PCs Using Negative Level Effects

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Are they worth the risk?

According to RAW, any creature that dies via too many negative levels rises as a wight, which is one of those monsters that, logically speaking, should've completely overrun the entire world many, many times over, because they "breed" on a geometric curve, if not exponentially. A single wight could destroy an entire town of low-level NPCs in one night, with every single one of them rising as more wights, which can then spread to nearby towns and do the same thing there. The only thing even slowing them down is travel time between populated areas, and even that doesn't matter if they kill wildlife on the way.

The only reason they haven't destroyed all animal life on the Material Plane is DM fiat, in most cases.

So, given that PCs are faced with the inevitable wightocalypse that is guaranteed to occur (but for literal divine intervention), is there any reason that using effects that cause negative levels, especially things like on-a-critical weapon enhancements, is worth the risk?

[Malphegor]

Presumably because negative energy wielders exist in a previously un-Wighted setting, perhaps there is some reason the world isn’t a Wight Supremacy setting.

Deities are too unsatisfying.

Maybe on their own, unawakened Wights are really unmotivated and do nothing or starve out? They are intelligent, but perhaps when they run out of people to feed upon/spawn from, they continue as pale twisted reflections of their living selves, apeing normal interactions like queuing at the post office and administrative duties.

Would give a contrast for undead that made themselves- undead that did not make themselves don’t have much motivation to do much.

[Calthropstu]

Are they worth the risk?

According to RAW, any creature that dies via too many negative levels rises as a wight, which is one of those monsters that, logically speaking, should've completely overrun the entire world many, many times over, because they "breed" on a geometric curve, if not exponentially. A single wight could destroy an entire town of low-level NPCs in one night, with every single one of them rising as more wights, which can then spread to nearby towns and do the same thing there. The only thing even slowing them down is travel time between populated areas, and even that doesn't matter if they kill wildlife on the way.

The only reason they haven't destroyed all animal life on the Material Plane is DM fiat, in most cases.

So, given that PCs are faced with the inevitable wightocalypse that is guaranteed to occur (but for literal divine intervention), is there any reason that using effects that cause negative levels, especially things like on-a-critical weapon enhancements, is worth the risk?

The "wightacolypse" is something that happened in my campaign world. The resulting war against them resulted in massive warded cities connected via teleportation gates with strike teams created comprised of adventurers. The strike teams proved extremely effective and eventually, the wightocalypse was defeated. My world is a much watered down version of a tippyverse.

[Troacctid]

I'm skeptical of your premise. Wights are CR 3 with no special defenses or resilience, no real special attacks other than a slam with +3 to hit, no native ability to advance by class level, and no way to deal with flying enemies. A single wyrmling dragon could take on an entire army of wights singlehandedly and emerge without a scratch. So what makes them more likely to overrun the world than any other threat?

[zlefin]

it is worth using negative level effects; because the premise is false, the wightocalypse is not inevitable, RAI is clear on that.
also, pretty much all the sources of negative levels require the party to have several levels themselves, and thus they'd be strong enough to easily put down a wight. it's also quite feasible to use negative levels as a supplement to make it easier to defeat a foe without using so many that they become a wight.

[Zaq]

I'm skeptical of your premise. Wights are CR 3 with no special defenses or resilience, no real special attacks other than a slam with +3 to hit, no native ability to advance by class level, and no way to deal with flying enemies. A single wyrmling dragon could take on an entire army of wights singlehandedly and emerge without a scratch. So what makes them more likely to overrun the world than any other threat?

Mostly the fact that they can make more of themselves relatively quickly if they find an unguarded place to feed, and they’re relatively intelligent.

Any individual wight isn’t likely to cause a wightpocalypse, but if they aren’t dealt with relatively rapidly, it can get bad.

Think of it like a bacterial infection. A lone bacterium is likely to get squished by your immune system before it gets bad, but if it manages to get a toehold and really starts multiplying, it can be difficult or impossible for your immune system to handle it. And since wights are unfortunately kind of easy to make incidentally (relatively few intelligent beings without class levels or a higher CR can handle a wight if they aren’t prepared), that toehold is likely to happen sooner or later. And unlike shadows, they aren’t hindered by sunlight, so there are few low-level mundane defenses against them.

Doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for the story. The GM is well within their rights to simply say that the spawning rules aren’t universal, or that there’s enough high-level stuff around to squish wightpocalyspes in the bud, or that it’s simply not the story they feel like telling today. But there ARE reasons why “wightpocalypse” is more plausible than, like, “dragonpocalyse.”

[Troacctid]

Thing is, like I said, it only takes a single dragon to stop an army of wights. A single aarakocra. A single 6th level warlock. A single Aglarondan Griffonrider. Etc. Their attacks don't even deal enough damage to break through hardness 5 or greater, so it takes three of them working together before they can take 20 to break down a simple barred wooden door. How are they going to storm a city?

[Florian]

The various kinds of "apocalypse" only happen when you place the crunch above the fluff. Most creatures have a strictly defined ecology and stick to that.

[Calthropstu]

I'm skeptical of your premise. Wights are CR 3 with no special defenses or resilience, no real special attacks other than a slam with +3 to hit, no native ability to advance by class level, and no way to deal with flying enemies. A single wyrmling dragon could take on an entire army of wights singlehandedly and emerge without a scratch. So what makes them more likely to overrun the world than any other threat?

On my world, it was a combined army of wights, shadows, spectres, wraiths and vampires. As such, anyone creating self propagating undead are hunted and slaughtered. The cities are cordoned into sections, each section defended with anti undead barriers. The biggest defense, however, is the fact that getting to low level people after an alarm has sounded is nigh impossible for most. These undead simply can't do it because the housing exists within planar partitions carved out of the astral plane... most undead are tied to either the ethereal or shadow plane. And, even getting into the astral plane isn't enough in itself.

While wights alone would be insufficient, shadows, wraiths and spectres are another story. Only able to be affected by magic being incorporeal, they are VERY difficult for normal villagers to affect. And a powerful vampire forcing them along to form an army makes them truly formidable indeed.

[gkathellar]

Wait, there are adventurers who don’t burn the bodies of absolutely everything they kill? That’s sloppy.

[PrismCat21]

I learned something today.
I didn't know that death from negative levels caused you to raise as a Wright unless specifically rising as another creature. huh... :D

[Florian]

@Stu:

The setting I'm using is definitely stricter and a bit more in-depth when it comes to undead, how they are created, how they function, what makes them work.

Basically, the whole class of "spectral dead" are more or less more echos of a real personality, imprints on the Ethereal Plane powered and given a semblance of life by the Negative Energy Plane. Broadly speaking, they lack any real sense of self-awareness and are eternally stuck in the moment of their deaths. They are basically the equivalent of a scratch on a DVD/BR disc, when the player stutters and jumps a bit. Neither a Shadow nor a Dread Spectre is really able to act on their own and even advanced version, like a Ghost or Banshee, will be reset the moment their Rejuvenation kicks in, forgetting anything they've learned, experienced or witnessed since then.

The class of "Feeders" is fully in thrall of their needs, which dictate everything they do, which is strong enough to override their base personality. Ghouls, Wights, the various Vampire kinds have an overwhelming need to occupy the niche in the food chain dictated by their kind and will stick to it. Ghouls will gravitate around graveyards and only ever attack the living who come into their domain, Weights will seek out places that are connected with death and negative energy and remain there. (As an anecdotal side note, Ghouls in Starfinder managed to be respected citizens)

All in all, Undeath is not overly pleasant and let's not talk about what it means to be a Lich here.

[Calthropstu]

@Stu:

The setting I'm using is definitely stricter and a bit more in-depth when it comes to undead, how they are created, how they function, what makes them work.

Basically, the whole class of "spectral dead" are more or less more echos of a real personality, imprints on the Ethereal Plane powered and given a semblance of life by the Negative Energy Plane. Broadly speaking, they lack any real sense of self-awareness and are eternally stuck in the moment of their deaths. They are basically the equivalent of a scratch on a DVD/BR disc, when the player stutters and jumps a bit. Neither a Shadow nor a Dread Spectre is really able to act on their own and even advanced version, like a Ghost or Banshee, will be reset the moment their Rejuvenation kicks in, forgetting anything they've learned, experienced or witnessed since then.

