how to protect a philactery

[Skorni]

my character's goal for now is to become a lich and he has a lot of levels to do as we started low level and are now at third. while he gets levels and all the materials i was wondering what i should use as a philactery. if he wants to continue adventuring (i still don't know what he wants to do next) i don't want something easy to be stolen or broken. so i wanted to ask which philactery is the best, either easier to be hidden or tougher, i don't know.

[TenDots]

In my opinion, unless you're doing something truly fancy with it (Like making it into a necklace for your worst enemy) then it shouldn't truly matter, as anybody with the time and resources to find and get to it will also be able to destroy it, given that you are a caster on the defensive. Phylactery protection isn't so much in the artifact itself as the protections you rig up around it.

I suppose, theoretically, that there aren't very many limits on what you can make it, so it might be possible to make it into a grain of sand and bury it in a desert, or a drop of water in the ocean. Assuming the DM lets it work as intended (It doesn't disperse in water or get melted down by some well-meaning glassmakers) you'd come back from anything but a world glassing. In much the same stream, and just as likely for your DM to approve, you could make it into a very large object, have it Nailed To The Sky, and start calling yourself Luna :smallamused:

But honestly, the best way to protect your phylactery is to protect it with magic, rather than making it something hard to break. Drop it into a personal demiplane, ward it from scrying and teleportation, and you're pretty much done. You can get in via wish and not much else (Maybe a combination of Metafaculty and Gate), and anything that can get in will be able to cast ninth level spells, so whatever your phylactery is doesn't matter.

This is assuming you'll have ninth level spell slots, because it's your characters overarching goal and thus you'll only achieve it at the epitome of your adventuring because of narrative causality. If you're restrained to lower level spell slots, just make it anything fairly durable and put your best defenses around it in the most defensible location you can find.

Personally? I'd make a box, and put my towel in it. Impossible to lose (And thus difficult to steal) and fairly durable.

[RoboEmperor]

Secret chest. If it gets lost in the ethereal plane, who cares?

Continuously cast hoard gullet and keep it inside you at all times.

Put it in a bag of holding, and then inside a portable hole. The contents are lost forever. Alternatively, just stab the bag of holding. Same result.

[Mizr]

Put it in a bag of holding, and then inside a portable hole. The contents are lost forever. Alternatively, just stab the bag of holding. Same result.

Problem with that. Your physical form is destroyed, and in 1d10 days YOU are lost forever. Now your enemies don't need to destroy your phylactery, just you.

[RoboEmperor]

Problem with that. Your physical form is destroyed, and in 1d10 days YOU are lost forever. Now your enemies don't need to destroy your phylactery, just you.

? How is your physical form destroyed? It just says they're lost forever. They could be in some extradimensional space that is no longer reach able in short of a wish or deity's intervention.

[Zaninel]

Give the Phylactery to a cleric. Fall into obscurity and change your name so nobody can track you back to it. Alternatively sell it at a market and watch it change hands a whole bunch of times. Unless you're in a world where magical items are regularly destroyed they usually just become part of a loot pool when someone dies, and if it isn't useful for someone it usually becomes vendor trash thus continuing the market loop. Anonymity is a fantastic way of protecting things, and so is high mobility. Especially since it can be a ring or amulet.

[Inevitability]

Make your phylactery a coin and put it in your coin pouch of holding. If someone kills you and takes the pouch, you have a reasonably place to rejuvenate, and taking revenge is easy.

[Morof Stonehands]

If I ever made a lich character, I would put its phylactery inside a Living Vault:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/livingVault.htm

But that would take some time to make:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/createLivingVault.htm

[atemu1234]

Ninth level spells are on the table, n'cest pas? Just put it in a heavily enchanted iron box in the middle of a custom built demiplane, full of monsters you've killed, teleported and reanimated, under your control.

[Inevitability]

Ninth level spells are on the table, n'cest pas? Just put it in a heavily enchanted iron box in the middle of a custom built demiplane, full of monsters you've killed, teleported and reanimated, under your control.

Reanimated Undead tend to be not very effective against anything incorporeal. I suppose you could give them magic swords, though.

