Strategies against liches

[Mrark]

Quick Introduction: we are a 18th level group: a barbarian, a rogue, a wizard, a cleric and a druid. We play in a very very rich world, and consider we can have or buy any item. After years of playing, we have become a very important group in the world, and recent events had a 20th level-vecna cleric-overpowered-meta built-lich try to imitate his God by ascending as a deity by sacrificing 5 million people during a world expo. We managed to stop him during the ritual, which made all us (lich too) half-ascended creatures with some great and fluffy bonus. After this, the church of Vecna started a war against the world (not the whole world, they have some allies in some evil Nations), having an hidden army of 400 liches built during the centuries (this plan was thought by the grand-priest of vecna 500 years before). So this is the situation: the vecna faction + evil nations + evil freelancer VS the good nations, good freelancer, all the other religions. Our DM (our beloved, hard working, great dm) managed to put some numbers up, and I will sum up them:
1) High level élite: the “good” faction (will be called “the Gs”) can count our group + a great fighter + a great assassin, while the bad faction (Bs) can count an high level freaking good lich wizard, The ascended lich, and some few 20th level liches
2) 17+ chars: The bs seem to be in a little advantage here, because when The ascended lich tried becoming a God, his army was ordered to go and kill + trap the soul of many high level characters all over the world
3) 15+ chars: the numbers are fairly even there, with the Gs having more fighters and barbarians and the Bs more wizard and clerics
4) 11+ chars: The Gs are in a great advantage, having waaaaay more “meat”

This said, some little more specifications: in this world our dm managed to almost even the differences between fighters and casters, by creating an economy in which adventurers can be REALLY WELL PAID. This allows fighters to be well prepared against casters, by buying items of any kind with relative ease. Furthermore, he does not allow many broken combos, trying to stay on the basic handbooks (except for preparing particular characters meant to be bosses).

Even then, the situation is not good for us. Vecna’s army can stile count on liches, and uses to trap the souls of the killed adventurers on our faction, while every lich we kill will regenerate.


In this scenario, after thanking anyone who decided to read so far, I ma asking for your help: any strategies, spells, particular items (the items can be from any source or handbook) which is good against lich and will help us win this war is welcome!

If something is not clear, ask and it will be cleared. Thanks everyone!!!

[The Kool]

Alright, so are you asking for help against the big bad boss lich, or against the lich army of footsoldiers? Different foes, different tactics.

[Calthropstu]

Quick Introduction: we are a 18th level group: a barbarian, a rogue, a wizard, a cleric and a druid. We play in a very very rich world, and consider we can have or buy any item. After years of playing, we have become a very important group in the world, and recent events had a 20th level-vecna cleric-overpowered-meta built-lich try to imitate his God by ascending as a deity by sacrificing 5 million people during a world expo. We managed to stop him during the ritual, which made all us (lich too) half-ascended creatures with some great and fluffy bonus. After this, the church of Vecna started a war against the world (not the whole world, they have some allies in some evil Nations), having an hidden army of 400 liches built during the centuries (this plan was thought by the grand-priest of vecna 500 years before). So this is the situation: the vecna faction + evil nations + evil freelancer VS the good nations, good freelancer, all the other religions. Our DM (our beloved, hard working, great dm) managed to put some numbers up, and I will sum up them:
1) High level élite: the “good” faction (will be called “the Gs”) can count our group + a great fighter + a great assassin, while the bad faction (Bs) can count an high level freaking good lich wizard, The ascended lich, and some few 20th level liches
2) 17+ chars: The bs seem to be in a little advantage here, because when The ascended lich tried becoming a God, his army was ordered to go and kill + trap the soul of many high level characters all over the world
3) 15+ chars: the numbers are fairly even there, with the Gs having more fighters and barbarians and the Bs more wizard and clerics
4) 11+ chars: The Gs are in a great advantage, having waaaaay more “meat”

This said, some little more specifications: in this world our dm managed to almost even the differences between fighters and casters, by creating an economy in which adventurers can be REALLY WELL PAID. This allows fighters to be well prepared against casters, by buying items of any kind with relative ease. Furthermore, he does not allow many broken combos, trying to stay on the basic handbooks (except for preparing particular characters meant to be bosses).

Even then, the situation is not good for us. Vecna’s army can stile count on liches, and uses to trap the souls of the killed adventurers on our faction, while every lich we kill will regenerate.


In this scenario, after thanking anyone who decided to read so far, I ma asking for your help: any strategies, spells, particular items (the items can be from any source or handbook) which is good against lich and will help us win this war is welcome!

