Also there's some novels about Thay and Rashemen which are amazing for undead content(main character aoth and his Griffin riders)(on edit damn auto carrot always turns Thay into that... Gotta proofread heh).
Slight correction: I'm pretty sure zombies and skeletons don't collapse in anti-magic fields. They at least didn't in 3.5e. They were like golems, created by magic, but the process animating them is a closed loop. Further evidence is the spells that create them usually have a duration of instantaneous.
I was going to make the long campaign I'm running be ghoul-focused, with Doresain as the bbeg. But as I worked on it last summer my idea felt more and more similar to the pandemic (a spreading illness, people refusing to leave their houses, villages locking out strangers, etc) and dnd was supposed to be our escape. So I put that campaign away and made a different one. Still want to run it someday.
A similar enough thing happened to me, though not with a whole campaign. Before the campaign I was working on an isolated village that I trying to have a strange custom the party has to deal with. I decided on it was considered rude not to cover a part of the body normally not considered unusual to show. At first I was going to have it be a requirement of wearing hats, but then had the idea that maybe instead they should always keep their faces covered in some way. I thought it would be interesting, because it would make insight checks more difficult, but when the pandemic started I felt it seemed to correlative with the mask wearing that has become common place, though an ancient plague could give a nice backstory for why the behavior started and became part of their culture.
With some Adjustments it still can be fun. Maybe keep the pandemic level of the ghoul infection. Maybe even a small snippets when it comes to patient zero or the first Ghoul to trigger said event. Set up Doresain as the obvious villain in that, but during the first confrontation and maybe the first fight against him, it becomes clear that he has no clue either what the meaning behind all of it is. Maybe the Ghouls themself react different. Maybe someone else tries to create a total army that overruns the world turning everyone into ghouls only to let the normal ones die out after a while and those special ones stay behind. The whole idea you have is nice to be honest. And with some perfect plot hooks, some dead ends and red-herrings and you could have an fun story at your hand.
These creatures are a real pain for low level adventurers, and should be ! I've used high leveled ghouls as lieutenants for a villain, it worked well. On another board, I didn't know their ties with the Abyss, thanks for the info ! Good work
ghouls (the mindless ones) and the occasion not so farial ghast are low lvl pains in the ass, but as you go up in lvl so do does the numbers of ghoals and the intelagiance of ghasts
My character didn’t want to kill her ghouls she’s good. So she released them outside of town…my DM just informed me he did not forget that. I haven’t been back to my hometown in a few weeks, in game. Whoopsy X.X
Hey, maybe your DM means that those Ghouls remember you as the one who let them live, and they will be willing to help you with a new problem! That or you're going home to a Graveyard, I'd say about 50/50.
@@theyondant6088 Why not both!? An abandoned graveyard that resembles a village and as you walk through the old ruined gate you see a deathly pale boy who greets, cracking some horrible pun like "Follow me. Don't worry I won't bite". Then they escort you into the epicenter of the town where the mayor's daughter greets you. Saying thanks for the meal and asks if you have any other good shopping locations for a carnivore.
Well that would be a cool addition to my world. A nomadic society of ghouls that attack small towns and villages, leaving them desolated before disappearing into the night. But if you come offering corpses, they have valueable information to tell. After all, many of them have lived for a remarkably long time. perhaps there is something within that mind that could be of use to you?
I had a mental block trying to find my undead kingdom for my world. I just love them so much. The existence of true ghouls made that click. I Never knew they existed. True ghoul Elf knights living has immortal nobles, enslaving the human populace, sound so perfect to me. Thanks for the perfect timing of theses.
Ghouls are honestly a lot more interesting than what I thought they were. They just seemed like something you'd throw into a dungeon to add a bit of danger for the players.
Imagine a group in an extreme survival situation, like the crash that inspired the movie Alive, but D&D. When it comes time to debate whether to eat the dead, many in the group believe that cannibalism will turn you into a ghoul. Could be a great RP moment.
A sealed necropolis with only a high entrance sounds like a great way to deal with the dead, no more graveyards for necromancers, no space filled with bodies. Just recycling
I've always used Ghouls and Vampires side by side as they're very complimentary and make for naturally good allies. Vampires only require the blood of a victim while Ghouls crave the flesh, this just naturally works out as they don't need to compete. A Vampire drinks the blood and gives the cast off flesh to the Ghouls, also by the Ghouls devouring the flesh of the victim this also keeps the numbers of unwanted Vampire spawn in check, this helps to limit the numbers of both undead helping them to stay hidden from unwanted attention. The Ghouls also benefit from the strength and cunning of the much more powerful undead creature (or creatures in the case of a coven) while the Vampire benefits from having minions that are smarter and stronger than skeletons or zombies. A typical arrangement of mine is using the Ghouls as guardians during the day and pack hunters at night either collecting prey for or driving them towards the Vampire. In turn the Vampires will typically use cunning or influence to keep themselves and their minions hidden from society at large, intervening directly in the case of powerful or skilled opponents such as undead hunters or adventurers. *In my campaigns Vampires are typically powerful and cunning creatures with a natural affinity for necromancy and who quite often have levels in one or more classes. It is very rare to encounter "wild" packs of vampires as their more cosmopolitan kin tend to hunt them down, it's not good for anyone for a bunch of wild animals to be slaughtering and frightening your livestock after all. They also tend to be choosy as to who gets to join their ranks so they often include wealthy or influential people such as landed nobility, the leaders of powerful merchant houses, guild leaders, etc... The sheer ammount of resources and manpower that a well established coven has at its disposal is staggering and crusades have been fought just to uproot them from fallen cities and even the occasional kingdom.
