New Paths #7: The Expanded White Necromancer (PFRPG) PDF

The latest installment of Kobold Press' New Paths-series is 17 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 1 page advertisement, leaving us with 13 pages of content, so let's take a look, shall we?

So...this is it. Ever since its initial inception in Kobold Quarterly, the White Necromancer by Marc Radle has been met with laurels and I admit to having waited for it for quite some time. That being said, in the meanwhile, Zombie Sky Press' Sacred Necromancer has delivered a solid, if not always perfectly balanced take on the class as well - so can the White Necromancer stand its ground or has it become redundant? Let's see!

After a short bit of aptly-written IC-narrative, we delve into the meat of the class: White Necromancers get d6, must be non-evil (d'uh!), get 2+Int skills per level, proficiency with simple weapons (no armors and shields - arcane spell failure), 1/2 BAB-progression and good will-saves as well as full spellcasting of up to 9th level. Spellcasting is handled via cha and thus also spontaneous.

White Necromancers get Eschew Materials at first level and are surprisingly not restricted from casting evil necromancy spells, but the respective spells use two slots when being cast - interesting balancing there! They also add wis-mod to all Knowledge-checks pertaining death and the undead, burial rites etc. and get +1/2 class level to heal skill checks. As a signature ability at 1st level, they also get the option to Rebuke Death as a standard action, which translates to healing living creatures by touching them for 1d4+1 per two class levels 3+Cha-mod times per day. Yes - ladies and gentlemen: An arcane healer that is effective without stealing the divine caster's thunder. Nice...at least at low levels. At higher levels, a more rapid scaling of healing would very much be in order.

At 3rd level, the class may also Turn Undead 1+cha-mod times per day and is treated as having channel energy, but ONLY for the purpose of turning the undead. Adding on further channeling feats is also mentioned. Now starting at 4th level, the class actually gets its signature ability - White Necromancy.

Undead creation-spells cast by the White Necromancer no longer count as evil and the resulting undead are free-willed, if intelligent, and of the same alignment as the White Necromancer - and as a crucial difference to regular undead: They are not slaves. To make them perform a task (even mindless ones), requires a diplomacy-check on behalf of the White Necromancer - and while I can hear some groans, I do think that's valid - interrupting someone's eternal rest should be no laughing matter and require some finesse. As you may have gleaned from the cha-focus and now diplomacy - white necromancers actually make for pretty good party leaders as written.

At 5th level, the class gets perhaps one of its most iconic abilities with Life Bond (Su): As a standard action, the White Necromancer may create a bond between him/her and one living creature within 90 ft. Each round at the White Necromancer's turn, each bonded creature (of which the White Necromancer may have up to class level active at once) is healed by 5 Hp if they've been damaged for more than 5 hp below their maximum hp, while the white necromancer siphons his/her life into them. Now this ability seems weaker on paper than in play - the tactical options it offers are significant and beyond that, the ability mirrors well the duality between life and death as well as lending itself to great potential for heroic sacrifice: We've all been there, the villain is almost vanquished, but it becomes readily apparent that she/he/it will take on PC down with it - with a solemn smile, the white necromancer can now make the conscious decision to give his/her life to give the PCs just that edge to survive. And this potential for drama, ladies and gentlemen, is awesome! This theme is btw. further enforced at 7th level, when the white necromancer may sacrifice up to 10+con-score+class level hp and transfer them via touch to an ally.

Speaking with the dead and blindsight that sees only the living and the undead also tie well with the concept of a spiritual person aware of the balance between life and death. At 11th level, damage-dealing skeletal arms erupting from the ground make for a more macabre form of attack and at higher levels, turning incorporeal and warding against death effects further enforce the theme of the class, with the capstone making the white necromancer hard to kill indeed and offering a lesser power word: kill - as a supernatural ability.

Now the class gets its own spell-list that takes the released Paizo-books so far into account and features a couple of, you guessed it, new spells; 6 to be precise. Bone shards (and its greater version) would be offensive spells that deal bleed damage beyond the piercing damage, whereas bone swarm allows you to conjure forth bones and direct them to move towards foes and pummel them into submission. Chains of Bones allow you to initiate ranged combat maneuvers (grapple, disarm, trip) and dance of the dead temporarily animates corpses to attack foes, but at a temporary cost to your life force. Finally, you now may erect Walls of Bones. It should be noted that all spells are NOT class-exclusives, but also available for other arcane classes.

We also get two new feats: Necrotic Spell allows you to make undead count as humanoids for the purpose of a spell at +1 level (and you have to think only for a split second to get the vast implications of this for once useful Metamagic Feat!) and the second metamagic feat, Siphon Spell, allow you to use lesser spell-levels to power high level spells, allowing for more control over your spells and adding quite an edge regarding versatility to those casting via it. Nice! Two out of two metamagic feats herein actually have a reason to exist - that's more than I can say about the vast majority of their brethren!

Now next up would be two new archetypes, first of which would be the Necrotic Healer, who not only gets increased healing capabilities, but may also, much like Forest Guardian Press' excellent Direlock class, take negative conditions from others to suffer from them. Unlike teh Direlock, though, the Necrotic Healer needs to suffer a certain base amount of rounds from them and may not redistribute them to foes. However, since the ability does not specify otherwise, White Necromancers may, in theory, even take permanent conditions upon themselves - not sure whether I'm comfortable with the repercussions there, but complaining here is a nitpick at best. At 9th level, the Necrotic Healer may a limited amount of times per day reflexively take the wounds of allies incurred by spell or blade upon him/herself, making for a more powerful option for the heroic angle.

Now Grave-Bound, the second archetype herein, nets the character an undead companion: These undead companions cannot be turned or controlled by others, are intelligent and there are some lavishly detailed choices here: Mummy, Skeleton, Zombie, Shadow, Ghost and even Vampire are potential options for your undead companion, all with their own advancement tracks. Furthermore, Grave-bound get a kind of minor semi-apotheosis into undead. One gripe: The Zombie-companion feels a bit weak and has an error in its 20th level advancement, where its 2d8 slam-attacks mysteriously regress to 1d12.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I didn't notice any significant glitches that would have hampered my ability to understand this pdf. Layout adheres to Kobold Press' rather nice two-column full-color standard and the original piece of cover art is duplicated on a gorgeous one-page spread. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Death is as important as life - and I'm not waxing philosophical here. Look up simulations of mortal versus immortal populations and you'll realize why - the presence of death drives one to excel, to cherish life - turns out immortal ennui actually has a scientific basis. But I'm rambling - the white necromancer as a scion of the balance between life and death works exceedingly well as a class and actually does not compete with Zombie Sky Press' "Sacred Necromancer" - instead, we get a shepherd of souls, an advocate of the dead that. The White Necromancers fills its niche and fills it well - though I do have one complaint - I wish more had been done with the hp-redistribution factor, which imho makes for the most interesting part of the class, but oh well - guess you can't have everything.

When all is said and done, the White Necromancer succeeds at the task set for the class and should make for an interesting addition to your game, one that only misses the full 5 stars only by a margin, since personally, I would have enjoyed a tad bit more unique tools for the class. Still, an excellent offering worth of 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 stars, omitting my seal of approval only due to the impression that the undead companions of the Grave-Bound could use some tweaking, the minor glitches and me longing for a tad bit more to be done with the condition/hp-distributing options.

Endzeitgeist out.

If you've been on these forums for any length of time, chances are you've stumbled across at least one discussion with a title similar to "Why Are Undead Evil?" And usually inside is a wide variety of debates and opinions on the subject both for and against the idea of non-evil undead being more than an occasional rarity in the setting of your choice. Given that the view of those who write for Golarion, and thus those who provide most of the lore and themes for first-party content, is that non-evil undead and those who make use of them should be so rare as to be thought nonexistent, to be inserted only on extremely sparse occasions as a complete surprise, it's unsurprising that there's little first-party support for those who disagree. The one supposed exception, the Juju mystery for the Oracle, was quickly marked as a mistake by the development team and errata'd away; for those players and GMs who want alternative options, they've been forced to rely on house-rules and personally adapting content to meet their requests for non-evil walking dead. Meanwhile debates rage rampant as to whether or not the Necromancy school itself is evil in entirety, or whether a good character of any stripe - be they mage, priest, or otherwise - can make use of Necromancy and still retain the moral high road.

