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Pauwel
2007-06-08, 04:06 PM
You have to be evil to become a lich (either that you or you become evil when you become a lich, can't remember). Is there any particular reasons for this, aside for the fact that liches are very often portrayed as evil? Why is it, by RAW, completely impossible to have a good lich?

Not that it matters, I'll just house rule in case it'll come up. I'm just curious what people's opinions on this could be.

PirateMonk
2007-06-08, 04:16 PM
Negative energy is inherently evil, somehow.

Saph
2007-06-08, 04:17 PM
From the SRD:

The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil and can be undertaken only by a willing character. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm)

It doesn't go into details, so your question of exactly why liches have to be evil can't be answered. As for why the Monster Manual doesn't go into details, the implication is that it's because D&D books try to be PG-rated, and the lich process has some really unpleasant bits in it.

As far as I know, no D&D books give specifics, probably because it's a lot more effective if it's left to the imagination. My pet theory is that that binding the soul into the phylactery maims it somehow, destroying whatever was left of the liches goodness in the process. But that's just a guess.

- Saph

TOAOMT
2007-06-08, 04:22 PM
I always figured there was some horribly evil act involved like sacrifice. While not really a Lich, a character in the Coldfire trilogy performs a ritual where he sacrifices his entire family for immortality (not a spoiler, happens in the prologue of the first book) and comments that the sacrifice is not of their lives but of his humanity. I see liching yourself as something similar.

This shouldn't mean that Liches are beyond redemption, but most of them don't have the mind to redeem themselves.

factotum
2007-06-08, 04:23 PM
I think you could easily houserule something like this. For example, you could make it that the process of becoming a lich requires the lich to sacrifice somebody else's soul in place of their own to keep the gods happy--slicing innocent people up in order to become undead is definitely not on the Good end of the scale!

Krrth
2007-06-08, 04:24 PM
There are two sources for a good lich that I know about, but both are *very* restricted. One is mentioned in passing in Liber Mortis about it being possible, but much harder. The other is in FR, and is the Balenorns (good, elven liches). Having said that, I think Saph is right about the phylactery damaging the soul, as the Balenorns don't have them.

Lemur
2007-06-08, 04:26 PM
I imagine the book doesn't give you details because the unspeakably evil deeds can't be spoken about :smalltongue:

Anyway, there are good liches in Forgotten Realms, so it's not like there's no precedent for it. Their abilities have a few differences, and it might be reasonable to assume that there's some kind of non-evil alternative to becoming a lich, but in my mind it would have to be more difficult or harder to understand.

Rincewind
2007-06-08, 04:26 PM
From the SRD:

The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil and can be undertaken only by a willing character. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm)

It doesn't go into details, so your question of exactly why liches have to be evil can't be answered. As for why the Monster Manual doesn't go into details, the implication is that it's because D&D books try to be PG-rated, and the lich process has some really unpleasant bits in it.

- Saph

Yes, Saph has summed up all that can be said on this thread. (Thank you)

D&d harbors really evil and wicked things, think of all the evil, wicked things in this world, an multiply them with the effects of magic... (Do not forget, by the use of magic, people can be healed and raised and transformed easily in this world of magic...)

Anyhow, if you really want to know WHAT all the evil business is about, read "Book of Vile Darkness". I think it was +18, and... Well, those spells don't really gross me out (I'm immune) but I was surprised that D&d people decided to involve such spells.

And Libris Mortis. (See "Lich Loved")

Dausuul
2007-06-08, 04:26 PM
From the SRD:

The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil and can be undertaken only by a willing character. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich.htm)

It doesn't go into details, so your question of exactly why liches have to be evil can't be answered. As for why the Monster Manual doesn't go into details, the implication is that it's because D&D books try to be PG-rated, and the lich process has some really unpleasant bits in it.

As far as I know, no D&D books give specifics, probably because it's a lot more effective if it's left to the imagination. My pet theory is that that binding the soul into the phylactery maims it somehow, destroying whatever was left of the liches goodness in the process. But that's just a guess.

- Saph

Hmm. I'd always figured you had to do something like personally rip the heart out of a celestial and devour it while sitting on a throne made out of the skulls of babies whose souls you'd fed to Orcus, which would knock your alignment into the evil range no matter how good your motives were... but I like your explanation better. It explains why liches would have to stay evil after becoming liches, and it's the sort of "eternal life at the cost of everything that makes life worth living" bargain that appeals to me where undead are concerned.

Krimm_Blackleaf
2007-06-08, 04:27 PM
I was under the impression that the act alone of becoming a lich is so indescribably evil that it's impossible to not be evil to even think about the process of what it takes, whatever it may be.

de-trick
2007-06-08, 04:27 PM
no cause sacraficing your soul for power, never dieing,is pretty evil to me

Serenity
2007-06-08, 04:28 PM
It bears repeating: liches are not evil because of Negative Energy, but because the ritual required to imbue themselves with the power and to store their souls so requires 'unspeakably evil' acts, heavily implied to include murderous sacrifice at the very least. If a transformation was available without performing those unspeakably evil acts, then nothing else would force them to be evil.

Fixer
2007-06-08, 04:32 PM
I recall back in 2nd edition that they did describe the process a person must go through to become a lich. This process involved sacrifices to gods of death (usually evil albiet not always) of either living creatures or their blood and the drinking of a potion that was always fatal (thus causing the drinker to become a lich).

Now, according to the commonly accepted definition of goodness, sacrifice must be of oneself and not of others. One's own life must also be considered important so killing oneself for power is definitely not a good act. These acts are, at best, neutral.

Now, evil is sacrificing others to benefit oneself (in most basic terms) or a severe callousness in the suffering of others. The original ritual described in creation of the lich (IIRC) dealt with a unicorn's horn being part of the potion. The horn had to have been cut from the unicorn, an act of evil. The fact that all of this was very premeditated (you have to plan all this out to get it right) means these are not singular acts but one long act of evil performed over time for a deliberate, selfish purpose.

Closet_Skeleton
2007-06-08, 04:37 PM
I assumed it was something like the Phylactery creation involves carving it from the skull of a baby you've killed yourself and consumed the rest of and by becoming a lich you have to seperate yourself from the mortal coil so that you can never go to heaven (or Mount Celestia, to use a proper DnD referance rather than a generic one). Or possible even hell. Maybe you're soul gets destroyed with the phylactery.

At any rate, it's unnatural.

If you're good, you shouldn't want immortality, you should be prepared to die for others. You might consider becoming a lich to be a version of dying for others, but then you're even more twisted than Miko. It's not the end that justify the means, its the power to use certain means that corrupt your idea of what's acceptable.

Note that many things that are considered unnatural (sleeping with close relatives for example) are also a good idea to stay away from.

Fixer
2007-06-08, 04:40 PM
If you're good, you shouldn't want immortality, you should be prepared to die for others. You might consider becoming a lich to be a version of dying for others, but then you're even more twisted than Miko. It's not the end that justify the means, its the power to use certain means that corrupt your idea of what's acceptable.

Actually, I think this is why the deathless were invented. Their creation requires sacrifice of self and (more or less) indentured servitude for eternity to a certain ideal.

Rincewind
2007-06-08, 04:46 PM
And let me add another point of view to this argument...

Becoming an undead just to continue on living and just to keep your magic. That's evil.

Think of all the wizards. Remember all the Good Wizard examples you have read. They all were under a burden.

We are "playing" wizards, but imagine what being a wizard is like. Those of who have read Terry Pratchett's books will understand what I'm saying... (Those of you who haven't? READ!)

Remember V-man's rants. Wizards study hard, and as they study, they become so devoted, they give up most and rest of their life. They train for years to become adept at being able to shape the fabric of reality at they will...

Quoting from the Rincewind himself: "You spend years trying to learn the spell to summon naked maidens into you bedroom, but when you have achieved your goal, your only wish is to lay down and sleep."

Wizards need their rest. Every wise and good wizards learns not to use his powers until absolutely necessary...

But some evil, unwise ones don't understand. They give up their lives to become liches, creatures with only one thing in mind: "power".

Remember all the heroes that "only need to rest"... Liches do not anymore.
[Scrubbed - That is not appropriate for these forums. Also, it is not OGL compliant.]
Some of the liches bury themselves deep within dungeons, trying to perfect their art. And they succeed, for they have nothing else to do. Nothing distracting them.

They become mad in time. They forget simple human emotion, and they see them as a weakness... WHAT are emotions, even WHAT is life when compared to their ART?

They can't see and understand anything good anymore.
And try distracting them. You'll see Time Stop in motion... (get it? :D)

That's why liches are considered evil. They don't value anything else then magic.

Have any of you read Dragonlance? Remember Raistlin, the dude with the bad cough? Even he didn't fall enough to become a lich. Think about it...

I'm tired of writing...

lord_khaine
2007-06-08, 04:47 PM
actualy by the rules there is nothing that prevents a lich from being good, if the motive for doing so isnt evil in itself.
the Arclich in Libris Mortis is a eksample of this.

Serenity
2007-06-08, 04:53 PM
'A Hero shouldn't want immortality.'

Why not? What's so evil about someone who doesn't want old age and eventual death to stop them from protecting others from evil?

And if I remember correctly, the Rincewind quote was more along the lines of the wizards being too senile and addled from potion fumes to remember what they wanted the naked maidens for.

ArmorArmadillo
2007-06-08, 04:54 PM
The only real examples of a Lich I can think of from popular literature would be Voldemort from Harry Potter or Dante from Fullmetal Alchemist.

In V's case, he made Horcruxes (Phylacteries) in which he stored part of his soul, so that he could never die so long as his soul was never "complete". The process involved murder, in the theory that by the virtue of committing an evil act he "severed his soul," allowing him to split it fully and create the Horcrux.

In Dante's case, she could continually shift into ever newer (living phylacteries, in a sense) by using alchemy (magic), and the power of the philosopher's stone (a powerful artifact made by sacrificing human lives).


I believe that the RAW has a lot of instances where the exact process of something, such as the process of bonding an animal companion, and that such processes are matters of DM or Player choice; however certain outlines are given for whatever process is chosen must include.
Becoming a lich could involve sacrificing your soul to demons or sacrificing innocents, just like bonding an animal companion could involve meditating in the wood until an animal approaches you or performing magical gestures over a sleeping animal;
however, becoming a lich couldn't involve anything that isn't "unspeakably evil" anymore than bonding an animal companion could involve planting a seed and growing a shark tree.

Saph
2007-06-08, 05:05 PM
Why not? What's so evil about someone who doesn't want old age and eventual death to stop them from protecting others from evil?

Well, for a start, anyone who claims that's their motivation for immortality is almost certainly lying. It's about as plausible as the bank robber who insists he's going to give it all to charity. Sure you are, dear. It's the kind of thing that a resentful evil or semi-evil character uses as a justification for doing what he wants to do anyway.

It's also very, very arrogant. Power corrupts. The guy who says he 'needs' immortality to 'protect' others is saying "The world just can't manage without me, so I have to become immortal. Other people can't be trusted, so I have to be around to watch over them. Of course, I'll always be a good person myself. There's no way I could ever become self-serving or evil. I'm much too good for that."

- Saph

PaladinBoy
2007-06-08, 05:11 PM
'A Hero shouldn't want immortality.'

Why not? What's so evil about someone who doesn't want old age and eventual death to stop them from protecting others from evil?

And if I remember correctly, the Rincewind quote was more along the lines of the wizards being too senile and addled from potion fumes to remember what they wanted the naked maidens for.

I believe there are several arguments against immortality. One is that death, to some people, is a natural part of life; thus denying death is unnatural. Another is the contention that life has no point without death; that anyone who knows that they have infinite time to do anything will become lazy, unmotivated, and eventually uncaring.

I don't quite agree with those arguments, but I can't totally discount them either. I can half-remember that there were other arguments which more fully convinced me that immortality is bad, but unfortunately I can't remember specifics.

In the specific case of a lich, though, it's quite clear to me that anyone willing to commit "unspeakably evil" acts just to obtain immortality, even if he intended to spend all of his time destroying evil, has his priorities wrong. I would call him evil, because I don't believe it's right to use evil to do good. I also believe that the moral corruption brought about by the evil acts in the lich ritual would eventually make him evil anyway....... anyone willing to make that justification is at severe risk of making more justifications, and the justifications would become more and more sketchy, until he was evil.

Closet_Skeleton
2007-06-08, 05:22 PM
Actually, I think this is why the deathless were invented. Their creation requires sacrifice of self and (more or less) indentured servitude for eternity to a certain ideal.

Deathless aren't like that really. If you look at the description of Deathless in the Book of Exalted Deeds, Deathless are only active when they're needed. Look at the Risen Martyr, a Deathless that dissapears once its purpose is complete.

Becoming a Deathless isn't about living forever, its about not letting death stop you from finishing your mission. Undeath is about either immortality or vengeance.

Jack_Simth
2007-06-08, 05:24 PM
You have to be evil to become a lich (either that you or you become evil when you become a lich, can't remember). Is there any particular reasons for this, aside for the fact that liches are very often portrayed as evil? Why is it, by RAW, completely impossible to have a good lich?

Not that it matters, I'll just house rule in case it'll come up. I'm just curious what people's opinions on this could be.

It is not impossible by RAW to have a good Lich.

Seriously.

It's just exceedingly unlikely:

Alignment: Any evil.

Alignment

This line gives the alignment that the creature is most likely to have. Every entry includes a qualifier that indicates how broadly that alignment applies to the species as a whole.

There's no modifier on the Lich's alignment. Unlike, say, the Barbed Devil, which lists "Always Laful Evil" or the Astral Deva that lists "Always Good (Any)".

But then, even if it was impossible for a lich to become good/neutral of their own actions, or to remain good/neutral through the process of becoming a lich...


Helm of Opposite Alignment: This metal hat looks like a typical helmet. When placed upon the head, however, its curse immediately takes effect (Will DC 15 negates). On a failed save, the alignment of the wearer is radically altered to an alignment as different as possible from the former alignment—good to evil, chaotic to lawful, neutral to some extreme commitment (LE, LG, CE, or CG). Alteration in alignment is mental as well as moral, and the individual changed by the magic thoroughly enjoys his new outlook. A character who succeeds on his save can continue to wear the helmet without suffering the effect of the curse, but if he takes it off and later puts it on again, another save is required. The curse only works once; that is, a character whose alignment has been changed cannot change it again by donning the helmet a second time.

Only a wish or a miracle can restore former alignment, and the affected individual does not make any attempt to return to the former alignment. (In fact, he views the prospect with horror and avoids it in any way possible.) If a character of a class with an alignment requirement is affected, an atonement spell is needed as well if the curse is to be obliterated. When a helm of opposite alignment has functioned once, it loses its magical properties.

Strong transmutation; CL 12th; Create Wondrous Item, creator must be 12th level; Price 4,000 gp;Weight 3 lb.
If you can manage to make a lich unable to act, and repeatedly put such a helm on the lich's head until the magic of the helm goes away (Lich has to roll a 1 eventually - it's not a mind-affecting effect, odd as it sounds, and there's nothing in the item's description or the Lich's description that says a Lich is immune - at which point, the Lich goes from Any Evil to Any Good.

But that's just picking nits.

SurlySeraph
2007-06-08, 05:26 PM
I recall back in 2nd edition that they did describe the process a person must go through to become a lich. This process involved sacrifices to gods of death (usually evil albiet not always) of either living creatures or their blood and the drinking of a potion that was always fatal (thus causing the drinker to become a lich).

Now, according to the commonly accepted definition of goodness, sacrifice must be of oneself and not of others. One's own life must also be considered important so killing oneself for power is definitely not a good act. These acts are, at best, neutral.

Now, evil is sacrificing others to benefit oneself (in most basic terms) or a severe callousness in the suffering of others. The original ritual described in creation of the lich (IIRC) dealt with a unicorn's horn being part of the potion. The horn had to have been cut from the unicorn, an act of evil. The fact that all of this was very premeditated (you have to plan all this out to get it right) means these are not singular acts but one long act of evil performed over time for a deliberate, selfish purpose.

Yup. And you had to drink the potion by the light of the full moon, if I recall correctly. Everything had to be planned WAY in advance.

The good-aligned liches that they have basically follow the "I have to stay immortal to protect people" idea. Baelnorns stay around to prevent the tombs of other elves from being desecrated/ used to create other undead. Personally I think evading death is more Chaotic than Evil. Why else would they make Kelemvor, the Inevitables, and everything else responsible for making sure everybody dies Lawful Neutral?

Counterpower
2007-06-08, 05:35 PM
'A Hero shouldn't want immortality.'

Why not? What's so evil about someone who doesn't want old age and eventual death to stop them from protecting others from evil?

And if I remember correctly, the Rincewind quote was more along the lines of the wizards being too senile and addled from potion fumes to remember what they wanted the naked maidens for.

Without death, what is life? While it may seem like a weird question, I'm well and truly serious. Mortal creatures are in a very large way defined by the fact that they die. That fact provides the impetus for a great deal of a person's life, for one. How much would anyone honestly be able to get themselves to do when there literally would always be tomorrow?