The class of "Feeders" is fully in thrall of their needs, which dictate everything they do, which is strong enough to override their base personality. Ghouls, Wights, the various Vampire kinds have an overwhelming need to occupy the niche in the food chain dictated by their kind and will stick to it. Ghouls will gravitate around graveyards and only ever attack the living who come into their domain, Weights will seek out places that are connected with death and negative energy and remain there. (As an anecdotal side note, Ghouls in Starfinder managed to be respected citizens)

All in all, Undeath is not overly pleasant and let's not talk about what it means to be a Lich here.

Fair enough, but in PF, it specifically states (at least for shadows and wights) that they can be bent to the will of a more powerful undead. Given that, at least Shadows, have a VERY clearly defined hierarchy (and the rest have an implied hierarchy) with the whole greater shadow thing, it's easily conceivable that a powerful vampire or lich could force massive groups by securing the aid of a few select individuals through bribery, force or intimidation.

But I wonder... since a big thing about the D&D verse is creating opposites, why hasn't there been a major push to create things that feed off of undead? Like a positive energy version of undead that heals living people? Something like:

"Any living creature affected by this creature's touch attack is struck by a cure moderate wounds spell and receive the effect of a restoration. Undead are hit with a cure moderate and suffer 1 negative level." Something along those lines.

[Silva Stormrage]

The other factor preventing a wightpoclypse, beyond the initial logistical problems of how a weak creature can kill enough creatures to get an army formed, is in Libris Mortis actually.

Wights have an inescapable craving for life force and essentially every day they don't feed on negative energy they take 1d6 wisdom damage. At 0 wisdom becoming wild creatures attacking anything in sight. Any large army of wights would very quickly be unable to feed itself and collapse as it's members go insane and start mauling each other viewing each other as rivals for life force or just because they are in state of rage and are lashing out at anything nearby. It would be nigh impossible for even a modestly sized army of wights (100 or so) to feed themselves for a week before going insane and imploding.

Also for PCs using negative levels it isn't hard to just cut off the head or turn the body to ash or something similar to prevent any creature who was killed via negative levels from turning into a wight. Or just animating them as a zombie/skeleton.

[Florian]

When it comes to PF, you must differentiate between the "generic" material (Bestiaries, Ultimate series, etc.) and the Golarion-specific material (Undead Horrors Revisited, etc.) with the later building upon but overwriting the former when it comes to the exact details.

For the rest, I can only give you an Golarion-specific answer, as the logic behind that setting makes sense to me. Pos and Neg don't really have an antagonistic relationship. One creates souls and spawns quintessence, the other is entropy and the death of all things, as such, both work in perfect harmony. The creation of the First World, which is entirely too close to the Pos, prompted the mirror reaction of creating Shadow, which is the same spiritual distance to the Neg. The actual Prime is positioned as the spiritual half-way point and that's basically it. Undeath in Golarion is basically a failure of the underlying cosmic function, so while there are creatures that evolved to feed on undead, with Pos and Neg forming a Yin-Yang, there is nothing more to come of this.

[Zaq]

Thing is, like I said, it only takes a single dragon to stop an army of wights. A single aarakocra. A single 6th level warlock. A single Aglarondan Griffonrider. Etc. Their attacks don't even deal enough damage to break through hardness 5 or greater, so it takes three of them working together before they can take 20 to break down a simple barred wooden door. How are they going to storm a city?

Eh, they’re intelligent and they have thumbs. They can use tools if they really want to get in someplace. Or, you know, they can wait and lay siege if they really care.

Like I said, it’s not likely that each wight is about to cause a disaster, but the potential is still there.

