FREQUENCY:
Uncommon
NO. APPEARING: 2-16
ARMOR CLASS: 5
MOVE: 12"
HIT DICE: 4 + 3
% IN LAIR: 70%
TREASURE TYPE: [B]
NO. OF ATTACKS: 1 ~ 15
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1-4
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Energy
drain
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Silver
or magic weapons to hit | limited immunity to magical attacks | immunity
to : poison, paralyzation, sleep, charm
MAGIC RESISTANCE: See below
INTELLIGENCE. Average
ALIGNMENT: Lawful evil
SIZE: M
LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: VI | 540
+ 5
Creature
Notes (REF5)
SAVES: 11.12.13.13.14
The term wight has lost its
old meaning of a person and come to stand for those undead
humans who typically inhabit barrow mounds or catacombs.
These creatures are most
evil && hateful, seeking to destroy any life form they encounter.
Wights shun bright lights and hate sunlight.
Because these monsters exist simultaneously on the normal and negative planes of the material plane, they are affected only by silver or magical weapons.
This
xistence allows them to drain life energy
levels <alt> -- one such level
each time they score a hit on an opponent.
The creature so hit loses
the hit points of damage scored (1-4) plus one experience level and all
the bonuses derived from that level, i.e. hit dice, class bonuses, thief
abilities, spell levels, etc.
A 9th level magic user struck
by a wight loses 1-4 HP and he becomes an 8th level magic user; he has
the spells and the hit points of an 8th level magic user, and he melees
as an 8th level character of his class.
Wights are not affected by
sleep, charm, hold, or cold-based spells.
Neither poison nor paralyzation
harms wights.
Holy water causes 2-8 hit
points of damage for every vial-full which strikes.
A raise dead spell will
destroy a wight.
Any human totally drained
of life energy by a wight will become a half-strength wight under control
of its slayer. <font=SLAYER>
FREQUENCY:
Uncommon
FREQUENCY:
Rare ([Cold Wilderness Mountains], Temperate Wilderness Mountains])
FREQUENCY:
Very rare ([Cold Wilderness Swamp])
FREQUENCY: Very rare ([Temperate
Wilderness Swamp])
FREQUENCY: Rare ([Tropical
Wilderness Mountains])
FREQUENCY: Very
rare ([Tropical Wilderness Swamp])
FREQUENCY:
Common ([Dungeon Level VI])
The Ecology of the Wight <Necrology?>
These notes on the wights
of the Forgotten Realms are taken from the
writings of Jilda the Sage,
a priestess of Oghma
who has taken as her specialty
the study of undead. When
reading her
dissertations on undead,
however, one
must remember that (1)
all of her
knowledge is taken second-hand,
as she
has never been an adventurer
or seen
most of the creatures about
which she
writes, and (2)
being a daughter of royalty,
her social prejudices show
in some
of her conclusions.
From the Notebooks of
Jilda the Sage of Neverwinter:
zb
. . . Wights are formed
from the
bodies of men
&& women of noble
birth who are buried in
earthen tombs.
There, their bodies are
sought out by
an evil spirit of power
which has no
way of interacting with
the PMP unless he inhabits such a
body.
When the spirit inhabits the
body, it
halts the normal process
of decay and
instead works its magic
to partially petrify
the body. When the body
has the
right balance of flesh &&
mineral, it
can move again under the
spirit?s guidance.
The presence of the spirit
also
causes the body to exist
on both the
negative and normal planes
of the material
plane, making it invulnerable
to
damage by any but silver
or magic
weapons.
Why the spirit wants to return
to a
semi-fleshy form is unknown.
Wights
lead a dank and cheerless
existence.
They avoid sunlight or any
bright light,
and spend their extremely
long lives in
a maze of tunnels under
the tombs that
originally encased their
bodies.
The only relief for this
cheerless
existence is the occasional
intrusion of
living beings. These they
attack without
parlay or pity, trying to
drain the life
energies of the victims
and make them
into pale shadows of wights
themselves.
These pitiful victims are
doomed to a
long but not eternal existence
with the
remnants of their spirits
bound to their
slowly decaying bodies.
