Ghosts should deal spirit damage, not void damage.

[Captain Morgan]

- Ghosts should be able to punch other ghost

- Dhampir and void healing PCs being immune to something as essential to adventures as ghosts is bad

- Ghosts are like the least evil undead so having them be void energy in its purest form is weird

- It's called SPIRIT damage duh

[Deriven Firelion]

I think that would be cooler.

[Finoan]

Agreed.

I think this came about because of the progression from Pathfinder1e to preRemaster to Remaster. In the initial printing of Ghosts, Spirit damage wasn't a thing. It was instead Good or Evil damage or Chaotic or Lawful damage. Those made even less sense than Negative damage.

But now that alignment damage is gone, Spirit damage does make a lot more sense than Void damage.

I'll certainly be using that in my own games as much as possible.

[Perpdepog]

It also helps to differentiate ghosts from the more overtly evil incorporeal undead, shadows and wraiths, particularly wraiths, which got way more evil in the Remaster it feels like.

[Squiggit]

I don't disagree, but to play devil's advocate... void isn't evil, it's a natural force that happens to power undeath, and in some respects ghosts feel like an inherently 'pure' form of undead, in the sense there's no necessary intervening matter or special condition, they are just a spirit animated into undeath. In that respect having them be somewhat innately good at manipulating the void energies that help sustain their existence feels very appropriate.

[Deriven Firelion]

I like the idea of ghosts being able to punch each other. Undead are immune to void damage, so they can't hurt each other doing void damage. Spirit damage leads to ghost brawls. That's cool.

[Ascalaphus]

There's a wrinkle though -

Incorporeal trait wrote:

Incorporeal creatures usually have immunity to effects or conditions that require a physical body, like disease, poison, and precision damage. They usually have resistance against all damage (except force damage and damage from Strikes with the ghost touch property rune), with double the resistance against non-magical damage.

Not included in that list: spirit damage.

While most undead incorporeals tend to also have positive damage go through, it actually because kinda hard for divine casters to handle non-undead incorporeal monsters because a lot of their force effects were converted to spirit.

I still maintain this is a bug and spirit damage should normally be effective against incorporeal enemies.

[NorrKnekten]

I believe that is purely because they lifted the Incorporeal Trait from the premaster content, as monster core lists the immunities and resistances for ghosts as

Monster Core pg. 160 1.1 wrote:

Immunities bleed, death effects, disease, paralyzed, poison, precision, unconscious Resistances all damage 5 (except force, ghost touch, spirit, or vitality; double resistance to non-magical). This resistance increases to 10 at 9th level and 15 at 16th level.

Most incorporeals did get the spirit damage exception when they were reprinted aswell.

Otherwise most other non-undead,non-shadow incorporeals deal either force damage or some kind of energy damage. Whatever energy causes them to manifest and give them form. For ghosts this happens to be void and thus they use void against the living.

Heres another question, What stops ghosts from dealing physical damage to eachother? Arguably their strikes should all have the properties of ghost touch.

[Tridus]

Great idea! That really does make more sense.

NorrKnekten wrote:

Heres another question, What stops ghosts from dealing physical damage to eachother? Arguably their strikes should all have the properties of ghost touch.

They still don't have a physical body to damage, even if its another ghost trying to do it.

[NorrKnekten]

Yet they aren't immune to physical damage and can even wrestle eachother, Even if their modifier is crap.

Like that one encounter where two poltergeists have spent centuries just throwing objects at eachother. Who knows how many times they have destroyed eachother through throwing furniture at eachother only to then reform 2d4 days after to continue the cycle.

Against corporeal creatures though? yeah, Energy or Spirit makes the most sense so the idea of making ghosts deal physical damage is not really a serious one when changing it to some kind of energy or spirit does the same thing with less writing.

[Christopher#2411504]

Void does reprersent death as "part of the cycle of life an death". Which is why Druids and Clerics are allowed to use it in their spells.

But yes, Spirit damage might make more sense now. Doesn't mean they are necessarily aware of it or willing to come to blows.

NorrKnekten wrote:

Yet they aren't immune to physical damage and can even wrestle eachother, Even if their modifier is crap.

Oh gods, that is like 5E Werewolf Wrestling!

They have "Damage Immunities Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing From Nonmagical Attacks Not Made With Silvered Weapons"
And their Claws count neither as magical nor silver.

They literrally can't hurt each other.

