Arcane Tradition: Reanimation

Students of this arcane tradition are experts in anatomy, alchemy, and chirurgery, approaching their work with a more scholarly and scientific approach than most wizards employ. Most reanimators who study this on their own are soon ousted by any academic institution or arcane order once they begin their macabre projects in this area. However, such a lack of vision on the part of their alleged peers is seldom enough to dissuade a reanimator. They know that one day their discoveries could grant the option of eternal life to all mortal beings.

As a member of the Night's Blessing mage school, you research how to reawaken dead flesh, not by animating it with necrotic energies, but by reinfusing the fallen with energies like those of the living. These necromancers tend to become death's allies or servants, but seeking to conquer death forever with rigorous experimentation.

***GM Note: This tradition is implicitly tied to the members of the Night's Blessing mage school; any member of this tradition must either be a current member of the school, or have some backstory that describes why they are no longer so.

Student of the Body

2nd-level Reanimation feature

When you choose this arcane tradition, you have made an academic study of the energies that sustain living creatures around you. You learn the spare the dying cantrip, and you add the false life and find familiar spells to your spellbook. When you cast find familiar, your familiar's creature type changes to construct, instead of one of the normal types for that spell.

You also gain proficiency with alchemist's supplies and the Medicine skill if you don't already have it. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make related to beasts, constructs, humanoids, or undead that uses this proficiency.

Alchemical Vitalism

2nd-level Reanimation feature

You can create a quick elixir that accelerates a body's healing powers. In order to use this benefit, you must have alchemist's supplies with you, and you must have at least one vial's worth of water. By spending 10 minutes performing an alchemical ritual, you can expend a spell slot to change one or two vials of water into the same number of curative admixtures.

Unlike a potion, the admixture does not need to be imbibed, merely inhaled or applied to the body, using either an action or a bonus action. When a curative admixture is used, the creature who uses it can heal either itself or another creature within 5 feet of it, for a number of hit points equal to twice the level of the spell slot used to create the admixture. When a creature is healed in this way, as a reaction, it can also spend one of its own Hit Dice to regain additional hit points. Only two curative admixtures created using this feature can retain their effectiveness at any one time. If a third admixture is created, the oldest of the existing, active admixtures is immediately transformed back into water.

Any curative admixture you create loses its curative powers 8 hours after being created.

Reanimated Servant

6th-level Reanimation feature

Your research and mastery of medical lore allows you to craft a servant from dead tissue. The servant is a construct, much like a flesh golem, that obeys your commands without hesitation and functions in combat to protect you. Though magic fuels its creation, the servant itself is not magical. You are assumed to have been working on the servant for quite some time, finally finishing it during a long rest after you reach 6th level.

Select a humanoid or beast of Small, Medium, or Large size, with a challenge rating of 2 or less (referred to below as the base creature). The reanimated servant uses the base creature's game statistics, but it can assume an appearance of your choosing, as long as its form is appropriate for its statistics. It has the following modifications:

  • The creature's type changes to construct.
  • Its hit point maximum equals either the base creature's original hit points or its Constitution modifier + your Intelligence modifier + five times your wizard level, whichever is higher.
  • It is immune to lightning and poison damage, and to the charmed condition.
  • It understands the languages you can speak when you create it, but it cannot speak.
  • It cannot cast spells.
  • If you are the target of a melee attack and the servant is within 5 feet of the attacker, you can use your reaction to command the servant to respond, using its own reaction to make a melee attack against the attacker.
  • It adds your proficiency bonus to all its attack rolls, Charisma (Intimidation) checks, Strength and Constitution checks, and Strength and Constitution saving throws.
  • Its carrying capacity (including maximum load and maximum lift) is doubled.
  • It has disadvantage on Charisma (Persuasion) and Charisma (Deception) checks against humanoids and beasts.
  • If it takes fire damage, it has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the end of its next turn.
  • Its weapon attacks are magical for the purposes of overcoming damage immunities and resistances.

In combat, the reanimated servant shares your initiative count, but it takes its turn immediately after yours. It can move and use its reaction on its own, but unless commanded otherwise by you, the only action it can take on its turn is the Dodge action. If you use your bonus action to command it, your reanimated servant can take one of the following actions: Dash, Disengage, Help, Hide, Search, or Use an Object.

If the servant is killed, you can return it to life by magical means, such as with the revivify spell. In addition, over the course of a long rest, you can repair a slain servant if you have access to its body and your alchemist's supplies, and you expend a spell slot of 1st level or higher. If you do so, at the end of the long rest, the reanimated servant returns to life with all its hit points restored.

At the end of a long rest, you can create a new reanimated servant if you have your alchemist's supplies with you. You can only have one reanimated servant at any given time using this feature. If you already have a reanimated servant and create a new one, the original reanimated servant is immediately destroyed.

Additionally, when you gain this feature, you add the animate dead and revivify spells to your spellbook.

Energies of Life

10th-level Reanimation feature

Performing the ritual for your Alchemical Vitalism feature can change up to three vials of water into curative admixtures, and you can have up to three curative admixtures active at once instead of two. Additionally, a creature that regains hit points by using one of your curative admixtures also gains temporary hit points equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of 1).

While a creature still has temporary hit points gained from this feature, it gains a bonus to melee weapon damage rolls equal to the number of temporary hit points it has remaining.

Additionally, when you gain this feature, you add the modify memory and reincarnate spells to your spellbook.

Improved Servant

14th-level Reanimation feature

As a ritual, you can spend 8 hours and expend one spell slot of 6th level or higher to transform your reanimated servant into a powerful construct akin to a flesh golem. The reanimated servant is transformed in the following ways:

  • Its Strength score becomes 19 if it was lower.
  • Its Constitution score becomes 18 if it was lower.
  • It becomes immune to any spell or effect that would alter its form.
  • It gains advantage on all saving throws against spells and other magical effects.
  • It becomes immune to the following conditions; charmed, exhaustion, frightened, paralyzed, petrified, and poisoned.
  • It becomes immune to lightning and poison damage, and to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks that aren't adamantine.
  • Whenever it is subjected to lightning damage, but takes no damage due to its immunity, it can use its reaction to regain a number of temporary hit points equal to half of the lightning damage dealt.