That sounds a lot like the domains of Shar, who includes things like nothingness, oblivion and desolation – she also created her own Shadow Weave as a counter to Mystral's Weave, but I think that one doesn't exist anymore.
I think it probably makes more sense to just repurpose Oathbreaker into some kind of Oath of Corruption like PsyrenXY suggested, as it fits that kind of theme and could suit a few different deities or ideals. Personally I don't think breaking an oath really needs to do more than cause you to no longer be a Paladin, until you can see atonement or swear a different oath.
Though it could be interesting if there were an "Oathbreaker" sub-class that is more about seeking atonement in extreme ways, e.g- maybe it can't Divine Smite, instead it can spend its Lay On Hands (with limits) to deal extra damage of its weapon type, their spells could be focused on things like compelled duel to try and force enemies to fight them so they can atone through brave deeds etc.?
But what if they don't seek atonement? Although I believe there should definitely be an oath of atonement, a martyr/flagellant kind of paladin for ex-criminals and ex-oathbreakers, with some masochistic features and gameplay rewarding taking one for the team and being below half HP. And it should support unarmored fighting in some way.
Though an unbeliever paladin is a whole different thing. Which part of their power is skill/training, and which is faith? They know how to channel, but what do they channel?
Necromancer is not inherently evil, but some key necromancy spells are inherently evil. Animate Dead, Negative energy flood, create undead, and finger of death are all evil because they create a creature that is by nature evil/harmful. Bestow Curse is also considered evil by most cultural norms, but in game isn’t necessarily evil. If you play a Necromancer that never cast the evil spells you can be a “Good” Necromancer. If you cast those spells but always try make sure that your undead do no harm to innocent people you could be a morally ambiguous Necromancer. Their are only 4 inherently evil necromancy spells, 5 if your world considers curses to be evil. It’s not hard to be a “Good” Necromancer especially with Summon Undead allowing you to avoid the evil spells to gain a meat puppet.
On topic of necromancy, it's all about the lore. If animating the undead means ripping a soul out of its deserved afterlife and shoving it inside its carcass while compelling it to violence, it is certainly not a nice thing to do. Can be justified by saving lives though. However, in a world where spellcasters can create consciousness to animate objects, it might not be an issue.
So, regarding the "no subclass should be inherenetly evil"; honestly I'm going to disagree with that for classes whose thematic point/background is to promote and/or emulate certain forms of behavior.
I think the point is more that players should be able to use the mechanics to build characters mostly how they want, as many things in D&D are not inherently evil. For example, Death Domain clerics can represent followers of Myrkul (one of the Dead Three) who is pretty unambiguously evil, but why not also Kelemvor who is generally regarded as good or at worst neutral?
Necromancer is a bit trickier; I guess in theory you could ditch the sub-class and create a more general purpose "Summoner" sub-class that bolsters any created/summoned creatures, though the risk is making it too generic so it becomes less interesting, but I think it could be made interesting, and you could then use that to run a necromancer if you wanted.
I would usually argue in that case that the Paladin should choose a new oath to swear instead. If they refuse to swear a new oath then they're really choosing not to be a Paladin anymore.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
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Necromancer is not inherently evil, but some key necromancy spells are inherently evil. Animate Dead, Negative energy flood, create undead, and finger of death are all evil because they create a creature that is by nature evil/harmful. Bestow Curse is also considered evil by most cultural norms, but in game isn’t necessarily evil. If you play a Necromancer that never cast the evil spells you can be a “Good” Necromancer. If you cast those spells but always try make sure that your undead do no harm to innocent people you could be a morally ambiguous Necromancer. Their are only 4 inherently evil necromancy spells, 5 if your world considers curses to be evil. It’s not hard to be a “Good” Necromancer especially with Summon Undead allowing you to avoid the evil spells to gain a meat puppet.
I think this will depend on what, if anything, they do with these spells. And, I suppose, if they change zombies, etc in the 2024 MM.
One thing could be your animated dead being a stat block in the spell so not necessarily being “infused with evil magic” and not automatically attacking any living thing.
We will have to see. But I don’t know, to the OP, if it needs to be in the DMG
Finally, to attempt to start to address a point that has been talked about a bit but not seriously focused on, any DMs here want to speak up on a preference for building from printed stat blocks vs class features for major humanoid NPCs? Because the initial idea behind having a few subclasses in the DMG was to provide the building blocks for DMs to design NPCs around certain typically antagonistic archetypes. Curious to know who from exprience feels that having the pieces there helps fill a need.
