# Dread Necromancer Spell List



## Darkness1987 (Jul 6, 2010)

Hey guys and gals,
Just signed up to this forum for some advice really and as you guys have 10 years of history figured you lot would be the best to ask. Played D&D since the age of 16, mainly as an evil, i will take over the world, cleric, and a warrior dervish with a serious anger management problem.
I have since decided I like the idea of death magic and hordes of undead at my command.
Saw the class dread necromancer and found there was very little information about the actual spells avalible to one; some forums say that they have access to ALL necromancy spells, others say they only have access to a few specific spells. Which one is it?
My reason for asking is mainly as if the latter is true then I'm gunna buy heroes of horror and comeplete necromancer and live a life of slaughter and fun as a slightly unstable Dread Necromancer with no real plans for the future but to find out more about the facinating transition between life and death.
For those of you who enjoy fantasy novels I basically plan to make a character similar to Sidi/Leso Varen from Raymond E Fiests books, with soul container and all.

Any help on this would also be nice as the ability to store ones soul indefinately and be able to move to it after you die and then on into another body no matter how far you are away from it (limited to world ofc) would be wicked and open up all sorts of interesting play styles as those who have read the books will know he has no choice over the body he first inhabits 
Imagine if you will an eight year old girl with the powers of a level 20, slightly insane, necromancer and you'll understand what I'm talking about xD


Thanks peeps and hope to hear back from you soon


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## Thorindale (Jul 6, 2010)

The spell list for the Dread Necromancer appears on page 87 in Heroes of Horror


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## Darkness1987 (Jul 6, 2010)

Thorindale said:


> The spell list for the Dread Necromancer appears on page 87 in Heroes of Horror





Yep but I don't HAVE Heroes of Horror as I'm not about to go and buy it if the one reason I would consider paying out for it isn't what I want. Thus the post asking whether they have access to specific spells or if they can have ALL necromancy spells.


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## jefgorbach (Jul 6, 2010)

Spell lists are thematic suggestions based upon a presumption of which books you might have access to so your necromantic caster would prefer spells with Evil, Necromantic, and Universal descriptors from whatever sources your GM allows other casters in the game use.

"The dread necromancer’s spell list appears below.
 1st Level: Bane, bestow wound*, cause fear, chill touch, detect magic, detect undead, doom, hide from undead, infl ict light wounds, ray of enfeeblement, summon undead I*, undetectable alignment 
 2nd Level: Blindness/deafness, command undead, darkness, death knell, false life, gentle repose, ghoul touch, inflict  moderate wounds, scare, spectral hand, summon swarm, summon undead II*
 3rd Level: Crushing despair, death ward, halt undead, inflict serious wounds, ray of exhaustion, speak with dead, summon undead III*, vampiric touch
 4th Level: Animate dead, bestow curse, contagion, death 
ward, dispel magic, enervation, Evard’s black tentacles, fear, giant 
vermin, infl ict critical wounds, phantasmal killer, poison, summon 
undead IV*
 5th Level: Blight, cloudkill, fi re in the blood*, greater dispel magic, insect plague, lesser planar binding, magic jar, mass inflict light wounds, nightmare, oath of blood*, slay living, summon undead 
V*, undeath to death, unhallow, waves of fatigue
 6th Level: Acid fog, circle of death, create undead, eyebite, geas/quest, harm, mass infl ict moderate wounds, planar binding, waves of exhaustion
 7th Level: Control undead, destruction, finger of death, greater harm*, mass inflict serious wounds, song of discord, vile death*
 8th Level: Create greater undead, horrid wilting, mass inflict critical wounds, symbol of death
 9th Level: Energy drain, imprison soul*, mass harm*, plague of undead*, wail of the banshee
  *New spell (see Dread Magic, starting page 125)." - source: Heros of Horror, WOTC.


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## Darkness1987 (Jul 6, 2010)

Thank you jef, so theoretically if I have a book that contains spells from outside the heroes of horror book i could, at my GM's descretion of course, have access to a wider range of spells even though they are not actually on that list?


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## jefgorbach (Jul 9, 2010)

Darkness1987 said:


> Thank you jef, so theoretically if I have a book that contains spells from outside the heroes of horror book i could, at my GM's descretion of course, have access to a wider range of spells even though they are not actually on that list?




