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Ragitsu
2010-10-27, 04:51 PM
I am curious to know if those of you that used this book for inspiration, or to partially/completely build a campaign, have had a successful experience.

hamishspence
2010-10-27, 04:58 PM
I like its "flexible Neutral" concept- ignores the normal SRD definition of neutral as:

"has qualms about harming the innocent but lacks the commitment to make sacrifices to help others"

and allows for a anti-hero character who is willing to sacrifice to help others- but is slightly too willing to do evil deeds for the greater good to qualify as Good-aligned.

Ragitsu
2010-10-27, 05:04 PM
Hm, that wasn't a valid interpretation before?

Myth
2010-10-27, 05:06 PM
I'm running an undead heavyo horror game. I'll be reading all of it soon for inspiration. So far i can tell you that Archivist is superbly fluffed for my tastes, as is the deliciously dreadful Unholy Scion. I expect the book to stay consistent and become one of my favorites.

hamishspence
2010-10-27, 05:12 PM
Hm, that wasn't a valid interpretation before?

Apparently not- if you treat statements like "Neutral people lack the commitment to make sacrifices to help others" as absolute statements.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-10-27, 06:27 PM
I really love that book, some of the fluffier aspect of it make for a good read IMO and most of the crunch is perfectly playable (with the exception of Taint and tainted schoolars, I don't see anything specially broken, though one could argue about the archivist, being a tier 1 and all)

It is also home to one of my favorite classes ever.... the Dread Necromancer!!!

dsmiles
2010-10-27, 07:49 PM
TAINT!!!

That is all, citizen, move along.

Newt
2010-10-28, 10:35 AM
I am curious to know if those of you that used this book for inspiration, or to partially/completely build a campaign, have had a successful experience.


Do you like Lovecraft? Specifically the Elder Gods works, Cthulhu and the like.

If yes, then read this book. Love this book. Prepare to send your PC's into depths of madness and joy. Joy being completely mindless with blood dripping from their eyes.

jiriku
2010-10-28, 11:26 AM
I've actually found the fluff advice about running horror games to be pretty run-of-the-mill. It's more like advice about how to run a dramatic, detail-rich game with compelling characters than advice for running horror. For better advice, I refer to the (sadly long out-of-print) 2nd edition Ravenloft boxed set. Archivist and dread necromancer are awesome classes, but now that I've had it for a while, I don't find myself using it for anything other than those two classes.

Telonius
2010-10-28, 11:35 AM
I've been running a campaign of Shackled City, and rebuilding some of the main bad guys to make them less of a cakewalk. Heroes of Horror was actually really good for Fetor Abradius. He went from being a vanilla Wizard/Loremaster (who would have lasted about one round) to a Wizard/Tainted Scholar that struck fear into the hearts of the PCs. (Also annoyed them greatly with his monologuing due to the "Hubristic" depravity). Though also because of his ridiculous pride, he tended to discount the effectiveness of his enemies, leading him to use some sub-standard tactics.

Sample exchange:
DM: "Okay, you're in the hallway. He casts Chain Lightning. Everybody roll saves."
Monk: "All right! 19, plus my modifiers ... 35, looks like I'm good."
DM: "Sorry, not quite enough."
Monk: (jawdrop) "What?! What's this guy's Intelligence score?!"
DM: "Oh, somewhere in the mid-20s. But it's not Intelligence you should be worried about." :belkar:

Myth
2010-10-28, 11:53 AM
I've been running a campaign of Shackled City, and rebuilding some of the main bad guys to make them less of a cakewalk. Heroes of Horror was actually really good for Fetor Abradius. He went from being a vanilla Wizard/Loremaster (who would have lasted about one round) to a Wizard/Tainted Scholar that struck fear into the hearts of the PCs. (Also annoyed them greatly with his monologuing due to the "Hubristic" depravity). Though also because of his ridiculous pride, he tended to discount the effectiveness of his enemies, leading him to use some sub-standard tactics.

