Necromancy: Beyond the Grave

[Morrus]

Necromancy: Beyond the Grave is the second book in Mongoose Publishing's Encyclopaedia Arcane series. Unlike the Slayer's Guides, this particular line is considerably more 'meaty' when it comes to rules content, something that many felt that Mongoose's previous work lacked.

I'll start with a quick look at the presentation of the book. It's a 64 page book with a full colour cover and back and white interior art. I find the cover a tad cartoony myself, not the same style as the covers of the Slayer's Guides (although drawn by the same artist), but certainly of high quality. The interior art is not as good - with the exception of one or two pieces, I was not overly impressed. That said, artwork is far from the be-all and end-all of an RPG supplement.

And so on to the important stuff.

Like Demonology: The Dark Road before it, this book maintains that Necromancy, in itself, is not inherently evil. However, it is a dark and dangerous path to follow and few people can follow the path for long without succumbing to corruption and/or insanity.

The book begins with an Overview, which introduces us to Necromancy, its paractitioners, the concepts of Negative Energy and a look at the 'creatures of undeath'. It's interesting reading, if a bit discussive, but it serves to set the scene well.

The bit that most people are looking for, of course, is the rules. N:BTG gives us three new knowledge skills (Anatomy, Necrology and Spirit Lore). I imagine that many people already have a Knowledge: Undead skill in their games already, so it is nice to see it presented in print. Unfortunately, I don't feel that these skills go into quite enough detail - a slightly more comprehensive list of DCs for each would have been more useful than the three levels of difficulty presented.

The prestige classes come next, and we are presented with The Spectral Loremaster (a spellcaster who gains knowledge via communion with spirits), The Deathseeker (a necromancer who taps into the rush of negative energy that floods into a dying body) and The Necrophage (an obsessive anatomist who grafts the limbs and organs of the dead to his own nightmarish creations). Other than the first of these, I can't see them being used by PCs (at least not in my game!), but they would be great villains if played correctly. The Necrophage, of course, instantly brings to mind images of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (and I have no doubt that that was the intent here).

We then move on to the spells section. Always the poorer cousin of the Evoker, the Necromancer's spell list has been boosted with 34 new spells. They are spread throughout all nine levels, from the 0-level Identify Undead to the 9th-level Raise City - the latter allowing the caster to bring an entire civilisation back as skeletons! Many of the spells fill in the expected gaps - necromantic divinations, a greater range of animation spells, some much needed offensve and defensive spells, along with some interesting new ideas. This section, above all others, is likely to be the most useful in the average game.

A large section on Necromantic Feats presents 8 new feats and a preceding section on 'Negative Energy Side Effects'. Each time a necromantic feat is used, the practitioner is required to make a Negative Energy check, failure causing a randomly determined side-effect to be inflicted on the character. There are 20 such side-effects, varying in strength from Aura of Unease, though Holy Aversion, Glowing Eyes and Disfigurement to the somewhat unpleasant Undeath (presented as a non-specific 'Undead' template as opposed to a particular type of undead). This is vaguely reminiscent of the 'Dark powers' checks from Ravenloft 2E, although I feel that Mongoose have come up with a more elegant system.

The feats themselves immediately follow this section. This is one problem that I have with this book - it's not a major issue, but the feats follow on immediately from the side-effects with no break distinguishing the two sections. So we go stright from the side effect Undeath to the feat Animation by Touch with no introduction. I found it a trifle confusing.

Then comes a section on lichdom - three pages describing how how becomes a lich, detailing the lich's phylactery and so on. Although this is something that would never be used in my game (players as liches - no chance!) I can see how it might be attractive to some and may help provide background for NPC villains. I would have liked to see the Death Knight (detailed as a monster later in the book) given the same treatment as I have always regarded that particular undead beastie to be the 'warrior' version of the lich.

A section on Magical Items presents several new items. These are fairly imaginative, although there aren't many there. It does include one very powerful artifact, however.

