I am a long-time player and fan of D&D as well as other Fantasy RPGs. As much as Necromantic magic has been portrayed in many systems, I've never found one that I liked. 5e is no exception.
Level 2) Grim Harvest: You gain HP for killing creatures with spells, especially Necromantic ones. Great...unless you're at full HP in which case this does you no good.
Level 6) Undead Thralls: You gain the Animate Dead spell if you don't already have it. When you target a corpse or pile of bones, you get one additional Zombie or Skeleton. Your creation's HP is increased by your Wizard level (which is good IMHO) and their damage is increased by your PB (which isn't bad either). This is sort of the bread and butter of the Subclass because it continues to increase as you level. Even at Level 6, a humble Skeleton with 13 HP now has 19 HP and does an additional 3 damage if it hits.
Level 10) Inured to Death: You are Resistant to Necrotic damage and your HP maximum cannot be reduced. This isn't bad I guess but we're halfway to 20 and this seems a bit underwhelming to me.
Level 14) Command Undead: This ability enables you to take command of undead not created by you, even those under the control of another. It's based on a Charisma Save (not something most Undead are known to be good at) and your Save DC is likely around 20 at this point. However, any undead you control with this are lost if you use the feature again. It's limited to one undead with 60' of you which, frankly, stinks. Also, if the target has an Int of 8 or higher, they get Advantage on their Save. If their Int is 12 or higher, they get to try again every hour. So, creatures like Vampires and the like are almost impossible to control for any real length of time.
In addition, anything created by the Animate Dead spell will break free of your control if you don't recast the spell every 24 hours.
My first question is; How do these great and powerful Necromancers and Liches control literal armies of Undead? I understand that there is a certain amount of 'Boss Handwavium' in most games but the idea of a powerful being having to set a timer to go off every 23 3/4 hours seems a bit silly to me. The other issue is that even though your minions might have more HP, at higher levels they'll never hit anything.
I think that being a Necromancer should be more about raising and BUFFING your minions and less about creating shambling armies of HP. I feel that there should also be more of a connection between the Necromancer and his minions. As a result, I suggest the following changes to the existing Necromancer rules:
1) Grim Harvest: At your discretion, HP that would be gained through Grim Harvest can be shared with your Undead minions. If you gain HP through Grim Harvest, instead of raising your own HP you may raise the HP of one or more of your minions within 10' of you. This distance increases to 15' at level 6, 20' at level 10 and 30' at level 14. (This gives Grim Harvest a purpose if you're already at full HP).
2) Undead Thralls: Any minions under your control gain your PB as a bonus to hit. When you use the Animate Dead spell, you may choose to either create two minions as per normal, or you may create one that is permanently under your control. (This is quality over quantity)
3) Inured to Death: HP lost from Necromantic damage is treated the same as HP gained through Grim Harvest i.e. For each point of Necromantic damage the caster takes, they may heal one minion by one HP. (This means that using Necrotic damage to hit a Necromancer is a BAD idea...DUH!)
4) Command Undead: The Necromancer can control up to their PB worth of undead minions. Note that going over their limit by using this ability again releases ALL of the minions already controlled through this ability (so, learn to count!).
I don't feel that any of these are OP but rather add necessary tweaks to existing rules. A Necromancer can now, through slow but steady progression, raise an army beyond counting and keep them under control. They can repair damaged minions through damaging others with their spells as well as taking over a handful of enemy minions.
So an entire subclass is set aside? Why? Because of the old 'Necromancy is always evil' trope? Rogues aren't evil when they steal or murder? How many spells from the Necromancy school do other mages cast? Are they all evil?
It's a sad and shallow response to a valid question. Next, please.
Necromancy is fundamentally broken both mechanically and from a world building perspective.
World Building Perspective
Either Necromancy is fundamentally evil and thus outlawed essentially everywhere, or the entire world's economy would be built on necromancy. If necromancy is totally fine and there is no morally reason not to do it, then undead are the perfect slaves. Mindless, obedient, immortal, and untiring they can work every hour of every day requiring no food, water, shelter or rest never complaining yet able to do all the tasks that don't require intelligence to perform - mining, cleaning, building, farming would all be done by undead. Why wouldn't every home have an undead maid? Why wouldn't all mining and farm-work be done by undead? While the living are simply managers herding and instructing their undead servants.
