Horror classes

[crowhaven]

Hey

I was looking for any info on classes besides the main classes that would be considered horror types like occultist or something.

Homebrew or any edition, doesn't matter

[Anonymouswizard]

What game? 13th Age has the Occultist (who I think gets powers from more Lovecraftian 'beings from higher dimensions') and Demonologist. I'm sure there's plenty of others in obscure or indie RPGs, even if the vast majority of horror games are classless.

Oh! Monte Cooke's World of Darkness includes Vampire and Werewolf classes.

[Wizard_Lizard]

5th edition of DND, I would definetly suggest warlock as the obvious pick, Fiend pact or Great old one both can have some nice horror flavours There is also Necromancer wizard, or if you're feeling creative, enchanter. I will also put an honourable mentipn out there to spores druid, which can have some really horror things, though with 5e it's all about how you flavour things.

[HumanFighter]

Necromancer. You can do some crazy and creepy stuff with that class. Imagine your character's best friend going into the dark, only to die instantly from an unseen monster. The Necromancer then raises his corpse as an undead monstrosity, and you have to fight him later on.

[Starbuck_II]

Hey

I was looking for any info on classes besides the main classes that would be considered horror types like occultist or something.

Homebrew or any edition, doesn't matter

Well, in Pathfinder, Spiritualist is basically a Necromancer caster that gets scythe as proficiency. Also gets a ghost (Phantom) that can full of ectoplasm (think Slimer from Ghostbusters) or incorporeal.

[Luccan]

The Heroes of Horror classes are interesting. The Dread Necromancer is slowly turning into a lich. Play up the horro by making the DN's power accidental and they're basically being transformed against their will by their powers.

The Archivist, while seemingly not as inherently horrific, is all about studying dark forces and, IMO, makes more sense in a game without other powerful divine classes running around, so basically the last force if healing and light in the world depends on scrounging ancient texts and forgotten libraries. And then you have to contend with Archivists relying on evil magic as well.

[Khedrac]

And in Lost Souls which is mainly a class=race game, most of the classes/races are different forms of ghost (all human as it is set in modern day earth) though you can also play a medium and be the only character who is still alive!

[Anonymouswizard]

The Archivist, while seemingly not as inherently horrific, is all about studying dark forces and, IMO, makes more sense in a game without other powerful divine classes running around, so basically the last force if healing and light in the world depends on scrounging ancient texts and forgotten libraries. And then you have to contend with Archivists relying on evil magic as well.

Honestly, if it wasn't for the tier issues the Archivist would be great as the only caster class running around, arcane or divine. It's basically a wizard with some extra bits and a different spell list more themed towards 'petitioning an outside source'.

But yeah, very few explicit horror classes, which is because most horror games don't use classes (at least not in the way D&D does).Plustraditionally horror thrives when characters are disempowered, although this isn't necessary (to pick an example, Aliens). Horror is more about the building of suspense and the payoff, and so most horror games are built with a focus on buiding up to the payoff instead of giving character abilities.

At the end of the day a g horror wizard doesn't have to do magic a normal wizard doesn't, he just has to use it be horrific. Is a necromancer inherently more suited to horrow thsan an illusionist or transmuter? Let's not touch the enchanter with a ten foot pole. Hell Baator Far Realm you do you think is summoning the horrific creatures from beyond space and time? That's Conjuror work, not necromancy.

[Kardwill]

Is a necromancer inherently more suited to horrow thsan an illusionist or transmuter?

Yeah, at least the necromancer will have the courtesy to transform you into a shambling mindless abomination only AFTER you're dead.

Hey

I was looking for any info on classes besides the main classes that would be considered horror types like occultist or something.

Homebrew or any edition, doesn't matter

I guess you're talking about D&D, and not stuff like Chill, Chtulhu or Buffy?

[Psyren]

Classes that allow themselves to be possessed by an external agency in exchange for power are excellent fits for a horror game. Binder, Pactmaker, and Medium are all great examples of this if you're starting from a D&D/PF space.

There are numerous reasons for this, but three in particular that stand out:

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1) Aesthetics - These classes make it easy to incorporate the visual themes and trappings of horror well, undergoing both physical and mental changes based on the entity being "hosted." These changes can verge from merely unsettling signs or quirks, to full-on body horror or drastic personality changes.

2) Mystery - A strong theme of horror is encountering and dealing with the unknown. Gaining power directly from foreign entities allows these characters to bypass the standard magic system - ignoring common pillars such as study, birthright or piety in favor of something a lot more bizarre and direct (and dangerous). Being difficult to classify.

3) Disempowerment - Perhaps the most major component of effective horror is disempowerment. This is hard to pull off in most class level-based RPGs because the idea behind class levels is that the character grows in power over time. "Possession" classes however can incorporate disempowerment in different ways - correlating increased capability with other disadvantages and making that power more of a double-edged sword. These can include for example loss of control of your character, or penalties if you engage in (or refrain from) certain behaviors.

It might also be worthwhile considering a classless game for horror, to reinforce that theme of disempowerment.

[SpanielBear]

For 5th Edition D&D I have to recommend the third party Cthulhu Mythos DM guide, which has monsters, player species, spells, items and feats as well as a whole array of Cthulhu-flavoured sub-classes. It’s fabulous.

