The 10 Best Necromancy Spells in D&D 5e

At the core of necromancy lies the ability to control and harness the power of the undead. The iconic animate dead spell grants spellcasters the power to reanimate corpses as loyal undead servants. With this spell, you can raise a small army of skeletons or zombies to fight on your behalf, providing tactical advantages and an intimidating presence on the battlefield.

This spell is a staple for necromancer wizards in combat because it provides options for their bonus action and another body between them and the baddies. For necromancers that are looking to guide a horde of undead, this is the best option you’re provided. Essentially, you can use a 3rd-level spell slot to animate one undead, or reassert your control over four undead. Depending on how many spell slots you have to work with, you can steadily grow your undead army.

Just make sure you have the spell slots to reassert your control or your undead horde will revolt.

Even though this is classified as a necromancy spell, it feels more like divine healing than forcibly reanimating the dead like other necromancy spells.

This potent spell is a must for just about any party as it allows you to bring a deceased creature back to life, provided they have been dead for no more than a minute. Revivify is a crucial spell for any healer in 5e and isn’t limited to just the evil, reanimating wizards you usually related to necromancy.

Just make sure you’ve got your 300 GP of diamonds before you run into a situation where you’re going to need this spell.

Resurrection is a powerful healing spell for when revivify just won’t cut it. Unfortunately, it costs 3 times as much as revivify, requiring 1,000 GP worth of diamonds. It also requires a 7th-level spell slot, compared to revivify’s 3rd-level spell slot.

On the upside, this gets around most of the constraints of revivify. The time limit is 100 years, it regrows any missing limbs and mortal wounds, and cures any poison or diseases.

That said, there are still limits to this spell that can only be fixed with true resurrection. If your intended target has been made undead through necromantic magic, resurrection won’t work and you’ll need to wait until you get access to 9th-level spells.

When it comes to sheer raw power, few necromancy spells can rival the deadly force of the finger of death. This spell allows you to unleash a bolt of necrotic energy, striking a single target with devastating force. Should the target be reduced to 0 by this spell’s effects, they rise as a zombie under your control, further amplifying your forces. Perfectly nasty, just like a powerful necromantic spell should be.

Enervation is a potent necromantic spell that allows you to siphon the life force of a target and use it to heal yourself.

If the target fails their initial Dexterity saving throw, you get to drain them for 4d8 every turn as an action with no more saving throws. The only potential for this spell to end early after it initially hits is the target getting outside of the 60 foot range or breaking your concentration.

While 4d8 may not seem like a lot for a 5th-level spell, the guaranteed turn-after-turn damage on top of receiving half of the drained hit points back as healing can certainly make this a necromantic staple in your arsenal.

Blindness/deafness is one of the best single-target debuffs in the game. For a 2nd-level spell slot, you can give a nasty enemy disadvantage on attacks, while your friends get advantage on their attacks against them for the entire encounter.

The biggest hiccup for this spell, is it targets Constitution, which is a common proficient saving throw amongst monsters in D&D 5e.

On top of the obvious uses for this spell, it can also be used for various other niche purposes. Some of these situations include deafening a guard so you can sneak past, blinding a caster so they can’t cast spells that require sight, and or protecting yourself from charm effects that require you to hear the charmer.

Just make sure not to waste this spell slot on enemies that have blindsight, like dragons, as it won’t end up the way you’re hoping.

Move over hunter’s mark and hex, there’s a new kid in town. Spirit shroud is a necromantic buff for martials who want to enhance their strikes with the powers of the dead. For a bonus action and a 3rd-level spell slot, you can enhance each of your strikes with necromantic or radiant energy.

This is awesome for eldritch knights, hexblades, or bladesingers that want to rush into combat and swing their sword as many times as possible as it can easily net a ton of damage throughout an encounter. It also provides a couple decent debuffs to enemies unlucky enough to get caught in your radius. First, any enemy hit with an attack while you have this spell active can’t heal until their next turn. Second, their movement speed is reduced by 10 feet if they start their turn within 10 feet of you, so good luck getting away.

The bestow curse spell is a versatile, potent, and flavourful tool in the necromancer’s arsenal, allowing you to afflict a target with a powerful curse. This curse imposes a detrimental effect on the cursed creature, providing a wide range of mechanical hindrances tailored to suit your needs. The mechanics of the curse can be customized to inflict various penalties, such as disadvantage on ability checks or saving throws, reduced speed, or even limited actions in combat.

Bestow curse spell offers flexibility in its application, allowing you to tailor the curse to exploit your target’s weaknesses or provide the most effective curse for a particular combat scenario. That said, the best use for this spell is usually to force the cursed creature to make a Wisdom save at the beginning of each of their turns or waste their action.

When used properly on a creature with low Wisdom, this can easily cripple your cursed enemy for the entire encounter.

Ray of sickness spell embodies the essence of necromancy as it weakens a living target, allowing you to project a ray of foul energy that infects your target with sickness and decay. Mechanically, this spell offers several advantages that make it a potent choice for necromancers.

This spell is a solid 1st-level damage spell but is made viable with its potent debuff. At 2d8 poison damage, it lags behind other spells of the same level like guiding bolt and poison damage is commonly resisted, which limits this spells effectiveness against constructs and undead.

But, a successful hit with the ray forces the target to make a Constitution saving throw or be poisoned until the end of its next turn. Being poisoned imposes disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks, significantly hampering the target’s combat effectiveness.

Toll the dead, a staple cantrip of every necromancer’s repertoire, harnesses the power of death to inflict damage upon a target. In true necromantic fashion, it preys upon creatures that are injured, dealing more damage to creatures that have already lost hit points.

When compared to the other necromantic cantrip, chill touch, toll the dead starts at a similar 1d8 necrotic damage. But, when targeting a creature that has lost hit points, toll the dead shoots up in effectiveness to a a d12, making it the most potent damage cantrip out there.