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Ghoul

Ghoul Creature1

CE Medium Ghoul Undead

Senses Perception +7; darkvision

Languages Common, Necril

Skills Acrobatics +7, Athletics +4, Stealth +7, Survival +5

Str +1, Dex +4, Con +1, Int +1, Wis +2, Cha +2


AC 16; Fort +4, Ref +9, Will +5

HP 20, negative Healing; Immunities death effects, disease, paralyzed, poison, unconscious


Speed 30 feet, burrow 5 feet

Melee [one-action] jaws +9 (finesse), Damage 1d6+1 piercing plus ghoul fever and paralysis

Melee [one-action] claw +9 (agile, finesse), Damage 1d4+1 slashing plus paralysis

Consume Flesh [one-action] (manipulate) Requirements The ghoul is adjacent to the corpse of a creature that died within the last hour. Effect The ghoul devours a chunk of the corpse and regains 1d6 Hit Points. It can regain Hit Points from any given corpse only once.

Ghoul Fever (disease) Saving Throw Fortitude DC 15; Stage 1 carrier with no ill effect (1 day); Stage 2 2d6 negative damage and regains half as many Hit Points from all healing (1 day); Stage 3 as stage 2 (1 day); Stage 4 2d6 negative damage and gains no benefit from healing (1 day); Stage 5 as stage 4 (1 day); Stage 6 dead, and rises as a ghoul the next midnight.

Paralysis (incapacitation, occult, necromancy) Any living, non-elf creature hit by a ghoul’s attack must succeed at a DC 15 Fortitude save or become paralyzed. It can attempt a new save at the end of each of its turns, and the DC cumulatively decreases by 1 on each such save.

Swift Leap [one-action] (move) The ghoul jumps up to half its Speed. This movement doesn’t trigger reactions.

About

Ghouls are ravenous undead who haunt graveyards and eat corpses.

Few creatures are more ubiquitous to sinister locations such as lonely graveyards and ruined crypts than the flesh-eating undead known as ghouls.

Ghoulish Society

Ghouls are quite intelligent and, more so than almost any other undead, prone to forming societies and cultures (if vile and repugnant ones centered around flesh eating and acts of depravity) in tangled warrens below boneyards, or even entire cities hidden away in the depths of the world.

Creating Ghouls

You can turn a living creature into a ghoul by completing the following steps. When creating a ghast, double these numerical adjustments. The monsters in this section are built from the ground up, so their numbers don’t match these guidelines exactly.

Custom-building ghouls is recommended if you have time, using the special abilities listed here but creating the other statistics to match what you want the ghoul to be.

First, increase the creature’s level by 1 and change its statistics as follows.

  • Increase its AC, attack bonuses, DCs, saving throws, and skill modifiers by 1.
  • Increase its damage with Strikes and other offensive abilities by 1. If the creature is limited in how often it can use an ability (such as a breath weapon), increase the damage by 2 instead.

Ghoul Abilities

A ghoul gains the undead and ghoul traits, and it usually becomes evil. If the base creature has any abilities that come from it being a living creature, it loses them. It also loses any traits that represented its life as a living creature, such as human and humanoid. You might also need to adjust abilities that conflict with the theme of a ghoul. All ghouls gain the following abilities. The save DC for all abilities uses the DC of the ghoul’s level.

  • Darkvision
  • Negative Healing
  • Immunities: death effects, disease, paralyzed, poison, unconscious
  • Claws: If the creature had hands, it gains a claw Strike (an agile unarmed attack that deals slashing damage plus paralysis). If it had any agile attacks, the damage dealt by its claws should be roughly the same as the damage dealt by those attacks. If it had only non-agile attacks, its claws should deal three-quarters that damage.
  • Jaws: If the creature had a mouth, it gains a jaws Strike (an unarmed attack that deals slashing damage plus ghoul fever and paralysis). The damage amount should be the same as the creature’s non-agile attacks.

Consume Flesh [one-action] (manipulate) Requirements The ghoul is adjacent to the corpse of a creature that died within the last hour. Effect The ghoul devours a chunk of the corpse and regains 1d6 Hit Points plus 1d6 for every 2 levels it has. It can regain Hit Points from any given corpse only once.

Ghoul Fever (disease) Saving Throw Fortitude; Stage 1 carrier with no ill effect (1 day); Stage 2 2d6 negative damage and regains half as many Hit Points from all healing (1 day); Stage 3 as stage 2 (1 day); Stage 4 2d6 negative damage and gains no benefit from healing (1 day); Stage 5 as stage 4 (1 day); Stage 6 dead, and rises as a ghoul the next midnight.

Paralysis (incapacitation, occult, necromancy) Any living, non-elf creature hit by a ghoul’s attack must succeed at a Fortitude save or become paralyzed. It can attempt a new save at the end of each of its turns, and the DC cumulatively decreases by 1 on each such save.

Swift Leap [one-action] (move) The ghoul jumps up to half its Speed. This movement doesn’t trigger reactions.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Pathfinder Bestiary (Second Edition) © 2019, Paizo Inc.; Authors: Alexander Augunas, Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, John Compton, Paris Crenshaw, Adam Daigle, Eleanor Ferron, Leo Glass, Thurston Hillman, James Jacobs, Jason Keeley, Lyz Liddell, Ron Lundeen, Robert G. McCreary, Tim Nightengale, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Alex Riggs, David N. Ross, Michael Sayre, Mark Seifter, Chris S. Sims, Jeffrey Swank, Jason Tondro, Tonya Woldridge, and Linda Zayas-Palmer.

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