When I DM, for humanoid NPCs I use statblocks and add on one or two class features to give the flavour of what class they are without the unnecessary complexity of a full character sheet and because as a general rule enemies have more HP, lower AC and lower damage than player characters. However, I know another DM who exclusively builds their humanoid NPCs as player characters.
Given we have Warlocks who derive their power from Fiends but are not themselves inherently evil, Necromancers, in D&D, needn’t be restricted to being villains. Some Necromancers may study Necromancy better to counter Undead monsters. Moving the current Wizard subclass into the DMG to become a “Villain” potentially removes it as an option at some tables (since the Death Domain and Oathbreaker Paladin are presented as being only available to players at their DM’s discretion).
I suspect we’ll see some “get you by” guidance come out around the time of release of the 2024 PHB to enable 2014-format subclasses, like the Necromancer and the other omitted Cleric and Wizard subclasses, to be adapted to the newer rules, then a book with updated subclasses sometime later.
The question I have is if you want a necromancer BBEG is it harder as a DM to create them via the subclass like a PC, with all the spell selections, stat generation, ASI/feats, etc. Or, looking at MP:MoM’s Necromancer Wizard take that stat block and adjust it as needed with additional spells etc. They already have Grim Harvest (modified version of the School of Necromancy subclass’s feature)
Seems to me as the stat block would be easier to modify and if you really want to build it from the class, it’s still there in the 2014 PHB and will be revised, most likely, in a post-core book release.
Edit: I do like how the Necromancer Wizard handled summoning zombies or skeletons and maybe a similar approach could work for animate dead without having to dig up grandma or leaving your zombies outside of town to stand there until an unfortunate villager happens to wander by and gets eaten.
I'd take the MP:MotM Necromancer, make them immune to Necrotic damage, give them 10-20 zombie/skeleton minions (10 hp each) that are all immune to Necrotic damage give them 3x uses of Circle of Death per day give them 3x uses of Counterspell/Dispel Magic per day replace Arcane Burst with at will Negative Energy Flood
give them Lair actions: 1) creatures of their choice touching the floor within 120 ft of them must make Con save or have speed halved until a different lair action is used. 2) fill their lair with magical darkness that their undead minions can see through that lasts for 1 round, and which counts as a 2nd level spell for the purpose of Dispel Magic and Daylight. 3) resurrect 1d4+2 zombie / skeleton minions.
Just had the idea today that if they do the Villainous Class section in the new DMG, they could add Necromancer as well since it didn't make it as a PHB subclass. It's very much a classic BBEG type, and I'm not at all confident the new MM will have blocks that give a proper toolkit for DM to design a BBEG who can interact with the setting the way a major caster should. Think it could happen, or is this just wistful thinking on my part?
Won't happen. Necromancers are a very core subtype, as each school of magic has their own specialist. They aren't going to split away Necromancy and leave it as a villianous subtype (which are often DM restricted)
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
I really hope they don't include "Oathbreaker" again purely to eliminate the confusion it causes, as it's very clearly not intended to be that any Paladin who breaks their oath becomes an Oathbreaker. I think "sub-classes" like those really ought to be changed into monster/NPC templates with "evil paladin" features since it also isn't really playable given that Oathbreaker can be an active impediment to a non-evil party.
Death Domain Cleric is more functional but it also feels a bit redundant alongside Grave Cleric. I prefer for sub-classes to aim to be somewhat general so you can use them as good or evil as you please.
Necromancy is a bit tricky; I was actually hoping OneD&D would do away with schools of magic as Wizard sub-classes, in favour letting you pick a school as a first or second level feature (to reduce spell copying costs) and to then focus on sub-classes that more substantially change how the core class plays, such as Blade Singer and Order of Scribes. There would still be room for a Necromancer sub-class in that case, since it can be specifically about raising the dead, and it would make some sense for that to be held back for an "evil player options" section. But by ditching schools as sub-classes they could do things like combine abjurer with war magic, rework illusion into a more general control sub-class (which could still choose to focus on illusion) and so-on.
I was hoping for the same with Cleric Domains as well, i.e- make Cleric sub-classes that change how it plays so you can choose to be any type of cleric in support of your choice of deity. They've sort of done that with the Holy Orders but it feels to me like the wrong way round to do it.
