Necromancers are spellcasters in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) that specialize in death magic. They use their abilities to gain control over their enemies’ bodies, minds, and souls by raising or summoning undead from fallen enemies. Necromancy savant is a powerful ability that allows necromancy wizards to copy necromancer spells in half the time and cost of the usual wizard spell.
Necromancers have an unending supply of disposable undead minions to fight for them, protect them, and achieve battlefield control. They can also use spells like Mage Armor and Shield to cover themselves if needed, while at higher levels, they can use Blur or Blink to do the same thing. The essential part of Necromancer equipment is the School of Necromancy Wizard, which allows them to make the most out of this spell.
The School of Necromancy Wizard is the only full caster build with access to the relevant spells and additional class features. Clerics have raise/save necromancy spells, while wizards have undead/necrotic necromancy spells. Necromancy spells can be used to create a growing army of undead minions, and the best class, species, feats, and spells can make the difference between a fledgling Necromancer and a mighty Commander of the undead.
In summary, Necromancers are skilled in necromancy and enchantment spells, using their abilities to gain control over their enemies’ bodies, minds, and souls. They possess a deep supply of disposable undead minions and can use spells like Chill Touch, Poison Spray, Spare the Dying, Toll the Dead, and Cause Fear to achieve their goals.
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Who can beat Necromancer?
The Necromancer is an Unholy/Eldritch boss that appears in the Ruins. He is a reanimated scholar who collaborated with the Ancestor and was murdered. After the Ancestor’s death, the Necromancer and his apprentices took over the Ruins, using their magic to bring corpses back to life as their servants. The Necromancer starts in position 1 and creates skeleton enemies in rank 1, pushing himself back until he is in position 4, where his attacks no longer spawn anything.
To stop the Necromancer from summoning a minion in a turn, stun him or have three existing ones. Corpses do not block this ability, as they will be replaced by newly summoned skeletons. The Necromancer has no weighted skill selection or targeting, making his series of attacks effectively random. The Crusader can use Stunning Blow to stop the Necromancer in his tracks.
Which class is best for necromancy?
The School of Necromancy wizard is a powerful class that can effectively utilize the spell Animate Dead. As of sixth level, this wizard can target an additional corpse, increasing the number of zombies they can command. Additionally, this subclass enhances the quality of the zombies or skeletons they control. All undead raised by this wizard gain an additional max HP equal to their level and add their proficiency bonus to their weapon damage rolls, enhancing their offense and survivability.
Can clerics use Necromancy spells?
Clerics excel in casting Necromancy spells and commanding undead, but they also possess the abilities of a real Wizard. The Conjuration one focuses on summoning spells and swapping places with creatures, including your summoned horde of undead. They also have access to the powerful Summon Undead spell, which works even better than Animate Dead, and benefit from the Conjurer’s highest-level abilities throughout their journey.
Can a druid use Necromancy?
A necromantic druid is able to access all necromancy spells from the wizard spell list and subsequently cast them as divine spells, thereby affecting their spellcasting ability. Additionally, they are able to spontaneously cast spells from the following list, sacrificing a prepared spell of the same or a higher level. This results in a modification of the nature bond class feature.
Which DND class can use necromancy?
The School of Necromancy wizard is a powerful class that can effectively utilize the spell Animate Dead. As of sixth level, this wizard can target an additional corpse, increasing the number of zombies they can command. Additionally, this subclass enhances the quality of the zombies or skeletons they control. All undead raised by this wizard gain an additional max HP equal to their level and add their proficiency bonus to their weapon damage rolls, enhancing their offense and survivability.
What race and class is best for necromancer 5e?
Fairy is a highly recommended species for Necromancers who focus on spellcasting and avoiding close danger. They offer at-will flight without using resources or Concentration, which is effective with medium or heavy armor. Fairies also have access to the Druidcraft cantrip, Faerie Fire, and Enlarge/Reduce, which grant controlled undead support in combat.
