Most Dungeons & Dragons parties, and other tabletop RPG parties for that matter, have probably dealt with fighting an evil ghost. In one of my games, our DM ended the session just before we began fighting one such being. What do you do with friendly ghosts though? Sometimes, the ghost is a friend that the players can interact with or they could be integral to the story and just an NPC. What do you do when the ghost wants to possess someone though? Ghosts have that ability and while the Dispel Evil and Good spell could help if you’re at a high enough level to have it, what if it’s a friendly ghost that means you no harm? Well, Christian Hoffer from CB talks about an idea that I think is really cool if the opportunity presents itself.
Hoffer talks about a game that he DMs and how the party’s Cleric named Averil had the ghost of a Paladin decide to occupy her body. The reasoning fit the story, but what all does it mean? What Hoffer did was basically give Averil some cool abilities and such related to the ghost and then after a while, Averil had to make Wisdom saving throws. When she failed, the ghost would take over completely. This created a very interesting dynamic as the ghost was still new to the group and therefore not tightly knit like Averil.
My wife once ran a one-shot where one of the players wanted to have multiple personalities and had to do a similar thing and it is definitely an interesting approach to an uncommon situation. How do you normally deal with ghostly possessions?