[sideswipe]

.... i just had a brain wave..... i don't even know if its possible

put the phalactery in some sort of indestructable or as close to box. or, my first thought was in a demiplane that you can only access if you know the password.
whatever it is make it so you need to know the password or you cannot get it through any means.

make the password your truename.
unname yourself

get your minions to resurrect you and give you a new truename.
your old truename no longer exists, so it cannot be opened.

have some sort of way of getting out of the locked place but no way in.

someone either make this or tell me it cannot be done. i don't have THAT level of system mastery

[blacklight101]

You could always just make it a cheap piece of jewelry, like what you would sell to a tourist, and do just that. If you die, you respawn by said tourist. Then, you take your amulet/ring/whatever and pawn it off somewhere and it gets carried around as a keepsake again. Certainly not foolproof, but less likely to get destroyed outright because of combat. Even if it was to get stolen, it would likely get kept or pawned off, so you still get that free respawn. Just don't forget to give it some permanancied protection or damage reduction spells (i.e. Magically treated from stronghold builders guide) and you should be good to go.

That's just what I would do, but it seems better than keeping it in some fortress that would just draw adventurers just for existing. maybe sell it off to a group of them that tries to kill you, then they carry the secret of your unlife and don't know it.

[Baroknik]

I've always been a fan of making it the XG child of a LG King so no one would destroy it.
Or make it into anything and THEN become a Vecna-blooded, so no one can ever know what it is. Ever.

[Andezzar]

Give the Phylactery to a cleric. Fall into obscurity and change your name so nobody can track you back to it. Alternatively sell it at a market and watch it change hands a whole bunch of times. Unless you're in a world where magical items are regularly destroyed they usually just become part of a loot pool when someone dies, and if it isn't useful for someone it usually becomes vendor trash thus continuing the market loop. Anonymity is a fantastic way of protecting things, and so is high mobility. Especially since it can be a ring or amulet.A phylactery still is a magic item, so a) it would be detected by Detect Magic and b) would be identified as a phylactery with Identify. So this seems like a very dangerous proposition.


I've always been a fan of making it the XG child of a LG King so no one would destroy it.Umm isn't the phylactery automatically destroyed when the child dies? Additionally a phylactery is a magic item it cannot be a creature.

[Baroknik]

A phylactery still is a magic item, so a) it would be detected by Detect Magic and b) would be identified as a phylactery with Identify. So this seems like a very dangerous proposition.

Umm isn't the phylactery automatically destroyed when the child dies? Additionally a phylactery is a magic item it cannot be a creature.

Sorry, should have been more specific -- make it an item that sustains the life of the child. Tha way the goodies won't kill it, nor will those working for the crown.

[Mizr]

? How is your physical form destroyed? It just says they're lost forever. They could be in some extradimensional space that is no longer reach able in short of a wish or deity's intervention.

Pardon, I should have been more clear:

When your physical form is destroyed, in 1d10 days you appear Gods know where, and are lost forever, with nothing on you, drifting in the void. Good luck getting back, as you yourself are now in a location that is lost forever, with limited options for getting back. Hope you have some contingencies set up.

[RoboEmperor]

Pardon, I should have been more clear:

When your physical form is destroyed, in 1d10 days you appear Gods know where, and are lost forever, with nothing on you, drifting in the void. Good luck getting back, as you yourself are now in a location that is lost forever, with limited options for getting back. Hope you have some contingencies set up.

Simple. Gate/planeshift or planar bind a creature that has those spells. :P

[Andezzar]

Sorry, should have been more specific -- make it an item that sustains the life of the child. Tha way the goodies won't kill it, nor will those working for the crown.Yeah liches never make enemies of non good creatures...

Come to think of it, good creatures (except paladins most likely) might even judge that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (pretty much the canon definition of Good), kill the child, kill the lich and resurrect the child.

[Mizr]

Simple. Gate/planeshift or planar bind a creature that has those spells. :P

Planeshift doesn't work because you don't have a focus with you, you don't reform with gear. Planar binding doesn't work because you lack the material components for a magic circle spell to trap the creature you're binding. Gate will work if you had it prepared, or can cast it without needing a spellbook. Hope you have gate prepared at all times, or have Eschew Materials and a magic circle and Planar binding spell able to cast. There's a lot of uncertainty in that, or some less than optimal tweaking involved.

