Essentia Necromancer (3.5e Class)

Author: Kaelik (talk) Date Created: 9/14/2025 Status: Closed off Editing: Suggestions are welcome in discussion but please don't change

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A Necromancer who invests in different kinds of Necromancy each day at different levels. 20 1

"Low" is not in the list (Good, Moderate, Poor, Other) of allowed values for the "Base Attack Bonus Progression" property.

Good Poor Good Alternate Magic Full

Essentia Necromancer

What if not spell slots, but yes Necromancer.

Making a Essentia Necromancer

Write Essentia Necromancer on your character sheet and figure out the rest each day when you wake up.

Abilities: Essentia Necromancers use Wisdom for Save DCs. Besides that, put the points where you want.

Races: Anyone can be a Necromancer, it's really more about being a weirdo that hates your society then your race.

Alignment: Any. Some spells are evil tagged because they were invented by evil people, but you can turn corpses into warrior and talk to dead people at any alignment.

Starting Gold: 2d12×10 gp (130 gp).

Starting Age: Moderate.

Table: Essentia Necromancer

Hit Die: d6

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Saving Throws			Special	Undeath
		Fort	Ref	Will		Capacity	Total
1st	+0	+2	+0	+2	Invested Undeath, Giving Orders	1	4
2nd	+1	+3	+0	+3	Speak With Dead	1	8
3rd	+1	+3	+1	+3		2	12
4th	+2	+4	+1	+4	Gentle Repose, Desecration	2	16
5th	+2	+4	+1	+4		3	20
6th	+3	+5	+2	+5	Tomb Creation	3	24
7th	+3	+5	+2	+5		4	28
8th	+4	+6	+2	+6		4	32
9th	+4	+6	+3	+6		5	36
10th	+5	+7	+3	+7		5	40
11th	+5	+7	+3	+7		6	44
12th	+6/+1	+8	+4	+8	True Resurrection	6	48
13th	+6/+1	+8	+4	+8		7	52
14th	+7/+2	+9	+4	+9	Lichdom	7	56
15th	+7/+2	+9	+5	+9		8	60
16th	+8/+3	+10	+5	+10		8	64
17th	+8/+3	+10	+5	+10		9	68
18th	+9/+4	+11	+6	+11		9	72
19th	+9/+4	+11	+6	+11		10	76
20th	+10/+5	+12	+6	+12		10	80
Class Skills (4 + Int modifier per level, ×4 at 1st level) Appraise (Int), Autohypnosis (Wis), Balance (Dex), Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Craft (Masks) (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Disguise (Cha), Escape Artist (Dex), Forgery (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Heal (Wis), Hide (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Jump (Str), Knowledge (Religion) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Open Lock (Dex), Perform () (Cha), Ride (Dex), Search (Int), Sense Motive (Wis), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Speak Language (None), Spellcraft (Int), Spot (Wis), Survival (Wis), Tumble (Dex), Use Rope (Dex).

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the Essentia Necromancer.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Essentia Necromancers are proficient with simple weapons, light armor, and anything made of Bone (or the souls of the dead, but that's a lot harder).

Invested Undeath: Essentia Necromancers have various Necromantic Powers they can invest Undeath into. I'm writing 11, but if there's something Necromantic not covered, feel free to write your own. All Essentia Necromancers have access to all existing powers to Invest Undeath in.

If you don't have Undeath invested in a Necromantic Power, it does nothing, and you can just not think about it at all. You can only Invest a certain amount of Undeath, labeled as Undeath Capacity on the chart, which scales as you level. It's basically “the highest level spell a Wizard could cast.” You can only Invest as much Undeath as you have, defined as your Total Undeath on the chart. It's basically 4 per level.

To Invest Undeath, an Essentia Necromancer has to rest for 8 hours, and then spend 1 hour in spooky necromantic rituals (appropriate to their own beliefs about necromancy) after which they remove all the Undeath they have Invested, and Invest it distributed as they choose amongst their Necromantic powers. These points stay invested “permanently” until you Invest again.

The save DCs of any ability granted by a Necromantic Power is 10 + half character level + Wisdom modifier. If a Caster Level is relevant, it's equal to Character Level. Specific granted abilities should be listed with their type, but if I forgot, default to Supernatural Ability unless that makes no sense.

