Monster of the Week: Wraiths

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Wraiths are incorporeal undead, pretty standard in just about any fantasy setting. Their very nature makes them very difficult to injure at all. For a DM, they are a handy monster as both a random encounter, and forcing the players to problem-solve a tricky encounter.

Wraiths are restless undead which basically serve no purpose in a game except to kill or be killed. They don’t really have motivation beyond killing the living. That’s fine. They’re pretty well suited to the task.

The big thing to remember about Wraiths is they are incorporeal, and can move through solid objects. A Wraith that just sits in a room is silly, and nonsensical. Wraiths have decent Intelligence (more in 3.5 than 4E, but still enough), and are going to move through the walls, floor, and ceiling if at all possible. Wraiths are thus ambushers, phasing through walls to strike and fading away if it is attacked too much.

However, we then come to the second bit: Wraiths are really hard to kill, especially if they use proper tactics. Both 3.5 and 4E Wraiths will be taking around half the damage they should. This means you have to be very careful when considering putting Wraiths into the game, because you may accidentally cause a lot more damage than intended. Consider the resources the party has available. If they are likely to defeat the Wraith easily in a fair fight, then use the phasing to the maximum, forcing the players to think about how they can kill the monster in the brief time it is attackable. On the flipside, if you’re not sure about their ability, or they simply aren’t that powerful, you need to play it easy on them… or choose another monster.

While there is cross-over, the easiest way of discussing Wraiths is to consider the 3.5 and 4E versions separately.

The rules for Incorporeal creatures are worth looking up. Basically, there’s a 50% miss chance for nearly everything, and nonmagical weapons can’t hurt them. This means that, whilst the CR of the regular Wraith is only 5, you should check what kind of equipment the party has before throwing a Wraith at them. If you’re running a low-magic campaign and the party has few or no magic weapons, then throwing a Wraith at the party should cost you your DM licence, or something. There’s difficult, and then there’s sadistic. You can’t even run away from Wraiths.

The danger of Wraiths is not just that they’re hard to hit. They themselves do a lot of damage, since they bypass armour and have Constitution Drain. Draining Constitution also gains the Wraith 5 Temporary HP (10 on critical hit). Whilst Temporary HP don’t stack, and 5 isn’t many, it does increase the survivability of the Wraith even further. Even if you don’t use any tactics with the Wraiths, and just do a simple hack-and-slash combat, the Wraiths can easily overpower unprepared parties. Careful. Parties without Clerics are even more at risk. (A Sun Domain Cleric could get lucky and nuke all the Wraiths, although they do have +2 Turn Resistance)

Wow. Pretty sadistic for a 4E creature, actually. Why? Because it can run away through walls, then Regenerate all its damage. The Monster Manual even says that that is the tactics Wraiths use. I’ll get back to this.

Before I go any further: Mad Wraiths are a completely different kettle of fish to the other kinds. Suffice to say, throwing one of these in makes regular Wraiths a little more effective, due to the synergy between Daze and the Wraiths’ Combat Advantage bonus.

Wraiths are Insubstantial, which means they take half damage from all sources. In addition, they cause Weakness… which halves damage output. They don’t have a huge amount of hitpoints, but considering the reduced damage, it’s more than enough. They do reasonable damage themselves, and the Paragon and Epic level versions have suitable extra abilities and stats, but that’s not the real power.

The power of 4E Wraiths is they’re very hard to kill. The party basically needs to amass enough damage to kill a full HP Wraith in one turn. If they fail, it’ll flee and Regenerate. Now, imposing status conditions helps: Immobilizing or Stunning a Wraith gives a bit more time to work with. Slow won’t work: they can just drop into the floor, if necessary. Radiant damage helps a lot. However, this means that as the DM, you need to look into the party’s capabilities before throwing Wraiths at them.

Basically, Wraiths are safe if:

• The party has a Paladin, Cleric, or other character with lots of Radiant damage
• The party as a whole has a very large damage output; lots of Strikers
• The party can Immobilize or Stun several times an encounter
• The party is large

Wraiths are particularly dangerous if:

• The party has no Radiant damage available
• The party has low damage output; few or no Strikers
• The party has few or no sources of Immobilization or Stun
• The party is small

In summary, for either edition, just keep in mind that anything with crazy special abilities needs to be used carefully with regular parties. Killing characters just because they literally can’t fight back is just not fun.

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