| Omnius |
That's... much more specific than "non minion."
Drain to heal people is... not really a thing that exists to such a degree that you can focus a character around it, particularly when in-combat healing and damage is not a recommended primary function for casters to begin with.
Non-minion necromancers can work reasonably well, but that's largely because the necromancy school has a lot of viable debuffing/disabling effects you can use.
| thelivingmonkey |
I second what Omnius said and further it: using the "life drain" sort of spell can be a nice secondary function, but the necromancy school is so juicy in terms of debuffs and the like.
However, I urge you not to limit yourself. Having one very expensive onyx around makes it so when your party kills some big strong thing, you CAN turn it into a bloody skeleton. One minion won't bog anything down and probably will come in handy. Such a potent subpart of necromancy, that is strong enough to be the focus of an entire character, should not just be left to the wayside.
I understand not wanting to do it, I really do, and maybe I'm a little biased in that minionmancy is my favorite type of caster (I know, I'm scum :)) but I think it's a good idea to just have it as an option, even if you never use it. At higher levels a few hundred gold is worth a potential undying minion.
Sorry if this isn't what you wanted to hear, and you should still do what you want.
| Omnius |
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Mystic Theurge is almost never a good idea.
A 9th-level prepared caster can do pretty much anything, and almost nothing is worth trading a level of spell progression, let alone three. The added spell list does not meaningfully expand your ability to do things.
If you want a combination of traditionally arcane and divine spells, play a Witch.
If you specifically want to focus on HP drain effects, this is not a viable build and I suggest broadening and the scope of your concept with consideration of available resources.
Being a Mystic Theurge does not meaningfully forward the concept you have proposed.
| avr |
There's not a lot of spellcasters which get both shield other and vampiric touch on their spell list. One which does is a psychic; the formless adept or mutation mind archetypes might be handy if you plan to go into melee to use vampiric touch, and a level dip in something which gives a decent armor proficiency might be an idea.
| SheepishEidolon |
An alternative to shield other is a single level of oracle with life mystery, to pick up the life link ability. It will always heal just 5 HP per ally per round, so on the long run you need something else to complement it.
If you want vampiric touch and shield other on the same spell list, you could also go for a divine caster - thanks to samsaran's alternate racial trait mystic past life. Vampiric touch is an antipaladin spell, so it can be a divine spell, hence oracles and clerics may take it via the samsaran loophole.
Set
|
Spell research may your best bet here.
While spells and effects that steal life from an enemy and use it to heal a friend (or shift life from oneself to an ally) may be commonplace in online games like EverQuest, Warcraft, etc. they never really broke into tabletop d20 games. (Same with other online game staples, like damage over time spells, super-common in computer games, but, other than acid arrow, quite rare comparatively in tabletop games.)
Having your life-force-shifting necromancer research spells that emulate inflict wounds spells, but restore health to the caster as they damage the target (a spell level higher than the normal inflict wounds option, obviously) could be one way to start. If the effect is going to be ranged, increasing it yet another level might be necessary...
You could even make it a metamagic option, so that any spell that inflicts negative energy damage (such as chill touch) could be used as a form of self-healing.
Combined with a different spell, to shift life from yourself to an ally, and you've got a one-two healing option, in which you damage yourself to heal an ally, and then recover your own health by draining it from a foe. It's half as action-effective as a standard heal, in that it takes two rounds, but in that second round, you are also damaging a foe, which kinda/sorta balances it out a bit.
Other tactics include using something like the life link mentioned above, or shield other, to mitigate damage to an ally, and a healing effect like channel energy that heals both your wounded self and your wounded ally at the same time, essentially doubling how useful the channel healing is for that specific instance of damage (since it's being split between two people, and less of the area-channel-healing is being 'wasted' on undamaged people).
Another option could be a 3rd level variant of shield other than not only transferred half of damage taken from the target to the caster, but also half of healing received from the caster to the target, allowing the healer to throw cures on themself, and the target, up to 30 ft. away, to receive half of that cure.
But anywho, short version, there's not a lot of ways to do this.
The game design kind of 'wants' for necromancy to be evil and bad and wicked naughty Zoot, to the point that they yanked the cure wounds spells out of necromancy and made them into conjuration back in 3.5.
You'd be best served by using spell research to make your own spells to further this character concept, than try to kludge something together out of tools that were ill-fashioned to emulate it (and, in some cases, actively fight against it).
| SheepishEidolon |
Vampiric Touch is a mediocre spell to begin with, and does not age well.
Well, mediocre might be good enough, depending on the power level of the table. The spell has a few strengths:
1) Melee touch means missing doesn't use it up. Hitting becomes easy at least against big foes, though.
2) No save means you don't have to go crazy about your casting ability score.
3) The temporary HP last for 1 hour - that's good enough for multiple encounters in a dungeon.
So I'd build on these strengths: Increase melee reach, use more point-buy points for physical stats and move to the next encounter quickly. The result is probably more magus-like than classical-wizard-like.