(DnD 3.X) Protecting your Phylactery.

[EvilJoe15]

Hello Playground.
I'm playing an epic demilich, and I'd like to know what are the best ways to protect one's phylactery. They needn't be flawless, as I have eight of them, but I'd like to keep my primary safe since I depend on it for the magic item transference.

The allowed sources are any 3.0, or 3.5 book published, and any webcontent from WotC. I can learn eighteen spells per level, so I have nearly any spell available. Psionics too.

So any thoughts?

[Noedig]

In the stomach of the Tarrasque is a good one.

Or one that my Lich NPC used: Make it permanently invisible, immune to scrying, sentient, and with a telepathic link that crosses planes.

Not sure if he can do that but Im the DM so it doesnt really matter.

Then bury it somewhere nondescript, like in the middle of some woods.

[Anxe]

Make it a Red Dragon Tooth and throw it in a volcano.

Put it in the arctic.

Put it in the hollow of a random tree.

Carry it with you and put a bunch of death spells on it.

Polymorph it into dust and spread it in a desert. This one might actually count as destroying it though...

[Lysander]

I remember a thread like this a little while back. Anyone know where it is?

What I suggested for that one was depositing the phylactery in a completely random spot in an infinite featureless uninhabited plane like the negative energy plane. Make it permanently invisible for good measure. The odds of anyone finding it are exceptionally small.

Another one is to have a continuously moving phylactery. Create or acquire a completely loyal servant that can cast Greater Teleport at will. Give it the phylactery with commands to teleport to a new location every single round, always picking someplace relatively safe. That way even if someone can successfully scry its location, they'll probably be unable to get there before it moves.

Or even better do both, have a loyal servant continuously teleporting your phylactery around an infinite uninhabited plane. Each round it can appear several billion miles away from its last position.

[Glimbur]

You'll need a source of Animate Objects for this. Cast it on your phylactery. Then cast Imprisonment on it. Now it takes a Wish to find it, and another ninth level spell to release it. Even more amusingly, Freedom only works on creatures, and when Animate Objects wears off the phylactery is back to being an object.

Build like six castles on the negative energy plane, in the basement of one of them is where you Imprisoned your phylactery. Then Modify Memory yourself so not even you know which castle is which. Guard them all. It's expensive but thematic for a lich anyway, so...

[NeoVid]

Put one in a Leomund's Secret Chest.

Put one in your safe deposit box.

[Lycanthromancer]

Find the only portal to a completely non-magic plane (ie, magic cannot function on this world), throw your phylactery in, then destroy the gate.

Polymorph any object it into an air molecule, cast awaken object on it, and give it the ability to teleport at will, as noted above.

[The Rabbler]

make one a hand of glory and put a ring of sequestering on it.

or animate it and put a ring of sequestering on it.

or animate it and cast sequester on it.

or make a clone, make it your phylactery, and cast sequester on it.

[Ravens_cry]

Find the only portal to a completely non-magic plane (ie, magic cannot function on this world), throw your phylactery in, then destroy the gate.

Since the phylactery contains your soul, wouldn't such a plane prevent your phylactery from working?

[CockroachTeaParty]

Since the phylactery contains your soul, wouldn't such a plane prevent your phylactery from working?

Plus, how would you escape the plane if you regenerated there?

[Ravens_cry]

Plus, how would you escape the plane if you regenerated there?

Not to mention your body is livened by what can be called magic to a non-magical (read:our) universe.
The trouble with hiding your phylactery is the fundamental problem of security, security verses access. If it's too secret, you lose the biggest advantage of being a lich, you come back. But if it's too accessible, you have the same problem.

[Masaioh]

Make it a coin in the treasure hoard of an epic dragon. In the Abyss/Baator.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Keep in mind people that where ever you hide your phylactery is where you reform when your physical body dies.
I recall the Lich from Libris Mortis who kept reforming on the ocean floor because his phylactery was lodged in the intestine of a Kraken and he kept dying trying to get it back.

So a volcano is not a good idea even the phylactery may be immune to fire but you aren't. Given a demi-lich wears items by having them next to his phylactery that's an extra level complication.
So you'll need regular access to it for equipment purposes.

Now, the most important thing to know is, how much effort would your DM actually put into finding it.
By epic levels unless its a TPK true resurrection is fairly easy to come by. So you could be perfectly safe keeping the phylactery with the party.

