Lost Soul (Pr’eta)
#Appearing: 1-6
AC: 5
Move: 12
Hit Dice: 4
% in Lair: 0%
Treasure: Type F X2
The Pr’eta is the soul of a suicide who to go to his rest must kill a replacement. He has an attack of 1-10 plus drain two levels. When someone is killed by damage or drainage by a Pr’eta, both will then vanish — the victim of a Pr’eta does not himself become a Pr’eta. Clerics turn Pr’eta as Vampires, except that a Pr’eta can never be dissolved: if a Dissolve result is rolled, it will merely turn away.
Preta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The description here does not match the name, at least according to my understanding of chinese myth.
A Preta is a
hungry ghost like the Japanese Gaki, spirits of folk cursed to roam the earth with unsatisfiable hunger for their greed and jealousy in life. They are generally pretty harmless.
The description sounds like a Shui Gui ("Drowned Ghost") or Diao Si Gui ("Hanged Ghost"). These are the ghosts of someone who has died by violence (often, but not necessarily suicide) who tries to lure a person to their death to become their replacement. They don't have a grotesquely large head, scrawny body and pencil-thin neck like a Gaki or Pr'eta, they usually look like they did when they died or shortly afterwards (e.g. sodden wet corpse, broken-necked corpse, gruesomely-chopped-up corpse
et cetera). Most of them try to trick or frighten their victim to drive them to their deaths, I don't recall them sucking the life out of folk like a Hopping Vampire, although I think there are stories of Chinese ghosts slowly leaching the life or will to live out of a victim (a bit like the
Vrykolakas's "Oppress Sleeper" power we did), it's a process that takes days. Frightening a potential replacement into falling into a torrent to drown, or tumbling off a cliff, is far faster.
Anyhow, as far as their stats go a suicide ghost could just be a Wraith with a makeover, the SRD Ghost's Rejuvenation ability, and a "Create Replacement" SQ instead of Create Spawn.