Lich Flavor

[EyethatBinds]

While they don't taste that good, I've always enjoyed providing a rich blend of herbal creation methods and alternate phylactery spices. I'll share a few of mine for those who want a lich but think they don't have the time to cook one themselves.

Creation:
Lich must infuse their phylactery with the soul of someone of equal or higher level (for creation).
This is more for players making themselves into a lich, but can also lead to plots involving high level (powerful) aristocrats being killed mysteriously or legendary heroes dropping dead while in retirement.

Lich must die from a surge of wild magic.
This can lead to unusual activity in extra-planar realms or the seizure of a rod of wonder from the party (or NPC trickster who frequently bothers the party).

Coming back:
Lich must have a corpse nearby to inhabit or the process is significantly extended. If there is a body within 100 feet of the phylactery, lich can inhabit the corpse and spends 1d10 days filling it with necromantic magics. If not, lich must spend 1d10 years creating the body.
This can make the recurring villain a bit less threatening but can also make them more disturbing if they inhabit the body of a friend or lover of the players killed while fighting the lich. However, it does give the party a lot of time to find the lich's phylactery and destroy it.

Person who strikes the final blow on the lich is haunted by the spirit while it creates a new body.
Player must make a will save (DC equal to the lich's paralyzing touch) whenever sleeping. Their dreams are haunted in any way the lich can imagine. This can result in some troubles for the player, particularly for a wizard or cleric. Consider allowing Remove Curse or sleeping on Hallowed ground removing and canceling the effect respectively.

Lich sprouts from the phylactery.
This can be more fun depending on the phylactery itself.

Unusual Phylactery:
My personal favorite is a silver reflective serving plate. While it doesn't tie directly to themes of death or magic, it is innocuous enough that most will overlook it in the treasure pile and often I've had players sell it. Consider giving it an additional ability of Create Food & Water 3 times per day to further mask the true purpose.

Golem(s)
The phylactery is required to cost 120,000 gp so why not make it big? The greater stone golem is the best choice from core, but I've found the Mithril Golem to be the most fun since it can be ordered to run away from the party if the lich is killed.
Alternately, an interesting golem to throw at the party is the MM3 one (can't recall name) that requires a lich be part of the creation. It really confused the players when a lich that had been supposedly vanquished for a millennia returned when they beat the golem that was supposed to be its mobile prison.

Castle
While even stranger than a golem, no player ever expects this one. Just mention in the dungeon that all the walls are covered with magical script that bears a strong necromantic aura and then have a lyre of building in the treasure room/tomb. How many castings of disintegrate can the wizard perform in ten days?

Any other recipes?

[Ravens_cry]

Ritual of Life Seeming.
After a bath of blood of living sentient, the lich will take on the appearance they had in life at their prime but aging over the course of a year, until they are at the point they would have died of old age of their natural span in their living body, or what that would look like in the case of an immortal race, the day before the ritual's anniversary.

[Afgncaap5]

Out of curiosity, does anyone else here use an actual, like... Phylactery for a lich's phylactery? I love the alternate items, but as a lover of words I tend to go in this direction (though the image of a lich jumping out of a mirror phylactery is awesome.) Whenever I describe the item to my players they seem to get freaked out and think it's cool, when all I'm doing is giving a general description of what a real-world phylactery looks like. It did lead to this Eberron concoction, though:

"Original In Triplicate" phylactery:
A phylactery created by a Gnomish Truenamer of House Sivis to extend, through undeath, the life of its creator by draining the life force of the inhabitants of a small village who are cursed to never be able to travel farther than needed to maintain the town's livelihood and longevity. The text within the phylactery itself is a contract sprinkled with phrases that quietly praise The Mockery while seeming like well-sounding prose, a contract that all of the village's inhabitants were tricked into signing when they began working for a small company that promised to solve all of their financial problems. Through an alchemical carbon-shadow-bonding process, the religious texts and arcane formulae (and the phylactery box itself) are actually in three parts, but only one exists at a time. The other two exist as shadows of themselves, in Mabar. When one is destroyed, the next in the series appears in the material world while its shadow returns to Mabar to regenerate its material version within a week. The "new" phylactery box and texts appear in a place of the creator's choosing. Only when all three phylacteries are simultaneously destroyed will the lich become truly vulnerable.

As an alternate method of questing (as in, if the players can't figure out a way to search the entirety of Mabar for the shadows of two scraps of parchment or breaking into various secure Sivis strongholds kept across the continent), each contract may be considered "destroyed" if the terms of the contract are found to be violated on the part of the lich (such as through the removal of a promised good or service in the company town). This form of destruction provides no chance at "regeneration" on the contract's part, but the destruction is undone should the lich find a way to re-fulfill his or her end of the contract(s) before the others are destroyed or invalidated. The lich will be aware if a contract is either destroyed or invalidated, even across planes.

[WeaselGuy]

In a somewhat related context, in Tome of Magic, in the Shadow Magic section, it mentions Shadow Liches, and says that they commonly utilize a Gem of Night as their phylactery...

[Maglubiyet]

I've thought about the golem idea before, but it seems risky. If a party can take down a lich, then a golem would be easy pickings. Likewise, the haunting thing is great flavor. It seems, though, that a party that could kill the lich in the first place could likely track the haunting spirit down and extinguish its life flame on whatever plane/state of being it exists in.

For a phylactery, I like the idea of a gaudy piece of art. It has to be obviously valuable so no one wants to destroy it outright and it can't be something that could be broken down or melted for its components. Something hideous, like a stuffed albino moose head on the wall or a wooden headboard carved with the equivalent of the Kama Sutra for gnomes. Something that will get sold and end up in the hands of someone the lich can use.

These floating phylacteries that escape permanent destruction are great ideas too. Seems like something an extremely intelligent immortal archmage could come up with given time.

[Segev]

I've described this elsewhere, but a "poor man's phylactery" could be a permanent wondrous item of magic jar. For 127,400 gp (okay, so it's actually 7400 gp more than a normal phylactery), a wizard-only (or sorcerer-only) amulet that contains your soul will let you body-surf as much as you want. Just make sure the amulet is within range of your current host-body if you're going to risk said body's life.

No need to die, perform an act of unspeakable evil, or wait 1d10 days to reform if destroyed. No nifty template though, either.

[the_archduke]

*Looks at the title*

Pretty dry. Also rotten. Would not eat again

[Ravens_cry]

*Looks at the title*

Pretty dry. Also rotten. Would not eat again
Try purify food and drink next time.

[atemu1234]

Try purify food and drink next time.

And Prestidigitation.