Here we are: the darkest, most metal of Wizard subclasses. The origin point for D&D's most iconic campaign-boss monster, the Lich. Dark magic, the raising of the dead - are you the party's token evil teammate, or are you using the darkest magic in the name of good. Or, is Necromancy misunderstood, and is actually just an efficient form of recycling?
If there's one thing associated with necromancers, it's their undead minions. Let's take a look at its features and see how it shapes up, mechanically.
Level 3:
Necromancy Savant functions much like the other redesigned Savant spells, giving you a free Necromancy spell for your spellbook each time you gain a new level of spell.
Necromancy Spellbook has two sub-features, one of which should look familiar to the 2014 version.
First, you get resistance to Necrotic damage, which, depending on your campaign, could be huge: great against lots of undead monsters.
Second, you get Grim Harvest: when you cast a Necromancy spell using a spell slot, you can choose yourself or a creature you can see within 30 feet of yourself, giving Temp HP equal to the spell slot's level plus your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1 Temp HP).
Notably, this is a redesign of Grim Harvest. The old version let you regain HP if you killed a creature using a leveled spell, gaining twice your Intelligence modifier, or three times that if it was a Necromancy spell. Here, you're going to be able to gain roughly comparable Temp HP on any Necromancy spell cast - I think in theory you could even use this to give the raised undead creature from a Necromancy spell some Temp HP right as you raise them. For example, Summon Undead's Skeletal version would start with 20 HP but then get perhaps 7 more thanks to this. While the healing might have been more useful if you were low on HP, this will let you protect yourself and allies right at the start of a fight, or even outside of combat.
Level 6:
Grave Power gives you the following benefits:
Grave Resilience: When you use Arcane Recovery, your Exhaustion level is reduced by 1.
Exhaustion is a little easier to get in 2024, largely because it's not as bad as it used to be. It's still fairly rare, but it'll be good to get rid of it quickly (and if you have several levels, this effectively lets you reduce it faster.
Overwhelming Necrosis: Necrotic damage dealt by your Wizard spells and features ignores resistance to Necrotic damage.
This is all well and good, but very few monsters have resistance to necrotic damage, as immunity is more common. I think vampires have necrotic resistance, and possibly some celestials. But this is very rare.
Undead Thralls gives you Summon Undead always prepared, and you can cast it once per long rest without expending a spell slot. When cast without a spell slot in this way, you regain HP equal to half the summoned creature's HP (so, if memory serves, 15 for the Putrid and Ghostly versions, or just 10 if it's the Skeletal one) but this also halves the creature's HP.
The big change here is that they've swapped out Animate Dead for Summon Undead. The former is still in the PHB, and works I think identically to how it used to. The old version buffed any risen undead's HP maximum and increased their damage by your PB.
I certainly felt that any Necromancer re-work would use Summon Undead instead of Animate Dead, because of the wonky scaling (the zombies and skeletons from Animate Dead don't get a buff to their attack rolls, so even if you've got a +8 to your spell attacks, your zombies might still only be rolling with a +3). Summon Undead scales more naturally with the Wizard, so it makes sense.
Casting Summon Undead at its base 3rd level, though, which you'll be doing with your free casting, is a bit underwhelming - just upcasting it to 4th level more than doubles the damage output of the spirit.
The old version of this feature also gave you one bonus skeleton/zombie, so cast at 3rd level you'd have two of them following you around. This is the tension with the general redesign in 2024 - the Necromancer is most iconically surrounded by several undead minions, but the game also runs more smoothly when you have only a single minion on the battlefield. I know that Draw Steel is trying to make their Summoner work with lots of minions on the board without slowing down the game, but we are going to somewhat lose some of that fantasy here, even if the power is probably fine.
Level 10:
Undead Secrets lets you expend a 4+ level spell slot when you finish a long rest. Until you finish your next long rest, the next time you are reduced to 0 HP, your HP instead changes 10 times the spell slot you expended.
Additionally, after you take damage and are bloodied after taking that damage (thanks for the clear language!) but not killed outright, you can use a reaction to teleport up to 60 feet away to an unoccupied space (notably, you don't need to see it) and each creature within 10 feet of the space you left takes 2d10 Necrotic damage.
