New Necromancy Spells(Dealing with Undead)

[Madara]

Breath of Undeath
Necromancy
Level: Cleric 2, Dread Necromancer 2, Wizard/Sorcerer 2
Components: S, F
Casting Time: Standard Action
Range: Touch
Target: One corpse touched
Duration: 1 min/level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

This spell grants the targeted corpse the ability to speak and move. It becomes a skeleton or zombie depending on the amount of corpse intact, as according to Animate Dead. For 1 min/level, the Skeleton or Zombie follows the casters commands. When the spell ends, the undead returns to its form as a corpse, and is no longer a skeleton or zombie. The undead controlled by this spell does not count against the total limit of Animate Dead. At any time, the caster can only control 2HD/level worth of undead from this spell per casting.

Focus: One Onyx shard

Undead Summoning Runes
Necromancy/Conjuration (Teleportation)
Level: Cleric 4, Dread Necromancer 3, Wizard/Sorcerer 4
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 10 Minutes
Range: Touch
Target: One Willing Undead Creature/level
Duration: Permanent until Discharged
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

By carving a rune on the selected undead creature(s) with an Onyx shard, the selected undead become bound to the caster. At any later time, the caster can summon the undead creatures with a standard action, discharging the rune. The summoned creatures appear in the nearest unoccupied spaces. The undead creatures remain at that location as if they teleported. When the rune is created, the caster decides on a specific command word that activates the runes.

The caster can place a rune on one undead creature/level, but all the undead that are targets of the same spell receive the same command word for their rune and are all summoned together if the word is said.


Material Component: Onyx shard worth at least 20gp/rune with the caster's blood on it, which is consumed when the spell is cast.

Necrotic Leak
Necromancy
Level: Cleric 3, Wizard/Sorcerer 3
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 20ft./level
Targets: All undead within 30ft. burst
Duration: 1 round/ 2 levels
Saving Throw: See text
Spell Resistance: No

All undead within 30ft. of the burst location start to leak negative energy. All creatures within 5ft. of these undead must make a reflex save or take 1d6/level(Max 5d6) negative energy damage, which heals the undead creatures 1d4 hp. The undead continue to radiate the negative energy for 1 round/ 2 levels.

Remote Necromancy
Divination/Necromancy
Level: Cleric 6, Dread Necromancer 5, Wizard/Sorcerer 5
Components: V, S, F, DF
Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: see text
Target: One or more willing Undead
Duration: 1 hour / 2 levels
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

By placing pieces on a game board, you can visualize the movement of your controlled undead, and command them from a distance. When you cast this spell, you can select any undead controlled by your Animate Dead spell or other means such as rebuking. Once chosen, these undead must remain within 100ft. of each other, or you lose sight of any that are separated and your connection is severed to that undead at which point they act as normal.

All the undead represented on your board can receive commands from you as if they were given verbally. Whenever the undead move, the playing piece used to represent them moves a scaled distance equivalent to the distance the actual undead moved. In addition, the game board changes appearance to represent the undead's surroundings. It will show a general image of any creatures that the undead encounter, but only shows their size, and not enough detail to identify any creatures.


Focus: A 100" x 100" glass game board worth 150gp and 1sq inch pieces or pebbles to represent each undead.

Divine Focus: As above except the game board must have been covered in holy or unholy water.

[Tzi]

Very interesting a flavorful spells.

Remote Necromancy has some great potential.

[JoshuaZ]

These are all balanced and seem quite fun. The only possible exception is Necrotic Leak which should be level 3 probably.

One other minor issue is that in general adding spells to the Dread Necromancer list is something that is not generally a great idea since they get full spontaneous access to their entire spell list. If a DN wants a spell they can either add it to their list or they can cast it through scrolls or the like. This is an important balance aspect of the class. This is also important because the spells that the DN have are in some sense highly generic, obvious necromancy, so at a flavor level, letting different DNs customize their spell lists help distinguish them, and just giving them every nice necromancy spell makes them all be a bit the same.

