The cleric in my game has become haunted by Father Charlatan. The party finished their prison explorations for the day and headed back into town without the cleric taking any damage and thus even risking triggering manifestation of the haunt. Now they are back in Ravengro and they are going to be doing research, visiting Father Grimburrow, etc. before heading back to the prison.
It seems weird that she should have this haunt following her around without there being some effects. Any ideas on stuff that I can have happen without giving it away that she has a haunt on her?
I'm thinking animals may show hostility to the party (hostility directed at her specifically may give it away) and that she will have a spell failure chance. It definitely seems like there should be some consequence to her walking into the Temple of Pharasma with a haunt hanging on her back.
I'd love to hear your ideas and your experiences with this haunt if it hung around for awhile.
I had Father Charlatan hang around in the mind of an Inquisitor for a few days. The Pharasmin Clerics were able to see the haunt with detect undead but Inquisitors of Calistra are less likely to pay attention to stuffy human clerics, I guess.
I handled it with dreams. Father Charlatan worked through dreams to try and convert the Inquisitor to heresy. First he befriended her, then he started influencing her. It took the Summoner dragging Pharasma's priest (what's his name) into the issue to really clear things up. And something like 6 protection from evil spells.
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I also use a lot of dreams. Actually my players all get dreams every night. I try to be very vague - but if someone is affected by something then they get more personal for that person. So afterwards they are able to interpret their dreams.
Father Charlatan finally was triggered two fights later when they fought some burning skeletons in the prison level. I managed to roll a crit to trigger which added to the effect.
I wasn't planning on using dreams for this particular one, I'm already using dreams for Splatter, and I think the individual ghosts manifest in their own characteristic ways. For charlatan, he needs some form of interaction with the players to attempt to portray himself as a good guy, just before swallowing their souls.
In my game, we never got to the point that dreams could even be used, one of my players cast detect evil immediately after picking up his journal, a bit to quickly perhaps... stupid public forums ;-). Anyways so now RAW says that charlatan just sits there grinning at them lets them channel him to death.
This seemed pretty lame to me, but luckily I've got a big party (6) so I've got an extra CR to dump into every encounter anyway, which gives me a little poetic license that I exploit/enjoy...
So.... I let Charlatan do his thing, now that he's detected he starts talking, convincing the PC's he's there buddy, on their side, all that.
The PC's of course don't buy this since they just found him with detect EVIL, so they immediately begin throwing everything they have at him.
Enter cockroach swarm. As Charlatan talks roaches begin creeping in from the walls, swarming in a pool about his feet. (sort of a representation of corruption I thought, and gives the handy effect of an easy point of damage or two on the haunted).
At this point had charlatan barf his chains of symbols like a web and wrap up the PC, wipe his mouth and keep talking to the PC's, turned out to be one of my favorite encounters, although the PC's still took him down relatively easily.
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I had a slight problem when the party, included the haunted character, visited V. I figured she would easily be able to see the Father and would alert the characters. I had her not be in her room, which surprised the characters as they thought she couldn't leave. What other options can people suggest? Was she, as I assumed, so terrified of the Father that, with the character giving the Father access to her sanctuary, she would not manifest?