Haunted One 5e
You are haunted by something so terrible that you dare not speak of it. You’ve tried to bury it and run away from it, to no avail. Whatever this thing is that haunts you can’t be slain with a sword or banished with a spell. It might come to you as a shadow on the wall, a bloodcurdling nightmare, a memory that refuses to die, or a demonic whisper in the dark. The burden has taken its toll, isolating you from most people and making you question your sanity. You must find a way to overcome it before it destroys you.
Source: Curse of Strahd
Skill Proficiencies: Choose two of Arcana, Investigation, Religion, or Survival
Tool Proficiencies: None
Languages: Choose two languages, one of which being an exotic language (Abyssal, Celestial, Deep Speech, Draconic, Infernal, Primordial, Sylvan, or Undercommon)
Equipment: A monster hunter’s pack, and one trinket of special significance (choose one or roll on the Gothic Trinkets table). Also gain a set of common clothes and 1sp.
Features
Harrowing Event: Prior to becoming an adventurer, your path in life was defined by one dark moment, one fateful decision, or one tragedy. Now you feel a darkness threatening to consume you, and you fear there may be no hope of escape. Choose a harrowing event that haunts you, or roll one on the Harrowing Events table.
Harrowing Event Table
| d10 | Harrowing Event |
|---|---|
| 1 | A monster that slaughtered dozens of innocent people spared your life, and you don’t know why. |
| 2 | You were born under a dark star. You can feel it watching you, coldly and distantly. Sometimes it beckons you in the dead of night. |
| 3 | An apparition that has haunted your family for generations now haunts you. You don’t know what it wants, and it won’t leave you alone. |
| 4 | Your family has a history of practicing the dark arts. You dabbled once and felt something horrible clutch at your soul, whereupon you fled in terror. |
| 5 | An oni took your sibling one cold, dark night, and you were unable to stop it. |
| 6 | You were cursed with lycanthropy and later cured. You are now haunted by the innocents you slaughtered. |
| 7 | A hag kidnapped and raised you. You escaped, but the hag still has a magical hold over you and fills your mind with evil thoughts. |
| 8 | You opened an eldritch tome and saw things unfit for a sane mind. You burned the book, but its words and images are burned into your psyche. |
| 9 | A fiend possessed you as a child. You were locked away but escaped. The fiend is still inside you, but now you try to keep it locked away. |
| 10 | You did terrible things to avenge the murder of someone you loved. You became a monster, and it haunts your waking dreams. |
Heart of Darkness: Those who look into your eyes can see that you have faced unimaginable horror and that you are no stranger to darkness. Though they might fear you, commoners will extend you every courtesy and do their utmost to help you. Unless you have shown yourself to be a danger to them, they will even take up arms to fight alongside you, should you find yourself facing an enemy alone.
Suggested Characteristics
You have learned to live with the terror that haunts you. You are a survivor, who can be very protective of those who bring light into your darkened life.
Haunted One Personality Traits
| d8 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | I don't run from evil. Evil runs from me. |
| 2 | I like to read and memorize poetry. It keeps me calm and brings me fleeting moments of happiness. |
| 3 | I spend money freely and live life to the fullest, knowing that tomorrow I might die. |
| 4 | I live for the thrill of the hunt. |
| 5 | I don’t talk about the thing that torments me. I’d rather not burden others with my curse. |
| 6 | I expect danger around every corner. |
| 7 | I refuse to become a victim, and I will not allow others to be victimized. |
| 8 | I put no trust in divine beings. |
Haunted One Ideals
| d6 | Ideal |
|---|---|
| 1 | Selflessness. I try to help those in need, no matter what the personal cost. (Good) |
| 2 | Determination. I’ll stop the spirits that haunt me or die trying. (Any) |
| 3 | Greater Good. I kill monsters to make the world a safer place, and to exorcize my own demons. (Good) |
| 4 | Freedom. I have a dark calling that puts me above the law. (Chaotic) |
| 5 | Logic. I like to know my enemy’s capabilities and weaknesses before rushing into battle. (Lawful) |
| 6 | Destruction. I’m a monster that destroys other monsters, and anything else that gets in my way. (Evil) |
Haunted One Bonds
| d6 | Bond |
|---|---|
| 1 | I keep my thoughts and discoveries in a journal. My journal is my legacy. |
| 2 | I would sacrifice my life and my soul to protect the innocent. |
| 3 | My torment drove away the person I love. I strive to win back the love I’ve lost. |
| 4 | A terrible guilt consumes me. I hope that I can find redemption through my actions. |
| 5 | There’s evil in me, I can feel it. It must never be set free. |
| 6 | I have a child to protect. I must make the world a safer place for them. |
Haunted One Flaws
| d6 | Flaw |
|---|---|
| 1 | I have certain rituals that I must follow every day. I can never break them. |
| 2 | I assume the worst in people. |
| 3 | I feel no compassion for the dead. They’re the lucky ones. |
| 4 | I have an addiction. |
| 5 | I am a purveyor of doom and gloom who lives in a world without hope. |
| 6 | I talk to spirits that no one else can see. |
Should You Be a Haunted One?
