Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Necromancy Spells by a Factor of Three

The weekly look at homebrew spells for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons takes a dark turn into spells to manipulate the energies of life and death. There’s currently over 10,650 homebrew necromancy spells at D&D Beyond so while Nerdarchists Dave and Ted tracked the homebrew Ranger Archetypes for 5E D&D at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel I’m dabbling in dark magic in this post. We get a kick out of checking out the 5E D&D content folks come up with and sharing their homebrew creations. (There’s lots of these posts whether for homebrew subclasses, magic items, spells, feats and more floating around for the curious.) Let’s get into it.

Necromancy spells at D&D Beyond

Before getting started it’s important to note you can create homebrew content for private use and share your homebrew content publicly at DDB at no cost — there’s no subscription required to access these services. However if you want to add any of the homebrew necromancy spells mentioned below or any other homebrew content you come across to your 5E D&D collection you must subscribe at the Hero Tier or above. There’s a lot you can do at DDB for free. Check out what you can do here.

The DDB homebrew collection uses several statistics to track entries. Views shows how many eyeballs any particular homebrew creation received, Adds shows the number of times a creation was added to someone’s collection and Rating is an upvote/downvote system. Since there are over 10,650 necromancy spells in the collection I’m going to share the top 10 highest rated, most viewed and most added selections and to see what’s out there along with any crossover between these three lists.

One last thing to remember:

“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. We like to mention this at every opportunity frankly because it’s amusing at this point. But also creating undead creatures in the world ain’t cool. (Except when it is.)

Top 10 highest rating necromancy spells

1. Achroma (9th level). Starting with a spell at the highest order of magnitude felt very auspicious. While this nasty spell infuses powerful necromantic energy into a victim and any who attempt to help them it’s far less repulsive than I expected from the highest rated homebrew necromancy spell. (This is encouraging because I’m rather squeamish and not really into dark and grisly stuff.)
2. Analyze Blood (1st level). This is a really terrific spell! Great scaling with higher level spell slots, awesome utility and generic enough in the sense it’s not festooned with blood, skulls and undeath but still very much in the necromancy brand.
3. Corpse Bomb (1st level). Nothing extraordinary or innovative here but certainly a great offensive spell with necromantic flair.
4. Animate Shadow (1st level). This is too powerful due to the duration coupled with a massive debuff and persistent damage. Plus it’s not really necromancy so much as enchantment or even illusion. I like the concept but the execution is poorly handled.
5. Decompose (cantrip). I believe this is meant to represent the homebrew cantrip on Caduceus’ spell list from Critical Role’s campaign 2. The language is a bit clunky and perhaps missing something. I was under the impression the spell explicitly prevents the corpse from being animated or returned to life. At any rate for a thematically appropriate character with a cantrip slot to spare this would be great.
6. Soul Assimilation (8th level). It’s challenging to contextualize the scope of high level spells to determine how balanced they might be and I was skeptical when I saw the first option for what this spell steals from the victim (one of their abilities for every 4 levels they had achieved). Then I saw the final option and noped out completely. This looks like a spell designed by a Dungeon Master to stick it to the characters. Whether it’s cast by a campaign villain or a player character it’s way too powerful.
7. Diabolism (cantrip). Basically a dark version of prestidigitation, thaumaturgy or druidcraft. I’m not keen on the name since diabolism refers to devil worship, which in 5E D&D equates to fiends. There’s nothing inherently necromantic about either those creatures or the ability to make lights grow dim with this spell. Causing decay fits though as well as the third option to reanimate a dead creature for a day. The parameters for doing so ought to be a bit more refined. Other than these nitpicks I dig this spell.
8. Accelerated Aging (6th level). Not bad despite some kludgy wording. In practice this would cause a lot of bookkeeping though because it mucks with ability scores. Not for nothing it never mentions how much a target ages beyond being proportional to their race.
9. Bone Shard (1st level). Protip: catapult achieves the same effect but with better results. If you wanna limit casting catapult only on skeletal remains you’ll get a lot more mileage.
10. Curse Of Nasty Diarrhea (6th level). A silly homebrew spell likely rated high only because of the name.

Top 10 most viewed necromancy spells

1. Decompose (cantrip).
2. Accelerated Aging (6th level).
3. Soul Assimilation (8th level).
4. Achroma (9th level).
5. Analyze Blood (1st level).
6. Necrotic Siphon (cantrip). Any time there’s hit points involved with a cantrip is a time to be extra careful of design. This is a bit wonky and the wording could be cleaned up a bit but overall it works okay. It was 100% designed for a specific kind of character, which means it’s got niche appeal.
7. Animate Shadow (1st level).
8. Animate Dead Variant (3rd level). Any time I come across a variant it’s just a jacked up version of whatever its a variant of so let’s see. Ah yes, the caster can animate up to gargantuan sized creatures. If this sounds like a fun addition to your game then go for it!
9. Corpse Bomb (1st level).
10. Withering Touch (cantrip). Meh. This would work better as a trait on a monster than a spell, which is the intended purpose I imagine.

