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Traab
2013-06-10, 03:05 PM
Every wizard/lord/lich/whatever who has some awesome macguffin they have to protect at all costs always does the same thing. They build a big structure, like a castle, or a maze around it, then place it in the middle (effectively speaking) WHY?! Unless it is something you need regular access to, the smartest way to make sure it never gets found is to place it in a room, then surround it with 50 feet of stone or whatever on all sides, THEN build a maze, which is nothing but a decoy to distract the heroes from finding the real deal.

They wander an endlessly looping labyrinth that has no treasure room until the big bad can get around to wiping them out or they starve to death. There should NEVER be a path that leads to the super incredible item of mega awesomesauceness. Why give the heroes a chance at all, no matter how small? Unless they know exactly where in the maze it is buried and brought some heavy duty excavating equipment with them, and have a week or two to kill, they arent going to get it.

Craft (Cheese)
2013-06-10, 03:19 PM
Because it makes a good story. If the villain makes defeating her utterly impossible, then how are the heroes supposed to win?

Of course, if we're talking the smart thing to do as a villain, the best thing to do is build the castle/dungeon/maze or whatever, then throw the macguffin to the bottom of the ocean. Or better yet, launch it into space heading as fast as you can manage into the intergalactic void.

Sir_Thaddeus
2013-06-10, 03:20 PM
Sure, a halfway competent villain can give the heroes a 0% chance of victory, but if they did, there'd be no story. In the context of a roleplaying game, the reason the villains do something like that is purely a DM tool to get the players into an environment where the stereotypical dungeon crawl can take place. Villain intelligence must sometimes take the backstage to the Rule of Cool.

Traab
2013-06-10, 03:36 PM
Ok, this is true, there cant be no chance, but, as an example of doing it right. A story I read had a team of knights plus one spellcaster making their way through a maze. They had wandered for quite some time, fighting random groups of troops and using any prisoners they caught as mobile trap springers when they realized they had been duped. All this time they had been following the blood trail of a soldier they had injured only to realize that by now he would have bled to death and NOT still be walking in a straight line down the hall. Anyways, they proceed to destroy a supporting collum and bring down the ceiling firguring if they cant go through the maze, they will climb out and go OVER it. They climb up the ruins only to discover that all this time the real path to their goal was above the maze, the maze itself was just an endlessly looping mess that went nowhere, and even better, the bad guys could change the walls from above at will as they were all on pivots. So they couldnt even mark their path effectively.

That was actually badass. The bad guy had this big dangerous trap laden maze, full of squads of troops and deadly pits, spikes, wall smashing traps and whatever and the whole time it was a fake. There was a secret passage early on that lead up a flight of stairs and let the people who were supposed to be there bypass the whole thing. Thats the kind of setup I would like to see more often. It can still be figured out, but at least it isnt as simple as, "Figure out the way through the maze, get the prize, and leave"

Vultawk
2013-06-10, 03:53 PM
Overconfidence.

Why place the MacGuffin in an unenterable room with 100' thick steel walls, or send it to the bottom of the ocean or the depths of space when your deathmaze is absolutely impenetrable and those fools have no chance of getting past even the simplest of the challenges you have laid before them?

It's really the biggest failing of any major villain in most fiction, which is why the Evil Overlord's list pretty much repeats the mantra "don't think you're invincible" every third item.

TheCountAlucard
2013-06-10, 04:50 PM
Sometimes you've gotta be able to check on the Macguffin. Maybe it needs maintenance to keep the trapped entity inside. Or maybe it's a book that writes in itself, and you have a vested interest in both knowing how it turns out, and keeping others from reading it (for instance, perhaps it details your life as it happens).

Or maybe you want the right people to be able to get at it in an emergency, but not just anybody.

Grinner
2013-06-10, 04:58 PM
Accessibility, like others have said. If I need to drill through 50 feet of stone every time I want to check in on it and then reseal it, that method will become time-consuming and expensive, fast.

And, in the case of Lord Voldemort, you must fight magic with magic. When your enemies can divine an object's precise location with a wave of a wand and a few words of gibberish, burying it at the bottom of the sea will be less effective than you might hope.

Scow2
2013-06-10, 05:00 PM
There is no amount of obscurity that can completely fool a comprehensive, dedicated divination taskforce. It WILL be found, and when it is, it better have good defenses.

GoddessSune
2013-06-10, 05:01 PM
Every wizard/lord/lich/whatever who has some awesome macguffin they have to protect at all costs always does the same thing. They build a big structure, like a castle, or a maze around it, then place it in the middle (effectively speaking) WHY?! Unless it is something you need regular access to, the smartest way to make sure it never gets found is to place it in a room, then surround it with 50 feet of stone or whatever on all sides, THEN build a maze, which is nothing but a decoy to distract the heroes from finding the real deal.


It is all part of fiction. You can't make the bad guys ''too awesome'' or the heroes will not stand a chance. That is why.

The bigger reason: It is easy. If you want to tell a story, you need to keep it very, very, very simple. The first reason is that few people in your audience like or can even understand or follow complex stories. The second is, of course, time. A movie/TV show only has so many minutes, a book so many pages and a RPG game session so many hours. And the third is that is is easy for the storyteller.

Everything in fiction is bound by the above three: Keep it simple, keep it short and keep it easy. Just look at anything in fiction and how it all ''works out''.

Doomboy911
2013-06-10, 05:17 PM
Because it makes a good story. If the villain makes defeating her utterly impossible, then how are the heroes supposed to win?

Of course, if we're talking the smart thing to do as a villain, the best thing to do is build the castle/dungeon/maze or whatever, then throw the macguffin to the bottom of the ocean. Or better yet, launch it into space heading as fast as you can manage into the intergalactic void.

yeah but who wants to play spelljammer?



Ooh just got a hilarious idea. They start exploring this giant maze when all of the sudden the ranger says he smells mice. Giant mouse comes around the corner. They reach the end of the maze and find a block of cheese the size of them.

Geordnet
2013-06-10, 07:12 PM
Nothing is ever impenetrable. If you provide no way to reach the MacGuffin, then the pesky adventurers will just carve their own -one conspicuously lacking in alarms and deathtraps.



Ooh just got a hilarious idea. They start exploring this giant maze when all of the sudden the ranger says he smells mice. Giant mouse comes around the corner. They reach the end of the maze and find a block of cheese the size of them.
Even better: after going through a maze chasing after gold, they discover the whole dungeon was just a psychological experiment by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy mice. :smallbiggrin:

valadil
2013-06-10, 07:18 PM
Every wizard/lord/lich/whatever who has some awesome macguffin they have to protect at all costs always does the same thing. They build a big structure, like a castle, or a maze around it, then place it in the middle (effectively speaking) WHY?! Unless it is something you need regular access to, the smartest way to make sure it never gets found is to place it in a room, then surround it with 50 feet of stone or whatever on all sides, THEN build a maze, which is nothing but a decoy to distract the heroes from finding the real deal.

In a world with teleport, stone to mud, and extraplanar travel, how much protection does 50 feet of stone really buy you?

Razanir
2013-06-10, 07:43 PM
In a world with teleport, stone to mud, and extraplanar travel, how much protection does 50 feet of stone really buy you?

Not much. Even with demonic contingencies to prevent people from teleporting, you can still be foiled by an army of dwarves with pickaxes

Grinner
2013-06-10, 07:50 PM
Not much. Even with demonic contingencies to prevent people from teleporting, you can still be foiled by an army of dwarves with pickaxes

Or, more embarrassingly, kobolds. :smalltongue:

Geordnet
2013-06-10, 07:58 PM
In a world with teleport, stone to mud, and extraplanar travel, how much protection does 50 feet of stone really buy you?
50 feet of deathtrap and monster sounds pretty appealing by comparison, doesn't it? :smalltongue:

(And seriously, you can use decoys either way, so why wouldn't you put your MacGuffin in an actual dungeon?)

Slipperychicken
2013-06-10, 08:05 PM
ACKS explains it with the idea that dungeons are used by mage-lords to attract monsters, whose parts are needed in magic items, and adventurers harvest the monster-parts through dungeon-crawling.

Razanir
2013-06-10, 08:16 PM
Although we all know the single safest place for a phylactery. You make a dungeon to store a map that leads to a dungeon that stores a decoy. Meanwhile, the actual phylactery is in a safe deposit box in the phylactery depository, a bank run by liches where their phylacteries are protected their collective magical strength, instead of what they could individually ward with.

Asmodai
2013-06-10, 08:39 PM
You'd trust other liches with your phylactery?

valadil
2013-06-10, 08:43 PM
You'd trust other liches with your phylactery?

Only unknowingly. I might swap my phylactery for another lich's, letting him thinking he's protecting his own. I kinda like the images of all the liches of the world closing guarding phylacteries that don't actually belong to them.

awa
2013-06-10, 08:51 PM
the problem with ideas like drop it in the ocean or hurl it into space is things live in the ocean and space. You made it harder for people looking for it to find it but you have dramatically increased the chance of it getting destroyed by dumb luck.

the problem with switching phylacteries is that it assumes that lich b is better at protecting a phylactery then you but you have already proved that lich b is lousy at protecting a phylactery becuase you have switched it.

Razanir
2013-06-10, 08:54 PM
You'd trust other liches with your phylactery?