Exactly. 

WOTC seems to follow an unwritten(?) policy to ignore ALL third-party/OGL material as a matter of course to avoid providing the competition free advertising and/or the appearance of showing favoritism, a limitation you and your GM need not adhere to.


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## Darkness1987 (Jul 11, 2010)

Yeah that I can understand, however as all the best thoughtout/balanced books are from WOTC and the fact a Dread Necromancer can't use any other schools I would think it would be unbalanced to give him access to all the WOTC necromancer content.


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## jefgorbach (Jul 11, 2010)

Darkness1987 said:


> Yeah that I can understand, however as all the best thoughtout/balanced books are from WOTC and the fact a Dread Necromancer can't use any other schools I would think it would be unbalanced to give him access to all the WOTC necromancer content.




I'll concede your preference and leave it to the numerous Min-Maxers to point out just how unbalanced WOTC's own writings can be. 

Being solely focused on a particular school implies he'd be far more familiar with all of the available spells/etc for that subset and thus justified in selecting from ALL of WOTC's necromantic content; esp since the GM is final authority regarding any particular spell should he deem it broken/overpowered and needing swapped for another. 

Besides, why purchase the books if you dont intend on using them when applicable?


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## rgard (Jul 15, 2010)

Here is the best resource for Necromancers I know of:

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872726/Revised_Necromancer_Handbook

Another thread of interest:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-le...ncer-tomb-tainted-soul-feat-what-do-i-do.html

If you take the tomb tainted soul feat, you may also want to take the Slow Healing flaw from Dragon 328.

Thanks,
Rich


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## Darkness1987 (Sep 10, 2010)

Thanks Rgard, Those links were exactly what I was after.


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## Takhisis (Sep 11, 2010)

Luckily, I have significant experience with necromancers, so I have a few pointers that I feel I can offer. One is that clerics and dread necromancers make the best necromancers, bar none. Wizards can be ok at necromancy, but will never be at the same level as the other necromancer classes as far as animating undead goes.  They lack many of the key necromantic spells like the inflict line(which heals your minions) and the ever important desecrate. Wizards however, can make great debuff necromancers who focus more on throwing around enervations and metamagiced rays of enfeeblement and less on actually animating undead.

However, if you want to run around with a horde of minions, the best non-3rd party or homebrew way to do it is via the cleric or dread necromancer. However, if your DM is open to homebrew and 3rd party content you have a lot more options. Frank and K made a great thread called the "Tome of Necromancy" which had many nice feats and necromantic prestige classes that are actually playable and a few actually make a necro themed wizard into a real necromancer rather then a conjurer who memorizes a few more necromancy spells then usual.(The current necromancy themed PrCs while cool in concept are hardly optimal and sometimes even traps(True Necromancer I'm looking at you.))

Also, Pazio publishing, the masterminds behind the great Pathfinder RPG produced a book called "The Dragon compendium" which updated much of dragon magazine's old 1e content to 3.5e. This book contains the death master, who is most likely the best arcane necromancer there is if your DM dose not allow you to alter/fix the Dread Necromancer's spell list. Speaking of which, a if you plan on playing a Dread Necromancer, you should really ask your DM if you can fix it's horribly handled spell list. For a good fix, check out this thread from GITP forums..

"Fixed" Dread Necromancer Spell List. - Giant in the Playground Forums

Even if your DM wants to stick to the books, he/she should let you at least make a logical fix like the one above. Especially since that fix uses all core spells and dose not give the class anything other then what it needs to function at it's full potential.

As for frank and K material, PM me if your interested in it, I can send you a well-crafted pdf that is a collection of all of frank and K's homebrew which I had downloaded a while back. They, after all, did cool things other then make necromancy more viable, like creating a version of the fighter class who's on par with fullcasters, improving/fixing the monk class, making a new feat system and making lots of options for monsters.(Which is nice if you happen to be a DM as well.)

Oh, and one other fun thing you could try is an "uttercold assult necromancer." That's basically a wizard who uses energy substitution(Cold) and the lord of the uttercold feat to turn all your blasty evocation spells into free heals for your undead minions. It's actually one of the few ways in the game to actually make evocation useful, and the only thing the wizard is better at then the cleric as far as necromancy goses.


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