If something is not clear, ask and it will be cleared. Thanks everyone!!!

Some strategies:

Mass wishes to assail their defenses from afar ending in numerous wishes to acquire or destroy the phylacteries.
Disintegrate spells work amazingly on liches. They will heavily prepare against that spell, but again continue assailing their defenses from afar before finally going in.
Have mass clerics turn them with level boosters.
Find a ghost. Find an artifact weapon with ghost touch and permanent dimensional anchor on the wielder. Get an anti-magic field around the ghost. The artifact will still function, which should prevent the ghost from being affected by the winking out effect. Have that ghost make an attempt to steal the phylactories. It is immune to practically everything.
Call in some extraplanar assistance. Inevitables will happily jump to your aid because they hunt down those who unnaturally extend their life spans.
Drag them to the positive or negative energy planes. (their side effects are particularly nasty.)
Call in dragons. Tell the evil dragons that the liches have lots of treasure, some of which was stolen from dragons (which will probably be true) and the good ones may be willing to help on general principle.
Research a spell to reverse the lich process.
Try to miracle a solution.
Look for a McGuffin.
Attack and kill Vecna, removing his clerics from play.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Generally speaking, liches can be attacked through their phylacteries. Even just putting it inside an antimagic field is good enough (if you can maintain the field, that is--dead magic planes are nice for that). Of course, it's not easy to find phylacteries, and that means you'll need some divinations, and Vecna is the god of secrets, so those might not work (thinking of the Vecna-Blooded template here). Still, an avenue worth exploring.

Your alternative is to put the lich in some not-entirely-dead stasis, like a vat of quintessence (no save, no SR) or an imprisonment spell (it's SR:Yes and Will negates, which is bad, so try getting a Dweomerkeeper to cast it, and use limited wish to drop the save bonus, and research its name for the -4 save penalty). Greater bestow curse also works, in the sense that it can set a creature's casting stat to 1, which tends to cripple a spellcaster. All of these have their own spellcasting counters, of course, so you may need to drop an antimagic field on top of the site of the imprisonment, or something.

[magic9mushroom]

In this scenario, after thanking anyone who decided to read so far, I ma asking for your help: any strategies, spells, particular items (the items can be from any source or handbook) which is good against lich and will help us win this war is welcome!

If something is not clear, ask and it will be cleared. Thanks everyone!!!

Okay, there are a few things worth noting about liches.

1) They have low HD (for undead). This means that Sun-domain Greater Turning works with only a little boosting (Phylactery of Undead Turning is 11k and a Sceptre of the Netherworld (LM/MIC) 9k, that should be enough). This won't permakill them, but it'll get a lot of them out of your hair in a hurry. Holy Word can do much the same thing if you can boost the caster level enough. Note that Life Ward grants immunity to turning. Also note that it's reasonably hard (but not impossible) to turn liches into your pets with Rebuke Undead.

2) There are, if you're high-enough level, ways to put a lich out of action semi-permanently without going after the phylactery. Temporal Stasis won't usually work, as it allows a Fortitude save and undead are immune to those; however, Imprisonment and Trap the Soul are Will. Bear in mind that BoVD declares Trap the Soul to be Evil, and that a DM might rule it doesn't work on liches due to the phylactery. Imprisonment should definitely work, though. If Spell Compendium is allowed, Bestow Greater Curse can also largely neuter a lich by setting their casting stat (or Intelligence) to 1, which lets you mundanely imprison them. If you have access to a slow-time plane (as in, REALLY slow, years outside to seconds inside), Plane Shifting them there also puts them out of commission for a while (because it'll take them a few seconds to shift back, even if they have it on-hand).

3) Liches are immune to [Mind-Affecting] attacks. This might sound a little redundant, given that they're undead, but it means [Mind-Affecting] things that ignore the undead immunity (there are a few ways to do this) still don't work on liches.

[Quertus]

Let Quertus, my signature academia mage, for whom this account is named, know that there is such a concentration of liches on a world. He will be most interested in talking to them, finding out what magic they've researched, investigating how much of their "not killing each other" is based on religion, how much they've cooperated in sharing custom spells, etc etc, and writing a definitive work on liches of the world.

