Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana and Necrotic Undead hunting.

[Leatherhead]

As you may be aware of, WotC is pushing out UA articles weekly at the moment. One of the more interesting themes that keeps coming up are undead hunting subclasses. The glaring issue these subclasses have, is that they use necrotic damage to hunt undead.

For the rundown of SRD undead creatures:
Ghast: Resistant to necrotic, immune to Poison.
Ghost: Resistances to acid, fire, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks. Immune to cold, necrotic, poison
Ghoul: Immune to poison
Lich: Resistances to cold, lightning, necrotic. Immune to poison; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Mummy: Vulnerable to fire. Resistances bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks. Immune to necrotic, poison
Mummy Lord: Vulnerable to fire. Immune to necrotic, poison; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks
Shadow: Vulnerable to radiant. Resistances acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks. Immune to necrotic, poison.
Skeletons: Vulnerable to bludgeoning. Immune to poison.
Specter: Resistances acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks. Immune to necrotic, poison.
Vampire: Resistances necrotic; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks. Special does not regenerate when hit by radiant.
Vampire Spawn: Resistances necrotic; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks Special does not regenerate when hit by radiant.
Wight: Resistances necrotic; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks that aren't silvered. Immune to poison.
Will o wisp: Resistances acid, cold, fire, necrotic, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks. Immune to lightning, poison.
Wraith: Resistances acid, cold, fire, lightning, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical attacks that aren't silvered. Immune to necrotic, poison.
Zombies: Immune to poison. Special radiant bypasses undead fortitude.

As we can gather from this, poison (13/15 immune!) is the absolute worst damage type to try to take on undead with. Followed by necrotic 12/15 and non-magic weapons (11/15). While the best ones are Radiant (for the few weaknesses) and Force (for no resistances at all). Both of which make sense, because Radiant is basically divine damage and Force is basically Ki/animus/life force damage.

In Volo's Guide to monsters we get 4 new undead, and a template. Necrotic damage is bad to use against half of them.

At this point, I suppose you could call this a rant more than anything. But hopefully putting this in an easily accessed list form will give some face time to the people who should see it.

 

[CapnZapp]

I didn't need your list for me to immediately think "necrotic damage? So you're an eevil undeadish hunter of the living, then?"

But thank you.

We can all agree that if you give a character necrotic attacks, undead is not what he'll be hunting.

So what is up with the name and the fluff on one hand, and the utterly incompatible damage on the other?

We must be missing something, because surely "necrotic is useless to hunters of the undead" can't be news to the UA team.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Thinks about the examples that you're actually using for a moment: A cleric of a Death deity and a Druid that connects with the balance of life and death, rather than just the life of the wild. Both of the 'power sources' of these concepts connect well with necrotic damage, and both already have good access to radiant, fire and potentially force effects through their base class abilities.

They may offend min/maxer sensibilities, but what they do fits quite well with what they actually are. Neither of them has "Undead Hunter" as you put it as their sole theme. It also helps limit excessive specialisation, where they would become too effective against a single type of creature, and not effective enough against the others.

I'm sure that if you wanted to make a character optimised towards just killing undead, you might not pick either of the options in question. That's not what they are there for.

 

[Aldarc]

Thinks about the examples that you're actually using for a moment: A cleric of a Death deity and a Druid that connects with the balance of life and death, rather than just the life of the wild. Both of the 'power sources' of these concepts connect well with necrotic damage, and both already have good access to radiant, fire and potentially force effects through their base class abilities.

They may offend min/maxer sensibilities, but what they do fits quite well with what they actually are. Neither of them has "Undead Hunter" as you put it as their sole theme. It also helps limit excessive specialisation, where they would become too effective against a single type of creature, and not effective enough against the others.

I'm sure that if you wanted to make a character optimised towards just killing undead, you might not pick either of the options in question. That's not what they are there for.

UA Grave Cleric flavor text:

Followers of these deities seek to put restless spirits to rest, destroy the undead wherever they find them, and ease the suffering of dying creatures.

Their Divine Strike deals necrotic damage.

UA Twilight Druid flavor text:

These druids seek out lands that have been tainted by undeath. Such places are grim and foreboding. Once vibrant forests become gloomy, haunted places devoid of animals and filled with plants dying a slow, lingering death. The Circle of Twilight goes to such places to banish undeath and restore life.