The most important thing is that they don't tell you about ghouls is that ghouls just wanna have fun. That's all they really want. Some fun. When the working day is done, ghouls just wanna have fun. They come home in the middle of the night their mummy says "when you gonna live your life right", Oh mummy dear we're not the fortunate ones but ghouls just wanna have fun.
@@mahro-wulf9947 I don't know but it's always fun to fight Ghouls, ghouls, ghouls. Long legs and bloodstained lips. Dancin down on sunset strip, with blood red lips and fingertips.
That thing about elves being immune to ghouls’ paralytic touch isn’t in the PHB so I’m excited to tell my players. It really should be in the PHB if it’s in the MM.
@@mylesdrake2949 The most common pattern I saw was that beings of unlife have to have a supplementary diet of "normal" living things or they faced degradation. Liches seem to have found the most effective source of energy as living things souls. Ghouls require humanoid flesh, etc., they all need something extra to sustain themselves. With two exceptions! Mummies and Mummy Lords are unique in that they spend undeath not needing any form of sustenance. This is probably because they are feeding directly on the divine energy of whatever god of death has gifted them with their unique forms. Either the mummy draws directly from a god (implying minimal costs required with their upkeep, showing divine energy to be incredibly potent a food source) OR their transformation is so perfect not even this is required. I am leaning towards the former conclusion as it seems highly irregular for there to be no "costs" associated with their undeaths. As a fellow student of the arcane, Id love to hear your thoughts!
@@daniell1483 as far as Mummies go, they do remove their organs and put them in canopic jars which is how they tie themselves to the divine. Destruction of these jars allows a Mummy to permanently be dealt with. As far as degradation goes, while yes divine magic plays a part, Mummies mostly don't degrade due the techniques use to preserve their bodies. Being the most preserve out of all common undead.. As for other divine intelligent undead you have the "death knight" we can compare to Mummies. These ones are unique in the sense they have no reason to kill or "eat" but kill out of sheer hatred of the world even as their bodies crumble to dust their souls remain piloting their armor. Both however feel they have a "purpose" that must be upheld. Mummies guard their place of burial killing intruders and Death knights engage in a black crusade. Both won't stop till either completely and utterly destroyed or that what purpose that binds them has been fulfilled.
@@mylesdrake2949 I suspect that Death Knights are feeding on some small part of their target's souls. DK are to liches what fighters are to mages, so I suspect they have similar needs as a lich, i.e souls. And yeah, canopic jars hold the organs of the mummy, but besides ceremonial reasons, it isn't like they truly need those jars besides the initial creation process. So I think canopic jars are perhaps more a game mechanic than anything; an enemy that is truly unable to be destroyed is problematic for D&D, so I can't help but think that is more of a compromise reached rather than their true purpose. That or, the gods of death are perhaps not allowed to create a perfect undead that isn't able to be destroyed. Either way, as undead, their true nourishment to prevent degradation isn't tied to those jars, it is perhaps just a medium through which those divine forces are able to work to keep the mummy bound to the Prime Material. That is my thoughts anyway.
Check out the Pickman Model by Lovecraft and a lot of the work Clark Ashton Smith did. They go into ghouls extensively. Pickman was an artist that needed good subject matter and made a deal with the ghouls to use them as models in exchange for eventually becoming one himself.
A ghast that shoots arrows cover with their own ichor/ blood to poison PCs to increase his numbers. Had that happen to a few of my low level PCs over the years, at lest the DM allowed us to run PC as monster. Mostly cause it free them up from making all the dice rolls themselves.
I seemed super happy at the end haha. Dude your videos are amazing and help so much. Thank you for all the work that you do for the community. The clothing line you are designing is is epic and extremely exciting. Keep up the great work and this channel will keep growing!
So in theory ecologically, ghouls would hunt and consume other undead creatures such as zombies? That would make them massively important in preventing the spread of certain strains of undeath.
In my campaign they do not. They require the flesh of a sentient human or humanoid. The process of becoming a zombie destroys their intelligence and making them inedible to ghouls or ghasts. In a weird way, they are spoiled meat to them.
Can I just say I greatly appreciate these vids on the undead. We're currently doing an evil campaign and my character is heavily based on the working of the anima and the souls of things. Additionally we have a necromancer in our party so some very chaotic things are bound to happen between us. Hearing these grants more insight on the inner workings of the undead
I am having a ton of fun by adapting the adventure night of the walking dead and combining it with the death house. The ghasts are disguised and walk among the living, actually ruling them.
Could go a darksouls style game of being a true ghoul but the first time to drop to zero you become a normal ghoul until you eat 'a soul' or flesh of a victim. May have a cleanser item that turns you back to human until you drop to zero and return to a ghoul once more.
This video actually inspired me to feature basically ghoul romans as the badies in my campaign, now my players are scared if they are going to get ferals to be used as a distraction or intellectual warmongers
So there's one thing that I didn't quite understand. At the beginning of the video, you read from the monster manual that a ghoul doesn't decay and they can persist for untold ages without feeding. But then, towards the end, the undead book says they are not immortal and they decay and need to eat. Was this just a difference between editions? Or does the monster manual somehow contain the "imperfect" knowledge someone in-world would have?
That's probably a difference between editions. Since they are only immortal in the Abyss, an in-world character would be far more likely to know that they can starve.
I'm playing cleric in Dungeon of the Mad Mage, and my DM made ghouls and their ghast into little community where they were all inteligent and communicating. They thought of themselves as noble knights serving their king, and they were acting like it while my party saw them as regular ghouls. And my cleric being young Twilight domain actually mourn the dead ghast king, cause my character is empathetic way too much.