Minions of Undeath is the title for the obligatory monster section. There are 8 monsters here, written by Scott Greene and Erica Balsley of the Creature Catalog hosted here at EN World. These monsters are all fairly unpleasant, especially the Skull Child which is downright creepy! Very useful overall, especially when it comes to those long-time players who know the Monster Manual inside and out. Interestingly, and somewhat controversially, the Death Knight has lost his 20 HD fireball.

At the back of the book is a Rules and Spell Summary apendix, which lists all necromantic spells from the PHB, Relics & Ritials and, of course, Necromancy: Beyond the Grave. It also lists the necromantic feats and prerequisites. I'm not sure if this is the first example of OGC content being used by another publisher (although I am certainly aware of plans for various publishers to use each others' materials), but it is good to see the Open Gaming License being used to its fullest extent. Compatibility between the products from various publishers is a legitimate concern for the fans, and this use of Sword & Sorcery's certainly goes some way towards easing some of those fears.

In Summary
A solid book, with plenty of useful material. Mongoose are getting better with each product and seem to be listening to the fans (the meat/fluff ration here is certainly better than their previous outings), and I find myself looking forward to future materials. This one gets a solid 4/5 from me.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Nearly as good as “Demonology” this book continues exploring both the, non-Vacnian alternatives for d20 magic and the game mechanics reasons behind the fantasy stereotypes; in this case, the reclusive Necromancer with unsavory appearance and habits.

One thing that I really like about the Mongoose books is that they make fantasy feel… well, fantastic. Too frequently when playing DnD magical spells and items start feeling, after a while, just like so much technology. With their total predictability and uninteresting prerequisites spells start to feel like every day gadgets, not mysterious and dangerous energies they largely are in most of the fantasy fiction, not to mention mythology. “Necromancy” goes a long way to show us how to rectify this. By making its spells relatively powerful and then introducing the hard-to-come-by and evocative components it enriches a game by making each casting somewhat of a special and memorable event. Digging out the graves of dead Clerics and Paladins to obtain material components does tend to give a distinct flavor to what would otherwise be a rather bland 1st level protection from undead spell.

Furthermore, such much needed high level necromantic practices as raising an undead hulk of a ship and making an old deserted city into a necropolis of living dead are all covered, filling many holes in d20 corpus of rules.

Finally there are necromantic feats, another application of non-Vancian “magic for a price” theme, very expertly done. Although it would not be able to stand on its own ike the one from Demonology, this system of magic does supplement the Necromantic magic and gives this kind of wizard a specific unsavory feel that it was always supposed to have.

Once again, a great product from Mongoose (no I am not on their payroll, I just happened to have very similar taste to Mr. Sprange). It does not surpass the “Demonology” but is still among the best of d20.

 

[Simon Collins]

Beware! This review contains major spoilers.

Necromancy: Beyond The Grave is a sourcebook dealing with the various nefarious purposes between the fine art of necromancy, for the D&D game. It costs $14.95.

Presentation: This is a softback book with a page count of 64. The front cover has a piece of colour artwork showing zombies and skeletons rising from their graves, summoned by a necromancer on a hill. The back cover contains information on the book, on a black background. The inside front cover portrays a crypt with its doors half split from its hinges, and the back cover shows a lich penning a letter - a hard job with his eyes rolled up into his head like that. The first page contains credits and contents and the antipenultimate page shows the OGL and D20 Licence. Though the Encyclopaedia Arcane series has improved in its use of space compared with the Slayers Guides, the wide margin still remains and they could still pare down some of the white space around art and between paragraphs (as well as reducing the length of some of the flavour text). The internal black and white artwork is generally poorer than in prevoius Mongoose modules - a couple of pieces are good but most is average with a few mediocre pieces.