Remote Necromancy is particularly clever and original, and nice fluff wise. It might make sense to have the gameboard also change to have something appear that represents other creatures, but maybe not give any data other than the presence of a creature that the undead sees, and maybe the creature's size? Also, I think you could probably reduce the spell level even with that to fifth level for wizards. (Sixth makes sense for clerics both because it is a much more wizardy spell and because clerics already get massive undead armies easily an this would be much more advantageous for them).

Overall, I like these a lot.

[Giegue]

Very interesting. By any chance did you get the idea for the Remote Necromancy spell from Kabuto's Edo Tensei gameboard from Naruto?

[Madara]

Also, I think you could probably reduce the spell level even with that to fifth level for wizards. (Sixth makes sense for clerics both because it is a much more wizardy spell and because clerics already get massive undead armies easily an this would be much more advantageous for them).

Overall, I like these a lot.
Well, since scrying is 4, and this is superior to it, I upped the level. But I'll change it for wizards.

I kinda felt like giving Dread Necromancers something nice. I feel like if they're gonna be doing necromancy, they should be the best at it, so I wanted to give them an advantage over Clerics.


Edit:
Very interesting. By any chance did you get the idea for the Remote Necromancy spell from Kabuto's Edo Tensei gameboard from Naruto?

Somewhat. I had the Idea for Remote Necromancy before it happened in Naruto, but I totally cribbed the game board from him.

Thank you both for you're imput. I think I will change the level on Necrotic Leak..:smallbiggrin:

[JoshuaZ]

.

I kinda felt like giving Dread Necromancers something nice. I feel like if they're gonna be doing necromancy, they should be the best at it, so I wanted to give them an advantage over Clerics.

:

Well, it is fine in any given campaign if DN's have a few extra spells. The real issue is that there's a lot of homebrew at this point that adds spells to that class list. And if one starts to include multiple versions it leads to DNs getting to be very powerful. I'm probably not one to talk since I prefer a slightly modified version of the DN that is essentially Tier 2. In any event, if these are the only ones added it should be fine.

[bloodtide]

1.Breath of Undeath--looks fine, temporary undead spells are common.

2.Undead Summoning Runes--Teleporting several undead to you looks like it might be too powerful. To summon something like a dozen undead with a standard action is way too much. The whole teleportation alone might be too much.

3.Necrotic Leak--Undead leak and heal themselves? That's weird. You'd think an undead that leaked energy would be destroyed. And the spell might be too powerful for stacking, you could cast it on a dozen zombie rats and do something like 70d4 (that's 5d4 x12). You might want want to limit this by HD, something like HD 1-3 only damage/heal 1, 4-6 do 1d4, or such. And you might want to limit the undead effected, and even more so how much a single target can be effected by the spell. One round a level is way too much also. Again 5d4 for something like 10 rounds is way too much. Maybe add something like every 1d4 removes 1d4 hp from the undead? And no save and no SR, this spell should have both!


4.Remote Necromancy--looks kinda odd. There are spells that let you see/hear through your undead....this spell might work better if it was all mental like that. So you could just see and command them all in your head. If you really want to keep the chess board, you should at least make it made of bone. Or something like made from a bit of each undead.

[bobthe6th]

man, I want to play a DN with remote necromancy just for the game within a game affect...

[Cieyrin]

Problem with Breath of Undeath: If you mean the material component to be the targeted corpse, that won't work, since material components are consumed at the end of casting, not the end of the spell, so you cast it and immediately lose the corpse, making the spell moot.

[Madara]

A few adjustments made to the Necrotic Leak, and I'll change the material component for the breath or undeath.

As for Necrotic leak, multiple effects don't stack. It targets the undead in an area. Yes, you could have it affect several rats, but they only affect those within 5ft. of them, so they have to be in melee range. Which means, that the rats will die. So, no HD limit.

[Steward]

Does necrotic leak last one round per level or one round per two levels?

[Madara]

1 round/ 2 levels, the text is wrong in this case. Nice catch. :smallsmile: