In my Descent into Avernus campaign, our party has a Hobgoblin Necromancy Wizard named Lorag Rend. I love his character, and love necromancers. What are your ideas for necromancer characters, what race/multiclass/background combinations for a necromancy wizard/cleric/warlock that you have/want-to play as?
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
I've a couple of NPC necromancers I would love to play given the chance (although one is Chaotic Evil so might not be that one i ever get to play).
First one is a kindly old man, head of the Necromancy School at the Wizards guild, played as a police medical examiner/mortician and generally there to help the local authorities with murder scene investigation, he's your basic wizard with observant feat build.
The Second is a Chaotic Evil Gnoll, I loved hamming it up/chewing the scenery in the one encounter the party have had with him so far, he animates zombies for food as it keeps the meat nice and "fresh" longer.
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I'm putting together a back up character in case my current PC dies.
A lizardfolk wizard/cleric. the party is currently level 7 so I'm looking at wizard 6/cleric 1. Might throw in a couple of warlock levels to get the devil's sight.
The idea would be to lean heavily into the pragmatic, emotionless characteristic of lizardfolk. Rather than just eating the bodies of the dead, he sees them as potential allies. Resurrection is just an efficient means for getting your allies back in the fight. Souls are just a poorly utilised fuel source. So he wouldn't consider himself evil but the rest of the party might. I think I'd use the far traveller background just to emphasise this.
For flavour though, I'd play him almost like a witch doctor. Rather than a spell book, he'd carry carved bones, shrunken heads, preserved animal bodies etc. I'd stress the fact that when he uses the cleric spells to heal people, it's a very unsettling sensation - like sitting on a recently used toilet seat.
I just think it would be fun to play a necromancer who doesn't understand why everyone has a problem with what he does. He's just trying to help in his own, very direct but unsympathetic way.
In one of my current campaigns, I'm playing a Moon Elf Wizard who is diving hardcore into the necromancy track. It's a very story-focused campaign, so our builds were all based more around backstory choices than the actual mechanics, which has allowed for some really interesting experiments. My dumb baby has a twin brother who disappeared (Haunted One background), and she has absolutely convinced herself that he must be dead. All her choices are based on trying to find out what happened to him/get him back, which might include multiclassing into Warlock if she were to come across a patron who she thinks would help her get answers. However, I gave the DM full reign over whether he's really dead and why he disappeared, so she might turn into a crazy paranoid Necromancer and then discover he just ran off to be a farmer of something, who knows? We're still pretty squishy and low-level, so we've got some time to see where this goes.
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Reading, Writing, Procrastinating, sometimes with clever snark and mythical creatures. Find me playing games at Quests & Chaos and Torpid Gaming Network, writing them at Itch, and yelling about them most other places.
All my info is at my Linktr.ee - hit me up to play, write, produce, or more!
I made a necromancer who was a doctor called Dr Longfellow for a multi planar game we played with a lot of diverse characters from universes typically portrayed in media/legends (our barb was a Saiyan, our Bard was a troll from Azeroth, our ranger was from the Monster Hunter games universe and our sorc was a competitor of Merlins) but my necromancer was from a world I and the DM colaboratively made up.
It was a world where only necromancy magic exists and the only gods worshipped are death gods, and nearly everyone was capable of living forever until a point where they choose not to be brought back to life. Their souls then go to power stations to be used as an energy source, there bodies were reanimated and used for manual labour. It was a pretty strange necro-utopia where typically doctors spent their time improving the clone spell and the process for growing new bodies so that they wouldnt develop diseases or wouldnt get injured as easily. But Longfellow was particularly attached to his body so his focus was on combatting diseases when they inevitably arrived.
He filled the healer role of the party (not possible when you play RAW but we use a homerule that wizards can learn any spell off of scrolls they find, since its the DM who decides the scrolls you get anyway.) and we ended up in some whacky situations. The more I filled in about the world the more Dr Longfellow's legend grew. He constantly referred to himself as being 7 because in the necromage world you dont count years you count bodies you've had. He talked about how eating food was disgustingly satisfying, his solution to a lot of problems was to kill and then reanimate, he had a pet badger (through the find familiar spell) that was somehow turned into a weird memory erasing flumph.
My personal favourite is his end game goal was to become powerful enough to become a demi lich, because all politicians in the Necromage world were liches, traditional liches who ate souls were Republicans and Demilich's (our home games have demiliches be weaker than lichs but they dont need to consume souls) are Democrats, and to change the planar reputation of necromancers by opening a "friendly necromancer" adventuring company, where you can pay to be cloned and once the clone is fully grown Dr Longfellow takes you to a random plane of existence to start your own adventure. This came about because every person we ran into hated Longfellow once they learned he was a necromancer
I played a human necromancer in our descent from Avernus campaign. He had a stated goal of trying to find a less muhahah evil method of becoming a lich, a certain plot point in the campaign has made that a even more entertaining goal. Their core ability is hampered with a undeads crap attack bonus. Dance Macabre though is a surprisingly effective spell, not only do you get fairly effective troops from the fallen townsfolk they can lift you up on their shoulders and parade you around town after the battle. The undead with that spell on my character had +9 to hit and were hitting for I think +8 to damage, my memory is shaky on that. Finger of death is the slow but effective army builder a chump a day is all it takes.
Danse Macabre is great, I made a level 10 necromancer sheet to use as a boss in a game I ran last week. Lvl 10 Mountain Dwarf (I think) necromancer, +4 to Int by that level trapped in a soul gem only able to use Danse Macabre to create skeletons to defend it and give it new souls so the soul inside wouldnt die.
With Danse Macabre and the level 6 necromancer ability working in tandem (the bonus to hit and HP takes effect on any undead created from a necromancy spell, not just animate dead) they had +12 to hit and +10 damage, and 23HP. 8 of them were a very suitable boss for 4 level 5 characters all of whom are veteran players who know how to get the most from a turn.
I just made a necromancer for Out of the Abyss. We're still at level one. She's a high elf wizard with sage background.
Essentially she is a serious academic. As a sage she was motivated to carve out her own niche field of research which led her to the taboo subject of necromancy and blurring the lines between life and death. She believes finding ways to manipulate this line can unlock new fields of study and be the foundation for future academics like her. Her peers and mentors have scorned her for her work believing she is messing with forces that are not meant to be trifled with. My character however realizes that most pioneers were misunderstood in their time, and she stubbornly believes she can prove that her work is worthwhile and will bring value. She is a scientist who seeks truth and to unlock knowledge that is not yet understood--she will leave the moral dilemmas to the philosophers and politicians. To further her studies, because she lacks the support of her community she must go above and beyond that of her peers. She must frequently leaves the comforts of the university to gather new knowledge to aid her research which is what takes her to the Underdark for the start of the campaign.
i will always go by the saying that the divine soul sorcerer is probebly the second best necromancer you can play, superior to the necro wizard in regards to how many thralls you can have at an time but lacking in many of the neat useful necromancy spells the wizard has and also having overall slightly weaker thralls than the wizard, making it an valid choice in y oppion, you got finger of death from sorcerer and create undead + animate dead from cleric list, an bonus spell to your limited spells and the abillity to grow spooky skeleton wings to better control your thralls, as well as twinned spell to get more permanent undead per day and font of magic to convert 1st and 2nd level spell slots into spell slots usable for animate dead, so i think that an necro wizard 6 divine soul 14 would be really good.
other than that an oathbreaker palladin gets to buff up both fiends and undead alike with their feature, and the summon greater demon spell allows you to summon two kinds of demons from mordekinens tombe of foes that are really useful for an necromancer, one demon that can posess any corpse and another that can constantly revive ghouls, so playing an paladin 7 / wizard 13 would allow you to have an small amount of really elite minions at you command.
furthermore an hexblade multiclass with the mobile feat and war caster that focuses on vampiric touch, run arround the battlefield, punch people, eat their souls and run away
there, those are the most fun necromancy multiclass ideas i have come up with so far i think
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
I have a bard who's learning as much necromancy as he can after learning that the mother he's been looking for for 17 years was likely killed in the attack from the Abyss on his village. Playing a sad necromancer bard is a surprising amount of fun. Between 5th and 10th levels he's learning one to three necromancer spells with each level up, either from the bard list, Additional/Magical Secrets, or the Magic Initiate: Warlock feat. It's not the usual necromancer build, and it's not where I thought the character would go when I started playing him, but it's certainly a thing I can highly recommend!
