How to Run Haunts in Pathfinder 2e

Howdy folks!

I've seen a couple of folks, both online and in a game of Outlaws of Alkenstar that I am playing in, struggle with how to run Haunts! And honestly, that makes perfect sense - Pathfinder 2e has incredible rules for Combat that even a new GM can just take and run with! Other aspects of the game require a bit more work from the GM, however, which can be harder for folks who aren't used to using the skills required.

In this post, I'll be going through the 3 most essential skills for running haunts in Pathfinder 2e, with further reading to help you master each one (in descending order of relevance, so if you only read the first article in each section you'll still get a lot of value!). Then, I'll be going through 3 example haunts - one from Abomination Vaults, which I ran earlier this year, the one from Outlaws of Alkenstar that my GM struggled with, and one higher level haunt from the GMG.

by GrandFailure

How To Run Haunts

The skills that help you run Haunts well are the same as those that help you run a good game in general! But Haunts (and other complex hazards) are an interesting case in that they are mechanically complicated enough to not always be the most intuitive to run, but don't have the same mechanical support as combat. More than a lot of aspects of the game, therefore, they rely on softer skills that a lot of GMs under-develop!

The 3 more essential skills for running Haunts are:

1. Telegraphing mechanics, especially what will and won't work
2. Narrating the action, and encouraging the players to do the same with their actions!
3. Adjudicating creative actions and helping move stuck players along

Telegraphing

At their best, Hazards are exciting puzzles, chances to solve a problem without just killing it dead. At their worst, they are a confusing mess where the players push whatever buttons the GM tells them to until the problem goes away. The biggest difference between the two is 1. what information the players have access to, and 2. how that information is presented.

Hazards have cool and unique ways of being disabled, but often there's no clear way for players to learn that information! It's up to the GM to come up with ways to telegraph each of those to the players. I recommend coming up with 2-3 clues per method of disabling, and then tying those directly into your narration! Your goal is to describe things in such a way that that the players don't need to roll dice to figure out how to disable the trap, and asking them to roll checks to recall or decipher information should be a last resort. 

Ask yourself: "What signs would there be of this option?" and then show those signs to your players. If it is magic that can be dispelled, describe its slight ethereal glow or the energy that spellcasters would feel emanating from it. If it can be disabled with thievery, describe in detail the visible mechanical components. If social skills might work, figure out at least one version of what that might look like and clue the players in on the haunts motivation (see the Stonescale Spirits below for an example).

Further Reading:

• The Angry GM: It's A Trap!
• The Angry GM: How To Manage Combat Like A True Game Master (specifically the section "Telegraphing: Never Attack Unannounced")
• The Alexandrian: Rulings in Practice: Traps (and part 2!)
• The Alexandrian: Three Clues Rule
• Dungeon of Signs: Towards a Taxonomy of "Trick" Monsters

Narrating

Once you've identified what information you need to telegraph to the players, it's time to bring the encounter to life! As Justin Alexander of the Alexandrian writes, "it’s important that a DM not allow any interaction at the table to become purely mechanical". While you will eventually have to deal with the mechanics, always speak to players in terms of the fiction. Instead of saying "here are the skills you can roll," visualize a picture of the hazard in your brain and describe all the intricacies to your players. This is where you sprinkle in all those clues you came up in the previous step! Your goal is for the players to visualize the same thing that you are.

This focus on fiction lends more weight to the scene by helping it feel more like a real spooky thing that's happening rather than a weird pile of mechanics that suddenly appeared. Not only that, but it can spark cool ideas for players as they think through solutions to the problems in front of them! The more you describe for the players, the better their characters can engage with the world as a real, living, breathing place.

This goes both ways! Players might have a skill they'd like to roll, but "I want to roll religion" is not an action declaration. "Religion" is not an action, it is a skill used to resolve certain actions. Instead, they should describe their exorcism ritual - what they do, what they say, and what their intentions are. As we'll get into more in the next section, being specific about the actual action being taken makes it easier for the GM to adjudicate the action! Some actions are more or less likely to succeed (independent of what skill is rolled), and some actions that don't correspond to the listed skills might totally work!

Further Reading:

• The Angry GM: Better Narration Through Visualization
• The Angry GM: The Declare, Determine, Describe Cycle
• Sly Flourish: Guide to Narrative Combat
• The Alexandrian: Thought of the Day: Disarming Magical Traps
• The Alexandrian: Dissociated Mechanics - A Quick Primer

Adjudicating

Once you've given the player enough information to make decisions, invited them into the fiction, and gotten them to describe their action, the next step is to resolve that action! Really listen to what the player says when they describe their characters action. Not just for "what skill should I ask them to roll?" but also for "how likely is this to work?" If the answer is "not at all", make sure the player understands everything that their character should, but if they do then sometimes the answer is "cool, you throw some water on the ghost, nothing happens."

