Our Liches are Different

[Promethean]

Just a quick idea for making liches fresh and terrifying I came up with at 1AM after a pizza binge.

I kinda like the old school version of liches that needed dead bodies to posses rather than growing one at their phylactery and was thinking of running that for a campaign, but then thought "Wait, If they can possess dead bodies and are most often powerful necromancers that control legions of undead by default, why couldn't they posses other undead?"

Long story short: Some buddies and I went about spit-balling ideas for what has been temporarily dubbed the "lich Lord".

Essentially a lich lord is a lich that can act through any undead under it's control and can reanimate dead bodies in it's line of sight to add to it's legions. Any undead under the liches control is another of it's bodies and cast spells through them like advanced form of familiar bond.

The lich get's a gaze attack as a free action vs undead(from it's phylactery or through a possessed undead) that they must make a will save vs the liches caster level check, and saves vs gaze attacks by the phylactery are at a -4 penalty. If the undead wins then lich can't make another attempt that day, on a tie both loose their action for the round and rolls are repeated the next round, but if the lich wins then the undead's mind is consumed by the liches hive mind. Mindless undead are treated as if they automatically fail the will save. All possessed undead get +2 to their mental ability scores(base of 10 if they were originally mindless), the paralyzing touch and gaze attack SLAa, and spells that the lich cast's through possessed undead all draw from the liches pool of spell slots, but in all other respects they keep their base stats.

The idea is that these monsters are what default lichdom creates.

[Afghanistan]

This oddly reminds me of the Lichs described in Van Richten's Guide to the Lich




I kinda like the old school version of liches that needed dead bodies to posses rather than growing one at their phylactery and was thinking of running that for a campaign, but then thought "Wait, If they can possess dead bodies and are most often powerful necromancers that control legions of undead by default, why couldn't they posses other undead?"

They can do just this. They can mostly only do this to weak undead (so Vampires and Mummies are often right out), but a Lich in their phylactery can totally just possess one of their undead minions and take over their body (forcing them to make a saving throw), but normally they possess dead bodies (again, the body makes a saving throw against being possessed as if it were alive).



Long story short: Some buddies and I went about spit-balling ideas for what has been temporarily dubbed the "lich Lord".

Essentially a lich lord is a lich that can act through any undead under it's control and can reanimate dead bodies in it's line of sight to add to it's legions. Any undead under the liches control is another of it's bodies and cast spells through them like advanced form of familiar bond.

Yep, this is a thing as well (sorta). Those Liches have Salient Abilities that allow them to just animate any old corpse as a zombie or a skeleton or something else. They also have plenty of other unique salient abilities such as, but not limited to:

Controlling Bones (Osteomancy).
Creating a chilling wind that freezes the area around them.
Control fire that is so hot it freezes (or the other way around? Not sure).
Increase their defenses thereby making themselves immune to magic weapons with less than a +2 enhancement bonus, or immune to creatures with less than 10 hit dice.
Animate dead bodies simply by touching them.
Manipulate dreams of creatures outside of holy ground (like a church or something)
Kill people just by looking at them.
Poison every piece of food around them.
Kill people just by touching them.
Drain the strength of creatures by touching them.
Control 10 times more undead than normal.
Cause people they look at to experience wracking pain in the form of 2d10 points of damage.
Imitate any spell cast in the previous round (read as: Broken).
Polymorph themselves into any Undead except a Vampire and gain their respective abilities.
Regenerate their body (fast healing 5 basically). This allows them to circumvent the requirement for new dead bodies to return to the walking world.
Scry through Skulls. These skulls can't be animated or attached to a spine.
Once per week, they can call every evil creature within int score miles to them to serve some nefarious purpose.


The Lich can also see out of it's normally rank and file undead servitors (skeletons and zombies and wights), but it can create Quasimancers (worst name, I know) and use them as mediums to cast spells from. It also deals with Vassaliches (you're sensing a pattern with the lousy naming schemes I take it?) which are basically Proto-lichs or people that serve a Lich in hopes of one day becoming a Lich themselves. They have a Phylactery as well (which is surrendered to their creator). Once they attain 11th level, they can become a true Lich, but they have to get their Phylactery back from their master/creator to do so.

At least this is from 2e and if memory serves people weren't really expected to play as a Lich so this stuff was all just fine.

[King of Nowhere]

Just a quick idea for making liches fresh and terrifying I came up with at 1AM after a pizza binge.

I kinda like the old school version of liches that needed dead bodies to posses rather than growing one at their phylactery and was thinking of running that for a campaign, but then thought "Wait, If they can possess dead bodies and are most often powerful necromancers that control legions of undead by default, why couldn't they posses other undead?"

Long story short: Some buddies and I went about spit-balling ideas for what has been temporarily dubbed the "lich Lord".

Essentially a lich lord is a lich that can act through any undead under it's control and can reanimate dead bodies in it's line of sight to add to it's legions. Any undead under the liches control is another of it's bodies and cast spells through them like advanced form of familiar bond.

The lich get's a gaze attack as a free action vs undead(from it's phylactery or through a possessed undead) that they must make a will save vs the liches caster level check, and saves vs gaze attacks by the phylactery are at a -4 penalty. If the undead wins then lich can't make another attempt that day, on a tie both loose their action for the round and rolls are repeated the next round, but if the lich wins then the undead's mind is consumed by the liches hive mind. Mindless undead are treated as if they automatically fail the will save. All possessed undead get +2 to their mental ability scores(base of 10 if they were originally mindless), the paralyzing touch and gaze attack SLAa, and spells that the lich cast's through possessed undead all draw from the liches pool of spell slots, but in all other respects they keep their base stats.

The idea is that these monsters are what default lichdom creates.

Seems like a neat homebrew.
It would be quite poweful, capable of troubling the party with high level spells cast through expendable minions, while staying out of the way

[Khedrac]

BECMI D&D (Master book iirc) introduced undead lieges and pawns which gave pretty much all of the intelligent undead the ability to control their weaker minions. (What was worse, they could chain the control, so a lich could command its limit of vampires, each of which was controlling its limit of mummies etc.)

So what? Well, there was one feature of the liege-pawn mechanic that you might want to copy for your master liches - and that is having the pawns turn as the master.

So, your 18 hit dice lich commands three 8HD mummies to attack a party. The part cleric steps forwards and unleashes the power of his deity and turns 25 HD of undead up to 19 HD - comfortably expecting to dust all of the mummies with the lich going next round. Imagine the look on his face when one single mummy turns to flee - the other two continuing to attack as normal.

Admittedly BECMI clerics had unlimited turn undead, so this feature could be too powerful for a 3.5 game, but I offer it as a possible option for your consideration.

[Gnaeus]

Eh.
A lich is a lich
Whether they poor or rich
They cast at the exact same pitch

[frogglesmash]

This idea sounds very similar to the suel lich from Dragon #339.

[Baine]

Interesting idea. It sounds like, to completely beat them, you'd have to both destroy the phylactery AND hunt every last body down, which could prove to be a challenge.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Essentially a lich lord is a lich that can act through any undead under it's control and can reanimate dead bodies in it's line of sight to add to it's legions. Any undead under the liches control is another of it's bodies and cast spells through them like advanced form of familiar bond.

Very 'Practical Guide to Evil'. I like it.