Study Up on 5E D&D Magic — Necromancy Spells

October 4, 2021

Salutations nerds! Manipulating the energies of life and death falls under the purview of necromancy magic in fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons. Necromancy is also the school you use to resurrect people. Today I’m going to dig into necromancy, which in most 5E D&D worlds represents the most outlawed school of spellcasting. Not surprisingly necromancy magic is also the favored area of study for our own Maxillae the Mad.

Arcane tradition — necromancy

The School of Necromancy Arcane Tradition starts off strong with Grim Harvest, which basically gives you the ability to siphon hit points from the things you kill. Because this is based on the spell level you used to kill the creature and not the hit point pool of the creature itself, you cannot just cast a fireball into a group of kobolds and regain all your health but you can kill something fairly weak and potentially get back more hit points than it had to start.

Undead Thralls makes your raised zombies and skeletons better at 6th level, and at 10th you become resistant to necrotic damage and your hit point maximum can no longer be reduced. Which is huge for someone with a lot of reasons to go looking for mummies.

The capstone feature grants the ability to steal other people’s undead, even if it’s intelligent like a vampire. Of course a vampire keeps getting to make saving throws to try to break free every hour, which is more than a normal person under a geas spell gets.

As a worldbuilding note if people have problems with necromancy and resurrection is a necromancy spell then perhaps a good reason for limited or no access to resurrection magic in a campaign could be for cultural or societal reasons regardless of the magic level in the setting. Imagine a campaign where it were possible to bring back the dead only the practice is heavily outlawed and considered abhorrent to nature by most people.

It would make character death mean more. Of course since it’s possible most parties will use magic like revivify, raise dead and resurrection on their comrades anyway. But in a setting like this it will be a lot harder to find someone to use this necromancy magic, garner the components and getting caught and landing in hot water for doing so. This are excellent story points to play with in your 5E D&D games.

“Necromancy spells manipulate the energies of life and death. Such spells can grant an extra reserve of life force, drain the life energy from another creature, create the undead, or even bring the dead back to life. Creating the undead through the use of necromancy spells such as animate dead is not a good act, and only evil casters use such spells frequently.” — from the 5E D&D Player’s Handbook

10 notable necromancy spells

Animate Dead. You find a corpse and reanimate it. It’s pretty classic and generally the spell people think of when they think necromancers.
Astral Projection. This spell lets you take the party into the Astral Plane. When you leave your body it doesn’t need food or air and doesn’t age so this is actually not a bad way to get around situations where you would otherwise drown.
Blight. Lots of necrotic damage and deals more damage to plant type creatures than it does to meat ones.
Blindness/Deafness. Cuts a creature off from one of their senses. A lot of spells have the condition of targeting a creature that can see or hear you so while this is meant to be baleful for the most part, it can absolutely be useful in a friendly fire situation against an enemy spellcaster.
Clone. You make a clone of yourself and your soul gets transferred to it if you die. A lot of necromancy magic in 5E D&D involves extending one’s own life it turns out.
False Life. You get temporary hit points. This is a prime example of necromancy magic being used to keep you moving rather than to animate the dead.
Magic Jar. This is my favorite necromancy spell. You put your soul in a container and you can possess other people and put their soul in the container. Back in the 3.5 D&D days my group used this a lot for both death fake outs and twists like, “Surprise, your sword is possessed and it’s a necromancer’s fault.”
Raise Dead. That’s right, the big resurrection spell is necromancy. It’s not without its costs, namely a 500 gp diamond and at least four days of this person being way worse at everything they do. It’s also worth noting this one isn’t on the wizard spell list.
Toll the Dead. A cantrip with the potential to deal more damage if the creature you attack with it has already taken damage.
True Resurrection. This necromancy spell lets you bring back even a headless body as long as it died no more than 200 years ago. This one is super expensive. You don’t even have to habeas the corpus as long as you know the creature’s name.

5 character concepts for necromancy magic

The Mortician. You use your necromancy magic for funeral rites. It’s easy to make the deceased look good for the bereaved when you can instruct them to pose.
The Carrion Conscriptor. In a large scale battle it can be useful to have someone who can raise the fallen to continue to fight. I actually love this concept for a clerical paladin — someone whose convictions are so strong they can just stretch a hand out and say, “No, stand back up, we are not done yet,” and the dead listen.
The Plague Doctor. To fight ailments you have to know how to use them. It’s a solid concept. Maybe save it for when we’re not in the middle of a pandemic but it would still be a fun one to play.
The Seeker of Immortality. You don’t want to die. You’re seeking a way to prolong your life and so you study.
The Fleshbinder. You’re practicing necromancy magic because you’re making friends. You want to create things and you want to make your creations better. You’re basically Dr. Frankenstein.

I was really looking forward to this exploration of 5E D&D necromancy magic. If you’ve been keeping up with Untraditionally Arcane then you know Chess leans toward picking up necromancy and going over all of this just reinforces the decision on my end. Necromancers are fun! They’re thematic, useful and the fact they get such a bad rap gives them an edge. Please tell me all about your 5E D&D necromancy experiences in the comments below, connecting with us on Facebook or tweeting us @Nerdarchy. Feel free to comment or tweet me @Pyrosynthesis too and of course, stay nerdy!

*Featured image — Randomness is the jam! This turtleperson spellcaster goes all in with the trappings of necromancy. The next time you play an necromancy enthusiast in your next 5E D&D game you might consider some of these highest rated necromancy spells for your spellcaster. Analyze blood and remove hand are terrific and with a bit of revision animate shadow could be too. This image was created in just a few minutes with full color thanks to the amazing resources at Hero Forge. There’s so much you can do with Hero Forge! Check it out for yourself here.