School of Necromancy
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
The School of Necromancy is supposed to be Wizard’s best way to become the lich of legend. It's a monstrous archetype, commanding legions of the dead to conquer the world backed by plagues and areas of death and destruction. That’s the fantasy the School of Necromancy should be living up to. Unfortunately, with a dud 2nd and 10th-level feature, most wizards can be played about as effectively as one from the School of Necromancy.
This school cares about Necromancy spells; for reference, here’s a full list of Cantrip through 9th-level Wizard spells of this school and the non-wizard options for multiclass considerations.
Wizard Necromancy Spells
| Spell Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| Cantrip | Chill Touch, Sapping Sting, Toll the Dead |
| 1st | Cause Fear, False Life, Ray of Sickness |
| 2nd | Blindness/Deafness, Gentle Repose, Ray of Enfeeblement, Wither and Bloom |
| 3rd | Animate Dead, Bestow Curse, Feign Death, Life Transference, Spirit Shroud, Summon Undead, Vampiric Touch |
| 4th | Blight |
| 5th | Danse Macabre, Enervation, Negative Energy Flood |
| 6th | Circle of Death, Create Undead, Eyebite, Magic Jar, Soul Cage |
| 7th | Finger of Death, Tether Essence |
| 8th | Abi-Dalzim’s Horrid Wilting, Clone |
| 9th | Astral Projection, Time Ravage |
Non-Wizard Necromancy Spells
| Spell Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| Cantrip | Spare the Dying |
| 1st | Inflict Wounds |
| 2nd | - |
| 3rd | Revivify, Speak with Dead |
| 4th | Shadow of Moil |
| 5th | Raise Dead |
| 6th | Harm |
| 7th | Resurrection |
| 8th | - |
| 9th | True Resurrection |
See Also: Best Feats for Necromancy Wizard
2nd Level: Necromancy Savant, Grim Harvest
Necromancy Savant provides the same passive benefit many tables opt to ignore entirely in its discount to adding spells to your spell book if they’re Necromancy. If you’re tight on gold, this gives you the incentive to invest in Necromancy spells you can find and copy, but realistically it's a ribbon most groups will immediately forget about. Most players tend to just use the spells they get for free on level-up, and those are more than enough.
Grim Harvest desperately wants to be a different feature. Necromancers just don’t need a life-draining ability like this. Their limited hit point tends to make them predominately backline characters who aren’t going to be regularly leveraging their hit point total. The rate you’re regaining hit points is tiny, too, with two hit points regained for a first-level slot. When you’re not the one killing most of the creatures in a given encounter, because you know, you have other party members, this isn’t regularly restoring enough useful hit points to make it worth anything.
Most necromancy spells you’ll find yourself regularly casting aren’t regularly killing things either. Animate Dead, the best necromancy spell for your damage output, doesn’t actually deal any damage: it just creates the undead. This leaves the bonus hit point regained per spell level as a flavorful ribbon with little to no impact on its performance.
Necromancers really want a skeleton or zombie ally here, some familiar-like undead creature to start the option off doing what it's built to do. Instead, you have to forgo a 2nd level feature to eventually get to live the undead ruler fantasy it promises.
6th Level: Undead Thralls
Undead Thralls is where you officially become a necromancer. Up to this point, the necromancy spell selection is limited to decent status effects like Cause Fear or terrible damage spells like Ray of Sickness. Animate Dead defines necromancer, and Undead Thralls improves it.
First, doubling the amount created reduces the time it takes to create and replace your undead which is a huge boon to the long-term logistics the spell creates.
The bonus hit points are nice, but the other majorly impactful feature is the added damage it adds, specifically when paired with Skeletons. Having a battery of four to eight skeleton archers at 6th level is really good, and while they’re still not that accurate when they hit, they do great damage per shot.
The big question is does Animate Dead need Undead Thralls to thrive throughout the game? I think usually what makes Animate Dead strong is collecting a small legion of soldiers around you that you have to maintain in order to get their barrage of shots. The damage bump is great, but I don’t think you need this to be a strong necromancer. Most of the time, the quantity you have is what really matters, and any wizard can learn Animate Dead and Create Undead. This doesn’t increase the quantity you can maintain control over. It just speeds up getting to that cap.
10th Level: Inured to Undeath
Inured to Undeath, like Grim Harvest, is horrible. The two effects it gives effect next to no encounters. This is a defensive feature at its worst. There isn’t much to say; resistance to a niche damage type and immunity to a condition less than a handful of creatures impose is just bad.
14th Level: Command Undead
Command Undead finishes the tradition off with a method to gain control over any undead. Want a Lich under your control? Technically, Command Undead can make that happen.
More realistically, this is a tool you use to get control over Ghosts, Death Knights, Wraiths, or any other splashy undead that can benefit the team for a a single fight. Should they have a reasonable intelligence, they’re not going to last more than an hour or two before breaking free and returning to attempting to kill you, making the window where this is good fairly small.
If you can’t guarantee you’ll find, summon, or create permanent undead, this ability is pretty bad. It technically can act as a permanent extension of Animate Dead for a single creature, but that isn’t nearly enough. You need to be in an undead-themed game for this to be a relevant ability, and most games don’t revolve around slaying exclusively undead.
All Together
Poor necromancers who attended the School of Necromancy. Undead Thralls is really the only consistent ability to enhance the fantasy it promises, and while it does a great job enhancing the fantasy, I think I’d generally rather just have Diviner for its powerful abilities and live with a slightly worse Animate Dead.
If you want a better necromancer full-caster, Death Domain cleric is an excellent option that gives you access to all your necromancy needs while also harvesting souls in an impactful fashion. If you’re cool with forgoing most of your subclass features and just want to play the Animate Dead character, the School of Necromancy will give you exactly that.
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