Green Bean
2007-06-08, 05:48 PM
Yup. And you had to drink the potion by the light of the full moon, if I recall correctly. Everything had to be planned WAY in advance.

The good-aligned liches that they have basically follow the "I have to stay immortal to protect people" idea. Baelnorns stay around to prevent the tombs of other elves from being desecrated/ used to create other undead. Personally I think evading death is more Chaotic than Evil. Why else would they make Kelemvor, the Inevitables, and everything else responsible for making sure everybody dies Lawful Neutral?

I don't think that evading death is any particular alignment on the chaotic-lawful axis. It's human nature to fear death; a lawful person could try to avoid death just as much as a chaotic person.

That being said, the reason all of the beings that make sure people die are LN is that death is an integral part of life. It's the rules. And just like cops and judges tend to be lawful, so are those who enforce the natural order.

And keep in mind that 'unspeakably evil acts' means 'unspeakably evil acts'. Go ahead, tell the DM that your unholy ritual of orphan sacrifice was for a good cause. I'm sure you'll qualify for Exalted status any day now. :smallamused:

doliemaster
2007-06-08, 08:09 PM
I made a lich that was evil when alive but after a hundred years of nothing to do until the game started became good simply to make the paladins go away and go to shops without being attacked. He volunteered at orphanges and actually adopted a goblin child later in the game. The party's paladin was actually considered more evil than me.

Fhaolan
2007-06-08, 09:24 PM
'A Hero shouldn't want immortality.'

Why not? What's so evil about someone who doesn't want old age and eventual death to stop them from protecting others from evil?

And if I remember correctly, the Rincewind quote was more along the lines of the wizards being too senile and addled from potion fumes to remember what they wanted the naked maidens for.

"The graveyard is full of
important men.
could not be spared but were,
in the end."
Beethoven's Last Night - Trans-Siberian Orchestra (2000).

Nobody is so important that they must live forever.

Serenity
2007-06-09, 12:36 AM
All right, just so we're absolutely clear, I'm not trying to claim that being a lich isn't so bad. Absolutely, liches are evil. The process of becoming one involves absolutely, irrevocably wicked deeds. All I'm saying is that there's nothing evil about immortality. Perhaps seeking it can be somewhat selfish and arrogant, but that's not the same thing as it being evil to seek it. There's many a selfish rogue and arrogant paladin who are nonetheless solidly good people.

Fhaolan
2007-06-09, 01:23 AM
All right, just so we're absolutely clear, I'm not trying to claim that being a lich isn't so bad. Absolutely, liches are evil. The process of becoming one involves absolutely, irrevocably wicked deeds. All I'm saying is that there's nothing evil about immortality. Perhaps seeking it can be somewhat selfish and arrogant, but that's not the same thing as it being evil to seek it. There's many a selfish rogue and arrogant paladin who are nonetheless solidly good people.

Oh, absolutely. I just saw the opportunity for an obsure, yet relevant quote. :smallsmile:

SolkaTruesilver
2007-06-09, 05:09 AM
I was thinking exactly the same question. In one of the game, I was wondering if my Elven LG Wizard could try to become a Lich. His whole lifegoal is to protect the world from a mighty Archfiend (the Minotaur-like one) who can be called to this world with a special ritual his Grandfather created - to his shame -.

Thus, his family has been marked by a hideous scar, but they repay the sins of their ancestor by protecting the special book containing the ritual from any dangerous cultists..

Would the ambition of becoming a Lich in order to eternally protect the ritual book from evil hands be an evil act?

Fluffy
2007-06-09, 05:38 AM
Why does people have to become liches in order to be immortal? Can't you just promise something stupid and almost impossible so you could be a ghost after death for as long as it takes you to fulfill your promise. It wouldn't be an evil act.

Also if I remember correctly spell reincarnation works even on natural deaths becouse it creates a new body so you can return to life every time you die.

Edit: As an answer to the last post: If you need to do an evil act in order to become a lich then it is evil to become lich no matter what. Why couldn't you destroy the book or have kids who could continue keeping the book safe?
There are (almost) always non-evil ways of solving problems which is why solutions that require evil things are evil even if you are trying to do good deeds.

bosssmiley
2007-06-09, 06:21 AM
What's so evil about becoming a lich? As a lich you are undead. A magic-fuelled, walking, talking, incanting blasphemy against the intended order of things. You have chosen to flout the eternal laws of life and death ("Marut haet lich!") and elected to live a shadow existence as a hollow-eyed, monomaniacal mockery of your former self, at whatever cost to yourself and others it takes.

Fluff reason over. In 2nd Ed AD&D there was a description of the liching process. This (IIRC) involved the consumption by the pupative lich of Larvae, the damned souls of the selfish dead. In order to become a lich you must wilfully summon and devour the souls of the damned. Yeah, that sounds pretty -E in the alignment box to me.

Tor the Fallen
2007-06-09, 06:27 AM
What's so evil about becoming a lich? As a lich you are undead. A magic-fuelled, walking, talking, incanting blasphemy against the intended order of things. You have chosen to flout the eternal laws of life and death ("Marut haet lich!") and elected to live a shadow existence as a hollow-eyed, monomaniacal mockery of your former self, at whatever cost to yourself and others it takes.

Fluff reason over. In 2nd Ed AD&D there was a description of the liching process. This (IIRC) involved the consumption by the pupative lich of Larvae, the damned souls of the selfish dead. In order to become a lich you must wilfully summon and devour the souls of the damned. Yeah, that sounds pretty -E in the alignment box to me.

Elans are abberrations, but have no alignment restriction. Jus cuz yer ugly don't make u evil!

Reinboom
2007-06-09, 06:38 AM
Well, for a start, anyone who claims that's their motivation for immortality is almost certainly lying. It's about as plausible as the bank robber who insists he's going to give it all to charity. Sure you are, dear. It's the kind of thing that a resentful evil or semi-evil character uses as a justification for doing what he wants to do anyway.

It's also very, very arrogant. Power corrupts. The guy who says he 'needs' immortality to 'protect' others is saying "The world just can't manage without me, so I have to become immortal. Other people can't be trusted, so I have to be around to watch over them. Of course, I'll always be a good person myself. There's no way I could ever become self-serving or evil. I'm much too good for that."

- Saph

Let's say you're a high wizard of Myth Drannor and an evil god invades. You strive through the war, seeing everything you love dye around you, your beloved city falling. Eventually, the evil forces break the final line, the great captain fell, and the greatest city falls to evil. You're the last high wizard left, and you protect a codex and one of the last means to prevent the evil force from escaping throughout, holding back the powers of an unimaginable evil. Of course.. gods outlive mortals... except, except liches. Taking so long to do, the lich high wizard still sits as the last true defender.
The very good high wizard lich.
(Forgotten Realms, it makes anything work.)

Charos
2007-06-09, 07:07 AM
Have any of you read Dragonlance? Remember Raistlin, the dude with the bad cough? Even he didn't fall enough to become a lich. Think about it...

Well, to be fair Raistlin DID sort of screw over basically everyone close to him so he could have a shot at godhood. He'd have pulled it off to (killed Takhisis the Dragon Queen herself) if his brother hadn't tracked him down after having a vision of Raistlin effectively destroying the world :)


actualy by the rules there is nothing that prevents a lich from being good, if the motive for doing so isnt evil in itself.
the Arclich

Demiliches are a whole other ball of wax. I think by the time they've developed to that point (In my copy of Van Richtens guide to Liches it goes into detail of one decimating entire armies) the limits of alignment would start to blur. When you've become so powerful that you're effectively a god the rules start to become moot... :)


I believe there are several arguments against immortality. One is that death, to some people, is a natural part of life; thus denying death is unnatural. Another is the contention that life has no point without death; that anyone who knows that they have infinite time to do anything will become lazy, unmotivated, and eventually uncaring.

You should check out a philosophy book called "The Gift of Death" by a guy named Derrida...great writer, but he goes into great detail that the capacity to die in and of itself makes human existence meaningful on a whole other level. Our mortality defines who and what we are, and without it our humanity would effectively be lost in a sense.

jamroar
2007-06-09, 07:19 AM
Let's say you're a high wizard of Myth Drannor and an evil god invades. You strive through the war, seeing everything you love dye around you, your beloved city falling. Eventually, the evil forces break the final line, the great captain fell, and the greatest city falls to evil. You're the last high wizard left, and you protect a codex and one of the last means to prevent the evil force from escaping throughout, holding back the powers of an unimaginable evil. Of course.. gods outlive mortals... except, except liches. Taking so long to do, the lich high wizard still sits as the last true defender.
The very good high wizard lich.
(Forgotten Realms, it makes anything work.)

Aren't the FR Baelnorns a completely different animal, powered by elven high magic and bound to the mythal they protect instead of a phylactery?

Wardog
2007-06-09, 07:21 AM
Well, for a start, anyone who claims that's their motivation for immortality is almost certainly lying. It's about as plausible as the bank robber who insists he's going to give it all to charity. Sure you are, dear. It's the kind of thing that a resentful evil or semi-evil character uses as a justification for doing what he wants to do anyway.

It's also very, very arrogant. Power corrupts. The guy who says he 'needs' immortality to 'protect' others is saying "The world just can't manage without me, so I have to become immortal. Other people can't be trusted, so I have to be around to watch over them. Of course, I'll always be a good person myself. There's no way I could ever become self-serving or evil. I'm much too good for that."

- Saph

Why are they almost certainly lying?

And how is it comparable to bank robbers claiming to be acting for charity?

(Oh, and btw, I take it you wouldnt approve of Robin Hood, or any similar CG rogue types).

For one thing, robbing a bank is in general an act that harms or risks harming other people. "Becoming immortal" need not be (there may be other routes than lichdom).

As for your second point about the arrogance and corruption:
1) In the case of most of the I-saved-the-world-(again) heroes, the world did need them, and may well do so again. As for corruption, that is something that would (or may) happen after the event. If someone becomes a King, they may become corrupt, powerhungry, and evil. But that doesnt make it evil to become a king. (Except perhaps in the view of a hardcore republican or anarchist etc. But then, their political views dont define alignment).



Anyway, the thing is, the old rules described the process of becoming a lich, and that process involved commiting evil acts.

However, the modern rules do not describe the process, nor do they say that becoming a lich involves commiting unspeakably evil acts. They say the process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil. Which suggests to me the issue is that the Powers That Be have decreed that lichdom (and undeath in general) is Evil in and of itself.

In effect, the cosmic powers that decide whether someone or something is Evil have a list of "Evil Things" which would include:
* Cruelty
* Sacrificing others for personal gain
* Desecrating coprses (which is treated as evil even when no living person is affected by the act)
* Being undead


So in my view, in theory a good person could become a lich, and retain their previous moral views, but would now be stuck with an Evil alignment, and be affected by detect/protection from/smite evil.

Although I would view this as extremely unlikely, as:
* A good person would be extremely unlikely to do something that is viewed as evil by everyone up to and beyond the gods themselves.
* Becoming a lich (or other form of undead) would probably affect you mentally, possibly to the extent of making you mentally evil, or at least neutral.
* After years of being condemned as a moral abomination by everyone up to and beyond the gods themselves, attacked and robbed by "good" adventurers, smited by paladins, etc, you might decide that if you are going to have all the disadvantages of being "evil", you might as well become properly evil and get the advantages that can go with it as well.

JellyPooga
2007-06-09, 08:22 AM
I find this thread kind of amusing (no offence), given that there are rules...official rules...for Liches that are good in Libris Mortis and the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.

Simply being Immortal (or seeking immortality) is clearly not an indication of being Evil. Gods, Outsiders, Ghosts and all manner of Good-Aligned immortals are testimony to that, so it can't be anything to do with Immortality.

Similarly it can't be because they are Undead. As intelligent being, most Undead have a choice as to what alignment they are. As a tendancy, the Undead are more than a little nuts (for one reason or another; forced state of Undeath, inescapable hunger for flesh/blood/whatever, etc.), so gravitate towards Evil, but not always. See previous comment regarding Ghosts, also reference Libris Mortis under Undead Outlook and Psychology .

The only specific thing about being a Lich that requires that you be Evil is the Evil process of becoming one. That does not preclude there being a Good process of becoming one, which there must be given the existence of Baelnorns and other Good Liches.

The 'standard' Lich in the Monster Manual is 'standard' because a)most people who want to be Liches are Evil and use the Evil method of Lichdom and b)most Liches any given adventuring party will encounter will be Evil (as a BBEG most likely...a reccurring one at that).

Anyway, I've said my bit for ERUM (the Equal Rights for the Undead Movement), so I'll leave it at that.

Knight_Of_Twilight
2007-06-09, 08:31 AM
One of the potions of Lichdom in 2nd edition needed several strange - and cruel ingrediants, including,

Blood from a Unicorn killed by wyvern Venom

Blood from a Demi-Human killed by a phase spider

and Blood from a vampire or person with Vampirism.

Not only that, but you also needed the VENOM from the Wyvern and the phase spider, and they needed to be killed within a month or so of each other. So it was a complicated ritual that involved killing other sentient beings in cruel ways so that you could be immortal.

Evil. Done.

the_tick_rules
2007-06-09, 11:08 AM
your using negative energy becoming an undead to escape the natural forces of life and death. But hey if you wanna make a repentent lich that's ok.

Driderman
2007-06-09, 02:27 PM
Oh, so many suggestions, so many possibilities!

In D&D morality is absolute. Evil is evil, good is good and there is a clear line between the two (almost) always.
Seeing as a lich is fueled by negative energy, which is by default evil, it can be no other way. The lich is techically evil, it's body infused with distilled evil from the plane of evil things. Even if it wants to do good, it will have to contend with nasty tendencies that surely follow.
That being said, I could surely see a lich wanting to do good. Its just that despite its good intentions, it is inherently evil which will probably get in the way from time to time and prevent any alignment shifts to non-evil alignments.

Personally, I see lich-dom more as a non-good thing than decidedly evil, but that's not what the rules say. I could easily see a neutral archmage cheat death to continue his search for power/mastery of the art/protection of apocalyptically dangerous legacy/etc

JellyPooga
2007-06-09, 02:34 PM
Seeing as a lich is fueled by negative energy, which is by default evil, it can be no other way. The lich is techically evil, it's body infused with distilled evil from the plane of evil things.

Where does it say this exactly?

Negative energy is just that...energy. How you use it makes it Good or Evil. You can't call Heat/Fire Evil because a pyromaniac burns down a city.

Driderman
2007-06-09, 02:40 PM
Where does it say this exactly?

Negative energy is just that...energy. How you use it makes it Good or Evil. You can't call Heat/Fire Evil because a pyromaniac burns down a city.

Well, it is rather subjective I admit. I don't want to waste time rifling through my books so my argument will be that seeing as negative energy is the energy that keep evil undead ticking and that undead by default are evil, so is negative energy. I completely agree that you can't call "ordinary" energy forms good or evil, but positive and negative energy is... well, something else.
Also, good clerics channel positive energy and evil clerics channel negative energy if I'm not mistaken. Coincidence? I think not.

But as said, it certainly isn't set in stone

LoopyZebra
2007-06-09, 02:55 PM
By RAW, as I understand it, negative energy is not evil. But undead are evil, and negative energy does hurt all life. The rules are rather inconsistent on this; making negative energy evil explains why undead are evil, making it non-evil must make undead non-evil. There's a good explanation on the Wizards boards, but, really, it's up to the DM and how stuff works in his campaign.

EDIT: Personally, I play negative energy as an evil force. It is, literally, the force of death.

Serenity
2007-06-09, 02:59 PM
If Negative Energy were evil, the Negative Energy Plane would be at least mildy evil-aligned, which it isn't, and good clerics would be forbidden from casting Inflict spells, which they aren't.

If Positive Energy was good, the Positive Energy Plane would be at least mildly good-aligned, which it isn't, and evil clerics would be forbidden from casting Cure spells, which they naturally are not. Can you imagine how much it would suck to be evil if you can't cure yourself?

It says it right in the description: 'unspeakably evil acts' are required for the ritual. There's your evil, right there. No need to make an elemental force evil.

LoopyZebra
2007-06-09, 03:04 PM
It says it right in the description: 'unspeakably evil acts' are required for the ritual. There's your evil, right there. No need to make an elemental force evil.

True, for liches. But why exactly are undead in general evil then? Yes, Animate Dead is Evil, but why exactly is it evil? There's no mention of "Unspeakably evil acts" in the spell description (at least, not in the SRD).

Serenity
2007-06-09, 03:12 PM
Well, Skeletons and Zombies were neutral until some idiot changed that in 3.5 so Paladins could smite them--despite the fact that skeletons and zombies are by definition mindless and incapable of making value or any other sort of judgements. They're little different than golems. Evil undead are evil because they are cruel, vicious predators and/or hell bent on vengance for past wrongs with no regard for anyone who gets in their way.