Abilities granted by Necromantic Power operate on a Recharge system. What this means is, if a fight is over, or if time isn't terribly important, just assume all your powers reset to save on the book keeping.

However, when you are mid combat or time is of the essence, keep track of each power you use, and mark it as “Expended” until it recharges. At the END of every round (IE, do this during other people's turns in a way that doesn't interfere with anyone else's turn or take up table time) for every expended ability for which you meet the conditions (only a few even have conditions) roll a 1d8. If the 1d8 is equal to or lower then your Invested Undeath for that ability, it is no longer expended and you can use it again.

This means that at low levels you might be going through a few different attacks while waiting for a recharge, but at higher levels, you might recharge attacks as soon as you use them. That's all fine! Everything is balanced so that if you do end up rolling all ones all the time, it still won't be a problem for the game. Some of your abilities are going to be always on passive buffs or effectively Permanent Duration Undead creation. Don't worry about Recharges for those at all.

Giving Orders (Ex): An Essentia Necromancer might have a lot of Undead they need to boss around. Any Undead created by Necromantic Powers or put under the Necromancer's control by Necromantic Powers is controlled by this ability.

A Necromancer controls their undead by giving verbal orders heard by the undead as a Standard Action. This can be used to give any specifically identified undead up to and including “all of my undead” the same order or you can give a single individual orders.

These orders can be potentially very complex, and the undead will follow them to the best of their ability. Intelligent undead can usually understand and appreciate complex orders. Mindless Undead are actually very GOOD at follow multi step orders, with 15 steps. They are just very bad at following conditional orders, because they do a bad job determining which part of the order to follow. If an order can be followed it has to be even at the detriment of the undead, this overrides any spell text that says otherwise (like Command Undead spell). Once an order is completed an undead reverts to its nature, though it can be given more orders. Orders can always include multiple steps such as “then find me and ask for new orders.” Some undead will be better or worse at finding you, but all undead under a Necromancer's control can tell in which direction they are if they are on the same plane.

If an Undead under your control is described as an Undead Lieutenant then it can Give Orders using this ability to any undead you control with it's Standard Action.

Speak With Dead (Sp): At level 2 an Essentia Necromancer can cast Speak With Dead at will as an SLA. This does not bypass the limits of the Speak With Dead spell on how the spell fails if the corpse has been targeted within a week, so this isn't a very big deal. The DC when necessary is 10+1/2 Char Level+ Wis mod.

Gentle Repose (Sp): At level 4 a Necromancer can cast Gentle Repose at will.

Desecration (Sp): At level 4 a Necromancer can cast Desecrate at will.

Tomb Creation (Su): At level 6 a Necromancer can create a Tomb. This process requires a 24 hour ritual that sacrifices sapient creatures as part of the ritual. The sapients are sacrificed at the exact middle of the ritual, in case that effects your dramatic rescue timing. The Tomb must be an enclosed area not exposed to sunlight (building, cave, ect.) and you must sacrifice 1HD of sapient creatures for every 10ft cube of space. Once created the Tomb is permanent, unless sunlight shines inside of it, at which point it stops being a Tomb.

The game effect of a Tomb is that all undead inside it gain fast healing 1 and cannot be Turned or Rebuked, and spells with the [Tomb] subtype can be cast within it. Undead cannot be created within the confines of a Tomb, and creatures slain by undead do not become spawn.

Tombs specifically created by this Ritual by the Essentia necromancer also prevent any divinations of anyone or anything inside them. Basically Mindblank Divination in the area, Obscure Object on literally anything if someone somehow scries the area.

Finally, at level 6 Essentia Necromancers have the unique ability to transport between any two Tombs they have ever been in. To do this they must destroy an undead in the Tomb they are currently in, at which point they can as an immediate action appear anywhere in any Tomb they have ever been in. They generally know the open space of all such Tombs for this purpose, including becoming aware of the destruction of any Tombs since the last time they did this.

True Resurrection (Sp): At level 12 a Necromancer can cast True Resurrection at will, but they have to know the target and have spent more then one day grieving the person's death with another person. This can be entirely performative on the part of the Necromancer, but the other person's grief must be a sincere feeling.

