Hello students. Professor Crunch here bringing you a review of Horror Adventures, a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game supplement. The Academy received an advanced copy of the book and I had a great time reading through all its spooky goodness.
Is it Necessary?
Before I get into the actual review, I want to address this question. It’s the first thing I asked when I picked up the book. Pathfinder is already full of horror themes. The Bestiaries are packed with terrifying monsters. In fact, Bestiary 4 is built on the themes of Lovecraftian terrors, my personal favorite version of the horror genre. All of the classic scary monsters already exist, from ghosts and vampires to werewolves and zombies. Occult Adventures came out last year and while it is not devoted to horror, it provides structure for many themes that show up consistently in horror games. And the Game Mastery Guide that was released way back in 2010 has info on Haunts and Sanity.
But like everything in Pathfinder, Horror Adventures builds upon the established foundation and takes it all a step further. For example, the older rules for Sanity are quite basic and simple compared to what is detailed in this new book. Everything in Horror Adventures is focused on delivering an intense experience of the genre. So yes, this book is necessary if you want to delve into the depths of the horror genre at your game table. And even if you don’t want to go that far, there are some very interesting concepts to borrow and use in other ways.
General Overview
Horror Adventures provides rules and guidelines to help create a stronger atmosphere of horror in the tabletop experience. It contains new mechanics for dealing with concepts such as Fear and Sanity; new class and race options; new spells, feats, and items; new monsters and templates; and a lot of GM-focused advance about how to run a horror game.
Truly, most of the book is directed to the GM. Given the heavy weight of running a horror game, this makes sense. But if you as a player are looking to find ways to build creepy new PCs, you might be disappointed.
Physical Appearance and Quality
Just like every other Paizo book, Horror Adventures is gorgeous. The art continues the now-typical cranked up version of the genre that has defined the Pathfinder series. I lovingly call it super hero high fantasy. The characters are larger than life heroes that leap from the page into our imagination.
Pathfinder’s established character examples of the core classes, such as Seoni the sorcerer and Kyra the cleric, are used throughout the book. They show up in the splashy example art for spells and feats and they’re used as subjects for the new Corruption effects. In a minor but favorite detail, the portraits of the spellcasters are used in the headers for each class’ spell list.
Horror Adventures is also easy to read and navigate. The content is organized in a logical structure. The table of contents and index makes it easy to quickly locate what you’re looking for. It may seem silly to highlight this, but when other game books are printed without such features, I think it’s worthwhile to point out that Paizo knowns how to make quality products.
New Mechanics
Horror Adventures introduces mechanics that add a lot of depth and crunch to the ideas of Fear, Sanity, and Corruption.
In the current rules, Fear has 3 levels of severity. Horror Adventures expands Fear to 3 lesser and 4 greater levels, for 7 total. The effects build on each other, growing from applying simple penalties to forcing the PC to run screaming from the source of fear. While I appreciate the details, they add a level of complexity that is almost unnecessary. And considering that fear effects can stack and interact differently depending on their individual durations and sources, these Fear rules can easily become overwhelming.
Sanity has also changed. Previously, negative effects from Sanity loss happened when a mental stat was reduced to 0. Now, Horror Adventures introduces a Sanity score that is the sum of all 3 mental stats and both a Sanity Threshold and Sanity Edge that define how Sanity loss translates to gaining Madness. These mental afflictions are presented in stat blocks very similar to diseases and poisons, each with descriptors of their effects and severity. While the system is not overly complicated, both Threshold and Edge exist to define the severity of Madness. Two new concepts that relate to the same thing seems unnecessary. And the d10 version of Sanity in Call of Cthulhu works so well that I don
’t see the need to ever use anything else for this type of game.
Lastly, Horror Adventures introduces Corruption, which is the thing that intrigues me the most in this book. Corruptions represent evil and horrific influences that can creep into PCs’ lives and start to bend them towards evil. These influences include things like being possessed by spirits, being tainted by vampirism or lycanthropy, or being tempted by demons or eldritch horrors. Corruptions are defined mechanically in the form of Manifestation Gifts and Stains, which are positive and negative respectively. Furthermore, Corruptions move through stages that culminate at their worst with the PC succumbing to temptation and becoming an NPC. I love this idea. It blurs the line between good and evil, demonstrating that not everything is exactly what it seems. It also includes the concept of consequence very clearly, and that’s not something that is often seen in game mechanics. Corruptions appeals to me as both a storyteller and a min/maxer.