OK, it won't actually help you defeat them, unless they're stupid enough to try anything. But it may keep a few of them busy, talking to him. :smalltongue:

[Deophaun]

400 liches is tough, but any one is rather simple. You need to divine when it re-incorporates. A wish or miracle might be able to do this. At that point, it's simply a matter of immediately casting circle dance, teleporting to another, distant location, casting circle dance again, and then triangulating the location of the lich. The really nice thing about circle dance is that there is no formal target, so common defenses against divinations may not work. This is also a good spell to have on an eternal wand, so you only have to deal with the standard action activation time instead of the full minute casting time, giving your target lich less time to move away from its phylactery (assuming your DM makes the common ruling that liches do recover next to their phylacteries).

Naturally, the places that you teleport to for the circle dance will be pre-established circles marking out degrees to make the triangulation much, much, much simpler.

There is also the possibility of communing with an intermediate or greater deity that has death as a portfolio. They should be aware of when and where a lich regenerates. In core, that gives you Wee Jas and Nerull as options. Time to put that psuedo-divinity to use and see if you can't get an audience. If, as you say, Vecna is facing off against all other religions, Wee Jas may be willing to help.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

When you don't want to deal with that whole phylactery business, you can keep a lich "on ice" indefinitely with Glass Strike. Action economy (possibly just having more people) + Disjunction + Limited Wish or similar should help land the first one, and then making it "stick" just amounts to your level 13+ wizard allies using enough spell slots; it's hrs/level, and rich folks tend to have extend rods. This isn't necessarily feasible for 400 liches, but for when you don't want to use up too many "elite" resources on phylactery hunting when you're still fighting other active liches...

[Mrark]

Alright, so are you asking for help against the big bad boss lich, or against the lich army of footsoldiers? Different foes, different tactics.

Against the army basically!

[Mrark]

400 liches is tough, but any one is rather simple. You need to divine when it re-incorporates. A wish or miracle might be able to do this. At that point, it's simply a matter of immediately casting circle dance, teleporting to another, distant location, casting circle dance again, and then triangulating the location of the lich. The really nice thing about circle dance is that there is no formal target, so common defenses against divinations may not work. This is also a good spell to have on an eternal wand, so you only have to deal with the standard action activation time instead of the full minute casting time, giving your target lich less time to move away from its phylactery (assuming your DM makes the common ruling that liches do recover next to their phylacteries).

Naturally, the places that you teleport to for the circle dance will be pre-established circles marking out degrees to make the triangulation much, much, much simpler.

There is also the possibility of communing with an intermediate or greater deity that has death as a portfolio. They should be aware of when and where a lich regenerates. In core, that gives you Wee Jas and Nerull as options. Time to put that psuedo-divinity to use and see if you can't get an audience. If, as you say, Vecna is facing off against all other religions, Wee Jas may be willing to help.

Both are nice ideas, but: 1) circle dance works with alive targets
2) deities have a lot of limitations in our world, so that they can not interfere too much. I will still try tho.

[Mrark]

When you don't want to deal with that whole phylactery business, you can keep a lich "on ice" indefinitely with Glass Strike. Action economy (possibly just having more people) + Disjunction + Limited Wish or similar should help land the first one, and then making it "stick" just amounts to your level 13+ wizard allies using enough spell slots; it's hrs/level, and rich folks tend to have extend rods. This isn't necessarily feasible for 400 liches, but for when you don't want to use up too many "elite" resources on phylactery hunting when you're still fighting other active liches...

Will definetely try.

[ShurikVch]

Hire a Hunter of the Dead (Complete Warrior):
True Death (Su): Undead slain by a hunter of the dead of 5th level or higher, either by melee attacks or spells, can never rise again as undead. They are forever destroyed.Just make sure the final hit would be by the Hunter of the Dead. :smallwink:

[Mrark]

Generally speaking, liches can be attacked through their phylacteries. Even just putting it inside an antimagic field is good enough (if you can maintain the field, that is--dead magic planes are nice for that). Of course, it's not easy to find phylacteries, and that means you'll need some divinations, and Vecna is the god of secrets, so those might not work (thinking of the Vecna-Blooded template here). Still, an avenue worth exploring.

Your alternative is to put the lich in some not-entirely-dead stasis, like a vat of quintessence (no save, no SR) or an imprisonment spell (it's SR:Yes and Will negates, which is bad, so try getting a Dweomerkeeper to cast it, and use limited wish to drop the save bonus, and research its name for the -4 save penalty). Greater bestow curse also works, in the sense that it can set a creature's casting stat to 1, which tends to cripple a spellcaster. All of these have their own spellcasting counters, of course, so you may need to drop an antimagic field on top of the site of the imprisonment, or something.

Sadly: there are no shapers in this world, so no quintessence allowed. And we do not have enough high level wizards to imprison them all, but the ones we have will surely start doing it.

