How would you create and then protect YOUR lich phylactery?

[eyebreaker7]

Your preparing for lichdom and need to make your phylactery. What do you use, how do you protect it and how do you hide it?
The level at which you make it is whatever level YOU would be when you make it. Class is your choice as well. Just please don't get all crazy on me. I probably don't have half the books you'll want to use.
It doesn't have to be the common box.
How much do you have to spend on the whole deal is up to you to reasonably determine how much money you would have at your level.


"The most common form of phylactery is a sealed metal box containing strips of parchment on which magical phrases have been transcribed. The box is Tiny and has 40 hit points, hardness 20, and a break DC of 40."

[Segev]

An intelligent but nondescript sword magically disguised to faintly radiate and detect as good-aligned with the special purpose of protecting me, given out to “chosen ones” that it may pick, itself, and generally going on quests to do good deeds.


The classic box, sealed inside a gravestone in a normal graveyard with nondetection cast on it or with the gravestone designed to radiate no more evil or magic than the background level in the graveyard.


Encased in a golem. The toughest I can build. Maybe a shield guardian, or as the control amulet for a shield guardian, so that they think it’s loot.


A stone box filled with magical writing, but enormous: it’s a library. Either one designed for continual use so none realize it’s important beyond that use, or perhaps designed as a dungeon that supposedly contains the phylactery so those who get that close and find it think the box at the center of it is their goal.

[Melcar]

Your preparing for lichdom and need to make your phylactery. What do you use, how do you protect it and how do you hide it?
The level at which you make it is whatever level YOU would be when you make it. Class is your choice as well. Just please don't get all crazy on me. I probably don't have half the books you'll want to use.
It doesn't have to be the common box.
How much do you have to spend on the whole deal is up to you to reasonably determine how much money you would have at your level.


"The most common form of phylactery is a sealed metal box containing strips of parchment on which magical phrases have been transcribed. The box is Tiny and has 40 hit points, hardness 20, and a break DC of 40."

I would first of all make "the box" out of a 1" thick Oerthblooded Pureore Obdurium for hardness 120, 180 HP per inch of thickness and put 2 amazing locks on. Thereafter I would put the following enchantments on:

Resistance to energy (Major)
Sign of Sealing, Greater (Maximized)
Improved Arcane Lock
Hidden Ward
Augment Object
Hardness
Dragoneye Rune
Symbol of Spell Loss
Watchware
Invisibility
Glyph of Warding, Greater (Spell)
Fireburst, Greater (Maximized)


If possible, I would heighten everyone of the above spells to level 9

I would probably hide it on a pocket plane, but if that was out of the question, I would hide it somewhere in my personal vault! Well guarded by by a number of appropriate golems...

EDIT: The phylactery itself, the small bauble which actually contains the lich's soul, I would again make out of Oerthblooded Pureore Obdurium, but I would either make it as a medal/ large coin, with my personal rune on one side and possible my deity's symbol on the other. Or, maybe make it into an ornate dagger. That way, I can put weapon enchants on it, and my enemies might mistake if for just a weapon and use it instead of destroying it!

[Celestia]

Step 1: Disguise yourself as a living person, preferably an elf. Use whatever means necessary to ensure that this disguise can remain flawless for hundreds of years (slightly modify the disguise as necessary to make it appear like you're gradually aging).

Step 2: Travel back in time as far as you can go, the further the better.

Step 3: Find (or create) a royal couple with fertility issues. Approach them as a friendly wizard and offer your services to help them produce their heir. Discretely polymorph your phylactery into a fertilized egg which you then magically implant into the queen.

Step 4: Your phylactery becomes the prince of the kingdom, and when you are offered a reward, request only that you continue your services to the crown by serving as the new prince's tutor.

Step 5: Work in the background to build a kingdom of just and moral righteousness, a beacon Good across the world with the only "flaw" being that the royal family is notoriously slutty with countless bastard children, spreading the DNA of your phylactery as wide as possible.

Step 6: After reaching the end of your fake life, return to the present. If all went according to plan, your phylactery should now reside within the bodies of millions of people, including the entire royal family of the greatest kingdom in the world. If any foolish heroes wish to kill you, they will not only have to commit mass genocide, but they will also have to desecrate millions of bodies to destroy your phylactery, including digging up the graves of everyone for the past however many centuries that still have your phylactery in their bones. And after all that, they'll still probably fail because if they miss even one body, your phylactery is still safe.

Step 7: Do whatever you want as the undead abomination that you are, secure in the knowledge that no one will ever try to destroy you.

[noob]

Make your phylactery be something that when destroyed results in the end of the entire setting then laugh as you did not gain any extra weak point.
Alternatively be a ghost in addition to being a lich and a worms that walks so that your phylactery is irrelevant.

[liquidformat]

Step 1: Disguise yourself as a living person, preferably an elf. Use whatever means necessary to ensure that this disguise can remain flawless for hundreds of years (slightly modify the disguise as necessary to make it appear like you're gradually aging).

Step 2: Travel back in time as far as you can go, the further the better.

Step 3: Find (or create) a royal couple with fertility issues. Approach them as a friendly wizard and offer your services to help them produce their heir. Discretely polymorph your phylactery into a fertilized egg which you then magically implant into the queen.

Step 4: Your phylactery becomes the prince of the kingdom, and when you are offered a reward, request only that you continue your services to the crown by serving as the new prince's tutor.

Step 5: Work in the background to build a kingdom of just and moral righteousness, a beacon Good across the world with the only "flaw" being that the royal family is notoriously slutty with countless bastard children, spreading the DNA of your phylactery as wide as possible.

Step 6: After reaching the end of your fake life, return to the present. If all went according to plan, your phylactery should now reside within the bodies of millions of people, including the entire royal family of the greatest kingdom in the world. If any foolish heroes wish to kill you, they will not only have to commit mass genocide, but they will also have to desecrate millions of bodies to destroy your phylactery, including digging up the graves of everyone for the past however many centuries that still have your phylactery in their bones. And after all that, they'll still probably fail because if they miss even one body, your phylactery is still safe.

Step 7: Do whatever you want as the undead abomination that you are, secure in the knowledge that no one will ever try to destroy you.

This is brilliant!

[Shirow]

Step 1: Disguise yourself as a living person, preferably an elf. Use whatever means necessary to ensure that this disguise can remain flawless for hundreds of years (slightly modify the disguise as necessary to make it appear like you're gradually aging).

Step 2: Travel back in time as far as you can go, the further the better.

Step 3: Find (or create) a royal couple with fertility issues. Approach them as a friendly wizard and offer your services to help them produce their heir. Discretely polymorph your phylactery into a fertilized egg which you then magically implant into the queen.

Step 4: Your phylactery becomes the prince of the kingdom, and when you are offered a reward, request only that you continue your services to the crown by serving as the new prince's tutor.

Step 5: Work in the background to build a kingdom of just and moral righteousness, a beacon Good across the world with the only "flaw" being that the royal family is notoriously slutty with countless bastard children, spreading the DNA of your phylactery as wide as possible.

Step 6: After reaching the end of your fake life, return to the present. If all went according to plan, your phylactery should now reside within the bodies of millions of people, including the entire royal family of the greatest kingdom in the world. If any foolish heroes wish to kill you, they will not only have to commit mass genocide, but they will also have to desecrate millions of bodies to destroy your phylactery, including digging up the graves of everyone for the past however many centuries that still have your phylactery in their bones. And after all that, they'll still probably fail because if they miss even one body, your phylactery is still safe.

Step 7: Do whatever you want as the undead abomination that you are, secure in the knowledge that no one will ever try to destroy you.

Sweet Jesus, that's eveil.
You'd have to be sealed forever in a way that you cannot destroy yourself I guess? So you'd need a failsafe against that as well I guess. But if you can time travel you probably have hyper epic capabilities.
Do you imagine growing simultaneously in all of the bodies of this descendants if you're destroyed? Or do you pick one?
Do they perhaps get any dark magic perks?
I'd seriously read this novel.



Some sort of invulnerable minute sarcophagus inside a star. Access to streaming services. Maybe it changes from star to star every once in a while.
The usual abjurations. Some star detonating traps that also teleport it somewhere else so the good guys can't come knocking in without the help of the gods or something in that order of magnitude.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I usually prefer to use baelnorn (good lich variant, MoF) to avoid the problem entirely, but if you have to have a phylactery, make it a fragment of voidstone, and send it spinning across the negative energy plane.

[Efrate]

Inside an otherwise unremarkable golem. encase In riverine first if you must but have it inside one (or more) of several stone golems. Iron has some value, flesh rots, clay is easily molded. But stone is difficult to break and not worth ripping apart. It's very nice in a room covered in anti magic with dead adventurer bodies "smashed" by the golems with loot on them in various stages of rumination. If in a room with multiple golems and blanketed in anti magic have it be in one of several destroyed golem left in said area.

[InvisibleBison]

Basic Scenario - for a lich who's just getting started: Planar bind an earth elemental. Have it hollow out a small room ~10 miles underground. Line the walls of the room with lead and fill it with poisonous gas. Stash your phylactery in the room, along with whatever undead or construct guardians you can obtain. Any would-be phylactery smashers would have difficulty finding the room, as the lead lining blocks most divinations. If they manage to find its location, they'll have to teleport into it with at most a 76% chance of success unless they're able to use greater teleport. Once they get there, they'll have to deal with the extreme heat (assuming a roughly earthlike planet, temperatures 10 miles underground would be around 800 to 900 degrees Fahrenheit), the poisonous gas, and the guardians, at least one of which they're likely to be unprepared for.

More Advanced Scenario - for a lich who's amassed a good amount of resources: Construct a few dozen of the rooms from the basic scenario. Put a skeleton and a teleport object trap in each one. Order the skeleton to activate the trap whenever anyone other than you arrives in the room. Thus, if the phylactery-smashers manage to get to the room that actually has your phylactery in it it will be immediately teleported to another room, greatly increasing the amount of work that needs to be done to actually smash the phylactery and putting the smashers at a commensurately greater risk of being killed by the guardians of one of the rooms.

[sleepyphoenixx]

I take a completely unremarkable rock (something hard like granite), ward it against divination and drop it at the bottom of an cave that has similar rocks.
Then i put some decent treasure there, create some undead guardians and ward the place with everything in the books.

Anyone who gets through the defenses will hopefully assume they're protecting the treasure and leave the rocks alone.

[Rijan_Sai]

Amounts of Pure EVIL
:smalleek:
I, too, enjoy destroying a beehive with a nuclear warhead! :smallwink:

Right... so...

*Note: If Arcane Genesis allows for planar-trait control, can skip the first two steps.*
1) Become Epic-leveled (before or after lichdom is not too important.)

2) Research an epic version of Genesis that allows for full planar-trait control.

3) Create a demi-plane with the Fast-flowing Time and Major Positive-Dominant planar traits.*

4) Once expanded enough, build your lair/keep/castle; in one of the hardest to access areas, build a "Treasure Trove."

5(optional-if Epic level)) Research a variant of Fragmented Phylactery (CoR37), and use it to fill the "Treasure Trove" as much as possible (magically disguising them with the "standard" defenses, as usual), supplementing other treasures as needed to fill most of the room. Also spread out a few of them throughout the cosmology (Kingdom treasure vaults; dragon hoards (<-pre-arrange this one with the dragon if possible); etc.) Not a lot, but enough that they will be difficult to track down...

6) Set up a separate. "Teleport-access Only" chamber for step 8.

7) "Recruit" a small army of undead creatures to guard your lair.

