Grave Ambitions
Death Knight
Some necromancers are content to sit in dusty tombs with moldering tomes, occasionally picking apart a battlefield for fresh ingredients and new company. By contrast, death knights are a predators among scavengers, seizing their goals through a melding of magic and traditional combat. Bolstered with dark energies and sturdy armor, the death knight wields a weapons edged with death itself. They are simultaneously the vanguard and general of their undead forces, unafraid of getting their hands dirty when necessary.
Intensive Combat Research
Starting when you choose this ambition at 3rd level, you’ve honed your body and mind to the various tools of war. You gain proficiency with light armor, medium armor, shields, and martial weapons. Additionally, you can perform the somatic components of spells while wielding weapons or shields you are proficient with, as long as you have your arcane focus on your person.
Charnel Strike
Also at 3rd level, whenever you make a melee weapon attack as part of the Attack action, you can channel your Charnel Touch through the weapon. When you do so, make an attack with a melee weapon instead of a spell attack. On a hit, the target suffers the weapon attack’s normal effects, and it takes the necrotic damage of your Charnel Touch. You can only deal necrotic damage using this ability once per turn.
Additionally, whenever you deal damage using this ability or a Charnel Touch attack, you gain temporary hit points equal to the necrotic damage dealt, up to a maximum of half your total hit points.
Extra Attack
Beginning at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.
Additionally, your melee weapon attacks score a critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20.
Overcharged Thralls
At 10th level, your inner nexus of energy has spread to your thralls, turning them into your own personal pools of spare energy when the need arises. When one of your thralls dies or you release it, your Charnel Touch pool regains a number of expended points equal to your necromancer level.
Lichdom: Imperator
At 20th level, you have reached the pinnacle of necromancy and transformed yourself into a lich. Due to your martial capabilities and incredibly potent inner nexus of necromantic power, you have transformed into an imperator lich—an Undead creature unmatched in both arcane and combat prowess. You gain the following features in addition to the Lichdom feature:
Completed Combat Research. You gain proficiency with heavy armor if you didn’t have it already, and you gain resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.
Peerless Charnel Strike. The necrotic damage caused by Charnel Touch ignores resistance and immunity to necrotic damage.
Additionally, you can gain any number of temporary hit points from your Charnel Strike, instead of a maximum of half your total hit points.
