The Wraith was introduced in the Dungeons & Dragons White Box (1974) and they are immediately disrespected, listed as only high-class Wights with more mobility. So let’s start this shindig by talking about the Wight. Wights are life-draining undead who look like spectral black ghosts. One hit automatically drains one level, meaning the character loses the hit die and any features they gained at that level, which is brutal.

You need to have silver or magic weapons to hurt a wight. It gets a little convoluted where silver arrows do normal damage, magic arrow do double damage, magic weapons do full damage, including any bonus. If you are a man-like creature and are killed by a wight, you turn into a wight. If you are any creature and drained of all your levels, you become a wight.

The Wraith is a supercharged wight, they have an additional hit die, better movement, and even more treasure for you to pilfer. To make the whole damage issue even more difficult to follow, they also only take half damage from a silver arrow and magic arrows only do 1 die of damage, which makes them very tough to bring down. Once you get through all that, there is no additional information on the Wraith. Which is pretty normal for any creature in this edition, no one gets any paragraphs of lore… unless you are a dragon, in which case you get over three pages of information.

Basic D&D - Wraith

Move: 120 feet, fly 240 feet/turn

Hit Dice: 4

Armor Class: 3

Treasure Type: E

Alignment: lawful evil

Attacks: 1

Damage: 1 -6 hit points

The Wraith is brought into the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1977) and then again in the Expert Set for 1981 and 1983. Very little changes mechanically for these creatures but we are given a small, teeny amount of lore for them in the Expert Sets.

Wraiths are undead and thus are immune to sleep, charm, and hold spells. They can only be hit by silver or magical weapons, though silver weapons will only do half because Wraiths are just badass wights. Wraiths still drain the life energy of anyone they hit and if you die to a Wraith, you become a Wraith under that original Wraith’s control. Wraiths can be found in deserted lands or in dwellings when they have killed off the occupants.

What this all means for an adventuring party is to sacrifice the magic-user so that everyone else can escape.

AD&D - Wraith