Drakenshield's page

As mentioned already - this isn't a house rule. Recall Knowledge can be used to recognize pretty much anything. Including Haunts. This is just standard stuff

Actually there is no reference to using Recall Knowledge on hazards excluding Magical Hazards that I can find. So non-magical hazards including haunts are not assisted with Recall Knowledge rolls.

Based on the written rules once you perceive a hazard you can diable it, and under the "Disabling a Hazard" rules it lists off the standard skills a player would use. But makes no reference to how players can get the information required to know how to disable it if there are other options besides those listed. Simply succeeding at the perception check is all you need to also perceive how to disable it.

So Complex hazards in general require narrative assistance, and Complex Haunts more so than any other hazard requires extensive GM narration to guide the the players to disabling it. This is not a massive deal, but the issue is simply how poorly laid out Complex Haunts are that they require a GM to house rule how to deal with them. Sure multiple GM's might come to the same way of doing it, but the fact remains that their is no explicit rules on haunts.

If I an incorrect about the recall knowledge thing please show me, I would very much appreciate seeing the rules that I am missing, because I have searched extensively and maybe I am just looking in the wrong place, which to be honest with P2E it is really easy to do.

The reason I asked the question as RAW only is not because of a lack of ability to house rules it. But rather to avoid house ruling something that was already covered somewhere that I am not aware of.

The point that Complex haunts should be an advanced DM tool I think makes my point entirely. New GM's running a Paizo product like an AP, one shot, society, etc, especially society which is designed with new player involvement in mind will run RAW.

I think any system that forces a GM to house rule something like Complex Haunts in order for them to actually work is just a poorly designed system. P2E has always had an issue with rule scattering, it got better in the remaster, but is still a massive problem. As TheFinish even pointed out early in this you are forced to extrapolate from other rules, or create new rules that don't exist to make this work.

I am all for GM's making their table run how they need it to for the players they have. Whatever makes the game more enjoyable do it. But when it comes purely to the RAW rules and understanding them house rules have no place in that discussion.

That is not to say as some have already done, stating that "the rules as written are crap, and here is how I handle it" that is very much appreciated. But I needed to know that I was not missing something first. I get new players all the time and some of them know specific rules far better than I do, and the last thing I want is to house rule something thinking I am fixing it just to find out I missed a rule that the player is reliant on and I have just killed that rule out of personal convenience without telling anyone thinking I was doing a good thing.

Complex Haunts are fantastic narrative tools and should be designed to be exactly that, the combat should be the secondary. I agree with the idea that the players can retreat and do some research to overcome the haunt later, but RAW if the players do not have the specified skills no amount of research matters.

The example of the troll is not an equivalent scenario. Sure their is the narrative that the players observe that the creature is healing from the wounds, or not healing. But even if you ran it as nothing more than a dice chucker the moment its turn comes around and it does not get back up you know you succeeded at stopping its regeneration, you don't actually need any GM help to solve that mystery. Even new players would know to try different attacks until they found what worked, and retreating to grab missing tools would be a natural conclusion if they lacked electricity damage for example. They could eventually figure it out organically. That is not the case for a Complex Haunt, you either show up with the right tools or nothing else matters based on RAW.

I really appreciate the responses and it has confirmed that the RAW is just bad and needs to be handled differently, and honestly I think it needs to be handled in a way that contradicts the RAW, but that is just my personal opinion. I just needed to make sure I wasn't missing a rule somewhere so again thank you.

I mean, RAW is you see a haunt, roll the check to disable it and either succeed or have to try again. The only requirement is being able to detect the haunt which means either identifying it before it activates or being in the middle of one.

I agree haunts are kind of weirdly noninteractive for what they're supposed to be and treating them as traps the way the system does is somewhat unsatisfying, but if you're only interested in the RAW they're pretty straight forward, albeit a bit disappointing.

Thank you, basically everything I assumed, but I had really hoped I was wrong about.

Definitely something I will need to house rule then if I want to use it as a story telling tool and not just a random hazard to waste resources on.

So going to respond to both of you as best I can.

I am looking for Rules as Written, not rules as interpreted. I understand that a lot of people have gotten comfortable with the lack of written rules on a lot of things, but this one has always bothered me. Planning on running a game where complex haunts in theory would be heavily used, but as written create a lot of issues.

First as it pertains to making extrapolations, that would be interpretation not written. P2E has well established that you cannot reliably extrapolate.

The fact remains that a complex magical hazard can be deduced to be magical by the players without successfully identifying it as magical simply by being hit by it. Players can easily know to Dispel magic and can ignore the skill requirements. They can retreat if needed, and pickup the proper tools to disable a magical trap.

You cannot do that with a haunt, and to address by RAW the ability to use a skill check even if you don't succeed at the recall knowledge, that would be technically correct, but again if the party does not have the required skill they have no ability to overcome the challenge.

Magical trap = Dispel Magic

Mechanical Trap = Depending on the trap you can bypass most if not all of them without ever rolling a skill check.