8) Never leave. Do all your adventuring "eviling" anything-you-would-want-to-do-for-the-rest-of-your-existence through use of the Astral Projection spell.**

*Fast-flowing Time: You're undead, so the passage of time is really no concern; also, while you may need to take some time in your sanctum for research/spell recovery/whatever, your "adventuring time" on (i.e.) the Material Plane is not delayed.
Major Positive-Dominant: Look at the entry for Positive-Dominant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm#positiveDominant) planes, then the entry for Undead (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#undeadType). Now read them again. Note that the undead entry does not specifically call out positive energy as harming undead, and also that the "fast healing special quality works..." and that undead are immune to "any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects or is harmless)."
So now any adventurer that wants to permanently remove the cosmology of you has to:
Find your demi-plane; figure out how to access it; deal with a small army of undead with potentially NI HP; find your "Treasure Trove"; determine which (if any) are the "True Phylactery"; and destroy it (or "them", if step 5 was completed). All while dealing the potential time-bomb of the Positive Energy Demi-plane they stepped into!
None of those are insurmountable by the determined adventurer, but certainly enough of a delay for an escape, if needed!

Oh! Almost forgot: if you are a wizard-base, make sure to either take the Eidetic Spellcaster ACF (Drag. 357 pg. 89), or have some form of alternate spellbook (CAr 186) for at least the most important spells (Plane Shift/Teleport/Whatever else may be needed) - recommended tatoos, carved into your bones if need be. Those should reform with you.

**Out of curiosity, what actually happens if a Githyanki(?) attacks (and even destroys) a lich's silver cord while they are astral projecting? I would guess the lich would be "killed" and reform 1d10 days later as normal but I'm not sure... (also, when you have created a "new physical body" on another plane, can you return to the Astral Plane, or are you stuck there until the body is destroyed and you are returned to your primary body?)

[King of Nowhere]

those things rely on some specificities of my campaign world, but here is how some of my most powerful liches protected themselves

1) give your philactery to minions allies. for this to work, you need allies you can trust. if you are the strongest wizard loial to a major nation, or the high priest of a widespread religion, then giving your philactery to your trusted underlings is the most sensible approach.

2) put your philactery in an anonymous safety in a bank. this works because in my world there are banks with the protections needed to keep off even high level adventurers. of course, if they have this kind of power, then they are also pretty competent and they will certainly figure out that you're giving them your philactery. they will ask you for a steep price, but as you are a high level spellcaster, you can barter it with a few days every year of working to reinforce their magical protections.

3) cast the best anti-divinations available on the phylactery, encase it in lead, then drop the thing in magma to create a perfect ordinary-looking rock. hide it in a very remote, but unremarkable, place. in my setting the best choice is the moon, as teleporting there won't work and there's no known workaround to get there than spending several years flying.

4) don't instigate conflicts.
seriously, avoid giving powerful people reasons to try to kill you. you'd be surprised how effective that is at curtailing the number of people actually trying to kill you.


Step 1: Disguise yourself as a living person, preferably an elf. Use whatever means necessary to ensure that this disguise can remain flawless for hundreds of years (slightly modify the disguise as necessary to make it appear like you're gradually aging).

Step 2: Travel back in time as far as you can go, the further the better.

Step 3: Find (or create) a royal couple with fertility issues. Approach them as a friendly wizard and offer your services to help them produce their heir. Discretely polymorph your phylactery into a fertilized egg which you then magically implant into the queen.

Step 4: Your phylactery becomes the prince of the kingdom, and when you are offered a reward, request only that you continue your services to the crown by serving as the new prince's tutor.

Step 5: Work in the background to build a kingdom of just and moral righteousness, a beacon Good across the world with the only "flaw" being that the royal family is notoriously slutty with countless bastard children, spreading the DNA of your phylactery as wide as possible.

Step 6: After reaching the end of your fake life, return to the present. If all went according to plan, your phylactery should now reside within the bodies of millions of people, including the entire royal family of the greatest kingdom in the world. If any foolish heroes wish to kill you, they will not only have to commit mass genocide, but they will also have to desecrate millions of bodies to destroy your phylactery, including digging up the graves of everyone for the past however many centuries that still have your phylactery in their bones. And after all that, they'll still probably fail because if they miss even one body, your phylactery is still safe.

Step 7: Do whatever you want as the undead abomination that you are, secure in the knowledge that no one will ever try to destroy you.

would that actually work?:smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:
making your philactery a living person, and then having all offspring of this person be also your philacteries, would require not just bending the rules, but throwing them out of the window.

[GrayDeath]

I take a completely unremarkable rock (something hard like granite), ward it against divination and drop it at the bottom of an cave that has similar rocks.
Then i put some decent treasure there, create some undead guardians and ward the place with everything in the books.

Anyone who gets through the defenses will hopefully assume they're protecting the treasure and leave the rocks alone.

Without knowing the exact setting and variant of rules available, that.

With it, I`df probably try to create a non glossy, black, extrahard one that survives easily in space, bind a "Return to plane X, place X" (namelky my supersecret plane i us eONLY for hiding) to it, and send it off into the voids of outer space.


those things rely on some specificities of my campaign world, but here is how some of my most powerful liches protected themselves

1) give your philactery to minions allies. for this to work, you need allies you can trust. if you are the strongest wizard loial to a major nation, or the high priest of a widespread religion, then giving your philactery to your trusted underlings is the most sensible approach.

2) put your philactery in an anonymous safety in a bank. this works because in my world there are banks with the protections needed to keep off even high level adventurers. of course, if they have this kind of power, then they are also pretty competent and they will certainly figure out that you're giving them your philactery. they will ask you for a steep price, but as you are a high level spellcaster, you can barter it with a few days every year of working to reinforce their magical protections.

3) cast the best anti-divinations available on the phylactery, encase it in lead, then drop the thing in magma to create a perfect ordinary-looking rock. hide it in a very remote, but unremarkable, place. in my setting the best choice is the moon, as teleporting there won't work and there's no known workaround to get there than spending several years flying.

4) don't instigate conflicts.
seriously, avoid giving powerful people reasons to try to kill you. you'd be surprised how effective that is at curtailing the number of people actually trying to kill you.



would that actually work?:smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:
making your philactery a living person, and then having all offspring of this person be also your philacteries, would require not just bending the rules, but throwing them out of the window.

Sadly, no.

The Phylactery must be "an Item". As soon as it is true polimorphed, it stops being your phylactery until that change is removed, and if you makle a fertile foetus out of it, it cant be returned to its original form as soon as it is born.

Hella cool idea though. ^^

[noob]

those things rely on some specificities of my campaign world, but here is how some of my most powerful liches protected themselves

1) give your philactery to minions allies. for this to work, you need allies you can trust. if you are the strongest wizard loial to a major nation, or the high priest of a widespread religion, then giving your philactery to your trusted underlings is the most sensible approach.

2) put your philactery in an anonymous safety in a bank. this works because in my world there are banks with the protections needed to keep off even high level adventurers. of course, if they have this kind of power, then they are also pretty competent and they will certainly figure out that you're giving them your philactery. they will ask you for a steep price, but as you are a high level spellcaster, you can barter it with a few days every year of working to reinforce their magical protections.

3) cast the best anti-divinations available on the phylactery, encase it in lead, then drop the thing in magma to create a perfect ordinary-looking rock. hide it in a very remote, but unremarkable, place. in my setting the best choice is the moon, as teleporting there won't work and there's no known workaround to get there than spending several years flying.

4) don't instigate conflicts.
seriously, avoid giving powerful people reasons to try to kill you. you'd be surprised how effective that is at curtailing the number of people actually trying to kill you.



would that actually work?:smallconfused::smallconfused::smallconfused:
making your philactery a living person, and then having all offspring of this person be also your philacteries, would require not just bending the rules, but throwing them out of the window.
If you make your phylactery be an ooze since oozes turns into smaller copies of themselves would the smaller copies get to be phylacteries?
Are cells oozes?
If cells works like ooze if someone gets to have one of their cells become a level 1 wizard would there be a risk to get a tumour made out of a whole lot of small wizards?

Essentially if it works it means that everything was already messed up and that everyone was at risk to die killed by armies of hundreds of billions of tiny wizards.

[zlefin]

I make the standard box phylactery and put it on my mantle. Once I've achieved lichdom, I don't really need anything else, and conquest is such a bother. So I just sit around at home all day being a couch potato, and scrying or something to get an entertainment source. I don't plan on ever going out anymore now that I'm immortal and don't need to.

[Telonius]

An intelligent but nondescript sword magically disguised to faintly radiate and detect as good-aligned with the special purpose of protecting me, given out to “chosen ones” that it may pick, itself, and generally going on quests to do good deeds.


I pulled a version of this on my players once. Bad guy was a Dracolich. It kept a +5 Dragonbane sword in his hoard. The phylactery was embedded in the lead scabbard. So, if it was ever defeated, the heroes would go out and slay some more dragons, creating more dead dragon bodies for the Dracolich to inhabit.

[Segev]

I pulled a version of this on my players once. Bad guy was a Dracolich. It kept a +5 Dragonbane sword in his hoard. The phylactery was embedded in the lead scabbard. So, if it was ever defeated, the heroes would go out and slay some more dragons, creating more dead dragon bodies for the Dracolich to inhabit.

Nicely done! Evil and pragmatic!

[aglondier]

I pulled a version of this on my players once. Bad guy was a Dracolich. It kept a +5 Dragonbane sword in his hoard. The phylactery was embedded in the lead scabbard. So, if it was ever defeated, the heroes would go out and slay some more dragons, creating more dead dragon bodies for the Dracolich to inhabit.

A magebane weapon would go a fair way to achieving this for a regular lich...it's easy enough to disguise the magical aura to hide its true nature from the players.

[Pinkie Pyro]

Step 1: Disguise yourself as a living person, preferably an elf. Use whatever means necessary to ensure that this disguise can remain flawless for hundreds of years (slightly modify the disguise as necessary to make it appear like you're gradually aging).

Step 2: Travel back in time as far as you can go, the further the better.

Step 3: Find (or create) a royal couple with fertility issues. Approach them as a friendly wizard and offer your services to help them produce their heir. Discretely polymorph your phylactery into a fertilized egg which you then magically implant into the queen.

Step 4: Your phylactery becomes the prince of the kingdom, and when you are offered a reward, request only that you continue your services to the crown by serving as the new prince's tutor.

Step 5: Work in the background to build a kingdom of just and moral righteousness, a beacon Good across the world with the only "flaw" being that the royal family is notoriously slutty with countless bastard children, spreading the DNA of your phylactery as wide as possible.

Step 6: After reaching the end of your fake life, return to the present. If all went according to plan, your phylactery should now reside within the bodies of millions of people, including the entire royal family of the greatest kingdom in the world. If any foolish heroes wish to kill you, they will not only have to commit mass genocide, but they will also have to desecrate millions of bodies to destroy your phylactery, including digging up the graves of everyone for the past however many centuries that still have your phylactery in their bones. And after all that, they'll still probably fail because if they miss even one body, your phylactery is still safe.

Step 7: Do whatever you want as the undead abomination that you are, secure in the knowledge that no one will ever try to destroy you.

That's great until another wizard uses teleport through time to go back and stop you from starting the royal family in the first place. saves them a lot of effort.

[Eldonauran]

That's great until another wizard uses teleport through time to go back and stop you from starting the royal family in the first place. saves them a lot of effort.I'm just curious as to how in the hell he was able to polymorph a phylactery into a fertilized egg. Pretty sure that 'creating new life' is something limited to epic level magic.

