Putting the “Fun” in “Fundead” – Necromancer Spotlight

I already talked about Necromancy Wizards once in my Gremishka article. However, I believe it is time they were given their own article. Necromancers are a pretty good Wizard subclass, and have a few really funny things going for them. In this article, I shall go over the subclass and what makes it as good as it is.

Grim Harvest

Once per turn, when you kill an enemy with a spell, regain hit points equal to twice its level. Thrice its level if it’s a necromancy spell.

This is a trap people fall for very often, so watch out. There are no good necromancy spells for blasting. Not circle of death, not blight, not horrid wilting. This is a bit of extra HP when you cast fireball or synaptic static. It’s also worth mentioning multiclassing Wizard with Cleric, typically Clc 5/Wiz 13, Clc 6/Wiz 14 or Clc 18/ Wiz 2. The first two are going to hurt compared to a regular Wizard, but may be a buff compared to straight Cleric due to the Wizard spell list being that much better and the Cleric spell list being primarily upcast spirit guardians. Spirit guardians is the biggest user of Grim Harvest, especially if you can mow down some cheap horde monsters or have a familiar throw bags of rats into the aura.

Naturally, if you have access to Strixhaven or Ravnica backgrounds you don’t need to go Cleric at all. Lorehold and Orzhov do everything by themselves.

Undead Thralls

The main feature of Necromancers. Add your level to the HP of all your undead created by necromancy spells and add your proficiency bonus to their damage rolls. This scaling bonus will keep your minions’ damage stable as expected AC scales, and it will generally be around 4-4.2 DPR per skeleton still alive.

You also get a free extra undead each time you cast animate dead.

Inured to Undeath

You have resistance to necrotic damage, and your hit point maximum cannot be reduced. Obviously a great help against vampires, but that’s situational. However, should you have a feature that allows you to reduce your maximum hit points in return for a benefit, this makes those buffs free. Also noteworthy is the ability to make temporary buffs to your hit point maximum permanent. Tools you can leverage include:

• create magen reduces your max HP by 3 to make a Galvan Magen. That drops to 0.
• aid lasts forever, and can be spammed every day after the previous spell’s duration ends to give you infinite hit points. As with all infinities, I would not expect to pull this off at any table, but simply using aid once and keeping the buffs permanently should be reasonable.
• Heroes’ feast works very similarly.
• Retain the hit points of your possessed form via magic jar.
• Give all your hit dice to your create homunculus homunculus.
• Make a pact with a Daemogoth Titan, free of consequences.

If you can weaponize hit point maximum reductions, you are on the right track with this ability and will gain plenty of use out of it.

Command Undead

If you wanted a worthy capstone, well… this is it. Its immediate value is quite campaign-dependent as the most powerful entities may or may not be encountered. However, by the time you are level 17 it’s just a matter of casting true polymorph on quite literally anything. Thanks to the excellent silvery barbs, we need less time to get the job done.

Use this on things that won’t repeat their save, the last thing we want is some smart monster killing us in our sleep. Good undead worth controlling of Int < 12 include:

• Nightwalkers(CR 20) – multiple attacks, insurance against enemies having allies resurrect them, just massive damage
• Storm Giant Skeleton(CR 16) – ranged blaster, throws rocks and shoots 12d8 damage lightning bolts.
• Mummy Lord(CR 15) – has a ton of abilities not gained if you true polymorph something else. Spellcasting with a handful of good spells, including animate dead with the potential to raise nearly thirty skeletons at once.
• Parasite-infested Behit(CR 11) – sack of HP with a restraining grapple and Swallow.
• Nightveil Specter(CR 10) – has an ability that wipes memories and a stunning blast to use in combat.
• Dullahan(CR 10) – mythic monster with Legendary Actions, so you may wish to capture the real one and bind it. It has Legendary Resistance so prepare to battle it first.
• Phylaskia(CR 9) – an aura that debuffs enemy saving throws and Strength Drain to wipe enemies.
• Frost Giant Zombie(CR 9) – has an aura that debuffs multiattacks and a spammable paralysis ability.
• Sword Wraith Commander(CR 8) – a summoner with decent minions and an okay combat profile.
• Nosferatu(CR 8) – big angry vampire monke that I love using as a kind of commander for groups of vampire spawn. Vomits blood, multiplies and is somewhat annoying to kill.
• Gallows Speaker(CR 6) – it can debuff saving throws. Make sure to take the Ready action to time the attack right so you don’t debuff some random attack roll.
• Zombie Clot(CR 6) – a poisoning aura and a restrain ability, plus some extra stuff.
• Bodak(CR 6) – get an Eloquence Bard friend and someone to cast pass without trace. Incredible alpha strike potential.
• Vampiric Mind Flayer(CR 5) – grappling, incapacitating vampire spawn.
• Vampire Spawn(CR 5) – just a decent elite warrior to throw magic stone and takes quite some power to kill.
• Spawn of Kyuss(CR 5) – oh my goodness, this thing. DC 11 Dex save seems low, but there are things that can debuff enemy saving throws, like Eloquence Bard stuff and mind sliver. It basically requires your enemy to waste their action or simply die. Only works on humanoids though, and the spawn doesn’t have much else in the way of impressive features, so it’s not all that useful most of the time.

I would not suggest controlling something below CR 5 with such a valuable ability, with the one exception of “I have absolutely no other undead to choose from so the only alternative is not using my feature at all”, in which case a free zombie is better than the lack of one.

Remember that this thing effectively counts twice since your simulacrum can have its own undead via this feature.

You can also true polymorph any creature into an undead for a moment, then drop concentration once it’s under your control. I won’t cover all the things you can command in this manner as there’s just an awful lot, but to give a few ideas:

• Adult White Dragons are a mere CR 13. Ancients are CR 20.
• Steel Predators(CR 16) have a stunning roar.
• Purple Worms(CR 15) burrow and hit like a truck.

Strategy

With Necromancer, it’s worth remembering to keep your minions spread out – the last thing you want is for an AoE attack to destroy a big chunk of your horde. Scouting ahead with familiars and the like to plan your tactics accordingly is a massive boon, and if any of your allies have the Inspiring Leader feat, then there’s nobody better at expressing gratitude than a fireballed-but-still-alive skeleton. The same goes for Twilight Domain Clerics and Artillerist Artificers.

By virtue of simply having damaging summons on the battlefield, you force the enemy to make a choice – they can target your undead and give the party a free turn to fight without losing some of their own hit points, or target your party and get a severe beating from your undead horde. In order to overcome resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks, hand your corpse friends all the excess magic weapons your party finds in dungeons. After all, nobody needs two identical +1 crossbows. While they won’t be proficient in things other than shortbows and shortswords, most magic weapons provide a +X to-hit modifier which helps to mitigate that issue. Additionally, cast magic stone! That cantrip is awesome.

Concluding thoughts

Necromancy is cool, and for that reason I really like the Necromancy Wizard. The subclass provides quite a few cool abilities, and makes many spells much better.

There’s a lot of stuff you can do with the higher-level features that really rewards you for knowing your stuff(like what spells allow you to sacrifice max HP for a benefit), and that’s a thing I really like about 5e.

For the holiday season, Form of Dread becomes Form of Doot.

That’s all I had to say about Necromancers for now. Go forth and bind the holiday spirit or something, I hear it doesn’t have too many Legendary Resistances. Thanks for reading, and until next time! Merry Christmas!