Kobold is an unconventional species choice that is synergistic with a D and D 5e Necromancer build, especially for melee-oriented Necromancers. Its Draconic Cry feature gives allies an advantage on their attacks for an entire round against enemies within 10 ft of a Kobold that used Draconic Cry. With a Kobold Necromancer able to use this multiple times, they can increase the accuracy of their undead minions and allies up to twice a day at level 1 and up to six times a day by level 17.
Background choice for a D and D Necromancer build is more open-ended, with custom backgrounds available. Acolyte is a good choice for its Religion and Insight proficiencies, while Hermit offers proficiency in Religion but Medicine instead of Insight. Sage offers Arcana and History proficiencies, and the faceless background is useful for Necromancers who want to associate their Necromancy with an alternate Persona, which can be useful in campaigns where the practice is particularly taboo.
Can bards do necromancy?
Bards have a plethora of common necromantic spells at their disposal, including “Speak With Dead” and “Raise Dead,” which facilitate the acquisition of low-level spells. Should the player wish to do so, they may consult their Dungeon Master about swapping out with another Bard spell or using the Magic Initiate feat.
Which class has the most Necromancy spells?
The utilization of necromancy spells, such as Animate Dead and Speak With Dead, is indispensable for the fabrication of skeleton and zombie armies. Additionally, Speak With Dead can be employed as a wizard spell, if desired.
Which DnD class can use necromancy?
The School of Necromancy wizard is a powerful class that can effectively utilize the spell Animate Dead. As of sixth level, this wizard can target an additional corpse, increasing the number of zombies they can command. Additionally, this subclass enhances the quality of the zombies or skeletons they control. All undead raised by this wizard gain an additional max HP equal to their level and add their proficiency bonus to their weapon damage rolls, enhancing their offense and survivability.
Who is the strongest Necromancer?
Ainz Ooal Gown, a renowned necromancer, is a powerful character in anime series who can bring the dead back to life, including himself, making him nearly impossible to kill permanently. His main ability is to call forth an army of the dead, which can lead to unexpected plot twists. Despite the potential to diminish the audience’s attachment to a deceased character, necromancers remain popular due to their ability to create minions and command them to fight for them. They are often feared and compelling, as they dabble in magic and the supernatural.
Known characters like Sung Jin-Woo, Gecko Moria, Orochimaru, and Ainz Ooal Gown have made necromancers well-known in the anime community. Some unique characters, like Sung Jin-Woo, Gecko Moria, Orochimaru, and Ainz Ooal Gown, use their abilities to their full potential, defying the world’s natural laws. Some acquire their abilities through extensive study of dark arts, while others are simply gifted. Regardless of their method, necromancers are a force to watch out for.
What races are best for Necromancers?
The Dark Elf is the best race for Necromancers in ESO, as it offers great racial passives for dealing damage. As a Dark Elf, you gain an additional 1950 Stamina and Magicka, along with 258 Weapon and Spell damage, allowing you to deal consistent damage and capitalize on powerful Grave Lord skills like Detonating Siphon. This race is top-performing in combat, allowing your DPS build to excel in combat.
Necromancers specialize in dealing bonus damage over time with abilities like Skeletal Archer or Skeletal Mages, combined with delayed burst attacks like Stalking Blastbones. This allows you to maintain a relentless assault on your foes, leaving them no choice but to succumb to your ghastly spells.
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I played a rogue once and my sister was paladin in the same group. It took her quite some efford not to kill my character. But as one member stepped out our fighting formation was broken. So i let him go and stepped in with an extra class called the sword sage. (in german Schwertweiser) a really unique class that can fulfill muptiple roles at its best. But the DM will kill me when we get to lvl 20, i swear. If my plan works i can stun an enemy first (This attack is complicated, i´ll give you that)(Saving throw is my jumping throw, wich i can also buff alot. currently up to 35 (plus the d20)at lvl 12) Due to a talent i can use two enhancements at once, making it possible to hit 11 times with a penalty of -2, further ehnanced each hit with 3d6+25 firedamage! And yes, i checked multiple times in the Book of the Nine Swords, he can´t do anything about it. Its completely inside the rules. And the attack bonusses are completely getting out of hand^^ BUT its ok to hit twice as hard if you´re running a thee person group… DnD3.5 btw. 5 is waaaaay to limited for us.
