The only ghost I've ever used in DnD had nothing but love and sorrow in its "heart". It was the ghost of a dog that got trapped in a sewer with no water or food while playing with his human (who, by the way, searched for him for months). The first thing the players ever saw about him was an ectoplasmic recreation of the ball he was following when he got trapped, rolling on the floor towards them and then a ghostly yelp. He was quite friendly unless attacked and he only wanted a little love and to reconnect with his human but he was a powerful opponent, should the players had chosen to go against him. He was only able to act in the room he died on, where the players found his dead body curled around a red ball just below the hole he fell through. That red ball was his main anchor to the world and, if someone presented it to his human, he would get a temporary physical form to say goodbye to then dissolve into nothing... maybe to go to dog's heaven, I hope. I almost cried while creating the encounter, more than one player almost cried at the end and one of them teared up a little. I am quite proud of how that session.
While the ghost doesn't have HP, inflicting damage on it could cause it to make concentration checks. If it fails, it de-manifests and must spend an action manifesting again on a subsequent turn. In this way the combat component of the ghost allows someone to keep it "at bay" in order to buy time for the party to complete the ritual/burial rites/monologue/salt scattering, etc. Could also lead to some interesting game play as the party is maneuvering around the haunted area searching for final clues with paranoid readied actions to ward the ghost off should it re-manifest around the next corner. Each time it manifests it shows up at "the haunting point" and gets to use its scary ability, or select from a lair action to give the PCs problems the turn it shows back up again. This gives the PCs an opportunity to pinpoint where they can salt an area to contain the ghost. Alternatively, once de-manifested, the DM rolls randomly to determine what initiative the ghost acts on. It can only re-manifest if you roll the middle-most initiative number it had before. Any other rolls allow it to only utilize one of the haunting lair actions. Then you roll again and apply another haunting lair action to the next initiative roll unless you roll a re-manifestation. Effectively, the haunted area starts to get really upset the longer you defy its emotional need to murder you. If you don't solve the ghost problem then the escalating haunting + ghost constantly re-manifesting with murder glares will eventually kill you all. Let the doom counter begin!
Oh man, and there'd be the option to pin the ghost to a different key item or place for different manifestations, both guiding players towards the other clues they need AND potentially creating this cool effect where a character is running around attempting to salt spaces while the ghost is attempting to navigate around them
@@MonarchsFactory Yeah, or have the ghost shift to a different emotional state/memory tied elsewhere in order to free itself, but then give it a new manifest ability that fits the emotion. This then gives the DM a new vessel to deliver extra story or clues if the PCs are having trouble figuring out the mystery (we all know they tend to over think the obvious or headbutt the cunning puzzles). First stage it's murder-rage mode. Second stage it's frustrated weeping set the house on fire mode. Third stage it's morose self loathing mode, which is infectious. :D Etc, etc. All giving hints at key personality/events leading to clues/answers.
I really like the way the ghost in Michelle Paver's book Dark Matter is handled. It doesn't *have* unfinished business, it just wants its home to itself, and given what its life was like and how it died it's no surprise that it hates anyone who comes to that place. And the most dangerous thing about it is that it gets into your head, and the more you think about it the more power it has. First, you get sensory stuff - seeing the ghost for a moment, flashes of what the ghost experienced as it died, maybe nightmares of the ghost's death and the ways the ghost killed people afterwards. Eventually, it gets so far into your head that it has enough power to do stuff. It can walk around outside the room ominously. It can open doors. It can get in. Eventually it can grab you and harm you. And all this depends on its ability to get into your head. In D&D terms, I'm thinking something like "you have to make a wisdom save, every time you fail the ghost gets more powerful." That said, this works best over multiple sessions.
You mentioned part way through the video that the ghost wants to have its problem solved, but in its frustration it kills anyone who could possibly help. That made me think, what if a ghost wasn't a single entity. The dead has two portions of their soul. One that wants to pass on into the afterlife, and the other that is the raw embodiment of their final emotions. The Rational portion of the soul attempts to help and guide the party to their ultimate goal, while the emotional portion of their soul lashes out at them the whole way through, attempting to satiate its rage or "protect" itself from what it perceives as a threat. It would be interesting to say the least.
i ran something similar to this idea with a more combat focused group, when the ghost manifested it essentially had a pool of temp hitpoints, and as long as, it did it and the party could directly damage each other. when the ghost lost all its temp hp, neither side could directly interact, giving the party a chance to heal/work out clues, but then when the ghost came back it would have more temp hp, and with each new threshold of temp hp it got more power and more abilities as it grew angrier. the only way to actually deal real damage to it was to solve the mystery and settle its business, or side with the guy who was secretly evil (there were clues along the way) and destroy it, rather than help it move along, with a ritual that enhanced the original murder weapon. gotta say though, your idea i think works really well with a story focused game and/or oneshot. i also really like that the ghost's first appearance can just straight up kill a character. it lends a real air of threat to it
"These damn adventurers keep tracking mud all over my expensive tile floors! I'll never get this hallway clean!" (passes through door to janitor's room, get mop and bucket) So, if the PC's simply clean the floors, the Ghost goes to the Afterlife, and the PC's gain XP equal to defeating the Ghost?
Here's a good one -- a Ghost who was a con artist in life who pretended to haunt a house like in a Scooby Doo episode, and has to convince people he's a real ghost, but the house has all these trapdoors and wires and mirrors around so that people can say, "Aha! It was all a trick, a real estate scam!" That poor damn Ghost, no one believes him. @@felscorf456
"Save or die" spells that don't actually kill are called "Save or suck" As for the ghost instakilling someone in a power word kill like fashion, I think the banshee has something quite close in their wail ability, it drops to 0 hitpoints on a failed save but doesn't outright kill and it works in a radius which I think is quite nice
A ghost is a good way to make animated objects interesting. It’s a lot more interesting to fight an animated chair if it’s ghost animating it’s haunting place and the stuff inside of it versus “oh this chair can move now...because magic”
In my setting there is a bank that gives out very generous loans, but if the holder doesnt pay back the loan before they die, the bank turns them into ghost indentured servants that work off their debt at a rate of 2sp per day. Most people take it thinking that they have eternity as a ghost so why not, but its a depressing, dreary existence. Some have been in service for hundreds of years.
2e Ravenloft modules (of which I have ... a lot) have some pretty great Ghost Stuff. The box-set module "Castles Forlorn" for example involves a haunted castle with __multiple ghosts__ that all basically hate each other and want revenge on each other for things that happened over several decades. So you not only have a situation where you've got different motivations for your ghosts (having NPCs with cross motivations is a favorite of mine) but the nature of the haunting will have the castle transport between various periods of time as you step through doors and whatnot. If you're thinking of running a good haunting campaign I recommend trying to locate that source material to mine for ideas :)
The way that Johnathan Stroud does ghosts and Incorporeal undead in his Lockwood and Co. Series is AMAZING. i highly recommend for dms who want to do something new
Im really glad i found her youtube channel. its really full of both tips that i love to steal for my dnd campaign and folklore that i ALSO love to steal for my dnd campaign.
I'm running two groups: for the first (low-level characters) group, I'm running a haunted house story. For the second (mid-level characters) group, I've planned an encounter with a flesh golem (dressed up as a scarecrow) in a corn maze. You have some really fun ideas for running a ghost, some of which I have already been using myself (spacial/ temporal distortions, emotional or temperature responses to their environment) I've also given RP cues to my possessed players, which they always play to a tee.
I ran a haunted house scenario a few years ago where I did a LOT of the things you talked about. The ghost's presence was felt for a long time before the party could interact with it. I gave the ghost a bunch of fun spells, like Command, Crown of Madness, etc. I also filled the place with supernatural traps, and other incidental monsters, like a cloaker in the basement. The ghost only manifested and attacked the party when they got too close to solving its problem. Then it was pretty easy to dispatch. A good time was had by all!
Every time I watch the beginning of a MonarchsFactory video I wonder if someone is at my front door. It's great. This is great by the way! Great for a whole adventure.
