Yet Another Phylactery Question

[SurvivorX]

Apologies if this has been suggested before.

Most liches have some small, compact item as their phylactery. Suppose a lich was to instead make a much larger item his phylactery, though?

Say, his fortress?

I mean, for one thing, who would even think "It's his fortress!" They'd probably think "It's IN his fortress" or somesuch. Heck, the characters in the game I DM would probably start living in the fortress after they'd defeated him. (It would be funny to watch them defending the lich's phylactery without realizing it ...)

Another thing, how far would it have to be damaged to be counted as "destroyed" enough to kill the lich? The first crack in the outer wall? Nothing less than the utter destruction of every single brick down to a fine dust? An Azure City type of explosion? Somewhere in between? If the entire thing has to be ground down to powder, it would be interesting if one of the bad guy's henchmen managed to make off with one brick while the good guys are hard at work crunching it down and he regenerates from that (could hide the brick in the walls of another fortress later).

Or would this simply be an impossible feat and unrealistic to even consider it? My monster manual (3.0) says nothing about what kind of things you CAN'T make into a phylactery, though I don't know about the other books.

[shadzar]

When you do sufficient damage to a phylactery to be considered destroyed would be when the object itself no longer resembles what it should be. a cracked locket, broken box, etc, and at that time the release of energy pretty much turns it into dust as there is nothing left after the "destroyed" kicks in.

That would be my way of doing it.

So if it was a lock on a treasure box, and the lock was picked, then it still functions as what it was, but if the lock was smashed to where the lock didn't work as a lock anymore, then I would consider it destroyed; both as a lock and phylactery.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

No comment on your idea, but one idea I keep in the back of my head for a near-epic game is a party of Liches, all of whom were friends and allies in both Life and Undeath, who are each others Phylactaries. You kill one, he reforms next to his friend, they contact their old friends, and half of them go into hiding while the other half go hunting.

[Coidzor]

Indeed, I've been intrigued by this sort of idea for awhile... Though more along the lines of some sort of construct that the lich once driven back into the phylactery controls in order to find a deep down hidey-hole/be a big fight if anything does come across said phylactery.

[Starbuck_II]

Another thing, how far would it have to be damaged to be counted as "destroyed" enough to kill the lich? The first crack in the outer wall? Nothing less than the utter destruction of every single brick down to a fine dust? An Azure City type of explosion? Somewhere in between? If the entire thing has to be ground down to powder, it would be interesting if one of the bad guy's henchmen managed to make off with one brick while the good guys are hard at work crunching it down and he regenerates from that (could hide the brick in the walls of another fortress later).

Only magic items work. Not pieces of a magic item.

So no using a piece of the sword. It has to be the sword. Now if he hide a magical brick inside a fortress: that could work.

But no saying it is the fortress and at same time using a brick.

[rokar4life]

where does it say that it has to be magical.

[Lochar]

Because it requires Craft Wondrous Item.

And Wondrous Items are, last I checked, magical.

[Hat-Trick]

It holds a person's life essence, that's magical by default.

[Devils_Advocate]

Libris Mortis specifies that every phylactery is Tiny, with 40 hit points, a hardness of 20, and a break DC of 40.

[SSGoW]

hmmm to be spawned next to it do you have to die on the same plane that its on? or if you put it in a bag of holding and hid it somewhere ... would you spawn inside the bag of holding?

*party kills lich*

oh hey i found a bag of holding (tiny invisible phylactery is inside) then when they are asleep lich jumps out and kills the party :3

[arguskos]

Libris Mortis specifies that every phylactery is Tiny, with 40 hit points, a hardness of 20, and a break DC of 40.

Make it a brick then.

Sstoopidtallkid, with your idea, make each Lich's phylactery a specific bone in another one.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Libris Mortis specifies that every phylactery is Tiny, with 40 hit points, a hardness of 20, and a break DC of 40.

Why was my first thought a Lich Awakened Bat Cleric with the birdcage he sleeps in as a Phylactary?

Also, how does that interact with Demiliches? They're apparently Dimunitive, with 8 Tiny objects inside? Yeah. I'm ignoring that Phylactary rule as poorly thought-out, hindering to creativity, and non-fun.

[arguskos]

Why was my first thought a Lich Awakened Bat Cleric with the birdcage he sleeps in as a Phylactary?

Also, how does that interact with Demiliches? They're apparently Dimunitive, with 8 Tiny objects inside? Yeah. I'm ignoring that Phylactary rule as poorly thought-out, hindering to creativity, and non-fun.

Within reason. Having a WHOLE CASTLE as your phylactery is a bit much really, along with having another undead creature. Now, making a small object a part of another creature? That seems like a good use of the phylactery rules.

They aren't really that poorly thought-out, they just need some clever usage to do silly things with. Now, any rule that says a phylactery is something specific (like a small metal box with special writings inside it) is foolish.

[Kalirren]

Now you're giving me an idea...

A Lich King with a Royal Mint. One magical coin press, among many other slightly less magical coin presses. The press itself isn't the phylactery, but every coin stamped by that press -is- part of the phylactery.

Given the way that coins tend to get lost in sewer grates etc., one couldn't ever manage to find and destroy them all...and there would be so many decoys...

[Hat-Trick]

Something tells me splintering your life essence would be really painful and/or ineffective, especially since it would be fractured who knows how many times and probably in uneven chunks.

[V'icternus]

See, what you do is use Epic Magic to split your soul into seven pieces. One piece stays inside you, while the other six go into a ring, your diary, a cup, a locket, a crown (tiara if you're a female Lich) and your familiar.

You may also put a piece inside your mortal enemy.*

Then, gather some minions and kill things.


*Optional.