The First Interplanar Bank of Lichdom:
For 100 gp/year, hours of service protecting the bank, and help adding creative new means of protection, you can store your phylactery safely in an undisclosed location hidden in Sigil.

navar100
2013-06-10, 09:02 PM
You're right. BBEG always wins. Players always lose. DM wins. Yay.

Slipperychicken
2013-06-10, 09:16 PM
You'd trust other liches with your phylactery?

Of course :smallbiggrin:

http://images.cryhavok.org/d/18002-1/I+Got+that+Lich+a+Phylactery.jpg

Geordnet
2013-06-10, 09:41 PM
Although we all know the single safest place for a phylactery. You make a dungeon to store a map that leads to a dungeon that stores a decoy. Meanwhile, the actual phylactery is in a safe deposit box in the phylactery depository, a bank run by liches where their phylacteries are protected their collective magical strength, instead of what they could individually ward with.
Then, of course, the adventurers ignore the decoy dungeons and pull off a daring raid on the depository. :smallcool:

No, seriously, this is the fatal flaw in the "best way to keep something safe". It assumes that the adventurers play by the rules you present to them, possessing no independent initiative or creativity at all.

Even less realistically, it assumes that your secret is kept safe. If it were possible to do this, you could bury whatever-it-is two feet underground in some random spot in the woods and it would be just as safe as in your solid adamantine cube. But if it isn't, nothing will stop someone determined enough from taking it.

That is all it really comes down to: keeping it secret. Lack of knowledge is the one and only thing that can keep the thieves away. Even the best lock can be picked if one knows its inner workings.

Kane0
2013-06-10, 09:44 PM
I'd just bury the McGuffin in the backyard myself, then build/buy a massive castle to live in.

Edit: If you totally forget about something can it be retrieved from your mind?

TuggyNE
2013-06-10, 09:56 PM
That is all it really comes down to: keeping it secret. Lack of knowledge is the one and only thing that can keep the thieves away. Even the best lock can be picked if one knows its inner workings.

Hmm. This is a fairly common attitude among professionals working in physical security, or at least it was; unfortunately, it's not really adequate, because of how absurdly difficult it is to maintain actual secrets. Computer security has had to wrestle with that more rigorously, and developed the idea that all parts of the security system, save only a very few private keys/passwords, should be assumed to be fully known to any potential attacker. Since this is not infrequently the case anyway, this attitude ensures that the system can cope with actual attacks.

One of the useful insights of physical security, however, is that safeguards do not need to stop attackers by themselves; they only need to buy enough time for guards to arrive to drive them off. This is why safes, locks, vaults, and so on are primarily rated by how long it takes a skilled attacker to penetrate them: half an hour, say, or two hours. As long as you have reliable alarms and a fairly well-understood security system that takes a certain length of time to get through, you just need to have someone on call to teleport in and gank the intruders.

Put more succinctly, an obstacle isn't an obstacle unless there's covering fire.

Tvtyrant
2013-06-10, 10:10 PM
yeah but who wants to play spelljammer?

:smallfrown: I want to play Spelljammer...

Kornaki
2013-06-10, 11:04 PM
I'm kind of on board with the phylactery repository. Get some devils involved to make sure the letter of the contract (phylacteries will never be used maliciously against their owner, etc.) is upheld, have good corporate structure to make sure rogue liches can't take advantage of the system, it seems like it could be fairly robust. Throw in some epic spells that incinerates anyone who tries to betray the customers and you've got yourself something good.

Admit it, a sweet epic level campaign would be to infiltrate the bank in an attempt to destroy 200 phylacteries (or blackmail 200 liches, or even better the phylactery bank into keeping quiet about how their security was breached so easily)

Lord Vukodlak
2013-06-11, 12:49 AM
People often talk about the evil overlord list but the biggest problem with that list is to be an evil overlord requires a megalomaniac personality which makes adhering to those rules rather difficult


Admit it, a sweet epic level campaign would be to infiltrate the bank in an attempt to destroy 200 phylacteries (or blackmail 200 liches, or even better the phylactery bank into keeping quiet about how their security was breached so easily)
In a campaign I'm running a race of extra dimensional spell-casters called the Hash'ilk'Khan are the main antagonist.

In there home plane is a place called the Well of Souls its location is secret and heavily shielded from divination (and the plane having a geography similar to Draenor) In essence it was once a material plane but the world was torn into shards some hundreds of miles across and scattered over large distances.

It is there where the Hash'ilk'Khan Leader(also a lich) stores the library of phylacteries for his underlings who've undergone the transformation into Lichdom. To keep its location secret the well reconstitutes the Liches near the location of there death instead of near the phylactery.(its also where he imprisons the spirits of upstarts who oppose him) Those imprisoned souls are then used to empower powerful undead engines of destruction called Dread Warriors, which have high HD, high spell resistance, high energy resistance and a high DR that can't be overcome and some limited magic to let them get around some battlefield control spells.

The party has been given a spell designed to tag a the spirit of a Hash'ilk'Khan Lich and track the direction its spirit goes when slain and rejuvenated once its been physically destroyed. After they've killed enough of these liches they'll be able to locate the "Well of Souls" and lead the armies of the alliance against it. Which in turn will force the Hash'ilk'Khan's leader to reveal its location which results in a very huge background battle to the PC's fighting the big bad and is elites.

Mastikator
2013-06-11, 01:33 AM
Sure, a halfway competent villain can give the heroes a 0% chance of victory, but if they did, there'd be no story. In the context of a roleplaying game, the reason the villains do something like that is purely a DM tool to get the players into an environment where the stereotypical dungeon crawl can take place. Villain intelligence must sometimes take the backstage to the Rule of Cool.

That's a cheap and unnecessary trick, if you want them to go dungeon crawling just tell them there's treasure.
Or better yet, have them mysteriously wake up in the bottom of the dungeon with no memory of how they got there and they have to dungeon crawl out of the dungeon instead of into.

-


Hmm. This is a fairly common attitude among professionals working in physical security, or at least it was; unfortunately, it's not really adequate, because of how absurdly difficult it is to maintain actual secrets.

Just spread false, contradictory/misleading rumors about the secret before the truth gets out, since there's no evidence people won't know what to believe.

Omegonthesane
2013-06-11, 02:04 AM
Addressing the specific example - if you want competent villains to do incompetent things, force their hand by circumstance. For example, in the First War for Armageddon the Daemon Prince Angron wasted lots of time building unholy temples - not out of hubris or devotion, but because the warp storm was fading and he needed to maintain his legion of daemons, without whom he could not even have finished the conquest let alone defeated the incoming strike force.

In the phylactery example - well done. Your phylactery is trapped within rock. When your corporeal form is destroyed it tries to reform around the phylactery and instead your partially generated bones crack continuously leaving you in impotent torment until someone cracks the stone open, leaving your phylactery defenceless and your helpless body next to it.

If you ask me? The only safe place for a Phylactery is on the person of the really high level Wizard who created it. Only a band of incompetents would kill you at the kind of levels where you have a phylactery, after all - there are many other ways to cheat death - and one may safely assume that in D&D any force capable of defeating you, personally, is capable of defeating all of your servants and traps combined, because the latter is actually an easier task with D&D's levelling system.

Kurald Galain
2013-06-11, 02:29 AM
Every wizard/lord/lich/whatever who has some awesome macguffin they have to protect at all costs always does the same thing. They build a big structure, like a castle, or a maze around it, then place it in the middle (effectively speaking) WHY?!

Because of divination magic.



yeah but who wants to play spelljammer
Me!

BWR
2013-06-11, 02:44 AM
the problem with ideas like drop it in the ocean or hurl it into space is things live in the ocean and space. You made it harder for people looking for it to find it but you have dramatically increased the chance of it getting destroyed by dumb luck.


Depending on where in space you throw it, not really. If you randomly throw it out in a direction in a star system, you run the risk of it gradually being pulled in to a planet. If you manage to get it out into interstellar space, it's WAAAAAAY more safe than anywhere on a planet.
Barring the setting being full of giant voidsharks that eat everything in interstellar space. But light years with nothing but the odd hydrogen atom as your neighbor is a bit safer than a planet, which has volcanodes, earthquakes, and adventurers messing about.

prufock
2013-06-11, 06:25 AM
That's a cheap and unnecessary trick, if you want them to go dungeon crawling just tell them there's treasure.
Or better yet, have them mysteriously wake up in the bottom of the dungeon with no memory of how they got there and they have to dungeon crawl out of the dungeon instead of into.

Speaking of cheap tricks!

DigoDragon
2013-06-11, 06:48 AM
Overconfidence.

Pretty much this. Some villains get really powerful and feel like no one could dare touch them (especially if no one has in decades), so they flaunt that power in a "I dare you" kind of way.

SethoMarkus
2013-06-11, 10:03 AM
Thats the kind of setup I would like to see more often. It can still be figured out, but at least it isnt as simple as, "Figure out the way through the maze, get the prize, and leave"

The issue I see with this is how many times can this be done before it becomes routine and loses all surprise? Just look at M. Night Shyamalan movies. In his earlier hits, like The Sixth Sense, the twist ending caught the audience completely by surprise, making the story both memorable and 'original'. Anymore, people expect some sort of twist and the result is just kind of lame.

