How do you use ghouls in D&D 5e is a question we don’t ask enough. Ghouls are great undead to use and can be use in unique ways when it comes to encounters. If you want to use Ghouls in encounters, have them be the enhancement to your encounters not the focus.
Key Points for Dungeon Masters:
• Ghouls are Not Mindless: With an Intelligence stat of 7, ghouls possess a basic level of cunning, enabling them to employ hit-and-run tactics and even work in tandem with other undead like zombies for strategic advantage.
• Paralyzing Claw Attack: The ghoul’s ability to paralyze adventurers with a successful claw attack introduces a layer of tension and strategy to encounters, necessitating careful party planning to mitigate this risk.
• Intelligent Encounter Design: Utilizing ghouls’ intelligence and abilities to create encounters that challenge the party beyond mere combat. This includes scenarios where ghouls might flee to bring reinforcements or strategically target party members to paralyze.
• Adjusting the Challenge: Considerations for potentially adjusting the paralysis DC for a heightened sense of danger, as well as tactics ghouls might employ based on their survival instincts and hunger for the living.
• Storytelling Opportunities: Suggestions for incorporating ghouls into your campaign’s lore and narrative, exploring their origins, desires, and societal structure within the undead hierarchy.
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However one uses them, as the GM/DM/RM, there is only one rule you have to remember: Ghouls just want to have fun.
+100 XP if you get that reference. 😉
Thank you
You are frogetting what ghouls are, they are undead embodiment of gluttony. They have a hole in their soul that erroneously seeks to fill it with the taste of flesh. they have a tortured existence to satiate a desire in a way that can never be successful. Undead existence is supposed to be a curse, and should be played as such.
Undeath is a progressive disease in my campaign. Those who contract the curse/disease sicken and die, sometimes within a matter of hours. Shortly thereafter (seconds to days, usually also a matter of hours) they arise as a zombie. Those zombies who eat well evolve into ghouls, then ghasts, and finally into wights. Those who don't putrefy, decay, and become skeletons.
Zombies have only the ability to pass on the disease/curse. Ghouls and ghasts have evolved their venom even further, and so can paralyze their victims. By the time they've evolved into the soul-eating Wights, they've gotten beyond their cannibalistic need for the flesh, and feast on the souls of the living directly.
Since you asked.
If you want to be really nasty to the PCs, if the ghoul paralyzes a character and it has allies, it can start to drag the PC off away from the combat for a private dinner. Can do the same with beasts too.
I never mix ghouls and zombies for the simple fact that ghouls eat the flesh of corpses and zombies have no sense of self-preservation. The ghouls would just eat the zombies and the zombies won't resist. There are other types of undead that you can pair them with, such as anything incorporeal, or corporeal undead that are powerful enough to keep the ghouls in a subservient position.
The lower the intelligence, the more likely it is to eat what it just dropped right then and there.
I use ghouls for the "zombie apocalypse" sort of game. I remove the paralyzing touch and give them a "zombie fever" with a 15 DC save that turns anyone bitten into a ghoul. Coming into contact with a ghoul corpse also calls for a save. Drinking water that has a ghoul corpse in it calls for a save too.
The disease is what causes the infestation. The infestation is what devastates kingdoms.
Unrelated to the topic, but the occasional mismatch between your narration and the on-screen text can be jarring at times for those of us listening and also reading along. Not sure if this is from a speech-to-text program or other service, but you might look into these discrepancies.
Otherwise, great video.
Kobold Press' Empire of the Ghouls has entered the chat
I don't use them at all
I tend to use ghouls as a 'natural' undead, they are created not by necromancers but by a kind of dark aura that forms in areas where desperate people turned on eachother to survive. Shipwrecks, isolated camps and villages where starvation drove the people to madness. The ghouls are formed from the remains of the last ones to die, the ones who ate their friends and loved ones and still starved in the end.
They are forever consumed by hatred and hunger, they want you dead, they want to eat you and they are cunning enough to set traps.
I have run a ghoul heavy adventure in 5 different campaigns and in only one of those did they not utterly terrify the party, the one time we had a paladin.
I have had more pc kills with ghouls than any other monster type, I have had a player rename their character for the many scars their one encounter with ghouls left on him.
My current party hasn't met them yet.
I did this: ac 10, dc15 paralysis for 3-6 seconds, 1d8+6 damage x2 claws, 12hp and 45' speed. They were fast but weak, with high damage and short term paralysis.
You are forgetting the most dangerous one, the Italian version, the Gaba-Ghoul.
I started D&D in 3e when they had an int of 13. Vampire folklore from some places didn't separate drinking blood and eating flesh. Ghouls can easily be Nosferatu-style vampires. Plus animals digging up shallow graves.
But even 5e's 7 int isn't That bad–a PC can start with an int of 8! So that opens a lot more options.
Even if you run them feral, they could be opportunistic hunters–following the party to eat the party's kills, or to wait until the party is fighting something else before the ghoul picks off weak targets. As for the "smart tactics vs starving hunger", that could be either based on the individual, or even on a check to resist its impulses/hunger. It could have a plan but then gives in.
I have Ghouls paralyzing a third level fighter under a 13. I have a third level cleric turning 1-12 of them on a 10 or better. Generally I give automatic hits on a paralyzed character, depending on circumstance. Ghouls can infect PC's and create a ghoul after they kill someone. Though if they eat the corpse there is no ghoul created.
Not many players play to their mental stats. Many dump int but play just as they always do. I always tell my players that I will play monsters the same way unless they play to their mental stats.
I think that rhe only reason a ghoul would attack a paralyzed victim is to start eating. Ghouls are motivated by hunger.
I dont remember if that is D&D accurate.
Ghouls feed on dead and decaying flesh. If they were working with zombies I would impose a Wisdom or Charisma save on them when the PCs take down one of the zombies. Any ghoul that fails falls on its former comrade and starts feasting.
I just use them to drag them away. So i dont end up one shotting a creature.
Yup
I hate to bring up the War Game Across the Pond, but I always use the Ghoul lore from Warhammer Fantasy for my scenarios.
They're undead…basically feral, rotting vampires that don't stop at draining blood, but devour flesh. The thing is, they are all under a mass delusion (a curse from their "king," the original ghoul) that THEY are actually a perfectly normal society owing fealty to their king. 😂 They're running around slaughtering heros and civilians, but they see themselves as normal people warring against a monstrous enemy for the glory of their ruler.
You've mentioned multiattack for ghouls but in my version of D&D 5e's monster manual they don't have that
always expect pack of ghouls with a ghast