Liches and alignment


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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I vote for saint


LazarX wrote:


Sure, just blithely ignore the fact that in order to choose the path, you were a mass murdering SOB who killed tons of innocent people in horrific ways to get there to start with. You're talking about someone who was essentially a sociopath on the order of Jeffrey Dahmer or Hannibal Lector combined with a megalomanical power fixation to boot.

Those kind of people don't simply wake up one morning and decide to become angels. In fact, they never do.

What if they became a lich only to stop a greater evil that they have prophifised to defeat... but in 350 years. So they used lichdom to ensure they would be there, and in the time between now and then, simply continued to commit good acts to try and redeem their "For the greater good" evil acts.

Note: This isn't a hypothetical to just make an extreme example, this was an NPC I've used previously.

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Milo v3 wrote:
LazarX wrote:


Sure, just blithely ignore the fact that in order to choose the path, you were a mass murdering SOB who killed tons of innocent people in horrific ways to get there to start with. You're talking about someone who was essentially a sociopath on the order of Jeffrey Dahmer or Hannibal Lector combined with a megalomanical power fixation to boot.

Those kind of people don't simply wake up one morning and decide to become angels. In fact, they never do.

What if they became a lich only to stop a greater evil that they have prophifised to defeat... but in 350 years. So they used lichdom to ensure they would be there, and in the time between now and then, simply continued to commit good acts to try and redeem their "For the greater good" evil acts.

Note: This isn't a hypothetical to just make an extreme example, this was an NPC I've used previously.

I know this aimed at LazarX but there are so many non-evil ways to get that done.

spoiler:
If I was writing the story over the years the lich would forget their "greater good" mission and it simply wouldn't matter any longer. The lich would move on completely oblivious to morality and simply be evil.

At the 350 year mark a band of adventurers would convince the lich to look into its past and remember why the lich was on that journey. The lich then defeats the greater evil but as a result destroys itself thus restoring its soul and being redeemed.

Probably piss off a lot of players because it sounds like people want to play powerful liches, but still be good guys. I just wouldn't allow it at my table; im no fun like that. However, I think a sandbox evil campaign with a group of adventurers seeking to become liches would be awesome!


Pan wrote:

If I was writing the story over the years the lich would forget their "greater good" mission and it simply wouldn't matter any longer. The lich would move on completely oblivious to morality and simply be evil.

At the 350 year mark a band of adventurers would convince the lich to look into its past and remember why the lich was on that journey. The lich then defeats the greater evil but as a result destroys itself thus restoring its soul and being redeemed.

Why would simply being immortal change someone core identity so completely? Especially only in a couple hundred years. Why would they forget the whole reason they became the monster they are now? Why would they forget the purpose they potentially damned their immortal soul for? Do lich in your setting have severe memory issues? If anything, a lich memory of why it became a lich would be better, since memory is represented in this game through knowledge and intelligence checks, and lich get a bonus to mental stats.

That isn't to say he wouldn't change. He eventually grew annoyed and bitter, both with destiny forcing him on the path and with himself for not trying to resist destiny. He is trying to redeem himself for his destiny, he knows he has committed atrocities, but he will accomplish greater good for doing them. But even then, simply doing the good later in hundreds of years isn't enough. He cannot just wait after causing so much suffering. He must try and help people, during those years. Try and make sure the people he annihilated didn't die in vain.

Quote:

Probably piss off a lot of players because it sounds like people want to play powerful liches, but still be good guys. I just wouldn't allow it at my table; im no fun like that. However, I think a sandbox evil campaign with a group of adventurers seeking to become liches would be awesome!

Wouldn't work generally, since it would require having a really good reason for the "Greater Good". Otherwise your committing atrocities for "minor acts" of good in the grand scheme of things, and you'd end up still being evil.


Quote:
New players already have a mountain of information hitting them, and the nitty-gritty details like this are not going to be a significant part of what they'll need to worry about.

For what it's worth, I actually was significantly annoyed by the restriction on evil for all undead things since my very first session or two playing when I first heard about it.

It's frankly very blunt and clunky storytelling, which I realize is not your or Paizo's fault, as it is an integral carryover from older editions that many customers would raise hell over (hah!). But yeah, it does actually stick out to new players.

Granted, liches in particular, no of course that was too subtle/advanced of a point as a new player.

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Crimeo wrote:
Quote:
New players already have a mountain of information hitting them, and the nitty-gritty details like this are not going to be a significant part of what they'll need to worry about.

For what it's worth, I actually was significantly annoyed by the restriction on evil for all undead things since my very first session or two playing when I first heard about it.

It's frankly very blunt and clunky storytelling, which I realize is not your or Paizo's fault, as it is an integral carryover from older editions that many customers would raise hell over (hah!). But yeah, it does actually stick out to new players.

Granted, liches in particular, no of course that was too subtle/advanced of a point as a new player.

It's actually not a holdover from earlier editions, where the restriction was much less (particularly with things like the deathless, or creatures like baelnorns in Forgotten Realms).