Ghosts can also make a great dues ex machina. If you're characters get stuck, or can't find the clue, or whatever, try this; A ghost of a previous adventurer who was slain in this dungeon fades in. The ghost thinks the PCs are its party. It helps them out until it reaches the part of the dungeon where it died. The characters find its body, with its treasure, and dun-dun-duuuuun the secret clue they will need in the next part of the dungeon. If they don't continue on and avenge the ghost then it will follow them on their adventures haunting them.until they do.
after watching this i have to re-write a ghost encounter for my campaign. part of me loves seeing videos like this, part of me hates that it leads to so many great ideas to add to my world with so little time to do so
In previous editions, I seem to remember ghosts reforming if they are killed or turned. So the only way to permanently deal with them is to resolve their trauma
You've inspired me to put in a spooooky ghost in an upcoming game! The Ghost of Brackenlow Bridge vineyards shall haunt my players. Going to give the lair actions a host of illusion and psychic attack spells, such as Dissonant Whispers, Phantasmal Force/Killer, Crown of Madness, Synaptic Static when it screams... It's gonna be good. Oh, and Dream. I hope the players spend the night!
I'd recommend checking out Matthew Mercer's Lingering Soul race. While I wouldn't use it in-game for when a player dies as a rule (as per the actual race template states, actually), a player, in that specific setting, having their soul temporarily ripped out of their body and thus being the only way to interact with the ghost could be an interesting turn of events.
My players had to retrieve a missing (living) child from a haunted mansion. They went full murder hobo on the innocent ghost outside the mansion who would've rewarded them with a level if they reunited her with her brother's ghost (who was hiding on the top level), then burned said brother's bones and thus sent him on to the afterlife, somehow managed to avoid all encounters and only trip one innocent trap, and found a room with six statues that did the Dr Who "we'll move if you blink" thing. But they were thoroughly spooked and good fun was had :D Oh, and they did find the missing girl. The things that lurked in the dark demanded that they could only leave with the girl if a party member stayed to play hide and seek with them in her stead. Their solution: sprinkle salt around their location, then bash their warhammers at a bricked-up window until it gave way and use their ropes and pitons to escape that way. Gotta give 'em points for creative thinking.
I like this because while the MM treats the ghost as a monster, you're turning the ghost into an entire dungeon. With it being the boss. And I think every monster can get this build up as you write more with them and around them. I agree I would think twice about just checking ghosts at the party unless it was part of the dungeon motif. (Like with recent CR campaign 2 the Diver's Grave encounter. Where there's an entire SLEW of ghosts bent on possessing the party!) Love this! Turn that ghost into a CR??? Because it isn't about challenging the player characters stats, but the players themselves! ;)
Thanks so much for your take on Ghosts! I incorporated this into a recent One-Shot and my players had a blast. (Even though the Barbarian failed the VERY FIRST check to resist getting possessed... oh well! XD)
Shades in the Greek style. They want to drink the blood of the living, and if they get enough, they become solid, gaining new powers but also vulnerability.
Here's my current take on it: A ghost haunts some place, person, or item. It can take damage, but when killed it's ectoplasm body discorporates. The ghost can then respawn at its haunt. To stop a ghost, clerics notwithstanding, you have to complete a side mission for the ghost to put its spirit to rest.
Yes absolutely. I love the idea of multi-phase monsters in general & ghosts-as-environmental-puzzles is my preferred way of looking at them. Excellent stuff.
In today's video, Dael teaches us how to change all of our players' last names to Winchester. I liked the idea of making it function like lair actions to begin with to build the tension. That's cool. The only thing I've done like that before is having the entity float by in the background, or appear for a second and then vanish before the players can do anything about it.
DM- "Make a Perception check." PC - "I got a 21." DM -- "You see a young girl standing next to the door, dressed in fine clothes. No one else seems to notice her. She looks at you and starts to ask you a question, as a wound appears on her throat and her dress is instantly covered in her blood. Then ..... she vanishes from sight. What do you do?"
I'm wrapping up a really long Extra-dimensional Haunted House adventure for my Pathfinder group and I was looking for a good one-shot idea for Halloween this year. I think you just gave me all the inspiration I needed for it. Tanks!
I've tweaked the possession in a slightly different way. Essentially the initial failure trapped the character's psyche into the ghost's memories. A series of three charisma checks akin to contesting a sentient weapon will result in either the character expelling the ghost or becoming lost within the ghost's memories. Essentially giving a possessed character a chance to do something as their compatriots try to aid them and also learn about the ghost.
this is great. i wish this video had existed a few months ago haha. i recently ran my party through a haunted house that they were allowed to have if they could free the house from the ghosts. they had to face two banshees and it was intense and fun but this stuff wouldve made it so good
I don't know much about how they work in DD5, but in Pathfinder the ghost (on top of being incorporeal which makes magic necessary to fight it) when defeated is not actually "killed": it comes back a few days later and just continues its haunting. My favourite ghost (I haven't yet run the game it is in, unfortunately) is only active during specific periods of time. It would exist only when the moon is visible and only be dangerous during the night. Defeating it normally only makes it disappear until the next night ; to defeat it for good you have to either finish the unfinished business or other esoteric stuff (technically a wish spell would work too). I like the idea about the weapon of the murderer, and it can creates very interesting situations, so I am stealing it. The most important thing about that ghost is that it has two shapes at the same time: - the Spirit of the dead person: it looks like the dead person, and it acts friendly, but it is mute so it can't explain the situation. It also can't do anything against the Manifestation. If defeated the Manifestation disappears too and both will came back the next night. - the Manifestation of its grief: it doesn't have a stable form, and tries to protect the Spirit. That's not a reasonable entity, so for example it could decide that any living person should die so the Spirit is safe from murderers, or that the village should burn since the spirit is afraid of the night and the light of the flames would reassure it. If the Manifestation is defeated, it reforms immediately around the Spirit. Typically the Spirit is indead an undead: what remains of a dead person who couldn't completely pass to the afterlife. The Manifestation is a creation of this undead, so it resembles a bit the "emotional echo" you talked about. In the case of the ghost of my scenario, the spirit is what remains of a young child who died in an orphanage while it was raided during a war. The Manifestation is a mix between what this child remembers about the protective tutor of the orphanage and the violent soldiers who raided the place (and also a bit of all the other characters the child remembers about). Those are closer to the nightmare of a child than to real people.
Fuck yeah, I'm absolutely taking these ideas and workshopping them for my upcoming halloween one shot. In response to your question at the end, what halloweeny thing am I throwing at my party? A survival oneshot, based of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Here's the trick, they don't know that's the case. The music is gonna be thumping synthwave and about half way through the adventure, when the clues start coming together, BOOM Thriller plays, and that's the reveal of what's going on. The basic idea is Michael Jackson is a lord that has invited everyone to his prviate estate, which at the strike of midnight, gets plunged into hell. Their goal is to survive till dawn, while completing objectives, or they lose. It's filled with grizzly ghouls, a beast of 40 eyes, and a funk of 20 thousand years. There is an additional mechanic, where if a player dies early, they come back as a zombie and get to keep playing, but in league with Michael Jackson's Musical Army and dance group. On top of that, each player will have a secret objective and special power associated with the theme and their characters. Some of their secret objectives will put them at odds with the other players. The basic dungeon will be set up into a mansion split into 4 wings. Each wing will have a different gimmick. And the end goal is to find a way to the alter underneath the manner. You have the haunted wing, the time manipulated wing (which rewards the players with that time travel mechanic from dishonored 2) and other stuff that I'm still designing. The structure of the adventure is that they'll be dropped in right as the clock strikes midnight and they'll have to complete some, but not all of the objectives and get to the end before dawn. It's gonna be aping 80's B horror movies with a dash of absurdist humor. Can't wait.
I ran a haunted house session themed off of this idea last night. A double murder suicide. A divination wizard studying the effects of herbs enhancing his visions killed his wife and son and then himself. The mother haunted the house until she was (A) trapped in a circle of salt (B) reunited with her son by putting their two skeletons together in the greenhouse (C) murder weapon destroyed. These were all great ideas and after surviving the effects of four haunted rooms including a phantasmal force fire in the library, a flood of blood in the upstairs hall and attacked by mantrap plants in the green house my players discovered all three resolutions in the same round in different parts of the house. It all came together wonderfully. Thanks for the idea and the framework.
