Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 PhyrexianKitsune Mar 18, 2015 12:41:06	As the title says, I got the idea to convert the infamous "Dread Necromancer" class of 3.5e fame to D&D 5e by turning it into a warlock build, specificily necromantic-themed patron and some assocated invocations. This is my VERY rough first attempt, and if at all possible I'd like all of you here to help me improve this/make it better and hopefully more in line with published 5e options...anyway, here is my stab at the "Dread Necromancer" warlock patron...     The Undead   You have made a pact with a powerful undead creature. This dark patron could perhaps be an ancient lich or dracolich, or maybe the ghost of a powerful necromancer or death cleric you conjured forth to pry fell knowledge from . It could even be a less obvious choice of patron, such as an exceptionally old and powerful Vampire whom you have suplicated yourself to in exchange for a portion of it's power. However, whatever the nature of your dark patron may be, it is a being intimatly linked to the forces of death and undeath, and by making a pact with it you slowly gain mastery over both. The abilites this pact grants are almost entirely evil in nature, making it a poor choice for good-aligned characters. However, some more benevolent individuals may turn to this pact out of desperation, such as to save a loved one from death or undeath, or may be forced into it agaist their will, being made the slave of a foul undead being they now despise. However, such characters usually are at best netural, and even if they start as good the dark powers they wield may inevidbly end up corrupting them, causing their personality, and alignement, to become less then pure as they gain greater mastery over their dark magics.     Expanded Spell List:   The Undead lets you choose from an expanded spell list of spells when you learn a Warlock spell. The following spells are added to the Warlock spell list for you.   1st:  Inflict Wounds, Ray of Sickness 2nd:  Blindness/Deafness, Suggestion 3rd: Feign Death, Spirit Guardians 4th: Death Ward, Greater Invisibility 5th: Contagion, Dominate Person   Channel Negative Energy: Turn Undead   At 1st level you can channel negative energy to influence undead. You gain a number of Channel Negative Energy uses per-day equal to 3+ your charisma modifier. You re-gain all spent uses of Channel Negative Energy uppon compeleting a short rest. At 1st level, you gain your first use for Channel Negative Energy, turn undead.  This ability allows you to expend one Channel Negative Energy use to turn undead as if you had the channel divinity and turn undead class features of the cleric class. Unlike a cleric, you never gain the option to destroy undead with this power and you do not need to present a holy symbol to use it. All facets of this ability that would normally use your wisdom modifier instead use your charisma modifier.   Corpsecrafter   Starting at 6th level your parton imparts to you the dark secrets of undead creation. Once per-day, you may cast the spell Animate Dead at the caster level of your standard warlock spells, consuming a single spell slot in the process. You regain this daily use when you finish a long rest. When you cast the spell Animate Dead through this ability, you may target an additional corpse or pile of bones, making another skeleton or zombie as appropriate. In addition, whenever you create an undead creature with a Necromancy spell, it gains these additional benefits:   The Creature's Hit Point Maximum is increased by an amount equal to your Warlock level The Creature adds your profiency bonus to it's weapon damage rolls.   Lord of the Damned   As your powe grows you learn how to expand your influence over an ever-increasing ammount of undead. Starting at 10th level you may upkeep a number of undead creation spells that would normally require re-casting to maintain(Such as Animate Dead or Create Undead) equal to half your warlock level + your charisma modifier every day by expending one warlock spell slot for each spell upkept by this ability. (So a 14th level Undead Patron Warlock with a charisma of 16 could mantain an Animate Dead spell cast at level 3 and a Create Undead spell cast at level 7 through this ability, for example.)  In addition, when you cast the spells Animate Dead and Create Undead you may cast them at any spell level that is equal to or less than the maximum spell level to which you have acssess, even if that level is below the level your spells are normally cast at or only able to be acssessed through mystic arcanum.(So you cold cast animate dead as a level three spell even if your warlock spells are normally cast at level 5 or cast create undead as a level 7 spell if you have a level 7 mystic arcanum spell.) You can also mantain extra undead creation spells not normally able to be mantained though this ability by expending uses of your Channel Negative Energy patron feature. Each day, you may expend any number of channel negative energy uses to mantain an additional number of undead creation spells equal to the number of use expended. Undead you mantain control of by expending uses of Channel Negative Energy lose the bonuses granted by the Corpsecrafter patron feature if they would normally have them.   