Wizard (Necromancer)

[R.Shackleford]

Outside of minionmancer what is the most awesome ability a necromancer has or could have?

It doesn't have to be balanced, I'm sure balancing could happen in some way.

I was thinking of the ability to force the soul of a creature killed to be pushed into a living creature's body. This causes psychic and necrotic damage and can even paralyze the living creature. The soul then departs to their reating place.

[krugaan]

Heh, magic jar mastery!

Soul Musical Chairs!

I remember there being a room in the Labyrinth of Madness that did something similar.

Or being able to actually use souls for power, like soul steal; work like sorcery points, except stronger.

[Gastronomie]

Have the characteres obtain the Book of Vile Darkness (or a copy of one of its pages) and make him a Lich.

Really, it would be fun.

[JeffreyGator]

Necromancers heal (sort of) through sucking energy from other beings.

You might look into palemasters from 3.x and let them assume minor undead forms before becoming a lich. It could heal through the use of necrotic damage. (which might also heal minions)

[Slipperychicken]

If you're really determined, then you can score some great stats with magic jar. Find something (perhaps a human-shaped boss) with physical stats that you like, subdue it, and eventually magic jar yourself into its body. Now you're a wizard with great physical stats. You don't even need to hold concentration, and you can achieve a much higher CR-equivalent than using polymorph.

[smcmike]

Two words: flesh elementals.

[RulesJD]

Outside of minionmancer what is the most awesome ability a necromancer has or could have?

It doesn't have to be balanced, I'm sure balancing could happen in some way.

I was thinking of the ability to force the soul of a creature killed to be pushed into a living creature's body. This causes psychic and necrotic damage and can even paralyze the living creature. The soul then departs to their reating place.

IF you're staying in-game and you have some really good rolled stats, a Necromancer is one of the best Gish builds.

Combine Necromancer + Fiend Warlock + off turn spell damage like Spirit Guardians to be basically unkillable. Each kill heals you actual HP at double the spells level (so minimum 6hp with SG if you don't upcast it) AND grants you temp HP per kill (which doesn't stack unlike the actual healing). The build would be insanely MAD, but insanely tanky with Heavy Armor (Cleric or Paladin) + shield + Shield spell + just rediculous amounts of self-healing.

[R.Shackleford]

I think I mistyped. This doesn't have to be features within D&D or tabletop gaming currently. It can be made up, from a different ttrpg, from a videogame, or from a book.

What I mean is, what feature would you like to see a Necromancer have that isn't just gaining undead minnion(s). What would make you think "yup, that dude is a necromancer".


Edit


Using souls for power... I might be able to work with this.

When I think about healing or temp HP by killing I think of the Fiend Warlock ability. Would be too similar.

Flesh elementals are just another form of minionmancy.

Hmm....

[smcmike]

The flesh elementals I mentioned are from one of China Mielville's books. He used all sorts of interesting elementals and golems, but the flesh elementals were pure horror - in the same way that an earth elemental might form itself from the ground or an air elemental from the air, flesh elementals are formed from flesh - the flesh of tightly packed troops on a battlefield, for instance. Whirling dervishes of blood and sinew and viscera. Not really a minion so much as a concentration effect that rips people apart. Pretty hard to balance in-game though. Somewhat similar to the old Diablo corpse explosion, I guess.

To a necromancer, people are just raw material.

[Specter]

A thematically-cool idea would be to absorb the soul of one corpse at a time, a la Shang Tsung, to prevent reanimation. Could even give a nice plot point: to revive their cherished NPC healbot, the PCs must slay the evil necro and claim his sould back.

[Segev]

I confess that, to me, the minionmancy is the number 1 reason to go for necromancy. It's so far in the lead that I have to think long and hard about what number 2 might be.

One idea I've had for a longish time is that of a necromancer who uses negative energy (or necrotic energy, or whatever) to keep himself healthy. This relies on germ theory being accurate in the setting, but by suffusing himself with a low level of necrotic energy - not enough to harm him - he kills off various "bugs" that might make him sick. Perhaps there's just a hint of animation going on to replace or remove the need for any "good bacteria" or the like that get caught in the crossfires. (It IS magic, after all.)

