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View Full Version : Phylactery concept [MY PLAYERS OUT OUT OUT]



shadow_archmagi
2009-11-15, 11:01 AM
Can you declare your phylactery to be something intangible?

IE: Poem, Drawing, math equation, libertarian system of belief....

Regardless of whether it is possible or not, what would some repercussions be? I'm thinking of having the players find a wizard's spellbook with a schematic for a strange box; the intelligent spellbook declares that this is the phylactery. The schematic itself is the phylactery; any time someone draws it the wizard has another respawn point.

Shinizak
2009-11-15, 11:05 AM
I tried that once. My players had one hell of a ***** fit over it. I suggest not trying it for sake of ease.

Allan Surgite
2009-11-15, 11:07 AM
...how would it work? How does the Lich respawn from something intangible? Does he appear in the mouth of whoever says the poem? Does he appear in the drawing and become "real"? Does the math equation = continued unlife? Does he appear in the face of his High Priest?

shadow_archmagi
2009-11-15, 11:13 AM
...how would it work? How does the Lich respawn from something intangible? Does he appear in the mouth of whoever says the poem? Does he appear in the drawing and become "real"? Does the math equation = continued unlife? Does he appear in the face of his High Priest?

I'd like to think a crappy stick-figure lich climbs out of the box and then gradually becomes more detailed until he looks real and then climbs out of the book.

sofawall
2009-11-15, 11:15 AM
Other forms of phylacteries can exist, such as rings, amulets, or similar items.

Intangible objects are not similar.

Closak
2009-11-15, 11:23 AM
Well, there's that one guy who uses people's memories of him as a type of phylactery.
As long as anyone remembers that he exists he just keeps coming back over and over, and due to having had such a big impact on the world pretty much everyone knows who he is.

Add in that this also applies to people in the afterlife who remembers him...

Unkillable villain much?

Admitedly he's more of a ghost/revenant/evil spirit/whatever than a lich...

Bayar
2009-11-15, 11:24 AM
Phylacteries need to be made out of tough material to not sunder easily. Get an osmium bolt as your phylactery, mount it somewhere on a warforged titan.

Edwin
2009-11-15, 11:56 AM
Well, there's that one guy who uses people's memories of him as a type of phylactery.
As long as anyone remembers that he exists he just keeps coming back over and over, and due to having had such a big impact on the world pretty much everyone knows who he is.

Add in that this also applies to people in the afterlife who remembers him...

Unkillable villain much?

Admitedly he's more of a ghost/revenant/evil spirit/whatever than a lich...

Freddy? :smallbiggrin:

Edit: admittedly, that was more of a fear than a memory thing.

SparkMandriller
2009-11-15, 12:03 PM
IE: Poem, Drawing, math equation, libertarian system of belief....

120000 gp worth of poem, huh? I wonder how you'd measure that.

Emmerask
2009-11-15, 12:22 PM
Can you declare your phylactery to be something intangible?

IE: Poem, Drawing, math equation, libertarian system of belief....

Regardless of whether it is possible or not, what would some repercussions be? I'm thinking of having the players find a wizard's spellbook with a schematic for a strange box; the intelligent spellbook declares that this is the phylactery. The schematic itself is the phylactery; any time someone draws it the wizard has another respawn point.

You are the dm you can declare whatever you want :smallbiggrin:

So if they want to kill the lich they would need to hunt down any such drawing, after they have discovered that each drawing is a pyhlactery .
This seems like a pretty undoable task to me it could have been copied thousands of times and could be anywhere (drawn inside a cave, in some random book on an emtpy page etcetc).

I do like the idea of an intangible phylactery very much but the pc´s still need a chance to destroy the evil I think^^
So how about a book is a phylactery not the book itself but its contents if the book is copied the lich gets another respawn point (lots easier to track down book copies then a random drawing)

Anyway if you stick to the drawing phylactery I would impose the following rules to the integible phylacterys:
-It can only be copied x amounts of times ie you can only split your soul so many times) [Yes I do copy shamelessly from Harry Potter :-P]

-After that maximum amount any further drawing is just that a drawing

-Each time a Phylactery is destroyed the part of soul in it is destroyed too
If the Lich realizes that or not is up to you

-due to having a part of the superpowerful lich in it each drawing is magical and can defend itself (yes yes like in Harry Potter -.-)

-Put each drawing in a different environment and have it defend itself accordingly (ie one is in a library it will create lots of animated objects (books) to attack for example)

sofawall
2009-11-15, 01:06 PM
Phylacteries need to be made out of tough material to not sunder easily. Get an osmium bolt as your phylactery, mount it somewhere on a warforged titan.

