Necromancer Feats Guide

Intense blue-green magic pours from a female-presenting wizard in the background, lifting her from the ground and flaring her waist-length white hair behind her. She is surrounded by skeletal minions brandishing rusty weapons.

Build your preferred master of undeath with the Complete Necromancer!

Unlike the wizard school of necromancy, the Necromancer base class commands a host of undead thralls that scale through class features. Your level 20 capstone feature is lichdom, and your subclass determines what type of lich you will become.

I’ve picked feats from the 2024 Player’s Handbook that work well with the Necromancer’s class features and narrative hooks. Here’s how to get the most out of your Necromancer build!

Origin Feats

Necromancers begin their adventures with an ambition that some might call unholy, something you could represent with Origin feats gained from your background. While it’s hard to beat the Lucky feat for sheer numerical advantage, these options interact directly with Necromancer class features or add new storytelling potential to your class.

Alert

Pulling your thralls from their extradimensional Dead Space just might stop a fight before it begins. This feat adds your Proficiency Bonus to your Initiative rolls and lets you swap with a willing ally—and since all your thralls share your Initiative, you can get more out of this feat than most other characters. This feat comes with the Criminal background and a bonus to Intelligence, the spellcasting ability score for Necromancers. I’m thinking of a jumpy grave robber, how about you?

Magic Initiate, Cleric

Excommunication is the likely fate of those who play with the line between life and death. But take the Acolyte background and your time in the church could get you two cantrips from the Cleric spell list as well as the one of the best level one spells in the holy book: Guiding Bolt, which sets up your thralls to wreck shop.

Tough

You may have a wall of hit points in front of you, but you’re still effectively a Wizard in spooky robes. Pick up Tough to buff out that d6 Hit Die, especially if you plan to become a Death Knight.

General Feats

Here’s what to choose as your Necromancer reaches levels 4, 8, 12, and 16.

Chef

What’s that you’re cooking? Delicious meat pies? Don’t mind if I do! (Cue Sweeny Todd music.)

The Chef feat is surprisingly great for a Necromancer build, since you can heal and buff your Undead minions with a Replenishing Meal or Bolstering Treats, making them even tankier than before. Just don’t ask what the treats are made of.

Defensive Duelist

If you’re building your Necromancer around Dexterity, this is the feat to take. A Reaction to parry with a Finesse weapon can keep you in the fight long enough for your army of unholy minions to take your enemies out.

Spell Sniper

If you want to stay in the backline alongside a firing line of Skeleton archers, with an army of beefcake Zombies slowing down enemies and absorbing hits, take this feat and sling cantrips from the other side town.

Telekinetic

As fun as it is to cause shenanigans with an invisible Mage Hand, the Telekinetic feat is mostly here to let you Telekinetic Shove enemies into your various AoE spells, like Grasp of the Grave. If the enemy escapes your nasty spell, position a Zombie linebacker to keep them from making it too far, and push them back in with another shove. Rinse and repeat.

War Caster

Where Spell Sniper lets you lead from the backline, War Caster gives you the defensive and offensive abilities to lead from the front line. You’re going to cast a lot of spells requiring Concentration, and advantage on those saves is a big advantage. What’s more, every Opportunity Attack becomes a chance to sling an Eldritch Orb at an unsuspecting foe.

Epic Boons

Every class can take an Epic Boon feat at 19th level, each of which has a prerequisite of level 19+ to augment the capstone abilities of your class. For a Necromancer, I’d recommend one of these two:

Boon of Fate

You’ll have plenty of allied creatures around making attack rolls, so you can pick the perfect moment for that extra 2d4 to a D20 test per rest. And if you’re playing the Overlord subclass, that perfect moment could be the moment you need to possess another humanoid instead of being banished back to your spirit jar. The greatest Uno Reverse card in D&D is yours to play!

Boon of Dimensional Travel

A Necromancer’s worst nightmare, if you still have nightmares at all, is being caught out in the open without your Zombie linebacker. With every spell or weapon attack, however, now you can just be somewhere else for free. Become as impossible to pin down as your own moral compass!

Do you agree with our picks? How do you build your Necromancer in 2024? Let us know in the comments below or in our Discord! There’s a Necromancer-specific channel for all your theory-crafting and gravedigging needs.