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I like the idea of Aura of Souls to work either on an Attack you make (any attack, not just a Necromancy spell one) OR give disadvantage against a creature attacking you. The way I see it, your using the Soul/Spirit to partially obscure your foe's vision, opening up an opportunity to make your attack better. The other way, the Soul/Spirit is distracting your foe's attack, thus making it harder for him to hit your properly.

This way, Necromancer doesn't have to be Spellcaster specific, working for only a few partial classes. I had an idea for this very exact character, one that grew up in a Funeral Home/Parlor and was a Grave Digger by trade (Background: Grave Digger - Intimidate, Stealth, Undead Lore skills). The character was going to be Fighter (due to background, plot, and story reasons) and it made far more sense in that scope than Sorcerer or Cleric. When I realized that he HAD to cast spells, well I build a Undead-ish Sorcerer and changed all the Dragon-fluff to Undead fluff (Dragon Strength turned into Zombie Strength, Dragon Scales into Lich Bones) and my claw attacks did Cold damage that felt like the very grave was leeching the life out of you. Still, I think the character was FAR better off a Fighter and would've liked the opportunity to build him as such. The Sorcerer is just to gimmicky for my tastes and doens't flow well yet as far as I'm concerned.

Aug 29, 2012 -- 10:09PM, Ramses42 wrote:

The way that I solved this problem was to make a cantrip called Necromantic Bolt. It had a range of 50' and did 1d6 necrotic damage and gave the target disadvantage until the end of the characters next round. So, High Elves and Magic User Fighters can use it. It has not proved to be too powerful. Only Necromancers have taken it instead of Magic Missile or Ray of Frost.
As for Warlocks. I made a Minor Invocation that allowed the adding of a keyword to your invocations. So, Eldritch Blast is Necromantic. Again, it is a serious investment of resources, so you need to want to have it. Because Invocations are rather major effects, I also extended the duration of the souls to five minutes. 
One thing that one of Necromancers started - and now everyone uses - is the Bag of Rats. If they have warning of a fight, they kill two rats and collect their souls. This also helps the "Waste of a Round" problem where all the character does is collect a round during a round. Most players want the wizard casting something, not using a round to get an Advantage for next round. Note: Warlock patrons get cranky if only fed rats .  Also, it is not as easy to carry of bag of rats around as one thinks .

I'd assume a bag of rats could make a lot of sound, but I like the idea behind it. I guess one could use any "creature" from Rats to Bugs to Worms to, well just about anything living. 

The problem I have with making stuff up is how unbalanced could this actually be. Your group didn't have a balance problem with it and that's cool, but how unbalaned would it be to just remove the spellcasting requirement for Aura of Souls and Animate Servant? You still need to use an Action to draw forth their soul, you still need 10 minutes to animate the skeleton and the proper equipment. What's so intrinsic about "spellcasting class" to make that a requirement for something that is just flavorful ways of gaining a pet or Advantage on an attack? 

To me, I just don't like prerequisites who seems like the whole design is to ram Fluff down my throat and NOT for some balancing factor. And that's what the Necromancer specialty is doing, negating a TON of roleplay options to 3 classes who can practically do that stuff anyways. It's like they took everyone's complain about 4E's Rituals (in that people said "Wait, a FIGHTER can use a teleport ritual and NOT have to multiclass wizard?!?!!?! SMH") to heart and banned any such notion from the game.