Check if your DM is an Age of Sigmar fan or has at least heard of the faction called the Flesheater Courts, because I think he might have borrowed the idea from them.
you are my favorite lore UA-camr i've searched but never find a video explaining the afterlife of forgoten realms, it would be really cool if you made a video about it
Shadowrun ghouls are the same too, except they're still alive. I thought I remembered oldschool D&D ghouls prefered eating long dead corpses than fresh ones, but I might be mixing memories with Necrophages
Actually ghouls (as described here, that are being forming after acts of cannibalism) have real world equivalent - Wendigo (yes the name comes from the mythical Native American creature) Psychosis is a phenomenon in which a person goes mad; the victim desires human flesh and fears turning into a Wendigo. It starts after a prolonged period of being inside-to escape the cold temperatures and deep snow-with little food. A feeling of melancholy takes over and the sufferer loses their appetite and begins having nightmares. Eventually, the victim goes insane and is consumed by the idea of eating human flesh.
There's a similar phenomenon in Japan/certain Asian countries. Though that is called Fox Sickness, and is more of an obsession with consuming specific pieces of anatomy, usually the liver.
I'm actually playing through a ghoul campaign right now called "Empire of Ghouls" and it's really cool. It has a lot of really cool lore and variations on ghouls.
First to appreciate your video! Whoo! All jokes aside can you go over Liberis Mortis and more specifically the Diet, Dependent, Craving, and Inescapable, and why 5th and 4th don't like using them.
One cool thing I did was have a Nosferatu from the new ravenloft book create ghouls instead of vampire spawn with it's bite under it's control(Some Strigoi ghoul king vibes). Ghouls had my take of ghoul fever which was on a successful bite attack DC 15 con save to contract giving you the poisoned condition till cured. After 24 hours have passed you can roll another save and if failed you gain one level of exhaustion that can't be recovered till the ghoul fever is cured. After 3 successful saves the disease ends and you can begin recovering exhaustion levels, death results in you rising as a ghoul the next night or if already night, (paying homage to create undead) in the next d4 hours. If any of you want to use this feel free since wizards literally just forgot to add it if you look up some old sage advice regarding ghouls.
Considering that all undead are unnatural creatures and that they have unnatural hunger, I would say that we the embrace the confusion. And not just that band of zombies turning out to have been ghouls, but that the very distinctions between various undead is a little artificial and arbitrary on our part aside from the corporeal and incorporeal undead. Meaning feel free to make your own version of undead, maybe that Lich is just as interested in your flesh as your soul, maybe a couple of the zombies in that horde are smarter and more dangerous than the rest, maybe some of them are capable of a twisted kind of evolution.
Maybe even make Liches who don’t need any food or souls and can look like Baelnorns forever, which they ought to be able to if they were making such a deal for immortality.
At this point I want to hear a 'favourite things' cover themed around the undead given the endless plethora of them. "Liches and revenants and banshees that scream..."
Loving the videos about the undead! I'm actually playing as a Necromancer Wizard atm, so these have been particularly helpful. Would you consider doing a video on Wights any time soon?
I have a ghast NPC that was turned from ghoul to ghast by a necromancer BBEG in my campaign! Once he was gifted (or cursed) to remember his past, he swore fealty to the necromancer, and spent years honing his body and allowed his mind to steep in anger at those who wronged him (became a barbarian).
Already ordered the Lolth t-shirt, but I'm definitely considering getting that Orcus hoodie too. Maybe for christmas. Or my birthday, which is not long after.
Lol, I did a ghoul sorcerer with the Phoenix subclass from unearthed arcana Basically I looked up a homebrew race and then wrote background story that some cultists tried resurrecting an undead with the essence of the Phoenix to restore the original person Well, the ritual went wrong, consumed all their life force, but actually brought the character back She then ate a lot of the corpses in a frenzy, calmed down, read the notes and books at the cultists' place, then ate the remaining corpses and left to explore the world She has no memories btw, just human intelligence and the normal player/sorcerer abilities
A video on rust monsters would be cool, the older editions say that they can break down any non-magical metal, but 5e says it an only damage nonmagical FERROUS metals
Great video! Love learning about this lore. Favorite part was the mention about midway in vid about how a person could become a ghoul dependent on a life "very gluten - ous" in nature 👀🤪😳 Best PSA against gluten ever👉👍🏻🐧 Ps. - also it's been shown to blow your d*** off, according to Southpark -- so becoming a nasty undead cannibal and this even worse curse 🤔☺🙃🐧
What about spell create undead? If i understand correctly ghouls have they souls still attached to them so does create undead using soul of the corpse or for example takes it from abyss?
I added a fun curse to my game called The Sin Eaters Burden, the one holding this curse would take apon the sins of those around them. After prolonged exposure of this curse the player begins to hear voices pushing them to indulge in evil acts. If the player goes along with these evil suggestions they are rewarded with experience. It starts of simple like lying to a party member to cannibalizing a man you tortured for hours. Ultimately if the player doesn't get the curse lifted they turn into an undead under the control of whom ever casted the curse. The more evil choices the player has made the higher level undead they become.
Yes more undead!!! Love this, I didn't know about true ghouls, might be fun to roll a campaign where everyone is a true ghoul. Random side note but that's one of the things I loved about WoW before it became crap, Forsaken always felt like an interesting storyline.
