OSSR: Heroes of Horror

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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

karpik777 wrote:Strickly speaking Sorin doesn't use a giant black sword, and that picture is some kind of fan(?) edit changing several things about him.
If there's a difference between that picture and Sorin's official card art for the Zendikar set, I don't see it.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

angelfromanotherpin wrote:
karpik777 wrote:Strickly speaking Sorin doesn't use a giant black sword, and that picture is some kind of fan(?) edit changing several things about him.
If there's a difference between that picture and Sorin's official card art for the Zendikar set, I don't see it.
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/ ... eid=195403

Most obviously, compared to what Koumei posted he's had a dye job and dropped his giant sword.
Last edited by Omegonthesane on Wed Aug 10, 2016 9:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Oops, somehow I thought the first pic in karp's post was the one he was holding up as an 'edit.' Disregard me.
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Post by norms29 »

RobbyPants wrote:
The evil duplicate ploy: Have a doppelganger fuck with the players in various ways. For extreme roleplayers only: have one of the PCs be replaced with a doppelganger without the player's knowledge. I'm not exactly sure how this works, but whatevs. "Oh, by the way, Fred, you need to target Jeff with that spell, and not the goblins, because you've actually been a doppelganger for the last three sessions".
I remember an reading this trick in an old TSR module once. but principle 1. the Doppelgangers had an always on spell that let them read surface thoughts, so they would always know what those around them expect the replaced character to do. 2. the doppleganger's imitation is perfect in front of the other PCs. 3. anything the replaced player does or sees out of view of the other PCs is actually just the lies the Doppelganger tells the rest of the party later.

there was an unspoken assumption that the PCs were completely incapable of keeping any secrets from each other(otherwise how would the Dopp know to do things kept secret from the rest of the party), or distrusting each other, or even surprising each other ( as the every action the player takes is what the real character would do, whcih the doppelganger only knew because the rest of the party apparently knew to read from their minds)

I'll dig it out tomorrow and see if it was as ill conceived as I remember. It probably was, there's a who-dunnit mystery which forms a major part of the module, story floating around a Ravenloft fan forum of a group who, at the start of the mystery successfully identified all 4 badguys by process of, and I quote,
Are you fucking kidding me wrote: we'll just take the list of suspects, and pickout the name that sounds the most German, and that's obviously the killer
EDIT: just remembered these bastards didn't just read surface thoughts (that was the Monster manual standard doppelgannger) they could actually MindProbe, at will, with no observable revealing action. the module instructs the DM to not bother rolling the savingthrows unless time is somehow a factor, otherwise they just keep making undetectable attempts until they succeed
Last edited by norms29 on Thu Aug 11, 2016 9:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
After all, when you climb Mt. Kon Foo Sing to fight Grand Master Hung Lo and prove that your "Squirrel Chases the Jam-Coated Tiger" style is better than his "Dead Cockroach Flails Legs" style, you unleash a bunch of your SCtJCT moves, not wait for him to launch DCFL attacks and then just sit there and parry all day. And you certainly don't, having been kicked about, then say "Well you served me shitty tea before our battle" and go home.
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Post by norms29 »

Just looked it up, here are some choice facepalms
those idiots wrote:
The DM should not tell the player that the PC
has been killed and replaced. (The attack
happens off-stage and is not role-played.) The
DM should let the player continue to play the
character with no knowledge that the PC is now
a doppleganger. The player is informed that the
character has been replaced by a doppleganger
only when it comes time for that doppleganger
to attack the other PCs. (There are several
places in the adventure where any
dopplegangers masquerading as PCs must
attack.)

also I didn't notice until now that they spelled doppelganger like that all through the module
wait there's more wrote: [A doppelganger] can (and does)
remove all magical items from the body of its
victim and can use these. It cannot, however,
duplicate the victim's special abilities (spells.
high-level thieving abilities, clerical turning
abilities, fighters’ extra attacks, etc.). In gaming
terms this means that, whenever the
doppleganger character attempts to use these
abilities, he or she automatically fails (regardless
of the player’s dice rolls).

So catching the infiltrator is as simple as saying "hey Wizard, Cast light". Apparently the imitation is perfect because they are so deep into character that they forget that they can't do the things the replaced character could.

EXCEPT FOR SAVING THROWS
bonus stupid wrote:Although a doppleganger normally would
differ in certain statistics (Strength, Dexterity,
Constitution, Intelligence, and Wisdom) and
would have different saving throws than the PC it
is mimicking, the DM should allow replaced PCs
to continue using their original statistics and
saving throws. This allows for the fact that the
doppleganger is intelligent enough not to do
anything that would give it away.
so it's "intelligent" enough to fake attributes that are better than it's own (I give it a pass on saves, because it has better saves than the players would at the level the Module is meant for), but it doesn't know to not agree to use abilities it doesn't have.
Last edited by norms29 on Fri Aug 12, 2016 4:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
After all, when you climb Mt. Kon Foo Sing to fight Grand Master Hung Lo and prove that your "Squirrel Chases the Jam-Coated Tiger" style is better than his "Dead Cockroach Flails Legs" style, you unleash a bunch of your SCtJCT moves, not wait for him to launch DCFL attacks and then just sit there and parry all day. And you certainly don't, having been kicked about, then say "Well you served me shitty tea before our battle" and go home.
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Post by Kaelik »

So you no save no decision Rocks Fall Everyone Dies one PC, then that player gets to experience automatic failure on a bunch of his special abilities for a while, and then gets told that their character no save died a long time ago...

