Black Flag Tales of the Valiant preview: The Wight

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I gotta say, I really like that Kobold Press is asking themselves "why" on these legacy monsters, something that TSR never seemed to do when creating a monster for every name they could extract from the thesaurus or other sources.

For the wight, here's the why:

Today’s example creature is the wight, a deathly lieutenant of undead armies. When approaching the wight, one of the questions we wanted to answer was, “for what purpose do they create zombies?”

Our answer was to give the wight a bigger role in the grand scheme of necromancers and greater undead like vampires and liches. The trouble with undead armies is they are filled with many mindless undead, which eventually get to be too much for one necromancer or lich to micromanage. Enter the wight! Undead warriors who retain much of the martial prowess they had in life, the wight is a perfect lieutenant for commanding units of skeletons and zombies. The wight can command skeletons and zombies on its turn, and it can create more zombies to fight alongside it. These changes make the wight a challenge on its own for equal-level PCs and a threat to watch for higher-level PCs facing a horde of undead.

That's great! Even a wight on its own now at least has a place in a setting -- they're former lieutenants created by a necromancer or other powerful undead. Left alone, they'll likely eventually acquire a small band of mindless undead and are likely to then use them to cause bigger trouble later on. Once player characters know about a wight, they should feel the pressure to do something about it, before it becomes a bigger problem. Fantastic -- it's a monster that creates its own adventures by merely existing. Their undead lieutenant stuff manifests in play through bonus actions to command up to five skeletons or zombies.

Life drain attacks maximum HP, which victims recover after a long rest. Easy to adjudicate, but a big problem in a fight, since one simply can't heal themselves out of danger.

 

[Quickleaf]

I love Kobold Press' process, but I'm not that enamored of the output in this case.

They've presented an identity for a wight. Which is a start! Unfortunately, the identity they settled on strongly reminds me of 4th edition's approach to the story of many monsters as "X...but this is the leader version!"

So if that's the way you go, and you're cleaving pretty true to 5e's design ethos – like with Black Flag – yeah, the writeup they present for the wight is the logical outcome of that. Take the 5e wight, slap some leader-y bonus actions on it, a "story" culminating in Martial Adept to better account for its threat level...and that's it.

But it does very little to spark my imagination. The wight is a hard monster to breathe new life into - I know from my own games - but for me that spark is missing here.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I agree woth the poster above. Those leadery bonus action could also be seen in the marilith peview. If those creatures are intended to work with other creatures that are their soldiers, I am ok with it.

The soldier creatures should not have so much abilities on their own, it will become unwieldy. Actually I think the command abilities are a bit too unwieldy already.

 

[KYRON45]

"Today’s example creature is the wight, a deathly lieutenant of undead armies."

and

"Command Horde. The wight commands up to five friendly skeletons or zombies"

It would seem that its been made clear that they are working with other creatures.
Seems like a pretty solid entry.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

"Today’s example creature is the wight, a deathly lieutenant of undead armies."

and

"Command Horde. The wight commands up to five friendly skeletons or zombies"

It would seem that its been made clear that they are working with other creatures.
Seems like a pretty solid entry.

Thanks for the help. I edited my post.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I like it. One fun bit is that you can just ignore its leaderly traits if you want. It can make a strong boss for 2nd level characters or a strong minion at higher levels. It has a lot of flexibility in the amount of damage it can do — sort of a built in difficulty mode.

Wights are one of my benchmarks because of where they sit in CR and how poorly they hold up in the 2024 Monster Manual. I’ve been modding wights for ten years. I’m happy with both this one and the A5e wight.

 

[aco175]

I do not have a problem with them presenting an option on how they work in the world. It gives them a place and an intelligence to have plans, which makes them dangerous. A cabal of wights, each with several undead, making coordinated attacks on a village would be a big fights for the PCs.

My problem with the statblock is that they are wearing only studded leather and not something more like splint or chain.

 

[Reynard]

My brain had a little glitch when I looked at the stat block because I have been running Pathfinder 2E and those numbers were just so low!

Anyway, its's a good implementation of minor mechanical bits to give the wight some character. I like adding a few small abilities like this to 5E monsters when I do design, so I approve. But the other thing monsters need is interesting reactions: having interesting reactions means the default is not always "opportunity attack" and therefore they encourage movement on the battlefield (which i think is more fun).

 

[Quickleaf]

My brain had a little glitch when I looked at the stat block because I have been running Pathfinder 2E and those numbers were just so low!

Anyway, its's a good implementation of minor mechanical bits to give the wight some character. I like adding a few small abilities like this to 5E monsters when I do design, so I approve. But the other thing monsters need is interesting reactions: having interesting reactions means the default is not always "opportunity attack" and therefore they encourage movement on the battlefield (which i think is more fun).

Hah. I'm going to play devil's advocate here, because while I appreciate the effort to make monsters more interesting, there is a real "at the table issue" that can arise.

In 4e, there was an explosion of options for reactions on both the GM's side and player's side, and that is one of the things that contributed to combat overstaying its welcome (i.e. the handling time of combat ballooning excessively).

One of the principles I've followed in monster design – even when I'm breaking other rules – is to be very conservative giving out special reactions to monsters meant to be encountered in significant groups. The wight's Shamble option (granting movement to 5 skeletons/zombies using their reactions) isn't the most egregious thing I've seen as far as burning table time, but it does raise a yellow flag for me. "Wait, which monster has a reaction left to opportunity attack again?" is something I've seen come up at the table.

Edit: Btw, personally, I've house ruled 5e so opportunity attacks are less prevalent in order to speed up the game.

 

[Reynard]

Hah. I'm going to play devil's advocate here, because while I appreciate the effort to make monsters more interesting, there is a real "at the table issue" that can arise.

In 4e, there was an explosion of options for reactions on both the GM's side and player's side, and that is one of the things that contributed to combat overstaying its welcome (i.e. the handling time of combat ballooning excessively).

One of the principles I've followed in monster design – even when I'm breaking other rules – is to be very conservative giving out special reactions to monsters meant to be encountered in significant groups. The wight's Shamble option (granting movement to 5 skeletons/zombies using their reactions) isn't the most egregious thing I've seen as far as burning table time, but it does raise a yellow flag for me. "Wait, which monster has a reaction left to opportunity attack again?" is something I've seen come up at the table.

Edit: Btw, personally, I've house ruled 5e so opportunity attacks are less prevalent in order to speed up the game.

Yeah, the other way to encourage movement is to eliminate or greatly curtail opportunity attacks and to bring back an automatic flanking bonus as well as a firing into melee penalty. With 5E's broken up movement, these rules mean both monsters and PCs dive into and out of melee a lot more.