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View Full Version : Why exactly is becoming a lich difficult?



90sMusic
2018-09-13, 07:56 PM
If Magic Jar is something so easily done that you can literally cast it once per day (or more than once per day at higher levels) and it can effectively make you immortal and lasts forever, I honestly don't see what the big deal about lichdom is.

The spell lasts forever until it is dispelled in some way or you choose to end it yourself by jumping back in your own body. But assuming neither of those two things happen, you can just body jump forever essentially and leave a body as soon as it becomes old/sick/injured and jump in a new one. Or even if you're killed by surprise, you have a good likelihood of auto bouncing back into your magic jar on death.

If you're about to die in a fight, you can pop into the bodies of one of the folks trying to kill you unless they were protected against such a tactic in advance and you didn't do anything to remove or prevent their protection from working. And assuming you aren't going to die from a fight and you just get sick or old or something, you just kidnap some strong, healthy young body to snatch.

Being a lich is basically a slight variation to Magic Jar that only has the following differences:

1. It never fails, as opposed to having to make that saving throw on death.
2. It creates a new (undead) body for you, as opposed to you possessing an already existing body.
3. You are undead, as opposed to humanoid.
4. The Phylactery has no range limitation, as opposed to needing to stay within 100 feet.

Honestly, it feels like Lichdom should be about on par with Magic Jar or maybe just the same spell cast at a higher level or something. It feels strange to me that everyone homebrews all these convoluted rituals meant to be extremely difficult or expensive or time consuming when literally any wizard or bard can do almost the same thing with a 6th level spell in magic jar.

I also find it interesting most of these methods for becoming a lich tend to have absolutely nothing to do with magic itself, it's usually just nonsensical "do evil" type things like sacrificing a bunch of people, killing your own friends and family, kicking puppies, stuff like that.

So why is lichdom something folks act like should be next to impossible to achieve when sorta-almost-nearly-lichdom is a multiple times per day spell to cast that is trivial to acquire and use?

Lichdom may be stronger in some ways, but Magic Jar has advantages over Lichdom. The main point though is they are very similar in functionality and effectiveness yet one isn't very difficult to get and use while the other is practically treated as mythical/legendary/borderline impossible.

Luccan
2018-09-13, 08:10 PM
Is this 5e? In the version of lichdom I'm most familiar with:

1. You must be a certain level of caster. Even the highest power level settings in D&D don't just assume high level characters are hanging around all over the place.

2. You need to be Evil to do it. It isn't just a spell you cast, it's a ritual you go through that is supposedly so evil and vile the writers didn't actually describe it. While that's a bit of a cop out, we can assume it's bad enough that any RPG interested in being sold to minors (and many adults) can't actually describe such a ritual.

3. Being a lich gives you extra abilities, some of which are quite powerful in certain editions. Making it easy might stretch the credulity of setting not overrun by undead overlords.

4. If it were easy, every evil caster would do it.

5. I believe in some editions, there is a chance of failure. Now, if you're evil enough to become a lich, do you really want to risk what'll happen to your soul if you fail? For some the answer is yes. And some of them are currently being batted around by Imps for fun.

Kaptin Keen
2018-09-13, 10:53 PM
The ritual to become a lich isn't actually described - not that I've ever seen, at least.

But it's worth remembering that, unless it's described inaccurately, it involves among other things that you need to carve out your own beating heart with a dull knife and place it in a specially prepared magical jug. It's not just something every other mage does while waiting for the bus. And the result isn't precisely all you'd want out of immortality: You're now essentially a spellcasting zombie. Congrats.

Erys
2018-09-13, 11:56 PM
Maybe I am misinterpreting your post, but...



Being a lich is basically a slight variation to Magic Jar that only has the following differences:

1. It never fails, as opposed to having to make that saving throw on death.
2. It creates a new (undead) body for you, as opposed to you possessing an already existing body.
3. You are undead, as opposed to humanoid.
4. The Phylactery has no range limitation, as opposed to needing to stay within 100 feet.