[NorrKnekten]

Except that the ghosts can, albeit very ineffectively as is the case with the two poltergeists. Which makes it all the more effective for storytelling if you present the poltergeists as centuary old rivals that want to send the other to hell. But they keep reforming once a week.

Wait.. isn't this just the plot for Team Fortress 2.

[Loreguard]

NorrKnekten wrote:

I believe that is purely because they lifted the Incorporeal Trait from the premaster content, as monster core lists the immunities and resistances for ghosts as

Monster Core pg. 160 1.1 wrote:

Immunities bleed, death effects, disease, paralyzed, poison, precision, unconscious Resistances all damage 5 (except force, ghost touch, spirit, or vitality; double resistance to non-magical). This resistance increases to 10 at 9th level and 15 at 16th level.

Most incorporeals did get the spirit damage exception when they were reprinted aswell.

Otherwise most other non-undead,non-shadow incorporeals deal either force damage or some kind of energy damage. Whatever energy causes them to manifest and give them form. For ghosts this happens to be void and thus they use void against the living.

Heres another question, What stops ghosts from dealing physical damage to eachother? Arguably their strikes should all have the properties of ghost touch.

One could make at least one of their attack versatile giving them the ability to do Spirit or Void damage with their strike. Gives them some flexibility to do damage to creatures that might have otherwise been immune to pure void damage.

Or potentially you could add an alternate attack that does Spirit damage that they could use if they want to switch things up or they discover their opponent is immune to void damage.

For another instance of why doing this would be that it wouldn't make sense to add versatile (spirit) to a draining attack that also replenish the ghosts HP by doing damage to a living creature. So that would be another option to create an alternate attack doing spirit damage.

I think the flavor of ghosts being able to do spirit damage would make sense... although I concede it isn't inherently wrong for them to do void damage either.

[Perpdepog]

Ascalaphus wrote:

There's a wrinkle though -

Incorporeal trait wrote:

Incorporeal creatures usually have immunity to effects or conditions that require a physical body, like disease, poison, and precision damage. They usually have resistance against all damage (except force damage and damage from Strikes with the ghost touch property rune), with double the resistance against non-magical damage.

Not included in that list: spirit damage.

While most undead incorporeals tend to also have positive damage go through, it actually because kinda hard for divine casters to handle non-undead incorporeal monsters because a lot of their force effects were converted to spirit.

I still maintain this is a bug and spirit damage should normally be effective against incorporeal enemies.

It's that word usually. It's doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. I agree that spirit damage should be included too, though to play devil's advocate for a moment, it may not be included because that's the Incorporeal trait, not the Ghost trait or anything specifically linked to ghosts. Ghosts are definitely the first thing that comes to my mind when I think incorporeal, but they're not the only thing in the game to be incorporeal.

[Christopher#2411504]

Perpdepog wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

There's a wrinkle though -

Incorporeal trait wrote:

Incorporeal creatures usually have immunity to effects or conditions that require a physical body, like disease, poison, and precision damage. They usually have resistance against all damage (except force damage and damage from Strikes with the ghost touch property rune), with double the resistance against non-magical damage.

Not included in that list: spirit damage.

While most undead incorporeals tend to also have positive damage go through, it actually because kinda hard for divine casters to handle non-undead incorporeal monsters because a lot of their force effects were converted to spirit.

I still maintain this is a bug and spirit damage should normally be effective against incorporeal enemies.

It's that word usually. It's doing some heavy lifting in that sentence. I agree that spirit damage should be included too, though to play devil's advocate for a moment, it may not be included because that's the Incorporeal trait, not the Ghost trait or anything specifically linked to ghosts. Ghosts are definitely the first thing that comes to my mind when I think incorporeal, but they're not the only thing in the game to be incorporeal.

To clarify, Spirit Damage is included in the Remaster Ghosts:

Ghost Commoner: "Resistances all damage 5 (except force, ghost touch, spirit, or vitality; double resistance vs. non-magical)"
Ghost Mage: "Resistances all damage 10 (except force, ghost touch, spirit, or vitality; double resistance vs. non-magical)"

Incorporeal doesn't even have a full listing to begin with:
"They usually have resistance against all damage (except force damage and damage from Strikes with the ghost touch property rune), with double the resistance against non-magical damage."

[WatersLethe]

You son of a lich, I'm in.

[Captain Morgan]

WatersLethe wrote:

You son of a lich, I'm in.

Oh I am stealing that.