[Segev]

I'm just curious as to how in the hell he was able to polymorph a phylactery into a fertilized egg. Pretty sure that 'creating new life' is something limited to epic level magic.

Polymorph any object can turn a statue into a human, at least temporarily. There are probably tricks for managing to step it into permanency.

[Celestia]

That's great until another wizard uses teleport through time to go back and stop you from starting the royal family in the first place. saves them a lot of effort.
I mean, erasing the greatest force for Good from history is arguably even worse than killing a bunch of people.

[PraxisVetli]

Shoutout to Aumvor's Fragmented Phylactery for splitting your phylactery up. I guess they forgot to trademark Horcruxes?

[noob]

Shoutout to Aumvor's Fragmented Phylactery for splitting your phylactery up. I guess they forgot to trademark Horcruxes?

In my opinion Horcruxes are just voldemort using the human heritage feat (it is specified that voldemort is half human) in order to be able to get the lich template multiple times.
(Hence the horrific evil act for each Horcruxe and Horcruxes lasting forever and voldemort saying that by making multiple horcruxes he would be more powerful: all points toward staking the lich template multiple times and not toward that epic spell)

[Vaern]

I'm fairly certain I've seen somewhere that a dead lich grafts is undead spirit to a nearby corpse, mindless undead, or weak minded creature within a few miles of its phylactery. I saw someone else mention the same thing in another thread yesterday, and Google turned up the same result for me just now. A phylactery stashed in a demiplane, launched out to space, cast into the ocean, or otherwise isolated from civilization is likely to not function depending on how your DM plays it, unless you have a way of supplying it with corpses to ressurect you.

[noob]

I'm fairly certain I've seen somewhere that a dead lich grafts is undead spirit to a nearby corpse, mindless undead, or weak minded creature within a few miles of its phylactery. I saw someone else mention the same thing in another thread yesterday, and Google turned up the same result for me just now. A phylactery stashed in a demiplane, launched out to space, cast into the ocean, or otherwise isolated from civilization is likely to not function depending on how your DM plays it, unless you have a way of supplying it with corpses to ressurect you.

It depends on the phylactery and of how you became a lich.
As some people said "each lich is unique"

[Alcore]

Well let's see...


As a lich i won't have the physical needs of the living. My phylactery will likely radiate Evil with a capital E. Additionally it will radiate other magical auras as i make it resist 20 versus the usual damages (fire, cold, electric, acid and sonic). So what i will want to do is to physically place this object someplace you can't walk to.

So i will build a tomb for me. A small two room affair. In my unmarked casket will be some random dude with great bone structure. Decked out like some viking warlord. A few feet below that is a 5 by 5 by 5 cell lined with lead with a simple pedestal with my phylactery sitting on it. Formed from spells the cell is technically encased in stone and lead. Not like i need to breath, right?

It will be an adamantine mace with a hollow handle. If the handle is also adamantine then it will still have hardness 20.



Also note that i am a level 20 dread necromancer (Heroes of Horror? Libris Mortis? I think the class name is slightly off) that is a level 1 to 20 progression that culminates into lichdom. So wealth will not be an issue.


Now another feature of the class is the ability to cast while wearing light armor with no penalties. They also have slightly better than wizard BAB and health. With four feats (two from core and two from the book that gave us warmages) i can run around in full plate mail and cast spells without penalty. This may sound like a tagent but it is not.


I want to be known for my martial abilities. I want others to think death knight or some avenger spirit thingie. I don't just want it to be hidden; i want my phylactery to be unlooked for. I want my phylactery to come in a shape that people will find value in. You don't toss an awesome mace into mount doom...


My defense is shattering all notions and expectations of what a lich should be.

[Fouredged Sword]

Use Planer Binding to summon a Rajkar. They are evil demon goats with access to fabricate at will. Have them use their material component-less fabricate to coat the small locket you use as your phylactery first with a coating of lead sufficient to block divination and then a few thousand layers of atom thick riverine layers sandwiched between layers of adamantine. Because Riverine is immune to HP damage and can only be broken by specific spells and adamantine blocks line of effect this means that anyone wishing to destroy the phylactery needs to expend a couple of thousand spell slots to get through your ablative armor. Pay the evil demon goat by casting planer binding to pull a bunch of his demon goat friends and unleash them on primitive unsuspecting norther barbarians.

If you ever suspect that your phylactery has been taken from it's hiding spot, don't go attempt to fetch it. Immediately cast wish and use the instant relocation feature to move your phylactery from wherever it is on any plane directly to a new hiding spot. This effect ignores local conditions so it's almost impossible to stop.

Alternatively you POA your phylactery into a newborn baby via a chain of castings that give it a permanent duration. Place the baby in a loving foster home in some backwater. When they die you just collect the corpse and POA it into a new baby. This is compatible with all of the above.

[Aldrakan]

Three liches in my setting with different approaches. All of them assume that being killed isn't something that's going to happen very often:

1. Embed the phylactery into an ancient sea serpent, which in Pathfinder have constant nondetection. Hard to scry, constantly moving somewhere within hundreds of miles of ocean.
2. Make the phylactery the core of an enhanced skeletal champion dragon and fight alongside it, deliberate risk-taking intended to combat falling into the torpor liches often suffer, which they fear more than death.
3. Secretly not being a lich at all, but an immortal wizard who uses shapechanging, illusion, and the Clone spell to fake it. Enemies waste time searching for a phylactery that doesn't exist.

[Vaern]

Now another feature of the class is the ability to cast while wearing light armor with no penalties. They also have slightly better than wizard BAB and health. With four feats (two from core and two from the book that gave us warmages) i can run around in full plate mail and cast spells without penalty. This may sound like a tagent but it is not.
Why so many feats? I would think that battle caster and medium armor proficiency to wear mithral full plate would be good enough. Or even just mithral medium armor for no feat tax - I'll generally do mithral breastplate as a bard.

[Segev]

3. Secretly not being a lich at all, but an immortal wizard who uses shapechanging, illusion, and the Clone spell to fake it. Enemies waste time searching for a phylactery that doesn't exist.

I like this because it's a good reminder that lichdom is not the only option. Serial clone spells work very well, as do a few other options. Lichdom has the benefit of requiring nothing beyond its 1d10 days of downtime if you do get destroyed, as well as some nice perks in terms of power-ups, but it also (if you are fully aware of mechanical costs) has a level adjustment that can slow your magical advancement.

There's a fragility to dispel magic or disjunction that would need special attention to overcome, but a magic item that is permanently a use-activated magic jar would enable you to body-hop more or less at will. Including into undead.

I personally think serial cloning is a BETTER overall solution to immortality. It's cheaper in the short run, more immediate for recovering from death, and can keep you young. Lichdom/undeath is mostly attractive for long-term expense (unless the phylactery is destroyed, it's a one-off cost), and the lack of need to sustain yourself. (This is actually one of the reasons I loathe 5e's change to liches. Making them need to feed souls to their phylacteries defeats the primary purpose to tolerating lichdom's downsides rather than becoming something more fun, like a vampire. The whole point for a lot of liches is being able to withdraw from the world and just do research on their own for years on end. If you have to emerge to feed regularly, that's entirely defeating the purpose!

[Zerryzerry]

1)put the strongest Endure Elements spell on it
2)Put Permanency on the spell
3)put the strongest NonDetection Spell on it
4)repeat the Permanency
5)glue it on something that the wind can move
6)Set a Twinned/delayed/echoed spell of Gust of Wind on the item is glued on
7)Cast a Twinned/echoed Teleport on everything into outer space
8)Sleep 20 years

My philactery should be at enough distance from whatever planet i am living on to be outside of range even from epic magic.
Oh, and i need the spell that brings me back to a set location no matter the distance as a contingency. I cannot remember the name now

[GrayDeath]

In my opinions Horcruxes are just voldemort using the human heritage feat (it is specified that voldemort is half human) in order to be able to get the lich template multiple times.
(Hence the horrific evil act for each Horcruxe and Horcruxes lasting forever and voldemort saying that by making multiple horcruxes he would be more powerful: all points toward staking the lich template multiple times and not toward that epic spell)

That...makes an awful lot of sense.

Also why he is so insane. He must be, all that RAWness in his brain^^


Well let's see...


As a lich i won't have the physical needs of the living. My phylactery will likely radiate Evil with a capital E. Additionally it will radiate other magical auras as i make it resist 20 versus the usual damages (fire, cold, electric, acid and sonic). So what i will want to do is to physically place this object someplace you can't walk to.

So i will build a tomb for me. A small two room affair. In my unmarked casket will be some random dude with great bone structure. Decked out like some viking warlord. A few feet below that is a 5 by 5 by 5 cell lined with lead with a simple pedestal with my phylactery sitting on it. Formed from spells the cell is technically encased in stone and lead. Not like i need to breath, right?

It will be an adamantine mace with a hollow handle. If the handle is also adamantine then it will still have hardness 20.


Now another feature of the class is the ability to cast while wearing light armor with no penalties. They also have slightly better than wizard BAB and health. With four feats (two from core and two from the book that gave us warmages) i can run around in full plate mail and cast spells without penalty. This may sound like a tagent but it is not.


I want to be known for my martial abilities. I want others to think death knight or some avenger spirit thingie. I don't just want it to be hidden; i want my phylactery to be unlooked for. I want my phylactery to come in a shape that people will find value in. You don't toss an awesome mace into mount doom...


My defense is shattering all notions and expectations of what a lich should be.

Mind if I steal that?

[Elbeyon]

I mean, erasing the greatest force for Good from history is arguably even worse than killing a bunch of people.

Similar idea. Turn the phylactery into pandora's jar. Store the greatest evils ever to exist inside the prison phylactery. If anyone wants to destroy it, they have to release armageddon. As long as having the lich around is less worse than all the stored combined evils in the phylactery it should be fine. A bonus if paladins fight to protect a lich's phylactery in order to protect the material plane from being scourged. Helping the lich is the lesser evil than damming the world.

[Celestia]

Similar idea. Turn the phylactery into pandora's jar. Store the greatest evils ever to exist inside the prison phylactery. If anyone wants to destroy it, they have to release armageddon. As long as having the lich around is less worse than all the stored combined evils in the phylactery it should be fine. A bonus if paladins fight to protect a lich's phylactery in order to protect the material plane from being scourged. Helping the lich is the lesser evil than damming the world.
That would certainly work, too. See, all these plans to make the phylactery unfindable/unreachable/indestructible/etc. are dooned to fail because they don't take into account the sheer willpower and persistence of heroes. No matter how hard you try, they will always try just a little harder, and they will always find/reach/destroy your phylactery. The trick, then, is to make the heroes not want to destroy it. If destroying your phylactery is worse than leaving you be, they won't destroy it. That's what Morgoth did when he turned all of Middle-Earth into his soul jar, and look! He didn't die! Of course, you do have to come up with a plan to avoid eternal imprisonment, but that was a problem, anyways.

[TheStranger]

Alternatively you POA your phylactery into a newborn baby via a chain of castings that give it a permanent duration. Place the baby in a loving foster home in some backwater. When they die you just collect the corpse and POA it into a new baby. This is compatible with all of the above.
Having a lich’s soul inside him has got to have some side effects for that kid. I want to play a game as that character.

As a GM, though, I’d probably rule that, by virtue of having placed your soul in a living body, you’ve effectively reincarnated yourself and are at risk of losing your status as a lich. Not as a “gotcha” thing where you just lose all your powers because I’m a jerk, but as a plot hook for some kind of zany adventure.

[Malphegor]

I’m tempted to go full koschei the deathless on this.

Step 1: My phylactery is a needle, as thin as one can get.