The only alternative to a world filled with undead servants, is for Necromancy to be outlawed basically everywhere.
Mechanically
Necromancy also sucks from a mechanical perspective, having a horde of undead at the beck and call of one player either requires each individual undead to be incredibly weak, or that player takes over the entire game and the rest of the party are superfluous. The onlyfair/fun mechanical way to do Necromancy for a player is to allow them only one undead minion that functions similarly to the Beastmaster Ranger or the Drakewarden or the Wild Fire Druid. But then that doesn't really "feel" like a necromancer does it?
Necromancy is fundamentally broken both mechanically and from a world building perspective.
World Building Perspective
Either Necromancy is fundamentally evil and thus outlawed essentially everywhere, or the entire world's economy would be built on necromancy. If necromancy is totally fine and there is no morally reason not to do it, then undead are the perfect slaves. Mindless, obedient, immortal, and untiring they can work every hour of every day requiring no food, water, shelter or rest never complaining yet able to do all the tasks that don't require intelligence to perform - mining, cleaning, building, farming would all be done by undead. Why wouldn't every home have an undead maid? Why wouldn't all mining and farm-work be done by undead? While the living are simply managers herding and instructing their undead servants.
The only alternative to a world filled with undead servants, is for Necromancy to be outlawed basically everywhere.
Mechanically
Necromancy also sucks from a mechanical perspective, having a horde of undead at the beck and call of one player either requires each individual undead to be incredibly weak, or that player takes over the entire game and the rest of the party are superfluous. The onlyfair/fun mechanical way to do Necromancy for a player is to allow them only one undead minion that functions similarly to the Beastmaster Ranger or the Drakewarden or the Wild Fire Druid. But then that doesn't really "feel" like a necromancer does it?
Well, as for world building, the same could be said why doesn’t every household have goodberries cast daily? Starvation the thing of the past! It’s a cantrip so easy to get. Oh, your average Joe isn’t a class so wouldn’t have access to it? Who’s casting and recasting Animate dead to keep millions of undead servants in every household in your world?
Mechanically, I agree. Hordes of undead can be a problem. And having a limited number a better solution. Maybe similar to summon spells allow your undead minion to use your spellcasting modifier to hit, or something. Boost HP more per level, as well as AC. Having one permanent, like find familiar, would be a bonus to a Necromancer subclass. And maybe allow the casting of Animate Dead to have up to casting modifier in number, but they are weak, like they are now so won’t last long at higher tiers and needs recast.
Necromancy is fundamentally broken both mechanically and from a world building perspective.
World Building Perspective
Either Necromancy is fundamentally evil and thus outlawed essentially everywhere, or the entire world's economy would be built on necromancy. If necromancy is totally fine and there is no morally reason not to do it, then undead are the perfect slaves. Mindless, obedient, immortal, and untiring they can work every hour of every day requiring no food, water, shelter or rest never complaining yet able to do all the tasks that don't require intelligence to perform - mining, cleaning, building, farming would all be done by undead. Why wouldn't every home have an undead maid? Why wouldn't all mining and farm-work be done by undead? While the living are simply managers herding and instructing their undead servants.
The only alternative to a world filled with undead servants, is for Necromancy to be outlawed basically everywhere.
Mechanically
Necromancy also sucks from a mechanical perspective, having a horde of undead at the beck and call of one player either requires each individual undead to be incredibly weak, or that player takes over the entire game and the rest of the party are superfluous. The onlyfair/fun mechanical way to do Necromancy for a player is to allow them only one undead minion that functions similarly to the Beastmaster Ranger or the Drakewarden or the Wild Fire Druid. But then that doesn't really "feel" like a necromancer does it?
Well, as for world building, the same could be said why doesn’t every household have goodberries cast daily? Starvation the thing of the past! It’s a cantrip so easy to get. Oh, your average Joe isn’t a class so wouldn’t have access to it? Who’s casting and recasting Animate dead to keep millions of undead servants in every household in your world?
