Why are all liches such buttholes? Is being evil a prerequisite to becoming a lich? Does turning into one make you evil?
I just wanna be immortal and read books for millennia tbh.
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Why are all liches such assholes? Is being evil a prerequisite to becoming a lich? Does turning into one make you evil?
>Why are cars so bad? Do they all require fuel to move?
>I just want to sail whole day
>Car analogy
Do Amerisharts really
>Why are all liches such buttholes?
Because they are people who decided that committee atrocities to extend their own lifespan was a good idea.
>Is being evil a prerequisite to becoming a lich?
In most games/stories, yes.
>Does turning into one make you evil?
Typically you're evil first.
If we take the D&D example, in addition to various murders, desecrations, and ritual suicide necessary to become a lich, most liches don't live more than a hundred or so years anyway, because the human psyche is not only not prepared for it, but even if one manages to prepare themselves, the loss of physical needs/desires tends to be insanity inducing.
Imagine. You never feel tired anymore, so you never have to take a break.
You never feel hungry or thirsty, so you never have to stop to prepare food.
You have no sense of smell or taste so your environment doesn't matter.
You see equally in the dark and light, do you stop paying attention to the passing of day and night.
You have no lust, so you are not driven on the genetic level.
Your lifetime of books are read and yet it has only been months or a brief few years, as more efficient use of time makes it not only fly by faster but a lot more is done in that time.
But now you have nothing.
In D&D 1e and 2e it was stated that most liches destroy their own phylacteries and kill themselves before age 300.
You know, wizard wizard making magical artifacts and artificers creating magitech, Technoliches like picrel should be more common. It's a based idea, really, you'd get a more sturdy body, with lots of cool shit, and you could solve some of the problems with being a lich, like mentions. Heck, you could even keep some of your organic parts alive as needed to fool spells that detect undead! Cool, right?
All of those limitations are arbitrary and are only invented to prevent people from wanting to be liches.
Lack of sense of smell is particularly dumb.
Worst case, lich spends more time to regaining life-like shape to continue being himself.
If you want to be a lich without any of the downsides, then why do you even want to be a lich? You might as well just ask the DM for a potion of immortality
Because I have my own ideas for what lichdom implies and do not appreciate additional nerfs for the sake of nerfs, such as DnD adding moronic soul suckery for liches.
It's not that I don't want any downsides, I want them to remain (barely) acceptable, so becoming a lich isn't a deal with the devil (which are far more favourable in DnD as well).
>adding
D&D basically invented liches and the downsides are ancient as frick. Undeath isn't supposed to be a pleasant state of being. Lichdom representing a complete rejection of humanity embodies this, the downsides are only downsides from a human point of view. If you don't think eating other people's souls is a perfectly fine price on the most reliable and powerful form of immortality, then you're never going to make it.
>most reliable form of immortality
That's vampirism, moron. And soul suckery is just introducing vampire quirks to stop liches from being a reliable and independent form of immortality.
The whole point of lichdom is it's just gatekept by IQ. The price is being a skellington.
If I wanted to eat people, I'd go for Athasian Dragonhood. Although the end result still has no strings attached.
Liches always had some kind of upkeep, it was literally blood in 1e which was needed to cast Nulathoe's Ninemen on its phylactery and in AD&D it was the life force of a living humanoid with a heart being drained through an elaborate ritual according to Van Richten's Guide. 3e walked back on it, but 5e upped the cost to actual souls.
>Liches cannot gain experience levels
Okay, no. I'm staying in 3e.
>wah wah wah wah let me have my powerwank and be a non-evil no-upkeep lich who just enjoys immortality exactly as a naturally immortal human would
No.
Yes
ITS A TABLE TOP GAME IM HERE FOR THE POWER FANTASY YOU ABSOLUTELY moronic NEO-APE
Liches are actually one of those rare D&D-original creatures that manage to make the jump into mainstream fantasy, like mimics.
What I meant to say was "newer editions", I thought it was obvious.
Liches are an edgelord version of Koschei the Deathless from Russian folklore. In the folktales he's just an old pervert king who has a phylactery making him deathless.
More to the point, proto-liches (skeletal immortal wizards) date back to Robert Howard in the 1930s and aren't really from DND.
No one gives a frick about your gay "ideas"
Liches are inevitably reduced to a skeleton with no skin, nerves, or muscle. No shit they're going to lack their physical senses.
Frick off with your moronic negation of the entire concept of being a lich.
Prove this hidden lich lore from 1e or 2e I call bs
>In D&D 1e and 2e it was stated that most liches destroy their own phylacteries and kill themselves before age 300.
I think that anon might be confusing liches and vampires according to Van Richten's Guides. Liches do die in 1e or 2e if they don't sustain themselves, but it's a good number of vampires that kill themselves after a century or more of existence due to either realizing the monster they've become, getting bored and doing reckless things that make them enemies who eventually kill them, or going insane and getting killed by their former allies or rivals.
>the human psyche is not only not prepared for it
He is right about the psychology of a lich though, they're described by Van Richten as beings that essentially lose almost all their formerly human ties to life such as schedules, relationships, desire for luxuries, etc and become inhuman husks of their former selves that only want power and knowledge for itself rather than any more human goal had in the past. Nergal from Fire Emblem and Zouken from Fate are good examples of this decay, the former wanted more knowledge to open a gate to reunite with his children while the latter wanted greater magic to honor the sacrifice of the woman he admired who sought the same thing when she sacrificed herself to create an artifact capable of their goal, but both ended up as power hungry dark mages who lost sight of why they wanted more power centuries later.
>Perhaps the lich undergoes a psychological ordeal similar to that of the vampire, when boredom (for lack of a better word) erodes its will to continue. Mages in all likelihood undergo the transformation to lichdom in haste after discovering the secret, but they may pay the price in personal anguish for many years
>Nevertheless, they all seem to recover. There is some aspect of the lich’s mind that is able to undergo those torments and weather them out. It may take a few months or a century-but all liches eventually become accustomed to their existence and function comfortably.
>It may also be that some-perhaps even most-liches despair and die or fade away or otherwise terminate their existence as some vampires do. If so, this is a blessing to the living as well as a mercy to the lich. How many more liches would plague the world otherwise?
Re-reading it, there's actually the possibility that some liches do destroy themselves like vampire.
Madness from boredom and old age are purely fictional and biological concepts.
The former is unprovable so far, the latter is unapplicable to the lich or vampire.
It's more a meme, the accepted theory.
It's just sour grapes from mortals, like all contrived "gotchas" for immortality.
I don't think so.
Look how terrible boomers are just because they can go on cruises at age 80, now imagine an immortal undead soul eater
You have to keep in mind that Van Richten's Guide is not supposed to be 100% factual and is more Ravenloft setting flavor than "real" universal mechanics. How many liches did Van Richten kill personally? Probably none, or a vassalich maybe (a lesser lich from Ravenloft). I know he met Azalin but it was like one small episode or something, don't even remember the specifics at this point. It's not inconceivable that a lich would indeed live for 100000+ years without going too insane, it just doesn't make them that interesting of a bad guy for the adventurers to slay.
>How many liches did Van Richten kill personally?
He literally goes over killing a lich named Crimson Arcanus in the book.
>beings that essentially lose almost all their formerly human ties to life such as schedules, relationships, desire for luxuries, etc and become inhuman husks of their former selves that only want power and knowledge for itself rather than any more human goal had in the past.
This just sounds like me or any other autistic incel, scratch the power of course
The other anon went at length for Van Richten's.
My 1e source was Lords of Darkness.
I'm autistic and what you consider the downsides of being a Liche sounds like literal heaven to me. Why would you feel bad about losing sensory input that is only there to slow you down due to survival needs? Who give a shit about rest if you never tire, who gives a shit about taste if you aren't hungry, who gives a shit about lust if you are immortal and no longer need to procreate?
Being a Liche would kick ass. It's like becoming a demigod. It's like finally getting to enjoy playing life on sandbox mode with no timer. If I was a Liche I wouldn't even need to frick with humanity, I'd just sit in my comfy tower reading books all day and writing.
So Liches are metaphors for science = bad? Nah they still sound cool
I'm also autistic and think the complete loss of physical sensation and material pleasures would be more of a boon than a bane. I suspect as we're both brain-damaged already lack most of our fundamental connection to humanity, losing the remainder is a small price to pay for eternal unlife and functional immunity to second death. Hence, most spergs are sent off to monasteries or killed out of superstition immediately in my settings. Those that are capable of functioning are too likely to become a deranged wizard to be allowed to live.
proof that autism is naturally evil-aligned
You'd still have to commit inhumanly evil and profane rituals to actually become a lich in the first place
Becoming a Lich means breaking Universal Laws in a Horrible Protocol Ritual to Achieve Undeath Permanence and Manipulate Souls to Achieve Mass Autism while usually Mass Mudering People For Sustenance or Raising The Dead And Doing Awfull Experiments For Knowledge in basically every setting under the sun.
Your existence as a Lich is determined by your insatiable thirst for perverse, awful, truly soul tainting knowledge. You don't become a lich to fricking read bodice rippers or a history book, you do it to read the books written by extremely talented demons and devils who have used some fricking despicable liquids, solids and immaterials to write and draw on pages made of things you would rather not know (but of course, you know *exactly* what it is) detailing diagrams and poses and rituals and materials so fricking foul that it makes whatever deviant shit you like look like fricking innocent tickling.
You don't become a lich because you want to be a baker and want to perfect the arts by reading every goddamn cookbook and writing your own. You become a lich to make shit like cross compatibility for species of beasts and monsters and humanoids and how to properly secure contain and crossbreed mortals and foul corrupted beasts with the aid of demonic magics, soul manipulation and several generations of selective breeding to achieve a nigh endless supply of fodder for your incursions into whatever plane of existence you wish to invade for treasures, books and skull polishing oil.