Step 2: It is (via magic presumably) placed inside an unfertilised egg.

Step 3: This egg is (via magic presumably) placed inside a undead rabbit.

Step 4: The rabbit is in a ordinary chest.

Step 5: The ordinary chest is in a magically sealed super chest.

Step 6: The magically sealed super chest is inside a much larger but ordinary cargo trunk.

Step 7: Now we’re gonna take a Baba Yaga approach and nail this trunk to an effigy of a large bird built with a sort of house instead of its rearward torso.

Step 8: Chuck it into a demiplane where failure to state the key phrase ‘I am koschei the deathless. Go away intruders’ every 9 hours causes one to be dismissed from that plane.

Step 9: expect the inevitability of someone trying to destroy it if I make myself known as a lich to the world because OF COURSE. The Inevitables alone are enough, but the adventurers are going to come for me eventually, but I’ll give them a fight worth prolonging my life for. Gather spells, weapons, minons, techniques, and prepare for battle with anyone who dares come for me

[sleepyphoenixx]

I like this because it's a good reminder that lichdom is not the only option. Serial clone spells work very well, as do a few other options. Lichdom has the benefit of requiring nothing beyond its 1d10 days of downtime if you do get destroyed, as well as some nice perks in terms of power-ups, but it also (if you are fully aware of mechanical costs) has a level adjustment that can slow your magical advancement.
My go-to would be Astral Seed if i can get it. It lacks Clone's downside of having to take 2d4 months to grow a new clone when you need to use it.
It also lacks any of the moral complications of lichdom and the heroes coming to kill the undead monstrosity, though if you're evil anyway Body Leech is also an option.


There's a fragility to dispel magic or disjunction that would need special attention to overcome, but a magic item that is permanently a use-activated magic jar would enable you to body-hop more or less at will. Including into undead.
Something like the Amulet of Spirit Storing (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/MagicItems.pdf)?
It's pretty nice since you can use the MIC rules to also make it an Amulet of Wisdom or something else relatively common and use Magic Aura to hide the spirit storing aspect.
Also significantly cheaper than lichdom.


I personally think serial cloning is a BETTER overall solution to immortality. It's cheaper in the short run, more immediate for recovering from death, and can keep you young. Lichdom/undeath is mostly attractive for long-term expense (unless the phylactery is destroyed, it's a one-off cost), and the lack of need to sustain yourself. (This is actually one of the reasons I loathe 5e's change to liches. Making them need to feed souls to their phylacteries defeats the primary purpose to tolerating lichdom's downsides rather than becoming something more fun, like a vampire. The whole point for a lot of liches is being able to withdraw from the world and just do research on their own for years on end. If you have to emerge to feed regularly, that's entirely defeating the purpose!
I don't actually see any benefit to lichdom that you couldn't also get with a Ring of Sustenance and an Endure Elements spell.
Sure, undead immunities are nice, but they also come with new vulnerabilities and many automatic enemies. If all i wanted was to be left alone i'd rather not have the latter.

[Segev]

Having a lich’s soul inside him has got to have some side effects for that kid. I want to play a game as that character.

As a GM, though, I’d probably rule that, by virtue of having placed your soul in a living body, you’ve effectively reincarnated yourself and are at risk of losing your status as a lich. Not as a “gotcha” thing where you just lose all your powers because I’m a jerk, but as a plot hook for some kind of zany adventure.

Technically, the phylactery stores the "life force," not the soul.

[GrayDeath]

Soooo, does it help one aiming for immortality (though not necessarily as a Lich, they tend to have stupid requrements) if one is the new owner of Baba Yagas Hut?

`Cause my Character just happened to manage that via a combination of subterfuge, punching the hut KO, and having a sure way to keeep the Witch somewhere where she cant get out.

(I really might post the Campaign Journal some time, this is after all the first mostly proactive Evil Group I have played in that simply worked so far, and once we CENSORED well...)

[Segev]

Soooo, does it help one aiming for immortality (though not necessarily as a Lich, they tend to have stupid requrements) if one is the new owner of Baba Yagas Hut?

`Cause my Character just happened to manage that via a combination of subterfuge, punching the hut KO, and having a sure way to keeep the Witch somewhere where she cant get out.

(I really might post the Campaign Journal some time, this is after all the first mostly proactive Evil Group I have played in that simply worked so far, and once we CENSORED well...)

Not inherently, to my knowledge, but it sure can't hurt! Nice job! And good luck keeping the hag (I assume she's a hag?) contained; she's dangerous.

[GrayDeath]

Well, for now she is fighting the other problem mage we tricked into the "entrapped area". While we assume she will win, they are both very powerful and have deep reserves (luckily they hate each other^^), so we have a few days we think.

Lets hope we find a way to off her till then, ^^

[ross]

The phylactery is a proton selected at random from all protons in the observable universe, and covered by customized epic anti detection spells cast by enslaved deities.

[Fouredged Sword]

Another great option to hide your phylactery is to ensure the adventurers defend it for you. You can assume that the adventurers are going to find it eventually. There are spells to mess with the aura a magic item gives off so there is no reason your phylactery needs to LOOK like something evil.

The Sword of True Death is said to be a blade as old as the Lich Smarmypants himself. It is a +1 undeadbane greatsword. Legends of lore and divination all say that it holds the key to defeating the awful lich Smarmypants once and for all.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Another great option to hide your phylactery is to ensure the adventurers defend it for you. You can assume that the adventurers are going to find it eventually. There are spells to mess with the aura a magic item gives off so there is no reason your phylactery needs to LOOK like something evil.

The Sword of True Death is said to be a blade as old as the Lich Smarmypants himself. It is a +1 undeadbane greatsword. Legends of lore and divination all say that it holds the key to defeating the awful lich Smarmypants once and for all.

The problem with having your enemies unknowingly protect your phylactery is that you presumably reappear near it if killed.
Without your gear and probably with most of your spells expended (or you wouldn't have died).

I think even the most naive adventurer would get suspicious if the same naked lich keeps reappearing around him every 1d10 days.

[Aldrakan]

Another great option to hide your phylactery is to ensure the adventurers defend it for you. You can assume that the adventurers are going to find it eventually. There are spells to mess with the aura a magic item gives off so there is no reason your phylactery needs to LOOK like something evil.

The Sword of True Death is said to be a blade as old as the Lich Smarmypants himself. It is a +1 undeadbane greatsword. Legends of lore and divination all say that it holds the key to defeating the awful lich Smarmypants once and for all.

Although you're gonna feel really embarrassed if they use it to kill you then work it out what it is and you made a totally accurate fake prophecy about your own defeat.

[Fouredged Sword]

Although you're gonna feel really embarrassed if they use it to kill you then work it out what it is and you made a totally accurate fake prophecy about your own defeat.


The problem with having your enemies unknowingly protect your phylactery is that you presumably reappear near it if killed.
Without your gear and probably with most of your spells expended (or you wouldn't have died).

I think even the most naive adventurer would get suspicious if the same naked lich keeps reappearing around him every 1d10 days.

This is why every lich should have set up a contingency clone and then on top of that a contingency true resurrections set to go off in some empty but otherwise secure location with a spare spellbook.

To kill you they need to break your phylactery. Then they have to kill you. Then you have returned to life in a cloned body and they need to hunt you down and kill you before you can turn back into a lich. Then they have to hunt you down and do that a second time because you revived again.

You can set up a clone spell before turning yourself into a lich and the spell remains functional until you need it. True resurrection also can be used to revive you if you actually kick the bucket.

You could even treat it as a vacation. You're alive again. Go out and enjoy a tankard of ale and maybe spend a few decades getting married and raising some kids. Then you can turn yourself back into a lich and return to your research relaxed and refreshed.

[Segev]

This is why every lich should have set up a contingency clone and then on top of that a contingency true resurrections set to go off in some empty but otherwise secure location with a spare spellbook.

To kill you they need to break your phylactery. Then they have to kill you. Then you have returned to life in a cloned body and they need to hunt you down and kill you before you can turn back into a lich. Then they have to hunt you down and do that a second time because you revived again.

You can set up a clone spell before turning yourself into a lich and the spell remains functional until you need it. True resurrection also can be used to revive you if you actually kick the bucket.

You could even treat it as a vacation. You're alive again. Go out and enjoy a tankard of ale and maybe spend a few decades getting married and raising some kids. Then you can turn yourself back into a lich and return to your research relaxed and refreshed.

Technically, I don't think you count as "destroyed" until your body and your phylactery is destroyed, if you're a lich. Therefore, you're not a valid target for resurrection nor true resurrection while your phylactery remains intact.

Clone is a stickier matter. It doesn't specify that being undead prevents you from coming back. Interestingly, it ALSO specifies that your original body becomes "inert flesh, and cannot thereafter be raised from the dead." While taken as a whole, this would probably refer only to the limit on not bringing the now-inert flesh back to life as "you," one might also argue that as "inert flesh" it is no longer a valid target for anything that brings the dead to unlife, either. If you wanted to make very spurious claims, you could even suggest that it might turn an extant skeleton, zombie, lich, wight, or other undead into "inert flesh," instantly ending the undead existence as the person wakes up, alive, in the cloned body.

Now, since a lich would still technically have a phylactery, it's possible that even killing the clone just turns him back INTO a lich, so....

[Alcore]

Why so many feats? I would think that battle caster and medium armor proficiency to wear mithral full plate would be good enough. Or even just mithral medium armor for no feat tax - I'll generally do mithral breastplate as a bard.

Yeah... if DM rules that mithral also reduces proficiencies. I can see some of the logic there but full plate still doesn't quite move like a breastplate or chainmail.



Mind if I steal that?

Thank you. Yes.

(Though you have now failed at stealing for i am giving)


Be sure the decoy corpse has good bone structure. If the party is going to be spending time purifying it in the hopes of dispelling you as an undead vengeance spirit thingie it should be a corpse you want to look at. It's supposed to be you....

[Celestia]

Yeah... if DM rules that mithral also reduces proficiencies. I can see some of the logic there but full plate still doesn't quite move like a breastplate or chainmail.
By RAW, it does not. You need heavy armor proficiency to use mithral full plate. It just counts as medium for encumbrance and movement.

[Alcore]

By RAW, it does not. You need heavy armor proficiency to use mithral full plate. It just counts as medium for encumbrance and movement.
I know that. The person i had replyed to does not.

[Eldonauran]

By RAW, it does not. You need heavy armor proficiency to use mithral full plate, without taking penalties. It just counts as medium for encumbrance and movement.
Just a bit of clarification, for the benefit of others.

[Oberron]

I'd put my phylactery in a solid wall forcecage with a wierdstone in a hole about 100ft underground on the moon. Then slowly cover hundreds of other spots on the moon with the same set up except instead of a covered hole each will have their own tomb filled with undead elemental and other creatures that don't breath and have silent spell type SLA so they can still cast, but mostly magical traps of dispell magic and areas of anti-magic zones to remove possible buffs/items that would protect adventures from the lack of oxygen and atmosphere.

This set up alone should protect me until space ships and nonmagical travel to the moon is more common and by then I should be able to think of a new plan. Meanwhile when/if I die I reappear in an indescribable cube of force and greater teleport back to the planet into one of the many other tombs/crypts left as "fake" lair s with fake phylactery in, maybe check up on tombs once and a while and improve with other traps and creatures if I come across any adventures that might contain undead/outsiders/whatever.

[Lord Arkon]

My phylactery would be a gold coin of a kingdom completely unconnected to my life. I would, of course, use what magic I could to suppress its magical aura. It would be pressed into a book of coins, with several of its contemporaries. The book would be kept in my private library, which would only be accessible by teleportation through lead lining, and once I was capable would be on my personal demiplane. If my DM rules that a coin wouldn't be a valid phylactery, I would instead make it appear to be a common brick in my private library.

