Troubled by the living? Unhappy with eternity? Call Beetlejuice, the bio-exorcist!
Welcome to Essential Builds, the blog that summons popular culture icons to Essence20 by saying their name three times!
What better way to continue our Spooky Season theme than by building the ghost with the most? That, and this build is overdue. Like, literally. Two weeks ago was the anniversary of me promising Renegade Community Specialist Rina that I would build Beetlejuice. I missed the window to make it my Halloween 2024 build, and I am not missing Halloween 2025.
It’s showtime!
Who Is Beetlejuice?
Well… he attended Juilliard… He’s a graduate of the Harvard business school. He traveled quite extensively. He lived through the Black Plague and had a pretty good time during that. He’s seen the EXORCIST ABOUT A HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SEVEN TIMES, AND IT KEEPS GETTING FUNNIER EVERY SINGLE TIME HE SEES IT!
Actually, we don’t know if any of the above is true. We don’t even know how to spell his name! It’s spelt Betelgeuse, like the star, anytime it appears on screen, but like an insect smoothie in all promotional material.
We do know Beetlejuice is a trickster spirit with incredible powers, bound by a curse that controls where and when he can appear. Outwardly, he acts like he’s having a great time. However, he manipulates everyone around to get him away from the afterlife, freaking out when these plans go awry. He’s always trying to bargain with anyone he comes into contact with: his powers for their obedience.
Building Essence20 Beetlejuice
There are three ways I could go about this build.
One, I could build a character with movie Beetlejuice’s powers and ignore his moral compass. You can include him in a party next to any Power Ranger or Autobot.
Two, I could build a character with movie Beetlejuice’s powers and moral compass. Reserved for evil campaigns.
Three, I could make animated series Beetlejuice, who was friends with Lydia, better adjusted, and more sincere, mostly using his powers to have a good time.
Even though option three would be the most useful build while still respecting source material, the animated series isn’t remembered nearly as well as the movies. So let’s go option two, the truest interpretation of the character, and an excuse to bust out Essence20’s evil options.
What Essence20 doesn’t have as much of is supernatural options. Expect a lot of My Little Pony and Welcome To Night Vale options, two unrelated settings that somehow create Beetlejuice when overlapped.
Origin
Brought Back (Welcome To Night Vale Roleplaying Game Citizen’s Guide)
See, this is why I needed to wait a year to build Beetlejuice.
Before Welcome To Night Vale’s release, I needed an option that you could squint and see how that could be a ghost. In Night Vale, you have to squint to see everything!
Brought Back says “You were gone for a long time” but it’s delightfully vague on where you were, what being gone even means, and what being back means. Maybe you left town. Maybe you left the mortal plane.
The Brought Back Origin Perk is a nice take back mechanic, letting us reroll certain dice with a bonus. It’s a great way to show that Beetlejuice has a full back of tricks, and even in failure, he can pull out a win.
Role
Spirit of Generosity (My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)
I admit that there might be better Roles for Beetlejuice, but when I made the connection that Spirit of Generosity could cover Beetlejuice’s deal making, I couldn’t shake it. I guess I just like corrupting the Spirits of Harmony.
We’ll be setting swapping, so that means losing a Talent For Generosity, Generosity Is Magic, and Friendship Circle at 1st level, according to Gen Con Worlds Collide: The Pony Puzzle Event – Character Preparations That’s probably for the best. These Perks reward you for playing up the spirit of the, well, Spirit. If the GM rules that quid pro quo deals aren’t generous, the Role loses two potent early Perks. On the other hand, for an evil campaign, all you need to do to make this Role a viable option is to say that g(r)ifting is always a generous act.
Still, we have a lot of other Perks that benefit our allies. And then we get to lord that over them until we get what we want.
Generosity of Spirit lets us give another PC a bonus on a Skill Test out of turn order, at the expense of suffering an equal penalty on our next Skill Test. And at 2nd level, we get Bits To Spare, which gives us a bonus to Wealth tests when buying for someone else.
Most of the Spirit of Generosity’s Perks follow a similar theme. We give allies benefits, or additional benefits when Lending Assistance, either at the cost of actions on our turn or some other penalty.
Look at us, the long suffering ally. They own us for all the help we offer. Or we could save that bonus for someone else, someone who would appreciate it.
Shoot, why can’t I write a villain without it sounding like I’m parodying Donald Trump? I guess because he’s a parody of a villain brought to life.
Back to Beetlejuice.
Setting and Focus
Night Vale (Welcome To Night Vale Roleplaying Game Citizen’s Guide), City Council
Wow, that’s four out of my last five builds that use Night Vale as the setting. I had no idea that one product opened up so many options.
It makes sense. Night Vale looks at a world like ours through a weird lens. Tim Burton looks at our world through a weird lens. With a lot of black and white stripes.
