How much Incorporeal Undead is too much?

[Silus]

Okay so I'm doing some homebrew setting stuff and I have one continent to flesh out. I'm leaning towards a sort of ruin-covered, semi-creepy "why do I always feel like i'm being watched" sort of continent. For those familiar with WoW, imagine a mix of pre-Cata Azshara and Ghostlands, with a not-quite Roanoke Colony feel.

Blah blah fluff and stuff, here's the problem: The idea I had was back during the big'ol war that turned the world into what it is now, the nation that held sway over the continent kiiiiiinda sorta not quite vanished. To quote a Skype conversation on it:

The continent was home to a more...traditional sort of nation that valued magic over technology. Needless to say stuff went down and now damn near the whole continent is dead. Or in some areas, undead. The whole continent is...grey. Color seems muted and there's a perpetual light haze about the land. Ruins crop up all over and are generally overgrown by trees or landslides and such. The once-capital remains amazingly untouched and quite dead during the day, though what little sun reaches through creates a stark contrast of light and shadows that is, in someways, unnatural.

At night however...

Early reports from the few expeditions there tell of great destruction, of tower toppled and cities sunk. But an...unusual lack of bodies.

The idea is that the continent, save for some wild animals and maybe one or two monster species, feels pretty dead. But there's ALWAYS the sensation that you're being observed.

The nobility still haunt the capital, along with their followers. A millennia and death haven't blunted their magical might. In the contrary, some have even gotten stronger.

So yeah, a "safe during the daytime" continent that more or less floods with incorporeal undead as the sun sets, some of which are friendly, some being evil and malevolent, and a good deal not fully aware that they're dead. Should I reign in on the incorporeal undead and work in more "traditional" undead like zombies and animated skeletons, or just play it as it is currently?

[Ettina]

Depends on your PCs.

If any of them are non-spellcasters with an un-enchanted weapon, they'll be left out of any fight involving incorporeal undead.

[Oneris]

Also allow them ways to easily recover ability drain/damage, like a wand of Lesser Restoration. Death to wisdom drain is just horrid.

[Silus]

So basically run with it but give the PCs means to mitigate the bad?

[Psyren]

Just because it's full of ghosts doesn't mean you can't mix things up a bit.

1) Have some of the ghosts possess things - animals, plants, vermin, even animated objects. These would be the ghosts that, for one reason or another, have basically descended into a more feral existence and may not even realize they are ghosts. Defeating the hosts will cause the interlopers' awareness to fade for a time, similar to beating the snot out of spirits in Jade Empire. You can even have corporeal undead show up, by having some of the revenants pop into any corpses laying around.

2) The thinness of the veil around this town leads to other abstract denizens moving in. Various flavors of elemental (like negative energy, ectoplasm, fog, or even the classic 4 could be wandering around, coalesced to a form that is tangible enough to strike. There could also be oozes, feasting on the detritus/remains of any living creatures who became the prey of the ghosts.

3) Stick a cult or two in there - a town that is flooded with the undead would be a great experimental site for any number of necromancers out in the wild, or even be considered a holy (or perhaps unholy) site by the clerics of a god of undeath. Such a group could be primary antagonists to any PCs in the region, or they could simply be a bunch of nutters who don't want any of the living sullying the place other than themselves.

4) Ancient ruins - whatever civilization lived there before everyone ghosted might still have some dangerous relics lying around, including "sleeping" constructs or traps. The ghosts, even if any of them hailed from that civilization, may not remember how to disable or bypass these obstacles, and so the PCs need to figure things out. Then you stick something the PCs want behind all those defenses.

[duboisjf]

Look for Haunts :http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/haunts

... The distinction between a trap and an undead creature blurs when you introduce a haunt—a hazardous region created by unquiet spirits that react violently to the presence of the living.