I would also keep some tombs defended with traps and undead minions across the land, with fake phylacteries in each one. These fake bases would also serve as laboratories for my important research, and I would operate under a different name for each one. My decision of which laboratory to use would be guided by my desire to avoid drawing attention to my activities. I might need to use a different lab every decade, but that just lets the mortals forget about the last time I needed test subjects.

[Vaern]

Yeah... if DM rules that mithral also reduces proficiencies. I can see some of the logic there but full plate still doesn't quite move like a breastplate or chainmail.



By RAW, it does not. You need heavy armor proficiency to use mithral full plate. It just counts as medium for encumbrance and movement.
I don't see how you figure that. It says it's considered one category lighter for movement and other limitations. "Other limitations" would include proficiencies, armored casting, and anything else that is limited by your armor's weight class.
There is a description of some non-magical mithral chainmail in the DMG which says it is considered light armor. It doesn't say it "counts as light for encumbrance and movement" - it is simply light armor. There's also the mithral full plate of speed, albeit enchanted, which explicitly says it is medium armor. As far as I can tell, there's all of the evidence to indicate that mithral full plate is medium armor that requires medium armor proficiency and none to indicate otherwise.

MIC also specifically notes that mithral armor is treated as a category lighter for the purpose of proficiencies. Races of the Wild also has a table of armors made from special materials listing mithral scale mail, chainmail, and breastplate as light, and full plate, half-plate, splint mail, and banded mail as medium armor. That seems like a pretty open-and-closed argument, but since I fully expect to hear "They're not core so they don't count" I thought it would be better to lead with examples from the core book that defines the material to begin with instead. There's nothing in the DMG to indicate that the armor's weight change doesn't affect its proficiency requirement and everything in the DMG and every book since to indicate that it does.

[Segev]

My phylactery would be a gold coin of a kingdom completely unconnected to my life. I would, of course, use what magic I could to suppress its magical aura. It would be pressed into a book of coins, with several of its contemporaries. The book would be kept in my private library, which would only be accessible by teleportation through lead lining, and once I was capable would be on my personal demiplane. If my DM rules that a coin wouldn't be a valid phylactery, I would instead make it appear to be a common brick in my private library.

I would also keep some tombs defended with traps and undead minions across the land, with fake phylacteries in each one. These fake bases would also serve as laboratories for my important research, and I would operate under a different name for each one. My decision of which laboratory to use would be guided by my desire to avoid drawing attention to my activities. I might need to use a different lab every decade, but that just lets the mortals forget about the last time I needed test subjects.

If you're making it an unremarkable coin, why not just put it into circulation? Good luck finding a specific quarter amidst all the coins in the USA.

[Celestia]

If you're making it an unremarkable coin, why not just put it into circulation? Good luck finding a specific quarter amidst all the coins in the USA.
That's where I thought that post was going, and I was confused when it turned out I was wrong.

[noob]

It is a double twist.
The oracle says "the phylactery is a coin" thanks to the divine portfolio sense of some deity.
Then the heroes seeks among all the towns all the coins and remelts all of them.
None of them was the phylactery.
Then the lich goes and taunts them and dance about how they are never going to find the phylactery among all the coins in circulation.
Afterwards the heroes goes on a dragon rampage and melts all the hoards.
The cycle of taunting continues indefinitely.
I think it was the intent.
What is the point of becoming a lich or any other form of BBEG if you can not taunt heroes?

[Lord Arkon]

If you're making it an unremarkable coin, why not just put it into circulation? Good luck finding a specific quarter amidst all the coins in the USA.

Paranoia. If I don't know where it is, someone could could be melting it down to make some noble a new goblet, or feeding it to an golden gorger, or it could be in the hoard of some dragon that decides to melt its bed into a new shape. Setting up in a coin collecting book increases its perceived value without screaming 'magic object'. It gets framed as an art piece the thieves can sell for a greater quantity of gold.

Of course, this is all for if I were a player lich. As a DM, I would be a bit less inconspicuous; to avoid my PCs melting every coin they get and tearing every dungeon down to the last brick. There's a point where the paranoia of the PCs just gets tedious, and I don't want to drive them there.

[Alcore]

I don't see how you figure that. It says it's considered one category lighter for movement and other limitations. "Other limitations" would include proficiencies, armored casting, and anything else that is limited by your armor's weight class.
There is a description of some non-magical mithral chainmail in the DMG which says it is considered light armor. It doesn't say it "counts as light for encumbrance and movement" - it is simply light armor. There's also the mithral full plate of speed, albeit enchanted, which explicitly says it is medium armor. As far as I can tell, there's all of the evidence to indicate that mithral full plate is medium armor that requires medium armor proficiency and none to indicate otherwise.

MIC also specifically notes that mithral armor is treated as a category lighter for the purpose of proficiencies. Races of the Wild also has a table of armors made from special materials listing mithral scale mail, chainmail, and breastplate as light, and full plate, half-plate, splint mail, and banded mail as medium armor. That seems like a pretty open-and-closed argument, but since I fully expect to hear "They're not core so they don't count" I thought it would be better to lead with examples from the core book that defines the material to begin with instead. There's nothing in the DMG to indicate that the armor's weight change doesn't affect its proficiency requirement and everything in the DMG and every book since to indicate that it does.
Indeed. But it is still a topic of contention (you even said why) and thus a DM's word can make or break this. It shifts from RAW to RAI as we can't be sure. And, while you did give good sources, you have mentioned why some will disallow. Even if you can figure it out doesn't mean we have to agree.

I am stating that some will say No and that is a fact regardless of evidence.

What is MIC?

[Alcore]

Paranoia. If I don't know where it is, someone could could be melting it down to make some noble a new goblet, or feeding it to an golden gorger, or it could be in the hoard of some dragon that decides to melt its bed into a new shape. Setting up in a coin collecting book increases its perceived value without screaming 'magic object'. It gets framed as an art piece the thieves can sell for a greater quantity of gold.
depending on the edition (or clone) the act of turning it into a phylactery counts as a magic item which means its hardness and HP both increase by an incredibly large amount. It is unlikely to be melted into anything and will be that oddly indestructible coin that some paranoid noble will put under a microscope...

I have not knowledge of a Golden Gorger but the coin might survive (its saves are based off a level 11 at the least when unattended) but eventually it will fail its save. Or force the DM to determine where the gold goes and how quickly; out the backend I assume. A dragon couldn't destroy it on the first try (unless it was sitting on top of the horde the coin will go unnoticed) but I am not too sure the lich can respawn with it entombed into gold.


In fact I think that Is a horrible way to hide it. Sure, if in circulation, it won't even be found by the group of heroes that actually care but accidents happen and a lich needs to regrow a body.

[Segev]

If the lich appears near the phylactery, this could be a source of occasional mass murders. The coin is unlikely to be implicated, but every few decades (or longer, the lich should hope), some people see something weird happening near the coin, and the lich slaughters all witnesses before teleporting away and dropping the coin back into circulation elsewhere.

[Celestia]

If the lich appears near the phylactery, this could be a source of occasional mass murders. The coin is unlikely to be implicated, but every few decades (or longer, the lich should hope), some people see something weird happening near the coin, and the lich slaughters all witnesses before teleporting away and dropping the coin back into circulation elsewhere.
It would be better to drop that last part. If someone notices the lich specifically claiming and moving one coin, the jig is up. Just slaughter everyone and leave. Ignore the coin. No one will ever draw the connection between the lich and coins because literally everyone everywhere has coins. That is, as long as the lich doesn't do anything suspicious with a coin.

Edit: Actually, I've thought about it a bit more, and I've cone to the conclusion that disguising the phylactery as a coin is really quite dumb. So, it'll only take a couple random slaughters for someone to figure out that the lich is respawning near their phylactery, and since the location of these respawns keeps moving, probably quite drastically in some cases, the phylactery must also be moving. The lich clearly isn't the one moving it, as they keep popping up around people, specifically. Thus, it's being moved by the people, meaning it's disguised as a mundane object. What's the only mundane object that passes hands over and over? Money. It's not the sort of logical conclusion that the average person would likely make, but someone like Sherlock certainly would, and in a D&D setting, there are plenty of people as smart or smarter than him.

[Vaern]

What is MIC?
MIC is Magic Item Compendium. It's a compilation of magic items and equipment collected from a number of different books across all of 3.5, with a few revisions made to effects and pricing for the sake of balance and consistency. For example, Complete Arcane has several metamagic rods printed using the pricing formula that was used for 3.0; MIC reprinted them using the updated method of pricing metamagic rods for 3.5. When it's available and in play it generally takes precedence over conflicting text regarding the functionality of items in other books, since it largely consists of revisions and errata to older content and its primary purpose is to serve as the table's primary source of equipment.

[Segev]

It would be better to drop that last part. If someone notices the lich specifically claiming and moving one coin, the jig is up. Just slaughter everyone and leave. Ignore the coin. No one will ever draw the connection between the lich and coins because literally everyone everywhere has coins. That is, as long as the lich doesn't do anything suspicious with a coin.

Edit: Actually, I've thought about it a bit more, and I've cone to the conclusion that disguising the phylactery as a coin is really quite dumb. So, it'll only take a couple random slaughters for someone to figure out that the lich is respawning near their phylactery, and since the location of these respawns keeps moving, probably quite drastically in some cases, the phylactery must also be moving. The lich clearly isn't the one moving it, as they keep popping up around people, specifically. Thus, it's being moved by the people, meaning it's disguised as a mundane object. What's the only mundane object that passes hands over and over? Money. It's not the sort of logical conclusion that the average person would likely make, but someone like Sherlock certainly would, and in a D&D setting, there are plenty of people as smart or smarter than him.

The point of the slaughter is that nobody knows it's a lich doing it. You're killing all the witnesses and doing whatever magical mojo you must to keep anything from divining the truth.

If you like, you can steal all valuables, making it look like a robbery. Or yes, ignore the coin.

But either way, it's a mysterious slaughter every so often, which may or may not ever be connected to any of the others. Nobody knows why it happened.

[Alcore]

The point of the slaughter is that nobody knows it's a lich doing it. You're killing all the witnesses and doing whatever magical mojo you must to keep anything from divining the truth.

If you like, you can steal all valuables, making it look like a robbery. Or yes, ignore the coin.

But either way, it's a mysterious slaughter every so often, which may or may not ever be connected to any of the others. Nobody knows why it happened.

Except there will be a massive trail. If his adjusted level is twenty or less he will leave any area he exists in covered in evil for as long as an hour. Once he goes epic it can remain for nearly a week. Any church that has a representative will quickly notice something really evil went through.


That all assumes he regenerates fast enough to not be caught helpless.

[Lord Arkon]

The coin itself is not meant to be a perfect, unassailable form; I don't believe such a thing exists. It is meant to be a final stopgap to delay the destruction of my all-important bauble long enough to get it back should my private library be looted - an event which already means I have failed and am desperate to preserve my existence long enough to build hidden lair 2.0 and then lay low for a century or two. If it going into circulation becomes a common enough event that people are putting clues together, I need to leave the Material Plane and start rewriting my defense plans from square one because something is not working.

But that's just the final, desperate layer when all else has failed. Before that there is the hidden private library that is lined with lead and has no entrance. And the first line of defense for that hidden library is not draw any attention to it.

