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View Full Version : How to kill a ghost



spindlyjohnny
2017-09-18, 12:06 PM
One of my players is going to die, it's a given. In fact, I plan for one of them to die, since it's important to the story that at least one of them makes it to the afterlife because there's plot-relevant information in the afterlife.

The premise: instead of going to the real afterlife, the dead player's soul is redirected into this sort of pocket plane/demiplane which is being leased to a necromancer by an evil god. The dead player will discover that they're not the first person this has happened to, and that an army of the undead is being built within this demiplane, with freshly-dead souls being sent to power the whole operation. In order to give them incentive to run, I decided that if a member of the undead horde touched a ghost, it would dissipate into ectoplasm while the soul and the magical energy making up the ghost were absorbed into the plane. And in order to make it even more distressing, I decided that the ectoplasm would be converted into another member of the undead army.

So, the question here is: how do you make a ghost undead? Specifically, what creature could the ectoplasm be converted into? I considered some kind of husk creature at first, but then the army would be unbalanced with about 10.000 husk creatures and only 3 vampires or zombies or whatever.

rferries
2017-09-18, 08:31 PM
I'm not quite sure I follow your question - are you asking what kind of monster the necromancy is creating by using ghosts (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/ghost.htm)as a power supply?

If so, I'd decide which standard type of undead you want the army to be made of: 1) standard corporeal (zombies, ghouls, wights), 2) standard incorporeal (shadows, wraiths, spectres), or 3) "special" (devourers, nightcrawlers, templated undead (liches, ghosts, vampires)). Will the army ethereally invade castles? Will it burrow its way up from the gravesoil to flood city streets? Will templated undead (which retain class abilities so tend to be more powerful and unique) be leading it?

Maybe converting 1 ghost creates 1 zombie, 2 ghosts creates one wight, etc using whatever conversion rate until you can make incorporeal and special undead as well.

spindlyjohnny
2017-09-19, 11:34 AM
Thanks for the reply. My plan right now is for the stolen energies to help power the necromancer's transformation into a lich (at least, that's his plan I have to go over lich rules again), while the army of the undead overruns the whole continent. I'll take your advice into consideration. Maybe I'll go with some sort of corrupt leveling-up system, where the more ghosts the horde absorbs, the more corporeal the undead army becomes (from wraiths and spectres to ghouls, wights, and zombies, maybe a few vampires if it gets particularly poetic) until they're strong enough to pose a considerable threat in the future of the campaign (or maybe a sequel campaign, we'll have to see how this current campaign rolls).

rferries
2017-09-19, 07:31 PM
Thanks for the reply. My plan right now is for the stolen energies to help power the necromancer's transformation into a lich (at least, that's his plan I have to go over lich rules again), while the army of the undead overruns the whole continent. I'll take your advice into consideration. Maybe I'll go with some sort of corrupt leveling-up system, where the more ghosts the horde absorbs, the more corporeal the undead army becomes (from wraiths and spectres to ghouls, wights, and zombies, maybe a few vampires if it gets particularly poetic) until they're strong enough to pose a considerable threat in the future of the campaign (or maybe a sequel campaign, we'll have to see how this current campaign rolls).

Righto, but keep in mind that the average noncorporeal undead is MORE powerful than the average corporeal undead, not less (before you get to the level of mohrgs, bodaks, devourers, nightcrawlers, etc, at least).