Dungeons & Dragons 5e Class Features : Necromancer
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Necromancer
hit dice:
1d6
hit points at 1st level:
6 + your Constitution modifier
hit points at higher levels:
1d6 (or 4) + your Constitution modifier per necromancer level after 1st
armor proficiencies:
None
weapon proficiencies:
Simple weapons
tools:
None
saving throws:
Constitution, Intelligence
skills:
Choose two from Arcana, Deception, History, Intimidation, Investigation, Medicine, Persuasion, and Religion
starting equipment:
You start with the following equipment, in addition
to the equipment granted by your background:
You start with the following equipment, in addition
to the equipment granted by your background:
- A dagger and any simple weapon
- (a) a component pouch or (b) an arcane focus
- A shovel and (a) a dungeoneer’s pack or (b) a scholar’s pack
spellcasting:
Your connection to the realm of negative energy allows you to cast powerful necromantic spells.
Your connection to the realm of negative energy allows you to cast powerful necromantic spells.
Cantrips
At 1st level, you know four cantrips of your choice from the necromancer spell list. You learn additional necromancer cantrips of your choice at higher levels, as shown in the Cantrips Known column of the Necromancer table.Spell Slots
The Necromancer table shows how many spell slots you have to cast spells of the 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all spell slots when you finish a long rest.Spells Known Of 1st Level And Higher
You know two 1st-level spells of your choice from the necromancer spell list. You learn an additional necromancer spell of your choice at each level except 12th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 19th, and 20th. Each of these spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots. For instance, when you reach 3rd level in this class, you can learn one new spell of 1st or 2nd level. Additionally, when you gain a level in this class, you can choose one of the necromancer spells you know and replace it with another spell from the necromancer spell list, which also must be of a level for which you have spell slots.Spellcasting Ability
Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for your necromancer spells, since your power is rooted in the fine manipulation of negative energy and research into magical secrets. You use your Intelligence whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Intelligence modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a necromancer spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus
+ your Intelligence modifier
Spell attack modifier = your proficiency
bonus + your Intelligence modifier
Ritual Casting
You can cast a necromancer spell you know as a ritual if that spell has the ritual tag.Spellcasting Focus
You can use an arcane focus as a spellcasting focus for your necromancer spells. For a necromancer, these are typically objects with sentimental value, such as a locket, childhood toy, prison shackle, or wedding ring, that are altered with magically conductive materials.class features:
Charnel Touch
Your connection to the negative energy realm grants you an inner nexus of dangerous power, ready to be unleashed at a moment’s notice. Starting at 1st level, you have a pool of Charnel Touch points equal to your necromancer level × 5 that replenishes when you finish a long rest. As an action, declare the number of points you wish to expend, up to a maximum of 5 × your proficiency bonus, and make a melee spell attack against one target within your reach. On a hit, you expend the declared amount of points and deal necrotic damage equal to the points expended. If you miss the attack, you don’t expend any points. The damage dealt by your Charnel Touch is doubled when you score a critical hit, expending no additional points. This attack deals no damage to constructs and instead heals undead for the amount of points expended. You can target a willing creature with this ability without making a spell attack roll.Thralls
While lesser spellcasters can only animate flesh and bone in a rudimentary fashion, and must expend valuable energy to maintain their undead’s loyalty, true necromancers can provide their undead with a portion of their own life force, ensuring long-term obedience. Beginning at 2nd level, you learn an ancient and powerful ritual that allows you to raise and command your own army of the undead.Animate Thralls
By spending 10 uninterrupted minutes performing this ritual with a spellcasting focus or component pouch,you can raise the remains of one or more Small or Medium humanoids within 30 feet of you into undead creatures. Undead created in this way become your thralls. You maintain control over your thralls indefinitely. Stat blocks for skeletons, zombies, and other thralls can be found in the Undead Thralls section at the end of the class description.Commanding Thralls
If you are conscious, you can mentally control all of your thralls, without using any actions. If you are unconscious, your thralls will move to protect your body from harm, but will not attack. In combat, your thralls take their turns immediately before or after your turn each round (your choice) All thralls collectively share one reaction and bonus action, which a single thrall can use each round. Thralls use your spell attack bonus to make their attacks.Maximum Thralls
You can animate and control one thrall of challenge rating (CR) 1/4. As you gain levels in this class, you can animate more thralls. The combined CR of all your thralls can’t exceed the number shown in the Thrall CR Total column of the Necromancer table, and the total number of thralls under your control can never exceed your proficiency bonus. At any time, you can use your action to sever your connection to one or more thralls, releasing them. Corporeal undead crumple into a heap and incorporeal undead flee to the Ethereal Plane.Animate Dead
