Haunts, as we all know, are a player's worst nightmare and the most fun a GM can have in a single action. The rules for haunts include two things that confused me a little at first and led me to make this post.
1.) "A haunt can have virtually any effect identical to an existing spell effect, but often with different—and distinctly more frightening or unnerving—sensory or physical features than that spell effect normally has..."
2.) A classic paizo-style rundown of haunt CR and CR modifications that include some haunt traits that remind me of metamagic feats.
For me, I was rather excited for haunts because I initially thought that you use a spell as the base for the haunt, and then add sprinklings of horror to make it a /little/ bit worse. But if any of the modifications extend past flavor, then there's rules on how they change the CR. In my opinion, a responsible GM should be able to modify a haunt to make it ever-so-slightly scarier than the base spell WITHOUT needing to change the overall CR. Now if the spell is Hunger For Flesh and you want it to hit 3 players, then yes, you'll need to use Mass Hunger For Flesh.
But I love the idea of haunts being a little bit more scary than their base spells, both flavor-wise and mechanically, so do you guys think it's reasonable to make small alterations to spells when using them for haunts without modifying the CR so long as the GM does it carefully? Extending spell duration for a round, increasing save DCs by 1 or 2, rolling 2d4 damage rather than 1d8?
What are your thoughts? Have you done this before or do you always do by the book?
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The idea of the CR system is as a tool for the GM to quantify how difficult something is to beat. Things that are roughly equally difficult to beat should have equal CR. That way, if as a GM you're wondering "can they handle this", you can look at the CR and make a somewhat informed decision.
So if you make a haunt more difficult than its baseline, it should have a higher CR than its baseline.
It sounds like you're thinking of CR as a"budget" - as in "you can use so many CR something encounters", so you want the maximum threat per CR.
Ascalaphus - Well both with CR as a budget and CR as a measurement of difficulty I think that there's room for maneuvering. Especially if you're making the haunt more dangerous without actually meeting the requirements for upping the CR.
For example, a Spiteful haunt (caster level and save DC increase by 2) increases the haunt CR by 1. But I would say that you could keep the original CR if you're just increasing the DC, not the caster level. Or, as per my original post, you can switch out damage dice to increase the average and minimum damage, without increasing the maximum damage (of course this change gets more dangerous with more dice, but swapping 1d12 for 2d6 won't do much harm). A Vaporous haunt (AC = 10 + CR) ups the CR by 1, but what about a haunt that acts as if it has Mirror Image; with multiple images projected but they all still have 1 HP and 0 AC?
You're very much right that I'm trying to increase the threat per CR and I'm just wondering if people think it's too much or if rules should come first etc.
I mainly view it similarly to different monsters with equal CR. Some monsters are tougher some are weaker, but practically speaking they can be considered equal threats.
Ascalaphus - Well both with CR as a budget and CR as a measurement of difficulty I think that there's room for maneuvering. Especially if you're making the haunt more dangerous without actually meeting the requirements for upping the CR.
There is room for maneuvering in so much as that any individual CR ends up covers a range of difficulty, not a discrete difficulty level. You can slightly increase or decrease the difficulty of an encounter without it being equivalent to an entire character level for the PCs.
You would probably be wrong for many haunts. DC is far more relevant to SoS/SoL/SoD than caster level - generally, damage is the thing that cares the most about caster level.
For example, a Spiteful haunt (caster level and save DC increase by 2) increases the haunt CR by 1. But I would say that you could keep the original CR if you're just increasing the DC, not the caster level.
Or, as per my original post, you can switch out damage dice to increase the average and minimum damage, without increasing the maximum damage (of course this change gets more dangerous with more dice, but swapping 1d12 for 2d6 won't do much harm).
You are boosting damage by about 7%, which probably isn't worth an entire CR point by itself. However, swapping out d8 for 2d6 would be pushing it.
A Vaporous haunt (AC = 10 + CR) ups the CR by 1, but what about a haunt that acts as if it has Mirror Image; with multiple images projected but they all still have 1 HP and 0 AC?
Casters will have an average attack bonus vaguely near +1 1/2 * Char Level on a spell or thrown holy water. That will mean that realistically only 1/4 or so of all attacks will miss. Twinked out combat characters are likely to hit every time.
Each holy water hit deals about 1CR worth of HP vs a persistent haunt. That means that Vaporous haunt will stop roughly 1 attack per 4 levels, if not less. Mirror Image stops...1d4+1 per 3 levels, which is substantially more for holy water, and astronomically more if actual spells are being used (like high end cure spells, which kill far quicker than holy water but will be almost certainly negated by an unablated Mirror Image, and the cure spells get discharged upon hitting an image, unlike outright missing). I would make it at least +2CR.
Oh, and mirror images don't have their own AC. Characters would be targeting AC10, or AC10+CR for Vaporous haunts.
You're very much right that I'm trying to increase the threat per CR and I'm just wondering if people think it's too much or if rules should come first etc.
If you are making changes that push its difficulty up to the point where player characters would need at least a level to find it just as easy as the encounter without the changes, and you are not changing the effective CR, then you have gone too far.
I mainly view it similarly to different monsters with equal CR. Some monsters are tougher some are weaker, but practically speaking they can be considered equal threats.
Different monsters have equal CR but different difficulty for three different reasons
1. Some monsters are mis-CR'd, and should be a higher CR *cough* aboleths, shadow demons, orcs *cough*2. CR represents a range of difficulty. Think of it as CR5 = CR4.5-CR5.5
3. Even subtle environmental differences can affect difficulty, so two creatures with almost identical stats can suddenly become very different because, say, one has a swim speed and one has a climb speed.