You're evil dipshit, own it.
>You don't become a lich because you want to be a baker and want to perfect the arts by reading every goddamn cookbook and writing your own.
Why the frick not?
Because you don't. A cars salesman doesn't become a satanist cult leader to beseach the Enemy to become immortal to sell super cars into the future with mad expertise the same way a halfling doesn't obey Orcus for 80 years to get the Lich Juice Recipe so he can bake super pies. To become a Lich means you are rejecting basically every moral creed existent in most settings to achieve a goal which necessitates an extreme amount of dedication, autism and sacrifice.
A baker may not be supremely content with life, but they are not quite in the mindset of going out there, adventuring and risking their lives on the daily for several years in order to achieve forbidden and foul secrets and then doing some fricked up ritual so they can keep doing mundane shit. Because if you're a Lich, you're putting yourself above literally everyone else. YOU are eating souls to sustain yourself, not food, YOU corrupt everything you touch because you cling on to existence, YOU make entire elaborate foul plans for knowledge because YOU have to know everything and YOU will do it at the cost of the world and its people because YOU matter.
Do you know what a sane, Good person does instead of becoming a paragon of evil animated by consumed souls and requiring a foul ritual of nigh unspeakable evil, which usually implies decades of either literally Demonic service or research so god awful its literally soul tainting?
They go ahead and try literally anything else like beseeching an Angel or just fricking die and deal with mortality like a normal person instead of snacking on people while reading Demon Rape Rituals 101.
>Because if you're a Lich, you're putting yourself above literally everyone else. YOU are eating souls to sustain yourself, not food, YOU corrupt everything you touch because you cling on to existence, YOU make entire elaborate foul plans for knowledge because YOU have to know everything and YOU will do it at the cost of the world and its people because YOU matter.
There's nothing stopping me from doing and thinking all of this while also being a baker and wanting to bake the worlds greatest pies
>Do you know what a sane, Good person
I'm an evil baker. What now, punk?
Losing your sense of taste is the biggest hurdle I can imagine. I'd tell you that you would also simply lose interest in baking but then you'd just say "NUH UH!!!"
>Losing your sense of taste is the biggest hurdle I'd imagine
Deafness didn't do Beethoven any harm
>I'm an evil baker
Congratulations you answered OP's question. You conceded that you have to be evil to become a lich.
>You conceded
I don't know who you think you're arguing with but I never objected to the idea that you need to be evil to become a lich. All I've said is that you can be a lich and also be a baker.
Thing is you become lich because you want to study magic. And you become one via this magic.
Bakery most probably doesnt provide the necessary tools to become such entity.
If you are obsessed with something you might become a reventnat or a ghost
>Thing is you become lich because you want to study magic.
I can have multiple interests. What if I want to study magic, and also want to be a baker?
Then you'll be a level 2 dabbler and never have the unbending dedication to make it to high level magic.
This version of lichdom is cartoonishly not worth it. Not even a sadistic lunatic would pursue it.
That's the original version and you now understand why only evil loons do it. The modern version is the result of lore being stripped out to fit in smaller generic rules boxes and then re-expanded as a power fantasy.
I think the original's method of requiring fresh corpses to possess instead of respawning from nothing is fair, but there isn't even a flawless result for the potion where it just works without striking one of your senses or your very intellect. How is anyone supposed to dispel the feeblemind effect from you, let alone spend a Wish on restoring your sight or speech/casting ability? They'd have to be an absolutely loyal servant of sufficient power and training. Could a paranoid madman capable of doing what is asked of him here ever be secure in knowing he has that kind of backup?
>aaaaaa the ancient dark magic isn't fair or flawless!
Oh no. Maybe you can roleplay your way into finding some solutions. Minions? An evil outsider's pact? Something exotic or perhaps dying and going to heaven like a normal mortal?
Rolled 54 (1d100)
YIELD UNTO ME THE POWER UNRELENTING, UNREMITTING, UNYIELDING!
>54
uh oh
Duuuuuuh
Then you become a lich because you are powerful mage. This mage along many things, enjoyed baking. Now he doesnt tho. He doesnt feel emotions at all. But if determination remains, he now has the eternity to study the art of bake.
Then you're probably the lunatic who makes Black Puddings.
There's a part in Lord of the Rings where Sam imagines what he'd do with the power of the Ring.
He imagines himself as a tyrannical master gardener, maniacally ruling over rolling fields bursting with flowers of incomparable beauty.
Then he realizes how ridiculous and moronic it is, and the ring doesn't tempt him again. That's the equivalent of your scenario. A person with simple pleasures doesn't need an endless dusty eternity of them.
>YOU are eating souls to sustain yourself, not food, YOU corrupt everything you touch because you cling on to existence, YOU make entire elaborate foul plans for knowledge because YOU have to know everything and YOU will do it at the cost of the world and its people because YOU matter.
basically kabbalah btw
I hear about it alot. Red pill me on it.
It's israeli occultism and philosophy that basically says the only real morality is self interest. You are more important than anything else in the world and should therefore should not only not feel bad about putting yourself first, even at the expense of others, you should feel great about it. The more advanced an individual is, the more self interested and free of moral considerations they are, and the weaker an individual is, the more they are constrained by the bounds of morality, and these people should be exploited by those that are advanced because that is their role in existence, they are merely fuel to power your own, superior existence.
Suddenly alot about how israeli people act makes sense.
I got really into studying different religious mysticisms for about three years for fun and literally you're just straight up lying about kabbalah lol, this just reads like more /misc/lack shit about "I have already decided this is evil, so now I will make up reasons as to why"
Don't bother replying because I don't care what your half assed response will be, it's just always funny seeing zero integrity for historical accuracy because "le israelite BAD!" So you just lie because you people have terminal Reddit brain, you might be "edgy" and "racist" but you're a total Redditor.
Elves have good liches in both Forgotten Realms and Eberron.
>live forever thanks to the power of Family
I should make a Baelnorn based on Vin Diesel
That sounds pretty based actually. I say go for it.
>I live my life a quarterstaff at a time
>I live my life a quarterstaff at a time
You win the thread.
>Is being evil a prerequisite to becoming a lich? Does turning into one make you evil?
yes and yes
They aren't
Depends
Depends
You can
In order to be a Lich, you need the following as requirements;
>Incredible aptitude for magic, typically from experience
>An obsession strong enough that you cannot accept death and, in most settings, the afterlife
>A willingness to commit a single (sometimes continual) atrocities for no gain other than extending your own existance
The first drives you away from your fellow man as you peer further from others and further towards the cosmos. The second typically means that you have a conviction stronger than, or in contrary with common morality. The third means that even if you are a good person you must be willing to throw this aside, even temporarily, for selfish gain.
It is not, therefore, absolutely necessary for every lich to be evil, but if even one out of three of these are fulfilled you're on shaky ground, two and you're likely at least mundanely evil, three and you're probably already a monster. Then, after all that, if you somehow approach the Lichdom ritual with the character to maintain being a good person, it filters you by nuking your mortal familiarities like senses and possibly dulls some of your emotions, literally mindbreaking you into being less Human without colossal willpower and - more importantly - the active belief that your Humanity should not be lost, something that you have to keep up for eternity or else fall into the doom spiral.
>even one out of three of these are fulfilled you're on shaky ground, two and you're likely at least mundanely evil
being good at magic doesn't just make someone evil
It doesn't but it also carries the potential for being detatched from other Humans due to the effort, experience and perspective shift involved. It is not a simple path where you just get the necessary spells like an engineering degree - even mundane studies have verifiable effects on people, and they don't give you ego-centric superhuman empowerments to overcome the limitations of reality.
Consider, for a moment, that to have a high enough Arcana to know everything about, say an Aboleth - you must have already researched, processed, and accepted that the government is literally being infiltrated by psychic aliens from before time who want to turn everyone into their puppets. This is one piece of lore out of the dozens, if not hundreds, that a Wizard must mentally deal with on his path to spellcraft - many of which might break lesser men or at least totally shift their perspective.
You cannot become a master magician and remain unscathed without an incredible sense of grounding and character, which is possible, but rare. The point being that you need to achieve three rarities of chatacter for Lichdom to not corrupt you, and if you're missing even one the knockon effects to your psyche can be catastrophic.
Becoming a lich requires Jailbreaking your soul which causes things like “morality” and “empathy” that require your soul to function to stop working properly.
There are ways to become a lich that damage your moral center less (becoming a Mummy Lord, or really most forms of lichery involving self-mummification for some reason?) but those require lifestyles of piety and temperance that are anthema to a wizard’s epic quest for cool magic powers and immortality.
I like this explanation. You're evil as a soul-based practical effect of the transformation.
OP didn't specify the system so I'm gonna pick a random one and answer without specifying it either: It's because you have to sacrifice dozens of innocents to become one and consort with the most horrible monstrosities to even gain the know-how to do so.
IMHO its because being good or living a productive and helpful without inherent reasons to take selfless actions is very diffficult when you cant feel, taste, or smell anything and time in itself becomes as meaningful as the erosion of mountains and deepening of rivers. Maintaining a Good alignment in such a state requires more discipline than all but the most devoted and dedicated have access to. Ignoring how the requirements of most Lichification spells actively require you to be evil, and immortality is a violation of natural principles (except when the Gods do it), it’s really just down to the Lich being uninvested in the lives of the world around them because its existence inherently makes living foreign to it.
