Oops, you died. Don’t worry about it too much, pal, these dungeons can be real death traps. Happens to the best of us! But because this is a game, and not one of those games where if you die in the game you die in real life, you now have the problem of everyone else’s characters still trekking through the dungeon while yours is decomposing on the dungeon floor, likely stripped of your best gear while your human body, the one whose eyes are even now reading this post, has to just sit at the gaming table, gnawing on the bowl of community cheetos not because you’re hungry but because you’re bored. There has to be a better way!

It is good for a game to be deadly. Games are more fun with stakes, and life and death make for pretty compelling stakes. However, it is not fun to just be out of the game when you hit this fail state. That is one aspect of Monopoly (of many, frankly) that makes it such an unfun game to play. So for a game to offer life and death stakes, it should also offer avenues to quickly get back in the game. These methods should also put the player in a meaningfully different position than they were before their character died–sure you can just immediately say that Tim the Fighter’s brother, Jim the Fighter, who has identical stats and equipment, happens to show up when Jim dies, but at that point, death isn’t truly on the table if we are being honest with ourselves. 

There are many options to quickly generate a new player character when a character dies and thus get the player back in the game pronto (and I have written about several previously), but one of the most whimsical is also the most in keeping with our current spooky season: you come back as a ghost. SpoOoOoky! But how does this work, in practical terms?

A Handbook for the Recently Deceased in Dungeons

When you die in the mythic underground while your companions are still delving into the dungeon, your soul cannot be at rest. Instead, you become a ghost. The ghost appears as you appeared at your death (including any mortal wounds), but pale and slightly translucent. You also hover one foot from the ground and can walk through walls. 

Spectral Statistics

Ghastly Visage. You appear as you did at your death (including any mortal wounds), but pale, glowing faintly (but not enough to give off light like a torch) and slightly translucent. You also hover one foot from the ground. You fall at half the speed of a body ordinarily affected by gravity and are immune to falling damage.

As in Life, so in Death. As a ghost, your attribute scores and number of hit points remain the same as they were in life. However, you lose access to any special abilities, spells, or skills you had. You also cannot use any of your corporeal equipment although you appear wearing the equipment you wore at the time of your demise. Might as well encourage your friends to loot your body. You can’t take it with you.

Dead Men Tell No Tales. You know any languages you spoke in life. However, you can only speak with those who knew you (even if only in passing) in life or to other undead creatures (but only if they know they are undead). To all others, your speech sounds like unintelligible wails and moans unless they use magic to speak to you.

Undead as a Doornail. You are considered undead. Any effects that target undead (such as a cleric’s ability to turn undead) works on you as well.

Phantasmic Powers

No Need for Doors. You are incorporeal and can no longer pick up or carry objects, wear equipment, eat, or drink. You may pass through non-magical objects by spending 1d6 hit points per foot of object being passed through (e.g., passing through a 3-foot wall deals 3d6 damage to you). If you end your turn inside a solid object, you take further 2d6 damage regardless of its size. You cannot use this ability if the solid object has any silver components (such as a silver doorknob). 

No Body to Harm. Unless you are possessing a creature (see Worldly Possessions below), you are immune to poison, disease, petrification, being grappled or otherwise restrained, sleep, or mind control. You are immune to attacks from weapons unless they are magical, made of silver, or doused in salt (the salt must be re-applied with each successful attack against you). However, you cannot regain hit points, either by resting or from spells or potions that ordinarily restore hit points. 

The Wail of the Banshee. Once per day, you can unleash a mournful wail. All living creatures within earshot of you must immediately succeed on a morale test or else flee. Any creature that knew you when you were alive is immune to this effect.

Worldly Possessions. You can enter the body of a living creature and influence their actions. To enter their body, the target makes a saving throw versus death. If they fail, you can control their body until either of you fall to 0 hit points.  Every turn, (i) you take 1 hit point of damage per hit dice the creature has, and (ii) they can make another saving throw to force you out of them. If they succeed on this saving throw while you are possessing them, you take 2d6 damage. You may also end the possession early on your own accord, and their allies may end it with a spell that dispels evil spirits. While possessing them, you can cause the target to do anything they are capable of doing themselves. If they take any damage, you and the target each take half the total damage. If holy water is applied to the target, you take the entirety of the damage from the holy water.