If a plan is particularly likely to work, make it easier! Lower the DC or give a circumstance bonus. If it's a stretch, make it harder by doing the opposite. Most importantly, however, be flexible with what might rolls you call for based on what they describe. If there's a complex whirling blade trap and a player puts an immovable rod in its path, do they try to place it in the path of the blades in a spot that would cause maximum damage? (Crafting) Or do they dodge through the blades to put it right amongst them? (Acrobatics) If a player tries to talk down a ghost and has an approach that might work given the spirit's motivation, who cares whether diplomacy was listed on the stat block?

The most important thing when adjudicating actions is to think with your brain first and the rules second. Don't get me wrong, Pathfinder 2e has some great rules! It's one of the game's biggest selling points! But the biggest selling point of TTRPGs in general is that the game isn't just automated by a computer, it's run by a living, thinking human who can make judgement calls on the fly to react to any situation. Your job as GM is to bring the world to life and use the mechanics to model things as best as you can, not to perfectly stick to the rules 100% as written.

Further Reading:

• The Alexandrian: The Art of Rulings (the whole series is worth reading)
• The Angry GM: Adjudicate Actions like a Motherf$&%ing Boss
• The Angry GM: Streamlining Action Adjudication
• Sly Flourish: The Only D&D Subsystem You Need - The Ability Check
• The Alexandrian: Rules vs. Rulings

Case Studies

Obviously, here there be spoilers! If you might play in either of these APs, don't read that section! Though both the examples from APs are from Chapter 1, so if you're at least on Chapter 2 you can read this section safely. I also added a more generic example from the GMG, both to showcase these steps on higher level Hazards and to give folks who don't want spoilers an example they can read through!

Abomination Vaults: The Stonescale Spirits

The Stonescale Spirits on the first floor of the Abomination Vaults are "A half‑dozen ghostly kobolds [that] rise from the rubble in a howling vortex!" When the haunt starts, they swirl around the room, likely frightening the characters, and then attack only creatures that are frightened! The haunt will likely only last 1-2 rounds (and almost never more than 3), as it de-activates when there are no more frightened creatures, and doesn't reset for an hour or so. 

• Telegraphing: The exorcism option is more obvious, but you can still play it up by mentioning how "unholy" these "restless spirits" are to trigger the word association. Intimidation is less obvious, so we need at least three solid clues. 1. The kobolds will recoil with fear from anyone not frightened as they swirl around. 2. If anyone moves further into the room or attacks them, they cower away momentarily before continuing. 3. Their voices crack / squeak occasionally when trying to be scary. As a bonus, you might ask for a recall knowledge check to clock that Kobolds are notoriously cowardly creatures. 
• Narrating: Describe the howling vortex as more of a force of nature than a single creature, with kobolds spirits swirling around each other as they unleash their unearthly yowls. The winds that buffer against the characters from their movement. Detail the looks of fear on the kobolds faces as they engage the party, play up the vocalizations, and describe their routine as the spirits passing through the characters as them transferring their own feelings of pain and helplessness.
• Adjudicating: Some forms of intimidation might be easier than others! A Bard who just says "fuck off" or something might roll at DC 20, while a barbarian charging in and swinging/screaming wildly might roll against DC 14-16. What else might work? For one, it's perfectly reasonable that an occultist might try to either exorcise the spirits or commune with them (potentially calming them down or even befriending them with a high enough roll! DC 20? 25?). A gust of wind spell or similar might buffer them back long enough for the party to recover, or even scare them off entirely on a successful spellcasting check! (I often ask for generic spellcasting checks for non-standard uses of spells)

Outlaws of Alkenstar: Lonely Machine Spirit

The Lonely Machine Spirit in the junk yard in Chapter 1 of Outlaws of Alkenstar is described as "Ghostly smoke rising from an alchemical engine belches forth; the screeching sound of grinding gears echoes from the engine as it shutters to life." As the players approach, the "painful whistle" of rising heat shatters their hearing, and then the engine comes to life! Alternating between belching alchemical smoke and flinging red hot gears. There is a pretty rad picture in the book, but of course the GM should try to visualize what it looks like in motion as the haunt performs its routine, not just in that static form.