Yep, no problem with that at alllllllll.
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Post by hyzmarca »

Just make it an Illithid Savant half-doppleganger who ate the PC's brain and thus got his abilities. And tell the Player, because fuck, why wouldn't you.
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Post by Wiseman »

There's this homebrew version of a doppelganger...

https://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Doppelgan ... Monster%29
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Post by norms29 »

Kaelik wrote:So you no save no decision Rocks Fall Everyone Dies one PC, then that player gets to experience automatic failure on a bunch of his special abilities for a while, and then gets told that their character no save died a long time ago...

Yep, no problem with that at alllllllll.
One PC? Oh you sweet summer child. no, you Rocks Fall ALL the PCs. One by one.
this is one, and I know it's not the only one, of the old modules that instructs Mr.Cavern to FORCE A TPK as part of the adventure, after which the killed characters wake at the next stop on the rail-road.
After all, when you climb Mt. Kon Foo Sing to fight Grand Master Hung Lo and prove that your "Squirrel Chases the Jam-Coated Tiger" style is better than his "Dead Cockroach Flails Legs" style, you unleash a bunch of your SCtJCT moves, not wait for him to launch DCFL attacks and then just sit there and parry all day. And you certainly don't, having been kicked about, then say "Well you served me shitty tea before our battle" and go home.
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Post by hyzmarca »

I'd just say that the entire party has been replaced by Doppelgangers, but none of them know that the other party members are Doppelgangers. I'd just pull each of the players asside one by one, to tell them a secret about their characters. And that secret is the same for each of them. They're Doppelgangers, and they're supposed to quetly murder the other party members so that they can all be replaced.

And then we end up with that one scene from Oglaf.
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Post by virgil »

norms29 wrote:
Kaelik wrote:So you no save no decision Rocks Fall Everyone Dies one PC, then that player gets to experience automatic failure on a bunch of his special abilities for a while, and then gets told that their character no save died a long time ago...

Yep, no problem with that at alllllllll.
One PC? Oh you sweet summer child. no, you Rocks Fall ALL the PCs. One by one.
Screw that one-by-one nonsense. All at once!
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Post by RobbyPants »

Sorry! Real life got in the way. After a few weeks off, I should probably get back to this.


Chapter 3: A Horror Campaign

We've covered a horror encounter and a horror adventure. Now, it's time to talk about an entire horror campaign. The into does a good job explaining that this type of thing require work on everyone's part and isn't for everyone. A lot of people like to play badasses in their escapist fantasies, and the book mentions this.


The basics of horror gaming
Again, the book mentions that both the players and the DM need to be on board for this to work. We then get a list of five obligations for both the player and the DM. It's mostly good advice on the DM's part. Primarily, don't fuck with the players and respect their comfort level. The players are told to cooperate with the DM and the mood, accept that bad things can happen to them, and make setting-appropriate characters. It says explicitly not to roll up that badass loner I keep mentioning when the book talks about killing family members. Touché, book.

The one I find really weird is the "don't metagame one", but not for why you might think. This section mostly says "trust the DM and the weird shit he does" rather than "don't use player knowledge for your PC", so the heading is kind of off. They say it's good to recognize that this fire-resistant troll isn't a normal troll, but it's bad to get mad at the DM for using one. How the second is metagaming (and the first isn't) I don't even.


Setting
The first choice is if you want to run your campaign in a horror-oriented setting or a standard one. The book goes over some advantages and disadvantages of each. There are a few prompts. Nothing super interesting. One point of note is that many of the prompts in and of themselves don't really sound all that horrific. The book has noted in the past that D&D already has a lot of horrific elements, if only you carry them to their logical conclusion. For example: why is the dragon so interested in maidens? My guess, if he's anything like the other villains in this book, he'll kill her to hurt her friends and family's feelings.

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What's the end game here?


We get some suggestions for adding horror to published campaign settings. I'm not super familiar with any of them myself, so I don't know how well they would fit. One I found interesting is in Faerun, where a handful of surviving followers of Iyachtu Xvim refuse to believe he's dead and are super pissed at Bane. They infiltrate positions of power and turn different organizations against Bane. Most good-aligned people are cool with this, so they don't pay too much attention. Then, they get all ends-justify-the-means in their methods of stopping Bane's followers. Whether or not they can actually revive their fallen lord is up to the DM.



