a PC in my campaign wants to be a Lich


Advice


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber

we're level one right now, and he started as a level one fighter, human, named john smith, with average stats(point buy) in all stats, and is of true neutral alignment (he also sells farming and farming accessories), but this is in fact all just a rues against the rest of the party, and he is extremely obsessed with a lost loved one and is trying to bring them back and thinks it might be possible if he becomes a lich.
he actually has high intelligence and charisma and will be gaining levels in wizard from now on.

through various circumstances, I jokingly said a horse he obtained had leveled up since it killed most of the enemies in the first encounters and got wizard levels and made him his familiar. so he's going to pretend i was serious and cast via the horse.

my question is how can I make this as interesting as possible and what in-game/house rules are there that he can use to A. fool the party into thinking the horse is casting, and B. gain Lichdom a bit earlier than lvl 11.

Sovereign Court

Heh you can make it get earlier but technically he wouldn't even be able to try to become a lich until level 12.

With one level of fighter, he needs to be a caster of 11th level at least and have 120 000 gp to spend for the phylactry which usually means most people at level 11-12 have a hard time affording it.

There are many more complications when becoming a lich, he has a fear aura, everybody within 60 ft just run away in fear with less 5 HD.

He has a paralyzing touch, anything that he touches get paralyzed and that's without counting the horrible palpable evil aura emanating from him.

As the dm you can make all kind of house rules since it's your campaign but be aware of the problems above.


has he seen/considered going fighter/wiz/eldritch knight? the graveknight template seems tailor-made for a mounted guy (and is effectively the melee-equivalent of the lich)

i'm not sure on how to get lichdom earlier (and wouldnt suggest it, since it's really powerful). as for castin from the horse, consider either silent/still spell, or just go the rule of cool route and fluff it as the horse.

or take the arcanist class instead of wizard, since it can get a witch-style bonded animal that holds your spells for you (and can cast them, iirc). it also fits for a guy who's aiming to break the rules of magic.

also-also, he DOES realize how (comparitively) cheap it is to bring someone back form the dead without resorting to immortal evil undeadness, right?


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
Eltacolibre wrote:

Heh you can make it get earlier but technically he wouldn't even be able to try to become a lich until level 12.

With one level of fighter, he needs to be a caster of 11th level at least and have 120 000 gp to spend for the phylactry which usually means most people at level 11-12 have a hard time affording it.

There are many more complications when becoming a lich, he has a fear aura, everybody within 60 ft just run away in fear with less 5 HD.

He has a paralyzing touch, anything that he touches get paralyzed and that's without counting the horrible palpable evil aura emanating from him.

As the dm you can make all kind of house rules since it's your campaign but be aware of the problems above.

at level 11, he is planning to retrain the fighter level.

as for house rules, i was wondering if anyone had any they had used before, or some ideas.

I'm already considering a DC 25(30?) arcane check whenever he spends a week or so researching in a library to give him a +1 effective caster level for this effect.

also a few other things like he's planning on going from a reaper of wheat to souls type deal.


Pathfinder Lost Omens Subscriber
AndIMustMask wrote:


also-also, he DOES realize how (comparitively) cheap it is to bring someone back form the dead without resorting to immortal evil undeadness, right?

we're still trying to figure out something cool about that.

but she's been dead for a long time. possibly she rejects the resurrection, and so he's trying to force it.

RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

He could quest to find and enter into an agreement with an existing powerful lich that would otherwise be prevented from interacting with the world (imprisoned, disembodied, partially destroyed or some other similar effect.) Then you could add toned back lich-like abilities as he levels to signify the energies twisting his body into a similar form. Eventually he would have to commplete the ritual or be ripped apart by the necromantic energy.


Suggestion: Home Brew becoming a Lich -

During his research he comes across a story about a band of heroes defeating a major Lich in his lair in the distant past.

Major quest to track down and then raid this Lair to try and find out info about life, death, undeath, and bring the dead back to life. At the end he finds out that the Lich isn't dead but is there as a spirit. Lich attempts (makes) a deal to help him with his goals for his help in getting him a new body.

Party runs around and does a bunch of quests that the Lich guides them on. Remember, the Lich has been cut off from the world for centuries. So the party is going to have to figure stuff out.

At the end, the Lich betrays him during the process of becoming a Lich and tries to steal your party members body. Big fight happens.

Go from there.

PS. This will require a lot of bluff, diplomacy, and sense motive on everyone's part. So stat your main bad guy out for these skills.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I don't get his motivation to become a lich. I mean...
1) He's a young man, in theory he's got plenty of time in front of him.
2) He should be working to bring her back to life, not become an undead monster.
3) If he "loves" her, it seems extremely cruel to bring her back as an undead creature of any stripe, when several magic spells to bring the dead back to actual life do exist.
4) If he does plan to bring her back to life, she's going to be in for a shock when her eyelids flutter and she gazes for the first time into his shudderingly vacant eyes and bleached white skull.

This said, regardless of his motivation to become a lich, it should be an extremely long process, as he spends years researching various lich formulas and developing his own. Not to mention the danger of getting things wrong - Vorel Foxglove of RotRL is a good example. And logically, most lich transformations would take place when the wizard is already wuite old, since it represents the wizard's last stab at immortality, when all other solutions have proved fruitless.

But, hey, whatever works and brings fun to the group.

Silver Crusade

I ran a game for years where one PC wanted to become a lich. She (my ex-partner, in fact) played a talented apprentice mage who set an early life goal to become a lich. She did not share this goal with anyone, but it was always in the background. She eventually met the goal, about the same time we retired the campaign. It worked out well as a nifty plot device.


I ran a game where one of the PCs became a lich, and it didn't really break the game.


Rules legal, you can't become a Lich earlier.

However, you could play around with building some house rules. You could work with the player to come up with something like an Archetype that allows the character to slowly develop Lich powers at lower levels until reaching full Lich power at level 11. If you want to extend it all the way to 20 you could have the archetype then slowly start developing Demi-Lich powers until becoming a fully powered Demi-Lich at 20.


Hark wrote:
Rules legal, you can't become a Lich earlier.

I'm not entirely sure that this is true. I mean, a scroll of Wish is less than 50,000gp, and I could in theory find one of those at level one. And a wish can do anything.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
Hark wrote:
Rules legal, you can't become a Lich earlier.
I'm not entirely sure that this is true. I mean, a scroll of Wish is less than 50,000gp, and I could in theory find one of those at level one. And a wish can do anything.

No, it cannot.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
Hark wrote:
Rules legal, you can't become a Lich earlier.
I'm not entirely sure that this is true. I mean, a scroll of Wish is less than 50,000gp, and I could in theory find one of those at level one. And a wish can do anything.

Actually Wish is a lvl 9 spell, so a scroll of Wish would be considered a Major Magic Item. When planning a hoard for a run, the cost of adding a Major Magic Item is 40,000 GP. Assuming that this is not the only item that players would find on the run means the hoard value would be even higher. For a lvl 1 run, a hoard surpassing 40,000 GP is a little excessive (unless you had a LOT of players). Now, i haven't GM'd a group close to lvl 12 but I imagine that a scroll of Wish would be more likely much closer to 12 (if not higher than 12) than it would be to lvl 1.

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