Illustration by Steve Argyle. Copyright 2008 Wizards of the Coast.

Looks like I missed this Monster Manual/Vault article due to a small typo when I named its draft. With this, the MM/MV reading is truly completed. Click here to see the other entries.

Wraiths have been in the game since the beginning as a member of the Undead Power Ladder, where they were the logical progression from wights. Here, they appear in both the Monster Manual and the Vault.

The Lore

Wraiths are still kind of a logical progression from wights, in origin if not necessarily in power. As mentioned in the wight entry, living beings in the D&D implied setting are composed of body, soul, and will (also known as the animus). When someone dies in a place filled with strong necrotic emanations, their animus might pop free and roam around on its own. This errant animus is a wraith.

Wraiths perceive the world as if through a heavy shroud. Everything feels cold, colorless, and gauzy. Bereft of a soul and tormented by vague memories of the lost life and sensations they can never recover, they quickly descend into a violent, hateful madness that drives them to attack and slay the living. “Newborn” wraiths at first behave like they did in life, staying near the ground and using doors, but soon they learn that gravity and solid barriers mean nothing to them.

Unlike some other undead we’ve already seen, wraiths don’t originate only from evil people. All it takes is for the person to die under the “right” conditions. A wraith who originated from a good and loving husband is just as violent and dangerous as one that came from a serial killer. In fact, the first wraith might specifically seek out and kill its former family without even knowing why.

Wraiths kill using their life-draining touch. The animus of a recently slain victim will pop free as a brand-new wraith almost instantly. These new wraiths are weak at first, but if allowed to exist for long enough will reach full strength. Even if the victim is brought back to life via magic, its wraith remains - a new animus forms to hold body and soul together. Predictably, this does nothing to improve the wraith’s mood, and it will hunt its former self tenaciously.

Sometimes, when a lot of people die suddenly and simultaneously, their tormented animi coalesce into a single entity known as a Dread Wraith, which is orders of magnitude more dangerous. Individual wraiths who stick around long enough, and who kill enough, may also reach an equivalent level of power.

So there you have it. A flying, insubstantial killer who makes more of itself whenever it kills someone, and who never stops doing that as long as someone is still alive within reach. As RPG.net member Monsieur Meuble pointed out in his own Let’s Read of the 3.5 Monster Manual, that’s a recipe for total extinction. Fortunately for all of existence, wraiths tend to hang out in out of the way places far from population centers.

The Numbers

Most Wraiths are Medium Shadow Humanoids with the Undead Keyword. Dread Wraiths are Large. All have darkvision. They’re immune to disease and poison, Insubstantial, and have a fly speed of 6 with Hover and Phasing capability. They also have 10/tier resistance to necrotic damage. The Monster Manual and Monster Vault versions differ substantially from this point on.

Monster Manual wraiths compete with needlefang drakes, ghouls, and hobgoblins as the most annoying and/or deadly monsters a same-level party can fight. They’re Insubstantial and most of them have attacks with a weakness rider, which means your PCs will spend much of the fight doing a quarter of their usual damage against these monsters. They also have Regeneration, which shuts down for a turn if they take radiant damage but makes them even more durable.

And if a MM Wraith does manage to kill a PC, their Spawn Wraith ability will make another wraith rise from the corpse at the start of the original wraith’s next turn. This new wraith is identical to its creator and starts out at full strength. If this ever happens you might very well be looking at the start of a long, grinding TPK.

MV wraiths attempt to address all of these issues. Their Insubstantiality is the new kind that always takes full damage from force attacks, and it turns off for a turn if the monster takes radiant damage. They have no regeneration, and Spawn Wraith creates a minion that can’t spawn further wraiths instead of a full monster. The weakness rider on their attacks has also been replaced by other effects that retain the same “life-draining” flavor.

The differences between “basic” wraiths are big enough that I’m going to give each book’s version its own sub-section.

Wraith (Monster Manual)

Having said all of that about wraiths in general, I have little left to say about the basic MM wraith. It’s a Level 5 Lurker with 37 HP, Regeneration 5, Necrotic Resistance 10, and Radiant Vulnerability 5. Radiant damage also shuts down the regeneration for a turn, as I said above.

Its Shadow Touch (vs. Reflex) does necrotic damage and weakens (save ends). It does extra necrotic damage if the wraith has Combat Advantage. Once per encounter the monster can use Shadow Glide to shift 6 squares, and any humanoid killed by it produces another full-strength wraith in the next turn.

Wraith (Monster Vault)

Once again, the basic MV wraith is mostly composed of the general traits I discuss above. It’s a Level 5 Lurker with 53 HP and Resist 10 Necrotic. It lacks a numeric radiant vulnerability, but radiant damage does make it substantial for a turn, and it always takes full damage from force attacks. Spawn Wraith produces wraith figments instead of full-strength monsters.

Necrotic damage from the Shadow Touch has been substantially increased, and it further doubles if the wraith was invisible when it started the attack. No weakness rider, though. Shadow Glide is an at-will free action now, triggered whenever the wraith is damaged by an attack that does neither force or radiant damage. It causes the wraith to become invisible until it attacks or until the end of the encounter, allows it to teleport 6 squares, and forbids it from attacking until the end of its next turn.

That’s a evil lurker mechanic. I like it! An unwary party might think they just popped a minion the first time this triggers.

Mad Wraith (Both)

This wraith is different enough from the standard one that it got me wondering that the explanation for it might be. Then it dawned on me that this is a renamed Allip, a monster introduced in 3e that was pretty much a wraith with a stronger insanity theme to it.

This is a level 6 Controller with 54 HP in the MM, and 73 in the MV. Both versions have all common traits for their books, with Necrotic Resistance 10. Let’s start with the MV Mad Wraith, which is the better one.

It has a Mad Whispers aura (3), which does 5 psychic damage to enemies caught inside and slides then 2 squares. It also has the standard Insubstantial and Spawn Wraith traits.

The mad wraith’s basic attack is the Touch of Madness (vs. Will), which does psychic damage and inflicts a -2 penalty to all defenses (save ends). There’s also the Touch of Chaos (vs. Will; Recharge 5-6) which does the same psychic damage, slides the target 5 squares, and forces it make a basic attack against its nearest ally. A miss does half damage and slides the target 2 squares (without the forced attack).

The MM version has the same attacks, the Monster Manual standard traits (and problems), and Radiant Vulnerability 5. Its Mad Whispers aura shuts down for a turn if it takes radiant damage, but otherwise works the same.

Wraith Figment (Monster Vault)

One of these Level 6 Minion Skirmishers gets created whenever a Monster Vault wrait kills a humanoid. They have a standard wraith’s senses, resistances and movement speed, but they lack the Spawn Wraith ability. Their attack is a Shadow Caress (vs. Reflex) that does minion-level necrotic damage and slows for a turn. They can Shadow Glide once per encounter, shifting 6 squares.

Having one of these pop up in a fight is bad news, but not as bad as if they were full strength wraiths. And story-wise they’re still a potential extinction event, as they would eventually grow into “proper” wraiths given enough time.

Sovereign Wraith (Monster Vault)

The strongest MV wraith, it likely belonged to a king or a fighting noble, as it packs an echo of the sword it wielded in life. It’s a Level 8 Soldier with 89 HP and all standard wraith traits with 10 necrotic resistance.

Its basic attack uses the Spectral Sword (vs. Fortitude), which does both immediate and ongoing necrotic damage, and also makes the target grant combat advantage (save ends both). Hit or miss, the target is also marked for a turn.

The sovereign wraith can also inflict a curse of Lonely Death (recharge 4-6), which allows it to make a Spectral Sword attack with an additional rider: on a hit, all creatures except the wraith become invisible to the target. Which is kinda terrifying when you think about it.

Sword Wraith (Monster Manual)

This seems to have the same concept as the Sovereign Wraith at is root, but it’s a lot higher-level and possesses the same issues as all the other MM wraiths.

Sword Wraiths are Level 17 Lurkers with 90 HP and all MM wraith traits with a Necrotic resistance of 20 and Vulnerable 10 Radiant. Their speed is 8. They attack with a Shadow Sword (vs. Reflex) that does necrotic damage and weakens (save ends). They deal extra damage when they have CA, and when they hit 0 HP they can shift 4 squares and make one last basic attack as a Death Strike, doing extra damage if they hit. This seems like it stacks with the bonus damage from CA.

They also have the usual Shadow Glide and Spawn Wraith powers. The printed tactics for them are “fight until bloodied, then run away to regenerate”. You might have noticed they have almost the same HP as the MV Sovereign Wraith, and they also do almost the same damage due to the math bug. The only issue preventing them from being dropped in late-heroic encounters is their high defense and to-hit bonuses.

Dread Wraith (Monster Manual)

This is either an incredibly ancient wraith or one that was formed when hundreds of people died at once and their animi all fused.

Dread Wraiths are Level 25 Lurkers with 124 HP and all MM wraith traits, with Resist Necrotic 30, Vulnerable Radiant 15, and Regeneration 20. Their speed is

  1. They’re surrounded by a Shroud of Night (aura 5) which weakens all light inside by one step: bright light becomes dim, dim light becomes darkness.

Their basic attack is a Dread Blade (vs. Reflex), which does necrotic damage and weakens (save ends). They do even more extra damage when they have CA, and when they die they release a Death Shriek (close blast 3 vs. Will) which does psychic damage and dazes (save ends). A miss still does half damage. Shadow Glide and Spawn Wraith complete their arsenal. Yes, if a dread wraith kills a PC, they spawn another dread wraith.

Sample Encounters and Final Impressions

There’s a series of increasingly powerful encounters here, pairing dark creepers, evistros, an immolith and a death titan with increasingly powerful varieties of wraith. This section also mentions that wraiths pollute the surrounding area with necrotic energy by their very presence, so now you know how those “necrotic-infused” places that keep giving rise to undead get that way.

The “angry mindless ghost” archetype is useful when designing adventures, but D&D has always been remarkably redundant in this area. 4e went a ways towards reducing this redundancy, but it didn’t go all the way since it still gives us ghosts, specters and wraiths. I did like seeing that the Allip was rolled into the wraith entry, at least.

Mechanically, you should absolutely use the MV versions instead of the ones in the Monster Manual. Level up the sovereign wraith and the figments if you need dread wraiths for the higher levels.