[ericgrau]

The reason there's no wightpocalypse is because not everyone is a level 1 commoner or warrior. There are a large number of level 3s, and a good number of 5s. And wights have no ranged attack. And the spawn ability only works on humanoids. So worst case wights quickly wipe out a small village or 5, grow to hundreds or thousands, move towards a larger city, and get wiped out at the walls. Using their intelligence they might circle around to other villages instead, at which point a ranged army from the city (and/or priests and/or etc.) comes to them and wipes them out. Heck it could even be a side quest for a level 10ish party.

Also I don't see anything about wight generation from negative levels in the SRD, only from the wight's energy drain. Perhaps it's in another section. Do you have a reference for that?


Eh, they’re intelligent and they have thumbs. They can use tools if they really want to get in someplace. Or, you know, they can wait and lay siege if they really care.

Like I said, it’s not likely that each wight is about to cause a disaster, but the potential is still there.
They don't have disguises though, so obtaining tools and weapons is difficult. The villages might have some climbing gear, but they'll likely be slaughtered on the way up the walls, and it doesn't do much against a ranged army. They can pick up their own bows and slings from villages, but those don't spawn wights and aren't very strong. Their best bet is to go into hiding and slowly build up from occasional ambushes. But even that is likely to be found out and exterminated.

Really it's the same as vampires, lycanthropy, and probably 9 other things. They build up a bit til they get noticed, there's a big fight, and then it's over.

[Zaq]

The reason there's no wightpocalypse is because not everyone is a level 1 commoner or warrior. There are a large number of level 3s, and a good number of 5s. And wights have no ranged attack. And the spawn ability only works on humanoids. So worst case wights quickly wipe out a small village or 5, grow to hundreds or thousands, move towards a larger city, and get wiped out at the walls. Using their intelligence they might circle around to other villages instead, at which point a ranged army from the city (and/or priests and/or etc.) comes to them and wipes them out. Heck it could even be a side quest for a level 10ish party.

Also I don't see anything about wight generation from negative levels in the SRD, only from the wight's energy drain. Perhaps it's in another section. Do you have a reference for that?

DMG pg. 293, under "Energy Drain and Negative Levels":


A character with negative levels at least equal to her current level, or drained below 1st level, is instantly slain. Depending on the creature that killed her, she may rise the next night as a monster of that kind. If not, she rises as a wight.

Interestingly, it seems that the wight's special ability to create spawn applies to any humanoid it kills, not just humanoids it kills from negative levels or even with its natural weapons. Wights with spellcasting basically have a better version of Fell Animate applied to every single spell they cast!

[ericgrau]

Interestingly, it seems that the wight's special ability to create spawn applies to any humanoid it kills, not just humanoids it kills from negative levels or even with its natural weapons. Wights with spellcasting basically have a better version of Fell Animate applied to every single spell they cast!
Weird I wonder if that's intentional or if they meant only with the slam attack and it's dysfunctional RAW. Seems strange that if a wight throws several rocks it somehow raises a wight without giving any negative levels.

Even so their weapon damage is quite weak. Most of their threat comes from their energy drain.

[Particle_Man]

I damn near ran into a chaos beast apocalypse in a 3.5 campaign.

And there are other hypotheticals like the lycanthropy apocalypse or the universe with the elemental planes of earth, air, water and Brown Mold.

Another weird thing is that holy weapons can create wights if held by low level evil folk.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Another weird thing is that holy weapons can create wights if held by low level evil folk.A cheap way to prevent yourself from being robbed is to carry around ten or so +1 holy/lawful arrows.


"All I have on me is this fistful of magic arrows."

"Well, they're safe enough, if you're holding them."

"Yes, that is true. They are safe for me to hold. Here you go."

"URK! Blargh. I am dead."

"Welp, might as well loot the corpse. It's not like all this gold is going to do it any good."

"Oi! You bastard! You killed me! I'ma kill you!"

"Another undead? Blah. Oh, well. At least if the guards come by, I can truthfully say I was attacked by a monster and defended myself."

"Blargh! I am redead!"

"Well, at least it hasn't started rotting yet. And my wolf companion IS hungry... Best to get rid of the body, to prevent unpleasant questions. Oh, and more undead badness."

"Woof! Woof! Growl!" ("Long pork, the other wight meat.")