The primary defense is operating any plan that requires interaction with the outside world (which I have very little desire for IRL) out of decoy dungeon tombs under assumed identities. If those tombs get raided and the fake phylactery within is destroyed, that identity is abandoned and I let everyone believe that lich is destroyed. Everything in that tomb is then written off as a loss and I lay low for a generation or so.

The best defense is to have no one looking for you.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

In addition to some clever defense for my own phylactery (perhaps hidden inside my own dreamscape, where I am not just king but God), I would have less well hidden fake phylacteries... and contingent spells that destroy my body when one is destroyed. Then I simply reform my body at my actual phylactery and use my max ranks in Bluff, Disguise, and Forgery to establish a fake identity as a newly transformed, up-and-coming lich. Repeat as necessary, starting a new unlife every time your wanted level gets too high and adventurers start putting in the effort to track down your phylactery.

[Lord Vukodlak]

I had an evil cleric who used a Miracle spell to simply remove a phylactery’s ability to rejuvenate the Lich. I could have asked Hextor to simply destroy it. But I felt languishing in a prison of his own making forever was far better then the mercy of oblivion


1)put the strongest Endure Elements spell on it
2)Put Permanency on the spell
3)put the strongest NonDetection Spell on it
4)repeat the Permanency
5)glue it on something that the wind can move
6)Set a Twinned/delayed/echoed spell of Gust of Wind on the item is glued on
7)Cast a Twinned/echoed Teleport on everything into outer space
8)Sleep 20 years

My philactery should be at enough distance from whatever planet i am living on to be outside of range even from epic magic.
Oh, and i need the spell that brings me back to a set location no matter the distance as a contingency. I cannot remember the name now

And then you find out putting your phylactery out of range of epic magic included the phylactery ability to rejuvenate you. And certainly if it’s out of range of epic magic. When you die and reappear next to it. How do you get back?

[sleepyphoenixx]

And then you find out putting your phylactery out of range of epic magic included the phylactery ability to rejuvenate you. And certainly if it’s out of range of epic magic. When you die and reappear next to it. How do you get back?
There is no such thing as "out of range of magic", epic or otherwise.
Greater Teleport for example has an unlimited range and most of the serious "find things" divinations are the same. So is the "transport traveller" function of Wish.

Also there's no guarantee your phylactery won't get caught in the gravity well of a sun or planet, possibly destroying it without you being aware of the danger.
That alone is reason enough to not shoot it randomly into space. Not to mention that in some settings that may not even work (think FR-style Crystal Spheres).

The other reason being that, since distance is meaningless anyway, space as an environment doesn't exactly lend itself to setting up additional defenses.
Sure, you could hollow out an asteroid or something but that's just an invitation for the Neogi (that was the FR space-slaver race, right) to try to move in.

That's why imo "in space" is not meaningfully better as a hiding place than some on-planet "ass end of the world" location where nobody ever goes.
Though if you really want to be safe nothing beats a private demiplane.
You can lock that down tighter than any other option and the chance of anyone or anything finding it by chance are pretty much zero.

[Celestia]

Also there's no guarantee your phylactery won't get caught in the gravity well of a sun or planet, possibly destroying it without you being aware of the danger.
That alone is reason enough to not shoot it randomly into space.
Assuming that you're teleporting into space and then just throwing it, it would take well over 40 million years just to reach the edge of the solar system and far, far longer to reach another. The chance if this happening is so infinitesimally small that you'll reach the heat death of the universe before you ever need to start worrying. Basic divination magic (or a telescope and Knowledge: Astronomy) can help you avoid the other planets within the solar system, and then you're effectively safe forever.

Your other criticisms are still valid, though.

[Segev]

There's always both using space and using the idea of making destroying your phylactery omnicidal: transform the sun into your phylactery.

Okay, you're going to need to rethink this when the sun starts approaching "not being a star anymore" stages, but hey, that's a pretty good extension, and I'm sure you can manage a replacement by then.

[Vaern]

Assuming that you're teleporting into space and then just throwing it, it would take well over 40 million years just to reach the edge of the solar system and far, far longer to reach another. The chance if this happening is so infinitesimally small that you'll reach the heat death of the universe before you ever need to start worrying. Basic divination magic (or a telescope and Knowledge: Astronomy) can help you avoid the other planets within the solar system, and then you're effectively safe forever.

Your other criticisms are still valid, though.

Alternatively, teleport to some arbitrarily far off point in space between stars or galaxies and bind the phylactery to an immovable rod. The immovable rod is unaffected by gravity and won't be pulled towards any nearby celestial bodies, and since space is constantly expanding the phylactery will gradually get farther and farther from literally anything else in existence.

Then again, your DM might then rule that the immovable rod maintains its position relative to the planet it was crafted on, in which case the further away you are the faster it will move to keep up with the planet's rotation. This is, of course, contrary to an opposite ruling I saw once (likely as a joke) where the DM ruled that the immovable rod maintained a fixed point in space independent of the planet and all other celestial bodies which are rotating and hurtling through space at rather high speeds.
Assuming you were to put such a phylactery halfway between the Milky Way and Andromeda (1.25 million light-years), the Earth continues rotating once per 24 hours, and the immovable rod maintains its position relative to the surface of Earth, the phylactery would revolve around our galaxy in a circle with a circumference of about 7.85 million light-years. Every day. That's about 3 billion times the speed of light. Nobody will realistically be able to target the phylactery with any means of destroying it, as it will travel about 540 light-years over the course of one round of combat.
It's likely that the DM will also rule, in this case, that the phylactery is more or less erased from existence due to having broken physics.

[Edreyn]

I'd create a demi-plane that only I know about, and only I can access and put it there. If I can't, I'll find someone in Sigil who has a solid business of protecting expensive stuff for others.

[noob]

The coin itself is not meant to be a perfect, unassailable form; I don't believe such a thing exists. It is meant to be a final stopgap to delay the destruction of my all-important bauble long enough to get it back should my private library be looted - an event which already means I have failed and am desperate to preserve my existence long enough to build hidden lair 2.0 and then lay low for a century or two. If it going into circulation becomes a common enough event that people are putting clues together, I need to leave the Material Plane and start rewriting my defense plans from square one because something is not working.

But that's just the final, desperate layer when all else has failed. Before that there is the hidden private library that is lined with lead and has no entrance. And the first line of defense for that hidden library is not draw any attention to it.

The primary defense is operating any plan that requires interaction with the outside world (which I have very little desire for IRL) out of decoy dungeon tombs under assumed identities. If those tombs get raided and the fake phylactery within is destroyed, that identity is abandoned and I let everyone believe that lich is destroyed. Everything in that tomb is then written off as a loss and I lay low for a generation or so.

The best defense is to have no one looking for you.
That is until an archivist casts door to great evil and it fizzles and the archivist thinks "there is an evil person in an antimagic or anti teleportation zone thus a great threat" and then starts investigating.
So also make sure your alignment is not evil.
(done with an healthy amount of mindrape on yourself)

[Celestia]

Alternatively, teleport to some arbitrarily far off point in space between stars or galaxies and bind the phylactery to an immovable rod. The immovable rod is unaffected by gravity and won't be pulled towards any nearby celestial bodies, and since space is constantly expanding the phylactery will gradually get farther and farther from literally anything else in existence.

Then again, your DM might then rule that the immovable rod maintains its position relative to the planet it was crafted on, in which case the further away you are the faster it will move to keep up with the planet's rotation. This is, of course, contrary to an opposite ruling I saw once (likely as a joke) where the DM ruled that the immovable rod maintained a fixed point in space independent of the planet and all other celestial bodies which are rotating and hurtling through space at rather high speeds.
Assuming you were to put such a phylactery halfway between the Milky Way and Andromeda (1.25 million light-years), the Earth continues rotating once per 24 hours, and the immovable rod maintains its position relative to the surface of Earth, the phylactery would revolve around our galaxy in a circle with a circumference of about 7.85 million light-years. Every day. That's about 3 billion times the speed of light. Nobody will realistically be able to target the phylactery with any means of destroying it, as it will travel about 540 light-years over the course of one round of combat.
It's likely that the DM will also rule, in this case, that the phylactery is more or less erased from existence due to having broken physics.
Honestly, the only way the immovable rod makes any sense is if the universe is static and unmoving. No expansion. No rotation. Just a basic level Newtonian understanding of physics.

[noob]

Honestly, the only way the immovable rod makes any sense is if the universe is static and unmoving. No expansion. No rotation. Just a basic level Newtonian understanding of physics.

The alternative is that all the immovable rods are in fact flying intelligent magical items that hates being moved around when you push their button.

[icefractal]

So the answer obviously depends on how regrowing works, whether it occurs at the phylactery or not.
For this answer, I'm going with the OOTS style - the Lich first possesses the phylactery and then visibly regrows from it.

With that in mind, the best way to keep it safe is put it somewhere nobody can get to.
But Wish screws that up, with it's whole "regardless of local conditions" thing. Dimensionally locked demiplane? Still unsecure.

Therefore:
1) Create a small 10 x 10 x 10 demiplane.
2) Create or recruit an intelligent Gelatinous Cube minion.
3) Have it take at least one level in Monk ("a Monk's unarmed strike is their entire body")
4) Give it an Amulet of Mighty Fists (Ghost Touch) and a way to reduce its size on demand.
5) Make a permanent Telepathic Bond to it or a way for it to tell when a phylactery is "occupied".
6) Have the cube engulf the phylactery (which should be either Ghost Touch or made of Riverrine) and occupy the room.

Nobody can enter the plane, because there is physically no space to occupy, and because the whole thing is occupied by a creature with Ghost Touch not even an incorporeal being can exist there. When you want to regrow, you tell it to shrink, and now there's space for you to regrow into. After you leave, it resumes blocking again.

This does leave a window of vulnerability while you're regrowing, so you may want additional defenses.
Also, you could probably use an animated object made of Riverine instead, but a Gelatinous Cube Monk is more amusing.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Therefore:
1) Create a small 10 x 10 x 10 demiplane.
2) Create or recruit an intelligent Gelatinous Cube minion.
3) Have it take at least one level in Monk ("a Monk's unarmed strike is their entire body")
4) Give it an Amulet of Mighty Fists (Ghost Touch) and a way to reduce its size on demand.
5) Make a permanent Telepathic Bond to it or a way for it to tell when a phylactery is "occupied".
6) Have the cube engulf the phylactery (which should be either Ghost Touch or made of Riverrine) and occupy the room.
This is very good, but wish can still transport the cube (perhaps even with the phylactery) to another plane. Perhaps the "regardless of local conditions" clause already allows you to ignore the cube's presence when travelling in, but let's assume it doesn't. So what you need is a cube with some form of immunity to Supernatural wish (let's go straight for the Dweomerkeepers, because why not).

I think a spellblade will do it, in principle, but the second Supernatural wish cast on the same turn will still affect the cube (or the third, or the fourth, and so on, depending on the number of spellblades a gelatinous cube can wield simultaneously). You can use anticipatory strike to get your next turn quickly and release the stored-up energy, allowing another round of wishes to be absorbed, but this is a finite strategy.

Perhaps a better strategy is to get the Heart chakra bind of Brood Keeper's Heart, which grants the swarm subtype. One of the effects is that you become immune to effects that target a specific number of creatures, which includes the "transport travellers" function of wish. The Heart chakra can be opened at ECL 21 with an epic feat or around ECL 15-18 with a large number of class levels. I think the earliest a gelatinous cube can have it is at 18 HD, with incarnate 3/necrocarnate 11. Necrocarnate is pretty appropriate for a lich anyway, so I'm happy with it.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Gelatinous Cubes have no int score, they can't take class levels. Also as mentioned Wish can still affect the cube.
Note that Spellblade only protects against spells, not supernatural abilities (like a Supernatural Wish).

