Having been reading some of the feedback on the class on this forum, I thought I’d give my two cents as a long-time fan of necromantic themes in fantasy.
Personally, I’m extremely excited about the necromancer class. I love the mechanic of creating expendable thralls to power grave spells. I love the very gross, anatomical focus of many of the grave spells and would love to see more of it. I love the three grim fascinations presented, especially since so many examples of necromancy in RPGs seem to ignore the spectral side of necromancy, which is my personal favorite. I’m very anxious to see how the team plans to iterate on this playtest. Personally, I would love to see more on the spectral side, more interaction with ghosts and haunts, for example, like the animist’s apparition sense feat, or something along those lines.
Now, a common theme I’m seeing for those that don’t like this version of a necromancer is that this class doesn’t animate corpses. I’d argue that the concept of a necromancer as an animator of corpses is not the definition of necromancy, but just one interpretation. While it’s totally fair to argue that you aren’t interested in this class because that’s the interpretation you like best, arguing that this isn’t a necromancer class because it doesn’t animate the dead is hyperbole. There are many interpretations of necromancy that don’t rely on the animation of corpses. Some of the examples I’m familiar with include:
The literal, original definition of necromancy is divining the future through speaking with the dead. So right off the bat, necromancy being the act of animating corpses is already an alternative interpretation of the word.
In many literary examples of necromancy, the actual intention of the necromancy is the full resurrection of a person from death to life, and any stories that feature this resurrection ending up more like undead animation are more an unintended consequence of trying to play with unholy powers.
Necromancy is presented in the history of Middle Earth, but is almost solely focused on command over ghosts, not the animation of corpses. While there are some examples of physical undead, such as the Barrow Wights, they are not animated minions of a necromancer.
Sabriel is a novel with a fascinating take on necromancers that presents a much deeper and complex concept of necromantic magic than just the animation of corpses. (It’s a cool read, I recommend it.)
Geist is one of the games in the umbrella of the Chronicles of Darkness (formerly known as the World of Darkness 2e) is one of my favorite necromantic themed games ever. It is more focused on the spectral side of necromancy (which is my personal favorite aspect), and while there is a capacity to animate corpses, it is just one example of a diverse range of necromantic, ghostly powers.
Hallowfaust is a city of necromancers in the Scarred Lands campaign setting. The city is run by seven guilds of necromancers, only one of which is focused on the animation of corpses. The other six focus on negative energy and death magic, speaking with the dead, fear magic, anatomy and medicine, the social implications of death, and the religious aspects of death. (These are general descriptions, I highly recommend looking up the book Hollowfaust: City of Necromancers. It's a really cool interpretation of a society run by necromancers that isn’t evil. In game terms, the city is Lawful Neutral)
Even in other media, necromancy isn’t always restricted to the animation of corpses. Diablo 2 would be one of the best examples of necromancy focusing on the reanimation of corpses. However, D3 moved away from using corpses to create minions, though they could still be used as fuel for other spells. And now D4 has reintroduced the use of corpses to create minions but tellingly, there are multiple ways to generate corpses from nothing in order to ease the difficulty of fights where corpses aren’t readily available. And there isn’t much difference between creating corpses from nothing and creating minions from nothing.
Death Knights in World of Warcraft are a very popular example of necromancy in gaming media, and they don’t require corpses to summon their minions.
Guild Wars is the other big name that comes to mind when talking about necromancers as a class and, if I’m not mistaken, neither game requires the necromancer to use corpses to summon their minions.
I’ve also seen a few people saying that this necromancer doesn’t have enough ‘thematic’ elements to make it a necromancer and that it could easily be called a different class with multiple themes. I like the fact that some of the Pathfinder classes have the different themes set up in their mechanics, including having multiple spell casting traditions in the same class depending on subclass choices. I would not want that of this class. Yes, it offers interesting variety, but it also waters down options for any theme specifically. Take the 2e summoner for example. In 1e, spiritualist was one of my favorite classes because it was heavily ghost themed. In 2e, the spiritualist’s phantoms were incorporated into summoner, but none of the rest of the spiritualist’s paranormal powers made it into the class, which ruined my personal interest in it. And if we’re going to talk about a necromancer class missing thematic elements, let’s talk about how necromancers have been presented in D&D and Pathfinder up until now. I, as a deep fan of necromancy in fantasy, have not enjoyed necromancer wizards in D20 based systems at all. This playtest’s concept of a necromancer has so much more thematically tying it to necromancy than the wizard ever has. Especially in earlier versions of D20 systems where there were fewer necromancy spells than more popular schools like conjuration and evocation and they were generally far less useful spells, especially at lower levels. They have typically had almost no thematic connection to necromancy outside the spells they take, so what makes a necromancer wizard any more a necromancer than an evoker or enchanter that also learns animate dead? Some versions of the necromancer school could animate more corpses than non-necromancers, some versions gave them a minor health drain ability. I would argue that neither of these boons is more necromantically thematic than this entire class is.
Personally speaking, I adore this interpretation of the necromancer and I can’t wait to see what the designers do to improve on what they’ve already presented in the playtest.
