School of Spiritism

Not all who study necromancy seek to use its power to control the undead. Those who enter into the School of Spiritism look for ways to use necromancy as a means to combat the scourge of the undead and grant spirits their eternal rest.

Spiritists are frequently found using there powers to aid grieving citizens commune with lost loved ones, helping the city guard find killers, or assisting the clergy in combating the undead. Many spiritists are seen to be no better than their necromancer counterparts by those who do not understand their ideals, and so have suffered the fate of being outcast or mistrusted.

Necromancy Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a necromancy spell into your spellbook is halved.

Commune with Spirits

Your studies into death and the passing of spirits allows you the knowledge and understanding of communicating with those who have passed on.

At 2nd level, you gain the ability to enter a meditative state in which you can see and hear into the Ethereal Plane. You can see up to 60 feet in shades of gray, and anything beyond that distance is muddled. Your physical body cannot see or hear anything on its plane, however anything you speak out loud can be heard on both planes.

When you use this ability, if you are holding an item that had personal meaning to a deceased person, you have a 25 percent chance of summoning their spirit to your location for 5 minutes. The spirit must be capable of being summoned and cannot be in any way bound, sealed, or trapped in such a way as to prevent this summoning. On a failed roll, nothing happens and you are unable to confirm if a spirit even exists. 

You gain an additional use at 9th level, and a third use at 15th level.

Spells of the Grave

Your studies have given you a better understanding as to how the undead function, allow you to direct your focus on either communicating with benevolent spirits or using the curse of undeath to heal others.

At 6th level, you are provided the option to follow the path of a spirit medium, or that of a healer.

Speaker for the Dead

Your connection with those who have passed beyond has allowed you the ability to communicate further with the dead.

At 6th level, you add the speak with dead spell to your spellbook if it is not there already. When you cast speak with dead, it has the following added benefits:

• Duration of the spell is increased to 15 minutes.
• You can ask the corpse an additional three questions, for a maximum of eight.

Vampiric Conduit

You have found a means of leeching the animating force from the undead to heal the living.

At 6th level, you add the vampiric touch spell to your spellbook if it is not there already. When you cast vampiric touch against an undead creature, you can choose to heal a non-undead creature within 5 feet of you instead of healing yourself.

Inured to Undeath

Beginning at 10th level, you have resistance to necrotic damage, and your hit point maximum can’t be reduced. 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.

Instill Life

You have discovered the means of using magical healing as a method of reversing the curse of undeath.

Starting at 14th level, you can use magic to attempt to destroy an undead creature. By flooding an undead target with healing energy, you can instantly cause the undead's essence to be returned to the Celestial Plane in which it belongs.

The target must make a CON save against your spell DC. On a failure, if the target's CR level is equal to (or less than) half of your current character level, it is considered defeated and cannot be revived or reanimated. If the undead target has a CR level greater than half your character level, it instead takes 5d10+20 radiant damage and is stunned until the end of its next turn.

On a successful save, the target takes half damage from the roll, regardless of CR level.

In addition, this spell can instead be cast using the rules for revivify without requiring a material component.

 The spell’s damage increases by 1d10 when you reach 17th level (6d10+20) and 20th level (7d10+20).