Necromancer warlock

[clash]

Here is my take on a necromancer warlock archetype

Patron Acendant Undead:
lvl 1 Deathless Vigor: You gain the spare the dying cantrip. When you drop to 0 hit points or would be killed outright you may instead cast spare the dying on your own body as a reaction 1/short rest
lvl 6 Master of Death: As an action, you shout out the name of your patron and harness its control over the undead. Each undead that can hear you within 30 feet of you must make a Wisdom saving throw. If the creature fails its saving throw, it is rebuked for 1 minute or until it takes any damage. While rebuked it cowers in awe. It is incapacitated and has a speed of 0. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
lvl 10 Undead resilience: You no longer need to eat, breath or sleep but must still rest. In addition you gain resistance to necrotic damage.
lvl 14 Immortal Acension: You are given an obsidian box from your patron. Should you choose you can remove your own heart and place in the box in order to gain immortality. Doing so does not injure you in any way and provides the following benfit: You no longer age and cannot die of old age, as well you gain immunity to being poisoned, charmed, or paralyzed. Finally, if you are slain and your heart is not destroyed you rise 24 hours later regaining all your hitpoints.
Spells:
lvl 1: Inflict wounds, ray of sickness
lvl 2: Gentle repose, Blindness/deafness
lvl 3: Phantom Steed, Speak with Dead
lvl 4: Phantasmal Killer, Death ward
lvl 5: Antilife Shell, CloudKill

Pact of the graft:
You replace one of your own body parts with a graft from a magical creature bestowed upon you by your patron. Choose one of the following creature types: Celestial(Abjuration), Dragon(Conjuration), Abberation(Divination), Fey(Enchantment), Elemental(Evocation), Fiends(Illusion), Undead(Necromancy), Constructs(Transmutation). Each corresponds to a school of magic indicated. Your graft can be used as an arcane focus. In addition you gain a 1st level spell from the selected school from any spell list that you may cast once expending a warlock spell slot. You cant do so again until you finish a long rest.

Invocation
Lvl 5 Graft Magic: Choose a spell of third level or lower from the school corresponding to your graft. You may cast it once using a warlock spell slot. You cant do so again until you finish a long rest.
Lvl 12 Graft Mastery: Choose a spell of fifth level or lower from the school corresponding to your graft. You may cast it once using a warlock spell slot. You cant do so again until you finish a long rest.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

In something of a hurry, but I'll try to comment.

First, I love this concept. Very nice.




lvl 1 Deathless Vigor: You gain the spare the dying cantrip. When you drop to 0 hit points you may cast spare the dying on your own body 1/short rest

I think this needs clarification of action. Is it a Reaction? Free Action? What happens if you are killed outright via HP damage?


lvl 6 Rebuke Undead: As an action, you shout out the name of your patron and harness its control over the undead. Each undead that can hear you within 30 feet of you must make a Wisdom saving throw. If the creature fails its saving throw, it is rebuked for 1 minute or until it takes any damage. While rebuked it cowers in awe. It is incapacitated and has a speed of 0. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Hm. Odd. Why not just allow the Warlock to Turn Undead? Rebuke isn't a term in 5e, but it is (part of) the name of a spell.


lvl 10 Undead resilience: You no longer need to eat or sleep but must still rest. In addition you gain resistance to necrotic damage.

Not gonna lie. Pretty weak. Compare to other Warlock abilities at 10th level giving you a shifting damage resistance, or virtual immunity to mental attack. Needs a buff. Maybe include breathing in the list?


lvl 14 Immortal Acension: You are given an obsidian box from your patron. Should you choose you can remove your own heart and place in the box in order to gain immortality. Doing so does not injure you in any way and provides the following benfit: You no longer age and cannot die of old age, as well when you drop to 0 hit points or would normally be slain your heart instead acts as a container for magic jar 1/short rest.

Oddly too flavorful. Most Patron capstones (cuz that's basically what Warlock 14 is) are some sort of big offense move, like dropping your foe into hell, or making them a mind slave. This one has the components of a great feature, but the box thing is a bit much. Perhaps you could give them some sort of paralyzing ability in addition to virtual immortality? Or make the immortality even better/more lich-like.


