Homebrew Ghost Species Details

Death did not carry you beyond the mortal world. Though your physical body is gone, your spirit remains, caught between life and whatever waits beyond.

Ghosts exist as spectral beings only partially bound to the physical world. Their incorporeal forms can pass through solid matter and resist mundane harm, but struggle to physically interact with their surroundings. To experience the physical world, a ghost can inhabit a willing or unconscious living creature, sharing the body with a conscious host or taking control when the host is unconscious.

A host is only a vessel, however, and its destruction does not destroy the spirit within. If the host falls, the ghost is violently expelled back into its incorporeal form. Though freed from many needs of the living, ghosts are not immortal their spirits can still be wounded and ultimately destroyed.

Ghost Traits

Ghosts exist between life and death, their spirits lingering in the mortal world after their physical bodies have been lost. Their incorporeal nature allows them to pass through physical matter and resist mundane harm, though it also limits their ability to interact with the physical world. To overcome these limitations, ghosts can possess the living, inhabiting another creature's body as a temporary vessel.

Darkvision

You have Darkvision out to a range of 60 feet.

Incorporeal Form

 Your spectral body can interact with the physical world, though physical matter passes through you more easily than it would a living creature. You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks. You can move through creatures and nonmagical objects as Difficult Terrain, but can't end your turn inside them or perceive through them. Your Ghost Form is visible and doesn't grant Invisibility.

Deathless Nature

 You don't need to eat, drink, breathe, or sleep. You must still complete Short and Long Rests normally to regain Hit Points, Hit Dice, spell slots, and expended features.

Deathless Resilience

You have resistance to Poison damage and advantage on saving throws you make to avoid or end the Poisoned condition.

Fragile Spirit

Your Hit Point maximum is reduced by 1 for each character level you have. Additionally, whenever you regain Hit Points from a spell, magic item, or other magical effect, the number of Hit Points restored is halved (rounded down).