Bringing Horror to the standard d20 game is harder than it looks.
Heroes of Horror
Written by James Wyatt, Ari Marmell, C.A. Suleiman
Published by Wizards of the Coast
www.wizards.com/dnd
ISBN: 10-7869-3699-1
160 full color pages
$29.95
Heroes of Horror attempts to bring the horror genre to the D&D game. If you’re new to the concept of adding horror to D&D and don’t have a long background of already doing this through various editions, this book is a good stepping stone for you.
If you’re an old reader like me though, you may find yourself scavenging the game mechanics and bypassing the advice.
Heroes of Horror is one of the better looking books put out by Wizards of late. By using the talents of individuals like Wayne England, Michael Phillippi, Eric Polak, Steve Prescott, Wayne Reynolds, and Dan Scott among others, they’ve put a fine looking book on the shelf. The standard two-column layout with the marbled borders is in effect here with the chapter and section being towards the upper end of the page in black marble. While the book has no index, it has a very detailed table of contents.
I wish that WoTC would stop with a blank credits page, since the authors get noted on the credits page. The three pages of ads also take a toll on the page length as well. That’s partially made up by the fact that this is an official product and doesn’t need a declaration of OGL material and doesn’t need to have an SRD license, despite updating and using material, Taint, that is OGC from the Unearthed Arcana book.
Broken up into six chapters, the book brings ideas for how to use elements of horror in a standard D&D campaign, as well as game mechanics including new core classes and monsters. It starts off with chapter one, dread encounters. Ideas on how to set the stage and create villains for a horror encounter are provided along with two sample encounters and a new demigod known as Cas.
For me, it didn’t spark any ideas. For example, talking about using the corrupt sheriff of the movie Unforgiven doesn’t make me think of horror. Sure, he’s a villain, but then for that, I have The Complete Book of Villains for AD&D 2nd edition with a lot of great advice, flow charts, and all sorts of tools, or the mechanically weak Villain Design Handbook by Kenzer and Company, recently updated to 3.5 in a paperback edition. This doesn’t count general NPC resources like John Four’s excellent NPC Essentials.
The news demigod Cas, must be a bad joke. In America and England, the moose head has long had an association with humor either though various British comedies or through good old Rocky and Bullwinkle. Having some farmer ascend through sheer will power to become the moose headed god of spite is just stupid. In an era where Wizards have in the past licensed great things like Call of Cthulhu or have their own Elder Evils in the Forgotten Realms, or the various elements in Eberron, or even the various undead gods from the old Complete Book of Necromancers, a moose headed god is silly. What’s worse is that we get his avatar as opposed to something we may actually use, like his aspect, a lower powered variant introduced in the Miniature’s Handbook and used in a other publications.
On the other hand, the two little encounters are nice touches with great maps and can provide a few hours of entertainment.
Chapter two, dread adventures, tries to showcase the difference between an encounter, such as those samples from the previous chapters, and a whole adventure of horror. Because D&D is at its roots a heroic game, generally of good versus evil, this is harder than it may initially seem. The authors bring up some good elements to use, like mood, setting, plot, story, and once again, the importance of a good villain. The advice on using adventuring classes as villains, while short, can provide some good seeds for a GM to mold into his own thing. I particularly like he druid that sends animals out to overrun nearby towns.
The chapter ends with a sample adventure, For Hate’s Sake. Here the party must pit their strength against a servant of the Moose Headed God.
Moving onto chapter three, we’re now past the adventure into the campaign. A campaign is a longer thing than an adventure and more care must be taken in deciding how to move ahead. One of the problems here is that in a game like D&D, there has to be a lot of player and GM interaction and trust to make it work. In some d20 settings like Midnight or even Conan, the players are generally not under the assumption that things are going to always work for them and that they’re always going to be a match for whatever shows up.
In standard D&D adventurers, that’s usually not true and good tactics will generally win the way through most pregenerated adventurers.