Our DM told us to roll up 15th level characters and select their armor and weapons from a list he gave. He also said to give them one Uncommon magic item. So I rolled up a wood elf Rogue 3 (Swashbuckler)/Paladin 10 (Vengeance)/Warlock 2 (Hexblade), gave him Winged Boots for his magic item and the Spell Sniper and Elven Accuracy feats instead of two ASI’s. The multiclass combination allowed me to zip within 30 feet of a target, curse it with Hexblade’s Curse then fly off my next turn without suffering from Attacks of Opportunity (Swashbuckler). At that point, I could launch 4 Eldritch Blast beams (no spell slot use) with Agonizing Blast (Charisma 18), Advantage on every attack, and crits on natural 19 or 20 (thanks to Hexblade’s Curse) from a range of 240 feet (Spell Sniper) in the air. Plus an auto-buff of +5 AC as Reaction thanks to the Shield spell. And when my character was grounded and forced into melee…Divine Smites with a magic rapier doing Sneak Attack damage. If he was hit with Darkness, he had the Devil’s Sight invocation (warlock) and the Blind Fighting fighting style (paladin). In brightest day and darkest night, no target could avoid my sight; I called the character “Predator Drone”.
My first actual character is a ranger, but he pretty much just goes around summoning his small dragon to scout for him and getting upset with whoever hurts animals around him Last session, the dragon accidentally woke up an enemy the party wasn’t supposed to interact with The enemy had 20 AC. It was originally supposed to be 40, but the dm was gracious enough to half it. THE ENTIRE PARTY IS, AND WAS, LEVEL 3.
The cleric one really hit me. Im currently in a campaign where my party has been so ridiculous and the dm so combat heavy that my character canonically wont heal people because shes given up on being nice and slowly turning into a monster. Started off with buffs and heals. And now i have one maybe 2 heals and all damage
once during a campaign i gave a cleric a rune that let them make a dual attack with a free hand but the other attack only does half of what the normal one does but it was attached with a curse a holy paladin the party was fighting lifted curses on the cleric (it was a campaign based around being the bad guys in the story) our monk used reaction to put on the wristband the curse was lifted so the wristband did nothing. after a short rest the cleric used restore on the monk with the wristband on it was his turn and that’s when i realized that i need to get better at homebrew because with two free hands he effectively doubled the amount of attacks he could do; he rolled 19 D8’s and a D12 for damage that turn
I so like to defy expectations. Not only does my cleric not hate the party it is probably the other way around. She is very nuturing and actually enjoys taking care of people. At the same time, she follows Tymora, so she has this believe that everything will work out and she is by far the most reckless in the entire campaign. I just love her.
The only time I was actively killed by my party and DM was when I was playing a Kender (halfling) cleric. My klepto halfling not only got the group thrown in jail on 6 separate occasions, but due to his fearless, curious nature, got the group caught by 3 separate groups of goblins, draconians, and bandit raiding parties. The last thing that caused the group to finally get rid of my character is when he stumbled into the layer of a blue dragon. They left him to be fried by lightning breath. It was some of the most fun I had with a character.
