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Tychris1
2011-01-15, 02:17 AM
So I am going to be playing as a 4e evil cleric on the play by post forum section and was hoping for a more necromancer feel. Do they still have rebuke undead and do certain sped change depending on the god you worship? (I do not have my PHB as it is in my cousins house at the moment, and I haven't touched it in months so I'm pretty reliant on you guys until sunday.)

WitchSlayer
2011-01-15, 02:26 AM
Well, for the most part your spells are still radiant as radiant is defined as "from the gods" and not necessarily positive energy. If you wish you can ask your DM to refluff you as using necrotic.

Anonomuss
2011-01-15, 03:41 AM
If you're looking to be a necromancer, you're better looking at being a wizard. Clerics are still mostly being catered for as "Good" classes, as most of their options are aimed towards the good gods. 4e is largely based on the presumption that most PCs will want to follow Gods of Order.

There will be a necromancer class in Heroes of Shadow, however, if you can wait. You could play something like a warlock in the meantime.

Kurald Galain
2011-01-15, 04:40 AM
So I am going to be playing as a 4e evil cleric on the play by post forum section and was hoping for a more necromancer feel. Do they still have rebuke undead and do certain sped change depending on the god you worship?
No, they don't rebuke, and no, their spells aren't different.

However, you can take a feat for your god which will give you an encounter power related to that god.


There will be a necromancer class in Heroes of Shadow, however, if you can wait.
Actually, there will be a necromancer build, of the Mage class.


I would recommend playing a Warlock (if you want the "debuff" kind of necromancy) or a Wizard (if you want the "summoning" kind).

rayne_dragon
2011-01-15, 08:21 AM
I don't have access to my books at the moment either, so this will have to be from memory.

Rebuke still exists and while it's not given to the cleric class you can still get it by means of a feat (from Divine power). You may not want it, though, as it's been made into turn undead with slightly different effect. As had been stated you can try to get your powers refluffed as necrotic, but by and large clerics are treated with the intent that they're the good guys, or at least the person healing the party.

You might be able to get some really good milage out of multiclass and hybrid rules though if you're really set on being a cleric. In fact, I'd recommend hybrid since that will let you pick up a fair amount of wizard, warlock, or whatever powers without spending a ton of feats on it while only loosing out on some class features that might not be very thematic to a necromancer anyways. Wizard can be a great choice since they get creepy/evil/necrotic spells (like grasping shadows) and a fair bit of summons (which you could potentially fluff as undead creatures). Plus then you can pick up Shaman as a multiclass for the spirit companion which you can fluff as your loyal undead minion. The trick is just making sure that you're not too MAD - try to keep all your attacks using the same attribute. That's fortunately easy with cleric since fairly often you can find powers that you don't need to attack with (or just don't want to use).

SoC175
2011-01-15, 10:56 AM
First of all, I advise against asking if you can change your radiant powers into necrotic. Necrotic is the worst damage type you can deal as a player, because it has the most monsters with resistance/Immunity against it.

Second radiant is not in any way a "[Good]" damage. It's simply the damage dealt by servants of the deities and by many foul entities from the Far Realm. There's nothing inherently good about radiant in 4e, a vile deity or an unspeakable horror from the Far Realm have their servants deal radiant damage just as much as the LG cleric of Pelor

kieza
2011-01-15, 02:41 PM
Clerics remain healers and use radiant spells, even if evil. However, on the one occasion I DM'd for an evil cleric, he described his heal spells as causing wounds to heal over with masses of painful scar tissue, and his radiant spells as blasts of neon blue light that left horrible burns and welts (Cherenkov radiation, in other words).

The descriptions given for powers in the book are only starting points. There's no reason why you shouldn't describe them differently if it's more fitting for your class.

NMBLNG
2011-01-15, 03:05 PM
Kieza +1

In 4e, I am not aware of any way to play a negative-energy cleric (like in 3.5) by RAW. Fortunately, RAW isn't very restricting and a religious wizard or warlock can do the job just as well.

gurban
2011-01-15, 03:43 PM
Dragon Magazine just released an article, Channel Divinity: Vecna. It is basically what you're looking for. DDI required though.

Kurald Galain
2011-01-15, 04:00 PM
Dragon Magazine just released an article, Channel Divinity: Vecna. It is basically what you're looking for.

...or not. According to the WOTC boards, the crunch content of the article is limited to half a dozen lacklustre feats. :smallannoyed:

Mando Knight
2011-01-15, 06:14 PM
...or not. According to the WOTC boards, the crunch content of the article is limited to half a dozen lacklustre feats. :smallannoyed:

Give or take. One of its feats, the Vecna CD, lets you force a particularly troublesome monster to use its dying breath to smack one of its allies, though (or grant a last-ditch attack to a falling ally). A few others depend on how many Necrotic powers you can find for your divine character.

Reluctance
2011-01-15, 06:16 PM
How much 4e experience do you have? Clerics are no longer the generic holy magic guy, any more than wizards are the generic other magic guy. Unless you're looking to use your necromantic energies to heal and buff the party, the leader role might not be your thing.

