I'm A Fan - Rifts Africa Style Necromancer

 

Been thinking about necromancers lately because of the Weird Frontiers game I'm running for some friends. Necromancers tend to be a "pet class" in my experience. They have skeletons and zombies and other undead "pets" that follow them around, follow their orders, and generally provide a lot of the substance of the class. Beyond the pets they also tend to have dark magic attacks, debuffs, and the like. So all of that said when I first got the 4th Rifts World Book, Africa, back in the mid 90s I was very pleasantly surprised by the very unique take on necromancers the book detailed. 

The rifts style necromancer could still animate the dead, and do all the usual necromancer standards, but in addition they could collect pieces of dead creatures and temporarily fuse them to their body with magic. These magical fusions would provide various special abilities and bonuses. A wolf's skull would give the necromancer a werewolf like visage complete with a powerful bite and wolf-like senses. The shell of a tortoise would act as a powerful armor, but slow the necromancer's speed and reactions. Tiger's claws would make for a deadly melee weapon. These ad hoc magical enchantments provided both a lot of interesting flavor for the necromancer, but turned a class that is often "rear guard" to a class that could be forefront. 

Now, I haven't played Rifts, or really anything using Palladium's system, in decades, nor do I want to, but I find myself thinking that the ideas and concepts that made this version of the necromancer interesting and fun to me, could work just as easily in any other system. For example, for an NPC necromancer in DCC or Weird Frontiers. Or potentially as a new focus for a Cypher System game.