Helping players with Haunts

[Squiggit]

I've been running a couple premade adventures with Haunts with a couple different groups, and despite both of them having completely different players they both run into a similar problem.

They see a haunt, usually take a bunch of damage/eat some nasty debuffs when it activates, make some recall knowledge checks to try to figure out how it works or look for any obvious mechanism, but if they roll poorly or don't see anything they tend to spend a round or two fumbling around and then just run away.

Between the two groups, four of the last five haunts have ended with the party eventually getting frustrated and going "we shut the door and pretend it doesn't exist."

Has anyone else run into a similar problem? Does anyone have any advice on how to help players figure out how to deal with haunts when there's no obvious solution? Straddling the line between not wanting to give up too much information for free but not wanting to see my players get frustrated not having any idea how to even approach a problem has been tricky.

[breithauptclan]

Squiggit wrote:

They see a haunt, usually take a bunch of damage/eat some nasty debuffs when it activates, make some recall knowledge checks to try to figure out how it works or look for any obvious mechanism, but if they roll poorly or don't see anything they tend to spend a round or two fumbling around and then just run away.

Between the two groups, four of the last five haunts have ended with the party eventually getting frustrated and going "we shut the door and pretend it doesn't exist."

That's about what I have seen too.

Though haunts are mechanically similar to traps that reset themselves. So that may be exactly what they are supposed to do: deal some damage, apply debuffs, and incentivize leaving the area before the players search it too thoroughly.

[John R.]

I ran into this problem when running a game once. If the party all failed their Recall Knowledge for the haunt, I'd have them have to wait a day before they could retry. They were also in a town with a temple that I let them research that haunt once with a bonus to the check. Fortunately, the haunt was more of an annoyance than a true obstacle and they could run through without triggering but I wouldn't remind them that it was there, and they were passing through it often. It did pretty minor damage but it still scared them cuz they had no idea if it was something that could get worse and worse the longer they were in the area or what.

ANYWAY! I'm rambling. Yeah, I'd give them a chance to retry their Recall Knowledge after a certain amount of time. If the haunt is keeping them from an area they MUST pass, keep that retry time limit manageable (not something where the world is going to end by their 5th try). If it's not keeping them from moving the story forward, it's not really an issue but maybe hint that there could be a nice bonus reward if they put the effort into exorcising it. It's probably safe to metagame a bit for them too if they are not at all familiar with haunts by telling them, often - but not all the time - haunts can be exorcised with Religion checks in the form of prayers or minor rituals and other checks that seem to make sense to the haunt in an obvious or ironic way.

[Captain Morgan]

You can also shut the door on a haunt, wait for it to settle down, and then try and exorcise it from outside the trigger zone.

I'd also encourage those knowledge checks more out of combat. If they've walked away from the haunts they aren't limited by actions

Are you letting players use both occultism and religion for the checks? There's no formal rules for identifying hazards but haunts are basically undead spirits.

[JackieLane]

In my case, I give them a little extra information for free.

First, whenever players run into a haunt and notice it, I confirm that this does look like a haunt, which means positive damage and religion checks are likely to help with it (generic meta knowledge), but there may be other, easier, more specific ways to deal with it.

I also give more or less complex descriptions of the haunts (what the spirits are doing or saying, what it feels like), treating it kind of like a riddle or puzzle, so that players can try to figure out what might help, and I stay open to creative and interesting solutions if they make sense for the specific haunt. So players get to figure it out themselves or have their characters figure it out through rolls.

Of course, this may not be to every group's liking (it's challenging the players rather than the characters), and if you don't like it, I recommend allowing retries like others have said.

[John R.]

JackieLane wrote:

First, whenever players run into a haunt and notice it, I confirm that this does look like a haunt, which means positive damage and religion checks are likely to help with it (generic meta knowledge), but there may be other, easier, more specific ways to deal with it.

Oh yes, this too. The positive damage thing is another good bit of general meta-knowledge that should be safe to give away for a party's first experience with haunts.

[kbowen0188]

Coming from other systems, I knew for sure that my players would be very confused by a haunt. One player had even prepped for ghosts, so I knew he was going to be baffled when the ghosts in the haunt didn't react to the skills he had that could cause damage to a ghost, all because there are usually pretty specific requirements with removing the haunt.

So, I was just honest with them. I used a simple haunt and openly explained how the whole haunt thing works. I then also let them know that a lot of the time I wouldn't be holding tightly to the requirements for removing the haunt as long as their method made sense for the haunt. I try to encourage open brainstorming and experimentation early on in a new system.

If anything, for your situation, I might even adjust the haunts I use so that the solutions are more in line with how my group thinks. Sometimes that requires me to adjust quite a bit of the haunt, sometimes on the fly. There was one that they were very obviously getting frustrated with, and the cleric mentioned that maybe a basic prayer to help pass them on would work. This wasn't a solution I had thought of, but it made sense. The haunt was there because of a murder, they were angry because of that murder, and someone getting through to them and helping perform the rites to move them on made sense. And then the player was super proud he had come up with a simple but effective solution for that one particular haunt.

[YuriP]

This cases we can also have the scooby doo solution. This give some extra work but say to your players when all them fail that they don't have enough information about that haunt to deal if it. They need to investigate more!
Then here is where start the hard part for GM. You have to improvise that thay can investigate more the dungeon, or they can obtain more information about it from NPCs and diplomacy check with the neighborhood or any other creative solution to obtain more information and allows them to reset their RK checks.
This also can be used to give some circumstance bonus due new source of information.

[Guntermench]

Sometimes groups just aren't going to be able to deal with things.