Necromancer

I played as a necromancer before, full skelly and had two skelly guards that accompanied us. The DM didn't give me shit for it and the party though it was ok. I played doing banter and trying to talk with enemies if they were undead to join us and stuff like that.
As always is mostly up to you and the group what you get out of the characters in a campaign. A bard knowing old ass songs or a defeated necromancer having to do community service helping a party of heroes are other things I wanna try some day.

can you post it?

No idea why you would want to read this self-indulgent trash, but here it is.

This is another alternative - play an entertainer. Dress your skellies up like lifesized dolls, stick some sticks into their rib-cages and pretend that you're controlling puppets, no magic here.

You could do a scholarly, amoral character who practices necromancy in order to study and the undead or something like that.

Why would you immediately jump to that when OP didn't even mention anything related to doing so.

And who cares about original ideas. Playing an evil necromancer isn't an original idea either and no one shits on people for doing that just because people did it before them. Hell I see people get pats on the back for playing evil necromancers now, just because they heard other people sometimes rarely play good ones.

While I'm not sure how original it is I played my necromancer as a socially awkward scholar type that mostly kept quiet. Because of this he didn't really find a reason why what he was doing was bad or immoral so he just kept delving deeper and deeper in the pursuit of knowledge.

I have never seen this done in any fiction. I just see the idea get knocked down by Veeky Forums every time it's brought up by the story here.

Out of curiosity what do you all think of Markal?

I once ran a necromancer who used his powers to lay restless spirits to... well, rest. He lived too far away from any reasonable civilization for priests or exorcists to get off their lazy asses and travel into the boonies. The local druids were fine for dealing with zombies (tell the crows to aim for the head). But when the angry ghosts of dead orcs or soldiers from wars long past rise up to haunt a farmer's field, or hateful spirits of young children who died to plagues or wild animals start poltergeisting their former families, nobody knew what to do. So my character apprenticed himself to a reclusive witch in a nearby bog, learned all the necromancy he needed to lay spirits to rest and put magic locks on corpses to prevent other entities from raising them (sorry, this corpse is spoken for). Then he just wandered a circuit between his home town and the three nearby villages, warding the cemeteries and dealing with any arcane or undead conundrums that arose. Then the nearest baron decided to go to war with a neighboring kingdom. Soldiers started moving through the area, charging him exorbitant taxes just to use the same footpaths and dirt roads he'd always walked. They started seizing the local farms to force them to provide for the military moving through the area. Food became scarce. People stopped being able to pay him his fees (mostly just room and board for the night and enough rations to get to the next town) . Then the knights and paladins and clerics started showing up and running him out of town when he tried to do his job. They started witch-hunts and turned communities he'd known since he was a child into mobs howling for blood. He was forced to leave his home and turned to 'mercenary work' and adventuring to feed himself.

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Sounds like you're pretty much playing what necromancers originally were. Just people who talked to the dead for information.

A problem with that is that in a conventional adventuring party there won't be much of a use for that. Maybe if you found a corpse or skeleton while out questing you could ask it for information, but knowing a man was killed by a troll won't help you fight the troll, aside from just the fact that you can prepare to fight it to some extent.

I've actually thought about including what you are talking about as NPCs that players would interact with, and existed in universe to deal with crime. It's exactly what you said, a detective, except they can interrogate the dead. In an urban campaign if that was a chunk of your character it would be perfect, but alone they would be about as useful as being a merchant or a get away driver that does nothing else.

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I'm currently running a 'necromancer' [Investigator/Advocate of Thamar] in the Iron Kingdoms RPG I play in. She's also a professional investigator. She makes her living like Sherlock does. She consults with the guards on exotic murders and unusual crimes. She happens to use her necromantic powers to track down the clues the constables need to close cases.

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>Why would you immediately jump to that when OP didn't even mention anything related to doing so.

Because this is Veeky Forums

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Most fun I ever had as a necromancer was when I created tons of weak skeletons and then stuffed them full of explosive tags. I would have them sneak into buildings and blow them up from inside so the rest of my party could steal loot or kidnap people etc.

I did something similar. My Necro-Nano-Nuke.

This was back in 3.5, and required a small amount of DM collaboration.

Question 1: Are fleas living creatures?
>Yes. I know they don't have stat-blocks, as such. The DM ruled that they have 1/4 of a hit point each and no attacks, a 10 foot move dependent on a skill check (acrobatics, huge natural bonus) and a diminutive size modifier.
Question 2: is an exoskeleton a 'skeletal structure'?
>Yes. Otherwise you wouldn't have Zombie Thri-Kreen and Zombie-spiders as canon enemies.
Necromancer walks into a stable. Casts Death's Call modified with the Fell Animate metamagic feat. Ever flea in the stable just died (1 HP of damage) and arose as a zombie under his control. But they have no attacks. But becoming a zombie grants them a SLAM attack. for zero damage (massive strength penalty from the FINE size category). No bid deal. The Deadly Chill feat from Libris Mortis added an extra 1d6 cold damage to the zero damage from the slam attack.

And because fleas are so small they're virtually invisible, nobody ever saw them coming. My necromancer never cast a spell in combat. Ever. He'd simply gesture mysteriously, and frostbite would form on his enemies. Hundreds of undead fleas would cling to the inside of his cloak and leap out at his command. Especially fun when we infiltrated a noble's castle. We knew he was planning to betray us, so I just spread around as many zom-fleas as I could. When he gave the order for his guards to ambush us, they all mysteriously died, leaving him alone to face the party. I would also use them as grenades. Have a dozen cling to the side of a flask of Alchemist Fire. Throw the flask, they all take fire damage, and the Destruction Retribution feat makes them explode in a 10-foot radius Negative energy blast.

Ahh, good times. Used to drive the other players NUTS since none of them knew what exactly I was doing. Or why my cloak detected as Undead, or how I did what I did. I miss 3.5.

>says the user who either had it saved, or went through the effort to find it

Create Undead spell kinda blows and is only useful for fluffy stuff, especially considering that by the time you're high enough level to cast it, you could simply cast Animate Dead in the midst of a Desecration spell and you'd be able to raise a Burning Skeletal Tarrasque or a Plague Zombie Elder Great Black Wyrm provided you could find a corpse of one lying around.

I once played a necromancer who's younger brother (Bal'Phonse) tore his own soul out trying to become a lich (through not evil means, setting had wild ass fuck magic so it's possible). He basically botched creating a body that could regenerate from his phylactery (a jet black pearl), but got his soul stuck in it regardless.

He himself, named Elrich Edwards (yes i was ripping of FMA something fierce), was a sorc of considerable power and lamented over the loss of his brother. So he started to practice Necromancy, along with his fist wizardry, eventually being kicked off his sky-island home.

Joined up with some sky pirates, practicing the necromancy in secret, eventually became the 'chief medical officer' of a hijacked imperial vessel that was renamed Boatmurdered (he volunteered for the position, no one caught on). That title was swiftly changed to 'Ships mad Scientist' when he reanimated the dead captains epic mustache.

He basically spent the campaign building his brother a body(from the parts of many dead crew mates), researching necromancy, and becoming a Eldritch Knight due to being a badass (and Plot).

HE was a good guy, protected his teammates and didn't afraid of anything. Though he wasn't the nicest of people, he definitely wasn't hardcore evil, just incidentally so. Except the time they became the prime suspects of a murder case, and he decided to abuse touch spells because it was easier than talking. So much material was created on that day. We were also sky pirates, so morality was thrown out by a lot of the crew a long time ago. He'd be the grey sheep in a black flock so to say.

Guy performed better than our dedicated melee fighter half the time. Died sacrificing himself (and by proxy his brother, trapped in pearl around his neck) to save literally the world, eaten by an Eldritch Abomination Old God Thing, and turned into a mask along with his brother and the host of the abomination.

Good times.

OP Here. Love this story. I just imagine a dude in a black cloak flailing about like some drunken master in the midst of combat before everyone just, dies. Ah, 3.5

Damn, OP. That's my boy Gauldoth right there. Based.

You can have some social skills and actually persuade some spirits into helping you without enslaving them. I bet dead priest of war god would want to get his revenge on the asshole who killed him so he won't mind helping tou as a spirit spy as long as you fight his enemies, and some criminals would rather serve as a ghost in this world then burn in Hell.
Also Necromancy could be used to heal people, although you'd have to kill other things to syphon life energy from them to your patient.
Third way is to go full Diablo, and just make general Necromancer with an army of the dead, curses and death rays, but fighting for the good guys (or for "restoring balance")

I get that reference.