Sample exchange:
DM: "Okay, you're in the hallway. He casts Chain Lightning. Everybody roll saves."
Monk: "All right! 19, plus my modifiers ... 35, looks like I'm good."
DM: "Sorry, not quite enough."
Monk: (jawdrop) "What?! What's this guy's Intelligence score?!"
DM: "Oh, somewhere in the mid-20s. But it's not Intelligence you should be worried about." :belkar:

monk :smallconfused:

Telonius
2010-10-28, 12:08 PM
monk :smallconfused:

Significantly bumped up in power due to houserules and application of Enlightened Fist. He usually mixes it up in melee, so I think of him as a Monk.

Ragitsu
2010-11-02, 06:17 PM
I really wish I had/have more of a chance to use the Taint rules: they are a great mechanic to enforce "Hey, this is messed up stuff. Limit your exposure or suffer the consequences of true evil".

hamishspence
2010-11-02, 06:22 PM
BoVD had an element of that- sufficiently evil acts could have an effect on people and the surrounding area- all the way up to giving everybody in the vicinity the Corrupted template and leaving a permanent magical scar on the land.

Seemed like a precursor to Taint.

Ragitsu
2010-11-02, 06:31 PM
BoVD had an element of that- sufficiently evil acts could have an effect on people and the surrounding area- all the way up to giving everybody in the vicinity the Corrupted template and leaving a permanent magical scar on the land.

Seemed like a precursor to Taint.

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will."

Akal Saris
2010-11-02, 06:52 PM
I really like the dread necro and the archivist, so the book is worthwhile just for those 2 classes in my opinion. I'm also running a game that uses the taint rules for the horror aspects of the game, which has had mixed success. Taint gives you too many benefits or too random/pointless negatives to be a good game mechanic.

Dark_Nohn
2010-11-02, 06:59 PM
The taint system: make sure that your PCs are okay with it BEFORE you start reaping their characters with taint points, otherwise the players will lose interest with a "not what I had envisioned my character to turn out as," thinking that characters were going to have been in a heroic fantasy setting.

The classes/PrCs: some of them rely on taint, well the PrCs do, and as such, the PrCs should be allowed only if you're using taint. Archivist is great for a cleric character that wants to be more special than the healer class, without resorting to CoDzilla cheese. Dread Necros, I rarely see reason for them to be PC classes.

Setting/Monsters: Works well if you plan on having a dark or gritty-themed campaign. There's other books that do this as well, exemplars of evil, elder evils, Libris Mortis, Lords of Madness, Fiendish Codex 1&2, BoVD. I will admit that those first two are poor source materials as they seem to me as just a pile of "X=BBEG 'cause the DM's too dumb to make their own."

Psyren
2010-11-02, 07:00 PM
HoH didn't pioneer Taint in 3.5 - that honor goes to Unearthed Arcana. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/taint.htm)

Honestly, the book itself isn't all that necessary. You can grab Taint rules from the SRD and the Archivist from WotC directly. Dread Necro is great but the PrCs are pretty meh (or abso-freaking-lutely broken - hi Tainted Scholar!) with the only reasonable one being Fiend-blooded.

I think Libris Mortis has more juice for a horror campaign myself.

Ragitsu
2010-11-02, 07:01 PM
thinking that characters were going to have been in a heroic fantasy setting.

There's nothing wrong with occasionally using Taint in a heroic fantasy setting to really drive home the vileness of certain villains or places...is there?

dsmiles
2010-11-02, 07:04 PM
HoH didn't pioneer Taint in 3.5 - that honor goes to Unearthed Arcana. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/campaigns/taint.htm)

Honestly, the book itself isn't all that necessary. You can grab Taint rules from the SRD and the Archivist from WotC directly. Dread Necro is great but the PrCs are pretty meh (or abso-freaking-lutely broken - hi Tainted Scholar!) with the only reasonable one being Fiend-blooded.