You also can't create a specifically sized demiplane, at least not without custom spells.
Genesis always creates a constantly growing spherical plane and you can't shape it since it's an effect spell.

The idea with the Broodkeeper's Heart is great though. Pity it needs so much investment to work.
Wasn't there some kind of druid ACF that allows swarm shapes too? Cityscape or Sandstorm i think had that one.
Druid lich would be a bit weird but i know there's at least one official example in FR.

On a slightly different note, what actually happens to a lich that gets slain by a Thinaun weapon?
Or one that falls victim to Trap the Soul and has his soul used as a spell component (or otherwise destroyed)?
Does the phylactery protect your soul from being trapped or is it a way to make any phylactery protections irrelevant?

[Segev]

On a slightly different note, what actually happens to a lich that gets slain by a Thinaun weapon?
Or one that falls victim to Trap the Soul and has his soul used as a spell component (or otherwise destroyed)?
Does the phylactery protect your soul from being trapped or is it a way to make any phylactery protections irrelevant?

This depends on whether you consider "life force" and "soul" to be the same thing, or two different things. The phylactery contains the lich's life force. If that IS his soul, then destroying a lich with a weapon that sucks out the soul doesn't do anything because the soul isn't there (but using it to destroy the phylactery should, in fact, trap the lich's soul). If they're different things, then it should work just fine...but you still have the open question of whether having his soul trapped really inconveniences the lich, or the phylactery will still cause him to rejuvenate, possibly AROUND or FROM the Thinuan weapon that contains his soul.

And, even if you destroy his soul-containing phylactery with a Thinuan weapon, given that he's a lich, have you really done anything other than transformed the Thinuan weapon into his phylactery? As a lich, he doesn't really need his soul to be in his body if the life force is the soul.

[icefractal]

Gelatinous Cubes have no int score, they can't take class levels. Also as mentioned Wish can still affect the cube.
Note that Spellblade only protects against spells, not supernatural abilities (like a Supernatural Wish).

You also can't create a specifically sized demiplane, at least not without custom spells.
Genesis always creates a constantly growing spherical plane and you can't shape it since it's an effect spell.Pretty sure there's a way to Awaken oozes, but if not there's always Animated Objects, those can definitely be made intelligent (or actually, True Mind Switch would be a lot easier). And I was thinking just high Will saves for Wish, but that doesn't help against spamming - ExLibrisMortis's addition is a great idea and I like that it's even in-theme for a necromancer.

I admit, I was thinking of the Pathfinder version of the demiplane spells, which are better. Still, with the spell (not psionic) version of Genesis it stops growing at 180', so just fill up the rest with riverine.

Also, is anyone else reading the thread title in the voice of "this is YOUR daily dose of internet"?

[Kesnit]

Edit: Actually, I've thought about it a bit more, and I've cone to the conclusion that disguising the phylactery as a coin is really quite dumb. So, it'll only take a couple random slaughters for someone to figure out that the lich is respawning near their phylactery, and since the location of these respawns keeps moving, probably quite drastically in some cases, the phylactery must also be moving.

There would almost certainly be decades, if not centuries, between respawns. No one is going to connect mass murders in different locations 50 years apart.

But time is the problem with using a coin as a phylactery. At some point, that coin is going to stop being used as currency. Maybe the nation that used it is conquered. Maybe the ruler on the coin dies and the nation mints new coins. Maybe the nation just changes the appearance of their coins. Eventually, the coin is either going to end up in a collection (with the lich respawning in the treasure room) or buried in a random location.

[sleepyphoenixx]

There would almost certainly be decades, if not centuries, between respawns. No one is going to connect mass murders in different locations 50 years apart.

But time is the problem with using a coin as a phylactery. At some point, that coin is going to stop being used as currency. Maybe the nation that used it is conquered. Maybe the ruler on the coin dies and the nation mints new coins. Maybe the nation just changes the appearance of their coins. Eventually, the coin is either going to end up in a collection (with the lich respawning in the treasure room) or buried in a random location.
It depends on the setting.
At least in FR it's canon that coins of fallen nations are still in circulation and generally accepted as currency, if only because adventurers keep digging them up and buying stuff with them.
Nobody cares whose face is printed on it, only how much gold content it has.

And i don't really see the problem with respawning next to a ready source of cash and equipment, especially since you're doing it behind most of the defenses.:smalltongue:

[Celestia]

There would almost certainly be decades, if not centuries, between respawns. No one is going to connect mass murders in different locations 50 years apart.

But time is the problem with using a coin as a phylactery. At some point, that coin is going to stop being used as currency. Maybe the nation that used it is conquered. Maybe the ruler on the coin dies and the nation mints new coins. Maybe the nation just changes the appearance of their coins. Eventually, the coin is either going to end up in a collection (with the lich respawning in the treasure room) or buried in a random location.
Because, clearly, when adventurers slay a lich who respawns a couple days later and slaughters an entire village, they just shrug their shoulders, say it's not their problem anymore, and leave it for somebody else to deal with in half a century. Who ever heard of finishing the job?

[Rijan_Sai]

Because, clearly, when adventurers slay a lich who respawns a couple days later and slaughters an entire village, they just shrug their shoulders, say it's not their problem anymore, and leave it for somebody else to deal with in half a century. Who ever heard of finishing the job?

True... although, given the levels at which you are reasonable dealing with (or being) liches, there's a not-insignificant chance that those adventurers are on the other side of the continent, if not another plane of existence, and it could be some time before word of the slaughter (if there even needs to be one) reaches them. By that point, the lich should also be long gone...

(And yes, given that it could respawn the very next day, they could still be in the area and available for more lich-slaying; at which point, recognizing a foe they thought was already defeated, they should become at least curious about how it returned (if they have never fought one before,) or working to find they phylactery (if they are familiar with the creature).)

[Segev]

Because, clearly, when adventurers slay a lich who respawns a couple days later and slaughters an entire village, they just shrug their shoulders, say it's not their problem anymore, and leave it for somebody else to deal with in half a century. Who ever heard of finishing the job?

How will they know it’s that lich that did it? What guarantee is there that the coin is even within a month’s travel of the place they slew the lich?

It’s possible the party would also be the ones to hear about the slaughter. But it’s hardly guaranteed. I think you’re presuming too much information about the slaughter is readily available.

[Celestia]

How will they know it’s that lich that did it?
Divination spells.


What guarantee is there that the coin is even within a month’s travel of the place they slew the lich?
If they're high enough level to beat a lich, they're high enough level to teleport.


It’s possible the party would also be the ones to hear about the slaughter. But it’s hardly guaranteed. I think you’re presuming too much information about the slaughter is readily available.
I think you're presuming too much idiocy on the side of the adventures. It only takes a simple Knowledge: Religion check to know what a lich is, and they're going to be trying to end the lich for good. I mean, the entire point of hiding the phylactery in the first place is to keep it safe from adventures who know about and are looking for it. It'd be quite silly to assume that the adventures doing the looking are too dumb to know that they should be looking.

[Segev]

Divination spells.Anti-divination magic, from mind blank to nondetection to all the other standard protections designed to keep a phylactery hard to find. And he'll probably use similar on himself.


If they're high enough level to beat a lich, they're high enough level to teleport.Not the point. I wasn't questioning the party's ability to travel to the location, but to hear about the slaughter in a timely fashion that leads them to investigate that location.

Assuming they DO hear about it, how do they know it was "the lich" and not some other horrible monster or curse or evil person? Again, you're presuming that the party has a priori knowledge that it was the lich that did it.


I think you're presuming too much idiocy on the side of the adventures. It only takes a simple Knowledge: Religion check to know what a lich is, and they're going to be trying to end the lich for good. I mean, the entire point of hiding the phylactery in the first place is to keep it safe from adventures who know about and are looking for it. It'd be quite silly to assume that the adventures doing the looking are too dumb to know that they should be looking.

Sure. They know they should be looking. Why is this slaughter more telling than the missing merchant caravan or the mysterious plague that broke out three countries over?

Are they the only adventuring party in the world and is there only one plot hook for them at a time?

[Celestia]

Anti-divination magic, from mind blank to nondetection to all the other standard protections designed to keep a phylactery hard to find. And he'll probably use similar on himself.
And how would a newly regenerated lich have access to any of that? All active spells he had on him expired when he was destroyed. All his magic items are back with his old body. And unless he glued a backup spellbook onto the coin phylactery (which would be a bit conspicuous), he can't cast spells. I guess a sorcerer lich could swing it (assuming liches regenerate with spell slots replenished, which is unlikely) but a sorcerer probably wouldn't be wasting a limited spell known on divination protection when items are available.


Not the point. I wasn't questioning the party's ability to travel to the location, but to hear about the slaughter in a timely fashion that leads them to investigate that location.
They would be actively looking. When they destroy the lich and can't find the phylactery right away, they'll be expecting the lich to pop up again. They'll be specifically trying to find where and when the lich regenerates, not only to try preventing the lich from doing more evil but also because where the lich pops up would give a very significant clue as to where the phylactery is located.


Assuming they DO hear about it, how do they know it was "the lich" and not some other horrible monster or curse or evil person? Again, you're presuming that the party has a priori knowledge that it was the lich that did it.

Sure. They know they should be looking. Why is this slaughter more telling than the missing merchant caravan or the mysterious plague that broke out three countries over?

Are they the only adventuring party in the world and is there only one plot hook for them at a time?
Standard, run of the mill investigation. Or more divination. You're acting like figuring things out is somehow impossible. The merchant caravan went missing on a road known for heavy bandit activity, and whoever did it made sure to grab all the valuable trade goods? Probably not the lich. A plague that has been ravaging the country for weeks? Well, that's before the lich was destroyed, so probably not the lich. A village was spontaneously murdered by a single skeletal figure? Possibly the lich.

No, the lich isn't the only villain in the world, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to distinguish between the lich and everything else that exists.

[Segev]

And how would a newly regenerated lich have access to any of that? All active spells he had on him expired when he was destroyed. All his magic items are back with his old body. And unless he glued a backup spellbook onto the coin phylactery (which would be a bit conspicuous), he can't cast spells. I guess a sorcerer lich could swing it (assuming liches regenerate with spell slots replenished, which is unlikely) but a sorcerer probably wouldn't be wasting a limited spell known on divination protection when items are available. Oh. If a lich is that helpless when he spawns, the whole scenario is moot: he can't slaughter anything before being destroyed again by the angry peasants.



They would be actively looking. When they destroy the lich and can't find the phylactery right away, they'll be expecting the lich to pop up again. They'll be specifically trying to find where and when the lich regenerates, not only to try preventing the lich from doing more evil but also because where the lich pops up would give a very significant clue as to where the phylactery is located.


Standard, run of the mill investigation. Or more divination. You're acting like figuring things out is somehow impossible. The merchant caravan went missing on a road known for heavy bandit activity, and whoever did it made sure to grab all the valuable trade goods? Probably not the lich. A plague that has been ravaging the country for weeks? Well, that's before the lich was destroyed, so probably not the lich. A village was spontaneously murdered by a single skeletal figure? Possibly the lich.

No, the lich isn't the only villain in the world, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to distinguish between the lich and everything else that exists.I brought up the missing caravan because the coin could as easily be carried in the merchants' lockbox, and the vanished caravan be the lich's doing. Why NOT take the valuables when he heads off?

The problem isn't that the lich is entirely untraceable (though I think he'd have taken effort to make himself as untraceable as possible when regenerating), but that the specific event of the lich's reappearance is not easily identified as "a lich's doing."

