Wandering Wight
Wandering Wight — The Encounter
The barrow-dead pilgrim who never reached his grave · a boss your table can run with almost no prep. SRD 5.1-compatible.
Who Is Wandering Wight
Some dead refuse the grave because they died mid-journey. The Wandering Wight was a pilgrim of the barrow-roads, a small soul who set out to lay an offering at a holy cairn and perished short of it, body and vow both unburied. What rose in his place is a stunted, swollen thing that still walks the route, beads clenched in a fist that no longer prays so much as counts. It mistakes every living traveler for a fellow pilgrim and reaches out to draw them onto its endless road, and those whose vitality it drains down to nothing rise to shuffle behind it as silent companions. Folk of the cairn-country leave salt and silver at crossroads to turn it aside, for steel alone barely marks its grave-toughened hide. It feels no fear and knows no rest; only the breaking of its unkept vow, or fire and holy light, will finally let it down into the earth it never reached.
Run Wandering Wight in Sixty Seconds
- Hold the line — this is a tanky add-on minion, not a boss; drop it next to a necromancer or undead pack so it always has corpses feeding Pilgrim's Toll.
- Open with Rotting Grasp on the squishiest target to start grinding their hit point maximum, then Multiattack the same victim every round.
- Kill-priority for the party: kill its grasp victims (their HP-max drop never recovers until a long rest) before they hit 0 and rise as a controlled zombie.
- When at 0 — Undead Fortitude usually drops it to 1 instead, and Cling to Unlife immediately swings back; bypass it with radiant damage or a critical hit.
- Three ways to run it — (1) lurching barrow-road tank that won't die, (2) max-HP drainer that wrecks healers, (3) corpse-converter that grows the horde mid-fight.
Wandering Wight
Small undead, neutral evil
CR 2 · 450 XP · GUIDELINEUndead Fortitude. If damage reduces the wight to 0 hit points, it must make a Constitution saving throw with a DC of 5 + the damage taken, unless the damage is radiant or from a critical hit. On a success, the wight drops to 1 hit point instead.
Pilgrim's Toll. Signature. The wight clutches a string of grave-beads and mutters a litany for the dead. Whenever a creature it can see dies within 30 feet, the wight regains 5 hit points and its weapon attacks deal an extra 3 (1d6) necrotic damage until the end of its next turn. It cannot exceed its hit point maximum.
Actions
Multiattack. The wight makes two attacks: one with its grave-spike and one with its rotting grasp.
Grave-Spike. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8 + 2) piercing damage plus 3 (1d6) necrotic damage.
Rotting Grasp. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 5 (1d4 + 2) bludgeoning damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or its hit point maximum is reduced by 5 (1d4 + 2) until it finishes a long rest. A creature reduced to 0 in this way dies and rises as a zombie under the wight's control 1 minute later.
Bonus Actions & Reactions
Cling to Unlife. Reaction (when reduced to 1 hit point by Undead Fortitude): The wight lashes out as it refuses to lie down. It makes one grave-spike attack against a creature within reach.
A squat, blue-skinned corpse no taller than a child, its bald scalp and cheeks studded with iron pilgrim-spikes, wrapped in a sagging mendicant's robe and gripping a string of grave-beads it never finished telling.
Wandering Wight, Bound
Companion · acts on your initiative
Bound · GUIDELINESilent Pilgrim (signature). Wandering Wight makes no sound and cannot speak. It has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks and is immune to being frightened, mirroring the litany that raised it.
Actions
Cold Hands. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d6 + 2) bludgeoning damage plus 3 (1d6) necrotic damage.
Reactions
Grave-Ward. When an ally within 5 feet would take damage, Wandering Wight steps between them and takes half that damage instead, the rest applying to the ally.
A traveler the wight drained to nothing on the barrow-road, risen mute and grey to shuffle one step behind its maker forever.
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 by shambling into the softest-looking PC and using Rotting Grasp to start chewing their max HP down. Keep it adjacent to anything dying so Pilgrim's Toll keeps healing it and stacking necrotic. Kill-priority is its grasp victims before a corpse turns into a fresh zombie; pair it with a flock of skeletons or a necromancer who feeds it kills.
Run it as a frontline drainer in an undead horde, soaking hits while Undead Fortitude refuses to let it fall. Position it where allies are dying so Pilgrim's Toll tops it off every round. Have casters burn radiant or land a crit to bypass its Fortitude; pair it with a bigger undead threat that supplies the bodies.
Even scaled up this is a relentless add, not a lone boss: anchor it in a barrow-lair beside a flagship necromancer or grave-titan that keeps the kills coming. It tanks the party while max-HP drain quietly cripples healers. Focus radiant and criticals to deny its Fortitude, and clear its risen zombies before they pile up.
Put Wandering Wight 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 Wandering Wight?
Its home statline is CR 2 (450 XP), a Tier 1 add-on undead. Scaled blocks for Tier 2 (~CR 6) and Tier 3 (~CR 11) are provided, but it is never a solo boss — it belongs beside a flagship undead threat.
Can Wandering Wight be a companion or ally?
Yes. Use the bound companion sidebar, Beadmute, Bound (AC 11, 30 HP) — a mute drained pilgrim that shields allies with Grave-Ward and strikes with necrotic Cold Hands, ideal for a necromancer PC or a graveside patron NPC.
Why does it raise zombies instead of more wights?
Its Rotting Grasp drains a victim's hit point maximum, and anyone it empties dies and rises as a basic zombie under its control after 1 minute. That makes it a horde-builder: the longer a fight runs, the more shambling bodies trail behind it.
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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