Hey I'm Jake, I make rpg supplements and videos about Pathfinder (PF2). I LOVE PF2 and as a long-time player of DnD, I want to share the things that I find along the way and share them with you in a way that makes them easy to digest and hopefully... FUN!
All information for PF2 can be found on the Archives of Nethys for free.
Otherwise, if you want to get a physical copy of the books you can find most relevant information in the Core Rulebook.
The Hallowed Necromancer Archetype can be found in the Book of the Dead.
The Oracle can be found in the Advanced Players Guide.
Please note, these links are affiliate links and if you use one to purchase, we may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thanks for your support!
I don't know about you, but when I think "Necromancer", I think "Black hearted pale master of the undead. With one hand they raise an army of zombies and with the other they strip the life and flesh from their victims!" The Hallowed Necromancer is the antithesis of this. They use positive and negative energy as tools to destroy undead and heal or protect innocent people. So we are going to dive into MY take on the Hallowed Necromancer concept. This is gonna be a long one and there are 2 different pdfs you can download for this build, one stopping at level 6 and one that goes to level 10.
Let us begin the journey of:
The Holy Oracle
First: Backstory. Cuz backstory. Duh.
Our character is a human named Smudge. Smudge was "adopted" by Lord Varen, an ancient and decrepit Nosferatu Vampire and taken in to his home as a curiosity; the baby had an aura brighter than any he'd ever seen. Holding the child brought a palpable warmth to the ancient dead man, as close to sunlight as he could ever be again.
When he placed the child in the gnomish hands of enslaved caretakers, their faces immediately brightened. Not with joy, but with peace and renewed life. Lord Varen stared in fascination as their eyes cleared, scars faded and even their wrinkles softened as they catered to the baby.
He allowed the two women to live in his home in order to care for the growing anomaly that always seemed bathed in candlelight to the Vampire.
That candlelight faded gradually, but even as the child grew into a young man there was a constant light shining in his eyes to the empowered vision of Lord Varen. In that light Varen felt an echo of what it was to be alive and found himself hypnotized by that promise of life. He sometimes couldn't tear his eyes away for hours.
To the other imprisoned creatures in and under Lord Varen's home, Smudge was a comforting friend - warmth and a light seemed to travel with the young man, who tried his best to care for them. It was what he was ordered to do, certainly; but also, Smudge had a great deal of empathy for each of them. When he touched them he felt their pain, lived their fear with them. You see, Smudge was a strangely blessed ...or cursed child.
When he touched an item or person a flood of images, sensations and emotions entered his mind. He saw fear, pain, grief and violence. His earliest memories were crowded with these pieces of other people and so they became a part of him. He wasn't sure who he was or where he was most of the time. For some reason, the Vampire Lord was the only person he could touch that never showed him anything. No pain, no joy, no fear. Nothing. For all his childhood and early teen years he found comfort in the arms and in the lap of the thin, stinking cadaver.
And so they spent many nights alone in the Vampire's coffin together. The disease-riddled corpse of a man staring unblinking into the endless gulf of light in Smudge's eyes.
Many years after this ritual began, Smudge began to feel something during these moments... himself. Old memories never reviewed or absorbed slowly trickled through his heart... the loss of his parents and the pain he had felt for Lord Varen's slaves... called "food" by his trusted mentor... and he realized that he hated his "papa". Hated him deeply and forever.
And somehow the Vampire didn't see it on his young and innocent face. These moments spent with the old creature continued sporadically until he was 17, Smudge learning more about himself and training his mind to hide his fear of being discovered by the wretched monster. The Nosferatu Lord was so unaware of his servant's change of heart that when the young man finally gathered the courage to run away, none of the lesser undead in the mansion even rose to stop him.
This leads us to the Background we will choose. And it is one that I created. If you don't want to use this, you can use the Necromancer's Apprentice; it's close.
Vampire's Apprentice
You were one of the servants of a powerful Vampire—surrounded by danger every day hardened your heart as it sharpened your mind. Your tasks included tending the wounds of your master's food supply to keep them alive longer and keeping them calm and easier to control. You were also often expected to perform in some way for the Vampire's or their guests amusement.