Mechanically, I agree. Hordes of undead can be a problem. And having a limited number a better solution. Maybe similar to summon spells allow your undead minion to use your spellcasting modifier to hit, or something. Boost HP more per level, as well as AC. Having one permanent, like find familiar, would be a bonus to a Necromancer subclass. And maybe allow the casting of Animate Dead to have up to casting modifier in number, but they are weak, like they are now so won’t last long at higher tiers and needs recast.
How many people in the modern world can make a mobile phone, vs people who own a mobile phone? The OP suggests making it easier to make permanently controlled undead, once you have permanently controlled undead (which is possible with Finger of Death already) you have an economy selling & trading those undead and thus an undead-based economy. Because undead never die, they never wear out, once made a permanent undead lasts until someone deliberately destroys it so it can be handed down generation to generation, or traded from one household to another.
Starvation is also probably non-existent in D&D worlds, not only because of Goodberry (which is a 1st level spell not a cantrip) but Create Food and Water, and Plant Growth. Any realistic D&D world should have wandering bards and druids travelling the world casting Plant Growth for a fee on every farm in the realm. But eliminating starvation would be less apparent in the world because removing starvation doesn't eliminate the need for farming, cooking, or food markets because the magically created food is not enjoyable to eat. Goodberry is basically a vitamin pill, and Create Food and Water is explicitly extremely bland tasteless food. You're not creating a roast chicken with garlic mash and mint peas, it's unspiced tofu and white rice level food. And TBH having an over abundance of food is pretty necessary to support the number of large cities with nearby wilderness that we see in D&D, IRL in the medieval times almost everyone was a farmer living off of the food they grew themselves and paying a small portion to the local lord to support a handful of guard/soldiers to protect them from bandits. If the world contains many large cities with mage towers, temples to a dozen gods, forges, armies capable of defending them from monster etc.. then you need that farming/food surplus to support all those people who are not farming.
There is already a Summon Undead spell, so they should really just remove Animate Dead or give it the Conjure-spell treatment and have it create some area of effect vaguely related to undead, then just make Necromancer a pet-subclass.
Either Necromancy is fundamentally evil and thus outlawed essentially everywhere, or the entire world's economy would be built on necromancy.
Something doesn't have to be fundamentally evil to be taboo. I can't think of a single culture on Earth that doesn't have notions of funeral rites and respecting the dead.
If necromancy is totally fine and there is no morally reason not to do it, then undead are the perfect slaves. Mindless, obedient, immortal, and untiring they can work every hour of every day requiring no food, water, shelter or rest never complaining yet able to do all the tasks that don't require intelligence to perform - mining, cleaning, building, farming would all be done by undead. Why wouldn't every home have an undead maid? Why wouldn't all mining and farm-work be done by undead? While the living are simply managers herding and instructing their undead servants.
The logistics of this are difficult because the game tells you very explicitly that adventurers (or adventurer-equivalent people) are exceptional and rare in any given population, so there simply can't be enough wizards with 3rd level spells to keep that many skeletons and zombies under control and also do all the other things you'd want wizards for (who's going to protect against magical assassins and spies? Who's updating all the wards on the castle? Who's creating and protecting teleportation circles?) But more importantly, most people would find it repulsive, and it's not a good idea to "hire" a maid that could wipe out your family or the neighbors if someone forgets to (or can't, for whatever reason) recast the control spell.
The only alternative to a world filled with undead servants, is for Necromancy to be outlawed basically everywhere.
It doesn't have to be outright outlawed either. Every country has laws to regulate socially frowned upon activities (sex work, gambling, drinking, carrying weapons.)
The onlyfair/fun mechanical way to do Necromancy for a player is to allow them only one undead minion that functions similarly to the Beastmaster Ranger or the Drakewarden or the Wild Fire Druid.
Summon Undead does just that. I don't have a horse in this race but I think the flavor is neat. "Rotting thing", "ghost thing" and "boney thing" covers most of the things you'd want. The Hexblade's Accursed Specter also seemed really fun to me.
I'd also like to give shoutouts to Danse Macabre, because I feel it does what most people want to do with Animate Dead much better, while also being high level enough that it's not super disruptive.
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I am a long-time player and fan of D&D as well as other Fantasy RPGs. As much as Necromantic magic has been portrayed in many systems, I've never found one that I liked. 5e is no exception.
