New Class: The Necromancer

Hey folks!

Cover of Harrow IX

I'm so excited to announce my first complete Pathfinder 2e class: the Necromancer! You can find the full document here. And oh boy, did I pick a tough one!

A year ago, Paizo released the Kineticist, and in many ways it revolutionized PF2 class design. It presented a version of spellcasters without attrition, with action-flexibility, and with fewer, reliable abilities rather than an exhaustive spell list. While I certainly don't think every spellcaster must follow this format, there was a big conversation on reddit about creating more thematic spellcasters that are tailored to a specific fantasy, rather than generalists. I started work on this class within the week!

Play a Necromancer if you want to bend hordes of undead to your will, unleash devastating theorems to wither your foes, or become the master of death itself!

Note: since I published this, Paizo has begun playtesting their own Necromancer class! It's pretty interesting, but also pretty different. I personally prefer the Kineticist-esque "casters" over actual full spellcasters, in part because it leaves more power budget for the minions! As is, there are some things that I don't love with this version - I think my version makes the minions matter a lot more, and to me captures a lot more flavor, though it will also be harder to balance.

The Basics

The Necromancer is built off the Kineticist chassis, with the same Class DC scaling (though no access to gate attenuators or similar). Its armor scales like a Wizard, however, and it only has 6 HP per level (though Flesh Specialists can effectively bump that to 8 HP/level). Its primary attribute is Intelligence, it's strongest saving throw is Will, followed by Fortitude, with Reflex pretty low (its saves are broadly aligned with Kineticists, not Wizards).

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, I kept the same broad structure as the Kineticist. At level 1, you pick a Specialism: Bone, Flesh, or Spirit. As you level, you can either maniacally focus on one Specialism or branch out. You Enter the Void to active your Voidsight, allowing you to cast Theorems, and possibly gaining other benefits related to perception or knowledge/analysis as well.

The core play loop is a bit different, however. There's much less focus on the PC striking (Grasp of the Grave is worse than Elemental Blasts, and they don't have access to Gate Attenuators). Instead, they use minions! It's pretty action intensive, and they won't be huge damage dealers on their own, but they have the potential to really clog up the battlefield and cause problems. Necromancers do have the fallback of their Theorems, though, for when they need to deal more serious damage or want more utility.

Minion Math

I made a spreadsheet to try to situate minions relative to existing Summons (assuming casters use their highest rank slots), Animal Companions, and Eidolons. The short version is, at every level, Necromancer minions are generally worse than any of those. But! They can summon them (effectively) endlessly, and can (at higher levels) have multiple active at once (maxing out at 3, based on action economy). The trick will be finding out how much worse they should be to balance, since even dedicated summoners in PF2 often feel underwhelming.

More in depth:

• Attack Bonus: Minions have a similar attack bonus to Animal Companions at most levels. They fall slightly below at certain levels, but are overall more consistent. They are consistently worse than Eidolons, and start slightly weaker but end slightly stronger than most summons.
• Armor Class: Same as Attack bonus, honestly, though Zombies start a bit lower.
• Hit Points: At low levels, it's a bit high, but it scales much slower than anyone but Animal Companions (who scale about the same). I could see bringing this down slightly (maybe just halving level 1 HP and keeping the scaling), but I think that needs playtesting. At higher levels I think it's almost certainly fine?
• Big Q is internal balance. How to resistances balance with more HP??
• Damage: About on par with the others! A bit lower than Eidolons, slightly higher on average than Animal Companions, starts higher and ends lower than Summons.
• You can command 1 minion at once from level 1-10, then 2 minions at level 11 with Master of Puppets, and 3 at level 17 with Obey Your Master!

I want minions to feel impactful, but not stick around forever, so if they need to be stronger I'll likely buff their offense, and if they need to be toned down I'll nerf their defenses. I also might have to homogenize defenses if I can't make the weird low AC vs. low HP/resistances balance work.

Ultimately, fine-tuning these numbers to hit the right balance will take playtesting! I unfortunately do not have time to do so (a Necromancer wouldn't work in any of my campaigns, and I don't have time to run one-off things), but please let me know your experience with this class if you try it out!

Power Budget

Currently, Necromancer Theorems are about as strong (sometimes slightly weaker) than Kineticist Impulses (though hopefully there's nothing like timber sentinel). Should they be weaker? What is the optimal power balance between Minions and Theorems, such that both feel impactful but Necromancers aren't OP? I think that answer requires a lot of playtesting, but please let me know if you have thoughts!

Outstanding Questions

This class is very much a work in progress! I'm calling it v1.0 because it is now fully feature- and content-complete, but I expect it won't be fully finished until v2.0. As such, there are a lot of things still up in the air.

Core Questions

The biggest questions are of balance!

• How is the overall power level of the class?
• How is the balance between minions and theorems? Does one feel dominant over the other?
• How is the internal balance between minions? Is one type substantially better or worse than the others? How do innovations/feats affect this?

Individual Feats/Abilities

Next up are questions regarding individual feats or abilities.

• Are any traits incorrect or missing?
• Should the Flesh/Spirit Grasp of the Grave innovations grant half your level in healing/temp HP, or is your full level okay? (How much will Necromancers even be using Grasp of the Grave?)
• Should minion Troops be toned down? My thought is halving the changes, i.e. gaining 2x level bonus HP, weakness to splash damage equal to half your level, weakness to area damage equal to your level.
• How are the tradeoffs for Large and Huge minions? Is the penalty to AC enough to balance the other effects? Is the 2-full turns of casting a Huge minion worth it?
• Both the armor feats have the morph traits, as do several theorems! Including blood warp, the level 18 capstone feats Skittering Carriage and Hulk Out, and the ghostly visage, spirit dash, and spectral form Spirit feats. I wonder if I should add the trait to Spike Skin, and just add language saying that morph traits from the same specialism can stack? Or just remove the morph trait from these armor feats?
• Should veil of souls extend beyond illusory object, and what would that look like?
• Spirit Dash cannot move through walls/etc.

Clarifications

The following are feats/abilities that I'm not certain are clear! Here is my attempt to clarify the intent.

• The Bone transformation innovation gives you a third arm that can only perform simple tasks. I didn't have space to write everything out there, but my intent was that it can be used for interact actions (like drawing/stowing/swapping/picking up items, drinking/administering potions, etc.), but not for activating magical items, attacking, casting spells with material components, raising a shield, or similar. If this ends up being too powerful, I could see restricting the ability to drink/administer potions a. la. familiars.
• Theorems do not require materials to work. Just like Kineticists, you can draw your materials from the power of the void (though if your group is up for it, you can flavor it as using your own bio-mass as the core material instead for a super creepy vibe).
• Similarly, Blood Warp does not require existing pools of blood to teleport to. If you like, you can reflavor this as a line of blood flowing through the air and reconstituting at its destination.
• Spike Skin doesn't have the Morph trait because I want it to be stackable with Calcify Skin. Maybe I should just specify that they can stack though? Idk. Not currently space for that.

That's all for now folks! I'll likely take a stab at rebuilding some NPCs in RHoD using this class chasis to do some testing there, but it will take a lot more than that, so if you end up trying this out yourself please let me know how it goes! And feel free to drop any other feedback you have as well, either here or on reddit, I'm sure I have blindspots given how long I've spent looking at this class.