Seffbasilisk
2007-06-09, 03:17 PM
Libres Mortum has rules for good liches I believe.

Liches powered by POSITIVE energy.

You lose some of the lich abilities, and gain a few different ones in exchange though.

jjpickar
2007-06-09, 03:27 PM
Positive Liches really wouldn't be liches in my mind. Think about it. A body infused with negative energy looks like some dessicated corpse that moves about only under the power of supernatural forces 'cause those near skeletal arms sure don't have the strength to move toothpick much less themselves.

A body filled with positive energy would, I imagine, have the look of overflowing life and health. Technically the creature is dead and is animated by a supernatural energy but you would have to call it something else.

Vhaidara
2007-06-09, 03:32 PM
I've had the same question, but for vampires. If you are made into a vampire, and the original is killed, why do you still have to be evil? You could go back to being your old self, with a slight vampiric touch.

LordofArcana
2007-06-09, 03:37 PM
Well, it is rather subjective I admit. I don't want to waste time rifling through my books so my argument will be that seeing as negative energy is the energy that keep evil undead ticking and that undead by default are evil, so is negative energy. I completely agree that you can't call "ordinary" energy forms good or evil, but positive and negative energy is... well, something else.


So the energy that keeps a mass murderer alive is evil too? Also, are ghosts evil? Just because a tool lends itself to evil doesn't mean that the tool is. It might be considered too dangerous to use and be forbidden by people in the campaign world, but why should it be evil?

Saph
2007-06-09, 03:53 PM
Why are they almost certainly lying?

And how is it comparable to bank robbers claiming to be acting for charity?

Because it's the kind of thing that's generally said by people looking to justify what they want to do anyway. It's not that it's impossible for the person to be genuine, it's just really unlikely.

It's like seeing a shell game down the street and concluding that it's a con. It's possible that you're wrong and that the game's honest, but it's very unlikely.

- Saph

TOAOMT
2007-06-09, 04:00 PM
The concept of a good lich is something that bugs me. Why? Because in D&D the good liches are powered by positive energy. They're not Liches who sought redemption, they're a gimmick for people who want to do Lichness without the word "Evil" on their character sheet.

Another thing, just because the Lich is evil why does he have to be a bad guy. I know, I know, Evil = Bad and all that, but bear with me.

Take for example character X, we'll call him Steve. Steve is a powerful wizard who finds that in the future, albeit distant, an avatar of Demogorgon himself is going to attack his village. Even if they began now, the village would not be able to prepare itself to defend itself adequately and the odds of adventurers wandering by is very slim. Poring over his texts, Steve finds what might be a solution, if he transforms himself into a Lich then he just might be able to stand against Demojunior and save his village. After committing the horrible rituals he is ready, he prepares himself for the day of reckoning and he is able to drive off the demon spawn.

There you have a character committing horribly evil acts for a good cause, and later committing good acts in spite of the fact that he has made himself irrevocably evil. Good guy, with Evil in the alignment chart.

Closet_Skeleton
2007-06-09, 04:27 PM
The concept of a good lich is something that bugs me. Why? Because in D&D the good liches are powered by positive energy.

They aren't. Good liches are not Deathless. Deathless are good creatures who the gods allow repreive from their heavenly rest to animate their bodies temporaraly.

Deathless are not immortal and deathless are not outside the cycle of life and death, they have just been given the write to jump around in it under limited circumstances.

Good liches are still undead. Archliches can turn undead and are immune to turning. They are turned or destroyed by evil clerics in a similar manner to Deathless but are still healed by negative energy. They also have an animate dead power. Forgotten Realms is not core and stuff that exists in it is not a precedent.


All right, just so we're absolutely clear, I'm not trying to claim that being a lich isn't so bad. Absolutely, liches are evil. The process of becoming one involves absolutely, irrevocably wicked deeds. All I'm saying is that there's nothing evil about immortality. Perhaps seeking it can be somewhat selfish and arrogant, but that's not the same thing as it being evil to seek it. There's many a selfish rogue and arrogant paladin who are nonetheless solidly good people.

What if every way to achieve immortality is evil though?


There you have a character committing horribly evil acts for a good cause, and later committing good acts in spite of the fact that he has made himself irrevocably evil. Good guy, with Evil in the alignment chart.

Possible, peasants look favourably on the tyrant who keeps them fed. His reasons are still selfish though. He could spend his life making holy weapons and set up a guild for the training of Paladins so that when Demogorgan came he would get his ass handed to him. The Paladins would also travel the lands helping people. He's commiting an act that some would say is good but he's doing it in a selfish way. A true evil person has nothing against helping good when its to their advantage.


Where does it say this exactly?

Negative energy is just that...energy. How you use it makes it Good or Evil. You can't call Heat/Fire Evil because a pyromaniac burns down a city.

Fire can cook food, be used in forging and ash can be used as fertalizer. Negative energy isn't like that, its pure destructive force. Mere contact with it causes physical injury. Only the servants of gods can channel it safely. Its like salt, but worse. It's the eventual doom of the universe, completely opposed to life.

Its a force of nature, no more evil than entropy. But it isn't good. Killing the few can save the many, but it should never be the first option. Creatures powered by negative energy are the enemies of life, Liber Mortis has rules for masses of undead breaking down the universe.

Last time I looked, good people where supposed to protect things and save the world, not erge it onwards to destruction by enouraging destructive energy to fill it up.

On another note, I always thought that ghosts should not be classed as undead but deathless (though I had this gripe before Book of Exalted Deeds came out and hated Deathless at first) instead. Ghosts aren't undead, they're dead, they just haven't gone to a higher plane yet.

Green Bean
2007-06-09, 04:45 PM
I've had the same question, but for vampires. If you are made into a vampire, and the original is killed, why do you still have to be evil? You could go back to being your old self, with a slight vampiric touch.

Well, RAW, even vampires not under anyone's control are 'always evil'. I'd rule that upon becoming a vampire, your mind is irrevocably twisted, and from then on you regard the living as little more than blood banks and sources of amusement. Evil, as it were, would be part of the package.

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-09, 04:52 PM
'A Hero shouldn't want immortality.'

Why not? What's so evil about someone who doesn't want old age and eventual death to stop them from protecting others from evil?

And if I remember correctly, the Rincewind quote was more along the lines of the wizards being too senile and addled from potion fumes to remember what they wanted the naked maidens for.

Besides, I have a question about this "A Hero shouldn't want immortality" crowd: so if a human Paladin decides to polymorph himself into an elf (possibly because a horrible villain took a page out of Dr. Evil's book and froze himself in an orbital spaceship that will return to the planet a long time later and the Paladin wants to be there to stop his evil schemes when he does). I know elves don't live forever in 3rd edition (but they did in 1st!) but still, thats extended his life and is one step closer to "immortality."

Also, what if even a Vegan lifestyle isn't compassionate enough for a person? Want if someone, eons ahead of his time, decides fruits and vegetables should have rights (you know, like Animal rights?) Problem is, as a living animal, he has to eat to survive. Well, if you become undead (as long as your not a vampire or something) you don't have to worry your pretty little head about eating anything ever again. Really, though, after Veganism, this is the next step, creepy huh?

Drider
2007-06-09, 05:17 PM
http://www.mindflayedcomic.com/comic041.html
that comic has a near-exalted lich

TheGreatJabu
2007-06-09, 05:52 PM
Also, what if even a Vegan lifestyle isn't compassionate enough for a person? Want if someone, eons ahead of his time, decides fruits and vegetables should have rights (you know, like Animal rights?) Problem is, as a living animal, he has to eat to survive. Well, if you become undead (as long as your not a vampire or something) you don't have to worry your pretty little head about eating anything ever again. Really, though, after Veganism, this is the next step, creepy huh?

My girlfriend is a vegetarian (not a vegan), and I love her to death, but sometimes lichdom does seem easier than seeing the look on her face when I order a country-fried steak at a restaurant. :smallfrown:

I can agree with the comments that in binding one's soul to a phyllactery, it becomes "damaged" in a way. I guess my opinion is that without a soul to moderate and guide you, your ways of thinking become skewed. The things that once seemed important to you now are put on the back-burner, because different things interest you now. It's not a radical "HA HA I am now evil and immortal! Let's go grill some kittens for dinner!", but simply a subtle change in priorities that, over time, will lead to a person who is less and less interested in the things that once were important to him/her. It kind of reminds me of severe drug addictions, in that you're "still the same person", but you can't help but prioritize satisfying your cravings about everything else, and that eventually causes you to care less and less about all those other things. Watching "Intervention" makes me sad. More sad than ordering steak with my girlfriend. :smallfrown:

Maybe if you create a phyllactery in a more pleasant manner, you could be less evil! Use happier ingredients, like flowers or chocolate! Then you could be a Lich and give out Golden Tickets to your chocolate phyllactery! *Badoomp-tish*

ArmorArmadillo
2007-06-09, 06:02 PM
Besides, I have a question about this "A Hero shouldn't want immortality" crowd: so if a human Paladin decides to polymorph himself into an elf (possibly because a horrible villain took a page out of Dr. Evil's book and froze himself in an orbital spaceship that will return to the planet a long time later and the Paladin wants to be there to stop his evil schemes when he does). I know elves don't live forever in 3rd edition (but they did in 1st!) but still, thats extended his life and is one step closer to "immortality."

Also, what if even a Vegan lifestyle isn't compassionate enough for a person? Want if someone, eons ahead of his time, decides fruits and vegetables should have rights (you know, like Animal rights?) Problem is, as a living animal, he has to eat to survive. Well, if you become undead (as long as your not a vampire or something) you don't have to worry your pretty little head about eating anything ever again. Really, though, after Veganism, this is the next step, creepy huh?
And the paladin couldn't train someone to take his place? Establish an "Order of Anti-Evil" to carry on after he is gone?

Becoming immortal to stave off evil later is saying (as was mentioned earlier) that you are the only hope for the world, without you the world is doomed. That's pretty arrogant.

At best, seeking Immortality is an arrogant act motivated by a desire to do good, and commiting an act of arrogance on this big a scale (defying basic laws of nature, time, and existence is a pretty big act) becomes an act of evil. If a hero committed such an act, the temptation and corruption of his power would turn him from good to evil in the time waiting for Dr. Evil to awake. Perhaps, more evil than the original threat ever was. Then, the evil would awake to find a world more devastated than he ever imagined, and find his old nemesis at the head, and be inspired to good. He'd then seek the help of the PC's...(Scribbles in adventure notebook)

That's not to say you can't have an immortal hero, but that's something that's given (ascending after a lifetime of good, gods grant you immortality as you're about to die staving off evil) rather than sought.

I'd say the best way to handle it would be to have some balancing caveat, such as being immortal but hibernating until some great need arises and you can then be awaken. One of the evil things about Liches is that they become immortal at no cost to themselves, and then they must pay with their Humanity. Elfity. Koboldity. Hombrew-Racity.

Vuzzmop
2007-06-09, 06:05 PM
Why is everyone so anti-negative energy all of a sudden? It's enegy, jus tthat. It doesn't hav a motive, it's just a destructive force. It damages the living, but so does a sword. Is a sword evil? The use of this energy may be purely destructive, but it depends only on what the wielder chooses to destroy. You can use a sword to murder the innocent, and you can do the same with negative energy. Tou can wield a sword to defend your homeland, and you can do the same with negative energy! WTF?:smallfurious:

Green Bean
2007-06-09, 06:18 PM
Besides, I have a question about this "A Hero shouldn't want immortality" crowd: so if a human Paladin decides to polymorph himself into an elf (possibly because a horrible villain took a page out of Dr. Evil's book and froze himself in an orbital spaceship that will return to the planet a long time later and the Paladin wants to be there to stop his evil schemes when he does). I know elves don't live forever in 3rd edition (but they did in 1st!) but still, thats extended his life and is one step closer to "immortality."


Well, if the villain did take a page out of Doctor Evil's book and froze himself, I guess he has no choice but to become undead. It seems as though there are no (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/binding.htm) other (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/temporalStasis.htm) options. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fleshToStone.htm)

:smallwink:

Serenity
2007-06-09, 06:59 PM
Any 'option' about masses of undead destroying the universe is just that: an option. Per core, it doesn't happen. And again, if every time a wizard raises undead he advances us a step towards Armageddon, the same would happen every time a cleric uses Inflict Serious Wounds, which good cleric adventurers do fairly frequently.

The idea that every path to immortality is inherently evil is a pretty dang large assumption. Again, I am not saying Liches are all misunderstood. I'm saying that if there are other paths to immortality that don't require 'unspeakably evil acts', you don't have to be evil to seek it. If simply being arrogant and powerful is enough to automatically turn you evil, than there's no such thing as a good high level wizard.

I think the problem with liches aside from unspeakably evil rituals isn't that they're immortal but that, having no souls, they have no conscience and are completely incapable of feeling. Becoming a lich makes you a sociopath, if you weren't already.

As for vampires, I tend to subscribe to the Buffy explanation that a demonic spirit has taken over the body, and the persons soul is lost somewhere...

ArmorArmadillo
2007-06-09, 08:30 PM
The idea that every path to immortality is inherently evil is a pretty dang large assumption. Again, I am not saying Liches are all misunderstood. I'm saying that if there are other paths to immortality that don't require 'unspeakably evil acts', you don't have to be evil to seek it. If simply being arrogant and powerful is enough to automatically turn you evil, than there's no such thing as a good high level wizard.
Why does being powerful mean that you're arrogant?
Wizard's who believe themselves above everybody else because of their powers aren't Good. But there's nothing inherent about them being so, one of the hallmarks of being good is humility despite power.

Immortality is forever. FOR-EV-ER. It's too long for anyone to control it purely by goodwill...it's the philosopher's stone, a catch-22; anyone who wants that kind of power can't handle it. They'll eventually let it go to their head.
Someday they'll kill that ancient evil, they'll triumph over the undead, they'll beat that obnoxious teenager at chess, and have nothing left to do with an eternity of superiority.



On the subject of Negative Energy; the most underused words in discussing alignment are nongood and nonevil, which allow you to have things be neutral without having them be truly one way or the other; negative energy is anti-life energy, it can serve only destructive purposes. This doesn't mean that it's evil, but it does mean that it isn't good. Good characters can do nongood things without being evil, but doing them too casually or too wantonly makes them neutral or evil.

LordofArcana
2007-06-09, 08:47 PM
What about guardians? There are many instances in fiction where there is some sort of eternal guardian protecting something that should not be released. I could very easily see some powerful wizards become immortal to try to prevent some adventurers from stumbling upon some horrible evil. Would becoming such a guardian be evil? There are elves that extend their lives in order to help protect and advise their family (baelnorns), are they evil?

Citizen Joe
2007-06-09, 08:49 PM
Why does being powerful mean that you're arrogant?
Because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Khantalas
2007-06-09, 08:55 PM
Because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

No, no, no! It's: "With great power comes great authority but absolute power rocks absolutely.".

Seriously.

Serenity
2007-06-10, 01:45 AM
Why does being powerful mean that you're arrogant?
Wizard's who believe themselves above everybody else because of their powers aren't Good. But there's nothing inherent about them being so, one of the hallmarks of being good is humility despite power.

Immortality is forever. FOR-EV-ER. It's too long for anyone to control it purely by goodwill...it's the philosopher's stone, a catch-22; anyone who wants that kind of power can't handle it. They'll eventually let it go to their head.
Someday they'll kill that ancient evil, they'll triumph over the undead, they'll beat that obnoxious teenager at chess, and have nothing left to do with an eternity of superiority.



On the subject of Negative Energy; the most underused words in discussing alignment are nongood and nonevil, which allow you to have things be neutral without having them be truly one way or the other; negative energy is anti-life energy, it can serve only destructive purposes. This doesn't mean that it's evil, but it does mean that it isn't good. Good characters can do nongood things without being evil, but doing them too casually or too wantonly makes them neutral or evil.

Funny you should mention the Philosopher's Stone. In Harry Potter, Nicholas Flamel lived for a few centuries on the Elixir of Life, and considering the close friendship he maintained with Dumbledore, it's doubtful he was destined to be a new Voldemort just because of his immortality. Nor did he choose to end his immortality; that choice was made for him when the Stone got destroyed; he simply accepted the fact with good grace. Likewise, I don't think Elminster or Tolkien's elves are in particular danger of going mad with power and unleashing their considerable fury upon the world of men. Admittedly, they come with immortality pre-installed, but by your definiton any immortality corrupts because they'll eventually 'have nothing left to do with an eternity of superiority.'

A sword has only destructive purposes. The spell Fireball has only destructive purposes. Many, many things have only destructive purposes. Using them isn't evil unless you use them to wreak that destruction on the innocent, the unthreatening, etc.

Shadowdweller
2007-06-10, 02:07 AM
Look, people:

Stop trying to impute some cosmic D&D rule or ruling on the matter. There very intentionally isn't one. D&D is specifically meant to allow for multiple cosmologies. Undead are generally evil in D&D because that's a fantasy stereotype and has been a real-world fictional one as well for centuries. Nothing more, nothing less.

That said, Libris Mortis offers the following reason why they -might- be generally evil: The negative energy that undead constantly draw to the material plane drains life force. Thus, being around undead a lot is bad for you. As for liches? There are any number of reasons one -could- use as to why they're evil. Maybe, as the MM suggests the process of becoming one involves nasty horrible things. Or you could channel the Anne Rice thing and have lichdom involving a long drawn out loss of compassion and humanity and thus frequently leading to an unlifestyle where one ceases to care about the loss of sentient lives. Maybe a phylactery somehow drains the lifeforce of surrounding creatures to power the lich's unlife. Maybe the lich's soul takes over the body of existing sentient being every time the previous body is destroyed. There are any number of possibilities.

The bottom line shouldn't be which one is universally true, but which one is coolest to the players and DM in any given situation.

Hectonkhyres
2007-06-10, 02:23 AM
In my games, liches tend to be evil because certain evil acts, pacts, and rituals offer a shortcut to immortality. There are dozens of roads to lichdom... but many of which are too long for most mortals to live to see the end of or are terribly risky to undertake. Or, in a few cases, are even accidental.

Picture the following lich: He was old... real old. He was a soldier cleric in an ancient mage war where the casualties included at least one god... his god. The world was blasted, both sides decimated, and was 'pushed' by some really scary magic closer and closer to the negative energy plane. Perhaps not quite physically... but it certainly became attuned to it.

The sun grew faint, plants stopped growing, and things died one after another... horrors at times replacing them. The cleric sat in his temple, praying to a god that would not answer, pleading for his lord to save them. Time passed and eventually the cleric was alone and still he prayed... not stoping for food or drink or rest. He grew gaunt and skeletal, sickening as hunger and black energies assaulted him, but knew nothing but his prayer.

His world fully aligns itself with the Negative Energy Plane and every last blade of grass, every last bacterium gives in to death. Except the cleric.... whe survives as a lich with his phylactery the holy symbol of a dead god. The world eventually regains its elemental balance and is repopulated by life through assorted mean and a few tens of thousand years we have our game.

I think that would be a damn fine way to have a lich.

TheOOB
2007-06-10, 02:42 AM
Heres how I've always seen it. The ritual to become a lich (whatever it may be), contains some element within it that somehow violates the natural laws in some way that only someone who is truly evil at heart will ever attempt it. Maybe it requires the souls of the innocent, maybe the trade for eternal life weakens the fabric of reality, or causes an arch-devil to be born, or something.

The other possibility, is that like a vampire, the energy that powers a lich will eventually make you evil.

Cauchy
2007-06-10, 02:54 AM
If you need an explanation, just say that the act of making the phylactry and having a connection to the Negative Energy Plane turns an individual evil, just like becoming a vampire consumes you with a thirst for blood, or drinking alcohol lowers your inhibitions.

Actually, alcohol is a pretty good metaphor... except evil. Evilhol. It makes you feel like burning good-aligned villages, studying ancient tomes for centuries, and building trap and monster filled dungeons are good ideas. In the case of a good wizard defending a city, sure, he might become a lich and face down the evil diety, but after the god has been driven away, the wizard has many centuries of contemplation left. No matter how strong his will or determined his convictions, he will eventually decide to convert the city into a necropolis, raising the citizens as zombies to serve him.

The bottom line is, Wizards didn't intend the alignment grid to stand up to serious philosophical discussion about the nature of morality. Paraphrasing the PHB, "good is good, evil is evil, that's the way things are in D&D so that we can have things like protection from evil." By this token, Liches are evil because they're predesigned for the role of BBEG. Resistant, reusable, and recyclable.

TheOOB
2007-06-10, 03:36 AM
Acually, there is very little evidence in the books that negative energy is evil, as seen by spells such as inflict light wounds, ray of enfeeblement, and enervation which are not evil.

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-10, 04:34 AM
And the paladin couldn't train someone to take his place? Establish an "Order of Anti-Evil" to carry on after he is gone?

Becoming immortal to stave off evil later is saying (as was mentioned earlier) that you are the only hope for the world, without you the world is doomed. That's pretty arrogant.

Arrogant; but, in a world like D&D, not unfounded. I mean, look at my threadWhy level? (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45047) I questioned the leveling system, and if it would make an unplayable game if skills and class abilities and highly-nerfed (a 24d6 Meteor swarm in a world of 20 or less hit points for all? No thanks.) spells were the only method of advancement available to characters and the problem of writing content for high-level characters. The problem with high level characters in my eyes is how to protect the low-level world from the high-level world (seriously, a lone Balor invades a kingdom were nobody is over 1st-level. The Demon has no allies, and will kill any who try to be his allies/servants/escapees of his wrath but most the humans are commoners because only excess people who are fed by the leftover food farmers sell to the market can become any other class and not many of them are going to pick a PC class, roughly 100,000 adult humans in 25 square miles, 10% of which are nonfarmers, 20% of the farmers -20,000- can be raised as levies -mostly given longspears and forced to fight- before the kingdom has trouble with starvation -unless the nonfarmers have taken a grim reduction in number- and of the 10,000 nonfarmers, only 500 have PC classes -core only, lets say, but they are split evenly into tenths, with sorcerers and wizards sharing a tenth, so that there are 25 Wizards, 4 of which know every 1st level spell, and 25 Sorcerers and 50 of everyone else- 2,000 warriors and 1,000 adepts with 500 aristocrats and every remaining nonfarmer -6,000- an expert. Also, the Balor has been jinxed so that if he dies in his attempt to genocide the country, he will explode and be dead forever just as if he was slain in the abyss. But that explosion will never happen, will it? The entire kingdom will be depopulated. Maybe the Balor is too strong? Okay, try an Adult Red dragon instead, surely they can handle that. *snicker*) and if the world levels up with the PCs, it get clunky. Dark had the best response, talking about the best way to look at level gaps.


Well, I understand where you're coming from. A game world feels very weird if everyone levels up along with the PCs. It also gives a feeling of futility. What's the point of leveling up if every encounter is just rescaled to your new level? Your PC doesn't actually become more powerful that way.

Avoiding this doesn't have to be difficult, though, and it certainly doesn't require redesigning the whole level system. I've found that a few rules of thumb fix the problem nicely.

1. When you design the campaign, decide on the range of levels in the NPC population. Who's 1st level? Most people, or only adolescents? Are the town guards 1st, 3rd, or 5th level? What about the elite royal guards? What's the highest level NPC typically present in a town, major city, or border fort? How common are PC classes compared to NPC classes?

2. Decide how fast specific NPCs will level up, if at all. For active NPC heroes, about half the speed of the PCs seems right, but tie it to game time and not to the PC's performance.

Once you've settled these questions, stick to them. As your PCs advance in levels, they will gradually grow in stature, becoming more and more important in their region. Their challenges should grow too, but not by scaling up the commoners. Put them in situations that are actually more dangerous and larger in scope. An easy way to do this is to use their reputation: higher-level NPCs will account for the PCs in their plots, and will oppose the PCs directly more often.

At some point the PCs will be a match for the most powerful NPCs in your campaign. What then? More rules of thumb:

3. Widen the campaign. The PCs greater power also gives them a greater range of operations. In a much larger area (say, you move up from country-size to continent-size) there are bound to be some NPCs of higher level than they've met before. Introducing travel to other planes will also widen the campaign this way.

4. Start some wars. Actually the PCs are likely to do that for you. In a warzone, it's reasonable for the average NPC to be higher level than in peaceful areas, both because of attrition (the low level ones died) and because a warzone offers greater challenges.

5. Expect the PCs to go looking for trouble. Instead of shaking down the local kobolds, they'll boldly go treasure-hunting in the Dragonspine Mountains. They'll travel to wild and unexplored frontiers, where the dangers and rewards are greater, and they'll meet high-level NPCs who traveled there for the same reasons they did.

6. When the PCs approach the limits of mortal power, they will likely interfere with some divine plans along the way, intentionally or not. The gods will either start making their lives difficult, or assign them quests which amounts to the same thing.

Played this way, the PCs can really feel their characters' ever-increasing impact upon the world. And that's the part I like best, because I have a lot of mua-ha-ah-ah-ah-ha in me.

That's great and all , but notice one thing from this type of campaign: if our Paladin (who isn't even turning himself into a lich, he's becoming an ELF via a permanent Polymorph spell!) has reach the point where the DM has implemented rule of thumb 3 or higher for his adventurers, than that means that the paladin is strong enough to beat anyone, anywhere in his "home turf" but that means that he and his party are also quite powerful


At best, seeking Immortality is an arrogant act motivated by a desire to do good, and commiting an act of arrogance on this big a scale (defying basic laws of nature, time, and existence is a pretty big act) becomes an act of evil.

I see you have opinions about death, so do the Transhumanists (http://transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq/):


Transhumanists insist that whether something is natural or not is irrelevant to whether it is good or desirable.

Average human life span hovered between 20 and 30 years for most of our species’ history. Most people today are thus living highly unnaturally long lives. Because of the high incidence of infectious disease, accidents, starvation, and violent death among our ancestors, very few of them lived much beyond 60 or 70. There was therefore little selection pressure to evolve the cellular repair mechanisms (and pay their metabolic costs) that would be required to keep us going beyond our meager three scores and ten. As a result of these circumstances in the distant past, we now suffer the inevitable decline of old age: damage accumulates at a faster pace than it can be repaired; tissues and organs begin to malfunction; and then we keel over and die.

The quest for immortality is one of the most ancient and deep-rooted of human aspirations. It has been an important theme in human literature from the very earliest preserved written story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, and in innumerable narratives and myths ever since. It underlies the teachings of world religions about spiritual immortality and the hope of an afterlife. If death is part of the natural order, so too is the human desire to overcome death.

Before transhumanism, the only hope of evading death was through reincarnation or otherworldly resurrection. Those who viewed such religious doctrines as figments of our own imagination had no alternative but to accept death as an inevitable fact of our existence. Secular worldviews, including traditional humanism, would typically include some sort of explanation of why death was not such a bad thing after all. Some existentialists even went so far as to maintain that death was necessary to give life meaning!

That people should make excuses for death is understandable. Until recently there was absolutely nothing anybody could do about it, and it made some degree of sense then to create comforting philosophies according to which dying of old age is a fine thing (“deathism”). If such beliefs were once relatively harmless, and perhaps even provided some therapeutic benefit, they have now outlived their purpose. Today, we can foresee the possibility of eventually abolishing aging and we have the option of taking active measures to stay alive until then, through life extension techniques and, as a last resort, cryonics. This makes the illusions of deathist philosophies dangerous, indeed fatal, since they teach helplessness and encourage passivity.

Espousing a deathist viewpoint tends to go with a certain element of hypocrisy. It is to be hoped and expected that a good many of death’s apologists, if they were one day presented with the concrete choice between (A) getting sick, old, and dying, and (B) being given a new shot of life to stay healthy, vigorous and to remain in the company of friends and loved ones to participate in the unfolding of the future, would, when push came to shove, choose this latter alternative.

If some people would still choose death, that’s a choice that is of course to be regretted, but nevertheless this choice must be respected. The transhumanist position on the ethics of death is crystal clear: death should be voluntary. This means that everybody should be free to extend their lives and to arrange for cryonic suspension of their deanimated bodies. It also means that voluntary euthanasia, under conditions of informed consent, is a basic human right.


If a hero committed such an act, the temptation and corruption of his power would turn him from good to evil in the time waiting for Dr. Evil to awake. Perhaps, more evil than the original threat ever was. Then, the evil would awake to find a world more devastated than he ever imagined, and find his old nemesis at the head, and be inspired to good. He'd then seek the help of the PC's...(Scribbles in adventure notebook)

Armor, thats one heck of a slippery slope argument. If I may say so, its unfair conjecture.


That's not to say you can't have an immortal hero, but that's something that's given (ascending after a lifetime of good, gods grant you immortality as you're about to die staving off evil) rather than sought.

I'd say the best way to handle it would be to have some balancing caveat, such as being immortal but hibernating until some great need arises and you can then be awaken. One of the evil things about Liches is that they become immortal at no cost to themselves, and then they must pay with their Humanity. Elfity. Koboldity. Hombrew-Racity.

If the D&D world was so zero-summed, then leveling up would mean harsh penalties to the heroes who did so. Usually, any penalty that does come up is negated by the fact that if they didn't level up, they might not have survived (in some campaigns, the very world's existence is on the line! When its the apocylpse, you CAN'T run away. You stop the imminent destruction or the imminent destruction stops you.)

So, to answer the original poster, if you want good liches, you can have good liches! The only reason lichdom requires "an unspeakably evil ritual" is because the people who wrote the book didn't want every wizard who got to that level to become a lich -it was an attempt to zero-sum the lich with a story-based penalty, in lue of any concrete, game mechanics-based penalty. Seriously, if you play an evil campaign, whats to stop all your parties' spellcasters from becoming liches? Nothing! Heck what prevents any NPC at all in the game world from becoming a lich? Nothing, except the same things that prevent them from casting 5th-level magic or making Constructs, or capturing a Gryphon, or flying into a barbarian rage, or singing to help your friends move silently across a battlefield (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0217.html).

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-10, 04:37 AM
Well, if the villain did take a page out of Doctor Evil's book and froze himself, I guess he has no choice but to become undead. It seems as though there are no (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/binding.htm) other (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/temporalStasis.htm) options. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fleshToStone.htm)

:smallwink:

Ow, you reference the SRD so hard! :smallfrown:

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-10, 05:01 AM
Why does being powerful mean that you're arrogant?
Wizard's who believe themselves above everybody else because of their powers aren't Good. But there's nothing inherent about them being so, one of the hallmarks of being good is humility despite power.

Immortality is forever. FOR-EV-ER. It's too long for anyone to control it purely by goodwill...it's the philosopher's stone, a catch-22; anyone who wants that kind of power can't handle it. They'll eventually let it go to their head.
Someday they'll kill that ancient evil, they'll triumph over the undead, they'll beat that obnoxious teenager at chess, and have nothing left to do with an eternity of superiority.



On the subject of Negative Energy; the most underused words in discussing alignment are nongood and nonevil, which allow you to have things be neutral without having them be truly one way or the other; negative energy is anti-life energy, it can serve only destructive purposes. This doesn't mean that it's evil, but it does mean that it isn't good. Good characters can do nongood things without being evil, but doing them too casually or too wantonly makes them neutral or evil.

Then I suppose that there are no good gods, then. Seriously, they have Immortality AND Superiority as part of their job description. And liches aren't that powerful. For the same reason Elves aren't that powerful. Long-lived creatures in D&D have a HUGE propensity for killing time despite living in a dangerous world filled with opportunities for XP. But the question is, which bigger and bigger monsters out, there, where do you stop? It can drive a person mad and take his entire life just fighting for the sole purpose of acquring experience points so he can level up to fight some big threat that might come knocking on his door. But, if things like THESE (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/devastationVermin.htm) existed in the real world, even in some remote corner, would you feel safe? I mean, if stronger and stronger monsters have been molesting your people, wouldn't you look for battle yourself, just so that by the time the Devastation Spider *shudder...spiders* came for you, you would not be unprepared? And what would you do for all those years if you didn't level up? Spend time with your family? Pay your poor mother a visit? Take a vacation to unwind? Check in with your psychiatrist and make sure the adventuring isn't eating your sanity away? FRIVOLITY!

-If you don't know what I'm getting at this time, I'm saying that I can suddenly see how -get this- leveling up and adventuring can drive you more insane and get your character damn well addicted to experience points, so he never stops killing monsters. I can see how that lifestyle might be more unwholesome than any lich might have dreamed. Actually, I wonder if any adventurer is wholly sane.

And yet, leveling up may be vital to the survival of the PC's civilization. They are the chosen ones (except perhaps, in the level-scaled up campaigns, but then leveling up is a very futile exercise.) And therefore, the world IS doomed if they don't stop the bad guy when he returns to Earth.

But, hey, no campaign really does have to be like. Especially if no player wants to play in such a campaign world.

Closet_Skeleton
2007-06-10, 05:09 AM
If you're prepared to become an undead monster in order to preserve your life, you probably care more about yourself than other people, making you evil.

A Lich's immortality relies on the Phylactery. A Lich is going to get pretty damn paranoid about that Phylactery. Paranoia + power generally equals psychopath.

To seek immortality through Lichdom you have to be completely and utterly terrorfied of death.

Wardog
2007-06-10, 05:24 AM
Becoming immortal to stave off evil later is saying (as was mentioned earlier) that you are the only hope for the world, without you the world is doomed. That's pretty arrogant.

At best, seeking Immortality is an arrogant act motivated by a desire to do good, and commiting an act of arrogance on this big a scale (defying basic laws of nature, time, and existence is a pretty big act) becomes an act of evil.

Since when does arrogance = Evil?



If a hero committed such an act, the temptation and corruption of his power would turn him from good to evil in the time waiting for Dr. Evil to awake.

"Would"? Maybe, possibly, or even probably "could", but IMO "would" is far too strict a word to use. And anyway, the hero in question would only become evil when (or if) they became corrupt. Not when they became immortal, and certainly not when they were simply trying to become imortal.


As someone said earlier in the sub-thread about negative energy: a sword can kill. That doesn't mean a sword is evil, or that anyone who owns or wants a sword is evil.

By the same token, immortality can lead to corruption. That doesn't make immortality - or wanting immortality - evil.



Besides, alignment isn't just a game mechanic, it's something that is known about in-character. OOC, many players think that Alignment is borked; I'm sure that IC, many heroes could think the same thing. "So what if seeking immortality is "evil" and I'm "good"? The whole concept of Alignment is screwey, so I'm going to try it anyway!"

ArmorArmadillo
2007-06-10, 03:12 PM
Of course arrogance is evil! It's believing you're above others, that you're inherently better than them by din of being you and can do whatever you want because of it! (P.S. If a 20th level fighter believes he's stronger than a 1st level commoner that's not arrogance; arrogance is believing that he has an inherent right to do whatever he wants because he's a 20th level fighter and anything a 1st level commoner says is pointless because he's a miserable peon)

@ Serenity: It's interesting the examples you used, I'm not familiar with Elminster (I don't do FR) but in Harry Potter: Inherent in the legend of Nicholas Flamel is that he did not seek immortality, but happened upon it; that's why he could handle it, because he didn't feel he needed to be immortal. That's why he so gracefully accepted losing it. The only character in Harry Potter who did actively seek immortality was Voldemort, a lich, and his exceeding avoidance was given as a big part of him being so evil.
As for Tolkeins elves, they were born immortal. Again, in Tolkein, the pursuit of immortality was a huge corrupting factor for the humans who sought it, the Nazgul.

@ ThoughtBot: #1, Transhumanists creep me out in a serious way, "Transcending Humanity through Technology". Other people inventing penicilin doesn't make them any better than those who came before us.
#2 You're metagaming everything; Alignment is based on morality, law, ethics, culture, and philosophy, not "what level you are."
Roleplaying characters can't say "We need to go kill monsters to level up!" Experience represents just that: EXPERIENCE! It's put in as an approximation of gaining strength over time and practice, not as some sort of magic reward for killing a monster. This isn't Everquest.
As for there being no good gods: again, part of being a good god is that you didn't set out to "Become a God." In core, the only God who did so is Vecna.

I will repeat this point as it apparently bears repeating: I have never said that being immortal is evil. I have said that seeking immortality is evil; that believing you need to be immortal for the good of the world is evil.

Remember to differntiate an evil act from an evil person. A good person can perform an evil act, and acts on the magnitude of seeking immortality will probably change them over time to something else.

Matthew
2007-06-10, 04:30 PM
ThoughtBot: Whilst I don't agree with everything ArmorArmadillo is saying here, I do agree completely with him that you are approaching things from the wrong end. Game Worlds are not defined by mechanics. All the mechanics do is facilitate the game. They describe the Game world, but they do so imperfectly. You can remove the mechanics entirely and the Game World will not be affected. Everything that was true before will remain true. Mechanics support the story, not the other way around.

Serenity
2007-06-10, 04:42 PM
Except that your explanation for why seeking immortality is evil boils down to 'Immortality is forever, ergo they will eventually be corrupted by their superiority over non-immortal beings.' Which means that any immortal, in a world in which non-immortal beings exist, will eventually turn evil, regardless of whether that immortality was achieved, granted, inherent, etc.

So far as I know, the Nazgul didn't seek immortality. They were just dumb enough to accept rings from Sauron, which he used to twist and corrupt them. Nicholas Flamel, on the other hand, was an alchemist. The entire point of his profession was to find the Philosopher's Stone, which has two uses: create gold, or give you the Elixir of Life. I think that qualifies as seeking immortality.

From Dictionary.com:
Arrogance: (Noun) Offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.

So do you wanna argue that Miko was regularly committing Evil acts from her introduction for being abrasive, overbearing, having a stick up her butt, and ironclad certainty that she was the epitome of goodness--and yet she didn't fall for these evil acts?

RandomNPC
2007-06-10, 04:49 PM
ok, so becoming a lich is unspeakably evil, so unspeakably evil it isn't spoken of. (unspeakable things usually are mentioned somewhere anyway) also, im pretty sure what i do know of a lich process is 3.5 MM, but may be 3.0 MM. im 99.9% sure it's from one of those two almost identical books.

so what if someone went and did all of these unspeakable things, and right before drinking the potion at the end of the ritual that kills the wana-be lich and makes them a real lich, a party of adventurers busts in, disintigrates him in one shot, and the kender who hasn't been paying attention goes "hey, a potion! i wonder what it tastes like?" *gulp*

everything evil has been done, the price has been paid, whatever this lichdom thing is, it's been bought. the potion at the end of the lich process says it outright kills the drinker to complete the process, and thus, our innocent (as they can be) kender whos Attention Deficit Dissorder kicked in at the wrong time dies.

everything is paid for, and the kender drank the potion that completes the process. I assume the kender at this point is the target, seeing as they drank the potion to complete the process, however the kender never even knew the paticular evils were committed, or atleast for this paticular purpose. does the kender get to be a lich? for the purpose of the example lets assume the kender does die and get brought back. does this kender, who did no evil, become so evil that his evil is never spoken of, thus being unspeakably evil?

ArmorArmadillo
2007-06-10, 05:01 PM
Except that your explanation for why seeking immortality is evil boils down to 'Immortality is forever, ergo they will eventually be corrupted by their superiority over non-immortal beings.' Which means that any immortal, in a world in which non-immortal beings exist, will eventually turn evil, regardless of whether that immortality was achieved, granted, inherent, etc.

So far as I know, the Nazgul didn't seek immortality. They were just dumb enough to accept rings from Sauron, which he used to twist and corrupt them. Nicholas Flamel, on the other hand, was an alchemist. The entire point of his profession was to find the Philosopher's Stone, which has two uses: create gold, or give you the Elixir of Life. I think that qualifies as seeking immortality.

From Dictionary.com:
Arrogance: (Noun) Offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.

So do you wanna argue that Miko was regularly committing Evil acts from her introduction for being abrasive, overbearing, having a stick up her butt, and ironclad certainty that she was the epitome of goodness--and yet she didn't fall for these evil acts?
When I say Nicholas Flamel happened upon immortality, if he was seeking it he sought only as an educational end; he wanted to see if it was possible, not necessarily to become it.
Miko's an odd example, she's not evil but her arrogance was an evil trait that eventually led to her fall from paladinhood. Everyone has bad traits, just because there are people who are arrogant without being evil doesn't mean that it isn't an evil trait.

A good kid lying to his parents to sneak out with his girlfriend isn't evil, but dishonesty is an evil trait, and if this kid was consistently dishonest in extreme ways, he starts to drift into evil rather than just occasionally having misgivings.

This is why I think seeking immortality, rather than just being immortal, leads to the corruption once it is achieved: because you're stretching an act motivated at best by arrogance onto forever. No matter how small X is, multiplied by infinity it becomes infinite.

Murongo
2007-06-10, 05:05 PM
I recall back in 2nd edition that they did describe the process a person must go through to become a lich. This process involved sacrifices to gods of death (usually evil albiet not always) of either living creatures or their blood and the drinking of a potion that was always fatal (thus causing the drinker to become a lich).

Now, according to the commonly accepted definition of goodness, sacrifice must be of oneself and not of others. One's own life must also be considered important so killing oneself for power is definitely not a good act. These acts are, at best, neutral.

Now, evil is sacrificing others to benefit oneself (in most basic terms) or a severe callousness in the suffering of others. The original ritual described in creation of the lich (IIRC) dealt with a unicorn's horn being part of the potion. The horn had to have been cut from the unicorn, an act of evil. The fact that all of this was very premeditated (you have to plan all this out to get it right) means these are not singular acts but one long act of evil performed over time for a deliberate, selfish purpose.

Leonidas took it upon himself to sacrifice 300 of his most loyal men- and he's practically a paragon of virtue. I think sacrificing others is totally situational moral-wise.

jamroar
2007-06-10, 05:13 PM
ok, so becoming a lich is unspeakably evil, so unspeakably evil it isn't spoken of. (unspeakable things usually are mentioned somewhere anyway) also, im pretty sure what i do know of a lich process is 3.5 MM, but may be 3.0 MM. im 99.9% sure it's from one of those two almost identical books.

so what if someone went and did all of these unspeakable things, and right before drinking the potion at the end of the ritual that kills the wana-be lich and makes them a real lich, a party of adventurers busts in, disintigrates him in one shot, and the kender who hasn't been paying attention goes "hey, a potion! i wonder what it tastes like?" *gulp*

everything evil has been done, the price has been paid, whatever this lichdom thing is, it's been bought. the potion at the end of the lich process says it outright kills the drinker to complete the process, and thus, our innocent (as they can be) kender whos Attention Deficit Dissorder kicked in at the wrong time dies.

everything is paid for, and the kender drank the potion that completes the process. I assume the kender at this point is the target, seeing as they drank the potion to complete the process, however the kender never even knew the paticular evils were committed, or atleast for this paticular purpose. does the kender get to be a lich? for the purpose of the example lets assume the kender does die and get brought back. does this kender, who did no evil, become so evil that his evil is never spoken of, thus being unspeakably evil?

I would say that the ritual is keyed to its performer only. In fact, the aforementioned examples of "unspeakable ritual acts of evil" could simply be a vile scavenger hunt designed to twist the subject's soul into a form suitable for the lichdom process. In this case, the deadly potion would simply kill the kender stone dead without turning him into anything.

(mechanically, he doesn't satisfy the prerequisites for the lich template to begin with.)

Serenity
2007-06-10, 05:50 PM
When I say Nicholas Flamel happened upon immortality, if he was seeking it he sought only as an educational end; he wanted to see if it was possible, not necessarily to become it.
Miko's an odd example, she's not evil but her arrogance was an evil trait that eventually led to her fall from paladinhood. Everyone has bad traits, just because there are people who are arrogant without being evil doesn't mean that it isn't an evil trait.

A good kid lying to his parents to sneak out with his girlfriend isn't evil, but dishonesty is an evil trait, and if this kid was consistently dishonest in extreme ways, he starts to drift into evil rather than just occasionally having misgivings.

This is why I think seeking immortality, rather than just being immortal, leads to the corruption once it is achieved: because you're stretching an act motivated at best by arrogance onto forever. No matter how small X is, multiplied by infinity it becomes infinite.

You specifically idenitfied arrogance as evil. Your exact words were 'Of course arrogance is evil'. By your reasoning, Miko should have fallen the second she identified herself as superior to the OotS for committing the evil act of arrogance.

Again, your argument for seeking immortality being evil is that being immortal extends temptations forever, and eventually an immortal person will give in to arrogance and superiority and turn evil. Setting aside that your classifying an act as evil for actions that could be taken after the fact, I fail to see how this problem doesn't apply to natural or granted immortality.

Nicholas Flamel was devoted to discovering the Philosopher's Stone. On finally getting it, he used it to create the Elixir of Life for himself and his wife. They lived for several centuries, watched civilizations rise and fall, and would have continued like this indefinitely if the Philosopher's Stone hadn't been destroyed. And I believe Dumbledore said that they had some Elixir in reserve, so there's no telling how much longer they could have lasted. Despite this, there is no sign that immortality was corrupting either of them. How would any of this change just because Flamel sought the stone with the specific intention of becoming immortal rather than 'academic interest'?

Flamel=Immortal by non-evil means=Good
Voldemort=Immortal by means of murder and literally tearing apart his soul=Evil.
Both sought immortality. It's the means they chose to get there that determined their alignment, not the seeking itself.

ArmorArmadillo
2007-06-10, 06:25 PM
Arrogance didn't cause Miko to fall because there was more to her personality, arrogance was a small part of it, held in check by discipline and righteousness. As time went by, the arrogance to become a bigger and bigger part, and eventually overtook those other aspects. Being arrogant in addition to being largely good doesn't make you evil, but immortality is the kind of thing that becomes a bigger part of your personality than anything else.

J.K. Rowling did not create the character of Nicholas Flamel, and according to the comonly accepted version of his story, I believe, the caveat of the philosopher's stone (why it was called the philosopher's stone) is that someone who wanted gold or immortality couldn't achieve it, (Rowling used a version of this in the magic mirror) only someone who wanted to know how to become immortal but not to be immortal could. Flamel succeeded because his interest was greater knowledge and understanding of alchemy, not immortality itself.
Of course, it's hard, if not impossible, to base this all off of Harry Potter, because he was an unseen character in that book and we really don't learn anything about his motivations.

I think immortality is wrong because there's something inherently moral, necessary and importantly natural about dying. Every second you steal from your natural need to die makes the arrogance of it that much more severe. Even if the arrogance is only a mild flaw compared to the greater cause you believe necessitates immortality, with infinite time the evil of it will grow and eventually overtake the goodness. You're immortal because of you; you are above nature; everyone else is going to die but you're not; you're better than them; why should you be held to their laws?

Humility is a virtue, pride is a vice.

Dausuul
2007-06-10, 06:39 PM
Seriously, if you play an evil campaign, whats to stop all your parties' spellcasters from becoming liches?

That +4 level adjustment maybe? You get to sit around at 11th level for approximately thirteen adventures, while your non-lich buddy cruises on up to 15th. The lich template is actually very weak for its level adjustment.

lumberofdabeast
2007-06-10, 07:32 PM
I just realized something.

The rules say that the lichification ritual can only be undertaken by a willing character.

But the rules also say that an unconsious character is considered to be willing.

So, if you're Good, and you get KO'd then turned into a lich before you wake up, what alignment are you?

Arbitrarity
2007-06-10, 08:41 PM
KO'd for 120 days while someone makes a phylactery for you?


Each lich must make its own phylactery

Nope.

Now. Is immortality inherently evil? Is arrogance/pride inherently evil?

According to wiki, evil is that which opposes life, or actions devoid of conscience.

So, is feeling superior to the commoner evil if that doesn't affect your actions? Is being superior to the commoner evil? Anyone will tell you that a 20'th level wizard>a commoner, if only for the extra +6 on will saves.


Of course arrogance is evil! It's believing you're above others, that you're inherently better than them by din of being you and can do whatever you want because of it! (P.S. If a 20th level fighter believes he's stronger than a 1st level commoner that's not arrogance; arrogance is believing that he has an inherent right to do whatever he wants because he's a 20th level fighter and anything a 1st level commoner says is pointless because he's a miserable peon)


So... arrogance is being better because you are you? Not because your immortal, or wield earth-shattering powers, but because you are you? And that you can do whatever you want, because you are you?

Arrogance is having excessive pride in oneself. Key words, among others, is excessive.

I find it interesting that a paladin, a paragon, a god, an outsider, and anyone immortal, will inevitably become evil. Specifically, judging by your view, chaotic evil (does whatever they want because).

Seeking immortality, in and of itself, according to this argument, is not evil. The result of such immortality is evil. Can I make an argument from ignorance about the effects of immortality?


I think immortality is wrong because there's something inherently moral, necessary and importantly natural about dying.

Although I agree with you about the necessary bit (Look. I've sat here for 200000 years. I is bored), any "inherent" statement about subjective values is a bit hard to back up. Death is inherently good? Natural, obviously, and necessary, subjectively. But good? Right?

I don't know about that.
Intrinsic describes a characteristic or property of some thing or action which is essential and specific to that thing or action, and which is wholly independent of any other object, action or consequence.

So, on it's own, death is a ethically good thing? It HAS to describe a good thing? There are no instances when death might describe a bad thing?

I think that counts as a strawman, but I'm not entirely sure. Dismiss it or refute it as you will :smallbiggrin: .

Serenity
2007-06-10, 08:49 PM
Arrogance didn't cause Miko to fall because there was more to her personality, arrogance was a small part of it, held in check by discipline and righteousness. As time went by, the arrogance to become a bigger and bigger part, and eventually overtook those other aspects. Being arrogant in addition to being largely good doesn't make you evil, but immortality is the kind of thing that becomes a bigger part of your personality than anything else.

J.K. Rowling did not create the character of Nicholas Flamel, and according to the comonly accepted version of his story, I believe, the caveat of the philosopher's stone (why it was called the philosopher's stone) is that someone who wanted gold or immortality couldn't achieve it, (Rowling used a version of this in the magic mirror) only someone who wanted to know how to become immortal but not to be immortal could. Flamel succeeded because his interest was greater knowledge and understanding of alchemy, not immortality itself.
Of course, it's hard, if not impossible, to base this all off of Harry Potter, because he was an unseen character in that book and we really don't learn anything about his motivations.

I think immortality is wrong because there's something inherently moral, necessary and importantly natural about dying. Every second you steal from your natural need to die makes the arrogance of it that much more severe. Even if the arrogance is only a mild flaw compared to the greater cause you believe necessitates immortality, with infinite time the evil of it will grow and eventually overtake the goodness. You're immortal because of you; you are above nature; everyone else is going to die but you're not; you're better than them; why should you be held to their laws?

