Nontraditional liches

[Spore]

We have had wizard liches, sorcerer liches, dracoliches, even warlock liches. We had lich kings (deathknights), we have had Bansheequeens (banshees possessing mortal bodies), and I am sure there are more lich variations out there. Technically warrior liches are there too (usually using a weapon that creates more undead as they are slain).

But have you had anything out there, that was not used in a comical manner?
What would a bard-lich do? Dirges and requiems are an integral part of music, so there is a thematical niche, but zombie pupeteers or undead jester is a thing too. I have had a priest-lich in my D&D game before (as well as the Dragon Priests of Skyrim fame, which are owing to the magic system in said setting are technically just wizards again).

Or talking about [race]-liches like dracoliches. Of course I know of druidic roots in necromancy nowadays, so undead dryads, and other fey creatures are entirely possible. They are not as overused but using them as antagonists is not as "creative" as I have had hoped.

What versions of undead necromancers (both as undead summoners and drainers of life/debuffers) perusing something other than wizards do you know? To somewhat unlock this from race or class idea, what concepts of undead masters do you enjoy?

[Millstone85]

Here are other types of liches that I know of:

Archlich. Or how to enter lichdom as if it were paladinhood. Instead of eating souls, an archlich is sustained by their dedication to doing good in the world. All spellcasters, including bards, can become archliches.
Death Tyrant. A beholder who died but, just like that, simply kept on going as a floating skull surrounded by ghostly eyes.
Demilich. Speaking of floating skulls, this is the next stage for many classic liches.
Illithilich / Alhoon. A mind flayer who became a lich, though there is a technical difference between an alhoon and a true illithilich.
Undying Court. The elves of Aerenal, on Eberron, use the power of faith to keep their most estimed ancestors.

[Spore]

Archlich. Or how to enter lichdom as if it were paladinhood. Instead of eating souls, an archlich is sustained by their dedication to doing good in the world. All spellcasters, including bards, can become archliches.


That point is actually pretty interesting, though traditionally, lich would be a prestige class for evil spellcasters. I am thinking along the lines of Heroes of Might and Magic. The idea being that Tier 1 units are mundane, Tier 2 introduces caster units and promotes mundane units (soldiers become knights, archers become snipers), Tier 3 has the casters promoted.

Lichdom as a way of saying: "My time on earth is limited, but I need to do more good in this lifetime." and then spitting in Death's face and becoming undead is kinda cool an idea. Aesthetically a good lich would just be an everwithering form of a kindly old person. A granny with soft facial features, which is crooked and impossibly old, but kind. A small bearded old man with deep wrinkles in his eyes, but formed from laughing, not anger.

So is Santa actually just a good lich?

[Millstone85]

That point is actually pretty interesting [...] Lichdom as a way of saying: "My time on earth is limited, but I need to do more good in this lifetime." and then spitting in Death's face and becoming undead is kinda cool an idea.I think so too.


Aesthetically a good lich would just be an everwithering form of a kindly old person. A granny with soft facial features, which is crooked and impossibly old, but kind. A small bearded old man with deep wrinkles in his eyes, but formed from laughing, not anger.Alas no, archliches are said to be physically indistinguishable from regular liches.

Although one of the official illustrations (from 4e, but the creature dates back to 2e) does manage to make an archlich look handsome for a walking corpse.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/7/79/Archlich_4e.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/400 (https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/7/79/Archlich_4e.jpg)


So is Santa actually just a good lich?Now you are giving me Discworld: Hogfather and The Nightmare Before Christmas flashbacks.

[hamishspence]

Different liches put different amounts of effort into preserving themselves. Some do things like wearing a Robe of Gentle Repose, some don't. Really old liches can be Xykon-eque "walking skeletons - really young, well-preserved ones can be nearly alive-looking.

[Eurus]

Santa incorporates the tributes of milk and cookies into his body to repair damage, clearly. :smallamused:

[J-H]

I'd like there to be a more viable path for non-casters to make themselves undead. Leaving aside things like being a ghoul, revenant, or wight (although wight isn't as un-free-willed), vampirism is about it...and it carries some serious side effects.

