Playing a Necromancer?

[RabanoDOOM]

This question is a, uh...bit of an odd one, in that it isn't so much about something like builds or optimization, but more what I actually do in-game. I've built a necromancer. Chaotic Good, sort of the "Break eggs to make omelette/Fight fire with fire/Greater good/Do bad thing to prevent worse thing" character trope. The problem is, even though the character's built, I have never played a necromancer in my entire D&D life, and have little idea of what I'll be doing in both RP and gameplay, beyond general ideas. I know that my primary resource for combat and problem-solving will be a horde of zomb-zombs and skellymans, and I know that a lot of what I'll be doing in RP and character interaction is excusing and defending such a taboo school of magic.

But...I don't know what I'm actually doing, or how I help the party, or any sort of tactical tricks involved with my skelly horde. I've never played a necromancer before, so I don't know how anything actually goes, or what to do. And I know the obvious answer is "Make it up as you go," but as someone who's used to more clear-cut roles like the Hit-stuff fighter or the Blow-everything-up evoker, I can't really figure this out. (Not to mention "Make it up as you go" seems like a very dangerous state of mind when dealing with such a resource based class as the necromancer. :smalleek: )

Can anybody help?

[Specter]

First of all, Necs are still Wizards, and you can provide utility for the whole party with your other spells.

In terms of roleplay, you probably fit the silent nerd type, always avoiding conversation with the weak-minded and searching for more ways to use undeath to your favor.

[DragonSorcererX]

This question is a, uh...bit of an odd one, in that it isn't so much about something like builds or optimization, but more what I actually do in-game. I've built a necromancer. Chaotic Good, sort of the "Break eggs to make omelette/Fight fire with fire/Greater good/Do bad thing to prevent worse thing" character trope. The problem is, even though the character's built, I have never played a necromancer in my entire D&D life, and have little idea of what I'll be doing in both RP and gameplay, beyond general ideas. I know that my primary resource for combat and problem-solving will be a horde of zomb-zombs and skellymans, and I know that a lot of what I'll be doing in RP and character interaction is excusing and defending such a taboo school of magic.

But...I don't know what I'm actually doing, or how I help the party, or any sort of tactical tricks involved with my skelly horde. I've never played a necromancer before, so I don't know how anything actually goes, or what to do. And I know the obvious answer is "Make it up as you go," but as someone who's used to more clear-cut roles like the Hit-stuff fighter or the Blow-everything-up evoker. (Not to mention "Make it up as you go" seems like a very dangerous state of mind when dealing with such a resource based class as the necromancer. :smalleek: )

Can anybody help?

If you are playing by the standard 5e cosmology, Necromancy is evil, you say "Fight fire with fire" it is more like "Fight r-word with r-word"... (The r-word is the violence from wich Half-Orcs were born before that Drizz't friend).

I think that a good necromancer would be like: "I help you, so, don't mind the weird stuff that I do with the corpses of your enemies."

[MrStabby]

"Make it up as you go" is not good with a necromancer - especially if you are running a lot of minions. This takes a lot of time in the turn and will bore everyone else at the table unless you have quick to execute pre-thought-out things to do. Out of respect for the other players find tactical things to do that can be executed in seconds.

That note aside - shoves rather than attacks are good. Your beasties won't be doing much damage and granting advantage to others may be their best use.

Have a few blocks of undead and don't throw them all in at once. If one of those heavily armoured guys you are fighting is a cleric you go back to the start pretty quickly.

Don't use them as your only tool. You have a whole spell book and you should use the right tools for the job. These are not your only tool.

Finally use them as a wall. Consider them as a redeploy-able piece of terrain to block approaches to the party or to threaten the rear spellcasters to make others pull back from the front.

[MaxWilson]

This question is a, uh...bit of an odd one, in that it isn't so much about something like builds or optimization, but more what I actually do in-game. I've built a necromancer. Chaotic Good, sort of the "Break eggs to make omelette/Fight fire with fire/Greater good/Do bad thing to prevent worse thing" character trope. The problem is, even though the character's built, I have never played a necromancer in my entire D&D life, and have little idea of what I'll be doing in both RP and gameplay, beyond general ideas. I know that my primary resource for combat and problem-solving will be a horde of zomb-zombs and skellymans, and I know that a lot of what I'll be doing in RP and character interaction is excusing and defending such a taboo school of magic.

But...I don't know what I'm actually doing, or how I help the party, or any sort of tactical tricks involved with my skelly horde. I've never played a necromancer before, so I don't know how anything actually goes, or what to do. And I know the obvious answer is "Make it up as you go," but as someone who's used to more clear-cut roles like the Hit-stuff fighter or the Blow-everything-up evoker, I can't really figure this out. (Not to mention "Make it up as you go" seems like a very dangerous state of mind when dealing with such a resource based class as the necromancer. :smalleek: )

Can anybody help?