Ok, there's a lot to unpack. This is really two separate features.
The first part is something like casting Death Ward on yourself. While it won't protect against something like Disintegrate, as Death Ward does, it also gives you a pretty hefty amount of HP when it goes off. It does require you to make the decision to use the feature at the very start of your adventuring day.
Here's the weird hack: the effect lasts until you finish a long rest, and we have a way to remove exhaustion on a short rest! Though we only get to use that feature once per long rest.
The second part of this has an element that I think bears looking at: there's no limit on uses. While you do need to be bloodied to use it, this is going to potentially give you several opportunities to escape harm when you most need to do so. Let's say the enemy Death Knight decides you're the biggest problem, and goes over to attack you. That first nasty hit bloodies you, so you teleport away, and they'll be unable to use their second and third attacks against you. Then, they finally catch up to you, hit you again, and... whoops, you're gone again.
We don't get Inured to Undeath, though we already got the necrotic resistance at level 3. We lost the immunity to getting our max HP reduced, but I think we're ok.
Level 14:
Death's Master gives you the following benefits while you are holding your spellbook (I doubt that many DMs are going to be too much of a stickler about whether you're holding it or not).
Bolster Undead: as a bonus action, you can choose any number of undead you have created or summoned with a Necromancy spell that are within 60 feet of yourself (note that you don't have to be able to see them). Those undead gain Temp HP equal to your Wizard level. Any given undead creature can only gain these Temp HP once every 24 hours.
Two words: Danse Macabre. One of my favorite spells from Xanathar's, Danse Macabre is the ultimate "I need a bunch of zombies or skeletons, and fast," and also buffs their attack and damage rolls by an amount equal to your spellcasting modifier, so while their scaling isn't perfect, they're a lot better-scaled than many of the older conjured creatures. I think Skeletons even have a higher attack bonus now than they used to, so if you have 20 Intelligence, they now have a +10 to hit and deal 1d6+8 damage on a hit, and you get 5 of them. Now, they effectively can also have 27 HP a piece.
The point is, this kind of gives you some of the old benefits of the older Undead Thralls, though admittedly at significantly higher levels. But that's a level when you're really going to need to improve the survivability of your undead minions.
Harvest Power: When you use Grim Harvest, the creature that gains Temporary Hit Points also gains one of the following benefits, which lasts until the end of the target's next turn: either they gain advantage on attack rolls or they get advantage on the next saving throw they make.
I think the natural use for this is to buff your Undead Spirit brought forth by Summon Undead, granting them advantage on their barrage of attacks when you first bring them forth. But, of course, with other spells you can toss some advantage to your allies or even yourself.
We do lose Command Undead, which was capable of permanently charming and dominating an undead creature. Command Undead was super cool, but also created additional bookkeeping. I think you could argue that this is another example of 2024 flattening out some of the funkier features and abilities, but I still think what we've got here is pretty good.
Overall Thoughts:
The Necromancer has always had a big advantage in that it truly gives the character a strong and distinctive flavor compared with the standard wizard. While I don't think it's the only "dark wizard" option - you could easily flavor Illusion, Enchantment, Conjuration - really just about any subclass as a pretty dark character - it's the one that is sort of inextricably linked to a darker aesthetic and tone, unless you really commit to playing against type.
Having played a Wizard for 4+ years, I'm not in any rush to play another one any time soon, especially because the Wizard's power mostly comes from its base class features, and particularly its amazing spell list. But I think a Necromancer would really encourage a player to focus on its particular spell school.
Is it the most powerful subclass? Probably not, though I think it's also not underpowered either. But is this almost certainly the subclass I'd play as a second wizard character? Yes, very much so (well, ok, Chronurgist is calling to me as well, given my love of time-travel, but the other wizard in my Wildemount game is one of those, so I'm getting some vicarious enjoyment of that subclass anyway).
I've got to say, I've put on Rebirth, the "greatest hits" album of the fictional band Old Gods of Asgard from the Alan Wake and Control video games, because it felt really appropriate to listen to metal while writing about this subclass.
Next, we'll conclude the Arcane subclasses UA review by looking at the Transmuter, aka the true Alchemist subclass.
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