The scenario you described is indeed awesome, but it should be the exception, not the rule.

awa
2013-06-11, 10:59 AM
this is d&d something lives everywhere and with planeshiftig/greater teleport no amount of distance is a useful defense.

In the real world outer space is mind bogglingly empty in the default d&d settings its full of magic boats flown by beholders, mind flayers, hippos with blunderbusses and more.

It would be like putting your phlactery in a bottle and hurling it into the sea and then expecting nothing to ever encounter it forever. Some one will stumble across it just by dumb luck even if no one hires a devil to retrieve it.

Geordnet
2013-06-11, 11:00 AM
Computer security has had to wrestle with that more rigorously, and developed the idea that all parts of the security system, save only a very few private keys/passwords, should be assumed to be fully known to any potential attacker.
Secrecy is still an essential component for two reasons. First, the section I bolded, for obvious reasons. Second, unless P>NP, any computer security system can be cracked given full knowledge of it (and knowledge of the proper algorithms). In either case the system is not secure against one with the right information, and only secrecy can keep this from them.


Put more succinctly, an obstacle isn't an obstacle unless there's covering fire.
I see you are well-versed in proper tactics, then. :smallcool:



Just spread false, contradictory/misleading rumors about the secret before the truth gets out, since there's no evidence people won't know what to believe.
Until they acquire evidence. Or just seek out the truth for themselves. :smalltongue:

Scow2
2013-06-11, 11:13 AM
Depending on where in space you throw it, not really. If you randomly throw it out in a direction in a star system, you run the risk of it gradually being pulled in to a planet. If you manage to get it out into interstellar space, it's WAAAAAAY more safe than anywhere on a planet.What? Interstellar space? You mean the place that is constantly patrolled by Githyanki Raiders, Illithids (Or proto-illithids), and the Elder Evils. And if you throw it into nothingness, the strong magical aura of whatever you're trying to keep safe WILL attract unwanted attention from such beasts.

You assumed real-world cosmology, which is strictly and explicitly NOT the case in games like D&D.

navar100
2013-06-11, 11:41 AM
The issue I see with this is how many times can this be done before it becomes routine and loses all surprise? Just look at M. Night Shyamalan movies. In his earlier hits, like The Sixth Sense, the twist ending caught the audience completely by surprise, making the story both memorable and 'original'. Anymore, people expect some sort of twist and the result is just kind of lame.

The scenario you described is indeed awesome, but it should be the exception, not the rule.

I caught the twist after the first movie scene. It would have been better not to have Bruce Willis' character shot in the first place, just start the movie with him meeting the boy to counsel. His character getting shot gave it all away.

EccentricCircle
2013-06-11, 11:53 AM
yeah but who wants to play spelljammer?

Ooh I do! Pick me, oh wait...

More seriously I once ran a game where the party found an ancient artefact and decided that the best way to hide it was to make lots of copies and then use illusion magic to make them all look exactly like the original. (Which led to the amusing side plot where they went off in search of a master illusionist, and discovered that they're not that easy to find)
they hid a few of the fake artefacts in heavily warded magical dungeons, remote castles, ancient tombs, entrusted some orders of knights with guarding some of them, sold a few on the black market, sold a few on the open market, threw a few down wells, gave some to charity, threw a few into the sea, put some in banks. They thought that they'd kept hold of the real one, but in fact the master illusionist swapped it for a fake and took it with him. Still, at least its safe behind an illusiary dragon, disguising a very real flame thrower...

Jay R
2013-06-11, 11:54 AM
The entire Evil Overlord list is based on similar foolish things that evil overlords do in order to make a good story.

Razanir
2013-06-11, 12:21 PM
People often talk about the evil overlord list but the biggest problem with that list is to be an evil overlord requires a megalomaniac personality which makes adhering to those rules rather difficult


In a campaign I'm running a race of extra dimensional spell-casters called the Hash'ilk'Khan are the main antagonist.

In there home plane is a place called the Well of Souls its location is secret and heavily shielded from divination (and the plane having a geography similar to Draenor) In essence it was once a material plane but the world was torn into shards some hundreds of miles across and scattered over large distances.

It is there where the Hash'ilk'Khan Leader(also a lich) stores the library of phylacteries for his underlings who've undergone the transformation into Lichdom. To keep its location secret the well reconstitutes the Liches near the location of there death instead of near the phylactery.(its also where he imprisons the spirits of upstarts who oppose him) Those imprisoned souls are then used to empower powerful undead engines of destruction called Dread Warriors, which have high HD, high spell resistance, high energy resistance and a high DR that can't be overcome and some limited magic to let them get around some battlefield control spells.

The party has been given a spell designed to tag a the spirit of a Hash'ilk'Khan Lich and track the direction its spirit goes when slain and rejuvenated once its been physically destroyed. After they've killed enough of these liches they'll be able to locate the "Well of Souls" and lead the armies of the alliance against it. Which in turn will force the Hash'ilk'Khan's leader to reveal its location which results in a very huge background battle to the PC's fighting the big bad and is elites.

Exactly. Enough protection on the First Interplanar Bank of Liches and the would-be heroes need to hunt down many liches to even find the FIBOL.

Geordnet
2013-06-11, 01:01 PM
Exactly. Enough protection on the First Interplanar Bank of Liches and the would-be heroes need to hunt down many liches to even find the FIBOL.
The point is that they can still find it. :smalltongue:

Razanir
2013-06-11, 01:16 PM
The point is that they can still find it. :smalltongue:

Only after hunting down who knows how many liches... And using custom high-level magic. In the world of security breaches, that sounds safe enough. If there has to be a flaw in the security, which there always will be, I'd prefer it something like that which is very complicated to exploit.

Lizard Lord
2013-06-11, 01:23 PM
Every wizard/lord/lich/whatever who has some awesome macguffin they have to protect at all costs always does the same thing. They build a big structure, like a castle, or a maze around it, then place it in the middle (effectively speaking) WHY?! Unless it is something you need regular access to, the smartest way to make sure it never gets found is to place it in a room, then surround it with 50 feet of stone or whatever on all sides, THEN build a maze, which is nothing but a decoy to distract the heroes from finding the real deal.

They wander an endlessly looping labyrinth that has no treasure room until the big bad can get around to wiping them out or they starve to death. There should NEVER be a path that leads to the super incredible item of mega awesomesauceness. Why give the heroes a chance at all, no matter how small? Unless they know exactly where in the maze it is buried and brought some heavy duty excavating equipment with them, and have a week or two to kill, they arent going to get it.

Well I assume they want to use it and protect it. A lich's phylactery, for example, is no good if the lich has trapped himself as soon as he comes back. They need a way for themselves to get in and out and, depending on their level of magical prowess, that may have to mean making it possible (though much harder) for other people to do the same.

Edit: Sleep deprivation tends to keep one from reading stuff, it would seem. I am not even sure "ninja'd" applies here due to length of time. :smallredface::smallannoyed:

PlusSixPelican
2013-06-11, 02:06 PM
Liches need their phylacteries, so hiding it well enough that Lich finds it, well enough that other people don't; is better than making it inaccessible, because then you might as well be alive.

Villains being 100% invincible makes for boring stories and players who will rebel against you. Seriously, play through three years of campaign and find out you had no way of winning. That last sentence sounds terribad, right?

And on the Overlord List, even though the guideline EXISTS, do you expect any villain to follow all of those rules? No. Enough of them to be a scarier target, but there will be a hole in any character, period. That's how characters lose.

BWR
2013-06-11, 02:54 PM
What? Interstellar space? You mean the place that is constantly patrolled by Githyanki Raiders, Illithids (Or proto-illithids), and the Elder Evils. And if you throw it into nothingness, the strong magical aura of whatever you're trying to keep safe WILL attract unwanted attention from such beasts.

You assumed real-world cosmology, which is strictly and explicitly NOT the case in games like D&D.

There are cases of of that sort of cosmology in D&D games. Dragonstar, several dimensions mentioned in The Immortals for BECMI, the world of Pathfinder's Inner Sea indicates such a set-up (a tad more Lovecraftian, though). Not all campaigns explicitly state what sort of set-up they have.

Even ignoring interstellar space, interplanetary space is pretty damn big and empty. Put it in a stable orbit around the sun well away from all planets and whatnot and the chances of something finding it go waaaay down. Build a super dungeon in vacuum. Cold, staffed only by undead and constructs and the odd weird life-form that can survive out there, and your phylactery is a lot safer than it would be anywhere on a planet.

awa
2013-06-11, 03:56 PM
the default setting is greyhawk greyhawk is part of the spelljammer universe (as is forgoten realms and dragonlance). Real world space is huge and mostly empty spelljammer it's basical an ocean with space pirates and space sharks also giant space hamsters but thats unrelated.

I imagine in orbit around the sun is a pretty hostile area for undead. I would not be suprised if some solar entity found a undead tomb on his door step unappealing

TuggyNE
2013-06-11, 04:11 PM
Secrecy is still an essential component for two reasons. First, the section I bolded, for obvious reasons. Second, unless P>NP, any computer security system can be cracked given full knowledge of it (and knowledge of the proper algorithms). In either case the system is not secure against one with the right information, and only secrecy can keep this from them.

