How to Learn Priest spells on my necromancer?

Jzoo

So, uh.... Been reading a lot on this game for 2 days.

I'm still unsure of how exactly I should go about learning All the necromancer skills on my "Necromancer". Including the ones from The priest book. If I cannot Multi-class a specialist mage other than Gnome Illusionist, Is there some way I can learn the priest book necromancer skills on a specialist necromancer? Or do I have to Duel-class a Human and just be a mage//cleric?

Open to suggestions too, If just sticking it out and going full necro is far better than splitting into mage/cleric or something, all comments are appreciated .

I Will be doing a full play through with a friend online, he is rather experienced, having done multiple run throughs of the game a long long time ago, but he has forgotten or mixed up a lot of the rules for this particular game. This is my first run through, though i played BG1 for awhile.

ryuken87

You can't learn priest spells as a Necromancer. Some spells have both priest and mage versions (e.g. Animate Dead). If you don't mind using a saved game editor (EEKeeper or whatever is used for EE2) then make a C/M multi and change your kit to Necromancer.

Time4Tiddy

If you are choosing a Necromancer, you won't be able to multi-class. The only multi-class with a mage specialization is gnome with Illusionist. You would need to start as a human Necromancer and dual to cleric at some point.

Personally, I would recommend just using a half-elf and being vanilla mage/cleric so that you can learn all spells - you can just choose to focus on the "evil" spells that you'd associate with a necromancer.

If you really want the title of Necromancer, then I'd say just play through the entire game as a single class mage, you will still be ridiculously overpowered by the end of the game. Dualling from mage to cleric is mostly counterproductive and not recommended.

syllog

You can copy priest spells and make new arcane spells based on them (using Near Infinity) then give them to your necromancer (through EEKeeper).

Maylander

I'd just stick with the Necromancer, and pick up some Cleric companion.

Mortianna

Cleric/Mage never felt very Mage-like to me, since you can't use daggers or darts but can use armor and shields. Aside from a few similar spells, such as Animate Dead, Contagion/Cause Disease, and Finger of Death, the divine "necromantic" sphere is quite different from the arcane "necromancy" school. Unless you want your Necromancer casting healing, cure poison/disease, and resurrection spells, stick with the single-class Necromancer. You have Larloch's Minor Drain at 1st level and Vampiric Touch at 3rd level, both of which will heal/bolster your PC's hit points and damage your enemies at same time, and the higher level necromancy spells are some of the most powerful in the game.

CrevsDaak

Dualing from Cleric to Mage can help, it is a good thing because you will be able to heal yourself as a mage and won't get those lvl9 spells in ToB, what bothers all the new players with a multi-class (it happened to me, and I was very upset), I always wanted to play as a Priest of Helm/Conjurer, with those True Sight every 5 levels you won't need Divination spells after all, and you'll have an ability to create a +4 sword every 10 levels, and you can cast only mage spells while it is there, what means that it do not matters much, but Priest of Helm/Conjurer is as cheesy as it sounds, and the best thing is that it could make a nice RP reason to do such, just that and a little editing with NI.
@Jzoo I recommend re-naming this thread/discussion to "Necromancer using Priest Spells" or something similar, because I laughed when I saw the "How to learn pries spells..." in the Home page.
And a little tip, I recommend playing as a Sorcerer and only selecting Necromancy like spells, and maybe adding some clerical spells to his spell book, remember that when editing, level 1 is named level 0, lvl2 is lvl1, lvl3 is lvl2 and so on, they are named one number lower to their level (I don't know why, but it is very stupid indeed since I memorized thousands of Magic Missiles in my custom Irenicus as lvl2 spells), also, you can either create the spells or change them in the memorization screen of NI (when editing the CHR and that stuff), also (I say that word the whole day, damned Baator) have in mind that you can Dual-class from Cleric to Mage, what might be very useful in BG2 (and in my next BG2 run I will do that in a solo ).