Beginning at 5th level, a necromancer can learn the animate dead spell, a staple of the school of necromancy. Necromancers can cast this spell as an action, instead of over the course of 1 minute. All undead created by the animate dead spell (as well as any other magic, such as the create undead spell, that allows you to control undead) count as your thralls and can be commanded as such. If your new thralls granted to you by a spell cause you to exceed your total CR or number of thralls, you can immediately sever your connection to any of your existing thralls so as to stay within these limits. Your thralls can never command or create other undead. As always, you can’t reanimate your undead that have been reduced to 0 hit points. Your Animate Thralls ritual, the animate dead spell, and similar magic only affects humanoid corpses, whereas your thralls are undead creatures.Bag of Bones
Also at 2nd level, you learn how to create a necromantic magic item, a bag of bones. The bag connects to a vast extradimensional space that can only hold Medium or smaller corpses, bones, and undead creatures; it violently expels anything else placed within it. You can use an action to place a corpse or willing undead creature into the bag, up to a maximum of 10 corpses or undead creatures, or use your action to dump the contents of the bag, which land in spaces within 5 feet of you. You can transform any container you can carry into a bag of bones by performing a special ritual over the course of 1 hour while you hold it. This container ceases to be magical if you perform this ritual again to create a new bag of bones. The container always connects to the same extradimensional space. If the bag is placed inside an extradimensional space, such as that created by a bag of holding, it is destroyed. Its contents remain in the same extradimensional space until you create a new bag.Grave Ambition
When you reach 3rd level, you decide on a proper path of research into the dark arts in order to carve a path leading toward your ultimate goal. Choose a Grave Ambition, detailed at the end of the class. Your choice grants you features at 3rd level, and again at 6th, 10th, and 20th level.Black Arcana
Also beginning at 3rd level, as a bonus action, you can expend a spell slot to replenish your Charnel Touch pool. Your pool regains 1d8 expended points, plus 1d8 for each level of the spell slot expended, up to a maximum of your pool’s total.Ability Score Improvement
When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.Critical Spellcasting
At 5th level, your potent necrotic powers punish your enemy at the first sign of weakness. When a creature rolls a 1 on a saving throw against one of your spells, it automatically fails the save, and you can roll all the spell’s damage dice a second time, adding the total to the spell’s damage against that creature. The additional damage only applies to the creature that rolled a 1. Additionally, your spell attacks score a critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20. Starting at 14th level, a creature automatically fails its saving throw against your spells and takes additional damage when it rolls a 1 or a 2. Additionally, your spell attacks score a critical hit on a roll of 18–20.Enthralling Presence
At 7th level, the negative energy that flows through you reinforces your thralls against those who would seek to destroy or control your servants. Your thralls and other undead you control are immune to effects that turn undead and can’t be forcefully controlled by another creature while you are conscious.Undying Servitude
When you reach 18th level, your connection to your thralls can pull them back from the brink of destruction. When a thrall under your control is reduced to 0 hit points but not destroyed outright, you can use your reaction to restore it to half of its maximum hit points. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.Lichdom
By 20th level, you have unlocked the pinnacle of necromantic prowess, through which you will conquer death itself: The Rite of Lichdom. When you reach this level, you have completed your phylactery and are ready to undergo the rite. To do so, you shut yourself away for 30 days in an isolated location of your choice, and emerge as an immortal lich, an undead of unsurpassed power. Once the rite is complete, you gain the following benefits as well as those dictated by your choice of Grave Ambition.Phylactery
A phylactery is a small object that houses a lich’s soul, safeguarding its immortality. If you drop to 0 hit points, your body crumbles to dust, but your will and mind escape to the phylactery. After 1d4 + 1 days, a new body coalesces as near to your phylactery as possible and you return to life (or rather, unlife). When your body reforms, you gain the benefits of a long rest. The new body is identical in every way to the one that was destroyed.Undead Resilience
You gain immunity to necrotic and poison damage.Undead Traits
You are immune to the effects of exhaustion and you don’t need to eat, drink, sleep, or breathe. You must still rest for 4 hours a day to gain the benefits of a long rest. Though your type is humanoid, spells and effects that specifically affect undead affect you as well. You are immune to any effect that turns undead.Phylactery
A lich’s phylactery is as much a memento as it is their anchor to immortality, and as such, no two are alike. Phylacteries are often constructed from objects with sentimental value, such as family heirlooms or prized possessions, but can be fashioned from swords, pieces of armor, or even entire castles. Furthermore, every phylactery has a weakness, a critical flaw by which it can be destroyed, allowing its lich to be slain permanently. These weaknesses, too, are unique to each phylactery. One phylactery might require a ritual to be performed around it for 24 hours, while another might call for the phylactery to be dipped in the lava of an active volcano. Discuss with your GM the form your phylactery takes and what weakness it possesses.