Here, the difference between "has knowledge of algorithms used" and "has no knowledge of algorithms used" is largely irrelevant: the idea is merely to require an attacker to spend an exorbitant amount of time breaking the system by brute force (in other words, a "vault" rated at thousands of years). Generally speaking, such systems do have weaknesses, but those are implementation flaws, not flaws in the basic idea. Solving NP-complete problems fast enough is non-trivial even if you know what the problem is!

Incidentally, secrecy of the private key tends to be easier than other secrets, because no human necessarily needs to look at it, ever
the key is almost entirely random, based on nothing discernible

If you're trying to keep the details of your dungeon safe, neither of those is true, since you obviously have to build it (meaning at least one person saw all the details, generally) and what's more, it corresponds to something that is physically there.

Scow2
2013-06-11, 04:15 PM
There are cases of of that sort of cosmology in D&D games. Dragonstar, several dimensions mentioned in The Immortals for BECMI, the world of Pathfinder's Inner Sea indicates such a set-up (a tad more Lovecraftian, though). Not all campaigns explicitly state what sort of set-up they have.

Even ignoring interstellar space, interplanetary space is pretty damn big and empty. Put it in a stable orbit around the sun well away from all planets and whatnot and the chances of something finding it go waaaay down. Build a super dungeon in vacuum. Cold, staffed only by undead and constructs and the odd weird life-form that can survive out there, and your phylactery is a lot safer than it would be anywhere on a planet.
Well... considering that The Astral Plane is D&D's equivalent of space... that's actually what a LOT of liches do. Like this guy (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0833.html). However, most liches DON'T yet have the ability to throw their stuff into outerspace - very few are above level 15. And those that are above level 20 that choose to reside on the material plane instead of a demiplane either don't have the resources to do so (Not every wizard knows Astral Projection and Genesis), or like the amusement of watching poor would-be heroes fumbling through their Tomb of Horrors.

The areas around discrete planes in the astral plane are the most heavily patrolled by things like Githyanki and Devourers.

BWR
2013-06-11, 04:32 PM
I imagine in orbit around the sun is a pretty hostile area for undead. I would not be suprised if some solar entity found a undead tomb on his door step unappealing

Orbits around the sun are hostile to undead? Like planets, you mean?
1. There are plenty of undead that aren't harmed by the sun.
2. Most of them would technically be better off than mortals in such an environment, given something similar to real world physics: no cells to be destroyed by radiation, no eyes to be burned out by staring at the sun, etc,
3. An orbit around the sun can be beyond Pluto. The sun isn't very big or impressive at that distance.
4. I don't know about you, but if I were to shove my most prized possession into space, I would make sure it had some sort of support mechanism there, like spare spellbooks, spare gear etc. (for when I'm destroyed and reform), and plenty of wards and minions ready for use. A floating airless dungeon, not just an unprotected amulet.

For the record, I'm not arguing that space is hands down the best and only way to safely hide a phylactery. As has been pointed out, enough magic can make that trivial. But like hiding it on demiplanes or at the bottom of an undersea volcano on the other sider of the world, the greater the distance from pesky do-gooders and the more deadly the environment, the better. Reducing the chances of accidental discovery is a saftey measure.

Traab
2013-06-11, 05:11 PM
Addressing the specific example - if you want competent villains to do incompetent things, force their hand by circumstance. For example, in the First War for Armageddon the Daemon Prince Angron wasted lots of time building unholy temples - not out of hubris or devotion, but because the warp storm was fading and he needed to maintain his legion of daemons, without whom he could not even have finished the conquest let alone defeated the incoming strike force.

In the phylactery example - well done. Your phylactery is trapped within rock. When your corporeal form is destroyed it tries to reform around the phylactery and instead your partially generated bones crack continuously leaving you in impotent torment until someone cracks the stone open, leaving your phylactery defenceless and your helpless body next to it.

If you ask me? The only safe place for a Phylactery is on the person of the really high level Wizard who created it. Only a band of incompetents would kill you at the kind of levels where you have a phylactery, after all - there are many other ways to cheat death - and one may safely assume that in D&D any force capable of defeating you, personally, is capable of defeating all of your servants and traps combined, because the latter is actually an easier task with D&D's levelling system.

Nah, assuming the item I am talking about even IS a phylactery, the room it is stored in is itself surrounded by 50 feet of solid whatever. The lich is recreated, then teleports himself out of there and goes back to being evil. As for the whole thing about kobolds and whatnot. The material the room is surrounded by isnt important, my point was basically, instead of actually designing a path that leads to your phylactery, build a fake maze or whatever, meanwhile the real deal is hidden underground with no access except by people who know where it is already. And since as a lich I would use disposable undead to construct it, there are no chatty masons or architects to worry about silencing. I will save them to build the fake maze. Let them spread word about my labyrinth of horrors. .

People keep saying divination. Look, I wasnt trying to come up with the perfect unbeatable lair, just basically talking about a part of the evil lords plan that always irked me, building a castle, or a maze, or whatever, where there is an actual path to get to the treasure. But for the record, I may not be an expert with magic, but I am fairly sure its possible to block divination magic. So block it over a large area, preferably over your maze, which is built on top of, (or underneath) the secret sealed off room that has no access point. The heroes naturally assume the macguffin is inside the maze as they always are, and proceeds to wander through it never finding the treasure room because its a massive loop with no treasure room and the actual room is located in a random part of the maze.

awa
2013-06-11, 05:22 PM
lots of undead arnt hurt by the sun when it's filtered through an atmosphere and all that but lots of sun based magic does extra damge to undead and the sun domain makes you better at killing undead so there is a link between the sun and undead dying.

also you are correct having reread the original stable orbit post it never actually say anything about being in orbit near the sun.

The thing is the lich is spending millions of gold making these super fortress if he instead just spent it all on magic items and contingencies and just carried the thing with him he would not need to worry about it in the first place.

my point is in d&d floating in space or in the center of a volcano does not actually reduce the odds of discovery it just means the things that randomly wander into it have a much higher cr.

TuggyNE
2013-06-11, 05:46 PM
People keep saying divination. Look, I wasnt trying to come up with the perfect unbeatable lair, just basically talking about a part of the evil lords plan that always irked me, building a castle, or a maze, or whatever, where there is an actual path to get to the treasure. But for the record, I may not be an expert with magic, but I am fairly sure its possible to block divination magic.

It is possible to block targeted divinations (with lead or the like), but unfortunately there are a fair number that aren't blocked. On the upside, those generally require a more careful approach to investigation, since they're a lot more sensitive to proper questioning.

Eurus
2013-06-11, 06:10 PM
Secrecy versus protection is a tradeoff. Obviously a giant dungeon of doom is harder to conceal, but relying solely on secrecy with the assumption that nobody will ever look in the right place is very dangerous. Divinations, used cleverly, can skirt around most standard nondetection spells. If you can't target the phylactery, maybe you can target the space around it, or the last entity who made contact with it, or use Contact Other Plane/Commune to ask if there's any places that Bob the Lich has been suspiciously layering Forbiddence spells. Or worse, they focus on killing you first and then track down where you're helplessly reforming.

Of course, you can be using your own divinations to identify potential threats and cut them off, but then we just get into divinations being OP and headache-inducing.

Ironically, if you *do* make your phylactery impossible to find or destroy, it doesn't matter much. There are so many ways to nonlethally subdue or imprison a creature that anyone who manages to defeat you despite your carefully-constructed battle plans and contingencies (a difficult task, to be sure) probably has a way to seal you in a jar or kick you into the far realm for less effort.

Lord Vukodlak
2013-06-11, 06:15 PM
Very recently a party I was in did battle with a Lich immediately after its defeat my Cleric knelt down and used divination (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/divination.htm) to ask where said Lich would reconstitute himself. The divination gave us the clue we needed to locate the phylactery and destroy it that very same day.

This also neatly dodged any potential wards against divination placed on the phylactery as it wasn't the target of the spell. I targeted the very event of the Lich's return

Now here's where the Lich got really clever we open the cask and fine two books. One non-magic the other with a heavily necromantic aura. The non-magic book has the formulas for making a type of crystal steel. but of course that's the real phylactery which was shielded from detect magic, it also was booby trapped and put the wizard who was studying it under a quest (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/geasQuest.htm) spell which made him essentially a slave to the Lich. His orders being to return the lich's possessions. (a difficult task as it was a divine lich and my cleric was wearing most of his gear).

Thankfully my Cleric's sense motive check was high enough to notice his odd behavior and we managed to break the spell on him. Our next order of business will be to return to the island and slay the Lich again before he has time to properly re-hide his phylactery. As fighting the lich was enough to take us to level 13 and said enemy doesn't have most of his gear it should be a little easier the second time around.(The Lich also doesn't know the wizard if free either as he was expecting him to be cautious about the endeavor and not make his return public knowledge).

In the maze example a divination spell clue the party in to its location such as "The Lich will return in the room aside the maze." This could be enough to clue the party into the fact the phylactery is in a room next to the maze but not actually connected to it.

Now here's a clever way for a Lich to hide his phylactery he disguises it as a fabulous piece of jewelry which he makes sure winds up in the royal vault of some foreign kingdom. So your the king of this distance land and a group of foreigners come up and say. "A Lich's phylactery is hidden within your treasure vault we need to get access to it." Your probably going to tell them to get lost. If your trying to protect your phylactery from meddlesome do-gooders who better to guard it then some innocent people who have no idea that the royal scepter brought out only for special occasions has a another purpose.