[Skorni]

to be more specific my character is a tibbit cleric of Nerull NE with Evil and Trickery as domains.

[Jeff the Green]

Is a philactery a box you wear on your head for the purpose of satisfying a kink? [/smartass]


I've always been a fan of making it the XG child of a LG King so no one would destroy it.

Not permitted.


Other forms of phylacteries can exist, such as rings, amulets, or similar items.
Emphasis added. A child is neither an item nor similar to a box filled with parchment, a ring, or an amulet.

I prefer the security-through-obfuscation strategy that others have mentioned. Vecna-blooded is very nice (in its effects, if not the means by how you attain it), as is making it a tchotchke. Personally I'd go with the fantasy equivalent of a Furby—so popular at one point that it's not unusual to find one anywhere you might look but tacky enough that you'll never actually want one. Then seed a number of other possibilities, such as other valuable things you donate to museums with very heavy security, amulets with no obvious function that you always keep on your person, any number of interesting artifacts you have in your lair, etc.

[Invader]

I find that when this question comes people always tend to go waaaaay overboard. There are really only two outcomes to the scenario. One, you can hide it in a relatively simple yet secure place, something as easy as a hidden room in your residence and in all likelyhood it will never be found because it has no reason to be found. Two, you can get crazy with quintessence and Demi planes and blah blah blah but it always comes down to whether or not the DM wants it found. If someone is looking for it in the game, it doesn't matter where it's hidden so it's kind of an exercise in futility to hide it with exceptional circumstances.

[GloatingSwine]

Make your phylactery a coin and put it in your coin pouch of holding. If someone kills you and takes the pouch, you have a reasonably place to rejuvenate, and taking revenge is easy.

Make your phylactery into a coin of common denomination and spend it.

Sure, if your body is destroyed you regenerate down the back of someone's sofa which might cause some temporary embarrassment, but otherwise you mix security through obscurity with a form which is inherently in circulation and therefore more difficult to locate.

[goto124]

Sure, if your body is destroyed you regenerate down the back of someone's sofa which might cause some temporary embarrassment, but otherwise you mix security through obscurity with a form which is inherently in circulation and therefore more difficult to locate.

Isn't a bad idea to not know where you'll go when you die? It could've gone down the sewers, and you could end up in a sea serpant's stomach upon regeneration (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0662.html), leading to an immediate and final death.

Oh wait, the DM could just avoid such a lame death. Since the coin could be anywhere, you can respawn in whatever place is convenient for the plot :smallbiggrin:

[Jeff the Green]

Fun fact: Despite the depiction in OotS, there's no indication in the entry that the lich regenerates near its phylactery, nor that they regenerate slowly. They could just pop back into existence in a place on the earth's crust determined randomly upon regeneration, at a predetermined spot, at the place they died, or wherever they want to regenerate.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Just hide it somewhere remote with basic protection against divinations. The big, protection-piercing divinations all require prior knowledge, so they're not really a problem.

Bury it in a lead-lined box. Somewhere totally inhospitable and dangerous to living beings, like the middle of the desert or in some kind of frostfell glacier.
Don't draw attention to the fact that something valuable is there by placing elaborate traps and armies of minions.

A single underground room, with a permanent Alarm and Mage's Private Sanctum, buried a few hundred meters under a glacier far from your normal area of operation would be my choice. Not too expensive and probably as safe as it's going to get. Throw up a permanent Prismatic Sphere around it if you're feeling paranoid and want to spend the money.

Then seed your lair, outposts, random unrelated tombs, etc. with tacky trinkets and jewelry that you cast Magic Aura on to mislead anyone searching for it.

[Ksstaritixtl]

Teleport yourself into space some lightyears away from your solar system. Give it a kick, silent spell teleport back to your planet.

[Sheogoroth]

The problem with all of the: "Just make it a needle and throw it in a haystack" solutions is that unless you're very skilled, that puppy is going to emanate magic, and probably necromancy to boot.


But you're really looking at it the wrong way in my opinion. YOU shouldn't be the one protecting your Phylactery, you should be creating reasons for other people to protect it.

