My favorite Youtuber is Abraham Zentia, who uses the handle, Talking About Games; he is an intelligent guy who reviews table top RPGs in a way that I really enjoy; never one to just point out the obvious, he actually tells you how he feels on certain subjects, and interjects true opinions which matter when one is looking at rule books.
Everybody plays the game in different ways, and I was surprised by one of his comments: He enjoys 2e, but he finds the Necromancer Player Class to be too weak. A Necromancer PC? My mind was blown!
Now, in regards to Necromancers, I had gone through a phase that dictated that the worst monsters are of the human variety, and we played a TON of Ravenloft, so I personally over-used the Necromancer and have no desire to go back. I can’t think of any new ways to play the same character! But the Necromancer has always been an Evil NPC in my games. The 2e rules support this, but it also makes one wonder. The Necromancer is only effective if he is at high levels, but if this is the case, how did he survive to become high level?
WIZARDS IN AD&D 2ndEDITION
In original AD&D all wizards, with the exception of Illusionists, were general wizards. They all cast basically the same spells, with very little variety. 2e set out to make wizards more unique from each other by encouraging players to specialize in schools of magic, and while the general wizard class is still a very popular one, if one chooses to specialize they will be less diversified, but more powerful, even at lower levels of play. Not all of the schools are created equally; the more powerful schools, while not restricted to just the spells from that school, are restricted from one to three schools of magic which oppose them, and can’t learn or cast spells from those schools.
While the Illusionist suffers the most restrictions, unable to cast Necromantic, Invocation/Evocation, and Abjuration spells, he can still fake it by creating illusions that simulate those spells. The true sufferer of the rule change is the Necromancer, he is unable to cast spells from the schools of Illusion and Enchantment/Charm. While he doesn’t really need spells from the Illusion school (after all, he can cast the real thing), since he can’t cast Enchantment spells, he’ll never be able to create his own magical items, which is a HUGE drawback. But the biggest problem isn’t the schools which oppose him; it is the lack of spells in his school in the first place. In the Players Handbook, there are only 18 spells which he can cast at a higher level because of his specialization. It is the smallest spell pool in the manual.
It is, of course, no secret why this is. This was done on purpose to appease our Mom during the Satanic Panic. Mom didn’t want us playing a Necromancer because before you know it we’ll be arrested for digging stuff up in the cemetery, which is actually a logical conclusion!
THE NECROMANCER
The necromancer is typically a power hungry guy. He doesn’t seek to control the living, if he did he’d specialize in Charm and Enchantment; no, his desires are to control the dead. Of course he still can borrow spells from other schools; well, that isn’t all that accurate, because he will HAVE to borrow spells from other schools because his specialized spell list won’t fill even a traveler’s spellbook.
His spells are good, but not very well rounded; he’s got only one mass attack, Death Spell, which even then requires a higher level to cast than the mass attacks of other schools. He also gets pseudo healing spells in the form of Reincarnation and Clone; good luck using Clone as it is an 8thlevel spell, but even for Reincarnationhe must be 12th level.I suppose that as a role-playing guide, this horrible spell progression would imply that he must hide what he truly is, he’d study normal magic, but in his own private researches he would be collecting tomes of the darkest nature possible. If he is discovered, he will no doubt be slain by his peers. He must bide his time until he feels that it is too late to stop him.
THE PROBLEM WITH THE BALANCE OF POWER
If one takes a look at the spell lists broken down into different schools, one can see what was done. Clearly they stole spells that were better fit for the Necromancer, and assigned them to other schools of magic. Was this fair? At epic levels a Necromancer can kill your entire army and turn it against you. One can say that that is a pretty strong ability to have, and one that balances itself out in the long run. If a PC uses this ability without moral obligations of any kind, then he could take over the entire campaign, but how is this any different from the other schools of magic? Enchanters don’t even need to kill you to turn your army against you. Illusionists can create entire armies of whatever; all of the wizards are truly epic in high levels of play. The Core Rulebooks go out of their way to tell us, specifically, how powerful the Necromantic School of magic is, which if you know anything about propaganda, the reason why they single this one school out as often as they do, is because that statement is utterly false.
The best fix is to restore the spells to the school by simply rewriting an expanded list of spells to Necromancy in Appendix 5. I’m not going to do this because it wouldn’t serve much purpose here; you can do this just as easily as I can, and in a format that you prefer.
CREATING AND INTRODUCING NEW SPELLS
I have always believed that the spells included in the Players Handbook are just there to get you started. As you play the game you’ll invent new spells, there is advice in the DMG to help you do just that. Once you understand how the magic system works, you can port spells in from other systems and settings if you don’t have the imagination to come up with them yourself. Players will have to submit them to the DM, as it is the DM that will have to live with this stuff. It is also helpful to let the player know that you are play-testing the spell, and things can always be altered later to make it better fit in the campaign world.
The Necromantic School has been expanded by the Ravenloft Setting; you’ll have to modify the spells that you take from the setting down, as the nature of that world promotes the art of necromancy specifically. You can usually cut one or more characteristics in half and it will be properly suited for your world, but that, of course, is just a suggestion. The books that might help you the most are, of course The Compete Necromancer’s Handbook(which I found to not be very helpful and don’t even own it), or Domains of Dread by William W. Connors & Steve Miller, and the Wizard’s Spell Compendiums Volume I-IV which had collected a huge range of TSR spells invented after the publication of the Core handbooks.
