Killing with Energy Drain should be the first step for Spawning from fallen victims, though. Maybe as a non-combat Ritual.
Forgot to mention this, but I love the idea of an actual ritual to spawn a new undead, rather than it being automatic. That way, you could plot to go back and seize your friend's body before the ritual was complete!
Though anyone drained to death should be a bit of a peril. Perhaps they should have a certain random chance of coming back as something, unless you cast Bless on them or the like.
Remathilis said:
I actually kinda hope for "multiple" energy drain abilities:
Possibly. I hope not too many, as it might start to get hard to remember which is which! I agree that shadows, in particular, should stand out from the rest, though. They've always felt different.
SLOTHmaster said:
like instead of draining Con, drain 1 hp/ level and give a penalty to saves.
Hm, that also has some potential, as it would mean high-level characters aren't nearly as insulated from harm as they usually are. (Though the Survivor specialty will still help!)
Scipio202 said:
I think there needs to be some kind of in-combat detrimental effect - HD alone is damage plus out of combat healing reduction.
Drained - if a character has had at least half it's HD drained, it has disadvantage on all attacks, checks and saving throws.
Good idea! I find this version to be the more elegant, and I'm adding it to the new writeup.
RangerWickett said:
Maybe we should have some sort of 'touch of death,' but make it harder to pull off.
Oh wow. Your description is all kinds of suggestive. I like it!
It definitely should be something suitably horrible, given that the wight had to work for it. Death on a failed save, and something still pretty bad on a successful one?
I realize save-or-die has a bad rap these days, but I think it might be justified in this case.