The focus on evil undead in Pathfinder is very much a specific and conscious decision we made, particularly with my input, based almost entirely on my lifetime of immersing in the horror genre and seeing PLENTY of stories about undead. Time and time again, the ones that are the more interesting to me are the ones about evil undead... or at the very least evil-adjacent undead. There are, of course, stories about non-evil undead that remain compelling to me... most of them are about ghosts, which is why you see ghosts having that restriction being the most lax in our products.

Obviously, I don't feel it's blunt or clunky storytelling at all. But, as with ALL stories (and art in general, which includes RPGs), opinions will vary. And as such, it may stick out for you, but I suspect that it might not stick out so much to the average new player... although the popularity of "Twilight" in recent years might be a big shift there, I suppose.

It just so happens that my opinions are part of what Paizo pays me to have and use to fulfill my duties as the company's Creative Director. These decisions obviously don't agree with everyone and I absolutely do NOT want them to, because variety is what makes life interesting.

As an aside, I would certainly love it if folks recommended books or movies or whatever that give great examples of non-evil undead. A few that come to mind as personal favorites would be "Near Dark," "The Devil's Backbone," "Nazareth Hill," and "The Others."


Ah, sorry :| *foot, mouth* I do really love the vast majority of the Golarion setting's flavor!

I also do enjoy a good classic horror setting, and super evil necromancers are fun. The part that irked me all along was the locked in **requirement** of evil only.

The bandied about notion of a different set of creatures that are mechanically more or less undead but go by different names (maybe positive energy?) like the "good-lich-but-not-called-a-lich" hinted at above could potentially satisfy more options and subtlety while also not stepping on the toes at all of common horror tropes and assumptions.

And Anne Rice's vampire series is a pretty good example of a non-evil undead. Or well, they may be evil, they may not, they're just sort of normal people psychologically. They generally struggle with the morality of their condition, almost all of them have compunctions against killing innocents (only killing cutthroats and such while hunting), etc.


Crimeo wrote:

Ah, sorry :| I do love the vast majority of the Golarion setting's flavor!

I also do love a good classic horror setting, and super evil necromancers are good fun. The part that irked me all along was the locked in **requirement** of evil only.

The bandied about notion of a different set of creatures that are mechanically more or less undead but go by different names (maybe positive energy?) like the "good-lich-but-not-called-a-lich" hinted at above could potentially satisfy more options and subtlety while also not stepping on the toes at all of common horror tropes and assumptions.

And Anne Rice's vampire series is a pretty good example of a non-evil undead. Or well, they may be evil, they may not, they're just sort of normal people psychologically. They generally struggle with the morality of their condition, almost all of them have compunctions against killing innocents (only killing cutthroats and such while hunting), etc.

Wasn't that the argument against Twilight? That they were not killing enough innocent people in those movies and behaving as real vampires?

Btw I agree with you, just pointing that out.

I am a huge Highlander fan, immortal characters who have existed for hundreds if not thousands of years. And some of the oldest are actually pretty mellow and zen. They have had millenia to adjust and adapt. My favorite Methos was EVIL for a good while, even taking on the persona of the Horsemen Death and was feared all over the region as one of the greatest mass murderers in history. He had since mellowed, and spent large swaths of his life doing good or just living a good life.

So sure you can do evil things, but you can atone, mellow our and spend centuries doing good as well. I think we are way to set into alignments when they should be fluid.

Yes a Lich who becomes a Lich on his own is doing this for very selfish reasons. Well ok, so he becomes a lich.. then what? To finish his research? What was the research for? Oh a cure for a plague that killed his family? Does he continue with it? If he doesn't then why would he have even invested so much energy into becoming a lich in the first place? If he does create a cure, does this not show he is at least not totally drive by selfish desires? If he then goes on to spend centuries finding cures, and modernizing medicine and saving hundred if not thousands of lives. Does this still require him to be evil? Even if he does this for his own personal glory. As the man/thing who did all this?

I think to often Lichs are written as very shallow characters. Not saying Paizo does it as I have not ready more then 1 of their work but in general descriptions they always seem so Bland and Stereotypical.


Another oldschool morally ambiguous or not-necessarily-evil character that comes to mind is Elric of Melnibone. He is not technically undead, but the vampire allusion is patently obvious (albino, from a race of compulsive violent non humans, has a magic sword that tricks him into stealing souls)

For the most part he's fairly evil, but also utterly racked with guilt always, and forelorneness over how he can never imagine to redeem himself, and he goes into many periods of successful "remission" from evil acts, and routinely helps save large swaths of people and fight for good (just "not enough to atone").


Crimeo wrote:

Ah, sorry :| *foot, mouth* I do really love the vast majority of the Golarion setting's flavor!

I also do enjoy a good classic horror setting, and super evil necromancers are fun. The part that irked me all along was the locked in **requirement** of evil only.

The bandied about notion of a different set of creatures that are mechanically more or less undead but go by different names (maybe positive energy?) like the "good-lich-but-not-called-a-lich" hinted at above could potentially satisfy more options and subtlety while also not stepping on the toes at all of common horror tropes and assumptions.

