School of Bones

The School of Bones is an offshoot of the School of Necromancy.  Its practitioners have a keen interest in anatomy and become adapt at manipulating both living and unliving skeletons.

Bonus Proficiency

At 2nd level, you gain proficiency in Medicine and you add double your proficiency bonus to any checks made using it.

Rattle the Bones

Starting at 2nd level, you can cause internal damage to your spells' victims.  When you damage a creature with a spell, you can make it take additional necrotic damage equal to your Intelligence modifier + your wizard level.  This has no effect on creatures without bones or similar structures.

Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Read the Bones

Starting at 2nd level, you can gain remarkable knowledge about a creature by examining its bones.  You must spend 1 minute closely examining and feeling a creature’s bones.  While the greatest members of the School of Bones need only a finger bone to use this ability, less powerful ones require more material to work with.  Make a Wisdom (Medicine) check.  You acquire the following information depending on your roll.  The results are cumulative, so if you roll a 17, you gain the relevant information for rolling a 10 and a 15.  For a given creature, you can make this roll only once, and the Help action cannot give you advantage.

10: If it’s fairly obvious, you learn the cause of death. 

15: You learn basic details about the creature such as its name and where it was from.  You have a better chance of determining the cause of death, and you also roughly know how long the creature has been dead. 

20: If you didn’t already know, you know the specific type of creature the bone comes from.  You also know what the creature was doing at or shortly before the time of death.  The GM should be as liberal as they think is appropriate.   It might be as simple as “Searching” or as broad as “Searching for the hidden treasure of Queen Yog.”  You also have a pretty good estimation of how long it has been dead.

25: If the creature knows how it died (for example, “Some crazy human ranger with a hamster stabbed me”), you learn that information.  You also know precisely how long it has been dead. 

30: You learn an important secret the creature had.

35: You can silently communicate with the creature that the bones come from as if you had cast Speak with Dead, with some differences.  The creature does not have to have a mouth and it gives much fuller answers than those provided by Speak with Dead. You can ask as many questions as you desire, and the creature must honestly answer.

Skeleton Master

At 6th level, you add the Animate Dead spell to your spellbook if it is not there already.  However, if it was not there already, you can only create skeletons with it, not zombies. When you cast Animate Dead, you can target one additional pile of bones, creating another skeleton.

Whenever you create a skeleton 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.

• You can spend an action to make any skeletons you have under your control shrink to tiny skulls that can easily fit on a bracelet or necklace or even in pockets.  You can spend another action to restore the skeletons to their full size in unoccupied spaces you can see within 30 feet of you.

Super Soldier Skeletons

When you reach 10th level, the skeletons you create with the spell Animate Dead or other necromancy spells become especially puissant. Their attacks count as magical for the purposes of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage.

In addition, you can cast Animate Dead and similar spells on piles of bones from a Small or larger non-humanoid creature.  Some of the bones rearrange to become a size Small or Medium creature.  If the creature was roughly humanoid in shape, it has the same statistics as a normal skeleton. 

If the creature has a different anatomy, it also has the statistics as a skeleton. except that it does not have a shortbow attack or a shortsword attack.  Instead, it has a single melee weapon attack that is appropriate for the creature.  For example, it might have a bite attack that does piercing damage, a claw attack that does slashing damage, or a slam attack that does bludgeoning damage.  Regardless of the type, it deals 1d8 + 2 damage.

Finally, you can spend a bonus action to empower your skeletons.  Until the start of your next turn, they have advantage on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws.  You can command them with the same bonus action.  Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Lord of Bones

By the time you reach 14th level, you have achieved a high level of specialization in bone magic.  You gain the following features.

Big/Small-Boned.  As a bonus action, you can increase or decrease your size as if affected by Enlarge/Reduce.  This lasts until you spend another bonus action to return to your normal size.  The rest of your body doesn't change in size as much as your bones do, so when you are smaller than normal you appear particularly fleshy, and you appear very skeletal when enlarged.

Bone Armor.  As an action, you can grow a strong layer of protective bone armor.  Your base AC becomes 14 + your Dexterity modifier.  This lasts until you spend a bonus action to remove it.

Roll the Bones.  You add the Augury spell to your spellbook if it isn't already there.  You always have it prepared, and it doesn't count against the limit on the number of spells you can prepare.  When you cast it, you don't need expensive material components; you can use any set of bones. If you do so, it doesn't expend a spell slot when you cast it.