I started following for the D&D stuff and stayed for the stories you tell on myths and lore. I watch them when I'm on break at work and have went out and picked up a few books on the subject because it sparked an interest I once had as a kid. I think it would be interesting if you mixed the two. Like giving characters and items from myths and legends game world stats. I know people have done this with popular characters and items like Merlin or Excalibur but I'd like to see if you would do anything different or go over some of the not so well known hero's, villains and items. Just an ideal.
The Ironclaw system differentiates between Ghosts and Shades. Ghosts are actually the spirit of a person or animal left behind, and they maintain some degree of their original intelligence. Shades, on the other hand, are more what you're talking about: An imprint of a strong emotion that manifested in the real world. Shades have their own personalities based on that emotion, and thus their own goals, logic, and ideas about the world. Because they are formed of ideas, they conform to strange rules, based on intent. They can go through doors, for instance, because doorways involve the idea of entry and exit, but they can't go through walls because the idea behind a wall is to keep things out. It's not explicitly talked about in the rulebook, but for the campaign I'm currently running, I made it so that Shades, while they can linger indefinitely in the real world, can exist at the same time as the person who may have manifested them, and that person's worldview may have changed drastically, potentially even opposing what they once felt strongly. Likewise, I like the idea that a Shade can manifest from strong emotions of a group of people, like in a war where no single individual generated it, instead manifest a very strong amalgamation of the same strong feeling, which can take on a "life" of its own. Lots of possibilities, and kinda seems like your wheelhouse, even if the system isn't something you play.
Interestingly, the Slavic equivalent to the Fair Folk - navki and boginki - are often the ghosts of those who died tragically. Also, they're often affiliated with water or nature. There's also a major Slavic pagan holiday called Dziaduszki, taking place around the same time as Halloween and I think it's also an alternative name for All Saint's Day in Poland because we've held on to a lot of pagan customs - anyway, the holiday is a celebration of the spirits of the ancestors. The spirits of the dead are everywhere and are very much able to affect the world. There was even a Slavic cult of the dead at one point. I'm saying all this, because I've been brainstorming a Slavic-inspired D&D setting. Hopefully I'll have enough worked out to play-test it for a Halloween one-shot at some point before I get my doctorate.
Great take on ghosts! I only found your channel a couple days ago and I’ve burned through a lot of the videos. Your play/DM style is so quirky and creative, I’d love to be a player at your table. For the scissors you keep kicking, try masking/gaffer’s tape for marking the floor spot for your focus point.
Might have to have those illusory manifestations be flexible in terms of strength if you're essentially relying on saves to determine party size. Might be a bad time if you're expecting 3 of the party to fail and the fighter and barbarian hit nat 20s on the save or something.
My Halloween nightmare for my table: They're a tribe of goblins... and while they're going about their business, an over-zealous Paladin crosses paths with them... annoyance ensues. When I'm playing the Goblins, having a bunch of OP adventurers is my worst nightmare...
For my game, I'm starting off my new Homebrew campaign by running a horror adventure in The vein of Sleepy Hollow. And you can bet the headless horseman is running amok, laughing mad and killing everyone he finds until the players stop him.
It's interesting. I realized a little whilr ago that a Ghost is to tier 1, as a God is to tier 4. It is dispersed and decentralized, impossible to kill or interact with directly, until it chooses to manifest.
I respect your opinions & effort. But I like to think of Ghosts as more then Emotions/Echos. I think of them as the Spiritual Manifestation of that person. It has the thoughts, feelings, & personality of its once living form. Additionally, some Ghosts could be helpful/friendly Spirits who are content with their existence. "Casper the friendly ghost, the friendliest ghost you know."
I like the idea of a ghost not being a human manifestation but rather a collection of objects or a place where odd things occur as the lost souls between life and death get trapped somewhere. So you could have the haunted house appear out of nowhere and entice a party member in, perhaps one who commits cruel deeds. Then that party member takes constant stat checks to see what happens as they "walk through" this illusory house. Failed strength, they are crushed against the ground unable to move not even able to speak. Failed Dexterity, they fall down. a lot. Failed constitution, a part of their body is weakened and perhaps on a really bad roll they have this weakness permanently or at least until some special rite is performed to remove it. Failed intelligence, they start hallucinating even more scary things that appear in this house. So throw in some random phantom monsters they have to kill. Failed Wisdom, the character starts acting strangely making rash decisions, perhaps even attacking friendly party members. (to their mind they're fighting phantasms) Failed Charisma, the character is terrified of other people their own party members included. As this is happening the other party members don't see this house, until the DM wants them to or some event occurs. All they see is their party member acting strangely, floating around hallucinating and generally having a really bad acid trip. So in a sense it's more of a possession than a creature by itself. Perhaps it could even possess an animal companion or a random creature nearby. And as the event unfolds you could slowly introduce extra things like as all the party members enter and become aware of this phantom house they all start having to deal with one or more or these checks, escalating things to the extent of the party having to fight a ghost version of a previous encounter with spectral variations of some of it's attributes. buff or nerf the manifested creature as you wish. Alternatively this ghostly event doesn't have to necessarily be aggressive in terms of messing with your party it could simply be an ethereal lake or mirror that when looked into by someone shows some corpses of people you've passed by tell you their stories. And this could impart some knowledge about your main storyline, perhaps a hidden lair that holds a powerful artifact to simply revealing a group of civilians trapped by some malicious entity somewhere. And if you have a bard who likes chatting up weird creatures you could turn the ghost into a friendly one if you wanted, where it can haunt some party members dreams giving them hints for the coming battles or locations. As a means of guiding the party if they're lost perhaps. Perhaps the haunted house beats your party so badly that it takes pity on them and lets them go with a parting gift for entertaining it. And some of the other spirits feel bad about it and make an effort to encourage your party to come again some time. Hell why not have the ghost run away if it's losing, just because you're spectral doesn't mean you aren't afraid of magical weapons. There's all sorts of ways you can work the unnatural ghost-like things into your stories to make them come alive and turn the game into something more than a monster hunting excursion for your bloodthirsty murder hobos.
Sometimes if I have a ghost poses someone, I have the character begin to suffocate. The ghost forgets people has to breathe so when it possesses someone, the possessed person will stops breathing.
Hi Dael, I would love to hear your take on worldbuilding religion, particularly in regards to a D&D world where Gods are known to exist. General things like the aspects of real life you have to disregard because of the known existence, does everyone believe in a particular god? Are there a load more temples and shrines than there would be in a real-life environment? Do traditions and practices differ as wildly as real life ones do? Those kind of questions!
I wish I had seen this 2 weeks ago. I wrote my own one shot set in a haunted manor, where the ghost is committing murder and framing it on the living. It was a riot but I feel like I could have made it spookier
Idea: a ghost that doesn’t haunt a physical thing but an idea or concept. And whenever someone does something related to that concept spooky shit starts to happen. Imagine a haunted song that was sung by a bard to cast a spell that killed someone. Or a ghost that died in jail and now haunts the concept of imprisonment and stalks prisons and slave trading organizations. Or a ghost that haunts revenge and whenever someone wants revenge the ghost leaves little signs to encourage the person to take revenge, or maybe the ghost itself kills anyone that people want revenge on
I've usually run ghosts as more of a role-playing challenge in the game, rather than as a combat. They are cryptic and inconvenient (they might moan and attract physical bad guys, or distract a player during a particularly finicky action like disarming a trap). I do try to make them terrifying and horrifying, by having them do wildly weird things at unexpected times, and they certainly feel dangerous, even if they tend to be not directly harmful. However, I like your take on them, and I'll likely incorporate some of your ideas into my games.
I like to treat ghost as mostly harmless and really just annoying. Then you could have spectres, poltergeist that are more dangerous. You could even play it that ghost get more powerful with living people around so as the night passes the party makes con checks every couple hours and the ghost drains 1d4 con or strength points. When the ghost gets a set amount it manifest as a more powerful spirit.