Some of these are actually incorrect. At least in regards to 5th ed.

1) It can fail, and if it does the caster becomes a Boneclaw (outlined in MTF).
2) You don't get a new body, you become undead and your flesh actually decays away. Older cannon even suggest that the process is at a 'natural speed' meaning a lot of disgusting days before you finally become the sexy skeleton you aim to be.
3 and 4 are correct.

Magic Jar is about possessing others, your body still ages- you will still die.

Lichdom means you can't die by normal means.

Reboot
2018-09-14, 12:11 AM
In 3.5e, you die when the Magic Jar spell ends (max duration 1 hr/level) if your body has been destroyed while you're out of it - http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magicJar.htm . You can't use it as an immortality cheat code.

5e, you don't have the time limit, but you're still counting on never ever being hit with a dispel, nor the jar being dispelled or destroyed, any of which kill you outright if your body has died in the meantime. http://5e.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magicJar.htm

Trampaige
2018-09-14, 10:11 AM
Maybe I am misinterpreting your post, but...



Some of these are actually incorrect. At least in regards to 5th ed.

1) It can fail, and if it does the caster becomes a Boneclaw (outlined in MTF).
2) You don't get a new body, you become undead and your flesh actually decays away. Older cannon even suggest that the process is at a 'natural speed' meaning a lot of disgusting days before you finally become the sexy skeleton you aim to be.
3 and 4 are correct.

Magic Jar is about possessing others, your body still ages- you will still die.

Lichdom means you can't die by normal means.



1 - When you die, the phylactery doesn't fail to reconstitute you
2 - When you die, the phylactery makes a new body

Rhedyn
2018-09-14, 11:21 AM
The fundamental flaw in this argument is assuming that Magic Jar is a fine spell.

I agree, both are nearly equivalent effects. It's magic jar that is the problem though.

Koo Rehtorb
2018-09-14, 12:46 PM
Lichdom is an iconic process dating back to the earliest days of Sword and Sorcery fantasy. Magic Jar is a dumb badly conceived spell in a game full of dumb badly conceived spells.

Rhedyn
2018-09-14, 12:56 PM
Lichdom is an iconic process dating back to the earliest days of Sword and Sorcery fantasy. Magic Jar is a dumb badly conceived spell in a game full of dumb badly conceived spells.

The spells are not dumb, they are just too cheap compared to how expensive non-spells are.

BWR
2018-09-14, 04:33 PM
Back in the day you had to be a 18th level caster to become a lich, the components and ritual were defined, and magic jar, unless they've really screwed it up in 5e, lets you inhabit a living body, not dead one, doesn't prevent your death from aging. Add no time limit, a suite of nifty powers and ability to recreate your body, and the fact that it can't be dispelled, and it's obvious lichdom is significantly better than magic jar.

Pleh
2018-09-14, 05:18 PM
Back in the day you had to be a 18th level caster to become a lich, the components and ritual were defined, and magic jar, unless they've really screwed it up in 5e, lets you inhabit a living body, not dead one, doesn't prevent your death from aging. Add no time limit, a suite of nifty powers and ability to recreate your body, and the fact that it can't be dispelled, and it's obvious lichdom is significantly better than magic jar.

Plus, being a lich in no way prevents you from utilizing Magic Jar (unless I'm much mistaken).

So why not have the benefits of both? Preserve your original body in an undying form, then slip into other people's bodies as you please to enjoy feeling young again whenever you wish.

Anymage
2018-09-14, 05:34 PM
Other people have covered how 3.5 Magic Jar has enough built in drawbacks that it isn't just body swapping on demand, while the only drawback that 5e Magic Jar might have is highly dependent on interpretation. (Specifically, whether Dispel cast on your body can dispel it, or whether the spell needs to be cast on the jar.) So I'm pretty sure that this is really a 5e thread.

And yeah. In a game where a second level spell provides perfect cover against everything that isn't Dispel Magic, summon spells had to have DM jerkishness built in lest pixies break them, and a sixth level druid spell (http://5e.d20srd.org/srd/spells/transportViaPlants.htm) means that any greenery in or around the city becomes a strategic weakness. So long as a plethora of spells are how many characters get their cool tricks, a certain number of broken ones will slip through the cracks. The only way to break that is to significantly change how D&D works, and that's just begging for fan backlash.

Arbane
2018-09-14, 06:24 PM
Given how specifically fiddly the Magic Jar spell is, does anyone know if Gygax & co. got the idea from a fantasy story, and if so which one?

Jay R
2018-09-14, 06:47 PM
Because the designers want liches to be rare.

If being a lich were easy, then everyone would be doing it.

Anonymouswizard
2018-09-14, 07:08 PM
The short answer for why becoming a Lich is so difficult: +2 to all mental ability scores, a bunch of minor abilities (including, but not limited to, paralysing touch, undead immunities, +2 racial bonus to listen checks), and an autoressurect as long as a certain artefact is intact (and even if you don't go the 'random copper piece circulating the economy' route any spellcaster with the power to become a lich can make their phalactery a magic item and put a ton of long duration abjurations on there before burying it in a sealed tomb with a backup spellbook* located two kilometers below ground level). Not to mention the fact that you don't die unless killed, but that's really part of the undead immunities.

Interestingly the last time I checked the lich rules (3.5) it wasn't specified what the body you ressurected in was like. While I assume that a skeletal body was intended I actually do like the idea of a lich who commits suicide every so often just to stop the decay from building up.

The second major reason is that if it was easy everybody would be doing it. Easy immortality radically changes a setting (even without the radical body modification that sometimes goes along with it), especially if ressurection is easily available. This is also why 5e Transmuters can restore youth but can't add more years to somebody's lifespan, which really annoys me (you have to be 14th level to get it and most campaigns won't last long enough for death by old age to be an issue**).

* Make sure it has teleport in there.
** And if it is either the GM will asspull a way around it or I'm intentionally playing an 80 year old human Transmuter trying to reach 14th level before he dies of old age.

Xuc Xac
2018-09-14, 07:51 PM
The spell lasts forever until it is dispelled in some way... But assuming neither of those two things happen... Or even if you're killed by surprise, you have a good likelihood...
If you're about to die... unless... and you didn't do anything... And assuming...

Being a lich is basically a slight variation to Magic Jar that only has the following differences:

1. It never fails

Smelling a lot of "if" coming off this plan...

Read the original post again. It basically says "magic jar is just as effective if, if, if, unless, and assuming..." When you have that many exceptions, it's not really "equally effective" anymore.

Not to mention, "usually works" is infinitely worse than "never fails" in an immortality method. When you're talking about immortality, "usually works" means "will eventually fail". It's no contest.

Quertus
2018-09-14, 09:37 PM
Back in the day you had to be a 18th level caster to become a lich, the components and ritual were defined,

Care to tell us what those components and rituals were?

Arbane
2018-09-15, 12:39 AM
Care to tell us what those components and rituals were?

1: More baby blood than fits in a single baby.
2:

(Semi-seriously, I vaguely remember a How To Become a Lich article in an oooold issue of Dragon Magazine. IIRC, it involved drinking a poisonous potion and lying down to die, and one major dealbreaker for most PCs: you were stuck forever at the level you became a lich.

Bohandas
2018-09-15, 02:10 AM
I always considered it to be largely the same as how it was handled in Harry Potter. Kill a bunch of people, damage your soul and theirs, etc.

Chauncymancer
2018-09-15, 07:45 AM
Its in a ravenloft supplement on the undead. The van helsing expys guide.