It'd help to know both your general flavor beyond "necromancer", and how you expect to contribute to the party. (Will you summon undead and dark beasties? Debuff enemies with dark powers and shades? Inflict a crapton of damage by ripping out their life forces of your foes?) It's a lot easier to do this sort of thing on 4e's terms, than it is to try and backfit what used to work in earlier-e.

Tychris1
2011-01-15, 06:40 PM
I was hoping for a more summoning minions flavor, with a side order of healing/buffs. I'll probably just be descriptive with how my spells look and ask the DM for a create undead spell or something. And I haven't touched 4e at all, I'm just getting my PHB back from my cousin on Sunday so I generally have no knowledge of anything 4e related.

Zaq
2011-01-15, 06:44 PM
Summoning is a lot rarer in 4e. Almost all summons are now daily, so you won't get more than two or three per day unless you really work hard at it (and even getting two or three is a not-insignificant dedication of resources).

I recommend playing a Shaman. You can fluff the spirit companion as a proper ghost instead of some beneficent nature spirit, or even say that it's a disposable zombie that you just plucked out of the ground right this minute. That means that you'll pretty much always have some kind of minion critter on the field, you'll get your heals in, and everyone's happy.

Tychris1
2011-01-15, 06:51 PM
Problem is I don't HAVE that PHB I just have the first one....

Kurald Galain
2011-01-16, 04:29 AM
I was hoping for a more summoning minions flavor,
Yeah, there are no summon spells in the PHB1. Arcane Power has a few mediocre summons for the wizard, Dragon Magazine has a few excellent summons for the wizard, and the PHB2 Druid gets good summons from the start, and more in Primal Power.

Maho-Tsukai
2011-01-16, 11:45 AM
If your not adverse to some 3rd party content there are quite a few third party books that take a stab at the necromancer as it's own class if you wish to play a character who really feels like a necromancer. One of the best is " Forgotten Heroes: Scythe and Shroud" by Goodman Games. It offers "death" as a power source(the book was made before the shadow power source was invented.) and one class of each roll for that power source, the Necromancer being included as a "death" power source controller. However, despite the 3rd party power source the class works very well as a necromancer and the "death" power source can easily be refluffed as being shadow. This class is a pure controler who has a lot of nice summons and some nice control powers too. It's not a leader in the slightest, though, and it feels more "arcane" then "divine" but you can easily just call your character a death priest/refluff if you wish.

Zodiac God Games released "Secrecy of Necromancy" which has a necromancer class as well, however, don't use their class. It's far to MAD even for 4e.(I know, that's impossible with all the stat boosts you get...well, if you have the book you will see what I mean..the class accomplished the difficult task of being too MAD, even for 4e..) However, what that book DOSE offer is an alternate build for a wizard. It says that you can, instead of using the Necromancer class, allow wizards to chose powers in that book and it also says you can exchange some normal wizard features for some necromancer-based ones, which do involve "blessings" from evil gods so it would definitely give you a "dark priest" feel despite being a "wizard." The big issue with this book, however, is that it was made before summoning was added to 4e and thus the summons do not follow the normal 4e rules and instead have their own stats. Thus, your DM may not be too keen on using this book so running it by him/her is a good idea if you play to go with this "necro."

Finally, if you don't want to spend money and want to play a character with both the ascetics of a necro cleric and the powers, I would highly advise you check out the Dread Necromancer (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19608198/Playtest:_Dread_Necromancer) by The Planeswalker of Wizard's forums. It's a nice class and despite the name it feels a lot more like a Necro cleric then a Dread Necromancer. You get all kinds of summons, "healing" in the form of temporary hit points that you can give to allies(and yourself in a pinch.), some melee powers, some buffs for allies, and even some controller powers. While the class dose say it is a controller primary, and it can make a good controller it can also make a passable leader. However, unlike the other necros I mentioned this guy gets armor, good weapons ect.. and that makes him feel a lot more "cleric-esc" then the others I mentioned that are robe wearers and feel more like "wizards" then "clerics."

Tychris1
2011-01-16, 04:38 PM
Thanks Maho, it looks amazing and I believe you have solved my dilema.

DragonBaneDM
2011-01-16, 09:21 PM
I'd recommend picking up Divine Power for this.

I know it sounds silly, but a lot of the pacifist cleric spells have a very dark feel to them. Take stuff like Bane or Sever the Source for instance. You don't need the feat to take the powers, but it makes them really shine.

I have a Pacifist Kalashtar Cleric who uses stuff like that, and flavor the majority of his powers as being very dark and tapping into his tainted quori for energy.

It works well, and I've creeped our DM out more than once. Flavor your healing as dark energy taking the place of their missing flesh and tell them they feel a bit queezy until the encounter ends.

That, and Temporary HP is the usual "undead" type healing, so you could rock stuff like Exacting Utterance, which in essence saps your enemy's vitality for your allies' benefit.

I could post the full build if you're interested!