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Insert clickbait thumbnail with title like "Necromancer: Dead on Arrival?!" here.
Hello again! Your friendly neighborhood internet dweller here once again to do a breakdown of the new Necromancer playtest. I will be going through the class by level, then do a review of the feats, then the Focus Spells. Finally, I'll be giving my summarized take on the class as a whole. This is going to be a lot of text, and I will not apologize. I've done my best to break out things into sections to make it easier to navigate.
I'd like to reiterate before I begin that regardless of how negative I may come across, I am genuinely excited for the new classes, and hope that my feedback can be some small benefit to the designers.
That being said, let's jump right into it.
BASE FEATURES/LEVEL 1
Trained in Perception, Reflex, Will, Occultism, 2+Int Skills, Simple/Unarmed, Light/Unarmored, Spell attack and DC. Expert in Fortitude.
8+Con HP, Key Attribute is Intelligence.
Essentially Psychic casting progression.
Create Thrall cantrip.
Consume Thrall focus spell.
Subclass for zombies/skeletons/spirits, grants a different focus spell for each. (Dead Weight, Bone Spear, Life Tap respectively)
Mastery of Life and death, lets you freely swap between Void and Vital damage to change your damage to whichever is better to hit the enemy with. Very cool that you can Vampiric Touch an undead this way. I like this a lot.
Undead Lore, a free lore skill that auto scales. And a pretty reliably good one in most campaigns since it's a rare campaign indeed where undead NEVER come up. Really solid.
Initial reaction is that this all seems fine. Slightly tankier than your average caster with slightly more HP and light armor. The Psychic spell progression catches me off guard, but I'm waiting to see how this "thrall" mechanic shakes out. Consume thrall is interesting in that it essentially gives you +1 max focus points over the normal cap. Subclass focus spells are interesting, but I'll break those down in the Focus Spells section.
Only concern at this point is that since thralls only get 1 hp and this doesn't scale, and they auto fail all saves and are auto-hit by attacks, any enemy that does AoE will rinse your thralls instantly. Something GMs have to be very careful about, as any AoE heavy series of encounters will have the class feeling very handicapped.
LEVEL 2-5
Inevitable Return, very cool reaction, very flavorful. Useless in big Single Boss fights, but that should be a minority of encounters.
Grim Wards,this one is interesting. The only other classes that get a save prof boot at 3 are Fighter, Gunslinger, Kineticist, Ranger, Swashbuckler and Thaumaturge, and those classes all have 2 experts at 1 with their level 3 boost rounding them out to all Expert. This looks to be the first class that get a save prof boost at this level that didn't start out with two experts. The "Juggernaut" effect vs. haunts/undead mental/possession effects is so niche outside specific campaigns as to be not worth consideration, but good flavor.
Reflex Expertise at 5. Fully expert by 5. Pretty solid. Makes it the most well-rounded in saves of all the casters on a quick review. I really need to make a spreadsheet before the next playtest to make this review process faster.
LEVEL 6-10
Expert Necromancy at 7, standard casting progression.
Perception Expert at 7, solid.
Not much to say for this level range in terms of class features.
LEVEL 11-15
Unnatural Fortitude at 11. Juggernaut is always solid. Fort Jugg on a caster is interesting.
Weapon Expert at 11. Standard weapon prof increase for a caster. Notable for a thought that will come up later. Remember this.
Light Armor expert at 13. Also standard for a caster. Same issue as Weapon Expert for later thoughts.
Master Necromancy at 15, standard caster progression continues.
LEVEL 16-20
Undying Resilience at 17, Super Juggernaut for Fortitude. Very nice.
Epitatph at 19, 10th level spell slot. Standard.
Legendary Necromancy at 19, finale of standard caster progression.
Quick Notes
So the core shell of the class appears to be a pretty bog-standard caster progression, though with just a touch more resilience from their armor and hp. Fortitude being the big benefit instead of Will like a usual caster is interesting though.
FEATS 1-5
1: There are feats here to get each of the subclass focus spells, in case you want to pick up more than the one you get.