[Millstone85]

I'd like there to be a more viable path for non-casters to make themselves undead. Leaving aside things like being a ghoul, revenant, or wight (although wight isn't as un-free-willed), vampirism is about it...and it carries some serious side effects.4e had something hilarious for rangers and rogues. Something that made lichdom, and undeath in general, look like such an absurd waste of time.

At 21st level, a ranger or rogue could choose the Dark Wanderer epic destiny. At 24th level, they became able to reach any destination in 24 hours, no matter the distance or planes, by automatically "finding shortcuts, portals, or other modes of transport previously unknown". And at 30th level, whevever they died, they would... simply walk back from the afterlife. :smallbiggrin:

[Spore]

Santa incorporates the tributes of milk and cookies into his body to repair damage, clearly. :smallamused:

Loosely quoting from the Book of Exalted Deeds, the main power that can be harnessed for and from Good is happiness or friendship or however you want to name it. Similar to Book of Vile Darkness, both "factions" can milk (pun intended) such a source to power their supernatural abilities.

So actually kids believing in his positive influence and presence is what powers the magic binding and enhancing Santa. :smallbiggrin:




Alas no, archliches are said to be physically indistinguishable from regular liches.



My thread is deliberately system agnostic but with a clear focus on D&D and fantasy settings. But if you don't want your liches look similarly, you can. If you want them to look alike but "feel" different, you can too!

Take an example from Harry Potter, and assume Dumbledore would actually want to live on, binding his soul into phylacteries strewn across the world similar to Voldemort. He would start to look like him, but he knows enough glamers and illusions to cover it up. But even with a plain description any DM can describe a benevolent lich different from an evil one.

Lines and wrinkled faces can be described as smiling, or a grimace. Bleaching undead skin can be described as decaying, giving way to rot, or being surprisingly well maintained. I am not saying an evil lich cannot maintain their presence properly, but many would not care how they look to say: a human child. There are so many descriptions in literature that have nothing to do with objective senses, but rather want to convey an emotion, you don't need to take a rules text and follow it by the letter.


I'd like there to be a more viable path for non-casters to make themselves undead. Leaving aside things like being a ghoul, revenant, or wight (although wight isn't as un-free-willed), vampirism is about it...and it carries some serious side effects.

Agreed. What ritual would give yourself access to good lichdom? Assuming a catch-all term of unspeakable evils to create a phylactery, do we want a mirrored version for good? Indescribable Good for humanity? Should it be divinely appointed or arcane in nature? How would an agnostic mundane creature attain this?

There are several ideas in my mind. The simplest is a divine vessel that allows the user with the sanction of the ruling god of the dead to live on. So youre basically best buddies with Hades and Kelemvor and whatnot. But that is grandiose, and the writing part is tired and cliche.

Arcane nature would be based on a creature's nature, explain a draconic sorcerer's immortality because his dragon blood gives him life. A studied caster would simply have enough willpower and desire for knowledge to life on. The body ceases to function, but the spirit lives on (but for some reason this lends itself more towards an incorporeal spirit than a lich imho). What about mundanes, about agnostics?

I feel willpower is a good point here too. More akin to a good-aligned revenant to be perfectly honest. Someone who lives on for the general purpose of good. My mind is turning a bit into psionics actually here, because it usually is a force from without the game universe. Something alien and bizarre, linked to willpower.


At 21st level, a ranger or rogue could choose the Dark Wanderer epic destiny. At 24th level, they became able to reach any destination in 24 hours, no matter the distance or planes, by automatically "finding shortcuts, portals, or other modes of transport previously unknown". And at 30th level, whevever they died, they would... simply walk back from the afterlife

For all the crap 4e got, this idea is actually genius.

