School of Necromancy (Variant)

The School of Necromancy explores the cosmic forces of life, death, and undeath. As you focus your studies in this tradition, you learn to manipulate the energy that animates all living things. As you progress, you learn to sap the life force from a creature as your magic destroys its body, transforming that vital energy into magical power you can manipulate in order to heal others, keeping death away from them, for the time being.

Most people see necromancers as menacing, or even villainous, due to the close association with death. Not all necromancers are evil, but the forces they manipulate are considered taboo by many societies.

While their mastery is over death and undeath, some necromancers use their abilities in order to delay and even overcome death, sickness and decay, using their rather grim powers for good. This is a variant of the School of Necromancy's features, meant to emulate those necromancers' power over life and death.

Necromancy Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a necromancy spell into your spellbook is halved.

Harvest Life

At 2nd level, you gain the ability to reap life energy from creatures you kill with your spells. You have a pool of necromantic energy represented by a number of d6s equal to half your wizard level, rounded down. As an action, you can choose yourself, or a friendly creature you can see within 60 feet of you, and choose a number of dice to spend. Roll the spent dice and add them together; The target regains a number of hit points equal to the sum of the numbers rolled plus your spellcasting ability modifier.

Once per turn when you kill one or more creatures with a spell of 1st level or higher, you gain a number of dice equal to the level of that spell, or double the level of that spell if it is a spell from the school of necromancy. You don’t gain this benefit from killing constructs or undead.

You may also convert a spell slot to a number of dice equal to the slot's level, as a bonus action.

You regain the expended dice when you finish a long rest.

The Dark Arts

Also at 2nd level, your mastery over undeath allows you to keep yourself and your allies alive, using arcane magic to restore and stabilize their vitality, and your study of the undead had revealed to you many secrets regarding the passing of souls, and the ways to contact them. The following spells are added to your spellbook:
1: Detect Poison And Disease, Detect Evil And Good
2: Gentle Repose, Lesser Restoration
3: Revivify, Speak With Dead
4: Death Ward
5: Greater Restoration, Raise Dead
6: Harm, Heal
7: Regenerate, Resurrection
8: Clone
9: True Resurrection

Those spells are considered wizard spells to you, for the purposes of your spellcasting feature. You can cast as a ritual any spell from this list that has the ritual tag.

You also gain the Spare the Dying cantrip, which is considered a wizard cantrip to you, and is not counted against the amount of cantrips you have.

Inescapable Doom

At 6th level, your mastery over necromantic magic becomes stronger, allowing you to harm enemies who are normally resistant to them. Your cantrips and spells deal normal damage to creatures who are resistant to necrotic or poison damage.

Superior Necromancer

Beginning at 10th level, you gain resistance to necrotic damage, and your hit point maximum can’t be reduced. You have spent so much time dealing with the undead and the forces that animate them that you have become resistant to some of their worst effects.

Between Life And Death

At 14th level, as a reaction to your hit points dropping to zero, you can use all of the remaining dice in your Harvest Life pool, to heal yourself. You can use this ability only once, and regain its use when you complete a long rest. Furthermore, you gain advantage on death saving throws. Undeath had became so familiar to you, that you are able to grant yourself a modicum of it.