Ghosts should be immune to all damage until you remove their mask and realise that it was just Old Man Jenkins the lighthouse keeper

The only ghost I've ever used in DnD had nothing but love and sorrow in its "heart". It was the ghost of a dog that got trapped in a sewer with no water or food while playing with his human (who, by the way, searched for him for months). The first thing the players ever saw about him was an ectoplasmic recreation of the ball he was following when he got trapped, rolling on the floor towards them and then a ghostly yelp. He was quite friendly unless attacked and he only wanted a little love and to reconnect with his human but he was a powerful opponent, should the players had chosen to go against him. He was only able to act in the room he died on, where the players found his dead body curled around a red ball just below the hole he fell through. That red ball was his main anchor to the world and, if someone presented it to his human, he would get a temporary physical form to say goodbye to then dissolve into nothing... maybe to go to dog's heaven, I hope. I almost cried while creating the encounter, more than one player almost cried at the end and one of them teared up a little. I am quite proud of how that session.

While the ghost doesn't have HP, inflicting damage on it could cause it to make concentration checks. If it fails, it de-manifests and must spend an action manifesting again on a subsequent turn. In this way the combat component of the ghost allows someone to keep it "at bay" in order to buy time for the party to complete the ritual/burial rites/monologue/salt scattering, etc. Could also lead to some interesting game play as the party is maneuvering around the haunted area searching for final clues with paranoid readied actions to ward the ghost off should it re-manifest around the next corner. Each time it manifests it shows up at "the haunting point" and gets to use its scary ability, or select from a lair action to give the PCs problems the turn it shows back up again. This gives the PCs an opportunity to pinpoint where they can salt an area to contain the ghost. Alternatively, once de-manifested, the DM rolls randomly to determine what initiative the ghost acts on. It can only re-manifest if you roll the middle-most initiative number it had before. Any other rolls allow it to only utilize one of the haunting lair actions. Then you roll again and apply another haunting lair action to the next initiative roll unless you roll a re-manifestation. Effectively, the haunted area starts to get really upset the longer you defy its emotional need to murder you. If you don't solve the ghost problem then the escalating haunting + ghost constantly re-manifesting with murder glares will eventually kill you all. Let the doom counter begin!

Got this idea that this woman hosts one hell'uva D&D game by sheer amount of info she brings to the table with every video

What's amazing about this is that it takes a vanilla fight with magic weapons, and turns it into a true "encounter." Nice.

I would like to see a ghost whose unfinished business was their to-do list. Like clean the gutters, or re-tile the roof or something.

"Save or die" spells that don't actually kill are called "Save or suck" As for the ghost instakilling someone in a power word kill like fashion, I think the banshee has something quite close in their wail ability, it drops to 0 hitpoints on a failed save but doesn't outright kill and it works in a radius which I think is quite nice

Your idea with sprinkling salt on the floor as a defence is just battleships, so you know, it's pretty meta

Fuck yeah, I'm absolutely taking these ideas and workshopping them for my upcoming halloween one shot. In response to your question at the end, what halloweeny thing am I throwing at my party? A survival oneshot, based of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Here's the trick, they don't know that's the case. The music is gonna be thumping synthwave and about half way through the adventure, when the clues start coming together, BOOM Thriller plays, and that's the reveal of what's going on. The basic idea is Michael Jackson is a lord that has invited everyone to his prviate estate, which at the strike of midnight, gets plunged into hell. Their goal is to survive till dawn, while completing objectives, or they lose. It's filled with grizzly ghouls, a beast of 40 eyes, and a funk of 20 thousand years. There is an additional mechanic, where if a player dies early, they come back as a zombie and get to keep playing, but in league with Michael Jackson's Musical Army and dance group. On top of that, each player will have a secret objective and special power associated with the theme and their characters. Some of their secret objectives will put them at odds with the other players. The basic dungeon will be set up into a mansion split into 4 wings. Each wing will have a different gimmick. And the end goal is to find a way to the alter underneath the manner. You have the haunted wing, the time manipulated wing (which rewards the players with that time travel mechanic from dishonored 2) and other stuff that I'm still designing. The structure of the adventure is that they'll be dropped in right as the clock strikes midnight and they'll have to complete some, but not all of the objectives and get to the end before dawn. It's gonna be aping 80's B horror movies with a dash of absurdist humor. Can't wait.