Bone Speaker lets you use your free Undead Lore on living things that have skeletons, but only lets you find out stuff about their biology. Considering that you're almost always going to want to use this to recall knowledge about weaknesses/resistances, slam dunk here. Also lets you use UL instead of Medicine when examining corpses, niche but neat.
Reach of the Dead lets you originate a spell you're casting from a thrall within 60 feet instead of yourself. Really cool.
2: Conceal Spell, standard.
Muscle Barrier, grants the associated focus spell. This is a common theme with these feats...
Necrotic Bomb, grants focus spell.
Reaper's Weapon Familiarity, this one is interesting. It seems to lean into the idea that the necromancer might be more of a gish, lets you treat Greatswords, Scythes, and Any Axes as one step lower (Advanced->Martial->Simple). But given that your weapon prof caps out at expert, seems like a bit of a trap.
4: Body Shield. Use your thrall for cover as a reaction, and grants damage reduction if they hit. Very good, very flavorful, one of my favorite feats hands down.
Bony Barrage, grants focus spell...
Draining Strike, Once per turn, you can make a strike and destroy up to three thralls, dealing +1d4 damage per thrall destroyed, and healing 1d4 HP per thrall destroyed. Flavorful, but it doesn't scale at all? I'm assuming it has pseudo-built in scaling given that you can spam out 3+ thralls every turn at later levels, essentially letting you always get that +3d4 damage/healing every turn. Pretty flavorful and unfortunately one of the only ways to consistently make use of your thralls outside of focus points. More on that later.
FEATS 6-10
6: Bone Burst, essentially Reactive Strike for creatures passing by a thrall that is within 60 feet of you, dealing 2d10 at base, 3d10 at 12 and 4d10 at 18. Very fun, very flavorful.
Reclaim Power, once per 10 minutes, lets you drain up to 5 thralls to heal 10 hp per thrall drained, and if you drain all 5, you also decrease your "clumsy, enfeebled, frightened, sickened, or stupefied condition" by 1. This one is odd because a) does it let you decrease ALL of them by 1, or only a single one of your choice? and b) this is another one where my knee-jerk reaction is that it feels a little weak at first blush. It's only usable once per 10 minutes, you have to consume FIVE full thralls, which means even at the highest levels you need multiple casts of create thrall to get the max benefit, which means a minimum of two turns. It's a lot of action economy consumed for a relatively minor benefit compared to what other classes can do consistently. I'd personally either give this some sort of scaling or make it's impact bigger.
Zombie Horde, grants a focus spell...
8: Conglomerate of Limbs, grants a focus spell...
Osteo Weapon, grants you a free weapon that auto scales it's fundamental runes with your level. Very cool, very flavorful. Unfortunately another gish trap.
10: Desperate Surge, lets you (essentially) use a thrall to use your spell attack in place of athletics for a Grab, Reposition, Shove or Trip. Flavorful but really sketchy since you probably shouldn't be up in melee as a caster, let alone grappling.
Lifesense: Oooo, this one is interesting. 30ft impreceise lifesense is already pretty fun, but getting to just know the HP of living and undead creatures is pretty wild, and I can see some GMs out there hating this.
Quickened Casting, pretty standard.
FEATS 11-15
12: Become as Spirit, the spirit-mancer subclass upgrade. Lets you move through enemies as difficult terrain, ignore natural difficult terrain, bonus on escape checks, and whenever you destroy a thrall you get resistance against ALL DAMAGE equal to half your level. Very nice.
Necrotic Focus, Refocus to full. Fine, but i've historically found if you've got 10 minutes to refocus, you've got 30. After the remaster this became a lot less necessary.
Reinforced Skeleton, skeleto-mancer subclass upgrade. Permanent resistance equal to half your level against two damage types of limited selection and +10 status bonus to speed, upgraded to +20 whenever you destroy a thrall. Pretty solid overall.
Vital Conduit, zombie-mancer subclass upgrade. +Level HP, whenever you destroy a thrall, any adjacent enemies need to make a fort save or be sickened one. This is... fine. Definitely a let down compared to the other two.