Much of the advice here follows on the advice of previous chapters. Using description to showcase the differences of the locals to the characters, using events like war and new game mechanics like taint to tip things out of the players hands. Things that settings like Ravenloft and Warhammer have been doing for years.
One of the disappointing things of this chapter, was it’s brief discussion on using horror in published campaigns. A lot of it was something that even a casual reader would think to do and a lot of the elements seem similar to one another. For example, a planar invasion occurs! In Eberron, it’s Dal Quor, in the Forgotten Realms, it’s the Plane of Shadows. How about an inquisition? Followers of Iyachtu Xvim infiltrate various good clerical orders in the Forgotten Realms, while in Eberron, the Keepers of the Silver Flame go on another inquisition? And Greyhawk? Yeah, the big obvious one of Tharizdun coming back is hit on with a few others.
There are some interesting ideas here but generally only when they go off the beaten path. For example, using things like alternative histories where Iuz won the Greyhawk Wars or having Toril have almost all new Gods thanks to the Time of Troubles. More advice on twisting familiar elements in the past to radically change the campaign would’ve been more useful than the obvious use of aberrations and undead.
The campaign seed here, Nightwatch, feels like parts of it came straight from the Darkwatch video game in which the players have powerful patrons who fight against the undead but that organization has it’s own secrets.
The material on dreams and nightmares provides some good general ground rules for using such elements in a campaign as plot devices and showing how the players might realize that they’re actually in a dream as opposed to being awake. It’s okay but I found some of the stuff from say Atlas’ Occult Lore to be of more practical value.
When we get to chapter four, Rules of Horror, I’m interested to see what can be done. We get some new effects like Shock and Weariness, as well as ideas on when to use these new features. A section on fear, including using things like phobias, is also included. It’s not bad per say, but thanks to Unearthed Arcana and Call of Cthulhu, we have a wide listing of insanities, phobias and other goods with which to torture players and drain their sanity.
But this book doesn’t use sanity. Well, not sanity as found in Call of Cthulhu and Unearthed Arcana. Rather, taking Taint, rules that first appeared in good old Rogukan (OA), and were updated in Unearthed Arcana, are updated in this book again. Taint can be accumulated in one or two forms, either corruption or depravity. The amount of taint you can have and the degrees of it, depending on either your Constitution Score or your Wisdom score. A character with a robust endurance (say 14), would have mild taint from one to seven points. On the other hand, if he’s like most warriors and has an average wisdom,(say 10), his depravity is lower, from one to five. The higher ranks of taint, it becomes more noticeable.
Corruption and depravity have their own tables for the effects that the players suffer as they accumulate taint. Ranks go mild, moderate, severe, to dead or insane. See, if you accumulate too much taint, your body gives up and you die, but on the other hand, if it’s depravity, you just go insane. You can suffer from things like ear scaps giving you a –2 penalty to listen checks, to delusional, giving you a –2 peanlty on Wisdom ability checks and Wisdom based skill checks.
Taint can be gained in a number of ways. For one, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If playing in Eberron for example, some GMs might decide that the Mournlands inflict taint on anyone there and that the taint accumulates on a daily basis. This would be similar to the Shadowlands of Rogukan.
In that fashion, you can have items that absorb the taint. The more items you have, the more taint that’s absorbed, but it’s a diminishing effect because the more items you have, the more taint you’re drawing to yourself, thus destroying those items all the quicker. Better to move in and get out when possible.
There are also some spells and quests that characters can go on to remove taint, and in some campaigns, these things are going to be mandatory or else the players are going to wind up insane with numerous physical deformities.
It’s not a bad system, and it comes into play more in the book when looking at the PrCs. It’s just that as it’s an old system, even being revised again, I’d rather have seen something new. When looking at something like the Wilderlands, I’m overjoyed because it’s a campaign setting probably as old as I am that’s been updated. When looking at Taint, well, it’s been introduced in 3.0, updated to 3.5, and updated again in 3.5. And once again, this doesn’t include third party efforts like say Mystic Eye Games Blight Magic.