So, for a Lich to be Good it would require intense discipline and a higher reason to do Good rather than just to satisfy its dulled desires.
Thus, the Good liches would be Monks, Clerics, Paladins, people defined by their self-discipline.
I mean, if you want to, you could have most liches be incredibly chill dudes who are sick of that butthole who lives up the coast constantly making them look bad. Make it the party mission to put down Warcrime Steve for good so the other liches can go frick off back to becoming the world's greatest farmer or whatever.
It's your setting, you can mangle the existing lore however you want to fit your idea if you so want. No need to feel beholden to existent D&D lore if you wan to try something new. Want a circle of farmer liches embroiled in a centuries-long battle to grow the largest pumpkin? Why not. Build what *you* want to have, and don't get caught up in seeking this board's approval.
Liches don't precisely have a historical/mythological basis in European history and myth, so it's fair to say that you can just edit them to be whatever you like.
TIL that liches were made by Gygax, thankfully they're so commonly used that Hasbro probably can't raise a stink of their copyrights.
Actually they do. Koschei the Deathless (who hides his soul/death in a needle that is kept inside an egg, the egg is in a duck, the duck is in a hare, the hare is in a chest, the chest is buried on a faraway island) is considered the originator of the D&D Lich.
Koschei is far being a steretypical lich.
He's no a skeleton, he's an old man with apparently functioning needs as he kidnaps princesses to do the diddling. Living the dream, so to speak.
Not European
Well, I’m working on varieties of liches who used the elements as agents in their ascensions to avoid having to do anything evil for it. For example, picture related is a potential example of an Earth Lich, Fire Liches would seem to be wreathed in flame, Water Liches might be covered in ice, and Air Liches might have a cloud of gases around them (though I admit that that could use some work). I also want Light and Shadow Lich variants though, and that’s giving me some trouble, particularly the former. Tell me what you think. Any suggestions for cool abilities each variety might have besides blasts of their respective elements or raising undead with elemental aspects like themselves?
>light lich
Buddhist monk mummy wreathed in holy shining light
>darkness lich
The lich classic. Maybe shrouded in black fog/miasma/smoke that billows from their very soul
Okay, I might just steal some of that for my Light liches, thanks.
Thanks for the suggestion, I've never played Skyrim, so I wouldn't have even considered those. I know the basics of the plot, but that's about it, so I hadn't heard of them before.
Okay, that isn't a bad idea, thanks, what would you suggest for liches of the other elements? For instance, Water liches might go the other route and have their phylacteries be freezing cold, and Air liches might have them surrounded by a vortex of noxious gas, and Earth could be crystalline, but besides being glowing or shrouded in darkness I can't really think of any things about the phylacteries that could work.
As for presence effects, maybe Water liches can suck the water out of the environment and/or freeze it? Not sure what Air liches could do besides hide in a cloud of smoke, and for Earth liches it seems like moving around underground like rabbits in those cartoons is my best idea, which while cool, doesn't really fit with the rest. Shadow Liches being able to deepen and strengthen the darkness in their presences could work, if a little obvious, but that still leaves Light liches, maybe they can cause hallucinations and obscure one's sight?
Where a water lich touches any river, brook or stream it grows tepid and stagnant. Wells are poisoned and milk sours. Wherever the Water lich goes he brings a phylactery flask containing the last precious drops of his soul which he will grasp with the desperate fervour of a man dying of thirst. It sips from the flask periodically and seeks to top it off with the souls of those drowned usually by its own hand.
The air lich brings foul winds and ill tidings. Putrid smells and choking fogs obfuscate its true form which can only be guessed at as a emaciated figure swinging a censer that must serve as its phylactery bringing blight upon the world.
The Earth Lich comes to being after a lengthy and profane ritual that requires in the final step to collapse an underground cavern rich in minerals upon oneself. The casters corpse entombed in layers upon layers of hard stone becomes its own phylactery. Wherever they go the earth is sundered and blighted and sinkholes and earthquakes become more common and the soils will become barren.
The Shadow Lich is something of a misnomer. Because although the creature has mastery over darkness they possess no visible shadow of their own. To become such a creature they must sever and imprison their shadow which ever seeks to return to its rightful owner. Thus they are always paranoid and secretive and fearful of the light where shadows are longest.
The Light Lich appears almost human except for its eyes which have been long since been driven out by the blinding glare of the light they surround themselves with. They command illusions, blindness and pristmatic spells that lead to them usually gaining a sizable following of fanatic converts who mistake them for saints chosen to be champions of law. This will eventually lead to a mass sacrifice of followers whereby the lich unveils the pitch-black prism that trapped the light of its own soul long ago.
>Air lich
>actually a BRAAAP Lich
hmmmmm
Shadow Lich sounds fricking awesome. Model them on the Shades from Skyrim, creatures made of tangible soldified darkness that is constatnly ebbing and flowing around them and can harden at will to allow their forms to physically interact with the enviroment around them and do spooky Lasombra stuff. Can teleport through continuously connected darkness or shaded areas, stuff like that.
Nah, i dont like it. There's an idea in this, but this shouldnt make you a lich. More so an elemental being of sorts.
Bread should be made from the flour and when you make it from beef, you get a cutlet
Fire liches phylactery being a sort of eternal flame like the one in the temple of Vesta that needs to be kept fueled constantly. Usually with a living human holocaust.
Conversely the mere presence of a fire lich causes all nonmagical flames to burn dim or go out except where the lich commands them to flare forth suddenly.
For an air lich, I remember one example from Iron Gods where a wizard had turned himself into a sort of undead smog elemental. More like an embodiment of pollution who lived in "the Choking Tower" or something. It was sick.
>Iron Gods
That's Pathfinder, right? Thanks. Let me know if you have any new ideas, please.
I was thinking slightly less evil, but if I take the worst of it out or at least make it slightly less horrible, it can still work, with the undiluted examples being what ones that are evil anyway are like, thanks.
Yeah Iron Gods is a Pathfinder 1e adventure path. One of my favourite ones all-in, but not everyone's game for science-fantasy in most circumstances.
There was also the Dry lich from 3.5, almost psuedo-druidic Liches who had power over salt and sand to preserve things. They had an aura of intense heat/desertification and their touch would dehydrate things, but all water would damage and inhibit them like being exposed to holy water.
https://www.realmshelps.net/monsters/templates/drylich.shtml
>vampirism
>more reliable than lichdom
>when catching a sunrise or sharpened table leg means immediate gg no re
The draw to lichdom is the fact that even complete destruction is survivable so long as the phylactory endures. Which is a level of security and proof against death that no other form of undeath, or even most forms of immortality, can offer.
It realiable in that it's achievable by simply finding an actual vampire and convincing to convert you.
That's it.
So long as you sit in some catacomb and go out only at night, you can live forever and many just did.
Don't overdramatise the sunlight vulnerability.
Lichdom isn't reliably achievable, you can fail, you can die before reaching it, or you can die in the process by failing.
Liches are also vulnerable to magic weave fluctuations, seeing a some fricking died during Mystra-related upheavals.
Phylactery is supposed to be your sole vulnerable point, adding the need to feed is forcing you to go out from your basement which is abhorrent anti-lich policy.
Yeah just enslave yourself to your vampire sire for eternity to fight as their patsy in some dumbass politicking that will probably end up with you dead. Forever, because you have no way to come back.
Or become a Lich. Advance your own agenda, with any unforseen deaths nothing more than a temporary setback as you regenerate from nothing, all for the low cost of one mortal every few decades.
"Reliable" in terms of immortality refers to how consistently it will save your ass, not the fact that you could theoretically suck off a vampire to get them to suck on you. Sure, you could do that, but the sort of hyper-egotistical people who would never accept anything less than the best and would become a Lich in the first place aren't going to accept it.
>just become a lich bro :^)
By the time you become a lich, IF you actually become one, you already have a string of denbts to your benefactors anyway.
So getting rid of them isn't really much different for a vampire.
The end result of Lichdom is superior, but not the way there, that's all I'm saying.
Otherwise, what was talking about is that upkeep is a b***h and will get you killed at some point.
Sunlight vulnerability isn't even a thing in certain settings, the original Dracula and Carmilla were weakened by it while older vampires like Lord Ruthven was completely unaffected by sunlight. Magic the Gathering's vampires in general are generally immune to sunlight or slightly bothered by it. If you're going by D&D, vampire lords and ascendants exist who are weakened and immune to it respectively. Vampires in Ravenloft also become immune to it when they turn 1000+. People downplay the risks of lichdom, even successful liches get themselves killed through magical rituals aimed at gaining more power or knowledge according to Van Richten because they eventually zero in on those things since they no longer need human things like substance, rest, relationships, or daily schedules. The irony is, despite vampires being claimed to be soulless when they're not in any of the major TTRPG settings like D&D, WFRP, or VtM, most liches might as well be soulless monsters whose goals generally boil down to either gaining more power or knowledge.
Who was debating that? Both liches and vampires are undead monsters. That's not the point.
The key difference is that vampires need to constantly suck worse that gays. A lich though, basically just needs to sit on his ass and not attract attention to himself to survive.
That's the most important distinction. Sunlight is just added on top of it, always disliked naturally gained immunity though.
Otherwise, deprived of nourishment, vampire weakens and dies. You can send a vampire to space and he dies, but a typical lich will not.
Basically a lich is a self-sufficient immortal, that's always a powerful wizard by necessity and that's what makes it so attractive.
>Basically a lich is a self-sufficient immortal, that's always a powerful wizard by necessity and that's what makes it so attractive.
