Who Ya Gonna Call?

Great 'enhanced AP' blog, thanks for sharing Wes!

You can never have enough haunts.

And now I know what Linus' Great Pumpkin looks like when he's angry.

Awesome, I wish I could read the book, but I'm not running this one :(. I have to wait until we've finished Legacy of Fire before I can start peeking at this one.

Great 'enhanced AP' blog, thanks for sharing Wes!

You can never have enough haunts.

And now I know what Linus' Great Pumpkin looks like when he's angry.

We need a rogue archetype "ghostbuster" whose skills include haunt sence, and haunt finding which replaces trap sense, and trap finding, and is a similar function but for haunt.

Maybe replace evasion with the ability to hit ethereal creatures.

Just spit balling, leave the details up to the rpg supernstars.

Thank you! I was hoping any extra haunts not in the AP would come to the surface somewhere.

Thank you! I was hoping any extra haunts not in the AP would come to the surface somewhere.

I think Haunts are so massively cool, that if Paizo publishes a book on haunts, from anywhere between 16 pages, up to and including 320 pages?

I'll buy it - and the larger the better.

In fact, I'm far more interested in a Haunt book then I am in Bestiary 3. This is especially so, given that I plan to pick up the 1000 page + Tome of Horrors when released. At a certain point, I simply don't need any more monsters. And that "certain point" is about to be reached this summer.

I do, otoh, need more Haunts! Bring em on!!

h2ofowler wrote:

Thank you! I was hoping any extra haunts not in the AP would come to the surface somewhere.

I think Haunts are so massively cool, that if Paizo publishes a book on haunts, from anywhere between 16 pages, up to and including 320 pages?

I'll buy it - and the larger the better.

In fact, I'm far more interested in a Haunt book then I am in Bestiary 3. This is especially so, given that I plan to pick up the 1000 page + Tome of Horrors when released. At a certain point, I simply don't need any more monsters. And that "certain point" is about to be reached this summer.

I do, otoh, need more Haunts! Bring em on!!

While I love the concept of haunts, I'm seriously concerned, after looking over the first Carrion Crown adventure path, with an oversaturation of them. They are thematically cool, and in many places, appropriate. However, there are way too many of them in the first book alone, and if this continues I doubt haunts will have the desired effect on PCs. Instead of them crawling down a dungeon path inspecting every inch for traps, they'll expect every 'strange' building or place they enter to be a haunt.

"Oh, look, another emo ghost rattling their chains. Better burn this place to the ground and never come back"

Part of keeping PCs on edge is reserving the impact of things for situations where they will actually make an impact. There's a delicate balance in horror GMing, that if you tip it, the game simply becomes another dungeon crawl. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing, you can still have a lot of fun with it, but at least in Carrion Crown, that's not the theme I intend to run with.

All that being said, I love seeing the haunts and will easily use them in other adventures, even if I pull a majority of them out of the Adventure Path itself.

While I love the concept of haunts, I'm seriously concerned, after looking over the first Carrion Crown adventure path, with an oversaturation of them.

Don't worry too much about it. The first adventure is Carrion Crown's "Ghosts" adventure, after all. Turns out, though, that ghosts, specters, wraiths, etc are pretty hardcore challenges for first-level characters, so many of the challenges take the more CR-versatile haunts route. The name of the adventure is "The Haunting of Harrowstone" after all. :P

But, as ghosts and hauntings are not a running theme throughout the AP, you won't have to worry about later adventures being as haunt dense. There will some haunts in later adventures as appropriate, but not as many as in the adventure pretty much all about them. I've talked about this on the Carrion Crown messageboards already, but remember, these adventures - while meant to be more moody and fear themed - are still Pathfinder AP adventures and have certain assumptions about how much experience players need to gain, treasure they need to get, number of encounters an adventure needs to have, etc. While the author in writing or we in developing could have added fewer thematically appropriate encounters in the haunted dungeon - vermin, wild animals, goblins, gnolls, orcs, other low-level undead - I think the versatility of haunts allow them to pose a variety of threats, with numerous solutions, without seeming repetitive, while still being CR appropriate challenges, and while keeping to the theme of the adventure. All that being said, I think most would agree that it's better to have too much than not enough, so when GMs run the adventure they should, as always, feel free to adjust play as best suits their own and their players' needs and tastes.

By the same token, in later adventures that feature werewolves, vampires, zombies, and bogies of all types, don't worry after you see them that later adventures are going to be overwhelmed by those same monsters. Each adventure tends toward a theme, plays it up, but moves on. We've got a ton of horror tropes to cover and only six volumes to do it in, so we can't linger on any one theme for too long.

