Advantage of undead

[Chewychunga]

I was a player who wants to become a undead ( more RP then mechanics)
Was wondering what the advantages / disadvantage of doing so are and if it better to give him the features and make him keep exisiting subtype or make him have undead or would he have both?

[Gildedragon]

Necropolitan is the way to go:
Benefits: Con score ceases to be an issue, no need to sleep or eat or breathe, immune to a number of things
Detriments: Vulnerable to turning, has no con score: fort save is trashed: disintegrate is very very dangerous

[OldTrees1]

Advantages:
The Undead type and having NULL Con gives a few immunities. Notably Mind-effecting effects, fortitude saves(excluding those that are "harmless" or affect objects) and lots of necromancy effects that cease to make sense given the altered biology.
Immortality is also a boon

Disadvantages:
Your Fort save is weaker given the lack of a Con bonus.
Undead are not valid targets for several buffs.
You become vulnerable to the anti undead abilities like Greater Turning or Command Undead.

Basically you get immunities at the cost of Pelorites and Necromancers becoming much much scarier enemies.

[frogglesmash]

Off the top of my head
Pros:
Darkvision
D12
No need to eat, sleep, or breath
Can run indefinitely
Immune to most effects requiring a fort save as well as precision damage, mind-affecting effects, poison, sleep effects, paralysis, stunning, disease, death effects, critical hits, nonlethal damage, ability drain, or energy drain. Immune to damage to physical ability scores, fatigue and exhaustion, massive damage.
Con is now a no brainer dump stat.

Cons:
More or less everyone is going to not like you
If you do have to make a fort you you'll probably fail it
Clerics and anyone one else who can make decent turn/rebuke attempts can ruin your day.
If they have the Sun domain or The Disciple of the Sun feat they can REALLY ruin your day.
You Probably look like a corpse.

[Chewychunga]

So on a char with 10 con there's not many problems other than turning or people not liking you

[frogglesmash]

So on a char with 10 con there's not many problems other than turning or people not liking you

That and pitchfork wielding lynch mobs.

[Chewychunga]

Ok the person wants lvl 1 ghost from savage progression
Was thinking about giving then it then making them perminatly manifested (realm is locked) and not allowing them to walk through stuff if they take ghostly grasp or only using ghost touch items if they don't
Also if they are a ghost what happens if there body is destroyed? I know ethereal items go poof

[Honest Tiefling]

Ok the person wants lvl 1 ghost from savage progression
Was thinking about giving then it then making them perminatly manifested (realm is locked) and not allowing them to walk through stuff if they take ghostly grasp or only using ghost touch items if they don't
Also if they are a ghost what happens if there body is destroyed? I know ethereal items go poof

The abilities you want to shut down (for I assume, balance reasons) are probably the goodies the player wants to play with. The progression is also balanced with those abilities in mind. It may not be balanced well, but it would be like promising a player that they can play a druid and then taking away their spells. It's sort of a vital aspect of the class that you need to clear with the player beforehand, not during the session.

Also, if you permanently lock the realm the ghost is stuck in the ethereal and cannot interact with the party, which most players would think is a bummer. Several spells would also cease to function, so keep that in mind.

Given the wording of Rejuvenation, I assume that the bodily remains don't matter and the ghost will return as normal, just probably a bit more pissy then before.

[Chewychunga]

The player is only wanting one level of the template.. Is that allowed?
And was going to make him perm etheril and locked in material world

[Gildedragon]

Ok the person wants lvl 1 ghost from savage progression
Was thinking about giving then it then making them perminatly manifested (realm is locked) and not allowing them to walk through stuff if they take ghostly grasp or only using ghost touch items if they don't
Also if they are a ghost what happens if there body is destroyed? I know ethereal items go poof

Let them take that level; it increases their LA by one (you might want to allow buyoff?) and is pretty balanced. It is what makes a ghost ghosty.

If their body is destroyed... same thing as happens to every undead: pile of dust (ectoplasm?) that can be raised by Revive Undead, or resurrected to actual life
And if they get to 3rd ghost level then they come back after a bit until their unfinished business is resolved (the class specifically says to talk with the PC about what this may be)

The player is only wanting one level of the template.. Is that allowed?
​as to PC only taking one level: totes legal here's the rules (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030824a)


And was going to make him perm etheril and locked in material world
regarding the "ethereal without the ethereal plane" thing: Easy fix that preserves the mechanical bonuses of etherealness.
first: note that while ethereal they can only percieve 60' radius of the material plane
second: you can fluff ethereal as a state of being (invisible, incorporeal, etc etc... you can read the mechanics (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#etherealness)) rather than a plane; after all the ethereal plane is particular to each material plane. though this probably makes etherealness even better as there is no risk of getting jumped by ethereal critters...
third: instead of manifesting, allow them to be incorporeal and just become visible/invisible-scentless-etc at will

[Honest Tiefling]

The player is only wanting one level of the template.. Is that allowed?