That was only true in 3e and 4e D&D, older editions and 5e required liches to feed on something whether it be blood, life force, or souls. For WFRP, they operate like 3e where lichdom's requirements are a one time thing but some don't survive the process. White Wolf's "lich" is just a catch all term for magic users trying to cheat death either through body jacking others, becoming ghosts, or absorbing souls like 5e liches do.
>older editions and 5e required liches to feed on something whether it be blood, life force, or souls
What kind of moronic bullshit is this?
Read
and Van Richten's Guide to the Lich
3.5 kiddie detected. Your consequence-free lich was the bullshit one, another caster edition mistake. "waaaaaa, waaaaaaaa. My wizard should be just the best and get everything they want and never have to pay nothin for it!"
Can vampires become liches? Seems like a good way to buy time for the research and resource-gathering.
Their loss, I love science fantasy personally.
Cool, the canopic jar bit gives the impression of a regular lich mixed with a mummy. Thanks.
Okay, really liking this idea, I'll tweak some details so I'm not just copying it 1-1, but thanks for suggesting it! Any ideas on what aspirants/skelementals of my specific elements might show the touch of their elements/look like (respectively), especially the Light, Shadow, and Water ones, since those are the only elements I'm using that you didn't mention for aspirants. Like, would Shadow aspirants always look like they're in the shade and Light aspirants in the sun, and Water always looking wet, or is that too on-the-nose? I'd also love to hear more about multi-element Skelementals too please.
The stuff you mentioned sounds good. Shadow Aspirants could also gradually become invisible based on the local level of light. They look normal in bright light but become ever so slightly translucent in the shade. In the darker rooms, they start to become transparent and they become completely invisible in pitch black darkness.
Light Aspirants appearing to have a beam of sunlight shining down on them from nowhere at all times sounds fun! If you want a subtle indicator, you can have their eyes glow or have them sparkle in the sunlight a la Twilight vampires
The water aspirants looking moist all the time seems good.
As for multi-element Skelementals, it is even more difficult for an Aspirant to become a multi-element Skelemental because they must attune themselves to at least two or more elements. They have to completely master those elements just as much as regular Skelementals must master their singular chosen element. Their death must also be caused by all of their attuned elements at the same time otherwise the skelementalization ritual will fail and the Aspirant will just die very painfully. Very talented aspirants who can formulate the suicide rituals can even incorporate opposed elements into their Skelemental forms. For example, an Aspirant may become a multi-element Skelemental who wields both ice and fire. They would appear like a skeleton coated in ice and wreathed with white-hot flames that do not melt or burn up the Skelemental.
Skelementals with more than two elements are exceedingly rare as it would take most people a lifetime to attune to two elements. But if a character is especially gifted or possesses an innate connection to the other elements through elemental heritage or if they just experience some sort of profound awakening, then they may be able to incorporate a third, fourth or even fifth element into their Skelemental forms.
With that said, don't forget that Skelementals can still cast non-elemental magic in their new forms
Oh yeah, that sounds cool for Shadow Aspirants, yeah. Thanks. What about interesting things that can be done for the
Sounds pretty based. Do you have anything for the mechanics of all this, BTW?
Alright, what about undead elementals, or undead that have been merged with elementals, then, like Libris Mortis's "Necromental" for the former, any suggestions there?
>Sounds pretty based. Do you have anything for the mechanics of all this, BTW?
Unfortunately no, you'll have to stat them yourself.
>What about interesting things that can be done for the
Que?
Whoops, that got cut off somehow sorry, I was asking for cool things that could be done for the looks of each element's Skelementals.
Some cool ideas I thought of were
Fire Skelementals would look like Ghost Rider from marvel comics or Atomic Skull. maybe they forge suits of armor for themselves to protect the rest of their skeleton from stuff like ice and water.
Rock Skelementals could have the entire skeleton encased inside a giant crystal like the mosquitos trapped in amber from jurrassic park. They would have giant limbs of animated stone that jut out of the crystal to give them a vaguely humanoid appearance
Shadow Skelementals, building on the prior translucency theme would look like translucent skeletons held aloft by magical darkness. Their arms and legs would be completely covered in the smoke-like shadow substance. In bright daylight, the shadow parts of their body look like someone just took a pair of scissors and cut a chunk of the world out of reality, leaving a pure black silhouette where the Skelemental should be. The only evidence of 3-dimensionality that would be apparent to an onlookers is the dark grey skeleton of the Skelemental
Light Skelementals would look like the picrel but more skeleton-y rather than fleshy. The more thoughtful light Skelementals wear armor/robes/clothes that functions like window shutters to avoid blinding people. The less thoughtful ones just go full glowskelly
Water Skeletons could look like a gelatinous humanoid but with water instead of ooze. Their skeletons could be covered in lichen or seaweed to make them look more water-themed. maybe they even have barnacles or small fish living inside their watery forms.
Metal Skelementals would look like they're covered in a mass of metal weapons, armor pieces, and metal scrap. The limbs they use to interact with the world would also be made of assorted metal stuff.
That's about all I've been able to think of off the top of my head.
This is all very cool, thanks. What about Ice Skelementals besides doing what Rock Skelementals do but with ice?
>What about Ice Skelementals besides doing what Rock Skelementals do but with ice?
eh, that's the best I can think of to be hoinest with you.
Same here, that's why I was hoping that you had some other ideas. What about cool looks for multi-element Skelementals, like a Light and Shadow one? Fire and Rock would be easy, it'd look like a skeleton covered in lava.
Not that guy but have you considered Ice skellies having frozen or crystallized flesh and blood attached to a glowing skeleton or being attached to less humanoid ice constructs (think a giant snowflake shaped spider mech)?
Shadow/Light skellies having a rainbow effect might work as they can freely manipulate and weaken the light aura as they please, creating vivid holograms and possibly an illusory appearance to hide their undead/elemental nature
The second option for Ice Skelementals sounds cool, and that Light/Shadow idea sounds neat too, thanks. What about Shadow/Fire besides smoke, or Stone/Air besides a sandstorm?
Shadow/Fire Skelementals would look like Shadowfiend from Dota 2
rock/air Skelementals could look like that rocky tornado titan from Disney's Hercules but with a visible rocky skeleton inside
Light and shadow seems pretty simple, you could have a glowing skeleton covered in "flesh" pitch black smoke. That way they are always visually distinct and never fade into the background
Okay, that's not a bad idea, thanks.
>Shadowfiend from Dota 2
Never played that game, but it looks like a cool design, thanks.
What about Water/Fire Skelementals besides a skeleton surrounded by a cloud of steam? As for Air/Water, maybe a cloud of fog would work, if maybe a little bland, but what about Earth/Water besides just mud?
cont.
So most aspirants would probably prefer to attune to one or two elements at most before undergoing the final Skelementalization. The longer they put it off, the higher the chances that something can kill them before they can complete the ritual or otherwise foil their attempt at immortality. Besides, once they get their foot in the door of eternity, they can start to broaden their interests and master the other fields of magic. They'll have all the time in the world to master whatever they want. They can even carry out lich-style magical shenanigans like building labyrinthine dungeons and scattering magical artifacts throughout the realms. They don't really need to eat anything to persist so they could even just chill in personal pocket planes if they really wanted.
At that point, you might as well stop calling them liches. Do you just want elementals with Skelly parts? There's nothing wrong with that
Well, sure, if you have any ideas for elementals like that, go ahead please, I'd love to hear them.
A person who wants to become a skelemental (we'll work on the name later) must first select the element that they wish to be bonded to. Then, they must attune themselves to that substance, usually through some form of meditation and careful study of the physical, magical, and metaphysical nature of that substance over a period of time that can range from a few years to a few decades.
As the aspiring skelemental attunes themselves to their chosen element, their physical appearance will begin to change in ways that reflect. For example: an aspirant of air may always appear to have a breeze blowing about them, even if there is no wind in the area; an aspirant of gold may have their skin shine with a golden lustre; an aspirant of fire may be unbearably warm to the touch or be constantly exhaling smoke; an aspirant of plants may have their bones replaced with hardwood and their skin turned green; an aspirant of stone may have hair turn into an asbestos-like fibre and so on and so forth.
The final step of becoming a skelemental is death. Once the aspirant sufficiently attuned, they must die in a way that involves their attuned element. Poisoned gas, drowning, getting crushed by rocks, incineration, and being stabbed through the heart with a knife made of their chosen element, are all common ways to satisfy this requirement. Although, more exotic methods are not completely unheard of. Because of how sensitive the process is to the cause of the aspirant's death, skelemental aspiriants often create elaborate suicide rituals which they carry out in isolation to maximize the odds of successful skelementalization.
Immediately following their death, a skelemental aspirant's flesh will begin to dissolve away, leaving only the aspirant's skeleton. The object or objects made of the attuned substance that killed them will begin to grow and envelope the skeleton, forming a protective shell around the bones. The aspirant will reanimate, now a fully fledged Skelemental.
A Skelemental is cannot die so long as fragments of it's original bones exist. Some Skelementals, after their initial rebirth, will divide their original bones up among multiple "bodies" and grow new "bones" for those bodies so that the Skelemental's original bones cannot be easily identified.
By the nature of the Skelementalization process, every skelemental is master of their chosen field of elemental magic. And because of their long second lives, they often pick up mastery of other fields of magic as well. As animated skeletons, Skelementals are also very hardy, able to survive in conditions that would kill most living beings, although they have to be on the constant lookout for their elemental weaknesses. Still, as powerful magic users, it is often a trivial task for an Skelemental to shore up their physical and magical weaknesses.
Despite their appearances, Skelementals are not technically undead. Instead, they are magical constructs like the Warforged but imbued with the souls of their creators.
There are tales of multi-element Skelementals although no one has ever managed to confirm their existence.