Choose two ability boosts. One must be to Constitution or Intelligence, and one is a free ability boost.
You're trained in Diplomacy or Performance and the Undead Lore skill. You gain the No Cause for Alarm skill feat.
That feat lets you make a diplomacy check to reduce the frightened condition of all creatures in a 10 ft radius.
I'm just picturing it: "Please everyone be calm. Papa doesn't want to hurt you. Not really. He just needs your help. You only have to stay for a year and a day and then he lets you go and your family will never be hungry again. I know it seems hard, but he helps the people that feed him."
That is, until he figured out that they were just getting eaten after that year. Yeah, he's got trust issues.
Our Ancestry is Human, Heritage is Versatile Heritage, which gives us a general feat. We'll use it to take a skill feat. That feat will be Read Psychometric Resonance.
I'll summarize:
"With a touch, you can read the psychic impressions left on objects by their previous owners.
This tells you emotions that are bound to an object and you can spend a minute to see the face of the person that left the emotion, or anything else related if the GM wants. If the associated emotion is painfully negative, you might take 1d6 psychic damage, as determined by the GM."
This is a power that we've had all our lives and we've seen and felt a huge number of things. Because of this gift, this spiritual "curse", we are already tired of people. Exhausted with life and emotions and pain and suffering and we feel OLD. When we go into a public place we have a "mask" we put up to meet people and to make things go smoothly. I think all of us introverts can relate...
1st Level
Ancestry Feat: Keep Up Appearances. Roll a Deception check and compare the result to any observing creatures’ Perception DCs. On a success, that creature believes you were unaffected by an emotion effect that targeted you. A creature tricked in this manner can’t benefit from the emotion effect and can’t use abilities that require you to be under this emotion effect. This basically makes you resistant to enchantment or control spells and fits the whole "never let them know what you're thinking" thing. Level 1: Oracle class - An Oracle is a little hard to describe but it's sorta like a cursed cleric with no deity. You were probably just born this way. You have a natural link to some type of cosmic force and it has both positive and negative effects on you. You learn about your connection to this cosmic force eventually and use it to learn spells and to enhance the crappiness of the curse to gain extra powers. We'll take the Life Mystery, as you may have guessed if you already know about Oracles. It says: "Life energy flows outward from you and connects you to all living things, but you expend your vital essence to do so. Your presence comforts the ill and injured, causes scars to fade slightly, spurs new growth in plants, and otherwise infuses your surroundings with vitality." We get the choice of two spells to take as a Revelation/Focus Spell. We'll choose Healer's Blessing. You cast it on an ally and when they get Hit Points from a healing spell, they get 2 extra Hit Points. Useful at low levels, but not really beyond that. You also get the Revelation/Focus Spell: Life Link: you target an ally, and it heals them for 1d4 damage then from the first hit they take every round they take 3 less damage, which you take instead. Oracles start out with 2 Focus Points which is pretty cool because Focus Points are like raw spell energy. They can be used for ANY of your Focus Spells from any source. Along with each Oracle Mystery comes an Oracle curse. Here's how they work: At first level, your curse can only be in its “Basic” state, its “Minor” state, or its “Moderate” state, each of which has different effects. The "Life Mystery" Oracle gets the Curse of Outpouring Life At Minor Curse level, which is the stage you reach when you use 1 of your Revelation/Focus spells in a day:
As your life force seeps outward, it becomes more difficult to keep your body functioning. Effects that restore Hit Points to you take a status penalty equal to half your level (minimum 1) to the number of HP you recover.
So like: little cracks appear in your skin with light shining through. And if you get healed, the light leaks more, like when positive energy goes into you, it also drips out. Maybe it even makes a seedling sprout where the life essence falls.
Moderate Curse (only happens if you've used 2 Revelation/Focus Spells without resting or refocusing): You can only be magically healed by yourself unless you're unconscious, but then only up to 1 hp. Items that heal you still work fine. When you cast Heal and all your targets are living creatures, you roll d12s instead of d8s for the amount of healing.
Whenever you finish casting a non-cantrip spell, you restore Hit Points equal to that spells level to either one target of the spell or to the creature nearest you. You can't heal yourself in this way.
