It's notable that this is literally the first instance of a rule being a danger to the integrity of a campaign that I've encountered since adopting this system (ACKS if anybody cares)
I hate to add something to the game after its been introduced, so I'm reluctant (not unwilling, just unhappy about) adding vulnerabilities, restrictions etc. We've done such a stellar job of running by the book, it irks me to tweak a game in motion.
The problem, for me, isn't "I can't think of restrictions for the undead". Yeah I don't have a lack of imagination; that's not the issue
The issue is, as written, wights should rule the fucking world. And that's weird, because no other monster does this.
Vampires fry in sunlight, a thing that literally floods every exposed surface of the world half of all time. Raising a single skeleton is a level 5 spell, one of the most powerful in the game. Zombies don't transmit their curse via killing their enemies.
Wights have no weaknesses save magic, which is rare and costly. They reproduce by conquest with a lag time of days to rise, rather than the 10-20 years human beings need to raise a new generation of soldiers. And every wight has this ability.
To the best of my knowledge these things have existed in every edition of D&D. There's no way that Gygax's players didn't see this threat; there's a line in my AD&D monster manual about the new wights being "half strength", though as typical with that tome I'm not clear on what that's referencing (hit dice? Strength score?)
Where were the armies of wights swarming greyhawk, or flooding eberron, or hell, ravenloft?
Is it just that wights were never militarized? That can't be right; just try and tell me this guy isn't in some army of the dead:
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I'm experiencing my first bout of cognitive dissonance with OSR mechanics. Did my players seriously find out something that nobody else has dealt with?
EDIT: Hey this is unrelated, but you have the exact same name as my brother. Isn't that weird?