The concept of an "undying cure" is one I like, too. The cure is guaranteed to work on any disease, and prevent contracting any in the future. It also makes you stop FEELING fatigue, hunger, thirst, etc. You're still alive, but whatever lack of care you give yourself is made up for by the necromantic energies that suffuse you. Unfortunately, this won't keep you from dying of malnourishment, exhaustion, or what-have-you. You'll become undead if that happens. So anybody who takes it must - absolutely must - be very careful to take care of themselves, and not rely on the fact that they "feel fine" to let them know they're okay. Because they very well might not be.

(I don't count that one as "minionmancy" since it's not about gaining control of the patients.)

My personal "story" about lichdom is that it is a multi-stage process. Most liches do the whole thing as expeditiously as possible, because they want the increased power and lack of concern over petty things like having to eat and sleep. But it's possible to build the phylactery without actually finishing the process. If you do, you remain human (or whatever you are) until you die. When you die, the ritual is finally complete, and (unless your death destroyed your body completely) you may not even look like you've died, as you keep moving. You are now a lich. Your flesh, if you don't take extraordinary steps, will wither and rot away with the standard timetable for a corpse.

Good, I think, for a nasty surprise when the party fights the necromancer, kills him, and he gets...annoyed...that his contingency plan had to trigger. (Kill him again, and we go to the 1d10 days before he returns.) Incidentally, I also prefer stealing the 2e Dracolich method of lich-return; rather than the skeleton-body reforming over 1d10 days, the 1d10 days is how long it takes the lich's wandering spirit to find a new corpse to possess and animate.

[Slipperychicken]

Here's one: Take a recently-dead or downed ally, and use horrible secrets of undeath to temporarily raise him as a special undead. He can get back up and fight as if still alive, but he'll fall over dead again in like a minute (or whatever time fights usually last in your system). This can only be done so many times because of damage to the soul or something.

[Pyon]

A concept I've wanted to replicate a lot is using body parts (more specifically bones) as weapons. So some basic abilities would to create skeletal hands to grasp at people and hold them down, but also animating the bones of a fresh kill, and sick them on another enemy! Bone missiles!

[RulesJD]

A concept I've wanted to replicate a lot is using body parts (more specifically bones) as weapons. So some basic abilities would to create skeletal hands to grasp at people and hold them down, but also animating the bones of a fresh kill, and sick them on another enemy! Bone missiles!

Use the Animate Objects spell on some bones.

[JeenLeen]

I think I mistyped. This doesn't have to be features within D&D or tabletop gaming currently. It can be made up, from a different ttrpg, from a videogame, or from a book.

What I mean is, what feature would you like to see a Necromancer have that isn't just gaining undead minnion(s). What would make you think "yup, that dude is a necromancer".



I really like how the (completed) webcomic Dominic Deegan handled necromancy. There's two prominent necromancers in the comic, and their magic stands out as necromany even when they're not managing minions. Stuff like becoming partially undead (bones & claws, no skin on the face) correlating to immunity and strength, 'stealing' powers from others by stitching their body parts onto yourself, and stuff like causes folk to rot or decay. They can also summon zombies and the like.

[Fable Wright]

The strength of a necromancer is manipulating the fundamental forces of life and death. Minionmancy is possible, and is the least scary thing you can do with it.

Think about it. Every archmage slain, every undefeatable warrior laid low by old age, every old king whose riches really did follow him to the afterlife... you can tap into them. Do a favor for a shade that can no longer affect the real world, or let them feel life again, and they do a favor for you. One fight, or one attack, or one deal. It's all you need. Not an army of minions, but one favor from a dead friend.

One less common trope is bringing back inhuman things. Perhaps bring back every seed or animal someone has eaten. Or awaken the god of the forest that loggers have killed. Reanimate a destroyed resistance effort. Or just uncroak a volcano. These aren't things that make you go 'yep, that guy is a necromancer', but they're certainly interesting takes on the archetype.

Really, what makes me think Necromancer the most is communion with the spirits of the dead not permanently beheld to the necromancer. Shades they chat with through the ghostly green fire, or the silhouettes in the air behind them. They might eat these souls, or barter with them, or just chat with them for information; necromancy in its purest form is information gathering. And that's something that sees unfortunately little screen time in most RPGs.

