Creating Your Ghost

Before you make your Ghost, think about the kind of relationship you two have. Do you mostly get along, or does your Ghost often question why it chose you? Additionally, decide with your Architect and fireteam how Ghosts will be role-played, if at all. Will everyone make their own Ghost, or will you be assigned a random Ghost another player made? Will you make your own Ghost, but another player at the table plays them for you? There are a myriad of interesting dynamics and options for you and your fireteam to explore!

Ghost Traits

All Ghosts have a variety of universal traits as a result of their creation.

Ability Score Increase. One of your Ghost’s ability scores increases by 2, and a different ability score increases by 1.

Size. While Ghosts can vary in size depending on the type of shell they equip, the core of the Ghost can fit into the palm of a human hand. Your Ghost’s size is Tiny.

Flying Speed. Your Ghose has no base walking speed and no jump distance, as it has no legs and cannot walk or jump. Instead it has a base flying speed of 30 feet (can fly in place). Whenever a feature, trait, Power, spell, or other source refers to your Ghost’s base walking speed, treat its base flying speed as its base walking speed to determine the effect. 

Your Ghost cannot fly if it’s carrying a weight greater than half its weight limit. If it is flying when it gains this weight, it begins to fall. Furthermore, if a Ghost becomes Incapacitated, it can’t fly and begins to fall.

Languages. Your Ghost can speak, read, and digitally write City common, the Risen language, and one other language of its choice. It understands and can interpret RSL.

Living Machine. Even though your Ghost is a machine, it has a personality and level of intelligence no different from other sentient biotic life. Your Ghost is considered a living creature, not a construct, and it appears on bioscanners as one. It is immune to disease, and it does not need to eat, sleep, or drink, though it can choose to enter a rest state to defragment its digital memory if it wants to.

Crafted in Light. Your Ghost is resistant to kinetic damage. However, your Ghost has a vulnerability to pure Darkness damage, and when your Ghost takes pure Darkness damage, its health point maximum is reduced by the same amount. If a Ghost is reduced to 0 health points by pure Darkness damage, it is instantly destroyed.

Naturally Stealthy. A Ghost can attempt to hide even when it is only obscured by a creature or object that is at least one size larger than itself.

Integrated Communications. Your Ghost is able to detect, read, and communicate across most digital and quantum signals. They can record video and audio, and they can always communicate internally with their Guardian via neural symbiosis.

Ghost Features

You and your Ghost are inseparable, but there will be times when your Ghost must act on its own. Your Ghost has its own hit points, set of skills, and bonuses to those skills, takes its initiative on your initiative, and can take its own actions, bonus actions, and reactions.

Hit Point Stats

Hit Dice: 1d6 per level

Health Points at 1st level: 6 + your Ghost’s Constitution modifier

Health Points at higher levels: 1d6 (or 4) + your Ghost’s Constitution modifier per level after 1st

Starting Proficiencies

Armor: Ghost shells

Weapons: none

Saving Throws: Choose any 2

Vehicles: Jumpships (autopilot programming only)

Skills: Choose any 3

Ability Scores & Increases

Your Ghost’s starting ability scores are determined using the same method that determined your own starting ability scores. Your Architect will determine what level your Ghost can start at, and how your Ghost gains experience points. Your Ghost’s level does not need to be the same as your level, though typically, your Ghost does start at the same level as you, and it gains a level whenever you gain a level.

When your Ghost reaches 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one of its ability scores of your choice by 2, or you can increase two of its ability scores of your choice by 1. You can’t increase one of your Ghost’s ability scores above 20 in this way. 

Memory Bank

Using a mind-bendingly sophisticated combination of the Traveler’s technology and common transmat protocols, your Ghost can download items and store them in its memory slots. Ghosts have a number of memory slots equal to 5 + (5 times their proficiency bonus). See Equipment: Ghost Memory for more information. If you’ve reached this point in character creation, all you need to write down is the total number of memory slots your Ghost has.

Restoration

Your Ghost is able to use its own Power to heal your injuries and revive you from almost any death, spending a use of this feature in order to take the Heal or Resurrect action, as described in Chapter 7: Combat. Your Ghost can use this feature a maximum number of times equal to its proficiency bonus. 

When your Ghost completes a long rest, it regains all uses of this feature. 

Glimmer Programming

Glimmer is a type of programmable matter that can be turned into any abiotic material, object, or construct, such as a pile of copper ore, a handful of weapon parts, or, with sufficient glimmer, even a fully functional Tower frame.

Your Ghost is capable of programming glimmer. As an action, it can program up to 2,000 bits of glimmer into an abiotic item that does not require attunement. This glimmer is spent when your Ghost does this. How many bits of glimmer it takes to create a specific item is determined by the item’s purchase cost, or by your Architect.

Reverse Programming

If an item is made up of glimmer, either in part or in whole, your Ghost can use an action to reduce it back to raw glimmer. The amount of glimmer that is recovered from the item is equal to one third of the amount of glimmer originally in the item.

Pocket Backpack

After it connects itself to you for the very first time, your Ghost gains access to a small pocket of extradimensional space attached to your person. Your Ghost can choose to use either its action or bonus action to enter or leave the pocket backpack on its turn, if it is within 5 feet of you. Your Ghost cannot be harmed while within its pocket backpack, and only your Ghost can enter or interact with its own pocket backpack.

If you ever die permanently, your Ghost is removed from the pocket backpack immediately, and cannot reenter it.

A Ghost’s interaction with the outside world is limited while within its pocket backpack. It can still communicate with you through neural symbiosis, but to interact with the physical world (such as to read radio signals, poke objects, or speak to someone else), it must leave the pocket backpack.

Equipment Swap

Even from within its pocket backpack, your Ghost is able to assist you in small ways. One of these ways is to switch out the items you’re holding or wearing with items it has stored in its memory. As an action, your Ghost can take one item you are holding or wearing and store the item in its memory. With the same action, it can withdraw an item from its memory and corporate the item in the physical world. This item isn’t automatically put in your hands or held on your body. Instead, you’ll need to grab the item first, as normal (see Combat: Drawing, Stowing, and Wielding Items).

Like normal, a Ghost can’t store an item in its memory if it doesn’t have enough space to do so.

Quick Thinking

Your Ghost’s computational mind and quick reflexes allows it to move and act quickly. It can take the Dash, Disengage, or Hide actions as bonus actions on its turn.

Additionally, if your Ghost is within 5 feet of you when it is forced to make a saving throw from an effect it can perceive, such as being forced to make a Payload saving throw from a creature it can see, it can choose to use its reaction to disappear into its pocket backpack immediately, removing itself from the area of the effect and negating the need to make the saving throw at all. 

If a creature makes an attack roll against your Ghost that misses, or if your Ghost takes damage, it can also choose to use its reaction to disappear into its pocket backpack, if it is within 5 feet of you.