I have a bard who's learning as much necromancy as he can after learning that the mother he's been looking for for 17 years was likely killed in the attack from the Abyss on his village. Playing a sad necromancer bard is a surprising amount of fun. Between 5th and 10th levels he's learning one to three necromancer spells with each level up, either from the bard list, Additional/Magical Secrets, or the Magic Initiate: Warlock feat. It's not the usual necromancer build, and it's not where I thought the character would go when I started playing him, but it's certainly a thing I can highly recommend!
You might even **** arround and get both hallow and summon greater demon so you can trap a dybukk and use its corpse possession powers for yourself
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
In my current campaign I’m playing a lawful evil Dragonborn necro who is a moody corpse with a bad temper and even worse arrogance, somehow I’ve never had him killed by my 90% paliden party. I’m trying to balance him with humor and probably being the only person in the party with good int score (20)
As long as this necro thread is getting a necro, let me add my necro (¬‿¬) Hope you're well Third
I have a spore druid necromancer, on the backburner that I really want to play as a PC and NPC. Variant Human for resilient (con) and Warcaster by 4. Idea is to combine Animate Dead and Conjure Animals. Her skeletons would have these iridescent stalks breaking out of the skull, a lot like the Ophiocordyceps Fungus that zombifies ants and pops out of their heads. She'd keep 4 skeletons with bows, sword and shield and mount them on giant bats or giant wasps using conjure animals.
As long as this necro thread is getting a necro, let me add my necro (¬‿¬) Hope you're well Third
I have a spore druid necromancer, on the backburner that I really want to play as a PC and NPC. Variant Human for resilient (con) and Warcaster by 4. Idea is to combine Animate Dead and Conjure Animals. Her skeletons would have these iridescent stalks breaking out of the skull, a lot like the Ophiocordyceps Fungus that zombifies ants and pops out of their heads. She'd keep 4 skeletons with bows, sword and shield and mount them on giant bats or giant wasps using conjure animals.
do note that there is an entire spell specifically for having giant wasps and other insects with giant insect, with the added bonus that you might be able to use your fancy animating spores to reanimate a fallen adjacent wasp before it becomes small again
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
I’m playing a Hobgoblin Necromancer myself right now. He is a fanatic pacifist who refuses to kill living creatures, but has no problem to raise the dead whenever the chance appears. His justification is that by employing already dead creatures in combat, you can avoid living people to die prematurely.
I took Moderately Armored at level 4 and due to his background as a Hobgoblin, he is now like a captain commanding a small army of undeads trying to protect the innocent.
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In my Descent into Avernus campaign, our party has a Hobgoblin Necromancy Wizard named Lorag Rend. I love his character, and love necromancers. What are your ideas for necromancer characters, what race/multiclass/background combinations for a necromancy wizard/cleric/warlock that you have/want-to play as?
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I've a couple of NPC necromancers I would love to play given the chance (although one is Chaotic Evil so might not be that one i ever get to play).
First one is a kindly old man, head of the Necromancy School at the Wizards guild, played as a police medical examiner/mortician and generally there to help the local authorities with murder scene investigation, he's your basic wizard with observant feat build.
The Second is a Chaotic Evil Gnoll, I loved hamming it up/chewing the scenery in the one encounter the party have had with him so far, he animates zombies for food as it keeps the meat nice and "fresh" longer.
I'm putting together a back up character in case my current PC dies.
A lizardfolk wizard/cleric. the party is currently level 7 so I'm looking at wizard 6/cleric 1. Might throw in a couple of warlock levels to get the devil's sight.
The idea would be to lean heavily into the pragmatic, emotionless characteristic of lizardfolk. Rather than just eating the bodies of the dead, he sees them as potential allies. Resurrection is just an efficient means for getting your allies back in the fight. Souls are just a poorly utilised fuel source. So he wouldn't consider himself evil but the rest of the party might. I think I'd use the far traveller background just to emphasise this.
For flavour though, I'd play him almost like a witch doctor. Rather than a spell book, he'd carry carved bones, shrunken heads, preserved animal bodies etc. I'd stress the fact that when he uses the cleric spells to heal people, it's a very unsettling sensation - like sitting on a recently used toilet seat.
I just think it would be fun to play a necromancer who doesn't understand why everyone has a problem with what he does. He's just trying to help in his own, very direct but unsympathetic way.
