Specter 5e: Stats, Life Drain and Fighting Through Walls

A specter is a CR 1 Medium Undead (200 XP) with AC 12, 22 hit points and a 50-foot hovering fly speed. It moves through walls and creatures, resists most damage types, including weapon damage (in 2014 only from nonmagical attacks), and has one action: Life Drain, a +4 melee attack that deals necrotic damage and lowers the target's hit point maximum. In the 2014 rules the target gets a DC 10 Constitution save against the maximum loss. In the 2024 rules there is no save: every hit lowers the maximum, which means enough specter damage kills a character outright with no death saving throws.

Table of Contents

• •Specter Stat Block (2014)
• •The Specter in the 2024 Rules
• •The Life Drain Death Clock
• •How Specters Fight
• •How Many Specters for a Level 2 or 3 Party?
• •How Players Beat Specters
• •Specter Encounter Ideas
• •Frequently Asked Questions

Specter Stat Block (2014)

The SRD 5.1 specter:

The defensive line is long for a CR 1 creature. The specter resists acid, cold, fire, lightning and thunder damage and bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks. It's immune to necrotic and poison damage, and to nine conditions: Charmed, Exhaustion, Grappled, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained and Unconscious. Its 22 hit points are fewer than they look against a cleric and more than they look against a fighter with a plain sword.

Life Drain is a melee spell attack at +4 for 10 (3d6) necrotic damage. The target then makes a DC 10 Constitution save; on a failure its hit point maximum drops by the damage taken until it finishes a long rest. A creature whose maximum reaches 0 dies.

The specter has no walking speed in 2014 (only fly 50 feet, hover) and Strength 1 (a -5 modifier), so any Strength saving throw is close to an automatic failure. It understands the languages it knew in life but can't speak. It has Sunlight Sensitivity: Disadvantage on attack rolls and on sight-based Perception checks in sunlight.

The Specter in the 2024 Rules

The 2024 specter (SRD 5.2.1) hits for less and drains for sure.

AC 12, 22 hit points, CR 1 and all nine condition immunities stay the same.

Two changes matter:

• •Less damage, guaranteed drain. Against AC 16, Life Drain hits on a 12 or higher (45%). The 2014 specter averages 4.5 damage a round, and a Con +2 character fails the DC 10 save 35% of the time, so the maximum drops by about 1.6 a round. The 2024 specter averages 3.15 damage a round, and every point of it comes off the maximum.
• •Magic weapons are halved. The 2014 specter only resists bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks. The 2024 specter resists all of it, so a +1 sword deals half damage. Force, radiant and psychic are the full-damage types.

The Life Drain Death Clock

The 2024 rules make one interaction easy to miss and very deadly.

Each Life Drain hit reduces a character's current hit points and its hit point maximum by the same amount. Healing restores current hit points but never the maximum. So the maximum is a running total: a character dies when the 2024 Life Drain damage it has taken since its last long rest equals its starting hit point maximum. It doesn't matter how much healing it got in between.

The character also doesn't fall unconscious first. If all the damage came from specters, current hit points and the maximum hit 0 at the same moment, and a creature whose maximum reaches 0 dies. No death saving throws.

Concrete numbers against AC 16:

Four specters land about 1.8 hits per round on one target (4 x 0.45). A pack that focuses the wizard can kill it in the second round with nothing the cleric's Healing Word can do about it.

The 2014 specter works the same way, but only hits where the target fails the DC 10 Constitution save count toward the maximum. For a Con +2 character that's about 3.5 points of maximum per hit (10 x 35%) against 7 in 2024, so the 2014 clock runs about half as fast, and the character usually falls unconscious long before the maximum runs out.

Tell players what's happening when it happens: "the cold goes into your bones; your maximum drops to 7." That's a warning they can act on.

How Specters Fight

Specters are simple creatures with one action, so their positioning does all the work.

Come through the wall. Incorporeal Movement lets a specter pass through creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain, so its 50-foot fly speed covers 25 feet of solid stone. It takes 5 (1d10) force damage if it ends its turn inside an object. The natural pattern: drift out of a wall or floor, drain the nearest soft target, and move away from the party.

Hide in the stone, at a price. A specter inside a wall is completely concealed by an obstacle, which is total cover: it can't be targeted directly. Each turn it ends there costs 5 force damage, so with 22 hit points it can afford to do it once or twice. A specter at low hit points does better to move away through the wall and keep going.

Swarm one character. Specters don't make Multiattacks; they're dangerous in numbers. Three or four specters converging through different walls on the same character work like the death clock table above.

Avoid the light. Sunlight Sensitivity gives Disadvantage on its attack rolls in sunlight (and on ability checks in 2024). Specters fight at night, underground, or in rooms with the shutters closed.