So like: the cracks in your body widen and it kinda looks like you're ice that's breaking apart. When you cast a spell, a bolt of golden-white light shoots out of you and hits an ally, healing them. So if your party is struggling in a fight, you'll want to cast 2 Focus Spells so you can pump out more heals. I'm going to assume, as I will with all of my builds that your GM allows the use of the Free Archetype Feat.
Level 2
At Level 2 you get an Archetype feat: we're going to further assume that your GM will allow you to hold it as unused for now because we need Expert Religion before we can take Hallowed Necromancer. If instead your GM just waives the requirement (as all the cool GMs do), then you could take Hallowed Necromancer Dedication here, instead of at level 4 but I'll explain what the Dedication does when we get to level 4.
For the Level 2 Class feat, just pick whatever you want. The low-level Oracle feats don't make much of an impact. We'll take Reach Spell (increases the range of a spell by 30 ft if you spend an action first) cuz it's sometimes really handy in battle. At Level 2 you get your first non-background skill feat, and we'll take Courtly Graces.
It says: "You were raised among the nobility or have learned proper etiquette and bearing, allowing you to present yourself as a noble and play games of influence and politics. You can use Society to Make an Impression on a noble, as well as with Impersonate to pretend to be a noble if you aren’t one."
We were brought to social soirees and Noble parties by Lord Varen while we were growing up and we feared his fury so we learned QUICKLY how to act like a pompous aristocratic vampire.
Level 3
At Level 3 we get our first General feat. Adopted Ancestry: Gnome. Our two mothers were both Gnomes and taught us nature and fey things, including the magic of light.
At Level 3 you get your first skill increase and we'll choose Religion to make it expert so you can take Hallowed Necromancer next level. This is the strangest part of this Archetype. That Expert Religion requirement. The only ways you can take this Archetype at level 2 involve your GM fudging some sort of rule SOMEWHERE.
Level 4
Then at Level 4 we get another skill feat and we'll take Eyes of the City.
"You can track down targets with the help of locals. You can use Diplomacy or Society, whichever you're trained in, to Track creatures in settlements. You chat with locals to help follow the trail of creatures you Track."
This isn't because we're ANY good in a city. We have zero experience in cities. But we have an innate connection to people; empathic skills, our general charm, soothing demeanor and practice talking with vampires and other monsters makes talking with normal people pretty easy.
For our Level 4 CLASS feat we will finally take the Hallowed Necromancer Dedication. This can be found in the Book Of The Dead. It gives you the Focus Spell: Hallowed Ground. This gives you a Focus point and you have a total of 3 now.
Hallowed ground says: "Each undead creature in the area takes 1d6 positive damage and 1d4 good damage, then any undead that are in that area take 1 extra damage from positive sources and/or your necromancy spells."
I kinda think of using this ability as sort of like: We have a sense of the connections this plane has with the Positive Energy Plane and so we weaken the membrane between planes and a small area of pure life energy leaks through.
You also have a restriction placed on you: Anathema. If you create, heal or help undead in any way, you lose access to all feats from this archetype. These abilities can be regained only with an atone ritual.
That will probably never be a problem unless your GM arranges it, maybe like for a fun story purpose... or cuz he's a dick.
For the Level 4 Archetype feat we'll take the Hallowed Necromancer Feat Sacred Spells. You add chill touch, death ward, disrupt undead, disrupting weapons, holy cascade, magic stone, and sunburst to your spell list. We get to add two of these to our repertoire and they're also considered Signature Spells, meaning you can upcast them without having to learn them at a higher level later. Just added flexibility. Cool.
ALSO: they are Necromancy spells for you. Which means dick to you now but I promise it'll at least matter a little bit later. Just stick with me.
Now at Level 4 we will use our Second Archetype feat that our sweet BELOVED GM allowed us to keep from earlier and we'll use it on Hallowed Initiate for Death's Call. It would give you a Focus Point but we already have 3.
This is a reaction that gives you temporary hit points if a creature within 20 feet of you dies or if an undead creature is destroyed. If they were living, you get temp hp equal to their level plus your Charisma modifier. If they're undead, you get double that.