[LecternOfJasper]

Santa incorporates the tributes of milk and cookies into his body to repair damage, clearly. :smallamused:

You have to keep those bones strong somehow! :smalltongue:


I'd like there to be a more viable path for non-casters to make themselves undead. Leaving aside things like being a ghoul, revenant, or wight (although wight isn't as un-free-willed), vampirism is about it...and it carries some serious side effects.

As far as this goes... I admit, most of the things I can think of are definitely built towards casters. In my research into this topic over a variety of editions and sources, here are some places to find unofficial necromancy support:

The Tome of Necromancy (https://dungeons.fandom.com/wiki/Tome_of_Necromancy_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Necromancy_with_Class) is a homebrew compendium of bonus rules to make undead make a bit more sense in 3.5e, and has several prestige classes that focus on various aspects of necromancy. Now, they clearly had a lot of fun making these, and I won't pretend that they are balanced (nothing is), but it is a good resource for idea mining, and offers a variety of paths to immortality.

Of particular note are the Death King and the Bone Rider, which don't require spellcasting as a prerequisite. There are also some Paragon classes somewhere in there and base undead races, but those are of the vampire/ghoul/wraith variety, so it's probably not quite what you're looking for....

For sources closer to 5e, this 5e SRD (https://www.5esrd.com/database/creature/) has all sorts of OGL liches and immortal souls. Primarily as monster stat blocks, but still some interesting stuff. The Virtuoso Lich (https://www.5esrd.com/database/creature/lich-virtuoso/) being an artistic sort who lives and dies by their expression, and the Lich Shade (https://www.5esrd.com/database/creature/lich-shade/) that's the result of a failed bid for lichdom. I recommend taking a look through the full creature list and just using ctrl-F until you find something fun to draw on.

(These are all OGL or Share-Alike, so I'm pretty sure I'm clear to link them.)

[Vahnavoi]

Most "non-traditional" liches actually start to overlap with or look like other traditional undead.

The basic idea of a lich is a magic-user who ties their soul to an external object, causing their body to keep limping on after their physical death. Specifying the lich is a druid or other priestly sort changes basically nothing - the distinctions between various spellcasters in modern D&D are highly specific and artificial, to the point most of them don't matter outside of it.

Once you ditch "magic-user" part, your left with person who has their soul tied to an external object, causing their body to keep limping on after their, which is a recurring theme in all stories and folklore about the undead. At that point, why you're calling those undead "liches" specifically instead of, well, any of the dozens of words for undead?

[Cluedrew]

I can think of some liches who had some pretty non-traditional personalities (that is, not evil and power hungry) but if we are talking about how they became a lich "The Master of the Unseen Arts" comes to mind. Now how exactly he became a lich is clouded in mystery but was suggested to be rather dark. But he is also an engineer as much as a spellcaster, several of his "magical artifacts" are actually much more "grounded" than they would first appear and many involve a bit of both. So the first thing is that although still a self made intellectual undead, it isn't a pure spell-caster.

The other is that a bunch of undead are tied to a bunch of other undead, the retainers. They can keep coming back to life as long as he is still alive. Actually, we kind of know of the master through the captain of his "Death Knights", a big woman known as the Grey Knight. Liches tend to be solitary, or with a lot of very low level servants.

The final one is his appearance. Instead of a commanding skeleton on a thrown, he looks like a thin grandpa sitting by the fire. (Perhaps not quite as kindly as the image suggests, but much more so than most liches.)

[Millstone85]

Most "non-traditional" liches actually start to overlap with or look like other traditional undead.For instance, ghosts.

According to the 5e Monster Manual, the famous Acererak himself actually spends most of his time travelling the planes as a disembodied consciousness, while his demilich skull sleeps in a tomb and occasionally eats the souls of trespassing adventurers.

It is not said what an encounter with that disembodied consciousness looks like, but I guess it would be something like a translucent Acererak, maybe even with the traits of a living man instead of a skeleton.

Which to me raises the question: Did he really need to go through all these transformations, only to end up abandoning his body like everyone else?