[vincegetorix]

The Vicissitude discipline from Vampire: the Masquerade could be interesting for a necromancer. It gave the players the power over flesh and bones. Some exemples:

1) Infuse parts of your body with your will to allow them to be severed from the trunk to do your biding (Mage's Hand? What about Necromancer's Foot?)
2) Transform the bones in a body into a club
3) Permanently make your blood highly corrosive
4) Turn your bowels into writhing tendrils

Other ideas:
1) Aura against undeath
2) Haunting: permanent animated object that cant be moved more than X yards from the corpse after a kill
3) Feast of the Dead: Similar to Hero's Feast but grant the Undead type (or revenant from the last UA) or some bonus for a day to those attendind the Feast
4) Hand of Glory: can fascinate an entire crowd
5) Grave Dust : Transform into a fine layer of dirt when down to 0 hp
6) Pale Cavalier: Summon an undead mount

I never liked necromancy, but reading about it in this thread gave me some hope for a Dread Necromancer/Pale Master/Reanimator/Sacred Exorcist class

[Saeviomage]

How about curing someone of their ailments by temporarily killing them (ie - suppressing their life force)? Targets a willing creature, causes the target to become dead for 1 round. That can purge a lot of curses, charms, ongoing spells, diseases and the like (for instance all your magic items are no longer attuned, including cursed ones. You're no longer a viable target for vampiric domination, so it would fade etc).

Temporarily turning someone into a zombie to get that sweet save vs death that they have would be pretty good. You'd probably also get the ability to not breathe or be poisoned too.

For extra creepyness, make the "return them to life afterwards" optional to the caster so the other players are always a bit wary of accepting spells from him.

Necromancer: "Hey, I'll cast zombie fortitude on you!"
Fighter: "Umm... it feels like you are trying to make me die. I'll pass, thanks."

Other possibilities:
A reaction spell that responds to the death of a creature within range with a heal to an ally.
A cantrip that animates the skeleton of a tiny creature.
A spell that makes a corpse an immobile undead (so that resurrection does not work).

[SharkForce]

traditionally, D&D necromancy is not a mastery of undeath, but rather of the forces of life and death.

now, lots of people use that to make minions. but while you may think of, say, the experiments that created manticores as being transmutation, transmutation generally doesn't actually do much other than alter a physical form. when you hear about a wizard that experiments with creating new life forms (rather than one who simply makes life forms look different), it's probably actually a necromancer.

[Waffle_Iron]

traditionally, D&D necromancy is not a mastery of undeath, but rather of the forces of life and death.

now, lots of people use that to make minions. but while you may think of, say, the experiments that created manticores as being transmutation, transmutation generally doesn't actually do much other than alter a physical form. when you hear about a wizard that experiments with creating new life forms (rather than one who simply makes life forms look different), it's probably actually a necromancer.

Which is why as a DM, I always include at least one adventure regarding owlbears guarding a wizard tower. The PCs off them, and then at some inopportune time, the PCs realize that zombie owlbears are behind them, having risen due to the ritual placed on them.

[Temperjoke]

For good ideas, you could look at Faust from Shaman King, at least initially. He sort of used minionmancy, but would use the bones for all sorts of things, such as cages, combining them to make them into a giant skeleton...

Medically, it's not a foreign concept that a necromancer would be skilled at less-orthodox healing, such as surgery (I mean, graverobbing was the base for a large chunk of our anatomy knowledge) or attaching foreign parts to live subjects, like replacing a human's arm with a orc arm, that sort of thing. Necromancers are probably also experienced at manipulating spirits, such as using them to possess/control enemies. They could potentially use their control of spirits to draw on their knowledge in battle, like capturing the soul of a fighter and temporarily using their superiority dice (to use 5e terms).

[Theodoxus]

I think I mistyped. This doesn't have to be features within D&D or tabletop gaming currently. It can be made up, from a different ttrpg, from a videogame, or from a book.

What I mean is, what feature would you like to see a Necromancer have that isn't just gaining undead minnion(s). What would make you think "yup, that dude is a necromancer".


Edit


Using souls for power... I might be able to work with this.

When I think about healing or temp HP by killing I think of the Fiend Warlock ability. Would be too similar.

Flesh elementals are just another form of minionmancy.

Hmm....

I suggest checking out Obsidian: Age of Judgement if you want soul based powers. Kultists kill people with spirit blades, suck their souls into them and use the souls to power various effects. It's not D&D, but it is a decent jumping off point for what you're looking for.

[old school man]

Two words: flesh elementals.

:eek: Nasty, master....Egor heats them! :tongue:




John

[old school man]

:eek: Nasty, master....Egor heats them! :tongue:




John

Holy moly!