My first character was a ranger. We were all pretty new to the game including our DM. When he let us start at level 5 I asked him about feats, I forget what the feat was specifically, but it let me call shots for the chance to do higher damage (at the cost of rolling at disadvantage). It became very useful because I was getting very lucky with rolls when he put us up against a dragon that was probably too strong for our part because no one understands challenge rating. I managed to carry our party through that fight on luck and luck alone. It was a rough start to a campaign, one person’s character almost primadied like 3 times leading up to and into this fight from bad rolls
I like Ranger That said I’ve been broadening my horizons lately :3 My most recent standout experience was playing a way of shadow monk for a heist that took place at night As a shadow monk I could cast silence, pass without trace, darkness, darkvision (maybe 1 or 2 more) using 2 of my 7 ki points for a casting and and I could teleport from dim light or darker 60ft to dim light or darker as a bonus action
My Wizard-Druid multiclass, who is obsessed with birds and often uses touch-range spells through them: – can’t hurt me if I’m not in range – enjoy being snared and shocking grasped, and left to be killed by the characters with the capability to knock you out – oh look, now I can take a hit or two, time to start causing a little more of a problem – flock of familiars? don’t mind if I do! – the birds now have dragons breath and I now have rope trick, making me even more of a pain in the rear – thunder step now means you aren’t getting to me easily – all this and only level 6 – …oh and as a side note I eventually made a crossbow that can deal a little bit of any kind of elemental damage given I have the right bolt loaded, with the Thunder one getting the chance to knock enemies prone and leave them vulnerable to my allies… and still upgrading it further
I have a house rule that summon undead does work with grim harvest, because your magic is constantly fueling the summon. (Because concentration); but animate dead does not trigger grim harvest because it’s not a constant magic flow. (Non-concentration) So tldr, if the spell requires concentration it will still trigger grim harvest, regardless if it is a summon or not.
Feeblemind is an excellent combo with command undead. As long as you can make it fail the Feeblemind save, you’ve basically already gotten the undead permanently under your control. Only downside is that you give up the potential of any speaking abilities and spellcasting of the undead in question, but almost anything else will still work with it.
I’m going to be running a ship based campaign soon and I gave my players the option of wanting it to be more realistic or not. They chose realism, so I had to bring up a crew, at first there was no issue, but then I brought up cost. Now one of them is dedicating themselves to be a necromancer and save up bodies to just man the ship. Gold reaps what dreams seek.
Unethical Unlife Pro Tip: Remember Recasting is only to maintain control over the undead that you’ve raised! They don’t go away on their own! If you have access to lots of bodies, you can store uncontrolled, dangerous undead in secure locations as traps for unwitting enemies. Or spend a few weeks filling up steel-reinforced wagons with a horde of skeletons that you can cart around and release in a pinch!
For the longest time I had the idea of somehow tricking a white dragon into changing to a dracolich. If you use the rules for dracoliches in the monster manual it becomes an undead and retains it’s 10 int, so you could control it for some Sindragosa vibes. Surely it’s not the stongest thing you could come up with but it’s cool none the less
Yeah, in general, you shouldn’t have more than 4 skeletons at once. Part of the wizard’s strength is being immensely versatile and you don’t want to trade ALL of that for a giant army of undead unless you need an actual army. Plus, then you have to account for every undead you make this way. Any stragglers that get separated and miss the chance for you to reassert control become a liability.
if you don’t want to wait or hope to find a powerful undead, you can use create undead to create one and command it to fail it’s save against your spell, which will save on slots used to keep undead under your control and allow you more minions, besides, you can save this feature for when you do finally run into that powerful undead you normally can’t just create. It’s also worth noting that Undead Thralls benefits any undead creature you create using spells, so Summon Undead gains the benefits of the increased damage on weapon attacks and more HP, adding a bit more bulk and damage to these summons that other wizards don’t get.
There are 2 damaging ranged Necromancy spells for Low level Necromancers can use to regain that 3x spell level HP with Grim Harvest. First is Ray of Sickness. Shoot a sickening ray at a target, dealing 2d8 Poison Damage. The target then makes a Con save or become poisoned until the end of your next turn. This early on, you are likely not facing things with poison resistance, or at least not very many. Snakes and spiders would likely be the only things this early on with poison resistance. Second is Wither and Bloom. Each creature of your choice in a 10ft radius of a point within 60ft of you must make a Con save or take 2d6 Necrotic Damage. Halved on a successful save. Furthermore, one creature of your choice can spend an HD and add your Spelllcasting mod to the HP they regain. In desperation, you could add yourself to that radios and spend your own HD and thus regaining even more HP if any creatures die from the spell. Also, I think there may be one thing about Zombies you are over looking when it comes to “survivability”. Undead Fortitude. All zombies have this feature, skeletons do not. So, in the example given about skeletons or zombies vs a troll, I’d say the Zombies would last longer. For starters, the troll isn’t doing any Radiant damage and second, the average damage listed in the troll stat block, is about 7 or 11 damage. So, about 2-3 rounds the troll might have killed the zombie, but it just needs to make a DC 5, 7 or 11 to survive with 1 hitpoint. Even with the trolls Multiattack, the zombie just needs to save against each damage roll separately, unless the troll manages to crit.
