Wights

As the appellation Wight once referred to men, so too the creatures thus called were once mortal lords. Now they are bitter undead, who loathe and envy the living. Their visages are bleached and their personalities eroded by time, until nothing remains but fierce hostility and simmering resentment. 

They were lords and still believe they should be. 

My own post-it drawing, referencing this one by Vance Kelly

A Boss Suitable for Low-Level Parties

The wights in my game are an undead boss monster. I want something that can stand on its own thematically, not just a stronger zombie with "No. Appearing 2-16" and level-drain. 

A wight should have a name and a story.

In my version, I hope to bring back the dread and vindictiveness of the Tolkien original and evoke the draugr sagas they were based on (e.g. Grettir, Hrómundar and Hervör's saga, perhaps the barrow-dragon from Beowulf). Fun fact: the original use of the term "barrow-wight" was by William Morris in his Grettir's saga translation. I also thought of M.R. James' "A Warning to the Curious" and its BBC adaptation. 

Wights haunt the vicinity of their own tombs and must return to them during the day, unless they are deep underground. 

They'll gain the ability Shuttered Room suggested in their comments section, "undead being vulnerable to weapons that were made while they were still alive, so that rusty old broadsword is of use while that specially imported custom rapier is not." You can reduce them to zero hit points, but they'll dissolve and reform until they're finally dispatched with a suitably ancient implement.

They can track treasure stolen from them, with dire consequences for anyone paid with it. 

You'll think you've defeated one only to have it show up at your campfire a night or two later.

Cairn in Snow (1807) by Caspar David Friedrich 

This is the fourth in my series about the classic D&D undead: 

• Skeletons
• Zombies
• Ghouls
  
• Wight (this post)
• Yet to come: Wraiths, Mummies & Specters

The Draugen - Theodor Kittelsen

Wight

Armor Class: 14 (or whatever rusty chainmail is in your system)

Hit Dice: 3* (HP13)

Damage Immunity: Immune to mundane weapons and can only be permanently killed by a weapon older than they are. If they are reduced to zero hit-points by some other means (fire, a newly-blessed sword, a spell) they dissolve into dust and reform in their tomb at the next sunrise.

Vulnerabilities: A Raise Dead scroll will destroy a wight.

Attacks: 1x weapon, +3 to hit. d8 Energy Drain.

Energy Drain: Reduces maximum hit points. Anyone reduced to zero is raised as a barrow-thrall. Restoring requires Remove Curse.

Move: As an unhurried human

Saves: 13+

Morale: Implacable

Special Senses: Can infallibly track anything stolen from them

Can't find the artist for this. Do you know?

Level drain is long debated. I don't like it. It's famously un-fun. Sure, it scares players and that fear is great, but when it actually hits and someone has to scrape levels off their character that took months of real-life play to earn and effectively re-do that part of their advancement, it creates more frustration than I want to cause. My version is a bit gentler (it only targets HP) and in my system, your hit points max isn't so hard to raise.

A quick aside on countermeasures:

Remove Curse will not be easy to come by. Getting a curse removed, will likely mean doing a quest for a witch, or taking on a scary obligation to a priest. It's not like going to urgent care to get an antibiotic because you forgot to armor your landjager.

Raise Dead is not on the spell list in my world. It is only found on scrolls scribed by martyrs. Each person of sufficient holiness can only write one and it isn't effective until after their death. 

Common Knowledge

Grim tales swirl about the barrows and the common folk fear them. Characters with knowledge of the area or advanced educations are likely to have heard rumors. Roll a d6:

1. The cairn-kings are unharmed by common blades
2. In life, the mound-dwellers amassed great treasures, which they greedily had buried with them
3. The belongings of the old lords are often cursed
4. Taking their treasures makes them restless
5. The Church can end them, but the price is high and they are loath to pay it
6. Some of them have been slain more than once

Tactics

Wights will target those carrying their belongings first. They are relentless. You can escape temporarily by fleeing into sunlight, but they'll find you later. 

