The Monster Within

Thursday, July 7, 2016

In just a few weeks, Pathfinder RPG Horror Adventures will be launching at Gen Con 2016 and landing on store shelves! And while the GM is the one who sets a lot of the atmosphere in a horror game, each player and character contributes to the ambience—what better way to do that than to partake in horror-themed character options? In this blog, I'll give you all a preview of the character options within this book.

To start, let's look at one of the most mysterious and anticipated sections: the corruptions! Corruptions grant your character new powers, but they also stain your character with drawbacks and risk your character losing control to the darkness within. Each corruption comes with a catalyst, which describes how you might acquire, progress, and remove the main source of corruption, as well as a number of manifestations that each grant you a gift and an associated stain. There's also variants for useful corruptions, where you can ignore the stains, and vile corruptions, where you have no control over the manifestations but can ignore the gifts to help you fight off the corruption's influence. The 11 corruptions are as follows: Accursed grants you powers of curses and revenge like a hag or a fey. Deep one grants you aquatic abilities and other benefits associated with deep ones. Ghoul grants claws, stench, paralysis, and other powers related to ghouls and ghasts. Hellbound grants diabolical abilities like horns and the ability to summon devils. Hive is related to a new subtype of aberration created by a depraved annunaki; while normally hive larvae gestate in your body for sustenance and then kill you, a hive corrupted character has survived a rare metabolic symbiosis, gaining hive-related powers instead like a hive mind or acid blood. Lich grants you powers related to a failed attempt at lichdom, including necromantic mastery and a corpselike countenance. Lycanthropy grants you the ability to shift form into an animal or hybrid as well as other lycanthropic powers. Possessed grants you benefits from a second mind or soul within your body, such as letting your possessing spirit give you another shot against Will saves. Promethean comes about when you replace your body parts with construct parts, and it grants various construct-related abilities, particularly resistances and immunities. Shadowbound fills you with darkness and empties your life of joy, granting darkness and fear abilities. Finally, vampirism grants vampire abilities like fangs and summoning a rat swarm.

Illustration by Kiki Moch Rizky

Unlike many other books, there's actually a brief section on new race rules with some cool variant abilities that work well in a horror campaign. One fun example is the halfling ability creepy doll, which lets you use freeze like a gargoyle in order to appear to be a creepy-looking doll instead of a creature, and lets you Intimidate larger humanoids without a penalty due to your size.

Illustration by Hugh Pindur

There's plenty of horrific archetypes and class options as well! For instance, the blood alchemist uses sentient lives to fuel her alchemy and can create alchemical circles like an occultist in order to apply formulas to an area instead of himself. The barbarian gains new rage powers including cult totem and daemon totem. The cleric elder mythos cultist archetype is a cleric who uses Charisma instead of Wisdom and is rather insane. Devolutionist druids devolve animals and humanoids into feral ancestors (including their animal companion, a devolved humanoid). Hexenhammer inquisitors mix blasphemous dark arts with their faith and must balance these transgressions with penance. Cult hunter investigators seek out horrific cults like your typical Lovecraft investigators. Kineticists gain the elemental whispers wild talents, which allow them to make friends with a voice in their head and even manifest it. Mediums can contact vile legendary spirits like the heretic, which replaces the hierophant and helps you infiltrate a good religion and corrupt it to evil. Hate-monger mesmerists can sow xenophobic hatred while applying touch treatment without the touched creature realizing it. Talisman crafter occultists can create talismans holding their spells that others can activate. Soul sentinel paladins can help with confusion and corruptions with their mercies and become immune to hexes and curses. Witch killer slayers are experts in hunting and killing arcane spellcasters, including an ability called "burn the witch". Necrologists are evil spiritualists that house vile undead within them, rather than phantoms. Hangman vigilantes are whip and noose experts. Tatterdemalion witches command fabric and thread and can stitch a creature's eyes or mouth shut. Finally, hallowed necromancer wizards use their necromancy to destroy undead, rather than create them.

Horror Adventures also has a variety of fun and horrifying feats, as well as feats to fight against the encroaching darkness. For instance, Absorb Spirit lets you temporarily house a rejuvenating spirit within you to prevent it from returning for a time, and Disconcerting Knowledge lets you demoralize a foe with Knowledge checks to identify its weaknesses. There's also plenty of monster feats (including one where a shapeshifter's form change involves ripping out of its old body in a gruesome fashion), a small assortment of story feats (like Twisted Love, where a horrible creature is in love with you), and even four new styles: Brute Style lets you victimize prone opponents like a rampaging kaiju, Deadhand Style allows you to manipulate fear and eventually inflict negative levels with your unarmed strikes for ki, Kyton Style lets you use a spiked chain as a monk weapon and eventually as a shield as well as a weapon, and Maddening Style lets you strike at a foe's sanity and eventually obliterate your fallen foes as disintegrate.

There are dark spells from foul tomes as well as righteous incantations to defeat them. The death clutch spell causes someone's heart to leap out into your hand while damnation deals damage to nearby creatures in proportion to their most powerful evil spell or spell effect. Vile dog transformation transforms dogs into horrific servitors, and they dissolve into a stinking pile of gore and bones at the end of the spell (if the dog trusts you, it takes a -4 penalty on its save to avoid being transformed), while holy javelin impales an evil creature, dealing ongoing damage and weakening them.

When it comes to magic items, there are a variety of horrific items, like a withered heart you can squeeze to damage your foes, an altar that lets you animated dead without expending onyx, gloves that give you mouths on your hands, ad a mantle of darkness that creates deeper darkness when you take a total defense. There's also holy items like a holy symbol that dazzles your foes when you channel or use it as a divine focus, a holy symbol that lets you calm down creatures by healing them with your channel, and a monocle that helps protect you from reading something that harm you (or your sanity!). There's also cursed items like the needful doll that demands attention lest it give you nightmares, as well as artifacts like the dark grimoire, which lets anyone cast any spell by studying it for 1 hour per spell level (you even ignore material component costs by sacrificing humanoid creatures—how convenient!).

And that's just a sampling of the goodies in store for you. Stay tuned next week when we'll be focusing on some of the cool GM tools and advice in the book!

Mark Seifter
Designer