They do not
gain the rock-like skin
of their masters
because they are never petrified,
and
eventually they become too
decayed to
hold together and return
to dust.
What becomes of their spirits
is still a
matter of speculation. It
is known that
slaying such a creature
releases its spirit
in normal fashion; this
has been confirmed
with speak to dead spells.
But
whether the spirits of those
half-wights
(as they are known) that
just finally dissolve
are finally allowed to pass
to other
pastures is still undetermined.
Entering a burial mound infested
with wights is a risky undertaking.
No
matter how quietly a party
moves, the
wights seem to know they
are there.
Moreover, the wights themselves
are
very quiet movers, and often
surprise
even the most alert of parties.
Many survivors of wight
attacks
speak of the creatures 'coming
out of
the walls,' which would
lead one to
believe they can tunnel
through the
earth. However, while they
do tunnel
out their mazes under the
burial
mounds, this seems the work
of many
months of painstaking labor,
not the
sort of thing one can use
to surprise an
adventuring party.
The approach of wights, when
seen,
is a frightening sight indeed.
They travel
hunched over, one hand on
the wall
or on the body of one of
their comrades.
They look something like
zombies
or ghouls, but their skin
is more
rock-like in color and the
colors can be
as varied as those found
in a limestone
cavern; frequently, several
colors are in
stripes in the same body.
Wights communicate in some
fashion
that has nothing to do with
normal
speaking. Many wights have
been
heard to wheeze and gasp
and moan in
the middle of combat or
when they
thought they were unobserved,
but this
does not seem to be a language.
Indeed,
many wights have been seen
whose
original bodies are such
that they could
not possibly speak.
Sages theorize that the spirits
communicate
through interaction of their
life forces. As such, this
must take place
at very close range, meaning
that they
have no real way of making
themselves
heard to other wights at
long range.
1.
Wights have eyes, but do not rely
on them for sight. In fact,
their eyes are
so calcified that only a
little light from a
strong source can penetrate
to the
brain, which pains the spirit
inhabiting
the body. This is why they
avoid sunlight
and other strong lights.
However, wights have a strong
sense
of touch and an ability
gained through
the spirit inhabiting them
to detect life
energies. Any living creatures
within
120' of a wight immediately
becomes
perceptible to the wight,
no matter how
thick the walls might be
between them
and their prey.
If wights are in their normal
tunnels
and burial mounds (and they
rarely
travel out of them), they
have memorized
all the passages, and can
pinpoint
just what route they must
take to reach
the life energies they have
detected.
Thus, no matter how quiet
an adventuring
band may be, the wights
will
know they are present and
move to
attack them.
A side effect of their ability
to detect
life energies is their ability
to detect the
aura that a living intelligent
body gives
the valuables carried on
the body.
These attract wights at
a range of about
30' and the wights collect
and hoard
such objects--apparently
for their aesthetic
value as auras.
They actually collect any
such objects
of value, but usually only
those made of
long-lasting, non-rusting
substances,
such as gold and silver
and most gems,
since wights do not maintain
them.
2.
Wights are very stealthy in their
movements. The chance of
hearing
them creep up on a party
is only the
same as the usual roll to
find a secret
door.
They are also very adept
at hiding in
shadows, so that sometimes
they are
described as "coming out
of the walls"
when they actually simply
blended
their earth-toned flesh
into the walls
around them and held incredibly
still.
3.
Because of their undead nature,
wights do not show up well
on infravision.
Thus, elves and dwarves
have little
better chance than humans
of knowing
there are wights in the
neighborhood,
unless the wights are in
a warm room,
where their cold bodies
will stand out
like statues against the
warmed walls.
4.
Despite their obvious intelligence,
most wights seem to have
lost all ability
to use weapons. Their attacks
are
smashing blows with their
calcified
hands, which incidentally
puts the
inhabiting spirit in contact
with the
aura of the target and lets
the wight
drain some of the soul energy
of the victim.
5.
The reason why wights and other
undead drain life energy
from their vic-
tims is open to speculation.
However,
one theory is that the life
energy of
intelligent living creatures
is what
allows these creatures of
two planes to
move about in the Prime
Material
Plane.
