Soul Bind + Lich = ???

[Neo2151]

Say your party successfully defeats an extremely powerful lich. Huzzah!
Say then that your caster uses the Soul Bind spell on the defeated lich.
What happens? Does the lich's soul return to it's phylactery or does it get stored in the soul bind gem?

[Frogmach]

I'd say that the soul should already be in the phylactery and making a new body by the time that the caster is able to cast Soul Bind. Part of the lich's main ability is that his soul technically be in the phylactery hidden away from the adventurers. So it never technically was in the lich's "Body"

[Cyrus Lanthier]

I am with Frogmach- you can't soul bind the Lich's corpse, for a variety of reasons. Leading among these is that the soul of a Lich is in it's phylactery, so nothing there to bind. Beyond that, Soul Bind says "You draw the soul from a newly dead body and imprison it in a black sapphire gem. The subject must have been dead no more than 1 round per caster level." A lich has generally been dead much longer than that. Finally, the lich's rejuvenation isn't one of the effects listed as prevented in the description of soul bind.

Also, even if it did work, Soul Bind gives a Will save, which a Lich is probably no slouch at. If you've got access to Soul Bind, next time try hitting the Lich with Temporal Stasis (Which is a fort save, for some reason). That should buy you some time to find and destroy the phylactery.

Actually, I guess since Temporal Stasis isn't listed as being able to target objects (why not?), you can't use it on a Lich? Does anyone know if that's right?