The details on horror environments are worth looking over for ideas and inspiration. For example, how do players react when placed in a land where the abyssal blackgrass grows thick and players can’t heal naturally within 50 feet of it? What uses can you come up with for the full-page maps of the shadow house, graveyard, or catacombs?
The book gets more interesting when it starts looking into unknown territory like changing how alignment works in the D&D game. For example, what if you want to use something like a behavioral alignment or track alignment with Taint? Options for doing so are provided and may be worth looking at for other campaigns.
The ideas on resurrection, including no resurrection and limited resurrection, are okay, but I found the ones in a recent Dragon magazine, more original. One of my favorites from that article for example, includes that the raised character cannot be further than so many feet from the person that raised them. There are some nice options here though, such as coming back wrong and bringing the wrong soul back to the body.
When chapter five roles around, we’re dealing with heroes and antiheroes. It starts off with two new classes. This classes are arranged as the standard PHB ones with details on what the class is, advice on ability scores, appropriate race, alignment restrictions and typical alignments, class features and class tables. The first of these, the archivist, is a divine spellcaster who learns his spells from prayer books. With a good fort and will save, but low hit dice, the archivist isn’t going to be heading into the frontlines of battle, but he’ll probably survive anything thrown at the group. His real ability is his dark knowledge, similar in some aspects to the akashic ability to delve into the memory pool and pull forth-different abilities.
The archivist makes a Knowledge (DC 15), and can call upon different abilities. For example, he can call on tactics, giving his allies a +1 bonus on attack rolls made against those foes. As the archivist goes up in levels, he has access to different options. For example, at 11th level, he gains dread secret that can dazzle a creature for 1 round.
The other new class is the Dread Necromancer. Now maybe it’s just me, but enough with necromancers already. Let the third party publishers have fun with the undead for a while. We already have the True Necromancer and Pale Master PrCs, not counting the third edition version of the Diablo Necromancer, nor the standard Wizard who specializes in Necromancy, nor the cleric with the Death Domain, nor the numerous third party necromancer supplements including some from EN World’s own Hellhound.
It’s not even that this is a bad class. In many ways, the design looks to have incorporated what they learned about making classes with the warmage, a small select list of spells, added some nifty special abilities, and threw the class into the game.
It’s just that we don’t need any more necromancers or necromancer variants.
After the two core classes, we move into the PrCs. It starts off with the corrupt avenger. This is a robust class with d12 hit dice and good fort save and strong bab, but weak ref and will save. This ten level PrC can use it’s taint as a smite ability inflicting extra damage based on the amount of taint the avenger has. Rules for using fallen paladins as corrupt avengers are included. It’s a nice PrC that tries to showcase evil versus good.
Other PrCs here may not rely on taint, like the Death Delver, a 10 level PrC that can rebuke undead and has abilities that let him stay in the fight like diehard, as well as death ward. It’s an interesting class that’s perfect for the PC who has come close to death one time too many.
Perhaps my favorite as a GM, is the Fiend Blooded. It’s not that it’s entirely original or anything, it’s a good method of having a sorcerer have blood that’s not based on dragon heritage. It’s the fact hat these individuals are often members of infernal blooded houses and that those houses can make great long term enemies, especially in a horror campaign.
One of the nice things about this section is the extras like the maps. One of the bad things, is that for some reason, WoTC has decided we now need two sample NPCs. Since these NPCs are using that new format that’s easier to read, they also take up more space. Thankfully they don’t go into the details of what the special abilities can do but on the other hand, there were some grumbles about the pregenerated characters already. I cant’ believe that we’d need two such characters.
