School of Necromancy: Death Sculptor

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.Your fascination with death and undeath however is prodigious and was infused with your impeccable sense of aesthetics and artistry. Unlike the fools who waste their energies animation a legion of rotting corpses and useless skeletons, your tastes are much more... sophisticated. Not content with a shambling army of rotting flesh, you prefer to infuse undeath into the most beautiful and sublime creatures, and turn them into magnificent masterpieces that the lowbrow necromancers can never understand, or achieve.

Most people see necromancers as menacing, or even villainous, due to the their close association with death. You pay them absolutely no heed. The rabble can think what they want, all that matters to you is your art. Genius exacts its price, and those who are beneath you can't be expected to understand true greatness and beauty.

 

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.

Undead Body

At 2nd level, your fascination with undeath lets you learn how to autopsy dead bodies.

By spending one hour with a corpse, you can learn all the characteristics of the creature when it was still alive. You learn the creature's CR level, as well as any Actions it had during life.

In addition, you must internalize the undead in order to better understand their machinations. This is the only way to improve your art. If the creature was undead, you may start grafting parts of its body onto your own. You may only graft body parts from an undead creature whose CR is equal to your Wizard level. Doing so grants you access to one Action of your choice from that creature's body associated with the part grafted, except for the Multiattack action. You can only graft Actions, you cannot graft resistances, immunities or other traits, and you cannot graft Legendary or Lair actions. The grafting process takes an hour for every CR level of the undead creature.

For instance, at Level 2, you can graft a Ghoul's (CR1) claws onto your hands, giving you access to its paralyzing claw attack with a Constitution save of DC 10. The process takes one hour to complete.

Note that any body parts grafted onto you are obviously monstrous or undead and are visible to other people unless you take steps to conceal it. The body part has to logically work with your body. If the DM deems the body part you are grafting on is too big, he may allow it but this will cause a lot of logistical problems for you while adventuring.

In addition, each time you undergo the grafting process, a part of your mind is shaved away. Roll for and gain one Short-Term Madness effect from the DMG (p.259). The effect wears of normally.

You may only have one grafted ability at any time, but you may replace it with another graft from another creature at a future date.

Death Sculpting

At 6th level, you learn the Animate Dead spell, if you don't know it already. When you cast the Animate Dead Spell, it gains the following special characteristics:

At Higher Levels. You may cast this spell with a 4th level or higher spell slot. If you do, you can target a single corpse or dead body of any non-undead creature with a CR of 1. That body becomes an undead creature known as a Death Sculpture under your control, following the same rules as the Animate Dead Spell. The stats of the undead are the same as it had in real life, with the following changes:

• It gains the Undead creature type
• It gains immunity to the Exhausted and Poisoned conditions (it still takes poison damage)
• It loses any Lair and Legendary Actions
• It retains its mental stats but is otherwise under your thrall as a normal Animated Dead zombie or skeleton.

In addition, you can bolster the effect by spending additional spell slots. If you do so, the spell becomes a special ritual and the casting time becomes one hour per CR of the corpse being animated. It still consumes all spell slots used. For each spell slot above 3rd level you use, you can add 1 CR (per spell slot level above 3) to the CR of the body being used as a base for the spell. You can use as many spell slots as you want in the casting of the spell, sacrificing your magic power for a stronger Death Sculpture.

For instance, if you cast the spell with one 4th level slot, you can animate a CR1 monster. If you cast it with two 4th level slots, you can animate a CR2 monster. If you cast it with a two 4th level slots and one 5th level slot, you can animate a CR5 monster body. You may theoretically animate very strong bodies with this spell, but at the cost of most of your magic power.

You still need to recast the spell with enough spell slots to match the CR level of the Death Sculpture every 24 hours, although recasting to retain control only takes the normal minute casting time and not the full ritual time. If you do not re-cast the spell with the appropriate spell slots to reach the Death Sculpture's CR, it goes berserk after 24 hours and attacks everything in sight, with a huge grudge against you for desecrating its body. You may still attempt to re-assert control with a regular casting of the spell using the appropriate spell slots (1 minute casting time) if you can subdue the Death Sculpture before it kills you.

