Ghoul
- This page is about the player species. For the monster, see Ghoul (monster).
Ghouls are horrible undead creatures who devour the flesh of the living, rending victims with their sharp claws. They can sleep in their graves for years on end, but when they rise to prowl among the living (as player Ghouls do), their appetite is insatiable. They prefer raw flesh, especially if it is rotten.
Ghouls have one major advantage over living adventurers, as they can heal themselves by eating meat, especially if it is rotting or contaminated, and cannot actually starve to death. On the other hand, they themselves will rot if they go too long without sustenance. Luckily, the Dungeon is sufficiently monster-infested in most areas that Ghouls can keep themselves nourished (and intact) far more easily than most living species. They also have fearsome claws and the immunities common to all undead.
For their predatory advantages, Ghouls have mediocre aptitudes in most skills. They excel only in Stealth, Fighting, and Unarmed Combat (using their claws). Due to their contact with the grave, they have a little talent for Ice Magic, Earth Magic, and Necromancy, as well. All told, their natural talents lend themselves most to close combat.
Contents
Innate abilities
- Undead immunities: Cold Resistance 1, Life Protection 3, Poison Resistance, immunity to Torment.
- Undead penalties: vulnerable to Dispel Undead and similar effects; will rot instead of mutate; cannot go berserk.
- Spell Restrictions (self-transformation and spells that only affect the living): 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 for hands and receive a bonus to "unarmed" damage.
- Carnivore 3: Ghouls can eat corpse chunks at any time, but cannot eat anything but meat.
- Saprovore 3: Ghouls can eat rotten or contaminated meat without problem.
- 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.
Preferred backgrounds
Ghouls are among the least versatile species in the game, although this is not necessarily a bad thing if they stick to what they're best at. They work best as Fighters, Gladiators, Monks, Necromancers, Ice Elementalists, and Earth Elementalists.
Due to their undead nature, ghouls are prohibited from becoming Priests or Healers. Like Mummies, they are also prohibited from becoming Transmuters.
Nutrition
Like other undead, Ghoul nutrition is a special case. Eating chunks of meat will heal HP and possibly rot. Rotten/contaminated or clean, the amount healed is 1 + random2(5) + random2(1 + you.experience_level). Clean chunks have a 1/5 chance of healing zero HP, rotten or contaminated chunks will always heal some HP. Clean chunks have a 2/3 chance to heal one rotted permanent hp and rotten chunks have 3/4 chance. Rotten chunks will heal a point of rotted strength attribute 1/5 of the time. 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 -- indeed, a Ghoul's food counter maxes out at 6999 instead of the usual 12000! (as per Grasland's spoiler, at least as of 0.5.2.) Of course, you'd still need meat to heal rotting.
In addition to chunks, Ghouls can also eat meat rations, royal jellies, honeycombs, sausages, cheese, and slices of pizza. These foods never heal them or restore rotted max HP, but by raising a Ghoul's overall satiation level they slow the onset of rot. Royal jellies will still cure stat drain as well.
Level bonuses
- Ghouls gain a Strength stat increase every 5 levels starting at level 5.
- Ghouls have 10% more HP than average.
- Ghouls have 10% less MP than average.
- Ghouls gain 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" (and Unarmed Combat skill).
Difficulty of play
| Simple • Intermediate • Advanced |
Ghouls are less dependent on healing items than living species, thanks to their ability to heal through eating meat. They aren't as strong or tough as Trolls, but borrow several pages from their playbook (enhanced healing factor, a preference for unarmed combat, a ravenous meat diet, a tough game in low-corpse branches, and so forth). Instead of having a Troll's toughness, Ghouls level faster, get undead resistances, fewer equipment restrictions, and have more forgiving aptitudes if they stray outside their niche of clawing everything to death.
Skill aptitudes
The higher the value, the better the aptitude.
| Skill | Aptitude | Skill | Aptitude | Skill | Aptitude |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Attack | Miscellaneous | Magic | |||
| Fighting | +1 | Armour | -1 | Spellcasting | -1 |
| Short Blades | -1 | Dodging | -1 | Conjurations | -2 |
| Long Blades | -1 | Stealth | +1 | Hexes | -2 |
| Axes | -1 | Stabbing | 0 | Charms | -1 |
| Maces & Flails | -1 | Shields | -1 | Summonings | -1 |
| Polearms | -1 | Traps | -1 | Necromancy | 0 |
| Staves | -1 | Translocations | -1 | ||
| Unarmed Combat | +1 | Transmutation | -1 | ||
| Fire Magic | -2 | ||||
| Throwing | -1 | Ice Magic | +1 | Invocations | 0 |
| Slings | -1 | Air Magic | -2 | Evocations | -1 |
| Bows | -1 | Earth Magic | +1 | ||
| Crossbows | -1 | Poison Magic | 0 | Experience | 120 |
Tips and tricks
The most obvious way to play a Ghoul is to hack everything to death with your claws. They have a good aptitude for Unarmed Combat (+1), and the claws give a +2 bonus to damage, which helps greatly in the early game. While ordinarily combining heavy armour and unarmed combat is counterproductive (EV penalty slows unarmed combat), Ghouls may want to consider it: they have very high Strength and very low Dexterity, meaning they won't get as much out of light armour but can wear heavy armours with less penalty than other races. A light armoured Ghoul is still quite viable, but will have considerably less EV than most other light armour characters. Additionally, Ghouls' weapon aptitudes are reasonable (-1), and a weapon-wielding Ghoul, while less than ideal, is quite doable.
Ghouls also make surprisingly competent casters. They start with low Intelligence, but their aptitudes for magic skills are actually fairly good: most of their spell skills are reasonable at -1, and they have considerable talent in Ice and Earth Magic, and are good with Necromancy and Poison Magic. Their ability to eat any and all chunks (including mutagenic and rot-inducing ones) means that spell hunger is far less of a concern for them than most races, which somewhat offsets their low Int. Their claws and aptitude for Unarmed considerably help in early game survival, and their high Strength gives them better carry capacity than other casters. However, their Int is sufficiently low that, in order to make a Ghoul caster, it is a good idea to start with a spellcasting background and devote most or all of your skill points to Int, at least if you want to cast higher-level spells.
While not as constrained as Vampires or Deep Dwarves in god choice, Ghouls will find that some gods make their game considerably easier than others. Makhleb is a very popular choice for them, as his HP-for-kills helps offset their slow healing. Since this reduces the time they must spend resting, it also lessens the problem of rotting. Another good option is Kikubaaqudgha: they can use his receive corpses ability to heal and restore rot in normally corpseless branches. His torment protection is redundant for Ghouls, but they can use his Necromancy spells and torment invocation to great effect. Unarmed fighters might consider Okawaru - even though his weapon gifts will be useless, his Heroism ability is considerably more powerful for them. Casters can make good use of Sif Muna or Vehumet to help offset Ghouls' naturally low MP.
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.