Plot in a horror campaign
The advice here focuses on longer-term planning than the plot section last chapter. They give a few ideas, and some good advice about not being a dick about any of them or overusing them:
  • Amnesia: PCs forgot who they are. Did they do something bad during this time? Find out!
  • Curses: These are the out-of-the-scope-of-the-rules variety, like the ones you find in stories. Maybe they affect the PCs directly or not. Don't overuse, or they become trite, and the players will rightfully start asking why they can't bestow curses every time they lose a fight. These should be curable, either by powerful magic or quests related to the curse.
  • Disease: Typically, not for mid/high level games, unless the DM wants to have one that evolves to be resistant to magic. That's actually a really cool idea. This is what happens when you stop going to the cleric when the symptoms go away rather than for the full prescription.
  • Injury: You get some type of permanent injury that is not at all covered in the rules. Maybe Regenerate heals it or maybe it comes back because it's a horror injury. Basically, see curses.
  • Magical Disease: Again, see curses. While the section says there are many types of magical diseases, they only focus on lycanthropy.
  • Mechanical Penalties: Lots of magical effects can deal long-lasting penalties. The book is smart enough to mention how frustrating having these for a long time can be, and how they can lower your ECL, so find a way to spread them across the party or keep them fairly short-term.
  • Phobias: Maybe something spooky gives a PC a phobia (rules described later). Talk to the player to work this out.
Right on point, the book mentions how you can invoke horror through the suffering of others. Interestingly, they finally note not to overdo this, as it both starts to strain willing suspension of disbelief if everything bad always happens to the PCs friends, and also, it incentivizes making badass loners.

Image
Pictured: the start of another session of the horror campaign.


Villains
It's important to make the villains motives make sense, or the whole thing will fall flat. There's advice on one-shot, short-term, and long-term villains. They mention avoiding the pitfalls of making the villain so weak that it goes down like a chump, but so powerful that everyone wonders why they didn't just kill the PCs the moment they became a threat. Also, if the PCs are particularly creative and find a way to kill the villain earlier than anticipated, don't deny them their victory. Fuck yes it's nice to see the book actually spell that out.
Image
Player: *rolls 20*
DM: *rolls 1* "Huh... well, that's that. I guess one of your family members
doesn't die."


...But, sometimes the villains come back. Maybe they get to be a ghost, or the DM breaks the rules and make some shit up. Maybe their minions carry on the plot. Don't overuse this, cuz it starts to piss players off. Also, here's a new trait called "soul-locked" that can make non-ghosts come back like ghosts.


Unhappy endings
Image
Hmmm, maybe now would be a good time for the DM to kill off another family member.

Apart from the occasional (and hopefully rare) TPK, D&D is supposed to end on a high note. Not in a horror campaign, bitches! You can go full CoC and end the game with the PCs driven mad or overcome by taint (heh). Maybe they have to sacrifice themselves to stop the big bad. Perhaps a loved one is turned into a vampire and has to be killed. Wait, can't Resurrection bring them back?
You can resurrect someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed. You cannot resurrect someone who has died of old age.
Apparently, not in a horror game (more on that in chapter 4)! In a non-horror game, dying of old age seems scarier than becoming a vampire.

Yet again, be mindful of the players, and don't shit all over the game if you don't think they're into that sort of thing.



Sample Campaign: Nightwatch
This is actually something I ran once. The book gives you some setup and prompts, but largely leaves it up to the DM to figure out how to integrate it. I think I had it span something like three or four sessions rather than be a full-blown campaign. It takes up just over two pages in the book, and comes with one map.

It's set on the boarder of a great kingdom. They're used to the occasional monster attacking, but there's an evil shrine out in the wilderness, with growing taint. Now, the borderlands are being attacked by the occasional spooky monster, and only a handful of NPCs recognize the growing threat. Also, the dopplegangers, demons, and other nasties are spreading into the government.

Image
Yikes!

Part 1: a decaying city
You're supposed to run the first few sessions of this as relatively normally. The PCs are supposed to gradually learn of the worsening situation, and eventually, of the Nightwatch organization. Perhaps the PCs learn of the organization on their own, or perhaps they do something badass enough to be inducted into the group. This is the group of NPCs who seem to know what's going on.

Now, the next few adventures center around doing stuff for the group, learning more about what's going on. Next, they draw the ire of the evil assholes in the corrupt government. These political/criminal adventures are supposed to be about half of this portion. During this time, they uncover evidence of an obscure, violent cult (Scary Moose?).


Part 2: a twisted wilderness
The PCs learn more about the obscure cult, which surprisingly isn't devoted to Scary Moose. One deity is listed each for a handful of published settings. The cult leader is someone in the city. During the adventures to undercover this, many Nightwatch operatives die. Crime reaches record highs, and the PCs get attacked by actual physical tendrils of taint (represented as taint elementals, introduced later).

Research indicates that these clowns want to manifest their dark god on the material plane. Also, by now, the PCs are supposed to find out or be told that the source of the evil is the shrine that the book otherwise hasn't said should be mentioned to the PCs.

Now, the game shifts to the wilderness. Monsters are big, scary, and tainted. The PCs seem to get specifically targeted by a storm. Plants and animals start to grow tentacles. Gross things happen, like rivers running with pus, or raining eyeballs. A dryad comes out of a tree and eats her own flesh to attempt to cleanse the corruption in the woods (wat?). A once-nice unicorn is now not nice. All of this shit is probably supposed to be inflicting depravity and corruption (two sub-forms of taint described later) on the PCs.