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>it's been done to death
>the necromancer brings it back again

Good Necromancers fall in the same category as good drow trying to redeem their race, anti-social anti-heros in adventurer bands who prefer to work alone or child characters.

You have a genre convention that says A because A generally makes sense for that genre, but people want to be edgy and snowflake and just HAVE to be B without even understanding why A is in place in the first place or why B might be actually interesting, but TvTropes says subversions are cool so they make a poorly thought out B.

Wouldn't zombie fleas have a moverate of like 5 ft/2 rounds?

Dont know much about him. He cool?

I think that Sandro was better.

Necrohealer? Summons the spirits of medicine men, healers etc. to create highly mobile hospitals in the places they are needed the most.

How the fuck did necromancer go from
>Oracle who communes with the spirits of the dead and helps families commune with their dealy departed, sometimes sp00ky spirits give him prophecies of the futures

To

>Evil wizard that raises the dead to do his bidding.

Christianity, basically.

I quite liked him. I mean, "non-evil necromancer" is a played out trope on Veeky Forums, but it wasn't so at the time.

Plus it helps that he's still calculating and ruthless, just also not actually trying to destroy the world and is fine with managing his own demonic/necromantic kingdom he carved out for himself.

DM probably should have read Libris Mortis, BOVD, and Dungeoneering, there was the hivemind feature, Hivenest undead, and swarmshifter undead Templates that would have worked well with that.

This, the initial idea spawned from when our doctors wen tabout gravedigging for autopsies when the church wouldn't let them, the mind of the public tended to wander and come up with stuff like this.

And that's why good necromancers are realistic. They're bringing the age of enlightenment and science, while christfags boil in rage
>muh traditions
>muh dead bodies
>muh feelings

Need more players like you based user. Microarmy of zombie ice fleas is fuckin genius

No, because they use their insane Accrobatics to jump

Lord have mercy on his players if he'd ever GM

I'm a DM, I'm far more likely to allow this than an evil necromancer, given how retarded it is to have one in the party.

Dude, no. Necromancy was already considered a form of witchcraft during the witch hunts.

I could never take Sandro seriously because Sandro is a diminutive form of Alexander where I live.

Unfortunately, the Plane of Negative energy, Orcus's Dweomer, and Atropus are all a thing, hence why Necromancy is usually bad.

Basically, it's all magic's fault, because some guy digs up a corpse and instead of autopsy and discover things about the corpse he dicusses in secret with his peers in groups of hidden wisdom he immediately is greeted with a vison of Him, screaming with his scalpel as he animates thousands of undead, and keeps going whilst he's screaming and doing the Lich Ritual and exploding out of his flesh whilst screaming and blowign himself up until he becomes an evil deity whilst also screaming because MAXIUM SKELLLINGGGGTOOOOONS and he cannot stop screaming because it's awesome.

>OP picture is from HoMM
>replies to a post about history
>shoehorns in his precious D&D regardless

One thing people never realize is that almost everything they say a Friendly Neighborhood Necro can do was traditionally done by the village pastor or cunning/wise man. So they're basically playing as either inexplicably powerful NPCs or as shittily recrunched clerics with less justification for abandoning their hone.

Actually, those make it worse. Turning the hundreds of Zom-Fleas into a swarm makes it a single entity with a single attack. Better to keep them as a bunch of individuals swinging separately.

Actually, I do DM. But I don't use any of my builds from my txt file 'Dirty_DnD_Tricks.txt' when I do. Well, except one. But it's not something the players are likely to interact with or pick a fight with.

Those aren't things that actually exist and your post is stupid.

Exactly.

Lots of small things should make a swarm exactly because of exploits like that.

Depends on the system and setting.
D&D necomancy shits magic evil radiation all over the place.
Warhammer necromancy depends on getting enough warpstone to power spookies.
HoMM... How does Might&magic necromancy work, again?

I would like to see that the setting has a life goddess and as such, she wishes to bring life everywhere, even the dead. So forests have undead critters roaming around. Her priests when they become overzealous, start being necromancers.

