Shadow 5e: Strength Drain, Hiding and the 2024 Shadow

A shadow is a CR 1/2 undead with AC 12, 16 hit points (27 in the 2024 rules) and an attack that doesn't care how many hit points you have. Each hit of its touch deals necrotic damage and lowers the target's Strength score by 1d4, and a creature whose Strength reaches 0 dies. It hides as a bonus action in dim light or darkness, and a humanoid it kills rises as a new shadow a few hours later. The 2024 version is sturdier but loses its resistance to ordinary weapons, and its Strength damage now lasts until a Long Rest instead of a Short Rest.

Table of Contents

• •Shadow Stat Block (2014)
• •The Shadow in the 2024 Rules
• •How Shadows Fight
• •How Many Shadows for a Level 3 Party?
• •How Players Beat Shadows
• •Shadow Encounter Ideas
• •Frequently Asked Questions

Shadow Stat Block (2014)

This is the shadow from SRD 5.1, the same creature as in the 2014 Monster Manual.

On paper this is a 16-hit-point creature with AC 12. In practice, a level 2 or 3 party without magic weapons deals half damage to it with every sword, mace and arrow, because it resists bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks. It also resists acid, cold, fire, lightning and thunder. Radiant damage is the exception: the shadow is vulnerable to it and takes double.

Its Stealth is +4, rising to +6 in dim light or darkness. Amorphous lets it slide through a gap 1 inch wide without squeezing, so it comes under doors, through floorboards and out of arrow slits.

The Shadow in the 2024 Rules

SRD 5.2.1 keeps the CR and the core idea but retunes almost every number.

The changes pull in two directions:

• •Easier to hit hard, harder to put down. The 2024 shadow takes full damage from any weapon, but it has 27 hit points. Against a mundane-weapon party, the 2014 shadow's 16 resisted hit points act like 32, so the two editions end up close in durability. Against radiant damage, the 2024 shadow lasts longer.
• •Less damage, longer-lasting drain. Draining Swipe deals about 5 damage instead of 9. The Strength loss is the same 1d4, but the 2024 stat block gives no short-rest recovery. The 2024 Rules Glossary says a Long Rest returns reduced ability scores to normal, so a party that fights shadows at noon stays weakened until the next day.
• •Everyone is spawn material. The 2014 shadow only raises non-evil humanoids. The 2024 shadow raises any Humanoid it kills, including the cultists who summoned it.

How Shadows Fight

A shadow's goal is to touch the same character as many times as possible before anyone lights a torch.

The Strength math. Strength loss stacks. A wizard with Strength 8 dies when the total reaches 8:

A rogue with Strength 10 survives three hits 84% of the time, but four hits kill them almost 3 times in 5. Hit points don't help at all. A 40-hit-point bard with Strength 8 dies to the same four touches as a 12-hit-point wizard.

Gang up on one target. Four shadows that all reach the wizard and attack with Advantage (from hiding) hit AC 13 about 84% of the time each. Simulating that round, the wizard's Strength hits 0 about 62% of the time. One round, one dead character, and no death saves, because the death comes from the Strength score, not from hit points.

Hide every turn. In dim light or darkness the shadow hides as a bonus action. Under the 2014 rules, its Stealth +6 is compared to passive Perception, beating a typical 12 about 70% of the time. Under the 2024 rules, Hide is a DC 15 Stealth check, which a +6 shadow makes 60% of the time, and success gives it the Invisible condition and Advantage on its next attack. The 2024 Hide action still requires the shadow to be Heavily Obscured (darkness counts) or behind three-quarters cover and out of sight, so in dim light it needs a pillar, a doorway or a coffin to duck behind. Attack, hide, move 40 feet, repeat.

Weaken the armored characters. A paladin in plate needs Strength 15 to move at full speed. One touch that drops their Strength to 14 costs them 10 feet of speed until the drain wears off. Shadows that can't reach the wizard should spend a turn on the plate-wearer anyway.

Never fight in the light. Sunlight Weakness gives a shadow Disadvantage on attacks, checks and saves. Bright light doesn't hurt it, but it turns off Shadow Stealth, which is most of its game plan. Shadows retreat from torches, flow through a crack into the next room and wait for the light to move on.

Grow the pack. A humanoid killed by the drain rises as a new shadow 1d4 hours later. Shadows that kill the party's hireling and then withdraw will be one stronger at the next fight.

How Many Shadows for a Level 3 Party?

Using the 2024 XP budget for four characters:

Those counts are the ceiling, not a recommendation. Shadows ignore hit points, so the budget overrates how much a party can take. Four or five shadows in a dark crypt is a hard fight for level 3 characters, and six is a likely death. Start at four, and add one only if the party has a cleric, radiant damage and plenty of light.

The 2014 guidelines (from the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide, used by our encounter calculator) come closer to the truth. Four shadows are 400 XP, doubled to 800 by the group multiplier, which is a Medium fight for four level 3 characters (Medium starts at 600, Hard at 900). At level 2 the same four shadows reach the Deadly threshold of 800.