Part 3: lich's shrine
We get a map of the three-level shrine. The DM is told to use whatever traps and monsters he feels like using, but the adventure gives example ideas. Entering the shrine immediately bestows 1d3 points of corruption (Fort DC 30 to negate). Aside from the really high DC, that amount of corruption is really no biggie in this new system.

Several of the rooms feature monsters from Libris Mortis. We get blasphemes, slaughter wights, and a gravetouched ghoul cleric. Then the PCs find the lich and some evidence that he's been communicating with a traitor in Nightwatch.


Part 4: a traitorous heart
Now, the city officials learn of Nightwatch and are convinced it's an insurant organization that might even be the cause of all this eye-ball rain and angry unicorns. The PCs get to keep fighting monsters while dealing with the political machine working against them, all while knowing there's a traitor in their organization. The DM is supposed to throw some assassination attempts at them mid-task, which gives one avenue of learning who the traitor is.

Of course, even once the traitor is figured out and dealt with, one of the nobles in the city belongs to the cult and wants to see his god worshipped and to rise to power during all this commotion. The traitor and this noble have been working together all along.

Slaying the lich and the traitor and the noble isn't the end. Doing so triggers the rite they've been building for months (Jesus Christ. Really!?). You get to fight an elder taint elemental (CR 13), which might be the god or a representation.


Further adventures
Ugh. You have the option of trudging through the aftermath of all of that shit in an area still rampant with crime, taint, and monster attacks, all while nobody knows who to trust. Have fun!



Other campaign models
There are some other ideas for campaigns, each given a paragraph or two.

The touch of taint
Okay, that's never going to stop making me chuckle when I read it. This whole mechanic was really unfortunately named, and it's not like people weren't making taint jokes back then. Anyway, this campaign model suggests using nothing but tainted monsters.

The father of monsters
Some god, demon prince, or whatever is the source of all the problems. Are you a bad enough dude to save kill him?

Death is only the beginning
All non-humanoid monsters are super rare (possibly unique) and are all soul-locked. So, all that advice about not overdoing the "sometimes they come back" prompt from earlier is thrown out in this model.

Conjunction

Image

The campaign world has come into conjunction with another spooky world, and stuff is coming through the rifts.

The evil that men do
A focus on how some fairly mundane things can still be pretty creepy.

In over their heads
Start the PCs as NPC classes and level them into PC classes as they get exposed to the horrors that are out there.


Dreams and nightmares
The ideas of dreams and nightmares are certainly genre-appropriate for horror. This section of the chapter is actually the longest. It goes over several ways to use dreams in the game. It covers anywhere from the DM just describing dreams to the PC(s), asking the player to describe their dream, prophesies, and actually entering into dreams.

There are several different ways listed to make events dreamlike. They can involve changing just one aspect of something otherwise normal, changing things abruptly, things evoking unusual emotions, ridiculous ideas that are accepted as normal, and the dreamer recognizing something that it's not.

Dreams can be prophesies, which can be made super vague of very clear. They can come from deities or something else. If nothing else, they can probably make a really convenient plot hook for players who just aren't finding all the bread crumbs you're lying around for them. Maybe the prophesy goes unfulfilled. Maybe trying to fulfill it makes you fuck it up even worse! Dreams can be false prophesies sent by people fucking with you. Prophesies can be used as an aftermath for an adventure. Basically, do whatever you want, but make it involve prophetic dreams.

Reoccurring nightmares can fuck with a character. After a number of days equal to their Con mod (minimum 1), they are constantly fatigued. After two weeks plus a number of days equal to Con mod, the character is exhausted constantly. After this, the character risks gaining depravity (a later-described taint sub-mechanic) each day. No mention how the fatigue interacts with Restoration and its cousins (duration: instantaneous). Does it just reset the timer, have no effect, or what? I guess I'd go with the former. So, as long as you can prep Lesser Restoration once every Con-modifier number of days, you're good. Maybe.

Image
Get that taken care of sooner rather than later.


Dreams can send messages. Of course. There's a spell that does just that.

Dreams can be used situationally to highlight how spooky a location is, or to prompt a certain action. I'd be careful of this, as it would likely become the focus of the rest of the session, knowing my players.

Adventuring in nightmare realms

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"Bitch!"


You can enter a dreamscape "with the proper magic". The proper magic is three feats in a chain and a 4th level spell (Dream Walk) that the third feat lets you cast. I'm assuming most campaigns featuring dreamscapes also feature a 7th+ level NPC who blew three of their feats on being a subconscious ferryman.

The DM picks how they want to handle dreamscapes. They can be "normal dreams" where what happens in the dreamscape stays in the dreamscape. They can have lasting effects where what happens in the Matrix kills you in real life. You can enter physically or mentally depending on the setup. Perhaps Astral Projection or Plane Shift can get you there, so you wait a few more levels, but save three feats. Perhaps you can just get sucked into a dreamscape cuz the DM says so. Maybe the PCs aren't even aware of it.

Dreamscapes are supposed to be weird and dreamlike. They tend to shift around suddenly and randomly. The DM is advised to design encounters to take full advantage of the PCs fears and the randomness of the environment. "Familiar" locations to the PCs should be off in some way (minor or major). Make the terrain or environment shift with the emotions of the PCs.