[Devils_Advocate]

It's not a quest to save the world without a matched set of McGuffins to collect, huh?

[Jayngfet]

I wonder if it's possible to animate a soul hidey place? Slap some illusion on and then it's a stray kitten in the slums, or a spider in menzoberranzan...

[Waspinator]

There's always the cheesy abuse of your undead lack of needing to breath to explore space and find a really obscure place to plant it. Then, since you're obviously a spellcaster of some kind if you're a lich, you can just teleport to and from it as needed.

[Gaiyamato]

There is a spellcasting prestige class somewhere that has the ability to make it's own permanent stable demi-plane at level 10 and set all of the rules for it.
I cannot remember which class it is though. :P

Just use an instant fortress full of shadow creatures and other nasties and fill the entire thing with random junk. One singular item in all of that is the phylactery. You can even use the plane to distort the detection spells so that they have no hope of finding it. ;)

vuala.. one almost invincible lich.
Mind you collapsing the plane would be bad for the lich if you were powerful enough to do so. :P
A lich can also make as many phylacteries as it can afford. Which for ancient liches is a lot.

[KillianHawkeye]

A lich can also make as many phylacteries as it can afford. Which for ancient liches is a lot.

Depends on the edition. In 3.x they can only make 1 ever, as clarified in Libris Mortis.

[Gaiyamato]

Depends on the edition. In 3.x they can only make 1 ever, as clarified in Libris Mortis.

Yeah, just read that.
Oh well, go with the hiding it inside a giant castle full of junk inside your own demi plane. lol.

[Lapak]

They aren't really that poorly thought-out, they just need some clever usage to do silly things with. Now, any rule that says a phylactery is something specific (like a small metal box with special writings inside it) is foolish.

See, I'm fine with it being a specific, non-replaceable thing. Liches are tough enough as it is without making them MORE invulnerable. The problem I have is that the thing in question is so flavorless. If you're going to make all phylacteries be one thing, it should be something like 'the lich's mortal heart, torn out and transmuted to a single flawless diamond while he was still alive' or 'the lich's actual soul, removed and bound into a featureless black sphere made of pure, magically contained negative energy enchanted into a solid form.'

I'm fine with them all being Tiny and tough-but-not-indestructible; if the lich wants to get clever then let him be clever in how he hides it. There's nothing stopping him from hollowing out a brick, shoving it inside, and using that brick as one of the thousands to construct a castle. Or sealing his phylactery in a permanent Force Cube that serves as the linchpin on a magic seal that keeps a permanent gate to the Nine Hells closed. Or burying it in the sands of a nameless desert island on the far side of the world. But letting the players know and/or research that the thing they need to find has a particular shape is no bad thing, so long as that thing is interesting.

Hah, an idea for a villain/foil just occurred to me if they're all identical, when I suddenly had the image of a rack of lich-souls all lined up. A collector of phylacteries, who uses the threat of their destruction to force a collection of liches to serve her. I'm seeing a destroyed lich start to regenerate, looking forward to finding out where she's hiding his soul, only to realize that there's a dozen identical phylacteries, each under their own magical protections - and before he can recover his spells and can start unlocking any of them, she comes in and teleports the just-regenerated lich away, leaving the whereabouts of the collection still unknown.

[Mystic Muse]

@^ you're ideas are good but it still has to be possible to find the phylactery. otherwise there's absolutely no point.

and an entire castle as a phylactery? isn't that overkill? I mean a few different phylactery decoys fine. an entire castle being the phylactery and having to destroy each and every brick? that'd be almost impossible to destroy.

[goken04]

I think there should be definitive limits on the size of a phylactery. Otherwise, the Lich could make the entire planet his phylactery. Hard to destroy, for sure.

As for hiding a phylactery, it's not that difficult for a Lich to gain fire immunity or bestow such immunity to his phylactery. At which point he hides the phylactery in the heart of the sun with a Contingent fire immunity and teleport on the phylactery should the Lich be killed and start to reform in the heart of the sun.

[Lapak]

I think there should be definitive limits on the size of a phylactery. Otherwise, the Lich could make the entire planet his phylactery. Hard to destroy, for sure.

As for hiding a phylactery, it's not that difficult for a Lich to gain fire immunity or bestow such immunity to his phylactery. At which point he hides the phylactery in the heart of the sun with a Contingent fire immunity and teleport on the phylactery should the Lich be killed and start to reform in the heart of the sun.

Somehow I feel like that might backfire when the Sun God gets home at the end of the day. "What's this? An abomination of unlife floating around in My Sun?" *DIVINE WRATH*

Depending on setting, of course.

[Yora]

When you do sufficient damage to a phylactery to be considered destroyed would be when the object itself no longer resembles what it should be. a cracked locket, broken box, etc, and at that time the release of energy pretty much turns it into dust as there is nothing left after the "destroyed" kicks in.

That would be my way of doing it.

So if it was a lock on a treasure box, and the lock was picked, then it still functions as what it was, but if the lock was smashed to where the lock didn't work as a lock anymore, then I would consider it destroyed; both as a lock and phylactery.

Make it a coin sized metal strip and hide it between the lock metal and the crates wood.

[Eloel]

Make a castle out of illusion-bricks (each a single spell). Make the phylactery a brick.

An army attacks the castle, each see bricks missing from here and there, but noone sees the exact same bricks missing. If the PCs can gather all the info from all the soldiers, and find the single brick that's there in everyone's sight, good job, they have found the phylactery.

It sounded better in my head :/

[Hat-Trick]

Confuse the hell out of everyone. Good tactic.

[Eloel]

Also, all you need to make sure the phylacteries are safe is 'Dominate Person' a few of the mooks. Make them say they don't see the brick the phylactery is in. It's not even suspected of.