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.
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Pretty cool list, All of these feats are quite nice, but I might as well throw my own hat into the ring and provide some of my own suggestions as well. I’ve been playing a necromancer for a year and a half about now and I’m planning on doing another soon that will try their luck on taking down Vecna, so I may as well throw in my own recommendations
Origin:
– Skilled: May be a bit of a universal one, but the Necromancer compared to most other classes are lacking in the versatility and skills, so getting the skilled origin feat can give them that extra knowledge boost in skills or tools that can help them contribute more information and formulate better and more informed strategies that match their ambitious plans.
General:
– Mage Slayer: As a class that is prone to critting with spells, it may be a great suprise to suddenly deal a bunch of damage from a botched save attempt against one of your harder hitting spells, allowing that damage to pile up and make the enemy spellcaster roll a concentration save for their spell at disadvantage against a suddenly potent blast of spell energy. Plus a free success against a mental save can always come in cluth to keep you in control. Use this feat if you want to showcase your spellcasting superiority against your rivals.
Inspiring Leader: While you’ll need to expend some points into charisma or wisdom for this, having the ability to recharge your thralls with a big burst of temporary hit points before the advanturing day can really make them bulky enough to survive initial hits. You’ll always have enough to get all your thralls involved in your arousing speech and if you don’t, you can just give the rest to your party. They’re like thralls anyways, just annoying more independent.
Fey Touched or Shadow Touched: Sometimes you need a contingency for when things get rough and your enemies suddenly get the leg up. These two feats give you the opportunity to give you a way to escape the fight or keep yourself hidden, whether that be fey-touched’s misty step for a free teleport out of there, or shadow touch’s invisibility to get out of sight and to attack when its just right. The additional learned spell is always fantastic as well, with Bless, Dissonant whispers, Hex and Speak of animals for fey touched being some options you can’t normally get that can be surprisingly useful and Colour Spray being an illusion spell that shadow touched can allow you to get thats not normally available for necromancers with false life, disguise self and even exhume or dead mist lash providing some other power or reliability.
Ritual Caster: Necromancers could always use the additional veristility, with some rituals like detect magic, identify and others that can help provide some additional versatility to locate and detect important points of interest. However, the free casting of a ritual spell with their regular casting time can give a free use of a ritual spell that’s not just one from the ritual list. Something like Phantom steed, Silence and MMP’s Protect Threshold can provide a surprisingly amount of flexibility when used with this as you master those dark rituals.
Epic Boon:
Boon of Recovery: This one may be a surprise, but this makes more sense when you consider that at level 20, you become a lich which lacks the ability to make death saving throws when you reach 0 hit points. So the sudden recovery and ability to bolster yourself with more hit points can allow your undying physique to keep going in the fight before you kick the spirir jar.