Can you frighten a ghost?

[Erpa]

I can't find anything right now, and I'm bugged that I have to hunt like this; can I intimidate/Frighten a ghost?

[Blave]

Yes, you can. The immunities in the statblock of a ghost don't say anything about fear, emotion effects or anything similar.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

As much as I struggle with the mental image of a menacing spectral entity from beyond the grave being sufficiently intimidated by a mortal warrior, I am very glad that PF2 removed blanket immunities to mind-affecting effects from creatures which have a mind.

One way to view it is that ghosts (and many incorporeal undead) tend to be depicted as especially ruled by their emotions--if something could convince the ghost to be spooked, it may not matter whether it has any reason to fear them logically. On the opposite hand, ghosts may already have died once, but given that they linger in this world, they probably have good reason to remain on the mortal plane, so the threat of having their tether to this world exorcised might reasonably be no less terrifying just because their body is ectoplasm and void, rather than flesh and bone.

... Had an Ulfen Champion successfully one-shot a linnorm with Scare to Death a while back and he's keeping the head for when he can get back to the Linnorm Kingdoms. It was awesome.

[HumbleGamer]

Rather than looking at the ancestry/family, I suggest you to just look at the immunities an NPC has.

For example, constructs are not necessarily immune to mental damage

Quote:

A construct is an artificial creature empowered by a force other than necromancy. Constructs are often mindless; they are immune to bleed damage, death effects, disease, healing, necromancy, nonlethal attacks, poison, and the doomed, drained, fatigued, paralyzed, sickened, and unconscious conditions; and they may have Hardness based on the materials used to construct their bodies. Constructs are not living creatures, nor are they undead. When reduced to 0 Hit Points, a construct creature is destroyed.

And you have to look after any of them ( Though I have the feel they did that way mostly because of ancestries that could have come, like poppet and automaton. Or maybe there are already specific constructs with no mental immunity ).

Also, a construct has no immunities to either Clumsy and Enfeebled, while one might assume you can't "enfeeble" a construct.

Back to the frightened condition ( or just mental/emotion effects ), in this 2e intelligent beings ( regardless their ancestry ) can no longer be immune to mental effects ( Vampires, liches, etc... are no longer immune, as they are "sentient" beings ) regardless their family/ancestry.

[Erpa]

No, good, good to hear. My thought was leaning towards 'yes' but I know with the CRB, you can hunt in 3 different sections to find the full truth of an answer (such as looking through all the key tag words to fully understand 'blinded').

I can rationalize it enough that the ghost still thinks of itself as alive, or in a state of disrupted living, and therefore will still act alive, and then feel threatened!