| Flashblade |
Wraiths are cool, and good, and my friend. I have recently done a lot of playtesting with them due to their appearance in a dungeon I plan to run in a few weeks.
How do/would you use this creature in your game?
I'm going to quote from the description for Ghosts real quick (emphasis mine): "An encounter with a ghost should never happen completely out of the blue — there are plenty of other incorporeal undead like wraiths and spectres to fill that role." What's more, their Environment is "any," and their Ecology entry is all of two sentences: "Wraiths are undead creatures born of evil and darkness. They hate light and living things, as they have lost much of their connection to their former lives."
These features combine to give the GM an in-universe carte blanche for placing them pretty much anywhere and for any reason. In this regard, they are much like Skeletons, Spectres, and Zombies: they do not need a specific narrative explanation, and any narrative explanation that fits some other monster can believably and reasonably be applied to include them. For this reason, my primary use of Wraiths is as supporting monsters or background variety for the primary narrative. For example, say you plan to have the players explore an old asylum or prison that was abandoned when it flooded during a major storm. In such an environment, it would make sense for you to have themed undead creatures representing the inmates or patients: you might have some undead that form when people drown, some who form when people starve, and/or some who form from particularly evil or insane people. And if you want to build into your adventure the story behind these groups, then you likely also want something to serve as less interesting filler combatants: that's where your carte blanche creatures come in, and Wraiths superbly fill that role. The party might be majorly interested in an Attic Whisperer or Ghost haunting an old mansion, but along the way Wraiths make for a thematically appropriate fodder creature. But don't interpret this to mean that they can only be used as fodder. As intelligent undead, they can think and plan. They can have agendas. They are not mindless, and they can be the crux of a story as easily as an Allip or a Banshee. Their usefulness to the GM is in their narrative-agnostic transferability across encounter areas: they can be anywhere almost any other kind of undead might be, and can fill almost any role. The same can be said of Spectres, which are effectively just their higher-CR cousins.
What are some tactics it might use?
Something not used enough in either adventure paths or custom games is versatility of the incorporeal special quality. They can freely hide in ceilings, floors, furniture, siege weapons, stairs, statues, vehicles, walls — and due to their lifesense, their ability to detect and observe prey is not hindered while within a solid object. As creatures "born of evil and darkness," and who explicitly "hate light and living things," Wraiths are perfectly fit for ambush predators. And they are not dumb; in fact, with 14 Intelligence they are quite smart! If you've ever had the urge to play Kobolds or other entry-level monsters as deceptively difficult through preparation, strategy, and tactics, then Wraiths are even better suited for that role because they are smarter and likely have the advantage over the players in concealment and movement. Hit and run. Hide and wait. Lure the good guys into traps. Take advantage of the ability to just ready an action to Constitution Drain the Wizard when he passes by, then retreat back into the wall to freely escape reprisal. Attack while the party is sleeping. Harry and harass and never fight fair.
And there's no reason one need ever face just one! By the time the party has heard of the old haunted asylum, castle, or mansion, it's very likely other people have attempted to explore or purify it — and died in the process. Wraiths are one of those wonderful creatures who have an in-universe reason to swarm the players with monster tokens and shift the action economy firmly onto the side of the bad guys. Paizo helpfully gave us unambiguous stats for a Wraith Spawn in Pathfinder 44: Trail of the Beast (pg. 25), and a CR 10 encounter of 1 Wraith (1,600 XP) and 6 Wraith Spawn (1,200 XP each). That's exactly the sort of ambush that experienced undead hunters should be paranoid about and be prepared to take steps to circumvent.
Encounter ideas
In a low-level game, a single Wraith can be the primary antagonist for an entire adventure. This is a creature who can create its own minions to send after the PCs, who can probably escape if losing a fight, and who by itself is a credible threat to the entire party even given their advantage of action economy. Even its individual spawn are dangerous opponents for a low-level party, and one wraith might have several. For me, this suggests a creature in a network position: perhaps the local criminal kingpin or capo is a Wraith or spawn, indirectly manipulating the local adventuring guild or temple to send naive do-gooders to their death and assimilation into the growing Wraith collective; perhaps this Wraith collective is itself just one of many arms infiltrating not just the local town but towns all across the country or province, all in service to a greater power like a devil, lich, or necromancer; perhaps the local noble secretly keeps the counsel of a Wraith who serves as both adviser and assassin; perhaps members of the local devil-cult routinely sacrifice victims to their Wraith patron who serves as intermediary with even darker powers; perhaps that devil-cult instead sees immortality as a Wraith Spawn as the reward granted the most devoted.
Keep in mind that for low-level parties, even a single Wraith or Wraith Spawn can be deadly — especially if it strikes without warning. Most party members will not be walking around with force effects all the time, so even the sword-and-board Fighter will get hit. Couple this with the above average DC 17 Fortitude save on its Constitution Drain (Su), and the party will likely experience long-term consequences after a fight. At low-level, it's best to use Wraiths as the difficult and exciting climax of an adventure. Alternately, have the Wraith encounter be the Twist — right after the party has taken long-term penalties and expended significant resources is the perfect time to reveal that the Wraith was merely The Dragon, and now they have drawn the attention of The Man Behind The Man. This is when you throw in a weak (compared to the rest of the New Bad Guy's minions) combat encounter, to drive home both just how powerful the New Bad Guy is and how significant the Old Bad Guy's damage to the party was; for an example think of the Power Rangers' first encounter with the Z Putty Patrol. Then you let the party have a break. This post-climax encounter guarantees the party actually experiences the consequences of the Constitution Drain (Su), and at the same time acts as a breadcrumb to the next adventure.
In a mid-level game, Wraiths and their Spawn can take more of the background and supporting roles that I opened this post discussing. Use them in conjunction with other creatures that target Fortitude saves to inflict all kinds of conditions, diseases, and poisons that the party might otherwise be able to shrug off. By this point in the game, especially in campaigns where undead have featured prominently, you can feel more free to use them in the sorts of nasty ambushes discussed above in the tactics section. This is also around the time when airborne and underwater adventures become possible, so begin to think in three dimensions if you haven't previously: they can just as easily emerge from the ceilings and walls of an airship or sunken ruin as they can from those of a haunted mansion, and these environments offer new challenges for the players to overcome while being harried by creatures that can deliberately make them more difficult. Relatively low-CR enemies like Draugrs, Ghouls, and Wights become considerably more threatening when in the company of Wraiths, and even mindless undead like groups of Skeletons and Plague Zombies become dangerous when they serve as distractions for Wraiths. Consider including other incorporeal undead like Allips, Poltergeists, and Shadows alongside wraiths for particularly haunted areas and a range of special abilities to challenge mid-level parties.
Designate one Shadow and a Wraith as progenitors and generate as many other Shadows and Wraith Spawn as you feel appropriate to either spread about a dungeon area or combine into a single encounter. As an example: 3 shadows, 1 wraith, and 2 wraith spawn are a CR 9 encounter where the bad guys have the advantage in action economy. Adding in 3 draugrs or 9 plague zombies bumps it up to CR 10. This batch of critters can be evenly distributed instead into a series of CR 2–4 encounters that culminate with the final CR 6 encounter with the progenitor Shadow and Wraith.
Ascalaphus
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Interesting.
A notable detail about wraiths: they come with Blind-Fight out of the box. This means they can stay inside a wall and attack fairly accurately, while remaining extremely hard to hurt.
(Remember, incorporeal creatures can't look out of walls they're hiding in, but they can sense when a creature is adjacent to the wall.)