Revamping Ghosts as Monsters for Halloween || D&D with Dael Kingsmill

I have scissors on the ground as a mark for where my focus should be and I keep kicking them which isn't great for keeping a muck hello humans my name is Dale Kingsmill we're getting up on Halloween now and I thought that it might be fun to do a D&D video talk and bat ghosts and how I would maybe run a ghost for a Halloweeny special of D&D goodness why ghosts well here's the thing when I look at the ghost in the fifth edition Monster Manual I'm a little bit underwhelmed because a ghost really a ghost should be spooky and a ghost should be sad and a ghost should be deadly like it's got to cover a bunch of different bases that I don't feel like the monster as provided I don't think it hits those points how to put this the ghost you basically can't fight unless you have magical weapons and once you do have magical weapons it's just like any other creature that you bash with your sword until it's dead which doesn't feel ghosty because I mean yeah we all know that when when it comes to a creature who's got immunity to weapons that aren't magical we don't throw them at our party unless our party has magical weapons but then once they have magical weapons then it's easy-peasy so I got thinking about how to make it ghost feel more like a ghost especially if you're gonna be like facing a ghost as kind of a solar battery the place I began thinking about this and grew everything from is a place stop kicking the scissors once as always what do I think a ghost is so to me a ghost should be not so much especially especially not in my D and D setting I mean maybe your setting is different you need to you know keep that in mind while you're doing this but for me a ghost is less and Undead and more an emotional echo I guess if you will I mean we all have that kind of idea in the real world when we talk about ghosts of that that you know highly traumatic death I like I like the twist on that it's that it's in deaths of great passion or heightened emotion that a ghost would be made and then maybe the ghost would haunt a person an object or a place that is tied to those emotions whether those emotions are negative or positive so maybe ghost haunts the house it was killed in or haunts the murder weapon that was used to kill it or maybe the ghost haunts a loved one that it didn't get to say goodbye to that idea of unfinished business you want it to have that that air of like something that the ghosts didn't get to resolve completely I think it goes should have something that it wants to communicate usually a thing that wants to be resolved but have a lot of the tension with the ghost come from the idea that it can't get that message across all it has left to communicate with is emotion so the more I thought about it the more it kind of consolidated into an idea that a ghost should be a genuine threat it has to be like a danger to the people around it just due to its frustration over time and its lack of an intellectual like the ghost isn't a person the ghost is not the person who was killed I want to get that across all they are is the rage and the sorrow and the fear and the you know overwhelming need for something to be done that imprint left behind of a person who's died so a ghost should be a genuine threat should be a real danger to the people around it and a ghost should have very limited ways in which you can actually dispel it and I didn't want these to be ways where you can just bash it with a sword so what the stories in the real world tell us about getting rid of ghosts a ghost leaves if it's unfinished business is completed a lot of folklore holds that a ghost might come about because its remains weren't properly buried so completing the burial rites giving it a marked grave would get rid of the ghost and because I wanted a way to get rid of the ghost that is on kind of the other side of things I think would be cool if there were very specific weapons that you could fight it with but only once it's fully manifested we'll get to that in a second so I thought it might be a cool idea if you find the murder weapon and you can fight the ghost with that maybe you want to add in some more things maybe you think that silvered weapons should work or holy weapons should work it's up to you you get to you get to mess around with this just like I'm messing around with this vague but evocative is my D&D / end all right so I'm just giving you ideas you take what you want so the the ghostly encounter the haunting if you will take place in two parts here also gonna get an insight into how I lay out my months to step looks because I don't do it like in the fifth edition Monster Manual because I really I don't find it intuitive the way that it's ordered over there I just like having the challenge rating be halfway down the step lock and everything's in kind of bitsy chunks I don't know doesn't make sense to me I do it in a different order specifically up top I start with initiative and speed and then I have a section on everything that is defensive so like class hit points and he save proficiencies and immunities or weaknesses or resistances anything like that followed by an offensive section which covers main attacks special attacks stuff like that and then a little stat section that covers any other stats that I would need to know so for like I don't know a kobold god that you don't know whether you play is gonna fight or try to sneak past you might include perception and stealth this is also where I check any other special abilities that I need to note that don't fall under the offensive or defensive sections so during the haunting phase I would begin by picking an object or a person or a spot on the map to which the ghost is tied the ghost doesn't have any kind of real manifestation like a solid key point at this stage