I want them to bring back opposition schools, but that too can be filed away under "never going to happen"
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
So, regarding the "no subclass should be inherenetly evil"; honestly I'm going to disagree with that for classes whose thematic point/background is to promote and/or emulate certain forms of behavior.
I think the point is more that players should be able to use the mechanics to build characters mostly how they want, as many things in D&D are not inherently evil. For example, Death Domain clerics can represent followers of Myrkul (one of the Dead Three) who is pretty unambiguously evil, but why not also Kelemvor who is generally regarded as good or at worst neutral?
Kelemvor is probably a better fit for "Grave" than "Death", in terms of what the current subclasses actually represent. He got stuck with the "Death" tag in the PHB because Grave didn't exist then. The point of the "Death" Domain is to represent gods who want their followers to commit murder for its own sake and/or who promote the spread of undeath. And while many things in D&D are not inherently evil, murder and the undead are typically evil. If you go into the Monsters section and select the Undead type, it gives you 12 pages. If you filter it to just Evil alignments, you get 9 pages. The majority of undead are Evil per RAW; this is a deliberate design point. Ergo deities who seek to foment their spread are going to be primarily Evil (Kelemvor is the only D&D original god from the PHB list with the Death Domain and a Neutral alignment as opposed to Evil), and so will be empowering Evil individuals as their followers. You can't entirely disconnect Clerics and Paladins from morality without undercutting the roleplay element of them being chosen agents of a deity.
Also, if 2 subclasses out of what would be 50 between the new DMG and PHB are hard or soft locked to Evil, then players are still able to build characters mostly how they want.
Kelemvor is probably a better fit for "Grave" than "Death", in terms of what the current subclasses actually represent. He got stuck with the "Death" tag in the PHB because Grave didn't exist then.
Kelemvor has always been Death domain for as long as he has existed as a deity. Grave was retconned awkwardly into 5th edition long after the Death domain and Kelemvor already existed in the lore, and I strongly suspect it was because they'd already released a Death domain cleric that didn't really do a good job of representing all that the domain encompasses.
Really the Death Domain Cleric in 5e is just a necrotic blaster, but the domain of death covers way more than that, and Grave domain does a much better job of it. In fact its features are nice and neutral, enough that you can easily play it as good, neutral or evil as you please, especially since core Cleric can choose spells like animate dead and inflict wounds as standard, giving you the room to tailor in any direction.
It would only take a slight lore change to make it in the OneD&D Death domain, though I wonder WotC would be willing to do that after it's been so popular as "Grave". But lore wise the Death domain is no one thing; yes you can have gods that favour murder or undeath like Bhaal and Myrkul but they're still gods of death in their own way, just as Kelemvor is a god of death in his own way (currently the god of death, really, though as always with D&D lore it's super complicated). Though I think officially he's both Death and Grave domain, in the same way that many other deities belong to multiple domains now.
We're just in this weird situation where mechanically Grave domain Cleric makes it seem like the superset of Death, rather than the other way around, but I'd argue that's the fault of 5e "Death" Cleric being way too specialised to the point of basically only having one feature (necrotic blasting) that just gets better over time. Strictly speaking they could still be used to do good, by necrotically blasting undead to bits, and they do still have all of a Cleric's core kit in terms of healing, resurrecting the living, turning undead etc. But I think if we're going to keep both as playable sub-classes it needs a major overhaul.
Necromancy is in a different situation because it only really has one feature that requires you to do a bit of raising the dead, but it could be made more general purpose; not that Wizards have a lot of other necromancy options, but there are still things around life-force manipulation like life transference, vampiric touch and similar which aren't inherently evil.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I think the Death domain works when you understand that it's not just about the state of death (which is more properly covered by Grave, yes); it's about the classic evil Cleric/cultist who goes around blighting the land, raising undead hordes, and/or sacrificing people in the name of their black god/fiend overlord (none of which are particularly supported by the Grave domain's kit or description). As I said, there's already classes where you can argue the names overlap, and most domain lists are at least half Cleric spells. Both mechanically and narratively, the two Domains cover different roles despite their names being synonomous, in the same way that Nature and Life cover two distinct mechanical and narrative roles. I'm not saying you couldn't have a bunch of gods overlap Grave and Death either, but imo even just as a player option if the DM is either permissive or running more Evil campaign, the subclass currently under the "Death Domain" heading covers enough distinct features and narrative connotations that it should get a reprint somewhere eventually.
