Hey guys,

I am throwing together a caster for a new campaign and I was thinking about something on the dark side.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what skills/spells a "necromancer" might take?
The system doesn't really lend itself to death style magic, but I wanted to see what's possible.

I was leaning toward Shadow/Silence/Poltergeist type spells and stealth-based skills.
Would you have to play a Mage? I don't know if there is any specific reason why a Shaman couldn't lean evil.

Any ideas?

If a body is considered an object, (Mass) Animate would be right up your alley.

possession spirits. voodoo. it works quite well in SR.
if you consider getting shot in the back for doing it working quite well.

That's not exactly what's I'm after. I didn't want to create zombies or anything.
There's never really been rules for that sort of thing.
Plus, I'd rather not make up the 5th ed. possession rules.

Uh... you're going to need to define what necromancer means to you then.

I'm honestly looking for ideas.
If there were an "animate dead" type spell, that would be one thing.
I guess I'm looking for drain-life, cold, shadow-type spells.
It might not be possible in 5th ed. quite yet.

Again, if a body is considered an object (and I would say it is) then you could use the spell Animate on it.

Good options based on your lsit:
Death Touch/Manabolt/Manaball
Poltergeist
Influence/Control Thoughts
Decrease Body/Strength
Silence/Stealth/Shadow

actually, there are rules for creating zombies.
a prepared vessel/corpse. and a watcher?

Drain Life . . no, not for players.
There's the Essence Drain critter power and Blood Magic.

I was just making suggestions from what is currently available without trying to hack 4E rules.

Yup, that's the kind of thing I'm going for.

I think you have to be more specific about what you want to play. If people think of necromancers they have creepy guys summoning demons and using dead bodies in mind. At least me.

Since there are no rules for possession in sr5 you maybe want to play kind of a warlock instead of a necromancer. If you and your gm are not that strict with RAW i would suggest you go with any combatspell + smoke as elemental effect. Worked well in sr4. The following spells are what i probably would pick:

- Smoke(thrower), like flamethrower but with smoke as elemental effect
- Darkness area spell (illusion)
- Some mind-controll spells
- Decrease Attribute (probably one physical and one mental)
- Shapeshift into dog/ wolf (http://s.cghub.com/files/Image/185001-186000/185909/100_max.jpg)

Sadly, Shapeshift doesn't exist in 5th ed.
I did just notice that Agility doesn't factor into Physical Limit, so I'd need to dump a bunch into Strength and Body to pull off any Touch spells.

Depends on how many successes you expect someone to get against you. If you have BOD3/REA3/STR3, you have a Phyiscal limit of 4, one point away fom 5 (Dwarves work well here since they get bonuses to BOD & STR). Touch spells work if you tie, so it really depends on what you expect defenders to roll to avoid your attack. Sadly, there are many more ways to defend against melee attacks than ranged ones.

That's still a max of 4 dice vs. Intuition + Reaction pool. Yikes.

Based on an average of 1 hit per 3 dice, they would (on average) need a dicepool of 15 to get more hits than your limit (You would need a dice pool of 12 to hit your limit, which would require a combination of 10 dice between skill and attribute with the +2 bonus for touch spells in play). Granted, they can introduce more dice through interrupt actions like Dodge, Block, Parry, & Full Defense.

So yeah, it depends on what you're expecting to face.

It's a max of 4 hits, not 4 dice. Big difference.

Fair enough.

Necromancers aren't just the undead-summoning, life-draining evil monsters mainstream RPGs made them. Originally they were those who consulted with and studied the dead. You could have any number of detection spells or health spells and fulfill the concept of a necromancer, and summoning Spirits of Man as the spirits of people who have died that you are trying to get information from. Necromancers were those who understood death, not those who bent death to their will.

This... The research I performed prior to making my SR4A Necromancer was enlightening, to say the least.

Spirits of Man, Guidance, Task or Fire (Cannot remember), Earth, and Water were the spirits I chose, for the Tradition, I think. Been a long while since I played him.

Considering OP clarified a few posts in that he was, indeed, looking for the "fantasy" necromancer template, I'm not sure if historical accuracy is relevant. With that said, it is very interesting information. Thanks!

I actually really like Neraph's take on it.
The rules don't really lend themselves to traditional RPG necro types.
A death-focused investigator might work better.

I added some discussion about Mage vs. Shaman traditions.
I'm still not sure which one makes better sense.
I might be hard pressed to find use for a logic-based necro-caster.
Alternatively, is there such a thing as a death-centric shaman?

Uncle Ancient called that concept a Necronaut i think . .
And there's precedence in shadowrun that a spirit counts as testimony.
But that's summoning again.

Technically, Native American "shamanism" actually calls their "priesthood" "medicine men," not shaman. They largely are animalistic (worship spirits), so it's not outside the bounds of imagination that you'd have one that got hooked by a spirit of death. It'd be interesting to see a Faustian medicine man...

EDIT: The term shaman comes from Tibetan/central Eastern religions. It's a misnomer.

Also not to be confused with that spiritualist rock and roll group Sha Ma Na Na. (With apologies to Bowzer for the pun)

Though that could make for a good cover, rockers by day- runners by night.

http://azaael.wordpress.com/2013/08/07/arc...cker-sr5-style/