Ghost Treasures

[Themike]

The adventurers are going to be going through a Haunted Forest, similar to the movie "The Forest" or the Japanese Suicide Woods, there will be an enormous set of ruins where the adventurers can try and beat the boss ghosts of the forest. It will be made clear to them that they have the option of just fleeing through the woods and skip the fighting. But if they do fight the ghosts and win what kind of treasure would the ghost have hidden in the ruins? I don't want to screw over the players with ghost coins or something like that and am kind of leaning towards the ghost would have gathered up the weapons and useful armor and other items that the people who have died in the forest. Which would mean that there would be lots of useful against ghosts after the fight against the ghosts, which also seems like a slap in the face as they will be unlikely to face large amounts of ghosts again for several levels.

So what do you recommend?

[DrMotives]

Well, besides ghost hunter equipment, there's always whatever treasure was in the ruins before they became a haunted site. You're no more limited here than with any other ancient ruins in your campaign. A royal treasure vault, the lair of a dragon killed in the same event that spawned all the ghosts (possibly still haunted by a ghostly dragon), you really shouldn't feel constrained here at all.

[OldTrees1]

Ghosts are equipped with "Ghostly Equipment" which is just ghostly copies of everything they died with. So provided the PCs find the corpses, they will be able to loot corporeal versions of everything the ghosts used against them.

[Eisfalken]

Depending on where the bodies of the ghosts fell (in the ruins or near there), those bodies probably have the stuff they had on them in life. Is there a tomb where the ghosts' bodies were laid in the ruins? Boom, the PCs can find grave goods.

If you don't want to do typical D&D loot, consider something potentially even more valuable: some kind of substance the PCs can gather that gives XP for casting certain spells, making magic items, etc. This actually has a set value in the game: 1 XP per 5 gp of value. If a ghost's CR provides treasure worth, let's say, 5,000 gp, maybe the PCs find a piece of glowing jade that they can later identify as being a material substance worth 500 XP when making items. (There's official precedence for this in the book Elder Evils, for the Pandorym entry. Practically the only reward you can get is from the shards from the BBEG's crystalline prison, which give XP for stuff like this.)

Here's another alternative: bring the remains of those who died to their families, and maybe some of them are nobles who give wealth, another is a wizard who gladly exchanges some items for their loved one, etc.