Bat wings, grave dust and a very poor attitude. The necromancer curses what he cannot kill, wears the shape of a wraith, and travels with a retinue that used to be other people.
Necromancy is magic with a different shape. Instead of throwing damage, you take things away: Corpse Skin strips a monster's resistances, Strangle and Pain Spike tick it down from the inside, Blood Oath makes it hurt itself every time it hits you, and Mind Rot makes its spells cost double.
Then there are the forms, which are the real draw. Wraith Form drains mana out of whatever you hit and lets you drift through obstacles. Lich Form trades your health regeneration for enormous mana. Vampiric Embrace heals you from the damage you deal. Horrific Beast turns you into something that regenerates and claws. You are not casting spells at this point so much as becoming the problem.
Spirit Speak is the partner skill: it makes your necromancy stronger and lets you heal yourself from nearby corpses. And there is a real cost — necromancy tanks your karma, which is permanent, visible, and makes you incompatible with the Chivalry prayers a paladin lives on. Choose a lane.
You get 700 skill points in total, which is seven skills at 100 (Grandmaster). Here is a sheet that works, and why each line is on it. You can load this exact spread on the hero sheet in the magazine and slide the numbers around.
| Skill | Points | Why it's here |
|---|---|---|
| Necromancy | 100 | Curses, summons and the forms. The core. |
| Spirit Speak | 100 | Boosts your necromancy and heals you off corpses. Mandatory, not optional. |
| Magery | 100 | For Recall, Gate and the utility spells necromancy simply doesn't have. |
| Evaluating Intelligence | 100 | Spell damage, and it works on the necro spells that deal it. |
| Meditation | 100 | Mana regeneration. Still no metal armour. |
| Resisting Spells | 100 | You are fragile and you spend fights standing still. Protect yourself. |
| Wrestling | 100 | Melee defence, and it's what Wraith Form's mana drain triggers off when you punch things. |
| Total | 700 | of 700 |
Because necromancy has no travel spells and no mass heal. Magery fills both holes. The two schools share mana and stack happily — most good necromancers are really hybrid casters.
Casting these spells drives your karma deeply negative. That is fine on its own, but it makes Chivalry unreliable and some NPCs hostile. Do not try to build a paladin-necromancer; it is the classic beginner trap.
Skills go up by using them, and they go up fastest on a task that is just barely hard for you. Climb the rungs in order — each one stops paying off, and that's your cue to move up.
NPC trainers cover Magery, Eval Int, Meditation and Spirit Speak to 30. Necromancy itself you earn. Start with the cheapest curses — Curse Weapon and Evil Omen — cast over and over on anything at all.
Spirit Speak trains by using it, and it trains best with corpses around. Stand in a graveyard, kill the skeletons, and use the skill repeatedly on what's left. Two skills climbing in one place.
Now you get help. Raise the things you kill and let them fight for you. A necromancer with a pack of risen corpses in front of him is suddenly durable, which solves the biggest problem with the build.
Pick a form and use it constantly — Wraith Form for mana sustain, Vampiric Embrace for survivability. Being in a form trains Necromancy passively while you do everything else. Combine with Corpse Skin plus Strangle on real targets.
Deceit and the Fire dungeon. Curses, a risen retinue and a wraith's mana drain make these places far kinder to a necromancer than their reputation suggests.
Buy this before you do anything else. Total damage to your purse is small, and every item on the list earns itself back in an hour.
| What | Where | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| A necromancer spellbook | Necromancer NPCs, Umbra | The book. Everything starts here. |
| Necromancy reagents, 300+ each | Umbra, or any necromancer vendor | Bat Wing, Daemon Blood, Grave Dust, Nox Crystal, Pig Iron. Separate from the normal mage reagents — you need both sets. |
| A standard mage spellbook and reagents | Mage shop | For the Magery half: Recall, Gate, heals, cures. |
| Dark robes, no metal | Tailor | Meditation still refuses to work in armour, and you have a reputation to maintain. |
| A runebook | Mage shop or tinker | Umbra, a graveyard, the bank, home. You'll be shuttling between all four. |
| Bandages, surprisingly | Tailor | Spirit Speak only heals you where there are corpses. Sometimes there aren't. |
The right room makes training three times faster. These are the spots worth a rune.
The necromancer city. Book, reagents, trainers. Your home town, and it suits you.
Skeletons to kill and corpses to Spirit Speak over. The ideal 30-to-50 training ground.
Wall-to-wall undead. Ironically dangerous for a necromancer — undead resist a lot of what you do — but the loot is excellent and Animate Dead has endless raw material.
Where you grind the cheap curses without an audience. Nobody needs to watch this part.
New necromancers treat it as optional and then wonder why their curses are weak and they can't heal. It amplifies necromancy and it heals you from corpses. Train it alongside Necromancy from day one, never after.
Forms train Necromancy passively and transform how you play. Wraith Form for mana, Vampiric Embrace for staying alive. Drifting around in human shape is leaving the best part unused.
It strips the target's resistance to fire and poison, which is most of your damage. Casting Strangle before Corpse Skin is doing the fight in the wrong order.
Negative karma is the cost of doing business. Accept it going in, and don't plan on Chivalry prayers ever working properly for this character.
Britannia runs on favours. These are the people you want in your party and on your friends list.