>Is being evil a prerequisite to becoming a lich?
Broadly speaking, yes.
Turns out the majority of rituals designed to rip your soul from your body and infuse both with enough necromantic energy to allow you to skirt around the natural cycle of life and death and achieve mastery over undeath require you to do fricked up things that nobody with any sort of moral fiber would be willing to go through with. There are methods that don't, but these are either much harder, require some sort of outside help, require making some degree of personal sacrifice rather than foisting it off onto others, or are otherwise off the radar of the kind of butthole who is searching for the simplest, most direct path to living potentially forever. And of course these good liches are generally not going to be causing the kinds of problems that put them at odds with roving adventurers.
Elementals aren't undead, anon.
I said undead with elemental aspects. Like Earth-aspected undead having crystal armor, or Fire aspect undead being on fire or resistant to flame, shit like that. Can you imagine a lich with an army of zombies that shatter swords used against their natural armor, just for an example?
Then they aren't zombies, anon.
Light lich should be neon or have prismatic stuff or black light
The ritual to become a lich is both extremely horrific and costs a large number of human lives to fuel it, and has a high failure rate. The sort of people who seek lichdom have to be the special kind of butthole who are willing to kill 200 people to get what they want AND are willing to make the bet that they are in 1 guy out of 20 who won't just fricking explode or have their soul get inside out halfway through the ritual. People who care about the wellbeing of others wont do it. People who don't take huge, stupid risks also won't do it. So it filters things down to people who are monsters AND are so high on their own farts that they think they can get away with anything, a mindset that they feel is validated because they got rolled the dice and didn't die.
Lichdom isn't even the best version of immortality, there are others that are either easier or have objectively better results. Its just the one that scrubs are drawn to like flies because it has a reputation.
But anon, being a wizard was already a prerequisite to lichdom.
Objectively false, the requirements just list 'arcane caster'. A bard could become a lich if they wanted to badly enough.
see
there is also mentalist liches as well
>there is also mentalist liches as well
Is there anything psionicgays won't ruin? REEEE
For one thing, there are more peaceful options for wizards to become immortal without messing with the cycle of life and death.
If someone wanted to transform themselves into a lich instead of a fae/celestial/some other kind of friendly immortal creature, I would assume they are not only evil, but take themselves way too seriously to the point of psychopathy.
> be born some weak shit that is constantly bedridden and will almost certainly die before age 20
> frick that, dying is for scrubs
> invent alchemy from your sickbed
> create artificial bodies and transfer your soul from one vessel to another
> master Alchemy, get really good at both creating things from nothing and moving your soul at will
> achieve a form of immortality that is objectively better than lichdom in every way
> you don't even need a phylactery
> Go down a research rabbithole and get weird hobbies like trying to perfect Cuteness as an objective concept
> living the dream
Cagliostro would make any lich furious.
>create artificial bodies and transfer your soul from one vessel to another
It seems like that's too much trouble, when you could just transfer your soul from one human to another. There's always more people. Speaking of which, are there creatures like that in any of the popular settings?
D&D has the high level wizard spell Magic Jar for that.
>It seems like that's too much trouble
See, shit like that is why you will never invent your own form of magic from scratch.
> when you could just transfer your soul from one human to another. There's always more people.
Yeah, but simple body transference limits you to available options. You might not be lucky enough to have a body that suits your needs within range, or if things go really badly you might not have ANY body to take over within range if you die somewhere remote enough. Cagliostro can custom-make new bodies for different tasks on the fly, and would be able to restore themselves to a physical existence even if there were no other bodies around to hijack because he can make one from scratch. And, importantly, he can do this even if his current body is already dead. We see someone use destructive alchemy to try to kill him and unmade every molecule in Cagliostro's form, leaving nothing left. Like 20 seconds later a new Cagliostro just materializes from nothing in a new outfit, and the time delay was only because while he was making the new body he got caught up with some tweaks and improvements he could test out while he was at it, like being immune to that form of destructive alchemy. And he had to design the new dress, obviously. Honestly that part took the longest.
mystra's chosen are body snatchers
Peak wizardry is demonstrating how the other wizards are shitty by inventing a better solution to problems.
>t. A shitty wizard
> create artificial bodies and transfer your soul from one vessel to another
Isn't that just "Clone" spell, from like, what, level 8?
Level 8, yeah. The difference is that in Dnd, even ignoring that the vast majority of wizards never make it to casting 8th level spells, clone costs a bunch of material components, requires you to chop off part of your own body, and takes 120 days to grow the body before it is ready. And you have to do all of this in advance of your fight, by the time you think you are in trouble its way too late. And if you are for whatever reason someplace where you soul can't easily get back to where you prepped your clone vessel its all a waste and you just die.
Cag can literally fricking die and afterwards decide to spawn a new body in the same place less than a minute later, no prepwork required, and the new body even comes with clothes.
>anime shittery
Wow, lame, my anime wizard could do that as a zygote.
Alchemy is explicitly not creating something from nothing you anime powerlevel wienersucker, it’s the transmutation of one material to another. The idea of “alchemizing” your immaterial soul in a fricking beaker like it’s a physical chemical and having that be directly superior to lichdom is exactly the kind of gaping mouth “I FRICKING LOVE SCIENCE” soiboi cringe bullshit that fuels the worst of steampunk. Please kill your self and never speak again.
Refining the soul is the peak aim of most IRL alchemical systems
Can you guys post some good lich art?
Take that either to be Good aligned liches or just cool pictures.
>Can you guys post some good lich art?
Liches get b***hes
Keith Thompson did a brief blurb with a good lich.
Here is an official TSR AD&D approved recipe for the potion that you have to drink at full moon to become a lich.
Arsenic (2 drops of the purest distillate)
Belladonna (1 drop of the purest distillate)
Blood (1 quart of blood from a dead virginal human infant killed by wyvern venom)
Blood (1 quart from a dead demihuman slain by a phase spider)
Blood (1 quart from a vampire or a being infected with vampirism)
Heart (the intact heart of a humanoid killed by poisoning; a mixture of arsenic and belladonna must be used)
Reproductive glands (from seven giant moths dead for less than 10 days, ground together)
Venom (1 pint or more, drawn from a phase spider less than 30 days previous)
Venom (1 pint or more, drawn from a wyvern less than 60 days previous)
This is not a formula any good person would produce. On a side note you'd think "virginal" and "infant" would be a bit of a pleonasm.
>1 quart of blood from a dead virginal human infant killed by wyvern venom
Wait for a pregnant woman to get killed by a wyvern attack, take baby blood, resurrect the mother and child.
>the intact heart of a humanoid killed by poisoning; a mixture of arsenic and belladonna must be used
Pay someone an obscene amount of gold for them to let you do this to them, redirect them after.
Now you only absorb evil people’s souls that are going to become demons and devils anyway, both automatically evil creatures.
Good lich
If you come up with excruciatingly convoluted plans in order to justify why you benefiting from the calculated deaths of innocent people is good, you are not good.
>On a side note you'd think "virginal" and "infant" would be a bit of a pleonasm.
Remember that the instructions are written for the people likely to use them, it's an important distinction.
The dead demihuman, vampire and even humanoid are a gimme. Plenty of c**ts in the world need a good killing, even if locking a demihuman in the same room as a phase spider is going to be a logistical wienersucker. We can harvest the venoms from the phase spider and wyvern. And nobody should raise a fuss about the moths or the belladonna.
The big moral kerfuffle is the Baby, smartest way to py his is grab up an orphan, no sense getting any heroes coming to "rescue the little blighter on behalf of a hysterical parent. Good news is, AD&D Raise Dead doesn't seem to have a material component. Bad news is, it doesn't do anything about the poison. So we need someone to cast Neutralize Poison too. Luckily any fifth level Cleric we find can likely do both. I suppose it raises the question if I immediately undo an action, am I still evil for the commission of it? There's a very legitimate line of reasoning that suggests merely putting that infant in danger of dying and staying dead is murder and very evil.
Oh well. I guess I'll have an eternity to sort that out.
That way of moronic gotcha is the reason why some settings force vampires and liches to suck the "life force" instead of arbitrary blood and make sacrifices unrefundable.
Not that gay but I like to have blood as life force. If you're tampering with life force, you're draining or drinking blood.
They're immortal wizards.
Think it through.
Liches are evil because evil is cool, if you're a self-centered egoist or shackled to deepening your sins.
Aside from the ritual being incredibly evil (at least dnd wise) and necromancy being evil in basically every setting and an insolence beyond compare against the natural order of things enforced usually by good or neutral deities becoming even just immortal fricks up human minds. The moment everything that life consist of is taken away youd have to constantly rationally reflect your actions because either instantly or after some time you just dont know how to human anymore. Imagine having to actively wage all the actions you usually automatically decide about constantly while having zero interest in it left for all eternity without pause. That level or tireless, stoic disciplin even buddhist masters would be impressed of but as a wizard you are the exact opposite. You endure that for maybe a few years before saying "ah frick it!". Also to be good you dont just have to do good actions you have to actually want it intrinsically. Acting good because you have rationally argument for it to persuade yourself would be neutral at best. Literally like a construct. You cant be good if you cant feel things besides ambition.
>he doesn't know about baelnorns and archliches
zoomzoom
What are baelnorns and archliches? Would Vecna be considered an archlich?
Archliches are good-aligned liches, baelnorns are the same thing but also an elf.
How much different are they?
They aren't self-made immortals
Their immortality is usually sourced from an external entity, usually a god or something similarly powerful.
Whereas a traditional lich earns their ticket to eternity through exhaustive study and immense sacrifice.
