Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Classes

The Necromancer

< M.L.Barklam - csai94@cs.bham.ac.uk >

This class is completely separate from the normal specialist wizard, although there are certain overlaps.  The description below conforms to that laid out in the DMG for "creating a new character class" although this class was not created using that method.
The necromancer is a loner.  He prefers to surround himself with the dead (and undead), not with the living.  He rarely subordinates himself to anyone and would prefer to rule his own kingdom of the dead.  He may, however, employ (or force into servitude) such devoted agents of destruction as orcs, gnolls and trolls.  Even animals smell the necromancer's devotion to death and try to avoid him wherever possible.  The necromancer will need the services of the living, however, if he wishes to erect a temple of death (see below) and so it is handy to have  few around. The necromancer detests sunlight and open places (except moonless nights).  He is furtive and reclusive as townsfolk distrust and abhor the necromancer and all that he stands for.  A low-level necromancer will probably need to live in a town so as to have access to the materials he needs to practice his art.  Attempts to maintain secrecy are hampered by the loathsome nature of the necromancer's work and so, in effect, for each level the necromancer progresses, he looses 1 charisma point as his aura of death becomes more and more palpable, until it reaches zero.  This loss also helps represent the growing suspicion of acquaintances, and the general reaction of people as he becomes imbued with death.  Long before his charisma reaches zero, however, he is usually chased from the town he is residing and starts a solitary life. High level necromancers are usually the object of quests for paladins, rangers and high level clerics.

Class Ability Minimums:

Race:
As with the specialist wizard necromancer, all necromancers must be human.

Combat Value used:
Necromancers fight as priests.

Saving Throw Tables used:
Necromancers make all saves as priests, but gain certain modifiers:

Hit Dice per level:
Necromancers use a D8 for determining hit points plus any constitution bonuses

Proficiencies:
Necromancers gain proficiencies as priests of the same level do

Armor Allowed:
Necromancers can use any type of armour and shields and use their special talents, but cannot cast wizard spells while so adorned.

Weapons Allowed:
Necromancers can use any type of non-magical weapon, and may use all magic items available to other classes except swords.

Hit Points Per Level Beyond 9th:
The necromancer gains 2HP upon attaining each level beyond 9th.

 

Abilities and Restrictions:
While these should probably be separate categories, I thought it best to put them together as some abilities also count as restrictions.

The first of the necromancer's abilities concerns his control over undead: Necromancers can communicate with undead, friendly or not, and may befriend undead, just as evil clerics can, using the undead matrix. A "D" result, means that the undead is permanently under his control, until such time as it is turned or killed.  The only other way to get undead to serve the necromancer permanently, is for the necromancer to present himself to friendly undead and if the result is successful, then 1-12 are permanently under his control.  If, however, the necromancer rolls a 1, then the undead immediately attack the necromancer.
Normal control lasts until a good cleric turns them, the undead moves out of a range of 20'/necromancer's level or out of line of sight. Volitionless undead like skeletons and zombies are exempt from this range restriction and may be left in an area with some simple instructions.  Control can also be broken by the successful casting of a dispel evil spell.  If the necromancer is physically present during the attempted breaking of his control over the undead, then the attempt will automatically failed.  As such, any undead controlled by the necromancer cannot be turned while the necromancer is present. The maximum number of undead the necromancer may control is equal to 10HD/level.  A necromancer is also immune to the powers of undead with fewer HD than his level.

Healing:
Unfortunately for the necromancer, his association with death makes it impossible for his wounds to heal naturally, or through the use of healing magicks.  Hit points must be regained by sacrificing (demi-)humans in a ritual requiring a brazier, candles and a ritually prepared knife.  The ritual takes one hour to perform and heals the necromancer 1HP for every HD or level of the creature sacrificed. Only one ritual can be performed per day.  Alternatively, there are spells the necromancer has access to that allow him to directly drain the life forces of others and add them to his own (Vampiric Touch is one) as well as some granted abilities which will be detailed later.

Sight:
At second level, the necromancer gains the ability to see in infravision, but his normal eyesight deteriorates with each successive level until, at tenth level, it is no better than normal sight under a full moon.  At the same time, his infravision becomes more accurate, losing all of its characteristic "fuzziness" by tenth level, unfortunately, it cannot be used in sunlight, or other bright lights.
The necromancer also gains the ability to see into other planes that touch the prime material, especially the negative material, allowing him to make out undead easily.  This ability also allows the necromancers to have an increased chance to see invisible, with a 5% chance plus 1% per level in addition to his normal chance.

Temple of Death:
At 10th level, the necromancer may build a temple of death.  He may only posses one temple of death at any one time, but if one is destroyed, he may create another.  The temple must be created out of the bones of creatures killed by the necromancer or his servants, bonded together with a paste made out of blood and various thickeners.  The temple may be of any size, but every 10 cubic feet costs 10 man-hours and 10g.p. to build.  Bone walls must be at least 1' thick, and ceilings and floors, ½' thick.  Undead slaves lack the dexterity to build the temple, so living engineers must be brought in.  The temple bones are magically resistant to damage and is treated as the hardest type of stone.

