Good Monsters for Gothic Horror


Advice


I'm going to be looking through the bestiaries and stuff, but maybe you can advise me on some good paizo monsters or character types I could throw into my gothic horror campaign? I'm thinking its going to be a monster hunting campaign, so I need good gothic horror monsters.

Looking right now for a classic movie feel and for lovecraftian stuff (that part should be easy)


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Always fun to toss in a pack of Shadow Mastiffs at the party. The baying in the middle of the night to bring on the fear, slowly hearing it draw closer and closer through the woods, just when the panic truly sets in, it grows to it's loudest and then suddenly... silence. Just when the party thinks the threat has left, the shadowy hounds break through the treeline and attack.


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A huge thing with the Gothic Horror genre is the disparity between different cultures.
In an absurd amount of Gothic Horror novels, the antagonists are either:
-Foreign
-Rich/Poor (no in-between)
-Catholic
-Some Combination of the Above
So what I would do is find "monsters" that don't appear to be monsters. In fact they'd appear to be normal people if only a bit eccentric. If your players are monster hunters, then they'll be looking for monsters- not people. That's where you can really prey on their biases. Weird things should happen around those characters to make the players feel on-edge. Eventually, the players should be the targets of the antagonists efforts. If we're talking about minions, animals are really popular. It's not just that they're animals, but that they're animals that think and act like intelligent creatures.
Most of the "horror" you're going to get out of a Gothic Horror setting is going to come from A) Suspense and B) good oration.

That's my 2-cents, anyway.


Flesh Golems are a good choice. Especially ones made from the people they've encountered during the game.


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Certain constructs and golems
Cythnigot
Zombies
Aranea
Mongrelmen
Insects
Slimes
Akata
Swarms
Attic whisperer
Bodaks
Faceless stalker


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Vamps, ghosts, and magic wielding nobles are the traditional ones. Werewolves also show up some.

Rakshasas would be a great one. The shape shifting thing, and taste for the high life would work perfectly.

Stock a convent with succubae.
Incubi show up in quite a few. At least among the more modern ones.

Allips
Banshees
Barghests

JamesCooke is right about how to get the horror going though. It's largely in what you reveal --or don't-- and how.

Ask questions about small, usually insignificant, thing about the players' actions. Opening a door-- which hand? If you do it a bit, it will nudge players to pay more attention to the little things.

Throw in the occasional phantom saving throw. Then look concerned and say you'll tell them later.


Bogeyman

many other fey.


Some of these templates and things might be of use to you: http://fraternityofshadows.com/Library/Ryan_Naylors_2_VRMHC.pdf


Schadenfreude wrote:
Some of these templates and things might be of use to you: http://fraternityofshadows.com/Library/Ryan_Naylors_2_VRMHC.pdf

LINK

ROBOTS HAVE NO FEAR. BUT MAY BE FEARED.
PERHAPS FOR LINKING PROWESS. SUCH IS MY DREAM.


The worst thing you can do is use hordes of weak monsters. That's splatter, not gothic horror. In my book the worst mistake CC made early on. Wading through destroyed enemies is the antithesis of gothic horror. So no skeletons, no zombies, no other cannon fodder.

Swarms, while many, are another thing. Because they scream horror.


This far in and no gargoyles?

Aside from those there's always doppelgangers and those faceless stalker things that can shapeshift into people. Paranoia ensues.

Scarab Sages

Mothmen, which have to be my personal favorite Pathfinder monster to date, would work very well in a Lovecraftian Gothic Horror game. Maybe you could make an even more powerful version to become a Q-like nemesis; never fully hostile, never permanently beatable, but an ongoing, clever, bizarre antagonist/wild card.


Part of gothic horror is that the players don't know who the monster is, or what it can do. Things which can disguise themselves, or pass unseen, or are easy to mistake for other things, are indicated.

Shapeshifters (lycanthropes, dopplegangers), vampires, ghosts possessing people, spellcasters who can cast mind-affecting spells with little chance of detection -- all of these seem indicated. A certain amount of deception (illusion spells, more shapeshifting, disguise) is part of the game. Whatever you do, don't use a bog-standard monster that the PCs can just figure out easily, or even with just knowledge checks. Make them work for their knowledge of the monster.

Silver Crusade

I'm one for always giving knowledge out for knowledge checks as per the RAW. I'd never let someone that invested in knowledge skills be up the river just for a little spooky.


Demons with the ability to possess or shapechange into normal forms.

Lycanthropes

Intelligent semi-civilized ghouls.


Honestly, if you want true Horror, you need to have the time and spirit for description.

A little flavor takes things a long way, as "You get attacked by three zombies" is vastly different from " The air hangs unnaturally still; not even the wingbeats of insects breaks the sudden silence that enveloped the graveyard just moments ago. Then, suddenly the silence is cut in twain as the ground ruptures beneath your very soles. Crawling forth from the dirt like some ghastly creature from the primordial soup wretches a hand, then an arm, a shoulder and more. Before you have time to catch your next breath your gaze meets that of a dead socket, a head who's eyes have long rotted away leaving naught but misery and hatred in their place. As two other nearby graves' occupants likewise rise, you realize that you may soon count yourself amongst them if you fail."

Literally any monster can do, but it's up to you to make it "pop."

Scarab Sages

3.5's Libris Mortis is probably another good source to dig through for this.


The Abandoned One makes a great horror monster for the early game.


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Be careful if you mix gothic and Lovecraftian themes. While neither is "in your face" about the type off horror they go for they have at least one thing that can be hard to mesh.

Lovecraftian things are often terrible in how beyond the reach of the mere fragile human mind they are while gothic terrors are the opposite, terrible in just how similar to us they really are.

Its not impossible to have both but it's worth keeping in mind.

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