it's not like you can go there it is there's the ghost no generally this is just a haunted space a house is a great location to put a ghost but I you could make this work for like a forest or whatever I trust you to work that out this is designed with like a building in mind so up to initiative and speed his speed is zero at this point because the ghost is not a thing like I just said and the initiative is special I want to get my creep on while the party are wandering around this house doing investigating so for me and my antek party size of seven players I personally would roll five initiatives for the ghosts before any of this starts going down during the first and second round I would have the ghosts to choose one initiative to act on out of those five on the third and fourth rounds the ghost gets to choose two initiatives that it may act on out of those five pre-rolled the fifth and sixth rounds the ghost may pick three initiative counts to take its turn you see what I'm getting at here basically it's ramping up and the longer you take to like discover what you need to discover about the ghost and get about actually dispelling it the hotter it's gonna come down on you maybe your party is smaller you want to have fewer initiative turns it's just common sense follow your heart I trust you and your judgement defense for the moment you actually can't fight the ghost at this particular phase so it's just got a list of weaknesses which are salt burial rites and finished business those are all abstract I know vague and evocative the idea with the salt for this particular section is that just like in the real world we all have just a general idea about the concept of ghosts and and we have those stories kind of surrounding us creating general knowledge I suspect the D&D world would be much the same and so it's very possibly common knowledge to your player characters that a ghost would not be able to cross a border made of salt so if your players wanted to they would be able to circle certain areas with salt which would mean that the ghost couldn't pass into or out of that circle depending on which side it's on I feel like that's a cool little mechanic even though it might be tricky to implement in some ways just in that the players can't tell the place or object or person that you've chosen at the beginning to kind of pinpoint your ghost pre manifestation and so they're kind of guessing at where the ghost might be and if they were to encircle a specific area that the ghost was in that goes would be stuck within it but if they circle an area that the ghost isn't in then they've just protected that space it's kind of like a a guessing game almost and I like that I like the idea but there's a there's a puzzle element to this kind of an encounter also worth noting that a space that has been circled by so probably can't be affected by any of the ghosts abilities in the offensive section what are we got in the offensive section well for the haunting phase where the ghost hasn't manifested I thought that it would be cool to make most of these lair actions so they act like lair actions even though the ghost isn't like a legendary creature I mean you could make it a legendary creature but for mine I specifically listed a few things I listed spatial disruptions you know that thing with haunted houses where maybe a corridor stretches on forever or you walk through a door out of a room only to find yourself walking back into the room let's make that happen how big would that be I specifically liked this as an idea because you could use it to guide the investigation because the tricky thing with a ghost is that it wants a solution but it in its frustration it nearly kills anyone who could possibly solve this thing so little bits of how the ghost operates should hopefully point your players towards that solution but also put obstacles in their way so for example an idea I had with this spatial anomaly is that maybe you have a player who's in the room containing the murder weapon that killed your ghosts former self right there's just a concept so maybe your player is in that room they don't know it contains the murder weapon but every time they try to leave the room they just keep walking back into the room the ghost won't let them leave until they've identified that murder weapon that object is the thing that killed the ghost is for myself I'd also like the idea of as soon as a player does solve that puzzle fix that get out of the room that's causing these problems it's just noble now thanks ghost ow cold spots wouldn't it be dope if maybe one of the rooms that the party is investigating just gets colder and colder and colder and in order to stay in that space they have to keep making con saves or risk freezing to death maybe the ghosts for myself kept secrets in that space and doesn't let them discover them wants to freeze you out or maybe the ghost just wants to highlight this face and go yes be looking here you're getting warmer getting warmer only getting warmer I don't know what just happened that some paper just appeared and fell out of the sky there it is magic paper you want it too bad it's mine it's like you're getting warmer but instead it's you getting colder literally because I'm a ghost and that's all I can do in a similar vein maybe you have rooms that create an over emotional state get across that that overwhelming weight of grief maybe a ghost is also a really great opportunity to use some of the sort of less often required saves so for a room that it's filling you with rage or with grief or petrifying fear you have to make a charisma save or you know be paralyzed by that emotion for X number of turns or what what have you no we can't have the entire thing be puzzly especially if it's going to be difficult to physically fight the ghost cuz I don't want you to physically