Haunted Feat

[BlackBoxGamer]

Hey all,

A player in a campaign I will be running sometime in the next month decided to take a more storyline driven character and took the Haunted feat. After reading through the description I was struck by the idea that the feat as written can appear to actually be a hallucination of the characters. I mean, looking at it, the geist only appears when the character is alone, will only manifest after it drains a character of some Cha (which represents a person's 'sense of self' and some measure of self confidence) and which will instantly vanish if anyone else enters the scene. From this perspective, it seems to me as if the person could appear to be either insane or daydreaming, as whenever their geist manifests, the character is left feeling 'disconnected' and 'out of sorts' with their self, and no one else witnesses these manifestations, which further muddles the truth of what they saw. I am loosely planning on running this as such whenever the character calls upon her dear, departed mother, to make the player feel a little more insecure (and slightly confuse the other players)

I was just wondering if anyone else ran it like this or had any interesting ways in which to portray this feat from a roleplaying perspective?

BBG

[Mortepierre]

One of my players is using it in my current campaign. However, I modified the feat.

First of all, as the name implies, the PC really is "haunted".. which means he is dealing with a ghost and not a geist (granted, there isn't a big difference, but still..)

Second, rather than having the PC receive a second chance at some skill rolls from the spirit, he is "advised" by it. The catch is that the spirit himself gets to decide when this should happen. When it does happen, he is utterly invisible to everybody else and only his "chosen" PC can hear him (except for those with the appropriate spells and/or feats).

Third, the spirit started to haunt the PC for a specific reason. He is - was, rather - the last member of a knightly order which was destroyed through treachery. As such, he is desperate to see his order "reborn" and the culprits brought to justice. Finding a kindred spirit in the (young) PC, he "tagged along" and now tries to make a worthy knight out of him.

In-game, none of the other players know what's going on. All they know is that - sometimes - their friend stops in mid-sentence, gets a blank look or grimaces, and then - usually - changes opinion about what he was saying OR comes up with a piece of info he hadn't known previously. He has also started to display weird powers (effectively dual-classing as paladin).

On one (very dangerous) occasion, the ghost possessed the PC (inflicting a massive Cha drain as a result) so that he could use his special abilities to keep the group alive. The haunted PC almost died and it took him months to recover, hence he isn't eager at all to repeat the experience!

[Samael Hands of Stone]

I think some good examples of how to portray or play out the Haunted feat are:

- Russell Crowe's character in Beautiful Mind was battling with mental illness in a very compelling way. The way he tried to deal with them was very novel and interesting as well. Good source of inspiration.

- Six Feet Under (series) is also a prime source, if not the best one I can think of. Almost every main character is "haunted" by their departed loved ones, or by the various deceased that are taken in by their funeral home.

- If you're looking for a more classic example of someone being haunted, I recommend movies like The Others and any good books on schizophrenia.

good luck

[Boccaccio Barbarossa]

I think you have the right idea with the haunted feat, personally. the others should question what is going on.

Now ,despite the feast not saying aso, I would work in something where you also have to sort of placate the spirit. Like, if this is the PC's mom, then she will want to be treated that way from time to time. And she is likely to be overprotective of the PC, punishing him (by not being around) when he does something "stupid" like go after monsters. lol!

It should be hard for that character, despite the bonuses of the feat, not to feel stuck in this role they hav to play: placating his mother even though she's been dead for several years, etyc.

[Kessler]

IMC I had an "insane" girl in sanitarium, who actually had simply haunted feat.

[Isabella]

IMO, Haunted, Ghostsight, Visions, and Etheral Empathy (and I'm sure there are others) should all be played like this. They're even better if the GM will allow characters to be created with failed madness saves.

My first Ravenloft PC was a cleric who thought she was going mad, even though she only had the Etheral Empathy trait (she was a Petrovna, so she had well founded fears).

We also had a Haunted Character, but the GM used the ghost as sort of a knowledge bank instead of as written (the ghost was the former husband of the PC, so it was generally well behaved).

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I have a Haunted character in my campaign, and we play pretty fast and loose with it. Mostly, it's just a voice in his head, no visible manifestation. The other PC's don't hear it, but they do hear the host talking to "himself". I decided to put a bit of a Lews Therin (from Wheel of Time) twist on it and make it a surly, evil ghost, rather than a helpful one. He's helpful mainly to save himself. He believes that if his host dies, he'll be stuck haunting the spot he died in, and he doesn't want that, so he helps keep him alive, hoping that one day the host will restore him to life. Since the Haunted character knows he's an evil ghost, he has no intention of doing that, but he does want to set him to rest.

