Looking for a build for a lich BBEG

[Eaglejarl]

Hello forumites,

The Big Bad in my novel, The Two Year Emperor (https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9669819/1/The-Two-Year-Emperor), is Afi the uber-lich. He's (tens? hundreds? of) thousands of years old, enormously powerful, and generally scary as hell. And now I need to model him. (urgh) I'd really appreciate some help on this, so I'm turning to the best. (i.e. all y'all.)

Also, if you're reading the novel and don't want spoilers, you might want to turn back now.

Here's the rules:



Absolutely no Epic, including anything in the Epic Handbook. Characters can advance beyond level 20 perfectly fine, they just don't get to do screw-the-world-completely epic magic and such. They do still get extra hit points, extra feats, etc.

No psionics that requires me to care about power points. If it's just another way to get some particular feat or body modification, fine, but nothing that can't be done with magic (etc) and nothing where I have to keep track of the numbers. Also, if you decide not to go psionics, I'm ok with using a homebrew version of illithids that retain the "eat your head and get your feats / abilities" ability but don't have psionics. This doesn't have to be used, I'm just listing it as an option.

No homebrew (aside from the above-mentioned illithid).

No personal demiplanes. Once you allow fast-time planes, everything become trivial and makes for a boring story.

Go easy on custom magic items and please don't make them story-breaking. You can assume an essentially unlimited number of XP, gold, etc for their creation.

Any official sourcebook is on the table.

Up to 100 character levels. Let's say 25 levels. I don't really care what the number is, so choose your own preferred.



In addition to a character build, what magic items / tactics / lair elements would you suggest?

Here is some highly spoilerific backstory about him:

The gods kicked off the Wighpocalypse (or, at least, they let it happen). It started off in the Underdark and depopulated a massive area, converting all inhabitants to undead or slaves. Then it went aboveground; a nation of a billion people was converted into shadows, wraiths, vampires, wights, zombies, etc. A tiny fraction escaped and formed Redoubts where they are hiding out and trying to fight back. There are several dozen liches (between 40 and 60) leading the undead side. Afi is by far the oldest and most powerful of them; he has at least 200 Legions of undead followers, averaging a million per Legion.

Afi is so old that he comes from an era when the world was substantially different -- for example, he's the only one in the novel who gets to make heavy use of feats, prestige classes, etc. He might quite believably have bloodlines, artifacts, lost knowledge, etc.

All suggestions welcome!

[Svata]

Do you see him as more of an arcane or divine caster, or both? Also, what kind of things dk you want him to do?

[Eaglejarl]

Do you see him as more of an arcane or divine caster, or both? Also, what kind of things dk you want him to do?

He's definitely an arcane caster, but it's fine if he also has divine levels. I can see him being the right hand of some ancient evil god, worshiped by an ancient cult that numbers millions of depraved humans, monsters, aberrations, demons, and undead among their ranks....


As to what I want him to do...I want him to be an absolute nightmare in personal combat, but to not NEED personal combat. He's a general, a politician, an expert at nearly everything; he uses his intelligence and his own personal power to rule over others. Very few beings can stand up to him over the long term and the fact that he doesn't rule the entire world yet is mostly due to the fact that he hasn't gotten around to it. Now, however, he's decided to get around to it and only The Plucky Heroes stand in his way.

Oh, one more thing I should have said -- no personal demiplanes. I've banned Genesis from the story because once you allow fast-time demiplanes everything becomes trivial. I'll add that to the list in the original post.

[Starmage21]

Unless you're modeling him for fun, 100 levels is pretty gnarly. You can generally do better with 20 levels even for someone that old. Greater dieties in Dieties & Demigods only had at most 80 hit dice IIRC.

[Svata]

Unless you're modeling him for fun, 100 levels is pretty gnarly. You can generally do better with 20 levels even for someone that old. Greater dieties in Dieties & Demigods only had at most 80 hit dice IIRC.