Night Vale characters get a General Perk at 1st level, and that’s huge for us. It means we get Magical at first level, unlocking the ability to cast spells, which we need to recreate a lot of Beetlejuice’s powers.
Also useful for unlocking Beetlejuice’s powers: The Weird Skill. And it so happens that the Politician Role’s City Council Focus gives us the Weird General Perk at 1st level! I haven’t started on Beetlejuice’s Skills yet, but with access to Spellcasting and Weird, I wonder how many Skill Points I’ll spend on Essence-agnostic Skills.
Back to City Council! While I wouldn’t say Beetlejuice strikes me as a politician, he does give off con artist vibes, and we’ve seen con artists succeed spectacularly in politics. Also, the Politician Role says they’re Dangerously Charismatic, an apt description for Beetlejuice.
Influences
1st Conniving (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Cobra Codex)
2nd Infatuated (My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Dark Skies Over Equestria)
3rd Unscrupulous (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Cobra Codex)
Cobra Codex, it’s been a minute.
Knowing that I was giving Beetlejuice a seemingly nice Role, I wanted to give him clearly corrupt Influences.
Conniving is not just a fun word, it’s a spicy Influence. When an ally offers to Lend Assistance, you say “after you” and let them roll the Skill Test instead. This is going to let us focus on the Spellcasting Skill, since we can rely on an ally to help out with our other Skills.
I wasn’t sure how to frame our second Influence. Infatuated represents everything from Spike’s crush on Rarity to how Changelings feed off the love shared between other creatures. We know Beetlejuice is obsessed with the living. We’ve yet to see him pull off one of his schemes, and he’s not an especially honest fellow, so we don’t know what his end game is. Luckily, we don’t need to take this Influence. The Perk gives us a bonus to Alertness when dealing with the living, and the Hang-Up gives us an equal penalty to Alertness on Skill Tests not related to the living when something related to the world of the living is present. Which, depending on the campaign, could be often.
Finally, Unscrupulous. If Beetlejuice had a mustache, you know he would stroke it. The Influence Perk is pretty weak—Skill Tests appealing to the good in us suffer a penalty—but the flavour feels right.
Essence Scores and Skills
Strength 3 (Bronze): Intimidation +d6
Speed 3 (Silver): Initiative +d2
Smarts 5 (Gold): Alertness +d4, Culture +d4
Social 5 (Diamond): Deception +d6
Spellcasting +d6, Weird +d4
Hm.
Not happy with this. And not sure what to do about it. These feel like all the Skills Beetlejuice needs, and the portions seem about right, but it also feels incomplete. Plus we have no combat Skills, other than Spellcasting.
If you have suggestions, I’d love to hear them. I’m stuck here.
Spells
MLP CRB: Mind Beam
Dark Skies Over Equestria: Disguise, Get To Know, Basic Shape-Shifting
Knights Of Canterlot: Scarefying Appearance
We can’t take all of these Spells at level 1, but this is a roadmap of the spells I see as important to this build. They fall into two categories: Mess with targets, and fancy outfits.
We see Beetlejuice use a variety of powers, but most of them have the same effect: Scare the target. Mind Beam gives us a selection of Conditions to apply to a target, and Scarefying Appearance changes us in a variety of threatening ways. Unfortunately, they’re both Virtuoso spells, which we can’t get until we have +d10 Spellcasting. I’m tempted to move the +d4 Weird Skill Points into Spellcasting and only worry about getting Weird later.
While we wait for the higher level spells, Disguise and Get To Know get us by. Beetlejuice does a lot of harmless costume changes, and Disguise’s ↓1 cost means we can do the same when we don’t have any other spells of consequence to worry about. And Get To Know helps us learn what would make a target uncomfortable as we craft the perfect scare.
Basic Shape-Shifting is our middle ground spell, letting us turn into a Beetlejuice-headed snake or whatever he does to his face, while we wait for the bigger, scarier Scarefying Appearance.
Conclusion
I’m about 90% on this Beetlejuice build. There’s a lot of unexpected combinations that I think would make it fun to play. I’m just worried the Skill selection limits how effectively we can execute our devious plans.
Then again, Beetlejuice fails at pretty much every plan he tries. He’s better on the ideation than the execution. And I think that also sums up how I feel about this build. It’s not a miss, I just don’t know if it’s everything it needs to be.
Resources
Field Guide to Action & Adventure
G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Cobra Codex
My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Dark Skies Over Equestria
My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Knights of Canterlot
Welcome To Night Vale Citizen’s Guide
Gen Con Worlds Collide: The Pony Puzzle Event – Character Preparations
Ryan Costello is one of the designers of the Essence20 system and an author on the G.I. JOE, Transformers, and My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebooks. As of this writing, he’s written over 300 000 words for Essence20, contributing to over a dozen products and counting.
