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My character has only a few years to live and wants to become a lich. Lich-friendly spells tend to be in Necromancy but I specialized in Conjuration and forbid Necromancy/Enchant instead of Illusion/Enchant (like most wizards). Now I need that school.
Are there any ways my character can gain access to the necromancy school without using scrolls/wands?
Liches do not require access to the school of Necromancy; the only requirement to become a lich is to have a phylactery, and that only requires Craft Wondrous Item, the ability to cast spells (any kind of spells), and caster level 11th (and a lot of money and XP).
Liches also do not have special affinity for necromancy; their magical talents apply equally-well to all schools of magic.
In fact, the word “necromancy” does not appear anywhere in the Lich monster entry on the SRD.
But anyway, getting spells from a banned school as a wizard can be done. A wizard cannot use items of banned spells without Use Magic Device, but he can use UMD. Eternal wands from Magic Item Compendium don’t even require that a spell is in your spell list, so those shouldn’t even require UMD. Banning schools as a wizard also doesn’t affect other classes, so multiclassing is an option. But neither of these is casting the spell as a wizard.
For that, options become somewhat more obscure:
Recaster (Races of Eberron) and wyrm wizard (Dragon Magic) are prestige classes that let you learn spells from other spell lists entirely. No restriction based on banned schools is mentioned.
The Spell Reprieve feat (Lost Empress of Faerûn) lets you learn one spell from a banned school.
The Diversified Casting feat (Dragon vol. 325) lets you cast three spells from a banned school.
I found an answer in page 192 of PHBII under Class Feature Retraining.
Some class features offer two or more different options, such as the choice of combat style a ranger must take at 2nd level. Class feature retraining allows you to swap out one option for another [...] Upon gaining a new level, a necromancer could change her school specialization to evocation, thus becoming an evoker. At the same time, she could also choose to change her prohibited schools from conjuration and illusion to abjuration and transmutation. Doing so would cause her to lose access to all spells from the newly designated prohibited schools. Even if her spellbook contains those spells, she would lose the ability to prepare and cast them.
Also, I'm aware that liches don't need Necromancy, but debuffing is crucial to me. Also Clone. Really the only two spells I use regularly are Mirror Image and Invisibily, both of which can be turned into scrolls and used with UMD.