Complex Haunts = Nothing, you cannot disable them through positive magic like you could in P1E, they cannot be targeted, emanations would not affect them. As not all haunts are spiritual but can also be psychic you cannot treat them as undead as they don't have that trait.

Unlike magical and mechanical which can be destroyed by abilities and effects that specifically target those two traits. Haunts are not something that have simple solutions other than knowing what they are. Sure you can have players just start rolling random skill checks with zero justification and zero immersion and hopefully someone picks the right skill and meets the rank requirements (Trained, Expert, etc).

There needs to be something other than a skill check that can bypass haunts, similarly to other hazards that common magic can solve, and even at times physical solutions for the more martial players. Haunts just come off as last minute additions with little thought and effort put in.

This is probably again house rule territory, but I was hoping I missed something in the actual books that cover this. I base a lot of my interpretation of the rules on how Paizo writes there AP's. So far I have never seen an AP that runs a haunt give any solution to haunts other than skill checks.

Personally I think there needs to be a way to either bypass the skill check, or reduce the skill requirements through research (books, NPC interactions, etc). Something that if the players lack the specifical skill requirements, they can learn something in the dungeon, or local people to remove/reduce the difficulty. No player likes an impossible dead end, failure is fine as it can be temporary, but impossible is not fun.

A lot of haunts can be pacified with religion, many also give clues what could help - but usually we also use recall knowledge.

I don't really see the "a party failed a single check", everybody can try - and if all fail you can often retreat - or try what sounds useful.

The single check is the recall knowledge. Say only one player is investing into Religion of Occultism enough to possibly succeed.

So if its failed your done, if the haunt is guarding treasure, a path , or core to the story then retreating means you lose that area completely.

That is only if you can recall knowledge as the rules don't actually establish that you can.

There are no rules that state how you know what skill to use to disable a haunt. If there is a rule that states recall knowledge then haunts are potentially impossible to beat if recall knowledge is failed. That creates a major problem and makes complex haunts not something you can ever use for anything other than throwaway encounters because they can become unbeatable.

Like I said I am looking for a RAW solution, now a house rule or opinion solution before I look at a house rule solution myself which I would like to avoid.

Hello, I have a major bone to pick with haunts. I love the concept but despise the execution and having to house rule a core mechanic really bothers me considering how much time P2E has been out and the developers have not fixed them to the best of my knowledge. So if I am wrong and some kind of errata is out there I would appreciate the help as I cannot find anything, and even youtubers seem to gloss over this and just house rule it, which should not be required at this point.

So first issue, the rules make no mention of how to recognize a haunt for what it is. Yes you can perception vs stealth and spot that something is wrong which is enough to know a haunt is most likely present. But that does nothing to tell you what to do next.

The house rule I keep finding is to then allow players to Recall Knowledge to get more information. Paizo has given no rules on this whatsoever so purely by RAW there is no way to actually get more information about a haunt without simply guessing by the players.

Next even if you permit Recall Knowledge to get said information what happens if the players fail. The haunt at that point becomes an unbeatable hazard as once you fail a Recall Knowledge you cannot roll again.

Every other encounter in Pathfinder can be brute forced on a failed recall knowledge in some capacity. Sure it might take the players more resources, or a bit of luck but monsters can be killed, simple hazards can be absorbed, and even complex traps can logically be overcome especially if they are magical.

Complex Haunts are the only thing in the game that by design are unbeatable purely because a party failed a single check.

Without using house rules, or using judgement calls am I missing any errata on complex haunts in particular that solves these issues? I really love the idea of complex haunts and I may have to redesign them for my games as right now they are broken and unusable as written.

Posted this on the wrong forum

So my reasoning on why Shuriken's shouldn't exist is simple. They either cost more to make, than you can earn selling them.

Shurikens cost 1 cp to buy, even if you ignore the cost of setup a 1st level crafter can craft 5 cp a day at level 0, which means Shurikens cost 5x more at minimum than you could make selling them. Moment you add setup time your at 25x more.

I understand the crafting system is not meant to reflect reality, but it is so far gone from any sense of reality I struggle to make sense of it.

I have some house rule ideas I am working on to deal with this issue, but it would be nice if the crafting rules reflected some semblance of sanity in regards to crafting certain items.

I understand in game the argument is just buy them. Except they are Uncommon and unless you are in a region that they would be considered common in, the only way to get Shurikens is to find one, break it down to learn the formula and then craft them yourself.

What I would like to see is rules to allow batch crafting of non-consumables. This should only come into play if your income is double or more the items value, but it would be nice if their was something official. The crafting system is already designed to not allow players to make money crafting.

So I own all the physical books and stuff for Reign of Winter, even bought the PDF's. Now a year later my group has moved on due to life and we cant get together to play anymore. I am looking at Roll 20 but after spending all the time prepping the campaign for a face to face setting I dont know if I have it in me to learn roll 20 and build the whole thing into their system.

What im wondering is if their is a Roll 20 setup for Reign of winter available, heck if Paizo has an official one ill buy it. I love this setting and campaign and really want to finish running it before everyone moves on.

Any help would be great.