And this is like creating a little bubble of energy around us, like a force shield.
Level 5
At Level 5 we get another Ancestry Feat and we'll take the Gnome Ancestry feat Unexpected Shift.
It says: "Your supernatural connection sometimes causes you to phase from reality when under threat, disappearing for split seconds before reappearing—often surprising you as much as your enemies. You roll a d20 and on a 16 or higher, you gain resistance to all damage equal to your level against the triggering effect, and you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to saving throws against that effect until the start of your turn, and you gain the dazzled condition for 1 round."
So for this character when the power activates successfully, your body becomes pure white light for a moment when you're hit and the blow just goes through you with minimal damage.
Chapter 2:
The Human Spirit
Now at some point before 6th level, you're in a battle and you increase your curse past moderate; the cracks in your skin widen and positive energy bursts from you. And I mean BURSTS. You EXPLODE and pieces of you fly everywhere. Maybe this positive energy rescues your party in a dire situation, doing some major healing or maybe it leaves a permanent rift to the positive energy plane. It could even be tied to the mission; an evil altar or a sinkhole of negative energy needs to be destroyed and with your dying breath you purify the region. While your friends gather your body parts you watch on as a disembodied spirit for a few seconds, then your view fades into white...
Then suddenly you wake up in the tavern you were all sleeping in, seemingly unharmed. You walk past tables of drunk, sleeping, or mindless faces to the stairs and then to the room that your party rented as a group. The door is open for some reason, so you walk in. A friend and ally reads studiously by candlelight while the rest of your friends sleep a deserved rest. You see your pack laying against a wall. "Hi guys! I'm glad I found you. What happened?" Or at least, you WOULD have said that if your first couple words hadn't roused your warrior to battle with a half-asleep yell. Then all eyes on you, your rudely awakened friends just stare straight through you to the door behind.
So now you're a Ghost.
BECAUSE THIS IS PATHFINDER! I'm about to explain how the Ghost Archetype works.
Level 6
At Level 6 we will take the Archetype feat: Ghost Dedication. It has the prerequisites: You died and returned as a ghost. Now OBVIOUSLY this requires GM permission. So here's how it works. "You gain the ghost, spirit, and undead traits, and the basic undead benefits. Your undead craving is to settle your unfinished business" (which in this case is probably either killing the Nosferatu Vampire Lord who killed your parents, or even killing all Vampires or all Undead). "You also gain the incorporeal trait except you can't pass through solid objects unless you select the Pass Through feat. " THAT would be for balance. I know. Kinda sad, but this is still a kick-ass Archetype. You get Low Light vision. You also get Negative Healing: "You are damaged by positive damage and aren't healed by positive healing effects. You don't take negative damage and are healed by negative effects that heal undead." You're also immune to death effects. Cuz ya dead, bitch! hahhaha. Aaaand Disease and Poison Protection: "You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to saving throws (or any other defense) against disease and poison." THIS IS STUPID. It even SAYS that you're INCORPOREAL. Oh, it doesn't say you don't have to breathe either, so you must have to. And eating! And Drinking! And sleeping! If it's a magical disease I could see MAYBE it has some sort of effect like on your soul. But seriously. c'mon. So obviously I'd say that you're immune to disease and poison. That's me. Floating: "You can float but are still tethered to the ground. Replace your land Speed with an equal fly Speed. You can't rise more than a few inches above the ground when you Fly. This means you can move above many types of difficult or hazardous terrain without moving slowly or being damaged, even though you can't fly without limit." Yet.
This actually makes some sense to me psychologically. Like when you hear ghost stories, people tend to still walk around their home, not float around it. If we die we don't relate to flying because we've never done it on our own before. Like you have to learn that you have different laws of physics than living people.
"You can transmute physical items to make them part of your incorporeal form. Your weapons get ghost touch, so you can use them against both corporeal and incorporeal creatures. Incorporated items become corporeal again only if you transmute them back or you are destroyed, in which case, they drop to the ground under you. "
"Your unarmed attacks become magical and deal negative damage instead of their normal type."
Also, "corporeal creatures can't grab you." Cuz you ain't got no body.