Channel Negative Energy: Dominate Undead   At 14th level you gain a new use for your Channel Negative Energy ability, Dominate Undead. When you use this ability you can expend one Channel Negative Energy use to bring undead under your control, even those made by other spellcasters. As an action, you can choose one undead creature that you can see within 60 feet of you. That undead creature must make a charisma saving throw against your warlock spell DC. If it makes it's save, you can't use this Channel Negative Energy option on it again. If it fails, it becomes friendly to you and obeys your commands until you use this feature again. Intelligent Undead are harder to control through this ability. If the target has 8 or more intelligence, it gains advantage on it's saving throw. If it has an intelligence of 12 or higher and fails it's save, it can make another saving throw at the end of each hour until it succeeds and breaks free of your control. In addition, If you expend one additional Channel Negative Energy use when using this ability, you may use it without losing control of an undead creature you used it on previously. However, once you have control of two undead creatures through this ability you cannot use it again unless you voluntarily give up control of one of those undead creatures or one of them is destroyed. _________________________________________________________________________________________________   In addition to their standard class features, Warlocks with the Undead patron have several unique Invocations made with their playstyle in mind. While not -exclusive- to such warlocks, many of these new invocations have prerequisites that are difficult for warlocks of other partons to meet, though they are open to warlocks of all patrons so long as they qualify...   New Invocations   Rebuke Undead Prerequisite: Channel Negative Energy patron feature You gain the ability to rebuke undead instead of turning them when you turn undead.  Rebuked Undead fall to their knees(effectively becoming prone) and cower in fear instead of running away. In addition, any undead that have fewer hit dice than you gain disadvantage on their saves against turn undead attempts made by you.   Destructive Retribution Prerequisite: Ability to cast either Animate Dead or Create Undead Each Undead creature you create with a Necromancy spell releases a burst of negative energy upon it's destruction, dealing 1d6 point of necrotic damage + an additional 1d6 per every 2 levels of the necromancy spell it was created with, to every creaure within a 10-foot spread centered on itself. Creatures caught in this burst are entitled to a constitution save against your warlock spell save DC to halve the damage taken.   Ghostly Puppetmaster Prerequsite: 12th Level You may cast the spell “Magic Jar” once per-day as a 6th level spell, expending a spell slot in the process despite the fact your spell slots normally cannot be used to cast 6th level spells. You regain  your daily use of  this ability after taking a long rest     So any thoughts on this and how to improve any/all of it?
#2 Matau99 Mar 18, 2015 12:58:37	This is incredibly awesome. It looks like you cherrypicked the best of Death Cleric and Necromancer and turned them into one true necromancer Warlock pact. I don't know how powerful it is, but it doesn't look that OP--just really, really good at what it does.   9/10 I want to play one.   Also, for that necromantic self-destruct thing, you might want to change it to a Con save. Just food for thought.
#3 Matau99 Mar 18, 2015 16:16:20	A couple more things:   The Channel Divinity is a very interesting idea, but that sort of makes this more of a divine caster... you might want to refluff/rename it. That's up to you, obviously, but just my view. It could be as simple as writing, "This ability works as Turn Undead, but it is considered arcane and not divine."   Another thing is, since most warlocks don't deal with gods... perhaps another kind of patron could be a lich, death knight, dracolich, or other mighty undead?   EDIT: Just saw your revisions--the class is now unbelievably awesome. I desperately want to play one.
#4 Ashur420 Mar 18, 2015 18:11:31	First I wanted to say I like the concept.   The problem I ran into when designing my warlock lich patron is giving a warlock access to Animate Dead itself is borderline OP.  It is OP because warlock spells recharge on a short rest, and they can raise/maintain a huge number of minions.  If you added wizard necromancy school style bonuses it would put it so far over the top.  This said, I would suggest reworking the 6th and 10th level feature.  I can't see this patron being balanced with those features included the way the are written.   Some of the added spells are also warlock invocations, which in itself isn't a bad thing, but I would keep that in mind when choosing what spells are given to warlocks.
#5 Matau99 Mar 18, 2015 18:13:49	Ashur420 wrote:
#6 Ashur420 Mar 18, 2015 18:30:48	Matau99 wrote:
#7 Matau99 Mar 18, 2015 18:32:02	Ashur420 wrote:
#8 PhyrexianKitsune Mar 18, 2015 18:34:59	I've updated the OP a bit to make it so instead of getting animate dead as a spell,  they get it with the corpsecrafter feature as a spell castible once-per day that still consumes a warlock spell slot but refreshes on a long rest. With that change made is this patron more ballanced or are their still other issues that need to be worked out?
#9 Matau99 Mar 18, 2015 18:35:43	Oh, by the way--Phantasmal Killer is a horribly weak spell that no one should ever cast, but Contagion is just amazingly powerful. It lets you take down legendary monsters easy.