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
This has to earn the title of the edgiest background out there. You’re a person defined by a Harrowing Event, somebody struck by ill fate or an overwhelming sense of dread that completely took control of your life. This background suffers from being made in an era when backgrounds were still mainly competing with Player’s Handbook backgrounds, largely resulting in little to mechanical improvements to your sheet outside of skills and the occasional tool proficiency.
Features: Harrowing Event and Heart of Darkness
Harrowing Event is all fluff, no function. It's good fluff, at least, offering you your pick from ten interesting options that tie into different iconic monsters that you and your DM can weave into the story, potentially opening up fun plot opportunities. Outside of this, though, it's a background event, not a feature.
Heart of Darkness reflects mechanically how people view you based on your changed demeanor caused by the Harrowing Event. It's… lackluster, to say the least. D&D often is about trudging into dangerous waters, delving into dungeons and lairs to strike down iconic villains. Sometimes adventures will be related to defending a village or town, but in those moments you’re typically tasked with defending the helpless. Common farmers aren’t going to be all that helpful against a CR 11 devil hurling flaming rocks at you and binding allies in serrated chains.
Skills
Haunted One offers you a choice of skills, two from arcana, investigation, religion, or survival. I’m generally in favor of bonus customization opportunities, and that extends to this. Of these four, your best bets every time will be investigation and survival, though, making the choice feel a bit hollow to me.
Arcana and religion both suffer from inconsistency and are entirely based on the DM’s agency, not the player’s agency. Investigation and survival are proactive tools you use to look over an environment or track an enemy; you can decide to investigate a scene agnostic of what the DM generally is planning. You can’t often decide to study the religious implications of an average environment, nor find value in understanding a bit about how the magic engaged with something. Arcana and religion tend to give you world-building information and rarely change how you approach a scenario, and while I rate arcana slightly higher than religion, I’d advise staying clear of both.
Other Proficiencies
Two languages, even exotic ones, aren’t going to regularly be useful. Unless you need to be an infernal translator for a game centered around negotiations with devils and demons, you’re likely never going to bust out an extra language and find it changes how an encounter can go.
There are no other bonus proficiencies earned here. Bummer!
Equipment
Monster Hunter’s packs contain “a chest, a crowbar, a hammer, three wooden stakes, a holy symbol, a flask of holy water, a set of manacles, a steel mirror, a flask of oil, a tinderbox, and 3 torches”. This is a solid set of starting adventuring gear, a lot of which can come up frequently when dungeon delving.
Manacles are fantastic tools for locking creatures with humanoid arms to things. Holy water provides you with a 2d6 radiant damage tool against the undead you can throw at things within 20 feet of you once. Oil and a tinderbox are obviously great at getting fires started, and the steel mirror helps look around corners without exposing your head.
I also have a love for trinkets; the Gothic Trinkets table has some of my favorite items on it which can expand out your Harrowing Event to become something unique to you and this character.
Shoutout to “a lock that opens when blood is dripped in its keyhole” and “a music box that plays by itself whenever someone holding it dances”, two functionally common magic items I can see there being some fringe utility in rolling!
Bonus Tables
The Harrowing Event table does come with a robust list of ideas to build a character from; “You did terrible things to avenge the murder of someone you loved,” sets up a tragic backstory with ample opportunity for your DM to weave conflict around it into the game. You could be hiding from investigators, maybe even a fellow party member, who is hunting a monster who massacred innocents, while from your perspective, they were unfortunate collateral damage between you and justice. Each has depth like this to it and offers multiple potential NPCs unique to your character that can fill out the world.
The personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws tables aren’t great. When your identity is a single dark event, having unique traits can be challenging. You get general “badass” or “edge lord” options like “I live for the thrill of the hunt” and “I don’t run from evil”. Some better ones relate to your traumatic past, which I find the most interesting; “I refuse to become a victim, and I will not allow others to be victimized” at least directly ties your harrow event to your motivation and mentality.
Their ideals table is the most solid of the bunch, each feeling unique to somebody who has done something terrible or had something terrible done to them. Most of the flaws are bland- “I have an addiction” and “I assume the worst in people” are particularly grave offenders to me.
The worst table by far is the Bonds table; despite having ample bond opportunities presented in the Harrowing Event table, the bonds table doesn’t expand on that further, instead setting most characters on the path as a loner with nobody else associated with them. “There’s evil in me, I can fee lit. It must never be set free” isn’t a bond by its definition, nor is “I keep my thoughts and discoveries in a journal”.
Bonds are ties to in-game NPCs the DM can mine to give your character more inclusion in the narrative, they help tie your character to the world by having connections and ties. Four out of six fail to give you anyone to add to the game.
Closing Thoughts
Listen: I love some edgy characters. Haunted One has some cool ideas, but by today’s standards isn’t a background anyone should be eager to pick up.
The equipment is the largest boon it offers, with moderately used skills being the second largest boon. It doesn’t get features you can regularly use, nor do the tables outside the Harrowing Event table add a lot of personality you’d want out of this kind of background.
At tables working with just the Player’s Handbook backgrounds, this will be entirely fine, if a little underwhelming. At tables with backgrounds offering feats, it's not where you’re going to want to be.
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