The Order of High Necromancy Arcane Tradition

Arterion, Undead Elven Wizard, by AlexSturdee

For my "Requiem of Heroes" Dragonlance campaign, I needed evil necromancers.

But necromancers have been greatly weakened in D&D5, and frankly, neither cleric nor wizard necromancers are very impressive.

Also, I needed a group of renegades to oppose one of my players, whose character was a wizard of High Sorcery.

This is the result...

 

Arcane Tradition: The Order of High Necromancy

Necromancy energy, when affecting both spiritual necromantic (cyan) and physical necromantic (red) energies, has a very specific purplish color.

This is the color chosen by the renegades of the Order of High Necromancy to represent their order, which explains why they usually wear purple robes, and will be nicknamed "Purple Robes" in contrast to their Orders of High Sorcery colleagues.

Abandoning the magic of the moons, they instead receive the favor of Chemosh, god of Undeath. And indeed, each "Purple Robe" wears a Medaillon of Faith of Chemosh.

This translates into the following Arcane Tradition powers:

Level 2

The Purple Robe gains access, in addition to all the spells from wizard spells list, to all the spells that are categorized as "necromancy" in their description (some spells will need adjustment, though).

These spells are, from the viewpoint of a Purple Robe, regular wizard spells, that are written down in their spellbook, etc.. Other wizard reading such spellbook would be able to read and understand the non-wizard spell if it was written down, but trying to cast it would always fail (as if something was missing...)

Level 6

The Purple Robe can now use Channel Divinity as a cleric of the same level (the DC equals the Purple Robe's spell save DC), but limited to:

• Turn Undead (as per the Cleric's)
• Destroy Undead (or Control Undead, if using the feat described above)

Level 14

The Purple Robe now knows the ritual to lichdom, or vampirism, or leading to the transformation of a living being or a recent corpse into any kind of undead, enabling them to create one such undead individual.

The details of this ritual are specific to each desired undead type.

 

Feats

Please see the following blog post for the Control Undead and Undead Master feats: https://paercebal.blogspot.com/2021/06/custom-spheres-for-priest-archetype.html

Spells

Undead Sovereignty

• Level 1 Necromancy
• Casting time: 1 minute
• Range: self
• Components: V, S, M (one onyx of 50 gp per level)
  
• Duration: instant
• Class: Cleric, Wizard
  

Casting this spell will convert its slot into a permanent "undead control slot" of the same level, until this "undead control slot" is converted back into a spent spell slot (thus needing a rest to be reused).

While active, such "undead control slot" can take over the control of one of more undead already controlled by the caster (for example, through a Channel Divinity control, the casting of an Animate Dead spell, etc.), thus freeing the total of undead controlled by these powers. 

While uintelligent undead controlled by such "undead control slot" will remain under control indefinitely, or until released, intelligent undead might try to free themselves by succeeding a Wisdom saving throw with a DC equal to the caster's spell save DC, once per 24 hours. Undead freeing themselves (or being released) will not affect the "undead control slot", which will then remain available to take over the control of another undead.

Each "undead control slot" can be used to lock the control of one, and only one (for this slot), type of undead (e.g. skeleton, zombie, etc.), and as long as the total sum of each controlled individual's CR is less or equal to the slot's level.

Table: Undead Control Slots

Undead Control Slot Level	Total of CR controlled by the slot
1st	1/8
2nd	1/4
3rd	1/2
4th	1
5th	2
6th	3
7th	4
8th	5
9th	6

This "undead control slot" can be converted back into a spent spell slot by freeing it, which also frees any undead under its control. The spent spell slot must be regained back as usual (usually through rest).

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 2nd level or higher, the resulting "undead control slot" is of the same level, enabling the cast to control more, and/or more powerful undead, as per the table above.

For example, a caster might:

• use one level-2 slot to control one skeleton (one skeleton is CR 1/4), or
  
• use one level-4 slot to control one ghoul (one ghoul is CR 1), or
• use one level-4 slot to control four skeletons (one skeleton is CR 1/4), or
• use one level-6 slot to control one wight (one wight is CR 3), or
  
• use one level-6 slot to control three ghouls (one ghoul is CR 1), or
• etc.
  

It is not possible group slots together to control higher-CR undead (e.g. combining two level-3 slots to control a ghoul).

Conclusion

This is an NPC-only arcane tradition, so I didn't focus on balancing this for players.

If you have suggestions to make arcane tradition better, please do not hesitate to share.