If you want some brute force, an ancient white dracolich can be pretty good, and because of the lore, if a dragon corpse of any kind touches its phylactery, it can possess it, so (in theory) there are options for upgrading your dracolich with different dragon corpses (a red dragon is a nice one, a gold dragon is the best, maybe one of those sun dragons from Spelljammer).
Great article, but I would like to point out some build decisions around Animate Dead that you may not have considered. As far as I understand it, it is not possible to effectively use your last third level spell slot on Animate Dead. You can use it to reanimate one corpse, but after that your army won’t be able to grow anymore because that slot is locked up maintaining that extra zombie. At 5th and even 6th level, a Divine Soil Sorcerer is dramatically better at using Animate Dead than the Necromancer. Flexible Casting allows the Sorcerer to make three additional 3rd level spell slots as opposed to the one extra one that the Wizard gets. This means that you are running with 16 or 17 undead compared to the Wizard’s 8 or 9 undead at 5th level. At 6th level, the Sorcerer has 20 or 21 undead compares to the Necromancer’s 12 or 13. However, as a Sorcerer, you can go down the tealock path as soon as you know Animate Dead. Up to Warlock 4 or total level 9, you are routing those extra slots through flexible casting, but from Warlock 5 onwards, things get really insane. If you really want to make the DM cry, take Genie Patron up to Warlock 11 or character level 16. The Sanctuary Vessel feature along with the extra spell slot exponentially increase the size of your undead army. This is not exactly practical, but this is how you optimise for Animate Dead.
Your quick side note about ‘Necromantic Savant’ rings real true, regardless of wizard schooling. Playing a Divination Wizard, and I’m torn because I have one feature that incentivizes me to have Divination spells (spell slots refund lower spell slots if you cast Divination spells), but the Divination Savant feature means I don’t want to pick up these spells, I’d rather find and transcribe them. Which means I’m constantly pestering my DM to offer spells, but specifically my kind of spells.
My favorite necromancy build is a “holy necromancer”. Get gets consent from soldiers, farmers, peasants, ect in a form of life/death insurance. By the middle of the campaign his actions were even sanctioned by the local church who held on to corpses for him to return and use. The king very much like the idea of having his fallen soldiers continue to serve and protect their home. Knights and peasants were eager to take gold in the knowledge that their corpses would be respected and would continue to help serve the kingdom. Farmers working the field who don’t require food, clothing, resources become very useful. A paladin in our party got to lead a horde of undead “knights”. He was quickly a fan. Best part about it was my necromancer was lawful good. The amount of power you can get when you have the Church and Kingdom on your side and no one to question you…
Undead Thralls also provides an amazing force multiplier to Summon Undead spell, specially to the Ghost spirit. It is basically free frighten attempt every turn. I used to summon my ghost spirit as the head commander of my archer skeletons army. In terms of DPR, versatility and reliability, Undead Thrall puts Summon Undead above any other summon spell, even the ones in higher levels.
a note on Grim Harvest: Its actually super good paired with Vampiric touch, and just about any other damage spell with a duration greater than instantaneous or 1. I once ran a Necromancer Mountain dwarf wizard. and the combo of Good Fullplate AC+ Shield spell is pretty effective when you can recover any damage that finally gets through by killing something the party has been whittling down. A bag of tricks is also good for this.
hey kobold, My party and I just came back from a Heist on Orcus domain to capture a powerful undead. Our preference was a white Dracolich, but we had a figth with a lich and had to retrieve because 1 player died and one was plane shifted to an undisclosed location. We, however, found a Mummy Lord and it’s heart. so we still think is a Nat positive.
Yay! My favorite character to play in Diablo 2 was the necromancer!! And when WoW became popular I found out about Arthas and the Lich King. Why be a soldier on the battlefield when you can be the General leading the whole army?! Why endanger living people when you can command the dead? No food needed, no pain during the fight, no dread of death to break morale. Everybody wins, except your enemies, who also join your army!
