Recreating Wights and Wraiths [3.5e]

[Neithan]

Both the wights and wraiths of middle earth are awsome creatures, and their adaptations to 3.5e are both quite poor.

So I want to recreate them as templates, but I'm still not really sure how to do that. I guess a start would be to translate the creatures into templates, but I'm unsure how to go on from that.

Wight
I think the wight should be a tamplate that makes the base creature retain all its class levels and class abilities that are not antithesis to their new undead nature. I imagine them to be terribly strong for their gaunt appearance and also quite agile, so Str +4 and Dex +2 seems appropiate to me, but I'm unsure about mental stats.
Energy Drain attacks also seem quite fitting to me, but when you fight more than one it becomes a real problem very soon, so maybe a Fortitude save against it might be a good idea to keep suchs fights to becoming utterly frustrating without a death ward spell and completely pointles with one.
I think they have actually much in common with mumies and think the mumies Despair ability would also fit them nicely. (Will save against 1d4 rounds of paralyzation on seeing them). The curse of wasting away after surving a fight against a wight appears to be also quite cool to me, but I'm unsure if the energy drain is allready enough to leave your soul scared for the rest of your life unless you have access to powerful healing magic.
Spawns seem okay to me, but I don't really like the idea of a high level character becoming the spawn of a mere wight with 3 fighter levels who just happened to find him dying in his barrow. What I could think of is that spontaneously or magicaly created wights retain all their class levels, but spawned wights don't. They could still gain class levels again after they have become undead. Limiting the amount of spawns under a wights control to twice his own HD and no single spawn with more HD than itself seems also okay to me. So he would have to kill spawns that become too powerful to control, which I think is quite cool as well.
Turn resistance +2 is a given.

Wraith
In my own campaign world, the etheral plane and the plane of shadow are identical, which was also adapted from the Shadow World of Middle Earth. That Wraiths exist on two planes at the same time seems very cool to me and if it's the etheral plane, plane of shadow or a spirit world isn't really so much important for that. But I'm unsure if wraiths should be material in this other plane or not. Personally I prefer incorporeal at both planes. In the Material Plane they are shapes of black smoke and in the other plane they are more clearly defined by still somewhat blurred white beings.
I think it would work best to have lesser and greater wraiths. Lesser wraiths could be very much like in the MM, but with all of them having the Lifesense ability of the Dread Wraiths. Again, there's the problem with class levels. starting at CR 5 seems okay to me but the power of a wraith should come from the evilness and hatred of its former soul, not simply from training in its former life.
Greater wraiths could have a manifestation ability, that allows them to become corporeal beings in the mortal world. Unsure about the shadow world. The horific moan ability of the ghost fits in very nicely, but the range could be expended to perhaps 60ft./18m.
Again, I'm unsure about the constitution drain. But it results in that your life force might forever be left crippled and wraiths are meant to be really terrible creatures, so I think that's fine.

Any thoughts on this or advice on how to make it work?

[Al-Ashrad]

Are you looking to make your Wraiths just like the Ringwraiths, or are you looking for something different?

As far as Wights go, the only reference to a Wight in LotR that I can recall is the Barrowwight. I'm not too sure how powerful that creature really was, since the Hobbits came across it after meeting Tom Bombadil. However, I do recall that it took someone as powerful as Tom Bombadil to get rid of it.

I remember a LotR d20 game, of sorts, having existed and that stats were done for the Ringwraiths. I may have the stats for the Ringwraiths lying around here still, if you would like them to be posted.

[Zeta Kai]

Barrow-Wight & Ring-Wraith. Enjoy.

[Al-Ashrad]

Barrow-Wight & Ring-Wraith. Enjoy.

Yeah, I'm going to have to dig up the other rules I found...

Wow... all Ringwraiths, including the Witch King of Angmar, have an adjustable Challenge Rating which is listed as a 2 when they were in the Shire... ummm, ok...