AD&D Monster Spotlight: The Wraith

Today I dig into the wraith. Fast, smart, and built to punish careless parties. I cover what it does, how to stage it, rulings that keep it deadly but fair, and hooks you can run tonight.

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Episode Transcript

(00:18):
Hey, good morning and welcome back to the Evil Dungeon Masters
AD and D Universe Podcast. Hopefully you're doing well out
there. I know I am.
It's the weekend, it's Friday. Did I say it's the week?
It's not the weekend officially,it's Friday.
Hopefully you got some gaming going on this weekend to get
this by on the weekend. Or maybe you're reading an RPG

(00:38):
book, planning something. Maybe you're writing something
out. Maybe you're just sitting there
rolling dice because that's whatyou like to do.
Anyway. Hopefully you're doing well.
That's all I want to know. If not, hopefully things get
better for you today. We're going to be talking about
a bunch of things on the podcasttoday, but first
[e-mail]. theevildm.com is my website.

(00:59):
You can go there for all the things I'm doing as well as if
you want to help me out. Go to patreon.com/the Evil DM
where you can get some write upsand special videos.
I got the same things going up on point crawls for video and
for members. I also have a poll up for what
you want to see. I also have a freebie up on for

(01:21):
Basic Fantasy talking about Dragons in Basic Fantasy.
I made-up some new Dragons for you.
I have a video up on aliens in DND talking about that.
Bunch of write ups going up on the next couple of days for
Basic Fantasy. Right now since I'm running
Basic Fantasy for my group, I'm just doing that.

(01:43):
Anyway, that's patreon.com/stevewill be up.
Enough about that, let's head into today's topic of choice.
Today we're talking about monsters.
Today we're talking about the Wraith.
Yeah, the Wraith. The Wraith generally is a
creature that we're all familiarwith in games and generally they
will be in a lot of games, especially when you had read

(02:07):
some old school modules for DND when it came to classic DND in a
box and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons when they always had
modules, they always had a Wraith or a white thrown in
those like weird areas or in therandom monster tables.
These two monsters between the white and the Wraith were always

(02:27):
kind of in there in the background, never actually used
for anything more than just random monsters or just a
placement of something to make the players run these creatures.
The rates are are what would classically call oh shit run for
D&D because they do make you run.

(02:47):
With a hit dice of 5 + 3, they are formidable, especially for
low level characters. When it gets up higher, yeah,
maybe not so much, but they do have that drain ability.
So let's talk about them real quick here.
They're uncommon. They're 2 to 12 in peering.
SO2D6 auto cost of 4/12/24 movement.

(03:08):
It dies 5 + 3. They're near layered 25% so
they're not always in their layer.
Generally they're just wanderingaround these dark gloomy places
of sorrow and stuff like that. Treasure type is the number of
attacks is 126 damage, but theirmain thing is that energy drain.
They can only be hit by silver or magical weapons to get them

(03:29):
magic resistance. We'll talk about that.
I mean they're very intelligent creatures.
Their lawful evil and man sized in size.
Man size and size, yeah. So wraiths are undead similar in
nature to whites, but they existmore strongly on the negative
material plane. They are found only in dark and
gloomy places where they have nopower in full sunlight.

(03:50):
That's one of their massive weaknesses.
In addition to the chilling effects of its touch of 186
points of damage, a Wraith drains a life energy at the rate
of plus one per hit, meaning levels, just as a white does.
Similarly, the Wraith can be struck only with silver weapons
which cause only 1/2 damage, or weapons which are magically

(04:13):
enhanced or enchanted, excuse me.
Which we'll do full damage on. Now when it comes to slain
victims for a Wraith, it will rise the next sunset unless the
body is blessed, burned, or otherwise sanctified or
resurrected or whatever. So if it gets slain, it's going
to rise up as a Wraith the next sunset.

(04:34):
So be wary of that as well. Now, Wraith are very, very
intelligent creatures. They're not stupid and they
shouldn't be treated as such as a boring attack type swipe.
You know the obviously the Wraith knows that it's in the
dark and gloomy area. So what are they going to do

(04:54):
first? What would be their first
logical move in an area where they're fighting a bunch of
adventurers because they want todrain their energy in this dark
and gloomy place? They're going to want to head
for those torch bearers. People holding the torch, it's
going to want to extinguish the light, not because it it's it's

(05:14):
a weakness for them. It's because it knows that that
light is your source to see now.Yeah, you could.
There's some characters, obviously races, excuse me, that
could see in the dark without the torch, but a Wraith will
know if they're holding a torch.Some people in that group need
that torch to see. So go after the torch bearers,

(05:38):
hit them, extinguish that torch,and now you have an advantage as
a race. When wraiths fight, generally,
they're not going to be a force that's just going to stand there
and take a beating and hit and take a beating.
No, no, no, you want to keep thefear up with wraiths.
When you drop a Wraith into the game, you want to drop,

(06:01):
obviously there's 2 to 12 showing up at once, so you're
going to at least have two no matter what you do at any given
time for your group. Now they could be low, low
levels, or they could be the equivalent or higher.
It doesn't really matter. The race is still going to
attempt to try to go get what they want and that's that energy
from the players. Now my suggestion for running

(06:23):
race, and you want to keep that fear strong with rates because
that's what they're good at, is fighting motion.
Hit, withdraw, hide, circle around and then come back when
the light falters, when they're not watching, hit from behind,
run. Maybe they take a hit when they
run, that's fine. But oh, they think it's gone.