Pretty sure the answer is no, and that they must finish the savage progression class before moving on.


And was going to make him perm etheril and locked in material world

That doesn't work. Ethereal means they are partially on the Ethereal plane. If they are locked into the material, then they are material. You could rule that your setting works otherwise, but it'll be a headache to explain to the players, not to mention the snarl of other rules that'll it will effect. Basically, you'd have to redefine the term Ethereal and how it interacts with things.

[OldTrees1]

The player is only wanting one level of the template.. Is that allowed?
And was going to make him perm etheril and locked in material world

No-ish Yes-ish

Template classes (from savage progressions) do allow multiclassing with other classes between levels in the template class. However most of them were not intended for someone to intend to never finish them. So as DM to DM advice, I recommend enforcing taking at least 1 level of the template class every X levels. So if you require at least 1 ghost level every 5 levels, then they could take 2 ghost levels and then wait 8 levels before needing to take another ghost level.

[Chewychunga]

Ok so idea is allow 1 level they become ghost and if the stuff goes missing or destroyed they need to find / replace
And if they die as ghost because they only have one level they will go poof and the party will need to raise them (one that can be done without body) and the person will need to die again to become a ghost again
If they take 3 levels they just regenerate

[Gildedragon]

Ok so idea is allow 1 level they become ghost and if the stuff goes missing or destroyed they need to find / replace
And if they die as ghost because they only have one level they will go poof and the party will need to raise them (one that can be done without body) and the person will need to die again to become a ghost again
If they take 3 levels they just regenerate

Regarding gear:
The gear they died with/started with: ...The original material items remain behind, just as the ghost’s physical remains do. If another creature seizes the original, the ethereal copy fades away.
The party could haul around a bundle that is his mortal remains (or bits of it) and his gear.

New gear: Assuming it is ghost touch or riverine gear or otherwise accessible to ethereal beings: if they drop the gear it still exists, though (in the case of ghost touch gear) might be wholly within the ethereal realm (which makes it hard to get to). Riverine or serren gear would be wholly physical. Loss of gear ought be treated like any other PC's loss of gear.
alternatively you could allow that ritually destroying items over his remains lets him have ghost versions of those items.

Regarding Re-Dying:
Have him carry a bit of his ashes in a something or give a finger-bone to a trusted party member. Then they can Revive Undead on that and get his ghostly self back. Death needn't be trouble.

[Honest Tiefling]

Ok so idea is allow 1 level they become ghost and if the stuff goes missing or destroyed they need to find / replace

This needs to be clarified. Ghosts usually don't replace their gear, and they aren't terribly known for roaming around the countryside. They have the gear they were buried with, and only 2d4 items. Can you re-bury a dead body to give them an upgrade? Is the party going to haul around a coffin to guard the ghost's burial place so no one can come along and steal the gear?

A first level party is not going to have the resources for a 7th level cleric spell, which assumes that they have the body to guard so their enemies just don't steal the ghost's stuff. Else it is a 9th level spell they need to get. In a way, it does make sense, but is the player okay with not playing for several levels (And probably, quite a few months) if their character bites the dust?

It seems like re-fluffing another class would be better. I suggest one from Rich himself, The Champion. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?172910-Articles-Previously-Appearing-on-GiantITP-com&p=9623431#post9623431) If you are going as far as rewriting mechanics and such, I would slap Ethereal on the Hero Form and add more ghost spells onto the list. They're a meat-bag most of the time, except when they focus and go all ghost like.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Have you ever heard of the Ghostwalk supplement? It's a single book setting and campaign designed around the idea of the players near-constantly dealing with and even being ghosts. To facilitate this, they added a new ghost template that is a form of outsider with some undead like traits (3.0 book, probably worth a +1 LA in a normal setting since it'll be incorporeal, not ethereal, most of the time), a couple of classes that allow you to advance your ghostly abilities, and a number of items and substances specifically for ghostly use as well as a few new rules.

I've incorporated elements of the book into my own campaigns and it works pretty well, IMO.

If you decide -not- to acquire a copy of the ghostwalk PDF, you should know that a creature that is ethereal (normal ghost template) is invisible and insubstantial to creatures on the material plane, not as a property of ethereality as some sort of status but because he's literally on another plane. They can't see or touch him because he's not there. He's in a place that corresponds to there in a parallel part of greater reality. Saying a creature "is ethereal" is shorthand for saying the creature "is on the ethereal plane," these are not two different things.

While the official rules for the savage progressions allow you to multiclass in and out of the creature's natural (or unnatural :smallwink:) progression, I'd advise you disregard that and houserule it that they -must- go through the full progression. It was a sloppy, ill-devised answer to the negative respose to the level adjustment system. It doesn't make any sense and upsets the already tenuous balance points of the non-caster classes. LA buy-off is a much better way to handle it.

[Eisfalken]

What Kelb said: ethereal and incorporeal are two different things, not the same thing. Check your index and/or glossary in the PHB and/or DMG.