Lichdom (Su): On or after level 14 a Necromancer can perform a ritual to become a Lich. This grants the Lich template with no LA and creates a Phylactery. The Phylactery must be created out of an object worth at least 10k gp that is totally mundane.

If the Phylactery is destroyed, the Lich CAN do the ritual again to create a new Phylactery, but they MUST sacrifice the person who destroyed their previous Phylactery as part of the ritual to create the new one. If that person is dead, well, they better find a way to bring them back.

Voice of the Soul

Command Undead (Sp): You can use the Spell Command Undead. You do so by shouting a command as a Standard Action as part of activating this ability. This can target a number of Undead up to your Invested Undeath in Voice of the Soul. At 3 Undeath the Range becomes Medium. At 6 Undeath the Range becomes Long. At 9 Undeath it can work on any undead you can detect, even if they can't hear you and can apply to 100 Undead per Invested Undeath.

Souls Dark Lament (Sp): With 4 Invested Undeath you can call forth the darkest fears of the soul, targeting a creature with Phantasmal Killer as the spell. This involves humming or singing a dirge, and requires the target to hear it. At 6 Undeath you summon their nightmare directly from the Negative Energy Plane, and it becomes the Finger of Death spell instead of Phantasmal Killer. At 8 Invested Undeath this can be used to cast Wail of the Banshee instead.

Undead Elites

Skeleton Squad (Su): You can create 3HD worth of Skeletons from corpses or bones per Invested Undeath with a 10 minute ritual. These are “permanent” minions, but if you lack the Invested Undeath to support the current number of minions you have, the oldest created ones become non functional in a cascade until you once again have enough Invested Undeath to support your current numbers.

You can go around turning every corpse you see into a Skeleton and piling the non functional ones into a portable hole or storing them at your Tomb until you have a veritable army of waiting undead if that's your bag.

You can voluntarily reduce your Skeleton HD control limit to provide buffs to the skeletons you still control:

6HD: You designate one Skeleton as an Undead Lieutenant, and grant it the [Dark Minded] subtype. (It has a mind, and some changes to immunities you can look up.) You get these HD of control back only when that skeleton is destroyed.

6HD: Hardened Bones: All your Skeletons get +6 more Natural Armor. You can turn this off or on (giving you back the control HD) at any time with a 10 minute ritual.

12HD: Frozen Skeletons: All your Skeletons explode for 1d6 Cold Damage per HD in a 15ft Burst on destruction. This can be turned off or on (giving you back the control HD) with a 10 minute ritual.

Wight (Su): At 3 Invested Undeath you can create one Wight from an intact corpse with 10 minute rital. That Wight is technically under your control, but will absolutely spend all it's time trying to figure out how to interpret any orders you've given into “kill every living thing I see and make more wights” and eventually do that. Wights created by your Wight are not under your control, or your Wight's control. They are just wights, and will try to kill living things. If your Wight is destroyed, you will know, and then you can create another one.

If you ever have less then 3 Invested Undeath in Undead Elites, your Wight will immediately become uncontrolled and do wight stuff.

Mummy (Su): At 6 Invested Undeath you can make a Mummy from a corpse with a 10 minute ritual. If you make a new mummy while one already exists the old one is destroyed. If you ever have less then 6 Invested Undeath the Mummy becomes nonfunctional as Skeletons above your HD cap. Your Mummies are all Undead Lieutenants. At 9 Invested Undeath you can make two Mummies without the first one dying. Third one still dies, and the oldest one becomes nonfunctional if you go under 9 Invested Undeath.

Zombie Horde

Zombies (Su): You can create 20HD of Zombies per Invested Undeath. You can raise each corpse with a standard action, even during combat, in which case this has Recharge. Zombies created above your HD cap cause the oldest zombies you've created to be destroyed in cascade until you are under cap again. No zombie can ever be created which has more HD then twice your Invested Undeath.

Technically at high levels you COULD have 10 invested death, make 4 10HD zombies, then reduce your Invested Undeath to 2 and still keep those. That's okay! You are a high level Necromancer and they are 10HD zombies, so they still suck.

Shadow's Life

Living Shadow (Su): Your actual shadow becomes an Incorporeal Undead that is not quite a Shadow as the monster, but is thematically basically that. This means that your shadow doesn't match and people notice, or if it leaves, you don't have a shadow and people notice. It's all very creepy, but like, just call people racists if they complain. Might ruin disguises.

