Shadewraith
Shadewraith — The Encounter
Carapaced stalker grown from the ash of a doomed city · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Shadewraith
When fire and brimstone fell upon the cities of the plain, not every soul was simply consumed. A few, too hateful to ascend and too proud to repent, were caught in the moment of burning and made eternal by it. The shadewraith is one such damned thing: its flesh hardened into a black insectoid carapace, its hands twisted into a reaping hook and a fistful of searing talons, its heart a coal that never cools. Where it lingers the air smells of smoke and old salt, and the red glow leaking from its seams is the last unspent flame of a doomed home. It hunts the way punishment hunts — silently, from the dark, slipping through shadow to drag a chosen victim down before any can intervene. It feels neither hunger nor satisfaction, only the cold compulsion to take from the living what was taken from it.
Run Shadewraith in Sixty Seconds
- Hold for the dark — the shadewraith wants dim light or darkness; in it, ranged attacks against it have disadvantage and it Hides as a bonus action. Open every fight by having it strike from cover, never in the open.
- Open with the assassin's pull — Cinder Step (bonus action, 30 ft. teleport) behind the line, then Multiattack: Reaping Claw drags the target 5 ft. toward you, Searing Talons burns its hit point maximum so the cleric can't heal it back.
- Kill-priority is the lightbringer — whoever casts daylight or carries a torch into the dark is your first target; remove their light and the wraith keeps advantage all encounter.
- When bloodied (62 HP), it ignites — Searing Marrow adds 2d6 fire to every Claw hit. Don't flee; press the advantage and burn down the most fragile PC before they reposition.
- Three ways to run it — lone terror in a dark ruin; an assassin paired with a flagship fiend that holds the front; or the unseen stalker of a warband that picks off stragglers each round with Cinder Step.
Shadewraith
Medium fiend, neutral evil
CR 6 · 2,300 XP · GUIDELINEShadow Stealth. While in dim light or darkness, the shadewraith can take the Hide action as a bonus action, and attacks made against it from beyond 10 feet are made with disadvantage.
Searing Marrow. The red light bleeding through the shadewraith's carapace is the unspent fire of a burning city. When it is reduced to half its hit points or fewer, its claws ignite: each Claw hit deals an extra 7 (2d6) fire damage.
Actions
Multiattack. The shadewraith makes two attacks: one with its Reaping Claw and one with its Searing Talons.
Reaping Claw. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d8+4) slashing damage. If the target is a creature, it must succeed on a DC 15 Strength saving throw or be pulled up to 5 feet toward the shadewraith.
Searing Talons. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 12 (3d4+4) fire damage, and the target's hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the fire damage dealt until it finishes a long rest.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Cinder Step (Bonus Action). The shadewraith teleports up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space it can see that is in dim light or darkness, leaving a puff of glowing ash behind.
Carapace Ward (Reaction). When the shadewraith is hit by an attack, it can angle its chitin plates to add 3 to its AC against that attack, possibly causing the attack to miss.
A lean, bladed silhouette in segmented black chitin, one arm a great curved reaping claw and the other a splay of glowing red talons, its carapace cracked with the smoldering ember-light of a city long since burned.
Shadewraith, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINEEmber Cloak (signature). While within 10 feet of Shadewraith, you and your allies have resistance to cold damage and can see normally in magical darkness.
Actions
Cinder Lash. Melee Weapon Attack: +5 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 9 (2d6+2) fire damage.
Reactions
Smoldering Veil. When an ally you can see within 30 feet is hit by an attack, Shadewraith wreathes them in smoke; the attacker must reroll the attack and use the lower result.
A smaller, half-formed cinder-thing that trails the wraith like a loyal coal, sheltering those it has chosen to spare.
Guideline numbers — formula-tuned and read from the miniature's design, not yet table-proven. Tell us how it ran in the comments.
How It Fights — by Tier
Same creature, scaled threat. The traits never change; only the numbers move.
Open from darkness with a bonus-action Hide, then Cinder Step in to flank the squishiest target with Reaping Claw to drag it away from the group. Lean on Shadow Stealth so ranged PCs miss. At this tier run it as a lone terror or a single elite among kobold/cultist mooks.
Open by Cinder Stepping behind the line and Multiattacking the backline caster — Searing Talons shreds their hit point maximum so healing can't undo it. Kill-priority is whoever can dispel darkness; spend Carapace Ward on the burst that would bloody it. Pair it with a bigger threat (a flagship fiend or a brimstone elemental) and let the shadewraith be the assassin while the boss holds the front.
Run it as the silent knife in a lair or warband, never alone: it ambushes, marks a victim with Searing Talons, then Cinder Steps out of reach every round. Have it stalk the party from the dark while minions pin them in the light. Kill-priority remains anyone who lights the room — strip that and the wraith fights with permanent advantage.
Put Shadewraith on the table
Download the presupported STL and run the fight tonight — the model, and the encounter that comes with it.
Get the STL on MyMiniFactory →Clay Cyanide Companion Rules v1
How a bound creature acts
- A companion acts on its owner's initiative, immediately after the owner.
- It uses the Companion block above — roughly ×0.6 HP and damage, no recharge abilities, and at most one reaction trait.
- It moves freely; it takes its Action only while its owner is conscious.
- At 0 HP a companion is broken, not dead — restored on a long rest unless your table rules otherwise.
Original Clay Cyanide material © Clay Cyanide LLC — explicitly not the non-SRD official sidekick rules.
Questions, Asked at the Table
What CR is Shadewraith?
Natively CR 6 (Tier 2, ~levels 5-10): AC 16, 123 HP, +7 to hit, save DC 15, dealing roughly 35-40 damage a round. The stat block also provides Tier 1 (~CR 2) and Tier 3 (~CR 11) columns so you can drop it into almost any party without rebuilding it.
Can Shadewraith be a companion or ally?
Not the wraith itself — it is an irredeemable damned thing. But the bundled companion, Ashling, Bound, is a half-formed cinder-spirit (AC 14, 38 HP) that shelters allies with Ember Cloak and can force an attacker to reroll with Smoldering Veil, making it a fine bodyguard familiar for a darkness- or fire-themed character.
Is the shadewraith immune to being shut down by light spells?
No — and that's the intended counterplay. Its Shadow Stealth and Cinder Step both require dim light or darkness, so a daylight spell or a few torches strips its disadvantage-to-be-hit and its teleport, turning the assassin into an ordinary melee fiend. Reward players who think to light the room.
Tell Us How It Ran
This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 ("SRD 5.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Clay Cyanide Miniatures is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC. This content is compatible with the fifth edition of the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game. Companion rules, lore, names, and original mechanics © Clay Cyanide LLC.
Technical Specifications
32mm, 75mm
STL, Pre-supported STL
Standard or ABS-like resin, 0.05mm layer height
Yes — ready to print, optimized supports included
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