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So last session my players decided to pay Aldern a visit at his manor house after suspecting he may be the culprit. As soon as they got there it was toward the end of the session and I wanted this place to be fresh and memorable so I decided to call it a night there. I have decided to take quite a few liberties in tinkering with the haunts and generally creepiness of the place.
I hear things at the table like "okay don't touch anything inside" and it has me worried that they will miss a lot of the fun that this place has to offer. I am considering beefing up the haunts so that they react far more violently to PCs being nearby than the book suggests. I have a party of 5 and they are all min/maxed pretty hard (Druid, Barbarian, Rogue, Monk, Sorcerer). The barbarian for example is only level 5 but has 76 health, that is the kind of players we are talking about. They are always super paranoid and don't investigate the little things too much. For example, the haunt where you have to wipe the cobwebs away from all of the paintings I can say with near 100% certainty they will not activate. I was thinking about doing things like: "when you enter the room the door slams shut behind you and the room begins to grow cold" The answer to getting the door to release would essentially be the haunt trigger, wiping away the cobwebs. Should I sprinkle more loot around the place to add incentives to exploring?
Am I going too far? I feel like I might be railroading it a bit but if it is for the sake of story should I feel bad?
I also am thinking about making the consequences for leaving much harsher. For example, we are quite a few days into the ghoul uprising and I was thinking of having a large amount of them stalking around outside the house, compelled by Vorel of course, to keep the PCs inside where he can torment them. Or perhaps have a supernatural fog that always seems to get them turned around and returned to the house?
I have the players pretty frightened of the place at this point and I plan to deliver in spades. What are some suggestions you guys have for beefing the misgivings up and ensuring the haunts are delivering story and giving the players fits? How did you run The Misgivings? Should I consider not using a board and minis? Should I have them in initiative from the moment they enter the house? I would like to brainstorm some ideas to make this place epic and memorable.
Be sure to have the glint of coinage here and there. Some of it is fake. But have some of it be real. Lure the players in. And you can PUSH the players also... like describing a fog billowing into the hallway behind them. They can stay and have it engulf them, or enter into the room with the Haunt. Finally... they can't enter into certain rooms without a key that is found behind a painting. Well, unless they have a really high skill for unlocking doors... but make it so they CAN'T get in without that key! So they have to search EVERYWHERE.
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There's a change I would make to the haunts running it again which may help you as well (although for different reasons).
My approach would be this: When the haunt triggers, let the players do whatever they want. Talk to it, ignore it, run away, whatever. Then make those choices matter.
So, if you pit your will against the haunt and banish it from your mind, you don't need to make a save or anything... but you do take 1d4 (or 1d6 or whatever you feel is appropriate) Wisdom damage. If you play along, you might get the effect in the book. If you run away, you run in fear for a while (probably running into another haunt) and so on.
The problem I had with the house is that the players were totally freaked out (yay!) but actually fairly passive, moving from room to room being exposed to horrors. So I wanted their choices to be more significant.
My answer to the "they can just leave" was to make the carrionstorms awesome. Like, the first time they looked back outside, the sun was blocked out by a circling mass of birds and the skeletons of the horses they'd left outside were scattered, the gnome's pony's skull resting in a tree covered with ravens like diseased fruit.
We didn't use minis at all in Foxglove Manor until they got to the basement. I'd suggest against them. Keep the players dependent on the fiction to "see" so they have to listen to all the awful stuff going on.
Cheers!
Landon
My players were really into figuring out the story behind the haunts. They wanted to trigger them so they could see more pieces of the story. Play up the story more than you do the "fear" and they may start to have more enthusiasm for the haunts.
I think I had the haunts automatically trigger once everyone (or as many as were going to) entered a room. Sort of a, "Where is everyone standing? Okay." and then launch into the haunt.
I also didn't give any opportunity to prevent a haunt with Turning/Channeling or the like. On the other hand, if someone beat the haunt's initiative, they were able to ready actions, or delay but then leap to help when someone (the person primary for that haunt) suddenly did something dangerous.
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The party has a rogue that likes to take 20 whenever he is not in combat, which results in him getting a 33. If I recall correctly the hardest locks you find in the skinsaw murders are DC30 so my party is not really troubled by locks anymore. I will probably jump several of them up to a DC35 just for fun and begin requiring keys, thanks for the idea.