I think Libris Mortis has more juice for a horror campaign myself.

I thought taint originally came when WotC got rights to Lot5R, and published it as OA. I could be wrong, though.

Dark_Nohn
2010-11-02, 07:06 PM
There's nothing wrong with using Taint occasionally in a heroic fantasy setting to really drive home the vileness of certain villains or places...is there?

Except for permanently scarring a character that's probably low-tier as it is, and invoking a feat-tax in the form of Pure Soul if they find a way to remove it, and don't want to deal with the taint system... or that's how I look at it. Vile damage, and other rules can certainly do that trick nicely without leaving permanent scars, and usually the ones that feel the scars the most are the lower tier characters as opposed to the higher tier characters having magics that get around it.

Ragitsu
2010-11-02, 07:08 PM
Except for permanently scarring a character that's probably low-tier as it is,

Low-tier character?

Dark_Nohn
2010-11-02, 07:17 PM
Low-tier character?

As the melee combatants and skillmonkeys usually get the most taint with their low will saves, but casters have high will saves. Sure there's also the fort-save taint as well, which the melee combatants can resist easier, but it's not as bad getting back to town and you look messed up physically, as you get back to town, and you're about on the point of becoming a homocidal maniac due to the horrors you've seen

Psyren
2010-11-02, 07:19 PM
I thought taint originally came when WotC got rights to Lot5R, and published it as OA. I could be wrong, though.

Yes, OA has some rules for Taint; but OA is 3.0, and I was specifying 3.5.

dsmiles
2010-11-02, 07:21 PM
Yes, OA has some rules for Taint; but OA is 3.0, and I was specifying 3.5.

Ah.
Now with obligatory text!

hamishspence
2010-11-03, 04:48 AM
"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will."

Yup- but in this case, it doesn't just affect the doer, but a whole bunch of potentially innocent people in the vicinity of their deed.

The highest tier, was reserved for "the birth of an evil god" (a bit like a much smaller scale version of what happened in 40K when Slaanesh was born) and "an act of genocide"

Ragitsu
2010-11-03, 03:11 PM
As the melee combatants and skillmonkeys usually get the most taint with their low will saves, but casters have high will saves. Sure there's also the fort-save taint as well, which the melee combatants can resist easier, but it's not as bad getting back to town and you look messed up physically, as you get back to town, and you're about on the point of becoming a homocidal maniac due to the horrors you've seen

It is a relief to hear it need not be permanent, even without taking a specific Feat/specific Feats.

Newt
2010-11-04, 12:38 AM
Yup- but in this case, it doesn't just affect the doer, but a whole bunch of potentially innocent people in the vicinity of their deed.

The highest tier, was reserved for "the birth of an evil god" (a bit like a much smaller scale version of what happened in 40K when Slaanesh was born) and "an act of genocide"


Really? Huh.. That.. Would be fair awesome. Especially if it did birth a god. Or even caused the land to become evil, opened a portal to whichever evil plane you decreed, etc. So many useful things you can do with it.



As the melee combatants and skillmonkeys usually get the most taint with their low will saves, but casters have high will saves. Sure there's also the fort-save taint as well, which the melee combatants can resist easier,

An area where a monk is actually useful? :O

I like monks, but even I think they have some issues. Eberron books helped them, but they still need some serious twinking. Or gestalt, gestalt monks make great bases, can make them do what you actually want. :D

hamishspence
2010-11-04, 03:41 AM
Really? Huh.. That.. Would be fair awesome. Especially if it did birth a god. Or even caused the land to become evil, opened a portal to whichever evil plane you decreed, etc. So many useful things you can do with it.

In the case of "birth of evil god"- it's the other way round, the god being born, is the "evil" that causes a massive scar on the land.

You can certainly pinch from Warhammer 40K though and do the reverse- enough acts of evil, severe enough, over time, increasing to a crescendo, causing an evil god to come into being.