Why not obdurium?

Closak
2009-11-15, 01:43 PM
Freddy? :smallbiggrin:

Edit: admittedly, that was more of a fear than a memory thing.

Not quite.

Think about it for a minute.


Uses the memories that others have of him in order to pull his conciousness and essence back together when killed, then proceeds to use sheer willpower to avoid going where people are supposed to go after death, thus leaving him with the issue of getting a physical presence.
Once that problem is solved he be back again.

It is possible to stop the "Regain a physical body" part of the process, but he still won't be really dead so ultimately you can't get rid of him.

shadow_archmagi
2009-11-15, 03:57 PM
This seems like a pretty undoable task to me it could have been copied thousands of times and could be anywhere (drawn inside a cave, in some random book on an emtpy page etcetc).

That would depend on just how you defined the drawing. If "All squares are meeee" then yeah, it'd be nigh unstoppable. But if it were something complicated like

http://www.leonardoda-vinci.org/Flying-Machine.jpg

Then it's unlikely there would be all that many copies. In fact, it'd mostly just be the copies that the PCs draw and hand out saying "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?"

Foryn Gilnith
2009-11-15, 04:11 PM
120000 gp worth of poem, huh? I wonder how you'd measure that.

Just use the Craft rules in Races of Stone. :) You'd need a collection of poetry to be your phylactery, though, given the values listed. Even if they're all haikus...

Rainbownaga
2009-11-15, 04:58 PM
libertarian system of belief


Woah, I like that: crush all hope for equality and human rites in the local village or the lich will come back and get you.

Jokasti
2009-11-15, 05:24 PM
It gets really fun when these concepts are on a Secret Page (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/secretPage.htm)...

Willfor
2009-11-15, 05:44 PM
Woah, I like that: crush all hope for equality and human rites in the local village or the lich will come back and get you.

Give the players a hook that leads them to kill/remove a seemingly horrible despot from the area. The village reverts to its old free ways. The lich begins reforming...

Optimystik
2009-11-15, 05:49 PM
Libris Mortis expands on the MM entry.

"The phylactery can exist in other forms as well, though it must either contain or bear an arcane inscription. Regardless of the phylactery’s form, its game statistics remain the same: size Tiny, hp 40, hardness 20, break DC 40."

A poem does not have Hardness 20 and cannot be broken, so I doubt it. Now if you put the poem on a piece of parchment that's another matter.

Khatoblepas
2009-11-15, 06:17 PM
A poem does not have Hardness 20 and cannot be broken, so I doubt it. Now if you put the poem on a piece of parchment that's another matter.

What about a riddle, the player's least favorite puzzle choice ever? That has a measurement of hardness, and you can crack a riddle, at least. The puzzle isn't to solve the riddle, it's to make the riddle seem ridiculous and offer valid but wrong answers...

.. breaking the riddle. B3

Rainbownaga
2009-11-15, 07:06 PM
Getting back to the drawing thing, if you just wanted the lich to reform out of a stick figure drawing, making that specific book or image a phylactary would be totally within the acceptable ranges of what is given (not that you're technically limmited to that).

Given the medieval nature of the game, making duplicates of the book (restricted to using certain magical inks or some-such) count as additional phylacteries is cool because it makes a type of sense (inscribing your soul onto a

What i think is awesome is that, given the medieval setting, copying illuminated scripts is a slow and laborious process, and magic that could speed the process wouldn't create 'true copies'. Suddenly, the players become aware of a new technology, the wood-block print. Will they be able to stop the lich before he can set up a production chain making him effectively immortal?

shadow_archmagi
2009-11-15, 07:12 PM
Woah, I like that: crush all hope for equality and human rites in the local village or the lich will come back and get you.