You can then throw another hurdle there way by having

Traab
2013-06-11, 06:35 PM
On a related note, has anyone read a story based off the evil overlord list rule
Whatever my one vulnerability is, I will fake a different one. For example, ordering all mirrors removed from the palace, screaming and flinching whenever someone accidentally holds up a mirror, etc. In the climax when the hero whips out a mirror and thrusts it at my face, my reaction will be "Hmm...I think I need a shave." because I for one think that would be funny as hell

Kelb_Panthera
2013-06-11, 06:52 PM
That's a cheap and unnecessary trick, if you want them to go dungeon crawling just tell them there's treasure.
Or better yet, have them mysteriously wake up in the bottom of the dungeon with no memory of how they got there and they have to dungeon crawl out of the dungeon instead of into.Since someone else already did, I won't point out the irony inherent in this statement.


Just spread false, contradictory/misleading rumors about the secret before the truth gets out, since there's no evidence people won't know what to believe.

Welcome to the intelligence/counter-intelligence game. I see you're at least loosely familiar with the basics of counter intelligence.

Lord Vukodlak
2013-06-11, 06:52 PM
On a related note, has anyone read a story based off the evil overlord list rule because I for one think that would be funny as hell

In one campaign I was a Lycanthrope who ended up on a world without Lycanthropes. Being the only one of his kind he led people to believe he was vulnerable to mithril. This being 3.5 and not Pathfinder where mithril counts as silver for DR purposes it led to several enemies planning a head with utterly useless weapons.

Doorhandle
2013-06-11, 11:52 PM
Then, of course, the adventurers ignore the decoy dungeons and pull off a daring raid on the depository. :smallcool:

No, seriously, this is the fatal flaw in the "best way to keep something safe". It assumes that the adventurers play by the rules you present to them, possessing no independent initiative or creativity at all.

Even less realistically, it assumes that your secret is kept safe. If it were possible to do this, you could bury whatever-it-is two feet underground in some random spot in the woods and it would be just as safe as in your solid adamantine cube. But if it isn't, nothing will stop someone determined enough from taking it.

That is all it really comes down to: keeping it secret. Lack of knowledge is the one and only thing that can keep the thieves away. Even the best lock can be picked if one knows its inner workings.

Reminds me of the story of a lich who destroyed his own phylactery knowing that all his foes would waste time trying to find it before making attempts on his life.

TuggyNE
2013-06-12, 12:33 AM
Reminds me of the story of a lich who destroyed his own phylactery knowing that all his foes would waste time trying to find it before making attempts on his life.

Now that is clever. Risky, but clever.

Scow2
2013-06-12, 01:44 AM
Reminds me of the story of a lich who destroyed his own phylactery knowing that all his foes would waste time trying to find it before making attempts on his life.

He better hope he doesn't get attacked by anyone like Beginning-of-OotS Roy, then!

The reason most Evil Overlords don't follow the list is because doing so can be extremely resource-intensive - resources the overlords don't always have.

awa
2013-06-12, 11:07 AM
The reason evil overlords don’t follow the list is because it would make a boring story.

That said many of the evil overlord rules assume you get all the benefits of the evil overlord trope legions of fanatically loyal minions and arbitrary amount of money without having to follow the bad aspects of the trope while assuming the heroes are required to follow the tropes

Jay R
2013-06-12, 12:06 PM
The original question is why does a Lich build a doorway to the place where his plylactery is kept, since he doesn't want anybody to get in to it.

The simple answer is that the phylactery's location is where he will regenerate. He wants to be able to get out.

Razanir
2013-06-12, 12:43 PM
The original question is why does a Lich build a doorway to the place where his plylactery is kept, since he doesn't want anybody to get in to it.

The simple answer is that the phylactery's location is where he will regenerate. He wants to be able to get out.

Now what if you engineered a high-level spell that blocks most teleportation, but that lets certain casters through? Like Hogwarts, but instead of the headmaster being able to teleport, the lich can

Geordnet
2013-06-12, 02:47 PM
Now what if you engineered a high-level spell that blocks most teleportation, but that lets certain casters through?
Then someone would teleport to just outside the zone, then walk (or float ethereally) in. :smalltongue:

Gamgee
2013-06-12, 02:49 PM
Every wizard/lord/lich/whatever who has some awesome macguffin they have to protect at all costs always does the same thing. They build a big structure, like a castle, or a maze around it, then place it in the middle (effectively speaking) WHY?! Unless it is something you need regular access to, the smartest way to make sure it never gets found is to place it in a room, then surround it with 50 feet of stone or whatever on all sides, THEN build a maze, which is nothing but a decoy to distract the heroes from finding the real deal.

They wander an endlessly looping labyrinth that has no treasure room until the big bad can get around to wiping them out or they starve to death. There should NEVER be a path that leads to the super incredible item of mega awesomesauceness. Why give the heroes a chance at all, no matter how small? Unless they know exactly where in the maze it is buried and brought some heavy duty excavating equipment with them, and have a week or two to kill, they arent going to get it.
Then the heroes must blow up the planet. Your move.

Razanir
2013-06-12, 03:55 PM
Then someone would teleport to just outside the zone, then walk (or float ethereally) in. :smalltongue:

I'd suggest demonic contingencies like Tomb of Horrors, but that was thwarted by a team of dwarves with pickaxes.


At least one group of adventurers has made it through without a single casualty by having a team of dwarves dig around the traps and obstacles with non-magical mining equipment over the course of several weeks. The writers planned for ethereal travel, melding into stone, magical defenses, teleportation, etc. but never expected an ordinary pickaxe and a group of patient, careful adventurers.

Jay R
2013-06-12, 09:49 PM
Then the heroes must blow up the planet. Your move.

"Heroes"?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

navar100
2013-06-12, 11:10 PM
"Heroes"?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Why? Even Doctor Who blew up a planet of Cybermen.

TeChameleon
2013-06-12, 11:30 PM
Eh. *handwaggle*

Most of the villainous types that end up hiding a widget of unholy power in their own personal maze tend to be the types that have burned their bridges as far as getting outside help goes, by betraying and/or murdering everyone in sight, or by generally being too paranoid to deal with the idea of another sentient anywhere near them, or just by being a blasphemous abomination against all that lives, that kind of deal.

That tends to limit how many resources they can spend on hiding their widget of unholy power. A maze full of traps and disposable minions is as good a way as any, and better than most, given that controlling the flow of information in a world where divination magic is a thing is brutally difficult.

Honestly, I suspect that the really smart villains who wish to remain openly villainous (as opposed to the quasi-benevolent rule you'd end up with if you followed the Evil Overlord List closely) would end up looking a good deal like the old Count Magpyr from Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulem.

He was a vampire that terrorized the countryside every so often, but not *too* badly, and left his castle full of easily-tearable curtains with big casement windows, kept a ready supply of garlic on hand, had curtain rods that could easily be twisted into holy symbols, and so on. He got to have his fun, the peasants got to feel good about 'destroying' the terrible vampire, and then he got a relaxing nap for fifty or a hundred years.

And he didn't have to worry too terribly much about having his ashes scattered or whatever, since the peasants generally assumed that he was too stupid to ever really be a serious threat, and didn't look for his coffin too hard.

I guess that one of the best ways to keep yourself permanent is to make it so that they never really want to seriously destroy you.

"I am many things, Kal-El, but here... I am god." - Darkseid, Superman the Animated Series

Doorhandle
2013-06-13, 12:05 AM
Eh. *handwaggle*

Most of the villainous types that end up hiding a widget of unholy power in their own personal maze tend to be the types that have burned their bridges as far as getting outside help goes, by betraying and/or murdering everyone in sight, or by generally being too paranoid to deal with the idea of another sentient anywhere near them, or just by being a blasphemous abomination against all that lives, that kind of deal.

That tends to limit how many resources they can spend on hiding their widget of unholy power. A maze full of traps and disposable minions is as good a way as any, and better than most, given that controlling the flow of information in a world where divination magic is a thing is brutally difficult.

Honestly, I suspect that the really smart villains who wish to remain openly villainous (as opposed to the quasi-benevolent rule you'd end up with if you followed the Evil Overlord List closely) would end up looking a good deal like the old Count Magpyr from Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulem.

He was a vampire that terrorized the countryside every so often, but not *too* badly, and left his castle full of easily-tearable curtains with big casement windows, kept a ready supply of garlic on hand, had curtain rods that could easily be twisted into holy symbols, and so on. He got to have his fun, the peasants got to feel good about 'destroying' the terrible vampire, and then he got a relaxing nap for fifty or a hundred years.

And he didn't have to worry too terribly much about having his ashes scattered or whatever, since the peasants generally assumed that he was too stupid to ever really be a serious threat, and didn't look for his coffin too hard.

I guess that one of the best ways to keep yourself permanent is to make it so that they never really want to seriously destroy you.

"I am many things, Kal-El, but here... I am god." - Darkseid, Superman the Animated Series

That.

Although darkseid is a bad example compared to the count, as he's universally hated outside his homeworld, while the count is beneath contempt.

