How does level adjustment and the book of vile darkness?

[AthasianWarlock]

I have a character who is thinking about becoming a lich. My question is, if I am level 11, once I am a lich I have +4 LA.

Level 11 is 55,000xp. With LA I need to have 120,000xp to reach level 12. Would reading book of vile darkness put me at 128,000 xp. Is that the way it works per RAW? Sees silly.

[Nifft]

Yeah, it's not efficient for a PC to become a Lich at the earliest possible level.

Lich is a late-game option for most PCs.

[Crake]

Yeah, it's not efficient for a PC to become a Lich at the earliest possible level.

Lich is a late-game option for most PCs.

his question still stands though, whether you do it at level 11 or level 20, he wants to understand if his grasp of the interaction is correct or not.

[DeTess]

I have a character who is thinking about becoming a lich. My question is, if I am level 11, once I am a lich I have +4 LA.

Level 11 is 55,000xp. With LA I need to have 120,000xp to reach level 12. Would reading book of vile darkness put me at 128,000 xp. Is that the way it works per RAW? Sees silly.

The book of vile darkness gives an evil character enough experience to go halfway to the next level. If you need to get 120k xp to level, you'd get 60k xp. I don't know where you're pulling 128k from. Is there an interaction with being a lich that I'm missing?

[zergling.exe]

The book of vile darkness gives an evil character enough experience to go halfway to the next level. If you need to get 120k xp to level, you'd get 60k xp. I don't know where you're pulling 128k from. Is there an interaction with being a lich that I'm missing?

OP is exactly correct in how much XP they would recieve:
Once this has been accomplished, an evil spellcaster gains a +1 inherent bonus to Wisdom and one experience level—receiving enough XP to put the character’s XP total midway between the minimum needed for his new (higher) level and the minimum needed for the level beyond that.

[DeTess]

OP is exactly correct in how much XP they would recieve:

Right, my reading comprehension sucks. BTW, do you know the source of the item? I've tried to find it online, but none of the references to the item give sources, and the obvious suspect (the book of vile darkness) doesn't seem to list it.

[zergling.exe]

Right, my reading comprehension sucks. BTW, do you know the source of the item? I've tried to find it online, but none of the references to the item give sources, and the obvious suspect (the book of vile darkness) doesn't seem to list it.

It's a minor artifact right in core, so the SRD or DMG will have it. BoED is there as well as an equivalent for Good.

[Crake]

OP is exactly correct in how much XP they would recieve:

Reading the way it's written there, it's one experience level, not one character level, right? You may be ECL 15 from being level 11 with lich, but your experience is still at that of an 11th level character, so wouldn't your experience level still be 11, which would mean adding to that would only bring your experience to that of a 12th level character?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Reading the way it's written there, it's one experience level, not one character level, right? You may be ECL 15 from being level 11 with lich, but your experience is still at that of an 11th level character, so wouldn't your experience level still be 11, which would mean adding to that would only bring your experience to that of a 12th level character?

Irrelevant. His experience level cannot advance without advancing his ECL and the BoVD explicitly says he advances a level. It tells him where to place his xp total as a consequence of that advancement not where to put his level as a consequence of an xp change.

[Crake]

Irrelevant. His experience level cannot advance without advancing his ECL and the BoVD explicitly says he advances a level. It tells him where to place his xp total as a consequence of that advancement not where to put his level as a consequence of an xp change.

Can it not? I guess "experience level" isn't exactly a well defined term in the rules. How it relates to ECL, character level, and xp isn't what I'd call crystal clear.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

There are rules for gradually gaining the Lich template (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20031212a), and you don't need to take those levels in succession (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030824a), you can gain other class levels in between.

Each level of a template class counts as a point of level adjustment, which you could potentially buy off (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm). So go [class]11/ Lich LA +1/ [class] 3 more, then spend xp to reduce that LA to zero, leaving you at [class] 14. Gain the second level of the template class, then three more class levels, and buy off that point of LA and you're at [class] 17 and half way there. By that point you may just want to gain the last two and then buy them off after six and then three more class levels.

[Crake]

There are rules for gradually gaining the Lich template (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20031212a), and you don't need to take those levels in succession (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030824a), you can gain other class levels in between.

Each level of a template class counts as a point of level adjustment, which you could potentially buy off (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm). So go [class]11/ Lich LA +1/ [class] 3 more, then spend xp to reduce that LA to zero, leaving you at [class] 14. Gain the second level of the template class, then three more class levels, and buy off that point of LA and you're at [class] 17 and half way there. By that point you may just want to gain the last two and then buy them off after six and then three more class levels.

That's not how LA buyoff works at all.