subclass options:
Grave Ambitions
Becoming a necromancer is seldom an accident. Almost all who dive into the secrets of life and death do so with a purpose, a method to the madness. This ambition is what drives them into the tenebrous corners of forgotten libraries, longabandoned tombs, and the graveyards of simple commoners. Ambition drives them further into the dark, where only the light of their end goal can lead them through the all-consuming shadows. A necromancer’s grave ambition represents the path to their ultimate goal, to what lengths they’ll go to achieve it, and serves to validate their actions, if only to themselves.Blood Ascendant
Necromantic might comes in many forms, but a singular, ancient source is the blood curse of vampirism. Though it promises much—immortality, agility, charm—it comes paired with insidious drawbacks, from the stinging burn of sunlight to a perpetual thirst for blood. Necromancers that wish to capture a measure of this power without suffering its myriad weaknesses perform a special ritual with vampiric blood in order to become Blood Ascendants. In doing so, they fall deathly pale and lose their reflection within mirrors, but learn to slowly pry out vampiric powers without fully succumbing to the all-devouring curse.Death Knight
Some necromancers are content to sit in dusty tombs with moldering tomes, occasionally picking apart a battlefield for fresh ingredients and new company. By contrast, death knights are a predators among scavengers, seizing their goals through a melding of magic and traditional combat. Bolstered with dark energies and sturdy armor, the death knight wields a weapons edged with death itself. They are simultaneously the vanguard and general of their undead forces, unafraid of getting their hands dirty when necessary.Overlord
There are few ambitions the common man fantasizes about more than the power to rule. From the ignoble peasant to the haughty nobility, many dream of a world in which they are in charge. Some necromancers, known as overlords, see their magic as an opportunity to accomplish this common dream. Overlords seek control both on and off the battlefield, using dark magics to bolster their allies as well as manipulate their enemies.Pale Master
Some necromancers wish to conquer, and others to control, but all utilize their necromantic powers as a means to an end, a way to pave the way to their true ambitions. Pale masters are no different, but few have grand plans to compete with the overlords nor dedicate themselves to the art of war as the death knights do. Rather, pale masters dedicate themselves to self-improvement and the growth of their powers. Pale masters range from the curious mage’s college student to the power-hungry spellcaster harassing the local hamlets. With the ability to embolden their spells, communicate with the undead, reduce the bravest souls to quibbling cowards, and effortlessly command their thralls in the thick of battle, these seemingly aimless spellcasters are no less a threat than any other necromancer.Pharaoh
The god-kings of ancient kingdoms practiced a unique style of necromancy, forgotten to time. Through the extraction of organs, the desiccation of flesh, and innumerable enchantments, those ancient kings were able to rule their subjects as divine, undead beings, long past their mortal deaths. While those kingdoms have been lost to the shifting sands and wild jungles of the world, their methods have been preserved in the carvings of colossal temples and revived by modern necromancers, who take on the guise of the erstwhile pharaohs. Their magic is a hybrid of divine and arcane influences, the legacy of god-kings from a forgotten age.Plague Lord
The power of plagues can’t be denied. A single disease can single-handedly overwhelm a nation, or even an empire. Necromancers that realize the potential within sickness will often seek to wield that power themselves. These are known as plague lords, commanders of vermin and disease alike. A plague lord’s touch is toxic, and vermin protect them from harm, can transfer their spells through unconventional means, and spread their filth to their thralls.Reanimator
Through bubbling test tubes and sparking electrodes, you have discovered the true heart of necromancy: mad science. You’ve experimented in far-reaching disciplines of surgery, alchemy, and physics, using your animated minions as gruesome test subjects and walking surgical dummies. Most crucially, you have discovered that lightning can imbue almost anything with a semblance of life, from the smallest severed muscle to the most towering and soulless golems.Reaper
The oblivion of death is the sure wellspring of all necromancy, a dark abyss into which all necromancers stare, and which sometimes stares back. Those rare necromancers that gamble with their own souls might become intertwined with death, becoming reapers, figures of shadow and demise that beckon others to the afterlife. For performing this deed, they strengthen their connection to the distant oblivion, until they are but tenebrous shadows: harbingers of an inevitable end.Find your way!
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by 3 Armored Kittens · Prodromos v.1.1 - World Anvil 0.9.15.042 © 2017-2024 [en] | Anvil Time: 15:36, Nov 20 2024