Jan 152011
 

 A Dragonborn Scion drifts slowly toward from the shadows. Ever increasing light reveals not a dragonborn at all, but a sewn-together amalgamation of beast and men. Your eyes are drawn to the skeletal wings, dripping with barely a film of flesh, before you feel your soul start to be torn from your body.

The Dragonbone Wight is a powerful, imposing creature. Its flesh and bones were taken from the once living forms of many until it resembles a hulk of a rotting dragonborn. Since scions themselves are rare, wings are often torn from the fresh corpses of beasts, such as manticores, demons and dragons. The finale visage is both mighty and grisly.

Dragonbone wights often serve even more powerful undead, such as Death Knights and Vampires, and are especially favored by Dracoliches.

Nature 16: The creature before you is no longer of the natural world. While it appears to be a dragonborn, only pieces of a dragonborn exist now in its mad combination body.

Arcana/Religion 23: The dragonbone wight, like most wights, is a creature of rage. It thrives off the pain it inflicts, which allows it to slowly tear away your essence as well your physical form.

Arcana/Religion 31: The dragonbone’s acid breathe lingers on the living, an extension of the dragonbone’s own hunger for life. Heroes who feel the breathe linger would be best to shake it soon, for the wights power can only grow as long as its present.

In Combat: The dragonbone wight’s speed is one of its greatest weaknesses. Heroes who have lived long enough to face it and stand a chance, can often run or fly circles around it. The dragonbone makes up for this by making sure multiple targets are in range when it uses it’s dragon breath power. Once a target is affected by it’s lingering breath, it can use Pull the Soul to bring the furthest enemy a little closer.

For most of combat, the dragonbone focuses on one target at time, making best use of its healing surge draining ability. If another target has taken serious injury, and is trying to break from the group to recover, the dragonbone will refocus on them, taking pleasure from extinguishing a life.

Encounter: Dragonbone wights often act a personal guard for powerful creatures and are paired well with spell casters and controllers. Commanders would do well to group dragonbones sent out on tasks with creatures who fight at ranged and move nimbly in combat, to make up for their lack of speed.

In order to maximize a dragonbone’s threat potential, and create a truly dangerous encounter, group them with creatures who are able to deal ongoing necrotic damage. Such a team proves to be a deadly soul-sucking squad.

 

Brian Liberge

Brian Liberge is a father of one, living in Boston, MA. Introduced to AD&D at an early age, he’s continued to update with the editions, and new games. He loves home-brewed ideas, is honest to a fault, and thinks that ideas and mechanics should absolutely be shared between systems. With a B.S. Degree in Theatre Arts, a job in Information Technology, and a love of strategy gaming, he tries to bring the best of each into his new creations for StufferShack. Check out his latest book the Midgard Bestiary for 4e, available now. Profile Page / Article Portfolio

  One Response to “Dragonbone Wight – Steal this Monster”

  1. I just love undead monsters, this one in particular!

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)