Necromancers?

[LibraryOgre]

Did 4e ever have an explicit Necromancer class? They seem to be perennial favorites.

[Vhaidara]

Wizard (Mage) has a necromancer subclass, but it's...kind of a very odd duck. There's a little bit of minioning, but the main thing is powers that have one effect on most enemies and do something different to undead.

My personal favorite "necromancer" setup is a refluffed Invoker|Druid (Sentinel) hybrid. You get an animal companion from Sentinel that can be refluffed as a persistent zombie, you get reasonable summons from both sides for short term minions, Sentinel give a heal as life/death manipulation, and the encounter powers can pretty easily be turned into like, a field of grasping skeletal hands.

[LibraryOgre]

I know you could switch it, but giving the Necromancer the Primal power source also seems pretty cool.

[Waddacku]

There's little in the way of permanent minions (and mostly needing a reskin from other classes for that, as mentioned). There's a range of summoning powers that bring out undead, but summoning is on a pretty strict action economy, so not a complete strategy in and of itself. There are necromancy- and undead-themed conjurations and zones (skeletal hands shooting out of the ground grasping at people, stuff like that) and various debilitating offensive spells and life force manipulating ones (getting temp HP when things die, stuff like that). Animating fallen enemies is implemented as summoning powers that target dead creatures.

[Kurald Galain]

Did 4e ever have an explicit Necromancer class?

They have a subclass named "necromancer", but it's in one of the late non-playtested books so somehow they've managed to make literally every single necromancy spell suck.

I'd recommend a regular staff/tome wizard focused on cold spells and summon dailies; there are a number of wizard summons that don't require the caster's actions to do anything.

[Beoric]

Something I have thought about implementing in my game is creating an Animate Dead ritual which allows a necromancer to animate a standard (undead) creature of the caster's level or lower, and treating it more or less like a mount: you can only control one at a time, taking control is a move action, you share initiative and a set of actions, but you and the creature can both move on a move action.

The component cost is the same as a magic item of the same level (which tracks with the level of most mounts). At higher level you can afford to control several creatures by creating swarms.

I would also let the caster create more undead than he can control, and try to give the "independent" undead directions, but the DM decides if they understand the commands, how they execute them (likely not with clever tactics), and what they do if they find themselves without an intelligible command (like attack the nearest living creature). So basically these are like NPC men-at-arms hired by the party, except they are (usually) mindless undead that want to feast on the living.

Or if you think it is a smart idea to animate an intelligent undead companion character, you can do it at a cost equal to a magic item of two levels higher than the companion.

I would allow essentially the same thing with demon summoning, or really any character with a focus on conjuration/summoning.

[masteraleph]

Wizard (Mage) has a necromancer subclass, but it's...kind of a very odd duck. There's a little bit of minioning, but the main thing is powers that have one effect on most enemies and do something different to undead.

My personal favorite "necromancer" setup is a refluffed Invoker|Druid (Sentinel) hybrid. You get an animal companion from Sentinel that can be refluffed as a persistent zombie, you get reasonable summons from both sides for short term minions, Sentinel give a heal as life/death manipulation, and the encounter powers can pretty easily be turned into like, a field of grasping skeletal hands.

This is a really good set of suggestions. You can even then take the Fey Beast Tamer theme (again, refluff) for a second minion

[ScrivenerofDoom]

Something I have thought about implementing in my game is creating an Animate Dead ritual which allows a necromancer to animate a standard (undead) creature of the caster's level or lower, and treating it more or less like a mount: you can only control one at a time, taking control is a move action, you share initiative and a set of actions, but you and the creature can both move on a move action.

The component cost is the same as a magic item of the same level (which tracks with the level of most mounts). At higher level you can afford to control several creatures by creating swarms.

I would also let the caster create more undead than he can control, and try to give the "independent" undead directions, but the DM decides if they understand the commands, how they execute them (likely not with clever tactics), and what they do if they find themselves without an intelligible command (like attack the nearest living creature). So basically these are like NPC men-at-arms hired by the party, except they are (usually) mindless undead that want to feast on the living.

Or if you think it is a smart idea to animate an intelligent undead companion character, you can do it at a cost equal to a magic item of two levels higher than the companion.

I would allow essentially the same thing with demon summoning, or really any character with a focus on conjuration/summoning.

Interesting. That's the same solution I came up with for undead and demons, not that either have come up in my games. Great minds think alike! :)

[truemane]

Metamagic Mod: Thread necromancy. Oh the irony.