Willpower 1: Mortals with a Willpower score this low cannot become ghosts.
Willpower 2-4: Individual people like this rarely become ghosts, but because weak willed people make up the largest share of Scarterra's and Scaraqua's population, roughly a two fifths of Scarterra's ghosts fall into this category.
They normally only become ghosts when their deaths are extremely traumatic and painful and/or they lived their lives for one purpose with great fervor.
Ghosts in this range typically have 2-4 Common powers, 0-2 intermediate powers and 1-2 Handicaps. Usually these ghosts can do little more than scare people and knock over pots.
Willpower 5-7: People in this range can become ghosts even without suffering unusual deaths, though unusual deaths are still the norm for ghosts at this level. These ghosts are the ones most likely to attract the attention of exorcists. They are powerful enough to be a threat to the common people, but they are not as wily or subtle as the more powerful ghosts. Roughly two fifths of Scarterra's ghosts fall into this category.
Ghosts in this range typically have 3-6 common powers, 1-3 intermediate powers, 0-2 rare powers, and 2-4 handicaps. Ghosts at this power level are capable of seriously harming living beings.
Willpower 8-10: People with this level of Willpower are rare, but people with this level of Willpower tend to be very passionate and driven. A disturbingly high percentage of these people become ghosts when they die. Ghosts of this level are very powerful and are likely to construct long-term complex plans to further their agendas. They are also likely to be well versed in the tactics of would-be exorcists and know how to avoid them. About a fifth of the world’s ghosts are at this level.
Ghosts in this range typically have 5-7 common powers, 2-5 intermediate powers, 1-4 rare powers, and 3-5 handicaps. Ghosts at this power level are incredibly deadly opponents.
Animal Manipulation
Handicapped: Ghost causes animals nearby to go berserk or become ill.
Normal: Ghost visibly spooks animals nearby.
Common Power: Ghost has a calming presence on animals and can speak to them freely, though responses are simplistic and limited by the animal’s simpler mind.
Intermediate Power: Ghost can spend a temporary Willpower point and roll Charisma + Animal Ken summon swarms of small animals. The more successes he rolls, the bigger and nastier the animals in the swarm are. One success would summon bugs while five successes would summon a pack of wild of dogs or the equivalent.
Advanced Power: Ghost can spend a temporary Willpower point to possess animals and magical beasts of animal like intelligence. Difficulty ranges from 4 for chickens and rats to 9 for elephants and griffins.
Conjurations
Handicapped: The ghost leaves behind salt water foot prints, blood on the walls, slime or other disturbing phenomenon at inconvenient times.
Normal: The ghost cannot create anything at all.
Common Power: The ghost can summon cosmetic but frightening features. Blood on the walls, illusory vermin, slime, etc. The conjurations cause no harm but they are unnerving to the living. Living creatures need to best the ghost pitting the ghost’s Manipulation + Expression against the living person’s Willpower. If the ghost wins, the mortal suffers +1 penalty on all dice rolls for the scene.
Intermediate Power: As above but the moral’s resistance roll is at difficulty 7.
Advanced Power: The ghost can spend a temporary Willpower point to make conjurations that can have physical effects as well as psychological ones. Slime constricts movements, blood can try to choke foes, shadow creatures can bite. A Manipulation + Expression roll determines how potent these conjurations are.
Corpse Manipulation
Handicapped: The ghost’s ghostly visage appears like a rotting corpse and/or smells like a rotting corpse. It doesn’t impair the ghost’s ability to move and fight though but it does mean that he or she will draw an instinctively hostile reaction from most living people.
Normal: A corpse is a corpse of course of course unless it’s the ghost's own original body in which case he or she can use the intermediate and common powers on her own corpse.
Common Power: The ghost can enter any relatively intact corpse to recuperate. While “resting” in this grotesque fashion, the ghost regains lost Willpower points and heals spectral wounds at double the usual rate.
Intermediate Power: The ghost can possess a relatively intact corpse and then spend a Willpower point to make the corpse move slightly for a few minutes, freaking living witnesses out. If the corpse is fresh enough that the tongue and lungs are relatively intact, a ghost can speak a few short sentences through a corpse.
Advanced Power: The ghost can possess a relatively corpse and spend a Willpower point to animate it fully for a scene essentially becoming a highly intelligent autonomous zombie. In theory a ghost that is near a pile of dead bodies can keep switching hosts when the last host is destroyed as long as his/her temporary Willpower pool holds out.
Embodiment
Handicapped: Ghost turns invisible when inconvenient, and/or her visage displays her cause of death or emotional state in a very grisly fashion when not convenient.
Normal: Appear as a faint translucent image of the ghost’s former self. Ghost can spend a temporary Willpower point to whisper several sentences to the living or shout a short sentence.
Common Power: The ghost can change his/her image to be frightening and terrifying, normal looking, or present an idealized beautiful version of their former self. Ghost can speak freely to the living without spending Willpower.
Intermediate Power: Ghost can be invisible or visible at will. S/he can be incredibly luminous. Ghost can spend a temporary Willpower point to complete change his or her form to look and sound like someone else for a scene. If a ghost knows what a living person’s dead relatively looked and sound like, she can be very persuasive at manipulating the living “Grandma told me the king had to die!”
Advanced Power: Ghost can spend a temporary Willpower point to become solid and effectively alive for one scene. Ghost has all the vulnerabilities of the living while doing this.
Fate Manipulation
Handicapped: Ghost is prone to bad luck, and so are the living people near her who are sympathetic to her goals.
Normal: Ghost has no special insight or luck.
Common Power: Ghost can sense danger reflexively. Rolling Perception + Alertness. Difficulty 6 for the ghost’s self or her loved ones or items of fixation. Difficulty 7 for detecting danger to everyone else.