This. So much this. I was going to give models for 15, 20, and 25 levels, because 100 is nuts.

[Eaglejarl]

This. So much this. I was going to give models for 15, 20, and 25 levels, because 100 is nuts.


No worries, I was basically just picking a really high number of levels.

I've already got a wizard-25 in the story, so giving Afi 25 as well (or even 30 if you want to make him higher) is fine. Basically, I have no investment in the number, so choose whatever you like.

[mostlyharmful]

No worries, I was basically just picking a really high number of levels.

I've already got a wizard-25 in the story, so giving Afi 25 as well (or even 30 if you want to make him higher) is fine. Basically, I have no investment in the number, so choose whatever you like.

Remember that particularly with casters levelling gives exponential power increases, each step up is huge at these levels so Lv25 isn't a bit more powerful than Lv22 it's a HUGE difference. Also, DnD3.5 really isn't the game engine for power levels that high, it's creaking and groaning once you get hold of 7th level spell. Epic's a fudgejob the whole way, once you've got a guy who's personal friends with dieties and suchlike then there's rule systems out there actually designed to handle that level play.

Maybe have him be a Demilich Level 30 - that's still nuts-huge and it's modellable if not playable...

Wiz5/Incantrix10/Archmage5/Initiate7FVeil7/HalruaanElder3

Stack some bloodline/boughtoff templates and hey-presto....

If you really want to build high epic there's great stuff over at dicefreaks, if they've sorted their stuff out over there...

[Svata]

Funnily enough, that's similar to what I was going to advise.

For level 25, I would advise the following- Wizard (Abjurer Specialist) 3/ Master Specialist 10/ Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil 7/ Archmage 5

For level 30, replace Archmage with Incantrix, and raise it to level 10.

Banned schools are Evocation and Enchantment, adding Illusion if you go with Incantrix. Would ban Necromancy instead of Illusion, but he leads an army of undead, so that's just silly.


Using 32 Point-buy, on a human, his stats would shake out to the following at level 25.

STR- 18 (8 base+4 inherent+6 item)
DEX- 24 (14 base+4 inherent+6 item)
CON- -- (8 base, made null by being undead)
INT- 37 (18 base+2 template+6 level+5 inherent+6 item) (Increase to 38 for level 30)
WIS- 24 (12 base+2 template+4 inherent+6 item)
CHA- 26 (14 base+2 template+4 inherent+6 item)

Feats (Source in parenthesis) are: Spell Focus (Abjuration) (1), Extend Spell (Human), Scribe Scroll (Wiz 1), Iron Will (3), Skill Focus (Spellcraft) (Master Specialist 1), Spell Focus (Necromancy) (6), Greater Spell Focus (Abjuration) (Master Specialist 3), Farsome Necromancy (9), Energy Abjuration (12), Empower Spell (15), Residual Magic (18), Chain Spell (21), Quicken Spell (24)

[Gildedragon]

I can see him being the right hand of some ancient evil god, worshiped by an ancient cult that numbers millions of depraved humans, monsters, aberrations, demons, and undead among their ranks....


As to what I want him to do... He's a general, a politician, an expert at nearly everything; he uses his intelligence and his own personal power to rule over others.

So firstly: there are a couple interesting choices lichwise besides the normal lich
there is the banelich (which if the wizard is cleric-y too works beautifully) from monsters of faerun
and there is the suel lich, which seems a more social and intimidating foe (if the body is destroyed it goes out to possess a new body)

But let's assume standard lich for now:

Wizard, probably starting with generalist or diviner (main reason: probably has access to most schools of magic, though evocation might be dropped; but all the others seem unlikely)

He probably has diplomacy, sense motive, bluff, and intimidate as class skills (and maxed)

Binder 1 and into Anima Mage might fit the "ancient evil god" bend.

If you can find a way to give the wizard 'divine spells' and rebuke undead then one goes into tenebrous apostate quick...