Liches get super autism and become psychopaths detached from human nature, read Van Richten's Guide on Liches
Seeking immortality and power at any cost, personal or otherwise, is one of those universal lessons you find across most cultures. It takes a special sort of psychopath and a deeply untrustworthy person to reject nature and embrace ruinous power for the sake of their own egotistical agenda.
Brief suggestion for 2 possibilities of a good lich, given the preestablished rules about their creation and survival involving human sacrifice
1- lich sets up a system for keeping some degree of power from no actual sacrifices but it isn't a long term fix and the wizard slowly becomes a demilich, finally reaching that point once their adventures and quests are finished, just in time for the poor schmuck to become essentially senile. Not terribly dangerous, but not really as sharp or impressive as they once were, now probably viewed (at best) as a sad, Alzheimer's-addled old man/floating skull who's stuck in a magic tower/library/lab/whatever, tended to by curious scholars and the descendants of the adventurers who they once journeyed with and the people they helped, even now that those memories are fading
2- lich tries using mass sacrifices of nonhuman creatures to make and maintain a phylactery, either with a large farm or an industrial sized insect breeding factory, possibly to decent success, but probably with side effects like being slowly transformed to resemble the creatures being sacrificed, at minimum losing a few points in mental stats in exchange for insect-themed powers, and at worst becoming an undead version of The Fly. Which would make the factory into a dungeon where adventurers must shut down the giant machine fuelling a warped phylactery with a stream of liquefied bugs while a mad half-bug lich chases them around with a ghostly swarm following and aiding it
I always felt that it wasn't necessarly the word of the lichdom ritual that was important (hence why there are so many variations) but the spirit behind the actions. The ritual is necessarily profane and evil because it serves to seperate the caster from their humanity/soul so it can be stored inside a phylactery. Attempts to make it somehow humane and "good" will inevitably just lead to failure and the caster dying in the process because ultimately they are not commited heart and soul to sacrificing their humanity for their goal.
But then you'd necessarily have to sacrifice people that you actually have reason to believe are worthwhile as people. As opposed to sacrificing Black folk or drow or (in non-gaming terms) NPCs.
So misanthropes and evil c**ts are going to have a harder time becoming liches? Seems ironic.
can liches get high?
>Why are all liches such buttholes?
Most of them were buttholes or amoral to begin with.
>Is being evil a prerequisite to becoming a lich?
Most of the time yes, even when it isn't...
>Does turning into one make you evil?
Generally this turns you evil, either immediately or over time as a lich.
They're inhuman and achieve an extended life for a price. Evil characters are much more willing to pay the price over good ones.
Pointyhat youtuber made interesting variations of liches based upon other classes. For example Bard-lich who incorporated his soul into his magnum opus music and exists as long as people remember it (he may force them to listen and learn it).
Or druid-lich who becomes an immortal heart of the forest, sacrificing himself to protect it.
Or sorc-lich who contains his life in his bloodline and from time to time switches bodies with his grand-grand-children.
Artificier-lich is basically a cyborg.
"Bard Lich! Where have you hidden your Phylactery"
Bard Lich: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLHuu3Ygvns
Those aren't liches. moronic israelitetubers shouldn't listened to, you'll get brain cancer.
Do you enjoy living like that anon? Denying yourself from any inspiration because of /misc/.
I certainly don't enjoy moronic zoomers applying the specific term "lich" to anything that pops up in their shrivelled brain.
Those ideas aren't anything novel either and are blatant regurgigation of the ancient concepts for hecking upboats.
Shut the frick up before I gave you the most common advice on 4chink.
The bard lich is a ripoff of fricking Encanto, try having a bit more self awareness next time
did you mean Coco?
if anything, encanto follows a family of warlocks
I did mean coco, thanks for the correction
Its certainly not a new idea though. Ravenloft had one for 2e although even that admitted he isn't a real lich just a powerful undead Bard.
It had, but didn't even give him any idea beyond that. The original was basically just "lol he's a good lich, except he isn't, also he's a Bard".
He spent years perfecting a killer lute solo, but his performance was such fire it cooked him alive and turned him into an undead monster cursed to shred guitar and rug alike for all eternity
I actually like most of those ideas especially the sorcerer eternal life being tied to one's blood line and having to repossess a descendant every couple of generations, I don't really like the artifice one tho I'd rather if their phylactry were more like a frickhueg memory storage bank/factory that can be used to upload one's soul/consciousness into a new construct or body and just go full necron.
Yeah the hat is a gay but occasionally has decent ideas/concepts for one to do whatever they wish with, maybe change whats happening from a lich to more like a "path to immortality" for each class and lich is exclusively used for wizards version of it
I think Paladin and warlock could also have very interesting versions of this even if it should be super simple/easy to guess what their phylactry/what their unlife is tied to, that being one's oath and the other being contract based(perhaps becoming a patron in his own right and buying other's lifespan)
That's just a blatant rip-off from WoD vampires, nothing else to it.
But in WoD such progentors are terrifyingly powerful inhumans, not some random sorcs and the world generally works differently. I dislike easy paths to immortality.
The key point why vampirism and lichdom exists is to drive a point that immortality is really very rare and very inaccessible to mortals without gruesome sacrifice.
Even Druidic concept, while sound at first, is actually shit, because Druids are the least likely to want to infringle on natural balance.
It's both cheapens the immortality and makes it too easy to obtain.
Is that a true immortality though? The main concept of lichdom is that a perversion of immortality, basically more of a prolongation of existence by terrible price. I think you can always buy cheap and impure version of immortality like that if you are capable human with ambitions, time and resources, who are willing to pay a price. Its okay for it to be even cheap, if it is a shit immortality anyway that you will curse.
Immortality is immortality. Some are nice and free with divine.
What makes it untrue if even the gods could be destroyed, so there's no "proper" form?
It's twisted and perverted because the idea is that mortals aren't supposed to become immortal.
>109 replies
>no Vecna
homosexuals all
That's not Vecna, this is Vecna
Why does he look like that Marvel character with the gauntlet but from Wish?
What is the deal with Vecna? What makes them so special
Not much tbqh. I literally dont know why is this guy so popular. There's no cool lore or anything. Ye, he ascended into godhood, but his story is dull and literally doesnt explain how he did this
>Ye, he ascended into godhood, but his story is dull and literally doesnt explain how he did this
The Die Vecna Die module explains how he ascended into godhood, and it's not just because he was powerful, he essentially outplayed two near omnipotent beings and a demigod. Vecna gets trapped in the Demiplanes of Dread for being an evil butthole alongside Kas when Kas betrayed Vecna when he tried to ascend to godhood. The Demiplane of Dread is connected to every plane and can essentially abduct any non-god being. Due to Kas interrupting Vecna's ascension, Vecna only achieves demigodhood and loses one eye and hand (which become divine artifacts).
While trapped in his prison domain, Vecna has his agents spread rumors on his home world of Greyhawk of an ancient ritual that allows a demigod to absorb the divine spark of another demigod to become a full god and plants a fake Sword of Kas. Iuz, a demigod and son of a demon prince, uncovers the ritual and fake sword then spends decades preparing to attack Vecna and steal his divine spark. The rulers of the Demiplane of Dread, the Dark Powers, allow Iuz to invade Vecna's realm because they like to punish evildoers and often have them clash before separating and imprisoning them in their own domains. Iuz discovers too late that the whole thing was a ruse, the fake sword shatters, and he gets his divine spark stolen by Vecna who ascends into a god by using the actual ritual on him. The Demiplane of Dread apparently can't keep true gods imprisoned and Vecna overpowers the Dark Powers using the plane itself as a bridge to Sigil (the center of the multiverse). Apparently Vecna had the help of a being known as "the Serpent" who provided him the knowledge of this ritual, some arcane knowledge, and possibly even planned the whole plot.
While Sigil normally repels any full god, Vecna skirts around this by entering the place as an ascending god who isn't a full god yet and he barges his way into Sigil's control center basically. The Lady of Pain, the ruler of Sigil and a near omnipotent being, cannot defeat this ascending god Vecna at this point unless she uses her full powers which would damage Sigil and the multiverse at large. A group of adventurers (the player characters of the module) who got caught in the middle of all this follow Vecna from the Demiplane of Dread get entrusted by the Lady of Pain to stop Vecna's plan since they can do it without damaging Sigil and the multiverse. The party ends up defeating Vecna before he ascends to a full god and before he shapes the multiverse in his image, but he still managed to make some edits to the multiverse which changes the multiverse forever and is used to explain the rules changes from 2e to 3e.
Vecna was a lich who got so powerful he became a god. He had massive armies, and he lost two body parts that are now famous artifacts, as is the sword that took them.
Man, I just want to learn more about the Serpent, but I doubt that'll ever happen now that WotC's approach is to just throw out anything potentially interesting
the asmodeus theory is my favorite
3.5 had so many cool plot hooks buried in various splats that they could've explored in future editions/adventures, and then they just threw everything out and it's doubtful that WotC will ever bother with anything creative again. The obelisk shit looks interesting, but that's the only thing I've seen from official 5e material that's gotten me the slightest bit interested.
Modern players have no idea what they're missing out on. I never cared much for 3.5, but MAN was it fun combing through random splats and just seeing what ideas random bits of fluff would inspire in me.
What is this about the serpent and asmodeus?
Vecna claimed he was in communion with a semi-sapient cosmic force called the Serpent which taught him magic beyond 9th level.
In 100% unrelated news, one way powerful evil outsiders in AD&D play the long game of catching souls is adding boobytraps and backdoors to spells for mortal casters to discover, use, and slide themselves into an evil alignment or otherwise cuck themselves into hell - most notably the lich ritual.