In one of my current campaigns, I'm playing a Moon Elf Wizard who is diving hardcore into the necromancy track. It's a very story-focused campaign, so our builds were all based more around backstory choices than the actual mechanics, which has allowed for some really interesting experiments. My dumb baby has a twin brother who disappeared (Haunted One background), and she has absolutely convinced herself that he must be dead. All her choices are based on trying to find out what happened to him/get him back, which might include multiclassing into Warlock if she were to come across a patron who she thinks would help her get answers. However, I gave the DM full reign over whether he's really dead and why he disappeared, so she might turn into a crazy paranoid Necromancer and then discover he just ran off to be a farmer of something, who knows? We're still pretty squishy and low-level, so we've got some time to see where this goes.
Reading, Writing, Procrastinating, sometimes with clever snark and mythical creatures.
Find me playing games at Quests & Chaos and Torpid Gaming Network, writing them at Itch, and yelling about them most other places.
All my info is at my Linktr.ee - hit me up to play, write, produce, or more!
I know summoning can get real clunky but I’d like to dO a combo that is like a necromancer from diablo II.
Re flavour spells and invocations into things like bone armor, bone spear, curse, shadow blade.
speak with the dead/ soul cage stuff too.
not sure where to start, probably a need to start scrapbooking from
shadow sorcerer, wizard, warlock, cleric
I made a necromancer who was a doctor called Dr Longfellow for a multi planar game we played with a lot of diverse characters from universes typically portrayed in media/legends (our barb was a Saiyan, our Bard was a troll from Azeroth, our ranger was from the Monster Hunter games universe and our sorc was a competitor of Merlins) but my necromancer was from a world I and the DM colaboratively made up.
It was a world where only necromancy magic exists and the only gods worshipped are death gods, and nearly everyone was capable of living forever until a point where they choose not to be brought back to life. Their souls then go to power stations to be used as an energy source, there bodies were reanimated and used for manual labour. It was a pretty strange necro-utopia where typically doctors spent their time improving the clone spell and the process for growing new bodies so that they wouldnt develop diseases or wouldnt get injured as easily. But Longfellow was particularly attached to his body so his focus was on combatting diseases when they inevitably arrived.
He filled the healer role of the party (not possible when you play RAW but we use a homerule that wizards can learn any spell off of scrolls they find, since its the DM who decides the scrolls you get anyway.) and we ended up in some whacky situations. The more I filled in about the world the more Dr Longfellow's legend grew. He constantly referred to himself as being 7 because in the necromage world you dont count years you count bodies you've had. He talked about how eating food was disgustingly satisfying, his solution to a lot of problems was to kill and then reanimate, he had a pet badger (through the find familiar spell) that was somehow turned into a weird memory erasing flumph.
My personal favourite is his end game goal was to become powerful enough to become a demi lich, because all politicians in the Necromage world were liches, traditional liches who ate souls were Republicans and Demilich's (our home games have demiliches be weaker than lichs but they dont need to consume souls) are Democrats, and to change the planar reputation of necromancers by opening a "friendly necromancer" adventuring company, where you can pay to be cloned and once the clone is fully grown Dr Longfellow takes you to a random plane of existence to start your own adventure. This came about because every person we ran into hated Longfellow once they learned he was a necromancer
I played a human necromancer in our descent from Avernus campaign. He had a stated goal of trying to find a less muhahah evil method of becoming a lich, a certain plot point in the campaign has made that a even more entertaining goal. Their core ability is hampered with a undeads crap attack bonus. Dance Macabre though is a surprisingly effective spell, not only do you get fairly effective troops from the fallen townsfolk they can lift you up on their shoulders and parade you around town after the battle. The undead with that spell on my character had +9 to hit and were hitting for I think +8 to damage, my memory is shaky on that. Finger of death is the slow but effective army builder a chump a day is all it takes.
Danse Macabre is great, I made a level 10 necromancer sheet to use as a boss in a game I ran last week. Lvl 10 Mountain Dwarf (I think) necromancer, +4 to Int by that level trapped in a soul gem only able to use Danse Macabre to create skeletons to defend it and give it new souls so the soul inside wouldnt die.
With Danse Macabre and the level 6 necromancer ability working in tandem (the bonus to hit and HP takes effect on any undead created from a necromancy spell, not just animate dead) they had +12 to hit and +10 damage, and 23HP. 8 of them were a very suitable boss for 4 level 5 characters all of whom are veteran players who know how to get the most from a turn.
