The Dead Deserve Better: Creating Necromancer’s Grimoire

TL;DR: Necromancer’s Grimoire is a 100+ spell supplement for 5e that gives necromancers what they’ve long been missing: undead summoning, control, healing, and manipulation starting from level 1. No more waiting until level 5 to animate a corpse. No more pretending necromancers are just another flavor of damage dealer. This is a complete toolkit for building any kind of necromantic caster—from battlefield general to graveyard medic.

I created Necromancer’s Grimoire because I was frustrated by how little 5e offers when it comes to controlling, manipulating, and summoning the undead—especially at lower levels. For a game filled with necromancers, liches, undead armies, and skeleton-filled dungeons, it’s surprising how shallow the player options are. You get Animate Dead at 5th level, Create Undead way later, and not a lot else. There’s little support for playing a necromancer who actually does necromantic things beyond damage and debuffs.

This book tries to fix that. I wanted to give players options for undead summoning and manipulation from level 1 and expand those mechanics thoughtfully across all tiers of play—without unbalancing the game. Nothing in the Grimoire overshadows Animate Dead or Create Undead. Instead, it builds the path toward them, and blazes a trail after.

And not every necromancer needs to be an evil overlord. controlling undead This grimoire supports a broader vision:

• You can play a grave-healer who draws strength from their minions to sustain the living (Gloom Heal, Sacrificial Healing, Mortis Link), or uses spells like Cure Undead, Grave Mending, and Necrotic Bulwark to tend to their undead forces without divine aid.
• You can play a forensic caster—an investigator of death, working through insight rather than fear—with spells like Mortician’s Touch, Eyes of the Departed, Doppelganger Dominance, and Deathseer.
• You can play a blight-slinger, hurling necrotic damage from afar without ever raising a corpse. Plenty of spells in this book offer ranged control, poison, and pure harm (Necro Surge, Withering Bolt, Final Judgment, Last Day)—no minions required.

There’s also a dedicated Sorcerer Necromancer subclass included, designed to support necromantic casting despite the Sorcerer's limited spell selection. It grants ten domain spells (two each for spell levels 1-5), expanded cantrip access (Mortician’s Touch, Necrotic Bloom), and thematic class features like Necrotic Enhancement, Malicious Morte, and Master of Death. It’s built to feel potent and flavorful from level 1, whether you’re animating a skeleton or disintegrating a celestial.

So what’s inside?

Over 100 spells, from cantrips to 9th-level, all tied to the necromantic theme. Most are brand new. A few are reimagined legacy spells designed to give necromancers actual tools for their role.

☠️ Healing & Sapping the Dead

These spells interact with undead under your control—bolstering them, draining them for your benefit, or using nearby corpses in flavorful, useful ways.

• Cure Undead and Grave Mending offer low-level undead healing.

• Gloom Heal and Sacrificial Healing let you draw health from minions.

• Armor of Flesh and Exoskeleton convert zombies and skeletons into temporary armor.

• Mortis Link creates a damage-sharing tether between the living and undead.

• Harvest of the Fallen turns corpses into rations ("Soylent Green is..."), Necrotic Elixir into potions, and Death’s Ichor into poison.

💀 Ranged Attack Spells

For the necromancer who doesn’t just want to sit in the back and cast Toll the Dead every round:

• Cantrips like Boil Bomb, Bone Shard Volley, and Venomous Curse offer flavorful alternatives.

• Corpse Explosion weaponizes the battlefield.

• Necro Surge, Pandemonic Bloom, and Beckon the Reaper punish clusters of enemies.

• Gas Chamber and Bubbles of Wailing create persistent hazards.

• Umbra Bomb is as devastating as it sounds—and it raises Shadows when it hits.

🧟 Undead Summoning & Control

This is the heart of the Grimoire. Unlike base 5e, you can start animating undead early—without outshining Animate Dead.

• Raise Skeleton and Raise Zombie show up at 1st and 2nd level.

• Raise Ghoul, Ghast, Wight, and Mummy let you scale into elite undead.

• Reanimate Animal brings beasts back with a necrotic twist.

• Raise Lesser Undead Horde and Army of the Damned give you mass minion options.

• Veylin’s Jars are a modular mechanic: store shadows for later release or convert them into Specters.

• Create Vampire, Summon Wraith, and Shadow Legion give you terrifying elite options in late game.

• Eternal Servitude lets you keep your best undead permanently.

🧪 Utility & Weirdness

Not every spell in this book is about fighting. Some are about flavor, exploration, or horrifying utility.

• Eyes of the Departed lets you interrogate a corpse’s final moments.

• Doppelganger Dominance locks down your foe and lets you wear their face.

• Life Tether and Astral Severance offer high-level battlefield control.

• Dark Renewal trades debuffs for sorcery points.

• Deathseer reveals necromantic truths and grants True Seeing.

🕳️ Veylin’s Jar Spells & Umbra Magic

These are a side-path in the Grimoire: creepy, shadowy, and modular.

• Veylin’s Jar of Shadows captures 3 Shadows for later use.

• Veylin’s Jar of Specters turns them into nastier spirits.

• Umbra Bomb, Umbra Titan, and Umbra Void form a destructive shadow-themed arc.

Everything in this book was balanced against SRD spells using a matrix I’ve been refining for years. I relied on GPT to speed up formatting, editing, and cross-checking—just like a human assistant. The spell concepts, mechanics, and writing are all mine.

PDF only for now (I’m still married to my two-column layout), but I’ll do EPUB if there’s enough interest.

Let me know if you use it in your game. The dead don’t walk without a little help.