1.) Prefer skeletons with bows over zombies for damage-dealing. Easier to concentrate fire. Zombies are primarily tanks who absorb damage.

2.) Up-armor and up-equip your skeletons with scale mail and heavy crossbows/longbows, and your zombies with chain mail and shields or greatswords. There's a huge difference in utility between an AC 8 naked zombie and an AC 18 armored zombie.

3.) Remember that each and every one of your skeletons and zombies can be either not just for direct attacks but for Helping other PCs attack, for scattering caltrops, for opportunity attacks, and for grappling.

4.) One or two skeletons can throw nets so that all the other skeletons (and PCs) and shoot the things restrained in nets at advantage.

Normally, net-throwing is always at disadvantage, but if you throw a net on a prone target from 5' away, it's a normal attack. Then if you back away, it's an opportunity attack at disadvantage.

5.) Armored zombies that have been ordered to Dodge still get an opportunity attack if someone tries to pass by them.

6.) Keep your skeletons dispersed over a wide area if possible so they're not all vulnerable to the same AoE (esp. Turning). This can sometimes mean that you leave a detachment of skeletons behind to guard the rear while the PCs and a handful (four or six) of skeletons come with the PCs to act as meat shields.

7.) Consider investing in cheap sources of temp HP such as Inspiring Leader feat from a Cthulock. Note that Aura of Vitality can heal undead.

8.) Make sure you have buy-in from your fellow PCs. Armored zombies are only good meat shields to the extent that the other PCs are willing to utilize them as such. There's a huge difference in effectiveness between a GWM fighter who is racing to get ahead of the zombies so they won't steal his kills, vs. one who is calmly waiting for zombies to grapple and/or push certain targets prone so he can slaughter them with advantage.

Meat shields like undead are particularly useful for a ranged-heavy party like a bunch of bardlocks and wizards. The undead fill in for the usual barbarians/fighters/etc.

9.) Zombies and skeletons are immune to your Stinking Cloud/Cloudkill spells. Grappling (or throwing nets on) targets in a stinking cloud prevents them from just exiting the cloud; meanwhile, the Stinking Cloud prevents them from easily removing the net. Win/win.

10.) (Necromancer-created) Skeletons that dual-wield short swords are amazingly good damage-dealers. 2d6+8 (15) points of damage total, at level 6, rising as high as 2d6+15 (21) at level 20.

11.) Do things that give you minions (and other PCs) advantage. Otto's Irresistible Dance, Web spell, Evard's Black Tentacles, etc.

12.) Undead tend to be weak against certain kinds of threats such as Medusas, Basilisks, Banshees, etc. To counter this, see point #6 above: disperse. Make sure you never have all of your skeletons in a position where one Banshee or one Fireball could wipe them all out.

13.) Manage your bonus action carefully. You only get one command per turn; try to give as many commands in advance as possible. See if your skeletons are smart enough to understand commands like, "Hey, youse! See this fighter? Kill anything he's killing, and nothing else, okay?"

[RulesJD]

Currently have a level 8 Necromancer.

Honestly, I wouldn't recommend it.

I have it optimized as pretty close to possible between having an Excel spreadsheet to track Skeleton health, magnetic tokens to simulate my horde, dice rolling app with pre-built macros to automate their attacks, damages, saves, etc.

At the end of the day, it just isn't that fun compared to the mechanics of other Wizards. The healing on kill from a spell is meh. And your Archer Skeletons will either be entirely useless (immune to non-magical weapons) or so utterly dominate an encounter that the rest of the party is sort of redundant. I'm pushing out more single target DPR than the rest of the party combined because of adding your proficiency bonus to Archer Attacks + some spell to generate advantage = really, really OP.

The obvious ways of toning them down really just means more table management (paying attention to squares, lines of sight, etc) which means less time at the table for other players, no matter how well you optimize your gameplay.

Loved the roleplaying aspect of it, but mechanically, it just wasn't that fun as other Wizards.

[NecroDancer]

Have your necromancer wear leather robes and have him hit corpses to bring them back to life, basically play Fonzie from happy days.

[MaxWilson]

At the end of the day, it just isn't that fun compared to the mechanics of other Wizards. The healing on kill from a spell is meh.

You're not using Grim Harvest to its full potential. Two applications:

(1) Fire Shield + Grim Harvest: every kill gives you back 8 HP. Good against hordes of kobolds/orcs/etc. Evard's Black Tentacles can be used similarly but more proactively, like a slow motion Fireball that simultaneously heals you and damages and restrains your enemies.
(2) Vampiric Touch + coop full of 2 cp chickens = 100+ HP of healing between combats.

