Comments from the Designer: The word “cyber lich” has been kicking around in our Dark Matter notes for as long as the setting has existed, but we haven’t had a cool way to implement it until now! Hack responsibly (both bodies and systems).
Cyberghoul
There’s more than one way to imbue a corpse with the semblance of life: while other necromancers leverage their magic for animation, you weave humming, electric wires in the dead flesh until it stirs once more. A corpse is no more than spare parts, after all.
Cyberghouls eschew the traditional foundations of necromancy in favor of high technology and digital ghosts. They are hackers in every sense of the word, leveraging the bleeding edge of cybernetics to construct undead machines and dominate the technological landscape. With enough resources, such a necromancer might be able to download their brain from their body and achieve the cold, immortal life of a cyber lich.
Cyber Spells
When you choose this ambition at 3rd level, you learn additional spells as noted in the table below. Each of these spells counts as a necromancer spell for you, but doesn’t count against the number of necromancer spells you know.
Additionally, you learn the technomancy cantrip, which is a necromancer spell for you and doesn’t count against your number of cantrips known.
| Spell Level | Spells |
| 1st | flawed reconstruction, technical difficulties |
| 2nd | circuit breaker, perception hack |
| 3rd | greater mending, lightning bolt* |
| 4th | intensify gravity, logic bomb |
| 5th | simulation, wall of force* |
Construct Corpses
Also at 3rd level, you learn to raise the dead through blasphemous technology. When you perform your Animate Thralls ritual following a long rest, you can choose to animate any of your thralls as Constructs, causing each such thrall to have the following changes:
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- The thrall is a Construct instead of an Undead, but counts as an Undead for the purpose of your necromancer class features.
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- Any critical hit against the thrall becomes a normal hit.
- The thrall gains thermalsight** out to a range of 60 feet.
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Charnel Blaster
At 3rd level, your Charnel Touch deals damage to Constructs. Additionally, when you use your Charnel Touch and expend 5 or more points, you can coalesce your necromantic energy into an antimatter beam. Make a ranged spell attack against a target you can see within 30 feet of you instead of making a melee spell attack, dealing necrotic damage as normal on a hit.
Ghost in the Machine
Beginning at 6th level, you can use your bonus action to infect a piece of magical technology you can see within 120 feet with a digital spirit known as a daemon process. The daemon remains within the technology until it is removed by an antivirus or remove curse spell, or you use this ability to infect a different piece of technology. While a piece of technology is infected, you can perform any of the following operations as a bonus action while you and the target technology are on the same plane of existence:
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- You can cause the device to malfunction and become unusable until you use this ability to restore functionality to it.
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- You can attempt to hack the device. You have advantage on Intelligence (Data) checks you make to hack technology infected with your daemon process and you don’t require an interface rig to do so.
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- You can remotely operate the device within its normal parameters. You can only perform unauthorized operations, such as opening a locked door or disabling an alarm, if you have already hacked the device.
- You can instruct your daemon to act autonomously. You describe a circumstance, such as a character entering a few keystrokes of data or a certain amount of time passing, and one of the other operations detailed in this list to be performed in response. Your daemon can remember up to eight such circumstances and reactions.
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Digital Death
By 10th level, you can download the necromantic spirit of your thralls into waiting corpses at the moment of death. When one of your thralls dies, you can cast the spell animate dead* as a reaction. As always, you can’t reanimate Undead that have been reduced to 0 hit points.
Cyber Lich
At 20th level, you have reached the pinnacle of necromancy and transformed yourself into a lich. You have forsaken your body, digitized your soul, and transferred it into an arcane terminal, which acts as your phylactery. From this digital vantage, you stand at the forefront of technology, far beyond the frontiers of ethics that constrain your peers.
Phylactery Device. A computing device, such as an arcane terminal, houses your soul and acts as your phylactery. You can upload your soul to a connected arcane terminal, ship computer, or datapad in an upload that you perform over the course of 10 minutes. Once your soul has left a device, it no longer bears the invulnerability typical of a phylactery. When you drop to 0 hit points, you regenerate in hardlight form within 5 feet of your phylactery device.
Hardlight Form. You interact through the world with a hardlight avatar, a physical representation of the ones and zeros of your soul that shifts and moves as you think. You are immune to radiant damage.
Infect Construct. As an action, your body becomes immaterial, and you attempt to infect a Large or smaller Construct you can see within 10 feet of you. This target must make a Charisma saving throw against your spell save DC. A Construct with a challenge rating greater than 10 automatically succeeds on this save.
If it fails its saving throw, you disappear and infect the Construct. While infecting the Construct, you control it. You maintain your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores and your alignment, but otherwise use the creature’s statistics. You don’t gain access to the target’s class features or proficiencies.
The infection lasts until the Construct drops to 0 hit points, you end the infection on your turn as a bonus action, or you are forced out by an effect like the antivirus spell. When the infection ends, your body reappears in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the Construct.
Once you use this feature, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.
Inhabit Technology. You can use your action to inhabit a piece of magical technology such as an arcane terminal or datapad that you can see within 5 feet of you. You disappear and gain control over the device. While inhabiting the device, you can’t be targeted by any attack, spell or other effect, and you can perform any function the device is capable of, without first hacking into it. As a bonus action, you can transfer yourself to any other piece of magical technology that is connected to the current device, or end the inhabitation. The inhabitation ends early if the device is destroyed or if you are forced out by an effect like the antivirus spell. When the inhabitation ends, you reappear within 5 feet of the inhabited device.
* Spells with an asterisk are available in the SRD; all other spells are available in Dark Matter, the sci-fi 5e sourcebook to match this sci-fi lich.
** Thermalsight is a new sense added in Dark Matter, allowing certain creatures to detect the body heat of other creatures.
The blog RISES AGAIN, LIKE A CYBORG ZOMBIE!
Oh my vecna! I just became a level 3 necromancies in a sci fi campain and this is perfect for her!