Necromancer Versus Reanimator
This morning I read Arnold K’s “Dungeon Hacker” class on Goblin Punch.
I love it. Let me tell you why.
Necromancers are a weird mixed bag of tricks who are portrayed inconsistently in fiction — well, usually they’re evil, that part tends to be pretty consistent — but their powers veer all over the spectrum.
I read this class, the “Dungeon Hacker,” and a clear image coalesces in my mind: the necromancer as a security specialist. So many of those weird “universal” spells that wind up in the spell section of the book can be reclassified as necromancy.
Like “Knock.”
Because the simple explanation is that a ghost did it. For a wizard.
It gives you the opportunity to connect all of a dungeon’s security measures, from scrying sensors to locked doors to lethal traps, into a really weird (and linked) high-security system. In some ways, it makes a necromancer a “magic-using thief.”
And this is actually pretty close to the “conjures the dead” idea of a necro-MANCING necromancer. Summoning ghosts to do little things. Cutesy tricks.
I like it in part because a wizard doing tricksy things with ghosts to bypass security overlaps with, but doesn’t eliminate the need for, thieves. It just puts the safe-cracking skills in the hands of a squishy nerd.
There’s still plenty of conceptual room for a ruthless, backstabbing rogue.
Speak With Dead turns every corpse you discover into a computer terminal. It has limited information based on who the corpse was, and where it’s found.
Reminiscent of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.
Now compare all of this to the reanimator, which is another, wholly distinct, expression of necromancy. Reanimators instill motion in things using a variety of methods, whether it’s spirits of the dead, or bound elemental spirits.
This makes me want to go back and try a necromancer again… If only the AD&D game I was in didn’t suffer the dreaded post-holidays game death.
One of my hopes for the future is to provide a full rewrite of the Necromancy school of magic. FTW
I almost imagine that Necromancer could be shaped along the lines of the old Illusionist class. Spells that would be available only to the Necro at lower levels would be able to recreate effects of other spells.
While illusionists had several of their own spells, a lot of higher level spells were available to them at lower levels, the implication being that they were more in tune with the quasi-elemental plane of Shadows (re: Nine Princes of Amber). Something like that but with ghosts sounds totes legit (pun intended) for a Necro.
By some coincidence, I was looking at 1e spell lists the other day. I was comparing transmutation 1e spells to their 3e and 5e counterparts, like heat/chill metal, rusting grasp, and warp wood (where they apply to each edition, that is).