14: Recurring nightmare. Focus spell.
Skeletal Lancers. Focus spell.
FEATS 16-20
16: Desperate Revival, reaction upon being dropped to 0 but not *immediately* killed, you suck the life out of all living creatures within 60 feet, and you regain hp = life loss. EXTREMELY flavorful but if you're going down and your party is low, this has a very high chance of dropping parts of your party. I can see accidental TPKs being very easily caused by this.
Effortless Concentration, a free sustain at the start of every turn. I'll admit I don't know how many occult spells require sustaining, and only 6 of the printed focus spells for the class benefit from sustaining. This could be insane or useless depending on the spells available.
Flesh Tsunami, Focus spell.
18: Bind Heroic Spirit, Focus Spell.
Ectoplasmic Aura, You + allies within 30 get +1 Circumstance to AC, enemies within 30 need to make a save or lose access to reactions. Interesting but seems... meh for 18th level.
20: Living Graveyard, focus spell.
Morem Ultimatum, 2nd 10th level slot.
Perfected Thrall, focus spell.
Quick Notes
Okay, there are 34 feats in the playtest. Of those, 14 of them grant Focus Spells. That's 41/% of feat options as focus spells. I'm not super fond of the idea that this class is seemingly wholly reliant on it's focus spells to do almost anything with it's key "Create Thralls" ability. Only 6 of the feats let you do anything with your created thralls, two of those are situational reactions, one of them is only usable every 10 minutes, one will essentially never be used more than once a fight (osteo armaments), and Desperate Surge should probably never see the light of day, meaning that the only way to use your thralls outside of focus points in any consistent fashion is Draining Strike, which is requiring you as a caster to make a melee strike, which you're not great at. This is a bit of a let down for me. Let's hope the focus spells are awesome to compensate.
FOCUS SPELLS
1: Bone Spear, respectable damage. Sac a thrall to do a 15-foot line that deals 2d8 scaling by a d8 every spell rank. Slightly higher avg damage than fireball. Not a save based action, it's a spell attack vs. every creature in the line, and counts as 2 towards MAP, but doesn't increase until you've made all your attacks. Solid damage, solid scaling, solid option.
Create Thrall, the bread and butter Cantrip. Creates a thrall that lasts for 1 min within 30 feet. Scales up at 7, 15 and 19 for +1 thrall. You get a spell attack against a target adjacent to one of your thralls for 1d6 + 1d6 per 2 spell ranks, scaling to a max of 10d6. Respectable damage on the summon. At higher levels I can only imagine the chaos of how many thralls you can spam out. The fact that they're actual creatures and as such can provide flanking is something I have a feeling people might miss at first blush but can provide a LOT of value all on it's own.
Dead Weight. This... is a choice. Launch a thrall at single enemy within 15 feet of it make a fort save. Crit success no effect. Succeed, -10 penalty to speeds. Failure immobilized but can escape. Crit fail, grabbed, can escape. TWO MASSIVE ISSUES. 1) No matter if they fail, the duration is ONE ROUND. Which means as written, even if they crit fail, they're only grabbed for a single round for your 1 focus point. 2) "This spell ends if the thrall is destroyed or a creature that failed the save successfully Escapes." Thralls have 1 HP and are automatically hit by strikes... which means that literally any creature can just make an unarmed strike and auto-kill the thrall, no need to escape. This is honestly one of the worst spells I've ever seen. This needs a SIGNIFICANT overhaul prior to release.
Life Tap. Sac a thrall within 30 feet, to the thrall stride to a target within 30 feet and have it make a fort save. Crit success no effect, success, fail, and crit fail make it drained 1,2,3 respectively for 1 minute, and you can have yourself or an ally within 30 feet of the now-moved thrall gain HP equal to the amount of HP lost. Decent option. Bone spear really blows this out of the water though.
Muscle Barrier. Sac a thrall within 60 to grant you or an ally within 15 feet of said thrall 10 temp HP and +1 status to athletics until the HP is gone, scaling +10 temp HP per spell rank. I think this might be the single largest temp HP granting effect in the game since it can theoretically scale up to 90 temp HP, which isn't nothing. Very interesting. Kinda wish the athletics bonus scaled too, at least a little.
Necrotic Bomb. Sac a thrall 60 to make it go boom, 10 ft emanation for 1d12 void (or vitality!) damage, scaling 1d12 per spell level. 9d12 makes it just sub-fireball in terms of average damage. Respectable. Kinda wish you could make this emanation bigger, but at the same time you can quite literally litter the battlefield with thralls. If this ability wasn't a focus spell it'd go nuts. As another point of comparison, Fire Kineticist can do slightly less average damage in twice the emanation every other turn starting at 8. So I guess you're trading frequency for damage with this class.
2: Bony Barrage. Sac a thrall within 30 to make a 30 foot cone, each creature in the cone makes a reflex save vs 2d10 piercing, scaling by 1d10 every spell rank. If there's a thrall in the targeted area, you can sac that thrall to a) give your allies in the cone immunity to it, and b) +1 status to AC until the start of your next turn. Pretty solid. Less damage than bone spear but bigger AoE and nice secondary effects.
3: Zombie Horde. Now this is a freakin' spell. Sac a thrall to create a 10-foot burst of Zombies. It's difficult terrain, and any creature that starts its turn in the space takes 3d4 (+1d4 per rank) bludgeoning with a basic fort save. Lasts 1 minute. Once per round on subsequent turns, you can sustain it to move the horde up to 10 feet, and if it moves into another thrall, it consumes the thrall and makes the burst 5 feet wider. If you play your cards right, that means it'd cap out at a 50 foot burst. Not high damage but consistent, wide-ranging, highly thematic. I like this one A LOT.
4: Conglomerate of Limbs. You create a grappling machine. Create a thrall with 40 (+10 per rank) hp instead of the usual 1, whenever an enemy begins it's turn next to the thrall, fort save or be grappled for 1 rd or until it escapes. Subsequent turns you can sustain once to make it move up to 15. This is what Dead Weight wishes it was. Can potentially grapple multiple enemies if they're in close quarters, can re-grapple targets on subsequent rounds, probably dies to 3-4 attacks but at least that's soaking decent amount of attention.
5: Nada.
6: Also Nada.
7: Recurring Nightmare. Create a special thrall within 30 feet that can share space with creatures, and can fly. Lasts 1 minute. If it is summoned into or ends it's movement in a creatures space, will save or be frightend 1, crit fail frightened 2. On subsequent turns, can make it Fly 60, OR re-create the Nightmare if it was destroyed, which is super interesting. None of the other "Focus Point Thralls" have this benefit, which I find interesting. I kinda wish they had this, but I also understand why they don't.
Skeletal Lancers. Create 5 thralls within 60 feet, they each have a lance and 10ft reach. Any time an enemy within their reach makes a strike, they take 5 piercing, but no more than once per strike. Can sustain each subsequent turn to make any number move up to 30 feet. Doesn't scale, which I find sad. Honestly by this level 5 piercing is almost nothing, the only thing that makes it reliable is the fact that they essentially take the damage EACH time they strike, so if an enemy is strike happy (like a lot of monsters are), they're "essentially" taking 10-15 persistent piercing damage, and that can apply to a lot of creatures depending on how creative you get with your positioning. My only gripe here is that they still have the 1 hp auto-kill of thralls. I'd really like if this had the recurring nightmare benefit, maybe let you re-create up to 1 of the lancers if they've been destroyed?
8: Flesh Tsunami. What a spell name. Sac a thrall within 30 to create a 60 foot cone, turns the cone into greater difficult terrain, if there's another thrall in the cone, you make each enemy in the area make a fort save. Crit succeed nothing, succeed, -10 speed for 1 round, fail -20 speed for 1 round, crit fail, immobilized for 1 round or until it escapes. This feels like dead weight all over again. This is a very high level spell, that requires you to sac 2 thralls and a focus point for full value, and it... makes people move less for one round at most. The greater difficult terrain lasting a minute is nice, but the actual effect of the saves feels so niche as to never warrant using.