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But what if they don't seek atonement? Although I believe there should definitely be an oath of atonement, a martyr/flagellant kind of paladin for ex-criminals and ex-oathbreakers, with some masochistic features and gameplay rewarding taking one for the team and being below half HP. And it should support unarmored fighting in some way.
Though an unbeliever paladin is a whole different thing. Which part of their power is skill/training, and which is faith? They know how to channel, but what do they channel?
Necromancer is not inherently evil, but some key necromancy spells are inherently evil. Animate Dead, Negative energy flood, create undead, and finger of death are all evil because they create a creature that is by nature evil/harmful. Bestow Curse is also considered evil by most cultural norms, but in game isn’t necessarily evil. If you play a Necromancer that never cast the evil spells you can be a “Good” Necromancer. If you cast those spells but always try make sure that your undead do no harm to innocent people you could be a morally ambiguous Necromancer. Their are only 4 inherently evil necromancy spells, 5 if your world considers curses to be evil. It’s not hard to be a “Good” Necromancer especially with Summon Undead allowing you to avoid the evil spells to gain a meat puppet.
On topic of necromancy, it's all about the lore. If animating the undead means ripping a soul out of its deserved afterlife and shoving it inside its carcass while compelling it to violence, it is certainly not a nice thing to do. Can be justified by saving lives though. However, in a world where spellcasters can create consciousness to animate objects, it might not be an issue.
I think the point is more that players should be able to use the mechanics to build characters mostly how they want, as many things in D&D are not inherently evil. For example, Death Domain clerics can represent followers of Myrkul (one of the Dead Three) who is pretty unambiguously evil, but why not also Kelemvor who is generally regarded as good or at worst neutral?
Necromancer is a bit trickier; I guess in theory you could ditch the sub-class and create a more general purpose "Summoner" sub-class that bolsters any created/summoned creatures, though the risk is making it too generic so it becomes less interesting, but I think it could be made interesting, and you could then use that to run a necromancer if you wanted.
I would usually argue in that case that the Paladin should choose a new oath to swear instead. If they refuse to swear a new oath then they're really choosing not to be a Paladin anymore.
For fun I decided to have a go at an "Oath of Atonement" Paladin sub-class, it's very rough but I quite like the idea.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I think this will depend on what, if anything, they do with these spells. And, I suppose, if they change zombies, etc in the 2024 MM.
One thing could be your animated dead being a stat block in the spell so not necessarily being “infused with evil magic” and not automatically attacking any living thing.
We will have to see. But I don’t know, to the OP, if it needs to be in the DMG
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
When I DM, for humanoid NPCs I use statblocks and add on one or two class features to give the flavour of what class they are without the unnecessary complexity of a full character sheet and because as a general rule enemies have more HP, lower AC and lower damage than player characters. However, I know another DM who exclusively builds their humanoid NPCs as player characters.
Given we have Warlocks who derive their power from Fiends but are not themselves inherently evil, Necromancers, in D&D, needn’t be restricted to being villains. Some Necromancers may study Necromancy better to counter Undead monsters. Moving the current Wizard subclass into the DMG to become a “Villain” potentially removes it as an option at some tables (since the Death Domain and Oathbreaker Paladin are presented as being only available to players at their DM’s discretion).
I suspect we’ll see some “get you by” guidance come out around the time of release of the 2024 PHB to enable 2014-format subclasses, like the Necromancer and the other omitted Cleric and Wizard subclasses, to be adapted to the newer rules, then a book with updated subclasses sometime later.
The question I have is if you want a necromancer BBEG is it harder as a DM to create them via the subclass like a PC, with all the spell selections, stat generation, ASI/feats, etc. Or, looking at MP:MoM’s Necromancer Wizard take that stat block and adjust it as needed with additional spells etc. They already have Grim Harvest (modified version of the School of Necromancy subclass’s feature)
Seems to me as the stat block would be easier to modify and if you really want to build it from the class, it’s still there in the 2014 PHB and will be revised, most likely, in a post-core book release.
Edit: I do like how the Necromancer Wizard handled summoning zombies or skeletons and maybe a similar approach could work for animate dead without having to dig up grandma or leaving your zombies outside of town to stand there until an unfortunate villager happens to wander by and gets eaten.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
A necromancer villain?
I'd take the MP:MotM Necromancer,
make them immune to Necrotic damage,
give them 10-20 zombie/skeleton minions (10 hp each) that are all immune to Necrotic damage
give them 3x uses of Circle of Death per day
give them 3x uses of Counterspell/Dispel Magic per day
replace Arcane Burst with at will Negative Energy Flood
give them Lair actions:
1) creatures of their choice touching the floor within 120 ft of them must make Con save or have speed halved until a different lair action is used.
