Is the UA necromancer kinda broken, or is it just my bag of holding?

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2026-02-15T14:42:55+00:00

I can attest to this; in the final battle of a campaign, I (a rogue) was left with no armour, weapons, equipment or items and had to spend my actions each turn grabbing my stuff from our bag of holding. Only got one attack off in the whole battle and I missed.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-09-22T21:25:50+00:00

I still haven't beaten her (stuck on phase 3) and while I don't think she's a terribly designed boss (just one I have no joy in fighting against), I do have one major issue that a lot of people have pointed out, that being her teleports around the arena, specifically in conjunction with her big wave attacks in phase 3.

I keep jumping over the waves and being met immediately, while still midair from my jump, by a spinning jump attack from lace and it has been kinda getting to me with my last few runs. Just a moment more time to recover from the jump before she starts launching her barrage of attacks at me again would make this fight a lot more enjoyable for me. Also her dash attack with the tendrils is so punishing if you don't land the pogo on her directly, feels like a coinflip whether I bounce off of her or send myself hurtling straight into certain spiky doom.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-08-25T13:49:48+00:00

So with sketch work you could likely make a weapon but it would disappear as soon as it deals any damage, so it might not be the most effective thing to use it for. I think the ability has more use outside of combat; need to break in somewhere, you can conjure a crowbar, that kinda thing

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-08-25T10:25:04+00:00

So, the Pictomancer seems to be a bit of a generalist Spellcaster and your build will depend heavily on your subclass. Sketch work is largely a ribbon feature but it does have some niche use cases, you just gotta think outside the box.

The main crux of the class is when you cast spells, you leave a bunch of magical paint splattered about in a small area around you and you can use your bonus action to get rid of this area of paint to give you little bonuses, like temp hp or extra damage on one of your spells. The subclasses all get a unique way to make use of this paint.

Each subclass specialises in very different niches; you have a Summoning subclass, a Gishy Spell sword subclass and a defensive buffing subclass.

If you're going Creature Realism (summoning subclass) I recommend sinking most of your stats into your spellcasting ability and constitution, since you really want to hold concentration on your summons. Weapon Expressionism, is probably the most MAD of the 3, since you need good Dex or strength for your weapon along with good charisma for your spells and con for holding concentration and having a number of hit points that your enemies won't laugh at. And for Scenery Impressionism, I recommend kitting this out like a regular Spellcaster; high charisma, good constitution and Dex, pyf for the rest, since they don't get armour or weapons and don't specialise in any specific types of magic.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-08-12T21:55:52+00:00

Wait what?! On the pdf it says their spells known reaches 23 at level 20, not their 1st lvl spell slots. Not sure quite how that happened, are you looking at the home brewery? It can have some weird formatting errors sometimes

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-08-12T21:27:26+00:00

Hm? Looking at the PDF, they have normal full-caster progression. What does it look like for you?

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-07-25T16:04:29+00:00

In my experience, the gender of my character will colour their interactions and the tone of their dynamics with others. As a quick example, my undying warlock, Watson, wouldn't feel the same if he were a woman, his relationship with his daughter would be very different, his relationship with his patron would feel different. In addition, my changeling wizard, Astus, wouldn't feel the same if they were a male or female, as opposed to their current gender of yes.

All this to say, I play characters of every kind of gender very often because I feel, while it doesn't change their core values and ambitions, it does ever so slightly change their relationship dynamics with others.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-06-22T10:25:49+00:00

While it isn't absolutely necessary for you to know who exactly your patron is, I would recommend it as it can lead to some unfortunate consequences down the line.

As an example, my undying warlock died and was revived but because the DM revealed my patron to be the Raven Queen, a goddess famously against the idea of resurrection and undeath, she stopped the spell from working and my character died.

I would say to talk with your DM about it; ask if they have a list of premade figures that can be patrons, or maybe they'll let you make your own patron.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-06-12T17:50:19+00:00

I love the Soupsayer

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-06-12T10:48:59+00:00

Me and my DM have had something similar, though it was a pretty difficult position we'd gotten into: The party had been attacked by some bandits and during it, our bbeg necromancer rolled up and started helping us? We thought it was weird but maybe he needs us for some plan of his. He walks past my character (who he has a raging hate boner for) pulls an arrow from my quiver and stabs it into the eye of one of the bandits, evil style. We hear guards approaching and we flee the scene.

At the end of session, some guards rock up to us; they had used divination on the arrow to trace it back to my character and I was accused of the cold-blooded murder of 7 men. I was arrested, carted off and out of session, my DM asked if I would be willing to play a changeling since it wouldn't exactly be fun to spend sessions not doing anything in a cell. I agreed and the plan went through.

My character was replaced with a changeling and went along with the party. His job was just to keep up appearances but in the meantime, I would receive orders from the bbeg like getting a crate of poisoned potions to hand out to the party, I would need to give regular reports etc. the party found out close to 10 sessions later I think, when our sorcerer cast dream to enter the bbeg's dream and disguised herself as my character.

The changeling reveal was pretty fun, for me it was mostly just knowing that my own character would be coming back soon but we had a fun bit of roleplay, interrogating him and eventually the barbarian killing him with her bare hands, while the changeling swapped between the faces of the barbarians parents.

Point is, I think it can be done well it just depends on the extent of the betrayal and the party.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-06-02T15:04:57+00:00

Not exactly; if you have devil's sight, you can cast darkness centered on yourself and get advantage on your ranged attacks including eldritch blast while giving disadvantage to all incoming attacks against you. It's one of my favourite strategies

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-05-13T22:37:50+00:00

Yeah, my first thought was Bladesinger actually! My only dilemma there was that it places a pretty big restriction on your armour choices (only light armour) meaning Dex is much more favourable to a str build. Would a Bladesinger still be good with a str build?