As someone who's read his Tolkien, I reason that if you make it beautiful enough, with just a 'hint' of mind control to make someone love to just hold it, to keep it, to feel safe and in control when they have it close to them, so that the last thing they would ever want is to lose it, then you're pretty much set.
You take your Silmaril/Arkenstone/One Ring and you go far away from where you would ever operate(Don't, uh, defecate where you eat), particularly somewhere with a very low undead presence that's not overly friendly to paladins, and you present it as a gift to a notoriously greedy king whose throne is relatively secure.

Now make sure that you give it as a gift from an existing kingdom, albeit one that is far, far away and preferably unstable. The reason for this being that A. Kings give each-other diplomatic presents all the time, and
B. The source of the item could theoretically be traced as not just randomly showing up one day.

You can, amidst your adventures, throw some support to make sure Mr. King's family stays in power and that the bauble remains the most prized royal heirloom and perhaps even the chief symbol of Lordship sometime down the line.

Bonus points if the item is secretly intelligent, helpful, non-evil, and woefully ignorant of its own true purpose.

[Inevitability]

I am not sure if this will work, but...

1. Craft a phylactery in the shape of a small statue. Make sure all materials involved in the creation are completely nonmagical.

2. Cast Animate Objects, followed by a Permanency spell, on your phylactery.

3. Polymorph Any Object the phylactery into a normal human.

4. Mindrape the human to give him a lifelong hate of puns, battles of wits, talking to others, or even not fleeing for other life at all cost. Also give him a lifelong wish to travel to the sun's centre and remain there for all of eternity.

5. Polymorph Any Object the human into a Taunting Haunt. Recast the spell to make the change permanent.


Your phylactery is now an immortal, incorporeal prankster, who will reappear 24 hours after being destroyed. The only ways to permanently destroy it (winning a battle of wits with it or fulfilling its final wishes) are either impossible or very hard.

[Doxkid]

Don't let anyone know you're undead, don't let people know you favor necromancy and have a spell ready to make you self-destruct when you die. Spell compendium has a few otherwise useless gems that would help you with that. Hide the phylactery with the tricks mentioned above and you're all set.

Once you die (and blow up) never darken your enemy's doorsteps ever again. You'll have the last laugh what with you being able to laugh a few hundred years after their bloodline finally dies out, and you'll lose basically nothing.

That's pretty boring though, so not many people actually do that or want to do that. It's much more entertaining to taunt Celestials every week so you have paladins to slaughter and reanimate.:smallcool:

[Mystral]

My suggestion would be to slap on as many spells as possible to make it harder to detect, (including invisibility and anti-divination stuff) then put it somewhere high in a cage of immovable rods, also invisible and as undetectable as possible. Hand it somewhere 20 meters high in a nondescript part of the land.

Perhaps bury a bit of equipment nearby.

[dantiesilva]

For my character Lord Loss I ended up having him turn the entire region he ruled into his philactery. And to destroy it one would have to destroy every city and town on the way up the mountain. Well my character was an illusionist, with a dracolich mentor, and a dred necromancer sister....He ruled his kingdom by turning the dead heroes into death knights or other such things to protect the people (and thus his own life). The people loved him for this as it showed that he wanted his people to be protected, while showing his respect to the heroes that rose to defend his kingdom. Suffice to say no one ever killed him.

[StoneCipher]

I hired a crew of hillbillies to bury mine as deep as they could. They didn't know why but when the gold kept coming, they didn't ask. Then they forgot where it was buried cause they was stupid and drunk.

[Invader]

For my character Lord Loss I ended up having him turn the entire region he ruled into his philactery. And to destroy it one would have to destroy every city and town on the way up the mountain. Well my character was an illusionist, with a dracolich mentor, and a dred necromancer sister....He ruled his kingdom by turning the dead heroes into death knights or other such things to protect the people (and thus his own life). The people loved him for this as it showed that he wanted his people to be protected, while showing his respect to the heroes that rose to defend his kingdom. Suffice to say no one ever killed him.

To be fair that's not really within the guidelines of the rules though. You'd be better off just making the moon or stars your phylactery and calling it a day.

[StoneCipher]

To be fair that's not really within the guidelines of the rules though. You'd be better off just making the moon or stars your phylactery and calling it a day.

In all seriousness, with all the strange undead things that Atropus does...perhaps you could consider him a phylactery lol.