It's important to note that Grim Harvest allow more than one HP drain per round, as long as they all happen on separate turns. Therefore, spells like Evard's Black Tentacles which do damage on an enemy's own turn are golden, for Grim Harvest Purposes.

It's cheesy--ask your DM--but the wording of healing spells and Vampiric Touch suggests that a Cleric of Life 1/Necromancer X will gain extra HP from casting Vampiric Touch. In theory you could regain up to 5d6/2 (Vampiric Touch V) + 7 (Disciple of Life) + 15 (Grim Harvest on a 5th level spell effect) ~ 30 HP of damage on a kill.

Necromancer tanks are surprisingly tanky. Not "optimal" compared to a real superhealer, because of the action economy and concentration issues and the need to find weak things to kill, but they can eke out their HP better than you'd expect. Definitely something to consider in a game where weak random encounters (giant rats) are a thing that happens when you rest.

-Max

[CrackedChair]

Hmm... I understand your pain, honestly.

I wanted to play somebody who used necromantic magic too; a Cleric with the Death domain. I wanted to break usual conventions of these people being evil, and played as a Lawful Neutral cleric. It was pretty fun, but eventually I had to animate corpses to fight for us, and I always made sure they find peace once their bodies served their purpose.

Alright, so let's see... Necromancy such as animating the dead, is an evil act. You force the dead into animating into a mockery of itself, so you basically disrespect their corpses. While yes, they are dead already and might not have any use for their body anymore, they might not like it too much if somebody is tampering with their body...

There's also the fact that necromancy using classes are built pretty evil. You'd be pretty hard pressed to stay in your alignment and not drift to evil with some castings of animate dead, but you could make it as an excuse that you are using their corpses, so they can remain useful even in the afterlife. Even then, it's still an evil act, and will earn you a few glares...

Just stay in character, as you built your character. That's my advice.

[MintyNinja]

Have you considered getting a small host of well armored and masked Zombies to act as your personal guard? Works even better if you've a noble background. "Him? He doesn't speak. Talk to me." "Freddy, help this [rogue] by grabbing anyone he attacks." "Jones, keep your shield up and stand between me and that bear. Good lad." Also allows you to keep replenishing your Zom-buddies without letting people know. Freddy's taken too many hits and you don't have any healing spells? Offer to bury the recently deceased foes and switch some costuming around. "Freddy" is topped up and there's a strange corpse in a grave.

[RulesJD]

You're not using Grim Harvest to its full potential. Two applications:

(1) Fire Shield + Grim Harvest: every kill gives you back 8 HP. Good against hordes of kobolds/orcs/etc. Evard's Black Tentacles can be used similarly but more proactively, like a slow motion Fireball that simultaneously heals you and damages and restrains your enemies.
(2) Vampiric Touch + coop full of 2 cp chickens = 100+ HP of healing between combats.

It's important to note that Grim Harvest allow more than one HP drain per round, as long as they all happen on separate turns. Therefore, spells like Evard's Black Tentacles which do damage on an enemy's own turn are golden, for Grim Harvest Purposes.

It's cheesy--ask your DM--but the wording of healing spells and Vampiric Touch suggests that a Cleric of Life 1/Necromancer X will gain extra HP from casting Vampiric Touch. In theory you could regain up to 5d6/2 (Vampiric Touch V) + 7 (Disciple of Life) + 15 (Grim Harvest on a 5th level spell effect) ~ 30 HP of damage on a kill.

Necromancer tanks are surprisingly tanky. Not "optimal" compared to a real superhealer, because of the action economy and concentration issues and the need to find weak things to kill, but they can eke out their HP better than you'd expect. Definitely something to consider in a game where weak random encounters (giant rats) are a thing that happens when you rest.

-Max

1. Fire Shield is too high level of a spell to care about. It also doesn't matter because I can't remember the last time I played against a "horde" of enemies that wouldn't just get Fireballed to death anyways.

2. As a necromancer you'll be in the back, not the front lines. I tried using Vampiric Touch as much as possible and it just wasn't remotely worth it. Far better off just going Fiend Warlock if "self-healing" tank is your goal.

[King539]

Hmmmm.

Once your horde reaches a suitable size, having some of them use the Help action is an excellent idea, especially if you have a rogue in your party. :smallsmile:

As mentioned previously, outfitting your minions with various weapons is also a good idea.

If your DM allows homebrew spells, I can also heartily recommend The Necromancer Spellbook from the Dungeon Master's Guild. (Too new to the forums, can't post a link.)

[Tanarii]

If you are playing by the standard 5e cosmology, Necromancy is evil,
This is worth noting. The PHB specifically says that:
"Creating the undead through the use of necromancy spells such as animate dead is not a good act, and only evil casters use such spells frequently." (PHB p. 203, The Schools of Magic sidebar, under Necromancy)

To my knowledge, it's the only act in 5e that has alignment associated specifically with it.