Would Xykon become a demilich?

[acire]

Mechanically, I'm pretty sure that he can (he's a lich, he's epic level, he's got the Craft Wondrous Item feat because he needed it to become a lich in the first place), but would he? Would he drop the rest of his body, embed some shiny soul gems in his skull, accept the higher level adjustments, & become a demilich (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/demilich.htm)?

Bonus Question: Would becoming a demilich make him too powerful for the Order of the Stick to beat him?

[GloatingSwine]

Does that require an extended duration of paying attention to something boring?

If so, Xykon would probably not bother unless he really needed it for something.

[ti'esar]

Xykon is possibly already too powerful for the Order to defeat in a stand-up fight. That doesn't necessarily make this impossible, though, since I think that Roy defeating him in the fantasy-illusion merely by hitting him with a sword until he died makes it pretty clear that's not at all how it'll actually happen.

Not that I actually think Xykon will become a demilich.

[factotum]

My inclination is that he wouldn't want to become a demilich--he seems far too attached to his physical form for that. He defeated Darth V by dropping a boulder on him rather than through purely magical means, for example. Also, he spends hours every day crafting magic items because he's bored and has nothing better to do, how would he do that as a demilich?

[snowblizz]

Mechanically, I'm pretty sure that he can (he's a lich, he's epic level, he's got the Craft Wondrous Item feat because he needed it to become a lich in the first place), but would he? Would he drop the rest of his body, embed some shiny soul gems in his skull, accept the higher level adjustments, & become a demilich (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/demilich.htm)?


Technically Red Cloak is the one that made Xykon a lich so that's not an indication is it? Though for dude making magic items 8hrs a day seems natural.

Also, bothers me somthing called half a lich is in fact much better than the whole of a lich. What's the logic there?

[Capt Spanner]

Also, bothers me somthing called half a lich is in fact much better than the whole of a lich. What's the logic there?

The logic is: "A demilich’s form is concentrated into a single portion of its original body, usually its skull." So it's a hyperconcentrated lich.

However, the 5th edition designers agreed with you. In 5th edition a demilich is a lich that couldn't absorb enough souls to sustain itself, so it falls into a weakened state.

[Goblin_Priest]

Technically Red Cloak is the one that made Xykon a lich so that's not an indication is it? Though for dude making magic items 8hrs a day seems natural.

Also, bothers me somthing called half a lich is in fact much better than the whole of a lich. What's the logic there?

Because it lost the weak half ;)


The logic is: "A demilich’s form is concentrated into a single portion of its original body, usually its skull." So it's a hyperconcentrated lich.

However, the 5th edition designers agreed with you. In 5th edition a demilich is a lich that couldn't absorb enough souls to sustain itself, so it falls into a weakened state.

I like Pathfinder's take on demiliches:


In their endless years of unlife, some liches lose themselves in introspection, and can no longer rouse themselves to face the endless march of days. Still others cast their consciousness far from their bodies, wandering planes and realities far beyond mortal ken. Absent the vitality of the soul, such a lich’s physical form succumbs to decay over the centuries. In time, only the lich’s skull remains intact. Yet the bonds of undeath keep the lich’s remains from final dissolution. Vestiges of the lich’s intellect remain within the skull, and wake to terrible wrath should it be disturbed. Traces of the lich’s will to live strengthen the skull, rendering it harder than any steel. The lich’s greed and lust for power manifest in the growth of gems in its skull. Lastly, though only the barest remnants of the lich’s eldritch might survive, a demilich aroused to anger still retains enough power to flense the very soul from any defiling its final rest.

The lich’s phylactery invariably fails during the slow decline of lich into demilich, losing its last vestiges of enchantment if not crumbling into dust with the lich’s body. But even without the preserving power of the phylactery, demiliches retain a tenacious grip on existence. Only powerful and precise use of magic can permanently destroy a demilich and its remains. To the unwary adventurer, a demilich looks like nothing more than dust and bones within the lich’s former sanctum. Indeed, until disturbed, a demilich has only the vaguest awareness of intruders, and ignores their presence. Any attempt to steal the demilich’s possessions, disturb its remains, or harm its domain rouses the demilich’s slumbering mind, causing it to rise up in the air and voice its wail of the banshee before again settling to the ground. Should the interlopers relent, the skull returns to its torpor. But if they persist, the skull rises again, not to rest again until all in its sight have perished. Fortunately for intruders, demiliches never pursue those wise enough flee.


Becoming a Demilich

Most demiliches achieved their state through apathy, not volition. For each decade that a demilich fails to stir itself to meaningful action, there is a 1% cumulative chance that its corporeal body decays into dust, save for the skull. Any return to activity resets the chance of transformation to 0%. Once the lich’s body decays, the lich’s intellect returns to its phylactery as normal. However, the skull rejects the return of the lich’s consciousness, keeping the lich trapped in its deteriorating phylactery for 1d10 years. If during that time the lich’s remains are destroyed or scattered (for example, by wandering adventurers), the lich’s phylactery forms a new body and the intellect leaves the phylactery as normal, returning the lich to life. But if the lich’s remains survive unperturbed, the phylactery’s magic fails catastrophically, releasing the lich’s soul and causing 5d10 points of damage to the phylactery. Regardless of whether or not the phylactery physically survives, the energies released by its failure channel into the lifeless skull of the lich, allowing the last remnants of the lich’s soul to transform it into a demilich. The lich’s soul itself either is utterly destroyed, reaches its final reward or punishment, or is condemned to wander the edges of the multiverse forever.

For wandering liches, the process is similar, but based on the number of decades the lich spends without its intellect returning to its body. While the lich’s body still decays, its mind remains at large, only becoming trapped in the phylactery if the lich tries to return during the period in which its body has failed, but it has not yet become a demilich. Should the lich’s phylactery fail before the wandering lich returns, the skull becomes a demilich, and the lich’s mind is doomed to wander until the end of days.

[JCAll]

Xykon would basically do anything, especially if it meant his own survival. I'm surprised he didn't look into it after getting ganked by the paladins.

[Peelee]

Xykon would basically do anything, especially if it meant his own survival. I'm surprised he didn't look into it after getting ganked by the paladins.

He didn't know about liches to begin with. There's no indication that he knows about demiliches.

[factotum]

There's no indication that he knows about demiliches.

Or that they even exist in the Stickverse, for that matter--it seems to be generally a fairly low-level setting, with characters even at low epic levels being extremely rare.

[Keltest]

Or that they even exist in the Stickverse, for that matter--it seems to be generally a fairly low-level setting, with characters even at low epic levels being extremely rare.

If anything, that should be an argument for more demiliches. A normal lich gets bored waiting for epic or near-epic adventuring parties to crop up, so they just sit there at the back of their dungeon for umpteen hundred years and turn into a demilich.

[Peelee]

If anything, that should be an argument for more demiliches. A normal lich gets bored waiting for epic or near-epic adventuring parties to crop up, so they just sit there at the back of their dungeon for umpteen hundred years and turn into a demilich.

In Pathfinder or 5th ed, maybe. 3.5? The process of becoming a demilich can be undertaken only by a lich acting of its own free will (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/demilich.htm).

[Kish]

Also, bothers me somthing called half a lich is in fact much better than the whole of a lich. What's the logic there?
Presumably, it was named by someone who noticed that it was a floating skull without a body and wasn't thinking about the "vastly more powerful" thing.

One noble, dedicated linguistic prescriptivist once attempted to make a case to Xykon that Xykon should term himself a "demilich" and call the floating skull things "liches." Unfortunately, Xykon just said :xykon: "No." and Energy Drained him to oblivion (it only took one Energy Drain). It was a great loss to...

well, I'm not sure who to, but it was definitely a great loss.

[Emanick]

Presumably, it was named by someone who noticed that it was a floating skull without a body and wasn't thinking about the "vastly more powerful" thing.

One noble, dedicated linguistic prescriptivist once attempted to make a case to Xykon that Xykon should term himself a "demilich" and call the floating skull things "liches." Unfortunately, Xykon just said :xykon: "No." and Energy Drained him to oblivion (it only took one Energy Drain). It was a great loss to...

well, I'm not sure who to, but it was definitely a great loss.

