School of Necromancy (SWW)

The School of Necromancy explores the cosmic forces of life, death, and undeath. As you focus your studies in this tradition, you learn to manipulate the energy that animates all living things. As you progress, you learn to sap the life force from a creature as your magic destroys its body, transforming that vital energy into magical power you can manipulate.

Most people see necromancers as menacing, or even villainous, due to the close association with death. Not all necromancers are evil, but the forces they manipulate are considered taboo by many societies.

This is a rework of the base School of Necromancy from the Player's Handbook.

Necromancy Expert

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, and at each even-numbered level you gain in this class thereafter, you can add one additional spell to your spellbook from the wizard spell list. The chosen spell must be from the necromancy school.

Reap & Sow

At 2nd level, you gain the ability to reap the life energy from creatures you kill with your spells. Once per turn when you kill a creature that isn’t an undead or a construct with a spell of 1st-level or higher, you can create a pool of hit points equal to twice the spell’s level, or four times the spell’s level if the spell belonged to the school of necromancy. Immediately after this pool is created, choose one of the following effects to occur:

• You gain temporary hit points equal to the pool of hit points.
• Choose one creature you can see within 60 ft of the slain creature. They must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC or take necrotic damage equal to the pool of hit points.
• You can restore hit points to undead creature(s) you have created or summoned with your necromancy spells equal to twice the pool of hit points. The pool of hit points can be distributed in any way you’d like to applicable creatures within 60 ft of you. Any hit points from the pool not expended are lost.

You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier. You regain all expended uses of this feature when you finish a long rest.

Undead Thralls

At 6th level, you add the animate dead spell to your spellbook if it is not there already. When you cast animate dead, you can target one additional corpse or pile of bones, creating another zombie or skeleton, as appropriate.

Whenever you create or summon an undead using a necromancy spell, it has additional benefits:

• The creature’s hit point maximum is increased by an amount equal to your wizard level.
• The creature adds your proficiency bonus to its weapon damage rolls.

Inured to Undeath

Beginning at 10th level, you have resistance to necrotic damage, and your hit point maximum can’t be reduced. Additionally, you have advantage on any saving throw that an undead creature forces you to make.  You have spent so much time dealing with undead and the forces that animate them that you have become inured to some of their worst effects.

Dominate Undead

Starting at 14th level, you can use magic to bring undead under your control, even those created by other wizards. As an action, you can choose one undead that you can see within 60 feet of you. That creature must make a Charisma saving throw against your wizard spell save DC. If it succeeds, you can't use this feature on it again. If it fails, it becomes friendly to you and obeys your commands until you use this feature again.

Intelligent undead are harder to control in this way. If the target has an Intelligence of 8 or higher, it can repeat the saving throw at the end of every hour until it succeeds and breaks free. If it fails the saving throw and has an Intelligence of 12 or higher, it can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns until it succeeds and breaks free.