Having recently run across a ghost using malevolence for the first time, I am left befuddled by the encounter. It takes one of the most poorly defined and easily abused spells in PF (magic jar) and removes its most obvious weak point (the lifeless body of the caster), and then combines it with the inherent mind-affecting immunity of undead.
The encounter went something like this (party is fighter, ranger, bard, cleric):
round 1: ghost wins initiative, moves adjacent to the fighter and easily possesses him. rest of party stand around looking at each other and wondering what will happen next (nobody managed to identify the ghost properly)
round 2: fighter begins wailing on his own party, who now realizes that something is wrong and tries to disable the fighter. fascinate and hold person fail utterly as the undead controlling the body is immune to their effects. Unfortunately, the cleric doesn't have protection vs evil prepared.
round 3: luckily the party has recently found a wand of levitate so the bard start UMDing it on party members to get out of reach
rounds 4-6: everyone gets safely in the air after running away from the fighter. The cleric channels a couple of times to try and harm the ghost, but it's hard to tell if it has any effect. The ghost is frustrated and begins attacking itself. The party watches helplessly.
rounds 7-10: fighter kills himself... ghost exists the dead body and lunges for the ranger, instantly possessing him. The bard dismisses the ranger's levitate
later rounds: the bard and cleric watch the ranger kill himself just like the fighter did. The bard drinks his potion of invisibility, and the cleric gets lucky on his will save, so the two of them run as fast as they can for as long as they can, thankfully losing the ghost somewhere along the way.
so with half the party dead and no plan for next time, we're at a loss. What can we do against a malevolent ghost? We can't dispel the creature's ability because it's supernatural, and there doesn't seem to be much we can do to expel it from the host once it's established. I understand protection vs evil will prevent possession, but there doesn't seem to be an easy easy way to get a constant protection vs evil effect. I'm not sure if we're misinterpreting something or if malevolent ghosts are intended to be essentially save-or-die type of encounters. Does anyone have any suggestions or clarifications for us?
Round 2 ya screwed up. The effects of fascinate and Hold person CAN effect the body. Just because a ghost is possessing you doesn't change the body itself.
The fighter doesn't stop being Humanoid for the Hold Person to take effect.
Also Dispel Magic can end the effect as well.
Round 2 ya screwed up. The effects of fascinate and Hold person CAN effect the body. Just because a ghost is possessing you doesn't change the body itself.
The fighter doesn't stop being Humanoid for the Hold Person to take effect.
Also Dispel Magic can end the effect as well.
Thank you for the reply.
Our DM ruled that the ghost would keep its mind-affecting immunity since magic jar states that you keep your own mental abilities. This made sense to us, since conceptually it's the mind of the ghost in there... it shouldn't be any more susceptible than normal to things that affect the mind - ie mind-affecting effects like hold person and fascinate. Is this commonly interpreted differently?
The magic chapter of the CRB explicitly calls out that supernatural abilities are not subject to dispel magic, so it was ruled that was out of the question also =(
The mental immunity is due to having "Undead traits" which is part of the creature itself. Unless he believes the fighter gains all undead traits after bonding with the ghost that doesn't make a whole lot of sense eh?
I'll go into more detail on this. Essentially the ghost magic jars the fighter, the fighter's soul gets suppressed, and the Ghost which is a manifestation of the soul, takes it's place. The Ghost is now no longer a ghost, but the fighter, till it leaves the host.
Except it acts like the spell and the spell itself states that it can be dispelled.
I may be wrong about the dispelling but it feels right since it does state it can be dispelled at the bottom.
Even with this ruling, it shouldn't have been hard for you to incapacitate the fighter. I don't understand what you guys were doing for 10 rounds. No matter how stacked your Fighter is, it's 3vs1. Wail on him a bit, and mix in some nonlethal damage in there, he'll go down, he'll be unconscious but otherwise okay.
When the ghost abandons this host, the cleric (who likely has the best will save) can heal him up and get him back on his feet.
Now, as far as dealing with the ghost, magic circle against evil. Now that you know what you're up against; there's no excuse. Stay close to the cleric and you can't be possessed. Metamagic rod of extend spell if you want it to last even longer than it already does.
Furthermore, beating the ghost in combat is not important. You merely need to survive and escape. There is no real reason to fight it at all. Even if you defeat it, it will rejuvinate in 24 hours. They don't have life sense, so go mass invisible and bypass it, or teleport past it, or use one of the myriad of adventurer's travel tricks.
Find the reason your ghost exists, and solve the mystery. This isn't a combat problem. You need to spend time gathering information and figuring out why the ghost haunts this world, then you can help it move on to the afterlife.
The mental immunity is due to having "Undead traits" which is part of the creature itself. Unless he believes the fighter gains all undead traits after bonding with the ghost that doesn't make a whole lot of sense eh?
Except it acts like the spell and the spell itself states that it can be dispelled.
Aha, when you put it like that, it makes more sense to not carry over the immunities. Though frankly, I'm not sure what we would have done if the hold person/fascinate had succeeded. The ghost's ability does not seem to have a duration, so it seems like it could just wait out any disabling effect. Any advice on what to do after we disable the possessed character?
As for the dispel, I'm not sure our DM will buy that, since the spell description states "Destroying the receptacle ends the spell, and the spell can be dispelled at either the magic jar or the host's location." It seems to specifically state that the spell can be dispelled in both locations, implying that if the effect can be achieved in other ways (ie not through a spell), it may function otherwise. Definitely worth a shot though!
Even with this ruling, it shouldn't have been hard for you to incapacitate the fighter. I don't understand what you guys were doing for 10 rounds. No matter how stacked your Fighter is, it's 3vs1. Wail on him a bit, and mix in some nonlethal damage in there, he'll go down, he'll be unconscious but otherwise okay.
When the ghost abandons this host, the cleric (who likely has the best will save) can heal him up and get him back on his feet.
Now, as far as dealing with the ghost, magic circle against evil. Now that you know what you're up against; there's no excuse. Stay close to the cleric and you can't be possessed. Metamagic rod of extend spell if you want it to last even longer than it already does.
Furthermore, beating the ghost in combat is not important. You merely need to survive and escape. There is no real reason to fight it at all. Even if you defeat it, it will rejuvinate in 24 hours. They don't have life sense, so go mass invisible and bypass it, or teleport past it, or use one of the myriad of adventurer's travel tricks.
Find the reason your ghost exists, and solve the mystery. This isn't a combat problem. You need to spend time gathering information and figuring out why the ghost haunts this world, then you can help it move on to the afterlife.
I think we were mostly at a loss for what to do even if we disabled him. We tend to pool our party wealth to fund the more gear-dependent characters, so our fighter was reasonably dangerous for us to fight in melee, even 3v1, since one unlucky swing and we'd have another dead character. The ranger had just started to shoot him in round 5 or so, but he was having trouble hitting him, so it was dragging on for several rounds.
Good advice about avoiding the ghost and trying to solve the root problem instead. We'll definitely do that as soon as we've reassembled a worthwhile party.
Any advice for protection down the line? We can't have an active magic circle 24/7, so should we just resign to losing a party member whenever we face a ghost? I guess I'm trying to figure out what we can do for damage control once someone is possessed. Knocking them out is a fine idea, but there's nothing requiring the ghost to leave at that point?
maybe I'm overthinking this. Might be a "take your licks and move on" kind of scenario I guess! just seems goofy to have an enemy that doesn't seem to have a way to defeat them other than just avoiding them... it seems like any intelligent ghost can wait out a party relying on magic circle etc to protect them.
I edited my post to include a bit more explanation, but I digress.
As for advice what to do for the character, nonlethal coupdegrace.
Bring Prot from Evil. Dm's tend to give a few clues prior to a party wiper fight like this to things that might aid ya incredibly. Fighting without it kind of arbitrarily increases the CR of the fight without actually increasing the CR of the fight if ya get my meaning. If you have no way of actually combating the encounter then guess what? You went from an average to an impossible.
Its like how you can have these awesome Aquatic creatures whose CR match up with the group, but unless your party is prepared to fight underwater, it'll probably TPK the group.
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Make sure your party doesn't neglect will saves. At high level fighters can be more of a liability than a help. Iron Will, Indomitable Faith, Cloak of Resistance, and a half-way decent wisdom score can all help. These are important for a fighter that doesn't want to be possessed/dominated/etc and kill the party himself.
From everything I can tell, there IS no way to get rid of a ghost that is possessing a party member, as all the suggestions have focused on prevention. Protection/magic circle is just a temporary delay if cast after the initial possession and channeling/cure spells won't do anything since we have already decided that it loses the undead type when it possesses the victim.
I guess the best plan of action that I can see from this discussion is that if we get ambushed by a ghost and someone fails a save vs possession, the best plan of action is to abandon that PC and come back with stacks of magic circle scrolls and a new PC next time.
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No, the best course of action is to KO that PC with nonlethal damage. Then when the ghost de-possesses him on its own (for what use is an unconscious body?) you can heal that character. Attempt to prevent further possessions.
Rinse and repeat as needed. Escape if you can. Otherwise, sooner or later you'll start passing will saves.
If you focus on using non lethal to knock out the fighter and have the cleric ready to cast a circle when he drops, could you trap the ghost in the circle, drag the fighter free, and hightail it?
No, the best course of action is to KO that PC with nonlethal damage. Then when the ghost de-possesses him on its own (for what use is an unconscious body?) you can heal that character. Attempt to prevent further possessions.
Rinse and repeat as needed. Escape if you can. Otherwise, sooner or later you'll start passing will saves.
This. Why kill a friend of yours? Subdue him. The whole party gangs up and assists (+2) and wrestle him to the ground.
Have a wand of Daze around to rob the possessed of his next action. Subdue him.
Also, reread the definition of Protection from Evil: it allows a second saving throw at +2, and prevents the ghost from exerting mental control (time enough to tie him up).
I like the trap the soul suggestion, but that does require quite high end magic. Hmm...
The problem I have with all of the suggestions to knock out or disable the PC that is possessed is that doesn't force the ghost out. Everyone assumes the ghost will leave once the PC is unconscious, but he doesn't have to. An intelligent ghost is free to stay in the PC's body even if he is knocked out, which is a great strategy for him to wreak havoc on the party when they are sleeping for example. Our DM is the evil genius type, so that's the exact scenario I see playing out if we were to disable a possessed PC without getting rid of the ghost. Leaving the possessed PC behind as I suggested above is the only safe strategy that doesn't lead to an easy TPK. It seems that we're still at the situation where there are no actual options to expel a ghost. It sounds like an exorcism is in order, but as far as I can tell, the only person who could do it is a specific inquisitor archetype, which is a rather limited means of solving the problem.
Also, reread the definition of Protection from Evil: it allows a second saving throw at +2, and prevents the ghost from exerting mental control (time enough to tie him up).
I double checked protection from evil and it explicitly states "This spell does not expel a controlling life force (such as a ghost or spellcaster using magic jar), but it does prevent them from controlling the target." So it's definitely not a solution.