How do you make a ghost the BBEG?
easily
>>47701244
Give it 20 levels in wizard.
>>47701244
Liberal use of possession.
>>47701286
this desu
let them possess more than one person at a time too
So they end up controlling all the major evils of the land
>>47701244
Cause it to be a constant nuisance throughout their journey in search of a way to rid themselves of the ghost.
>>47701439
Doppleganger type thingey. The ghost has attached itself to one of the party members, and is intent on fucking up their lives/driving them crazy so that it can feed from their trauma, and eventually take that person's form.
>>47701244
Impossible!
Ghost BBEG pales in comparison to my Skulltan BBEG!
>>47701527
>Skulltan
Is that still a thing?
>>47701244
Arcanum did a pretty good job.
Imagine for a moment, a ghost so ancient and powerful that it approaches the same level of metaphysical threat as say a demon prince. This malevolent spirit is driven by something unfinished in its lifetime, something so important to it that it defies death and time in order to accomplish it.
In Arcanum's case, it was a necromancer emperor who felt that the universe was in disharmony, that life was suffering and the only way to bring harmony and an end to suffering was to kill the universe.
Start with Hamlet.
IF YOU WANNA SEE SOME ACTION
>>47701244
make it a dragon ghost, bitches love dragons.
>>47701244
One Pathfinder campaign we had it where the BBEG was a moderate level ghost that wanted to shift from the Ethereal Plane to the Material Plane as part of a plot to keep its ethereal powers but effectively come back to life. Instead it suffered a lot of mental trauma, turning it evil, and actually pulled a Material town and himself into the Shadow Plane. He then began a quest to subjugate an entire kingdom under his rule in the Shadow Plane, gaining more and more power with each person he ripped from the Material Plane.
It ended with most of the situation reversed. A PC made a pact with the gods for the knowledge to bind and defeat the ghost, resulting in him multiclassing as an Oracle with the BBEG as part of his Haunted curse.
>>47701244
Had a BBEG that was a human barbarian mercenary. He died but his hatred made him rise as an intelligent Zombie Lord who retrained into a fighter. He died too but his spite made him rise as a in intelligent Skeletal Champion who retrained into a bard because of doot. He died as well and his groveling to the gods of death turned him into a worm that walks and retrained into a wizard. He also died and his failure turned him into a ghost. When the Pc's confronted him he took one look and gave up and floated off into the after life.
>>47701244
>possess the powergamer's character and beat the rest to a pulp
>>47704455
Could be done in most if not all systems.
>>47701244
Ask these ladies. Heck, two of them did it twice.
Possessions, poltergeist activity (starting fires, throwing stuff), make it mobile (doesn't just haunt at one location, but follows people), creepy manifestations with psychokinetic attacks etc.
>>47701244
Take living BBEG.
Apply Ghost template.
Increase CR by 2 as appropriate.
>>47704546
What?
>>47701244
Make it a spooky ghost. Like really spooky
>>47701244
His physical body (corpse) is stored somewhere and acts like a lich's phylactery.
>>47705088
How spooky?
>>47701244
Easily.
Take your BBEG and add the ghost template to it
>>47701244
>How do you make a ghost the BBEG?
Fatal Frame.
The ghost princess and her half-ghost gardener have stolen away spring and caused an eternal winter.
How will you stop them?
>>47708390
Lawful Goodshootings performed by Niel Armstrong.
Spoilered to protect immature minds.
>>47703589
Turns out he just wanted to die for good though. You can talk him out of destroying all life if you have a proper killing machine.
>>47708421
Alternatively, Lawful Good dancing.
>>47705052
I think anon is referring to the fact that both the final bosses in ffx and ffx-2 were technically ghosts. Sin was the spirit of tidus's father... and I can't remember the second game. Sucked so sad my brain mus have purged all memory of it
>>47708443
>Joker Michael Jackson
Make PCs also ghosts.
I played Murdered: Soul Suspect the other day. Wasn't a good game in any way, but I think certain elements would be great if they were free-played and controlled by human GM.
>>47708390
How soft is the half-ghost gardener?
That was a really good comic OP
>>47707780
really spooky
>>47701244
Great graphic novel. Pretty prime example right there.
>>47709666
What if you make it too spooky?
>>47701244
you kill him first
>>47708426
I know. I talked him out of it with my extremely charismatic wizard. I just wanted to use it as an example that would spark the OPs imagination.
>>47701244
Get creative with cool ghost shit. Not just standard ghost shit any ghost should be able to do like phase through things or posses someone, but something more unique and formidable.
