Master of Undeath (Legendary Wizard Archetype)

Most consider death to be an end, a finality granted by nature to usher on a new age. And yet for a master of undeath, it is not an end, but a new beginning. Focusing on making the vale between life and death that much thinner, these lords of the dead focus on the goal of bringing that which once was back from the brink.

Requirement

The master of undeath must select necromancy as their arcane school at 1st level.

They gain the following ability in place of the normal active ability granted by the necromancy school:

Spontaneous Reanimation

As a standard action the master of undeath can infuse a corpse within 100 feet of them with necromantic energies, causing it to spontaneous animate, rise to its feet, and make a single attack against a creature of the master of undeath’s choice. After the attack is made, the creature collapses into a lifeless corpse. The creature uses the statistics it possessed in life when making the attack, save that it also counts as an undead created by the master of undeath for the purposes of any effects that grant an undead creature bonuses or penalties.

This modifies the legendary wizard’s arcane school ability.

Bond with Undeath

The master of undeath has formed a magical bond with the powers of undeath itself, allowing them to use their powers to spontaneously raise corpses into unlife. The master of undeath can sacrifice one of their prepared spells (or a spell slot, for a path of the mage wizard) to create undead minions under their control. The legendary wizard can choose to sacrifice a spell of a higher level than the reanimation spell they choose to cast, increasing the effective spell level of the reanimation spell to the level of the sacrificed spell, as the Heightened Spell metamagic feat.

At 1st level, the legendary wizard can sacrifice a 1st level spell to spontaneously cast lesser animate dead. If they cast this using a 1st level spell slot, the duration of the undead created is 1 hour per caster level, rather than instantaneous.

At 3rd level the legendary wizard can sacrifice a 2nd level spell to spontaneously cast lesser animate dead.

At 5th level, the legendary wizard can sacrifice a 3rd level spell to spontaneously cast animate dead without requiring the spell’s normal material components.

At 11th level, the legendary wizard can sacrifice a 6th level spell to spontaneously cast create undead without requiring the spell’s normal material components.

At 15th level, the legendary wizard can sacrifice an 8th level spell to spontaneously cast create greater undead without requiring the spell’s normal material components.

This replaces the legendary wizard’s arcane bond and scribe scroll class features.

Vigor of Undeath

At 5th level, any undead creatures the master of undeath create gain a +2 Enhancement bonus to their Strength and Dexterity scores. This bonus increases to +4 at 11th level, and +6 at 17th level.

This replaces the legendary wizard’s bonded advancement class feature.

Lord Over Undeath

At 11th level, the master of undeath can bind intelligent undead they create to their will. Whenever the master of undeath creates an undead creature with the create undead or create greater undead spells, they can choose to have the resulting undead creature created under their control. If they choose to do so, this undead counts against the number of Hit Dice of undead they can control using the animate dead spell. Undead created by create undead count as twice their Hit Dice, undead created by create greater undead count as three times their Hit Dice, and undead created with class levels (such as Skeletal Champions) count as four-times their Hit Dice for this purpose.

This replaces the legendary wizard’s bonded inspiration class feature.

Undeath’s Union

At 17th level, the master of undeath infuses themselves with their own necrotic energies, allowing themselves to gain the benefits of their vigor of undeath ability as if they were an undead creature they created.

This replaces the legendary wizard’s bonded union class feature.