1.) Ask your GM before you play how they feel about Necromancers and also where the party will be spending most of their time (in dungeons, in towns, etc.) and plan accordingly
2.) Don’t plan to have more than about six undead with you
3.) Discuss the fact that you want to play a necromancer with the party. Somebody else might want to play a Paladin or something else that is going to cause problems
4.) Look for opportunities to arm your skeletons with bows, then use spells such as Entangle or Web to trap your enemy.
5.) Stinking Cloud plus Zombie wrestlers is a great combo.
As it was a wizard class you're going to want as high an intelligence as you can. And you are also going to want a high constitution, both for HP because you won't have armor of any real use and for spell concentration checks.
As far as races go, a gnome it's a +2 int, high elves and tieflings get +1 int. If you can use a variant human you can get +1 to two different ability scores. There are different RP expectations for each race so think carefully.
Also look at the backgrounds, some people use background to get skilled proficiencies that the class would not normally receive.
I love Necromancers so did a 11 part thing about playing them in different ways, link to the last part here but it contains links to all the other parts:
I’m playing a good Necromancer myself right now. He is a pacifist! Which means I have never used Grim Harvest at all... but my Skellies are really effective in combat.
Sorry, I've never thought of necromantic abilities as being more "evil" then any other way of killing something. Is using necrosis really any different then using fire or lightning? If you're an inch from death, do you really care if I sacrifice a bit of my life-force to bring you back? Or must it be from divine sources? Evil is an effort, an intent, not a damage type.
Area Effect spells, nothing ruins a necromancers day like a fireball blowing up your nicely clumped together minions.
DM's using NPC's with Control Undead abilities, what is worse than having minions blown up? Having them controlled by someone else and turned against you. Fortunately this is a little easier nowadays as most NPC's and evil PC clerics don't have the ability to Command Undead anymore, I think Oathbreaker Paladins are the only playable (ish) class that can do this aside from Necromancer. If you do get the thumbs up to play a necromancer it would be worth also asking if you can do some in game/down time research into controlling undead so you know what to look out for with regards to creatures, religions and other entities that might hold sway over the undead and also means you know which groups might be a bit more zealous in their antipathy towards you and your creations.
The fresher the body, the easier it is to pass as normal. If you can cover up any wounds and freshen it up a bit then you might just be able to animate that npc the party inadvertantly killed and get it to walk you all out of town without anyone noticing. Mending and Prestidigitation can be a useful cantrips in this regard; Mending to mend holes in clothing, prestidigitation to remove blood splatter and clean the body up.
See if your DM would allow you ot animate Beasts as well as humanoids. The party might be a lot more inclined to have you along if you can provide them with undead horses that never tire or having some zombie wolves to go in and rough up a bandit camp or act as a diversion.
Thank you everyone! this actually helps a lot. I am still in the creation process of the character. But your responses definitely will help me to build a foundation and background.
As it was a wizard class you're going to want as high an intelligence as you can. And you are also going to want a high constitution, both for HP because you won't have armor of any real use and for spell concentration checks.
As far as races go, a gnome it's a +2 int, high elves and tieflings get +1 int. If you can use a variant human you can get +1 to two different ability scores. There are different RP expectations for each race so think carefully.
Also look at the backgrounds, some people use background to get skilled proficiencies that the class would not normally receive.
Hold on a minute. This is not necessarily true. It is right for a generic Wizard, but there are many instances where one doesn’t need the highest Int. There’s also many cases where the extra feat from human is better than the Int from another race.
Sorry, I've never thought of necromantic abilities as being more "evil" then any other way of killing something. Is using necrosis really any different then using fire or lightning? If you're an inch from death, do you really care if I sacrifice a bit of my life-force to bring you back? Or must it be from divine sources? Evil is an effort, an intent, not a damage type.
I believe it’s the general feeling and vibe of someone walking around with zombies and skeletons. My character has a good reasoning behind this: as a strong pacifist and preserver of life, he concluded that the best way to avoid unnecessary deaths is by making use of the ones who were already dead — so he takes every opportunity to animate an unfortunate dead enemy or ally. And every time an undead falls in combat, he cheers — because it could be one of his allies instead.
Sorry, I've never thought of necromantic abilities as being more "evil" then any other way of killing something. Is using necrosis really any different then using fire or lightning? If you're an inch from death, do you really care if I sacrifice a bit of my life-force to bring you back? Or must it be from divine sources? Evil is an effort, an intent, not a damage type.
It is a breach of a fundamental category. Ancient civilizations had lots of these. X could not do Y, only Z did Y, so if X ever did do Y, then it was a sin. The dead shouldn't be shambling along, only the living shambled, so if the dead ever did shamble, then it was a sin. Of course, those rules don't hold up so well in a world where the dead do occasionally get up and shamble. So, I have to assume that in any campaign world where Necromancy is considered evil, it (and undead) must be rather rare.
