By Alan McCoy from Dungeons & Dragons: Fundamentals
How to build challenging encounters against a Wight
Note: This has been prepared utilizing only the 5E Core Rules. The Wight can be found in the Monster Manual page 300.
The Wight is one of the Classic Monsters from the earliest days of Dungeons and Dragons, in fact fantasy writing in general.
Wights are powerful corporeal undead. Essentially a spirit that has been allowed to continue to animate and possess its mortal body by the influence of a powerful entity. While this is often the Demon Lord of Undead, Orcus, others have been known to empower this evil manifestation.
A Wight is a creature that is so obsessed with a goal that the spirit refuses to accept defeat even in death and calls upon any power that will listen to allow them to continue. Once this dark bargain has been accepted, the spirit is granted undeath so that it can pursue its dark agenda.
While a Wight will lose much of its humanity in the transition, it continues to possess the memories and drives of its former living self. Now freed from the physical restraints of life, it will pursue its goal unflinchingly, needing to pause for neither sustenance nor rest.
While the source of this limitation is not fully understood, it is known that Wights cannot stand the light of the Sun. They are greatly weakened by it and will not willingly fight under the light of the Sun. They flee to caves, crypts, and other desolate areas to avoid Sunlight Exposure.
Those slain by a Wight will rise as Zombies under the control of the Wight, usually after a period of 24 hours.
Step 1) Let’s Review what we know about Wights
Wights are extremely strong, nimble, and tough, a byproduct of being liberated from mortal limitations. Their mental faculties are usually intact, though their force of will and their force of personality are often much stronger than that of mortals.
Wights gain proficiency in Stealth and Perception.Wights are resistant to damage from Necrotic and not magical or silver weaponry.
Wights are immune to Poison.
Wights have Darkvision and a passive perception of 13.
Wights know the languages they knew in life.
Step 2) Determine the probable Strategy.
If given the time, a Wight will assemble a zombie army as cannon fodder. Such cannon fodder will be utilized to distract and occupy any resistance while they continue to pursue their primary objective.
Step 3) Determine Tactics
Utilize their zombie minions to occupy foes, trigger traps or USE items that will benefit the Wight in combat. As Zombies are automatons with no free will, possible tactics include grapple and dive into danger (off a cliff or the like), dropping flammable oil at their own feet, and pulling a lever that will drop a deadfall of rocks that will crush themselves as well as any party member that happens to be there. The Zombies are also capable of utilizing the HELP action to render foes more vulnerable to attack.
While a Wight is a capable melee combatant, they far prefer to utilize their longbow attacks in support of their Zombie minions, entering into the fray only when foes have been substantially weakened and they can utilize their life drain ability to create replacement or additional zombies.
Intelligent and capable, a Wight will withdraw if a conflict is going badly, surviving to fight another day.
Step 4) DM Tips and Observations
If a Wight had better ability scores in life, utilize that score instead of the MM listed score, the transformation should always IMPROVE their physical form.
One of the things that makes the Wight one of the most dangerous of the Undead, is the fact that they retain their memory, skills and class abilities in their Unlife. Imagine a Wight that has not only it’s undead powers, but also those of a high level rogue or wizard.
I usually have the slain rise at the next Sunset rather than a specific twenty-four-hour period.
While it is not covered in the MM entry, it can be assumed that a Wight that achieves the goal that kept it in UNLIFE will be destroyed or otherwise laid to rest.