[mashlagoo1982]

This idea isn't fully fleshed out, so there are probably many holes.
For instance, I don't know what the physical limitations are for selecting items to be a phylactery.

While I didn't have a specific item in mind, I do have a few requirements for potential items to qualify.

1) The item must be of great value to as many creatures as possible.
2) The value of the item would need to transcend nations/religions/other organized groups.
3) The item would be something others would rather not destroy.
4) Better if the value would be something intrinsic to life as it is known.
5) The item must be guarded by a party besides myself.
6) The party guarding it must not have the entire item guarded all the time. Maybe they guard access to this item, but don't directly observe the item all the time.
7) Even if it wasn't my phylactery, the item must be something I would want to protect.
8) Access to this item would need to very strictly limited but not impossible.

One item I can think of that may fit the bill would be the single source of magic in some worlds.
This is only a semi-serious idea because it seems kinda unrealistic to me.

Depending on the setting, sometimes these are fountain like objects where access is guarded but do not have guards stationed around all the time. Maybe I could even insert myself into the power structure using fake identities to control the methods being used for protection.

As a caster, my interest in this item would make sense.
Everyone, including myself, would want it protected.

I would also have a false phylactery created for would-be heroes to destroy.
If I am killed and my false phylactery is destroy, I still respawn at this sacred source of mana.
Hopefully nobody is present, but if someone is I would just lie about my identity/purpose and make my escape.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Oh. If a lich is that helpless when he spawns, the whole scenario is moot: he can't slaughter anything before being destroyed again by the angry peasants.

To be fair, a lich is at least an 11th level character.
It has a negative energy, paralyzing touch attack, a fear aura and DR 15/magic and bludgeoning, so it's unlikely to be threatened by the average peasant mob.
It also gets a decent +8 racial bonus on hide and move silently, so simply sneaking away might be an option if you don't reappear in plain sight.

But yes, generally a lich wants to reappear in a safe location, one which grants him at least a days respite to prepare new spells. With access to a backup spellbook if he's a wizard.

[Fouredged Sword]

Technically, I don't think you count as "destroyed" until your body and your phylactery is destroyed, if you're a lich. Therefore, you're not a valid target for resurrection nor true resurrection while your phylactery remains intact.

Clone is a stickier matter. It doesn't specify that being undead prevents you from coming back. Interestingly, it ALSO specifies that your original body becomes "inert flesh, and cannot thereafter be raised from the dead." While taken as a whole, this would probably refer only to the limit on not bringing the now-inert flesh back to life as "you," one might also argue that as "inert flesh" it is no longer a valid target for anything that brings the dead to unlife, either. If you wanted to make very spurious claims, you could even suggest that it might turn an extant skeleton, zombie, lich, wight, or other undead into "inert flesh," instantly ending the undead existence as the person wakes up, alive, in the cloned body.

Now, since a lich would still technically have a phylactery, it's possible that even killing the clone just turns him back INTO a lich, so....

Sorry for the long delay before response, but the idea of having a true resurrection to be triggered by a "trusted" party is specifically FOR when your phylactery is broken and you die. The idea is that if you have done an unspeakably evil act to make yourself harder to kill permanently you may as well go whole hog and sacrifice a bunch of people's souls to devils to get a fairly powerful one waiting for your soul to end up on the petitioner line to cast true resurrection to return you to the moral plane as a moral. You then redo the unspeakably evil act needed to be a lich again and go sacrificing enough souls to reup your deal to stay not dead.

Clone would be a possible thing to set up right after you become a lich to do the same thing just no devils directly involved. It would be a good idea anyway so you don't invoke your devil deal.

The name of the game is "don't stay dead".

[Jazath]

Your preparing for lichdom and need to make your phylactery. What do you use, how do you protect it and how do you hide it?
The level at which you make it is whatever level YOU would be when you make it. Class is your choice as well. Just please don't get all crazy on me. I probably don't have half the books you'll want to use.
It doesn't have to be the common box.
How much do you have to spend on the whole deal is up to you to reasonably determine how much money you would have at your level.


"The most common form of phylactery is a sealed metal box containing strips of parchment on which magical phrases have been transcribed. The box is Tiny and has 40 hit points, hardness 20, and a break DC of 40."

I would put powerful spells like a time stop on the offender, magical barriers, permanent walls of force, a separate demiplane only accessible by one point, and contingent spells that activate if anything goes into the room with intentions to destroy, obtain, or violate your phylactery.

You could also seal it in a powerful golem guarded by sentient weapons, Implicate magical contingent spells to spirit away the phylactery in case your its protections are penetrated, and task powerful creatures to guard it

But you also do not wanna make it to obvious, make the offenders think that all these protections were used to guard a huge hoard of gold and magical items by simply filling a room with stuff (Or permanent illusions) while placing the phylactery in a secret room sealed in a rather normal looking adamantine golem that's line up in with other adamantine golems. Put a powerful item in the center of the room like a artifact to make others think that was the reason for the secret room.

[goodpeople25]

I'm thinking that a great defense for nearly any object is a powerful and active spell caster who's invested in keeping said object safe.

So while setting up lasting protection for my phylactery will most likely be a sensible course of action I'd treat maintaining my ability to affect the world and adapt to it as part of the defence of said phylactery.

[Olo Demonsbane]

I personally would use the Crystalline Prison of Pandorym as my phylactery. That's about the last thing in the world anyone sane wants to destroy, and anyone attacking it starts spawning CR 25 monters to deal with them. If they do succeed in destroying it, Pandorym is unleashed, which is an entity capable and planning on ripping the gods from reality.

Honestly, all you were doing was improving the crystal's hardness. They should give you a medal!

[noob]

I personally would use the Crystalline Prison of Pandorym as my phylactery. That's about the last thing in the world anyone sane wants to destroy, and anyone attacking it starts spawning CR 25 monters to deal with them. If they do succeed in destroying it, Pandorym is unleashed, which is an entity capable and planning on ripping the gods from reality.

Honestly, all you were doing was improving the crystal's hardness. They should give you a medal!

Then some day later you feel yourself becoming more and more pandorym then some time later there is no you and only pandorym.
It is very risky.

[Segev]

Acererak in this boxed set has a long-term scheme to essentially make the Negative Energy Plane his phylactery. In the process, he intends to become the will behind the animating force of every undead in the multiverse, thus being able to see through all of their eyes, hear through all of their ears, and take them over whenever he feels like it.

[expectocat]

my phylactery would be a a deck on many things placed in a room with an custom epic spell with the compel seed making the person draw as many cards as they can and if they resist the spell the deck is transported through a contingency spell to another identical vault with the same enchantments. however people know where my phylactery is and I can't have that so as an additional precaution I hide my phylactery by buying an immensely powerful skill bonus bluff bonus magic item (one costing somewhere on the order of millions of gold pieces) and teleport around telling people That my phylactery does not exist

[Eladrinblade]

The phylactery needs to be physically and magically resistant, in a place that is difficult to reach, and needs some way to keep divinations from finding it.

I remember some material that blocked divinations, so I'd get some of that and put it around the phyl. I'd then coat it in lead and gorgons blood, then adamantine, then lay down a ton of wards on it. Then I'd teleport to the moon and bury it. That's a short and simple solution.

[Feldar]

Your preparing for lichdom and need to make your phylactery. What do you use, how do you protect it and how do you hide it?
The level at which you make it is whatever level YOU would be when you make it. Class is your choice as well. Just please don't get all crazy on me. I probably don't have half the books you'll want to use.
It doesn't have to be the common box.
How much do you have to spend on the whole deal is up to you to reasonably determine how much money you would have at your level.


"The most common form of phylactery is a sealed metal box containing strips of parchment on which magical phrases have been transcribed. The box is Tiny and has 40 hit points, hardness 20, and a break DC of 40."

This might be a bit long-winded, so bear with me.

I would prepare my plan long before I became a lich, disguising it as a random book in my magical library and preparing it with many, many spell defenses. I would probably make it part of my spell book library, weaving encoded bits of the plan into individual spell books so that there would be no one place where the entire plan existed.

I would pursue my career, seeking out magics that could be used to travel through time in addition to those that would protect my phylactery. I would learn the skills required to craft my phylactery personally, so that no one would know of its construction methods and appearance, and I would carefully gather materials for it through the crafting of items for others. For those items I would not be able to gather personally, I would travel a long distance and disguise myself to hire a party of adventurers to acquire the item for me, rewarding them handsomely for their efforts and then disappearing once I had the maguffin they provided. (It should not be too hard to find a party of adventurers gullible enough to not look past the wealth of the reward.)

In a workshop known only to myself, I would personally craft my phylactery as a common item (details later in this posting...), taking the necessary steps to toughen it and make it essentially both commonplace and very tough.

I would enchant the phylactery with some abilities (again, more details later). I would place a contingency on the phylactery that if were ever seriously threatened with destruction that it would teleport itself to a secure place known only to me.

Once I achieve the ability to cast spells in 10th level spell slots, I would execute my plan to become a lich and prepare my phylactery.

I would secrete my phylactery inside another such common object, in such a way that it was not locatable through divination and in such a way that the phylactery itself (sacred object!) could be seen as merely hidden inside another common object as a manner of disguise if it were accidentally discovered.

I would then travel back in time, to a time after the appearance of a new deity. I would adventure as a mundane hero venerating that deity, making conspicuous use of my phylactery under a false name and converting as many people as possible to the faith. I would hire bards to write songs venerating my deity and his ability to radiate power through my HOLY SYMBOL.

I would carry out legendary deeds in my deity's name and then I would disappear while seeking some final, treacherous quest in the name of my deity.

I would secrete my phylactery in a place where it would be hard to find, but not impossible -- a suitable quest for heroes in the service of my deity!

In other disguises, I would wander distant lands as a bard singing songs of my first alter ego, the mighty hero (or whatever) who did mighty deeds in the name of his deity and disappeared on a holy quest.

I would through the coming decades appear as a "vision" to those venerating my deity, offering them insights into how to succeed in their holy missions. I would stop this before I became venerated as a saint, but would carefully appear under different guises in different places at different times to encourage this veneration.

Once I felt the momentum was unstoppable, I would then travel forward in time.

Over the centuries my phylactery has become the symbol of the purest good and benevolence, protected by a major church.

Orders of knighthood have been founded to protect my phylactery. Handsome young men denied pleasure to themselves and beautiful young maidens in the name of protecting my phylactery as a most holy relic of their deity.

Saints have established their reputation through the use of my phylactery or by citing my actions as their inspiration.

Miracles have been performed using my phylactery.

I am now a saint of the goodiest good god known to the world. My phylactery is a relic and minor artifact of that faith (possibly having acquired additional powers through actions of those who venerate the deity through the ages). Anyone attempting to destroy my phylactery risks offending the most powerful church in the world and all that churches' allies.

Should the church elders learn the secret, they risk EVERYTHING if they reveal the truth. At best for the church, any attempt by church elders to destroy my phylactery will create a schism in the church. At worst, telling the truth will destroy the power of the deity through mass loss of faith!

[Feldar]

Oh yeah, did I mention that adventurers trying to destroy me will be lost in a sea of myths as they try to learn the full truth about me, that clergy of the party might even sunder the party affiliation because of those speaking illy of a saint the clergy venerate, and that the clergy might even go as far as to turn their church against their fellow party members?

Failing that, me revealing the truth under the guise of being a spirit of the saint might cause the adventuring party to stop attacking me, or at least to cause a massive crisis of faith (possible spell loss!) for the faithful in the party, taking them out of the fight or even having them join my side!