One assumes the lich has used this spell or a variant with his phylactery:
Secret Chest
Conjuration (Summoning)
Level: Sor/Wiz 5
Components: V, S, F
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: See text
Target: One chest and up to 1 cu. ft. of goods/caster level
Duration: Sixty days or until discharged
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
You hide a chest on the Ethereal Plane for as long as sixty days and can retrieve it at will. The chest can contain up to 1 cubic foot of material per caster level (regardless of the chest’s actual size, which is about 3 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet). If any living creatures are in the chest, there is a 75% chance that the spell simply fails. Once the chest is hidden, you can retrieve it by concentrating (a standard action), and it appears next to you.
The chest must be exceptionally well crafted and expensive, constructed for you by master crafters. The cost of such a chest is never less than 5,000 gp. Once it is constructed, you must make a tiny replica (of the same materials and perfect in every detail), so that the miniature of the chest appears to be a perfect copy. (The replica costs 50 gp.) You can have but one pair of these chests at any given time—even a wish spell does not allow more. The chests are nonmagical and can be fitted with locks, wards, and so on, just as any normal chest can be.
To hide the chest, you cast the spell while touching both the chest and the replica. The chest vanishes into the Ethereal Plane. You need the replica to recall the chest. After sixty days, there is a cumulative chance of 5% per day that the chest is irretrievably lost. If the miniature of the chest is lost or destroyed, there is no way, not even with a wish spell, that the large chest can be summoned back, although an extraplanar expedition might be mounted to find it.
Living things in the chest eat, sleep, and age normally, and they die if they run out of food, air, water, or whatever they need to survive.
Focus
The chest and its replica.
Now, going by genie lore (meaning fairytales), if you wish for something beyond the genie's power, he apologizes and says that he can't do that.
I do however think that the djinn could do some variety of divination or augury to find what plane the phylactery is on and then take the party to that plane, letting them battle whatever beasts, guardians and traps the lich has set up so that residents of that plane can't just waltz in and take his phylactery either.
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So the party in a game I'm running recently killed a powerful lich, but have yet to find his phylactery, which is sequestered away on another plane. They have one wish left from a genie and are probably going to wish for the phylactery so they can destroy it. So I have two questions:
1. The monstrous manual doesn't really specify what happens if you destroy the phylactery while the lich is alive. Will that kill the lich again? They still have a few days before he comes back to life, but I'm not sure what to do in that case. My gut feeling is that it should kill him.
2. How would you deal with players wishing for a phylactery that's hidden on another plane? My feeling is that it's beyond the scope of what would be considered a safe wish, so something would probably go wrong, but I'm looking for fun ideas for that.
My opinion is that if you destroy the phylactery, you destroy the lich. But the phylactery is going to be very well guarded and protected magically or otherwise. I would hazard a guess that a powerful lich isn't going to leave his phylactery exposed enough that a wish could bring it to his enemies. He too knows what a wish can do. Also if I remember correctly, a defeated lich reforms near to it's phylactery as it is what holds their soul.
Depends on how you want the campaign/adventure to go, but I wouldn't allow a simple wish to retrieve the phylactery to the player's hands. They would have to know what it looks like, exact details, which plane of existence, etc. to get the correct phylactery. That would be an incredibly long winded wish if they want to get done correctly and on the first try.
As for ideas, there is a rumor of an entire city in the Abyss that filled with nothing but liches, they would all have phylacteries.
The players' wish attracts the attention of leaders of this city. Destroy one, gain the wrath of many?
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My opinion is that if you destroy the phylactery, you destroy the lich.
That's not how I understand it. See the Age of Worms campaign and Dragotha. The PCs gain the phylactery before they confront Dragotha, but if Dragotha was killed just by destroying the phylactery -- well it would be rather anti-climactic.
I've always looked at it as -- if the phylactery is destroyed, the "life force" goes to the lich and he has to create a new phylactery. If the lich is destroyed first, then the "life force" creates a new body for the lich (eventually) -- actually, in times past, I thought that the life force would need to take over another body to use as the new lich body. The thing is that either one takes time. A lich can't (or at least shouldn't) be able to create a new phylactery in a few minutes and the phylactery shouldn't be able to create a new lich body quickly.
As far as hiding a phylactery on another plane -- wow. If I were a lich, I'd want it well hidden (yes), but also easy for me to access at a moment's notice. Putting it on another plane where some demon/angel/slaad/etc. can find it without my knowledge would make me rather nervous to say the least.
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Not sure just where I read it, but as I understand it, destroying the Phylactery simply allows you to finally kill the lich for good. So, if they destroy it before he reforms, the lich is dead. If he reforms, then destroy it, they have to kill the lich all over again, but this time he is dead dead.
UNLESS you wanna take the idea from the Harry Potter books and have the lich have more than one Phylactery! Oh that would SO piss them off!