Fleshing Out Ghosts

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t like reinventing the wheel. If a game system already has stats or mechanics for a thing, I’ll generally use them rather than create my own. With that in mind, I’ve take a close look at how ghosts are written up in the Savage Worlds core rulebook and Horror Companion, to see how I can use them for the Ghost Punchers roleplaying game.

The core book ghosts are good, the Horror Companion ghosts (technically “phantoms”) are better, but in the end, I’ve decided to riff on them both to come up with this:

Ghost

The phantasmal dead come in a number of shapes and sizes, but this is their basic ghostly form.

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d6, Spirit d10, Strength d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d6, Intimidation d12+2, Notice d12, Taunt d10, Stealth d12+4
Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness: 5

Special Abilities

• Spiritual: As creatures of spirit, ghosts can pass through solid objects and can’t be harmed by physical attacks. However, this means they can’t affect physical objects (or people) unless they make a Spirit roll or spend 1 Essence per turn to do so. Ghost are also invisible unless they allow themselves to be seen.*

• Fear –2: Ghosts cause Fear checks at –2 when they let themselves be seen.**

• Essence Burn: When making a trait roll, a ghost may spend a point of Essence to roll an additional 1d6. (This is similar to, but not the same as, a Wild Die.)***

• Essence Drain: By winning an opposed Spirit roll against a human in melee range, a ghost gains a point of Essence and the victim takes a point of Fatigue.

• Essence Transfer: A ghost can donate some of its Essence to another ghost at a rate of 1 point per round.

• Weakness (Fade Away): Ghosts need to spend a point of Essence once per day in order to resist the constant pull of their Final Judgement. If a ghost fails to spend the requisite Essence, it must make a Vigor roll to avoid taking a level of fatigue that can only be recovered by spending a point of Essence. (A ghost incapacitated by lack of Essence fades away to the afterlife in 1d6 hours.)
  

* I decided to create “Spiritual” as a new monstrous ability rather than simply use “Ethereal” from the core Savage Worlds rules. Ethereal is great, but it assumes the immaterial creature can still throw things and otherwise interact with the physical world, which isn’t something I want. (I debated whether to roll ghosts’ invisibility into this ability, as it is with Ethereal, or to create a new “Invisibility” ability. I decided to keep it together, since I’m not a fan of creating new abilities unless absolutely necessary, and it keeps it consistent with Ethereal, for those who are familiar with that ability.

** This is straight out of the core rules. I’m not positive I want to stick with this fear effect. I suspect I’ll have to tinker with the whole “fear” system, and changing this would be part of that effort, but I’ll leave it for now.

*** This might be too good, but I want to give ghosts a default thing they can spend Essence on.