The Shadow has all of your senses and can make whispering sounds that only the Necromancer can interpret.

The Shadow is an Incorporeal Undead with no Stength or Constitution, and other states equal to 10 + Twice Invested Undeath. It also has a BAB equal to twice Invested Undeath and hitpoints equal to 10 times Invested Undeath. Finally it has ranks in Hide, MS, Spot, and Listen equal to Invested Undeath.

It has a speed of 30ft + 5ft per Invested Undeath and on a touch attack, the Shadow does 1d4 Strength damage per Invested Undeath.

After making a touch attack, the Shadow cannot make another until it Recharges, but the Recharge roll only happens when the Shadow is in the same square as the Necromancer.

Entangling Shadows (Sp): You can make any shadow into a set of grasping tentacles. This is like the Entangle spell, but it has to be a contiguous area of shadow and it can only be one 5ft square per Invested Undeath. You can tag someone's specific shadow to Entangle just the square they are in. This area lasts until you create a second one.

At 5 Invested Undeath this can instead be Black Tentacles and Entangle in the Area.

At 8 Invested Undeath you can instead cast the spell Imprisonment, with their shadow reaching up and dragging them down to trap them in a shadow sphere under the ground. You still have to Touch them as a Touch Attack. This ability is not subject to the limit of one area at a time, so you can create an area to entangle someone, then walk up and imprison them, and the area will still be there and you can create more and have 100s of people imprisoned.

Fear

Fear Mask (Su): You can spend 10 minutes crafting a Mask which while worn and not Expended causes any person who is seeing it in enough detail for the first time in that day to make a Will Save or be panicked for 1 minute after it stops seeing the Mask. This is usually about 60ft, though it could be further if they have good sight. Obviously you can see the many disadvantages both in over and under inclusive fear effects. The mask only has it's effect when worn by the Necromancer.

Any time someone fails or succeeds on the will save, they become immune to that mask for 24 hours and the effect is Expended and needs to Recharge.

At 3, 6, and 9 Invested Undeath you can make a second through fourth Mask. These can be worn by other people and work just the same way, including the Necromancer's undead. However they can only Recharge when in the possession of the Necromancer.

Terror (Sp): With 1 Invested Undeath a Necromancer can cast Cause Fear. With 4 Invested Undeath a Necromancer can cast Fear. With 7 Invested Undeath a Necromancer can cast Nightmare.

Touch of Death

Life Sapping Skin (Su): Any contact with the skin of the Necromancer forces a Fort save against Paralyzation with a duration of one round per Invested Undeath. This applies to attacks with natural weapons, or can be delivered as a touch attack so long as gloves aren't worn. Once an individual attempts the save against this effect, it is Expended and has to be Recharged before it can trigger again.

Enervating Ray (Sp): The Necromancer can fire a Ranged Touch Attack out to close range doing 1d6 Negative Energy Damage per Invested Undeath. At 4 Invested Undeath this can instead be the spell Enervation. At 6 Invested Undeath this becomes 2d4 Negative levels when used as the spell Enervation. At 8 Invested Undeath this can instead be 3d4 Negative Levels. At 10 Invested Undeath this becomes 4d4 Negative Levels.

Gravemist

Grave Mist (Sp): With 1 Invested Undeath the Necromancer can create a cloud of mist that has all the effects of a Fog Cloud. However it has a radius of 5ft per Invested Undeath.
With 2 Invested Undeath it causes no save Fatigue.
With 3 Invested Undeath it does 1d6 cold damage per round.
With 4 Invested Undeath it causes a Fort save which if failed gives Exhaustion and if succeeded gives Fatigue.
With 5 Invested Undeath it also has the effect of Solid Fog in the area.
With 6 Invested Undeath the Exhaustion becomes no save.
With 7 Invested Undeath the Fort save returns, and this time failed saves make people Paralyzed and Exhausted, and successful saves make them Exhausted.
With 8 Invested Undeath it ignores wind effect dispersal.
With 9 Invested Death it prevents extradimensional travel in the area including teleportations.
With 10 Invested Undeath the Paralysis is also no save.

The Necromancer can always choose to emulate the effects of a lower amount of Invested Undeath in case you are worried about friendly fire or avoiding someone with Mettle.