Otherwise, I guess look at how you might fluff regular classes to get the theme you desire. Play up the creepy factor of Psy Knights or Psychic Blades; the body horror of an aberrant mind sorcerer, the madness at the heart of a conquest paladin’s unshakeable conviction…

[Vahnavoi]

Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Magic-User are horror classes if you take the right approach to them, as attested by Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

To wit:

For Fighter: think for a moment of the actual physical reality of sticking a blade into another man; of facing human and inhuman monsters both in mortal combat. That's horror, right there.

For Thief: what conditions of your life put you in a position where stealing from others, or worse, stealing from tombs guarded by supernatural forces, is your best bet? That's horror, right there.

For Cleric: you are servant of a higher power. So who is that higher power? What is that higher power? What does it demand from you? That's horror, right there.

For Magic-User: you sold your soul for knowledge man was not meant to know. You are the cultist in a Lovecraft story. That's horror, right there.

For Clerics and Magic-Users, you may need to swap their prayer and spell lists for something less convenient and more flavorful than vanilla, but that's most of it. Fantasy and horror are twins. You get the latter by paying attention to details glossed over by the former.

[Slipjig]

I think which roles are appropriate will depend heavily on what kind of horror you are going for. If you are going for straight body horror or what amounts to a standard game just with horror monsters, then the full range of classes works. If you want something where horror of the unknown is primary, a lot of the classes mentioned above would work better as antagonists or NPCs than as PCs. Not knowing much about the horror you are facing is a key component of lots of horror stories.

Horror is really tough to pull off at most having tables, because most PCs are, frankly, sociopaths who would saunter unfazed through the climax of your average slasher flick. There's a reason most horror movies involve teenagers, academics, or scientists. If you are powerful enough to credibly fight back, that undercuts several flavors of horror pretty severely. If your character reacts to the horrible monster by drawing his longsword, you have adventure, not horror.

An interesting choice would be to require that all characters be non-melee types. That would counteract the natural reaction of most melee PCs to charge as soon as they see an enemy, and if you make most of the enemies melee types, you can easily create chase scenes where the monster(s) are chasing the PCs, since the PCs don't want to be in melee range!

[Grod_The_Giant]

My Grimoire includes a 5e version of the Archivist, heavily themed around slow creepy magic.

[Telok]

horror thrives when characters are disempowered, although this isn't necessary (to pick an example, Aliens).

Nah, you're totally disempowered in Aliens.
You don't have enough guns.

[Anonymouswizard]

Nah, you're totally disempowered in Aliens.
You don't have enough guns.

Oh no, they have enough guns.

They just don't have enough ammo.

[Vahnavoi]

Aliens movie is a pretty good example of how incompetence can turn a routine dungeon crawl into survival horror. You can achieve the same effect with most low-level monsters - famously, the story of Tucker's Kobolds is pretty much D&D Aliens. Hell - giant rats would work. Rats - rats in the walls!

[Telok]

Oh no, they have enough guns.

They just don't have enough ammo.

Well I didn't use that because the recent Aliens rpg doesn't track ammo. If a character's stress meter gets high enough they can snap, and one of the possible effects of that is to empty your gun into the nearest thing and have to spend a turn reloading.

Similar effect, you can't put enough ammo into the targets to prevent them from getting to you.

[Psyren]

Alien (1st movie) and Aliens (sequel) are both horror, but they are different subgenres. Alien is Survival Horror, built largely around carefully evading and surviving an overwhelming threat that isolates you over the course of the game. Aliens meanwhile is Action Horror - where you have the means of defending yourself without having to exclusively hide, but it's not absolute, and the sheer relentlessness or numbers of the foe means needing to retreat and be careful about how you engage.

Gamewise, you can think of the likes of Silent Hill 2 / Slender / Amnesia as survival horror, while Resident Evil and Dead Space would be more action horror.

Personally I think Action Horror is a better fit for a class-based game. The players get the growth and progression that comes from having a class and levels, but they will be kept on edge by fights that can easily become overwhelming if not approached correctly. One of the keys to making this kind of horror work is taxing the player's resources - much like you have to carefully manage your ammunition in Resident Evil, horror classes need abilities that can be reduced or strained over the course of an encounter or adventuring day.

[Anonymouswizard]

Well I didn't use that because the recent Aliens rpg doesn't track ammo. If a character's stress meter gets high enough they can snap, and one of the possible effects of that is to empty your gun into the nearest thing and have to spend a turn reloading.

Similar effect, you can't put enough ammo into the targets to prevent them from getting to you.

To be fair, it's one of the few things I'd houserule out of the RPG, but it matters maybe twice in the film, so at worst I'd just let PCs have a maximum number of reloads equal to their STR at any time (and Aliens guns have big enough clips you won't have to track in most battles anyway).

Although annoyingly the game also makes them more resilient to guns than fire. It doesn't take many gunshots to take them down in the films (the issue is having guns in the first place) but they've been shpown to survive the firing of surface to orbit drives before. E-

Although as a side note, while I'd use the Alien RPG to play Aliens, I'm not sure I'd use it for Alien. I'd be very tempted to go for Those Dark Places instead, partially because of the lack of character Talents (also because it focuses on long term Pressure over short term Stress, which fits the original film).