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When I was a kid and playing BECMI, wights used to be scary. In 5e, the worst they can do is make healing less effective for a day. What about replacing life drain with exhaustion?
Love new house rule ideas, keep âem coming! â„ïž
Iâve seen âlife drain should be exhaustionâ proposed before so youâre on to something, and you have the best execution of that Iâve ever seen and Iâm considering it.
I havenât recoursed to that yet though, becauseâŠ
New players donât know that the HP max can get restored on long rest, which makes wights super scary to them. That can also be an easy avenue for house ruling, changing the condition for restoring the lost HP max. Not that a day with less effective healing is nothing, thatâs already plenty scary in the right circumstances.
There are also four other reasons wights are scary in my game.
Diegetically they are undead (in older Swedish lore âvandödâ which means more maldead, misdead, wrongdead). Thatâs messed up right there. There are so many ways to make undead (or any monster) scary. They can be someone the player characters know about and thought was dead, or the environment or circumstances or description can make them scary. Theyâre at the intersection of body horror and the fear of the gateway between life and death.
Second, wights can insta-kill since they have an attack that bypasses death saves. Thatâs also pretty scary!
Third, and Iâll understand if you donât think this one donât count, since itâs the consequence of a house rule: Oh, Injury!, but, where all monsters wear down your hope and stamina with fatigue, wightâs life drain is a âmessyâ attack that inflicts actual wounds. If the character canât get the wound healed within a few days, theyâre in trouble. Sure, itâs dumb of me to say âI donât need to house-rule wights because Iâve already house-ruled the general damage systemâ but it is what it is.
The fourth reason does apply to nonâhouse-ruled games and I saved it for last because itâs the best. They can turn you into a zombie. Sprinkle some wights in with your zombies and you have the contagious walking dead army of your dreams.â„ïž
Of course, all four of these are plenty compatible with your exhaustion suggestion. Fun fun fun.â„ïž
PS:
Iâm not as into your other house rule suggestion:
Oh, another thing: incorporeal undead can move through things as they wish, none of this âtake damage if they end their turn inside an objectâ bullshit.
I think thatâd be bad, for four reasons:
Itâs a great limit if your player characters find a way to become incorporeal, itâs a fun limit to make running them as DM more challenging and engaging, it better matches how I thought they worked as a kid, and itâd make them impossible to hit otherwise. They could just phase through every sword swing coming their way.