fight the ghost that makes it not very ghostly just saying so we gotta find something to appease the players who like to bash stuff with swords not gonna take it away from them you know first thing I would introduce would be illusory assailants basically think kind of like phantasmal force maybe the ghost gets into your character's head and find out what it's afraid of maybe your character's afraid of spiders or you know maybe it creates the the vision of your dead family I don't know something horrible it's Halloween and your character has to make an intelligent save any character that succeeds on it save understands that their illusions the illusion is dispelled but for a character that doesn't make their intelligence say if those illusions become real and just like with phantasmal force as a spell you can be damaged by them in the sense that while in your head Europe I don't know getting clawed at by a werewolf I don't know what you're afraid of your character is taking psychic damage because you believe that you're getting damaged you know it's the matrix and your character can fight them back so there's kind of a trade-off there if you fail your intelligence save then they can hurt you and you can hurt them if you succeed on your intelligence save they can't hurt you but you can't hurt them so that'll keep some of your fighters and barbarians busy and the other significant thing I wanted to do it was revamp possession because possession is something the ghost can do in the monster manual it's pretty cool but here's the thing I wanted to make possession a little bit more of a centerpiece particularly as it will be incredibly useful for you as a DM to guide your players towards the answers they need to get rid of this ghost so I have possession as a save or what is it called I guess a save or die mechanic but you don't die so it's not that basically the ghost tries to possess your character you make a charisma save if you feel that save you are possessed there are no more saves after that you just are possessed here's why I think that is fine because rather than me as the DM controlling that character I would hand that character a very short probably two-word micro goal a goal that is essentially an action and a target you know kill Demian destroy Lockett and maybe an emotional cue to go with that and then I would just let that player go wild I know we have other spells and and magical effects that you know make a character act against their own wishes and they kind of do what they're told while still playing is they character like trances and stuff but I think giving them a very specific goal for their character to complete and it's not like they character things I am the spirit of so and so now it's just their character is like I have to do this thing and that player takes control of that character and runs with it they act on their own initiative they just have this very new very specific goal in mind that could be a risk to the party could be a risk to NPCs you know play around with it see what you can do the possession can obviously be broken I personally would make my conditions for breaking possession getting salt in the mouth of the possessed person maybe burning the ghost out of them with silver or of course if their micro goal is completed the possession ends the other thing I would say is that the ghost can't use any of its lair actions while it is possessing a person it's got all its attention on running that human towards a specific goal and stats what are the stats don't mention true say you can't hide from a ghost so then what happens Dale how do you fight a ghost if you can't fight a ghost well let me tell you as soon as you find out a defining detail about that ghost or how the person it used to be was killed the identity of the murderer the identity of the ghost the heirloom that the ghost once reunited with their former daughter I don't know kind of anything that pins down what the ghost unfinished business was then the ghost does become manifest and it does so with drama and gusto the ghost appears as a spectral vision of its murdered self or dead self and then it all murdered in that pre-decided place or attached to that you know predetermined object or person or whatever and basically strikes the nearest person with I guess a reskin de quiver of power would kill just a super intense burst of emotion that could cause someone to die a fright or if a broken heart you know your mileage may vary but this depending on how strong your party is or things like that maybe you just want it to do a heck of a lot of damage I don't know but I like that idea of a one-shot you die of fright especially since like a lot of parties again a have revived I remove a father-like on hand anyway so that's what happens and now the ghost has kind of a picking these scissors and now the ghost is there you can you can see it it becomes more solid because you've identified more of who it used to be so that echo is kind of you know pulled together into something recognizable initiative pick your middle most initiative count and that's when the ghost goes now it is no longer everywhere all around you all the time speed 25 feet it's got a speed now I pick 25 feet cuz I Iike that I think it needs to be fast especially cuz it can walk through walls I think you've spent all this time building up with the ghost is building the atmosphere making it spooky making it emotional at this point the ghost slowly coming off to you is more freaky than it coming at you real quick defense I'm a class that's one now because now you can target it with stuff not that much stuff but stuff I'm a class 14 is what I picked arbitrarily it also might be beyond the class of the Monster Manual ghost it does not have hit points as it is still not an alive thing and it still has very specific