Weekly Wonders – Battlefield Haunts by Alex Riggs and Joshua Zaback is a role playing game supplement published by Necromancers of the Northwest for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a seven page PDF that is available from RPGNow for $1.49 but was purchased at the reduced price of $1.12 during a sale. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page is the front matter and one the Open Game License.
This supplement naturally covers haunts, the trap-like supernatural encounters that are a staple of Pathfinder. The brief Introduction states that few places have as much death and carnage as a battlefield, yet haunts in the game tend to focus on enclosed locations. This supplement provides eight new haunts for battlefields.
There’s also a brief new rule on identifying the weaknesses of haunts. Guessing what a haunt’s weakness is is difficult (frankly, without help or a clue, it’s basically impossible) and this allows characters to make a knowledge check to identify a weakness. GMs are also encouraged to reward clever thinking and allow characters to affect haunts in ways outside of those specified.
Next are the New Haunts. Bloody Mud is a logical haunt; it forms where there has been death on a large scale and turns the ground into difficult terrain. Drums of the Damned can cause rage in the listener. Fog of War fills the area with a red mist like a fog cloud. Ghostly Command functions like suggestion. Hail of Arrows causes darkness by blocking out the sun (a reference to 300? “Our arrows will blot out the sun.” “Then we will fight in the shade.”). Hand of the Dead has skeletal hands reach out of the ground. Quaking Battlements causes battlements to shake. Spectral Charge has a force of spectral cavalry charge across the area.
Weekly Wonders – Battlefield Haunts in Review
The PDF is bookmarked with the various sections and new haunts linked. Navigation is good for such a short supplement. The text maintains a two column format and appeared almost free of errors. Although the supplement is in colour, there are no illustrations. Presentation is okay.
The haunts themselves vary a bit. Some are rather of the “spell in a can” type; admittedly, that’s what haunts are designed to be. Some are more imaginative in how they function. These are definitely better. All told, there is a decent selection of haunts that can be dropped into a campaign. Given the prevalence of battlefields, at some point it is highly likely that characters will stumble across one, at which point these haunts can be dropped in, perhaps as simple, albeit potentially dangerous, scenery, or perhaps developed further. Weekly Wonders – Battlefield Haunts can be found by clicking here.
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