Sounds like something out of 40k

"IF ANYONE AT ALL SO MUCH AS *THINKS* ABOUT FREEDOM, AN EVIL WIZARD APPEARS.

ericgrau
2009-11-15, 07:14 PM
The most common phylactery is a box of significant size.


Other forms of phylacteries can exist, such as rings, amulets, or similar items.

That and the common box suggest that every lich out there and his brother isn't trying to hide his phylactery by making it seemingly unimportant. "Similar items" implies that it cannot be such a thing. It is a significant magic item. The PCs detect magic it, find it, identify it as a phylactery and destroy it. Or if the lich is smart he Nystul's Magic Auras it. Then the PCs have to do some investigation (hmm, there's a "non-magical" amulet tucked under a floorboard) and/or area dispels. Get over making it into a grain of sand or 1000 other easy to think up and hard to find objects. That's not clever, it's dumb and annoying.

Chrono22
2009-11-15, 07:18 PM
Polymorph Any Object the phylactery into a living creature.

Emmerask
2009-11-15, 07:19 PM
Libris Mortis expands on the MM entry.

"The phylactery can exist in other forms as well, though it must either contain or bear an arcane inscription. Regardless of the phylactery’s form, its game statistics remain the same: size Tiny, hp 40, hardness 20, break DC 40."

A poem does not have Hardness 20 and cannot be broken, so I doubt it. Now if you put the poem on a piece of parchment that's another matter.


Well if some "rule" stands in the way of a good plot or story there is only one thing a dm can do... bend or break it :smalltongue:
Well it depends on the players of course if they like original stuff or if they stick by the official rules no matter what, such players wouldn´t be happy in my campaigns but to each his own :smallwink:

And if your players really want an official explanation just say that some epic spell was used (can do anything with that anyway:-P) to create an epic phylactery :-P

Anyway I really like the idea of an intengible phylactery and will put something like that in my campaign too :smallbiggrin:

Haven
2009-11-15, 07:53 PM
It would be awesome, therefore yes.

RiOrius
2009-11-15, 10:54 PM
I like the idea of making it an intangible object, but I don't really like the consequences you're talking about. Specifically, the business of making copies to grant additional phylacteries.

I think it'd be totally cools if there were a poem that was the lich's phylactery. But it would be some mystical poem that only one person could know at a time. If you spoke the poem aloud, the person nearest you would hear it and remember it, and you would forget it (along with everyone else within earshot; they'd hear it, but couldn't remember it). And then to destroy the phylactery, you'd have to kill whoever currently has possession of the poem.

Similarly, with the drawing idea: if the drawing is ever copied, the previous original vanishes. The power is in the drawing, not in the object. So by some (possibly contrived) means, the PC's can see the drawing on a shield, but lose the shield. Later, the lich has moved the phylactery onto the trunk of a withered tree, etc. I'm not sure how you'd get it to work (since to be really awesome the PC's would need to see it on different objects), but it could be pretty awesome if you pulled it off.

But yeah, the whole "every copy of this schematic is another fully functional phylactery" seems kinda wrong, IMHO.

The whole idea is clearly against RAW, so you're definitely getting into DM Fiat territory, where the question is no longer "is it legal" but rather "will the players enjoy it", and I'd probably not in the latter case. It'd just be annoying to never know how many copies there are, y'know? Kinda ruins the climax of destroying the lich, which I tend to think the players deserve. If you do go through with it, make sure there's some way that the players can know that they've got 'em all, so they still get closure.

Rainbownaga
2009-11-16, 02:46 AM
Anybody else get the mental image of the characters walking into a city only to find the lich's phylactery-sigil scrawled hundreds of times on walls, doors and windowframes throughout the city?

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-11-16, 02:46 AM
The most common phylactery is a box of significant size.

That and the common box suggest that every lich out there and his brother isn't trying to hide his phylactery by making it seemingly unimportant. "Similar items" implies that it cannot be such a thing. It is a significant magic item. The PCs detect magic it, find it, identify it as a phylactery and destroy it. Or if the lich is smart he Nystul's Magic Auras it. Then the PCs have to do some investigation (hmm, there's a "non-magical" amulet tucked under a floorboard) and/or area dispels. Get over making it into a grain of sand or 1000 other easy to think up and hard to find objects. That's not clever, it's dumb and annoying.Polymorph Any Object.

