Liches: thinking outside the box

[kwanzaabot]

So, a lot of liches I've seen tend to fall into one of two categories. There's the evil overlord type, and then there's the good lich who became undead to protect something or somebody. But usually there's just the evil overlord.

I'm looking to shake things up, and maybe inject a little moral greyness into the mix, so I thought I'd post here, and see what kind of lich characters people can come up with by taking the lich outside the box, and then setting the box on fire and scattering the ashes of the box into the wind.

[Lanaya]

I don't think anyone in my game is going to be reading this, but if you are, stop it right now.

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Well, technically this falls under protecting something or somebody, but the lich in my current campaign became a lich in order to save himself. He was being hunted by some very efficient assassins, and the only way he could evade them was to make them think he was already dead. And the only way to do that was to actually die. So he makes a phylactery, lets them kill him and destroy all trace of the body, and then 1d10 days later his body reforms and he walks away a free man.

[kwanzaabot]

I don't think anyone in my game is going to be reading this, but if you are, stop it right now.

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Well, technically this falls under protecting something or somebody, but the lich in my current campaign became a lich in order to save himself. He was being hunted by some very efficient assassins, and the only way he could evade them was to make them think he was already dead. And the only way to do that was to actually die. So he makes a phylactery, lets them kill him and destroy all trace of the body, and then 1d10 days later his body reforms and he walks away a free man.

That's actually pretty cool.

[The-Mage-King]

A lich who turned undead so that they could learn all of the things- he (or she) has founded a library of arcane writings, and does allow people access, if they agree to help with (usually nonlethal) research, or contribute something of their own to it.

Though similar has been done before, I'm pretty sure.

[DarthCyberWolf]

You could take off the evil part of “evil overlord”. Say there was someone who wanted to set up a single system (himself at the top of course) rather than multiple tribes, cities, etc. His reasons could be to actually unite everyone instead of just for personal power. He could be opposed by normal good characters who see the tyrant you’d expect, or by chaotic types who’d prefer individuality. Could become more of an order vs. freedom, instead of good vs. evil.

Remember that the reason for becoming a lich is less about power, more about cheating death. Maybe this character sees it as his personal mission for whatever reason and was being hunted by those against the idea. They were getting close to killing him, so he needed a backup plan. Or maybe he was just getting old because it took a long time. Time’s a *****.

[GM.Casper]

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Absolutism is the best form of government - until you die and your life's work is destroyed by a incompetent successor.

[Zaggab]

I had a lich character sketched up for a campaign that I never had room to introduce, but he was a non-typical lich. He was an artist who just wanted to live forever, to be able to create the art he loved until the end of time. He was still quite evil though, by being incredibly selfish and insensitive to others, but too sqeamish to have any love for violence.

Then the villains got hold of his phylactery and blackmailed him into going along with their plans (or, they would have, if the campaign had room for him).

[GodGoblin]

Ive always loved the idea of Liches who have 'lived' so long theve gained some perspective on the world and become harbingers of neutrality, They give up on the usual evil deeds as after a few tousand years it gets boring, they also realise that absoloute Good can do as much damage as Evil so tehy might form some sort of secret society dedecated to bringing balance to the world.


Ive also wanted to include a lich in my games who has been working on a portrait for thousands of years and achieved near photo realism

[Gettles]

How about this, a Lich who just doesn't want to die. They love life and the like seeing the world so they became a Lich, use illusion spells to disguise their physical deterioration, and go about their day to day business, every 15 years or so moving to a new place with a new name to keep people from getting catching on?

[Silma]

I don't think anyone in my game is going to be reading this, but if you are, stop it right now.

Spoiler

Show

Well, technically this falls under protecting something or somebody, but the lich in my current campaign became a lich in order to save himself. He was being hunted by some very efficient assassins, and the only way he could evade them was to make them think he was already dead. And the only way to do that was to actually die. So he makes a phylactery, lets them kill him and destroy all trace of the body, and then 1d10 days later his body reforms and he walks away a free man.

Interesting idea.


Love the name by the way.