I ran a haunted house scenario a few years ago where I did a LOT of the things you talked about. The ghost's presence was felt for a long time before the party could interact with it. I gave the ghost a bunch of fun spells, like Command, Crown of Madness, etc. I also filled the place with supernatural traps, and other incidental monsters, like a cloaker in the basement. The ghost only manifested and attacked the party when they got too close to solving its problem. Then it was pretty easy to dispatch. A good time was had by all!

I like this because while the MM treats the ghost as a monster, you're turning the ghost into an entire dungeon. With it being the boss. And I think every monster can get this build up as you write more with them and around them. I agree I would think twice about just checking ghosts at the party unless it was part of the dungeon motif. (Like with recent CR campaign 2 the Diver's Grave encounter. Where there's an entire SLEW of ghosts bent on possessing the party!) Love this! Turn that ghost into a CR??? Because it isn't about challenging the player characters stats, but the players themselves! ;)

You know, you may not be Matt Colville, but your ideas are absolutely fantastic. Your insanity must be contagious.

I don't know much about how they work in DD5, but in Pathfinder the ghost (on top of being incorporeal which makes magic necessary to fight it) when defeated is not actually "killed": it comes back a few days later and just continues its haunting. My favourite ghost (I haven't yet run the game it is in, unfortunately) is only active during specific periods of time. It would exist only when the moon is visible and only be dangerous during the night. Defeating it normally only makes it disappear until the next night ; to defeat it for good you have to either finish the unfinished business or other esoteric stuff (technically a wish spell would work too). I like the idea about the weapon of the murderer, and it can creates very interesting situations, so I am stealing it. The most important thing about that ghost is that it has two shapes at the same time: - the Spirit of the dead person: it looks like the dead person, and it acts friendly, but it is mute so it can't explain the situation. It also can't do anything against the Manifestation. If defeated the Manifestation disappears too and both will came back the next night. - the Manifestation of its grief: it doesn't have a stable form, and tries to protect the Spirit. That's not a reasonable entity, so for example it could decide that any living person should die so the Spirit is safe from murderers, or that the village should burn since the spirit is afraid of the night and the light of the flames would reassure it. If the Manifestation is defeated, it reforms immediately around the Spirit. Typically the Spirit is indead an undead: what remains of a dead person who couldn't completely pass to the afterlife. The Manifestation is a creation of this undead, so it resembles a bit the "emotional echo" you talked about. In the case of the ghost of my scenario, the spirit is what remains of a young child who died in an orphanage while it was raided during a war. The Manifestation is a mix between what this child remembers about the protective tutor of the orphanage and the violent soldiers who raided the place (and also a bit of all the other characters the child remembers about). Those are closer to the nightmare of a child than to real people.

I've tweaked the possession in a slightly different way. Essentially the initial failure trapped the character's psyche into the ghost's memories. A series of three charisma checks akin to contesting a sentient weapon will result in either the character expelling the ghost or becoming lost within the ghost's memories. Essentially giving a possessed character a chance to do something as their compatriots try to aid them and also learn about the ghost.

Only being killed by the weapon that killed them in life is BRILLIANT! Hooray for Narratively-Satisfying Mechanics!

@Dael ... It's all about how you run the ghost. They can move through objects and has horrifying visage, and most importantly they can possess people. What I like to do is also give them limited invisibility. Like you said, using the traditional methods can either force the ghost to appear. Magic weapons are like a cross to a vampire the ghost will always try and wait out the party's investigation or like a poltergeist it will wait for opportune times to try and get rid of the item. Just my 2 cents. Good Shit Girl..!

I really like the way the ghost in Michelle Paver's book Dark Matter is handled. It doesn't *have* unfinished business, it just wants its home to itself, and given what its life was like and how it died it's no surprise that it hates anyone who comes to that place. And the most dangerous thing about it is that it gets into your head, and the more you think about it the more power it has. First, you get sensory stuff - seeing the ghost for a moment, flashes of what the ghost experienced as it died, maybe nightmares of the ghost's death and the ways the ghost killed people afterwards. Eventually, it gets so far into your head that it has enough power to do stuff. It can walk around outside the room ominously. It can open doors. It can get in. Eventually it can grab you and harm you. And all this depends on its ability to get into your head. In D&D terms, I'm thinking something like "you have to make a wisdom save, every time you fail the ghost gets more powerful." That said, this works best over multiple sessions.

This would be good for a Call of Cthulhu session. The Sanity trait could be played with to great effect.

A ghost is a good way to make animated objects interesting. It’s a lot more interesting to fight an animated chair if it’s ghost animating it’s haunting place and the stuff inside of it versus “oh this chair can move now...because magic”

26 years DMing and never once used those lame ghosts, fixing them never occurred to me. 👍👍 You. Are. A. Genius.

Gosh this old stuff is still so so good

You mentioned part way through the video that the ghost wants to have its problem solved, but in its frustration it kills anyone who could possibly help. That made me think, what if a ghost wasn't a single entity. The dead has two portions of their soul. One that wants to pass on into the afterlife, and the other that is the raw embodiment of their final emotions. The Rational portion of the soul attempts to help and guide the party to their ultimate goal, while the emotional portion of their soul lashes out at them the whole way through, attempting to satiate its rage or "protect" itself from what it perceives as a threat. It would be interesting to say the least.

Yes absolutely. I love the idea of multi-phase monsters in general & ghosts-as-environmental-puzzles is my preferred way of looking at them. Excellent stuff.

i ran something similar to this idea with a more combat focused group, when the ghost manifested it essentially had a pool of temp hitpoints, and as long as, it did it and the party could directly damage each other. when the ghost lost all its temp hp, neither side could directly interact, giving the party a chance to heal/work out clues, but then when the ghost came back it would have more temp hp, and with each new threshold of temp hp it got more power and more abilities as it grew angrier. the only way to actually deal real damage to it was to solve the mystery and settle its business, or side with the guy who was secretly evil (there were clues along the way) and destroy it, rather than help it move along, with a ritual that enhanced the original murder weapon. gotta say though, your idea i think works really well with a story focused game and/or oneshot. i also really like that the ghost's first appearance can just straight up kill a character. it lends a real air of threat to it

I’m glad I’m not the only one that says “DOPE” about DnD ideas.

The way that Johnathan Stroud does ghosts and Incorporeal undead in his Lockwood and Co. Series is AMAZING. i highly recommend for dms who want to do something new

Dael still has a beautiful mind. My creativity & motivation burned out many years ago, & i have never been able to get it back again.

Inspiring! Thank you. (and indeed, never underestimate the power to walk through walls when the party cannot...)

2e Ravenloft modules (of which I have ... a lot) have some pretty great Ghost Stuff. The box-set module "Castles Forlorn" for example involves a haunted castle with __multiple ghosts__ that all basically hate each other and want revenge on each other for things that happened over several decades. So you not only have a situation where you've got different motivations for your ghosts (having NPCs with cross motivations is a favorite of mine) but the nature of the haunting will have the castle transport between various periods of time as you step through doors and whatnot. If you're thinking of running a good haunting campaign I recommend trying to locate that source material to mine for ideas :)

6:10 Please, someone GIF that! "I wanna get my creep on!"

Im really glad i found her youtube channel. its really full of both tips that i love to steal for my dnd campaign and folklore that i ALSO love to steal for my dnd campaign.

I'm running two groups: for the first (low-level characters) group, I'm running a haunted house story. For the second (mid-level characters) group, I've planned an encounter with a flesh golem (dressed up as a scarecrow) in a corn maze. You have some really fun ideas for running a ghost, some of which I have already been using myself (spacial/ temporal distortions, emotional or temperature responses to their environment) I've also given RP cues to my possessed players, which they always play to a tee.

Might be cool if the ghost can animate objects to fight you physically

The thumbnail for this is adorable.

Taking a group of 8 players out to a rural cottage to run a two day fireside adventure loosely inspired by The Evil Dead. Basically going to try and murder everyone with a combination of undead, demons, and plant monsters.

Just use the blood from your foot after you kick the scissors for the mark. Permanent blood mark, problem solved.

One way to mess with the players in a haunted house is if the map is more tesseract in design, where the map doesn't work with standard geometry. If not a traditional tesseract, one where the doorways between rooms are portals so you could walk out the east doorway of one room but enter the next room from the south. Kinda like how some of those mazes in old Zork style text adventures could confuse the player.

I am pretty sure subscribing to you was the best decision I made recently.

Real good system stuff for a ghost, with great plot anchoring! A cool trick monster that still engages the non-puzzlers. For the Nova ultimate, you could snatch the Banshee's _Wail_ attack, dropping those who fail their save to 0hp. Doesn't kill the party outright, no matter how many (or few) hp, but sure frightens them and gives the Cleric something to do (assuming they make the save themself). I have a sketch for a BehindTheScreen article somewhere on making ghosts matter narratively, inspired by a splendid philosophy talk on Grecian tragedies I attended. Maybe it's time to break that out and actually throw it together.

I like the Winchester method of dispatching ghosts.