Good necromancers are a thing in Warhammer

>How does Might&magic necromancy work, again?
It's a gift from the creator goddess. Necromancers are the only faction that worships the world's original creator. They're always TN by default.

I want you to post that

PC Necromancers ruin games

What about Mac Necromancer?

Seconded.

kek

It's not... Well, OK, it's slightly necromantic. A group of 'blues', the psionic goblin sub-species, got together and decided that the whole 'maglubiyet' thing sucked. The god of goblins is a dick. And the tenets of the traditional goblin faith just destroy every possibility of improving life for the goblins. So they decided to fix it. They got a pair of Hobgoblin Wizards, summoner and a necromancer, to enact a ritual, binding the group of 8 to one spot, their hidden lair. When they died, half became psionic ghosts, and the other half became that cheesy positive-energy-totally-not-a-ghost thing. They then used Metaconcert to join into a single undead ghost-mind. Undead cannot ordinarily regain psionic Power Points, ever, but they exploited the Earth Power trick from Races of Stone to continually replenish their power. They then used a combination of telepathy, metaconcert, and necromancy to bind the souls of the goblin tribe to them. Now, whenever a goblin sworn to their service dies, it becomes an empowered ghost. They built a new religion of Ancestor Worship (helped by the ghosts of the ancestors actually sticking around to help their descendants). The Council is currently a Divine Rank 3 Lesser Power, its salient Divine Abilities keeping it hidden from the various Pantheons. Maglubiyet is just starting to notice a dip in the number of dead goblin souls flooding into his Realm, and doesn't know why. Goblins breed REALLY fast, though. The Hobgoblins and goblins in a remote mountain valley are building Goblin Rome, having thrown away conventional divine worship in favor of the new religion. Organized militias, agriculture. they'
re really making play for this 'civilization' thing. In 40 more years, they'll be ready to reveal themselves to the world as an organized nation. The Council itself is now a massive floating orb of navy-blue, resting in a marble temple at the center of their burgeoning city.

It's not even that hard. Polymorph Any Object will get you the corpse you need.

Balthazar Gelt is a Metal Wizard, not a necromancer.

Seriously, the fuck is that user talking about, Necromancy is way fucking evil in Warhammer.

All right. That's Ubi's M&M.
How did it work in original setting?

>no dirty tricks here
>summons pit fiend because reason

>no Loss shirt
that edit is trash

>talks about good necromancers in warhammer when the kindest people with necromantic powers are lichepriests, who are grey as fuck
>posts picture of balthasar gelt, a gray wizard
>titles his picture dagoth ur

I don't know how it's possible to get so many things wrong with such a small post

>posts picture of balthasar gelt, a gray wizard
Gray wizards are the shadow wizards, user. Balthazar is a Gold wizard.

Everything is fucking evil in Warhammer.

Well, I guess the nicest necromancers were Strigany Necromancers during the glory days of Mourkhan. Mourkahn was really the ur-example of "Necrouthopia" only with more badass warriors instead of artisans, sages or scientists (becuse there are shitton of Orks everywhere around) and Vampire aristocracy rulling over it. They even maaged to avoid herontocracy common amongst vampires, as old vampires eventually die out in wars.

looks like i've got egg on my face

Have them think that they are being kind to the dead by letting them move again. Basically misguided evil.

I had a friend once play a necro bard. He just really wanted to throw the best show ever. So he would raise dead people to help run his traveling act. The PC eventually became an NPC that our current party is hitching a ride with his caravan.

Im actually doing that third way with a Necromancer build for Age of Wonders 3. Just playing neutral Grey Guard. Its going, kinda, weird.

Saved from coffin, casket, urn
Darkness falls, but life returns!
Flesh may fall and bone may burn
But soul remains, for which we yearn

Those we return to life's esteem
We see their hearts, their eyes do gleam
They rave! They kill! They gnash! They scream!
So full of joy! Their greatest dream!

Returning those that we amend
They hurry home, a distant friend
But do they cheer? Do they commend?
They yell! Does rotting flesh offend?

Right, well, it seems no one else has posted pic related so I suppose it's up to me.

Nobody posted it because its retarded user.

You erect some tombstones and skeletons arrive next monday.

This greentext is shit, and the only reason it keeps getting reposted is, good necromancers are the new good drow.

>I'M NOT SUFFERING DADDY

oh fuck my feels