[North_Ranger]

I was at one time fascinated by the baelnorn(sp?) lich variant offered in one of the D&D 3.5 books; essentially an ancient elf who had become a lich to serve as the record keeper and living memory of an elven family, kingdom or order. In one storytelling game I put a bit of a twist in that, and introduced a millennia-old elven lich who had turned to lichdom to continue his arcane studies. Already standoffish in life, he had become completely detached from the world around him, living only for continued knowledge and preserving as well as expanding his master's legacy. He didn't even acknowledge the world beyond his massive fortress, so monomaniacally focused he was on his studies of the secrets of the universes.

Pretty much the only time he left his fortress was when some lucky rogue managed to sneak off with one of his spellbooks, and then he essentially rode out like a storm of arcane fury.

[kwanzaabot]

Since I made this thread, I may as well weigh in with my own, huh? (btw, GodGoblin and Gettles, love your ideas)

So, my lich did it all for love. The woman he loved died suddenly, so of course, what do you do in these situations? You make a deal with the devil to bring her back. The cost? His soul.

And of course he didn't read the fine print, as the devil brought his lover back... as a zombie. As, in my setting, dead is dead. No resurrection.

So, after the soon-to-be lich kills the zombie (after all, what choice does he have?), he looks into ways to safeguard his soul. After all, the devil cheated him, so he might as well cheat the devil right back! So, naturally, as you do, he became a lich.

After several decades of research, he discovered that yeah, there's no way to bring the dead properly back to life.

I'm treating him as a very tragic hero. He's got an eternity and nobody to spend it with. so he might as well do some good before some over-zealous paladin puts him down.

[Fishman]

Absolutism is the best form of government - until you die and your life's work is destroyed by a incompetent successor.

That's the beauty of it, isn't it? He's a lich...he doesn't die.

What about the otherwise ordinary dude who isn't evil, or out to rule the world, or has any other monomaniacal lofty goal, he just thinks the entire "dying" thing sucks and becomes a lich just to avoid that?

[The Glyphstone]

I had a lich character sketched up for a campaign that I never had room to introduce, but he was a non-typical lich. He was an artist who just wanted to live forever, to be able to create the art he loved until the end of time. He was still quite evil though, by being incredibly selfish and insensitive to others, but too sqeamish to have any love for violence.

Then the villains got hold of his phylactery and blackmailed him into going along with their plans (or, they would have, if the campaign had room for him).

I had something similar (an idea I created but never got to use) - a bard determined to create the perfect symphony. He wasn't finished by the time he got old, so he pursued lichdom in order to have eternity to keep tinkering with his music. Had a very phantom-of-the-opera feel.

That's the beauty of it, isn't it? He's a lich...he doesn't die.

What about the otherwise ordinary dude who isn't evil, or out to rule the world, or has any other monomaniacal lofty goal, he just thinks the entire "dying" thing sucks and becomes a lich just to avoid that?

The problem is that the creation of a phylactery is, by default, an 'unspeakably evil act'. It doesn't specify how many orphaned infant livers you need to feed to demons, and can usually be re-fluffed without significant pain, but non-evil liches who aren't Baelnorns/Archliches are deviant by both fluff and rules, so they'll be exceptionally unusual.

[Psyren]

An oft-overlooked quirk of the lich rules is that some unconventional casters, like Warlocks, can become liches so long as they have any spellcasting ability at all.


One idea I had was of a master craftsman, who pursued lichdom to be able to perfect his art. This lich was a Warlock 12 with Magical Training and a bunch of crafting feats - offensively weak as far as liches go, but able to meet all the RAW requirements for lichdom. The "evil act" requirement was met by selling his soul for craftsmanship ability, i.e. extra crafting feats using the Pact Certain (FC2 23-24) for more feats.

Between his plethora of crafting feats and his Imbue/Deceive Item abilities, he can create any non-artifact in the game - and unlike an Artificer, his items are truly arcane or truly divine as the situation warrants. This makes him highly sought after by adventurers of many backgrounds for a variety of ends. However, being immortal through undeath, Hell has no way to collect its due from him until both he and is phylactery are destroyed - the devils naturally feel cheated and thus wish to hasten his demise. He thus ends up siding with Good out of practicality, as he needs protection, but is not above supplying anyone who can stave off the constant assassins sent his way by Baator, regardless of alignment (he has supplied demons more than once who bear grudges against his devilish pursuers.). He is extremely charismatic, totally paranoid, not-quite-sane, and highly dangerous (since he can also UMD anything he makes, and reserves his choicest creations for his personal use.)