#10 PhyrexianKitsune Mar 18, 2015 18:50:40	Yeah, I know what you mean, but 4th level was REALLY dead for themeatic spells to choose that Warlocks don't already get via invocations. Other then Death Ward or Phantasmal Killer, pretty much every 4th level spell is either already granted to the warlock by virtue of being on their spell list or selectable as an invocation, or has absolutly no connection what so ever fluff-wise to the theme of the patron. So while Phantasmal Killer sucks, it was the most -fitting- spell for the level, and I thought that having a few crap/dud spells on the list(Inflict Wounds, Phantasmal Killer) it would balance out getting the ridicilously good contagion at 5th level spells. About the only option I could think of that would be even remotly fitting would be maybe to start dipping into spells that mimic the powers of undead...such as suggestion in place of gentel repose and dominate person in place of contagion, as to replicate vampire dominate effects and enchantment spells cast by liches, and maybe Gaseous form in place of stinking cloud at 3rd level to represent a vampire's mist form and general "ghostlienes?"
#11 Ashur420 Mar 18, 2015 18:53:13	PhyrexianKitsune wrote:
#12 PhyrexianKitsune Mar 18, 2015 18:56:25	I suppose, that would fit with the theme of "spells that emulate different types of undead" idea....along with the other swaps I suggested in the edit of my previous post. I kinda like that idea, now...having a list composed of both basic necromancy stuff and non-necromancy spells that emulate the powers of different undead. I think I'll go make those edits.   Also, what do you think to my re-work of the Animate Dead related class features, corpsecrafter and Undead Mastery. I don't want to get rid of the wizard-like bonuses, so instead I decided to limit the casting of animate dead/prevent short-rest animate deads by making it an ability gained through the class feature that you can cast once per long rest consuming a warlock spell slot, like an invocation but baked into the patron, along with the undead bonuses...
#13 Ashur420 Mar 18, 2015 19:18:19	PhyrexianKitsune wrote:
#14 PhyrexianKitsune Mar 18, 2015 19:22:28	The main thing behind the feature is to allow the warlock to assemble an army of equal size to a wizard's. By not having an auto-upkeep feature, the warlock can, at best, only ever command 2 undead, since they can only ever cast animate dead once a day,  while the wizard can burn a bunch of slots to have a small army. Maybe instead of auto upkeep as-is I have it where the warlock can burn some pool per long-rest limited resources to upkeep their animate dead and create undead spells, possibly making both their turn undead and dominate undead features draw from the same pool? Like some form of "negative energy pool" that most of their abilities draw from? If so, what should the ammount of charges in the pool be? Charisma mod? 3+ charisma mod as the old 3.5e rebuke undead? Or some other number?
#15 Ashur420 Mar 18, 2015 19:42:51	PhyrexianKitsune wrote:
(Reply to #15) PhyrexianKitsune	Yeah, and thats exactly why I'm only giving them the ability to cast Animate Dead 1/day and giving them an auto-upkeep feature to keep them competitive with wizards. I've changed the way the auto-upkeep works, now, to have it demand slot sacrifice to use yet at the same time still not be able to make Animate Dead short-rest enabled due to Animate Dead being 1/day. Also, to make it more of a sacrifice I made it so half the slots you expend refresh on a long rest rather then a short rest. So you can still build a large army, but it's a slow, graduel process like it is for a wizard, and is limited both by the fact you can only ever cast animate dead 1/day and that your auto-upkeeps are limited both by class level and cha modifier. I'm not sure it's enough, though, so I want your opinion on it...
#17 Ashur420 Mar 18, 2015 20:07:18	PhyrexianKitsune wrote:
#18 PhyrexianKitsune Mar 18, 2015 21:08:00	Edited Undead Mastery again to add a new effect based on Channel Negative Energy uses that I would appreciate a second opinion on, and I'd also appreciate opinion of the overall patron and the invocations, if at all possible.   EDIT After looking at your lich patron for Warlocks, I feel that what I'm aiming for (Dread Necro conversion w/o making a new class) may be better on a sorcerer chassis then a warlock one, and that your lich patron does the "necrolock" more elegantly then my version does. So I think I'll start working on that as my main means of "converting" the Dread Necro to a base class option for 5e.
#19 Mephi1234 Mar 19, 2015 5:20:36	Matau99 wrote:
#20 Mechatarrasque Mar 19, 2015 8:09:06	I would add a skeleton, zombie, spectre, or shadow to the warlock familiar list so the chainlock gets an appropriate pet.  Personally, I would prefer the latter two as you can already hang around with enough skeletons and zombies.
#21 Matau99 Mar 19, 2015 8:42:11	Mechatarrasque wrote: