Running incorporeal undead in D&D 5e

Ghosts, specters, banshees, wraiths and other ethereal, undead nasties to throw at your players.

What causes a soul to rise as an incorporeal undead?

Normally when a soul is killed in D&D, their soul passes on to the afterlife. However, this is not the case for ghostly entities. Their souls linger on the mortal plane.

There are broadly speaking, 4 reasons why this might happen:

1. If a creature undergoes intense emotions or trauma at the time of their death, that soul may instead remain on the mortal plane until they can be destroyed, banished or their trauma resolved. This is the case for beings like ghosts, banshees, poltergeists, revenants and wraiths.
2. If a mortal is killed by a certain type of ghostly being that transforms their soul into a ghostly entity. This is the case for shadows and specters (who are transformed into such by wraiths).
3. Evil deeds might impact whether a soul becomes a ghostly entity and may affect the kind of entity that they become. For example, wraiths are often formed from tyrants and particularly evil mortals.
4. A curse or spell might trap one’s soul on the mortal plane, cursing them to an undead existence. This can be the case for any kind of incorporeal undead.

Types of incorporeal undead

There are several types of incorporeal undead. While they may seem similar, each is unique. The circumstances of their death are different, as are their abilities and their behaviour. Knowing your revenant from your wraith is one of the most important parts of running a ghostly encounter:

• Banshee (CR4) – Born of bitterness and sorrow, these howling apparitions have a shriek that can kill. Most common among Elven communities, some believe that in life, these souls were hoarders of treasure or destroyers of nature as well as dying in a grief-stricken state.
• Ghost (CR4) – The remnants of a soul with unfinished business or that died in a state of extreme emotion. They often haunt a location of significance during their mortality and will do so until their business has somehow been concluded. Ghosts are not necessarily aggressive, but they certainly can be if an object or location of significance is disturbed (or if they’re inclined towards aggression).
• Poltergeist (CR2) – Invisible trickster spirits that torment the living. Many poltergeists aren’t aware that they’re dead. For this reason, they can end up repeating activities they did in life.
• Revenant (CR5, 7 or 10) – Vengeful spirits that possess their own dead bodies, those of others or even an entire graveyard of bodies (known as a graveyard revenant). Some revenants, known as haunting revenants, will even inhabit a building like a house to exact their vengeful desires. Wronged in life, a revenant will not rest until vengeance has been enacted upon those that wronged them.
• Shadow (CR1/2) – Shadows are resentful spirits, dark and shadowy in form and vaguely resembling the appearance of the mortal they once were. Shadows resent mortals for the life they wish they had and will attempt to drain their essence, transforming their victims into shadows themselves when they die.
• Specter (CR1) – Unlike many spirits, specters do not resemble their mortal selves whatsoever. They have been utterly transformed using the negative energy of a wraith, into a malicious evil that feeds upon suffering.
• Will O Wisp (CR2) – Formed from the souls of evil beings that other Will O Wisps have led to their doom, these spirits appear as floating orbs of light. While innocent in appearance, they often cooperate with other creatures to lure unsuspecting victims into traps, at which point, they consume their life force.
• Wraith (CR5) – Formed from the souls of particularly evil individuals such as tyrants, wraiths are especially malevolent spirits. Wraiths actively seek to bring torment to mortals, and their negative energy is capable of transforming dead mortals into specters.

Using incorporeal undead in combat

If a party is unfortunate enough to wander into the lair of some malignant spirit, below are some tactics you can use to torment the party:

• Sunlight sensitivity – Spirits don’t do well in sunlight, incurring disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls. Having your ghostly encounters indoors, at night or underground is a great way to ensure they aren’t nullified by the sun.
• Any resistances and immunities – Getting tired of the party monk constantly grappling your monsters, or the barbarian knocking innocent goblins prone? Well thankfully, being incorporeal has its advantages. They’re immune to the likes of prone, grappled, restrained and a variety of other conditions as well as necrotic and poison damage. They’re also resistant to another 6 damage types which will cause problems for characters without magic.
• Turn invisible – Creatures like will o wisps and poltergeists can turn invisible making them much harder to hit. As many of these combats are fought at low levels, some parties may quickly need to adapt tactics to help them handle invisibility.
• Incorporeal movement – By nature, spirits are incorporeal, which means that these bodiless entities can pass through objects walls and even other creatures. Need to catch a breather or draw party members into a trap, not a problem. Just pass through a wall.
• Possessing bodies – Some spirits can possess the bodies of others. This is the case for ghosts and revenants. Revenants will only do this if they’re killed and have time to repossess a body, but ghosts can do this as part of combat. If they manage to possess another character, their allies will need to destroy the body before they can destroy the ghost making it a hugely problematic ability!
• Hard to keep down – Revenants can regenerate hit points and unless they’re killed in a very specific way (have dispel evil and good cast on their corpse), then they’ll return by possessing another corpse. In fact, these creatures can even curse a creature so they know where the party is when they are killed and are subsequently restored.
• Flight – Use verticality to your advantage by escaping the range of martials to frustrate things like barbarians that just want to smash you with their big axe!
• Frightening – Most incorporeal undead are able to frighten their enemies. This is the case for creatures like banshees and revenants. Use this to nullify some party members while you focus on their more courageous allies.

Using incorporeal undead outside of combat

Despite their interesting combat capabilities, I’d argue that ghostly creatures are even more interesting as plot points to solve than as enemies to defeat. Because of their cursed nature as tormented souls, many incorporeal undead can have their encounters resolved without resorting to combat.

Below are some ways you can use ghostly creatures outside of combat, including some plot ideas:

• Resolving a trauma: Many incorporeal undead (like ghosts) haunt an area due to an unresolved trauma. Having party members resolve that trauma, like destroying a trinket, rescuing an imperilled loved one or killing their murderer may end the haunting and let the soul rest.
• Setting a trap: Some spirits, like will o wisps, will seek to lure creatures into traps. You could present them as benevolent spirits looking to guide the way through a misty marsh or forest, only to lead the party into a trap. Will O Wisps will often cooperate with other creatures to accomplish this.
• Haunted by a defeated enemy: Some enemies might come back, especially if they possessed particularly strong hatred towards a party member. Revenants might do this, doggedly tracking down the party for vengeance. Other undead might do similar things though, such as banshees and wraiths.
• Haunted house: You might use an entire house or castles of haunted creatures. Perhaps it’s the site of particularly traumatic events, leaving many souls in a state of restlessness. You might even use a haunting revenant as an actual house that’s been haunted (you can check out my haunting revenant article for advice on running this new monster).
• Mysterious goings on: Strange things are going on. People go missing, the walls bleed, you hear repeated whisperings, things get misplaced and whatever other bizarre occurrences you can think of. Perhaps a poltergeist has taken up residence in the house, or it’s possessed by a haunting revenant. Maybe a multitude of entities are haunting the same location… Whatever it is, it’s up to your players to solve it!

Advice for a haunted adventure

Running such encounters is a little different from your average encounter with an orc war party or the shadow thieves. Part of the puzzle is deducing what’s going on, why it’s happening and how to stop it. I’d follow some of the advice below as you run hauntings in your campaign:

• Work out the rules of your spirit: What will trigger the spirit to act in different ways. Will it become angry when someone comes near it’s gravesite, will it speak to the party, can it converse with them or just repeat phrases and what will cause it to end it’s haunting. Establishing these rules (and others) of your haunting will help you respond to the actions of your party.
• But don’t be too rigid: Your players will undoubtedly do some unexpected things. React to what they do and ensure the plot moves forward. Sometimes a negative leaves a clue in itself. Just allow players to progress without becoming frustrated.
• Prepare LOTS of clues: Prepare more clues than your players will need. They’re almost certain to miss some. And don’t leave essential clues where they might not be found. In fact, if you need to, grant important clues in the places your players happen to be looking. There’s nothing worse than leaving players floundering because they didn’t look for a clue beneath the kitchen sink or some other unexpected place.
• Progress the effects of the haunting: Have initial hauntings be subtle or smaller in nature, but build up to larger, more threatening occurrences.
• Allow for multiple resolutions with multiple consequences: Don’t have just one possible resolution as the players may not think of the thing you’re thinking of. Instead have multiple ways the haunting could be ended, but have the consequences differ too. For example, killing the entity might be the most straightforward solution, but have the creature use the voice of a child as it dies so players wonder if maybe they should have resolved the creatures problem rather than just killing it.

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Ghosts and other incorporeal entities make great enemies for a session. Let me know about your own encounters with spirits in your campaign in the comments below.

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