The Dread Necromancer: A TABLE FRIENDLY wizard optimized build D&D 5e

questness now has a Kickstarter for the Divine Forge their brand new adventure path this is an adventure for character level six through nine that includes three chapters you can play together or as independent Adventures included are Plug and Play locations tailored music and dice professional battle maps supported by stunning artwork unique spells items factions deities and more in this GM friendly Adventure even the base level of support provides you with a stunning range of content questnest has already proven they have quick turnaround on delivering content to supporters click the link I pinned in the comments to take you to the kickstarter page hey optim answers Chris here so recently I did some analysis of various summoning spells in D D I discussed some of the issues with spells like conjure animals and other alternatives to make it effective but also table friendly summoning focused character and d d and when I was thinking about Concepts that aren't table friendly one of the first things I thought of was The Necromancer and part of the reason for that is that if you want to make an optimized Necromancer the features kind of lead you to a particular type of character and that's one that utilizes the animate dead spell to create armies of minions now conceptually that's really cool if you've ever seen it in actual play not so cool now if you didn't watch my last video I kind of covered the reasons why characters like that aren't very table friendly and if you haven't seen it then you really should watch that video first it really sets the foundation for the build I'm presenting today look there it is linked for you at the top right of your screen click that watch the video and if you like what I covered I think you'll like this build and if you don't then you can probably save your time for watching this video as well as my next couple are you enjoying this content would you like to support it if you would please click the link to my patreon page that you'll find in the video description my patrons see these videos early and they don't have to watch YouTube ads additional perks depending on your level of support you might be a member of my exclusive Discord Community or you might get called out in a video wouldn't that be a thrill just like these people right now thank you so much to tazel TomTom voo Wesley terpstra Zachary Shapiro Alex C hey Mr Wonderful Alexander tinkoff Arden babrak blue wolf blue eyes white seven Ryan Delgado brother Shadow Burr Condor John D descarpus 9 El conquista Dorito Eric Harvey and Falcon Neil thank you all so much for your support let's get started [Music] thank you now for me I love the idea of the summoning character and I've come to the conclusion that the summoning spells from Tasha's culture of everything warned special attention in fact I drew the conclusion that just the Spells themselves with no special attention to our build decisions are worthy castings particularly some in Shadow spawn some in Faye some are not dead and some in aberration this was due to a combination of durability reliability of damage spell level and quantity of damage so once I completed that analysis I excitedly started looking at classes and subclasses Feats and spells to determine what build decisions we could make to enhance these spells even further and if you know me at all you know the first class I started looking at the wizard also probably no surprise I took a look at conjurer first these spells are generally conjuration spells and I remember that conjurers have some subclass features specifically related to summoning well one feature specifically related to summoning anyways at 14th level a conjure adds 30 temporary hit points to any creature they summon or create with a Conjuration Spell 30 extra hit points sounds great but 14th level doesn't sound great at 10th level though Focus conjuration although not specifically related to summoning it does help protect concentration of The Conjurer while concentrating on a Conjuration Spell and that would certainly apply to contrarys and spells for summoning so it's looking pretty hard on how to make a conjure work for a summoning build and I did note I guess the sixth level feature could probably be of some use in concert with summoning though this is stretching a bit more and that's about it so working backwards from 14th level The Conjurer offers a lot but working upwards from first level the features that apply to summoning they just come pretty late in my opinion and that led me to looking to other subclasses of wizard and analyzing their features I noted in Azure can share their Arcane Ward that could certainly be helpful evokers can potentially blast enemies with evocation spells while excluding their own summon creature but the one that ended up getting me really excited was The Necromancer and that is partially because necromancers I don't see a lot of them in gameplay and when I do they tend to be disruptive because their features really do push that stereotype of hordes of animated Undead and that has lots of problems with it which I'll cover a little later in the video now this might seem counterintuitive because the entire plan of focusing on these spells was to avoid the less table-friendly summoning spells and here we have a subclass that I mean when I see this played it's about creating armies of animated Undead and that creates all kinds of problems the strategy itself has all kinds of issues but also it is just super disruptive to your table and we cannot make a table-friendly necromancer build if we're going to focus on that spell but you really do feel pressured to focus on it because of their six level feature Undead throws here is a feature that adds the animate dead spell to your Spellbook provides an extra zombie or skeleton when you cast it and provides two additional benefits to those creatures first it increases their maximum hit points by an amount equal to your wizard level and second it adds your proficiency bonus to weapon damage rolls for those creatures but check this out it says whenever you create an undead using a necromancy spell it has these additional benefits the summons spells from tashas are all conjuration spells with one exception here is someone Undead and as we can see it is a necromancy spell so it is a spell that creates an undead using a necromancy spell so by using Undead thralls we increase both the hit points and the damage of the creature we summon the bonus to damage by the way is going to scale with our level but also our spell slot level because every additional attack from our summon Undead will also benefit from this feature so that is exponential scaling I am adding an edit to this video because if we look at the forums we can choose with someone Undead here they are so this is the stat block for someone Undead so we can choose you can see a putrid form a ghostly form or a skeletal form and my original plan was to use the skeletal form and take advantage of the ranged attack that it can do however I noticed once again let's go back to Undead throws you can see it says the creature adds your proficiency bonus to its weapon damage rolls and then going back to the stat block you will see that here we've got three attacks and we can see that two of them are weapon damage rolls and one of them is a range spell attack and that happens to be the skeletal form so this character needs to use one of the other two forms the putrid form does not have reliable damage so we are going to be using the ghostly form now again the original plan was to use the skeletal form and if you hear some point in the video me referring to the skeletal form I we'll go through the video and make sure the best I can that I refer to the ghostly form but that's why that would happen but my intention here is to use the ghostly form now because it doesn't have a range attack it does have fly with hover which is very useful we can also use long Strider to increase its speed as well as our help action but what we want to do definitely is to do a ritual to cast Phantom Steed before we do the summon then we do the summon and the summon can ride the Phantom Steed and ideally the Phantom Steed will do the disengage action move in get the attacks then move away without provoking opportunity attacks to help keep that ghostly form safe because the armor class is not that great it's not terrible but it's it's not particularly strong and it doesn't have a huge amount of hit points so we are going to want to keep it out of danger as much as as we can but the ghostly form definitely is the way we want to go to get those bigger damage numbers now the damage is slightly different from the skeletal form and the Ghostly form so I have updated all the damage calculations here so that they take the d8 into account instead of the 2d4 so just want to let you know that as we move into the rest of this video I should also mention that when it comes to enhancing these summoning spells adding to the summons damage is really rare other than some really limited stuff like you know you could use a Bard inspiring the summon that kind of thing I could only really find two features in the game that just gave a repeatable bonus to damage and it was this one and the oath breaker paladins were of hate and yes I did consider a multi-class necromancer oath breaker but I was able to dismiss that really fast before getting into ability scores which were going to be a nightmare anyways seven levels of Paladin means slowing spell slot progression by four levels and that's two full levels of spell slots which means such a multi-class would be something Undead not just with fewer hit points but one full attack less which would basically mean that even with unrealistic ability scores or of hate fails to deliver more damage if we're going Necromancer here is what is super cool though I like the idea of a dread Necromancer but I never play them because armies of skeletons is fantastic thematically but it just doesn't work it not being table friendly is just the tip of the iceberg but that alone is enough to prevent me from using the concept and so I tend not to play necromancers because what's the point if we're not making use of the one feature that makes summoning Undead better it's probably the standout feature for necromancers as well and here we are with our verified knowledge that summon Undead is worthwhile on its own and now we have a way to enhance that so the dread Necromancer is our build today starting with the concept for the build our dreadnet romancer is the exact concept you're probably envisioning when you hear the title the dark wizard who has learned to tap the Arcane Powers associated with death itself for personal power their magic encapsulates this theme to spread death with this necrotic power as well as Force back the spirits of the Dead to serve at their whim I don't know how much more I need to describe the concept you get it starting with our racial selection we are choosing the Hobgoblin this is the monsters of the Multiverse version that I'm using for this build however this isn't the happy and helpful hobgoblin presented in that book this is the Hobgoblin that parents warn their children about before they go to bed there's a couple features we get through this race that really work for this build but without going into details on the rest of it we're medium-sized or a humanoid we have 30 base movement and 60-foot dark vision fans history gives us advantage on saving throws made to avoid or end the charm condition now let's talk about the meat of the race those are our next two features the first is Faye gift this allows the ability to provide the help action as a bonus action a number of times equals our proficiency bonus per long rest we can use this to provide advantage to our summon creature but in addition we can provide temporary hit points to the summon and ourselves and increase the speed to the summon and ourselves or impose disadvantage on a creature that our summon creature hits with an attack all three of these I think are pretty good the second providing useful maneuverability and the first and third both providing additional protections this is on top of the offensive Boost from the help action in the first place and since this is a bonus action it won't interfere with us spell casting using our action the next feature that really works well for us is Fortune from the many this allows us to alter an attack roll ability check or saving throw we make with a plus three I mean technically it's up two plus three but it's going to be plus three this again is usable a number of times equal to our proficiency bonus per long rest so right off the bat this is a great boost to protecting our concentration as we can use this to enhance our concentration saving throws and just to be transparent this feature isn't specifically good for necromancers this is just a good Feature A plus three to an attack roll ability check or saving throw when you need it is a straight out strong feature universally I have been planning to highlight a hobgoblin in a build ever since Monsters of the Multiverse was released as I think this feature combined with fake gift is a really strong combination so with our ability scores first off we're selecting the plus two slash plus one option from hobgoblin to increase our intelligence by two and our constitution by one with Point by we end up with a strength of 8 dexterity of 15 constitution of 16 intelligence of 17 and a wisdom and Charisma of eight so how did our character start out well I see this character descending into the dark arts you know rather than starting out that way so we're going to begin as a mere dabbler in Magic but our primary profession is Undertaker no not that Undertaker though that might be an interesting build at some point but I think I'm gonna stick a pin in that one so we're starting with artificer and we'll have Proficiency in Wood Carver's tools for creating elaborate vessels for The Departed as a dabbler in Magic will be proficient in Arcana and will