Intermediate Power: Ghost can spend a temporary Willpower to automatically know the general direction of her loved ones, enemies, or objects of significance.
Advanced Power: Ghost can spend a temporary Willpower point to activate a field of good luck and/bad luck for one scene. Roll Manipulation + Subterfuge. Every success effects two targets. A subject with good luck gets a -1 difficulty break on all rolls, a subject with bad luck gets a +1 difficulty penalty on all rolls. A single subject can be double dinged to the make the modifier -2/+2.
Lifeforce Manipulation
Handicapped: Ghost causes plants to die in her vicinity and causes the living to feel mildly ill.
Normal: Ghost has a sixth sense to identify the health or lack thereof in living creatures.
Common Power: Ghost can spend a Willpower point to numb a living person’s pain for a day or infect a living person with a serious but recoverable disease.
Intermediate Power: Ghost can spend a Willpower point to double a living person’s rate of natural healing for one week per success rolled on a Manipulation + Medicine roll or the character can complete negate all non-magical healing for one week per success.
Advanced Power: Ghost can drain life with a touch attack against the living inflicting his Manipulation in dice of damage. The ghost regains health for every success, the target suffers a level of physical attribute damage.
Memory Manipulation
Handicapped: Character has forgotten significant portions of his/her past life, likely only remember his/her main passion/obsession and little else.
Normal: Character has full memories of his/her life though they are often viewed through an emotional lens.
Common Power: Character can spend a temporary Willpower point and sing or whisper to manipulate the emotions of others. Roll Manipulation + Subterfuge or Manipulation + Performance, whichever is higher. Difficulty 6 to create negative emotions, difficulty 7 to create positive emotions. Resisted by subject’s Willpower, difficulty 6.
Intermediate Power: Character can spend a temporary Willpower point and roll Manipulation + Subterfuge or Manipulation + Performance to implant hypnotic suggestions or remove short-term memories. Resisted by subject’s Willpower, difficulty 6.
Advanced Power: Read intense memories from others or share memories with others. This can be used as a debilitating attack depending on the memory. Resisted by subject’s Willpower, difficulty 7.
Mobility
Handicapped: Unable to move more than a short distance from a person, place, or thing very important to the ghost’s life.
Normal: Walk like a normal living person, but without tiring. Also, all ghosts can pass through solid objects at will.
Common Power: The ghost can hover and float. The ghost can spend a temporary Willpower point to float with a modicum of control.
Intermediate Power: Spend a temporary willpower point to fly with speed and agility for ten minutes per success on a Willpower roll.
Advanced Power: Spend a temporary Willpower point to enter the astral plane, exiting the Astral Plane is free. Ghosts (and living people who can somehow travel to the Astral Plane) can move about fifty times faster in the astral plane than the material world. The hard part is to avoid overshooting your destination in the material plane because the Astral Plane has so few landmarks. The ghost needs to roll Perception + Enigmas (difficulty 6) or Intelligence + Arcana (difficulty 5), assuming they have the Arcana skill, to navigate accurately.
Ghosts in the astral plane are fully corporeal to all astral monsters and astral travelers. Ghosts that spend a lot of time in the astral plane tend to develop derangements faster than ghosts that do not. Very few ghosts no how dangerous it is to spend more time in the Astral Plane than the Material Plane. Many getting addicted to existance the Astral Plane and then become astral spirits.
See
What Happens to ghosts as they linger? for more information.
Possession
Handicapped: The ghost frequently causes living people nearby to have sudden chills, nervous tics, hairs standing up, etc.
Normal: The ghost cannot interact with living people directly.
Common Power: The ghost can spend a temporary Willpower point to possess a person but not control them. The ghost and the would-be host make opposed Willpower rolls. If the mortal is suspecting a ghostly possession (such as if the ghost is visible), the ghost’s Willpower roll raises to 7. This is mainly used by a ghost to vicariously enjoy the pleasures of being alive, but this can be used to facilitate travel or gain a hostage if the ghost is fighting someone capable of harming incorporeal creatures. This can also be used for a ghost to temporarily evade another incorporeal foe.
Intermediate Power: As above but the ghost can force the subject to take sudden actions or blurt out things. Each action is resisted by opposed Willpower rolls. As soon as the living subject wins one contest, the ghost is evicted from its host and cannot repossess her for 24 hours.
Advanced Power: As above but the ghost has full control. Make an opposed Willpower roll versus the mortal being possessed. The ghost has full control over the person for one hour per net success.
It is far easier for a ghost to possess a third party pawn rather than to lead a possessed victim to damage itself directly or indirectly. When the ghost takes actions against the host’s direct interest, the host gets an additional resistance roll. If the actions the possessed person is forced to take are directly suicidal or acting directly against the host’s loved ones, than the host’s resistant roll is at difficulty 4.
Telekinesis
Handicapped: The ghost periodically moves objects or knocks things over by accident when nervous or agitated.
Normal: The ghost cannot move corporeal objects at all.
Common Power: Ghost can spend a temporary Willpower point to write or draw in dust, the film on windows or move very tiny objects slowly but not with any dexterity or finesse. Spend a temporary Willpower to activate telekinesis equal to the ghost’s Strength.
Intermediate Power: Move heavy objects slowly, or smaller objects at great speeds, enough to cause injury. Alternatively, the ghost can move smaller objects with more finesse, tying and untying knots for instance. One temporary Willpower point enables the ghost to perform one such feat per dots of Wits s/he has.
Advanced Power: Spend a temporary Willpower point to blast a target (living or incorporeal) with energy. Damage pool is the ghosts Wits + Strength.
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