School of Animancy

Some wizards find in themselves a gift for channeling the basic energies of life. Among them, you are welcomed as a fellow animancer. You wield the breath of life, the power to raise mundane things into vibrant beings.

To animancers, the world is littered with potential minions. A bundle of sticks waits to become a wooden spider. This stone is a tiny solider, ready to launch itself into battle. Walls become doors and doors become jaws. Even death is temporary, for you return life to where it had once resided.

Life Magic

Your dedication to the magic of life is total. Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, when you would learn a wizard cantrip or spell of 1st level or higher, you must choose the new spell from the spell list found below, and it becomes a wizard spell for you. You must otherwise obey all the restrictions for selecting the spell. The gold and time time you must spend to copy one of these spells into your spellbook is halved.

Restorative Touch

Starting at 2nd level, you learn the cantrips Mending and Spare the Dying, which do not count towards your maximum number of cantrips known.

Reflavoring Many wizard spells could involve breathing life into something if the description was reflavored. Already, the material in this playtest assume some reflavoring will occur. For instance, spells like Mage Hand or Unseen Servant are presumed to no longer involved invisible forces, but rather handy nearby objects temporarily under the animancer's sway. For summong spells such as Summon Lesser Demon, it's presumed that the summoned creature is instead a construct of equivalent CR fashioned from whatever's nearby. Make sure to speak with your DM before adding or modifying spells on the animancer's list.

Trustworthy minions

Starting at 6th level, you add the tiny servant spell to your spellbook if it is not there already. When you cast tiny servant, you can target one additional object, creating another servant.

Whenever you create a minion using an animancy spell, it has additional benefits:

The creature’s hit point maximum is increased by an amount equal to your wizard level.

The creature adds your proficiency bonus to its damage rolls.

The Breath of Life

Starting at 10th level, you add the Passwall and Create Homunculus spells to your spellbook, if they are not there already. You can cast Passwall without expending a spell slot. Once you cast Passwall in this way, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest, though you can still cast it normally using an available spell slot. You can cast Create Homunculus as a ritual.

Vital Essence

Starting at 14th level, you can put some of your own vitality into your magic. You can replace a spell slot by taking damage equal to 10 times the level of the slot to be replaced.