pick up perception as well as an artificer we're going to have Proficiency in light and medium armor as well as Shields proficiency and simple weapons thieves tools Tinkers tools and Constitution saving throw proficiency so from an optimizer's Viewpoint this is the Holy Trinity for class tips for Wizard artificer rounds up their level when multiclassing with spellcasters so we don't lose any spell slot progression and since we're up casting summon Undead it's just fine if we have spell Slots of higher level than any spells known Constitution saving throw proficiency improves their concentration saving throws and medium armor and shield gets rid of that pesky low Armor class that Wizards otherwise would be contending with magical tinkering isn't powerful but it is fun it's more of a storytelling creativity feature than a mechanical one allowing you to enhance devices so they shed a bit of light create audible messages emit sound effects or odors or display static visual effects now we should talk about artificial spell casting it combines really well with wizard but there is one issue with multi-classing wizard and artificer that you should at least be aware of if an artificer casts a spell it is automatically considered to have a material component but more than that we have to use our artificial Focus which is going to be our thieves tools or Artisans tools and we must have them in our hand when we cast our spell now if we are using a shield which we will that means you need to remember you'll need to draw your tools to cast your artifice or spouse and once we start progressing in Wizard we're not going to want to still be holding those tools at the end of our turn or it could interfere with us casting wizard spells when it's not our turn like spells like counterspell or Shield or absorb elements at first level this is not a problem but at higher levels you need to consider that before casting any of these artificial spells I mean if your table worries about juggling Spell components then you need to worry about it if they don't then you don't but for the most part I'm considering that this character is probably going to be casting these Spells at first level and once we get into higher levels we'll probably just be casting our wizard spells anyways uh in fact as we increase our intelligence we'll get more preparations of artificial spells and I didn't even bother selecting any additional ones because they just aren't great for us to cast for cantrips we have two selections we'll take guidance this provides a D4 to an ability check for ourselves or the creature we touch this is a great cantrip and it is normally not available to wizards so it's a good option for us to pick up here now just for first level we will want an attack hand trip now because of the requirements for casting this probably isn't going to be something we use past level one but at level one we want something to do on our turn I'm recommending Magic Stone because you know Magic Stone is actually going to out damage any of the other attack cantrips at first level since you had your intelligence bonus to the damage roll and that gives us a 6.5 average damage result which will be higher than any other attack hand drip but now I have to discuss juggling what's in our hand anyways so if you don't worry about components at your table ignore this part of the video but I do want to explain how this spell works by the rules just be aware that if you are wearing a shield then you have one free hand you have to hold your tools in your hand when you cast this spell meaning you don't have a free hand to throw a stone maybe you can drop the tools and then throw the stone or maybe you can cast this over and over so that y'all already have three stones when combat begins if at your table you can't utilize either of these options then maybe go ahead and grab Firebolt but assuming you can Magic Stone is the better option okay and for our first level spells we want to start with at least one spell that's strong to cast in combat at level one even if we don't cast it at higher levels and then we probably want a couple spells that continue to be useful for us at higher levels and because of artificial component stuff then we're looking for things that ideally we can cast outside of combat so our big first level spell will be fairy fire this is a 20-foot Cube area of effect spell and All Creatures within the cube make it x30 saving throw if they fail they shed dim light in a 10 foot radius they can't benefit from being invisible and most importantly attacks against them have Advantage as long as we maintain our concentration this ends up being a buff for all attackers in your party and it's a pretty strong option as far as first level spells go for other two spell options I really like long Strider this is a nice buff lasts a long time and it doesn't use their concentration it adds a 10 feet movement bonus regardless of the movement type we're using and it has a great upcast option now being that I've made some changes with this build so that it's going to be using the ghostly form long Strider is even more important longstrider adds to your fly speeds as well as your land speed so for our ghostly form that has a 40 foot hover speed long Strider is going to increase that to 50 feet with a first level spell that is just a no-brainer we will absolutely cast longstrider on our summon just as an automatic thing we're also going to pick up the sky itself now this is a utility option but it has a good duration it's definitely an out of combat spell it continues to be useful at higher levels and perhaps especially for that dreaded Necromancer that wants to infiltrate those simple Town folk who cringe a terror at the sight of our character so level one it's pretty easy we're going to have scale mail we'll grab a shield when we can I mean eventually we'll upgrade to half plate but you're probably not doing that at level one so we're looking at an 18 Armor class and in combat you're going to use Magic Stone and if it's a tough combat you'll throw a ferry fire on round one so it pretty straightforward now at second level we're going to begin to access the dark arts as we multi-class in the wizard now we're a fair bit into the video already and I really want to get to the summoning though I think most viewers are probably aware that Wizards do just fine before seventh level but thematically when this particular build goes from Wizard to a dread Necromancer is level seven level one artificer level six wizard so I'm going to quickly go over everything from levels two through seven let's first go through our class and subclass features and then through the Spells we add to our Spellbook hit points are on the low end of the spectrum but because we did start with a high Constitution score overall our hit points are going to be fine wizard spell casting is powerful and unique first we can prepare different spells from our Spellbook after any long rest and after Tasha's optional class features we can change cantrip selections as well Wizards get the very nice option to cast rituals from their Spellbook without preparing them so we're going to select a fair number of rituals we should keep in mind though although we can cast virtual spells without using spell slots any spell that you cast that uses more than an action to cast we will use our concentration so if we are concentrating on our summon spell that's not the time to cast a ritual Wizards can recover spell slots after short rest once per long rest the spell slot recovery is equal to half our level and wizard rounded up so at seventh level will be a sixth level wizard so we could recover three spell slot levels obviously we're selecting necromancy as our Arcane tradition so let's quickly review those features so necromancy Savant you gain the ability to copy necromancy spells more quickly this is really a ribbon feature it is not worth spending a lot of time on Grim Harvest is a little more substantial it's gained at second level once per turn when we kill one or more creatures with spells of first level or higher we recover hit points equal to twice the Spells level and three times if the spell is a necromancy spell now ideally we're not going to be wounded a lot of the time so I don't expect this to be a very big deal this is not one of the more powerful wizard second level features but one thing we should actually discuss here because this is obviously relevant to the build is does a creature killed by a creature we summoned satisfy the requirements of grim Harvest so in other words if we cast summon Undead that someone Undead kill something do we recover hit points Jeremy Crawford's answered this question multiple times but I'll highlight one of those responses because this answer doesn't just apply to the anime dead spell which obviously tends to be the subject of this question but his reply here definitely applies to summon and dead as well when you summon create or animate a creature that creature is a spell effect but it is not a spell so that means in order for us to benefit from Grim Harvest we need to inflict the damage that kills the creature ourselves meaning spells that deliver damage directly have a bit more value though I think optimally we shouldn't overvalue Grim Harvest it's a nice little benefit when it comes up but I wouldn't be making build decisions chasing this small bit of hit point recovery however one thing we will be interested in are spells that deliver damage because we are a damage delivering concept and honestly a lot of the spells that deliver damage are the ones that don't use our concentration and will be looking for spells like that as well so it just so happens we will be selecting lots of spells that will benefit from Grim Harvest but that's not why we're selecting those Spells at level 4 and wizard gets us our first ability score increase and we will take telekinetic so first off obviously we'll take the plus one intelligence to boost our intelligence to 18. I'm recommending telekinetic over feet like safe they touched because this character doesn't really have a requirement for their bonus action I mean they can deliver the help action a few times as the bonus action but other than that their bonus action will normally be free so this feat gives a great built-in bonus action option and that's why I think it's optimal here now I've already covered Undead thralls but I actually want to take a little bit more time to discuss the most obvious use of this feature so we'll be using the feature to boost the summit Undead spell but the obvious initial intent of this feature centers around the animate dead spell so we should at least take a look at that spell this spell has all the undesirable features I brought up in my last video the whole idea behind the dread Necromancer is to make a character that's table friendly which The Necromancer that focuses on this spell has never been that's why you don't see a lot of them and it really comes down to The Usual Suspects multiple spots on the initiative order bog down gameplay having several creatures added that all take their own turns slows down gameplay far more the power of creating many many creatures with this spell is super swingy it can do a crap ton of damage it also can do none and face the danger of being wiped out with a single area of effect spell nevertheless anime dead particularly enhanced by the undead thralls feature is a powerful spell but it is not table friendly in the least the build I'm presenting today is intended to be optimal but it is also intended to be fun to play fun for your DM and fun for the other players so we're not going to use this spell so let's talk about the Spells we do take our character level is seven but our wizard level is six this means we'll have four wizard cantrips and four first level slots three second level slots three third level slots and one fourth level slot now we have no fourth level spells but we'll be using the slot to upcast summon Undead with a one hour duration we should be able to get multiple combats out of this spell and it might very well last us until our next short rest so we're going to take four wizard cantrips the first one I'll take is Chill Touch I think it's the most thematically appropriate cantrip we get a d8 scaling necrotic damage with a strong 120 foot range when we hit a Target that can't recover hit points until the start of our next turn and if we hit an undead target has disadvantage on attack rolls against us until the end of our next turn but be aware that although necrotic damage is pretty reliable normally it's not particularly reliable against Undead creatures there's five pages on DND Beyond of creatures immune to necrotic damage and three pages of those are Undead creatures that are immune to necrotic damage however the most useful part of this can't drip actually isn't even the damage it's the inability of creatures to recover hit points this doesn't just stop healing spells this also stops regeneration and by rules as written this is crazy it even stops the Mythic trait which if you are fighting in Mythic creature is insane and DMS you probably want to consider if you even want to run this is written against those kinds of creatures because it's single-handedly kind of ruins the whole idea of a Mythic creature and that's pretty strong for a kanship we're going to take Firebolt here for two reasons first it can Target objects which can be super useful the more experience I have with this cantrip the more I'm convinced that the ability to Target objects is potentially the best additional feature that any attack cancer has secondly provides us an alternate damage type mind sliver gives us yet another damage type but it also avoids the attack roll requiring the normally weak intelligence saving throw instead this also imposes a D4 penalty on the target's next saving throw before the end of our next turn so it can be a reasonable lead up to an important saving throw then minor illusion is one of the only illusion spells that requires no concentration so we can use this to do things like provide obscurement