Humility is a virtue, pride is a vice.

If there's something inherently moral, necessary, and importantly natural about dying, then all Gods, all Celestials, all of Tolkien's elves, most of the major characters of Highlander, all those folks from Tuck Everlasting are inherently immoral and unnatural. Admittedly, the last two works say that being immortal is a lonely existence and that dying is important, but neither of them say that being immortal automatically mean you will become corrupted by your superiority to mortals.

There is nothing in your arguments that doesn't apply to inherent, granted, or 'accidential' immortality as well as to sought immortality.

In fact, let's zero in on the Highlander Immortals. They don't seek their immortality, they simply discover it. But...they are certainly not given the inherent moral superiority one might argue protects Gods, Celestials, and even Tolkien's elves from turning evil because they are powerful. They simply discover one day that they need fear almost nothing that regular humans do. They are, without preamble or warning, given an eternity of nigh-invincibility. An eternity to think "you are above nature; everyone else is going to die but you're not; you're better than them; why should you be held to their laws?" And yet champions of good arise from their ranks, including Connor MacLeod and Sean Connery-under-a-Spanish-name. Connery lives from Ancient Egypt through to Fifteen-Forty-Something AD. Connor lives from 1518 through to modern day New York and beyond. Why were they not corrupted?

Arbitrarity
2007-06-10, 08:52 PM
Becuase they're unrealistic fictional characters?

:smallbiggrin:

Knight_Of_Twilight
2007-06-10, 09:57 PM
I figured the MM stating that the process to becoming a Lich is UNSPEAKABLY evil would be enough to make this arguement very short.

If you want good liches, house-rule it. But if you want an official ruling, Lich = EVIL

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-11, 01:11 AM
ThoughtBot: Whilst I don't agree with everything ArmorArmadillo is saying here, I do agree completely with him that you are approaching things from the wrong end. Game Worlds are not defined by mechanics. All the mechanics do is facilitate the game. They describe the Game world, but they do so imperfectly. You can remove the mechanics entirely and the Game World will not be affected. Everything that was true before will remain true. Mechanics support the story, not the other way around.

So it doesn't matter if I say, Wish that every humanoid on the material plane was an epic level wizard and it gets granted? The problem is experience points and character levels are very real resources in the player character's society. If NPCs don't have experience points, then how do you explain the existance of:

-Magic item shops
-Monsters with character levels
-NPC Clerics that can resurrect your cleric
-The large number of 1 HD peasants farming the fields of a nation rife with monsters, many of which probably could eat out a village of them in one day (Look, dragons are huge, flying creatures that live a hella long time, they will likely eat entire ecosystems if they aren't hunted to extinction, and there is ALWAYS a much smaller standing army than there are farmers until we get to modern agricultural practices. The peasant at the bottom is disempowered and generally kept ignorant. He has no chance to learn how to be any kind of effective warrior like the nobles or the PCs do. He has difficulty advancing finacially and I would imagine difficulty advancing in personal power. Besides, even if he levels up a bit whats he going to say when a tribe of Trolls comes to eat his neighbors and his family, "Begone, foul trolls or face the wrath of tenth-level commoner!"? Oh, wait, thats too meta-gamey, you don't want people in the game world talking about their level and class. Let me try again: "Begone, foul trolls or face the wrath of a simple village man that is inexplicably better at taking a beating and throwing rocks at baby-stealing kobolds than the other villagers!....not by much, though.") Basically, they'd all be dead and the kingdom would starve in their absence. A Tiger is easier to scare away from a settlement than a Huge 18 HD Winter Wolf. And a Tarrasque? Forget about it.
-Where do Wizards learn 9th level spells? I mean, when they level up, they get two free spells before they go off to the scroll market. And they start their careers with knowledge of ALL cantips. Doesn't that mean that every Wizard academy has access to all the spells Wizards can use? Sorcerers and Bards just manifest certain magical abilities, and Divine spellcasters get their spells from prayers, so it makes sense that they can pray for any spell they have the power to cast and if no temple knows the spell, say "True Ressurection" exists, then a God can inform the first cleric that reaches lvl 17 *stammers* I-I mean has proven their worth to the God. But Wizards can't be inventing these spells as they go along, or else nobody would ever succeed a Spellcraft check to recognize a Time Stop Spell that a Wizard had "Invented" unless they saw the wizard in action before. Knowledge of the spell would not exist.
-Permanent Spells. If you ever set a permanent alarm spell on a safe, one thing that should pass the theif's mind is where are the NPCs who set the alarm trap get the experience. How often do they spend experience? How likely is it that common farmer's homes might have permanent magical wards? Hey, though, maybe thats whats protecting the weak from being attacked by an invisible stalker in the middle of the night. Maybe anti-monster protections are affordable. But then if the rogue in your party has a very traditional "burglar" character concept in mind, finding the average house more trapped than the average dungeon is going to ruin his night.

In a way XP is a renewable resource. What I want to know is WHAT renews it. Some stories revolve around a resource shortage. But XP can make it all better. Seriously. If there's a dought, the priestess' decanter of endless water will restore any well to its former glory. If its a lack of medicine during a plague, then just ask a high-level Paladin, I promise you he'll never find a better use for them, and with enough Paladins, the plague gets weaker. Shortage of Labor or Recruits for the military? Just bind a few outsiders and dominate some hostile humanoids (though I do wander about the ethics of using summon and mind-control spells in the first place -I mean, if you use Summon monster spells a lot, don't those outsiders have other things to do? How are they always ready and willing to fight?). Is there an Oil shortage in contemporary fantasy game with magic and modern technology? Light is a cantip, I'm sure you could produce a permanent, magical light bulb that will shrink the need for energy from an oil-burning plant, if only some industrous casters had some XP (and in a modern setting, education is more rampant, so more than a few people would learn magic). Now, the one problem with xp is that if a high-level character dies, then you lose all his powers and all the magic items he might have made. (Actually, here's a house rule you should consider. Magic items might work after their creator's death, but permanent spells cease to work should the caster die or somehow permanently lose his powers, or maybe suffer some negative levels and lose the ability to cast the spell that he made permanent.)

You might throw up your hands and say "Ok, xp has a presence in a society if we look at it as an operating simulation, but how does this affect the adventure the player characters are having? As a DM I'm supposed to provide a story, not a system!" Well, thats one way to look at it, but in the event that your players ever acquire fiefdoms or something similar and have direct control over a little piece of civilization, it might be worth it to tally up how many high-level magic users and how common magic items are if the player say, puts a high-tax value on the ownership of such items (which in some old tax systems, meant that the tax collector is likely to repossess the tax-heavy item if the person in question is unable to pay.) How well can a PC use the magical resources of spellcasters to advert disasters that visit his little kingdom? How many brave NPC adventurers will offer their services to help the PC? The first step is to find out how many of what level are in a community, and to do that, you have to figure out how much XP the NPCs are getting, where they are getting it, and how much are they using in creating magic items/permanent spells.

And if they aren't selling magic items, then thats a problem for the PCs at lower levels, because then they have nowhere to buy healing potions and +1 Greatswords.

If you want to hand-wave it, thats fine, but if a PC ever gets control over town or two, and asks for a report of say, how many Cleric are capable of casting Raise Dead, and you give some number your pulled out of your ass, and then he wants to keep track of any increases or decreases in that number-well, you might have wished that you worked out a system for NPC experience points.

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-11, 01:42 AM
If you want good liches, house-rule it. But if you want an official ruling, Lich = EVIL

Actually, yeah. Thats what I was saying at the end of my first post.

ArmorArmadillo
2007-06-11, 02:17 AM
XP and Levels are an abstract, not a mathematical resource.

An in-character Wizard couldn't say "I'll make these spells permanent to help the village, but it costs XP so I have to go kill some trolls first." At best, he could say, "I'll make these spells permanent to help the village, but I'll have to do so when I understand arcane powers better, as I feel it would take too much of my power to do so in my current state. This isn't just "phrasing things differently," this is the difference between metagaming and roleplaying.

Characters never know what their level is, what level spells they can cast, what their feats are, what their skill selection is, or so on. This is because the goal of the game, unlike WoW or Diablo II, is completing the story of the campaign, not achieving higher levels arbitrarily.

Magic Item shops are in the game for purposes of utility, but if someone just has some arbitrary "magic item shop" where everything is sold by RAW price just because it's in there, then they've created a shallow world driven by statistics and rules for rules sakes.

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-11, 02:30 AM
Becuase they're unrealistic fictional characters?

:smallbiggrin:

So are Liches. Actually, Arbitrarity, you hit on a good point. Everything we've discussed on this thread is about the fictional, the hypothetical, and most importantly, the things that are entirely under author/DM control.

If I may point out, neither me nor Armor Armadillo nor anyone is right about liches, Gods, Elves, or Highlanders because none of them exist. We don't really know what an immortal person would be like, because we've never met one. Actually of all the people who have been unfairly demonized throughout human history, I feel sorry for the immortals because they don't exist outside fiction (at least not yet, and if they do, they aren't very public about it) and they cannot defend themselves against this attacks on their character.

I meant to end the post on that pun, but it actually lit a fire within me instead, and I continued to rant like a raving lunatic, for those who want to read on, click the spoiler.


I would think that seeking immortality and waking up one day immortal are irrelevant not just to if you are evil, but even if you are arrogant. I mean really, why do we research cures for diseases that largely affect the elderly? Isn't THAT tampering with nature by defying death?

Lets look at the past for a second, here's what Reverend Timothy Dwight IV said about smallpox vaccinations (this was when smallpox was a major killer):


If God had decreed from all eternity that a certain person should die of smallpox, it would be a frightful sin to avoid and annul that decree by the trick of vaccination

also, read the article: God and Smallpox (http://lowcountry.humanists.net/SEPS/sep-2001-11.html#2) I just find it uplifting, but then maybe I'm just that kind of guy.

Smallpox had been with us so long, some of the number of humanity were even seeing it as a good thing, not just a stubborn disease. Perhaps death is just another disease, but we're too afraid to admit it.

Dervag
2007-06-11, 05:02 AM
I don't think immortality is somehow inherently immoral. Being immortal might make it possible that you will grow corrupt and start treating the people around you as irrelevant mayflies. It might even make it likely. But it doesn't automatically make you an evil being now, or for that matter ever.

However, there may be profoundly indecent ways of seeking a decent goal. Having money isn't wrong. Having lots of money isn't wrong. Seeking to obtain lots of money by becoming a contract killer is wrong. Ruling a country isn't wrong. Wanting to rule a country isn't wrong. Staging a coup and butchering your way into office, then massacring everyone who objects to your leadership is wrong.

Likewise, being immortal isn't wrong, and wanting to be immortal isn't wrong, but becoming immortal by the process of lichification is wrong, so wrong that only a horribly evil person would ever do it. There is also very likely some kind of lock-in effect that 'preserves' the lich's alignment, though there might not be.

Matthew
2007-06-11, 06:47 AM
Moved to prevent derailing...

AtomicKitKat
2007-06-11, 12:56 PM
Where to begin...

1. Helm of Opposite Alignment has no effect on the Lich. Liches are immune to mental "attacks", and the change is


...not just mental, but moral as well..."

2. Just because you need the Unicorn's blood doesn't make you evil. I could have just set up a few scrying things near known Unicorn grazing grounds, teleported in after a Wyvern raid(Hey, it's not my fault! I was sleeping at the time, and one stab would have killed me!), killed the straggler Wyvern while collecting the Unicorn's blood, and done the same with the Phase Spider.

3. "Immortality=corruption". That's a load of malarky spawned by the people who need to use the spectres of death, eternal reward, and eternal damnation to control the masses. What about their own immortal judges, who decide who's good and who's evil? Shouldn't they be corrupted as well? I think I'll stop before I bring this into scrub territory.

4. "Immortality breeds laziness." Actually, I prefer to look at it from the other viewpoint. It is precisely because humanity fears "dying before they've left a mark in the world." that leads them to evil. With an eternity of existence, one has to take a long hard look at what they will be doing to the world. If you're mortal, you won't give a crap if the world overheats 150 years down the road, because you'll be dead by then. What if you had to live with the consequences of your actions? If you couldn't just say "Screw that, it's the next generation's problem."? It's basically the same as the Invisible Man argument. If you're not around(visible, existent, etc.) to answer for your own actions, you tend to make stupid choices.

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-11, 01:53 PM
Where to begin...

1. Helm of Opposite Alignment has no effect on the Lich. Liches are immune to mental "attacks", and the change is



2. Just because you need the Unicorn's blood doesn't make you evil. I could have just set up a few scrying things near known Unicorn grazing grounds, teleported in after a Wyvern raid(Hey, it's not my fault! I was sleeping at the time, and one stab would have killed me!), killed the straggler Wyvern while collecting the Unicorn's blood, and done the same with the Phase Spider.

3. "Immortality=corruption". That's a load of malarky spawned by the people who need to use the spectres of death, eternal reward, and eternal damnation to control the masses. What about their own immortal judges, who decide who's good and who's evil? Shouldn't they be corrupted as well? I think I'll stop before I bring this into scrub territory.

4. "Immortality breeds laziness." Actually, I prefer to look at it from the other viewpoint. It is precisely because humanity fears "dying before they've left a mark in the world." that leads them to evil. With an eternity of existence, one has to take a long hard look at what they will be doing to the world. If you're mortal, you won't give a crap if the world overheats 150 years down the road, because you'll be dead by then. What if you had to live with the consequences of your actions? If you couldn't just say "Screw that, it's the next generation's problem."? It's basically the same as the Invisible Man argument. If you're not around(visible, existent, etc.) to answer for your own actions, you tend to make stupid choices.

...................*abruptly spreads his arms out*

Hug.

Max Graeves
2007-06-11, 04:54 PM
With all this discussion of liches and evil and negative energy, I'm suprised no-one's mentioned the Dread Necromancer class. When a DN reaches 20th level, they become a lich; however, while a DR player character cannot be good, it clearly states that a DR can be neutral, and there is no mention in the class description (that I'm aware of...please correct me if I'm wrong) that states a DR becomes evil once they reach 20th level and lichdom.
Would that be the exception to the rule, then?

Jack_Simth
2007-06-11, 05:06 PM
Where to begin...

1. Helm of Opposite Alignment has no effect on the Lich. Liches are immune to mental "attacks", and the change is


Almost - they're immune to "mind-affecting" attacks. [Mind-Affecting] is a descriptor - just like [Fire] and [Sonic]. Nothing in the description of a Helm of Opposite Alignment specifies that it's mind affecting, odd as it may sound.

SpiderKoopa
2007-06-11, 05:14 PM
I must turn to my 2E monster manual, where at the very end, they hint at "arch-liches" which are LAWFUL GOOD.
I suppose it goes to DM for ruling.

Saph
2007-06-11, 05:49 PM
3. "Immortality=corruption". That's a load of malarky spawned by the people who need to use the spectres of death, eternal reward, and eternal damnation to control the masses.

*rolls eyes*

Right. That was exactly what I meant when I said that someone who thinks the world can't manage without him is being extremely arrogant. I actually said that out of my desire to control the masses. I'm really one of the Illuminati, you see.


It is precisely because humanity fears "dying before they've left a mark in the world." that leads them to evil. With an eternity of existence, one has to take a long hard look at what they will be doing to the world.

Uh, no, they don't "have" to do that.


Just because you need the Unicorn's blood doesn't make you evil. I could have just set up a few scrying things near known Unicorn grazing grounds, teleported in after a Wyvern raid(Hey, it's not my fault! I was sleeping at the time, and one stab would have killed me!), killed the straggler Wyvern while collecting the Unicorn's blood, and done the same with the Phase Spider.

If you've got the resources to set up that kind of scrying, you've got the resources to stop the unicorns getting killed in the first place. Which you didn't try to do because . . . that would stop you becoming a lich.

Yeah, you're really demonstrating your selfless goodness here. It must be that higher moral concern with the consequences of actions of yours. The world's really losing out by having you die of old age. Anyway, the Unicorn's blood thing is pre-3rd-ed.

- Saph

BlueWizard
2007-06-11, 06:33 PM
I've had good vampires, so I see no reason a Lich can't have a change of heart in your own D&D game. Remember you control the world; the books are just a set of guidelines.

AtomicKitKat
2007-06-11, 07:58 PM
*rolls eyes*

Right. That was exactly what I meant when I said that someone who thinks the world can't manage without him is being extremely arrogant. I actually said that out of my desire to control the masses. I'm really one of the Illuminati, you see.

I said it was "spawned" by them. You are merely repeating what they have told you.


Uh, no, they don't "have" to do that.

Yeah, they do. You have to "live"/exist with the consequences of your actions, you start thinking "Hmm, maybe allowing them to set up that nuclear testing site less than 25 miles from my home might be a bad idea."


If you've got the resources to set up that kind of scrying, you've got the resources to stop the unicorns getting killed in the first place. Which you didn't try to do because . . . that would stop you becoming a lich.