[Deth Muncher]

Couldn't you use the rules for unslotting a magic item and just apply the phylactery quality to something ridiculous, like...your own body? O_o

[Ravens_cry]

Make it a coin in the treasure hoard of an epic dragon. In the Abyss/Baator.

Isn't that the place generally, by virtue of your undeath, you're trying to avoid?

[holywhippet]

Slap some anti-scrying spells on it, paint it to look like ordinary rock and embed it in the roof of a tall cave. If you have to regenerate you appear at the top of the cave and can simply fly/feather fall to the ground. Anyone trying to find it with detect magic will fail because a) they aren't likely to look up and b) the roof just needs to be over 60 foot tall.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Couldn't you use the rules for unslotting a magic item and just apply the phylactery quality to something ridiculous, like...your own body? O_o

A liches phylactery is an unslotted item to begin with so what are you talking about? The point of a Liches phylactery is if you kill the Lich he is revived by his phylactery. If the phylactery was your own body it serve no purpose.

[Shalist]

Find some way to attach it to a Vampire Lord from the WoTC site...

Spoiler

Show

aside from shedding a lot of the usual weaknesses (not killed by stakes, can walk in sunlight, etc), there's this beauty:

The only way to make sure that a vampire lord does not return is to cut its head from its body, burn the body and the head separately, scatter the ashes from the body over running water, immerse the ashes from the head in holy water, and bury the immersed ashes in consecrated ground. However, if the head ashes are ever unearthed and somehow separated from the holy water, dried thoroughly, and then subjected to an unhallow spell, the vampire lord can regenerate in a week if the ashes are placed inside one of its places of rest.

Also...protect it from what? Good guys, other evil guys, the ravages of time, dieties, etc? Sheer anonymity (bury it in the woods, random plane, etc) doesn't protect it from time. Dragon's hoard...with a touch of 'sympathy,' and we're doing a bit better. Maybe spell it up (immune to pressure, heat), and chuck it into a big star? Dress it up as a holy artifact / relic of good, so that the Super Pals unwittingly guard it from all your enemies?

And you can't animate a magical object, unfortunately. 'Hardening' for a CL/2 hardness boost. 'Greater sign of sealing' for more hardness, 5*CL HP, and other protections, might also help.

Forbiddance (keyed to LG) and antipathy, may come into play for this.

Also, here are some similar threads

Let's play hide the phylactery.


How to hide your phylactery, redux

edit:

Per the 'vampire lord' bit...is there any way to turn your 8 phylacteries into 8 soul shards, merged with the souls of 8 other powerful creatures? It'd go great with the "fortress on the negative plane" type ideas. They wouldn't all have to be super-evils...you can have some super-goods in there too, or random epic monsters, just for kicks, and none of them would even know what was up.

edit 2:

I always liked this:
Step one: Genesis to create a small empty demiplane.
Step two: Put Phylactery and backup spell book in the demiplane.
Step three: Cast a Delayed (metamagic) Forbiddance (buy a scroll if you don't want to take the feat yourself).
Step four: Plane shift out.

End Result: Your phylactery is on a plane that is completely inaccessible via planar traveling spells. If your body is destroyed you reform on the demiplane (I'm pretty sure this doesn't count as interplanar travel). Cast dispel magic to break the forbiddance so you can leave then reapply steps three and four. As far as I know this is unbreakable without epic/divine stuff.

[Deth Muncher]

A liches phylactery is an unslotted item to begin with so what are you talking about? The point of a Liches phylactery is if you kill the Lich he is revived by his phylactery. If the phylactery was your own body it serve no purpose.

Nono...maybe I'm not explaining this correctly.

Okay, so normally, you've got the phylactery. Say it's a glass sphere. So instead, you make it a non-item (which is kinda what I always assumed unslotted items to be, just kinda becoming part of you). So you make this part of your body. So basically, your soul is in your body, except that you regenerate adjacent to your body, and you also have a corpse to jump back into should the need arise. Further, who's going to think to go through the trouble to destroy your body when they just (supposedly) killed you? Behead you, sure, but destroy?

[pingcode20]

If you're a lich, the two most important steps in fighting you are 'Kill You' and 'Kill Your Phylactery', in either order.

Putting both of these in the same place is a recipe for nothing but disaster. Not only will someone who knows what you are (which isn't tough, given that you're a powerful spellcasting skeleton) have a much easier time of finishing the job, but you risk it getting smashed by an overenthusiastic barbarian smashing at your broken body in post-battle thrill.

[Doc Roc]

Swap meets with other liches are a great way.

[BobVosh]

I read an amusing thread about a week ago where they had the lich PAO the phylactery into a card, and placed it within a deck of many things.

I've always been fond of mind raping the nearby powerful erudite (or other really long lived/can't die of old age) emperor into adopting a child. Then making the child a PAO 2x phylactery.

If you can somehow manage it, you can make it an important part of sigil. The lady will make sure it stays safe, but it must be very important part. Even then she may find another way to balance if it is taken/destroyed.

Another popular one is genesis, plane no one can reach, and never actually leaving. Only astral projection/plane shift.

[Gralamin]

Swap meets with other liches are a great way.

This is probably going to be very effective. Each swaps there phylacteries, makes dastardly traps to protect them, etc. Then if an Adventurer comes after one of them, they all wipe them out, to protect their own phylacteries.

[Heliomance]

Make your phylactery into a playing card - pretty sure it's an acceptable size that you don't even need to polymorph it, just craft it as such in the first place - then shuffle it into a Deck of Many Things. Then use some of the other methods here. That way, even if the PCs do find your the deck, they won't dare draw your phylactery.

[Fishy]

Sadly, obfuscation is not the same as security- Even if you hide it so well that you've removed all traces of it from existence, a 15th level Seer (or a Wizard with Wish) can still deduce exactly where it is and how it's defended. Nothing this side of Epic beats Hypercognition.

For my money, use the Save Game Hack- manifest Forced Dream on a minion, throw them into a vat of Quintessence with your Phylactery, and any attempt to destroy your phylactery is instantly thwarted through time-travel.

Or, create a quasi-sentient demiplane out of the minds of your worshippers. Either way.

(Also, I really need to let my players stop being harassed by the Karrnathi Kops and hide their phylacteries already.)

[Shalist]

Swap meets with other liches are a great way.

Realistically, shouldn't the lich be a lot more worried about his competition, than some brainless paladins, or upstart adventurers he's never even heard of before?

[Omegonthesane]

Sadly, obfuscation is not the same as security- Even if you hide it so well that you've removed all traces of it from existence, a 15th level Seer (or a Wizard with Wish) can still deduce exactly where it is and how it's defended. Nothing this side of Epic beats Hypercognition.

Incorrect, on two counts I can think of.

You make lightning-fast deductions based on only the slightest clue, pattern, or scrap of memory resident in your mind. You can make reasonable statements about a person, place, or object, seemingly from very little knowledge. However, your knowledge is in fact the result of a rigorously logical process that you force your mind to undertake, digging up and correlating every possible piece of knowledge bearing on the topic (possibly even extracting echoes of knowledge from the Astral Plane).

The bolded bits imply, to me, that there must exist some trace of the knowledge you seek for Hypercognition to work. So while purging all trace of your phylactery is Very Hard, if you pull it off even to the point of Mindraping yourself when you're done, there will exist nothing in any plane to point to your phylactery.

The nature of the knowledge you gain concerning the subject of your analysis might include the answer to a riddle, the way out of a maze, stray bits of information about a person, legends about a place or an object, or even a conclusion concerning a dilemma that your conscious mind is unable to arrive at.

No guarantee that the knowledge Hypercognition gives you will be even nearly enough to actually solve your problem.

Here's 11 pages of ways of hiding your phylactery, and ways that they can go wrong.. Not all are rule-legal but hey.

[EvilJoe15]

Thanks for the replies. I must say I' like the demiplane idea(Fitting for a demilich). In terms of who I'm fighting, it's the dragons, all of them. There may be another demilich in the party, but I don't know it's build.

I think I might design the plane as one giant trap for would be slayers, pit's of lava, poison gas as air, with a box made out of force, inside which is an antimagic field, and inside that is an adamantine box with lead lining just big enough to fit my phylactery, gear, and my head.

Any glaring problems with that?

[Zen Master]

Any glaring problems with that?

Long as it's not actually in there, no. Honestly, big showy protection works just draw attention. Do all that, place it in there - then cast the biggest, baddest abjuration and anti-divination spells know to arcana, pick the phylactery back up, and leave.

Then, instead, you simply place it somewhere it might be ignored or unseen forever - a lowly copper piece used to buy an apple, a brick in the Great Wall of Chinerium, a book on a shelf in the Eternal Library. Forgotten forever. Far safer that way - you only need to resist the compulsion to protect it at all cost, that only draws attention.

[Fishy]

Any glaring problems with that?

Only one. How do you get out?