Also, WotC should have gone into more detail on what is required to become a Lich. If we knew why the phylactary is usually(but, very specifically, not always) that shape, it would give us a better idea of what's possible.

Rainbownaga
2009-11-16, 03:33 AM
That and the common box suggest that every lich out there and his brother isn't trying to hide his phylactery by making it seemingly unimportant. "Similar items" implies that it cannot be such a thing. It is a significant magic item. The PCs detect magic it, find it, identify it as a phylactery and destroy it. Or if the lich is smart he Nystul's Magic Auras it. Then the PCs have to do some investigation (hmm, there's a "non-magical" amulet tucked under a floorboard) and/or area dispels. Get over making it into a grain of sand or 1000 other easy to think up and hard to find objects. That's not clever, it's dumb and annoying.


I agree totally. IMHO there are two ways of running a lich. In the first case, you have a recurring enemy who will continually attack you until you finally storm his base and break the phylactery hidden somewhere in his base. Messing around with different shapes isn't useful.

The second way is to make finding and destroying the phylactery a mystery and puzzle in itself. I agree, making it a grain of sand or the lich's toilet brush isn't really helpful, but the examples in this thread are. You can force moral dillemas, make the party feel intimidated by the lich having an indefinite number of them, force them to track down some bric-a-brac that got sold in a market stall and changed hands a dozen times before the players realised its significance.

It's all good :smallsmile:

Zephyros
2009-11-16, 05:30 AM
Sounds like something out of 40k

"IF ANYONE AT ALL SO MUCH AS *THINKS* ABOUT FREEDOM, AN EVIL WIZARD APPEARS.

I once did that using the ToB's adaptation on JPM (the eeeeeevil Obsidian Destroyers as I named them...) "The Evil of the Order has haunted the memories of the people..."

All the players confessed that "if the story wasn't so damn good" they would have gone "PURGATUS on my ass".

(on a side note it was the first time I saw a paladin trading levels to get at Black guard 10 asap and then continuing with Crusader.)

Optimystik
2009-11-16, 09:17 AM
Well if some "rule" stands in the way of a good plot or story there is only one thing a dm can do... bend or break it :smalltongue:

Well in this case, by breaking the rules the DM risks actually impacting the players' fun. RAW and RAI, all phylacteries are physically breakable, tangible objects. If the DM makes one that isn't, he needs to be sure the players have some way of discovering this, and a "final" way of destroying the lich.

I would argue that a phylactery like this should be even easier to destroy than a conventional one. The players just have to recite the poem backwards or something. The strangeness of the phylactery is an additional layer of difficulty in itself.

Multiple phylacteries (which the OP seemed to be suggesting) are also out by RAW:

"A lich can construct only a single phylactery. A lich whose phylactery is destroyed suffers no harm, but cannot construct a new one."

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-11-16, 10:45 AM
I would have fun with this in a modern campaign, probably. "The Lich's Phylactary is this diagram." "I upload a copy to /b/. He'll suicide rather than respawn from there". If it's a poem, convert a reading of it to FLV. Then finish with a Bel-air. Torturing an immortal undead just takes more thought.

Emmerask
2009-11-16, 10:50 AM
Well in this case, by breaking the rules the DM risks actually impacting the players' fun. RAW and RAI, all phylacteries are physically breakable, tangible objects.


for most pcs this knowledge would be metagaming I know it is hard not to metagame with such things.That alone is justification to change the rules not to take away fun but to create something exciting.
"oh yeah its a lich lets find his phylactery, look for an object worth 12.000gp and break it!" this wouldn´t be my idea of fun as a player.




If the DM makes one that isn't, he needs to be sure the players have some way of discovering this, and a "final" way of destroying the lich.


Thats perfectly true they should be able to discover or already have that knowledge (ie a necro who learned much about phylacterys because he wants to become a lich himself, a scholar who has written a paper about lichs etc in these cases I would hand out how phylacterys work in this world freely)
otherwise yeah there should be a way to discover how it works in this world.





I would argue that a phylactery like this should be even easier to destroy than a conventional one. The players just have to recite the poem backwards or something. The strangeness of the phylactery is an additional layer of difficulty in itself.