Whats Inside: After the mandatory introduction and page of flavour text, there is a five page overview of necromancy including detail on negative energy, the consequences of channeling negative energy regularly (coming to look like undead), creatures of undeath, a comparison between arcane and divine powers over undead, and some guidelines for using the book. The next (10 page) section, To Pass Beyond The Grave, deals with the Spectral Loremaster (researches forbidden knowledge from spirits), The Deathseeker (uses the negative energy of dying creatures to fuel spells)and the Necrophage (grafts body parts onto undead, and undead body parts onto live subjects) prestige classes. This section also introduces three new Knowledge-based skills - Anatomy, Necrology (material undead lore) and Spirit Lore. There follows 15 pages of new necromantic spells (from the 0-level Animate Animal to the 9th level Raise Death Fleet, though most spells are fairly low-level) and 8 pages of negative energy side effects (such as Stench of Death and Eater of the Dead) and new necromantic feats (such as Animation By Touch and Empower Undead). The next section, Lichdom (3 pages), details the process of becoming a lich. There are then 3 pages of magic items linked with necromancy. A four page section, Help For Games Masters, deals with the PCs sending undead minions to test traps, allowing very powerful necromancers in your campaign, including necromantic feats and side effects, a PC becoming a lich, and introduces the next section, Minions of Undeath (8 pages of undead). The designers notes explain why there is a preponderance of low-level spells in the spells section (playtesters told them that was where the necromancer was weakest) and why they used necromantic feats to attempt to balance out the power difference with clerics when raising and controlling undead. The module ends with a page of lavour text and two pages of rules and spells summary.

The Good: In a seeming mirror image to the Slayers Guides, Necromancy - Beyond The Grave has a wealth of rules-orientated information - new spells, new feats, new skills, new monsters, new prestige classes. This book is tightly packed with information to expand the role and power of the necromancer in a campaign setting. I particularly liked the negative energy side effects.

The Bad: Unlike Demonology, Necromancy suffers a little from too much rules-orientated information for my tastes. I'm not a huge fan (unlike most people out there seemingly) of prestige classes or new spells and, despite their creativity, these sections left me a little cold (and at 25 pages thats nearly half the book). This is not a comment on the quality of the content, just the subject matter. What I would like to have seen was an expansion of the idea of the necromancer in a similar way to the demonologist.

Conclusion: Whilst the rules included definitely make a necromancer a more attractive proposition for a PC if used in a campaign, and they also enable a necromancer to stand on an even par with a cleric who commands undead, Necromancy did not manage to take its prime concept into another dimension (figuratively speaking) in the way Demonology did. I was tempted to give the book an Average rating because of this and my feelings about the glut of rules-orientated information backed this up (not to mention the price increase). However, the book is full of creativity within the confines of its subject matter and I can definitely use some of its ideas (such as the negative energy side effects, and the Undead in the Minions of Undeath section). So it just scrapes a Good rating. For those of you who feast on new spells, feats and prestige classes, I'd recommend it.

 

[Psion]

Necromancy: Beyond the Grave

Mongoose Publishing is one of the first d20 vendors to focus primarily on supplemental rules material rather than adventures. Their first line of books was the Slayer's Guide series, and the second is their Encyclopedia Arcane series, detailing different methodologies of magic. Necromancy: Beyond the Grave is the second book in the Encyclopedia Arcane line, following Demonology: The Dark Road.

As the title implies, Necromancy: Beyond the Grave focuses on the necromancy school of magic, and more specifically, the arcane spellcasters who use it. As with many publishers, Mongoose has noticed the deficiency in the ability of the d20 system to replicate the popular archetype of a "master of the undead" type character. Their solution, however, is modestly different than any that I have seen to date.

A First Look

Necromancy: Beyond the Grave is a 64-page, perfect-bound, softcover book. The cover is dominated by a color picture of a horde of zombies emerging from a graveyard, with a female necromancer in the distance.

The interior of the book is black and white. The interior artwork is generally poor, a step down from Demonology: The Dark Road. The best art is by Chris Quillaims, who is underused here just as he is in other Mongoose products. Quilliams does great work on the inside covers, but most of the art that is between the covers looks rather amateur and unattractive. Additionally, one illustration struck me as rather lewd.

The font size is slightly above average, as the use of space could be slightly better. As with Demonology: the Dark Road, the price per page is a little high - $14.95 for 64 pages. Also worth noting, the price of Necromancy: Beyond the Grave is almost a dollar more than Demonology: The Dark Road, which has the same page count.