You've inspired me to put in a spooooky ghost in an upcoming game! The Ghost of Brackenlow Bridge vineyards shall haunt my players. Going to give the lair actions a host of illusion and psychic attack spells, such as Dissonant Whispers, Phantasmal Force/Killer, Crown of Madness, Synaptic Static when it screams... It's gonna be good. Oh, and Dream. I hope the players spend the night!

This is brilliant. For a high level encounter, maybe something along the lines of Ju-on and its vengeful ghosts.

Every time I watch the beginning of a MonarchsFactory video I wonder if someone is at my front door. It's great. This is great by the way! Great for a whole adventure.

Now i know how to introduce a legendary item to my players and make it really feel like an achievement. Thanks Dael!

Sound like White Wolf ghosts ( e.g. haunted house in VtM: Bloodlines). A terrific obstacle for the right sort of campaign. Thanks for sharing.

I had a small plan to put my future campaign through an abandon ghost city where a plague broke out and they have to solve some puzzley maze, or fight a beauty to get an artifact that is actually a puzzle piece. Thanks to you and some tweeting I could use these guidelines to make getting to the crypt or whatever a little harder with those lair actions but in the city, that could be fun

My players had to retrieve a missing (living) child from a haunted mansion. They went full murder hobo on the innocent ghost outside the mansion who would've rewarded them with a level if they reunited her with her brother's ghost (who was hiding on the top level), then burned said brother's bones and thus sent him on to the afterlife, somehow managed to avoid all encounters and only trip one innocent trap, and found a room with six statues that did the Dr Who "we'll move if you blink" thing. But they were thoroughly spooked and good fun was had :D Oh, and they did find the missing girl. The things that lurked in the dark demanded that they could only leave with the girl if a party member stayed to play hide and seek with them in her stead. Their solution: sprinkle salt around their location, then bash their warhammers at a bricked-up window until it gave way and use their ropes and pitons to escape that way. Gotta give 'em points for creative thinking.

I've been thinking to run a ghost someday and the vanilla was SO bad, nothing like what I wanted, and this was just amazing. Keep up the good work!

I'd recommend checking out Matthew Mercer's Lingering Soul race. While I wouldn't use it in-game for when a player dies as a rule (as per the actual race template states, actually), a player, in that specific setting, having their soul temporarily ripped out of their body and thus being the only way to interact with the ghost could be an interesting turn of events.

I used to be a paranormal investigator IRL and I had some ideas based on my own theories. Firstly in a lot of ancient cultures there is a "naming taboo" You would be familiar with this if you've watched any TV shows with aboriginal people in it the ABC and SBS give a warning "the following programme may contain the names, images, and voices of deceased persons." This is the belief that when you talk about a ghost the ghost will gain power. Have you ever heard the saying that you're not dead until you are forgotten. That. The way I would run it is to roll a dice whenever a character mentions the ghost. On a 5 or 6 the ghost appears and on a 3 or 4 the ghost gains energy. The more energy the more times it can use it's special abilities. Secondly a common spiritualist belief is that ghosts decay over time. You are right a ghost is mostly emotions. But those emotions are not always their own. A strong ghost will be the soul of a person, complete and whole remembering who they are. But over time a ghost will lose energy and suck up emotions and feeling from others. This makes a ghost into something made of vague feelings and confusion. It no longer knows what is happening. Thirdly a ghost is lost out of time. Their perception of the world is static. Ghosts don't walk through walls. They walk through closed and locked doors because that door could be opened by their perception. Sometimes they will walk down a corridor that has been broken into rooms or pass through a house built in what used to be their backyard. This could be useful to get your party to find hidden doors. Another idea I had is that you can fight a ghost if you become one. If at any point a ghost kills a party member they may become a ghost themselves at which point the ghost can be treated as human by that character.

Ghosts can also make a great dues ex machina. If you're characters get stuck, or can't find the clue, or whatever, try this; A ghost of a previous adventurer who was slain in this dungeon fades in. The ghost thinks the PCs are its party. It helps them out until it reaches the part of the dungeon where it died. The characters find its body, with its treasure, and dun-dun-duuuuun the secret clue they will need in the next part of the dungeon. If they don't continue on and avenge the ghost then it will follow them on their adventures haunting them.until they do.

after watching this i have to re-write a ghost encounter for my campaign. part of me loves seeing videos like this, part of me hates that it leads to so many great ideas to add to my world with so little time to do so

Thanks so much for the bag of ideas. I too feel that ghosts as written were either unkillable,or if you have magic weapons they are too easy

I think a way to use the MM ghost stuff along with this is to possibly consider necromancer or general entities that raise dead. If ghosts are a more natural phenomenon (as this video implies when I believe you said you don't consider them undead in this format) that is bastardized into becoming undead through magic which is how you get the kind of ghosts in the MM. Or maybe they're just particularly weak ghosts or ones that were manifested at some point but something happened to interrupt those that tried to help them

I run a campaign bi-weekly and just realized our next session is on Halloween, so I'll try to apply this!