conditions on diving likewise it is still immune to basically anything that requires a save except for things that require a charisma save because at this stage the ghost is entirely charisma just holding it to the Material Plane just barely still has weaknesses to salt burial rites finish business the murder weapon maybe silver maybe we discussed that at this point they will have discovered what it's unfinished business is or you know what the murder weapon is and they will have ways that they can handle getting rid of the ghost good and proper and this stage it's like a race to get that done before the ghost kills you offensive withering touch is still a thing that's in the handbook handbook monster manual reckless I kind of like the idea that because the ghost is such a being of emotion and like intensity in that emotion that every attack it makes is reckless also telekinesis is fun that's a classic ghostly trope throw some people against wolves slam some doors to stop him getting out to bury the remains they've discovered extra stats ago still has true site and now it is incorporeal and can walk through walls some thoughts on resolutions and unfinished business for actually getting rid of the ghost I feel like a really simple way to break that down into something that will be doable by your D&D party and won't be too crazy difficult to solve any combination of a person a place into thing just like the ghosts can haunt an object a person or a place you've got the idea that you maybe have to reunite this heirloom with this person object person make sure this NPC who's really the daughter if the ghost finds the unmarked grave that the body was left in I don't know person place return this treasure a stole to the manor I stole it from object place see what I'm getting out there really simple combinations that can make some unfinished business for you in order for the party to discover those things I wouldn't make this a really complicated murder mystery or anything like that I'd keep it really simple you know if you have a bunch of NPCs in there who are all mixed up in this ghostliness someone in that group is lying and you just have to give the party some evidence as to who is lying maybe they find the diary that tells you who the last person that they were going to see before they were killed was maybe a party member who was possessed looked across the family portraits and was enraged by one of them in particular and filled with an urge to destroy that portrait or if they find the remains or the murder weapon they don't really have to worry about unfinished business if they just want to get rid of the ghosts because yeah the ghost story is sad but it's also nearly killing a lot of people if you find their remains you just do a proper burial service the murder weapon they just got to make sure they've got the right thing and then use it to kill the manifest ghosts oh yeah it doesn't have hit points but as soon as you complete any of these the ghost is like ah and dies yeah just keeping it to like a couple of pieces of evidence that can be discovered always make sure that there are multiple things that can lead to the solution as with any puzzle in D&D the other thing that I think is worthwhile considering if you were going to run a ghostly wanza would be what the party's goal will be what has brought them in contact with this ghost maybe they've been hired to get rid of the ghost that's really simple and straightforward isn't that easy maybe they've been hired to steal something from a haunted man I didn't realize it was haunted ahead of time so then they don't have salt in their pockets they have to go and find it in the storerooms you know maybe they're just trying to pass through a haunted wood but they happen to go through where this ghosts body was buried and the ghost just is not letting them pass through until someone resolved the situation basically ghosts are cool and they deserve to be more ghostly let me know what Halloweeny stuff you're planning to throw it you're D&D group this year what else before I forget a bunch of new people have joined my patreon thank you so much oh my gosh it blows my mind the generosity because so many of you have just joined the patreon Pantheon I did want to make sure that I mention in a video where everyone's more likely to see it please please please make sure that you know when signing up to my patreon that you aren't charged monthly on my patreon you're charged by video there's a few reasons for this but basically it comes down to the fact that I feel more comfortable because it means that you will only be charged when I make things so if I happen to have a patch where I'm really busy with other things or I just don't get any videos out you're not gonna meet judge fer godless of that it feels like more of an exchange however because you don't know whether I'm gonna have like an extra creative patch and put out more videos or whatever I am begging you please make sure that you have set a limit on how much you want to donate to me monthly there's instructions that I've linked on my patreon page I'll also put instruct in I'll also put a link to those in the description of this video and cuz I don't want to have a month where I go like why wouldn't it be great if I make these 10 million videos and suddenly you end up spending a bunch more than you had budgeted so please please pretty please go and make sure that you have set a limit on how much you want to give monthly and again thank you so much for even joining my patreon it's I am so grateful and I don't think I'll ever fully be able to express how grateful I am apart from that I do believe that's it I'm done email this to your grandma and I'll see you some other time oh it's getting close to summertime again it's getting close to summertime I'm sweating rivers off my face