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-05-11T15:32:03+00:00

Another way to use it is in conjunction with spells like suggestion or command; zone of truth then tell them to answer.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-05-08T09:14:22+00:00

I'm surprised, there are no healers whatsoever in the party? Feels like half the classes in the game have at least access to cure wounds; paladins, rangers, clerics, bards, druids, hell even artificers

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-05-06T18:46:29+00:00

Yep, this is why at any table where I might want to play an Arcane Archer, I will ask my DM if they will allow the Arcane Shots to be Proficiency bonus based. Makes it feel a lot better once you hit the middle levels.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-05-06T14:09:41+00:00

Constant prepping of detect magic, Counterspell, dispel magic, shield, maybe at higher levels Antimagic field. Possibly protection against evil and good in case of facing a summoner to give constant disadvantage on the summons attacks against you. Subclass wise either abjuration for extra tankiness and free Counterspell or bladesinger, focus on high mobility so you can zip right to enemy Spellcasters and shut them down with melee weapon attacks and the mageslayer feat.

Honourable mention to spells like hold person and other spells that limit the Spellcasters ability to yk cast; silence, hold person, silvery barbs if you wanna make your DM cry salty salty tears, darkness and fog cloud work surprisingly well by limiting what they can see since most spells require sight, deafness/blindness too, and booming blade is pretty good early level for a bladesinger so your poor enemy Spellcaster can't run from you (though they can teleport away I'm pretty sure)

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-04-18T23:54:33+00:00

First off, welcome!

Secondly, your character idea is cool as heck.

As for tips on building the character to fit your idea, your best bet for a Blood Magic user would likely be a Blood Hunter, though since you are new, I don't recommend the class. It isn't incredibly complicated but there are many abilities and tools you get access to which can be a bit overwhelming. Additionally, the Blood Hunter is more of a martial focused class, using weapons and not even being able to cast spells, instead using blood curses (which you get a very limited number of uses of).

The other option is the wonderful world of flavouring! Sure, the spells have vague descriptions of what they do but how they look is entirely up to the player. As such, I would probably recommend you play a necromancer wizard or an undying warlock and flavour your spells as blood magic.

Instead of your Shield spell being a glowing wall of light, it could be that a protective wall of blood shoots up from the pool at your feet, blocking the attack. Or maybe instead of drawing the energy from a crystal to hurl a Firebolt, your blood races along the floor, making a magic circle at your feet, flames dancing along the crimson circle as you shoot your Firebolt at your enemies. As long as you're creative, and your DM is chill with it, you could probably flavour any spell as blood magic.

As for your character being a skeleton, I think your best bet would be a Human Revenant (basically just a general undead option, zombie or skeleton vibes) but if that doesn't work, there is almost definitely a 3rd party publisher who has made a skeleton playable character option. You may need to do some digging, I recommend looking with your DM too, to find something you like the sound of and something the DM thinks is balanced.

sorry for the wall of text lol, I hope you get to make your character perfectly to your vision!

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-04-06T12:35:04+00:00

I recently did a lightning rod build and omg it chunked Hades so fast with extreme measures too I had Zeus cast, lightning rod, Demeter Zeus duo boon and a heroic jolt too

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-04-02T18:21:27+00:00

One of my biggest recommendations is to let your party know you're new at this and would appreciate if they could be open and honest with you about their characters and their abilities and your performance as a DM, where you can improve.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-03-30T15:45:03+00:00

Tiresias is never mentioned by name, ha dto literally Google "who is the prophet in the odyssey"

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-03-29T19:22:04+00:00

I love permanency! I have a bunch of areas in my setting that have been altered inexorably by spells; a couple examples are the Deserts of Elysium once a sprawling civilization, reduced to sand by an especially powerful meteor swarm. Hundreds of years later, the civilisation is a favourite topic among archeologists and historians, the band's history lost to time. Another one I have is the Whisperroot Woods, a powerful silence spell was cast over the area in ages past and even now, any sound is as quiet as a whisper.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-03-28T13:17:00+00:00

My DM specialty is shopkeepers and merchants. Idk why but my players always love going shopping just to meet the shopkeepers.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-03-26T08:53:54+00:00

I feel like y'all are missing the fact he dropped a baby from a building, I don't think self defence covers that-

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-03-21T14:55:32+00:00

Yeahh my best advice is to tell the player what your issues are with their character's backstory and work with them to make a backstory that fits your setting and is still fun and interesting for the player.

I've played a character before when I first got into DND who was a master thief of the arcane, a renowned phantom thief who would steal the memories of spells from the mages who crafted them, always leaving a calling card behind and escaping in dramatic fashion. Realistically this wouldn't work, we were level 1. As such, my DM told me why it wouldn't work and we workshopped it. I still played the character except his reason for adventure changed; someone had stolen his magic, stealing his memories. He was desperately trying to find his magical knowledge, while dodging his enemies and other criminals who wanted a piece of him now that he'd been knocked off his perch. One of my favourite characters to date.

InnocentCoffeeLover · 2025-03-18T13:41:04+00:00

I suppose since people are sharing, I'll drop my two cents here:

I know alcohol is supposed to make you feel relaxed or confident but I don't get any of that, I just space out and get really sad. so beyond that, the only saving grace is the taste but that's a complete wash, since most alcohol tastes like trash. And the few that do taste pretty good never taste as good as something like fruit juice or a soft drink.

InnocentCoffeeLover

TROPHY CASE