9: Bind Heroic Spirit. Here it is. The epitome of the gish trap for the class. +3 status bonus to attack rolls and saving throws for one minute. Whenever you successfully strike, create a thrall adjacent to you that lasts 1 minute. This is exactly what the class needs to even try and function as a gish, and you don't get it until ****ing 18th level. Credit to Ronald The Rules Lawyer here, but I really think this should be implemented WAY sooner and scale as you level. Maybe at level 6 for +1, then +2 at 12 and +3 at 18? It'd at least slightly close the gap between the classes inherent lackluster attack rolls and a martial. As it is this feels like a "Oh I'm level 18, guess I'll re-tool my entire character to function as a gish now" which is a massive feelsbad in my mind.
10: Perfected Thrall. Create a 200 HP thrall, and you can use it as a source to destroy, but each time you woulud destroy it it instead loses 20 hp. I wonder if you can repeatedly sac it to the same effects for something like Draining Strike or Reclaim power... anyway. On subsequent turns, can move and make a spell attack through it to smack for 7d6. This is... fine? Like by this level you're not hurting for destruction fodder when you can make 4 thralls for 1 action, and since the spell otherwise does nothing the turn it shows up, it's a 200 hp body that you can then try and hit things with for the next 9 turns to do mediocre damage. Average 24.5 damage assuming you hit... I dunno. Like this is cool on it's face but the more I think about it the less interesting or impactful it becomes.
Living Graveyard. Summon a massive animated graveyard within 100 feet with 400hp. it also summons 5 thralls. Each round after you can sustain it to make it move up to 60 feet and make 3 new thralls. Very cool, hyper flavorful, absolutely wild to imagine in person. Ultimately, I have no idea what this is useful for. If you need thralls, you can spend your one sustain to make 4 rather than 3 from the graveyard. if you have the free-sustain feat I guess it's 3 free thralls a turn, but given how few things you can use them for once you run out of focus points, I feel like your thrall creation will RAPIDLY outpace your ability to consume them.
FINAL SUMMARY/REVIEW
I absolutely adore the flavor of this class and I'm so happy we're getting to explore this niche finally. It has a lot of potential, and as always I'm sure that the class will see a massive improvement between now and release. Ultimately my fully summarized thoughts are as follows:
1) If the class wants the option to be a gish, Heroic Spirit needs to come way earlier or there need to be more options to support it. I think making heroic spirit lower level and scaling is a quick and easy way to do that.
2) The class needs more consistent ways to make use of it's thralls outside of focus spells. Even if there was a cantrip you could take to just command a thrall within range to make a new attack, that'd be something. Anything to make use of these thralls your spamming across the battlefield once you're out of focus points.
3) Dead Weight and likely Flesh Tsunami seem incredibly underwhelming, Dead Weight especially. It's a spell that costs you essentially 2 actions to make an enemy lose at most 1 action if they decide to pop your undead balloon of a thrall, and if they weren't planning to move anyway they can just fully ignore it.
4) There are a few things that create an effect "from where the thrall was" which is odd when most spells and such create an effect "centered on one corner of the square". Might need a language clean up.
5) I like the idea of the spells that can consume multiple thralls for bigger effects. Bony Barrage and Flesh Tsunami as obvious examples, but also stuff like Reclaim Power or Draining Strike, it's an interesting way to handle some "pseudo-scaling" that could be achieved at lower levels but is easier as you get higher and can spam your thralls out faster. It really leans into this flavor of the Necromancer building their horde and then using it to great effect, even if we can't achieve the stereotypical horde of undead storming the gates.
6) This is purely a thought, but maybe a feat to give them access to the Create Undead ritual? Could let players at least try and live up to the ravening horde fantasy with the right resources.
7) Similarly, giving the class some version of the Command/Improved Command Undead feats from OG Core Rulebook.
All told, I'm very much looking forward to how this turns out. Thank you again to the designers for all your hard work, and thank you for continuing to bring incredible classes to the game.
Tune in next time for my breakdown of the Runesmith!
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Nice writeup and an interesting read. Thank you!