Omegonthesane
2013-06-13, 03:47 AM
Nah, assuming the item I am talking about even IS a phylactery, the room it is stored in is itself surrounded by 50 feet of solid whatever. The lich is recreated, then teleports himself out of there and goes back to being evil. As for the whole thing about kobolds and whatnot. The material the room is surrounded by isnt important, my point was basically, instead of actually designing a path that leads to your phylactery, build a fake maze or whatever, meanwhile the real deal is hidden underground with no access except by people who know where it is already. And since as a lich I would use disposable undead to construct it, there are no chatty masons or architects to worry about silencing. I will save them to build the fake maze. Let them spread word about my labyrinth of horrors.
Still sounds like more effort than just keeping it inside your ribcage, which is a harder thing to pry open.


People keep saying divination. Look, I wasnt trying to come up with the perfect unbeatable lair, just basically talking about a part of the evil lords plan that always irked me, building a castle, or a maze, or whatever, where there is an actual path to get to the treasure. But for the record, I may not be an expert with magic, but I am fairly sure its possible to block divination magic.
Not without constant effort - you would need to refresh it on a monthly basis at absolute most, and a patient, determined scry & die team would know that and keep at it.

Besides - like I said, if you want to have a villain who doesn't suffer the classic stupidities, and don't want him to have perfect unbeatable plans, then you force his hand. Houserule away the spells that let him block the scry bit of scry-and-die, so that neither he nor the players can cast them. Make his unstoppable death ray require level loss or something such that he can't actually be sure that it will cost him less than being defeated would. Have him forced to spend inordinate amounts of time "dealing with" the various demons and devils with whom he made and broke dark pacts on his way to lichdom if you think he'd otherwise devote his time to slaughtering the heroes efficiently.

Geordnet
2013-06-13, 11:13 AM
I guess that one of the best ways to keep yourself permanent is to make it so that they never really want to seriously destroy you.
Hmm...

Sounds familiar... (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0606.html) :smallwink:

Scow2
2013-06-13, 11:42 AM
Still sounds like more effort than just keeping it inside your ribcage, which is a harder thing to pry open.A lich doesn't want to keep his phylactery on himself, because that negates the benefit of being able to send heroes on a scavenger hunt while you regenerate - if you keep it on yourself, when they find you they find your phylactery as well. And, there's even a chance they can pry it out BEFORE they finish you off. Brittle bone and desiccated flesh isn't a very sturdy storage space.

As for keeping a macguffin on the person in general - The problem with that plan is that it gives the heroes a single target - Killing/capturing you becomes their highest priority because they don't have the option to divert their resources. Most villains have personal survival as their highest priority - Every minute the heroes are trying to find/look for/get to the macguffin is a minute they aren't trying to stab you in the chest or thwart your OTHER schemes.

It also greatly increases the risk of the item being misplaced. A lot of these objects are either magically toxic to carry, or too large to carry at all times anyway.


Not without constant effort - you would need to refresh it on a monthly basis at absolute most, and a patient, determined scry & die team would know that and keep at it.

Besides - like I said, if you want to have a villain who doesn't suffer the classic stupidities, and don't want him to have perfect unbeatable plans, then you force his hand. Houserule away the spells that let him block the scry bit of scry-and-die, so that neither he nor the players can cast them. Make his unstoppable death ray require level loss or something such that he can't actually be sure that it will cost him less than being defeated would. Have him forced to spend inordinate amounts of time "dealing with" the various demons and devils with whom he made and broke dark pacts on his way to lichdom if you think he'd otherwise devote his time to slaughtering the heroes efficiently.There's no way to protect against indirect divination, either - which is a LOT more fun than generic "Scry+Die" anyway.

Zeful
2013-06-13, 11:58 AM
The simple answer is that the phylactery's location is where he will regenerate. He wants to be able to get out.

That's not the rules on lich regeneration. It never specifies how the lich returns only that doing so takes time. It can be regenerating from the phylactery to possessing the bones of a nearby corpse, to simply regenerating where he was destroyed.

Omegonthesane
2013-06-13, 01:37 PM
A lich doesn't want to keep his phylactery on himself, because that negates the benefit of being able to send heroes on a scavenger hunt while you regenerate - if you keep it on yourself, when they find you they find your phylactery as well. And, there's even a chance they can pry it out BEFORE they finish you off. Brittle bone and desiccated flesh isn't a very sturdy storage space.

As for keeping a macguffin on the person in general - The problem with that plan is that it gives the heroes a single target - Killing/capturing you becomes their highest priority because they don't have the option to divert their resources. Most villains have personal survival as their highest priority - Every minute the heroes are trying to find/look for/get to the macguffin is a minute they aren't trying to stab you in the chest or thwart your OTHER schemes.
Then let them try to find/look for/get the MacGuffin. Seed fakes of it across the world and never reveal that the real one stays in your bed.


It also greatly increases the risk of the item being misplaced. A lot of these objects are either magically toxic to carry, or too large to carry at all times anyway.
This would fall under my earlier point of having physics prevent the evil overlord from enacting an otherwise unstoppable plan.

Scow2
2013-06-13, 01:42 PM
Then let them try to find/look for/get the MacGuffin. Seed fakes of it across the world and never reveal that the real one stays in your bed.He doesn't have to reveal it - it WILL be found out. And then he has adventurers barging into his bedroom. And even then, you're back to putting it in an elaborate base. Evil Overlords have enough enemies that they need to turn their private homes into fortresses.


This would fall under my earlier point of having physics prevent the evil overlord from enacting an otherwise unstoppable plan.How so?

Omegonthesane
2013-06-13, 01:45 PM
He doesn't have to reveal it - it WILL be found out.
Before or after all the Evil Overlord's ambitions have been fulfilled? The secret will probably hold out longer than a Tomb of Horrors mining operation.


And then he has adventurers barging into his bedroom. And even then, you're back to putting it in an elaborate base. Evil Overlords have enough enemies that they need to turn their private homes into fortresses.
I was rather assuming that the Lich-King in this case was not Orcus On His Throne, but instead was seeking to put his MacGuffin somewhere safe while he went on his own epic quest for ultimate unholy power á la Xykon.


How so?
If the item's too large or poisonous to keep on your person, then that's an answer to why you don't keep it on your person that doesn't insult the audience's intelligence.

Scow2
2013-06-13, 01:51 PM
Before or after all the Evil Overlord's ambitions have been fulfilled? The secret will probably hold out longer than a Tomb of Horrors mining operation.Before, either due to the Theory of Narrative Casuality, or the heroes being aware of what the Overlord was up to BEFORE the counterintelligence campaign started.


I was rather assuming that the Lich-King in this case was not Orcus On His Throne, but instead was seeking to put his MacGuffin somewhere safe while he went on his own epic quest for ultimate unholy power á la Xykon. Even roving villains tend to have an (At least temporary) private house/main base. When adventuring, Xykon kept his phylactery on his trusted lieutenant's person. The comic would have been MUCH shorter had he kept it on his own body. However - OotS also demonstrated why doing such was a bad thing, and when Xykon realized the security threat of having his phylactery not being kept in a sanctum, he shipped it off to his doom-fortress in the astral plane.

If the item's too large or poisonous to keep on your person, then that's an answer to why you don't keep it on your person that doesn't insult the audience's intelligence.The other reasons not to keep it on your person are to split the Heroes' targets, and avoid misplacing it.

Lord Vukodlak
2013-06-13, 05:31 PM
I once dealt with a Lich in a rather clever way. After stripping him of his magical defenses we grappled, bound him in manacles, chains and a gag before tossing him into mud pit. One casting of transmute mud to rock later the lich was trapped under and within several feet of stone unable to move, unable to speak trapped forever.


Then let them try to find/look for/get the MacGuffin. Seed fakes of it across the world and never reveal that the real one stays in your bed.
Except the PC's are likely to loot everything from the Lich's lair. So they'd find it by default. The trick is careful misdirection


Still sounds like more effort than just keeping it inside your ribcage, which is a harder thing to pry open.
Lich's are quite skeletal you don't need to pry the ribcage open. You'd see it dangling inside if his robe was open.

BWR
2013-06-13, 05:46 PM
Depends on how old they are, how much damage they've sustained since becoming undead and what sort of environment they live in. I'm pretty sure there isn't any statement that liches must be skeletal. Imagine one that's only been undead for a 100 years or so, no damage in a very dry envrionment.

Lord Vukodlak
2013-06-13, 06:55 PM
Depends on how old they are, how much damage they've sustained since becoming undead and what sort of environment they live in. I'm pretty sure there isn't any statement that liches must be skeletal. Imagine one that's only been undead for a 100 years or so, no damage in a very dry envrionment.

Liches have a DR vs bludgeoning which implies a skeletal undead not fleshy.
Also from the description of a Lich.

A Lich is a gaunt and skeletal humanoid with withered flesh stretched tight across horribly visible bones. Its eyes have long ago been lost to decay, but bright pinpoints of crimson light burn on in the empty sockets.

Geordnet
2013-06-13, 08:25 PM
Liches have a DR vs bludgeoning which implies a skeletal undead not fleshy.
Or just that the magic animating it is advanced enough to not be concerned with inconvenient things like presence or absence of flesh and muscles in the manner of lesser undead. Think of it like a marionette on strings: the function of its motion doesn't depend on the construction of the puppet itself. That actually makes a lot of sense concerning Demiliches, which have realized this fact and done away with pointless complexity.

