School of Necromancy 2024

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. The School of Necromancy is a wizard subclass in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition that focuses on manipulating the forces of life, death, and undeath.

Necromancy Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, choose two Wizard spells from the Necromancy school, each of which must be no higher than level 2, and add them to your spellbook for free.  

In addition, whenever you gain access to a new level of spell slots in this class, you can add one Wizard spell from the Necromancy school to your spellbook for free. The chosen spell must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

In addition, when you cast the Find Familiar spell, your familiar may be an undead creature type as well.

Soul Harvest

Starting at the 2nd level, by reaping life, you are able to claim a fraction of those unfortunate creatures' souls to regenerate your wounds and fortify your body. At the end of your turn, if you or any undead under your control have killed one or more creatures, you gain hit points equal to your necromancer level. If doing so would grant you more hit points than you can have, you gain temporary hit points equal to the amount of excess hit points received.

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 raise an additional number of undead. This number is equal to half your wizard level. You no longer require a corpse or pile of bones to do so; the skeleton or zombie will claw its way up from underground and acts on your next turn. 

Whenever you create 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.

Animate Major Undead

Beginning at 10th level, your pursuit of knowledge has led to uncover the secrets to mastering undead of all sizes. You can now raise any corpse that is Huge or smaller of a monstrosity, humanoid, or beast with a challenge rating of 3 or lower. It keeps its original abilities and attacks, but loses any resistances, immunities, legendary actions, and senses it had and gains the immunities and vulnerabilities of its type, skeleton or zombie. You can issue mental commands to the creature as the animate dead spell. You can only control one major undead at a time. This feature functions as the spell animate dead, except where otherwise noted. You may use this feature on an existing undead you control to reassert your control over it. You must finish a long rest before you can use this feature again.

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.

Additionally, your lifespan is slowed; for every 10 years that pass, your body ages only 1 year.

Command 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 has advantage on the saving throw. If it fails the saving throw and has an Intelligence of 12 or higher, it can repeat the saving throw at the end of every hour until it succeeds and breaks free.

In addition, the duration of your control over undead creatures that you create using a necromancy spell is extended indefinitely until the creature is killed, eliminating your need to recast the spell to maintain control.