First time commenting, but long time watcher and suscriber :). I'm glad you're working on some PDFs and whatnot to put out and I'll be sure to keep an eye out for it. I'm a professional artist that does work for TTRPGs, Miniature games and video games so I did want to throw a small word of caution out on the way you're seeking artists. Asking for artists to make a piece of art for an application (even if you don't intend to use it) is called speculative (spec) work and it tends to be (rightly) considered a big no-no in professional art and publication circles. It's basically an exploitative practice and its one of the things pro artists get warned about when they're starting out... I know that is definitely not your intent but doing that can put a red flag on your project for more experienced artists who've encountered spec work before. Any artist with the skill level and experience you're looking for (1st party DnD book levels) should have a portfolio that can show everything you need to know in case you want to hire them, without a need for spec :)
I got rip off by art galleries so much in my mid 20's I gave up on my art work and let my skill degrade for close to 20 years, I am just getting back to ink drawing what I did as a teenager. It is a bit rough to get back into the habit of sitting down and spending three to six hours to work on a single picture.
Always been a fan of d&d ghouls and ghosts. As a dm I’ve used them in conjunction with juju zombies to spread disease across the player kingdom. Things get real when that horde of lumbering”zombies” turns out to be a ghoulish ambush…..
You could have mention "Empire of the Ghouls" from Kobold Press. It's a third party 5e module, they actually have the same idea as you 2 or 3 years ago and made a 350 pages book. You even took the art cover of the book for your video at 9:53.
Good video! Lacedons do appear but they do not have that name . They are named aquatic ghouls and appear in Princes of the Apocalypse. They are exactly the same, just have a swimming speed, tbh might as well, no need to fill space in a book for it.
Very intrigued by these "true ghouls" how does their society work. Would love to hear more.
I recommend the campaign the Empire of Ghouls from Midgard Campaign Setting
Check out the necropolitan. They're people who gave up life in a ritual to become undead with all their memories and skills and they have cities
Yes I support this video idea
Also there's some novels about Thay and Rashemen which are amazing for undead content(main character aoth and his Griffin riders)(on edit damn auto carrot always turns Thay into that... Gotta proofread heh).
it is the underdark, so slavery is likely involved.
Seeing as undead don't need to breathe, one can assume a lacedon is, in fact, just a regular ghoul who lives underwater.
Slight correction: I'm pretty sure zombies and skeletons don't collapse in anti-magic fields. They at least didn't in 3.5e. They were like golems, created by magic, but the process animating them is a closed loop. Further evidence is the spells that create them usually have a duration of instantaneous.
Right, I am guessing that the Antimagic field just means the necromancer can no longer give additional commands to those undead while they are in it.
@@evannibbe9375 yeah, that and supernatural abilities won't work. Even incorporeal undead aren't destroyed, they just blink out of existence
Hence why he said they *should* collapse.
@@alchemysaga3745 I mean I guess, but they've worldbuilt around it, and that's good enough for me
I was going to make the long campaign I'm running be ghoul-focused, with Doresain as the bbeg. But as I worked on it last summer my idea felt more and more similar to the pandemic (a spreading illness, people refusing to leave their houses, villages locking out strangers, etc) and dnd was supposed to be our escape. So I put that campaign away and made a different one. Still want to run it someday.
Good idea on both counts. Shelve it but definitely use it. Sounds great
A similar enough thing happened to me, though not with a whole campaign. Before the campaign I was working on an isolated village that I trying to have a strange custom the party has to deal with. I decided on it was considered rude not to cover a part of the body normally not considered unusual to show. At first I was going to have it be a requirement of wearing hats, but then had the idea that maybe instead they should always keep their faces covered in some way. I thought it would be interesting, because it would make insight checks more difficult, but when the pandemic started I felt it seemed to correlative with the mask wearing that has become common place, though an ancient plague could give a nice backstory for why the behavior started and became part of their culture.
Wdym? People often times refuse to stay in there homes. Having massive protests against the quarantine
Honestly, I would say just run it. It might feel good to be able to literally punch a virus in the face as a player!
With some Adjustments it still can be fun. Maybe keep the pandemic level of the ghoul infection. Maybe even a small snippets when it comes to patient zero or the first Ghoul to trigger said event. Set up Doresain as the obvious villain in that, but during the first confrontation and maybe the first fight against him, it becomes clear that he has no clue either what the meaning behind all of it is. Maybe the Ghouls themself react different. Maybe someone else tries to create a total army that overruns the world turning everyone into ghouls only to let the normal ones die out after a while and those special ones stay behind.
The whole idea you have is nice to be honest. And with some perfect plot hooks, some dead ends and red-herrings and you could have an fun story at your hand.
These creatures are a real pain for low level adventurers, and should be ! I've used high leveled ghouls as lieutenants for a villain, it worked well.
On another board, I didn't know their ties with the Abyss, thanks for the info ! Good work
It's new that's why 😉
Almost every undead are tied to the abyss... Why? Because is against the balance of life and death
@@Voldrim359 I would have link it to the Négative Plan instead of the abyss
ghouls (the mindless ones) and the occasion not so farial ghast are low lvl pains in the ass, but as you go up in lvl so do does the numbers of ghoals and the intelagiance of ghasts
@@Voldrim359 no, because Orcus live there
My character didn’t want to kill her ghouls she’s good. So she released them outside of town…my DM just informed me he did not forget that. I haven’t been back to my hometown in a few weeks, in game. Whoopsy X.X
Hey, maybe your DM means that those Ghouls remember you as the one who let them live, and they will be willing to help you with a new problem!
That or you're going home to a Graveyard, I'd say about 50/50.
A good necromancer? I thought I was the only one
@@theyondant6088 Why not both!? An abandoned graveyard that resembles a village and as you walk through the old ruined gate you see a deathly pale boy who greets, cracking some horrible pun like "Follow me. Don't worry I won't bite". Then they escort you into the epicenter of the town where the mayor's daughter greets you. Saying thanks for the meal and asks if you have any other good shopping locations for a carnivore.
"Your DM will remember that."
That character must have to do a lot of good deeds to balance out the creation of powerful undead.
Well that would be a cool addition to my world. A nomadic society of ghouls that attack small towns and villages, leaving them desolated before disappearing into the night. But if you come offering corpses, they have valueable information to tell. After all, many of them have lived for a remarkably long time. perhaps there is something within that mind that could be of use to you?
I had a mental block trying to find my undead kingdom for my world. I just love them so much. The existence of true ghouls made that click. I Never knew they existed. True ghoul Elf knights living has immortal nobles, enslaving the human populace, sound so perfect to me. Thanks for the perfect timing of theses.
Yeah, I've been wondering what creature to use for a regular intelligent humanoid undead community and that fits the bill alright!
@@Harrowed2TheMind wights with an intelligence boost are a good one too.
Ghouls are honestly a lot more interesting than what I thought they were.
They just seemed like something you'd throw into a dungeon to add a bit of danger for the players.
In the world of D&D I think trying to live a peaceful life free of trouble would be the most challenging quest of all
Imagine a group in an extreme survival situation, like the crash that inspired the movie Alive, but D&D. When it comes time to debate whether to eat the dead, many in the group believe that cannibalism will turn you into a ghoul. Could be a great RP moment.
A sealed necropolis with only a high entrance sounds like a great way to deal with the dead, no more graveyards for necromancers, no space filled with bodies. Just recycling
I've always used Ghouls and Vampires side by side as they're very complimentary and make for naturally good allies.
Vampires only require the blood of a victim while Ghouls crave the flesh, this just naturally works out as they don't need to compete. A Vampire drinks the blood and gives the cast off flesh to the Ghouls, also by the Ghouls devouring the flesh of the victim this also keeps the numbers of unwanted Vampire spawn in check, this helps to limit the numbers of both undead helping them to stay hidden from unwanted attention. The Ghouls also benefit from the strength and cunning of the much more powerful undead creature (or creatures in the case of a coven) while the Vampire benefits from having minions that are smarter and stronger than skeletons or zombies.
A typical arrangement of mine is using the Ghouls as guardians during the day and pack hunters at night either collecting prey for or driving them towards the Vampire. In turn the Vampires will typically use cunning or influence to keep themselves and their minions hidden from society at large, intervening directly in the case of powerful or skilled opponents such as undead hunters or adventurers.
*In my campaigns Vampires are typically powerful and cunning creatures with a natural affinity for necromancy and who quite often have levels in one or more classes. It is very rare to encounter "wild" packs of vampires as their more cosmopolitan kin tend to hunt them down, it's not good for anyone for a bunch of wild animals to be slaughtering and frightening your livestock after all. They also tend to be choosy as to who gets to join their ranks so they often include wealthy or influential people such as landed nobility, the leaders of powerful merchant houses, guild leaders, etc... The sheer ammount of resources and manpower that a well established coven has at its disposal is staggering and crusades have been fought just to uproot them from fallen cities and even the occasional kingdom.
Looks like True Ghouls were inspired by Lovecraft's version of ghouls (which probably inspired the ghouls from Fallout too).
Gotta go the extra mile and make a ghoul named Pickman who paints beautifully graphic depictions of ghoul feasts.
🎶I got ghoul fever!
🎶It’s burning in my brain!🎶
🎶I got ghoul fever!🎶
🎶It’s driving me insane!🎶
The most important thing is that they don't tell you about ghouls is that
ghouls just wanna have fun. That's all they really want. Some fun. When the working day is done, ghouls just wanna have fun. They come home in the middle of the night their mummy says "when you gonna live your life right", Oh mummy dear we're not the fortunate ones but ghouls just wanna have fun.
Wasn't this song used in the movie the ghoulies?
Everybody needs ghouls in life.
@@mahro-wulf9947 I don't know but it's always fun to fight
Ghouls, ghouls, ghouls. Long legs and bloodstained lips.
Dancin down on sunset strip, with blood red lips and fingertips.
@@BrakhianSoldier It's definitely a ghouls world.
Who run the world? Ghouls
Aquatic ghouls/lacdeon actually do feature in 5e! They appear in Tales from the Yawning Portal and Princes of the Apocalypse
Was about to say could of swore they were in PotA at the first stronghold of the water cultists.
I see all the Warhammer AOS images you're using and just want to say i love it! The Flesh Eater Courts are amazing lore wise
That thing about elves being immune to ghouls’ paralytic touch isn’t in the PHB so I’m excited to tell my players. It really should be in the PHB if it’s in the MM.
Another great video another request for dwarves and magic runes please.
I wonder what definitively is your favorite undead. (Personally)
My favorite has always been the greater mummy
Mine is the dracolich.
Illithilitch is just too interesting to me
*ZomBees*
@@bodaciouschad ZomBeavers
“Ghouls create more Ghouls.”
Ghouls together strong!
I love the family of undead! Once I tried to map out the family of all known undead to see how they've developed over time. Fascinating creatures!
As a long time necromancer, I approve of your studies lol.
@@mylesdrake2949 The most common pattern I saw was that beings of unlife have to have a supplementary diet of "normal" living things or they faced degradation. Liches seem to have found the most effective source of energy as living things souls. Ghouls require humanoid flesh, etc., they all need something extra to sustain themselves. With two exceptions!
Mummies and Mummy Lords are unique in that they spend undeath not needing any form of sustenance. This is probably because they are feeding directly on the divine energy of whatever god of death has gifted them with their unique forms. Either the mummy draws directly from a god (implying minimal costs required with their upkeep, showing divine energy to be incredibly potent a food source) OR their transformation is so perfect not even this is required. I am leaning towards the former conclusion as it seems highly irregular for there to be no "costs" associated with their undeaths.
As a fellow student of the arcane, Id love to hear your thoughts!
@@daniell1483 as far as Mummies go, they do remove their organs and put them in canopic jars which is how they tie themselves to the divine. Destruction of these jars allows a Mummy to permanently be dealt with. As far as degradation goes, while yes divine magic plays a part, Mummies mostly don't degrade due the techniques use to preserve their bodies. Being the most preserve out of all common undead.. As for other divine intelligent undead you have the "death knight" we can compare to Mummies. These ones are unique in the sense they have no reason to kill or "eat" but kill out of sheer hatred of the world even as their bodies crumble to dust their souls remain piloting their armor. Both however feel they have a "purpose" that must be upheld. Mummies guard their place of burial killing intruders and Death knights engage in a black crusade. Both won't stop till either completely and utterly destroyed or that what purpose that binds them has been fulfilled.
@@mylesdrake2949 I suspect that Death Knights are feeding on some small part of their target's souls. DK are to liches what fighters are to mages, so I suspect they have similar needs as a lich, i.e souls.
And yeah, canopic jars hold the organs of the mummy, but besides ceremonial reasons, it isn't like they truly need those jars besides the initial creation process. So I think canopic jars are perhaps more a game mechanic than anything; an enemy that is truly unable to be destroyed is problematic for D&D, so I can't help but think that is more of a compromise reached rather than their true purpose. That or, the gods of death are perhaps not allowed to create a perfect undead that isn't able to be destroyed. Either way, as undead, their true nourishment to prevent degradation isn't tied to those jars, it is perhaps just a medium through which those divine forces are able to work to keep the mummy bound to the Prime Material. That is my thoughts anyway.
Check out the Pickman Model by Lovecraft and a lot of the work Clark Ashton Smith did. They go into ghouls extensively. Pickman was an artist that needed good subject matter and made a deal with the ghouls to use them as models in exchange for eventually becoming one himself.
Yay more undead,would you consider doing the wight
It'd be the wight thing to do
Nah, those are just dead wight
Wight power
Good idea! Guess we'll just have to wight for it.
These puns are bad enough to wake the dead!(good job everyone)
The fact that ghouls can infect and turn sentient species is actually terrifying, and adds so many story implications.
A ghast that shoots arrows cover with their own ichor/ blood to poison PCs to increase his numbers.
Had that happen to a few of my low level PCs over the years, at lest the DM allowed us to run PC as monster. Mostly cause it free them up from making all the dice rolls themselves.
MrRhexx: "ghouls are hugely underused in dungeons and dragons"
Me come here after getting ready to master play tomb of annihilation: "sure"
I seemed super happy at the end haha. Dude your videos are amazing and help so much. Thank you for all the work that you do for the community. The clothing line you are designing is is epic and extremely exciting. Keep up the great work and this channel will keep growing!
You seemed*
So in theory ecologically, ghouls would hunt and consume other undead creatures such as zombies? That would make them massively important in preventing the spread of certain strains of undeath.
Fully planning on introducing a ghoul kingdom into my campaign world and this helps flesh it out even more. Thank you MrRhexx the lore master.
You mentioned that elves' CANNOT sleep, I always read it as elves' do not NEED to sleep but can in fact actively choose to do so
Now that I know that a Ghast is just a stronger Ghoul, I got to ask a question.
*Since they eat Rotten flesh, Do Ghouls eat Zombies?* 🤔
Probably, especially since the ghouls will eat each other when they run out of flesh from other sources.
In my campaign they do not. They require the flesh of a sentient human or humanoid. The process of becoming a zombie destroys their intelligence and making them inedible to ghouls or ghasts. In a weird way, they are spoiled meat to them.
@@singledad1313 if they starving,I pretty sure they we'll eat zombies
Yes.
Do you eat zombies and ghouls?
Can I just say I greatly appreciate these vids on the undead. We're currently doing an evil campaign and my character is heavily based on the working of the anima and the souls of things. Additionally we have a necromancer in our party so some very chaotic things are bound to happen between us. Hearing these grants more insight on the inner workings of the undead
I would love to see the pdf for the armor changes. I actually really liked your weapon change ideas too!
So what your saying is… as long as I feed a ghoul flesh we might be friends? I’ve got my next companion for my necromancer!
Specifically the flesh and brains of sentient creatures.
I got this spell that basically gives you a small price of flesh and it satiates most undead for 12 hours
I am having a ton of fun by adapting the adventure night of the walking dead and combining it with the death house. The ghasts are disguised and walk among the living, actually ruling them.
I waited all day to get off of work to listen to this one and it was well worth it.
Yes finally we talking about my favorite type of monsters, have always liked the undead classes, looking forward to shadows n nightmares
Could go a darksouls style game of being a true ghoul but the first time to drop to zero you become a normal ghoul until you eat 'a soul' or flesh of a victim. May have a cleanser item that turns you back to human until you drop to zero and return to a ghoul once more.
Yessssssss been waiting on a video about the ghouls
Really Really good content! One of the best narrators on YT!
Mr Rhexx just tells great stories.