My guess is that his skull serves as an anchor to resist the pull of the various planes he doesn't want to get stuck on, like the Lower Planes or the Domains of Dread.

[Morphic tide]

Three things come to mind immediately:

1. "Victimized" Liches, where you take an innately magical being, chop it up for power... And then it gets back up because the way you locked in the power also forces its soul to come back to its body. Including the bit you used to make your fancy gear, meaning that both need destroyed for death to stick. It remains an overtly magical being that comes back from death repeatedly due to a bond with a keystone item, but the process removes powers it had in life and the challenge is putting up with sacrificing your own abilities.

Notably, the creation of it can be explained as a screwup of referential or residual infusions of magic, where it's supposed to only template off the bits used or take what's left in the base flesh, but you accidentally grab at the soul of the creature in question and end up stuck with an undead abomination unless you throw away the rest of the investment. Which, due to the possibility of an accidental origin, doesn't actually have to be evil anywhere along the line, as there's plenty of situations in which one brings back a Good creature in pursuit of Good causes.

2. "Life Support" Liches, where the underlying method is actually rooted in healing magic and protections instead of reanimation procedures. You still have reason for a keystone item providing the effects, they still may have dramatic gains in power, but it is *not* truly Necromancy and does not share the counters, even as the gaps in conveniences result in appearing dramatically beyond any survivable condition and they expressly ignore most ordinary needs.

The big trick about this one is that you can "cut the knot" of hunting down and destroying their keystone by researching the measures in place. You could deal with their fortified location as a dungeon to clear. You can also have careful in-universe research of survivability magic edge-cases. A Rasputinian death will work, as will sufficient application of dispelling. But if the party is really low brow and really heavy on the raw numbers, it's very much possible to brute force them down by hacking and blasting and strangling until the bits stop twitching.

3. "Hypertraditional" Liches. You have your D&D-based RPG tropes, your Tolkienesque fantasy line of descent, modern conventions all over the place. Everyone takes the usual countermeasures as common knowledge, the players might be rolling their eyes at how standard it all is as they embrace the cheese. Evil Overlords slain, Undead disintegrate in the face of holy power, dark elves from the depths with obnoxiously blatant bondage and sadism fetishism undertones arrive, the works.

And then you chuck in an expy of Koschei with every serial number shuffled running on folklore conventions absent from the standards, the more obscure the better. The party tries to brute-force things only to find out they lacked the key counter, with the DM treating it as rote and well-cracked as any other trope with all the same grace of plot hooks. Ideally, the DM should be able to show their work of crafting this parallel universe Lich plot as something actually well founded in the origins of the idea.

[Vahnavoi]

For instance, ghosts.

A-yup.

It's one of the classic ghost tropes that they are tied to some object or location due to some grudge or tragedy, and return from beyond the grave to possess the living, or their own corpses, or whatever else suitable. Overlaps with tropes of astral projection, where the ghosts are often portrayed as literally being chained to some object, location or their own earthly remains, in the same vein a silver chain connects the soul of an astral traveler to their unconscious body.

A ghostly warrior bound to a cursed weapon or set of armor is common enough to have its own cliches, they just have other names than "lich". Ditto for vampires being tied to ground or coffins of their graves.

[Mutazoia]

Don't forget this guy....

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/8/84/FootballZombieHD.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20191128210226

That's right. It's the dreaded Jock-Lich.

[Chalkarts]

But have you had anything out there, that was not used in a comical manner?
What would a bard-lich do? Dirges and requiems are an integral part of music, so there is a thematical niche, but zombie pupeteers or undead jester is a thing too. I have had a priest-lich in my D&D game before (as well as the Dragon Priests of Skyrim fame, which are owing to the magic system in said setting are technically just wizards again).


As a forever DM I'll never get to play him, but at the top of my stack is a bard who wants to become a lich so that he can take his time to learn every song and play every stage. He's an eternal seeker of musical lore.