[nedz]

Lich vs Lich for world domination.

Actually a college of Liches against a renegade.

The renegade Lich, describing himself as a vivi-mancer, manages to recruit a good party to take out the others. It worked very well. He hid on an obscure island, placed several 'prophesies' to entice the PCs into acquiring the relevant artefacts, ...

[Zale]

Make a female Lich.

They're almost always male, so that'd make an exception right there.

[Lapak]

One of the earlier liches in a book published for AD&D was neither an evil overlord nor a noble protector. The Forgotten Realms campaign setting for AD&D had an adventure set in a ancient wizards' college in the ruins of Myth Drannor, and one of the inhabitants was an insane lich who didn't realize he was dead or that the college had been abandoned. If the party didn't attack him, he treated them as if they were students and sent them on meaningless errands. If they attacked him, he would kill them (probably easily, since it was otherwise a fairly low-level adventure.)

[Eldan]

Make a female Lich.

They're almost always male, so that'd make an exception right there.

Vol is female...

[Thinker]

An oft-overlooked quirk of the lich rules is that some unconventional casters, like Warlocks, can become liches so long as they have any spellcasting ability at all.


One idea I had was of a master craftsman, who pursued lichdom to be able to perfect his art. This lich was a Warlock 12 with Magical Training and a bunch of crafting feats - offensively weak as far as liches go, but able to meet all the RAW requirements for lichdom. The "evil act" requirement was met by selling his soul for craftsmanship ability, i.e. extra crafting feats using the Pact Certain (FC2 23-24) for more feats.

Between his plethora of crafting feats and his Imbue/Deceive Item abilities, he can create any non-artifact in the game - and unlike an Artificer, his items are truly arcane or truly divine as the situation warrants. This makes him highly sought after by adventurers of many backgrounds for a variety of ends. However, being immortal through undeath, Hell has no way to collect its due from him until both he and is phylactery are destroyed - the devils naturally feel cheated and thus wish to hasten his demise. He thus ends up siding with Good out of practicality, as he needs protection, but is not above supplying anyone who can stave off the constant assassins sent his way by Baator, regardless of alignment (he has supplied demons more than once who bear grudges against his devilish pursuers.). He is extremely charismatic, totally paranoid, not-quite-sane, and highly dangerous (since he can also UMD anything he makes, and reserves his choicest creations for his personal use.)

This one is my favorite.

[Knight13]

I made a lich once that had become a lich by accident and was actually rather nice and quirky. Heck, he wasn't even a caster. I based him off of Shinigami-sama from Soul Eater.

[Kalmageddon]

I had a lich character sketched up for a campaign that I never had room to introduce, but he was a non-typical lich. He was an artist who just wanted to live forever, to be able to create the art he loved until the end of time. He was still quite evil though, by being incredibly selfish and insensitive to others, but too sqeamish to have any love for violence.

Then the villains got hold of his phylactery and blackmailed him into going along with their plans (or, they would have, if the campaign had room for him).

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember that undeads in D&D lose the "creative" part of their mind and basically stay frozen in whatever mentality they had at the moment of their transformation.

Yours is still a good idea, only it would make for a much more tragic figure since the artist would find himself permanently out of ideas, only able to recycle the art he has already done but unable to create anything truly unique or new.

[Aedilred]

I can't fully remember the background for the lich from my campaign, but I'll do my best. Centuries ago (blah blah) when the central empire (whose name I forget) had been under threat, they had retreated through the mountains to evacuate the heir to the throne. The greatest hero of the empire stayed to act as a rearguard in the mountains (if you think of Roland, that's along the right lines). However, he was betrayed, his men were slaughtered, and he was presumed dead. Even in the modern era he is remembered as a great mythic hero.

However, he survived, turned to lichedom somehow, and since finding his way back to civilisation has been working to destroy the empire (again, I can't remember whether it was the same one, or a successor set up by the invaders he fought against). Either way, he had gone completely mad, and whether or not you agreed with his motivations his methods were supervillainous. It was all about the destruction. He just wanted to bring down the empire so something better could emerge (or so he claimed to his minions and himself, anyway); he wasn't interested in power for its own sake.

Plus, of course, he had a supporting cast of loyal (though often powerful) minions to handle his day-to-day requirements. Most of them were hiding in plain sight. (One of my favourite parts of the campaign was when, after scouring a city for the lich's holdout for several days, one of them thought to go to the central records office and see the list of properties owned by $minion - he was hiding there).