Creatures can change very suddenly, including PCs. Change the appearance of a PC, and tell everyone but said player. Perhaps let one or more players run NPCs during the dream.

There's a typical last-paragraph caveat warning DMs not to fuck with their players too much.

Spells in the dreamscape
Not surprisingly, this section opens up with a lolrandom chart for things that can happen with your spells. 10%: spell functions normally, but affects a different (randomly chosen) target or area. 20% of the time, you get a different spell (that you don't necessarily know). It might be 1d4 levels lower or higher than the one you cast.

"I tried to hit him with a Scorching Ray, but instead I cast Heal!"

I'm sure your party members will be fine that you accidentally cast Implosion instead of Heal on them. Now, if you have the Oneiromancy feat (feat #2 in that chain), you don't have to put up with all this bullshit, and you even get some boosts in the dreamscape. So, I guess the take-home here is: if your DM wants to run dreamscape stuff more than once or twice, all casters have a new feat tax.

Injury and Death
If you physically enter the dream world, injuries work like normal. If not, we are given some options. Injuries might carry over as HP damage. Injuries might result in Wis and Cha damage based on a division problem. Injuries might result in depravity, based on a division problem.

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"It tastes like I lost three points of Wisdom."


Characters who die could suffer different fates. The body could die of shock. You might lose a level (and some memories). You might get hit for a permanent 2 or 4 point loss of Int, Wis, or Cha. If your body is killed while your mind is in the dream world, your mind is trapped (unless your mind later dies, then it goes to the afterlife).

Why use nightmare realms?
In short, because the DM can do whatever the fuck he wants!

Dream magic
It's not actually until now that we're told about the three dreamscape tax feats. I was cheating when I told you about them earlier.

Monsters of the dreamscape
Finally, we get some interesting ideas for how to have monsters that live in the dreamscape. It's up to the DM if certain types of monsters (typically aberrations) exist as "nightmare monsters". The DM decides how he wants them to mechanically interact with the world. This gives these types of monsters a unique feel.
  • They only manifest in the waking world if they're near someone dreaming.
  • They cannot manifest physically, but can possess people.
  • They deal physical damage to people, even if they're not physically in the dreamscape.
  • They deal nonlethal damage, but if they deal enough to KO the target, the target becomes mentally enslaved until you use high-level magic.
I could see some of these setups yielding some pretty cool adventures. I think the DM would have to be creative to span this for a whole campaign, but he might have to if people start blowing feats to keep their spells working normally.


Next up: Rules of Horror!
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Post by RelentlessImp »

RobbyPants wrote: Also, if the PCs are particularly creative and find a way to kill the villain earlier than anticipated, don't deny them their victory. Fuck yes it's nice to see the book actually spell that out.
Say what you will about WotC and the garbage they churned out, but this one thing right here puts them miles ahead of Paizo's garbage. Paizo rarely acknowledges the PCs might do something like this, and then tells you to tell your players to fuck off if they do.

...Then we get to the feat tax to interact with a once-in-a-campaign subsystem. Worse, it's a feat chain tax. Holy shit, who ever, ever thought that was a good idea?
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Post by Slade »

RelentlessImp wrote:
RobbyPants wrote: Also, if the PCs are particularly creative and find a way to kill the villain earlier than anticipated, don't deny them their victory. Fuck yes it's nice to see the book actually spell that out.
Say what you will about WotC and the garbage they churned out, but this one thing right here puts them miles ahead of Paizo's garbage. Paizo rarely acknowledges the PCs might do something like this, and then tells you to tell your players to fuck off if they do.

...Then we get to the feat tax to interact with a once-in-a-campaign subsystem. Worse, it's a feat chain tax. Holy shit, who ever, ever thought that was a good idea?
Yeah, in Hell's Vengence, you can do it, but it adds a huge mess of points to rebel/riot chance of town.
It notes that killing important NPC's/enemies that are important to be used for later encounters earlier adds more. Seriously.
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Post by RobbyPants »

Real life, again. Also, fantasy heartbreaker.


Chapter 4: Rules of Horror

Four chapters in, and finally, some crunch! This has definitely been a very fluff and advice-heavy book, so far. The two most resounding pieces of advice, thus far, have been to target the friends and family of the PCs, and for the DM to not be a big dick. This chapter consists mostly of new rules to tack onto the current system to make it more spooky, and alterations to existing rules. Some of this will involve the DM applying status effects ad hoc to force emotions on PCs. The example in the intro is backing up dread seizing the character "like a cold undead hand clenching his heart" with "and you're staggered for one round". Lets jump into these!


Dread
We get an explanation that dread is going to involve a slow build of both what is happening and what could happen. We're pointed to the list of condition effects in the DMG on pages 300 and 301, and are told to use these to reinforce the sense of dread.

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"You're so scared, it's... petrifying."
YEEEEAAAAAAA

Okay, it doesn't explicitly say to do that, but it also doesn't say not to. We're just told that in addition to shaken, frightened, panicked, and cowering, any of the others might be good models for different things. The suggested base DC is 10 + the average party level. Throw in another 2 to 4 points if targeting friends and family members of the PCs (you knew it was going to be in here!).