Greater bestow curse looking good indeed, so I will give it a look

[Mrark]

Some strategies:

Mass wishes to assail their defenses from afar ending in numerous wishes to acquire or destroy the phylacteries.
Disintegrate spells work amazingly on liches. They will heavily prepare against that spell, but again continue assailing their defenses from afar before finally going in.
Have mass clerics turn them with level boosters.
Find a ghost. Find an artifact weapon with ghost touch and permanent dimensional anchor on the wielder. Get an anti-magic field around the ghost. The artifact will still function, which should prevent the ghost from being affected by the winking out effect. Have that ghost make an attempt to steal the phylactories. It is immune to practically everything.
Call in some extraplanar assistance. Inevitables will happily jump to your aid because they hunt down those who unnaturally extend their life spans.
Drag them to the positive or negative energy planes. (their side effects are particularly nasty.)
Call in dragons. Tell the evil dragons that the liches have lots of treasure, some of which was stolen from dragons (which will probably be true) and the good ones may be willing to help on general principle.
Research a spell to reverse the lich process.
Try to miracle a solution.
Look for a McGuffin.
Attack and kill Vecna, removing his clerics from play.

This is nice. I Will discuss with our dm such possibilities. Even though the miracle/wishes one will not be playable I Guess, because in the world, with an upcoming war, many XP and wishes themselves were spent for powerful items or permanent +1 stats

[Malphegor]

Against the lich's minions, your cleric might want everyone to have active the spell Sheltered Vitality, from Libris Mortis. Total immunity to ability damage/drain and tiredness-effects. Beyond that, I'm not sure, never played high level fights against a caster yet.

[Mrark]

Hire a Hunter of the Dead (Complete Warrior):Just make sure the final hit would be by the Hunter of the Dead. :smallwink:

Will discuss this too. Would make the work easier.

[The Kool]

Against the army basically!

Then anything with an XP cost is right out, unless you have a caster for each 1-3 liches. If that's the case, go right ahead with your Wish spam. It's worth noting that, if you appeal to a deity that's opposed to this Lich army (like Pelor), then Miracles to defeat them will be free. You still run into the problem of limited spell slots, but I hope this helps.

Ultimately, AoEs like Holy Word are effective, and any of your level 15+ clerics should be able to use that, with a CL boost. If your clerics or CL boosts are limited, invest in a staff that can use it. You'll want to strike quickly, but this will just dust entire swaths of liches until they have a chance to reform. Higher level ones will cause problems, but I'm assuming if there's hundreds of them then they're also using a very basic stat block, so they (hopefully) don't have specialized defenses.

One more thing... With that many liches, even created over a long period of time, due to their purpose as an army... The phylacteries may all be in the same place, or the same select few places. If you can locate these caches, despite the sheer number of liches, you should still be able to do something about the phylacteries. I see almost no scenarios in which they won't be very aware of what you've done, however, so keep that in mind.

[Eldariel]

Hire a Hunter of the Dead (Complete Warrior):Just make sure the final hit would be by the Hunter of the Dead. :smallwink:

You could also just try and find some Illithids, Mind Rape them and acquire a pack of Illithid Savants and have them become Hunters of the Dead if the actual Hunters are hard to come by. Now this will entail having a Hunter, getting its brain eaten and then repeatedly regenerating said brain (and probably True Resurrecting said Hunter) but it's a decent means of replicating said ability without actually just training a ton of Hunters of the Dead (not to mention, Illithid Savants can easily become casters so they're rather more formidable than 5th level Hunters of the Dead).

Anyways, war against casters. First, remember their advantages:
1) They don't need to eat, sleep or drink. It's pretty huge.
2) They have a lot of divination spells available. Consider your command line and supply lines constantly under attack if anything is without sufficient guard to stop all of them Greater Teleporting in, killing everyone, and Greater Teleporting out.
3) Logistics. They have a ton more Teleportation Circles than you do. That said, use said spell to make strong points for frontline supplies and such.

Certainly, there are weaknesses too:
1) Rebuke Undead. If you can get a ton of Evil Clerics/Dread Necromancers with optimised Rebuke, you can easily Command the Liches and turn the tides rather easily.
2) Magic Jar. It's not mind-affecting, you can take over their bodies this way and permanently depose of their soul. This should sidestep the issue of them regenerating.
3) Destroy Undead. It's pretty obviously good: Disjunction followed by Destroy Undead is a standard issue offense in a setup like this (so assume they'll prepare as such; counterspell options are aplenty as are contingency options).