Pre-Lichdom, you still needed to sleep. It's not your fault if the Wyverns were nocturnal, or if they attacked the Unicorns on the other side of the world.


Yeah, you're really demonstrating your selfless goodness here. It must be that higher moral concern with the consequences of actions of yours.

Again, not a question of morals. For all you know, perhaps coming too late to the rescue was what made me decide to become a Lich. "Curse this petty mortal need to sleep! Please, noble unicorn, let me keep some of your blood, that I might research a way whereby I could be able to come to your rescue in the future without fear of being asleep or uncontactable."


Anyway, the Unicorn's blood thing is pre-3rd-ed.

It's also the closest we have to an official statement on the requirements to become a Lich. *shrug*

Saph
2007-06-11, 08:11 PM
I said it was "spawned" by them. You are merely repeating what they have told you.

Yes. I'm just repeating things. Obviously, there's no possible way I could be capable of thinking for myself.


Again, not a question of morals. For all you know, perhaps coming too late to the rescue was what made me decide to become a Lich. "Curse this petty mortal need to sleep! Please, noble unicorn, let me keep some of your blood, that I might research a way whereby I could be able to come to your rescue in the future without fear of being asleep or uncontactable."

Uh huh. So you're telling me that this wizard just happened to be around when a wyvern and a phase spider just happened to be attacking some unicorns and he just happened to fail to defend them in exactly the way that got him the spell components he needed to become a lich, yet meant he didn't have to get his hands dirty doing the killing himself?

Wow, what an amazing coincidence. I'm sure it wasn't arranged at all.

- Saph

Counterpower
2007-06-11, 08:48 PM
I said it was "spawned" by them. You are merely repeating what they have told you.

We call that stuff a conspiracy theory. There are quite a lot of people who don't believe immortality is a good thing, many of whom aren't religious at all.


Yeah, they do. You have to "live"/exist with the consequences of your actions, you start thinking "Hmm, maybe allowing them to set up that nuclear testing site less than 25 miles from my home might be a bad idea."

Well........... if you're undead and don't need to eat, sleep, breathe......... actually, there's no reason for you to care, since that site won't affect you in the slightest. Same thing goes in the real world. If we allow some technologies to progress to the conclusions some scientists have envisioned, not only will we be immortal, but we'll be able to not give a crap for anything around us. Children won't matter, parents won't matter, your life won't mean much either.

ArmorArmadillo
2007-06-11, 08:57 PM
I said it was "spawned" by them. You are merely repeating what they have told you.
They? Who's they?

You can't accuse people of being dupes of mass cultural brainwashing unless you're at least willing to claim who's responsible.



As for your unicorn blood scenario; any explanation of immortality requiring "Drinking Unicorn Blood" is built around the fact that commoditizing the blood of noble creatures as a resource is an inherently evil act. (Drinking unicorn blood wasn't chosen out of nowhere; it was chosen because of the unmistakable evil of it)
If a player in my campaign tried to skirt a clearly evil method to gain immortality by skirting around others who commit the evil parts and then using the end results.

Walking through an alley, finding a murder victim, and stealing his wallet is evil. Directly profiting from an evil act, whether or not you were responsible, is evil.

Solo
2007-06-11, 09:04 PM
If we allow some technologies to progress to the conclusions some scientists have envisioned, not only will we be immortal, but we'll be able to not give a crap for anything around us. Children won't matter, parents won't matter, your life won't mean much either.

Although we do not know any of this for certain.


Say, aren't elves immortal or nearly so? How come they aren't evil and uncaring of life or whatever?

Matthew
2007-06-11, 09:16 PM
Eh? Elves get bored and sad and bugger off, as far as I recall.

Poppatomus
2007-06-11, 09:31 PM
Although we do not know any of this for certain.


Say, aren't elves immortal or nearly so? How come they aren't evil and uncaring of life or whatever?

Immortal elves stems from Tolkein, as i understand it, and in tolkein the elves are less mortal creatures than they are angels. Though some may have said that immortality is inherently evil, it is assuredly over reaching. i doubt even they would begrudge eternity to good outsiders like Angels.

With mortal races, like D&D elves, it is a different issue though. The world says you need to die, and in the game, death by old age is all but unavioldable. Currently, the only way I am aware of to become truly immortal while retaining your intellect is to go the way of the Lich. This particular method of immortality requires evil acts (since your immortality is powered by negative energy) and is thus inherently evil.

If there were a path of good actions that one could tread to reach that point It would not be evil to do so. That said, it is unlikely that good, especially in the D&D universe will offer such a path, especially an easy one. The reason is that good in this universe includes valuation on each individual and acceptance of one's place in a universal order that includes both life and death. Subverting that order for one's personal gratification is in a way arrogant, or at least awfully presumptive, even if not inherently evil.

Arbitrarity
2007-06-11, 09:32 PM
Actually, the realy way to be immortal involves killing a lot of stuff for XP, and reincarnate. Not only that, but it infinitely loops all your mental stats, as they don't decrease in your new body.

Solo
2007-06-11, 09:34 PM
With mortal races, like D&D elves, it is a different issue though. The world says you need to die, and in the game, death by old age is all but unavioldable. Currently, the only way I am aware of to become truly immortal while retaining your intellect is to go the way of the Lich. This particular method of immortality requires evil acts (since your immortality is powered by negative energy) and is thus inherently evil.


You could also become an Elan. They're effectively immortal.

Jayabalard
2007-06-11, 09:41 PM
2. Just because you need the Unicorn's blood doesn't make you evil. I could have just set up a few scrying things near known Unicorn grazing grounds, teleported in after a Wyvern raid(Hey, it's not my fault! I was sleeping at the time, and one stab would have killed me!), killed the straggler Wyvern while collecting the Unicorn's blood, and done the same with the Phase Spider.Blood for spells isn't just a chemical ingredient... and even in the real world: If you need medical blood work done, you don't rush in after you cut you finger while slicing a bagel and ask them to use that... it needs to be drawn in such a way that it's actually useful (not contaminated).

The same goes for blood to be used as a spell component; if you need unicorn's blood for a spell, going in and mopping up after a wyvern attack (drawing the blood without the correct ritual) isn't going to produce anything useful.

GymGeekAus
2007-06-11, 09:42 PM
It is not impossible by RAW to have a good Lich.

Seriously.

It's just exceedingly unlikely:

There's no modifier on the Lich's alignment. Unlike, say, the Barbed Devil, which lists "Always Laful Evil" or the Astral Deva that lists "Always Good (Any)". I agree with this 100%. RAW. It is also a testament to the potential for any sentient soul, regardless of its past, to find redemption. And a sign of how hard it would be, too!
But then, even if it was impossible for a lich to become good/neutral of their own actions, or to remain good/neutral through the process of becoming a lich...

If you can manage to make a lich unable to act, and repeatedly put such a helm on the lich's head until the magic of the helm goes away (Lich has to roll a 1 eventually - it's not a mind-affecting effect, odd as it sounds, and there's nothing in the item's description or the Lich's description that says a Lich is immune - at which point, the Lich goes from Any Evil to Any Good.

But that's just picking nits. And it's willingly performing an evil act, too. Turning the lich into a good guy, after being such an evil guy, might just be the sort of poetic justice that would make for a good campaign idea. ;)

AtomicKitKat
2007-06-12, 01:14 AM
You want to know why immortality is not inherently evil? Look at the Green Star Adept. If you can actually find a line in there saying that it's required to be evil to be one, I shall conceded the point, print out an apology, and eat it.

Fixer
2007-06-12, 07:33 AM
Without using game terms within the description (bolding out of story), here is where I see the whole lich/evil argument going because while people argue rules. Remember that in D&D, alignment is a tangible force, not just a viewpoint.

Edgar Allen Poo, archmage (19th level wizard) decides he no longer wishes to be afraid of dying. His reasons could be altruistic (good) or selfish (chaotic) or greedy (evil) or noble (lawful). The end result is that his reasons matter little. We will say he wants to save the world from a future menace.

He researches the process of becoming a lich. He discovers that the process requires acts of 'unspeakable evil'. At this point, Edgar decides he really wants/has to become a lich and decides to perform the first parts of the process. Whatever Edgar's original purpose for deciding to become a lich, the actual engaging of the act of becoming a lich calls his motivations (alignment) into question.

With each act he performs he becomes more dedicated and consumed by the process he has engaged. The shroud of evil, regardless if it was present before, begins to weigh heavily upon Edgar. If Edgar was to turn away from his path he could throw off its shroud and return to his previous life but he CHOOSES not to do so. With each act of preparation his soul becomes weighted down (alignment shift) with the burden of the acts he has committed to get as far as he feels he must.

With the final preparations, he must prepare a new vessel for his soul. His body will become nothing more than an unliving construct. It represents the last connections he has to humanity and life itself. If he had wanted to save the world by becoming a lich, he can still do so but he will not do so with a clean conscience. He has accepted condemnation of his soul and spirit for this opportunity and, regardless of his motivations, he has become evil by the road he travelled to arrive at this destination.

He completes the ritual and his body dies. His soul inhabits the shiny new vessel he has chosen and he begins to reanimate his old body and imbue it with portions of his power. His new undead body will be his vehicle in the world.

Over time, Edgar completes his purpose. He saves the world as a creature of undeath. His reasons for doing so could still be the same as they were before he started the process but the method he chose to perform them has condemned him to undeath. The rest of his existence will be solitude from all forms of life (cold aura) and his purpose one of his own choosing.

It is likely the world, if it knows of his involvement, will not accept his 'sacrifice' to save it. Edgar is now a creature of death, reeking of rot and with a touch that freezes the blood. He is no longer a part of the world but has seperated himself from it for the rest of his existence.

Saph
2007-06-12, 07:34 AM
If you can actually find a line in there saying that it's required to be evil to be one, I shall conceded the point, print out an apology, and eat it.

If you want to impress people by conceding points, conceding the one that everyone who disagrees with you is a brainwashed idiot would be more effective.

- Saph

Serenity
2007-06-12, 08:35 AM
Uh, no, they don't "have" to do that.

No, immortals don't have to become better people because they have to deal with consequences. They don't have to do that any more than they 'have' to become corrupted over time because they are more powerful than mortals.

Immortality through lichhood is evil, make no mistake. Such a transformation requires the deliberate partaking in actions of 'unspeakable evil'. It requires malice aforethought, and to argue that point is ridiculous. But this has nothing to do with the Lich's connection to Negative Energy.

Edgar Allen Poo is evil because he's willing to sacrifice and bring harm to others for the sake of his mortality. If he rejected the lich idea, however, sought a different path to immortality, and found one that didn't require evil acts to achieve, he would not be evil for pursuing that path.

Telonius
2007-06-12, 08:54 AM
Immortal elves stems from Tolkein, as i understand it, and in tolkein the elves are less mortal creatures than they are angels. Though some may have said that immortality is inherently evil, it is assuredly over reaching. i doubt even they would begrudge eternity to good outsiders like Angels.

Tolkien elves are "effectively" immortal. They're bound to Middle Earth, and will exist as long as it does. I'd have to get into some pretty heavy Tolkien theology to explain it, but the short and ugly version is that Tolkien elves don't go to heaven when they die. They go to the halls of Mandos in Valinor, which is still part of Middle Earth. The Valar are the Tolkien things that are more like archangels, and the Maiar (like Gandalf and the rest of the wizards) like regular angels.

Tolkien elves can indeed go evil. So can Valar and Maiar, like Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman. For evil Elves: Feanor and his sons, Eol the Dark Elf come to mind. But in Tolkien, the most important group of evil "elves" are the Orcs. They were originally elves captured by Morgoth; tortured, twisted, and dominated into becoming an evil race of slaves.

Roland St. Jude
2007-06-12, 09:38 AM
Sheriff of Moddingham: Veiled and passive-aggressive insults are still considered flaming on these forums. Please holster your sidearms and step out of the streets. Thank you.

AtomicKitKat
2007-06-12, 10:07 AM
If you want to impress people by conceding points, conceding the one that everyone who disagrees with you is a brainwashed idiot would be more effective.

- Saph

I was perhaps hasty in the way I worded my statement. The "malarky" line still stands. It was not my fault that you took it as a statement of personal attack. I was directing it expressly at the leaders of certain "institutions", who use them to further their own goals, and impeding progress(You know who you are, you Luddites! Although, if you were true Luddites, you would probably never see this statement anyway, because "technology is eeeevul!")

Poppatomus
2007-06-12, 10:30 AM
Tolkien elves are "effectively" immortal. They're bound to Middle Earth, and will exist as long as it does. I'd have to get into some pretty heavy Tolkien theology to explain it, but the short and ugly version is that Tolkien elves don't go to heaven when they die. They go to the halls of Mandos in Valinor, which is still part of Middle Earth. The Valar are the Tolkien things that are more like archangels, and the Maiar (like Gandalf and the rest of the wizards) like regular angels.

Tolkien elves can indeed go evil. So can Valar and Maiar, like Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman. For evil Elves: Feanor and his sons, Eol the Dark Elf come to mind. But in Tolkien, the most important group of evil "elves" are the Orcs. They were originally elves captured by Morgoth; tortured, twisted, and dominated into becoming an evil race of slaves.


Thanks for the further info Telonius, appreciated. Is it still valid to say that, though not "outsiders" they are meant to be qualitativly different from the races of men?

Telonius
2007-06-12, 11:08 AM
Thanks for the further info Telonius, appreciated. Is it still valid to say that, though not "outsiders" they are meant to be qualitativly different from the races of men?

... kind of. No way to avoid the Tolkien theology now. :smallwink: Elves are the Firstborn of Illuvatar (Tolkien's creator God). Dwarves are the secondborn, Children of Aule (one of the Valar). Men are the third kindred, also children of Iluvatar.

Tolkien elves are basically creativity spirits. When they do something other races consider "magic," they don't know what they're talking about. The Elves just use the essential properties of mithril, or gold, or whatever it is they're working with to do what they want to do. There's no disconnect between what the Elvish artisan envisions in his head and the finished product that comes out. Some elves are powerful enough to make bows and arrows; others are powerful enough to make Rings of Power or Silmarils.

But despite that, they're still part of the world. They marry, and can have children. They need to eat. (Which brings up the interesting question of whether or not a Tolkien elf can starve to death. I don't know that it's ever been adequately answered). They need to breathe, and can drown. But they don't ever get sick, or frail in old age. There is no "death by natural causes" for an Elf. So in that sense, they're qualitatively different from Men.

Elves can - under extremely rare circumstances - marry humans; but doing this causes them to lose their immortality. (They still have a vastly extended lifespan). Elves can become humans, but humans can't become elves. (Iluvatar made one exception to this, in Earendil, but that was under very unique circumstances). In the same way, Maiar can become Elves, but elves can't become Maiar. Maiar>Elves>Men. You can go down the power scale, but not up.

But despite all of that, each race has free will. They can all choose to follow the will of Iluvatar, or work against it. Morgoth (Tolkien's devil figure) did so. So did Sauron and the Balrogs. So did Mim the Petty-Dwarf, Smeagol and Lotho Sackville-Baggins from the Hobbits, the elves I've mentioned, and lots of evil Men who were in the service of evil. (Ar-Pharazon, the Nazgul, the Mouth of Sauron, Grima Wormtongue...). In that sense, they're not qualitatively different than Men. They all have the freedom to work for good or evil. Or, if they want, they can stay on the sidelines. Quite a few of Tolkien's creatures did. Not all of the Elves took an active part in the War of the Ring. There was always squabbling with the Dwarves. The Hobbits (as a group, not counting the Fellowship) didn't really do much of anything until the War was practically over.

Okay, enough of that from me, gotta get back to actually doing some work. :smallsmile:

Fixer
2007-06-12, 01:10 PM
I suppose, to answer the question in the title, the answer is: "Nothing."

There is no inherent evil in being a lich. The evil comes from the acts of becoming a lich. As I expect few of the persons posting here has ever truly walked down a path of unspeakable evil, we can only imagine what sort of pennance or absolution one can perform to remove the scar upon one's soul for the acts they must perform to become a lich. Most liches either do not care to perform these acts of pennance or simply don't see the hurry in doing so (after all, it isn't like their immortal souls are in danger of being damned by a natural death). A few might feel the need, but engaging in acts of evil with the expectation of absolution after the fact is a surefire way of preventing it from occuring. Thus, for a lich to become non-evil AFTER the process of becoming a lich would truly require a crisis of faith.

Can anyone imagine a lich having a crisis of faith?

Poppatomus
2007-06-12, 02:05 PM
Can anyone imagine a lich having a crisis of faith?

would be a hell of a campaign.

Tobrian
2007-06-12, 02:26 PM
You have to be evil to become a lich (either that you or you become evil when you become a lich, can't remember). Is there any particular reasons for this, aside for the fact that liches are very often portrayed as evil? Why is it, by RAW, completely impossible to have a good lich?