The 2014 shadow's weapon resistance also matters more than its CR suggests. A level 2 party with no magic weapons and no radiant damage should not face more than two or three. At level 5 and up, shadows work as the rank and file under a bigger undead: three or four of them hiding in the dark around a wraith make the party fight in two directions at once.

How Players Beat Shadows

Light is the first counter. Shadow Stealth only works in dim light or darkness. A torch gives 20 feet of bright light, and the Light cantrip does the same from an object. Dancing Lights is a trap here: its lights only shed dim light, so shadows can still hide in it. In 2024, Daylight creates sunlight, which gives every shadow inside it Disadvantage on all D20 Tests. The 2014 Daylight spell makes ordinary bright light, which still shuts off Shadow Stealth.

Radiant damage doubles. Guiding Bolt deals 4d6 radiant, doubled to an average of 28. That kills a 2014 shadow on almost any hit and a 2024 shadow about 56% of the time. Sacred Flame, Moonbeam and Spirit Guardians (for a good or neutral cleric) also get doubled.

Turn Undead. Under the 2014 rules a cleric's Turn Undead targets the shadow's +0 Wisdom save, and from cleric level 5 a failed save destroys anything CR 1/2 or lower, shadows included. Under the 2024 rules, Turn Undead imposes the Frightened and Incapacitated conditions. Shadows are immune to Frightened, so a strict reading leaves only Incapacitated, which still takes the shadow out of the fight until it takes damage. From level 5, Sear Undead adds radiant damage that the shadow's vulnerability doubles.

Magic weapons matter in 2014. Any magic weapon ignores the 2014 shadow's resistance. A party facing shadows at level 2 or 3 is a good reason to hand out the first +1 weapon or a few flasks of holy water.

Spells that don't work. Hold Person can't target undead. Web and Entangle rely on Restrained, and shadows are immune to it. Necrotic and poison damage do nothing. Sleep fails in both editions: 2014 Sleep ignores undead, and in 2024 creatures immune to Exhaustion automatically succeed on the save. Faerie Fire works: an outlined shadow can't benefit from being invisible.

Recovering Strength. A 2014 character gets their Strength back on a Short or Long Rest. Under the 2024 rules only a Long Rest restores it. Greater Restoration removes the reduction in both editions.

Bury or burn the dead. A character killed by a shadow rises as one 1d4 hours later. Revivify within 1 minute avoids both problems at once.

Shadow Encounter Ideas

The lamplighters' strike. The old quarter of a city has had its street lamps lit every night for a century. This week the lamplighters' guild is on strike over pay, and the alleys are dark for the first time anyone can remember. People are found dead in the morning with no wounds. The guild elders know exactly what lives in the old sewer, and they're using it as leverage. The party can fight shadows alley by alley, or settle the strike and get the lamps back on.

The infirmary ledger. A hilltop monastery stopped answering letters. Inside, the party finds the infirmary's death register. The first entry is a novice who "went cold in the night," and every entry after it is 1d4 hours apart. Reading the ledger tells the party how many shadows are in the building right now. The last entry is dated two hours ago and is in a different hand.

The noon crossing. A sunlit courtyard sits on top of an old crypt full of shadows, and the only path from the gatehouse to the vault runs through the crypt. At noon, light comes down a broken shaft and pins the shadows to one end of the room, with Disadvantage on everything while they stand in the sunbeam. The party has one hour before the sun moves off the shaft.

Frequently Asked Questions

What CR is a shadow in 5e?

A shadow is CR 1/2 (100 XP) in both the 2014 and 2024 rules. The 2014 shadow has 16 hit points and the 2024 shadow has 27, both with AC 12.

What happens when a shadow reduces your Strength to 0?

You die. The Strength loss from a shadow's touch stacks, and the stat block says the target dies if its Strength reaches 0, no matter how many hit points it has left.

How do you get Strength back after a shadow attack?

Under the 2014 rules, the reduction ends when you finish a Short or Long Rest. Under the 2024 rules, the stat block gives no duration, and a Long Rest restores reduced ability scores. Greater Restoration also removes the reduction.

Are shadows resistant to nonmagical weapons?

The 2014 shadow resists bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks. The 2024 shadow doesn't, so ordinary weapons deal full damage to it.

What happens to someone killed by a shadow?

A new shadow rises from the corpse 1d4 hours later. In 2014 this only applies to non-evil humanoids. In 2024 it applies to any Humanoid.

What are shadows weak to?

Radiant damage, which they take double, and sunlight, which gives them Disadvantage on attacks, ability checks and saving throws. Bright light of any kind stops them from hiding as a bonus action. If your party keeps running into these things, Loreify can record the session and log every crypt and who lost Strength where.

Stat blocks: System Reference Document 5.1 (2014) and 5.2.1 (2024), Wizards of the Coast, CC-BY-4.0. Tactics, encounter math and ideas are Loreify's own.