Sorry, I've never thought of necromantic abilities as being more "evil" then any other way of killing something. Is using necrosis really any different then using fire or lightning? If you're an inch from death, do you really care if I sacrifice a bit of my life-force to bring you back? Or must it be from divine sources? Evil is an effort, an intent, not a damage type.
It is a breach of a fundamental category. Ancient civilizations had lots of these. X could not do Y, only Z did Y, so if X ever did do Y, then it was a sin. The dead shouldn't be shambling along, only the living shambled, so if the dead ever did shamble, then it was a sin. Of course, those rules don't hold up so well in a world where the dead do occasionally get up and shamble. So, I have to assume that in any campaign world where Necromancy is considered evil, it (and undead) must be rather rare.
It's not just that. There are also issues with Desecration of the bodies of the dead instead of giving them a peaceful rest through burial or other funeral rite. There is connotations because of the negative energies that are used to power undead that necromancy draws upon. Necromancy does technically do things like healing spells but that could be considered drawing more upon positive energies in many respects.
But not all Campaign worlds see using the bodies of the dead in quite the same way. There is a culture in Eberon that actually sees it as an Honor to have their remains used to defend their kingdom after death and thus undead minions is not a bad thing.
Which makes it certainly something to discuss with your DM and how their world views things.
Why is it that almost everyone thinks about necros by the ability to animate the dead? I think about the instilling of fear, draining life (your or others), or curses of status ailments. Do necros really need to raise the dead to be dangerous? It may be what they're known for but it's not all they can do.
Why is it that almost everyone thinks about necros by the ability to animate the dead? I think about the instilling of fear, draining life (your or others), or curses of status ailments. Do necros really need to raise the dead to be dangerous? It may be what they're known for but it's not all they can do.
Theorycrafting. In an actual game, you really can’t summon hordes of undead. It’d take forever for them to just enter a dungeon room and there’d be no room for them to move. Plus, going to a town would be a complete headache.
Playing a necro is complicated, a lot of the necros abilities are morally wrong and are going to conflict within the party but undead are pretty simple to deal with, just throw em in a bag of holding. I believe you can get pearls of power pretty cheap as well, so just buy a bag of holding and 3 pearls of power and at level six you have a army of up to 24 skeletons each you can equip with great swords. I have a level 8 necro I’m playing and it’s pretty simple and not that actually long to play the undead if you know what your doing which mostly comes down to movement in the hard category, rping is the hardest of all going back to the morally wrong part and as long as your ok with having a lot of conflict with the Palidan and your group and you know each other’s thoughts and opinions on pvp and player death and knowing when “my palidan attacks you” is the right time if ever.
Playing a necro is complicated, a lot of the necros abilities are morally wrong and are going to conflict within the party but undead are pretty simple to deal with, just throw em in a bag of holding. I believe you can get pearls of power pretty cheap as well, so just buy a bag of holding and 3 pearls of power and at level six you have a army of up to 24 skeletons each you can equip with great swords. I have a level 8 necro I’m playing and it’s pretty simple and not that actually long to play the undead if you know what your doing which mostly comes down to movement in the hard category, rping is the hardest of all going back to the morally wrong part and as long as your ok with having a lot of conflict with the Palidan and your group and you know each other’s thoughts and opinions on pvp and player death and knowing when “my palidan attacks you” is the right time if ever.
The morality issues are not actually as black and white as your making them out to be. I stated in one of these threads at the very least. Not sure if it was this one. But there are actually societies, even officially printed ones, where necromancy is not considered somehow reprehensible. In fact one of them in Eberon actually considers it an Honor to have ones corpse animated in defense of their nation for it's protection.
I’m might have been a little black and white but I was referring to the fact that 9/10 times if you walk into a village with undead the townsfolk aren’t going to see undead as being honorable or anything except evil because in most religions the gods tend not to like undead as they see undead as insults to them and their power, the undead are stated to be evil like whights, or just needing to rob graves to get the materials to create one. What I was saying is that yes someone might find it honorable but in most cases you have to be “evil” or morally dubious to have undead additionally most people believe that sapping the life force of others to heal yourself, practicing occult magic, or cursing creatures to be “evil” and this stuff is all related beck to the features of the necro subclass.
I’m might have been a little black and white but I was referring to the fact that 9/10 times if you walk into a village with undead the townsfolk aren’t going to see undead as being honorable or anything except evil because in most religions the gods tend not to like undead as they see undead as insults to them and their power, the undead are stated to be evil like whights, or just needing to rob graves to get the materials to create one. What I was saying is that yes someone might find it honorable but in most cases you have to be “evil” or morally dubious to have undead additionally most people believe that sapping the life force of others to heal yourself, practicing occult magic, or cursing creatures to be “evil” and this stuff is all related beck to the features of the necro subclass.