2) fill their lair with magical darkness that their undead minions can see through that lasts for 1 round, and which counts as a 2nd level spell for the purpose of Dispel Magic and Daylight.
3) resurrect 1d4+2 zombie / skeleton minions.
Won't happen. Necromancers are a very core subtype, as each school of magic has their own specialist. They aren't going to split away Necromancy and leave it as a villianous subtype (which are often DM restricted)
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
I want them to bring back opposition schools, but that too can be filed away under "never going to happen"
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Kelemvor is probably a better fit for "Grave" than "Death", in terms of what the current subclasses actually represent. He got stuck with the "Death" tag in the PHB because Grave didn't exist then. The point of the "Death" Domain is to represent gods who want their followers to commit murder for its own sake and/or who promote the spread of undeath. And while many things in D&D are not inherently evil, murder and the undead are typically evil. If you go into the Monsters section and select the Undead type, it gives you 12 pages. If you filter it to just Evil alignments, you get 9 pages. The majority of undead are Evil per RAW; this is a deliberate design point. Ergo deities who seek to foment their spread are going to be primarily Evil (Kelemvor is the only D&D original god from the PHB list with the Death Domain and a Neutral alignment as opposed to Evil), and so will be empowering Evil individuals as their followers. You can't entirely disconnect Clerics and Paladins from morality without undercutting the roleplay element of them being chosen agents of a deity.
Also, if 2 subclasses out of what would be 50 between the new DMG and PHB are hard or soft locked to Evil, then players are still able to build characters mostly how they want.
Kelemvor has always been Death domain for as long as he has existed as a deity. Grave was retconned awkwardly into 5th edition long after the Death domain and Kelemvor already existed in the lore, and I strongly suspect it was because they'd already released a Death domain cleric that didn't really do a good job of representing all that the domain encompasses.
Really the Death Domain Cleric in 5e is just a necrotic blaster, but the domain of death covers way more than that, and Grave domain does a much better job of it. In fact its features are nice and neutral, enough that you can easily play it as good, neutral or evil as you please, especially since core Cleric can choose spells like animate dead and inflict wounds as standard, giving you the room to tailor in any direction.
It would only take a slight lore change to make it in the OneD&D Death domain, though I wonder WotC would be willing to do that after it's been so popular as "Grave". But lore wise the Death domain is no one thing; yes you can have gods that favour murder or undeath like Bhaal and Myrkul but they're still gods of death in their own way, just as Kelemvor is a god of death in his own way (currently the god of death, really, though as always with D&D lore it's super complicated). Though I think officially he's both Death and Grave domain, in the same way that many other deities belong to multiple domains now.
We're just in this weird situation where mechanically Grave domain Cleric makes it seem like the superset of Death, rather than the other way around, but I'd argue that's the fault of 5e "Death" Cleric being way too specialised to the point of basically only having one feature (necrotic blasting) that just gets better over time. Strictly speaking they could still be used to do good, by necrotically blasting undead to bits, and they do still have all of a Cleric's core kit in terms of healing, resurrecting the living, turning undead etc. But I think if we're going to keep both as playable sub-classes it needs a major overhaul.
Necromancy is in a different situation because it only really has one feature that requires you to do a bit of raising the dead, but it could be made more general purpose; not that Wizards have a lot of other necromancy options, but there are still things around life-force manipulation like life transference, vampiric touch and similar which aren't inherently evil.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I think the Death domain works when you understand that it's not just about the state of death (which is more properly covered by Grave, yes); it's about the classic evil Cleric/cultist who goes around blighting the land, raising undead hordes, and/or sacrificing people in the name of their black god/fiend overlord (none of which are particularly supported by the Grave domain's kit or description). As I said, there's already classes where you can argue the names overlap, and most domain lists are at least half Cleric spells. Both mechanically and narratively, the two Domains cover different roles despite their names being synonomous, in the same way that Nature and Life cover two distinct mechanical and narrative roles. I'm not saying you couldn't have a bunch of gods overlap Grave and Death either, but imo even just as a player option if the DM is either permissive or running more Evil campaign, the subclass currently under the "Death Domain" heading covers enough distinct features and narrative connotations that it should get a reprint somewhere eventually.