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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2008516" data-attributes="member: 9860">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.</blockquote>

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