(06:44):
It goes through a wall or whatever comes back again.
Swipe, you know, scare them withthe whatever moment you possibly
can. Drop from the rafters, rise
through the ground, glide over them in front of glide over
people, things like that. Play the long game.
They are not stupid. These creatures will want to

(07:06):
just like jump in and attack andthen flee thinking letting the
players think they're safe and then boom hit them again when
they're not safe. They're not dumb and they're it
could be played really a lot of fun for Adm that knows how to
use these creatures. Now, Speaking of level drain, a
lot of people don't find that a lot very fair that these

(07:29):
creatures can do that, but that's the way they were
designed when it came to these creatures.
And I remember I had a long, long time ago, I remember I had
a player argue with me that healing spell would return the
level drain. Well, no, it doesn't.
So they argued about the, you know, it would, it would easily
restore. I'm like, no, no, no, only
restoration magic will get rid of that.

(07:52):
Or you know, some other way, maybe a wish or something or
limited wish, but it doesn't heal levels.
It only heals damage and that's it.
So a Wraith could be used a lot.If you're going to fight a
Wraith and you find a Wraith, you're going to want to get them
into daylight, Some type of daylight.
Otherwise you are going to be screwed unless your group your

(08:14):
group has silver weapons or magical weapons to back them up.
Regular weapons are just going to fly right through, and there
are other ways that a Wraith canactually walk around and stuff
like that when it's not completely dark outside or
gloomy or whatever. It could literally walk in the
middle of the halls of a building with stained glass

(08:37):
windows on it. Yeah, think about that.
It's noon and there's a Wraith floating around in there in this
room because the sunlight, whilethe light does come through
stained glass windows, it does keep the true sunlight itself
out. So there's a way for you to work
around this to get race in your campaign when players think

(09:01):
they're safe and you can. And just thinking about it, you
can actually have a world on a post apocalyptic world where
it's just race. And maybe there is an evil,
let's say necromancer or an evilmagic user that's figured a way

(09:25):
to block the sunlight in the world.
Kind of like the old evil, like,you know, Cobra Commander and
things or you know, an evil Skeletor thing where he wants to
block the light from the world. Well, this necromancer, wizard,
whatever you want to call him, blocks the light.
He figures out a way since wraiths are intelligent, I don't

(09:49):
see an issue why a Wraith and a magic user could not strike a
deal together. Where he says maybe the Wraith
has had him corn for his life. And he says to him and you know
he does some type of comprehend languages or whatever he does
and he says listen, I have this idea and it'll help you out if

(10:11):
you let me survive. I will work with you to get you
what you want. So the race, being very
intelligent, will be like, all right, I would as Adm I would, I
would, I would definitely have the situation.
The race will listen and he's like, listen, I'm going to block
the the sun from the world. I have this spell or whatever

(10:33):
ritual that will block it from the world.
I have to maintain it somehow, blah, blah, blah.
And he goes through the whole process.
And what this means for you is you work with me and you can
build an army and you can go outduring the day, during the
night, you can float around the world's and not have to worry

(10:58):
about sunlight anymore and just drain people and make more.
You can take over the world withme as your partner and we could
form this whole, you know, wholearmy of things.
And it's a Wraith world instead of like a zombie apocalypse.

(11:19):
And now the people have to fightagainst wraiths.
And that's their common enemy ishe's just tons and tons of
wraiths. And what you could do is maybe
you could turn them into lesser wraiths, like, you know, every
time, kind of like vampires and vampire of the Masquerade.
When one race becomes a race, another race makes another race

(11:43):
and they're different generations and they get weaker
and weaker. And you can, you know, have them
so that the race will, instead of draining levels all the time,
maybe like the higher rates willdo that 'cause they're the first
generation and then other generations of these race, maybe
they don't do that. Maybe they drain and burn or
something. They every time they touch you,

(12:05):
they leave burn marks on you andthey do damage that way and they
temporarily drain Constitution from you.
So they make you weak and enoughof that and you die.
And you could become a Wraith aswell.
Kind of like the whole zombie apocalypse thing.
But now you have a Wraith apocalypse thing going on.
I kind of like this idea of the whole Dark World and it becomes

(12:29):
a Wraith apocalypse. I think I'm going to write that
up and put that on my Patreon for people 'cause I think people
will find that really interesting to use.
But yeah, tell what you think ofthe comments below about
wraiths. I mean, there's so many ways you
can do this with wraiths. I don't know, I really enjoy
creatures like this that can just kind of stalk, pray and
then attack, run, attack, make it.

(12:51):
It's kind of a fear factor type thing, like your ghosts and
stuff like that. But tell what you think of the
comments below or either on Spotify or on youtube.com/evil
DM, which is my YouTube channel.Hopefully you are having a good
weekend or whenever you're listening to this.
I appreciate everybody that listens and downloads.

(13:12):
A lot of people do and I really appreciate that.
So I'm glad that AD and D is still a topic of conversation on
everybody's mind and that I'm keeping the role for initiative
Torch Burning when the rest of the group is kind of faded out.
With that said, I'm going to head out.
Keep it original, keep it old school tonight, and God bless
everybody.