Revenant 5e: Stats and Guide for Players & DMs

Last Updated on November 7, 2023

Revenant

Medium Undead, Neutral

  • STR 18 (+4), DEX 14 (+2), CON 18 (+4), INT 13 (+1), WIS 16 (+3), CHA 18 (+4)
  • Armor Class: 13 (leather armor)
  • Hit Points: 136 (16d8 + 64)
  • Speed: 30 ft.
  • CR (XP): 5 (1,800 XP)
  • Senses/Languages: Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 13; The languages it knew in life
  • Proficiency Bonus: +3
  • Size: Medium
  • Type: Undead
  • Alignment: Neutral
  • Damage Resistances: Necrotic, Psychic
  • Damage Immunities: Poison
  • Condition Immunities: Charmed, Exhaustion, Frightened, Paralyzed, Poisoned, Stunned
  • Saving Throws: STR +7, CON +7, WIS +6, CHA +7

Regeneration. The revenant regains 10 hit points at the start of its turn. If the revenant takes fire or radiant damage, this trait doesn’t function at the start of the revenant’s next turn. The revenant’s body is destroyed only if it starts its turn with 0 hit points and doesn’t regenerate.

Rejuvenation. When the revenant’s body is destroyed, its soul lingers. After 24 hours, the soul inhabits and animates another humanoid corpse on the same plane of existence and regains all its hit points. While the soul is bodiless, a wish spell can be used to force the soul to go to the afterlife and not return.

Turn Immunity. The revenant is immune to effects that turn undead.

Vengeful Tracker. The revenant knows the distance to and direction of any creature against which it seeks revenge, even if the creature and the revenant are on different planes of existence. If the creature being tracked by the revenant dies, the revenant knows.

Actions

Multiattack. The revenant makes two fist attacks.

  • Fist. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (2d6 + 4) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a creature against which the revenant has sworn vengeance, the target takes an extra 14 (4d6) bludgeoning damage. Instead of dealing damage, the revenant can grapple the target (escape DC 14) provided the target is Large or smaller.

Vengeful Glare. The revenant targets one creature it can see within 30 feet of it and against which it has sworn vengeance. The target must make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, the target is paralyzed until the revenant deals damage to it or until the end of the revenant’s next turn. 

When the paralysis ends, the target is frightened of the revenant for 1 minute. The frightened target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, with disadvantage if it can see the revenant, ending the frightened condition on itself on a success.

Revenants Explained – Powerful and Relentless

Our goal with Black Citadel Creature Guides is to give you information beyond the stat block.  Helping you run these creatures as a DM, or fight them as an adventurer.  

With condition immunities, damage resistances, bags of hit points, and a regeneration ability that would make a Troll or an Oni jealous, the revenant would be a daunting enough prospect for a 5th-level party to fight once

The problem is that, if you’re unlucky enough to find yourself with a revenant on your trail, you’re about to spend the next year repeatedly facing an unstoppable, fearless, immortal killing machine. If you survive, that is.

A revenant doesn’t need to sleep, eat, or breathe. It knows exactly where you are at all times and how to get to you, and there’s no magic that can hide you. In fact, nothing short of a wish spell can stop the revenant’s quest for vengeance before its year is up. 

If you choose to stand and fight it, the fight won’t end until you hit it with radiant or fire damage or unless it’s restrained. The revenant’s fist multiattack is already pretty hefty, but the fact that it deals an additional 4d6 bludgeoning damage to targets that it has sworn vengeance against makes it especially dangerous.

Running from a revenant isn’t a guaranteed success either, however, as their Vengeful Glare ability lets it paralyze its targets long enough for it to close the distance, meaning a revenant can permanently freeze, punch-punch (with advantage, attacks that hit count at criticals), rinse, and repeat against a single target.   

And this is all before I get to the really scary bit. 

Revenants are smart. Even worse: they’re charming. While a revenant may resemble a zombie (and can’t disguise its identity from the target of its vengeance), this doesn’t mean that you’re dealing with any kind of mindless shambling undead. 

In fact, with the number of interesting special effects the revenant brings to the table combined with its 18 Charisma, above-average Intelligence, and the fact that “If its foe is too powerful for the revenant to destroy on its own, it seeks worthy allies to help it fulfill its quest,” the creature I’d most likely compare the revenant to is a vampire

Revenants will recruit allies to lure their target into traps, charm the locals with stories of their unjust demise, and stalk the party as they wait for the moment when they’re most vulnerable. 

How To Defeat a Revenant

There is absolutely no way that the revenant will lose track of you, and the chances they convince a wizard, god, or other powerful magic user to teleport them after you is not zero. 

If running away isn’t an appealing option, then I have a few ideas for running down the clock on your own personal terminator. 

Trap It – Stop a Revenant

Revenants are immune to a lot of stuff, but binding them inside an iron sarcophagus and sinking them to the bottom of the ocean will almost certainly do the trick. 

Basically, anything you can do that takes a revenant out of action without exposing them to any radiant or fire damage — and thereby short-circuiting their regeneration — means you’re going to be able to (sort of) relax. Even locking it in a prison cell will do. 

Or if that doesn’t work, you could just…

Die – Let the Revenant Fulfill it’s Vengeance

Okay, okay but just hear me out. 

When its adversary dies, or if the revenant fails to kill its adversary before its time runs out, it crumbles to dust and its soul fades into the afterlife.” 

So, if you die (not even if the revenant kills you), the revenant pretty much immediately disappears as well. 

Well, even at 5th level, you can have the party rogue stab you through the heart before the cleric waits 59 seconds to cast revivify — a 3rd-level spell that brings you right back to life at 1 hp. 

During those 59 seconds, the revenant senses its task is done and crumbles to dust. If you really, really don’t want to die, just cast feign death — another 3rd-level spell that places you in a state magically “indistinguishable from death.”

While it’s a little bit more up to the DM, I would 100% reward the creativity of any player who thought of this. 

The Dungeon Master’s Guide To Running a Revenant Encounter

I think that — whether you’re running a one-shot or planning the next phase of a long-running campaign — a revenant might be my new favorite monster for a mysterious danger. 

It always knows where you are, it never stops (not even when you “kill it”), and it serves to “punish” the guilty for their sins. 

There’s nothing I can think of that’s more chilling than a situation playing out as the players and other NPCs are slowly picked off by an unstoppable assassin as they race to uncover the truth behind what’s happening to them.

DM Option: A More Dangerous Revenant 

If the character who rises again as a revenant was a spellcaster, the revenant may know some or all of the spells they knew in life. Likewise, if they were proficient with armor or weapons, they may also use these in death. 

Basically, if you want to scale your revenant up for a higher-level party — or just give it a few more nasty tricks that play into its backstory and help you run your encounter — this is free license. Was your revenant a powerful priest? A necromancer? An unstoppable warrior now quite literally unstoppable? 

Personally, I would improve a revenant’s spellcasting. Grab invisibility, magic mouth, darkness, and control weather (for atmospheric rain that also happens to extinguish any nearby fire). 

Less offensive stuff, seeing as it has some great offensive capabilities already, and more control magic. 

Or just give it a great big sword and full plate armor. That’s also very cool.If I were designing a revenant one-shot, I would want to think about the various “acts” of the story that slowly peel back the veil of mystery, first revealing the nature of the foe and then the nature of the PCs’ crimes. 

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