Anyways, the description seems to imply/assume the lich in question has been dead for a while. It doesn't explain how long it takes for the decay to set in; it could be seconds, or it could be centuries. (It's probably being ambiguous on purpose.) Either way, it still mentions skin, so it could just mean skeletal as in like someone extremely malnourished. (I'm not going to link any pictures, but it fits "gaunt and skeletal" perfectly, while simultaneously being undeniably "fleshy" -relative to undead, at least.)

Lord Vukodlak
2013-06-13, 08:55 PM
Anyways, the description
Was for the template not any individual Lich. Liches are skeletal that's simply how they are. The only lich's that appear otherwise are the ones using illusion to mask there undeath entirely.

Omegonthesane
2013-06-13, 09:30 PM
Was for the template not any individual Lich. Liches are skeletal that's simply how they are. The only lich's that appear otherwise are the ones using illusion to mask there undeath entirely.
It also states that their eyes have been "long ago lost to decay" as opposed to being burnt out during the ritual, even in the case where they literally finished the Ritual of Living Death or whatever 37 seconds ago and are still tallying what they gained and what they lost. Clearly the flavour bits of the description aren't set in stone to the same degree as the crunch.

You also never addressed:

Either way, it still mentions skin, so it could just mean skeletal as in like someone extremely malnourished. (I'm not going to link any pictures, but it fits "gaunt and skeletal" perfectly, while simultaneously being undeniably "fleshy" -relative to undead, at least.)

Kornaki
2013-06-13, 09:30 PM
Its eyes have long ago been lost to decay, but bright pinpoints of crimson light burn on in the empty sockets

The description for the lich template also makes it clear that it is describing someone who has been a lich for a while, unless part of the ritual is to sever your eyes' blood flow and let them rot for a year before you get to become a lich

Also, when you google image search "gaunt and skeletal" we can see the description doesn't mean "is a skeleton" apparently)

Alleran
2013-06-14, 12:23 AM
My go-to for hiding something is handing it to a Zodar (to get it to swallow the item, or put said item inside it and fuse the two together), dropping said Zodar on a demiplane that prevents all magic except for its Wish ability, using Flesh to Stone on it and then putting it inside an earth node on the plane, because while an item is stored inside an earth node, it explicitly does not exist. Then getting a timer-based spell clock to wish me out of the plane, since I can't do it myself.

And staff the plane with a bunch of nonmagical constructs for additional protection, while the item and its carrier no longer explicitly exist. Then keep a decoy on my person at all times as well as one in some other vault deep within my demiplane. It might not be a foolproof plan (I'm sure there are ways around it), but it's enough in most cases.

Omegonthesane
2013-06-14, 01:01 AM
My go-to for hiding something is handing it to a Zodar (to get it to swallow the item, or put said item inside it and fuse the two together), dropping said Zodar on a demiplane that prevents all magic except for its Wish ability, using Flesh to Stone on it and then putting it inside an earth node on the plane, because while an item is stored inside an earth node, it explicitly does not exist. Then getting a timer-based spell clock to wish me out of the plane, since I can't do it myself.

And staff the plane with a bunch of nonmagical constructs for additional protection, while the item and its carrier no longer explicitly exist. Then keep a decoy on my person at all times as well as one in some other vault deep within my demiplane. It might not be a foolproof plan (I'm sure there are ways around it), but it's enough in most cases.
At which point the forces of Team Monster decide to simply petrify you instead of doing something that sends you back to your phylactery. It's high level, they can probably have friends chain-binding efreeti to get infinite gold for their cleric's True Resses in any case.

SiuiS
2013-06-14, 04:57 AM
Every wizard/lord/lich/whatever who has some awesome macguffin they have to protect at all costs always does the same thing. They build a big structure, like a castle, or a maze around it, then place it in the middle (effectively speaking) WHY?! Unless it is something you need regular access to, the smartest way to make sure it never gets found is to place it in a room, then surround it with 50 feet of stone or whatever on all sides, THEN build a maze, which is nothing but a decoy to distract the heroes from finding the real deal.

They wander an endlessly looping labyrinth that has no treasure room until the big bad can get around to wiping them out or they starve to death. There should NEVER be a path that leads to the super incredible item of mega awesomesauceness. Why give the heroes a chance at all, no matter how small? Unless they know exactly where in the maze it is buried and brought some heavy duty excavating equipment with them, and have a week or two to kill, they arent going to get it.

Kotschie didn't.

Also, as a lich; if you are temporarily beaten and your Phylactry's is at the bottoms of the deeps or in the horizon less void You aren't coming back, why the hell did you even make the McGuffin then?.

Spiryt
2013-06-14, 05:02 AM
Every wizard/lord/lich/whatever who has some awesome macguffin they have to protect at all costs always does the same thing. They build a big structure, like a castle, or a maze around it, then place it in the middle (effectively speaking) WHY?! Unless it is something you need regular access to, the smartest way to make sure it never gets found is to place it in a room, then surround it with 50 feet of stone or whatever on all sides, THEN build a maze, which is nothing but a decoy to distract the heroes from finding the real deal.

They wander an endlessly looping labyrinth that has no treasure room until the big bad can get around to wiping them out or they starve to death. There should NEVER be a path that leads to the super incredible item of mega awesomesauceness. Why give the heroes a chance at all, no matter how small? Unless they know exactly where in the maze it is buried and brought some heavy duty excavating equipment with them, and have a week or two to kill, they arent going to get it.

Some kind of 50 feet thick bunker with no apparent point actually catches eye even more than a maze, to be honest.

Kelb_Panthera
2013-06-14, 05:23 AM
Kotschie didn't.

Also, as a lich; if you are temporarily beaten and your Phylactry's is at the bottoms of the deeps or in the horizon less void You aren't coming back, why the hell did you even make the McGuffin then?.

'cause teleport says you're wrong about me not coming back.

Doorhandle
2013-06-14, 05:24 AM
Kotschie didn't.

Yes he did. He hid his death " inside a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron chest (sometimes the chest is crystal and/or gold), which is buried under a green oak tree, which is on the island of Buyan in the ocean. " (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koschei)

Also, as for the dumping it in the ocean thing it depends on whether or not the phylactery can survive that pressure, or if the lich can even when it's body is at it's weakest state. Likewise for space and the variants between abysmal cold and ridiculous amount of heat, to say nothing of space-junk.

Then again, it's hardness 20 so that's not so hard, but then again, it's already been mentioned in this thread that there are so many ooggly beasts in space/the deepest oceans in the D&Dverse that a phylactery wouldn't be very safe there either, and if it's an artefact you're doing this too, it's even worse because some creature will nick it without your knowing.

As for burying it, there are still a few critters to worry about, and I think it would need some space big enough to fit the lich's body, but that's about it.

Traab
2013-06-14, 10:25 AM
Some kind of 50 feet thick bunker with no apparent point actually catches eye even more than a maze, to be honest.

How? Im not saying you build it above ground in the middle of a field or something. What you basically do is, you build an underground room, place your phylactery inside it, then seal it off completely. I pulled the 50 foot number out of my hindquarters, its just an example. Then over the top of that, you build your evil overlords dungeon maze, only there is absolutely no indication of where in the maze that 50 feet of sealed off room is located. Just a near endless series of twists turns and dead ends, filled with monsters.

If the lich is defeated, he reforms inside the sealed room, then teleports himself out through one of the dozens of options available then goes back to rebuilding. Short of scouring the entire dungeon to the bedrock and digging everything everywhere, the heroes arent going to find it very easily even with scrying, because all they will see is that its in a room without doors and its underground somewhere in a maze, and, as the entire maze will be built to have no unique features, just blank walls, evenly spaced torches, and no landmarks, there wont be much in the way of clues to let you know where to start digging. The lich puts up whatever magical defenses are needed to obscure the results of scrying as much as possible, and to ward his secret room from any outside attempts to attack it, and we can call it a day. Is it perfect? Im sure it isnt, but its still a better idea than building a maze, and putting your phylactery at the middle of it where anyone strong enough to grab it can just waltz on up and go "Yoink!"

SethoMarkus
2013-06-14, 11:33 AM
What about not having a McGuffin at all? What possible benefit is there for the BBEG to create/leave such an thing lying around anywhere? If there is a holy artifact that can destroy the demongate before the evil plans unfold, why would the BBEG not hire a team of mercenaries to get a hold of the artifact and then fling it into the depths of the ocean or into empty space? Or, why would the BBEG have a phylactery at all? Yes, I understand they are necessary for lichdom, but there are other ways of becoming immortal without becoming a lich.

In fact, even going beyond not having a McGuffin to begin with, why not spread rumors of such an artifact merely to distract your foes? "The evil sorcerer can only be stopped with the aid of the Lost Sword of Truth. Maybe the sword never existed at all, or maybe it is merely a mundane/unrelated item? In any case, the Heroes will assuredly attempt to recover the McGuffin before going after the big bad, especially if they believe it immortal without it.

The reason, really, is for story. If the BBEG was impossible to defeat, what's the point? (Unless a horror theme is the point of the game, of course.) There are plenty of in-character reasons for the BBEG to keep the McGuffin at the end of a maze or otherwise trapped dungeon, but for the same reason that the BBEG doesn't swoop in and kill the Heroes while they are still level 1 is why he doesn't lock the McGuffin up in a superfortress (at least not right away) - he doesn't see the Heroes as a legitimate threat, is overconfident, or otherwise feels vastly superior. Otherwise, there wasn't much of a game to begin with, just a collaborative slow failure.