to our summon now I'll mention once again that I expect this character is going to be concentrating on summon Undead a lot and in some cases perhaps in every combat so I was particularly attracted to spells that didn't require concentration so this list is weighted towards non-concentration spells absorb elements we'll keep this prepared for a reaction to gain resistance to Elemental damage comprehend languages it's a ritual so we won't need to prepare it and it has useful utility detect magic same thing don't need to prepare and useful utility find familiar is arguably the best first level spell in the game and only on the wizard spell list alarm again the ritual tag makes this an attractive option Shield because of course we have to take the shield spell and we're going to add sleep now we're only going to prepare this when we're second level and I wouldn't bother preparing it at higher levels but it's worth a spawner spell book just for that level too unseen servant finishes off our first level spells and five of our eight first level spells don't need preparation and we'll keep shield and absorb elements prepared forever for second level spells we'll take Webb this is one of our primary options when we don't have our Undead summoned very strong spell for control probably the best second level spell available to wizards I mean it might be the best second level spell period it also really pairs nicely with our telekinetic feat which we can use to pull or push creatures into the web Tasha's mind whip is a good spell to do a bit of damage and debuff an enemy it also upcasts really well and doesn't use their concentration this is a way we can help keep summoned Undead safe as well if it ends up in a bad spot we could do a mind Whip and that could allow the undead to back away from an enemy without provoking opportunity attacks and that enemy might not have many options left when their turn comes up Misty step of course is on our list I think that having at least some kind of bonus action teleport is practically an automatic pick when it's available if you cast Missy step just be aware that any other spell you cast on that turn must be a can trip mirror image is a pretty potent defensive spell that doesn't use concentration it has a short duration so really a single combat kind of spell for third level spells let's start with the most obvious one summon Undead now anime dead is automatically appearing in our Spellbook with Undead thralls but we're not going to be preparing it and Fireball Fireball is a great use of our third level slots while we're concentrating on summon Undead it has a big area of effect damage with great range and it isn't easier concentration and you know I guess we'll heal six hit points if a creature dies from our Fireballs being that we're a dread Necromancer of course this isn't the standard orange flame explosion these will be sickly green Flames befitting The Dread Necromancer so I want to do like a snapshot of our damage at this level this is going to assume two things first that we're using the summon Undead spell so I need to add a little bit more here because we are using the ghostly Forum instead of the skeletal form as I originally planned now this skeletal form the whole idea of that was it's just damage so it fires does a lot of damage from a good range and so ideally it can just stay out of the fight or out of danger and snipe enemies with the ghostly form we're gonna have to get in there now if we're fighting on the ground this ghostly form could use a phantom Steed to probably go in and then get out again but if we're fighting flying enemies that won't be a possibility it is gonna have to fly and move up to those enemies so what can we do to keep this thing alive well first it does have more hit points than the skeletal form it has a base 30 hit points instead of 20 so that's 10 extra hit points it's 40 hit points once we cast this with the fourth level spell and then we're adding our Necromancer level to its hit points as well so we're talking about 46 hit points and we have that fly speed with hover and it's 40 feet we'll be using long Strider so it'll be 50 feet we have incorporal passage and this will allow our ghost to like move through walls or ceilings or floors ideally they could maybe move somewhere so that they can't be attacked however here's the biggest thing of all so deathly touch has a rider and the rider is very good so we can see here it does a d8 plus three plus the spouse level necrotic damage and again plus our proficiency bonus because we have Undead thralls and the creature must succeed on a wisdom saving throw against our spell DC or be frightened of the undead until the end of the target's next turn now this might be the best defensive feature that the ghostly Forum actually has because this isn't once per turn this is on every single attack so if the ghostly form moves up to an enemy and attacks twice if they hit twice that creature actually has to make two saving throws to avoid being frightened and if it is frightened of the ghost then it will have disadvantage on attacks and disadvantage on attacks against our ghost is going to help protect it and it is even possible that if we split up our attacks we might even frighten more than one enemy and I think we actually have to lean into that a little bit now when we get to higher levels immunity to frightened condition is not all that uncommon and when that's the case then we're going to have to rely on in Corporal passage or our Phantom Steed to try to keep the ghost safe but if we land the frightened condition then we don't really have to worry too much about that creature because it will be attacking with disadvantage and although our Armor class isn't all that high yeah disadvantage on the attack roll and that is going to add a lot of durability to our summoned creature so at level 7 my Baseline for damage is 17.7 that's how much damage we would expect if we were playing a warlock throwing outer's blasts with agonizing blast and concentrating on the hex spell so let's see how we compare now I'm assuming you watched my previous video where I showed that we can deliver 20 over the Baseline at level eight now I'm expecting a better result here I'm going to assume that Chill Touch is our cantrip but if we do use Firebolt the numbers do go up a little bit okay so our damage calculations at level seven so we have 14.5 base damage on attacks from the ghostly form that's a d8 plus three plus four from the spouse hot level plus three from our proficiency bonus 60 chance to hit uh and that gives us 8.7 average damage on each attack we have two attacks so that's 17.4 we're going to add a little bit because we might critical hit so that's a five percent times an average increase to damage of nine or that's 4.5 times two different attacks so that's 0.45 then we're going to cast our Chill Touch and I've used 0.65 here because the entire damage doubles on a critical hit it so we can just add the five percent and do it as a single calculation times nine average damage is 5.85 