Implemented the ghost in yesterday's session. There was a winding staircase and the ghost did not want the party to leave the room with the stuff... so if they went up the stairs they would just circle and come back from beneath and vice versa... to see what really happens, they took a rope and went up. I just bullshitted that they would be able to tie the rope to itself. Now after they solved the ghost problem, the players asked me what happened to the rope... now they have a Gordian knot.
You talking about ghosts being tied to an emotion is an interesting idea. They could affect the players that way, forcing the living to replay the moment of death for the ghost. I feel this works better in games without fighting and magic though; Dread comes to mind Edit: I should lewrn to watch the whole video before commenting. You talk about this at 10:52. Good job being on top of things!
I dunno if you've ever watched Buffy, but the episode "I only have eyes for you" is a favourite of mine and one of my top ghost texts; it plays around with that idea really well :)
Interesting. You have the ghost as more so a terrain than a monster. In my hands, I'd have the players relive the victim's final moments to exorcise it. Maybe have the ghost guide the PCs to its body/murder weapon and the closer they get, the more experiences they endure like: - the rage/malice of the murderer or melancholy of a suicide victim (failed WIS save = attacking each other or themselves) - the fear of death (INT save otherwise the ghost conjures illusions the party must fight) - healing spells are weakened or negated outright someway through to emulate how medical aid couldn't save the victim. Maybe the ghost resents healing spells because nobody could save her/him. Hopefully, the experience would motivate the PCs to find justice for the ghost because they empathise with him/her.
This video was great. I love your take on goasts. It sounds like you love to make your players look back and forth at one another with wide panicked eyes, as I do. Keep it up.
Real good system stuff for a ghost, with great plot anchoring! A cool trick monster that still engages the non-puzzlers. For the Nova ultimate, you could snatch the Banshee's _Wail_ attack, dropping those who fail their save to 0hp. Doesn't kill the party outright, no matter how many (or few) hp, but sure frightens them and gives the Cleric something to do (assuming they make the save themself). I have a sketch for a BehindTheScreen article somewhere on making ghosts matter narratively, inspired by a splendid philosophy talk on Grecian tragedies I attended. Maybe it's time to break that out and actually throw it together.
@Dael ... It's all about how you run the ghost. They can move through objects and has horrifying visage, and most importantly they can possess people. What I like to do is also give them limited invisibility. Like you said, using the traditional methods can either force the ghost to appear. Magic weapons are like a cross to a vampire the ghost will always try and wait out the party's investigation or like a poltergeist it will wait for opportune times to try and get rid of the item. Just my 2 cents. Good Shit Girl..!
My players are going into a foggy swamp in a few weeks after a lot of sailing. Planning to throw a homebrewed Bunyip that jumps them from a pool in the swamp. Aboriginal mythology can be really spooky
One change I would make, Ghosts can be of any alignment, right? Well, Good aligned ghosts shouldn't have the horrifying visage ability, because it just doesn't really fit for a good aligned creature to use an ability like that. In return, I would give it the Intangible Virtue trait. This is a trait possessed by some geists from the Plane Shift: Innistrad PDF. It basically grants anyone possessed by the ghost a whole bunch of benefits. Evil and possibly (maybe) neutral aligned ghosts could still have the Horrifying Visage ability, and maybe you could even come up with some traits that ghosts might have if they're lawful or chaotic alignment as well. Ghosts should be the rawest, truest expression of the individual's inner self. Like that line from Avengers, they're "exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare." They should have traits that directly reflect their personality. That's how I would go about making a ghost encounter interesting.
I had a small plan to put my future campaign through an abandon ghost city where a plague broke out and they have to solve some puzzley maze, or fight a beauty to get an artifact that is actually a puzzle piece. Thanks to you and some tweeting I could use these guidelines to make getting to the crypt or whatever a little harder with those lair actions but in the city, that could be fun
One way I handled ghosts in my campaign was that the party was hired to clear an old, abandoned brothel. There, they find the ghosts of prostitutes murdered by a Jack The Ripper-styled serial killer. The horrific sight motivated them to track down the murderer, especially when the ghosts of beloved NPCs would be trapped in the brothel when they got murdered.
Kingsmill! You're an adorable human being. :D On the video topic though: This is some dang solid advice and we pretty much had the same idea about Manifestation when the players pinpoint aspects of the ghost's existence. I'd probably add on a mechanic that has maybe an incremental effect, so for each aspect you uncover brings into a more tangible form (which could be done with giving them AC, Saving Throws, removing abilities or decreasing their range of said abilities, etc.)
"We don't throw them at our party unless they have magical weapons." I feel it's beneficial for the party to occasionally have a fight they can't win so they don't let their guard down every fight. Otherwise I find the party will make a lot of bad decisions that progress in severity until there's such a horrible combat outcome that they feel the DM tried to kill them when really they should have aced the battle. However, I do agree that there should be alternatives to combat. Perhaps if they don't act aggressively with the ghost and put up with its shenanigans for a brief time it eventually gives them clues on how to lay it to rest.
Great video as always, really enjoyed it. Saw the length and thought "wow, 20+min Dael vid, is it my birthday?" Very flavourful. I love the idea of dropping little clues about what happened to the ghost to help the players help the ghost. Taking that philosophy and you get something like using a phantasmal force to re-enact or play out some of the awful things that have created this overflow of emotion, so in some cases they literally have to battle through the source of the emotion while learning about the no-doubt juicy backstory the GM has cooked up. Halloween plans for my group? Nothing particular... except having them meet the character who the whole setting was built around 3 years ago. Dude's got 2 gods in his head fighting to make him their avatar and there's a lot of emotion and pain involved for everyone. Was already planning on having a bunch of his memories manifesting in reality as he tries to continuously establish his identity to prevent himself from being taken over and erased, so this ghost video's given me some great ideas. Thanks Dael!
Ghosts should be immune to all damage until you remove their mask and realise that it was just Old Man Jenkins the lighthouse keeper
A-ah got it!
So Shaggy's a Beastmaster?
I know this was a Scooby Doo reference, but it also kind of applies to the final boss of Mega Man 2.
All of the ideas are cool,, but some of them seem like what you're looking for is a death knight.
The only ghost I've ever used in DnD had nothing but love and sorrow in its "heart".
It was the ghost of a dog that got trapped in a sewer with no water or food while playing with his human (who, by the way, searched for him for months). The first thing the players ever saw about him was an ectoplasmic recreation of the ball he was following when he got trapped, rolling on the floor towards them and then a ghostly yelp. He was quite friendly unless attacked and he only wanted a little love and to reconnect with his human but he was a powerful opponent, should the players had chosen to go against him. He was only able to act in the room he died on, where the players found his dead body curled around a red ball just below the hole he fell through. That red ball was his main anchor to the world and, if someone presented it to his human, he would get a temporary physical form to say goodbye to then dissolve into nothing... maybe to go to dog's heaven, I hope.
I almost cried while creating the encounter, more than one player almost cried at the end and one of them teared up a little. I am quite proud of how that session.
While the ghost doesn't have HP, inflicting damage on it could cause it to make concentration checks. If it fails, it de-manifests and must spend an action manifesting again on a subsequent turn.
In this way the combat component of the ghost allows someone to keep it "at bay" in order to buy time for the party to complete the ritual/burial rites/monologue/salt scattering, etc. Could also lead to some interesting game play as the party is maneuvering around the haunted area searching for final clues with paranoid readied actions to ward the ghost off should it re-manifest around the next corner.
Each time it manifests it shows up at "the haunting point" and gets to use its scary ability, or select from a lair action to give the PCs problems the turn it shows back up again. This gives the PCs an opportunity to pinpoint where they can salt an area to contain the ghost.
Alternatively, once de-manifested, the DM rolls randomly to determine what initiative the ghost acts on. It can only re-manifest if you roll the middle-most initiative number it had before. Any other rolls allow it to only utilize one of the haunting lair actions. Then you roll again and apply another haunting lair action to the next initiative roll unless you roll a re-manifestation. Effectively, the haunted area starts to get really upset the longer you defy its emotional need to murder you.