You can find them in their tombs by day and wandering by night. 

They avoid large fires and holy places.

Wights are not that hard to take down. They have limited hit points and most parties with even a couple levels, will have a magic weapon or two. The trick is that they come back repeatedly until the party can figure out how to finish them. It will show up at the tavern where they sleep. They'll wake to screams and find it has slaughtered everyone downstairs en route to find them. 

The wight will kill anyone that has received its money as payment... That fruit vendor the players like, their loves-for-hire, the town smith. Might stir up some guilty feelings.

Psychology

Wights are formed by souls so avaricious, so entitled, that they cannot release their grip on the world or anything that was once theirs. They possess their own corpses.

Centuries of brooding alone in the dark has ground down their minds into daggers of saturnic resentment. Focused but not creative. Mean but not clever. They won't have a complicated revenge scheme and they won't work with others.

Koschei by Carapace777

Encounter design

The ideal wight scenario will likely involve running into it a few times. Probably in the barrow first, then a time or two out in the world as it hunts the grave-robbers and perhaps a final showdown back in the tomb. Of course, players have agency, so don't force it. 

Build atmosphere. Make sure they know who they're about to find.

Place treasure early in the dungeon, so adventurers will have something stolen in hand, when they first meet the wight. Perhaps coins that they'll spend in town.

The wight might not move until the first loot is claimed. Once a gem is pocketed, his approach is nigh.

If the party flees, daylight escapes should feel like a clean victory. Give the other shoe space to drop.

If they camp nearby after raiding the barrow, they've guaranteed a night time encounter. The wight lurches silently out of the gloom into the light of the campfire. A great image. 

If they head back to town and spend treasure, the DM should be merciless in targeting all their favorite NPCs with barrow-gold in their pockets.

Don't make the lore on how to defeat him too hard to find. There's a limit to how many run-ins will be fun. Once the trick is discovered and the right tools are assembled, victory will feel earned.

Epiphenomena

Wights are surrounded by a supernatural chill. It moves ahead of them and warns of their approach. 

The barrow in Grettir's saga is filled with horsebones. That rocks.

Animals will refuse to enter a wight's barrow. Even getting them near it will be a struggle.

Sometimes, on especially cold nights, lights will be seen on top of the barrows. 

Great Baddow Hoard

Loot 

Wights sit on great hoards of treasure. Expect thousands of heaped up coins and a small chest of silver under their feet. 

Sometimes their stuff isn't as it seems. 

A couple other ideas:

• A cup that when removed from the barrow is no longer hidden from its original owner. 
• Piles of gold that, once acquired, the new owner won't part with and must carry with them wherever they go. 

Variants and Re-skins: 

It's easy to give your individual wights their own particular niche by adding one more basic ability: 

1. Can snuff one mundane light source per round.
2. Command (as spell): "Kneel!" "Grovel!" "Give it back!"
3. Disorienting fog fills room + adjacent rooms (or 50' radius outdoors)
4. When encountered your hirelings must succeed on a morale check or flee.
5. Any fire whose light touches the wight permanently dims to the brightness of a candle.
6. Emits a choking stink that causes retching and imposes a -2 penalty on attacks and defense rolls

A slightly more complicated variant: When encountered, this wight is pierced through by 3 or more clearly magical blades. Each blade that is removed gives the wight another hit die. One dagger is old enough to end him.

Discussion

Wights won't let go. They clasp onto un-life with their grown-out fingernails and won't let go of their treasures and if you take their baubles, they won't let go of their grudges. 

Players who encounter them are likely to walk away with scars that won't wash off easy. Hit points that will take real work to recover. Lost friends that won't be easily forgotten. 

Working on this, I've tried to give wights a lane distinct from the en masse, faceless undead that I've covered so far and the unliving-sorcerers (mummies, liches etc.) that I still have to do. 

In chasing something memorable, I turned to a lot of very old stories and tried to evoke their spirit. 

"Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light." -Dylan Thomas, repurposed.

Philippe Druillet