[Pex]

My world has a Lich of Philosophy. When the world was created 19 entities vied for being a deity, but there only 18 positions - two of each alignment. One entity, being of a Good sort, agreed to voluntarily renounce his claim on the condition he may have one Portfolio to be his alone to do with as he pleases. The entities that leaned to Good agreed on his voluntary claim, though sad to see him go. The Neutral entities were fine with it as it meant no conflict. The Evil leaning entities agreed since he would take something they didn't want anyway. How wrong they were. The entity who stepped down chose Undead.

The Good entities laughed uproariously. The Neutral entities applauded. The Evil entities screamed bloody murder but could do nothing about it. By choosing Undead this entity, now the First Lich, deprived the Evil faiths of a powerful weapon. Their followers can still animate and create minor undead, but there could never be a grand undead army for the First Lich forbade it. Since the First Lich was not a god he has freedom to interfere on the world to prevent anyone from becoming a lich or vampire or any powerful undead. Because he isn't a deity a (un)lucky few can fall through the cracks and manage it, but they are rare. In game terms, all undead from any source book that's not the Monster Manual cannot exist at all in the game world.

There is an Undead Church whose Cause is to protect the world. These undead make the world a better place. Living people can choose to voluntarily become undead upon their death to further the Cause, retaining their knowledge and talents they had in life. A 5th level rogue wight or a 7th level monk skeleton could exist. People who were made vampire spawn against their will gain freedom when the master vampire is slain, and can join the Church still vampire but otherwise their normal selves. Mummies can guard holy places. Good aligned Necromancer wizards can become Disciples, i.e. a Lich. The First Lich is the Patron of Undead/Undying Warlocks. The Phantom Rogue is a member of the Church. I don't have undead PCs yet for my game, but the Ravenloft races could have a place in the future.

[Batcathat]

As a forever DM I'll never get to play him, but at the top of my stack is a bard who wants to become a lich so that he can take his time to learn every song and play every stage. He's an eternal seeker of musical lore.

That's a pretty cool concept, but wouldn't it work just as well (or more so) as an NPC? Depending on circumstances and what he's willing to do to learn new songs, I could see him either as a quest giver ("Wait, you had us do all that for a song?") or a villain ("When you've studied music long enough, you'll see that orphan screams is the superior instrument").

[Eldan]

I suppose the thematic difference between a Lich and most other forms of undead is that they do it to themselves, voluntarily. You can be mummified after your death without knowing it and you mostly become a ghost by accident and a zombie due to malign influences, but a Lich is something you want to happen. So you hide your heart in an egg or whatever.

[Chalkarts]

That's a pretty cool concept, but wouldn't it work just as well (or more so) as an NPC? Depending on circumstances and what he's willing to do to learn new songs, I could see him either as a quest giver ("Wait, you had us do all that for a song?") or a villain ("When you've studied music long enough, you'll see that orphan screams is the superior instrument").

"Work just as well" from a mechanical standpoint, sure.
I want to play the character though.

[Witty Username]

As I recall there is the Lichfiend: a demon/devil that has chosen to increase its power though Lichtman.

Orcus is probably a fan, or rather hates it less.

[Millstone85]

I suppose the thematic difference between a Lich and most other forms of undead is that they do it to themselves, voluntarily. You can be mummified after your death without knowing it and you mostly become a ghost by accident and a zombie due to malign influences, but a Lich is something you want to happen. So you hide your heart in an egg or whatever.With this, I have an idea for a "conceptual" lich.

First, the character has studied spiritual anatomy and identified the following elements:

the soul, which after death is usually reborn on an outer plane as a petitioner.
the mind, which after death usually floats in the Astral Plane as a memory core.
the eidolon, or astral body, which can be projected away from the mind and soul.

They have then found a way to use these in place of the typical components of lichdom:

the soul remains the soul, to be secured in a phylactery.
the memory core takes on the role of the phylactery.
the astral body takes on the role of the animated corpse.