Enter the White Necromancer, a class that brings back the original purpose of the Necromancy school as intended: not as the domain solely of the lord of the undead horde or master of plagues, but as the spirit shaman, the seance performer - the balancer of life, death, and undeath in a revered triad that encompasses all existence. The White Necromancer is no puppetmaster of skeletal knights nor unleasher of horrors on the innocent, but a scholar of the power of life force, a student of ancestral spirits, a healer who knows that to truly understand healing one must first understand harm, to know life requires one to understand death.

Mechanically, the White Necromancer is relatively simple. His core mechanics are no different than the Sorcerer: d6 hit die, slow progression BAB, good Will save and poor Fort and Reflex, Charisma-based spontaneous arcane casting with the same progression of nine spell levels, and no armor proficiencies due to spell failure. He even gains Eschew Materials at first level as a bonus feat, same as Sorcerer. The main difference is that instead of a bloodline, the White Necromancer gets a varied array of abilities that center around his theme of being a non-evil master of life and death.

Non-evil being the key phrase: yes, this class has an alignment restriction - Any Non-Evil. And this is doubly reinforced by one of their class abilities also received at 1st level, regarding [Evil] Necromancy Spells. While the WN is not barred from casting such spells, they are treated much like a Wizard treats an opposed school's spell - casting such a spell requires using two spell slots. An available option, in the case that such a spell becomes absolutely necessary, but an understandably restrictive one given the class's flavor. Otherwise, the WN picks his spells from a list provided in the book, which includes a small handful of new spells introduced in the book's final section, as well as an array from Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, and the APG.

Likewise at 1st, he picks up Lore of Life and Death, which allows him a bonus to Knowledge (Religion) checks regarding his focus - death and rituals and practices associated with it, the afterlife, and undead - as well as a bonus to Heal checks. Furthermore, he gains the Rebuke Death ability - a touch effect that heals a small bit of damage to an unconscious target. It's not much, but it's a nice way to get the core point across that the WN is as much a healer as he is what one would normally expect of a Necromancer.

At 3rd level, the WN gains Power Over Undead, gaining the Turn Undead feat as a bonus feat and the ability to Channel Energy as a Cleric a few times per day but only for the purposes of using that feat and any feats he takes later that build on it (but not alter it). The doc is quick to note that the WN's own undead (see below) are also affected by his turnings.

At 4th comes one of the class's most crucial abilities - White Necromancy. First, this ability removes the [Evil] descriptor from Necromancy spells that create undead, no longer taxing the WN two spell slots to cast them. Secondly, it allows the undead he creates with such spells to no longer be of Evil alignment: mindless undead such as zombies and skeletons are automatically True Neutral, while intelligent undead are of the same alignment as the WN. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the WN is not the master of these undead, but rather an ally and respectful petitioner. To obtain the aid of any undead he creates, the WN must first convince - using Diplomacy - the undead to aid him in his cause. Failing to show the proper respect or not agreeing to return the undead to its slumber or free it from his command once the task is done can lead to negotiations being far more difficult. Once convinced to aid, though, the undead (presumably controlled by the GM, at least out of combat) will work faithfully and loyally alongside the WN, though it may have quests and desires of its own - a great potential adventure hook for GMs to latch onto.

The middle levels are smattered with an array of small but interesting abilities: Life Bond, which allows the WN to transfer 5 hp per round to a bonded, unconscious ally; Necrotic Transfer, which allows him to give an injured but not necessarily unconscious target a larger portion of his own health; Voice of the Grave, a free speak with dead effect for a few rounds each day; Life Sight, a short-term short-range blindsense that automatically pinpoints living and undead targets (but not non-living or non-undead, such as Constructs); Grasp of the Dead, which summons up skeletal arms to snatch and slow opponents; Ghost Walk, a short-term incorporeality; and Death Warded and Protective Aura, which provide the WN with a resistance against death spells and the ability to save against such spells even if they don't normally offer a save, and then to project an aura of protection against death effects, draining effects, and negative levels out to his allies.

