Wight 5e: Stats, Life Drain and the Zombies It Leaves Behind

A wight is a CR 3 Medium Undead (700 XP): an armored, intelligent corpse with AC 14, a sword, a longbow and Life Drain, which lowers a victim's hit point maximum. A humanoid it kills with Life Drain rises 24 hours later as a zombie under its control, up to twelve at a time. The 2024 wight nearly doubles its hit points (82 instead of 45), adds necrotic damage to every weapon hit, turns Life Drain into a saving throw instead of an attack roll, and loses its resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks.

Table of Contents

• •Wight Stat Block (2014)
• •The Wight in the 2024 Rules
• •How Life Drain Works
• •How Wights Fight
• •Running a Wight Encounter
• •How Players Beat a Wight
• •Wight Encounter Ideas
• •Frequently Asked Questions

Wight Stat Block (2014)

The SRD 5.1 wight:

The 2014 wight is a soldier. Its Multiattack is two longsword attacks or two longbow attacks, and it can swap one longsword attack for Life Drain. Every attack is +4. The longsword deals 6 (1d8 + 2) one-handed or 7 (1d10 + 2) with two hands, the longbow 6 (1d8 + 2) at 150/600 feet. Life Drain is a melee weapon attack for 5 (1d6 + 2) necrotic damage plus a DC 13 Constitution save against hit point maximum loss.

Its 45 hit points look low for CR 3, but they sit behind resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks that aren't silvered. Against a level 3 party with plain weapons, the wight effectively has 90 hit points against the martial characters. The SRD lets characters silver a weapon (or ten pieces of ammunition) for 100 gp, which a party hunting a wight should know about.

The rest of the block describes something smarter than a zombie: Intelligence 10, Charisma 15, Stealth +4, Perception +3 and the languages it knew in life. A wight can plan an ambush, negotiate and give orders to its dead.

The Wight in the 2024 Rules

The 2024 wight (SRD 5.2.1) keeps CR 3, AC 14, Sunlight Sensitivity and the zombie-raising, and rebuilds the rest.

What changes at the table:

• •More damage per round. Two 2014 two-handed longsword attacks against AC 16 (+4 hits on 12+, 45%) average 6.3 damage. Two 2024 Necrotic Swords average 9 (2 x 10 x 0.45), and the bow deals the same 9 at range.
• •Life Drain ignores armor. In 2014 Life Drain had to hit AC first, then the target saved. In 2024 there's no attack roll: the target makes the DC 13 Constitution save, and a failure means both damage and maximum loss. The plate-armored paladin is no safer than the wizard.
• •Different durability. The 2014 wight is tougher against mundane weapons (45 resisted, roughly 90 effective). The 2024 wight is tougher against everything else: spells, magic weapons and silver all face 82 hit points.

How Life Drain Works

Life Drain is the reason a wight is scarier than its damage.

The reduction. When a target fails the save, its hit point maximum drops by the necrotic damage it took. A character at 24/24 who takes 6 from Life Drain is at 18/18. Healing can't fill the gap. In the 2014 rules the reduction lasts until the target finishes a long rest. In the 2024 rules, a Long Rest returns a reduced maximum to normal, and Greater Restoration removes the reduction in both editions.

The death clause. A creature whose hit point maximum reaches 0 dies. Current hit points fall by the same amount, so a character usually drops before its maximum runs out. The clause bites when healing keeps someone fighting on a shrinking maximum, or when the wight keeps draining a character who is already down: a level 2 wizard with a 14-point maximum is gone after about three failed saves.

The save odds. DC 13 Constitution. A character with Con +2 fails on a 1 to 10, 50% of the time. With +5 (proficient, Con 16) it fails on 1 to 7, 35% of the time. Wizards, rogues and bards without Constitution proficiency are the natural targets.

The zombies. A Humanoid slain by Life Drain rises 24 hours later as a zombie under the wight's control, unless it's restored to life or its body is destroyed. The wight can control at most twelve. This only applies to kills by Life Drain itself, not to the sword or bow. A dead party member who gets Revivify within its 1-minute window won't rise. A body that's carried off and left alone for a day will.

How Wights Fight

A wight has the mind of the soldier it used to be. Run it like one.

Open from range in the dark. Darkvision 60 feet and a longbow with a 150-foot normal range let the wight shoot first. Two 2024 Necrotic Bow shots average 9 damage a round with no need to close. The party's torches tell it where to aim.

Close for the drain on soft targets. When it engages in melee, the wight should pick the character with the worst Constitution save and use Life Drain plus one sword attack. Against a Con +1 wizard, the 2024 Life Drain causes maximum loss 55% of the time, with no attack roll to miss.

Screen with zombies. A wight with zombies uses them the way a sergeant uses conscripts: a wall of AC 8 bodies in the doorway while it shoots past them. Six zombies and a wight cost 1,000 XP (2024) and make a level 4 fight where the party has to cut through the screen to reach the real threat.

Avoid sunlight. Sunlight Sensitivity imposes Disadvantage on its attack rolls (and, in 2024, on its ability checks). A wight fights at night, underground or indoors, and it retreats from daylight rather than fighting in it.

Keep its kills. A wight that drops a character with Life Drain wants the body. Expect it to try to drag a corpse away, or to order its zombies to. In a day, that body is a new soldier.

Running a Wight Encounter

A wight is worth 700 XP; a zombie is 50. With the 2024 encounter budget for four characters:

The 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide guidelines, used by our encounter difficulty calculator, treat one wight with four zombies as 900 XP doubled to 1,800 for a group of five. That's over the Deadly threshold for four level 3 characters (1,600) and Hard for four level 4 characters (1,500 to 2,000).

Our read: a lone 2014 wight against a level 3 party without magic weapons lasts longer than the XP suggests, because of the resistance. A lone 2024 wight is a fair, straight fight. Wights get dangerous as commanders, so the most interesting builds are one wight with a handful of zombies, at level 3 to 5.

How Players Beat a Wight

Radiant damage. Nothing in either wight's block resists it. Guiding Bolt and Spirit Guardians from a good or neutral cleric deal full damage, and Spirit Guardians also chews through any zombies that walk into it.

Magic or silvered weapons against the 2014 wight. Without them, martial characters deal half damage. Silvering a weapon costs 100 gp in the 2014 rules. Against the 2024 wight, any weapon works.

Fight in sunlight. Disadvantage on every attack roll (and, in 2024, every ability check) is a huge penalty. Luring a wight outside at dawn ends the fight on the party's terms. The 2024 Daylight spell creates sunlight, so it triggers Sunlight Sensitivity. The 2014 Daylight spell creates bright light without calling it sunlight, so whether it counts is a DM ruling.

Turn Undead. A wight's Wisdom save is +1, so it fails against DC 13 55% of the time. In the 2014 rules, Destroy Undead at cleric level 14 destroys CR 3 undead on a failed save.

Command works in 2024. The 2014 Command spell has no effect on undead. The 2024 version has no such restriction, so "Grovel" or "Drop" against a wight with Wisdom +1 works more often than not.

Protect the low-Constitution characters. The wizard shouldn't be the one standing next to the wight. Protection from Evil and Good gives undead Disadvantage on attack rolls against the warded character. That blunts the 2014 Life Drain, which is an attack roll, but not the 2024 version, which is a saving throw.

Burn the bodies. If anyone died to Life Drain, destroy or protect the body within 24 hours. That rule applies to townsfolk the wight killed before the party arrived, too.

Don't bother with poison (immune) or Exhaustion-based effects. Charm and fear effects do work on a wight: it isn't immune to Charmed or Frightened in either edition.

Wight Encounter Ideas

The barrow captain. A war-band was buried with its captain under a hill, weapons and all. The captain rose as a wight. For a hundred years it slept. Then road-builders cut into the barrow, and three of them died in the night. Tomorrow they come back as zombies wearing work clothes. The party arrives in daylight, which helps, and has to decide whether to clear the barrow before sunset or wait for the wight on open ground.

The deserter's oath. A wight approaches the party under a flag of truce. In life it was a soldier who swore to hold a pass until relieved, and it still holds it, with twelve zombies who were the travelers it killed. It will let the party through if they bring it orders from its commander, who has been dead for two centuries. The commander's grave is three days away. So is his signet ring.

Twenty-four hours. The party rescues a village from a wight raid, kills the wight's zombies and drives it off. Five villagers died in the raid. If the wight drained them, they'll rise tomorrow night under its control, and their families want them buried in the churchyard as usual. The party has to work out which of the five died to Life Drain and convince grieving families to burn the bodies.

A campaign with a wight in it usually means tracking who died, who rose and who the party saved. A D&D session note-taking app like Loreify can record the session and keep that list for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

What CR is a wight in 5e?

A wight is CR 3 and worth 700 XP in both the 2014 and 2024 rules. The 2014 wight has 45 hit points; the 2024 wight has 82.

How does a wight's Life Drain work?

The target takes necrotic damage and, if it fails a DC 13 Constitution save, its hit point maximum drops by that amount. In 2014 Life Drain is a +4 melee attack for 5 (1d6 + 2) followed by the save. In 2024 it's only the save, for 6 (1d8 + 2) on a failure. A creature whose hit point maximum reaches 0 dies.

How many zombies can a wight control?

Twelve. A Humanoid killed by the wight's Life Drain rises 24 hours later as a zombie under its control unless it's restored to life or its body is destroyed.

How do you restore hit points lost to Life Drain?

A long rest restores the reduced hit point maximum in both editions, and Greater Restoration removes the reduction immediately. Normal healing can't raise current hit points above the reduced maximum.

Is a wight resistant to nonmagical weapons?

In the 2014 rules, yes: it resists bludgeoning, piercing and slashing from nonmagical attacks that aren't silvered. The 2024 wight resists only necrotic damage, so any weapon deals full damage.

What's the difference between a wight and a wraith?

A wight is a CR 3 corporeal soldier with weapons that raises zombies. A wraith is a CR 5 incorporeal undead whose Life Drain hits harder (21 necrotic) and which turns the spirits of the recently dead into specters.

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.