If you don't solve the ghost problem then the escalating haunting + ghost constantly re-manifesting with murder glares will eventually kill you all. Let the doom counter begin!
WOAAHHHH I LOVE THAT!! I've only read your first paragraph but was filled with the immediate urge to respond, gimme a tick to actually keep reading
Oh man, and there'd be the option to pin the ghost to a different key item or place for different manifestations, both guiding players towards the other clues they need AND potentially creating this cool effect where a character is running around attempting to salt spaces while the ghost is attempting to navigate around them
@@MonarchsFactory Yeah, or have the ghost shift to a different emotional state/memory tied elsewhere in order to free itself, but then give it a new manifest ability that fits the emotion. This then gives the DM a new vessel to deliver extra story or clues if the PCs are having trouble figuring out the mystery (we all know they tend to over think the obvious or headbutt the cunning puzzles).
First stage it's murder-rage mode.
Second stage it's frustrated weeping set the house on fire mode.
Third stage it's morose self loathing mode, which is infectious. :D
Etc, etc. All giving hints at key personality/events leading to clues/answers.
That's a little similar to how they work in World of Darkness.
Stealing this mane.
What's amazing about this is that it takes a vanilla fight with magic weapons, and turns it into a true "encounter." Nice.
Got this idea that this woman hosts one hell'uva D&D game by sheer amount of info she brings to the table with every video
I really like the way the ghost in Michelle Paver's book Dark Matter is handled. It doesn't *have* unfinished business, it just wants its home to itself, and given what its life was like and how it died it's no surprise that it hates anyone who comes to that place.
And the most dangerous thing about it is that it gets into your head, and the more you think about it the more power it has. First, you get sensory stuff - seeing the ghost for a moment, flashes of what the ghost experienced as it died, maybe nightmares of the ghost's death and the ways the ghost killed people afterwards.
Eventually, it gets so far into your head that it has enough power to do stuff. It can walk around outside the room ominously. It can open doors. It can get in. Eventually it can grab you and harm you.
And all this depends on its ability to get into your head.
In D&D terms, I'm thinking something like "you have to make a wisdom save, every time you fail the ghost gets more powerful." That said, this works best over multiple sessions.
You mentioned part way through the video that the ghost wants to have its problem solved, but in its frustration it kills anyone who could possibly help.
That made me think, what if a ghost wasn't a single entity. The dead has two portions of their soul. One that wants to pass on into the afterlife, and the other that is the raw embodiment of their final emotions. The Rational portion of the soul attempts to help and guide the party to their ultimate goal, while the emotional portion of their soul lashes out at them the whole way through, attempting to satiate its rage or "protect" itself from what it perceives as a threat.
It would be interesting to say the least.
i ran something similar to this idea with a more combat focused group, when the ghost manifested it essentially had a pool of temp hitpoints, and as long as, it did it and the party could directly damage each other. when the ghost lost all its temp hp, neither side could directly interact, giving the party a chance to heal/work out clues, but then when the ghost came back it would have more temp hp, and with each new threshold of temp hp it got more power and more abilities as it grew angrier. the only way to actually deal real damage to it was to solve the mystery and settle its business, or side with the guy who was secretly evil (there were clues along the way) and destroy it, rather than help it move along, with a ritual that enhanced the original murder weapon.
gotta say though, your idea i think works really well with a story focused game and/or oneshot. i also really like that the ghost's first appearance can just straight up kill a character. it lends a real air of threat to it
I would like to see a ghost whose unfinished business was their to-do list. Like clean the gutters, or re-tile the roof or something.
"These damn adventurers keep tracking mud all over my expensive tile floors! I'll never get this hallway clean!" (passes through door to janitor's room, get mop and bucket)
So, if the PC's simply clean the floors, the Ghost goes to the Afterlife, and the PC's gain XP equal to defeating the Ghost?
Sounds fair to me :p
Here's a good one -- a Ghost who was a con artist in life who pretended to haunt a house like in a Scooby Doo episode, and has to convince people he's a real ghost, but the house has all these trapdoors and wires and mirrors around so that people can say, "Aha! It was all a trick, a real estate scam!" That poor damn Ghost, no one believes him. @@felscorf456
@@paulcoy9060 lol, now that's quite a good one. I'm going to write it down down for a future game :P
I think he should look like Bruce Campbell. Probably based on what he looked like in "Spider-Man".@@felscorf456
"Save or die" spells that don't actually kill are called "Save or suck"
As for the ghost instakilling someone in a power word kill like fashion, I think the banshee has something quite close in their wail ability, it drops to 0 hitpoints on a failed save but doesn't outright kill and it works in a radius which I think is quite nice
A ghost is a good way to make animated objects interesting. It’s a lot more interesting to fight an animated chair if it’s ghost animating it’s haunting place and the stuff inside of it versus “oh this chair can move now...because magic”
In my setting there is a bank that gives out very generous loans, but if the holder doesnt pay back the loan before they die, the bank turns them into ghost indentured servants that work off their debt at a rate of 2sp per day. Most people take it thinking that they have eternity as a ghost so why not, but its a depressing, dreary existence. Some have been in service for hundreds of years.
So, the Orzhov Guild then.
Dael still has a beautiful mind. My creativity & motivation burned out many years ago, & i have never been able to get it back again.
26 years DMing and never once used those lame ghosts, fixing them never occurred to me. 👍👍
You. Are. A. Genius.
2e Ravenloft modules (of which I have ... a lot) have some pretty great Ghost Stuff. The box-set module "Castles Forlorn" for example involves a haunted castle with __multiple ghosts__ that all basically hate each other and want revenge on each other for things that happened over several decades. So you not only have a situation where you've got different motivations for your ghosts (having NPCs with cross motivations is a favorite of mine) but the nature of the haunting will have the castle transport between various periods of time as you step through doors and whatnot. If you're thinking of running a good haunting campaign I recommend trying to locate that source material to mine for ideas :)
If you want to do D&D horror, you can't find better source material than the old 2ed Ravenloft stuff!
The way that Johnathan Stroud does ghosts and Incorporeal undead in his Lockwood and Co. Series is AMAZING. i highly recommend for dms who want to do something new
Im really glad i found her youtube channel. its really full of both tips that i love to steal for my dnd campaign and folklore that i ALSO love to steal for my dnd campaign.
I'm running two groups: for the first (low-level characters) group, I'm running a haunted house story. For the second (mid-level characters) group, I've planned an encounter with a flesh golem (dressed up as a scarecrow) in a corn maze. You have some really fun ideas for running a ghost, some of which I have already been using myself (spacial/ temporal distortions, emotional or temperature responses to their environment) I've also given RP cues to my possessed players, which they always play to a tee.
I ran a haunted house scenario a few years ago where I did a LOT of the things you talked about. The ghost's presence was felt for a long time before the party could interact with it. I gave the ghost a bunch of fun spells, like Command, Crown of Madness, etc. I also filled the place with supernatural traps, and other incidental monsters, like a cloaker in the basement. The ghost only manifested and attacked the party when they got too close to solving its problem. Then it was pretty easy to dispatch. A good time was had by all!
I’m glad I’m not the only one that says “DOPE” about DnD ideas.
Every time I watch the beginning of a MonarchsFactory video I wonder if someone is at my front door. It's great. This is great by the way! Great for a whole adventure.
The thumbnail for this is adorable.
Ghosts can also make a great dues ex machina. If you're characters get stuck, or can't find the clue, or whatever, try this; A ghost of a previous adventurer who was slain in this dungeon fades in. The ghost thinks the PCs are its party. It helps them out until it reaches the part of the dungeon where it died. The characters find its body, with its treasure, and dun-dun-duuuuun the secret clue they will need in the next part of the dungeon. If they don't continue on and avenge the ghost then it will follow them on their adventures haunting them.until they do.
