digitaldark said:
I was just wondering if any of you have picked up the Ghostwalk book...and am really interested in what people think about it. I'm strongly considering picking this one up this week and maybe starting a campaign using it. Alsom any opinions on possibly using the ghost rules in d20 Modern?
I bought it. I give it a resounding "ehh."
It's unique, imaginative, and overall a boring read. I'll start with my biggest gripe about Ghostwalk, by far: the clumsy mechanic of a character with levels in a ghost class suddenly returning from the dead. They actually recommend that you keep track of a character's ghost levels' worth of hit points, skill point assignments, BAB bonuses, saving throw bonuses and feats so that if you have a "life epiphany" (the setting's term for a ghost returning to flesh and blood) you can redistribute them to your new, living class.
What a pain in the arse! That's exactly why, among my friends, we've house-ruled that instead of level loss from things like energy drain attacks you go in the hole XP-wise instead. Keeping track of where you place every single point at each level is an exercise in tedium. No thank you.
Two more things stuck out glaringly. First, I am still unclear on whether you are supposed to apply the ghost template to your character upon dying, or if you leave the stats unchanged. They spend a lot of time explaining about different types of ghosts and ghostly powers, but they never come out and explicitly state that you should apply the ghost template or not. I can infer from the descriptive text in the sidebar on page 8 that you do not apply the template, but that's just a guess based on later writings. I would have appreciated a clear, outline-format step by step walkthrough on how to convert a PC to a ghost, and the book lacks that, and that disappoints me.
Second, and more importantly to me as a DM, is the fact that there is an absurd lack of time spent on one of the points mentioned on the back jacket, a point that ultimately swayed me to buy the book: how to integrate Ghostwalk into an existing campaign. There is a tiny paragraph in the main body of text at the end of chapter 3, as well as a large sidebar explaining how to drop Ghostwalk into Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk. For the third time, then, I am disappointed, because I expected a page or two at least of helpful ways to insert Ghostwalk into an existing homebrew. As is, I'm going to have to get pretty creative in my own setting if I want to use the city of Manifest and its environs, and that annoys me because this was the promised feature of the book that I was most anticipating.
Thumbs down for Ghostwalk.