This video actually inspired me to feature basically ghoul romans as the badies in my campaign, now my players are scared if they are going to get ferals to be used as a distraction or intellectual warmongers
So there's one thing that I didn't quite understand. At the beginning of the video, you read from the monster manual that a ghoul doesn't decay and they can persist for untold ages without feeding. But then, towards the end, the undead book says they are not immortal and they decay and need to eat. Was this just a difference between editions? Or does the monster manual somehow contain the "imperfect" knowledge someone in-world would have?
That's probably a difference between editions. Since they are only immortal in the Abyss, an in-world character would be far more likely to know that they can starve.
I'm playing cleric in Dungeon of the Mad Mage, and my DM made ghouls and their ghast into little community where they were all inteligent and communicating. They thought of themselves as noble knights serving their king, and they were acting like it while my party saw them as regular ghouls. And my cleric being young Twilight domain actually mourn the dead ghast king, cause my character is empathetic way too much.
Check if your DM is an Age of Sigmar fan or has at least heard of the faction called the Flesheater Courts, because I think he might have borrowed the idea from them.
you are my favorite lore UA-camr i've searched but never find a video explaining the afterlife of forgoten realms, it would be really cool if you made a video about it
Shadowrun ghouls are the same too, except they're still alive. I thought I remembered oldschool D&D ghouls prefered eating long dead corpses than fresh ones, but I might be mixing memories with Necrophages
Fun fact the original sounds from night of the living Dead or referred to as ghouls in the script. So the modern idea of zombies literally is ghouls.
I remember the video you talked about revamping the armor system, actually really excited for that it sounded interesting
Cannot wait for when Fizban's drops to see "What they don't tell you about Gem Dragons."
Oh this has given me a fantastic idea for an encounter. Thanks!
Even though its 3rd party I'm surprised you didn't give mention of Tome of Beasts 1 & 2 for the ghoul material.
Thank you so much! I have been looking for a more natural undead for when I don't want to have some lich or necromancer causing mayhem.
Yes! I wanted to put these in my new campaign! Thankyou!
I like that you used Flesh Eater Courts images for this video. It makes sense given their fluff lol.
Actually ghouls (as described here, that are being forming after acts of cannibalism) have real world equivalent - Wendigo (yes the name comes from the mythical Native American creature) Psychosis is a phenomenon in which a person goes mad; the victim desires human flesh and fears turning into a Wendigo. It starts after a prolonged period of being inside-to escape the cold temperatures and deep snow-with little food. A feeling of melancholy takes over and the sufferer loses their appetite and begins having nightmares. Eventually, the victim goes insane and is consumed by the idea of eating human flesh.
There's a similar phenomenon in Japan/certain Asian countries. Though that is called Fox Sickness, and is more of an obsession with consuming specific pieces of anatomy, usually the liver.
I'm actually playing through a ghoul campaign right now called "Empire of Ghouls" and it's really cool. It has a lot of really cool lore and variations on ghouls.
First to appreciate your video! Whoo! All jokes aside can you go over Liberis Mortis and more specifically the Diet, Dependent, Craving, and Inescapable, and why 5th and 4th don't like using them.
When you showed those three at the table in the beginning it took me a second to realize that was not a gaming group
I'd love to see a video on the Penanggalan in future! Maybe we'll get some official stats for her in future 5e books.
Are you running a complete undead lore series this time, if so i love it, great vid as always
I have a lich as my BBEG in the campaign I'm running. I think I'll use some of these ideas for it. Might have the lich creating ghouls and ghasts.
That would be terrifying to challenge.
If a ghoul eats a Goodberry, would they get satiated? (Because it’s magic that provides the nourishment)
One cool thing I did was have a Nosferatu from the new ravenloft book create ghouls instead of vampire spawn with it's bite under it's control(Some Strigoi ghoul king vibes). Ghouls had my take of ghoul fever which was on a successful bite attack DC 15 con save to contract giving you the poisoned condition till cured. After 24 hours have passed you can roll another save and if failed you gain one level of exhaustion that can't be recovered till the ghoul fever is cured. After 3 successful saves the disease ends and you can begin recovering exhaustion levels, death results in you rising as a ghoul the next night or if already night, (paying homage to create undead) in the next d4 hours. If any of you want to use this feel free since wizards literally just forgot to add it if you look up some old sage advice regarding ghouls.
Hopefully next you I can donate to your patron. As a old 2nd ed player I love your deep dives.
I wanted so much a video from you talking about ghouls! Thanks a lot. :)
I’ve been talking about ghouls all week, thank you for uploading
Having Ghouls be a very big part of tier 1 in my next campaign so i love this video!
Considering that all undead are unnatural creatures and that they have unnatural hunger, I would say that we the embrace the confusion. And not just that band of zombies turning out to have been ghouls, but that the very distinctions between various undead is a little artificial and arbitrary on our part aside from the corporeal and incorporeal undead.
Meaning feel free to make your own version of undead, maybe that Lich is just as interested in your flesh as your soul, maybe a couple of the zombies in that horde are smarter and more dangerous than the rest, maybe some of them are capable of a twisted kind of evolution.
Maybe even make Liches who don’t need any food or souls and can look like Baelnorns forever, which they ought to be able to if they were making such a deal for immortality.
I miss the series about the planes...
At this point I want to hear a 'favourite things' cover themed around the undead given the endless plethora of them.
"Liches and revenants and banshees that scream..."
Wtf, I was literally looking to see if you had made a ghoul video last night! Haha what timing. Thanks for such great content man
Loving the videos about the undead! I'm actually playing as a Necromancer Wizard atm, so these have been particularly helpful. Would you consider doing a video on Wights any time soon?
