QB's Libris Mortis for 5th Edition

It's a basic fact; if you're a D&D fan, and you like the magic-user classes, you've almost certainly got at least one favorite School of Magic. For me, well, that School is undoubtedly Necromancy (with Evocation close behind).

Why? I guess, at heart, it's a combination of n appreciation for darker settings and anti-hero types, and simply the fact that it just feels more "magical" to me. Enchantment and Illusion, I'm just too predisposed to writing off as comparatively mundane trickery by comparison - I guess a result of growing up reading Conan, where it's repeatedly stated that most hypnotic spells work in large part because of cultural indoctrination - whilst Divination has always felt too "NPC-focused" for me as a player.

But, as much as I like playing a necromancer, I have to confess that D&D's treatment of it has been a bit... hit and miss.

Whilst there's certainly an abundance of necromancy spells in total, they've tended to be scattered over sourcebooks, and as 5e currently doesn't have a "Complete Book of Necromancers", a "Libris Mortis", or even a "Complete Arcane", well, that leaves 5e Necromancers in particular with a fairly limited spellbook if they want to be thematic.

I also have some issues with the kinds of spells traditionally lumped under necromancy. Namely, despite the school's association with destruction and death, it tends to be rather lacking in actual "blasty" type spells. Where's the ability to let out soul-withering ghostly screams, to freeze foes with the cold of the deepest grave, to scorch them with hellfire?

And, of course, the biggest issue; the fact that D&D has had a long tradition of gimping the wizardly necromancer in favor of the clerical one, despite the fact that clerics are supposed to be the class specialized in fighting against the undead, with their mastery left to the fields of "those blasphemous, heathen wizards". This most famously manifested itself in the fact that the Necromancer was long inferior in terms of controlling the undead to an evil Cleric, courtesy of their "Control Undead" class feature, but it also manifesteds in a bias in spell allotment as well - seriously, can you believe that in 3rd edition, Create Undead was a Cleric-exclusive spell?

I recently came into possession of a copy of Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead. It awakened in me my long-slumbering fondness for necromancers, and since I have some of D&D's big respositories of necromancy spells to hand (Complete Book of Necromancers, Libris Mortis, Player's Option: Heroes of Shadow), I thought I might try and update various spells from them, and perhaps some other "dark mage" flavored spells, such as those from the Book of Vile Darkness (and its Dragon #300 bonus spells) or Pathfinder's Horror Adventures. Maybe even try some completely homebrewed spell ideas that I've had boiling around, inspired by the likes of Warcraft and Sacrifice.

But, as I read through the Guide to the Walking Dead, I began to wonder. It's a 3e sourcebook, but it's got a lot of interesting ideas. Ways of making undead more unique. The "Bind Undead" feats, which allow you to render undead you create permanently animated and loyal. The "Reign Undead" skill, which was used to teach undead to perform complicated tasks (essentially "Animal Handling for Necromancers").

Moreover, it reminded me of my favorite kit from AD&D. The Undead Master was awesome, as it was the most "pulpy" Dark Mage wizard kit ever envisoned. For the price of giving up all but the barest minimum combat skill and access to three schools of magic (Alteration, Divination, Illusion), it gave you the usual Necromancer bonuses, let you cast Enchantment spells (ordinarily forbidden to a Necromancer), Control Undead as if you were an Evil Cleric of equivalent level, and Control Outsiders as if they were Undead of equivalent hit dice.

Now, "I'm A Banana" was awesome by noting ways you could pull off this kit perfectly legitimately by just using the right blend of spells, backgrounds and feats, plus a homebrew feat for an added bit of "oomph", but still, it made me wonder if 5e doesn't have room for necromantic Prestige Classes, feats, alternate subclasses, skills, etc.

Beyond that... I realised that for all my enthusiasm to convert spells, I actually am a rookie who could really use the input of others on the occasional bit of brainstorming. For example, I've heard that the Summon Undead spells from the Libris Mortis were held up as pretty awful back in 3.5 - why is that? And how can I fix that? For another, both VRGTWD and Libris Mortis contain a "create 5HD of undead per caster level" 9th level Necromancy spell for creating armies of minions. The Ravenloft version is called Army of Darkness and takes a day to cast, whilst the Libris Mortis one is dubbed Plague of Undeath and only takes an action. How do I choose which one to use? Can I maybe work them both in, just using different effects from casting? Heck, how am I supposed to handle the resultant undead horde - maybe have them create a "Zombie/Skeleton Swarm" instead?

So, recognizing that I need the assistance and input of others for this little project, I start this topic here. If you're interested in fleshing out the necromancer's arsenal in 5e, please, I'd love to talk shop and swap ideas, see what we can do!

I don't have any blasty spells to give you, and to be quite frank I find the current iteration of summoning spells to be a bit broken. But I do have a few necromancy spells that I tried my hand at here.

So, I'm currently trying to work out where to start on this project, and I could use opinions.
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Firstly, the order I'm thinking of going in is: Spells first, Monsters second, Class Expansions (feats, subclasses, prestige classes, skills, whatever) third. This sound sensible to anyone else?
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Secondly, for the spell updating, does it make the most sense to start with the Complete Book of Necromancers first, then move on to Libris Mortis, then finish with Heroes of Shadow?
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Finally, in the Libris Mortis, there's a series of spells relating to Necrotic Cysts. These all require you have a "Mother Cyst" as a material focus. I'm trying to decide how to handle them - what I'm currently leaning towards is the idea of making Mother Cyst into a feat and the various Necrotic Cyst spells are instead special abilities you can get by using spellslots, rather than as spells proper. Do folks think this makes sense? Or should I just remove the idea of needing a Mother Cyst entirely, as I personally uphold the belief that material components for adventuring wizards are and always have been a stupid idea?