In all cases, this SLA is Spell Resistance: No.

Bones of the Earth

Bones of the Earth effects create literal bones that come out of the literal earth. This means they aren't very good for attacking flying people, or people up in tall trees. If you travel to another plane, the same rules basically apply, but you kind of have to decide what counts as “the earth.”

Bone Spear (Sp): The Necromancer summons a spear out of the ground that makes a single attack against a creature within 10ft of the ground. The Spear attacks against regular AC with a BAB equal to Character Level, and Enhancement Bonus and Strength Modifier both equal to Invested Undeath. It does 2d8 damage before bonus damage. This can be done out to Long Range as an attack action. The bones sink back into the earth after each attack.

Bone Wall (Sp): A Wall of Bones is summoned from the earth within Medium Range. This can be horizontal or vertical or at any angle. It does not make any attack rolls and just moves things in the way out of the way.

The wall itself is made of giant bones that are 1ft thick per Invested Undeath, 10ft “Tall” per Invested Undeath and have Hardness equal to 4+Invested Undeath and HP for a 5ft by 5ft by 1ft section of the wall of 10HP per Invested Undeath.

Causing a second Bone Wall to appear causes any previous Bone Walls to sink back into the Earth. This effect goes away if you have 7 Invested Undeath or more, and all Bone Walls become permanent until you use this ability with less Invested Undeath then 7.

Wall of the Damned

Terror (Sp): You can summon a Wall of the Damned which is 10ft long and 10ft wide per Invested Undeath and 5ft thick at all times. It can be summoned anywhere within Long Range and can be oriented in any direction. You can summon it right on top of people if you want, in which case they are subject to the conditions of passing through the wall immediately. The wall lasts until you create another one, but also if you make a wall and then reduce your Invested Undeath the wall only causes saving throws based on your current Invested Undeath when people pass through.

The wall itself is made of the souls of the damned, which obstructs sight but not the passage of objects or creatures. Creatures that touch or pass through the wall have to make a Will and Fort save with different effects depending on Invested Undeath. You get ALL the effects of failing the save for any amount of Invested Undeath less then the current amount except for fear effects. For fear effects you only get the longest duration of Shaken and the longest duration of Frightened. They can stack to Panicked where their durations overlap.

1 IU: Will Shaken 1 round, Fort Sickened 1 round
2 IU: Will Shaken 1 minute, Fort Nauseated 1 round
3 IU: Will Frightened 1 round, Sickened 1 minute.
4 IU: Will Frightened 1 minute, Fort Nauseated 1d4 rounds.
5 IU: Fort Paralyzed 1 round.
6 IU: Will Dazed 1 round.
7 IU: Fort Paralyzed 1 minute
8 IU: Will Dazed and Stunned for 1 minute.
9 IU: Fort die instantly [Death Effect]
10 IU: Will effects of the Insanity Spell.

Undead Senses

You gain the following passive senses based on your current Invested Undeath:

1 IU: Darkvision 10ft per Invested Undeath.
2 IU: Low Light Vision.
4 IU: Lifesense.
6 IU: You can tell the exact square of a creature you can't see if you can see it's Lifesense.

Fortitude of Undeath

You get the following passive defensive improvements based on your Invested Undeath.

1 IU: Healed by Negative Energy instead of harmed. Immune to Negative Energy effects that might otherwise be an issue.
2 IU: DR 1/bludgeoning per Invested Undeath.
3 IU: +1 Natural Armor per Invested Undeath, No need to breath.
4 IU: Immune to Fear effects.
5 IU: Immune to the Sickened and Nauseated conditions.
6 IU: Immune to Death Effects.
7 IU: Immune to Fort Saves that don't effect objects.
8 IU: Immune to Mind Effecting Effects.
9 IU: A bonus to All Saves equal to Invested Undeath.
10 IU: Immune to being Turned or Rebuked.

Prestige Classing as an Essentia Necromancer

Any Prestige Class that advances the Caster level and spellcasting level and spells known of a casting class AND IS OBVIOUSLY NECROMANCY THEMED may advance the Undeath Capacity and Total of Invested Undeath instead, increasing their level as shown on the chart. Still give up the other at will spells and becoming a Lich.

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