and what that gives us is a total DPR of 23.7 the Baseline at this level is 17.7 that's 34 over the Baseline at level seven now remember if we were just doing this unenhanced we would be looking at about twenty percent so we've gone from 20 to 34 percent by choosing Necromancer now if damage was all we were doing and Chill Touch was all we were casting this on its own is okay however we're going to be using other spell slots for Tasha's mind whip Fireball this is going to increase our damage and provide other helpful effects so I think this concept is working well at this level so we're going to add some levels and we'll take another look at our damage at level 13. so at level 8 in Wizard will increase our intelligence score to 20. this improves our spell DC's our spell attack roles and improves our summon creature as well at 10th level we get a nerd to death beginning at 10th level you have resistance to necrotic damage that's good and your hit point maximum can't be reduced now that's pretty situational very useful when it does come up but I wouldn't expect that to come up a lot so overall I'd say a not bad feature at level 12 we're going to take the resilient dexterity feat this provides us Proficiency in two of the three big savings rows now we could go with resilient wisdom instead and I did consider that and if you want to play this build and you felt that wisdom was the more important saving throw then go ahead and select that I went with dexterity here mainly because it also improves our initiative and when we improve our initiative we also improve the initiative of our Southern creature our spell slots now include a sixth and seventh level slot so the sixth level slot probably gives us the biggest bang for our buck on summon Undead but you know at this point I would probably use that seventh level slot for someone Undead as well this should give us the three attack creature for pretty much any combat in a day and we don't have seventh level spells anyways yet so we might as well upcast a good spell with it we're gonna add one more cantrip and we'll add magehand now we get magehand automatically with the telekinetic feat but if we take the cantrip it actually adds 30 feet to our range so now we have a 60 foot range magehand we will add counterspell to where the devil spells and of course we will prepare it counterspell just gets more and more important as we increase in levels it is also something we can cast without interrupting our concentration I took Phantom Steed uh now you should be aware that you can't cast the ritual after summoning the undead creature because casting any spell that requires more than an action to cast will interrupt concentration but you could do the fandom seed first and then cast summon Undead and the idea would be you could put your Southern creature on the Steed and that would provide it even more protection just by adding all that superior mobility to it I will be adding life transference to this character and this is a change since I decided to use the ghostly form I figured we might actually need some healing so life transference what it does is it take you take 48 damage when you cast it and the creature that you choose receives double that amount in healing so we could do that to give our ghostly form on average about 36 points with a single action and a single third level spell that's a fair amount of healing the issue is of course we would have to make a concentration save because we took damage but the DC of that concentration save is likely going to be 10. the average amount of damage we would take is 18 you have that that's nine the minimum amount is 10 so we actually have to roll really high for it to be more than 10. and with a proficiency bonus a plus four and the Constitution bonus of plus three we have a plus seven on our save already if we roll a 1 we would get an eight if we roll a 2 we would get a 9 those two results could potentially cause a failure drug concentration but here's where it's a really good thing we chose hobgoblin because we can add plus three so if we add plus three even a one we should be able to make our concentration safe so life transference should be a safe cast as long as we have enough hit points ourselves to get our summon done dead back into fighting shape if they've taken a lot of damage we're going to grab dimension door super useful and it allows you to teleport yourself as well as your minion and without requiring a line of sight after a bit of thought I decide added I would take summon aberration as well now this is not enhanced by our Undead thralls feature but we already know can deliver effective damage even without that the idea here is to have like a backup so if we expect a lot of necrotic resistance and Immunity because we're entering an area where we expect there to be a lot of those kinds of creatures then some an aberration might be a good backup now I almost never take this spell blight but listen it is an option against single enemies especially if the area of effect of a fireball or the fire damage type might be a problem I guess technically we do recover 12 hit points if we kill a creature with this I mean this pick is iffy expect this spell to deliver about 27 damage after we take saving throws into account unless you're fighting a planned Creature if you're fighting a plant creature then this spell is fantastic with fifth level spells we'll grab transmute rock this is in my opinion in the best non-concentration spell at fifth level this provides really good control and non-concentration control options are few and far between you know I'm still going to take wall of force there's going to be times when we're not concentrating already and while a force is probably the single most potent fifth level spell period steel wind strike I think gives us a pretty good damage option the damage here is pretty good and it has the added benefit of not having Friendly Fire the damage type is one of the most reliable in the game as well rari's telepathic bond is a good ritual Again cast this before summon Undead spells like this are a good way to keep limited preparations in check for six level spells we'll grab magic jar this is a fun necromancy spell very powerful and very thematic for this character takes way too long to explain how it works so I will link my video for magic jar up above we're also going to grab math suggestion now I should mention that I said we would likely use our sixth and seventh level slots on summon dead at this point but you know we're not going to be 13th level forever and as high level slots become available for some and Undead those sixth and seventh level slots are eventually going to be opened up so let's run through our damage at 13th level Baseline at this level is up to 26.55 and considering our calculations in our last video we should expect our character to be improving their damage versus the Baseline as we scale up some and Undead I was really pleased to see that that the more we scale someone Undead the better it does even against a scaling Baseline with