Rhedyn
2018-09-15, 08:43 AM
In GURPS it's, research the spell via magical research rules, research a special potion via the alchemy rules, pay a decent chunk of money, find some way to provide the energy cost of 5 proficient wizards by yourself, and pass 2 save or die rolls.

Not hard, but then you are either at a character point deficiet or the GM made you save up points to pay for it. And what a lich is and the energy cost depends on the setting.

BWR
2018-09-15, 09:14 AM
Care to tell us what those components and rituals were?

Sure.


Its in a ravenloft supplement on the undead. The van helsing expys guide.
There are three versions, actually, at least three I am familiar with. The aforementioned Dragon Mag one, an updated version in Wizard's Spell Compendium vol 4. and the VRGtL one.

Dragon Magazine # 26
- Must be 14th level or higher
- Must have magic jar, trap the soul, enchant an item
- must create the phylactery with at least 2000 cp worth of materials (insert 1e ad hoc crafting rules). The phylactery is called a 'jar'.
- create a potion consisting of:
- 2 pinches pure arsenic
- 1 pinch belladonna
- phase spider venom less than 30 days old
- wyvern venom less than 60 days old
- blood of a dead humanoid infant killed by phase spider venom
- blood of a dead humanoid infant killed by a mixture of arsenic and belladonna
- the heart of a virgin humanoid killed by wyvern venom
- 1 quart vampire blood
The potion is mixed by the light of a full moon, added to each other in the order listed.

Roll percentile dice!
% result
1-10 all hair falls out. no other result
11-40 coma 2-7 days, but potion works
41-70 Feebleminded. Each attempt to remove the feeblemind has 10% chance of killing target. Potion works
71-90 Paralyzed 4-14 days, 30% chance of 1d6 Dex drain. Potion works
91-96 Permanently deaf, dumb or blind. Wish to remove condition. Potion works
97-00 Dead. Hope you can be resurrected.

This version doesn't create new bodies, it inserts the soul of the lich into corpses near the phylactery. Corpses receive a saving throw, modified by their in life alignment. Lich can retry once per week until successful on its own corpse, but other corpses are immune after a successful save. If in a body other than its own, the lich has limited abilities until it finds the remains of its original body and consumes those. The only way to completely destroy the original body is to disintegrate it. Returning to a jar costs a level and if its level went lower than 11 the lich died the next time it is returned to the jar. They cannot level up or use scrolls.



WSC
Mostly the same as above, but they added Nulathoe's ninemen to required spells and a 100 000+ gp research cost.
The ingredients are the same as above except that they removed the infant blood (wussies!) and change them to:
- heart of a humanoid killed by the arsenic/belladonna mixture
- reproductive organs of 10 giant moths, dead less than 10 days.

Potion is sparkling black with blusish radiance and must be drunk within 7 days of creation, and over the course of six rounds the changes occur. Once a potion works, you don't die or transform quite yet. Craft the phylactery in no more than nine days (insert 2e crafting rules), using EAI, then TtS, and NN and MJ within 10 minutes of each other. Your soul is drawn into the phylactery and you lose one level and the top three spell levels are wiped clean from your memory until you have rested 1d6+1 days in your own body. Now you are a lichnee (I'm not quite dead, sir) until you die. After this, the same as the DrMg version, including failure chance for potion. No mention of inability to increase level or use scrolls. Phylactery can be anything.



VRGtL
Phylactery must be an amulet worth at least 1500 gp, The interior (itmust be able to contain things) is engraved with the wizard's sigil and filled with silver. Spells required are enchant an item, permanency, magic jar and reincarnation.
The potion is less specific, but said to contain arsenic, belladonna, nightshade, heart's worry, the blood of any number of rare venomous creatures, then the following spells must be cast: wraithform, cone of cold, feign death, animate dead, permanency. No fancy table, just a System Shock to survive the process and hope you don't fail because if you do you are dead and gone for good. No Wish can help you now.