But none of their abilities actually focus on banishing undeath.

I would disagree and say that there is a disparity between the flavor text and the mechanics of these two subclasses.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

UA Grave Cleric flavor text:
Their Divine Strike deals necrotic damage.

UA Twilight Druid flavor text:
But none of their abilities actually focus on banishing undeath.

I would disagree and say that there is a disparity between the flavor text and the mechanics of these two subclasses.

Are you sure that you've actually stated the entire flavour text, rather than just cherrypicked? I'm sure there was more detail about the Grave domain being connected to gods of Death, and that they were caretakers of the dead etc.

 

[gyor]

The Undead hunting Druid makes more sense if you completely ignore the provided fluff and call it a Blight Druid instead. They should replace one of the given abilities for the ability to assume undead forms with wild shape.

 

[Aldarc]

Are you sure that you've actually stated the entire flavour text, rather than just cherrypicked? I'm sure there was more detail about the Grave domain being connected to gods of Death, and that they were caretakers of the dead etc.

It's not the entire flavor text, but it is their mission statement. Was their connection to gods of Death and the Dead ever being questioned, Cap'n Kobold? That's something of red herring, don't you think? How does that make their necrotic damage appropriate for fighting undead given the purpose of the Grave cleric? Would you like me to post the entire flavor text for the Grave cleric?

Gods of the grave watch over the line between life and death. To these deities, death and the afterlife are a foundational part of the multiverse's workings. To resist death, or to desecrate the dead's rest, is an abomination. Deities of the grave include Kelemvor, Wee Jas, the ancestral spirits of the Undying Court, Hades, Anubis, and Osiris. These deities teach their followers to respect the dead and pay them due homage. Followers of these deities seek to put restless spirits to rest, destroy the undead wherever they find them, and ease the suffering of dying creatures. Their magic also allows them to stave off a creature's death, though they refuse to use such magic to extend a creature's lifespan beyond its mortal limits.

Again, the mission statement for these clerics by their gods is emphasized in bold. If they were just Death clerics serving Death gods then there is already a Death domain that provides necrotic damage making the Grave domain pointless.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

It's not the entire flavor text, but it is their mission statement. Was their connection to gods of Death and the Dead ever being questioned, Cap'n Kobold? That's something of red herring, don't you think? How does that make their necrotic damage appropriate for fighting undead given the purpose of the Grave cleric? Would you like me to post the entire flavor text for the Grave cleric?

I'm pointing out that the necrotic damage is thematically appropriate for most of the deities, and the source of power of the clerics of that domain.

I don't believe that that is a red herring at all. I've already acknowledged that from a min/maxing mechanical standpoint rather than a thematic one, radiant damage would be more optimised. If there is an undead-hunting archetype of a Sun god, I would expect them to use a lot of that.

I've also stated why I believe these archetypes are the way they are: a class that is completely optimised against one specific foe will dominate excessively in some campaigns and have little use for its special abilities in others.
Both Clerics of the Grave and Druids of the Twilight are effective against undead while still retaining capability against other foes.

Again, the mission statement for these clerics by their gods is emphasized in bold. If they were just Death clerics serving Death gods then there is already a Death domain that provides necrotic damage making the Grave domain pointless.

The Grave Domain is for Player Character Clerics Deities of Death rather than the Undeath-focused NPC domain in the DMG that probably wouldn't be appropriate for a number of the Deities listed in the Grave Domain text.

 

[Parmandur]

The Undead hunting Druid makes more sense if you completely ignore the provided fluff and call it a Blight Druid instead. They should replace one of the given abilities for the ability to assume undead forms with wild shape.

In the Druid threads it was pointed out that the subclass crunch really fit the Children of Winter to a tee: terrorist shadow Druids from Wberron.

Could be the fluff in the UA article is a smokescreen by [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] & co. to obscure the Eberron connection, while testing the feel of the crunch...

 

[CapnZapp]

No, my fellow captain - your efforts at persuading us that giving foes of the undead necrotic powers can be good design falls completely flat.

Why? Sure things doesn't necessarily need to attract minmaxers. But you don't need to be a minmaxer to immediately see that using necrotic against the undead is plain stupid.