Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 7629086" data-attributes="member: 58197">Strongly dislike vampiric touch. It does less damage than a cantrip, it requires you to wade into melee, and if you are taking enough damage to need the healing, you'll lose concentration in short order, so what's the point? It's a truly terrible spell and Grim Harvest does not make it better. If you want to deal damage with a 3rd-level spell slot, throw a fireball.In fact, I would not even consider Grim Harvest when making spell picks. It's a nice bonus when you get it, but you're a wizard with an army of meat shields. You shouldn't need that much healing in the first place.I've been giving a lot of thought to playing a necromancer myself lately, when I wrap up my current campaign and get to play again. My theory, which I shall have to test in actual play, is that a necromancer should specialize in battlefield control. You have a horde of durable, slow-moving meat shields who can be ordered to attack, grapple, or shove; your goal should be to bring the enemy into their reach, or keep the enemy from escaping.(You can also go skeletons instead of zombies. Skeletons offer far better damage output due to ranged attacks and higher attack bonus, but you sacrifice so much in durability - an area attack can easily wipe them all out, where the zombies have at least a chance to weather one blast. And skeletons aren't nearly as good at grappling and shoving. I'm leaning toward zombies right now but could see going with skeletons instead.)Spells in the 1-3 range that I like for a necromancer:Grease: Block off an exit or an escape route that the enemy could use to evade the horde. Note that this spell does not require concentration.Tasha's hideous laughter: Drop a flying enemy out of the sky into the midst of the zombies. (A flying creature that falls prone falls to the ground unless it can levitate.)Blindness/deafness: Not really battlefield control, but good enough to take it anyway. Blindness on a failed save, multiple targets at higher levels, and NO CONCENTRATION? Yes please. For bonus points, it's a necromancy spell so it's on theme.Slow: This is a really vicious debuff. Huge area, half speed, AC penalty, only one attack per round, no bonus actions and no reactions. The half speed and the AC penalty in particular will make zombies very happy.I'm debating on stinking cloud. On the one hand, "poison cloud" effects are very nice for undead. On the other hand, the enemy has to start its turn inside the cloud to be affected - if they just run through, it doesn't stop them - so it's more a way to cripple someone who's already engaged with your zombies, rather than hold them in place so the zombies can get them.Animate dead: Obviously you're going to take this, but I wanted to point out that while you can only create 1-2 undead per casting, you can maintain control over 4. As soon as you hit 5th level, you get three 3rd-level spell slots per day (two normal and a third from Arcane Recovery); so if you have corpses and a few days, you can build up to 8 zombies and still keep a 3rd-level slot in reserve. On a non-spell-related note: Get proficiency with an herbalism kit so you can do some embalming pre-animation. Your fellow PCs will be so very grateful. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> More to the point, if they aren't stinking of rotting flesh, you can dress your zombies up in long robes and masks when you are in an environment where undead are not welcome (i.e., most environments). It's not foolproof but it could come in handy. When you get to 9th level, definitely pick up seeming.</blockquote>

Verification