Building an NPC Necromancer

[Farnsworth]

I'm very new to 4th edition, but I've had a lot of experience with 3.5 and role-playing in general. I've got a great idea for a villain that will continuously plague the PC's, which is a Necromancer that eventually becomes a lich.

I've looked through the PHB's, DMG and the Arcane book; but no where do any of the books mention a necromancer that I can see. There is very little about the different school of magic in 4th edition, and based on the way arcane magic users are built I understand why. That said, how do I create a wizard that deals in death magic? I suppose I could just change the flavor of the spells, but I want to explore all of my options.

If anyone can point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[webrunner]

I'm very new to 4th edition, but I've had a lot of experience with 3.5 and role-playing in general. I've got a great idea for a villain that will continuously plague the PC's, which is a Necromancer that eventually becomes a lich.

I've looked through the PHB's, DMG and the Arcane book; but no where do any of the books mention a necromancer that I can see. There is very little about the different school of magic in 4th edition, and based on the way arcane magic users are built I understand why. That said, how do I create a wizard that deals in death magic? I suppose I could just change the flavor of the spells, but I want to explore all of my options.

If anyone can point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Your best bet would be to create an elite monster, and boost up things like hp or give him some sort of escape plan in case of being locked down, so he can continually harass. You dont need to make up full player stat blocks for NPCs. Use monster stat blocks, and update him as he needs to be updated every time he shows up.

Giving him some leadery undead-controlling powers (granting them actions or strength, or maybe even raising them after they're fallen until he's driven off) would create interesting encounter dynamics, as well.

As for all the non-combat stuff, that's what rollplaying is for.

IIRC, there's a few sections in the DMG and DMG2 about creating NPCs and monsters, and the Adventure Tools on DDI can do a lot of the math for you. Also, you can re-skin an existing Necromancer monster and work from there.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

One of the big changes that fourth edition brought is that enemies no longer play by the same rules as PCs. If you want to make a necromancer with a power like "ray or darkness" or "animate skeleton" you can just give it to them, you don't need to find a PC power that matches.

If you have the monster Manual you might want to look at the Deathpriest of Orcus for some ideas. There are other books out there that have other versions of necromacners. (If you have DDI you could search the compendium for "necromancer" to see some examples).

The DMG & DMG 2 have some guidelines for building your own monsters.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

What powers do you want your necromancer to have? There's so many types of necromancers. Nerfing PCs with necro spells? Controlling/buffing/creating undead?

Some DMs would consider the Animate Dead ritual enough; just give him a bunch of undead to fill up the XP budget plus some undead-buffing powers. (There are lots of creatures in the various MMs with this; I suggest looking at the Death Knight for an example of a cool power.)

Others would prefer the necromancer create undead right on the field, in which case I would suggest having it summon undead minions. (Of equal level to the PCs, of course.)

And others want to dish out corpse explosion (in effect, necro-flavored direct-damage). And yet others want to use flesh golems, blood golems* or what have you.

He's better working as part of a cult, so if he dies there's still a threat to the PCs out there.

*A do-it-yourself monster, based on the Diablo II "summon". The blood golem drains some health with each attack, giving it back to the necromancer. (It also drained health from the necromancer when it took damage, but you can drop that. Or not.) The necromancer also had a curse it could put on opponents to increase their damage, which meant the golem was transferring greater health back to the necromancer. I'm thinking you could use some of the infernal warlock class features, slightly modified, for this type of direct-damage necromancer.