Sound like White Wolf ghosts ( e.g. haunted house in VtM: Bloodlines). A terrific obstacle for the right sort of campaign. Thanks for sharing.
after watching this i have to re-write a ghost encounter for my campaign. part of me loves seeing videos like this, part of me hates that it leads to so many great ideas to add to my world with so little time to do so
In previous editions, I seem to remember ghosts reforming if they are killed or turned. So the only way to permanently deal with them is to resolve their trauma
This is brilliant.
For a high level encounter, maybe something along the lines of Ju-on and its vengeful ghosts.
You've inspired me to put in a spooooky ghost in an upcoming game! The Ghost of Brackenlow Bridge vineyards shall haunt my players. Going to give the lair actions a host of illusion and psychic attack spells, such as Dissonant Whispers, Phantasmal Force/Killer, Crown of Madness, Synaptic Static when it screams... It's gonna be good.
Oh, and Dream. I hope the players spend the night!
I'd recommend checking out Matthew Mercer's Lingering Soul race. While I wouldn't use it in-game for when a player dies as a rule (as per the actual race template states, actually), a player, in that specific setting, having their soul temporarily ripped out of their body and thus being the only way to interact with the ghost could be an interesting turn of events.
My players had to retrieve a missing (living) child from a haunted mansion. They went full murder hobo on the innocent ghost outside the mansion who would've rewarded them with a level if they reunited her with her brother's ghost (who was hiding on the top level), then burned said brother's bones and thus sent him on to the afterlife, somehow managed to avoid all encounters and only trip one innocent trap, and found a room with six statues that did the Dr Who "we'll move if you blink" thing. But they were thoroughly spooked and good fun was had :D
Oh, and they did find the missing girl. The things that lurked in the dark demanded that they could only leave with the girl if a party member stayed to play hide and seek with them in her stead. Their solution: sprinkle salt around their location, then bash their warhammers at a bricked-up window until it gave way and use their ropes and pitons to escape that way. Gotta give 'em points for creative thinking.
I think lots of damage is more effective than instant death or nothing because it builds more tension
I like this because while the MM treats the ghost as a monster, you're turning the ghost into an entire dungeon. With it being the boss. And I think every monster can get this build up as you write more with them and around them.
I agree I would think twice about just checking ghosts at the party unless it was part of the dungeon motif. (Like with recent CR campaign 2 the Diver's Grave encounter. Where there's an entire SLEW of ghosts bent on possessing the party!)
Love this! Turn that ghost into a CR??? Because it isn't about challenging the player characters stats, but the players themselves! ;)
Thanks so much for the bag of ideas. I too feel that ghosts as written were either unkillable,or if you have magic weapons they are too easy
Thanks so much for your take on Ghosts! I incorporated this into a recent One-Shot and my players had a blast. (Even though the Barbarian failed the VERY FIRST check to resist getting possessed... oh well! XD)
Shades in the Greek style. They want to drink the blood of the living, and if they get enough, they become solid, gaining new powers but also vulnerability.
I run a campaign bi-weekly and just realized our next session is on Halloween, so I'll try to apply this!
Here's my current take on it: A ghost haunts some place, person, or item. It can take damage, but when killed it's ectoplasm body discorporates. The ghost can then respawn at its haunt. To stop a ghost, clerics notwithstanding, you have to complete a side mission for the ghost to put its spirit to rest.
Now why didn't I think of that? I will definitely refine the NPC who attacks on multiple initiative counts for my personal GM style. Thank you!
Yes absolutely. I love the idea of multi-phase monsters in general & ghosts-as-environmental-puzzles is my preferred way of looking at them. Excellent stuff.
In today's video, Dael teaches us how to change all of our players' last names to Winchester. I liked the idea of making it function like lair actions to begin with to build the tension. That's cool. The only thing I've done like that before is having the entity float by in the background, or appear for a second and then vanish before the players can do anything about it.
DM- "Make a Perception check."
PC - "I got a 21."
DM -- "You see a young girl standing next to the door, dressed in fine clothes. No one else seems to notice her. She looks at you and starts to ask you a question, as a wound appears on her throat and her dress is instantly covered in her blood. Then ..... she vanishes from sight. What do you do?"
Exactly. Even better if you use whispers so the other players don't hear it. people freak out over that kind of stuff.
I'm wrapping up a really long Extra-dimensional Haunted House adventure for my Pathfinder group and I was looking for a good one-shot idea for Halloween this year. I think you just gave me all the inspiration I needed for it. Tanks!
Your idea with sprinkling salt on the floor as a defence is just battleships, so you know, it's pretty meta
I've tweaked the possession in a slightly different way. Essentially the initial failure trapped the character's psyche into the ghost's memories. A series of three charisma checks akin to contesting a sentient weapon will result in either the character expelling the ghost or becoming lost within the ghost's memories. Essentially giving a possessed character a chance to do something as their compatriots try to aid them and also learn about the ghost.
this is great. i wish this video had existed a few months ago haha.
i recently ran my party through a haunted house that they were allowed to have if they could free the house from the ghosts.
they had to face two banshees and it was intense and fun but this stuff wouldve made it so good
Love the spooky background music.
I like your background OST- DA:origins. Classic!
1:55 “an emotional echo”
You know, you may not be Matt Colville, but your ideas are absolutely fantastic. Your insanity must be contagious.
I like the Winchester method of dispatching ghosts.
I don't know much about how they work in DD5, but in Pathfinder the ghost (on top of being incorporeal which makes magic necessary to fight it) when defeated is not actually "killed": it comes back a few days later and just continues its haunting.
My favourite ghost (I haven't yet run the game it is in, unfortunately) is only active during specific periods of time. It would exist only when the moon is visible and only be dangerous during the night. Defeating it normally only makes it disappear until the next night ; to defeat it for good you have to either finish the unfinished business or other esoteric stuff (technically a wish spell would work too). I like the idea about the weapon of the murderer, and it can creates very interesting situations, so I am stealing it.
The most important thing about that ghost is that it has two shapes at the same time:
- the Spirit of the dead person: it looks like the dead person, and it acts friendly, but it is mute so it can't explain the situation. It also can't do anything against the Manifestation. If defeated the Manifestation disappears too and both will came back the next night.
- the Manifestation of its grief: it doesn't have a stable form, and tries to protect the Spirit. That's not a reasonable entity, so for example it could decide that any living person should die so the Spirit is safe from murderers, or that the village should burn since the spirit is afraid of the night and the light of the flames would reassure it. If the Manifestation is defeated, it reforms immediately around the Spirit.
Typically the Spirit is indead an undead: what remains of a dead person who couldn't completely pass to the afterlife. The Manifestation is a creation of this undead, so it resembles a bit the "emotional echo" you talked about. In the case of the ghost of my scenario, the spirit is what remains of a young child who died in an orphanage while it was raided during a war. The Manifestation is a mix between what this child remembers about the protective tutor of the orphanage and the violent soldiers who raided the place (and also a bit of all the other characters the child remembers about). Those are closer to the nightmare of a child than to real people.
Fuck yeah, I'm absolutely taking these ideas and workshopping them for my upcoming halloween one shot.
In response to your question at the end, what halloweeny thing am I throwing at my party? A survival oneshot, based of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Here's the trick, they don't know that's the case. The music is gonna be thumping synthwave and about half way through the adventure, when the clues start coming together, BOOM Thriller plays, and that's the reveal of what's going on.
The basic idea is Michael Jackson is a lord that has invited everyone to his prviate estate, which at the strike of midnight, gets plunged into hell. Their goal is to survive till dawn, while completing objectives, or they lose. It's filled with grizzly ghouls, a beast of 40 eyes, and a funk of 20 thousand years. There is an additional mechanic, where if a player dies early, they come back as a zombie and get to keep playing, but in league with Michael Jackson's Musical Army and dance group. On top of that, each player will have a secret objective and special power associated with the theme and their characters. Some of their secret objectives will put them at odds with the other players.