Also, there's a wight template and a monstrous wight template (the latter of which is applicable to non-humanoids), though apparently before monstrous wights existed, any creature killed by negative levels would rise as a regular wight. Made enervating chickens rather awkward, really. Bawkward, even.

[Fizban]

Are they worth the risk?
According to RAW, any creature that dies via too many negative levels rises as a wight, . . .
So, given that PCs are faced with the inevitable wightocalypse that is guaranteed to occur (but for literal divine intervention), is there any reason that using effects that cause negative levels, especially things like on-a-critical weapon enhancements, is worth the risk?
What inevitability?

Whether or not you endorse wights as an apocalypse class monster (I don't, I'm more scared of Ekolids), active PC use of negative levels barely has any chance of creating even a single wight unless they specifically want it to. Because by the time the PCs can generate negative levels, enemies have a bunch of hit dice, and they only turn into a wight if the deathblow is from negative energy. If your assumption is stacked cost-reduced metamagic that insta-kills anything at appropriate CR, then fine, whatever. If you're actually looking one or two casts of normal spells, then you're just going to soften them up. Because the other 3/4 of your party is dealing in normal damage, negative levels include hit point loss so it's not like the party is short on damage, and spending enough slots to outright kill a foe with negative levels is a waste of resources.

Casting Enervation is a slight reduction in damage dealt in exchange for massive penalties (and spell loss if the happen to cast, but not SLAs, hosing players but few monsters). Unless the rest of your party is sitting around doing nothing and you brought nothing but Enervation, the enemy is most likely going to die from hp damage. Other sources of negative levels are pretty universally limited to one at a time, so nothing besides souped up spells even threatens creating a wight. Unless you're deploying these effects against low HD foes, in which case you're intentionally going overkill against foes from which you are gaining no benefit, so you're probably not the kind of person who cares about the danger of wight infestations. And if you knew about it an did, as has been mentioned, it's trivial to destroy the body before anything rises from it.

The fact that aligned weapons can kill normal people who pick them up is of more setting concern, as it can be used as a hook for needing powerful heroes who can withstand the evil of the blade in order to go destroy it. Or it would, if destroying magic weapons wasn't essentially the same as destroying non-magic weapons. And the reverse where evil creatures dying from touching a holy weapon creates an evil undead, doesn't make any sense. Simple use of Enervation and friends in combat, no major concern. Probably most importantly, the fact that the "he cast a single dark spell which slew them with no resistance" trope is achieved as soon as Enervation becomes available, long before Finger of Death, because normal people die instantly to Enervation and even 7th level heroes are critically weakened by one and die in two.

Of course, if you have 1st level necromancy spells that deal direct damage then the trope is achieved at 1st, but while Negative Energy Ray is a 1st level spell in Tome and Blood (and Negative Energy Burst is 3d), it's not reprinted anywhere. I expect this is probably because someone decided sor/wiz shouldn't be able to heal their undead, even as they reprinted and buffed tons of other stuff to boost arcane undead users, but it also means necromancy that can outright kill people quickly is a Big Deal without that particular book.

[Crake]

It takes a long time for the wight to rise, just behead the bodies, problem solved. As for why the wightpocalypse hasn't happened? Easy: One wight wanders into town, kills a few villagers before being dispatched by the guard. The local level 3 priest recognizes the wight for what it is, and knows that the temple he serves in was hallowed by his clergy, and he knows that by interring the dead in his hallowed temple, they will avoid rising as undead. If his temple isn't hallowed, then he makes sure the dead are cremated instead. Boom, no wightpocalypse. The shadowpocalypse is much more dangerous because the dead rise as shadows in 1d4 rounds, not the next night.

[Doctor Awkward]

The only reason they haven't destroyed all animal life on the Material Plane is DM fiat, in most cases.

The reason they haven't destroyed all life on the planet is because a) Wights can only turn humanoids into other wights, and b) 8th-level clerics exist, and on a turn attempt you automatically destroy any undead you would normally turn if you have twice their hit dice.