CAN A NECROMANCER BE GOOD?
We are dealing with a character that can raise the corpses of your dead loved ones, and turn them against you. It is a psychological assault on so many levels that the very implications are horrifying. To force you to fight your dead loved one is one thing, but to also be forced to see your loved one in the shape that they are in is an additional insult and an attack all in itself. The fact that this school of magic would appeal to the forces of evil is beyond questioning. The more one thinks about what is happening, and its implications, the more unsettling these spells become. What requires a true work of imagination and creativity is coming up with ways that one can perform acts of good within this very dark school.
A necromancer may be summoned to help with moving a cemetery to a different location, but then again, wouldn’t a cleric of the dead be better suited for this job? Hiring a known Necromancer probably wouldn’t make anybody involved feel better.
A necromancer may be hired to retrieve corpses from a calamity. A respectful one would cover them up and have them walk to where clerics could properly intern them. I can see that as a PC class, but again he can only do this job at very epic levels, which sucks. The Necromantic Priest is much more powerful in regards to this, as he is able to STEAL the undead by altering the Turning Ability.
Fighting Fire with Fire: A scholar who is well-versed in Necromancy can use his powers to hunt evil magic users, and destroy them. If one created a Corruption Table, that would be one hell of a fun class to play. Very Call of Cuthulu, but so what? I can see a Necromantic avenger in Forgotten Realms.
Necromantic Battle Mage: Again, an epic level character, which sucks, but this mage is a soldier. Those that he raises from the dead are his allies, and once the war is done, the battle mage will make sure that the men that were slain and in his charge are properly interned as beliefs and custom dictates. Fellow soldiers would not see this type of Necromancer as evil, but as a blessing as they can still complete their missions even if death takes them. Becoming a ghost because of failure is probably more feared than this option.
FINAL NOTES ON CLASS WEAKNESS
If one looks through modules they’ll notice that even TSR hated the Necromantic weaknesses inherent in the class. I had converted the 5e Starter Set and found a huge error; a low level wizard of Thay had raised a bunch of zombies and was controlling them with no explanation as to how he was doing this. Either the spells were dramatically lowered so a 5thlevel wizard could use this stuff at will, or the module was cheating. Personally I’d say that the designers were cheating, but it proves a point. Low level Necromancers are severely underpowered. The only benefit of the school is to control undead, and they can’t even so much as raise a skeleton until 9thlevel? The Necromancer can’t even create magical items to allow him to do this; apparently the only way to fix this mess is create a spell, which should be core in the first place. Even a first level Enchanter can cast Friends. A Cleric can Animate Dead at 2nd level, why would Mom say that that is okay for evil clerics but not for Necromancers? That makes no sense at all, thus our friend, Talking About Games, has found a HUGE hole in the system, the question is, how can we patch it up without having to totally rewrite the book.
ADDENDUM: Our friend Brandon Lighter whose blog is The Rosetta Drake had this to say on Google+
As just-another-specialist-wizard, the Necromancer hardly bears discussing as a separate class -- though the Complete Book of Necromancers helps this tremendously (giving a lot of love to the classic villain -- including 1st and 2nd level spells that let them animate skeletons and zombies, albeit only 1 per casting), thus making low-level adventures to stop the zombie-creating apprentice Necromancer make sense. They are no more or less powerful than any other specialist -- though party tactics and the nature of encounters the DM runs can skew this one way or another (i.e. invoker has a clear advantage if the game features large-scale combat too heavily).
One of my longest-running campaigns featured a PC Necromancer who was the only truly good character in the entire party. The party (in 5 years and 28 levels of playing) never acquired a cleric, so the Necromancer quickly stepped up into that role, loading up on spells like: Hold Undead (in place of turning), paired Empathic Wound Transfer and Vampiric Touch (taking her allies wounds on herself then healing them at the expense of their enemies in place of more normal healing), and rampant Reincarnation at high levels (in place of Raise Dead). With the exception of VT for work-around healing, the character was otherwise a committed pacifist, studying the powers of death in order to understand how to counter them.
Talking about Games said:
That's a really good blog post, thanks a lot for mentioning me! So far, my favorite versions of d20 Necromancers are the ones presented in "13 True Ways" and in "Adventures Dark & Deep". If you are curious about those or haven't seen them already, here are the links:
Talking about Games reviews 13 True Ways, and Adventures Dark & Deep
The first one feels powerful and customizable without 'stealing the spotlight' from the other members in the party. The second one is pretty standard old school stuff, but the spells, the ability to create magic items and affect undead make it a lot better.
I also somewhat liked the 3.5 versions presented in "Libris Mortis" and "Heroes of Horror", but the former felt too fiddly, and the latter felt too powerful at times.
CORRECTIONS: Paolo Greco (AKA: Tsojcanth) whose blog is Lost Pages pointed out that Enchant an Item is also associated with the school of Invocation, so Necromancers ARE able to create magic items.
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