necromantic lord

a subclass working on a modification to the way skeletons work to allow a more custom experience

Skeletal harvest

Starting from level 2, you can harvest a corpse to try and find unique bones. These bones are unlinked from the soul of the dead creature so can be used when summoning skeletons without using up any of the cr of the spell. This allows for extra parts to be added to the skeleton when being created for free.

Undead Sculptor

When casting animate dead, you can add bones from extra corpses. for each corpse you make use of you can summon one less undead. You also get to use one extra corpse for free without being able to summon one less undead. For example, if you cast animate dead at 4th level you can instead of summoning 3 skeletons you can summon 2 skeletons each using bones from 2 corpses. At level 12 you gain a second extra corpse and at level 18 you gain a 3rd extra corpse for free.

You can only add bones where and if they make sense/fit for example a tail cannot be put in a leg slot but another creature's leg could be added there.

The new bones have different effects based on what they are.

legs - changes the dex of the creature.
arms - changes the strength of the creature's
main torso and head - changes the constitution of the creature
other appendages like tail, or horns - add the utility or action related to them. for example horns or claws add the attacks related to them and the tail adds the ability to use the tail for actions

Forced Servitude

When casting animate dead on a recently dead corpse, you can choose to activate this. When activated the soul of the dead is trapped in the dead. The intelligence and wisdom loss from the change to a skeleton is halved. If they can cast spells, they keep the ability to cast cantrips. They also keep other basic mental features/actions. e.g a minotaur who has this ability used on them would keep the reckless ability.

The main issue about this is due to the soul being kept inside the body then part of their will is also kept. they keep some of their old ideals and opinions of some people. the views are corrupted, for example, if they hated someone in life they might dislike the person in their skeleton form.

True servant

Can only be used on the recently dead, when using animate dead at 7th level, you can resurrect the person from the dead. they will be reborn as a skeleton and the effects of undead sculptor can still be used. they will be converted to a skeleton but their stats will stay the same.