White Necromancer

An enlightened few wizards know that true mastery of life and death requires understanding of the uneasy balance between life, death, and undeath—the necromantic triad.

You don’t walk the same path as traditional users of necromantic magic, which your order refers to as “dark necromancers.” You have profound respect for life’s eternal cycle and use the power you have accumulated to honor the dead and aid the living.

Restriction: Non-Evil. You can choose this wizard specialty only if you have an alignment that isn’t evil.

Necromancy Savant

Beginning when you select this specialty at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a necromancy spell into your spellbook is halved.

Lore of Life and Death

At 2nd level, you gain proficiency in Medicine and Religion if you don’t already have it, your proficiency bonus is doubled for Wisdom (Medicine) checks, and you have advantage on Intelligence (Religion) checks to recall lore about deities of death, burial practices, and the afterlife. In addition, you learn the spare the dying cantrip, which is a wizard cantrip for you and doesn’t count against the number of wizard cantrips you know.

Rebuke Death

Also starting at 2nd level, you can use an action to heal a creature you can touch. The creature regains hit points equal to your Intelligence modifier + your wizard level (minimum of 1). This feature can restore a creature to no more than half its hit point maximum. Once a creature has regained hit points from this feature, it can’t do so again until it finishes a long rest.

White Necromancy

At 6th level, you add the animate dead spell to your spellbook if it is not there already. When you cast this spell, it has additional effects:

  • If the undead creature has an Intelligence score of 5 or lower, its Intelligence becomes 6, and it gains the ability to understand and speak one language of your choice that you speak.
  • The undead creature’s alignment is the same as yours.
  • At the end of the undead creature’s first 24 hours of serving you, it might continue to serve you for another 24 hours or else return to its eternal rest. You can convince the undead creature to continue serving you with a successful Charisma (Persuasion) check against a DC equal to 8 + the creature’s challenge rating. On a successful check, the creature remains under your control, and the DC of the next check you make to maintain control 24 hours later increases by 1. You have disadvantage on this check if you were disrespectful to the creature in the previous 24 hours. On a failed check, or if you choose not to maintain control, the undead creature immediately crumbles to dust.

When you reach 11th level, you add the create undead spell to your spellbook. All of the above effects also apply whenever you cast that spell.

Life Bond

At 10th level, you add the warding bond spell to your spellbook, and it is a wizard spell for you. You can cast warding bond without expending a spell slot or requiring the material component, and the spell’s duration increases to 4 hours.

Once you cast warding bond in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest. You can still cast warding bond normally using an available spell slot.

Protect Life

Once you reach 14th level, you can use an action to cause life-preserving magic to emit from you. When you do so, you and friendly creatures within 20 feet of you have resistance to necrotic damage for 1 minute. In addition, each creature affected by your use of Protect Life has advantage on saving throws against spells and effects that reduce its hit point maximum, such as a specter’s life drain or the harm spell.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Section 15: Copyright Notice

Deep Magic for 5th Edition © 2020 Open Design LLC; Authors: Dan Dillon, Chris Harris, and Jeff Lee.