These have been added to d20pfsrd.com's Haunt's page.

baron arem heshvaun wrote:

Great 'enhanced AP' blog, thanks for sharing Wes!

You can never have enough haunts.

And now I know what Linus' Great Pumpkin looks like when he's angry.

We need a rogue archetype "ghostbuster" whose skills include haunt sence, and haunt finding which replaces trap sense, and trap finding, and is a similar function but for haunt.

Maybe replace evasion with the ability to hit ethereal creatures.

Just spit balling, leave the details up to the rpg supernstars.

Sounds more like an archetype for inquisitors.

Overcast wrote:

While I love the concept of haunts, I'm seriously concerned, after looking over the first Carrion Crown adventure path, with an oversaturation of them.

Don't worry too much about it. The first adventure is Carrion Crown's "Ghosts" adventure, after all. Turns out, though, that ghosts, specters, wraiths, etc are pretty hardcore challenges for first-level characters, so many of the challenges take the more CR-versatile haunts route. The name of the adventure is "The Haunting of Harrowstone" after all. :P

But, as ghosts and hauntings are not a running theme throughout the AP, you won't have to worry about later adventures being as haunt dense. There will some haunts in later adventures as appropriate, but not as many as in the adventure pretty much all about them. I've talked about this on the Carrion Crown messageboards already, but remember, these adventures - while meant to be more moody and fear themed - are still Pathfinder AP adventures and have certain assumptions about how much experience players need to gain, treasure they need to get, number of encounters an adventure needs to have, etc. While the author in writing or we in developing could have added fewer thematically appropriate encounters in the haunted dungeon - vermin, wild animals, goblins, gnolls, orcs, other low-level undead - I think the versatility of haunts allow them to pose a variety of threats, with numerous solutions, without seeming repetitive, while still being CR appropriate challenges, and while keeping to the theme of the adventure. All that being said, I think most would agree that it's better to have too much than not enough, so when GMs run the adventure they should, as always, feel free to adjust play as best suits their own and their players' needs and tastes.

By the same token, in later adventures that feature werewolves, vampires, zombies, and bogies of all types, don't worry after you see them that later adventures are going to be overwhelmed by those same monsters. Each adventure tends...

That's a huge relief to me, to be honest. I saw the changing monster themes in the synopsis of each volume of the adventure path, but was still concerned by the huge volume of them and the large amount of attention that they were receiving, it made it seem like they'd be a major feature of the entire Carrion Crown path. If they're being used mostly as a feature for this first adventure path, then I have far fewer qualms about including more of them.

As a sidenote, I love the ectoplasmic subtype included at the back of the path. There's a lot of fun that can be had with that.

Sounds more like an archetype for inquisitors.

Try this out:

Hmmm, it's Savage Pumpkin. I wondered when Helloween put out their new album if they were Paizo fans....

KaeYoss wrote:

Sounds more like an archetype for inquisitors.

Try this out:

** spoiler omitted **...

AWESOME

I'm with Galnörag though I would take my argument a bit farther.

Ok . . . while I was a fan of Haunts I sort of Lost my enthusiasm for them when a certain Barbarian ate a party member and our party and didn't quite have the resources/skills or general knowledge to deal with the haunt. The GM was crafty and between him and the pc's saying this has something to do with ghosts so I'm poking the raging cannibal barbarian w/ my wand of cure light wounds and hoping I don't roll a 1 on my Use magic device.

Without a full time expert on religion (a rare thing even with a cleric in the party) countering haunts is nearly impossible and deadly for a party. It also thoroughly frustrates my rogue, because Haunts are essentially traps that rogues can't deal with, and they seem increasingly common. Rogues being treasure finders, experts in dealing with dangers of dungeons and forgotten places and skilled in being able to detect sense and deactivate hazards in a dungeon. In fact here's a quote from the core rule book "Most, however, excel in overcoming hindrances of all types, from unlocking doors and disarming traps to outwitting magical hazards and
conning dull-witted opponents."

If they continue to be common in Pathfinder and in Pathfinder Society I think it would be reasonable to include knowledge (religion) as a class skill for rogues or rogue tricks should be created that aid in a rogues ability to overcome hindrances of all types which in my mind includes Haunts.

If this has already been discussed please point me at a thread.

If they continue to be common in Pathfinder and in Pathfinder Society I think it would be reasonable to include knowledge (religion) as a class skill for rogues or rogue tricks should be created that aid in a rogues ability to overcome hindrances of all types which in my mind includes Haunts.

Add to my spoiler above that Knowledge (religion) is added as a class skill for the archetype.