Top 10 most added necromancy spells

1. Animate Shadow (1st level).
2. Corpse Bomb (1st level).
3. Analyze Blood (1st level).
4. Decompose (cantrip).
5. Achroma (9th level).
6. Soul Assimilation (8th level).
7. Remove Hand (cantrip). I love this if for no other reason it reminds me of Mystic Hand from 1993’s Flaming Carrot/TMNT crossover.
8. Bone Shard (1st level).
9. Black Flame Armor (1st level). Yawn.
10. Decompose (cantrip).

Necromancy spells rising to the top

I’m greatly surprised by these 15 spells since fully expecting one after another of grisly, bloody and gross necromancy spells. Kudos to the DDB community for more refined tastes. Something I noticed quite a few of these spells share is higher level scaling, which I haven’t noted before in previous Top 10 Homebrew Spells posts like this. I wonder if there’s a commonality among official 5E D&D spells with this quality and if so what it might be. Since we design a tremendous amount of content ourselves I’m curious to research further. At any rate spells with scaling really increases their value and from a design perspective provides some space to expand what a spell can do without increasing the base level.

Analyze blood stands out as my favorite of all these homebrew necromancy spells. I like how it’s a ritual but more than anything I appreciate how it’s an aspect of necromancy not dealing with creating undead, causing necromantic damage or crushing souls. The spell speaks to the analytical side of necromancy, which seeks to understand life and the forces both driving and destroying it. I want to love animate shadow and with a bit of revision I certainly would. The final standout for me is remove hand. It’s quirky as heck, which I’m totally here for and the nostalgia it evoked hit me hard too.

5E D&D spell resources

I mention our own forays into homebrew content creation for 5E D&D several times to plant the seed in your mind. Now you’re wondering, “What kind of homebrew content do you create, Nerdarchy? I’m extremely interested!” In addition to the monthly rewards our Patreon supporters receive we’ve presented tons of material in our videos and right here at Nerdarchy the Website ready to drop right into your games too. Another place we frequently create new content for Dungeon Masters and players to drop right into games is Nerdarchy the Newsletter and you’ll also get several gifts including $9.99 in store credit so you can add whatever you like there to your own collection when you sign up. Over the years we’ve scribed over 60 new spells of our own. Here’s some places where you’ll find these spells along with other spell related stuff we’ve shared.

• Make 5E D&D Spells Your Own with Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
• Play Your Next 5E D&D Game with Snakes on the Brain and Cast More Snake Magic Spells
• Play Your Next 5E D&D Game with Snakes on the Brain and Cast Snake Magic Spells
• Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Force Spells by a Factor of Three
• Top 10 5E D&D Summoning Spells by a Factor of Three
• Uphold your Sacred Oath Through Paladin Oath Spells
• Beardomancy (11 new spells)
  • Beard Growth, Beard Servant, Beard Whip, Beardgury, Beardskin, Conjure Hirsute Horror, Feard, Guardian of Face, Power Word Beard, Hairotte, Transport Via Beard
• Friend of Foe Vol. 1 (1 new spell)
  • Withered Thorn Whip
• Lost Lore Vol. 1 (3 new spells)
  • Wood Warp, Swords to Sorrows, Sticks to Snakes
• Lost Lore Vol. 2 (7 new spells)
  • Spider Bite, Pack of Spiders, Nest of Spiders, Rampage of Spiders, Spectral Spider Servant, Spider Plague, Hail of Crystal Spiders
• Gaze of the Void Eye (6 new spells)
  • Darksight, Shadowstep, Darklight, Shadowtrap, Darkling’s Hand, Silhouette
• Winter Court Soiree (7 new spells)
  • Solstice Cheer, Virgin Snow, Icespike, Grasp of Winter, Cloak of Rime, Find Sleigh, Winter’s Nightmare
• Hairable Ideas (12 new spells)
  • Animate Moustache, Blessing of Samson, Cloister of Combs, Enhance Style, Friendship Bracelet, Hairball, Haircut, Hair Whip, Rain of Quills, Rapunzel’s Curse, Shroud of Hair, Sun Wukong’s Magic Hairs
• Bad Hair Day (3 new spells)
  • Godiva’s Ride, Ordo’s Binding Beard, Ordo’s Resilient Beard, Wild Web
• Chained One’s Animus (10 new spells)
  • Venomous Blade, Heart of the Pack, Creeping Fungus, Shroud of Thorns, Cloud of Spores, Root, Thorned Oath, Chained Oath, Warped Oath, Barbed Shield

*Featured image — Is there a better figure in 5E D&D to represent necromancy than Acererak the Archlich? Orcus probably but there’s no official images of the Demon Prince of Undeath with such panache as this image of the archlich as he raises an army of undead and prepares to unleash it on an unsuspecting world. In 5E D&D 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. [Art by Tyler Jacobson]

New videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel here