Hide me from the Lich

[Starchild7309]

I am DMing a campaign in which a party member is a Warforged. He has a form of amnesia so that he only "reawoke" 4 years ago, no memory of his purpose or what occurred to him before. What I am working on is that as the Lich's personal Phylactery Guard (the warforged) actually has the phylactery built into him without his knowledge. The lich escaped its entombment and reawoke in desperate need to find this phylactery, but has not been able to yet. I want to make it feasible and realistic without DM Fiat so what would a lich who was wanted to hide its phylactery from everyone, but still keep it close do to make sure it could not be divined, or whatever.

The basic idea is since the character is only 5th lvl and no where near ready to face a lich I need a reason the lich doesn't just show up, rip it out of him and destroy him.

Any ideas. The warforged doesn't know whats in him and won't know till much later in the campaign. I am thinking the lich will be something like Wizard 11+/Arch?? depending on when I decide to introduce it. All books are legal as long as they are not third party and no dragon magazine.

Ready set...GO!

[FleshrakerAbuse]

Step 1: Make the casing around the Phylactery out of lead.
Step 2: Laugh Evilly!

I'm not sure if this is what you want, but it will work 'cause it's a warforged (so much metal in him he won't be able to distinguish anyways).

[iceman10058]

how about nondetection? but honestly seeing at it is his soul hidey golem, it stands to reason that he can easily find it.

[rexx1888]

magic in 3.5 doesnt work like that though. He may have left some form of loophole in whatever he did to his protection, but if theres a loophole then someone else might exploit it to find. Far safer to make the thing a slave to the lich as then itll follow him around(who really expects robot amnesia to be a thing :\ ) so its perfectly feasible that hed make his phylactery impossible to find even to himself

[Wacky89]

I have actually no clue about what you are asking :D
Can you please specify?

[Oxydeur]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0660.html
and
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0661.html

:xykon: "It has the best anti-detection spells we know on it!!! We're going to need to search for it BY HAND!"

So yes, a high-level anti-detection spell on a lead casing make it as magical and detectable as a rock. But you can easily find other reasons for the lich to not TP-Blast-Go-away-with-loot.

- The warforged may be part of a serial production and there are 100 similar warforged walking in the world.
- During his "sleep" the warforged has been reworked by some Artificer and now doesn't look like his previous form (which the lich is looking for)
- Maybe, during his "sleep", the internal structure of your Warforged has rearranged itself while incorporating the philactery. And the lich won't risk to destroying it by attacking the warforged whithout study.

You can also combine all of them.

Edit : the phylactery part can also be the 'core' of the warforged. So the only way for the lich to get his phylactery back is to a)convince the warforged to join the dark side b)imprison said warforged.

[Rubik]

The shirt of wraith stalking is an inexpensive magic item in the MIC that disallows any undead to notice you, and there's no way to bypass it. No save, no SR, not even magic immunity. And it explicitly says that it works identically to both intelligent and mindless undead.

[Oxydeur]

Wow, i never notice that one (MIC, p.216). Extremely powerful for 6000 gp !
But Hide From Undead is subject to SR. As the shirt replicate the effect of the spell, even if it remove the save, it must be subject to SR as well.

Now, Liches don't gain SR but keep it if they already have one before transforming (drow lich anyone ?). And a powerful-lich can easily buy/craft a spell resistance objet or replicate the effect of Spell Resistance (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/spellResistance.htm) (the spell, not the score). And seeing that the shirt is only CL 3rd, its effect are avoidable.

[Rubik]

Might I suggest that the warforged's body was somehow imbued with the shirt's abilities by someone who knew that the warforged contained the lich's phylactery, and that the lich doesn't know? Perhaps it was done as a slightly malicious prank, rather than to destroy the lich.

[Starchild7309]

Thank you for the suggestions. I did think of the lead and nondetection. As Rexx pointed out I don't want any loopholes. This lich was a paranoid creature. I am thinking of maybe pushing the history flavor back some and have the warforged and his enchantments created by a Mythal. Like I was telling one person I would prefer not to Fiat, but I want to start at the rules and work out from there. I have a pretty good idea what to do now and you were all very helpful.

[Ydaer Ca Noit]

Maybe the lich used a poorly worded wish to hide his phylactery, and now he can't even remember who has it? He tried wishing the keeper of the phylactery dead, but he doesn't know its a construct. As a result of the wish, every NPC forgets about the warforged after a while, and he is undetectable to most spells. Sooner or later the PCs will notice :smallamused: