A friend of mine is letting me join a Pathfinder campaign that she's DMing and has approved the idea of my using a Mythos Ghoul since the campaign is currently situated around Ustalav so she thinks a Ghoul would fit in well there.
For my Ghoul he's going to be a Dusk Elf Crypt Breaker who ended up changing due to all the necrotic energy he'd be inadvertently coming in contact with throughout his adventures but his completed transformation is fairly recent, being a full Ghoul for only a couple of years.
So my question is how much of the Elven mentality should he retain after his transformation? Given he's only been a Ghoul for a couple of years I feel like he should still retain Elven as a free language, as well as still having an Elven sense of cuisine and aesthetics that is current with the times.
I'm thinking maybe he baths on a fairly regular basis, eats his putrefied meat with a knife and fork and perhaps a bottle of wine that compliments the humanoid it came from, perhaps wear a censer or some other type of incense holder around his neck to help stave off a Ghouls normal smell and so forth.
Anyone else have any good suggestions about what parts of being an Elf he should retain in his new form?
And here's the link to the PDF if anyone is interested but doesn't have it yet: https://petersengames.com/the-games-shop/sandy-petersens-cthulhu-mythos-for -pathfinder-pdf/
Ok, I think you may have gotten the wrong Ghoul. When I'm talking Mythos Ghoul I don't mean an Undead Ghoul, I mean a Living Ghoul.
Mythos Ghouls need to eat, drink and sleep just like any other living being. While they may look monstrous and have an unpleasant aroma they are very much a living being.
Here's the description from the Sandy Peterson Games book:
The word “ghoul” often conjures grotesque images that shock and nauseate. Dwellers in graveyards and connoisseurs of flesh and bone, these hooved eaters of the dead move with hungered poise, slaver for the living, and exude the stench of a charnel house. And yet, those who suspect a ghoul of being nothing more than a savage monster are often surprised to learn otherwise. Ghouls are not savage or feral, but possess a keen intellect and a complex society steeped in lore and custom. A ghoul is just as likely to aid visitors as attack, if not more so.
Unlike the more well-known grave-gorging undead that share the same name, these ghouls are living creatures. While their demeanor and nature would seem to make them natural allies to undead ghouls, competition for food and the undead hatred of the living makes living ghouls and their undead counterparts bitter enemies. Nonetheless, living ghoul necromancers are fond of using undead as minions, and undead ghouls often appeal to the sardonic sense of irony so many ghouls possess.
Unless otherwise noted in the text below, when the word “ghoul” is used, it is used to refer to the living ghouls of Lovecraft’s traditions, rather than monstrous undead ghouls.
So the Ghoul I'm referring to is the living sort. A Nascent Ghoul is a template added to the character's race that adds a -4 to Charisma and a -2 to Dexterity but upon completing the transformation into a full Mythos Ghoul their race changes to Ghoul and they lose the stats bonus/penalty for their old race, in this case Elf, and instead gain the bonus/penalty for Ghoul.
And since the campaign is set in Ustalav that's why I picked the Alchemist's Cryper Breaker, although I'm also weighing the Investigator's Gravedigger as a possibility as well.
But mostly, in the grand scheme of the character, him being a Dusk Elf is merely background fluff. That's why I'm not keeping anything like Elven Magic, skill bonuses or the like but merely going for what would be considered personality aspects.
product link CMfPF
personally I think you should be a base human rather than an elf.
Alchemist Class Crypt Breaker is focused on corporeal undead and constructs.
Cthulhu mythos ghouls retain knowledge of their past. The more intelligent ones try to carry on that past life in their new one. They live in the dreamlands and know of burrows that lead there. They are also familiar with Mordiggian and the black temple in a certain city. They now eat dead flesh, preferring human and the older the better. They also realize they can contaminate others with this dread curse and are likely to take precautions. Some may yearn to be human again.In previous editions you had to create a base character with class, get converted into a ghoul paying the HD or CR in levels, then undead had to pay 3 levels to become 'emancipated spawn'{PrC in Savage Species}(PCs) gaining +2 BAB, +1/1/3 svs, +6 turn resistance in the process.
So you should have to pay somehow for being an undead type and a ghoul, mainly in lost levels.
Here's the link for the Sandy Peterson Mythos Ghoul if you're interested. It's built more to make them playable as either a 1st level character or as a way to replace a character's race. So there's no having to incur massive penalties to create them, aside from the Nascent Ghoul period which has some hefty penalties to Charisma and Dexterity, but those should be expected of a transitional stage. The section gives a pretty detailed accounting of how the Ghouls think.
Also of note is the Sandy Peterson supplement also adds Dreamlands Cats as a playable race.
If I remember correctly the Mythos Ghoul kind of picks up memories and such from the corpses he eats, they have no culture of their own but build facsimiles of human culture from the memories they absorb from their meals.
So your character who has been turned into one, might start getting confused depending on how much he's eaten. Are the customs and traditions he has still all elven or have other ones slipped in there without him realizing it. Dose he still 100% remember what it is like to be an Elf or is it slipping away from him.
there is some neat RP potential in there