The book goes into detail about four specific types of dread (shock, weariness, illness and despair, and obsession), and gives example conditions for each. So, luckily, petrified never makes the list. Paralyzed, nauseated, fascinated, and confused do, however. In some of the examples, these conditions are doled out right at the onset of a dangerous encounter. Granted, we're playing a horror game, which is supposed to have a different feel, but note that a spooky campaign might rob you of a round or two of actions because the DM says so.


Fear
This section opens up by telling us that fear is a part of every D&D game, to some extent, and that just handing out condition effects isn't effective at scaring players. It's more likely to frustrate players than scare them, and is rarely horrific. Wait. Did the guy who wrote this section talk to the guy who wrote the last one? Are they the same guy? Is this just an editing goof?

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At least this was several different books written a few hundred years apart.

So, instead of doing that, encourage players to roleplay their fear. Consider throwing them against an obviously overpowered fight, and watch them roleplay running away (their words, not mine). This comes with the very familiar caveat of not doing this often, cuz it's kinda dickish.

There's an alternate rule for making the frightened condition give a -4 penalty to everything shaken did, instead of causing the character to flee. This does do it's stated purpose of not removing a PC from the fight on the second tier of this status effect tree, but it does set you up to fail more important saves in future rounds...

The book goes into the escalating nature of fear, in that the three statuses mechanically stack. It then notes how Doom will make you shaken, and casting Cause Fear will make them frightened or panicked. This is true, but it notes how you couldn't just cast the same spell twice, because the effects don't stack from the same spell. Now, maybe I'm missing something about stacking, but reading those spells and looking at fear, I can't find any of that. Are they actually right, here?

People can have phobias. There are three strengths, which each correspond to the three levels of fear. They say the player (or sometimes DM) can choose a phobia, but there's no real rules for when or how this happens. I guess it's supposed to be context dependent on the game. But you can totally play a character with a debilitating fear of magic, which just seems like a terrible idea in a Dungeons and Dragons game. To get rid of a phobia, you need Heal, Limited Wish, Miracle, or Wish. For mild phobias, you can also overcome them with ten consecutive saves. That seems... incredibly unlikely.


The Taint of Evil
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Focus on it, because it will be mentioned at least once per page, for the rest of the chapter.

This is one of those ideas I've liked for a while, but I've never seen a good representation of it in D&D. The first version (in Oriental Adventures, and reprinted in Unearthed Arcana) was fairly simple, but had some flaws built in. The worst I remember is a caster PrC that let you use your taint score for determining DCs, which went off the RNG quickly. This version is more robust, and... less playable.

Taint is split into corruption (physical) and depravity (mental), which is keyed to Con and Wis respectively. Instead of working against your base score like the last system, we're given a lot more points to work with, so the DM can roll d6s when distributing taint (heh). An average ability score (9-12) will withstand up to 41 points until your character is rendered dead or unplayably insane. In addition, the table splits up into columns for mild, moderate, and severe taint. Each has a mechanical effect associated with it.

Mild is easiest to correct if done so quickly, but this eventually escalates into a sickness your character is just mostly stuck with. 9th level spells can correct the worst of it, but that's about it from moderate and on. There are two charts (one for corruption and one for depravity) that you roll a d10 on to see how your character gets fucked up. You don't roll again when increasing from mild -> moderate -> severe; you keep worsening further to the right on the same row of the table. Some of these are kind of neat, and many make things pretty much unplayable. Some highlights include:
  • Joint pain (moderate): -3 Reflex.
  • Nose rots (severe): -2 Cha (did you know the source of power of paladins and sorcerers is their nose?)
  • Skull deformity (severe): -2 Int and Wis. Also, -3 Will.
  • Lich Eyes (severe): 60' darkvision (or +30' to existing), but you get light blindness like a drow. This is pretty sweet compared to the others! Of course to get it, you need Dead Eye (roll concealment miss chances twice, take the worse) and Lips Shrink (-2 on Cha-based skill checks).
  • Bones Thicken (moderate): +2 Str, -4 Dex. Of course, to get that one, you need Gums Swell (CL DC20 check or fail spells with verbal components).
These are pretty annoying for the most part, but its the depravity table that will make you start killing other PCs, randomly.
  • Opinionated (minor): you are so opinionated, you're always flat-footed the first round of combat (what?).
  • Prophetic (minor): you get creepy dreams and tell everyone about them. 10% are actually right. Also, you suffer the ill effects of ongoing nightmares discussed in the last chapter.
  • Sycophantic (minor): you get -2 Listen and Spot (and enemies get +2 vs you) because you won't shut up and stop complimenting people.
  • Hallucinating (moderate): -6 initiative, bitches!
  • Hysterical (moderate): you think everything is funny, and only get a standard or move action on the second round of combat.
  • Treacherous (moderate): any time you can make an AoO against an ally, you must make a DC 20 will save or take the attack. Why would anyone adventure with you after your first "slip up"?
  • Craven (severe): you must always cast defensively (meh) and fight defensively (FUCK YOU FIGHTERS!).
  • Fatalistic (severe): -3 to all saves.
  • Hubristic (severe): divine healing has no effect on you. Wait, can you negate all divine effects just by being arrogant? Apparently, this hurts the god's feelings, and they won't heal you.
  • Murderous (severe): Any time you have the ability to deliver a coup de grace (typically, being within 5' or a helpless being), you must take the action. Basically, it's Treacherous turned up to 11. Hopefully this doesn't happen to the cleric.
  • Unbalanced (severe): you are confused the first "turn" (not round) or every combat, and every turn thereafter. That's really odd wording.
Other than that, you get a bonus feat when you get moderate and severe taint. There are little gimmicks for reducing and resisting taint. There's a list of spells that may or may not work, depending on how the DM runs the campaign. Gaining taint may or may not make you actually turn evil, but you start to register as evil. If you finally get enough points to put you beyond the severe rating, you become a tainted minion or tainted raver (two templates at the end of the book) and become unplayable.