Level 2) Grim Harvest: You gain HP for killing creatures with spells, especially Necromantic ones. Great...unless you're at full HP in which case this does you no good.
Level 6) Undead Thralls: You gain the Animate Dead spell if you don't already have it. When you target a corpse or pile of bones, you get one additional Zombie or Skeleton. Your creation's HP is increased by your Wizard level (which is good IMHO) and their damage is increased by your PB (which isn't bad either). This is sort of the bread and butter of the Subclass because it continues to increase as you level. Even at Level 6, a humble Skeleton with 13 HP now has 19 HP and does an additional 3 damage if it hits.
Level 10) Inured to Death: You are Resistant to Necrotic damage and your HP maximum cannot be reduced. This isn't bad I guess but we're halfway to 20 and this seems a bit underwhelming to me.
Level 14) Command Undead: This ability enables you to take command of undead not created by you, even those under the control of another. It's based on a Charisma Save (not something most Undead are known to be good at) and your Save DC is likely around 20 at this point. However, any undead you control with this are lost if you use the feature again. It's limited to one undead with 60' of you which, frankly, stinks. Also, if the target has an Int of 8 or higher, they get Advantage on their Save. If their Int is 12 or higher, they get to try again every hour. So, creatures like Vampires and the like are almost impossible to control for any real length of time.
In addition, anything created by the Animate Dead spell will break free of your control if you don't recast the spell every 24 hours.
My first question is; How do these great and powerful Necromancers and Liches control literal armies of Undead? I understand that there is a certain amount of 'Boss Handwavium' in most games but the idea of a powerful being having to set a timer to go off every 23 3/4 hours seems a bit silly to me. The other issue is that even though your minions might have more HP, at higher levels they'll never hit anything.
I think that being a Necromancer should be more about raising and BUFFING your minions and less about creating shambling armies of HP. I feel that there should also be more of a connection between the Necromancer and his minions. As a result, I suggest the following changes to the existing Necromancer rules:
1) Grim Harvest: At your discretion, HP that would be gained through Grim Harvest can be shared with your Undead minions. If you gain HP through Grim Harvest, instead of raising your own HP you may raise the HP of one or more of your minions within 10' of you. This distance increases to 15' at level 6, 20' at level 10 and 30' at level 14. (This gives Grim Harvest a purpose if you're already at full HP).
2) Undead Thralls: Any minions under your control gain your PB as a bonus to hit. When you use the Animate Dead spell, you may choose to either create two minions as per normal, or you may create one that is permanently under your control. (This is quality over quantity)
3) Inured to Death: HP lost from Necromantic damage is treated the same as HP gained through Grim Harvest i.e. For each point of Necromantic damage the caster takes, they may heal one minion by one HP. (This means that using Necrotic damage to hit a Necromancer is a BAD idea...DUH!)
4) Command Undead: The Necromancer can control up to their PB worth of undead minions. Note that going over their limit by using this ability again releases ALL of the minions already controlled through this ability (so, learn to count!).
I don't feel that any of these are OP but rather add necessary tweaks to existing rules. A Necromancer can now, through slow but steady progression, raise an army beyond counting and keep them under control. They can repair damaged minions through damaging others with their spells as well as taking over a handful of enemy minions.
Feedback is appreciated.
Honestly, the best fix for necromancers is "necromancers are NPCs".
So an entire subclass is set aside? Why? Because of the old 'Necromancy is always evil' trope? Rogues aren't evil when they steal or murder? How many spells from the Necromancy school do other mages cast? Are they all evil?
It's a sad and shallow response to a valid question. Next, please.
Necromancy is fundamentally broken both mechanically and from a world building perspective.
World Building Perspective
Either Necromancy is fundamentally evil and thus outlawed essentially everywhere, or the entire world's economy would be built on necromancy. If necromancy is totally fine and there is no morally reason not to do it, then undead are the perfect slaves. Mindless, obedient, immortal, and untiring they can work every hour of every day requiring no food, water, shelter or rest never complaining yet able to do all the tasks that don't require intelligence to perform - mining, cleaning, building, farming would all be done by undead. Why wouldn't every home have an undead maid? Why wouldn't all mining and farm-work be done by undead? While the living are simply managers herding and instructing their undead servants.