Not a big fair of linguistic prescriptivism, are you? :P

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Not a big fair of linguistic prescriptivism, are you? :P

Have you seen the English language? Anyone that thinks you can prescribe "the proper way" of using English needs to take a good long look at the mess of exceptions that coagulates into the language. Literally, literally.

GW

[pendell]

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." - James Nicoll.

BTW, what exactly is "Meaningful action"? Would a lich assigned to working tech support in a cube farm crumble from sheer ennui?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Kantaki]

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." - James Nicoll.

BTW, what exactly is "Meaningful action"? Would a lich assigned to working tech support in a cube farm crumble from sheer ennui?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

I'm pretty sure that would accelerate the progress. The lich would crumble within months.:smalltongue::smallbiggrin:

[Riftwolf]

.

BTW, what exactly is "Meaningful action"? Would a lich assigned to working tech support in a cube farm crumble from sheer ennui?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Intelligent undead are trying to avoid such a fate, which is undoubtedly the punishment/reward for the LE/LN afterlives

[Darth Paul]

BTW, what exactly is "Meaningful action"? Would a lich assigned to working tech support in a cube farm crumble from sheer ennui?

Respectfully,

Brian P.


Intelligent undead are trying to avoid such a fate, which is undoubtedly the punishment/reward for the LE/LN afterlives

Well now, I don't know about that. I'm pretty sure I've encountered at least 2.5 kilonazis' worth of evil when dealing with tech support before. Sounds like just the kind of environment to foster really creative evil schemes.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Yes, but they'll mainly be aimed at 1: Upper Management, who I will testify are spawn of the Lower Planes and 2: some of the particularly stupid idiots who call in, some of whom make slaadi seem rational.

[5jco]

I like the 5e version of demi liches. The tiny skull intuitively seems less threatening. And it makes a lot of sense for an ancient lich to go crazy and get the unholy necrotic arcana version of alzheimers. Plus a demi lich can still consume a living soul, and then revert back into a lich, so you can do cool "lay dormant for hundreds of years, until adventurers disturbed his dungeon" kind of thing.

[FrankNorman]

I think a case could be made that there hasn't been enough time since the creation of the OOTSverse world for all that many people to become liches to start with, let alone for them to deteriorate into demi-liches the way it's described there.

[Kish]

Making a case to explain why something introduced solely in 5ed and directly contradictory to 3.5ed hasn't happened in the OotS universe is profoundly unnecessary.

[Mandor]

Also, bothers me somthing called half a lich is in fact much better than the whole of a lich. What's the logic there?

Well a demi cup is better than.... oh never mind. :smallsmile:

[acire]

I think a case could be made that there hasn't been enough time since the creation of the OOTSverse world for all that many people to become liches to start with, let alone for them to deteriorate into demi-liches the way it's described there.

In 3.5e, demiliches aren't deteriorated liches. They're "evolved" liches who have sacrificed most of their body (and a boatload of XP & money) to become more powerful.

[eilandesq]

No, for two obvious reasons:

--while it is not listed as a limitation on the template, demiliches do not talk. Can you imagine Xykon voluntarily assuming a form where he would never speak again?

--while demiliches can fly (and do so very quickly and with perfect maneuverability, at least in 3.5), they spend the vast majority of their time sitting around (and again, in complete silence). Can anyone picture Xykon willingly entering such a state? He'd be bored out of his skull (pun intended) in an incredibly short period of time.

Also, Xykon does do some research, but he's not the type to sit around for decades contemplating where his navel once was, or the mysteries of the universe. He's one for staying active to avoid boredom, and that--by traditional interpretations of the demilich--will stave off the decay that sends a lich toward demilichdom.

[137beth]

No, for two obvious reasons:

--while it is not listed as a limitation on the template, demiliches do not talk. Can you imagine Xykon voluntarily assuming a form where he would never speak again?

Wait, what? I've never heard that. In fact, the rules explicitly contradict this statement:

Demiliches speak the languages they knew as liches and as living creatures.

[GloatingSwine]

Presumably by the time you're a demilich the opportunities for productive conversation with lesser intellects are all well exhausted.

It's not that demiliches can't talk, they just don't think you're worth talking to.