This lich can project themself beyond the Astral, their appearance synergizing with the plane they are currently visiting. They look fey in the Feywild, umbral in the Shadowfell, elemental on the Inner Planes, etc., and are considered to be under a disguising effect like Nystul's magic aura. In truth, they are undead.

[Beleriphon]

I suppose the thematic difference between a Lich and most other forms of undead is that they do it to themselves, voluntarily. You can be mummified after your death without knowing it and you mostly become a ghost by accident and a zombie due to malign influences, but a Lich is something you want to happen. So you hide your heart in an egg or whatever.

I think that's the key here. Most undead aren't intentional on the part of the person/creature that is now undead. Most folklore undead are curses, improper burials, or punishments from The Divine for some deed. A lich is a person seeking to specifically make themself beyond death by any means necessary. If we look at the folklore around a lot Chinese mythology and folklore there are potions to make a person immortal, actually immortal as in can't ever be killed immortal, but the lich isn't this idea. They just don't die, but they also aren't alive.

[Eldan]

Though, thinking about it... does that mean the original (Bram Stoker) Dracula is a lich? Because he did that to himself, with his magic, pure willpower and noble lineage.

[MrStabby]

One of my BBEGs was a Bardc Lich - they believed that if they could become famous enough, they would be literally imortalised in song. As long as people told their tales they would be able to come back from the dead.

This was one of my first campaigns and I went for a cartoonishly evil villain - I wanted someone who was grandstanding, evil for the sake of notoriety and generaly persuing flamboyant dickishness. The more people would want to tell takes of their actions the better. Not a subtle bad-guy but fun all the same.


I get there are differences, but I kind of feel like mummies fill the priest-lich slot quite well. For other classes I can see similar roles.

A Thief lich that steals their own soul back from the underworld.

A druid that binds themselves to nature and regrows with the seasons as some kind of immortal guardian of the wood.

A barbarian that has their ancestor spirits standing by to jailbreak them out of the afterlife (possibly after an oath to deal with their unfinished business or whatever)

[VonKaiserstein]

The Pirates of the Caribbean has quite a few ways for a non-caster to acquire eternal life. Cursed aztec gold, turning you into a lich that seeks to unite the treasure and break the curse- behaving much more like a dragon than a traditional lich.

Davie Jones' chest, where the would be lich needs to be tough enough and strong enough to cut out his own heart and place it in a chest- at which point he achieves eternal life and a phylactery. Why? Because feelings hurt too much. This is definitely metal (and emo), and a barbarian path to lichhood.

Or the good old fountain of youth, where you are tied to a water source, and become a territorial survivalist. Best suited to a ranger, I'd imagine.


I really like the idea of a chest of eternal life though, where you have to inflict so many points of damage to yourself within a certain number of rounds, then pass some sort of con check to put your own heart into the box. Unless, you know, you wimp out and have to get someone to assist you.

[Grim Portent]

One idea I've had for a while now is of a character who just knows how to walk back from the afterlife.

No magical life extension, no methods to circumvent dying or being taken to where souls go to rest. They just know how to leave the hereafter and return to the here and now. It's not a quick process, it's a long walk even if the distance is metaphysical rather than physical, but they just return one day, whole, hale and hearty, though still dead.

After the first time they're not really mortal anymore, but not exactly a traditional undead, and not necessarily magical but they are becoming more and more mystical in nature as they traverse the liminal space between alive and dead repeatedly.

[icefractal]

Spellbound Lich
Requires researching a custom spell that contains a hidden link to your soul and spreading it as far and wide as possible.
When they die, they go "outside" the normal planes, like a vestige. In that state:
When anyone casts their spell, they're aware of it and briefly see the situation it was cast in.
They can inhabit a spellbook containing their spell, or a magic item which uses it. Their abilities are severely limited in this state though.
They can try to possess anyone who prepares the spell, with better chances the more often someone prepares it. Once they get a strong enough possession, they can make it permanent and remain in that body until their next death.

If all copies of their spell are destroyed, they can no longer return to the world, and might become a vestige or just cease existing.