D&D: Is That a G-G-G-G-Ghost? Technically Not!
D&D is full of monsters that might look, sound, and act like g-g-g-ghosts but are actually, technically, a whole other class of spirit.
We are hip-deep in ghost season. And whether you’re out there with a spirit box, looking for spaghetti and apple taters, or you’re out there with an unlicensed nuclear accelerator strapped to your back, there are plenty of folks who can expect to run into ghosts this year. But… are you sure that was actually a ghost?
In D&D, ghosts might just be impostors. You might think that the glowing, see-through person in front of you is a ghost. But you could so readily be wrong. Dead wrong. You see, a ghost is the soul of a once-living creature, bound to haunt a specific location, creature, or object that held significance to it in its life.
And they make the environment spooky. Sensations of profound sadness, loneliness, and unfulfilled yearning emanate from places where ghostly hauntings occur. But most notably, a ghost can age you anywhere from 10 to 40 years in a single moment.
And it can keep doing that. So you could literally die of old age-induced fright upon seeing one.
But that won’t happen if you run into these monsters that might look like ghosts but are entirely different undead entities.
Spectre
Specters, on the other hand, are the angry, unfettered spirits of humanoids who have been prevented from passing to the afterlife. These are restless undead who are condemned to walk the world forever. They can never find rest or redemption, they are doomed to linger on the Material Plane forever. Specters hate the living with every fiber of their translucent being.
They specialize in draining life from the living. And only in the act of killing, can they finally find a moment’s reprieve from the hatred and sorrow that consumes them.
Sword Wraith
Don’t be fooled. These flying, blue, incorporeal beings might look like the soul of a once-living creature, bound to a specific location, creature, or object that held significance to it in its life, but they’re actually not. Sword Wraiths are warriors who died in battle without honor. They are the spirits of soldiers who died without mercy.
Their restless souls rise up as ghost-like warriors. Each one is a capable combatant, but they cannot supernaturally age you.
Shadow
Shadows, on the other hand, are ghost-like beings who consist entirely of shadows. Dark exaggerations of humanoid shadows, these creatures hunger for life. The purer of heart the living creature, the better the meal for a shadow.
They will drain their victim’s strength and vitality, leaving only a withered husk. The shadow of the victim, however, breaks free, becoming an undead shadow all its own.
Will-O’-Wisp
Those glowing, wispy lights you see? The ones haunting lonely places and battlefields, bound by dark fate or darker magic to feed on fear and despair?
Those aren’t ghosts. They’re Will-O’-Wisps. These are evil undead spirits who lure unwary creatures to their doom, tricking the unsuspecting into following their ghostly light until they drown in quicksand, blunder into a monster’s lair or some other place where their chosen victim dies a slow, horrible death.
Fitting for the souls of evil beings that perished in anguish. A Will-O’-Wisp might be the soul of a once-living being, but instead of being bound to a place, it becomes a little murder lamp.
Wraith
Wraiths are also the souls of once-living beings. Only instead of being bound to a place they once loved, they were so evil, so depraved, so suffused with negative energy, that the soul became a sort of collapsing singularity of evil. And in its place: a wraith. Wraiths are malevolent voids that might resemble the beings they once were in life.
But these are malice incarnate. They desire nothing less than to quench all life. And wraiths only exist to annihilate any other life they come across.
They do this quite efficiently because they can raise any humanoid within 10 feet of it that recently died, creating a specter who serves the wraith from the recently dead body of a fallen friend.
Still not a ghost though.