On a personal note, our character feels pretty good about this change. No longer do we feel our body falling apart or failing to function. There's no pain either. We don't even have to TOUCH things or people unless we want to. Strangely, becoming undead is something that actually makes us feel more relaxed and free.
For the Level 6 Class feat we'll take Frightful Moan. "Every living creature in 30 ft. has to make a save or get the frightened condition. " Now we have lived our life literally giving our energy to people and being owned and now that we died, we feel GREAT. So I think this should be laughter instead of a moan. Maybe mad raucous laughter bubbling up from deep inside, just a feeling of pure joy at being dead. Perhaps tinged with a little mania. Ghosts are not known for their mental stability.
Also at Level 6 we get a Skill Feat. We'll take Chromotherapy. You can relieve persistent damage using colored light. When using a torch, lantern, or another artificial light source to illuminate an area you use different tools like colored lenses to turn that light one of seven colors. You can do this for anyone in the radius of your light source instead of needing to be adjacent to you. This can be used to stop persistent cold damage, electricity, mental damage, bleed, fire, acid and poison.
This is absolutely something that we can do if we've previously cast Continual Flame. You can use different colors of gemstone dust to make different colors of light (or at least you could in D&D 3.5 so I'm keeping it). So you have 7 different continual flame enchanted items that are either kept in a pouch or are otherwise covered most of the time.
Level 7
Next at Level 7 we get another General Feat. Aura Sight: "You've learned how to read the natural auras of living creatures. "
You get:
The target's current apparent attitude toward you (friendly, indifferent, and so on).
The target's current apparent emotional state.
A general assessment of the target's physical health
You may be able to identify if they're being deceptive in some way (such as expressing a false attitude toward you or faking an emotional state).
Now that we're dead, we are SO much more in tune with our spirit and that of others. We see energy and colors in people and maybe now we can even see our own inner light and appreciate ourselves a little more.
Level 8
Now for our Level 8 Archetype Feat we'll take Ghost Flight: "Once per day for up to 10 minutes you can fly at your move speed with no restriction on height."
At Level 8 for our Class feat we'll go back to Hallowed Necromancer for: Advanced Hallowed Spell for Life Siphon. When you use a Necromancy spell, you can use a Focus point and heal yourself 1d8 per level of the Necromancy spell. THIS works even on a ghost. Because it doesn't have the Positive Energy trait. And this is why all those random NECROMANCY spells matter now. Positive energy Sunburst heals you. That's weird.
Next is our Level 8 Skill feat and we'll take Additional Lore: Necromancy. We were raised by a Vampire Lord, we're a Ghost now, and we use positive energy and fight undead constantly. It's kind of a no-brainer.
Level 9
At Level 9 we get ANOOOTHER Ancestry feat: Multitalented from Human Ancestry. You gain a 2nd-level multiclass dedication feat, even if you normally couldn't take another dedication feat until you take more feats from your current archetype. And we'll take Champion Multiclass Dedication, choosing Liberator.
"You’re committed to defending the freedom of others." *eyebrows*
"You must respect the choices others make over their own lives, and you can’t force someone to act in a particular way or threaten them if they don’t." Yeah.
"You must demand and fight for others’ freedom to make their own decisions. You may never engage in or accept or support slavery or tyranny." Makes sense.
Level 10
The Level 10 Class Feat will be used on the Champion Archetype for Basic Devotion, which gives us a Champion Feat. We'll take Desperate Prayer. As a Free Action once per day, if you start a turn with no Focus Points, you gain a focus point. This is one of only a few ways that someone can get more than 3 focus points in a day without spending time refocusing. It's very useful for an intense combat.
At Level 10 we'll spend our free Archetype Feat on the Champion's Advanced Devotion so we get a Champion Feat and we'll pick Aura of Courage.
"Whenever you become frightened, reduce the condition value by 1. At the end of your turn when you would reduce your frightened condition value by 1, you also reduce the value by 1 for all allies within 15 feet."
This is sorta more like an Aura of Peace for this character. Everyone in 15 feet can see our eyes and skin glowing with white light at all times now and they find themselves comforted and they feel a little safer around us. For the last Skill Feat we'll be choosing on this build, Hobnobber: "You are skilled at learning information through conversation. Gather Information takes half as long as normal."