This would explain why such
creatures
frequently seem almost statuelike
and totally dead until living
creatures
are close enough to grab.
The inhabiting
spirts are operating either
on their
own reserves or a residue
of energy
from their last victims.
Also, it seems clear that
absorbing a
great deal of life energy
allows a wight
to grow more powerful, and
slightly
independent of its urges.
A wight that
has absorbed 20 life energy
levels in a
month gains in power and
has a chance
to become a great wight-
a wight leader.
The number of energy levels
that
need to be absorbed and
the benefits
derived are shown in the
Wight
Advancement Table.
Wight Advancement Table
| Energy Levels | Hit Dice |
| 20 | 5+3 |
| 60 | 6+3 |
| 140 | 7+3* |
* This is Vinjarek, the great wight described in "The Night Gallery".
Wights of higher-than-normal
hit dice
are antagonistic to one
another, but
unless one has attained
the stature of
great wight, the rivals
do not actually
fight one another. However,
once a
wight has collected its
140th energy
level, he wages a war against
all the current
5 + 3 and 6 + 3 hit dice
wights to
eliminate any competition.
He also
attempts to slay any wights
who progress
to 5 + 3 dice after the
great wight
has established his dominance.
6. The wight spirits
are effectively
immortal. Slaying a wight
with silver or
magic weapons or most destructive
spells simply sends the
spirit off to find
another body to inhabit.
If a cleric destroys a wight
by using
his turn undead ability,
the spirit is ban-
ished to the Negative Material
Plane for
a century before it can
come back, but
it is not killed.
These spirits can be killed
only on the
Negative Material Plane
or by a raise
dead spell.
7. A cleric can turn
a half-wight with
the same chance he can turn
ghouls.
The spirit of a half-wight
that is slain
or dissolves without ever
draining a life
energy level goes to whatever
reward
to which he normally would
have gone.
He can also be raised
from the dead by a
cleric of sufficient level.
However, once
the creature has stolen
the life energy
of a victim, its spirit
becomes that of a
wight. In effect, the creation
of halfwights
is the wight reproduction
system.
Raise
dead will no longer work on
this victim, though it will
destroy the
wight spirit.
The half-wight is described thusly:
FREQUENCY: Uncommon
NO. APPEARING: 1-20
ARMOR CLASS: 7
MOVE: 12"
HIT DICE: 2+3
% IN LAIR: 80%
TREASURE TYPE: nil
NO. OF ATTACKS: 1
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 1d3
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Energy
drain
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Silver
or magic weapons to hit
MAGIC RESISTANCE: As wights
INTELLIGENCE: Average
ALIGNMENT: LE
SIZE: M
LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: <>
Half-wights have to follow
the orders
of their creators. Once
they have
drained an energy level,
they become
willing wights. If they
strike a target,
they automatically drain
energy. They
still have some command
of their communication
facilities, but wights rarely
allow their half-wights
who have not
drained energy to get to
a position
where they might warn potential
targets.
serleran wrote:
Was it ever intended
that a Wraith be a subrace/subspecies of a Wight, or vice versa.
The 1E MM descriptions
seem to indicate they are related to each other, in my humble opinion.
No, there is no relationship
as in developmental status.
they are related in being
undead, and that's that.
A wight is more closely
related to a lich than a wraith,
eh?
Cheers,
Gary
Quote:
Originally posted by
ScottGLXIX
Greetings,
A question on some of
the undead creatures. Did you originally see wights and wraiths as having
corporeal forms or not? Early on wights and wraiths were very similar,
the wraith was just the more powerful of the two. Over the years they’ve
developed into very different critters with a wight having a physical form,
and wraiths not.
Scott
Hmmm. Absolutely did
have in mind that a wight was a physical being, a wraith mainly immaterial,
and I thought that was clear from the get-go in original D&D. Certainly
the movement rates for the two creatures reflected that, as I recall. (Heh,
you can tell it's been a while since I have delved into the MM--over a
year now, in fact.)
In fact, as I recall the Mm illos of the two showed the wight as a clearly physical, corpse-like monster, while the wraith was shown as spectral, ghostly, no?
Cheerio,
Gary