Ignore the fighter's grapple. A specter can't be Grappled, Restrained, knocked Prone or Paralyzed. Characters who rely on battlefield control have nothing to grab.

Specters serve wraiths. A wraith can turn a Humanoid that died within the last minute into a specter under its control, up to seven at a time. The 2014 wording requires the humanoid to have died violently; the 2024 wording doesn't. A party member who dies near a wraith can become a specter on the wraith's next turn, so the party fighting a wraith with specters is fighting a group that gets bigger.

How Many Specters for a Level 2 or 3 Party?

Specters are worth 200 XP each. With the 2024 encounter budget for four characters:

The 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide guidelines, used by our encounter difficulty calculator, rate four specters at 800 XP doubled to 1,600: exactly the Deadly threshold for four level 3 characters and Hard for four level 4 characters.

Our advice: the XP budget doesn't account for the death clock. At level 2, two 2024 specters are a fair fight and four can kill a wizard before the cleric acts. At level 3 and above, the main risk is a party without magic, radiant or force damage, which turns a CR 1 swarm into a long grind against creatures that resist almost everything they throw.

How Players Beat Specters

Use force and radiant damage. Magic Missile is force and never misses: three darts at 1d4 + 1 average 10.5 damage, nearly half a specter, with no attack roll. Guiding Bolt (4d6 radiant) and Sacred Flame bypass every resistance it has.

Bring magic weapons to the 2014 fight. They deal full damage to a 2014 specter. Against the 2024 specter, they're halved like any other weapon damage.

Protection from Evil and Good. Undead have Disadvantage on attack rolls against the warded character, which drops Life Drain's chance to hit AC 16 from 45% to about 20%. Put it on the character with the lowest hit point maximum.

Turn Undead. A specter's Wisdom save is +0, so it fails against DC 13 60% of the time. In the 2014 rules, Destroy Undead at cleric level 8 destroys a CR 1 specter on a failed save. In the 2024 rules, Sear Undead adds radiant damage, which the specter doesn't resist.

Ready an action for the wall. When a specter keeps emerging from the same wall, a Readied attack hits it the moment it appears.

Use daylight. Sunlight gives it Disadvantage on attacks. The 2024 Daylight spell creates sunlight; the 2014 version creates bright light, and whether that counts as sunlight is the DM's call.

Recover between fights. Lowered maximums come back after a long rest in both editions, or immediately with Greater Restoration. A short rest and Hit Dice can't refill the gap. A party that fights specters at dusk should not go on to fight anything else before sleeping.

Don't bother with Sleep and other effects that cause the Unconscious condition, Hold spells, grapples, nets or poison. It's immune to all of them.

Specter Encounter Ideas

The cold mine. A silver mine collapsed with nine miners inside. The owner reopened it last month. Now the night shift comes up with gray skin and hit points that don't come back, and two of them died in their sleep with no wounds. Three specters move through the rock between tunnels; the miners' silver picks don't hurt them any more than iron would.

The wraith's household. A wraith rules a ruined manor through seven specters that were once its servants. Each specter haunts the room where it worked: kitchen, stable, library, nursery. The party can fight their way through, or find out which servant's spirit still resents its master and use the house's layout against the wraith.

The quarantine bell. A village rings a bell at sunset and everyone locks indoors. Specters drift through the streets at night, and walls don't stop them, but they only enter houses where someone is awake. The villagers sleep in shifts, drugged on poppy milk. The party arrives after dark, and nobody will open a door to them.

If your table is tracking lowered maximums, which villager knows what and which room each specter haunts, Loreify can record the session and keep campaign notes for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

What CR is a specter in 5e?

A specter is CR 1 and worth 200 XP in both editions. It has AC 12, 22 hit points and a 50-foot fly speed with hover.

Does specter Life Drain allow a saving throw?

In the 2014 rules, yes: the target makes a DC 10 Constitution save, and only a failure reduces its hit point maximum. In the 2024 rules, there's no save, and every hit reduces the maximum by the necrotic damage taken.

Can a specter go through walls?

Yes. Incorporeal Movement lets a specter move through creatures and objects as difficult terrain. It takes 5 (1d10) force damage if it ends its turn inside an object.

How do you restore hit points lost to a specter?

A long rest restores a reduced hit point maximum in both editions, and Greater Restoration removes the reduction immediately. Healing spells restore current hit points but can't raise them above the reduced maximum.

What's the difference between a specter and a ghost?

A specter is a CR 1 life-drainer that hunts in groups and can't speak. A ghost is a CR 4 undead with a personality and unfinished business, which possesses humanoids, frightens with its face and steps into the Ethereal Plane.

Are specters immune to nonmagical weapons?

No. They resist weapon damage rather than ignoring it. The 2014 specter resists bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks, so magic weapons deal full damage; the 2024 specter resists all bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage, magic or not.

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.