A Deeper Look

Necromancy: Beyond the Grave is divided into a number of sections, though it does not have quite the plethora of sections as in Demonology: The Dark Road. The first section is an introduction describing the nature of the book. With it comes the first of the book's short narratives, this one describing the exploits of an adventuring mage delving too deeply into the dark arts of necromancy.

The second section is entitled Necromancy - an Overview. It sets forth the game world theory that is both a conceptual exploration of the game concept of the art of necromancy and a basic idea from which other parts of the book will draw. The book purports that when a living being dies, there is a release of negative energy that can have certain effects and can be harnessed by a necromancer.

The third section is entitled To Pass Beyond the Grave. It details three new Knowledge skills - anatomy, necrology, and spirit lore. More significantly, it includes three new prestige classes:

- Spectral Loremaster: The spectral loremaster is a spellcaster that gains knowledge from spirits. His abilities focus around the gathering of information from spirits.
- Deathseeker: The deathseeker is an arcane spellcaster that feeds off the negative energy that is unleashed when a living creature dies. She can use this energy to enhance her spellcasting ability.
- Necrophage: The necrophage is possibly the most disgusting of this set of prestige classes. The necrophage can graft body parts from dead creatures onto himself or others. This graft can often grant special abilities. It seems to me, however, that the graft system should have been a little more explicitly limited: for example, by using a variant of the item creation system or (more simply) limiting the number of grafts a necromancer may have in effect at one time.

I was actually a little surprised not to see a "master of the dead" sort of prestige class as Wizards of the Coast did in Tome & Blood and as Sword & Sorcery Studio did in Relics & Rituals. Yet this is probably a good thing. You can use these classes alongside other publishers' prestige classes instead of having to choose between them. Furthermore, by not going the obvious route, Mongoose has come up with more unique character ideas than they might have otherwise.

Mongoose, though, does appear to share the feeling of those other publishers that arcane spellcasters deserve access to greater ability to animate and control undead. Mongoose does that not by a specialized prestige class, but by expanding on the selection of arcane necromantic spells in the next section, entitled Necromantic Spells.

The Necromantic Spells section provides a variety of new spells for the school of necromancy. Some of these are undead creation spells that are more basic than the animate dead spell for neophyte necromancers: animate animal (0-level, animates one tiny animal skeleton or zombie); animate skeleton (1st-level, animates a skeleton of medium size or less); and animate zombie (2nd-level, animates one zombie of medium size or smaller). Each of these only allows the necromancer to animate one corpse at a time, and if that corpse is destroyed it cannot be animated again. (I wonder if Mr. Sprange had been playing much Diablo II when he wrote this book . . . .)

On the other end of the spectrum are spells such as raise death hulk (calls a sunken ship to the surface, complete with undead crew), raise death fleet (think mass raise death hulk), and raise city. These are the sorts of high-level spells that you would expect to be in the arsenal of a master necromancer. These spells have a significant XP cost: 10 xp per skeleton or 1000 xp per ship. I can understand why you would not want a necromancer blithely casting these spells, but the cost still seemed a little steep to me. A GM would be well advised to reduce these costs, make judicious use of the power component rules in the DMG (which could provide the dingus for a campaign), or both.

Of course, spells that animate dead are not the only additions to the necromancer's bag of tricks. New spells are provided that detect and identify undead, aggravate wounds, recall a creature's spirit to its body, graft weapons to undead minions, cast spells through a conduit to one of your undead minions, and so on. All in all, there is plenty here to make necromancer characters more sinister - or to protect against their undead minions.

The book uses another method to expand on the options available to necromancers: feats. The Necromantic Feats section introduces a new class of feats. Necromantic feats are fairly powerful, but the book proposes to balance them by making hazards inherent to their use. Whenever a necromantic feat is used, there is a chance that the energies use fly out of control. The character can suffer a variety of effects often associated with necromancers. At best, this constitutes simple consequences such as causing unease in people or animals. On the other end of the spectrum, it can be insanity, attribute loss, or even acquiring an undead state.

