Necromancer subclass for Dark Matter
Raise the Dead with Foul Technology
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.
Level 3: Cyber Spells
Your necromantic ambitions ensure you always have certain spells ready. When you reach a Necromancer level specified in the Cyber Spells table, you thereafter always have the listed spells prepared. New spells are marked with an asterisk (*) and found in Dark Matter.
Cyber Spells
| Necromancer Level | Spells |
| 3 | Circuit Breaker,* Flawed Reconstruction,* Geodesic Shield,* Technical Difficulties* |
| 5 | Greater Mending,* Lightning Bolt |
| 7 | Electromagical Pulse,* Intensify Gravity* |
| 9 | Simulation,* Wall of Force |
Level 3: Construct Corpses
When you perform your Animate Thralls ritual, you can choose to animate any of your thralls as Constructs, causing each such thrall to have the following benefits.
Adamantine Flesh. Any Critical Hit against the thrall becomes a normal hit.
Construct. The thrall is a Construct instead of an Undead, but counts as Undead for the purpose of your Necromancer features.
Thermalsight. The thrall has Thermalsight with a range of 60 feet. (See the Dark Matter Glossary.)
Level 3: Charnel Blaster
You can make your Charnel Touch as a ranged spell attack with a range of 30 feet, instead of as a melee spell attack. This attack ignores Half Cover and Three-Quarters Cover.
Level 6: Ghost in the Machine
You can take a Bonus Action to infect a piece of Magical Technology you can see within 120 feet of you 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.
Shutdown. You can cause the device to malfunction and become disabled until you use this ability to restore functionality to it.
Hack. 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.
Remote Operation. 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 hacked the device.
Autonomous Operation. 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 responses.
Level 10: Digital Death
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 Animate Dead as a Reaction. As always, you can’t reanimate Undead that have been reduced to 0 Hit Points.
Level 20: Cyber Lich [Lichdom]
You have reached the pinnacle of Necromancy and transformed yourself into a lich. You have augmented your body with machinery, digitized your soul, and transferred it into an Arcane Terminal, which acts as your spirit jar. From this digital vantage, you stand at the forefront of technology, far beyond the frontiers of ethics that constrain your peers. You gain the following benefits in addition to those of your Lichdom feature.
Soul Device. A computing device, such as an Arcane Terminal, houses your soul and acts as your spirit jar. You can upload your soul to a connected Arcane Terminal or Datapad in an upload ritual that
you perform over the course of 10 minutes. The device inhabited by your soul bears the invulnerability typical of your spirit jar.
Radiant Immunity. Your body is supported by a hardlight lattice, granting you Immunity to Radiant
damage.
Infect Construct. As a Magic action, your body becomes immaterial and you attempt to infect a Large or smaller Construct you can see within 10 feet of yourself. This target makes a Charisma saving throw against your spell save DC. A Construct with a Challenge Rating of 10+ automatically succeeds on this save.
If the Construct fails its saving throw, you disappear and infect it. Your game statistics are replaced by the statistics of the Construct, though you retain your alignment and your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. You retain your own class features and feats. If the target has any class levels, you can’t use any of its class features.
The infected Construct can repeat its saving throw every 8 hours. On a success, the infarction ends and you are ejected from the body. The infection also ends if the Construct drops to 0 Hit Points, you are forced out by an effect like the Antivirus spell, or you choose to end it as a Magic action. A Construct that succeeds its saving throw against your infection is immune to your Infect Construct for 24 hours.
Inhabit Technology. You can take a Magic 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.
Dark Matter for 5E 2024 launches on Kickstarter in early 2026!
Blend science fiction and fantasy with the definitive science fiction expansion. Follow the Kickstarter now and be among the first to back!
If you’re playing with the original Dark Matter and the 2014 Player’s Handbook, you can add the Cyberghoul to your game with the 2014 version of the subclass here.
