How would you create and then protect YOUR lich phylactery?

[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.

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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.

[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?