Yes there should be some downside ie it shouldn´t become an impossible task




Multiple phylacteries (which the OP seemed to be suggesting) are also out by RAW:

"A lich can construct only a single phylactery. A lich whose phylactery is destroyed suffers no harm, but cannot construct a new one."

To me these are more of guidelines then actual rules not everything in YOUR world needs to be raw or rai especially if your players know most rules pretty well it will not be challanging.
I quite similar example woud be using monster manual monsters against someone who knows the manual exceptionally well " oh its monster xyz its weak to fire has xy ac and xy hd" so what you do is change the stats so that his metagame knowledge isn´t right anymore...

Of course if the players just don´t want anything else but the standard lich then just call this thing a memory which became flesh and create your own rules for it :smallcool: (it will work just like a lich but with multiple phylacterys and a different name so no one can complain ;))

Optimystik
2009-11-16, 11:08 AM
I would have fun with this in a modern campaign, probably. "The Lich's Phylactary is this diagram." "I upload a copy to /b/. He'll suicide rather than respawn from there". If it's a poem, convert a reading of it to FLV. Then finish with a Bel-air. Torturing an immortal undead just takes more thought.

Not even soulless liches deserve such treatment :smalleek:


for most pcs this knowledge would be metagaming I know it is hard not to metagame with such things.That alone is justification to change the rules not to take away fun but to create something exciting.
"oh yeah its a lich lets find his phylactery, look for an object worth 12.000gp and break it!" this wouldn´t be my idea of fun as a player.
...
To me these are more of guidelines then actual rules not everything in YOUR world needs to be raw or rai especially if your players know most rules pretty well it will not be challanging.
I quite similar example woud be using monster manual monsters against someone who knows the manual exceptionally well " oh its monster xyz its weak to fire has xy ac and xy hd" so what you do is change the stats so that his metagame knowledge isn´t right anymore...

I'm fine with mixing things up to catch the players off guard now and then, but that should only be done to players who go into a situation thinking they already know everything. Punishing players that actually do the research is unfair.

With the right class and skills, any 'metagame' information can become known in-game to the players, and thus ceases to be meta. Consider the various Knowledge skills - a high enough check means the PCs know everything about your big bad lich, or at the very least find an NPC who does. Consider divination magics, especially the divine "ask my deity what to do" ones, or the psionic "read reality itself to find out about this thing." Consider that all liches have to be above 11th level anyway - coincidentally, the exact same level that Legend Lore and similar effects care about. Consider unique class abilities that can retrieve information, like Bardic Knowledge for bards or Dark Knowledge for Archivists.

The more you hide from your players, the more fiat you're exercising for the sake of being able to say "Gotcha!". I can't speak for every player out there, but I'd be annoyed if I tried the above methods and my DM kept responding with "it doesn't work" just so they could spring a phylactery replacement on me later. It sounds like the DM having his fun at the expense of the players to me.

Emmerask
2009-11-16, 11:24 AM
Not even soulless liches deserve such treatment :smalleek:



I'm fine with mixing things up to catch the players off guard now and then, but that should only be done to players who go into a situation thinking they already know everything. Punishing players that actually do the research is unfair.

With the right class and skills, any 'metagame' information can become known in-game to the players, and thus ceases to be meta. Consider the various Knowledge skills - a high enough check means the PCs know everything about your big bad lich, or at the very least find an NPC who does. Consider divination magics, especially the divine "ask my deity what to do" ones, or the psionic "read reality itself to find out about this thing." Consider that all liches have to be above 11th level anyway - coincidentally, the exact same level that Legend Lore and similar effects care about. Consider unique class abilities that can retrieve information, like Bardic Knowledge for bards or Dark Knowledge for Archivists.

The more you hide from your players, the more fiat you're exercising for the sake of being able to say "Gotcha!". I can't speak for every player out there, but I'd be annoyed if I tried the above methods and my DM kept responding with "it doesn't work" just so they could spring a phylactery replacement on me later. It sounds like the DM having his fun at the expense of the players to me.