Ok, I can't unsee the knee at 7:08 ... I'm sorry.
I have a ghast NPC that was turned from ghoul to ghast by a necromancer BBEG in my campaign! Once he was gifted (or cursed) to remember his past, he swore fealty to the necromancer, and spent years honing his body and allowed his mind to steep in anger at those who wronged him (became a barbarian).
Already ordered the Lolth t-shirt, but I'm definitely considering getting that Orcus hoodie too. Maybe for christmas. Or my birthday, which is not long after.
Lol, I did a ghoul sorcerer with the Phoenix subclass from unearthed arcana
Basically I looked up a homebrew race and then wrote background story that some cultists tried resurrecting an undead with the essence of the Phoenix to restore the original person
Well, the ritual went wrong, consumed all their life force, but actually brought the character back
She then ate a lot of the corpses in a frenzy, calmed down, read the notes and books at the cultists' place, then ate the remaining corpses and left to explore the world
She has no memories btw, just human intelligence and the normal player/sorcerer abilities
sounds like the plague in wow , where entire cities were almost wiped when nearly everyone turned into undead
A video on rust monsters would be cool, the older editions say that they can break down any non-magical metal, but 5e says it an only damage nonmagical FERROUS metals
Great video! Love learning about this lore.
Favorite part was the mention about midway in vid about how a person could become a ghoul dependent on a life "very gluten - ous" in nature 👀🤪😳
Best PSA against gluten ever👉👍🏻🐧
Ps. - also it's been shown to blow your d*** off, according to Southpark -- so becoming a nasty undead cannibal and this even worse curse 🤔☺🙃🐧
we got the Lacedon in Dead in Thay (Tales From the Yawning Portal) :D
so they are in 5e, and cr 1 as the ghoul.
I don't know if you take suggestions for videos, but I would love to see a video about Yuan-ti.
I'd recommend the Kobold Press book, the Empire of Ghouls, which is a great setting and overall fun big bad empire for your players
Can you do a really deep dive into vampires? That’d be awesome
Imagine how crazy goul lizard folk, kobalds and dragon born would be.
Also it surprising elves can succumb to goul fever
If I remember correctly the Lacedon do exist in 5e. There are some in the Doomvault found in the Tales of the Yawning Portal.
What about spell create undead? If i understand correctly ghouls have they souls still attached to them so does create undead using soul of the corpse or for example takes it from abyss?
Hey I would love a “what they don’t tell you about satyrs” I thing that would be a very intresting one
I added a fun curse to my game called The Sin Eaters Burden, the one holding this curse would take apon the sins of those around them. After prolonged exposure of this curse the player begins to hear voices pushing them to indulge in evil acts. If the player goes along with these evil suggestions they are rewarded with experience. It starts of simple like lying to a party member to cannibalizing a man you tortured for hours. Ultimately if the player doesn't get the curse lifted they turn into an undead under the control of whom ever casted the curse. The more evil choices the player has made the higher level undead they become.
Yes more undead!!! Love this, I didn't know about true ghouls, might be fun to roll a campaign where everyone is a true ghoul. Random side note but that's one of the things I loved about WoW before it became crap, Forsaken always felt like an interesting storyline.
Gorging on flesh and human organs? Sign me up, bro!!!
Jesus jeffrey
I still remember that the DC of Saving in 3.5 was 15 that was too high for most characters.
First time commenting, but long time watcher and suscriber :). I'm glad you're working on some PDFs and whatnot to put out and I'll be sure to keep an eye out for it. I'm a professional artist that does work for TTRPGs, Miniature games and video games so I did want to throw a small word of caution out on the way you're seeking artists. Asking for artists to make a piece of art for an application (even if you don't intend to use it) is called speculative (spec) work and it tends to be (rightly) considered a big no-no in professional art and publication circles. It's basically an exploitative practice and its one of the things pro artists get warned about when they're starting out... I know that is definitely not your intent but doing that can put a red flag on your project for more experienced artists who've encountered spec work before. Any artist with the skill level and experience you're looking for (1st party DnD book levels) should have a portfolio that can show everything you need to know in case you want to hire them, without a need for spec :)
I got rip off by art galleries so much in my mid 20's I gave up on my art work and let my skill degrade for close to 20 years, I am just getting back to ink drawing what I did as a teenager. It is a bit rough to get back into the habit of sitting down and spending three to six hours to work on a single picture.
I hope youre able to get around to Nightwalkers and their kin. Love those monsters.
Always been a fan of d&d ghouls and ghosts. As a dm I’ve used them in conjunction with juju zombies to spread disease across the player kingdom. Things get real when that horde of lumbering”zombies” turns out to be a ghoulish ambush…..
Kobolds Tome of Beast has a large section on ghouls and their empire. They mention in a sentence about a ghoul dragon and I NEED TO KNOW MORE
2:22 to skip ads
You could have mention "Empire of the Ghouls" from Kobold Press. It's a third party 5e module, they actually have the same idea as you 2 or 3 years ago and made a 350 pages book. You even took the art cover of the book for your video at 9:53.
Well this blows my mind on the zombie lores. Planning to make some harsh reviewing of some of the campaigns I run.
Super awesome into!!! Thanks for sharing
Good video!
Lacedons do appear but they do not have that name . They are named aquatic ghouls and appear in Princes of the Apocalypse. They are exactly the same, just have a swimming speed, tbh might as well, no need to fill space in a book for it.
The image used at 6:49 is the manga Undead Unwanted Adventurer