Reanimator

Through bubbling test tubes and sparking electrodes, you have discovered the true heart of necromancy: mad science. You’ve experimented in far-reaching disciplines of surgery, alchemy, and physics, using your animated minions as gruesome test subjects and walking surgical dummies. Most crucially, you have discovered that lightning can imbue almost anything with a semblance of life, from the smallest severed muscle to the most towering and soulless golems.

Level 3: Skilled Surgeon

You gain proficiency in the Medicine skill, if you did not already have it. You can use your Intelligence, instead of Wisdom, for Wisdom (Medicine) checks.

Level 3: Mad Science

You can spend 10 minutes installing a monstrous graft on one of your thralls that doesn’t have the Incorporeal Movement trait. Additionally, your thralls don’t lose hit points or Hit Dice from installing or removing grafts, and it takes them no time to recover after the attachment of a new graft. See Appendix C for monstrous grafts.

Level 3: Charnel Voltage

You supplement your necromantic energies with arcing bolts of electricity. You can choose to deal lightning damage with your Charnel Touch. When you expend 5 or more points when making a Charnel Touch attack and deal lightning damage, you can cause the energy to arc to a second creature within 5 feet of the target. The creature must make a Dexterity saving throw against your spell save DC, taking lightning damage equal to half the number of Charnel Touch points expended on a failed save.

Level 6: Lazarus Bolt

As an action, you can drive a bolt into the torso of a creature within 5 feet of you that has died within the last minute and shock it back to life. That creature returns to life with 1 hit point. This feature can’t return a creature to life if it lacks a heart, died of old age, or is missing vital organs. Once this creature returns to life, you can restore hit points to it using your Charnel Touch for 1 minute, as if the creature were one of your thralls.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Level 10: Arcane Stitching

You’ve learned how to inscribe magical effects on your thralls using gruesome arcane stitches. You can expend 10 points from your Charnel Touch pool to apply an arcane stitch to one of your thralls in a process requiring 1 minute of work with a needle and thread. The arcane stitch lasts until your thrall uses it, your thrall is killed, or you use this feature again. You can apply any of the following arcane stitches:

Augmented Incision. The thrall gains advantage on attack rolls and ability checks until the end of its turn (no action required).

Bulwark Backstitch. The thrall casts shield when an attack would hit it.

Fleet Threads. The thrall’s speed is tripled until the end of its turn (no action required).

Searing Suture. On a hit, the thrall deals an extra 3d6 lightning or necrotic damage (your choice).

Level 20: Lichdom - Patchwork Golem

You have reached the pinnacle of necromancy and transformed yourself into a lich. Through abominable works of alchemy and surgery, you have constructed yourself an artificial body to act as the vessel for your soul.

Golem Form. Your Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution scores become 20 if they weren’t already higher, and you have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage from nonmagical attacks that aren’t adamantine. Additionally, you don’t lose hit points or Hit Dice from installing or removing grafts, and it takes you no time to recover after the attachment of a new graft.

Magic Resistance. You have advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.