Ghoul

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This page is about the player species. For the monster, see Ghoul (monster).

They are horrible undead creatures, slowly rotting away. Although Ghouls can sleep in their graves for years on end, when they rise to walk among the living, they must eat flesh to survive. Raw flesh is preferred, especially rotting or tainted meat, and Ghouls gain resilience from consuming it. They aren't very good at doing most things, although they make decent unarmed fighters with their claws and, due to their contact with the grave, can use ice, earth and death magic without too many difficulties.

Innate Abilities

• Ghouls have the following innate resistances and immunities: Cold Resistance 1, Life Protection 3, Poison Resistance, Rot Resistance, and immunity to Torment. Ghouls will rot instead of mutate.
• Ghouls are vulnerable to Dispel Undead and holy damage, including Holy wrath brand.
• Ghouls cannot go berserk, willingly or unwillingly.
• Ghouls cannot worship the "good gods," The Shining One, Elyvilon, or Zin. Nor can Ghouls worship Fedhas.
• Ghouls cannot be polymorphed or change form, but they can be petrified.
• Ghouls cannot use or memorize the following spells: Dragon Form, Ice Form, Spider Form, Statue Form, Stoneskin, Beastly Appendage, Blade Hands, Necromutation, Death's Door, Borgnjor's Revivification, Cure Poison.
• Claws 1: Ghouls have claws on their hands and receive a bonus to unarmed combat damage.
• Carnivorous 3: Ghouls can eat chunks at any time, but cannot eat anything but meat.
• Saprovore 3: Ghouls can eat rotten or contaminated meat without any problems.
• Slow Healing 1: Ghouls heal more slowly than usual.
• Ghouls rot randomly and continuously, but more quickly when hungry or starving. Happily, they can heal rot and HP loss by eating rotten or contaminated meat.
• Ghouls can eat any amount of meat without ever becoming "full" or "engorged". However, they can only retain up to 6999 points of nutrition, as compared to the usual 12000.
• Ghouls do not leave Player ghosts.

Preferred Backgrounds

• Warriors: Fighter, Gladiator, Monk
• Mages: Necromancer, Ice Elementalist, Earth Elementalist

Due to their undead nature, ghouls are prohibited from becoming Priests or Healers. They are also prohibited from becoming Transmuters.

Nutrition

Like other undead, ghoul nutrition is a special case. Along with its nutritional value, eating chunks of meat can heal HP, and rot damage. Regardless of the kind of chunk involved, the amount healed is 1d5 - 1 + 1d(1+XP level). However, the likelihood of these restorative effects occurring varies between chunk types:

Chunk Type	Heal HP	Heal Rot
Clean	80%	75%
Contaminated	86%	75%
Rotten	100%	75%

It's worth noting that while you will never be told you're too full to eat more, you cannot accumulate a "life-time supply" of nutrition by devouring everything you come across, as a ghoul's satiation never increases beyond 7/12 of the maximum amount other species can hold. Even if you could, you'd still need to regularly eat meat to heal rotting.

In addition to chunks, Ghouls can also eat meat rations, beef jerky, sausages, cheese, pizza, honeycombs, royal jelly, and ambrosia. These foods have no healing or restorative effects, but by raising a ghoul's overall satiation level they slow the onset of rot. Royal jelly and ambrosia will also still provide their unique benefits.

Level Bonuses

• +1 strength every 5th level.
• 10% more HP than average.
• 10% less MP than average.
• +3 magic resistance per level.

Starting Skills and Equipment

Ghouls start with the skills and equipment listed for their background, with the following exceptions:

• Ghouls never start with food of any kind.
• If their background does not start with Unarmed Combat skill and offers a choice of weapon, Ghouls have the extra option of "claws" (which also gives them some starting skill in unarmed combat).

Difficulty of Play

Ghouls have a unique—and rather fiddly—relationship to food. However, if one is willing to deal with that, then in Ghouls one finds a fairly durable undead species that, unlike Mummies, can quaff potions and has decent aptitudes. Ghouls naturally tend to have very poor dexterity and intelligence, though this can eventually be offset by the chosen stat ups that one receives every three levels.

Skill aptitudes

The higher the value, the better the aptitude.

Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude	Skill	Aptitude
Attack		Miscellaneous		Magic
Fighting	1	Armour	-1	Spellcasting	-2
		Dodging	-1
Maces & Flails	-1	Shields	-1	Conjurations	-2
Axes	-1	Stealth	2	Hexes	-2
Polearms	-1			Summonings	-1
Staves	-1	Invocations	1	Necromancy	0
Unarmed Combat	1	Evocations	-1	Translocations	-1
Throwing	-1	Shapeshifting	N/A	Alchemy	-1
				Fire Magic	-2
Short Blades	-1			Ice Magic	1
Long Blades	-1			Air Magic	-2
Ranged Weapons	-1	Experience	0	Earth Magic	1

Strategy

The most obvious way to play a Ghoul is to hack everything to death with your claws. Their claws give a +2 bonus to damage, which helps in the early game when bare-handed combat is otherwise weak. This play style is further supported by a good aptitude in unarmed combat. However, Ghouls' weapon aptitudes are reasonable, and a weapon-wielding Ghoul is perfectly viable.

Ghouls can also make for competent casters. They start with low Intelligence, which one should seek to offset by choosing Intelligence every three levels, by starting with one of the spell casting backgrounds (which have more Intelligence), or both. However, their aptitudes for magic skills are fairly good.

As far as gods go, Makhleb is a popular choice for Ghouls. Aside from the usual benefits, Ghouls benefit from HP-for-kills with reductions in the time they must spend resting, which lessens the problem of rotting. Another good option is Kikubaaqudgha: This option gives Ghouls an easy way to branch into Necromancy, and they can use his receive corpses ability not only for necromantic purposes, but also to heal and restore rot (including in normally corpseless or corpse-light branches). Unarmed fighters should, as usual, consider Okawaru, as his Heroism ability is even more powerful for Unarmed Combat than it is for other weapon skills. Ghouls who choose a background that starts with a book can make good use of Sif Muna or Vehumet, as always.

Appetite and Corpses

Even though you can eat meat at any time, don't eat chunks immediately, as Trolls and Kobolds do. Instead, save them until you're injured, rotted, or actually hungry. Unless it's an emergency, hold off on eating chunks until they're rotten, when they will be most nourishing for you, and more likely to heal your rot. Also remember that while the game will let you eat all the meat you want, you don't actually accumulate nutrition beyond Satiated -- excess food is "wasted" (aside from healing). From the top of "Hungry" to the top of "Satiated" (your max) is less than five chunks, and you don't get any notice when you max out your food counter! Also, plan ahead -- for example, stock up on to-be-rotted chunks when facing an unexplored area, or when your current rotted chunks will vanish soon.

It should be noted that Makhleb and several other gods also accept blood sacrifices. This is not necessarily a huge issue for Ghouls, despite their penchant for devouring every corpse in sight. Your piety may not progress quite as efficiently as species who have little use for raw meat (and can afford to sacrifice corpses left and right), but most areas of the Dungeon should provide enough corpses to satisfy both needs.

No Ghosts

Like other undead, Ghouls do not leave ghosts. This comes in handy when you've accumulated a lot of ghost levels, and would like to clear some out -- a few Ghoul characters can try to take them out, without adding to the problem. Their unnatural resistances are handy against those Venom Mage and suchlike ghosts, too.