The 5th Edition Necromancer is lacklustre certainly.

The idea that you have to recast Animate Dead every day instead of just allocating spell slots to it and leaving them allocated for as long as you want really grates. I always houserule that utterly unnecessary booking out of my games where Necromancers are concerned.

There should indeed be lower level necrotic aoe and single target attack spells, but we are yet to see them.

As for controlling the undead - once again, the necromancer is weak and needs to be their own thing - not requiring DMG Cleric or Paladin multiclassing to come up to concept.

I would like to see a Feat for Necromancers as well.

We shall see - we haven't yet had a UA for Wizards and one can hope...

While I can agree with your opinions on the methods of handling Animate Dead (which does inspire me for a way to convert 3e's Bind Undead feats), and I do agree there needs to be more necromancy attack spells (Necrotic, obviously, but also Poison and Ice), I have to say I don't understand where the comment about necromancers needing to multiclass to be better at controlling the undead is coming from?

I mean, yes, it kind of ticks me off that the Necromancer doesn't get Control Undead until level 14... but it's the only class with that kind of power in 5e now. Even the Death Cleric, who traditionally beat the Necromancer at being the Necromancer, doesn't get that ability - its powers all revolve around dishing out lots and lots of necrotic damage, and its only concession to undeath is that it gets Animate Dead as a bonus spell. The Oathbreaker Paladin does boost the melee damage of undead with its Aura of Hate, but it has no inherent ability to control them.

Alrighty, so, unless folks say otherwise - and I really want to talk about how to pull off the Necrotic Cyst family of spells, because the Feat method is making more and more sense - I'm going to start with spells soon. However, I want to ask; what "theme" of spells do folks think I should work on first?

Animation? This would be focusing on the classic "create and control the undead" aspect of the school. Spells like Animate Dead Animals or Summon Undead would come out of this work.

Destruction? This would be focusing on the oft-neglected "necromantic attack spells" field, something that D&D has a long tradition of issues with. This'd include some updated spells, like Black Darts or Beltyn's Burning Blood, but this'd doubtlessly be my most homebrew based field of spellcraft, with spells that never existed in D&D before, like Frost Nova, Death & Decay, Rain of Foulness, Wailing Wall, etc.

So, I've been slowly chipping away at my stockpile of spells to convert, and I've hit upon an issue where I'm unsure how to proceed. In Ravenloft's "Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead", there's a 9th level necromancy spell called Army of Darkness, which has a 1 day casting period but animates 5 hit dice worth of zombies/skeletons per caster level at the end of it. In the "Libris Mortis", there's an equivalent spell called Plague of Undeath, which does the exact same thing, but only takes 1 action to cast.

Now, I'm aware of Animate Dead's ability to raise more undead through upcasting. Problem is, a 9th level Animate Dead creates a grand total of thirteen (13) zombies or skeletons, which is no army by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm currently thinking that the two spells can work in 5e, but how to do so is the issue. After all, raising massive amounts of individual undead would essentially destroy action economy and drive the DM nuts.

What I'm thinking for Army of Darkness is that A: it drops back down to being a 1 action casting time, and B: it animates an Undead Horde - which is basically a Large/Huge/Gargantuan Swarm template applied to the Zombie/Skeleton base creature. This allows the caster to have something that really feels like an army of the undead, but which still only uses up actions as per a single minion. Does this make sense to anybody else?

Plague of Undeath is trickier. What seems the best way to distinguish it from Army of Darkness, in my opinion, is to make it the "zombie plague" spell; a sort of super-Contagion that's infectious and turns those who die into zombies. But, how can you make that workable for a PC caster? I could really use somebody to talk to about this.

I do point out that the d&d 5e necromancer wizard and the death cleric have kind of swapped places in this edition. In editions past the cleric was more of the minion builder while the wizard necromancer was more about debuff and withering spells. I say withering rather than damage because necromancer itself has always been devised between necrotic style damage, self healing through damage, and ability drain type of stuff rather than just raw damage (that's evocation's thing).

The problems we run into in 5e are a couple. First, the necromancer wizard is NOT the witherer anymore, the death cleric (and warlock...Albeit there really should be a true Lich patron, not just undying), and they accomplish this through spells like bane, hex, ray of exhaustion/sickness, etc. If you look at the death cleric ' features, they even get raw necrotic blasts as their channel abilities, and spirit guardians is literally an aoe necrotic blast spell with ghosts tearing apart your enemies! The warlock list likewise screams a cool "dread necro" feel (who says your eldritch blasts arent ghostly skulls? Again, it just lacks a true focused patron, undying is close though). Part of the disconnect from previous editions aside from the above role switch also is that 5th in general has less stacking debuffs which makes hyper focused characters not as viable anymore. I'll agree perhaps a spell or two that reduces max enemy health (the new ability drain) might be warrented, though that could be situational at best as most enemies you only encounter once.

The necromancer wizard in this edition is without a doubt a minion builder, not the "blasty necromancer". You can totally still take and cast fireball, fly, or other wizard spells. Though the wizard being forced to use spell slots in a balance thing. Minions are powerful (and more importantly take a lot of time each turn to roll dice for), hence this was stuck in as al balancing factor. What you are all so not bringing up is that Animate Dead no longer has all son expensive material cost, so who cares if your zombies die? You can always find more bandits or a graveyard. And with the necromancer abilities they are less likely to do so compared to the death cleric.