I'm looking for Pathfinder's most horrifying spells and rituals. Specifically, the kind only a depraved individual would use against their most hated enemies, either to prolong their targets' suffering, or to end it brutally.
Bonus points if your suggestion includes elements of body horror!
I'll start with a few that have crossed my radar recently.
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I will go for some more classics:
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500 Toads.
That has to be the most terrifying spell ever. Just imagine the sheer mass of flesh that is summoned in an instant, the inexplicable horror of the disjointed croaking shattering the mind, the bulbous eyes gazing blankly at you while they are slowly crushed under the weight of their 499 siblings.
Take a slash at it to clear the way? The toads knit back together and the croak grows stronger.
Try to blast them? The toads reform and the croak grows stronger.
Close your eyes to pretend this volume of flesh no longer exists? THE CROAK GROWS STRONGER.
500 Toads, man.... I was there.
My contender is Nevermind. In a campaign we were in, opponents critfailed enough for us to feel bad about the effect. Also, my character got a fail on this.
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I would nomintate Inside Ropes
As a cantrip, you can start to terrify from the very beginning.
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Don't forget the easy to overlook R3 ritual of Rune Trap.
It's not a spell for this list on it's own, but oh man, would this be a scary/great tool for a bad guy.
A minion / lieutenant, even an unwitting civilian, can waltz into a bustling market square, then unwrap a statuette with the big bad's spell precast into it.
500ft Desiccate triggers, and now you've got a serious mass-casualty incident on your hands as every living thing in a 150 meter radius is going to take lethal void damage.
The perfect circle of death is just a plus, as it guarantees investigators will find the object responsible.
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Comedy horrifying: Torturous trauma is a meme spell, and I love it.
Actually just straight up horrifying? Dominate, hands down.
I would have to say the Awaken Curse and Bathe in Blood rituals.
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My contender is Nevermind. In a campaign we were in, opponents critfailed enough for us to feel bad about the effect. Also, my character got a fail on this.
Oh god I'd never had a proper look at it before. That's disqueting.
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Not the most immediately terrifying, but a subtle spell casting of Outcast's Curse is nasty. Even on a regular failure, the target will permanently have every single new person they encounter think less of them. Every indifferent stranger will dislike them, and every potential friend who would hit it off right away simply doesn't care. It's not a case where it's just a matter of finding the right sort of person, someone similar, because it's truly everyone new. And any attempt to fix it, whether through kindness, fear, lying, or simply putting on a show, is twice as hard. Somebody pats them on the back, and the rest of their life is just worse until they can figure out what went wrong.
And that's the regular failure. On a crit failure, every new person they run into who wouldn't care about them instead actively wants to do them harm. If they run into somebody who doesn't dislike them, it's only because that person would have been a ride-or-die friend otherwise.
(Now, without using a spellshape to make this subtle or some other delivery method, it loses a lot of that bite. "Ever since that person at the party chanted a spell and touched me, everyone has been treating me worse" is much less of a puzzle to work out.)