Just some minor corrections/additions:
Draining Strike doesn't require a melee Strike. It works at range. So you can pull out an air repeater, stuff three zombies into it and fire them at your enemies. :D
Bone Spear isn't 2d8 with 1d8 heighten per level. It's 1d8 with 2d8 heighten per level. It scales exceptionally well for a focus spell, easily outscaling staples like fireball and even chain lightning (if you look only on rolled damage number and ignore the potential number of targets of course). But it starts really really weak, barely more damaging than create thrall and it's short range of 10 ft combined with a 15 ft line area makes it awkward to use. Becomes a lot better once you can create more thralls at once and get Reach of the Dead.
Create Thrall has max damage of 5d6, not 10d6.
Muscle Barrier scales up to 100 temp HP, not 90. There's no rules saying Focus spells don't heighten to rank 10.
Necrotic Bomb: Also scales to rank 10 for 10d12 damage.
Living Graveyard knocks all nearby creatures prone if they fail a fort save. It's called an emanation, but from the description it's not perfectly clear whether this happens only on cast or as permanent aura-like effect. It also seems unable to move through creatures or share their space. Being Gargantuan itself it can theoretical block a huge area, but it might as well just end up being a huge pain in the neck to even find the space to summon that thing, much less move it each turn.
very nice write up!
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You can move through the spaces of creatures three sizes larger or smaller. Gargantuan is three sizes larger than Medium.
Sure, but you still can't share a square with them outside of movement. The graveyard is four by four squares and needs exactly that (uninterrupted) area to even exist and more if you want it to Stride. That's nothing you can count on having available in all or even most encounters, especially when fighting multiple enemies.
The Graveyard would be much more usable if it was redefined as a swarm-like thrall, consisting of corspes, limbs and gravestones that move along the ground and can share spaces with creatures of any size, even when not moving.
10: Perfected Thrall. Create a 200 HP thrall, and you can use it as a source to destroy, but each time you woulud destroy it it instead loses 20 hp. I wonder if you can repeatedly sac it to the same effects for something like Draining Strike or Reclaim power... anyway. On subsequent turns, can move and make a spell attack through it to smack for 7d6. This is... fine? Like by this level you're not hurting for destruction fodder when you can make 4 thralls for 1 action, and since the spell otherwise does nothing the turn it shows up, it's a 200 hp body that you can then try and hit things with for the next 9 turns to do mediocre damage. Average 24.5 damage assuming you hit... I dunno. Like this is cool on it's face but the more I think about it the less interesting or impactful it becomes.
Another small correction: The damage is 7d10, not 7d6. So it's 38,5 points of damage on average, over 50% more than what you assumed. Quite solid for a repeatable effect that you can also use as fodder for your other abilities, I think. I just wish it could attack on the turn it's created.
Nice writeup and an interesting read. Thank you!
Just some minor corrections/additions:
Good shoutout on these corrections! Draining strike at range definitely makes it slightly more appealing, though with only simple ranged available to you at max expert prof, would still struggle a bit.
The focus spell scaling to 10 bit is something I hadn't considered. My brain auto-completed the usual "heightening stops at 9", so that's pretty cool.
Not sure how I missed create thrall only scaling every 2 instead of every 1, I even put it in the dang writeup, noticeable dip in the dps, but it's "Free" damage still.
I did indeed get bone-spear scaling backwards. I think when I did my math I applied it correctly, I just typed it wrong. Whoops. Yeah just re-checked and my math was right. Though including the 10th level does make it edge out most other spells in terms of damage.
I think I just straight up forgot the living graveyard making people prone thing, but I'm not sure how much it changes my mind on it being a little lackluster.
And as far as perfected thrall goes, yeah, that damage does help a bit, not sure where I pulled the d6 from but I was kinda fading there at the end after typing the review for over an hour. I do agree that I wish it had the same "attack once on summon" thing that regular thralls get to at least give you some amount of advantage the turn it comes into play instead of making it purely a setup action.
Thanks for the catches! It's way too late to edit my original post unfortunately, but still very helpful.