• Telegraphing: First off, the goblins the party likely met already know it's haunted (ish). Next, there are two main ways to disable this haunt. The first is an exorcism, but this is pretty tough for 1st level characters (even the best possible character for the job would need to roll a 15). A slightly better option would be to somehow "eject the animated spirit from its mechanical shell". You can imagine this as either flushing it out like smoke or as the machine spirit being centered on a specific mechanism and removing that piece. Either way, you'll want to make that clear in the narration! And, of course, whenever either the name "the Harpy’s Kiss" or "Phera Wyndslow" are mentioned, it should react visibly (either with rage or sorrow depending on pacing).
• Narrating: The spirit is part of the machine! Maybe it pops up in different places, maybe its face is in the belching smoke or on the gears as they attack the party (based on whether you want it to be primarily smokey or primarily tied to a specific piece of the machinery). There's a lot of cool ways to visualize this thing! Pick your favorite. When the party sees the spirit, it is crying tears of ectoplasmic oil and roaring furiously. It cannot speak, but it can make noises like the hissing of heat and the whirring of metal. If the party backs away, it continues lashing out futilely before collapsing in sorrow and retreating inside.
• Adjudicating: I think it's super reasonable to allow crafting instead of engineering lore, possibly at a slightly higher DC (22?). You could even probably try to roll athletics to just smash it up or pull the mechanical pieces out if that's what the spirit is tied to, or again use gust of wind if it's more of a smokey spirit (can you tell that's my favorite spell?). I also want to hone in on "lonely" machine spirit! The poor lil guy just missed its friend Phera! Awwww! Attempts to make friends with the ship should absolutely get it to calm down, and maybe even take the machine spirit with them!

GMG: Dance of Death

The Dance of Death is "An eerie orchestra compels all who hear it to dance until they collapse from exhaustion." They cannot be attacked (and probably like dissolve like smoke or disappear and reappear elsewhere or something if someone tries), and their music compels people to dance until they die!

• Telegraphing: By the time they're facing a level 16 hazard, players should know that ghosts can be exorcised. The more important ones to telegraph are the Intimidation and Performance routes!
• Intimidation: Scaring off the ghosts! 1. I like the idea of the musicians basically disappearing somehow whenever they are directly threatened and basically scattering throughout the area. 2. Any attempts at violence/etc. should automatically trigger an intimidation check, and even on a failure the spirits recoil slightly or fuck up their playing juuuust a little. 3. With each success, describe some of the orchestra as either running off or disappearing!
• Performance: this is all about disrupting the performance through discordant noises. So: 1. describe the composition as intricate, complicated, perfect. 2. Whenever someone messes with one of the musicians (successfully or no), describe a slight break in that perfection, and the conductors increasing frustration at such disruptions (up to you if you want them to actually speak or not). 3. When disruptions happen, consider letting folks roll another save but treating the degree of success as one better as the hold breaks slightly. At the very least, describe the hold as faltering for just a moment as the music is disrupted!
• Narrating: Describe the swell and flow of the music as it controls the players, and ask them what their dancing looks like. Make clear the unholy fervor of these musicians, and the increasing danger of continuing to dance. Try to detail at least some individual spirits (i.e. the conductor with a slick, curly mustache, the reed section full of spindly nerds, the hulking drummer who's just playing along and seems easily distracted., etc.) and use them to highlight each of the bits of telegraphing. Nevertheless, they all have the same intent - up to you whether that's malicious or rapturous! I think it'd be fun to have some spectral dancers as well, spirits that continued dancing after death!
• Adjudicating: First off, each approach will have a different result! Disrupting will be temporary (until they retune in an hour). Frightening will be temporary, but they'll already be scared of the party next time and it'll probably be easier next time. Exorcising will just defeat it. As for variations on these approaches: Anti-ghost gear is likely to help folks scare them! Depending on what folks do, you might allow other checks to disrupt the music (i.e. Crafting to create something that makes discordant whirring noises, though this might take longer. or Athletics to just like bang on shit and throw them off their rhythm.) And I would honestly allow something along the lines of insulting the ghosts into angrily stopping and trying to argue, using a skill based on the approach.

Conclusion

Haunts can definitely take more prep than a normal combat! Not everything you need is strictly on the page, and if you're not used to using these skills it's probably a good idea to plan out what you're going to do (and a few examples of creative solutions you might allow) in advance. The more you do it, the fast it'll be (I think each of the examples above took maybe, 10 minutes each to write out in full? Probably less if I was just jotting down notes to myself or thinking it through live as things got started).

If you put these skills to use, you'll find Haunts (and other Hazards) come alive! And become an engaging puzzle that the players must solve with their brains, thinking through the fiction of the world, rather than with their character sheets.

What are your top tips for running Haunts? Do you have any resources you think should be added to the further reading lists?