Character Options
Pathfinder’s greatest strength, in my opinion, is the depth of character creation that it provides. Horror Adventures continues this trend by providing racial options and class archetypes that reflect the themes of the genre. Some racial options are very useful, like the Human trait Rationalize that provides a bonus for Sanity checks. Others are just fun, like the Halfling trait Creep Doll, which is exactly what it sounds like. The new class options are just as fun, but they don’t exist for every Pathfinder class. There are some classes that you’d expect, like the Witch and the Occultist. There are options for Clerics and Wizards to contact the spooky eldritch horrors or master necromancy. Several newer classes are supported, such as the Alchemist who could become a Mad Scientist or the Slayer who could become a Witch Killer. But my favorites are the options for the Barbarian and the Paladin. It’s odd to me to have martial classes supported in a book about spooky horror, but it makes sense. Barbarians get Cult Totem powers and options like the Dreadnought (the slow unstoppable killer) and the Mooncursed (blurring the line between rage and lycanthropy). Paladins on the other hand become even brighter lights in the darkness, with options such as the Martyr and the Soul Sentinel.
The min/maxer in me loves finding ways to combine these new options into the perfectly effective character build. And the storyteller in me loves finding interesting ways to include these elements into unique story hooks.
And no Pathfinder supplement would be complete without new feats, spells, and items. Most feat lists, while on genre, can find homes in any campaign. These feats, however, are strongly linked to the horror genre. I don’t think it’s impossible to use these feats elsewhere, but they are very focused on supporting a specific type of game. I really like the Monster Feats, that support PCs with spell-like abilities or special qualities. There are also a few trees of Style Feats, that provide ever-improving martial skills.
Likewise, spells are focused in the horror genre. There are lots of spells for contacting and summoning otherworldly entities; others for slinging curses and horrible effects; and still others that are just plain nasty. I like these spells, but they clearly have a very specific use.
The items, on the other hand, are really fun and can be easily found in any genre. There is a list of torture devices, if you really want to get into that type of detail. There are some specific magic weapons with brutal effects. And there’s a new favorite weapon ability, Vampiric. It converts damage to healing and I will absolutely be using it for my next PC. The other items are all on theme, but don’t feel as locked to a horror game like the feats and spells. There are some really neat cursed items and artifacts too. The Elder Sign artifact in particular has me thinking about a new campaign with lots of action and weighty choices that lead to truly awful consequences.
There’s also a neat section on Fleshwarping, a new option that basically lets your PC or NPC play Doctor Frankenstein. Feel like grafting claws or tentacles to yourself or someone else? This is the section for you. There’s also temporary options in the form of potions that can be guzzled down, but these run the risk of developing into dangerous mutations.
The Bestiary
As I mentioned earlier, most of the classic monsters and creatures you’d think of for a horror game already exist in Pathfinder. The Bestiary section in Horror Adventures is thus very short. Mostly, it contains templates to apply more horror themes to existing creatures. Most valuable, in my opinion, are the Simple Templates. These give GMs both quick rules to easily apply a new theme, such as Hellbound or Possessed, to an existing monster on the fly. But there are also Rebuild Rules if you have the time to rewrite the entire monster stat block.
Oh, and there are Hive creatures, just in case you ever wanted to throw your PCs at some Xenomorphs and see what happens.
The Most Important Part
In all of Horror Adventures, what I think is most valuable is Chapter 6: Running Horror Adventures. Sure, all the mechanical support is great and necessary. The part about new rules for curses, diseases and haunts are super important and very helpful. But the chapter dedicated to helping GMs create the atmosphere necessary for a horror game to thrive is absolutely the most important thing in this book.
Very smartly, this chapter starts with acknowledging the need for player buy-in and then moves into the extremely important aspect of player consent. It reminds GMs that horror games are still games and should not bleed over into reality. It also points out that if a player becomes uncomfortable, the GM should react accordingly without requiring any detailed explanations or reasons.
There’s a quick section addressing how to handle the heroic nature of Pathfinder in a genre where there is normally far less dynamic heroism. And there are suggestions for how to create a horror mood, such as with music and lighting, or even with the mechanics of the game itself. The majority of this chapter focuses on different genres of horror, giving GMs ideas of how stories are structured and supplying them with plot hooks. This chapter concludes with a section about improvising with the established rules and how to adjust the detail-heavy simulation mechanics that form the foundation of Pathfinder.
All in all, this chapter is full of solid advice and inspiration for running horror games in any mechanical system.
Conclusion
Pathfinder is not for everyone. It’s a world simulation system, full of detailed rules for how every single aspect of the game reality works. It’s also focused on delivering big heroic fantasy action moments. The horror genre, on the other hand, is about being helpless in the face of a larger threat or dealing with a terrifying unknown. Bogging down this experience with mechanics and dice rolls can very easily ruin the mood.
However, Horror Adventures does an excellent job of adapting the horror genre to the crunchy reality of Pathfinder. As a fan of both Pathfinder and horror, I enjoyed this book. It’s well-written and contains a lot of great information. I will definitely make use of this book in the next game I play. More importantly, I will use the themes and inspiration it provides in other horror games and projects. I highly recommend reading Horror Adventures and adding it to your game library. You can find it on Amazon here.