The new feats include some old favorites like Vile Feats, as well as new ones like Taint Feats. Some of these would be good for any campaign though. For example, Font of Life gives you a saving throw to avoid the energy drain in the first place while a wizard who has a ton of knowledge skills may want to take Master of Knowledge, which grants a +1 bonus to all Knowledge skill checks.
The Vile feats focus on deforming yourself to gain special abilities. For example, if you deform your teeth, you gain a bite attack and +1 on Intimidate checks. On the other hand, if you take Skin, you get a natural armor class bonus.
Spells are broken down by class and level. Arcane spells for sorcerers and wizards are also broken down by school. I’ve heard that the summon undead spells are fixed and well, that’s good, but once again, an example of something I didn’t really need to see. This is the book of horror, not the book of undead and necromancy. For domains, we have dream and spite. One of the more interesting aspects, is that spellcasters can gain access to a suite of spells if they take a chain of feats that ends in Improved Oneiromancy. It’s a nice benefit and could lead to some great role playing elements similar to those found in say, The Wheel of Time, another setting which its own rules for dreams and dreaming.
One of the disappointing things here is how short the magic item and artifact section is. In a book about horror, it would be the perfect time to put cursed items or provide some discussion on using evil and otherwise unusual items in a horror based campaign. It’s like they had this big chance to add some real punch to the mechanics of the book, but give us a rod and a robe.
Chapter six, creatures of the night, doesn’t start off right away with the new monsters. Rather, it starts with the monster types and archetypes like the mummy and ghosts that may be familiar to most GMs and players. After that, it moves into a handful of new monsters.
We have a few undead, like the bane wraith, an incorporeal undead that hunts down the loved ones of it’s enemies. Then we have taint as an elemental force. While it has the same sizes as standard elements, the aberration known as the corruption eater, also gets some points for it’s creepiness thanks to Wayne England’s illustration. This thing feeds off of taint with its toothed tongue and can absorb taint from players. Do they let it continue to damage them to lower their taint, or lash out at it? Another dangerous entity, the phantasmal slayer, is an incorporeal outsider that clocks in at a CR of 15.
In looking at it, it’s not that Heroes of Horror is bad; it’s just not good enough. For example, the authors mention Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and Fitz Lieber as potential inspirations of horror games. Well and good, but how about a bibliography of appropriate material? That tool was included in the WoTC Call of Cthulhu, why not here? Most of the Conan stories, while having some elements of horror, are not horror. Same thing with most of the Twain’s stories. And Clark Ashton Smith? His work goes in and out of print rather frequently so I doubt that many people are familiar with him outside of some quotes in other books. So go check
here!
Another problem is that if you don’t go far from the base assumptions or game mechanics, D&D isn’t a very good engine as written for horror games. In Darkness and Dread, Mike Mearls weakens the characters considerably in order to get some horror ideas out there. In other games, like Warhammer, even powerful characters are prone to be taken down by bad luck and are always weary of something more powerful than them. Ditto for other d20 engines like Midnight. Another problem for me is that the book doesn’t’ go far enough in providing solid non-mechanical ideas like say, Kennith Hite’s Nightmares of Mine does. It also doesn’t take advantage of the horror genre with appropriate magic items.
Another problem is taint. It’s not that taint is bad, nor even that it’s been done before. It’s that unlike say chaos in Warhammer, it’s a new element that can easily bother players. For example, in the sample encounter, the players can acquire three points of taint if they’re not at their best behavior for one event in this book. That’s a huge amount of taint for an encounter, much less an adventure. Either the players are going to be deformed freaks that are mad, or they’re going to be spending a lot of time removing taint from themselves.
If you’re new to the game, many of the things I’m babbling about, like the Complete Book of Villains, various Ravenloft sourcebooks, Call of Cthulhu by Wizards of the Coast, Darkness and Dread, Villain Design Handbook, Complete Book of Necromancers, and others, are just so much nonsense. For you new players, the advice here is solid but should only be your first step into investigating the use of horror in your campaigns.