The only alternative to a world filled with undead servants, is for Necromancy to be outlawed basically everywhere.
Mechanically
Necromancy also sucks from a mechanical perspective, having a horde of undead at the beck and call of one player either requires each individual undead to be incredibly weak, or that player takes over the entire game and the rest of the party are superfluous. The onlyfair/fun mechanical way to do Necromancy for a player is to allow them only one undead minion that functions similarly to the Beastmaster Ranger or the Drakewarden or the Wild Fire Druid. But then that doesn't really "feel" like a necromancer does it?
Well, as for world building, the same could be said why doesn’t every household have goodberries cast daily? Starvation the thing of the past! It’s a cantrip so easy to get. Oh, your average Joe isn’t a class so wouldn’t have access to it? Who’s casting and recasting Animate dead to keep millions of undead servants in every household in your world?
Mechanically, I agree. Hordes of undead can be a problem. And having a limited number a better solution. Maybe similar to summon spells allow your undead minion to use your spellcasting modifier to hit, or something. Boost HP more per level, as well as AC. Having one permanent, like find familiar, would be a bonus to a Necromancer subclass. And maybe allow the casting of Animate Dead to have up to casting modifier in number, but they are weak, like they are now so won’t last long at higher tiers and needs recast.
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No, because minion classes are terrible gameplay.
How many people in the modern world can make a mobile phone, vs people who own a mobile phone? The OP suggests making it easier to make permanently controlled undead, once you have permanently controlled undead (which is possible with Finger of Death already) you have an economy selling & trading those undead and thus an undead-based economy. Because undead never die, they never wear out, once made a permanent undead lasts until someone deliberately destroys it so it can be handed down generation to generation, or traded from one household to another.
Starvation is also probably non-existent in D&D worlds, not only because of Goodberry (which is a 1st level spell not a cantrip) but Create Food and Water, and Plant Growth. Any realistic D&D world should have wandering bards and druids travelling the world casting Plant Growth for a fee on every farm in the realm. But eliminating starvation would be less apparent in the world because removing starvation doesn't eliminate the need for farming, cooking, or food markets because the magically created food is not enjoyable to eat. Goodberry is basically a vitamin pill, and Create Food and Water is explicitly extremely bland tasteless food. You're not creating a roast chicken with garlic mash and mint peas, it's unspiced tofu and white rice level food. And TBH having an over abundance of food is pretty necessary to support the number of large cities with nearby wilderness that we see in D&D, IRL in the medieval times almost everyone was a farmer living off of the food they grew themselves and paying a small portion to the local lord to support a handful of guard/soldiers to protect them from bandits. If the world contains many large cities with mage towers, temples to a dozen gods, forges, armies capable of defending them from monster etc.. then you need that farming/food surplus to support all those people who are not farming.
There is already a Summon Undead spell, so they should really just remove Animate Dead or give it the Conjure-spell treatment and have it create some area of effect vaguely related to undead, then just make Necromancer a pet-subclass.
Something doesn't have to be fundamentally evil to be taboo. I can't think of a single culture on Earth that doesn't have notions of funeral rites and respecting the dead.
The logistics of this are difficult because the game tells you very explicitly that adventurers (or adventurer-equivalent people) are exceptional and rare in any given population, so there simply can't be enough wizards with 3rd level spells to keep that many skeletons and zombies under control and also do all the other things you'd want wizards for (who's going to protect against magical assassins and spies? Who's updating all the wards on the castle? Who's creating and protecting teleportation circles?) But more importantly, most people would find it repulsive, and it's not a good idea to "hire" a maid that could wipe out your family or the neighbors if someone forgets to (or can't, for whatever reason) recast the control spell.
It doesn't have to be outright outlawed either. Every country has laws to regulate socially frowned upon activities (sex work, gambling, drinking, carrying weapons.)
Summon Undead does just that. I don't have a horse in this race but I think the flavor is neat. "Rotting thing", "ghost thing" and "boney thing" covers most of the things you'd want. The Hexblade's Accursed Specter also seemed really fun to me.
I'd also like to give shoutouts to Danse Macabre, because I feel it does what most people want to do with Animate Dead much better, while also being high level enough that it's not super disruptive.
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