I didn´t mean to change things midgame that would be unfair yes ^^
If they have the means ie appropriate knowledge skills or bardic/ dark knowledge I would give them these information or if not I would give them oppertunities to find out but this would happen in game and not with knowledge they have from the dmg or libris mortis or other I know every book from page to page knowledge :smallwink:

On the other hand if they don´t have these skills and don´t research what to do but only use their metagame knowledge yes then indeed I would say "GOTCHA!" and my players would most likely agree that it was stupid to take all things as a given :smallbiggrin:

But I guess it really depends on the players you are playing with the setting and many other factors if it will be awesome or a fail

Randel
2009-11-16, 11:37 AM
Maybe his 'phylactory' is an incantation? Instead of creating a single anchor to keep his soul in the realm of the living he made up a ritual or poem that can re-summon him exclusively.

It wouldn't be something that you could effectively disguise as a normal poem. For the thing to work you would need someone to get the book and recite the incantation out loud. It less like saying "nobody expects the spanish inquisition" and more like reciting fifty pages of arcane sentences out loud over a period of hours.

Our villain, instead of having a phylactory that automatically revives him if he dies, instead has to be summoned back willingly by someone. He can make copies of his summoning text (you could call it the Liches Bible or the Tome of the Immortal) and distribute it around to ensure that there is always the chance that he can be resummoned by someone.

A few side-effects:

1. Once you find out that there are copies of the Tome that brings him back to life, you can alert all the churches who then send their paladins out to seek out an burn any copies of it (maybe jot down the first ten lines of the text and have them seek out any books with those lines written in them). This may cause a wave of bookburning and such, but its all for the greater good.

2. He can't be resurrected by normal means anymore, having his remains on hand can't be used for raise dead spells.

3. Each copy of the book can summon him from wherever he is... even if he's dead (thats the point) or if he's still alive. Thus you could grab a copy of his Tome and start reading it, then when he is forcibly summoned to your position you kill him. It takes a few days for his soul to travel to the point where he can be summoned from so each time you summon him and kill him there are a few extra days where he can't really do anything. (or you could just form a brotherhood of knights who spend their time summoning him and killing him over and over so that they get lots of XP and he can't do anything ever).

4. Instead of automatically being revived or going to the afterlife, the villain gets sent to a little spot in Limbo where he waits until someone summons him. If the heros manage to keep people from summoning him again for long enough then he starts to go insane, either arbitrarily killing whoever is around when finally summoned, being summoned but weak (from not having a body for so long or just forgetting what its like to be alive anymore), or being summoned and pleading that the heros help him destroy all his Tomes so he can finally move on instead of getting stuck in Limbo. In effect, his attempt at immortality has resulted in a Fate Worse than Death if he is ever actually killed and there is nobody to summon him for years.

5. He might try carving his tome into a big monument so that archeologists will find it someday.

ghashxx
2009-11-16, 11:57 AM
I think that making his phylactery some kind of physical embodiment of libertarian ideals is definitely beyond absoflippanlutely amazing. Perhaps a series of expensive crafted writings on the walls of a peaceful and loving village dedicated to hospitality and family values. The people can be slowly bonded to the writings so that on the occasion the lich needs to respawn he draws power from the people, hurrying up the process. At all other times the bond actually strengthens the people, lending them extra energy and such. So all the party sees are people who love each other and are dedicated to peace and liberty. To destroy the lich, you have to kill/demoralize every villager, and destroy every inscription. I would love to see any good character's face upon discovery.

Optimystik
2009-11-16, 11:59 AM
Randel, I think your solution is spot-on. This is a great use of the Incantation rules.

A few changes I would note though;

1) The book should be disguised as something else entirely. For example, The Tome of Life Everlasting, with rumors that reading the entire book out loud in a secluded place grants immortality. The rumors just don't specify WHO the immortality is for. The seclusion clause prevents the reader from spawning the lich somewhere hazardous - for example, in the middle of a circle of paladins. The party would thus have to get creative in terms of bringing him back in conditions where they have an advantage.

2) I agree completely that "normal" resurrection and reanimation would cease to apply to this special lich, even via a normal phylactery.

3) Since we're using the incantation rules instead of a phylactery, the caster in question wouldn't even need to be a lich anymore, though he certainly still could be.

4) I don't agree with the ability to "summon him from wherever." Certainly he should be aware of the locations of all his books, and have the option of teleporting to any one of them. But the books should function like a normal phylactery - useless unless the lich is already destroyed.TUnlike a normal phylactery however, possessing a book should either make it easier to find the other books, or the lich himself, or both.