Spells:

Seem legit.



Pact of the graft:
-stuff-
Invocation
-stuff--stuff-

Really like this stuff. Excellent combination of flavor and ability.

[TundraBuccaneer]

Looks more fun than the undying patron. I also am a fan of magical prosthetics so this pact boon looks awesome.

vampiric touch is already in the warlock spell list.
Bestow curse is an invocation's. Probably since at starting at lvl9 you would be stacking it with hex or other concentration spells.

[clash]

Looks more fun than the undying patron. I also am a fan of magical prosthetics so this pact boon looks awesome.


Thanks. It took a few iterations to get the pact boon right.



vampiric touch is already in the warlock spell list.
Bestow curse is an invocation's. Probably since at starting at lvl9 you would be stacking it with hex or other concentration spells.

Good catch. I have altered the spell list.



I think this needs clarification of action. Is it a Reaction? Free Action? What happens if you are killed outright via HP damage?


Clarified as a reaction



Hm. Odd. Why not just allow the Warlock to Turn Undead? Rebuke isn't a term in 5e, but it is (part of) the name of a spell.


I have changed the name to Master of Death to avoid confusion with the Hellish Rebuke spell. The reason I choose to have this rather than turn undead, is that turn undead is more of a making them fear you, this is moreso awe or respect. It was a concept from 3.5 that I liked and thought I would try here.



Not gonna lie. Pretty weak. Compare to other Warlock abilities at 10th level giving you a shifting damage resistance, or virtual immunity to mental attack. Needs a buff. Maybe include breathing in the list?


Added breathing to the list. Do you think that offers enough benefit to make it balanced?



Oddly too flavorful. Most Patron capstones (cuz that's basically what Warlock 14 is) are some sort of big offense move, like dropping your foe into hell, or making them a mind slave. This one has the components of a great feature, but the box thing is a bit much. Perhaps you could give them some sort of paralyzing ability in addition to virtual immortality? Or make the immortality even better/more lich-like.


Ya I wasnt sure about this I really liked the flavor but I agree it is really situational. This is my attempt at making it more lich like and adding more mechanical benefit.
lvl 14 Immortal Acension: You are given an obsidian box from your patron. Should you choose you can remove your own heart and place in the box in order to gain immortality. Doing so does not injure you in any way and provides the following benfit: You no longer age and cannot die of old age, as well you gain immunity to being poisoned, charmed or paralyzed. Finally, if you are slain and your heart is not destroyed you rise 24 hours later regaining all your hitpoints.

I was also playing around with an alternative that might be a better fit
lvl 14 Fell Animate: You gain the ability to reanimate corpses even as you slay them. Whenever a spell you cast reduces a humanoid to 0hp or slays them outright, you may as a reaction, imbue the creature with the foul mimicry of life. At the start of your next turn the creature rises as a zombie permanently under your control. Once you have used this feature you cannot use it again until you complete a long rest.

What are your thoughts?

[Nifft]

Added breathing to the list. Do you think that offers enough benefit to make it balanced? I'd suggest also getting healed by Inflict spells, which has nice synergy with the Patron's spell list. It's still not that strong. Hmm.


I was also playing around with an alternative that might be a better fit
lvl 14 Fell Animate: You gain the ability to reanimate corpses even as you slay them. Whenever a spell you cast reduces a humanoid to 0hp or slays them outright, you may as a reaction, imbue the creature with the foul mimicry of life. At the start of your next turn the creature rises as a zombie permanently under your control. Once you have used this feature you cannot use it again until you complete a long rest.
This can be abused to gather a large army over the course of many long rests, and that's not the kind of tactic that I would want to encourage.

My suggestion would be to make it more like the 3.5e Warlock invocation limits: you can raise zombies all day, but every time you raise a new one, you lose the previous one.

[clash]

You can already so the same thing with finger of death as the verbiage is exactly the same. And since warlocks only get 1 7th level spell as it is sorcerers or wizards can get 2 permanent zombies per day and warlocks can only get one max as is. With the archetype ability they wouldn't be any more abusable then other casters raw