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Another taint joke for good measure!


Horror Environments
This section lists ways you can change the rules for certain environments.
  • Tainted locations: these areas might bestow corruption and/or depravity when you enter, and for each day you stay. Casting an [evil] spell increases the CL by 1, but you need to save or gain depravity. Hallow can remove the effect after a year.
  • Abyssal blackgrass: This grow in the abyss, but might be brought over on purpose or on accident from seeds. Natural healing is impossible within 50 feet and magical healing is 1/2 effective. If hit by an [evil] spell within 50 feet, you might gain corruption.
  • Blood rock: This makes crits more likely (double threat range) in the area. You can deliberately seed a 5' section of earth with 5 lb of blood rock. Doesn't stack with Improved Critical or keen weapons, cuz 3.5. Can also be tainted, because this book loves that mechanic.
  • Charnel bog: Need to make a Spellcraft check (DC 15 + spell level) when casting a [good] spell in the area, or the spell is lost. Turning checks have a -4 penalty (rebuking has a +4 bonus). You get nightmares if you sleep in the area. Every week you're in the area, you need to make a Will save (DC 10 + number of consecutive weeks) or lose all will to continue, and you can't leave on your own without Limited Wish, Miracle, or Wish. Can also cause disease, be haunted, and/or cause taint.
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Basically, rules for this place, minus the falling in.
  • Night stone: Deals 1d6 damage per round to living creatures within 5 feet. Death Ward prevents the damage. The description says it's "infused with negative energy", but it doesn't explicitly deal negative energy damage, so it probably doesn't heal undead.
  • Haunting presences: An undead spirit can haunt an unattended mundane object or location, if the DM says so. It's supposed to be the "spirit" of a skeleton, zombie, wraith, or whatever the DM chooses (this sets things like HD and Cha modifier). It might be able to gain a material form a few times per week, but if killed, the effect is ended. It can act like a poltergeist and move certain parts of the object. So, you can totally make undead wagons that propel themselves, if your DM allows, but there's no rule for what makes this happen other than "sometimes it happens". I guess, buy the DM his favorite beer and hope he forgets that haunted presences are immune to rebuking and you probably can't control it?
  • Haunted sites: Places can also be haunted ("sometimes", if the DM says). The undead can bust out illusion effects of various sorts. They might be figments (Silent Image or Ghost Sound), phantasms (affects one person), or patterns (visible to all). The last two cause fear. Phantasmal odors cause nausea, and the DM can even let them use Phantasmal Killer if he likes. They can also use Telekinesis, and the area might be tainted (of course).
  • Mortuary terrain: This is a pretty bland section on the percentage chances of various squares in a grave yard to contain grave stones, statues, and whatnot based on the graveyard's age. There are rules for how much cover things provide. It's not a bad set of rules, but it's also not interesting to write about.
  • Catacombs: More rules for walls and doors found in these types of dungeons.
Campaign Rules
These are variations to normal rules.

Alignment can behave differently, to affect how the game feels and plays. You can have behavioral alignment, which basically makes you detect as whatever you most recently did. So, a cultist baking a loaf of bread would register as neutral, and a commoner who's plotting revenge for something at that moment would register as evil. The cultist might register as good if helping a friend. The rules are to use intent instead of inherent nature. This will affect how various powers interact with different creatures. So, Holy weapons are suddenly more affective against people who are being douchebags right now, but not always against cultists or orcs, or whatever. Of course, the section doesn't get into if the cultists fighting off the attacking paladins are evil, neutral, or even good. So, yay for the freedom to run more deeper and thought provoking mysteries, but boo for more arguments with the DM!

You can instead replace alignment with taint (I told you they love this subsystem!). There's no alignment axis or opposites; you're either tainted or you're not. Spells that deal with alignment are largely removed, and the DM can institute a few that detect or otherwise interact with taint. I'm all for removing alignment. I guess if you're going to be like the book and double down with the taint mechanic, you can use this variant.

We get some advice for DMs who want to keep alignment as-is, but still wants to use mysteries. It's pretty straight forward, although at least one of the facts listed is wrong. Mindless undead are listed as neutral, but that's not the case in 3.5!

There is some advice for DMs who are being confounded by divinations. It lists some of the heavy hitters and how the DM can work around their limitations. It follows it up with "don't be a dick and do this all the time, or the players will get pissed".