I downright LOVE this.

GREAT vid! Good job as usual!

Thanks so much for your take on Ghosts! I incorporated this into a recent One-Shot and my players had a blast. (Even though the Barbarian failed the VERY FIRST check to resist getting possessed... oh well! XD)

Fantastic. Outstanding.

I think lots of damage is more effective than instant death or nothing because it builds more tension

Your ideas are amazing

In previous editions, I seem to remember ghosts reforming if they are killed or turned. So the only way to permanently deal with them is to resolve their trauma

I love the possession revamp!! Honestly, genius

I respect your opinions & effort. But I like to think of Ghosts as more then Emotions/Echos. I think of them as the Spiritual Manifestation of that person. It has the thoughts, feelings, & personality of its once living form. Additionally, some Ghosts could be helpful/friendly Spirits who are content with their existence. "Casper the friendly ghost, the friendliest ghost you know."

In today's video, Dael teaches us how to change all of our players' last names to Winchester. I liked the idea of making it function like lair actions to begin with to build the tension. That's cool. The only thing I've done like that before is having the entity float by in the background, or appear for a second and then vanish before the players can do anything about it.

This was very spooky. Great video.

Love the spooky background music.

This video was great. I love your take on goasts. It sounds like you love to make your players look back and forth at one another with wide panicked eyes, as I do. Keep it up.

Now why didn't I think of that? I will definitely refine the NPC who attacks on multiple initiative counts for my personal GM style. Thank you!

I adore your DnD content. Please make more! I will watch every one

Blurry ghosts are the scariest ones

Interestingly, the Slavic equivalent to the Fair Folk - navki and boginki - are often the ghosts of those who died tragically. Also, they're often affiliated with water or nature. There's also a major Slavic pagan holiday called Dziaduszki, taking place around the same time as Halloween and I think it's also an alternative name for All Saint's Day in Poland because we've held on to a lot of pagan customs - anyway, the holiday is a celebration of the spirits of the ancestors. The spirits of the dead are everywhere and are very much able to affect the world. There was even a Slavic cult of the dead at one point. I'm saying all this, because I've been brainstorming a Slavic-inspired D&D setting. Hopefully I'll have enough worked out to play-test it for a Halloween one-shot at some point before I get my doctorate.

I like your background OST- DA:origins. Classic!

I'm wrapping up a really long Extra-dimensional Haunted House adventure for my Pathfinder group and I was looking for a good one-shot idea for Halloween this year. I think you just gave me all the inspiration I needed for it. Tanks!

Shades in the Greek style. They want to drink the blood of the living, and if they get enough, they become solid, gaining new powers but also vulnerability.

Love these ideas, will definitely have to use them. I was just thinking up a ghost concept to kind of subvert the unfinished business trope: a ghost or ghosts who think being trapped on the mortal plane is a neat sort of loophole to that whole death thing, and don't want to move on. They like to possess people to feel alive again, and will immediately try to do so with some of the PCs (or any NPCs that may be tagging along) then proceed to carouse and going about accomplishing corporeal things they can't normally do. They do have some sort of past trauma or unfinished business, and it would the goal of the players to resolve that for them against their will (making them very upset in the process).

Great piece on implementing ghosts in a satisfying way. Dope. If you're looking for critiques at all: you went on a bit of a tangent on how you lay out your statblock, when I think all you needed to say was "I lay out my statblocks this way because I personally find them more useful that way" and then if there was interest you could follow up with another video, social post, etc.

This is pretty awesome! I'm totally going to use this for a Halloween one shot this year!

I started following for the D&D stuff and stayed for the stories you tell on myths and lore. I watch them when I'm on break at work and have went out and picked up a few books on the subject because it sparked an interest I once had as a kid. I think it would be interesting if you mixed the two. Like giving characters and items from myths and legends game world stats. I know people have done this with popular characters and items like Merlin or Excalibur but I'd like to see if you would do anything different or go over some of the not so well known hero's, villains and items. Just an ideal.

perfect timing. I'm so glad I found this. I'll have a ghost in the game I'm running tomorrow. you've inspired a plot hook/ side quest.