these calculations I'm assuming we're using our six level spell slot the damage here is a you know a wee bit higher if we cast with our seventh level slot but it's still pretty close so here's our level 13 damage so we have 18.5 base damage on the ghostly forms attacks that's a d8 plus three plus six from the spell level plus five from proficiency bonus that is sixty percent chance to hit times 18.5 is 11.1 and we have three attacks that's an average damage of 33.3 also we should expect to hit with probably two of the three attacks that is two saving throws against the frightened condition for the creature and yeah some creatures at this level are going to have legendary resistance they just can't afford to be expending legendary resistance on a one-turn frightened effect or the legendary resistances are going to be gone really really fast uh I mean if they do great but there is really good chance at this point we're going to frighten any creature that's not immune already then we're going to add another 0.68 from Critical Hits and 8.78 from our Chill Touch and that gives us a total DPR of 42.76 against the Baseline of 26.6 I said the damage would go up and boy it sure did we're at 61 over Baseline now this is the kind of damage number where it doesn't even matter that we have all these other spells and potentially delivering the frightened condition this is actually pretty good damage on its own I mean there are builds that do more damage than this but as far as optimized damage builds go anything over 50 percent I consider to be pretty good so by this level we are really delivering damage now in addition to all those other things that we can do so uh I would say that this build has gotten significantly stronger even for its level at level 13 versus level seven this is just upscaling a third level spell so our next snapshot is going to be at 17th level overall and that's going to be kind of our final damage numbers because that is basically as much damage as we're going to deliver it's also the last time that the Baseline scale so what you see at 17th level is what you're going to see at 20th level now the unfortunate thing about 17th level on this character is we have a ninth level spell slot and we have no 9th level spells yeah we'll probably use it to upcast someone Undead but I'm not going to disingenuously claim that we wouldn't be better off using a ninth level slot for a ninth level spell if we had one and at 18th level when we do get ninth devil spells don't use your ninth level slot depth cast summon Undead at 14th level in Wizard we get the command Undead subclass feature if you can land this it can be a pretty nuts feature so if you do fight like say a lich or really powerful Undead and you do happen to burn through their legendary resistances then I mean get together with the rest of the party get your eloquence bar to lower their save get a mind sliver set up get the Clockwork Soul sorcerer to cancel the advantage you know whatever you can do because having a pet Lich is going to be something everyone in your party can get behind with our next stability score increase we take the alert Feet Again remember it's not just our initiative where we're rolling and immune to surprise is really handy to have added to our spell book is scatter a great non-concentration spell allowing you to reset the chessboard in your favor Soul cage this is a fun spell and it is non-concentration it is super thematic for our character and it doesn't need up our actions you know I had forgotten that etherealness is non-concentration single action casting meaning it's actually not a bad spell for us to cast well we're concentrating on another spell I mean at this level this might actually be a worthy upcast for a 9th level slot because we could turn the whole party including our Undead Spirit ethereal when we needed to now I won't keep teleport prepared but in a campaign this is a huge spell to have I mean if Gandalf had teleported in his Spellbook Lord of the Rings would have been a very short book finger of death heals as 21 hit points if it slays the Target and we'll get a zombie I guess basically if we want single Target damage spells don't take disintegrate because that does no damage if the target makes their saving throw finger of death at least still delivers a somewhat respectable 31 damage to the Creature if they make their saving throw and it does over 60 damage if they don't now Force cage I think is an obvious pick no concentration and lasts an hour now remember we can't really afford our eighth or ninth level spell slots for eight level spells so I'm recommending clone which is a good out of combat spell that can give the whole party if you like some backups if they're slain Demi plane again is a good spell to have even if you aren't adventuring just to keep all your stuff if you kill a lot of creatures with your finger of death you could store all your zombies in here as well but just take it from me if you were to you know actually use this that way and you flood the battlefield with an army of zombies that is something that's going to be cooler in your head than how it actually plays out at the table we'll be taking two more eighth level spells so antipathy sympathy and telepathy are added to our spell list mainly for utility and off time castings I didn't prepare either of them so here are spell slots at 17th level and you can see of course we don't have any ninth level spells we'll use that ninth level slot for Summit Undead we'll also use our eighth level slot for Summit Undead that might get us through the whole day and if that's the case you're going to see we have lots and lots of spell shots left now I've highlighted my third fourth and fifth level slots because remember that when we take a short rest we can recover spell slots eight levels of spell slots in fact but none above fifth level so we're gonna have a lot of spells in that kind of range and if we want to focus on damage then we really should consider maybe not doing a can trip every round uh what's the point of being a 17th level character and not casting leveled spells when you have so many now we're going to want to save some third level slots in case we need some like a counter spell but for the most part we can pretty much throw these spells with abandon in combat so we could still do Chill Touch and I will just tell you right now that we end up with a little over 80 percent over base Baseline which is better than we saw at 13th level and it's good damage but I just don't think it's realistic that we're going to be playing a 17th level character and every round we're gonna throw a can trip but it is difficult when you start looking at area of effect spells or multiple Target spells because when you split the damage that is not the same as single Target damage tactically it is so different that it's not really comparable but what if we just look at single Target damage like let's say with our third level spells we throw a fire about just at that one guy and fourth level spells we throw that blight spell