What exactly that means I guess would depend on what you're going for and how your system and setting do ghosts. I would suggest using ectoplasma for something, as a tool or for some magic or alchemy or even use it directly as a weapon. In most ghost things ectoplasma is either a substance created when ghosts interact with physical things or it is what ghosts are actually made out of. In either case you could do something creative with that, in the latter case especially it seems like it would be pretty potent, being the actual substance a spirit is made of.
That's just one suggestion, my point is that the ghost should be abnormally powerful or otherwise unique. Give them something new, or have them creatively use an already established trait or power of ghosts, or beef up an already established trait or power like >>47701286
>>47701409
>>47712848
No such thing
Suel lich
>>47708810
>>47711140
>Siobhan and Anya don't fuck
0/10
>>47701244
Lot of head bobbing.
>>47713880
Fuck that, Anya is a horrible person.
Siobhan and Dima should have ended up together with a Marie/Edd vibe to it.
Li Dao, the Ghost Emperor. An ancient Chinese ruler who was obsessed with immortality, drank a mercury based elixir, died but came back as a ghost and now sends his still devoted Cult-followers to collect a number of powerful relics so that he can raise an army of zombies/terracotta warriors
Make it a half-ghost.
>>47708669
Oh, they're all pretty soft, the one with the bigger boobs even more so, obviously.
>>47701244
give it insane manipulation capability and have it whisper more physical people into act of madness and seemingly irrational actions. hamlet style babyyyyy.
I'm glad this thread didn't turn into an image dump for that ghost girl with the quest from a while back
>>47701244
Make him kinda weak on his own. The big thing is that he just won't die and has a large support base of pawns and useful vessels willing to be possessed. Perhaps the ghost is of some peasant wronged by the nobles ages ago who's been building his revenge ever since, or a noble who got passed over for the crown and has come back to fix it. Ancient grudges pursued well beyond the point of reason make for a great ghost BBEG. Since ghosts tend to be ridiculously hard to put down you can even have him fight the party repeatedly, slowly upgrading his vessel and weapons to keep pace.
For general archetypes a lot of the stuff applied to vampires works, though ghosts are usually portrayed as a bit more fixed in their mindsets than vampires.
>>47701244
Ghost was a scientist/researcher/guy who experimented in life. Now that he's dead he doesn't give a shit about anything but his project.
Needs a mineral for thing? Mine nearby run by dude? Straight up jack their shit.
Need a food source for plants that make 'stuff'? Go grab coupe people and make fertilizer.
Need to pay a guy for services? Go rob a bank.
>>47716902
Phanty? She's pretty cute
Bbeg immortal ghost who fucks with everyone for the lulz
>>47708390
I live in a southern place, eternal winter seems pretty good.
Not a BBEG, but had an idea for an encounter whilst looking through a bestiary.
>>party is trudging along a mountainside
>>Snowstorm picks up, party seeks shelter in a nearby cavern.
>>lone maiden inhabits the cabin, is really happy that the PCs have stopped by, seems to be starved for company.
>>Serves food to the players, offers fresh beds. Tends to divert the conversation away from the blizzard outside and warns not to go out, saying they can wait it out here.
>>food she serves doesn't seem filling, and the place feels drafty.
>>Whenever the blizzard is mentioned she gets more and more agitated before flying off the handle if the PCs decide to brave the storm.
>>Maiden is actually Yuki Ona and the cause of the blizzard, keeping the PCs in the ruins of her old home so she'd never be lonely again.
>>47701244
Go full Baron Harkonnen
The ghost of an evil ruler posesses his descendants, nobody knows of this of course.
Having the wisdom of an entire lifetime and beeing able to posess multiple people makes for a pretty tough to nail down bad guy with some solid potential for intrigue.
Bonus points if his descendants actually oppose each other and dont know they are influenced by their power hungry ancestor.
>>47717174
Winnie is better tho
Lord Haleth Bricklemeier's charitable works are legendary, and the life expectancy and literacy of his people still stand far above the average.
His personal board of magical directors attempted to make him immortal, but only succeeded in binding his spirit to this plane.
For the first two centuries, give or take, he was a kind and benevolent, if dead, ruler. His people formed a cult around him, and after a certain number of generations they considered him a true god, ascended from man.
His ubiquitous celebrity status and the kind of spiritual degradation that comes with being hostless and eternally bound to the wrong plane eventually overtook him though. Now, his is as much a mindless, shrieking specter as any other, though he cannot be banished except by dispelling the original curse that bound him.
His people still follow his will as a god, and are the most feared fiefdom in the Eastern world.