Maybe ill put some loot in the more dangerous places, like inside the stuffed manticore, amongst the keys on the piano, or inside the desk with the "splinter of wood" on it just to persuade them to live dangerously. They are very boastful of how powerful their characters are, and I want to humble them a bit.
I look forward to the moment when someone looks out the window and notices thousands of ravens perched on the outbuilding. I will probably significantly beef up their CR, maybe give them ghoul fever too.
Let's put it this way. My players rolled 4d6 for stats and rolled well (except for one player and I ended up giving her points to upgrade her stats with so she'd stand a chance with the upgraded monsters I've been siccing on them). They went into every room. And they were delightfully creeped out. It helps two of them are horror film buffs.
The party has a rogue that likes to take 20 whenever he is not in combat, which results in him getting a 33. If I recall correctly the hardest locks you find in the skinsaw murders are DC30 so my party is not really troubled by locks anymore
I'd just start putting him under time pressure. Take 20 takes 20 times as long, so some footsteps, swirling fog, spectral visions or other encouragement might make him less keen to waste so much time. Alternatively, you could trap the doors as well, so taking 20 has unfortunate side effects.
I am also going to be running skinsaw murders soon, and I was wondering how to handle the groups paladin with the haunts. Since all haunts are fear effects according to the gamemastery guide, would the haunts just not happen to them or would they just see things and not care about it?
While haunts are fear effects, they don't always cause fear. For instance, one of the haunts
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So people have tried (and liked) the idea of not using maps or minis? I am writing out note cards to hand to people anytime they make the perception DCs in the house, as well as haunt instructions so that I will not be broadcasting what is going on across the table for everyone to hear. Has this worked well for anyone else?
Also doing the candlelight / creepy music thing.
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I used maps and minis throughout the manor.
For keeping folks in the house
For the paintings, describe a familiar face being visible through the cobwebs and have it be one of the elder Foxgloves. Hopefully piquing their curiosity will be enough.
Also, as the haunts are keyed to specific PCs, I did not have them trigger until one of those folks entered the room.
All primary effects created by a haunt are mind-affecting fear effects, even those that actually produce physical effects. Immunity to fear grants immunity to a haunt’s direct effects, but not to secondary effects that arise as a result of the haunt’s attack.
Personally I take that to mean that all haunts are fear effects, so the paladin would be immune to everything in there - including
That said, I had a paladin in my group when I ran this scene and I made him explicitly immune to haunts - ie he was aware that something was happening but he couldn't actually see the visions or experience the emotions tied to them.
In hindsight I wish I would have handled this differently, since the players were frustrated that they were "missing pieces of the puzzle" to the story of Foxglove Manor - the visions the paladin's haunts were never seen, after all.
I'd probably either play it so that the paladin could still experience the haunt but he'd be able to suppress the negative effects of it (ie getting the visions with no downsides) or choose to drop his fear immunity (much like spell resistance) in order to experience the haunt, but in this case he would be vulnerable to the negative effects and have to make a saving throw as per usual.
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When I get to this area, I plan on creating a bunch of player handouts to give to the PCs. Since haunts are only perceived by the person experiencing them, I plan on letting them know what they're seeing, and then letting them describe what their character is doing. It makes for a much more natural way of experiencing the haunt.
"What happened, Amiri?"
"I don't know. I just saw a little girl who looked at me and asked 'What's that on your face, mommy?' I scooped her up and tried to get us both out of the house. So, um, sorry about that Lem."
"It's fine, but could you put me down, please?"
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Oh, one other trick that I loved: call for a Perception check, then describe some momentary supernatural occurrence to whoever rolled highest. Nobody else notices it, but they wouldn't.
A good example, that I think is used in the actual adventure, is a room that when you enter it, whoever gets the highest Perception roll sees a woman's pallid face looking in through the window. By the time they point it out to anyone else, she's already gone.
It doesn't do anything, but damned is it good for tilting players that fall into "gameplay mode."
Cheers!
Landon
I had a paladin in the group, and I just played it out as she saw the effect, but it didn't harm her. It was really nice, because she ended up describing what she saw to the others, and insisting on going through the other rooms to see the entire story, but whenever she approached a haunt, it triggered and affected the targeted PC. The best moment was when her best friend/little brother figure (the bard) got the mysogeny haunt and stabbed her, leading her to lecture him on controlling himself.