5) In terms of existing in limbo and potentially going crazy from solitude, I think a better option would be for the larger part of his consciousness while dead to be sealed away and unaware. A very small part of him could exist in the book(s) while dead, similar to Voldemort and Riddle's diary. He can thus influence the world in small ways, and stay sane. (Well, relatively sane anyway.)

6) The books should have some kind of benefit to possessing them, to tempt the PCs into keeping them around rather than destroying them immediately or trying to bring him back immediately. For example, the book could contain minor incantations that do useful things, but each one is a part of the larger incantation of bringing him back. The books could also visit small misfortunes on the carrier - not exactly life-threatening, but the kinds of inconveniences that would cause them to make use of its "helpful" magics.

7) The books should function like many other evil magic items - they want to be found. Thus including them in monuments would be unnecessary - no matter whose trove they end up in, thieves/heroes/looters etc. should be compelled to pick them up.

Randel
2009-11-16, 04:52 PM
Hmm, the idea of each book having a fraction of his conciousness in it sounds good. I imagine that each book appears to function as a semi-intelligent item, sort of like Riddles diary. It might have a bunch of spells in it, and have the ability to look around and communicate with people in its vicinity.

Creating a duplicate of the book is rather easy, a person simply removes a few pages from one book, replaces the mising pages with new fresh pages, and then incorporates the loose pages into a new enchanted book.

In his 'limbo' state, a large portion of his conciousnes is unconcious but all the smaller fragments can communicate with eachother and he lives on as a bunch of books, each one knows what the others know and they are all workng together to get him revived.

When he's revived he loses a good deal of his connection to his books (all the formerly talkative books go silent) but he can sense the presence of all of them and by concentrating he can look through each of them and speak through them.

Thus, he has two basic forms:

1. A series of books, each containing his vast arcane knowledge and who are able to doll out their magical powers and knowledge to the user if they desire (the words on the pages appear and dissapear as he chooses, but it might be possible for a suitibly powerful spellcaster to 'read him like a book' to extract knowledge forcibly from him. These books all work together to get him revived, but they need someones help to do so.


2. His natural form of a powerful wizard, he can still use the books to his advantage, looking through them, communicating, and maybe casting spells through them. He can teleport to their location but only because he knows where they are and can cast teleportation spells. He can still use his books to comunicate with his minions, but when he has his body back then he has to concentrate to use them.


As long as any copy of his books remains then he can potentially be revived and can speak throgh the books. He could probably also be revived from just a few loose pages if they get incorporated into a new magical book. The pages can also transform themselves into scrolls... so he could if need be sacrifice some of his power to have a minion cast a powerful spell at a needed time... though the book would need to be mended before he could be revived using it.

Jacey
2009-11-16, 05:01 PM
Best one I heard of (not mine): Use The material focus from a trap the soul spell cast on a Tarrasque. Anyone who breaks your phylactery has to deal with fluffy.


I always preferred to use something the party wouldn't want to destroy. An orb of curse disease at will. Every now and then some naked guy shows up from 3 countries over, puts on the spare set of clothes he left with the priests, goes into town and buys some supplies and heads out on his way. Back home he may be an evil despot, but here he's just the kindly old lich who singlehandedly wiped out the plague.

Prime32
2009-11-16, 05:28 PM
Polymorph Any Object the phylactery into a living creature.Better yet, this creature turns out to be a PC's girlfriend.


Best one I heard of (not mine): Use The material focus from a trap the soul spell cast on a Tarrasque. Anyone who breaks your phylactery has to deal with fluffy.


I always preferred to use something the party wouldn't want to destroy. An orb of curse disease at will. Every now and then some naked guy shows up from 3 countries over, puts on the spare set of clothes he left with the priests, goes into town and buys some supplies and heads out on his way. Back home he may be an evil despot, but here he's just the kindly old lich who singlehandedly wiped out the plague.That's similar to Eight-Bit Theatre, where Lich uses the Orb of Earth as his phylactery - if any of the four Orbs are destroyed the entire universe will collapse.

Haven
2009-11-17, 05:46 PM
I really like the direction this thread has taken :o)