Now, they have the stronger standing armies and the stronger mobility so you need to draw defensive lines, use magic to restrict their movement (if you can get gods involved, there may be a chance to take control of the Astral Plane to the point that they are unable to Teleport freely) and force engagements on your term. Again, avoid killing Liches unless you can be sure you can find their Phylacteries (Elemental Weirds or Shapechanging into one can spam Contact Other Plane to locate them easily enough but again, Vecna being on the opposing side can really screw with divination).

Locating 400 phylacteries is a bit of a thing. Lots of micromanagement. To that end, bypassing it somehow (unless they're all in one secret hall which would be uncharacteristically stupid of Vecna's) is pretty much the only way to go. Again, mind control, true destruction (Unnaming and such options are on the table too) or freezing them forever is probably the way to go. You have less Wizards so engaging them head-on seems foolhardy but try and use your casters smart behind the lines and as spec ops to hit the key points and enable the actual forces you've got marshalled.

[Telonius]

Do the Liches have Steadfast Determination? Hit them with a Disruption (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicWeapons.htm#disruption) weapon often enough, and eventually they'll roll a 1. (Maybe give them to one or several of the Hunters of the Dead that you've hired).

[King of Nowhere]

One more thing... With that many liches, even created over a long period of time, due to their purpose as an army... The phylacteries may all be in the same place, or the same select few places. If you can locate these caches, despite the sheer number of liches, you should still be able to do something about the phylacteries. I see almost no scenarios in which they won't be very aware of what you've done, however, so keep that in mind.

to contextualize, major powers in the campaign have strongholds that cannot be assaulted easily (no direct way to breach walls, teleport inside is forbidden even with wish). the details of those defences are not important, because the purpose of them is not to play the gotcha! game to see who forgot to ward against one thing. The purpose of those strongholds is that you cannot defeat a major power with a single blow, but you have to weaken it first.
Scry and die tactics against the top personnel is impossible for both sides. Both sides will try scry and die tactics against secondary targets, in what is basically a war of attrition. Looted gear and diamonds for resurrections are key resources, but in general killing high level people and damaging the economy are the established strategies.

the church of vecna has 3 such strongholds. Vecna's allies also have strongholds, but the vecnites are not entrusting them with philacteries. So most of those philacteries are split inside those three strongholds. A few are hidden outside, not particularly well, but just to keep some egg outside of the basket. Some exceptions are made for the top echelons, but this does not concern us at the moment. So, it is well known where they are, but it's practically impossible to get them without hurting vecna first (may happen by trapping a lot of liches with mundane means, convincing most of its allies to defect, or convince most of the world's neutral powers to join the war against vecna).

Many resources here mentioned are not available in the campaign world (most players are very casual, I'm trying to keep the game relatively simple; and again, I'd rather establish a few sources and explore their interactions than turn the game into a contest of sourcebook rifling). Good news is, you don't need quintessence to trap a lich; most of those strongholds have neat antimagic prisons, so if you can capture a lich alive by mundane means, you can keep it out of the game. Well, some of them at least; I'm not sure those prisons would have room for all 400 liches.

Vecna's chief tactic, regarding the rank and file, is to send about 100 of those liches to strike, without any magic gear. they lose absolutely nothing if those liches are destroied, and the remaining 300 are in reserve to protect the strongholds. they will try to win by attrition.

For exactness, the liches are roughly equal numbers of clerics and wizards; around 250 of them can cast 6th level spells, some 100 can cast 7th level, roughly 40 reach 8th level spells, and 10 lead with 9th level spells. three or four bosses are significantly stronger (artifact gear/better optimization, no epic). those liches are the bulk of vecna's forces, though they also have a considerable amount of living combatants from their allies, including a handful more 17th level casters. the good guys have about two thirds as many casters, but they compensate with more martials.

EDIT2: those numbers represent roughly half the high level people in the world. the other half did not join either side, either because they don't care enough to risk their lives, because they are scared, or because they are waiting to see how things evolve to better take advantage of any opportunity.
the dragon races, taken together, have about as much power as the humanoid total. they declined to get involved in what they perceive as "not their business", though they have... deeper political factions and motivations that I haven't disclosed with the players.

EDIT: As an obscure prestige class, hunter of the dead is not available in my world...
but! Now that there is such a great threat from the undead, someone may be looking for some specific power to use against them. I could make a "research the hunter of undead prc" quest that will enable some people on the good side to take the class, and be one of the many stepping stones towards victory.