D&D: The Five Best Necromancers (Who Aren’t Necromancers)
In D&D, the best way to be a necromancer isn’t by playing an actual necromancer. Try one of these options instead.
In the fiction of Dungeons & Dragons, Necromancers are masters of life and death. But in the rules of the game, maybe not so much. While Necromancy Wizards get access to some interesting abilities, they don’t actually make them that much better at commanding the undead.
Weirdly enough, these five options make for much better Necromancers.
Grave Cleric
Clerics, ironically, make some of the better masters of undeath. And the Grave Cleric is one of the better options. This is because their Eyes of the Grave make them good at figuring out where the undead are without needing spell slots.
And their Path to the Grave ability means they can cause a creature to be vulnerable to all damage, setting them up for extra damage from your undead cohorts. All that’s on top of the basic Cleric abilities, like Turn Undead, which makes hostile undead flee at your word. Or the Cleric Spell list, which includes animate dead.
Death Cleric
Grave Clerics aren’t a bad start, but Death Clerics jam on the gas. They take all the innate abilities of a Cleric but then they layer on some surprisingly necromantic abilities like Touch of Death and Inescapable Destruction.
Also, they’re better at casting Necromancy spells than Wizards are, by the time they get to higher levels.
Conjuration Wizard
For all that Clerics are good at commanding undead and mimicking the abilities of a Necromancy Wizard, the actual Wizard is pretty good at it too.
Not the Necromancy Wizard, mind you. The Conjuration one focuses on summoning spells and swapping places with willing creatures (that includes your summoned horde of undead). As an added bonus, they get access to the powerful Summon Undead spell, which works even better than Animate Dead, and benefit from the Conjurer’s highest-level abilities all the way through.
Circle of Spores Druid
Now, you might not think Druids make for good Necromancers. And most don’t. But the Circle of Spores Druid is all about the cycle of life and death. And their special abilities make them perfect Necromancers.
At 2nd level, they can become infested with Spores, dealing extra necrotic damage, so that you feel all creepy and spooky. And then at 6th level, you can just create undead from dead creatures around you. It doesn’t take one full minute to cast the spell either.
You just target a corpse and it rises up as a zombie. This is the true fantasy of a necromancer, turning the bodies of your enemies into allies in the middle of a fight. But if you want to do that? You gotta be a Druid.
Oathbreaker Paladin
Oathbreaker Paladins are relegated to the Dungeon Master’s Guide. And they’re a lot more like Death Knights than anything. But if your DM lets you play one, they make for a fantastic Necromancer. All their abilities starting at 3rd level with the ability to actually just control undead through Channel Divinity, up to an aura of gloom that consumes light and life all around you at level 20 make you a perfect Necromancer.
And you get Animate Dead on top of it.
What’s YOUR go-to pick for playing a Necromancer?