It was epic roleplay, I didn't break the "immune to fear" taboo, and the PCs got to see every single haunt because the paladin insisted on figuring out what was going on...
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One other question... every haunt has a DC 20 Perception check to notice the haunt before it fully manifests. Do I allow everyone to make this notice check or just the PC that is about to be haunted? For example, would everyone have a chance to notice the scarf moving before it latches onto someone?
Everyone. However, only the people who make the Initiative check can act in the Surprise round, and the only things that can affect the Haunt are Channel Positive Energy or maybe Holy Water. If no one stops it before Initiative 10, it goes off.
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i just ran through this, and all of the compulsion haunts were delivered via notes and forcing the possessed player to role-play the horror they were experiencing....
... except the suicide one, that player was the only one in the dark about the fact that she was about to coup de grace herself.
fun side moment... the destructive fighter decided he really didn't like the stained glass windows. he got to throw a couch through one of them before the house started 'reacting' to his destructiveness.
he was still in panic mode when he ran balls-first into the carrion swarms
fun side moment... the destructive fighter decided he really didn't like the stained glass windows. he got to throw a couch through one of them before the house started 'reacting' to his destructiveness.
he was still in panic mode when he ran balls-first into the carrion swarms
heh. Somebody's seen "Young Sherlock Holmes", and the stained glass golem...
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So believe it or not my party is actually checking EVERYTHING in the house which makes me a happy DM. 2 4 hour sessions down and they are just now getting into the tunnels underneath.
I came to the conclusion the saves were too low to challenge my party so I made them all like DC 18 will saves. It has been MUCH more entertaining. So far the haunt in the observatory and the haunt in Vorel's lab have gotten the biggest rise out of the party. They say they are all scared but it doesn't feel like there is tension at the table. The birds have successfully kept them in the house, and they are wondering which inanimate object is going to make them want to kill themselves next.
I had them in initiative all the time and the character with the insane haunt went right after the haunt itself so you can guess how the suicide compulsion went. I had trouble applying game rules to the situation.
Player A: "I walk over to the knife on the table"
Player B, C, D, E: "Can I trip him? Can I tackle him? Can I ____"
I didn't really know what to do in this situation so I ended up just fudging it by saying "okay player D and player B are close enough to try and stop him" Same goes for just about any other haunt where a player seemed to be doing something self destructive.
Foxglove Manor was the best session I have ever run and it received rave reviews. I had a party of 3 - Dwarf Grapple Monk, Human Rogue and an Elf Magus. My group strongly favours RP and I loved the rich story of the manor so instead of tipping them off about checks and saves, I had each haunt trigger as they came into the room. I'd pre-selected which haunts would be keyed to which characters based on their stories and backgrounds and only asked for the affected individual to make a save once the story was clear - ie: in the ballroom the player had to make a Will save only after being swept into a dance with a ghost that slowly deteriorated over the course of the dance ala Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Most of my party made the saves every time, but when they didn't they got hit hard - so hard in fact that I let the Revenant and Aldern fight it out without PC involvement.
Personally, I always sacrifice rules and game crunch for story and this time it paid off in spades.
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If I understand it correct, the suicide compulsion would go like this:
Surprise Round:
Everyone rolls initiative, and anyone that both notices the haunt and goes before count 10 can do something. Assuming they can't do anything about it, it goes off, and targets the person tied to the insane haunts. That person makes the Will save. If they succeed, nothing happens and the haunt's over. If not, then the encounter continues.
Round 1: Most people won't know exactly what's happening right now, so they'll probably delay. On the haunted character's turn, they move to the "dagger" and pick it up. That's a standard and a move, so they can't do anything else. This gives the PCs a full round to do something - grapple the target and prevent them from killing themselves, disarm them, something. If they do anything to try to prevent the target from killing themselves, then they get attacked by the haunted character instead, getting critically hit and causing bleed damage. The attack expends the haunt.
Even if the PC beat the haunt in the surprise round and delayed, they still can't get to the dagger and kill themselves - coup de grace is a full-round action. So, in the end, the likelihood that the PC actually kills himself is almost nil, as it depends upon the rest of the group doing nothing when they put a jagged piece of wood to their throats and scream, "This is the end!"