Quote Originally Posted by Elitarismo View Post
Nothing without houserules. With them, Monk houseruled to full BAB, so that he can bulk up his Wisdom and be a little less fragile...

...Is it terrible the Ghostlord is so horribly bad that MONK levels can honestly be argued as an improvement?
Yes. Yes it is.

I think earlier in the thread another user basically said if the Ghostlord was any other type of lich than a blighter it'd at least be a competent character. At least a monk has decent saves all round, can move a bit faster, and focuses on unarmed strikes, which gels with the lich's paralysis attacks. But like I said, a blighter first rips away all the druid's strengths -- summoning, orthodox wild shape and druid casting --and doesn't even give him undead control until he's got level 6 spells. Some of the more obvious stuff like Flame Strike, Forbiddance, and Antilife Shell are given over as a level down on where a druid would normally gain them, but it's a woefully limited spell list with very, very few blasting options and not a lot of buffing party options.

On top of that, any decent melee combat options are then horribly nerfed by imposing the lich template on him. Like I said, it turns anyone with divine spellcasting into the lich's biggest enemy, and anyone who can make a touch attack and has a Healing Belt can do damage to him since he's undead. Even the Evolved Undead template only benefits if you use it for area effect options.

Again, this is all coloured by my own experiences with the Ghostlord. And building him up ahead of the combat and making him truly scary at least lets the players have a sense of achievement if they win; unless they're very good with the math, they won't necessarily know it's going to be easy and if you do it right, they feel like they topped a major villain against the odds.