What happens if you take control of a ghost, and make it possess yourself? 10:00 I feel like this could actually have some interesting uses. First, you can make yourself or others immune to the ghosts possession, making it easier to deal with once you lose control over it. You could also use this as an excuse to get away with doing things you shouldn’t, and say “it was the ghost possessing me, its not my fault” and actually have proof. Another interesting thing, is can a ghost possess someone who is already possessed? Could you free someone from a ghosts possession with a counter possession from your own ghost? A person being possessed by a ghost is still a humanoid, so I feel like this could work. …How many ghosts can possess one person at a time? What happens if there are, say, 100 ghosts possessing one person and the person being possessed drops to 0 hp, and now the ghosts all have to reappear within 5 ft of them? I guess since they have incorporeal movement there would just be like 12 ghosts in each space around them all just phasing through each other.
It’s important to remember the lack of size limit with animate dead when using command undead. Once you get it, you can break down all of your skeletons and combine them all into one pile and then raise that gigantic abomination as one creature, since it doesn’t matter what arrangements of bones you use. It’s interesting to think about. Perhaps instead of an army you instead just collect every bone you find and add it to an ever-increasing pile as your singular minion just gets bigger and bigger
Just gonna put the same advice I put in the other article Zombies can wear heavy armor and shields to become really tanky, and use their actions to put battlefield hazards on, can use Nets that had disadvantage anyway, Help action, etc. Wights are a good use for your capstone permanent thrall, but in general they’re worthwhile when you can feed them a bunch of kills from say, bandits. 12 zombies and a Wight for a 5th level slot is significant, since 8 can body block for you completely, and 4 can aid the Wight. Inspiring Leader basically doubles the HP bonus you give your undead, and can be reapplied endlessly because they’re too stupid to remember your last speech.
The way my table rules commanding minions and undead, is if you try to control a single unit as your bonus action, then you get “direct” control. Choose where it moves, what it does, et cetera. If you use your bonus action to control multiple creatures, you do so by giving a command, like guard the party, attack the enemy, so on. The DM then does the creatures actions based on your command. An example is if you command a group of skeletons to guard the party, they will actively not attack hostile creatures that aren’t actively trying to harm a party member. Command them to kill the enemies, they will target the nearest enemy until it is dead and move on to the next one, mob tactics. It seems to make play faster and smoother without one player taking 6+ turns each turn.
I play a necromancer in one of my games. My DM and I talked a few times and when I had 4 skeletons on the battlefield, it got really hard to balance combat. so she changed it so I would just get one Bone Collector (after my necromancer used the bones from one to make a new minion.) I still have to invest the spell slots and I get one big strong guy. Much easier for the DM it deal with.
I’d recommend seeing if anyone else wants to go down the necromantic path. Could have some interesting ties to each other’s characters. Oath breaker comes to mind for mechanical and inter character relationships. It’s fun to have the oath breaker’s aura of hate with these skeles. Giving the pally’s Cha mod as extra damage to your undead. Could also place aid on some of them. Btw if you want some burst damage, Danse macabre with both necromancer and oathbreaker buffs can do a lot of stacked damage. If you knock a creature prone and have them swarm them, hitting with advantage, that is pretty punchy. Shortsword skele, 3.5+2(Dex)+spell mod+PB+CHa. So we are probably talking about 13-16 damage per skeleton, 5x skeletons for an hour of concentration.
Question: Since zombies or skeletons doesn`t need to breathe how about walk with your undead army inside a bag of holding? Is it a viable solution? I want to make a necromancy doctor whose skeletons work as his nurses (like Fausto at shaman king), so I thought about using a bag of holding. My character is not evil, but he refuses to loose the ones he traits.
I thought a more interesting version of the savant feature is that each level in wizard you take you learn an extra spell of whatever school of magic you are a savant of. Played around with the idea of allowing an extra spell of that school being prepared and gaining one more at levels 5, 11, and 17 (same scaling as a cantrip), but I have not run this at any table yet.