"vauge but evocative" is also how my lovers describe me

Kingsmill! You're an adorable human being. :D On the video topic though: This is some dang solid advice and we pretty much had the same idea about Manifestation when the players pinpoint aspects of the ghost's existence. I'd probably add on a mechanic that has maybe an incremental effect, so for each aspect you uncover brings into a more tangible form (which could be done with giving them AC, Saving Throws, removing abilities or decreasing their range of said abilities, etc.)

A ghostly one-shot like this sounds like so much fun 😃! Reminds me of the good old Scooby-Doo cartoons in a way 😁 New to your channel - and loving it so far! Keep up the good work!

this is great. i wish this video had existed a few months ago haha. i recently ran my party through a haunted house that they were allowed to have if they could free the house from the ghosts. they had to face two banshees and it was intense and fun but this stuff wouldve made it so good

Damn... this is brilliant.

You are a genius this is a great idea. I like the idea of a party having to do something at the behest of a ghost like bring them their significant other to where they are haunting or bring their murder so they can have revenge. Also I would like a way to pacify a ghost so one could live peacefully with them or take the home to live with them. Any thoughts on that? Also how do you feel about Magic Jar in this situation? Like becoming a ghost to fight a ghost.

For my game, I'm starting off my new Homebrew campaign by running a horror adventure in The vein of Sleepy Hollow. And you can bet the headless horseman is running amok, laughing mad and killing everyone he finds until the players stop him.

Great take on ghosts! I only found your channel a couple days ago and I’ve burned through a lot of the videos. Your play/DM style is so quirky and creative, I’d love to be a player at your table. For the scissors you keep kicking, try masking/gaffer’s tape for marking the floor spot for your focus point.

Love the ideas here! I've been working on some rumors to seed a new location with - looks like there's going to be a haunted manor!

might steal some of those ideas for an allip encounter i have planned :) great stuff

Idea: a ghost that doesn’t haunt a physical thing but an idea or concept. And whenever someone does something related to that concept spooky shit starts to happen. Imagine a haunted song that was sung by a bard to cast a spell that killed someone. Or a ghost that died in jail and now haunts the concept of imprisonment and stalks prisons and slave trading organizations. Or a ghost that haunts revenge and whenever someone wants revenge the ghost leaves little signs to encourage the person to take revenge, or maybe the ghost itself kills anyone that people want revenge on

btw, I like the music selection you use here

Dang it. These videos are too cool. I have to subscribe.

Vague and Evocative would be the best Perfume/Cologne brand name ever, just sayin. These rules are real cool! I'd actually not planned anything particularly spooky but one of my groups is in a pocket of the Underdark right now so I'll probably put something spooky in there. I mean we already got some Aberrations and a... very particularly spooky monster that they might come across. I won't say the specific one because I think one of em might see this comment here but it's a very exciting one straight from Mordenkainen's and I'm hoping they'll be as terrified as I am jubilent during the encounter as they realize what's happening when I say "Okay so you take 4d8 psychic and make a WIS save"

I ran a haunted house session themed off of this idea last night. A double murder suicide. A divination wizard studying the effects of herbs enhancing his visions killed his wife and son and then himself. The mother haunted the house until she was (A) trapped in a circle of salt (B) reunited with her son by putting their two skeletons together in the greenhouse (C) murder weapon destroyed. These were all great ideas and after surviving the effects of four haunted rooms including a phantasmal force fire in the library, a flood of blood in the upstairs hall and attacked by mantrap plants in the green house my players discovered all three resolutions in the same round in different parts of the house. It all came together wonderfully. Thanks for the idea and the framework.

In my setting there is a bank that gives out very generous loans, but if the holder doesnt pay back the loan before they die, the bank turns them into ghost indentured servants that work off their debt at a rate of 2sp per day. Most people take it thinking that they have eternity as a ghost so why not, but its a depressing, dreary existence. Some have been in service for hundreds of years.

I have a custom RPG system, and I'm currently working on my own "monster manual" so this is really useful. Thanks Dael!

In most legends I've read a ghost can be temporarily made incorporeal with cold iron, and held at bay with lines of salt.

Found your channel... binge watching it.

Here's my current take on it: A ghost haunts some place, person, or item. It can take damage, but when killed it's ectoplasm body discorporates. The ghost can then respawn at its haunt. To stop a ghost, clerics notwithstanding, you have to complete a side mission for the ghost to put its spirit to rest.