From the standpoint of game style and feel, I think this is a wonderful mechanic. It reintroduces the creepy "touch of darkness" type of effect that afflicts necromancers in other game material or literature. I am uncertain, however, that the drawbacks associated with these feats are sufficient to pay for the powers that some of them convey.

Some examples of necromantic feats are:

- Command Undead: Allows the character to rebuke and command undead as a cleric of half her character level.
- Death Touch: This feat essentially replicates the death touch ability of the clerical Death domain.
- Empower Undead: Undead you create automatically have turn resistance of half of the character's level.
- Spirit Dissertation: You may speak with dead (as the spell) once per day.

Some necromantic feats are very powerful and relatively easy to acquire. At the very least, many necromantic feats should be given stiffer prerequisites or toned down.

The next section is entitled Lichdom, and adds new details on how to handle this most ghastly of a necromancer's aspirations. The requirements outlined here are a bit more demanding than the requirements listed in the Monster Manual. Not only is the bar raised on feat and skill requirements even to attempt the transformation, but the chances of even the most intelligent would-be lich surviving the transformation are rather low. Given this, the section appears to be of an informational nature for GMs, as only the most risk-tolerant players will fiddle with the idea of lichdom given these rules.

After the section on lichdom is a short section introducing new magic items. The magic items vary in power from the single-use bloodied onyx, which grants undead creatures regeneration if they are animated using the onyx as a material component, to a major artifact called the black banner, which grants the user great power to animate and control undead.

A section entitled Help for Games Masters attempts to highlight some of the pratfalls that a GM may stumble upon in this book. This book is nowhere near as edgy as Demonology: The Dark Road, so perhaps this section is less productive. Mostly, it warns of - and makes apologies for - the rough spots in the book, primarily the campaign style and balance issues that may come from allowing a player to run a character than can command undead creatures.

The Minions of Undeath section introduces a number of new undead creatures. The primary theme here seems to be undead that arise under specific circumstances. For example, the burning ghat is an innocent that died from being put to death by flames, and the bone delver is a grave robber that died while about his larcenous profession. No exception to this trend is a template for recreating a classic creature from old editions of the D&D game: the death knight, a paladin that died while falling from grace. Unlike the old death knight, there are no references to involvement with infernal lords. This death knight is more purely a creature of undeath, complete with an undead mount called a grave mount.

The book closes with a page of designer notes, the obligatory Open Game License, and an appendix summarizing the new feats and necromantic spells in this book, the PHB, and Sword & Sorcery Studio's Relics & Rituals book.

Summary

It seems that with this book, Mongoose is finally getting their footing. The book is much better organized than their previous effort in the Encyclopedia Arcane series, and it seems to strike a better balance between exposition, flavor text, and game material. Furthermore, the game material appears to be less likely to wreak havoc on your game than that of Demonology: The Dark Road if introduced without a heaping spoonful of GM restraint.

More importantly, the ideas presented have an interesting feel. The necromantic feats are a little mechanically edgy to me, but they appear as if they would add a certain appropriate undeathly feel to necromancers. This is somewhat reminiscent of the attributes that such twisted spellcasters were given in the Warhammer FRPG and in the AD&D 2nd edition game's Complete Necromancer's Handbook.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Throughout the civilised lands of man, dwarf and elf, the practice of necromancy is universally shunned, its knowledge suppressed and its practitioners persecuted. Only now, with the advent of Necromancy – Beyond the Grave, are the darkest secrets of this terrible and frightening magic finally uncovered. One skilled in wizardry or sorcery may use this tome, for good or ill, and tap the powers inherent beyond the grave for their own direct benefit. For those willing to risk the wrath of a society opposed to the art, mastery of necromancy may bring the most potent of magical energies to command.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

I was tempted to give the book an Average rating because of this and my feelings about the glut of rules-orientated information backed this up (not to mention the price increase).

Oh, give me a break! That monumental price hike was less than a dollar! We're not talking second-mortgage prices here. Complaining about the price... I can see that happening for Tome of Horrors but not this.