It just makes sense. If we're really comfortable for people to talk to, then it makes sense that people will be more willing to give us info. And now we address the Elephant Ghost in the room. Won't healing yourself as a Ghost or for that matter, doing ANYTHING to help yourself be "Assisting an Undead" for purposes of the Hallowed Necromancer's Anathema? Yes... or No. You and your GM will have to decide. Technically, the Hallowed Necromancer Anathema says "Casting spells that create, heal, or otherwise aid or promote undead is anathema to you, as is cooperation with undead." If you are undead, you aren't cooperating with yourself, so you're good there. Casting spells that promote undead? Easy to avoid-just don' do dat. Casting spells that create undead? Jus' don' do dat eithah. Now Casting spells that heal or otherwise aid undead... that's a problem. Because you could avoid aiding yourself with spells if you only use your spells to help your allies or kill enemies... but if you don't heal yourself, your adventuring career is going to be difficult. And that's FINE for some people. Ghosts have a lot of resistances and stuff so maybe you'll be alright if you just hide during combat and heal from range or blast Undead from range. You could ask your GM to interpret the Anathema interaction as "thou shalt not use thine spells to heal or aid thy undead brethren, for thou art a grand bastion for the living soul. And therefore you a'ight." Or you could go with my favorite option: reverse the negative healing trait and be a POSITIVE energy spirit. You lose immunity to negative energy but you can still heal yourself and you are "set apart" from the natural order, a holy righteous spirit to annihilate the undead. The Hallowed Necromancer anathema simply DOESN'T APPLY to you. You are the exception to the law in order to lay other spirits to rest and rebalance the great spiral.
If this is a problem for your GM, you could offer to have a weakness to negative energy too. Which should make them happy because it's way more likely for an enemy to use Negative energy than Positive Energy.
Another idea I had is that since we spent so much damn time in the dark with a horrible monster staring into our eyes for literal hours in order to figure out how to be ourselves... maybe we're afraid of the dark; so our Oracle powers sometimes don't work in the dark or maybe not at all if it's dark AND we're in combat. Stressful situation. So we have to spend time pulling out light before doing anything else. This might make you more balanced AND it's good roleplaying.
I have a great image of this character. You're a holy spirit of light and life, flying around the battlefield. Your skin and eyes glow, you shed rainbow-colored light and you shoot freakin' laser beams at monsters. And fire bolts of healing light at your friends. And this isn't just IF you build to 10th level. You're a radiant spirit at level 6, and even before that you seem like some angel healing people, consoling them with your empathy, and making freakin' plants grow as you walk.
I really like Oracles. There is so much room for expression in them.
If you don't want to take the Ghost Archetype, you could instead go Soul Warden. You could even take Ghost and THEN Soul Warden if you wanted, as they both fit the flavor of the Hallowed Necromancer.
So instead of the Ghost powers you'd get, you and your allies would do extra damage against undead, or you get a little Psychopomp familiar! I like the idea of having a little positive/negative energy glowing white wisp that flies around and shoots positive energy beams. Even if you are a ghost.
Well, this has been a freaking blast! I LOVE this character.
I am so grateful you joined me today; thanks for being here.
If you want to make sure to catch the next build I make, signing up for our newsletter is a good way to bookmark the page so you can remember to check back later and see what I've done.
The download for both builds for this character (up to 6th and up to 10th) along with alternate build options and suggested spell selection can be found here.
I would love it for you to drop a like if you enjoyed this build or found it helpful and feel free to leave a comment if I missed something or if you have ideas that could go with this build. Seems like fun to work on it together. And remember; food doesn't really go bad, it's just that something else starts eating it before you do. So at least you can be happy that you're feeding something else by not eating your food. You're such a nice person. :)
Below are the Suggested Spell Lists
They are also included in the PDF downloads.
LEVEL 6 VERSION
CANTRIPS
1- Create Water
LEVEL 10 VERSION
CANTRIPS
1- Create Water
2- Faerie Fire
2- Create Food
4- Enervation
5- Sending