D&D 5E Necromancer Archetypes For PCs

[Kobold Avenger]

What would be some archetypes for Necromancers that would be among the party? The Necromancer specialization often comes across as something villainous, but does what about ideas for heroic or anti-heroic Necromancers. Those who aren't trying to trying to destroy the world and are mostly non-evil in alignment.

I can think of some immediate ideas along the way of:

Necrologist
You're deeply interested in the study of life and death and the undead, prying into its secrets for a look beyond the veil. How things decay, the passages of the soul, burial customs of varied cultures, the interactions of positive and negative energy, the physiology of the undead are among your interests. Many think you're detached as you see the dead as often better company than most people, but in it all you know that everyone one day will join the ranks of the dead. How a necrologist studies death, and what their opinions are on the undead vary from necrologist to necrologist.

Ancestral Spirit-Shaman
You have a calling from the spirits of your ancestors, who guide and assist you. With them at your call they can control the corpses of the fallen to help avenge those who would ruin their legacy. You possess no distaste towards the living, but towards the undead some you understand as spirits who were wronged and need your help to move on, others you see as abominations that must be destroyed. Your calling has made you a mediator between the departed and the living, and it's up to you help the balance of both worlds. For this archetype, I'd actually allow them to learn Speak with Dead even if it's generally a Cleric spell.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

You could just play a cleric. Beneficial necromancy spells such as Spare the Dying and Resurrection are cleric spells.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Keep in mind that, almost without exception (revenant can be any alignment I think), the walking dead are evil in alignment, as are most incorporeal undead. So animating undead may not be automatically an evil act (as it was in 3.5e), but it is definitely bringing evil into the world, and would require some hefty justification for a good character.

 

[Taronkov]

So animating undead may not be automatically an evil act (as it was in 3.5e), but it is definitely bringing evil into the world, and would require some hefty justification for a good character.

See I disagree with that statement. If you're bringing evil into the world to fight and destroy evil, as long as they remain under your control you, yourself are not performing an act of evil. A perfect example in my mind is the Necromancer from Diablo II. They weren't evil although through the novels they did make people feel a bit uncomfortable. As a DM or a player I would take no issue with this. That said if they somehow became under someone else's control or you lost control in any matter, you should take some responsibility and attempt to destroy them or regain control.

 

[Jaelommiss]

"What would you give to defend you homeland, soldier?"
"Anything, sir."
"Including your own life?"
"Yes, sir. I would give everything I have to protect those I love."
"What if told you that there's a way that you could continue to protect them after falling in battle?"

Good aligned wizard raising fallen comrades to help them continue fighting for their home. Use Create Undead to raise willing soldiers as wights. The only downside is that it requires a 15th level caster to use Create Undead at 8th level, so this might work better as a wizard who helps the city guard on the side rather than a dedicated character concept.

 

[pkt77242]

"What would you give to defend you homeland, soldier?"
"Anything, sir."
"Including your own life?"
"Yes, sir. I would give everything I have to protect those I love."
"What if told you that there's a way that you could continue to protect them after falling in battle?"

Good aligned wizard raising fallen comrades to help them continue fighting for their home. Use Create Undead to raise willing soldiers as wights. The only downside is that it requires a 15th level caster to use Create Undead at 8th level, so this might work better as a wizard who helps the city guard on the side rather than a dedicated character concept.

This reminds me of the Evermeet book from 2E where the Queen had an army of soldiers in "sleep" to be called up on when their need was most dire. While they were living soldiers who chose to be put in magical sleep for centuries to help protect the elves, it definitely shares some similarities.

In our medical schools we use (or have used) bodies to help our future doctors learn about the body, just as a necromancer might use deceased people's skeletons to protect the village. Not a great analogy but close enough for me that I can see a good/neutral necromancer as viable.

Edit: What I am trying to say is that there are some good uses for "dead" bodies.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Raising evil skeletons to fight is about as evil as summoning evil mephits to fight, which is to say that it's not.

However, given that uncontrolled skeletons automatically go into "kill everything" mode, creating skeletons that you FAIL to keep under control is evil in the same way as slipping great white sharks into the community swimming pool.

Undead are useful but crazy dangerous, especially to NPCs. Keep that in mind when creating them, unless you just Don't Care, which means you are evil.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

If you're raising skeletons willy-nilly without care that you might lose control and you're not evil, you're in a situation so desperate where losing that control won't make things worse.

This is known as the Godzilla Threshold.

 

[Voort]

I'd recommend Brian the Cheerful Necromancer, from the webcomic Dominic Deegan. It's a different archetype, at least. Introduced starting here:

http://www.dominic-deegan.com/view.php?date=2008-06-11

 

[Kobold Stew]

I'll preface this by saying that during the play test, my views on Necromancy were quite unpopular on these boards; I know that, but I continue to believe there's so much more potential in D&D Necromancy than they pursued. Part of the reason, I feel, is a hangover anxiety form the scaremongering of the 80s: people are unwilling to consider anything called "necromancy" as anything other than evil.

with that as preamble:
* in the earliest play test, any spell caster could become a "necromancer" (it was like a background or feat); you only needed to be able to cast a spell. But it was so poorly written, that it was intolerable. But the idea was cool.

* a good case can be made that all healing spells properly belong in the necromancy school. They backed away from that too, but it creates an inconsistency. As it is, raise dead and resurrection (the most powerful, positive life magic) are necromancy, as is inflict wounds but not cure wounds.

What I wish we saw was EITHER "necromancy" (i.e. a school of life/death magic) not tainted with evil, OR an unambiguous statement that only evil spell casters can use spells from that school (thereby putting Raise Dead into a really interesting moral place in the game; cf. Revenge of the Sith and Darth Plaguis).

I also wish that they had kept necromancy specialization as (now) a feat, so that clerics or wizards (or others) could qualify, not just wizards.

But I get neither -- necromancy is a school of wizard magic, that has an imprecise evil taint. For me, that's the least interesting of all possible results. I understand how we get here, but it aggressively limits the sort of cool things one might want to do with a life/death magic specialist.