Omegonthesane
2013-06-14, 12:46 PM
What about not having a McGuffin at all? What possible benefit is there for the BBEG to create/leave such an thing lying around anywhere? If there is a holy artifact that can destroy the demongate before the evil plans unfold, why would the BBEG not hire a team of mercenaries to get a hold of the artifact and then fling it into the depths of the ocean or into empty space? Or, why would the BBEG have a phylactery at all? Yes, I understand they are necessary for lichdom, but there are other ways of becoming immortal without becoming a lich.

In fact, even going beyond not having a McGuffin to begin with, why not spread rumors of such an artifact merely to distract your foes? "The evil sorcerer can only be stopped with the aid of the Lost Sword of Truth. Maybe the sword never existed at all, or maybe it is merely a mundane/unrelated item? In any case, the Heroes will assuredly attempt to recover the McGuffin before going after the big bad, especially if they believe it immortal without it.

The reason, really, is for story. If the BBEG was impossible to defeat, what's the point? (Unless a horror theme is the point of the game, of course.) There are plenty of in-character reasons for the BBEG to keep the McGuffin at the end of a maze or otherwise trapped dungeon, but for the same reason that the BBEG doesn't swoop in and kill the Heroes while they are still level 1 is why he doesn't lock the McGuffin up in a superfortress (at least not right away) - he doesn't see the Heroes as a legitimate threat, is overconfident, or otherwise feels vastly superior. Otherwise, there wasn't much of a game to begin with, just a collaborative slow failure.

"The story requires it" is no excuse to have things happen in a way that is inconsistent or insulting. I don't say this to advocate bad stories, I say it because you don't need to compromise storytelling in any way to avoid inconsistency.


What about not having a McGuffin at all? What possible benefit is there for the BBEG to create/leave such an thing lying around anywhere?
Already covered in several ways - he cannot die while it persists, or he needs it for a later ritual yet cannot simply keep it on his person or in his normal base of operations due to its toxic properties.


If there is a holy artifact that can destroy the demongate before the evil plans unfold, why would the BBEG not hire a team of mercenaries to get a hold of the artifact and then fling it into the depths of the ocean or into empty space?
If the story requires such - the Big Bad's unholy dark powers cannot close the gate, and he wants to make sure the foul monstrosities that come through it remain on his side, so he wants to have the holy artifact as a threat once his plans are complete.


In fact, even going beyond not having a McGuffin to begin with, why not spread rumors of such an artifact merely to distract your foes? "The evil sorcerer can only be stopped with the aid of the Lost Sword of Truth. Maybe the sword never existed at all, or maybe it is merely a mundane/unrelated item? In any case, the Heroes will assuredly attempt to recover the McGuffin before going after the big bad, especially if they believe it immortal without it.

Some Heroes might take the bait. But some won't, because you can't pull that scheme in a world where all rumours are well founded. There have been stories where some prophecies and such were outright indisputable falsehoods - it's not unheard of.

Alternately, a wizened old sage hands them a fake Lost Sword of Truth knowing they don't actually need it.


.. but for the same reason that the BBEG doesn't swoop in and kill the Heroes while they are still level 1 is why he doesn't lock the McGuffin up in a superfortress (at least not right away) - he doesn't see the Heroes as a legitimate threat, is overconfident, or otherwise feels vastly superior.
I'm going to stop you right there. I don't like overconfident non-paranoid BBEGs. They're overdone and I have serious cognitive dissonance portraying an NPC as anything but "how the PC of his story would act". I'd rather give legitimate reasons for the BBEG having to overlook these things - he keeps the McGuffin somewhere he can come back to because he needs it and can't carry it, and he doesn't smash the Heroes when they're level 1 because they actually aren't the only threat he's facing, what with the assorted paladins and rebels throughout the realm to be suppressed or run from.

SethoMarkus
2013-06-14, 12:57 PM
snip

I never said that you can't have good, thematic in-story reasons for any of those things, or that you can never have a BBEG that both has a McGuffin and protects it extremely well. However, the OP is about "Why give the heroes a chance at all, no matter how small?", and the most general answer is "for a story."

Sure, there are other, better answers, but I am willing to bet that the majority of the time it is a combination of suspension of disbelief and giving the players something to work towards. If you can create a scenario that isn't the stereotype, more power to you! I just don't think that those should be the common set up, but the rare exception (within a setting). There's no reason that every setting has to be set up that way, though.

Geordnet
2013-06-14, 02:25 PM
Honestly, I think the problem here is that a lot of people are getting literary devices and authorial skill mixed up.

Taken out of context, any element of a plot can seem like an exclusively bad thing. Take, for instance, Deus ex Machina. A lot people assume that it's implicitly wrong, but in truth it's just another tool. It's only because it's used too often and in the wrong ways by poor authors that it has such a poor reputation.


I think this is what's happening here. The OP took one general situation out of context and asked for a good justification for it. But the problem is...

That the situation itself exists has to have justification, too.

For the purposes of this argument, let's for a moment assume that the author of this work in question is an idealized "Good Author". As such, he would never include anything in his work that is inconsistent with and detrimental to the story. So, if the situation in question were to occur in his work, then it would make sense and there wouldn't be (m)any problems with it. Therefore, if you see this situation happening where it doesn't make sense, isn't justified and conflicts with established plot points, then it's only because the author's less than perfect.


There have been a lot of suggestions for basic (you can't get very specific without context) explanations on this thread, and any of them could be used by a good author -expanded, modified, and otherwise fit into place. I'll add just one more: the villain didn't think of doing it that way. At least not when it mattered, before it was too late to change his plans. Or maybe he rejected it on a whim, who knows? These things happen all the time in real life.

In any case, I say to you: have faith in the author. No matter how many 'talentless hacks' make a mess of things using a specific tool, if a good author picks it up then it is because he has plans for it and will do something constructive with it.


EDIT:
Something else I should mention is that sometimes the ends that justify the means actually come before them. Going back to the Deus ex Machina example, the drama from being stuck in a seemingly-unwinnable situation wouldn't be possible if there wasn't a way to resolve such a situation without relying on previously-known elements, because if such a situation is solvable with known elements it doesn't seem so unwinnable, does it?

TeChameleon
2013-06-14, 11:44 PM
There's also the minor factoid that the BBEG is rarely responsible for the actual hiding of the macguffin- unless it's specifically something that he made to boost his power (Sauron), or to protect his existence (phylacteries), or something of that nature, typically it's some ancient people who hid their superweapon or whatever behind the maze of devious traps and fiendish puzzles (http://www.zeldadungeon.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/comic275-1.png).

The villains seem to be taking a lot of flack here for doing cliche stuff that's more often than not none of their business. And the ancient whosits actually want people to find their superweapons to defeat evil (hellooooo, prophecy), so it's hardly surprising that they didn't maintain flawless security measures- they're basically there so that some chucklehead doesn't trip over the Holy Flamberge of Righteous Invincibility in the woods someplace, and then the heroes can't find it when they need it because Joe Schmuck is using it on his farm as a post-hole digger.

Traab
2013-06-16, 06:16 AM
There's also the minor factoid that the BBEG is rarely responsible for the actual hiding of the macguffin- unless it's specifically something that he made to boost his power (Sauron), or to protect his existence (phylacteries), or something of that nature, typically it's some ancient people who hid their superweapon or whatever behind the maze of devious traps and fiendish puzzles (http://www.zeldadungeon.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/comic275-1.png).

The villains seem to be taking a lot of flack here for doing cliche stuff that's more often than not none of their business. And the ancient whosits actually want people to find their superweapons to defeat evil (hellooooo, prophecy), so it's hardly surprising that they didn't maintain flawless security measures- they're basically there so that some chucklehead doesn't trip over the Holy Flamberge of Righteous Invincibility in the woods someplace, and then the heroes can't find it when they need it because Joe Schmuck is using it on his farm as a post-hole digger.

Yeah but this topic was started specifically about the bad guys who actually do this sort of thing. There is another example of what I consider "doing it right" Diablo 2. Finding the entrance to duriels lair. There are something like 7 dungeons side by side. 6 of them are nothing but distractions to make you waste your time and risk your life. There is only one tiny symbol at the entrance to identify them and you need to figure out which one is the right symbol.

The game gives the info away by putting it in your quest log, but the way its setup is, you kill off the boss of the arcane sanctum and see a series of symbols floating overhead. The symbol that ISNT there is the real tomb, which makes it a bit harder as some of the symbol differences are fairly minor and easily missed. So not only is your clue only found after beating a midboss, you cant even be sure of what the clue means until you reach the location of all the tombs and see the symbols, so I hope you reflexively copied them all down precisely, because that one little line under the circle was an important distinction to which tomb you are supposed to enter. Of course, all that is ignoring the massive number of hoops you had to jump through just to make it possible to enter duriels lair, most of which would have never occurred to the average hero without the narrator telling you precisely what the next step is every time. (Hi Cain)

Eric Tolle
2013-06-16, 10:42 AM
So let me get this straight... you can make a method for the lich to hide his phylactory so that it can't be found or destroyed. Which means after we kill him, he can always come back...In other words, the lich is now an infinite XP generator! Do you think we can figure out a way to get his wealth to regenerate as well?

Seriously, I think the lich would be better off just investing insome Doombots.