The basic dungeon will be set up into a mansion split into 4 wings. Each wing will have a different gimmick. And the end goal is to find a way to the alter underneath the manner. You have the haunted wing, the time manipulated wing (which rewards the players with that time travel mechanic from dishonored 2) and other stuff that I'm still designing. The structure of the adventure is that they'll be dropped in right as the clock strikes midnight and they'll have to complete some, but not all of the objectives and get to the end before dawn. It's gonna be aping 80's B horror movies with a dash of absurdist humor. Can't wait.
I adore your DnD content. Please make more! I will watch every one
Either a break the haunt one shot or a kill house one shot (think H.H. Holmes hotel) but obviously ways to get out of traps
This is pretty awesome! I'm totally going to use this for a Halloween one shot this year!
I ran a haunted house session themed off of this idea last night. A double murder suicide. A divination wizard studying the effects of herbs enhancing his visions killed his wife and son and then himself. The mother haunted the house until she was (A) trapped in a circle of salt (B) reunited with her son by putting their two skeletons together in the greenhouse (C) murder weapon destroyed.
These were all great ideas and after surviving the effects of four haunted rooms including a phantasmal force fire in the library, a flood of blood in the upstairs hall and attacked by mantrap plants in the green house my players discovered all three resolutions in the same round in different parts of the house.
It all came together wonderfully. Thanks for the idea and the framework.
This sounds completely awesome and I'm so stoked to hear it!
I started following for the D&D stuff and stayed for the stories you tell on myths and lore. I watch them when I'm on break at work and have went out and picked up a few books on the subject because it sparked an interest I once had as a kid. I think it would be interesting if you mixed the two. Like giving characters and items from myths and legends game world stats. I know people have done this with popular characters and items like Merlin or Excalibur but I'd like to see if you would do anything different or go over some of the not so well known hero's, villains and items. Just an ideal.
The Ironclaw system differentiates between Ghosts and Shades. Ghosts are actually the spirit of a person or animal left behind, and they maintain some degree of their original intelligence. Shades, on the other hand, are more what you're talking about: An imprint of a strong emotion that manifested in the real world. Shades have their own personalities based on that emotion, and thus their own goals, logic, and ideas about the world. Because they are formed of ideas, they conform to strange rules, based on intent. They can go through doors, for instance, because doorways involve the idea of entry and exit, but they can't go through walls because the idea behind a wall is to keep things out.
It's not explicitly talked about in the rulebook, but for the campaign I'm currently running, I made it so that Shades, while they can linger indefinitely in the real world, can exist at the same time as the person who may have manifested them, and that person's worldview may have changed drastically, potentially even opposing what they once felt strongly. Likewise, I like the idea that a Shade can manifest from strong emotions of a group of people, like in a war where no single individual generated it, instead manifest a very strong amalgamation of the same strong feeling, which can take on a "life" of its own.
Lots of possibilities, and kinda seems like your wheelhouse, even if the system isn't something you play.
Interestingly, the Slavic equivalent to the Fair Folk - navki and boginki - are often the ghosts of those who died tragically. Also, they're often affiliated with water or nature.
There's also a major Slavic pagan holiday called Dziaduszki, taking place around the same time as Halloween and I think it's also an alternative name for All Saint's Day in Poland because we've held on to a lot of pagan customs - anyway, the holiday is a celebration of the spirits of the ancestors. The spirits of the dead are everywhere and are very much able to affect the world. There was even a Slavic cult of the dead at one point.
I'm saying all this, because I've been brainstorming a Slavic-inspired D&D setting. Hopefully I'll have enough worked out to play-test it for a Halloween one-shot at some point before I get my doctorate.
Great take on ghosts! I only found your channel a couple days ago and I’ve burned through a lot of the videos. Your play/DM style is so quirky and creative, I’d love to be a player at your table. For the scissors you keep kicking, try masking/gaffer’s tape for marking the floor spot for your focus point.
Might have to have those illusory manifestations be flexible in terms of strength if you're essentially relying on saves to determine party size. Might be a bad time if you're expecting 3 of the party to fail and the fighter and barbarian hit nat 20s on the save or something.
My Halloween nightmare for my table: They're a tribe of goblins... and while they're going about their business, an over-zealous Paladin crosses paths with them... annoyance ensues.
When I'm playing the Goblins, having a bunch of OP adventurers is my worst nightmare...
For my game, I'm starting off my new Homebrew campaign by running a horror adventure in The vein of Sleepy Hollow.
And you can bet the headless horseman is running amok, laughing mad and killing everyone he finds until the players stop him.
It's interesting. I realized a little whilr ago that a Ghost is to tier 1, as a God is to tier 4. It is dispersed and decentralized, impossible to kill or interact with directly, until it chooses to manifest.
I respect your opinions & effort.
But I like to think of Ghosts as more then Emotions/Echos. I think of them as the Spiritual Manifestation of that person. It has the thoughts, feelings, & personality of its once living form. Additionally, some Ghosts could be helpful/friendly Spirits who are content with their existence.
"Casper the friendly ghost, the friendliest ghost you know."
I like the idea of a ghost not being a human manifestation but rather a collection of objects or a place where odd things occur as the lost souls between life and death get trapped somewhere.
So you could have the haunted house appear out of nowhere and entice a party member in, perhaps one who commits cruel deeds.
Then that party member takes constant stat checks to see what happens as they "walk through" this illusory house.
Failed strength, they are crushed against the ground unable to move not even able to speak.
Failed Dexterity, they fall down. a lot.
Failed constitution, a part of their body is weakened and perhaps on a really bad roll they have this weakness permanently or at least until some special rite is performed to remove it.
Failed intelligence, they start hallucinating even more scary things that appear in this house. So throw in some random phantom monsters they have to kill.
Failed Wisdom, the character starts acting strangely making rash decisions, perhaps even attacking friendly party members. (to their mind they're fighting phantasms)
Failed Charisma, the character is terrified of other people their own party members included.
As this is happening the other party members don't see this house, until the DM wants them to or some event occurs. All they see is their party member acting strangely, floating around hallucinating and generally having a really bad acid trip.
So in a sense it's more of a possession than a creature by itself. Perhaps it could even possess an animal companion or a random creature nearby.
And as the event unfolds you could slowly introduce extra things like as all the party members enter and become aware of this phantom house they all start having to deal with one or more or these checks, escalating things to the extent of the party having to fight a ghost version of a previous encounter with spectral variations of some of it's attributes. buff or nerf the manifested creature as you wish.
Alternatively this ghostly event doesn't have to necessarily be aggressive in terms of messing with your party it could simply be an ethereal lake or mirror that when looked into by someone shows some corpses of people you've passed by tell you their stories. And this could impart some knowledge about your main storyline, perhaps a hidden lair that holds a powerful artifact to simply revealing a group of civilians trapped by some malicious entity somewhere.
And if you have a bard who likes chatting up weird creatures you could turn the ghost into a friendly one if you wanted, where it can haunt some party members dreams giving them hints for the coming battles or locations. As a means of guiding the party if they're lost perhaps.
Perhaps the haunted house beats your party so badly that it takes pity on them and lets them go with a parting gift for entertaining it. And some of the other spirits feel bad about it and make an effort to encourage your party to come again some time.
Hell why not have the ghost run away if it's losing, just because you're spectral doesn't mean you aren't afraid of magical weapons.
There's all sorts of ways you can work the unnatural ghost-like things into your stories to make them come alive and turn the game into something more than a monster hunting excursion for your bloodthirsty murder hobos.
Sometimes if I have a ghost poses someone, I have the character begin to suffocate. The ghost forgets people has to breathe so when it possesses someone, the possessed person will stops breathing.
Hi Dael, I would love to hear your take on worldbuilding religion, particularly in regards to a D&D world where Gods are known to exist. General things like the aspects of real life you have to disregard because of the known existence, does everyone believe in a particular god? Are there a load more temples and shrines than there would be in a real-life environment? Do traditions and practices differ as wildly as real life ones do? Those kind of questions!
Ive always wanted to do a "haunted mansion" you have inspired me!
