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TLDR: Necromancer Gishing could be good and it gets close but its various feats and support for the playstyle fall flat, usually due to poor scaling and lacking power, personally i think the best step forward would be to give it a Warpriest style Subclass that gives it a better base and to buff and alter the feats to be stronger.
The Long: At a Base its chassis isn't the best for Melee, only light armour, simple weapons, standard caster progression, its got a good bonus because of the spell list that has some nice buffs but generally you have to spend a lot of feats fixing these innate deficiencies, so for smoother play and especially early level play (which is where melee necro is at its weakest) a Warpriest subclass to fix this would sort all of these issues.
and now Feats
Reaper Weapon Familiarity: this is an Ancestry Feat in the trenchcoat of a Class feat, what on earth is it doing here? i don't have any feedback other than just delete this and replace it with something else because it is entirely redundant with ancestry and general feats, Class feats should generally be better than both of those things.
also given that most of the weapons are strength based, it kinda highlights how much a Melee Necro needs a way to get at least Medium armour (also i like fully armoured Necromantic Death Knights)
Draining Strike: this is pretty good and i like it, however it does have a scaling issue and an action economy issue, if you have already setup a thrall to destroy with this then all is well but as a two action attack its pretty bad compared to most other two action attacks, personally i think their should be a way to pump a focus point into it (or just make a separate focus spell to make a big strike or something) to give it a boost at later levels.
Osteo Armaments: admittedly i don't entirely see the point of this feat, its awesome on a thematic level i love the idea but If i wanted to focus on Melee i would already have a weapon with runes, so i would be just spending actions on something i don't need and is slightly worse, at best if Enemy resistances are being a pain but you are still a spellcaster and have ways of getting around that, its too cool an idea to just scrap but it needs to do something better than just be a backup plan imo
Level 12: while not strictly a gish feat, they all to some degree make The Necromancer more tanky which is appreciated, no real complaints here
Bind Heroic Spirit: this is a level 18 feat, good Christ that is bad, i get it, its a focus point version of 9th level Heroism that spawns a thrall when you strike, but this comes FAR too late in the level to be meaningful and, this feat should come far earlier and should scale with the player instead of just being at max level only, also i think it should take a note from Animists playbook and add damage instead of adding to saves, attack increases enable melee, damage incentivises melee and all that.
I've seen this feedback pop up a few times and i hope Paizo takes into consideration as i really like Gishes and Necromancer is so close to being a good one it just needs some love
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Reaper Weapon Familiarity: It's almost better on martial people dipping into Necromancer, unlocking advanced axes. But my main gripe is that these weapon proficiencies don't have much reason to be locked behind a feat - namely, what is preventing Necromancers from just knowing how to swing Scythes at level 1? (I know the comparisons don't necessarily work 1-to-1, but all Clerics get a special weapon for free and all Bards get every martial weapon for free. It's not unprecedented.)
Draining Strike: You've touched upon a common trend here. Muscle Barrier and Body Shield are also forms of early-game survivability feats, all of which require Thralls. Presumably, you're playing a melee build to perform melee attacks instead of casting Summon Thrall. Doing those melee attacks leaves you without the Thralls which allow you to perform well in melee. That's a heavy mismatch between the melee options and the basic ability to use those melee options (related to my rant on Bind Heroic Spirit later on).
Osteo Armaments: It got better when someone informed me that the summoned weapons don't have a max duration, but in 90% of scenarios you're better off simply purchasing an actual weapon and spending your feat elsewhere. That said, I would never wish for this feat to be removed - its core thematic is extremely strong.
Bind Heroic Spirit: I'm glad that other people also see this as a build-defining feat which arrives far too late. I am personally of the opinion that this could be a rank 1 single-action focus spell which only summons Thralls (no Heroism), and that alone would be a MASSIVE improvement to the Necromancer's gish viability. (I'm even theorizing whether such an ability could just be a passive effect on the class itself - they're still heavily incentivized to stay at range going all-in on INT with Summon Thrall, but basic melee support wouldn't detract from that basic playstyle at all)
I'd even settle for a rank 3 focus spell which mirrors the heightening of Heroism, and even that feels like a really late implementation of what I'd call a playstyle-defining ability.
I'm fine with the notion that the Melee Necromancer gets less Thrall generation. I'm less fine with the thought that a level 18 Necromancer summons 3 Thralls per action, about to be 4 per action at level 19, and ONLY JUST NOW can their melee attacks summon a singular Thrall. (I know right now it also affects their ranged strikes, but if the concept of an gun Necromancer is what's choking out the melee benefits... that's just a supremely weird reason to kneecap the gishes)
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Warpriest-Style subclass: I'd go a step further and say Battle Harbinger. If you aren't aware - it's a new Cleric subclass which replaces their spellcasting with Magus-style spell slots and proficiency growths. Partially because I don't think we're ever going to see another full caster gain an option like Warpriest, partially because I already view Necromancer as a class where I'm fully okay giving up my old spell slots.
That said, Necromancer is interesting to me as a light class because their feats DO allow them to become hugely resilient. In theory, anyway (see my argument on Draining Strike). It only sucks because their iconic gish uses a scythe in light armor, which is kind of bad at level 1. Level 10+, your ability boosts allow studded leather to cap out your AC without foregoing INT or STR at all, but actually making it to that point is rough. I don't think there's a perfect answer here, because medium armor would solve the mechanical problems in the early game whereas I don't think the class even makes thematic sense with medium armor. (And I kind of which PF2 were more lenient with people not instantly capping out their AC for this precise reason - the mechanical incentive is massive)
ugh idk, I agree with your thesis that they'd do better with medium armor. I just wish that weren't so true for thematic reasons.
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ugh idk, I agree with your thesis that they'd do better with medium armor. I just wish that weren't so true for thematic reasons.
As someone who also suggested to give them medium armor: What exactly about their theme doesn't fit medium armor? I don't see how it fits them any better or worse than light armor. Or even heavy, for that matter.
They aren't a nimble class and their theme is more or less standing their ground while throwing thralls at their enemies (because their action economy is too tight to move around more than absolutely necessary). I could absolutely see them prefer the heavier armor types. We would need a few more skeletal armors to have a perfect fit, but that seems easy enough to accomplish. Anyone who still prefers light armor could still use it, after all.
Since blanket medium armor proficiency seems unlikely to happen, a fourth subclass that get Armor Proficiency as its general feat would be a decent middle ground. At least I could play a necromancer at level 1 without feeling the overwhelming need to be a human for armor proficiency.
The main advantage of have a medium armor at lower levels is that you can invest more in Con or Str in earlier levels. Something that make sense for a melee build that uses non-finesse weapons.
Mechanically we also have the problem that IMO the current power budget of necro is pretty subpar. We have 8hp/lvl medium armored druids that uses wisdom to cast, have access to entire primal common spell list, and starts 1-2 focus spells and still have 3 spells per rank so it's hard to justify that Create Thralls power needs to restrict the necromancer to light armor and one less spell slot per rank for a prepared class the uses int and needs to learn every extra spell paying some money and having to find an source to study. So have a better armor grade is the minimum to adjust this (yet we can have other things in place like for example one more spell slot).
But thematically except from Diablo necromancers I see almost no reason to have medium armored necromancers, maybe a skeleton armor could be a medium armor?