I just made a necromancer for Out of the Abyss. We're still at level one. She's a high elf wizard with sage background.
Essentially she is a serious academic. As a sage she was motivated to carve out her own niche field of research which led her to the taboo subject of necromancy and blurring the lines between life and death. She believes finding ways to manipulate this line can unlock new fields of study and be the foundation for future academics like her. Her peers and mentors have scorned her for her work believing she is messing with forces that are not meant to be trifled with. My character however realizes that most pioneers were misunderstood in their time, and she stubbornly believes she can prove that her work is worthwhile and will bring value. She is a scientist who seeks truth and to unlock knowledge that is not yet understood--she will leave the moral dilemmas to the philosophers and politicians. To further her studies, because she lacks the support of her community she must go above and beyond that of her peers. She must frequently leaves the comforts of the university to gather new knowledge to aid her research which is what takes her to the Underdark for the start of the campaign.
i will always go by the saying that the divine soul sorcerer is probebly the second best necromancer you can play, superior to the necro wizard in regards to how many thralls you can have at an time but lacking in many of the neat useful necromancy spells the wizard has and also having overall slightly weaker thralls than the wizard, making it an valid choice in y oppion, you got finger of death from sorcerer and create undead + animate dead from cleric list, an bonus spell to your limited spells and the abillity to grow spooky skeleton wings to better control your thralls, as well as twinned spell to get more permanent undead per day and font of magic to convert 1st and 2nd level spell slots into spell slots usable for animate dead, so i think that an necro wizard 6 divine soul 14 would be really good.
other than that an oathbreaker palladin gets to buff up both fiends and undead alike with their feature, and the summon greater demon spell allows you to summon two kinds of demons from mordekinens tombe of foes that are really useful for an necromancer, one demon that can posess any corpse and another that can constantly revive ghouls, so playing an paladin 7 / wizard 13 would allow you to have an small amount of really elite minions at you command.
furthermore an hexblade multiclass with the mobile feat and war caster that focuses on vampiric touch, run arround the battlefield, punch people, eat their souls and run away
there, those are the most fun necromancy multiclass ideas i have come up with so far i think
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Edit: Wrong thread :)
I have a bard who's learning as much necromancy as he can after learning that the mother he's been looking for for 17 years was likely killed in the attack from the Abyss on his village. Playing a sad necromancer bard is a surprising amount of fun. Between 5th and 10th levels he's learning one to three necromancer spells with each level up, either from the bard list, Additional/Magical Secrets, or the Magic Initiate: Warlock feat. It's not the usual necromancer build, and it's not where I thought the character would go when I started playing him, but it's certainly a thing I can highly recommend!
You might even **** arround and get both hallow and summon greater demon so you can trap a dybukk and use its corpse possession powers for yourself
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
In my current campaign I’m playing a lawful evil Dragonborn necro who is a moody corpse with a bad temper and even worse arrogance, somehow I’ve never had him killed by my 90% paliden party. I’m trying to balance him with humor and probably being the only person in the party with good int score (20)
As long as this necro thread is getting a necro, let me add my necro (¬‿¬) Hope you're well Third
I have a spore druid necromancer, on the backburner that I really want to play as a PC and NPC. Variant Human for resilient (con) and Warcaster by 4. Idea is to combine Animate Dead and Conjure Animals. Her skeletons would have these iridescent stalks breaking out of the skull, a lot like the Ophiocordyceps Fungus that zombifies ants and pops out of their heads. She'd keep 4 skeletons with bows, sword and shield and mount them on giant bats or giant wasps using conjure animals.
do note that there is an entire spell specifically for having giant wasps and other insects with giant insect, with the added bonus that you might be able to use your fancy animating spores to reanimate a fallen adjacent wasp before it becomes small again
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
I’m playing a Hobgoblin Necromancer myself right now. He is a fanatic pacifist who refuses to kill living creatures, but has no problem to raise the dead whenever the chance appears. His justification is that by employing already dead creatures in combat, you can avoid living people to die prematurely.
I took Moderately Armored at level 4 and due to his background as a Hobgoblin, he is now like a captain commanding a small army of undeads trying to protect the innocent.