Gravebinding

While most wizards who desire power over the dead focus their efforts on necromancy, there are other, rarer, paths one can choose. Gravebinders focus their efforts on safeguarding tombs and graveyards to ensure the dead remain at rest and the living remain safe from the dead. When undead rise to prey upon the living, a gravebinder hunts downs the abominations and returns them to their eternal slumber.

Restriction: When you choose this wizard arcane tradition, you can no longer cast spells that animate, conjure, or create undead, and, if any such spells are copied in your spellbook, they fade from the book within 24 hours, leaving blank pages where the spells were.

Gravebinder Lore

At 2nd level, you can use an action to inscribe a small rune on a corpse. While this rune remains, the corpse can’t become undead. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. In addition, you have proficiency in the Religion skill if you don’t already have it, and you have advantage on Intelligence (Religion) checks made to recall lore about deities of death, burial practices, and the afterlife.

Hunter of the Dead

Starting at 2nd level, you gain access to spells passed down by generations of gravebinders. The heart to heart (2nd), dead walking (3rd), gird the spirit (3rd), life from death (5th), and lay to rest (9th) spells are wizard spells for you, and you add them to your spellbook at the indicated wizard levels. Once you gain access to one of these spells, you always have it prepared, and it doesn’t count against the number of spells you can prepare each day.

Also at 2nd level, you can use your action and expend one wizard spell slot to focus your awareness on the region around you. For 1 minute per level of the spell slot you expend, you can sense whether undead are present within 1 mile of you. You know the general direction of the undead creatures, though not their exact locations or numbers, and you know the direction of the most powerful undead within range.

Ward Against the Risen

Starting at 6th level, when an undead creature you can see within 30 feet of you targets an ally with an attack or spell, you can use your reaction to hamper the attack or spell. The undead has disadvantage on its attack roll or your ally has advantage on its saving throw against the undead’s spell. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier (a minimum of once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

Disruptive Touch

Beginning at 10th level, when an undead creature takes damage from a 1st-level or higher spell you cast, it takes an extra 4d6 radiant damage. Undead creatures you kill using this feature are destroyed in a puff of golden motes.

Radiant Nimbus

At 14th level, you can use your action to envelope yourself in a shroud of golden flames for 1 minute.

While enveloped, you gain the following benefits:

• When you summon the flames and as an action on each of your turns while the flames are active, you can frighten undead within 30 feet of you. Each undead creature in the area must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be frightened of you until the flames fade or until it takes damage. An undead creature with sunlight sensitivity (or hypersensitivity, in the case of vampires) also takes 4d6 radiant damage if it fails the saving throw.
• You shed bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet. This light is sunlight.
• When an undead creature hits you with a melee weapon attack, it takes 2d10 radiant damage.

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