A single 8th-level cleric can wipe out an entire dungeon of of wights with just turn undead and their daily allotment of 4th level spells for death ward.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Actually, the wight's energy drain will turn any living creature that dies from negative levels into another wight. The create spawn ability, however, does only work on humanoids, but it works on ANY death the wight causes, not just its slam -- potentially even avalanches and such. Its slam will inflict negative levels, which always turn the unfortunate target into a wight, if its negative levels equal its HD, unless noted otherwise in the effect description or otherwise prevented (such as via hallow, above).

And it'd be easy enough for a wight to destroy a whole small village, and for those wights to spread out into the countryside, catching small animals on the way to neighboring towns. Hell, a termite mound would result in dozens of thousands of them in minutes, if the wight were so inclined.

So, yeah. Having thousands upon thousands of wights crawling out of the woodwork, each of which creating even more in their wake? That's pretty difficult to deal with without some serious cheese, even for high level characters.

This is even worse if you're using the wight template for higher level wights with class levels.

[Particle_Man]

The shadowpocalypse is much more dangerous because the dead rise as shadows in 1d4 rounds, not the next night.

At last a use for soulborns (at least ce one that are immune to str damage)! :smallbiggrin:

[Troacctid]

And it'd be easy enough for a wight to destroy a whole small village, and for those wights to spread out into the countryside, catching small animals on the way to neighboring towns. Hell, a termite mound would result in dozens of thousands of them in minutes, if the wight were so inclined.
Hard to imagine a wight being so inclined. Only humanoids become spawn that the parent wight can control. Animal-wights would be independent, and therefore unlikely to make good servants.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Hard to imagine a wight being so inclined. The resulting animal-wights would be uncontrolled and therefore unlikely to make good servants.But wights hate the living. They want them all to (un)die. Doesn't matter if the termites make bad servants. Just turn them and set them loose to do as life-hating mindless undead are wont to do. It's not like wights need the living to sate their hunger, or whatever, since they don't actually feed from their energy drain attacks, as far as I know.

Killing the living makes them happy, or as happy as they ever get. Doesn't matter how, and creating swarms of more wights that roll over everything in their path (creating thousands more wights in the process) is a good way to do that. Bahamut forbid if the termites start invading more termite mounds and anthills, thereby creating (potentially) millions of wights in just a few acres of land. And remember, some ants and termites can fly.

That kind of thing is why I think wightocalypses are pretty much inevitable without outside intervention.

[Calthropstu]

But wights hate the living. They want them all to (un)die. Doesn't matter if the termites make bad servants. Just turn them and set them loose to do as life-hating mindless undead are wont to do. It's not like wights need the living to sate their hunger, or whatever, since they don't actually feed from their energy drain attacks, as far as I know.

Killing the living makes them happy, or as happy as they ever get. Doesn't matter how, and creating swarms of more wights that roll over everything in their path (creating thousands more wights in the process) is a good way to do that. Bahamut forbid if the termites start invading more termite mounds and anthills, thereby creating (potentially) millions of wights in just a few acres of land. And remember, some ants and termites can fly.

That kind of thing is why I think wightocalypses are pretty much inevitable without outside intervention.

...
Wight power!

[MaxiDuRaritry]

...
Wight power!That was bad and you should feel bad.

[Troacctid]

It's not like wights need the living to sate their hunger, or whatever, since they don't actually feed from their energy drain attacks, as far as I know.
They don't need it for sustenance, but they do have an insatiable craving, which makes them go insane if they go too long without draining life.

[Calthropstu]

That was bad and you should feel bad.

It was bad and I feel great.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

They don't need it for sustenance, but they do have an insatiable craving, which makes them go insane if they go too long without draining life.Nothing in the monster entry even hints at this. Even if The Book of Bad Latin says they do, it's not errata, and it has no say in campaigns that don't include it.

And even if the DM does accept that, all it takes is one wight who fails a Wisdom check, lets its life-hating rage blind it, and doesn't realize it's shooting itself in the foot. Just one.

[Doctor Awkward]

Actually, the wight's energy drain will turn any living creature that dies from negative levels into another wight.