The capstone, Master of Life and Death, is pretty much exactly what one would expect from the class: immunity to death spells and effects, automatically stabilize below 0 HP, cannot have ability scores drained or damaged below 1, bleed and stabilize at will and a limited power word kill (150 HP or lower) once per day.

The next section is the new spells added, all of which are on the White Necromancer's spell list but also on the Sorcerer/Wizard and Witch lists as well. Bone Shards, Greater Bone Shards, and Bone Storm are Evocations, nice little damage-dealing spells and the first two add Bleed to the effect. (Still brings to wonder why SR would kick in against these, given their flavor and descriptions, but that's a discussion for elsewhere.) Chain of Bones is a Conjuration and functionally similar to the Chain of Perdition spell, just not a [force] effect and it doesn't have to contend with SR due to being a Conjuration instead of an Evocation. (Poor Evocation, outdone again... though the Chain of Bones can't do a Dirty Trick maneuver like the force chain can, nor does it have auto-success in ability to attack incorporeal things, so not a total loss =) I'm actually a bit surprised to not see Chain of Perdition on the WH spell list, given its inspiration.) Dance of the Dead is a very short-term animate dead effect without the material component that gives temporary unlife to basic skeletons and/or zombies, which can either attack (using the stats for basic humans with the template of choice) or perform tasks as unseen servants for a few rounds. Wall of Bones joins the long list of useful Wall spells, a bit more fragile than the Wall of Ice at the same spell level (5th) but less vulnerable to capricious temperature effects.

Feats are next, with two Metamagic feats being the whole of the lot. Necrotic Spell costs 1 spell level up and allows spells to affect corporeal humanoid undead as if they were whatever they were in life, and allows mind-affecting spells to work on corporeal mindless undead of any type. Siphon Spell lets you expend lower level spell slots to cast a higher level spell by adding their levels together, a great way to make use of unusued low-level slots after burning through your best spells earlier in the day.

Last but not least are two archetypes, the Necrotic Healer and the Grave Bound. The Necrotic Healer does exactly what it says it does, focusing on and enhancing the healing aspects of the WN and forgoing many of its powers over undead. The Grave Bound focuses in turn on the undead, obtaining an undead companion (of non-evil alignment, matching the Grave Bound WN's own) in a similar manner as a druid's animal companion, and gaining some undead traits of their own in time. The companions (choose between ghost, mummy, shadow, skeleton, vampire, and zombie) are weaker than their Bestiary counterparts for the most part, but scale in power along with their WN master and gain new abilities over time. (Among the most useful of which is the fact that they are explicitly immune to being turned or commanded. Clerics and enemy Necromancers can't steal or chase off your partner! How cool is that?!) There's no text saying what base creature the undead companion is, though the associated art is of a humanoid skeleton; I personally don't see any reason you couldn't have some other creature like a loyal undead family pet or something, since the base creature's stats and HD would be irrelevant as you'd be using the provided companion statistics anyway. At that point it's just the player's flavor.

All in all, the class is solid, does exactly what it advertises, and does it well. The few things I would lament is that it doesn't get any way to directly enhance its Necromancy spells, not even along the par of the Necromancer Wizard, nor does it take the necessary step of reclassifying cure spells as Necromancy when cast by a WN. (I personally houseruled them into Necromancy in all my games anyway, but I think that should have at least been something the WN had, to further exemplify the fact that they focus on both the Life and Death portions of the Necromancy school.) I also thought it odd that they got access to all the cure and inflict spells, but heal and harm are curiously missing from their spell list. Some of the healing abilities, likewise, are strangely limited or relatively weak (for example, it's a meager 1d4+level for the Rebuke Death ability, and only usable on unconscious targets), which hampers much of the healing ability the class is supposed to be proficient with, while their undead-related abilities are usually more potent.

Nevertheless, these in my opinion are relatively minor quibbles. For someone looking for a good way to introduce non-evil undead and the necromancers who love them into their campaign, you could do far, far worse than the White Necromancer. Five stars.