I wish I had seen this 2 weeks ago. I wrote my own one shot set in a haunted manor, where the ghost is committing murder and framing it on the living. It was a riot but I feel like I could have made it spookier
Idea: a ghost that doesn’t haunt a physical thing but an idea or concept. And whenever someone does something related to that concept spooky shit starts to happen. Imagine a haunted song that was sung by a bard to cast a spell that killed someone. Or a ghost that died in jail and now haunts the concept of imprisonment and stalks prisons and slave trading organizations. Or a ghost that haunts revenge and whenever someone wants revenge the ghost leaves little signs to encourage the person to take revenge, or maybe the ghost itself kills anyone that people want revenge on
I've usually run ghosts as more of a role-playing challenge in the game, rather than as a combat. They are cryptic and inconvenient (they might moan and attract physical bad guys, or distract a player during a particularly finicky action like disarming a trap). I do try to make them terrifying and horrifying, by having them do wildly weird things at unexpected times, and they certainly feel dangerous, even if they tend to be not directly harmful.
However, I like your take on them, and I'll likely incorporate some of your ideas into my games.
I like to treat ghost as mostly harmless and really just annoying. Then you could have spectres, poltergeist that are more dangerous. You could even play it that ghost get more powerful with living people around so as the night passes the party makes con checks every couple hours and the ghost drains 1d4 con or strength points. When the ghost gets a set amount it manifest as a more powerful spirit.
Implemented the ghost in yesterday's session. There was a winding staircase and the ghost did not want the party to leave the room with the stuff... so if they went up the stairs they would just circle and come back from beneath and vice versa... to see what really happens, they took a rope and went up. I just bullshitted that they would be able to tie the rope to itself.
Now after they solved the ghost problem, the players asked me what happened to the rope... now they have a Gordian knot.
Whenever certain characters die in my games I plan to bring some of them back as ghosts
might steal some of those ideas for an allip encounter i have planned :) great stuff
"vauge but evocative" is also how my lovers describe me
btw, I like the music selection you use here
Found your channel... binge watching it.
You talking about ghosts being tied to an emotion is an interesting idea. They could affect the players that way, forcing the living to replay the moment of death for the ghost. I feel this works better in games without fighting and magic though; Dread comes to mind
Edit: I should lewrn to watch the whole video before commenting. You talk about this at 10:52. Good job being on top of things!
I dunno if you've ever watched Buffy, but the episode "I only have eyes for you" is a favourite of mine and one of my top ghost texts; it plays around with that idea really well :)
Interesting. You have the ghost as more so a terrain than a monster. In my hands, I'd have the players relive the victim's final moments to exorcise it. Maybe have the ghost guide the PCs to its body/murder weapon and the closer they get, the more experiences they endure like:
- the rage/malice of the murderer or melancholy of a suicide victim (failed WIS save = attacking each other or themselves)
- the fear of death (INT save otherwise the ghost conjures illusions the party must fight)
- healing spells are weakened or negated outright someway through to emulate how medical aid couldn't save the victim. Maybe the ghost resents healing spells because nobody could save her/him.
Hopefully, the experience would motivate the PCs to find justice for the ghost because they empathise with him/her.
This video was great. I love your take on goasts. It sounds like you love to make your players look back and forth at one another with wide panicked eyes, as I do. Keep it up.
Real good system stuff for a ghost, with great plot anchoring! A cool trick monster that still engages the non-puzzlers.
For the Nova ultimate, you could snatch the Banshee's _Wail_ attack, dropping those who fail their save to 0hp. Doesn't kill the party outright, no matter how many (or few) hp, but sure frightens them and gives the Cleric something to do (assuming they make the save themself).
I have a sketch for a BehindTheScreen article somewhere on making ghosts matter narratively, inspired by a splendid philosophy talk on Grecian tragedies I attended. Maybe it's time to break that out and actually throw it together.
Ooh, do it! That sounds like such an interesting read!
I've been thinking to run a ghost someday and the vanilla was SO bad, nothing like what I wanted, and this was just amazing. Keep up the good work!
This is a great video, I was trying to mull around a good haunted ship and I think I have a good start now
Watch John Carpenter's "The Fog" for a great ghost ship idea, a reason for them to haunt a place.
@Dael ... It's all about how you run the ghost. They can move through objects and has horrifying visage, and most importantly they can possess people. What I like to do is also give them limited invisibility. Like you said, using the traditional methods can either force the ghost to appear. Magic weapons are like a cross to a vampire the ghost will always try and wait out the party's investigation or like a poltergeist it will wait for opportune times to try and get rid of the item. Just my 2 cents. Good Shit Girl..!
Your ideas are amazing
My players are going into a foggy swamp in a few weeks after a lot of sailing. Planning to throw a homebrewed Bunyip that jumps them from a pool in the swamp. Aboriginal mythology can be really spooky
One change I would make, Ghosts can be of any alignment, right? Well, Good aligned ghosts shouldn't have the horrifying visage ability, because it just doesn't really fit for a good aligned creature to use an ability like that. In return, I would give it the Intangible Virtue trait. This is a trait possessed by some geists from the Plane Shift: Innistrad PDF. It basically grants anyone possessed by the ghost a whole bunch of benefits. Evil and possibly (maybe) neutral aligned ghosts could still have the Horrifying Visage ability, and maybe you could even come up with some traits that ghosts might have if they're lawful or chaotic alignment as well.
Ghosts should be the rawest, truest expression of the individual's inner self. Like that line from Avengers, they're "exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare." They should have traits that directly reflect their personality. That's how I would go about making a ghost encounter interesting.
I love the possession revamp!! Honestly, genius
Inspiring!
Thank you.
(and indeed, never underestimate the power to walk through walls when the party cannot...)
I had a small plan to put my future campaign through an abandon ghost city where a plague broke out and they have to solve some puzzley maze, or fight a beauty to get an artifact that is actually a puzzle piece. Thanks to you and some tweeting I could use these guidelines to make getting to the crypt or whatever a little harder with those lair actions but in the city, that could be fun
One way I handled ghosts in my campaign was that the party was hired to clear an old, abandoned brothel. There, they find the ghosts of prostitutes murdered by a Jack The Ripper-styled serial killer. The horrific sight motivated them to track down the murderer, especially when the ghosts of beloved NPCs would be trapped in the brothel when they got murdered.
This was very spooky. Great video.
Fantastic. Outstanding.
Kingsmill! You're an adorable human being. :D
On the video topic though: This is some dang solid advice and we pretty much had the same idea about Manifestation when the players pinpoint aspects of the ghost's existence. I'd probably add on a mechanic that has maybe an incremental effect, so for each aspect you uncover brings into a more tangible form (which could be done with giving them AC, Saving Throws, removing abilities or decreasing their range of said abilities, etc.)
I wish so badly that wizards of the coast would hire you.
"We don't throw them at our party unless they have magical weapons." I feel it's beneficial for the party to occasionally have a fight they can't win so they don't let their guard down every fight. Otherwise I find the party will make a lot of bad decisions that progress in severity until there's such a horrible combat outcome that they feel the DM tried to kill them when really they should have aced the battle. However, I do agree that there should be alternatives to combat. Perhaps if they don't act aggressively with the ghost and put up with its shenanigans for a brief time it eventually gives them clues on how to lay it to rest.
6:10 Please, someone GIF that! "I wanna get my creep on!"
Assuming I can ever get it back together I have a hag line that this kind of ghost would be perfectly suited for.
Great video as always, really enjoyed it. Saw the length and thought "wow, 20+min Dael vid, is it my birthday?" Very flavourful.
I love the idea of dropping little clues about what happened to the ghost to help the players help the ghost. Taking that philosophy and you get something like using a phantasmal force to re-enact or play out some of the awful things that have created this overflow of emotion, so in some cases they literally have to battle through the source of the emotion while learning about the no-doubt juicy backstory the GM has cooked up.
Halloween plans for my group? Nothing particular... except having them meet the character who the whole setting was built around 3 years ago. Dude's got 2 gods in his head fighting to make him their avatar and there's a lot of emotion and pain involved for everyone. Was already planning on having a bunch of his memories manifesting in reality as he tries to continuously establish his identity to prevent himself from being taken over and erased, so this ghost video's given me some great ideas. Thanks Dael!