I recently backed "Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for Pathfinder". The most recent update concerned one of the developers who had the privilege of playtesting Horror Adventures at the GAMA trade show. He has this to say:
Another feature we tested out was corruptions. Corruptions are basically an affliction (such as vampirism, lycanthropy, lichdom as well as others) that has been bestowed upon a player character. Unlike the normal rules for such things, these rules allow the PC to be affected by the corruption a little and then progress at the player’s choice. Becoming more corrupted leads to having more abilities, but also leads you closer to your character being completely corrupted, evil, and therefore according to these rules, given to the GM to become an NPC.
This sounds very interesting. But one thing that strikes me oddly is the fact that lichdom is portrayed as a corruption. Obviously, liches have always been evil. But I suppose they (Paizo in this case but TSR/Wizards have always been guility of this) finally owe us an explanation as to why putting your soul in a phylactery and turning yourself into an immortal is evil in of itself.
What I'm REALLY concerned about is that I thought the assumption about lichdom is that you become one as soon as you create your phylactery. Corruption is supposed to be gradual, so how does that make sense? Do you incrementally siphon your soul into it, or something?
I don't get it.
One last thing I want to mention is that you apparently get a "Game Over" if your corruption reaches 100%. This is most likely to ensure that corruption has an actual cost and that power-gamers don't immediately succumb to it to get access to dank templates. But personally, I would let them get the template and play as a villain; so they can make one last attempt on the party.