Paladin/Necromancer: fun or just useless?

[Rxproject]

All in the title. I would like playing a necromancer but I'm not exactly a caster player (I'm too reckless ^^'), so...can I play an oathbreak paladin subclassed necromancer or it's just really bad/stupid?

[GrimAtrament]

You would have to be a rather physically weak paladin because the stat demand you could go all in on charisma and int but you would have to sacrifice dex/strength or con making you a rather bad frontliner

[Agent Chieftain]

Technically possible. As someone pointed out, there's headgear that increases your int to 17, regardless of the base amount you have. So you could just dump it, and then wear the headband.

You could with a spread of:

Str: 16 (+2)
Dex: 10
Con: 12
Int: 8 (17 with headband)
Wis: 13
Cha: 16 (+1)


A split of Oathbreaker 7/ Necromancy 5 should work. Oathbreaker's Aura of Hate adds damage based on your charisma modifer to yourself and any undead within 10 feet. You'll also have both Animate Dead and Control Undead, so you can have up to 2 undead minions at a time.

If the aura doesn't interest you, you could also go 6/6 for Dead Thralls, which brings the total number of undead you have control of to 3.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

Necromancy is the weakest school of magic in 5e, as it has been grossly nerfed when compared to 3.5e. It is a genuine disgrace and insult what was done to necromancers.

This angers me to read, as Necromancy is probably my second favorite school of magic, after Transmutation.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

Necromancy is the weakest school of magic in 5e, as it has been grossly nerfed when compared to 3.5e. It is a genuine disgrace and insult what was done to necromancers.

This angers me to read, as Necromancy is probably my second favorite school of magic, after Transmutation.

It's my favorite type of magic, but 5e really dumbed / nerfed necromancy and magic in general. Have you read any of the old magic books from earlier editions? They were genuinely amazing where you felt like a real necromancer, not just a skin suit of one.

[Mollerz]

I like these kind of deep pairings.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

It's my favorite type of magic, but 5e really dumbed / nerfed necromancy and magic in general. Have you read any of the old magic books from earlier editions? They were genuinely amazing where you felt like a real necromancer, not just a skin suit of one.

Back when you could inflict permanent ability score damage, and even permanent level drain. As well as there being one shot kill spells like Finger of Death and Wail of the Banshee.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

It's my favorite type of magic, but 5e really dumbed / nerfed necromancy and magic in general. Have you read any of the old magic books from earlier editions? They were genuinely amazing where you felt like a real necromancer, not just a skin suit of one.

Back when you could inflict permanent ability score damage, and even permanent level drain. As well as there being one shot kill spells like Finger of Death and Wail of the Banshee.

I'm more so talking about the cool spells like being able to rip off your hand, turn it into a crawling claw that you could stealthily search or explore places with. As well as ones that allowed you to turn into angelic creatures, demons/fiends, and undead without the need for a 8th level true poly-morph spell. And i forget the name, but the spell that allows you to rip off the enemies hand and make it attack them.

The Book of Vile Darkness and Book of Exulted Deeds had some really cool stuff.

Wither Limb was always a good low level necro spell. Could disable just about any foe that was foolish enough to attack you alone.

[Dondu]

useless... go max pally

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

I'm more so talking about the cool spells like being able to rip off your hand, turn it into a crawling claw that you could stealthily search or explore places with. As well as ones that allowed you to turn into angelic creatures, demons/fiends, and undead without the need for a 8th level true poly-morph spell. And i forget the name, but the spell that allows you to rip off the enemies hand and make it attack them.

The Book of Vile Darkness and Book of Exulted Deeds had some really cool stuff.

Wither Limb was always a good low level necro spell. Could disable just about any foe that was foolish enough to attack you alone.

Have you heard of 'Hateful Defecation'?

It's a spell from Shadow of the Demon Lord, which causes the victim to quite literally ♥♥♥♥ out their own organs, potentially killing them in the process.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

I'm more so talking about the cool spells like being able to rip off your hand, turn it into a crawling claw that you could stealthily search or explore places with. As well as ones that allowed you to turn into angelic creatures, demons/fiends, and undead without the need for a 8th level true poly-morph spell. And i forget the name, but the spell that allows you to rip off the enemies hand and make it attack them.

The Book of Vile Darkness and Book of Exulted Deeds had some really cool stuff.

Wither Limb was always a good low level necro spell. Could disable just about any foe that was foolish enough to attack you alone.

Have you heard of 'Hateful Defecation'?

It's a spell from Shadow of the Demon Lord, which causes the victim to quite literally ♥♥♥♥ out their own organs, potentially killing them in the process.

Not familiar, but it sounds pretty useful and suitably dark

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

Not familiar, but it sounds pretty useful and suitably dark

Oh yes, a very useful spell. But one that is so evil, that even learning how to cast the spell guarantees your character will be spending time in Hell after they die.

[Nokturnal]

Could go sorcerer instead of wizard and just use necromancy spells with some metamagic to buff em. Both are charisma based casters.

Granted Paladin already is pretty amazing without dual classing and Sorcerer is pretty OP on it's own as well, both will be hampered by the dual class. Necromancy spells don't really mesh well with Paladin spells either as they're usually debuffs where the Paladins job is mainly melee attacks and buffs. Other classes basically only dual class into Paladin solely for the Divine Smite lol. (Which both Sorc and Wizard can't really utilize as they're just tossing spells most of the time)

[Nazzarus]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Wahr Eogard:

Play what you want to play. That's all there is to it. Sounds pretty fun to me.

People need to stop encouraging this kind of mentality.

Level cap is 12, not 20, meaning it's very easy to screw up your build and cripple your character because you decided to try some gimmick.

That being said, the Warped Crown of Intellect boosts your INT to 17 as long as you're wearing it. So a Charisma / Intelligence casting hybrid is possible.

That’s why we have the possibility to reset our class/build at any given point in time.

[GrandMajora]

Originally posted by Nazzarus:

That’s why we have the possibility to reset our class/build at any given point in time.

We did not always have that. It came much, much later in development.

Even then it still does nothing to disprove my point. Even if you respec, you still don't have enough levels to "play whatever you want." - thus I reiterate that people need to stop encouraging that kind of mentality.

[Nivathe]

Originally posted by GrandMajora:

Originally posted by Nazzarus:

That’s why we have the possibility to reset our class/build at any given point in time.

We did not always have that. It came much, much later in development.

Even then it still does nothing to disprove my point. Even if you respec, you still don't have enough levels to "play whatever you want." - thus I reiterate that people need to stop encouraging that kind of mentality.

Unless you believe you can only play the game on Tactician, full minmaxing everything, I don't think you understand that playing the way you want is actually completely fine for the most part unless you're completely idiotic with it, especially since the game also just gives you so many ways to make a lot of builds that aren't ordinarily possible.