The general description of Energy Drain special ability as defined in the Monster Manual will only raise "characters" killed by it as spawn of the creatures that killed them (or wights as default). "Character" is defined in the Player's Handbook glossary as "A fictional individual within the confines of a fantasy game setting. The words “character” and “creature” are often used synonymously within these rules, since almost any creature could be a character within the game, and every character is a creature (as opposed to an object)."

Thus whether or not Energy Drain is capable of raising a slain creature as a wight is determined entirely by their role in the narrative, which is ultimately controlled by the DM.


Furthermore, the wight's specific monster description overrides the normal energy drain description with their Create Spawn ability, which states that they can only raise humanoids that they kill as additional wights. This ability does not care how a creature is killed by a wight, only that the wight kills it. As noted in the general description for Energy Drain, "A character with negative levels at least equal to her current level, or drained below 1st level, is instantly slain." Thus if a wight level drains a creature to death, it has killed it, and per Create Spawn, it will only return if it is a humanoid.

Same thing goes for shadows.




but it works on ANY death the wight causes, not just its slam -- potentially even avalanches and such.

If a wight causes an avalanche and kills a creature, then it was the avalanche that killed the creature, not the wight. It is patently illogical to run a game under the assumption that supernatural monster abilities are governed by how a modern criminal code would assign fault for a negligent homicide.

[Silva Stormrage]

If a wight causes an avalanche and kills a creature, then it was the avalanche that killed the creature, not the wight. It is patently illogical to run a game under the assumption that supernatural monster abilities are governed by how a modern criminal code would assign fault for a negligent homicide.

Though part of me wants to read/play a game about a setting/magic system that works like that. Where the magic is attached to the legal system of the general environment? Or something along those lines.

[Troacctid]

Libris Mortis actually talks about the avalanche scenario too. Page 11.

[Mechalich]

The wightpocalypse may be unlikely to happen naturally, but it is certainly something that can be triggered by a reasonably motivated necromancer. A mid-level necromancer can easily lay siege to village and force everyone into the town square where wights devour them all. Suddenly you have 200 wights. Then you throw those at a town of a thousand people - the necromancer just has to engage and kill the clerics on site and now you have a thousand wights. Repeat this over a couple of days and you have ten thousand wights or more and a lot of dead people. That's enough to let loose in every direction and expect a self-sustaining apocalypse to result.

If you throw in air support in the form of a an equally large apocalypse of shadows and wraiths, then resistance becomes really difficult. Sure there will be strong points that never fall, but the countryside can be devastated.

Oh, and to those noting 'burn the bodies' as a solution, undead spawn in 3.5 rise in 1d4 rounds - meaning in 6-24 seconds. Burning the bodies might result in wights that are on fire, but they aren't going to burn away fast enough to prevent them from spawning even if you manage to get them lit in time.

[Silva Stormrage]

The wightpocalypse may be unlikely to happen naturally, but it is certainly something that can be triggered by a reasonably motivated necromancer. A mid-level necromancer can easily lay siege to village and force everyone into the town square where wights devour them all. Suddenly you have 200 wights. Then you throw those at a town of a thousand people - the necromancer just has to engage and kill the clerics on site and now you have a thousand wights. Repeat this over a couple of days and you have ten thousand wights or more and a lot of dead people. That's enough to let loose in every direction and expect a self-sustaining apocalypse to result.

If you throw in air support in the form of a an equally large apocalypse of shadows and wraiths, then resistance becomes really difficult. Sure there will be strong points that never fall, but the countryside can be devastated.

Oh, and to those noting 'burn the bodies' as a solution, undead spawn in 3.5 rise in 1d4 rounds - meaning in 6-24 seconds. Burning the bodies might result in wights that are on fire, but they aren't going to burn away fast enough to prevent them from spawning even if you manage to get them lit in time.

The original point of the thread was the danger of PC's using negative level like attacks and accidentally causing a wightpolpyse. Wights spawned from negative levels take a full 24 hours to spawn, easily enough time for clean up.

