Secret College of Necromancy (d20 System)

Rating:
Summary: Creative but possibly overpowered
Review: This is a pretty good resource for DMs. It has two new classes, the death knight and the necromancer, both of which have some neat abilities. However, you can't really use this for players because it seems (to me, at least, from playing a bit with it) the Necromancer is a bit more powerful than an equivalently levelled wizard or cleric. This probably holds true until somewhere around 9th level, at which time it is quite a bit more even (the reduction in spells become significant at that point). The Death Knight is a great nasty to throw against players, I haven't used it as much but the flavor is much appreciated and I think these folks have done a good job overall.

Rating:
Summary: Creative but possibly overpowered
Review: This is a pretty good resource for DMs. It has two new classes, the death knight and the necromancer, both of which have some neat abilities. However, you can't really use this for players because it seems (to me, at least, from playing a bit with it) the Necromancer is a bit more powerful than an equivalently levelled wizard or cleric. This probably holds true until somewhere around 9th level, at which time it is quite a bit more even (the reduction in spells become significant at that point). The Death Knight is a great nasty to throw against players, I haven't used it as much but the flavor is much appreciated and I think these folks have done a good job overall.

Rating:
Summary: A very good book!
Review: This little book is very, very good. It is quite fun to read, and packs lots of information on necromancy, tools, rituals and related disciplines (graverobbing, embalming, etc). It also has some background on the historical evolution of necromancy in a fantasy setting, which is decent enough to be used.

Basically, it begins by introducing two new core classes, the necromancer and the death knight. The authors do advice at the beggining of the book that these classes are very "potent" and meant to be used for villanous NPCs, however, i've found them quite usable for evil PCs.

The Necromancer is quite different from your typical PHB wizard specialized in necromancy. It is a great class, with a spell list that includes arcane and divine magic, some new spells that make it easier to create undeads and constructs -blood, bone or rot golems-, and access to some extremely cool undead familiars. It does seem a little overpowered, but nothing a good DM couldn't handle, and i let my players have access to it as is.

The Death Knight is somewhat similar to the DMG's Black Guard prestige class, but as a core class. It has access to some arcane magic (up to 4th level spells from its own list), and as a class is very similar to the paladin (you could actually consider this class sort of an "antipaladin"). They also get access to an "unholy steed" in 4th level (a ghost horse -below 10th level-, or a nightmare -10th level or above-).

Both classes can become undead at 20th level, the necromancer becomes a lich (adopting the lich template), while the death knight adopts the undead template (this, i won't allow for PCs but i will definitely allow for NPCs).

Next comes the new skills and feats, as well as the new spells.
The skills are mostly new craft and knowledge skills, all related to necromancy, and a new proffesion: graverobber. They all seem appropriate. The feats, well, let's just say i didn't allow some of them ("coup de grace" and "improved mortal curse") to maintain game balance, and i'd recommend you only allow them after carefull consideration.

The new spells are mostly well balanced, but there are a few spells that really should've been playtested more throughly, and you should read them carefully before allowing them in your game, perhaps after adjusting their level.

After a short description of various necromantic items, comes a very good essay on graverobbing and undead creation, which provides really needed depth and information extremely valuable for PC or NPC necromancers as well as DMs running these classes.

Then comes a short description of undead feats, describing most of the qualities possesed by different types of undead, that could be given to undeads as they are created, short description of typical undead lackeys and what the expected capabilities of each type of undead, and their duration (because undeads do have a lifespan...).

Then come some decent creatures, and an extremely cool necromantic siege engine which brings lots of ideas to mind.

The book closes with the history of the secret college of necromancy, and how to use it in your campaign, this part of the book is well written and very interesting, and the college is very usable in any setting.

I really like this book, it's fun to read, nicely done, and fills some voids that typical PHB necromancers have. Both core classes are usable in an evil aligned campaign, and they certainly add some badly needed, and very colorful evil core classes players will surely enjoy.

It also has some minor flaws, specially the feats mentioned and some of the spells, but these are minuscule drawbacks compared to the rest of the book, which is quite good.

I highly recommend this book, and give it 5/5 stars!