You can adjust difficulty slightly without caring about the CR, but if you manage to assemble an encounter that is quite a bit harder than its calculated CR, then you should treat it as the higher CR.
In short, CR is supposed to be a tool to estimate the difficulty of an encounter. If you are deliberately gaming the CR system by making precise changes to boost the effective difficulty of an encounter beyond its CR, then you are missing the entire point of CR.
If it is a noticeable increase in difficulty then it deserves a CR increase.
CR is a diagnostic tool to help the GM figure out how hard something is. If you're trying to make something harder without increasing the CR, you're basically trying to fool yourself.
From what I've experienced, I believe that CR functions more as a measure of how dangerous an encounter is relative to the PCs themselves. If a level 3 all-melee party goes up against a CR 3 encounter filled with ranged attacks and Tanglefoot bags, then that's not really an "easy" encounter for them even though the CR would suggest it is. All GMs understand that some encounters are harder than others even when you calculate everything by the book and they all have an identical CR.
CR is a guideline. It is an estimation of what level the party needs to be in order to successfully deal with the encounter; which effectively means that often times CR is affected greatly by the actual skill of the players. How many times does a GM need to apply the advanced template or add another trap simply because the party's skill effectively makes them 1 level higher than they are?
But what about when you want to a threat to exist, but you're not bothered if the players deal with it quickly? That's why I'm asking about haunts. What if the spell used is fairly easy to deal with, but you'd like it to survive long enough to actually have some effect? Upping save DCs by 1, increasing the average damage but not the maximum, giving it one extra round to live, all the things I'm describing are things that GMs do mid-game all the time.
At the end of the day, CR reflects difficulty because player XP is based on it, and vise versa. So if the GM makes changes that do NOT cause the encounter to go from Easy to Challenging, then is it really unreasonable for the CR to remain unchanged and still reflect an Easy encounter?
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If the danger does not actually increase significantly then no CR change is needed, but the then becomes, "Is this change significant"?
As an example increasing the duration by 1 round might not matter but adding 3 rounds might. How much is too much will depend on the situation. Taking an extra round of acid arrow is not as dangerous as an extra round of being paralyzed.
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CR is a diagnostic tool to help the GM figure out how hard something is. If you're trying to make something harder without increasing the CR, you're basically trying to fool yourself.From what I've experienced, I believe that CR functions more as a measure of how dangerous an encounter is relative to the PCs themselves.
That's pretty much absolutely backwards-to-reality wrong. CR is a measure of how difficult an encounter is relative to a hypothetical "standard" party (which they typically keep in the room next to the "standard" platinum-iridium kg).
If you happen to have a group of lightweights (whether kilograms or party members), that's on you, not on the Paizo design team. Because they aren't going to come into your kitchen table and audit your Cha 8 bard.
Conversely, if your party can easily handle a CR=APL encounter, then the solution is to throw a CR=APL+1 encounter at them, not to try and game the CR system to get a more powerful encounter that still has the same CR number.
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I'd say that you are both off, although somewhat close. CR is a diagnostic that is meant to challenge an average part and to deplete their resources. It isn't meant to be a test that they can loose, but rather something that they can push through.
Not all encounters will challenge the party to the same degree as other "CR appropriate" encounters, because the make up of the party, luck, and circumstances can significantly alter the course of that encounter, which is perfectly fine.
When it comes to Haunts, I believe a lot of factors really make them very special. The mechanics simply do not allow what the flavor suggests they are supposed to do happen, most of the time. I also remember reading almost as soon as they came out that the absolute best thing that a party or individual can do when they encounter a Haunt is to move back however far they can with a single Move Action, (allowed in the Surprise Round). Most of the time, compared to any other action they do, has the best chance of negating or mitigating the Haunt outright.
Unfortunately for the game, Haunts are written much more as guidelines than actual rules, and this leads to a lot of variation on how they are handled. For instance, as Undead creatures, which they specifically are, the party should be entitled to a Know Religion check to ID it, in addition to and regardless of any other special Notice Check. But, it's sort of silent on that.
The way that they are written tends to actually leave players very disappointed, making it sound like a really interesting encounter and then more often than not simply being over before most can even act. Instead of being a really good blend of a trap and an Undead encounter, they tend to blend the worst to aspects of those two things, robbing those that actually do prepare for them of the chance to show off, (due to limiting to a Surprise Round only) and simply not offering enough information, as written, without the DM going above and beyond the system, to make them memorable or special.
The idea of putting a Haunt to rest permanently, for each and every one could be an adventure unto themselves, (and there are plenty of times I've wanted to jump the rails and do that adventure instead), but are instead almost always written to be a one shot encounter with no relevance after they,. . . "go".
Because these are the sorts of faults I have with Haunts, I don't really see altering things like their effective spell level or adding metamagic-like effects as really doing anything. It will simply increase the number of "I simply turn around and walk as far back as I can"s, and not make Haunts any more fun or interesting for anyone.
Beckett, that was an absolutely amazing comment, thank you! This is the main issue I have been trying to address! The flavor surrounding haunts makes them seem amazingly terrifying, but at the end of the day it's all flavor, and the mechanics have trouble reflecting their spook-factor.
The iffy part of it for me is that mechanically Haunts just expand spell-based traps outside the traditional evocation school and into necromancy and enchantment. However, the writing around them paints them as an entire new game mechanic vs. an addition to existing trap mechanics.
Essentially, I would really like to write some haunts that are a bit closer to their ever-so-flavorful descriptions, but as I am working with XP budgets, I want to make sure that anything that ups CR actually adds to the flavor/fun/threat of the encounter.