[BlackBoxGamer]

Wow. Thanks for all the ideas. It has definately fed me some ideas about how to portray this character's mother and the perception that the other players will have of this haunting. When I have some more time (work eating up the majority of it) I'll post some of the character's history, focusing on the events & people that are responsible for her haunting.

Thanks again,

BBG

[Dominique]

I think some good examples of how to portray or play out the Haunted feat are:

- Russell Crowe's character in Beautiful Mind was battling with mental illness in a very compelling way. The way he tried to deal with them was very novel and interesting as well. Good source of inspiration.

- Six Feet Under (series) is also a prime source, if not the best one I can think of. Almost every main character is "haunted" by their departed loved ones, or by the various deceased that are taken in by their funeral home.

- If you're looking for a more classic example of someone being haunted, I recommend movies like The Others and any good books on schizophrenia.

good luck

Four words: Turn of the Screw. A governess for two young children begins to suspect that the children are being haunted by malevolent ghosts, but as readers we can never tell if they're actually being haunted or if the governess is just completely off her rocker. There's an excellent Masterpiece Theatre version starring Jodhi May, and another version starring Ingrid Bergman that I hear is even better. It really sounds like exactly what you're looking for.

EDIT: Masterpiece Theatre, not BBC. Argh.

[Guardian of Twilight]

I finally got to play my character with the Haunted feat for Halloween and was surprised at how well it fleshes out a character. It can add a whole new level of attachment to your character. Man, that feat is awesome!

[Guardian of Twilight]

Wow, talk about bringing back the dead. Pun intended? Perhaps.

I actually have a question about geists, though. I was talking to a few people that run other campaigns set in Ravenloft and we were talking about the Haunted feat. When the person that has the feat is with the geist, can the geist talk, or can they only portray emotions through facial features? I personally thought that they could talk, and one fellow said no. Can anyone help me out, here? Does the geist actually talk to the person that has the feat, or is it just a silent figure that has to use illusions to inform the person of what's transpired?

Great, now I'm getting an image of a geist Lassie trying to tell Timmy what's transpired.

[A G Thing]

Hello again Guardian of Twilight...

To quote the feat it's self...

"The geist communicates through phantasms; it cannot affect physical objects. You can ask the geist to manifest whenever you are alone."

and now the geist entry in the in Den of Dread...

"Unable to manifest, these powers are often the spirits sole means of interacting with the material plane."


So this leaves it slightly unclear... Normally a geist cannot manifest so it cannot make it's self heard. Along with this it says the geist communicates through phantasms...

But it does not clearly state if it may speak while manifested to the character. If it can then the players may overhear such a conversation with two voices and that could be disturbing.

Since however it does say it communicates in phantasms then as the rules seem to imply it cannot seem to speak for some reason. Though it can force the player to see some storytelling through etheral resonance. This forces the conversation to be of only one voice and since such effects are disrupted by the presence of others, the character may wake into horrible scenes that can be veiwed by others as maddness should they see them just coming to, or overhear the talkative haunted PC.

It determines your take on it I guess... Which ever effect makes the scene drive the way you wish should probably be used...

[Mangrum]

Since however it does say it communicates in phantasms then as the rules seem to imply it cannot seem to speak for some reason.

Phantasms are a specific category of illusion in 3.X. They can be visual, auditory, etc., but are actually just projections into the mind of the witness.

[doctor-evil]

I always envisaged the geist in the feat to be a little like Baltar's visions in the new battlestar Galactica. Whispers in the ear at stretigic times. Those that observe him speaking to the apparition assume that he is insane. But what is the agenda of the apparition?

[Guardian of Twilight]

A G Thing, always nice to see you drop in and lend me your thoughts.

Ok, so through the phantasams, the geist can give voice to his or her concerns. Does that mean then that the character with the feat could 'hear' the geist while in the company of the party? For example, my character Nathan is haunted by his fiancee that was murdered. She stays with him to keep him safe, and out of love. While traveling with other characters, could she whisper something along the lines of, "My love, there is something more here than you are being led to believe. Search the western wall again," or would he have to have the party leave, ask her to manifest, then get the information?