I think you have a good point, so don’t take the following as criticism. It most definitely is not meant that way.
I think that a culture’s relationship to primal forces such as life and death and rebirth is one of the most powerful ways to add richness to the people. It is very important, if someone wants to be a good world builder, that they not think in overly-simplistic terms like “undead, yuck!” or “undead, let’s subvert expectations by making a 180 degree turn on ‘undead, yuck!’”
There’s many other options. For example, maybe only certain people are intended to end up getting animated in a culture. Maybe a PC wants to end up animated after he dies so that he can X, but he doesn’t belong to the right class of people. Maybe everyone in the culture is killed and animated after they reach a certain age.
Also, think about how the culture’s ideas about these primal forces have changed over time and why that change occurred. Perhaps a cultural position on animation has evolved from a good thing to something evil or vice versa. Perhaps one god of death and it’s followers are dealing with immigrants who are bringing their own god of death with them.
In fact, two different Lawful Good religions can end up in conflict with one another. (Though I much prefer the situation where a god has no definitive alignment and its followers have many different alignments.). How might a religious war between two LG gods of death look, especially if each of them has specific and complex guidelines about animation?
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Hey everyone! I am relatively new to D&D and am looking to create a necromancer. Is there any advice on how to best build my character?
two pieces of general advice
1.) Ask your GM before you play how they feel about Necromancers and also where the party will be spending most of their time (in dungeons, in towns, etc.) and plan accordingly
2.) Don’t plan to have more than about six undead with you
3.) Discuss the fact that you want to play a necromancer with the party. Somebody else might want to play a Paladin or something else that is going to cause problems
4.) Look for opportunities to arm your skeletons with bows, then use spells such as Entangle or Web to trap your enemy.
5.) Stinking Cloud plus Zombie wrestlers is a great combo.
As it was a wizard class you're going to want as high an intelligence as you can. And you are also going to want a high constitution, both for HP because you won't have armor of any real use and for spell concentration checks.
As far as races go, a gnome it's a +2 int, high elves and tieflings get +1 int. If you can use a variant human you can get +1 to two different ability scores. There are different RP expectations for each race so think carefully.
Also look at the backgrounds, some people use background to get skilled proficiencies that the class would not normally receive.
I love Necromancers so did a 11 part thing about playing them in different ways, link to the last part here but it contains links to all the other parts:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/class-forums/wizard/50937-necromancy-primer-part-11-the-undead-fan
I’m playing a good Necromancer myself right now. He is a pacifist! Which means I have never used Grim Harvest at all... but my Skellies are really effective in combat.
Sorry, I've never thought of necromantic abilities as being more "evil" then any other way of killing something. Is using necrosis really any different then using fire or lightning? If you're an inch from death, do you really care if I sacrifice a bit of my life-force to bring you back? Or must it be from divine sources? Evil is an effort, an intent, not a damage type.
A few general tactics to be aware/wary of:
Area Effect spells, nothing ruins a necromancers day like a fireball blowing up your nicely clumped together minions.
DM's using NPC's with Control Undead abilities, what is worse than having minions blown up? Having them controlled by someone else and turned against you. Fortunately this is a little easier nowadays as most NPC's and evil PC clerics don't have the ability to Command Undead anymore, I think Oathbreaker Paladins are the only playable (ish) class that can do this aside from Necromancer. If you do get the thumbs up to play a necromancer it would be worth also asking if you can do some in game/down time research into controlling undead so you know what to look out for with regards to creatures, religions and other entities that might hold sway over the undead and also means you know which groups might be a bit more zealous in their antipathy towards you and your creations.
The fresher the body, the easier it is to pass as normal. If you can cover up any wounds and freshen it up a bit then you might just be able to animate that npc the party inadvertantly killed and get it to walk you all out of town without anyone noticing. Mending and Prestidigitation can be a useful cantrips in this regard; Mending to mend holes in clothing, prestidigitation to remove blood splatter and clean the body up.
See if your DM would allow you ot animate Beasts as well as humanoids. The party might be a lot more inclined to have you along if you can provide them with undead horses that never tire or having some zombie wolves to go in and rough up a bandit camp or act as a diversion.
Don't forget you have Summon Undead from Tash's Cauldron of bubbly stuff so zombies and skeletons are not your only creations,. If you do not have Tasha's then the UA version of the spell is here: https://media.wizards.com/2020/dnd/downloads/UA2020-SpellsTattoos.pdf
Thank you everyone! this actually helps a lot. I am still in the creation process of the character. But your responses definitely will help me to build a foundation and background.
Hold on a minute. This is not necessarily true. It is right for a generic Wizard, but there are many instances where one doesn’t need the highest Int. There’s also many cases where the extra feat from human is better than the Int from another race.