Now I just have to make a Necromancer and name him Victor Frankenstein. :wink:




John

[R.Shackleford]

:eek: Nasty, master....Egor heats them! :tongue:




John


Holy moly!

Now I just have to make a Necromancer and name him Victor Frankenstein. :wink:




John

Uhh... Are you talking to yourself or are you trying to edit your own post?

[INDYSTAR188]

What about the ability to blight the water/ground? That feels pretty necromancy-esque to me. Also very creepy and potentially deadly to a community.

[R.Shackleford]

What about the ability to blight the water/ground? That feels pretty necromancy-esque to me. Also very creepy and potentially deadly to a community.

Hot damn... I think we have a winner :)

Thanks y'all.

[uraniumrooster]

When I think about Necromancers, the two main archetypes that come to mind are

1) The minionmancer with a horde of undead at their command. This is pretty well supported by the rules already, and not what you're looking for.

2) The loner, researching dark arcane secrets to achieve immortality through undeath. Instead of animating an undead army, they animate parts of their own body to augment their physical abilities and stave off the effects of aging. The Pale Master in 3.x fit into this type pretty well, and in 5th, Undying Warlocks and Monks of the Long Death have some similar abilities. Basically, the end goal for this type of Necromancer is to completely overcome the biological limitations of their living body by achieving a state of undeath - ie, become a lich, mummy lord, vampire, etc.

Some mechanical benefits could include:


Resistance to B/P/S Damage. When your body is animated by necromantic energy, physical damage isn't as bothersome.

Augmented Str/Dex/Con. Overcome the weaknesses of your physical form and turn those frail wizardly muscles into rippling undead guns.

Plague Carrier. As a result of killing and reanimating various parts of your body, your immune system has basically shut down. Diseases don't bother you (you're mostly dead anyway), but they do tend to spread in your wake. Oops.

Drawbacks. Liching ain't easy, and should come with some drawbacks. Sunlight sensitivity, adventurers trying to kill you, bad breath, etc.

[Dr. Cliché]

Maybe something like this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twucv_0I0zo

[R.Shackleford]

Maybe something like this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twucv_0I0zo

Dude, some of us are using mobile, please put huge things like pics and video behind a spoiler.

(if you quote my post it will show how to do spoilers and name what's in the spoiler).

Thank you for your consideration.

[old school man]

Uhh... Are you talking to yourself or are you trying to edit your own post?

Just being a goof, is all.




John

[Temperjoke]

Now I want to make a necromancer scientist who is studying medicine and alchemy to spite the fickle gods who attempt to control mortals like playthings, teasing with powers through prayer and promises of heaven, yet turning on mortals with a flicker of their mood.

[R.Shackleford]

Now I want to make a necromancer scientist who is studying medicine and alchemy to spite the fickle gods who attempt to control mortals like playthings, teasing with powers through prayer and promises of heaven, yet turning on mortals with a flicker of their mood.

I really wish healing spells would just go back to necromancy.

Evocation makes sense but I would like to see more necromancy healing.

[Dr. Cliché]

I really wish healing spells would just go back to necromancy.

Evocation makes sense but I would like to see more necromancy healing.

Same. I liked when Necromancy actually had a legitimate use.

[R.Shackleford]

Same. I liked when Necromancy actually had a legitimate use.


I've been thinking about it and...

I would like to see a wizard spell list where the spells are very basic and not overly impressive. Base spells don't even have schools they belong to for the most part.

However, once a wizard puts them in his or her spell book they can be modified. The Wizard has a main school and two sub schools that they can use. The main school is their tradition that they get specific class features from. All three schools however can modify each spell.

So, we have the Fireball Spell, when a Necromancer wizard (sub schools illusion and transmutation) puts that spell in their spell book they are able to make it a Necromancy, Illusion, or Transmutation spell.

Fireball (Necromancy): Shoot a bead of Necrotic fire, deals Necrotic damage and the wizard heals X HP whenever a creature does. Con save for half damage?

Fireball (Illusion): Shoot a bead of illusionary fire, deals psychic and fire damage. Wisdom/Intelligence save for half damage.

Fireball (Transmutation): You don't throw a bead of fire, any number of creatures within a radius spontaneously combust. No somatic components. Con save for half damage.

Fireball would give you range, component, targets, and damage... But the wizard is in charge of really making the spell the spell.

Note: Evocation would be a normal fireball that has a bigger AoE or something.