Necromancer...

[mentle]

A Necromancer is a Mage (Essentials' Wizard build), so anything that lets you play an effective Mage is good to go. Pick Necromancy as your first school, and maybe Nethermancy (shadow magic) as your secondary school.

Humans are always effective

Thanks! Its for a new player so I'm trying to give them something I think they will find entertaining too. I was thinking a Vyrkola (?) Or maybe revenant. I guess that info would have been helpful at the beginning of this post. Kinda brain dead from working all night.

 

[Klaus]

A Necromancer is a Mage (Essentials' Wizard build), so anything that lets you play an effective Mage is good to go. Pick Necromancy as your first school, and maybe Nethermancy (shadow magic) as your secondary school.

Humans are always effective

Thanks! Its for a new player so I'm trying to give them something I think they will find entertaining too. I was thinking a Vyrkola (?) Or maybe revenant. I guess that info would have been helpful at the beginning of this post. Kinda brain dead from working all night.

Neither the Vryloka nor the Revenant are particularly suited for the Mage, but you should make whatever character the player will be interested in.

 

[mentle]

After reading more I found that to be true. Considering a gensai with the sand form feat.

 

[knightofround]

I think your best bet would be recommending that the player become either a Wizard or Druid. And then just reflavor the powers appropiately. Just change the powers from doing elemental damage into necrotic damage.

 

[marelion]

Just change the powers from doing elemental damage into necrotic damage.

I think that`s a bad trade-off. Immunity/resistance to necrotic damage is pretty common, whereas elemental resistance only comes up every once and so-often. The necro should have access to feats that allow him to circumvent necrotic resistance/immunity more easily(Arcane Admixture is a good start, but happens pretty late (Lvl 11 at the earliest). Maybe sth. like:

Dust to Dust *Heroic Tier; Necromancer: Whenever you hit a target that is immune to necrotic damage with a wizard encounter/dailyspell or druid encounter/daily invocation respectively the target looses its mmunity to necrotic damage against your attacks until the start of its next turn.

The necromancer would still be severly hamperderd in battles against undead, but he would not be entirely useless.

Just from the top of my head, hope you find the idea useful

 

[mentle]

I'm thinking necrotic mastery at lvl 10. Pretty sure that eliminates necrotic resistance.

 

[Klaus]

After reading more I found that to be true. Considering a gensai with the sand form feat.

That'd work great, specially if you re-flavor the race as being a human necromancer working towards becoming a mummy.

 

[Syntallah]

I was in the exact same position as you. I had a player coming from 3.5E and he loves necromancers...

I made a shade mage (from the Character Builder), and simply chose all spells that had the necromantic flair (i.e. they did necrotic damage, or had an undead element like Animate Dead).

The character was quite cool, but in the end the guy went back to his old group because he did not like 4E..

 

[mentle]

Well the player that the nec is for, is the gf of another player. She had a weapon master fighter; but she felt like she couldn't do much. So I just wanted something entertaining for her

 

[Pour]

I believe Necromancer is one of the great unfulfilled aspects of 4e, personally. It is such a powerful archetype it really deserved its own class, with its own builds beneath it. I think unique companion and horde mechanics could have been implemented, but around Heroes of Shadow the design philosophy really seemed to shift. The Shadow power source in general was kind of shafted, and deserved its own treatment, not any sort of odd piggyback on others. Just a real lost opportunity there.

That said, we've been able to get a lot of traction out of hybrids and multiclassing in my groups, and, most of all, reflavoring. I think you took the right approach, cherrypicking powers you felt spoke Necromancer to you. I think every race offers something special when combined with the idea of necromancer, and sand-form genasi sounds particularly sweet. Did you have any notions, or did you friend's gf, on how the character was going to be played? Does he shift into sand and exhume choice bodies? Or does he bury his victims alive? I think that also has something to do with being a Necromancer, the approach to the character in the game itself. If a character takes on the air of a necromancer, and the other PCs kind of recognize it, it goes a long way to empowering them and thus creating a fulfilling necromantic experience (even the character is really a mage or, hell, bard). The DM can also go a loooong way in making her feel more Necromancer in certain effects descriptions and plot ties (induction into necromantic orders, rivals and enemies of the Raven Queen faction, etc). It's a group effort, but it's completely possible.