In summary, Ghoul characters:

- No longer physically age after having been ghoulified

- Suffer a permanent -5 roll penalty to PER rolls, but take no PER penalties from lighting or weather

- Suffer a -20 speechcraft penalty versus non-ghouls (this can be removed, like all racial speechcraft penalties, by achieving fame or notoriety (±100 Karma)

- Do not need to eat, sleep or go to the bathroom.

- Are immune to the effects of heat exhaustion (but not cold)

- Are 2d4*15 units of weight lighter

- Are immune to (and healed by) radiation, to the point where it can reattach severed limbs. This metabolizes 20 rads per wound.

- Receive a +20 bonus on END rolls versus poisons and drug addiction, and are immune to regular-strength mind effecting drugs entirely – that includes all drugs that do not give a bonus to STR, END or AGI (but they’re NOT resistant to taint or enervation).

- Are immune to most diseases

- Are immune to the effects of taint and pink cloud

- Are extremely vulnerable to Enervation

Canterlot Ghoul (4 Character Creation Points. Ponies, Zebra and Griffins only. Cannot be taken with the Addictive Personality, Unstable Genetics, or Mutation hindrances) – Your character has been to Canterlot. This is a big deal, considering that the place is completely inundated in toxic gas, the ongoing result of the pink-cloud megaspell that destroyed the city and killed at least one of the princesses. Canterlot ghouls have all of the benefits and downsides of normal ghouls as listed above, save for the fact that Canterlot ghouls do not need to sleep, at least not regularly. A few hours every few days is enough to keep them from becoming mentally addled, and their physical bodies no longer suffer from the effects of exhaustion like those of normal ghouls do.

In addition, Canterlot ghouls are immune to the pink cloud that saturates Canterlot (they are in fact healed by it) and the lethal effects of the corrupted pipbuck broadcasters. (For more information on these deadly devices, see their entry in the items section under technology.) To top it all off, they’re damn hard to kill. The only way to put a Canterlot ghoul in the ground for good is to destroy or decapitate their head or central nervous system, or to disintegrate them completely. Otherwise, they will just keep getting back up, their other limbs reforming or reattaching themselves unless disintegrated. Disintegrated limbs can only be regenerated in the presence of radiation or pink cloud, the latter of which which heals Canterlot ghouls as if it were 1000 rads-worth of radiation.

Canterlot ghouls do have some additional downsides, however; whatever they were wearing when they were ghoulified, they now cannot take off. Anything in direct contact with their flesh, hair, or in some cases even their hooves fused with them. Exposed areas that were not in contact with anything simply ghoulified in a fashion similar to normal ghouls, as described above. Quite a few Canterlot ghouls have a pipbuck fused to their foreleg as a result of this fact. Some, like Steelhooves or Lionheart, fused with their armor and gain mixed benefits and downsides from their armor’s magical abilities and enhancements (Temporary attribute bonuses become permanent, and should be treated as such; skill ranks should increase and decrease accordingly. At character creation, pick out the articles of clothing or armor that your character would have been wearing on the day the city was hit. Additional equipment that your character possesses can be worn on top of the fused apparel, as long as the pieces don’t interfere.

Because of the nature of Canterlot ghouls, nearly all of them are as old as the apocalypse that spawned them. As a result, they’ve lived through a lot, and their experience provides them a benefit in the form of 15 free skill ranks at character creation, which they may distribute among their skills as they see fit. Canterlot Ghouls may take the Specialization trait for free if their GM deems it appropriate.

Note that not only are Canterlot ghouls immune to radiation, but radiation-spawned ghouls, being technically dead, are also immune to the effects of the pink cloud. Radiation-spawned ghouls are NOT immune to the effects of corrupted broadcasters.

3 – Leveling Up Your Character

There are a few easy steps to go through to make your character that much more of a badass each time they level up. Generally speaking, your GM will determine when you level up based on how much experience your character or group of characters have had surviving in the wasteland, based on the tables below and what challenges you’ve faced. Every level, they get a few nice new things to play with, including

• Skill Points (How many depends on your perks and INT score)

• 1 New Perk

• +1 Damage per Wound (every three levels, starting at level 3)

Note that skill points are received, and can thus be distributed, before you pick your perk. This is very useful in that it allows players to raise their skills to meet perk requirements before they select a perk. The maximum rank for any skill is 100 - no exceptions.

Characters level up when they’ve received enough experience to do so. If your GM decides to let players keep track of their own experience progression, the amount of experience a character needs to progress from one level to the next is shown in the tables below. The Total EXP column shows the minimum experience required for a character to be at that level. A slower progression is available on the left, and a faster progression is on the right.

Table XII: Slow (left) and Fast (right) level progressions.

Level	Total EXP		Level	Total EXP		Level	Total EXP		Level	Total EXP
1	0		16	120000		1	0		16	18750
2	1000		17	136000		2	200		17	21200
3	3000		18	153000		3	550		18	23800
4	6000		19	171000		4	1050		19	26550
5	10000		20	190000		5	1700		20	29450
6	15000		21	210000		6	2500		21	32500
7	21000		22	231000		7	3450		22	35700
8	28000		23	253000		8	4550		23	39050
9	36000		24	276000		9	5800		24	42550
10	45000		25	300000		10	7200		25	46200
11	55000		26	325000		11	8750		26	50000
12	66000		27	351000		12	10450		27	53950
13	78000		28	379000		13	12300		28	58050
14	91000		29	407000		14	14300		29	62300
15	105000		30	436000		15	16450		30	66700

Note that not all GMs run games with experience; some insist that leveling up after every game session or two is preferable, and there is a school of thought among game masters of many different RPG systems that suggests experience points, if handled poorly, will actually inhibit good roleplaying.

That being said, if your group does decide to play with experience, GMs should award experience points as they see fit, for things such as good roleplaying, solving puzzles, escaping traps, discovering locations, talking with NPCs, advancing the story, doing something cool, or even just killing monsters. Frequently, however, GMs may want to simplify the leveling up process so as to keep all characters at around the same level and strength by just raising everyone’s level as a group instead. This is much easier for the GM and is recommended for the new or inexperienced. Leveling up the party as a whole with or without keeping track of experience is explained in more detail in the GM’s section.