Channel: MonarchsFactory

Views: 45,385

Rating: 4.9868994 out of 5

Keywords: MonarchsFactory, Dael Kingsmill, Geek & Sundry, Geek & Sundry Vlogs, Geek and Sundry, Geek and Sundry Vlogs, Geek, nerd, australian, australia, vlogger, Greek mythology, myths, mythology, Dael, Kingsmill, Dale, Dale Kingsmill, story, storyteller, story teller, story time, funny, d&d, dnd, dungeons and dragons, 5e, fifth edition, homebrew, ghost, halloween, monster manual, monster, one shot

Id: RlHom7zSWD0

Length: 22min 42sec (1362 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 17 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Malinhion]

All her stuff is killer. I hadn't seen this, though. Thanks for sharing!

Going to watch tonight.

[u/Desdam0na]

Her video on Thieves' Cant made me want to legit learn how to speak it with my DM so I could talk to NPCs in character and blow the other players away.

Edit: Watched the video, I really like it, especially the way she does possession. As a DM it can be scary to trust that to your player but as a player I would have so much fun with it!

[u/SmartAlec13]

As usual, seeing her content makes me want to go an do a bunch of this myself.

While I do like stuff from Matt Mercer and Matt Colville, I feel like Dael Kingsmill does such a good job at taking a concept in DnD and really thinking about it critically and shaping it into something with so much depth.

[u/Darth_Mediocre]

I originally subscribed two years ago because I love mythology. Now I am so happy she is doing more and more D&D stuff because she has so many good ideas.

And anything that improves the lackluster ghosts in the MM gets approval from me.

[u/cassandra112]

Basically the same argument made vs Curses. and how "remove curse" trivializes something that should in reality, be much more involved. and as many suggested. reworking "remove curse" to a kind of divination spell instead, that simply points you into the direction of whatever action is needed to break the curse, instead of just instantly removing it.

Also, the "if you stat it, it will be killed." Reducing an intangible threat like a "ghost" to a stated creature, does instantly make it not nearly as much of a threat. you are giving it hp, and defining exactly what a ghost can and can't due, in a turn based scenario..

I do think the possession mechanic does make them way more of a threat, then just "i need magic weapons". and, spectres, shadows, poltergeists, banshees, etc are all different things in DnD. Many of the classical ideas of these things are all spread out under different named creatures.

Ghosts should have rejuvenation imho. Their bones/body acting as the phylactery. burn, consecrate their remains and the ghost "dies". but will keep coming back if you don't.

[u/Goreness]

Fantastic ideas. It's definitely true that ghosts in 5e have let me down... Spooking people to make them older doesn't really capture what makes ghosts interesting in other media such as horror movies and tv shows. They should be terrifying, you should have to solve their unfinished business or find their corpse or actually have some sort of quest fodder at all.

The 5e ghost lore has these paragraphs:

Unfinished Business. A ghost yearns to complete some unresolved task from its life. It might seek to avenge its own death, fulfill an oath, or relay a message to a loved one. A ghost might not realize that it has died and continue the everyday routine of its life. Others are driven by wickedness or spite, as with a ghost that refuses to rest until every member of a certain family or organization is dead.

The surest way to rid an area of a ghost is to resolve its unfinished business. A ghost can be destroyed more easily by invoking a weakness tied to its former life. The ghost of a person tortured to death might be killed again by the implements of that torture. The ghost of a gardener might become more vulnerable when exposed to a potent floral fragrance.

However, nothing about the actual ghost's mechanics actually reflect these cool concepts. Dael's video absolutely does though-- I love the idea that the players must investigate what killed the ghost originally and use the murder weapon to put the spirit to rest again.

[u/rickyjj]

Did she post this special ghost stat block anywhere? I’d love to look at it.

[u/stinkingyeti]

Sounds like an aussie.

[u/efrique]

Oh, cool; I've watched a few of her videos before -- they were full of interesting ideas. Definitely going to give this a look.