Death and resurrection can work differently if the DM wants. The DM can flat-out ban resurrection magic. It can be made more difficult by casting time, location requirements, going on quests, balancing the scales (a life for a life sort of deal), or risking the person coming back "wrong". We get a picture of a rather deranged looking Lidda looking at the viewer holding a dagger while Jozan resurrects her. We get a whole table of mishaps for resurrection. It can be weird shit like the person is cold to the touch, to the character seeks others who were resurrected to share stories, gain 1d4 taint and roll again, or you spurn all physical possessions. Ugh, in a WBL-based game, that effectively perma-kills your character.

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Or you can double down and take a bunch of shitty feats and a PrC that doesn't play well with the rest of your party.

There's even rules for violence causing taint. I'm glad the book realizes that this is a huge shift from the normal game. So, maybe everyone rolls up Apostles of Peace and calls it a day?


Next up: Heroes and Antiheroes!
Last edited by RobbyPants on Fri Sep 16, 2016 10:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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momothefiddler
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Post by momothefiddler »

RobbyPants wrote:This is true, but it notes how you couldn't just cast the same spell twice, because the effects don't stack from the same spell. Now, maybe I'm missing something about stacking, but reading those spells and looking at fear, I can't find any of that. Are they actually right, here?
When I was making a fear-based character I was referred to PHB171-172, which talks about how things don't stack when they're the same type or from the same spell. I was about to quote that to you, but it turns out that doesn't necessarily apply here, since what it actually says is:
PHB wrote:Spells that provide bonuses or penalties on attack rolls, damage rolls, saving throws, and other attributes usually do not stack with themselves.
and then proceeds to elaborate on that. So causing fear multiple times with the same spell might actually stack, though it also seems reasonable to rule that it's not intended. I dunno now.
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Post by RobbyPants »

Yeah, all I remembered was the bonus-stacking rules.
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Post by Kaelik »

The rule they usually cite to is this one:

"Same Effect with Differing Results
The same spell can sometimes produce varying effects if applied to the same recipient more than once. Usually the last spell in the series trumps the others. None of the previous spells are actually removed or dispelled, but their effects become irrelevant while the final spell in the series lasts."

They basically claim that it's a special rule totally independant of the fact that it's under a section about how bonuses stack, and that it applies to everything.
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Post by momothefiddler »

Yes, and that section goes on to give the example of multiple polymorph effects overriding each other, because if you get turned into an elephant and then into a frog, you're not an elephant-frog, you're just a frog.

Of note, Cause Fear and Cause Fear do not, in fact, have varying effects, differing results, etc. So that whole section is irrelevant at multiple points.

All that said, I guess you could point to that section in HoH as the rule that Cause Fear doesn't stack with itself? I dunno.
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Post by Prak »

Welp, I'm looking forward to Robby getting to the prestige classes, because I just found out that Dread Witch is kind of crazy.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by hyzmarca »

RobbyPants wrote: Or you can double down and take a bunch of shitty feats and a PrC that doesn't play well with the rest of your party.
Just respec as a Druid.
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Post by RobbyPants »

Prak wrote:Welp, I'm looking forward to Robby getting to the prestige classes, because I just found out that Dread Witch is kind of crazy.
I remember looking at that one back in the day, being really torn about the caster level loss. I had an unexpectedly long day of remodel projects, today. I'll work on it more, soon.

hyzmarca wrote:
RobbyPants wrote: Or you can double down and take a bunch of shitty feats and a PrC that doesn't play well with the rest of your party.
Just respec as a Druid.
Druids still have plenty of use for gear. They're a better class than most others, of course.
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Post by Prak »

Oh man, I just looked at Tainted Scholar. What the fuck were the writers smoking when they wrote these prestige classes? At least as far as spells per day go, but also DC, tainted scholar is crazy fucking go nuts insane, because it replaces your casting ability for bonus spells and spell DC (and accessing spell levels) with Taint(+10).

And you get taint for casting spells. You can save, but with the fact that the class also lets you hide your physical taint, why the fuck would you!?

So, you take a level of tainted scholar, your spells now rely on your taint. Let's say you're a fifth level Wizard with Depravity 8. That gives you 15 spells per day. You prepare, fuck, iunno, Mage Hand 15 times and sit in your room paging through your creepy porn with 15 castings of Mage Hand, and voluntarily fail your save each time, gaining 15 taint, which means that after you take an eight hour nap, you can prep 21 spells and do the same thing. And just repeat this until you get tired, but, fuck, after just two days you've got 29 total spells per day with DCs of 32+spell level.

PLEASE tell me there's something that uses your taint to increase your caster level, because this might just be my new favorite PrC.

edit: ok, you have to worry about death from excessive taint, I guess, but STILL
Last edited by Prak on Sun Oct 09, 2016 9:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
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Post by Username17 »

The key is to then become undead or a demon or something and then never have to worry about taint death again.

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Post by Ancient History »

Prak wrote:Oh man, I just looked at Tainted Scholar. What the fuck were the writers smoking when they wrote these prestige classes?
Tainted Scholar is a variant of the Tainted Sorcerer class from Unearthed Arcana, and is genetically linked to Oriental Adventures d20, which is in turn based on Legend of the Five Rings Taint rules.
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