I believe it’s the general feeling and vibe of someone walking around with zombies and skeletons. My character has a good reasoning behind this: as a strong pacifist and preserver of life, he concluded that the best way to avoid unnecessary deaths is by making use of the ones who were already dead — so he takes every opportunity to animate an unfortunate dead enemy or ally. And every time an undead falls in combat, he cheers — because it could be one of his allies instead.
It is a breach of a fundamental category. Ancient civilizations had lots of these. X could not do Y, only Z did Y, so if X ever did do Y, then it was a sin. The dead shouldn't be shambling along, only the living shambled, so if the dead ever did shamble, then it was a sin. Of course, those rules don't hold up so well in a world where the dead do occasionally get up and shamble. So, I have to assume that in any campaign world where Necromancy is considered evil, it (and undead) must be rather rare.
It's not just that. There are also issues with Desecration of the bodies of the dead instead of giving them a peaceful rest through burial or other funeral rite. There is connotations because of the negative energies that are used to power undead that necromancy draws upon. Necromancy does technically do things like healing spells but that could be considered drawing more upon positive energies in many respects.
But not all Campaign worlds see using the bodies of the dead in quite the same way. There is a culture in Eberon that actually sees it as an Honor to have their remains used to defend their kingdom after death and thus undead minions is not a bad thing.
Which makes it certainly something to discuss with your DM and how their world views things.
Why is it that almost everyone thinks about necros by the ability to animate the dead? I think about the instilling of fear, draining life (your or others), or curses of status ailments. Do necros really need to raise the dead to be dangerous? It may be what they're known for but it's not all they can do.
From the leftover parts of dead adventurers! 😆
Theorycrafting. In an actual game, you really can’t summon hordes of undead. It’d take forever for them to just enter a dungeon room and there’d be no room for them to move. Plus, going to a town would be a complete headache.
I might be a little late here but
Playing a necro is complicated, a lot of the necros abilities are morally wrong and are going to conflict within the party but undead are pretty simple to deal with, just throw em in a bag of holding. I believe you can get pearls of power pretty cheap as well, so just buy a bag of holding and 3 pearls of power and at level six you have a army of up to 24 skeletons each you can equip with great swords. I have a level 8 necro I’m playing and it’s pretty simple and not that actually long to play the undead if you know what your doing which mostly comes down to movement in the hard category, rping is the hardest of all going back to the morally wrong part and as long as your ok with having a lot of conflict with the Palidan and your group and you know each other’s thoughts and opinions on pvp and player death and knowing when “my palidan attacks you” is the right time if ever.
The morality issues are not actually as black and white as your making them out to be. I stated in one of these threads at the very least. Not sure if it was this one. But there are actually societies, even officially printed ones, where necromancy is not considered somehow reprehensible. In fact one of them in Eberon actually considers it an Honor to have ones corpse animated in defense of their nation for it's protection.
Take tool proficients in smith tools, learn fabricate, deck out skeletons in full plate, shields, bows, long swords.
I’m might have been a little black and white but I was referring to the fact that 9/10 times if you walk into a village with undead the townsfolk aren’t going to see undead as being honorable or anything except evil because in most religions the gods tend not to like undead as they see undead as insults to them and their power, the undead are stated to be evil like whights, or just needing to rob graves to get the materials to create one. What I was saying is that yes someone might find it honorable but in most cases you have to be “evil” or morally dubious to have undead additionally most people believe that sapping the life force of others to heal yourself, practicing occult magic, or cursing creatures to be “evil” and this stuff is all related beck to the features of the necro subclass.
I think you have a good point, so don’t take the following as criticism. It most definitely is not meant that way.
I think that a culture’s relationship to primal forces such as life and death and rebirth is one of the most powerful ways to add richness to the people. It is very important, if someone wants to be a good world builder, that they not think in overly-simplistic terms like “undead, yuck!” or “undead, let’s subvert expectations by making a 180 degree turn on ‘undead, yuck!’”
There’s many other options. For example, maybe only certain people are intended to end up getting animated in a culture. Maybe a PC wants to end up animated after he dies so that he can X, but he doesn’t belong to the right class of people. Maybe everyone in the culture is killed and animated after they reach a certain age.
Also, think about how the culture’s ideas about these primal forces have changed over time and why that change occurred. Perhaps a cultural position on animation has evolved from a good thing to something evil or vice versa. Perhaps one god of death and it’s followers are dealing with immigrants who are bringing their own god of death with them.
In fact, two different Lawful Good religions can end up in conflict with one another. (Though I much prefer the situation where a god has no definitive alignment and its followers have many different alignments.). How might a religious war between two LG gods of death look, especially if each of them has specific and complex guidelines about animation?