LordofBones's page

Occult has all the old necromancy spells, which makes the change bizarre. Why is finger of death divine and not occult? Why is wail occult but not arcane? Why is vampiric exsanguination arcane?

Basically, the necromancer wizard is a worse necromancer than the occult bard. I personally don't think this change was well thought out; the divisions are arbitrary - finger of death has never been a divine spell, and wail has been a wizard spell since it first showed up in 2e.

It's not just the animate dead line. Necromancy has lost almost all its core iconic spells to other spell lists. We only get horrid wilting while bards get almost all of necromancy's old spells, including those on the arcane list, and clerics get finger of death.

Necromancy as a school has been utterly gutted.