As the creators of the Creature Codex and the Tome of Beasts series, we wanted to give the same love and care for the earliest 5E monsters that we gave to our other monsters. To accomplish that, we noted a few key points we wanted for each monster:

• Clear Identity. For each creature, we worked to answer, “What makes this creature special? How is it thematically different from other creatures of its type, terrain, or niche?”

• Unique Features. In clarifying identity, we set ourselves up for better creating unique features. We worked to answer, “What mechanics make this creature different from other creatures? How can we fold its identity into its game mechanics?”

• Streamlined Statistics. The most obvious change to monsters in Monster Vault comes in our streamlining of the stat block, making a monster’s statistics and features easier to parse at-a-glance. The stat block presented here should give you an idea of some of the changes we made. Compare them to the creature you’ve been using from other source!

Today’s example creature is the wight, a deathly lieutenant of undead armies. When approaching the wight, one of the questions we wanted to answer was, “for what purpose do they create zombies?”

Our answer was to give the wight a bigger role in the grand scheme of necromancers and greater undead like vampires and liches. The trouble with undead armies is they are filled with many mindless undead, which eventually get to be too much for one necromancer or lich to micromanage. Enter the wight! Undead warriors who retain much of the martial prowess they had in life, the wight is a perfect lieutenant for commanding units of skeletons and zombies. The wight can command skeletons and zombies on its turn, and it can create more zombies to fight alongside it. These changes make the wight a challenge on its own for equal-level PCs and a threat to watch for higher-level PCs facing a horde of undead.

Wight

The armored corpse strides with purpose, clutching a bared blade. The withered flesh of its face is twisted with rage, and its eyes are ablaze with ethereal light.

Deathly Warriors. A wight can rise from the corpse of an individual that died a sudden and extremely violent death, or it can rise from the corpse of a cruel and merciless individual who lived a violent life. Regardless of the circumstances, wights naturally arise only from the corpses of soldiers, warriors, or similar martially adept individuals who died violently.

Familiar Countenance. A wight appears much as it did in life, but its flesh is decayed or desiccated in places. Wights are intelligent warriors, retaining many of the memories from their lives, and mindless undead instinctively follow their commands, making them highly desirable as lieutenants for undead armies.

Graveyard Terrors. Wights can drain the essence of the living with a touch. When a wight kills a humanoid by draining all its essence, the humanoid rises as a zombie that instinctively follows the wight’s commands.

WIGHT                      CR 3

Medium Undead
Armor Class 14 (studded leather)
Hit Points 69
Speed 30 ft.
Perception 13             Stealth 14
Resistant necrotic; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks
Immune Undead Resilience | frightened
Senses darkvision 60 ft.
Languages the languages it knew in life

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
+3	+2	+3	+0	+1	+2

Martial Adept. A manufactured weapon, such as a sword or bow, deals one extra die of its damage when the wight hits with it (included in the attack).

Sunlight Sensitivity. While in sunlight, the wight has disadvantage on attack rolls, and its Perception is 8 when perceiving by sight.

Undead Nature. The wight doesn’t require air, food, drink, or sleep.

Undead Resilience. The wight is immune to poison damage, to exhaustion, and to the poisoned condition.

ACTIONS

Multiattack. The wight makes two Longsword or Longbow attacks. It can replace one attack with a Life Drain attack.

Life Drain. Melee Spell Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 10 (2d6 + 3) necrotic damage. The target must succeed on a DC 13 CON save or its HP maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the damage taken. This reduction lasts until the target finishes a long rest. The target dies if this effect reduces its HP maximum to 0.

A Humanoid slain by this attack rises 24 hours later as a zombie under the wight’s control, unless the Humanoid is restored to life or its body is destroyed. The wight can have no more than twelve zombies under its control at one time.

Longsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (2d8 + 3) slashing damage, or 14 (2d10 + 3) slashing damage if used with two hands.

Longbow. Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, range 150/600 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d8 + 2) piercing damage.

BONUS ACTIONS

Command Horde. The wight commands up to five friendly skeletons or zombies to do one of the following:

• Protect. Until the start of the wight’s next turn, each time a friendly creature within 5 feet of a target is attacked, the target can use its reaction to intercept the attack, becoming the target instead.
• Overwhelm. Until the start of the wight’s next turn, each target has advantage on attack rolls against a creature on its turn if at least one other target is within 5 feet of the creature and the allied target isn’t incapacitated.
• Shamble. Each target uses its reaction to move up to its speed in a direction chosen by the wight. If this movement provokes an opportunity attack, that attack is made with disadvantage.

The Tales of the Valiant roleplaying game comes ever closer! Over 400 classic monsters from 5E history (and some surprises)!
Want to see how else Kobold Press does monsters? Try Tome of Beasts 1 for a giant pile of monsters that are
completely compatible with 5E and the Tales of the Valiant game!