They See Dead People. You can spend 1d6 hit points to become invisible for up to 1 hour. However, children, non-sapient, non-magical animals, and other undead creatures (but only if they know they are undead) can still see you. 

Haunted Hindrances

The Ringing of the Bell. When you hear a bell ring, you must immediately move as far as you can from the source of the ringing for as long as it persists or else take 1d6 damage per turn. This damage is increased to 2d6 if the bell is made of silver.

Taken with a Grain of Salt. You cannot cross over lines made of salt or over bodies of saltwater. Feeding salt to a creature you are possessing causes the possession to end and for you to take 3d6 damage.

Ouija Boarded. You may be compelled to make yourself visible and communicate with anyone performing a séance in your vicinity. During a séance, you must answer all questions honestly. Each question they ask, you may make a save versus spells to end the séance. 

Unfinished Business. When your adventuring companions leave the dungeon or all die in the dungeon, your soul can finally rest and you move on to the afterlife. 

What Happens When Ghosts Die?

There are two ways for a ghostly adventurer to “die”. The first, and most likely result, is when their adventuring companions leave the dungeon. This causes their spirit to be at peace enough to enter the afterlife. This is the ideal way for the ghost to “die” and gives the player time to roll up their new character without interrupting the adventure during which their character died.

However, ghosts have hit points like other characters (this is to provide some limit to the power of a ghost), which begs the question of what happens if those run out. If a ghost is reduced to zero hit points, their soul is consigned to eternal torment in hell. Such a damned soul is incapable of being brought back to life by magic short of a Wish spell. This is a bad way to go, and ghost adventurers should seek to avoid it. However, if they do die twice, they can perhaps play an available hireling that is traveling with the party or you can decide that they already used up their freebie ghost experience. A bit harsh, but perhaps you abide by that old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again.’”

If you wanted to be a real dungeon bastard, you could rule that a ghost adventurer that loses its hit points loses its memories from life and becomes a non-player monster that will attack the other player characters. This will give the other players a bit of an incentive to keep their ghost pal from burning through his hit points.

Ghosts of Homebrews Past

I am not the first to suggest this idea as a mode of keeping a deceased character’s player in the game. For instance, here is another take on this concept from my colleague, Ian of the Benign Brown Beast blog. Whitehack famously allows deceased player characters to enter into a “ghost form” whereby the character “retains all her abilities and full hit points, but she can’t affect anything directly in the world of the living unless she pays HP for it” similar to spending HP to cast spells in the Whitehack’s rules. These ghosts cannot pass through walls and are only hurt by things that hurt the undead like exorcism or incorporeal attacks. The ghost form ability lasts as long as the player character still has hit points to spend, allowing high level characters to remain in ghost form for longer. This is very similar to my idea but frankly doesn’t go far enough into ghostiness. The player is essentially playing the same character with an HP tax on actually doing anything meaningful. They have their old abilities and don’t have access to classic ghost abilities, which the rules state are “advanced abilit[ies] available to monster ghosts only”. My preference is for monster ghosts and player ghosts to not be too dissimilar. Give the players a taste, if only for a short while, of being a monster!

On the other side of the spectral spectrum is to make the ghost a character class in and of itself. That is precisely what Hedgemaze Press did for B/X (basic expert set D&D) a couple of Halloweens ago. This solves my gripe with the Whitehack ghost form mechanic in that it certainly gives the player all the hallmarks of being a ghost, but it doesn’t actually solve what I came here for–providing a short term solution to character death, with the understanding that the player can make their new character between sessions. It even creates new problems–what happens if the ghost dies in the middle of the dungeon? 

My proposal above is an attempt to thread the needle. To provide a short-term character option that still feels like you are playing a ghostly apparition of your now-dead character. A fear referees might have in introducing this option is that being a ghost is too fun or that its abilities solve some of the obstacles of the dungeon. I would posit that if constantly killing one’s character is more tantalizing than watching that character grow and achieve its ambitions in the game world, there are deeper problems with the campaign. As for the power of ghosts, I would lean in. It’s okay if it’s a little fun to die. Happy haunting!