While under the effects of the Animate Dead spell, the Death Scuplture is also immune to Charm and Frighten effects.

The pursuit of beauty is singular, and genius is only one step away from madness. You can only ever have one Death Sculpture at any given time. Each time you make a new Death Sculpture, gain one Long-Term madness effect from the DMG (p.260). This effect wears off normally.

Greater Sculpting

At 10th level, your artistry improves. You can upgrade the undead you control with Death Scultping by making changes and enhancements to its body. To make an upgrade, you need a fresh corpse of another non-undead creature. You require 1 hour of time per CR level of the Death Scultpure along with 100 gold per CR for ingredients and other reagents to make the upgrade.
 
You can make any single one of the following upgrades. You can only make one upgrade per corpse:

• You can set any of its ability scores to any one ability score of the corpse you used
• You can increase its hit dice by one, up to the Hit Dice of the corpse (this can change the Hit Dice from a D8 to a D12, for instance). Adjust Hit Point totals accordingly.
• You can add any single Action from the corpse's action list to your Death Sculpture.

Every time you do an upgrade, the CR of your Death Sculpture changes.

• If you used a body with a CR higher than your Death Sculpture, the CR automatically becomes equal to that of the dead body plus four.
• If the corpse's CR is equal to or less than your Death Sculpture, add three to the CR of your Death Sculpture.

Take note that this makes it harder to retain control of the Death Sculpture with each daily casting of Animate Dead. You will need to dedicate more and more spell slots to maintaining your Death Sculpture every day. But we must all make sacrifices for our pursuit of ultimate beauty!

Once you start upgrading your Death Sculpture, you devote more and more of your soul into it. If your upgraded Death Sculpture is ever destroyed, you must make a Wisdom Save with a DC equal to the Death Sculpture's CR. If you fail this saving throw, you permanently gain one indefinite madness flaw from the DMG (p.260).

In addition, your body no longer ages or requires sustenance or sleep, as you have become infused with the powers of undeath.

One With Death

At 14th level, your love for the undead knows no bounds. It now allows you to possess the undead. What better way to appreciate death and learn its secrets than by becoming one of the dead?

By spending ten minutes in a profane, obscene ritual, you can attempt to infuse your soul into any undead. The target undead must be within touch range and in contact with you for the entire duration of the ritual. If contact is broken, the ritual fails prematurely. At the end of the ten minutes, the undead target must make a Charisma save against your Spell DC. It may choose to fail this save. Strong-willed undead are harder to maintain possesion over and will fight your soul. If the undead's charisma score is 12 or higher, it may repeat the saving throw to break free of your control every hour.

If the saving throw is successful, nothing happens. On a failure, you possess the undead's body while retaining all your personality, alignment and Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma scores. You maintain all your class abilities as long as your new body is physically capable of using them. However, you can’t use any of your special senses, such as darkvision, unless your new form also has that sense. The rest of your stats are those of the undead body.

Your original body becomes dead for all intents and purposes. If the undead body you possess is destroyed, your soul returns to your body if you are within 100' of your body. If not, you die.  You may also voluntarily end this possession at any time as a bonus action, if your body is within 100'. The possession is permanent until you end it or the undead is destroyed. Do note that if your body has decayed or been physically destroyed while your soul was away, your will have nowhere to return to and will die.

You may use this feature a number of times per long rest equal to your constitution modifier, minimum of once per day. You can only possess one undead at any given time.

You can use this feature to possess your Death Sculpture. While possessed in this manner, you still need to maintain the Death Sculpture with the Animate Dead spell, but you gain a +3 CR bonus to the computation of the total CR level of the spell slots used due to the close affinity of your soul to the body. (for example, if you use two 4th level slots, you get a 5 CR total instead of 2 CR). Maintaining the Animate Dead spell removes the Saving Throw requirement against Charisma for the Death Sculpture, as the magic you sacrificed suppresses its will.