Usually, wizards who want to extend their lives unnaturally are already evil before they become a lich. On the other hand, the evil archmage Fistandantilus in the Dragonlance setting sucked life energy from his apprentices to rejuvenate himself, but wasn't technically a lich because he was alive (although he later became one after he died, or something).

THere have been examples of good or neutral liches in AD&D modules. Presumaby, they found a ritual and path to lichdom that did not require "acts of unspeakable evil". And there are numerous non-evil (usually neutral) intelligent undead in the MMs. Someone else already summed it up:


I find this thread kind of amusing (no offence), given that there are rules...official rules...for Liches that are good in Libris Mortis and the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
(snip)

The only specific thing about being a Lich that requires that you be Evil is the Evil process of becoming one. That does not preclude there being a Good process of becoming one, which there must be given the existence of Baelnorns and other Good Liches.(snip)

But WotC designers apparently can't make up their minds if being undead is inherently evil or not, and go on and on about negative "death" energy being inherently evil because it opposes positive "life" energy, yadda yadda...

Thus casting an Animate Dead spell is an evil act regardless of the intention, but using Dominate Person is not. Yeah. :smallsigh:

Vuzzmop asked the same question:

Why is everyone so anti-negative energy all of a sudden? It's enegy, jus tthat. It doesn't hav a motive, it's just a destructive force. It damages the living, but so does a sword. Is a sword evil? The use of this energy may be purely destructive, but it depends only on what the wielder chooses to destroy. (snip)

Back in AD&D, all clerical healing and resurrection spells were "white" necromancy. Because healing and harming were both about manipulating life energy. Think about that.

Seriously, it drives me nuts. Under 3.0, zombies, skeletons and other mindless soulless undead were NEUTRAL unless they followed commands of an evil caster. Now in 3.5 we're back to evil zombies again, although intelligent undead are still listed in the Monster Manuals as usually having the alignment they had before death (for example ghosts, by RAW you can have LG ghosts!).

But because WotC decided that negative energy is icky-bad they invented the Deathless of Eberron just so that all those LG dead guys and undying elves become positive-energy undead (huh?), while older-edition LG ghosts of paladins are detected by Detect Evil spell. Because the detect evil spell under 3E functions as a cheap detect undead and detect fiend spell, too!

Don't her me wrong, I like the concept of Deathless and Risen Martyrs, because it draws from real-world examples: all those dead-and-sleeping kings or heroes who will return from some Otherworld/rise from their slumber to fight and protect their land in the hour of need. But I don't see how it fits into the whole D&D universe.

So what is going on there? For myself I have houseruled that positive energy and divine emanations are NOT the same, just as negative energy and infernal emanations are not... but as both necromancers and fiends can desecrate an area, they're often painted with the same brush. And various gods of good who oppose the creation of undead and oppose the creatures of hell just lump it all together and sic their paladins on it, granting a detect evil power to paladins that basically "detects" everything the paladin's deity doesnt like.

On the other hand, divine beings often make heavy use of positive "life" energy (but so do fey creatures like unicorns), but a holy sword should be infused by DIVINE energy, not positive energy! Because positive energy destroys undead, but heals fiends just like it heals normal living creatures. It's divine powers that harm fiends. I wish the game designers would stop mixing it both up.

Consequently, there's no logical reason that consecrating an area with divine energy would harm undead... unless we simply pretend that undead fall under the portfolio of various gods of undeath and a good cleric consecrating an area outs a ban on it against all those creatures his deity does not like.

Similarly, we're stuck with D&D defining all death gods as evil (or in rare cases as lawful neutral), and making a sharp distinction between gods of life and gods of death or undeath. In real-world mythology, many pantheons (i.e. Egyptian, Celtic) had gods who had both Life and Death in their portfolio, because they were gods of death and rebirth. And if they were solely gods of some Underworld (like Hades in Greek, or Hel in Norse mythology), they were not seen as inherently evil and bend on destruction. They did their job presiding over the souls of the deceased. Death was part of cosmic balance.

Now, undeath in D&D is more along the zombies-eat-your-brains variety, but given that mindless undead don't even have souls (and I'm not sure of some of the intelligent undead like ghosts and ghouls), where's the problem from a metaphysical standpoint? Ghosts in D&D are not wayward souls (or under 3.5 they would be Deathless) instead they seem to be a psychic imprint of the deceased's former personality in the Shadowlands or the Plane of Negative Energy, and this imprint is bound to some task or the place of their death, because they died before their time. Does this hurt the soul in some way, does it prevent it from reaching its final destination, as it is commonly presented in popular real-world folktales?

But back to D&D: Let's say I'm a necromancer... if I raise a skeleton from a dead body that's been dead for some years, surely the soul has already moved on? Maybe even been reincarnated. Who cares about the bones? The only objection I can see to having rotting zombies who were once living people shamble around is that it's morally repugnant to see the corpse of your own neighbor wandering around town. But is it more moral to work slaves to death or waste the life of soldiers in battle than to use undead? I know I'm not the first to ponder that; lots of fantasy authors have tackled this topic.

Of course, if your fantasy world works under a paradigm where the presence of undead magically pollutes the ether, drains life from nearly mortals or makes them fall sick, I can see why people would consider necromancy evil, because it is dangerous.

The defilers of Dark Sun worked on that premise, they sucked life energy from the land itself and converted it to arcane power to cast spells.

In the Death Gate Cycle of novels by Dragonlance author Weis and Hickmann, bringing someone back from the dead, either by returning a dead person to life as per a Raise Dead spell, or turning dead bodies into zombies to work for the living, meant a sacrifice was made somewhere else... life and death needed balance. For every person brought back to life, someone else somewhere would die before their time, and the creation of zombies (ironically with the best of intentions) subtly shortened the lives of the survivors and making them sterile.

In Shadowrun, blood magic requires human sacrifices, willing or unwilling, and it taints the psychic ("astral"/spirit) plane.

But in all other D&D settings, arcane arts are not powered by the caster's life energy. Positive and Negative Energy planes are much like the Elemental Planes. An unprotected human would not survive long there. Too much "life" energy in D&D kills you spectacularly... you literally explode and burn up, leaving (presumably) only your naked soul.

Anita Blake, the titular heroine from the series of fantasy/dark horror novels, is definitely LG (at least at the start of the series, later her morals become a lot more shady, but she's never evil). She's an "animator" working for the police, laying dangerous undead to rest, fighting evil vampires, but also temporarily raising ghosts or zombies of murder victims for intel or because a family wants to ask granny where she left her will.

And in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics, the inhabitants of Necropolis are undead, but not evil. Just people. Here, having your soul bound to an immortal undead body is not a horrible thing to mope about, it just is how life works. THere are much worse things that can happen to a soul in the Sandman universe...

So for me the question is: What's so evil about being a necromancer?

As both DM and player, I have no problem with necromancers who are neutral in alignment. Heck, depending on the setting I'd even allow NG or LG necromancers (working for the government?)! But that's just me. I love using necromancers... either as misunderstood gentle heroes or as flawed and cursed antiheroes. But I can sympathize with the point of view of a character living in a fantasy world who finds undead horrible and the whole concept perverted, especially if he is a druid. I've even played a character who had a massive phobia of undead (the same "Tobrian" whose name I post under on these boards). :smallsmile:


Becoming immortal to stave off evil later is saying (as was mentioned earlier) that you are the only hope for the world, without you the world is doomed. That's pretty arrogant.

At best, seeking Immortality is an arrogant act motivated by a desire to do good, and commiting an act of arrogance on this big a scale (defying basic laws of nature, time, and existence is a pretty big act) becomes an act of evil. If a hero committed such an act, the temptation and corruption of his power would turn him from good to evil in the time waiting for Dr. Evil to awake.(snip)

No sorry this is bordering on the ridiculous.

In fantasy literature, the fate of the world CAN rest on the shoulders of one single hero. (ISn't that the point of D&D that you and your band of brothers are the only ones who can defeat Villain-of-the-hour?)

Delusionally believing you're the Chosen One and thus feeling entitled to all sorts of things is arrogance and hubris. Actually BEING the only one who stands between the world and destruction is not arrogance. Extending your life by binding your soul to an eternal body, essentically giving up your chance for a new start, to be able to keep doing your duty for all eternity is NOT arrogance. Otherwise all those mythic defender heroes would be evil.

As for "defying basic laws of nature, time, and existence", what laws are we talking about here? Real World natural laws of physics and biology? Isn't the very definition of magic "breaking the laws of nature"? By that logic all wizards are already evil on a cosmic scale. And clerics... bringing the dead back to life? An abomination against fate! Time Travellers? Quick, arrest Doctor Who!


So, to answer the original poster, if you want good liches, you can have good liches! The only reason lichdom requires "an unspeakably evil ritual" is because the people who wrote the book didn't want every wizard who got to that level to become a lich -it was an attempt to zero-sum the lich with a story-based penalty, in lue of any concrete, game mechanics-based penalty. Seriously, if you play an evil campaign, whats to stop all your parties' spellcasters from becoming liches? Nothing! Heck what prevents any NPC at all in the game world from becoming a lich? (snip)

I couldn't say it better, so I stop here. goodnight everyone

ArmorArmadillo
2007-06-12, 02:39 PM
Can anyone imagine a lich having a crisis of faith?

I've always believed that because becoming a lich involves such evil acts, undertaking the process irreperably twists your soul past the point of redemption.

Redemption isn't possible so long as you remain a lich; at best you could realize the error, do something good with your power, and destroy yourself.

Shadowdweller
2007-06-12, 10:03 PM
Seriously, it drives me nuts. Under 3.0, zombies, skeletons and other mindless soulless undead were NEUTRAL unless they followed commands of an evil caster. Now in 3.5 we're back to evil zombies again, although intelligent undead are still listed in the Monster Manuals as usually having the alignment they had before death (for example ghosts, by RAW you can have LG ghosts!). Nope. Mindless undead were evil back then, too. Intelligent undead, except for ghosts which as you say can be good, are still ALWAYS listed as evil...and a particular form of evil at that. Look it up.

Serenity
2007-06-13, 12:11 AM
*Bzzt* Wrong! Skeletons and zombies were rather explicitly listed as Neutral in the 3.0 Monster Manual, because, like animals and golems, they lacked the mental capacity to make any judgements or choices, let alone have a moral or ethical system.

SpiderKoopa
2007-06-13, 12:14 AM
Nope. Mindless undead were evil back then, too. Intelligent undead, except for ghosts which as you say can be good, are still ALWAYS listed as evil...and a particular form of evil at that. Look it up.

Well, I know for a fact that mindless undead in 2E and before are TN.
And, after all, 1st and 2nd Ed are the only ones that count, right? =P

THAC0 FTW!!!

-Edit.-
I also wish we could just agree that it should be a dm call. I had a couple of liches in one of my campaigns that were CN. They were there to either fight the pc's if they were feeling righteous and non rp-ish, or help the pc's with info if they wanted to do a bit of talking. Needless to say the paladin of the local god of life, victory, and justice was kind of... upset when the rest of the party defended the liches after the information had been gathered. The liches were nice, just a bit crazy. ;D

Shadowdweller
2007-06-13, 02:06 AM
*Bzzt* Wrong! Skeletons and zombies were rather explicitly listed as Neutral in the 3.0 Monster Manual, because, like animals and golems, they lacked the mental capacity to make any judgements or choices, let alone have a moral or ethical system.
Then perhaps you'd care to explain why my copy right here lists them as evil?


-Edit.-
I also wish we could just agree that it should be a dm call. I had a couple of liches in one of my campaigns that were CN.
For what it's worth, I completely agree that it should be a DM call.

jamroar
2007-06-13, 02:25 AM
Then perhaps you'd care to explain why my copy right here lists them as evil?


For what it's worth, I completely agree that it should be a DM call.

It's one of the changes from 3.0 -> 3.5, due to the adding of the [Evil] descriptor to animate dead, the spell used to create them. They're mindless beings and have no capacity for evil, but the magic animating them is corrupt for some reason (though negative energy itself may not necessarily be).

Fixer
2007-06-13, 06:29 AM
You have to be evil to become a lich (either that you or you become evil when you become a lich, can't remember). Is there any particular reasons for this, aside for the fact that liches are very often portrayed as evil? Why is it, by RAW, completely impossible to have a good lich?

Not that it matters, I'll just house rule in case it'll come up. I'm just curious what people's opinions on this could be.

The original post. Ah, a beautiful thing. Let us get back to it, shall we?

You do not have to be evil to become a lich. The act of becoming a lich, according to RAW, forces the person to become evil (although, as with all PCs, they do not have to STAY that way). The reasons have been stated above that the process that WoTC has decided is necessary to become a lich requires a prolonged period of evil acts, thereby causing the PC in question to alignment shift to evil.

Now, as DM you can elect to use Rule 0 and say the process to become a lich no longer requires acts of unspeakable evil and, thus, avoiding the WHOLE problem altogether. If it suits your campaign world to have a bunch of undead liches (which would be likely if you have many high-level wizards who wouldn't be keen on dying) then go right ahead. It may be that undeath is not viewed as 'evil' in your campaign world in which case you want to change a few spell descriptors and suddenly undead are just your non-breathing friends down the block who don't ask for sugar because they don't eat. Some are good, some are bad, most of them smell pretty bad but some smell better than the living after the meat has all rotted off.

Thoughtbot360
2007-06-13, 10:26 PM
The worlds really losing out on you dying of old age.

Saph, did you just say that it doesn't really matter if AtomicKitty dies? Is that a death threat?

:biggrin: J/K

But actually, if your saying that someone needs some high moral qualities for their life to have meaning in such as way that if they aren't immortal then the world loses out when they do die.

Assasains and murderers could use the same justification for denying preservation of a person's life to outright take it. Afterall you are merely denying him continued life (past his deathbed), why not boarden it out and deny a person continued life (past tonight)? You could also use the same reasons to not just wait for a Unicorn to die, but to kill it yourself asking "What did the unicorn ever do to deserve continued life?" Besides, don't Wyverns need to eat? Its not my place to interfer with nature.

But, in all seriousness, Atomic is suffering from a lack of imagination on how to get the unicorn blood. I mean, help the unicorns, but after the battle theirs bound to be dead, or at least wounded unicorns and even if the ungrateful surviving unicorns refuse to allow you to have some unicorn blood from the fallen, you could offer to treat some wounds (and perhaps suck out some unicorn blood to get the Wyvern's poison out...and spit the blood out into a canister, boiling or neutralizing the poison out of the mixture back in your alchemist's lab.) But the speediest way is just get a bundle of darts and lace them with a tranquilizer. Then extract as much blood as you need from the unicorn population a little bit at a time, theres no need to drain an entire unicorn (this is actually better, because you can get clean blood and work carefully and higenicly). Its unicorn blood, not unicorn brains, any inventive player can get without the whole thing. He just needs to be in a 2e campaign to benefit.


If we allow some technologies to progress to the conclusions some scientists have envisioned, not only will we be immortal, but we'll be able to not give a crap for anything around us. Children won't matter, parents won't matter, your life won't mean much either.

Technically we are ABLE to not give a crap for anything around us RIGHT NOW. Who, at present says you have to care about anything? In the long run, its your past and what you discover as you live that determines your worldview, what you believe, and what you should care about, and there is nothing that stops you from waking up one day and saying to hell with, I'm not even going to get up, no need can motivate me and no person can move my heart, I'm just going give up and lay in this bed until I die......ah screw it, I'll just get a knife, its quicker. Its called being Emo.

But to be honest, couldn't anything that happens as you live forever happen in the afterlife? I mean, its "spiritual immortality" and all that jazz. Maybe the outer planes are filled with socially detached, arrogant, mentally unstable people. In fact, one could say that all undead creatures in a fantasy world are merely living their "afterlife" in the mortal world.

To get back to the original topic, the reason there even is a dicussion about liches is because they are the one of the big three intelligent "template" undead that appear in the MM that do not have an inbred reason to be destroyed (they apparently undergo an "unspeakably evil ritual" but the book doesn't speak of the details. *rim shot*) Ghosts (and various enslaved animated undeads) are bound to a person or place for eternity grieving or apparently in some kind of pain and "putting their souls to rest" is a good thing; Vampires suffer thrist, and specifically that of living humanoids. If they just drank the blood of say, muskrats, nobody would care. But liches are just "really cool choices for bad guys" without the sense of immediacy of Ghosts or Vamps, therefore the OP asks, quite understandably, "Whats so evil about being a lich?"

And I imagine he got his answer from earlier posters as we are now talking about the ethics of life-extenstion.

Talyn
2007-06-13, 11:52 PM
Look, people:

Stop trying to impute some cosmic D&D rule or ruling on the matter. There very intentionally isn't one. D&D is specifically meant to allow for multiple cosmologies. Undead are generally evil in D&D because that's a fantasy stereotype and has been a real-world fictional one as well for centuries. Nothing more, nothing less.

<snip>

The bottom line shouldn't be which one is universally true, but which one is coolest to the players and DM in any given situation.

Well said. I was going to make a comment to that effect, but I don't think I need to.