Alright, so Vecna is a crazy old fart who was responsible for the change from 2e to 3e. He claims to receive knowledge from 'the serpent', which taught him how to become a lich among other things. What exactly this mysterious being is was never clarified, but its' existence was hinted at in various books between 2nd and 3rd edition.
One theory about Asmodeus is that he's actually one of the creator serpents who made all of reality. The Serpent=Asmodeus theory, naturally, is that it's Asmodeus whispering all these things to Vecna as part of some plan of his to restore himself to full power and defeat the other creator serpent before rewriting the multiverse.
https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Serpent
He's the most powerful lich in D&D and probably one of the most powerful liches in fiction, even surpassing Larloch (the most powerful lich in the Forgotten Realms) in raw power according to Ed Greenwood, and he became a god. He's known for being a schemer who essentially cheated his way into godhood and outwitted two near omnipotent entities on their home turfs, and he almost rewrote the multiverse in his own image. Critical Role brought him back to modern relevance, as he is the big bad guy of their season 1 campaign, but he jobs and only manages to kill one of the player characters (and the guy just gets revived as a servant of the Raven Queen).
Mind telling me how he bested 2 deities on their home turf? Who is Larloch?
>Mind telling me how he bested 2 deities on their home turf?
Author fiat.
What
said basically but the in-universe reasons are
and
. Larloch is an uber lich basically, he has a hoard of hundreds of magic items and his minions are other liches, some of which probably don't even know he exists or they work for him. He's more or less undefeatable by normal circumstances and one of the 5e official adventures literally have the player characters die instantly if they try to fight him. Unironically rocks fall and you die, no rolls.
>wants to bring back Mystryl instead of moronic Mystra or Midnight
Now this is a truly and objective Good lich.
He gained fame long before you where born. He was mentioned in the 1st ed AD&D DMG.. His hand and eye where incredibly powerful artifacts, granting a brave idiot godlike powers if they cut off their own and grafted these bits on as a replacement. Dragon Magazine later added a joke 'Head of Vecna', so that stupid powergaming players would make their characters cut their own heads off.
Make them cute magical girls.
>I just wanna be immortal and read books for millennia tbh.
This attitude is exactly why Liches should be made evil, usually through the ritual itself being so profane only the most evil people could do it.
Vampires have to at the very least assault/pseudo-rape people for blood. Mummies often spread plague and death by their very existence. Immortality shouldn't come cheap, and immortality + superhuman powers shouldn't come without a cost to your soul.
necromancy literally pulls power from the negative energy plane. Liches are literally at all times are filled with magically induced negative emotions. That's why they're so evil and crazy
The process of becoming a Lich depends on the setting, but is rarely covered.
Generally, it's less being evil, and more like being bathed in so much Negative Energy that the Lich become evil, it doesn't help that most of the time, becoming a Lich comes with a change of mindset. And the loss of a their penis.
>Is being evil a prerequisite to becoming a lich?
explicitly yes
Heh nothing personnel skellyman
>human wizard wants to be an immortal lich for vague, nebulous and/or probably stupid and ill thought-out reasons
>devotes many years to traveling, learning, and engaging in deadly battles of weapon and wit against many foes
>finally learns that all signs point to merc'ing someone's baby and draining sentient humanoids of blood as the most important part of becoming a lich
>rather than simply accept this as a necessary sacrifice or give up on the path he starts researching more about life, sentience, and related magics in the hopes of finding some alternative or loophole
>as his research furthers and his work draws attention, a failed assassination leaves him injured and poisoned for a week, leaving him frightened, delirious, and aware of his increasingly limited time
>As he mulls over his options, cursing the effects the poison has on his ability to focus, he wonders how ways to fortify and manipulate the mind could help, and begins focus on psionics
>in this he finds, at last, a shortcut to allow him immortality without fear of condemning his soul to Hell as a side effect, even confirming his success with a divination spell
>all it'll cost is, it seems, a slight drain of his normally world-class intellect, and he'll be free to regain it one way or another over the centuries to come
>he performs the ritual and downs the potion
> -6 to INT
>he awakens as a reborn twelve hours later with a splitting headache and no memory of what he did for the past several years, why he's there, or how to cast any spells above 2nd level
Why is /tg/ so prone to asserting headcanon as fact?
Anyway OP just make your own setting where liches are how you like them. It's not hard.
>Is being evil a prerequisite to becoming a lich?
>d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lich
>Alignment
>Any evil.
Yes
What else do you call evading the life sentence of taxes and death?
can fleshliches exist
vampires?
Imagine for a moment you're old as hell, and people keep banging into your tower to whine and moan about some nonsense you didn't even do, like 'cursed our harvest' and 'sent plagues to ravage the countryside'.
You'd probably become bitter after a while too.
All the morons in this thread not understanding selling your humanity and the one thing that all mortal beings share is something that deserves to be punished
Don't metaphorically sell your soul to the devil and expect to be rewarded for it. That's like storytelling 101.
>Endure incredibly dangerous and difficult rites and trials to become immortal
>At last, you can finally devote thousands of years to solving that problem or question that always bothered you.
>Every couple of years your concentration and research is ruined by some bumbling oafs trying to break into you tomb/castle, destroying your servants and trying to steal your carefully amassed magical research equipment.
>After the 200th interruption, you finally lose your rag , shout "FOR FRICK'S SAKE!" and decide to exterminate all life on the planet.
>Apparently, you are the 'bad guy' now.
we had this conversation a long time ago
https://1dGanker/wiki/Millennial_King
The time it takes for a lich to possess or respawn a body after its original is destroyed is known as its refractery period.
hehehehe
It depends on the setting, but in general:
>Is being evil a prerequisite to becoming a lich?
Yes. The act of becoming a lich usually requires an act of utter evil, and remaining a lich requires constantly feeding on the souls of humanoids. The kind of people who become liches aren't the kind of people who are seeking immortality for good reasons, either.
There are other methods of achieving immortality that don't require the act of utter evil that lichdom does; for example, permanently polymorphing yourself into a naturally immortal, unaging creature, such as a genie. However doing this probably means giving up some level of arcane power. Note that you CAN get this power back with effort - nothing stops a genie from gaining class levels - and you're immortal so it's not like you don't have the time.
Liches are specifically the wizards (or others) who wanted to be immortal and didn't want to give up their power to achieve it, even temporarily, even though by definition they'd have an eternity to get it back and require only a fraction of that time to do so (after all, they got powerful enough to render themselves immortal in the first place inside of an ordinary human lifespan).
They figured it was better to do an act of unspeakable evil to become a lich, and then continue to do evil acts to remain a lich; then it would be to surrender even a modicum of power.
Becoming a lich doesn't make you evil. If lichdom is seriously something you're considering, then you're already an evil bastard.
5e really fricked up lich lore with the whole "have to feed on souls" thing, huh? Now every single zoomer is parroting it like it's holy scripture.
Yup.
jesus fricking christ, it's annoying
if that really were a requirement, no one would go lich
Eh, you can always go Thulsa Doom and have thousands of fanatical followers who'd die for you.
Those are some real moronic people.
That's how IRL cults work: they find moronic easily-manipulated people. If you have fantasy mind control magic and shit and it's much easier.
Agreed. I've never liked it as a concept not just because I think soul destruction as a concept is nihilist cringe but the whole point of a litch is you do loads of work and do all kinds of hoop jumping and then finally at the finish line you become an immortal all powerful skellyboy. You now have all the time in the world to sit on the same mouldy couch reading and re reading the same book over and over again for the next 1000 years.
The easy way to reconcile classical lichdom with 5e lichdom is... using 4e lore (gasp!). Because in 4e there was the "easy way" to become a lich: suck Orcus' wiener and do the whole evil shenanigans ritual to become a lich early, and the "hard way": become archlich through your own power (the archlich epic destiny starts at 21st level). You can always say that only loser secondaries suck souls and true gigaskelly chads do it the right way.
if devouring souls actually gave something to the lich than just sustained it, i think something could be found there
If eating food actually gave something to people other than just sustaining them, I think something could be found there.
If drinking blood actually gave something to vampires other than just sustaining them, I think something could be found there.
Seriously, there's nothing wrong with it. Gotta find a good point between the literally no drawbacks version and
, because the first gives rise to people like OP who don't know why liches are evil, and the second isn't really tempting at all.
>If eating food actually gave something to people other than just sustaining them, I think something could be found there.
It does actually. Meat gives protein to get bigger gains.
>If drinking blood actually gave something to vampires other than just sustaining them, I think something could be found there.
Werewolf blood or the blood of other vampires make you high as a motherfricker.
Wanna try again?
>Souls of powerful adventurers, or just eating extra souls gives liches bonus magic
Easy.
It's not original to 5e. The idea of liches (or demilches, whatever) feeding on souls existed in D&D as far back as 1e's Tomb of Horrors, given that luring in strong souls to feed upon is literally the reason Acererak built the damn Tomb in the first place and why the actual "correct" way to defeat the Tomb is to just not enter it, seal it off or flood it, and let Acererak starve.
Though you are technically correct, you are also technically wrong because at that point Acererak is a demilich.
Potato, Roger Smith. Anyone who becomes a lich is probably hoping to eventually become a demilich, since prior to 5e making them degraded forms of lichdom, demiliches were essentially Lich+ in terms of arcane might, and as we previously established liches are definitionally selfish bastards obsessed with arcane power who chose lichdom over any other viable form of immortality because they refused to surrender a modicum of arcane power even temporarily.
In terms of judging whether or not liches are evil bastards, it's a distinction without a difference to say that Acererak was a demilich.
>Potato, Roger Smith.
*Tomato, Roger Smith. Mea culpa.
5e has a replacement for the old demilich/lich+ anyway, Acererak is described in Tomb of Annihilation as "an archlich who travels between worlds and is known to take sick pleasure in devouring the souls of adventurers, whom he lures into trap-ridden dungeons where they suffer horrible deaths." His statblock is considerably more powerful than other liches and he has two level 9 spell slots which is wholely unique to him out of all 5e statblocks.
Not even isolated to 5e either, Magic's liches also require souls
>The Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition basic rulebook and starter set was released on July 15, 2014
>Core Set 2019
That's a shoddy argument because WotC writers are incompetent shitters who probably just stole it from 5e lore. Find a pre-2019 card with that lore text then we'll talk.
>*pre-2014
derp
Here's another flavor text that implies they absorb life force or souls
Eh, could just be soul-sucking for fun Shang Tsung-style.
Shang Tsung also needs to eat souls, or else he gets super old and dies.
It also popped up with the Tremere Lich for Mage: the Awakening in 2005.
>Tremere and soul eating
Guess his disciples didn't learn
Why don’t more liches try to at least disguise themselves as being alive, or find some way to be more than a walking skeleton in robes. It would cut down drastically on the number of adventurers trying to destroy them, if nothing else.
they're so powerful that they would destroy most adventurers
Still, having to deal with the attempts must be annoying. Heck, even a decent illusion could save a lot of hassle.
That's actually a pretty cool idea. I might use that, thanks.
sorcerers can't stop winning
As I recall, Xykon just kept spamming Enervation until he hit. 1d4 negative levels is no joke, and there's nothing stopping Xykon from just casting it over and over and over again because unlike a wizard, he doesn't have only so many Enervations prepared in a day.
>enervation
he was epic level before becoming a lich, he didn't bother with no b***hass enervates, he was spamming energy drain and for good measure, empowerd and maximized energy drain
Fair enough. Main point is that I do love it when Xykon decides to teach a lesson in what REAL power is. A boatload of spells doesn't mean much when your opponent can cast more spells per day than you AND spam his best one over and over again until you just straight-up die, no save.
Ironic that Xykon's point here is that power is far more situational than it may seem but raw power is the most applicable out of all others.
god
remember when things actually happened in that webcomic?
I still love it, personally. But then I actually like the talky bits. Legitimately one of my favorite bits in the whole comic is when Redcloak and Durkon literally just sat at a table and talked for 6 pages/half a year real time.
i'd be sympathetic and interested if the goblinoids weren't literally africa-tier moronic joggers that created a god that doesn't even give a shit about them
wanting to reshape the world for them is like wanting to reshape the world for ants who don't even give a shit just because one can talk
>i'd be sympathetic and interested if the goblinoids weren't literally africa-tier moronic joggers
Of course, the reason that they're africa-tier moronic joggers is because no one gave a shit about them.
It's a vicious cycle.
no
they're africa-tier moronic joggers because they're africa-tier moronic joggers
the entire world shouldn't suffer because of their moronation
Anon, you might not like the comic but if you're gonna opine on it you should at least be reading it so that you can demonstrate that you know what the frick you're even talking about.
This is like being mad at god that ants are fricking ants. I don't see Durkon crying for literally any other creature in existence having a seemingly shittier lot in life.
Yeah, well, no other creature is in a position to potentially destroy reality if things don't change. He's wise enough to not get distracted by things that, in the context of the moment, are not important.
This isn't even an innovative idea on Rich Burlew's part; I first encountered it in a fan splat for 3.5 called Races of War, albeit with orcs.
No one even what the frick the snarl is. They're in no position for anything.
Redcloak IS, however, and Redcloak purports to be motivated by concern for goblins, and several gods including Thor and Odin are aware of this, and Durkon is aware of this, and that's why Durkon is talking to Thor and Odin about the goblins in that comic.
Going off on a tangent talking about how fricking unfair it is to be born a squirrel or something wouldn't be relevant to the discussion, which is about Redcloak's plan and Redcloak's motive. Redcloak doesn't care about squirrels, he cares about goblins, or at least he believes he does.
Redcloak isn't even the subject. Durkon is. What would I care for a moronic goblinoid who only gave a shit about his own people when one saved his life?
Then this means you're never in position to judge anyone or their actions because everyone is technically born under different circumstances.
Anon it's someone who got lost from /misc/ and just wants to scream Black person you're talking to.
It's 2023. You should know not to engage them by now. They have no interest in changing their opinion or exploring the topic honestly. It's just gonna be a rehash of the same /misc/ posting that always happens here.
stop talking to yourself to cope with your horrible position
>being born with better conditions than someone else is horribly unfair
...is the writer fricking 5?
He's the free-loving women are equal to men in every way kind of liberal so yeah.
born with better conditions than someone else is horribly unfair
No. Being born with better conditions but then judging those born in worse conditions by the same standards as you apply to yourself, is fricking moronic.
thing is, he's not necessarily RIGHT
for example his main power move is energy drain, he spams it, wields it like the bludgeon it is
and sofar it's worked all the time
except for the part where the Order has researched mass death ward and is now effectively immune to that tactic
in fact, he would be supremely vulnerable to Haley/Elan bluffing him into thinking his energy drains worked and getting him to waste his high level spell slots doing absolutely nothing
Maximized Meteor Swarm
the beauty of xykon was he had a point in raw ability being above damn near anything else
before the comic strip devolved into absolutely nothing but word bubbles to overly explain basic shit
maybe thats why sorc liches are so rare. They are so charismatic (and disguised) that most people never realize they are undead
>thread devolves into “uhm aksully” when people agree the soul eating is just a shitty idea
>all that sour grape “IMMORTALITY BAD” shit
i liked the brief part where we shat on how moronic vecna is
DnD lore has always been moronic and stops working the moment it’s taken out of context or thought over more than necessary for the module
lady of pain is also moronic
but making your omnipowerful super-not-a-god get taken out by an ascending one was uber moronic
The lady of pain was just bizarre, broke the cosmology of the setting by being a not-god that totally spurred worship. It could totally fight all the others and felt like an early example of oc donut steel
>no origin whatsoever
>LOL, YOU LOSE
>so powerful to win against vecna would destroy the multiverse or some moronic nonsense
>a woman
she was an oc donut
She was a parody of Lorraine Williams, and was not meant to be a flattering one. She has all the power, she never really explains what she’s about, she doles out punishment to people who are just doing their job or who cross her or who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time…
It’s hardly Jeff Grubb’s fault that it turns out people look at a woman like that and think “dommy mommy” instead of “b***h boss that I hate”.
if only anything was done to ever explain that
Yeah, like an interview or something, wouldn’t that be wild, ha ha ha who would ever do that.
https://www.expositionbreak.com/a-walk-through-the-planes-an-interview-with-monte-cook-ray-vallese-and-colin-mccomb/
It must have come up before 2022 though because I first heard about it on this very board back in like 2013.
>Yeah, like an interview
>outside of source material info
come on, man
Right, because a TSR-published book is going to explain that their Lady of Pain is meant to be an unflattering parody of TSR’s own boss.
You come on, man.
how the frick is anyone supposed to get a joke if you set up no punchline and just give it
It wasn’t a joke, Anon. It was the writers’ way of digging at a b***h boss they hated. You, the audience, weren’t supposed to get it because you didn’t have to deal with Williams.
The Lady of Pain works as a handwave for how Sigil is able to function the way it does as a city and not a warzone, she's just something you are supposed to accept, move on, and rarely ever think about and almost never see. But autistic munchkins can't fricking handle being told there is something stronger than they are, so they've spent decades fuming over the one thing the game they are not allowed to kill for xp.
>Why are all liches such buttholes?
not all liches
He’s not even a wizard
>He’s not even a wizard
I am aware.
>all this b***hing about how a good priest would never do it
Just fricking alignment restrict is Jesus Christ no sane player would do it anyway, not that players ever do anyway, all of this shit is just pointless white room b***hing.
What are some cool things that you've seen or done with Phylacteries? And what are some good alternative terms for such an item besides "soul jar"? Like, what might a Lich from a pseudo-Japan call theirs, or one from a pseudo-China, etc.?
>ITT
Lich gays want their cake and eat it, go become a god if you want power and immortality without downsides
>evil people who are ready to do whatever it takes to become immortal want the best deal possible
What a surprise.
You would be an butthole too if your dick rotted off.
What does that say about women?
>5e is fricking moronic
news at 11
Becoming a lich requires you to do a ritual that involves multiple ambiguous atrocities that are bad enough that anyone who isn't evil, or worse, an objective moralist (double evil), wouldn't do it.
And the best part is they don't lay out the specifics so you can't go and contextually justify it to keep your good boy points while you become an evil skeleton monster.
If you're in a setting where that isn't the case, you're in an easy mode setting.
I’m looking to have a nation in my setting be ruled over by a council of several Liches, with new ones occasionally arising as old ones fall. Does anyone have any suggestions to where I can start with names, please? What about alternatives to “Lich”?
the council of unlife, presided by the three great death weavers
What about the individual members of the council then, got any names for them please?
Maybe you should invite that anon to frick your wife as well, hmm? Seeing that you can't do stuff that matters yourself.
SETTRA THE IMPERISHABLE
>Is being evil a prerequisite to becoming a lich
yes
If good people don't stay dead and instead just keep working together to make the world better you have to wonder why the world is still a nasty enough place that there is chance the players get to be heroes themselves.
Making the process to become a lich so nasty it filters out would-be do-gooders, helps you keep the world adventureful.
>why would someone who removed their soul from their body be an butthole?!
Sounds like you removed your brain from your fricking skull, OP.