My players seemed to take to the concept - I don't know how original it was, but I think it managed to avoid the worst of the lich cliches.

[Psyren]

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember that undeads in D&D lose the "creative" part of their mind and basically stay frozen in whatever mentality they had at the moment of their transformation.

Not sure where you got that. Libris Mortis 13:

Beyond acrobatics, beyond theater, the Deathless Troupe has created an entirely original form of entertainment. Part theater, part opera, the troupe creates a world where anything is possible. For it is in the theater that the unliving try to understand their destiny.
—Ethana, proprietress of the Theater of the Dead

IIRC, only certain kinds of ghosts get stuck in the sort of mental loops you describe. Most mindless undead have no personality left to freeze at all, while intelligent undead are free to pursue all manner of pursuits, from the elaborate to the decadent, from the capricious to the cruel.

[Lapak]

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember that undeads in D&D lose the "creative" part of their mind and basically stay frozen in whatever mentality they had at the moment of their transformation.

Yours is still a good idea, only it would make for a much more tragic figure since the artist would find himself permanently out of ideas, only able to recycle the art he has already done but unable to create anything truly unique or new.

You're probably linking up 'liches in general' with 'Darklord Azalin of Darkon' from the Ravenloft setting. His ironic curse from the Dark Powers is that he is unable to learn new spells or knowledge of any type. But it is specific to him, not liches in general.

[Kalmageddon]

Not sure where you got that. Libris Mortis 13:



IIRC, only certain kinds of ghosts get stuck in the sort of mental loops you describe. Most mindless undead have no personality left to freeze at all, while intelligent undead are free to pursue all manner of pursuits, from the elaborate to the decadent, from the capricious to the cruel.

Strange, I could have sworn that I read it in the Libris Mortis itself, in the section dedicated to undead psychology.

Maybe I'm getting confused with some setting-specific information.

[BRC]

Strange, I could have sworn that I read it in the Libris Mortis itself, in the section dedicated to undead psychology.

Maybe I'm getting confused with some setting-specific information.

That might be true for some Undead. Ghosts or undead soldiers, forever stuck fighting the war that killed them.

That said, I could imagine a Lich as the ultimate Diplomat/Mediator. He lives in his dark castle until people come and request he help end some conflict. When that happens, he teleports in and tries to get the parties in question to make peace. Highly Intelligent, he is capable of quickly sizing up the situation. Charismatic, he can make his voice heard. If peace talks break down, he can nonlethally restore order with Hold Person spells, and if worst comes to worst and he is destroyed, he will simply reform at his phylactery.
He is the ultimate in impartiality. Any nation he may have held loyalty to is long gone. He can't be bribed or coerced, and he probably negotiated the last treaty between your two nations several hundred years ago.

[Analytica]

I like the idea of someone who became a lich just to live forever, maybe to be able to keep on sampling the magical and artistic developments of the world. They had to do some evil things to get there, and did them anyway, making them evil by choice when their back is to the wall. They also are now powered by negative energy, so empathy might no longer come as an instinct or spontaneously. So again, evil alignment. However, intellectually the lich is benevolent and wants to minimize damage done at all times. Someone who can't feel guilt or shame or compassion, but takes pride in attempting to act as though they could. Still undead, served by other undead and prone to necromantic atrocities and overkill when enraged or in danger, but always try to reason first and pick up the pieces afterwards. Keeps away from mortal relatives to avoid hurting them. Travels incognito, pretending to be just a little old lady or something.

[The Glyphstone]

Strange, I could have sworn that I read it in the Libris Mortis itself, in the section dedicated to undead psychology.

Maybe I'm getting confused with some setting-specific information.

This is what is says on Page 12 of Libris Mortis:

Aside from a rare few exceptions, an undead’s
outlook remains stagnant over the decades, or centuries, of
its existence, despite new experiences and new situations it
may encounter.

And then a page later, talks about that undead theater troupe. So either said troupe is one of the rare exceptions, or we default to the standard 'WotC has no idea what it's talking about'.

[Tyndmyr]

Well, outlook isn't quite the same as knowledge and skills.

I can keep creating new songs, while still holding more or less the same outlook on life, society, whatever.