And yes a dedicated wizard can easily kill a whole bunch of unprepared commoners, thats not particularly surprising though. This was more discussing about the possibilities of an accidental outbreak which is much much more unlikely. Also I doubt the wizard would get away with that more than once if the government overseeing that land is at all competent. Divinations would probably warn them ahead of time and I imagine a man hunt would be very quick to engage on that wizard after he killed an entire town. Could be an adventure hook though, "Mad wizard killed a town. Quick find him and kill him before he strikes again!"

And once again I feel the need to point out the effects of the insatiable hunger trait that Libris Mortis inflicted wights with which will cause them to go insane and the horde will very quickly devolve into infighting and will implode shortly. This won't be a problem for the shadow version since they can't hurt each other but it still utterly limits such a large horde of wights which would quickly be unable to sustain itself.

[Doctor Awkward]

Though part of me wants to read/play a game about a setting/magic system that works like that. Where the magic is attached to the legal system of the general environment? Or something along those lines.

Done and done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlaNKKHzNKQ

In the Red Dwarf roleplaying game (http://despotmedia.com/deep7/?p=149) based on this show, Justice World was written up in one of the books (probably in the Series Sourcebook). Unfortunately I only have the core book, and while the game is hilarious I'd be hard-pressed to recommend it to anyone outside of hardcore fans of the show. The mechanics are pretty dirt-simple and can get repetitive.

[ShurikVch]

Thing is, like I said, it only takes a single dragon to stop an army of wights.Dragon Wight (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/cg/cg20010727a) begs to differ...


Also for PCs using negative levels it isn't hard to just cut off the head
It takes a long time for the wight to rise, just behead the bodies, problem solved.Nothing in the RAW says decapitation will keep Wight from rising
Aren't Wights - as a monsters - immune to decapitation?
Heck, if just an arm as a Wight is possible...

or turn the body to ash
Wait, there are adventurers who don’t burn the bodies of absolutely everything they kill? That’s sloppy.Actually, nothing in the RAW also says incineration is able to prevent turning into a Wight


or something similar to prevent any creature who was killed via negative levels from turning into a wight. Or just animating them as a zombie/skeleton.Usually, most of those measures are costly - in gp or XP (the single exception, may be, Fell Animate - but even it is far from ideal)

[zfs]

...
Wight power!

Causing the apocalypse - just another example of Wight privilege.

[Dalmosh]

I looked into this in detail for my last campaign, which had a Dread Necro PC intent on destroying all life in the world.

Wight animals/vermin are not implicit to the game in any way, the only book published wight template is the one in Savage Species that only works on humanoids.

But DMs that specifically want to have weird kinds of wights in their game can use the alternative wight template as presented in Dragon 300.

WotC further clarify the RAI on this by their alteration of the wording of death by negative energy in the Rules Compendium. Note that the revised wording is that a negative energy drained creature only
rises as a wight "if able to do so". So that again means humanoids only except by DM fiat using Dragon content.

I was pretty interested in self-replicating swarms of wight insects, but had to concede that individual insects don't count as "creatures" in the game, since they lack stat blocks, and even when represented collectively as swarms, are mechanically immune to the attacks of most wights.
If you wanted to though, you could obviously choose to represent a bee within the game by applying iterative size reductions to a giant bee, until it is fine sized.


I try to allow my PCS to do anything they want if its cool enough, and I can somehow cobble rules together to make it. I find PCs with Level Draining really annoying though, as its a total headache having to recalculate your NPC's stats mid-combat every time the Blackguard hits someone with their sword.

[Anthrowhale]

Liberal use of the 'sacred item' spell is a good way to prevent any kind of reproducing undead apocalypse. Since it has no material cost, the only limit is 4th level cleric spell slots. In the extreme of liberal casting, every stone becomes an undead/evil oustider/evil shapechanger landmine. even without extremes it's easy to imagine a wandering priest passing through a village leaving enough castings to guarantee that the number of undead leaving the village will be substantially lower than the number entering.

[Elkad]

Wait, there are adventurers who don’t burn the bodies of absolutely everything they kill? That’s sloppy.

I've played in that game.
Partially for the wight-prevention, partially to make rezzing our enemies more difficult.

Cultures that use cremation make a lot of sense in a D&D world.