Undeath:
When the necromancer is killed, he can come back in a week as a free-willed undead of equal HD as he had levels in life.  The 
necromancer retains his abilities, but no longer advances in level. A 15th level necromancer comes back as a lich.  Even destruction of the body will not prevent this.  This "reincarnation" only works once, if his undead form is killed too, he is permanently dead and cannot be resurrected.

Curses:
A necromancer may curse his killer as he dies (assuming he has chance to speak it and knows who killed him). this ability is 
equivalent to the clerical curse spell, but not automatically removable.  The necromancer places the curse as a cleric four times his own level (a 10th level necromancer places the curse as a 40th level cleric).  Any remove curse or dispel evil works on this curse as a dispel magic works on magic.  Each cleric has one try only.

Skills:

The necromancer, during his studies, will come across methods of doing necromantic things.  These skills are learned in a similar way to proficiencies, but do not take up proficiency slots, instead a necromancer may have a number of them per level depending, just as mages may memorise a number of spells.  Necromantic abilities, once learned, cannot be forgotten and replaced by other abilities, but nor need they be memorised to be used.  Once learned, they may be used once a day, except where noted in the skill description, a necromantic skill may be learned more than once, thus allowing the necromancer to use it more than once per day.  This is not applicable in some cases, and should be obvious from the description.  Necromancers may also take wizard spells from the school of necromancy as skills, too.  These need not be memorised, simply learned, and can be used once per day, without the need of complex castings or spell components.  Level 1 and 2 spells count as grade 1 skills, levels 3 and 4 count as grade 2, 5 and 6 as grade 3, 7 and 8 as 4, and 9 as grade 5.  If level 10 spells are used, these are also considered of grade 5 ability.  These spells can ONLY be taken from the school of necromancy, not all the spells necromancer specialist wizards have access to. Necromancers gain these abilities per level based on the below table:
 

Grade	Level of Necromancer
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
1	2	4	6	8	10	10	11	12	13	14	15	15	18	18	19
2	-	1	2	2	3	4	6	7	7	9	11	12	14	15	16
3	-	-	-	-	1	2	2	2	4	5	6	9	11	11	12
4	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	2	2	2	3	3	3	5	5
5	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	1	2	2	2	3

As can be seen, if a necromancer simply specialised in wizard spells, he would be a formidable opponent for any reasonable well armed party.  Necromancers rarely do this, however, as they prefer to have a broad base of necromantic knowledge.  Intelligence does not limit the number of magic spells he can learn as it does for a wizard, because the necromancer isn't learning spells, but skills that simply happen to duplicate magic effects.

The extra abilities are listed below, these can be chosen in addition to magic spells.  A brief description follows each:

Grade 1 Skills

Grade 2 Skills

Grade 3 Abilities

Grade 4 Abilities

Grade 5 Skills

As can be seen, Necromancers have the potential to be VERY powerful (at 10th level they could use a 9th level spell, or a grade 5 ability).  Necromancers also, potentially, have access to the death spell at 5th level.  To some this may appear to be overpowerful, but when you consider the restrictions on the activities of the necromancer, it almost seems to pale in comparison.  It would always be possible to impose further restrictions on the necromancer: The Complete Book of Necromancers has some prices for being a necromancer (and some extra abilities, if you care to use them); Require a ritual sacrifice of some living creature (getting more specialised as the necromancer goes up in level) to appease the dark gods he follows; etc.  This class is chiefly designed to make a very good arch-nemesis for a group of good-aligned characters, and not to be used as a PC class.  A PC would make a poor necromancer anyway, not only due to the solitary distrustful nature of the necromancer, but, at higher levels, necromancers rarely GO anywhere or DO anything, they stay in their temples, sending their undead out to do their work, and researching further necromantic skills and practising extant skills.

 

Experience:
Necromancers get experience for anything they accomplish as well as anything his animated undead do in his presence.

Individual Class Awards: (Necromancer)

The necromancer progresses using the following experience table:

Level	Experience	Hit Dice (D8)
1	0	1
2	2,200	2
3	4,400	3
4	8,800	4
5	22,000	5
6	44,000	6
7	88,000	7
8	165,000	8
9	308,000	9
10	638,000	9+2
11	968,000	9+4
12	1,298,000	9+6
13	1,628,000	9+8
14	1,957,000	9+10
15	2,288,000	9+12

15th level is the maximum attainable.  As can be seen, the necromancer requires more XP to get to 15th level than a paladin does!  It can also be seen that this XP table follows the progression given the 2nd Ed. DMG (mult.11).

Magic Items:
Necromancers can use magic items belonging to all other classes, except swords, but there are no necromancy specific magic items that these necromancers can create as their powers are not magical in nature (although they do duplicate their effects); they are more akin to granted powers once they have researched and learned a skill.

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