that I normally never take and with fifth level spells maybe we upcast that blight spell well blight does 8d8 and then they save for half let's say they save half the time so eight times four point five which is the average of a d8 and then we multiply by 0.75 to take into account saving throws and if we throw a fourth level slot and we cast blight we should expect about 27 points of damage now if we upcast that it becomes nine dice so then we would have 40.5 again multiply by 0.75 and then we're looking at about 30 points of damage and then Fireball does an average 28 damage times 0.75 and then we have 21 damage so we have 21 if we use a third level slot or 27 on average with a fourth level slot or 30 on average with a fifth level slot divided by three means on average we should be able to get about 26 points of extra damage with our action so for these calculations let's skip the Chill Touch and let's just go ahead and cast a spell that's going to deliver some damage and our action is going to add 26 points so our 17th level dread Necromancer now has a plus six proficiency bonus we will be using an eighth level slot on summon Undead of course sometimes we'll use a ninth level slot which will do a little more damage but not enough more that it's worth a separate calculation and they will be using their action to cast a spell that delivers damage our base spell would probably be the blight spell which of course is super thematic so let's say blight even though sometimes it'll be a fireball so our damage calculations at level 17 so our base damage is at d8 plus three plus eight from the spell level plus six from our proficiency bonus that's 21.5 per attack from the ghostly form 60 chance to hit times 21.5 is 12.9 and there's four attacks so that's a total of 51.6 then we add and I didn't put all the calculations here but it's 0.9 is added for critical hits and then we talked about doing blight or another spell for another 26 points of damage so what that ends up being is a DPR of 78.5 against the Baseline of 35.4 this is 122 percent over the Baseline now I should tell you right now that I have done all kinds of Marshall Builds on this channel that are just delivering damage and if I get over a hundred percent of the Baseline I am super thrilled and I'm more than proud to present that as an optimized damage build here we have a character that has full spell casting and they're doing over 100 of the damage now we have to wait a long time to get there it builds and builds and builds but the end result here is fantastic and considering that we're just upscaling a low level spell that is crazy damage furthermore remember that with four attacks we're probably hitting three times that's three saving throws to avoid the frightened condition and I should also mention that if a creature has magic resistance which a lot of them do it's not going to apply and why is it not going to apply well I'll refer you back to that Jeremy Crawford tweet I showed at the beginning of this video a creature summoned by a spell is not a spell it's just the effect of the spell and its attacks are its own that's why they're not automatically treated as magical attacks the exact same reasoning means that it's fear fact is not a spell effect either that means that magic resistance is not going to give them advantage to avoid being frightened three saving throws on average could be four might be two and that means that creatures are almost automatically going to be frightened by this unless they happen to be immune to being frightened so that on top of the 122 over Baseline this character I am just thrilled with how it's turned out and we could increase our damage even further if we want to dip into those super high level slots but it would just be for like a round like if you want to Nova you could do a finger of death or something that said we should discuss where we go from 17th level so we're going to cast Misty step and shield at will not really kind of thought about what we would get for our final ability score increase I decided on medium armor master I think lucky works here okay but you know medium armor master I thought you know this character is proficient in stealth and this would prevent that disadvantage and it would increase our Armor class by one because we do have that 60 index 30. we're adding a number of spells to our spell book not all of them ninth level spells so we're gonna add augury for a useful ritual cast we're also going to add divination same thing and our ninth level spells we have meteor swarm Prismatic wall true polymorph and wish I could go through these spells individually but it would take a lot of time listen they're ninth level spells they're all really powerful now that we have nine double spells use your ninth level slot to cast one of these spells so that is the dread Necromancer a table-friendly necromancy build and I honestly kind of question like if you look online for recommendations for optimize necromancers are you going to find a single one other than this that's actually table friendly I don't think so I think they pretty much universally lean hard into doing as much with animate dead as they can despite the fact that that's not table friendly and here's a dirty secret from somebody who does that kind of content I make a lot of character Builds on this channel obviously I don't play them all there's no way I could do that because even though I play multiple times a week I just don't play enough d d to play a hundred builds and when you do something like The Necromancer well what you want to do is you look at their features how can I make the best use of these to get the most out of them and then you look at Undead throws and it leads you to anime dead obviously so you make that build you present it online but I don't play that build I look at that build and go I don't really want to play that and you know what all the other places online where you see that build posted I bet you they don't play it either this is a build that I have already set up to play next week in fact by the time you see this video I'll have already played it because this is the kind of character that is fun to play as well as being optimized so when I make a build like this I want to do it and I think if you want this theme The Dread Necromancer this is the kind of build that you should create for your table I think you will find it far more fun than leaning hard into the anime dead so I hope you enjoyed it let me know in the comments down below though if you've had experience with the dread Necromancer that just totally leans into anime dead and how that went at your table otherwise until next time I'm going to sit back relax and have some fun D and D is for everyone thanks everybody and I will talk to you soon foreign [Music]

Channel: Treantmonk's Temple

Views: 100,132

Keywords: dnd, D&D, Dungeons and Dragons, Optimization, Guide, Wizard, Wizards, charop, ultimate, best, most powerful

Id: Pj9WjcsZkrA

Length: 57min 50sec (3470 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 18 2022