And Anne Rice's vampire series is a pretty good example of a non-evil undead. Or well, they may be evil, they may not, they're just sort of normal people psychologically. They generally struggle with the morality of their condition, almost all of them have compunctions against killing innocents (only killing cutthroats and such while hunting), etc.

Thing is, bestiary says the alignment stuff isn't absolute, use ghosts, or you can just use the removing alignment options present in the game. There non-evil undead.

As much as I hate the 99% absolute of undead = evil, there are ways around it in the system.


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Honestly, I LIKE the 99% of all undead being evil. Personally I'm bored to tears with the 'one special undead who just wants to be human again' stories.

I could tolerate a player playing something like that... but for the DMs and their redeemed liches and Demons... Let that trope die.

Mechanically, I WANT the clerics and Paladins and Holy weapons to tear up the undead monstrosities... the protection from Evils and things like that are tailor made for hordes of shambling undead.

The idea of 'oh.. they're all neutral while they're trying to kill you dead' just wouldn't be fun for me.

So if there's ever a vote... Keep em' Evil!!! :D


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To the disease curing lich example, a lich that did that for those reasons would likely not be evil. But that's not an arc that I would use a lich for. Depending how he's curing that disease, I'd find immortality through chained reincarnate or an improved clone process. Or nanites. Or an alchemical elixir. Or implantation in a construct that's immune to disease. Or seek an artifact like the Holy Grail to tie his life to.

I would make a lich that started the process for that reason. When he gets to the other side, he might even continue the process because he's obsessed. All his logic would look the same before and after his transformation, but the way he values things would change. Where before life was precious and family was everything, he's separated from those petty biological urges and tethers holding him back. You know, if Mom were some reasonable kind of undead, she'd be immune to that disease like him.

In fact, here's this agent he could use to give that gift to everyone. Then they'd see how much better this new form is.

You could certainly tell the story of the researcher dedicating his life and beyond to curing a disease, but in my opinion, the lich isn't the right tool for that job.


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phantom1592 wrote:
Honestly, I LIKE the 99% of all undead being evil. Personally I'm bored to tears with the 'one special undead who just wants to be human again' stories.

Uhh.... Doesn't "99% of undead are evil" increase the chance of those stories?

If sentient undead equally prone to evil as the living (or even just that sentient undead are more prone to evil than the living), then undead that aren't evil aren't special snowflakes.


Oh I know, I am in love with the Reincarnated Druid archetype for that reason.


Milo v3 wrote:
phantom1592 wrote:
Honestly, I LIKE the 99% of all undead being evil. Personally I'm bored to tears with the 'one special undead who just wants to be human again' stories.

Uhh.... Doesn't "99% of undead are evil" increase the chance of those stories?

If sentient undead equally prone to evil as the living (or even just that sentient undead are more prone to evil than the living), then undead that aren't evil aren't special snowflakes.

Not really.

If 99% of undead are evil... then the only time you'll hear a story about a misunderstood one... is if you choose to tell it.

If the general understanding is that Undead = Rip your throats out... then that's just the standard you hold to. It leaves the door open just a crack for some unique special story out there... but that's only after 99 other undead=horror stories first.

In most media now days, it's closer to a 50/50 split whether you're supposed to kill the vampire or sleep with it.


I should also say that I don't really see why undead have to be horror, so that is why I am against undead=evil. There are even undead gods in mythology that aren't evil or horrorific in any way. Osiris for example.


Quote:
'oh.. they're all neutral while they're trying to kill you dead

Incidentally, zombies really should be neutral anyway, shouldn't they? If a starving hyena pack ripping you apart while neutral is not a problem thematically, then a horde of zombies should be neutral for the exact same reason.

No moral faculty to know what they're doing in a sense of right or wrong, just instinct (or at least that's the Paizo spin on animals).

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Milo v3 wrote:


Why would simply being immortal change someone core identity so completely?

I think this is the heart of the issue right here. Some may see becoming a lich as simply gaining an undead template and an evil alignment. Perhaps im too hung up on much of the write ups, but I see it as fundamentally changing the individual on a core level. At the point of becoming a lich there is a transformation, a severing from mortal being. A lich no longer has hunger, fear, or passion. A lich is basically an echo of the person they were and as time goes by less and less of their humanity will remain. Ultimately, a lich will become nothing more than a collector of tangible elements like rudimentary power. Anything that mattered before transformation will become unimportant and inconsequential to a lich. All that drove a lich previously, has been imprisoned with their soul as cost of immortality. Clearly my take on things influenced by gaming material and literature I have read. So no not memory loss or damage, but loss of empathy and emotional destruction.


phantom1592 wrote:
Milo v3 wrote:
phantom1592 wrote:
Honestly, I LIKE the 99% of all undead being evil. Personally I'm bored to tears with the 'one special undead who just wants to be human again' stories.

Uhh.... Doesn't "99% of undead are evil" increase the chance of those stories?

If sentient undead equally prone to evil as the living (or even just that sentient undead are more prone to evil than the living), then undead that aren't evil aren't special snowflakes.

Not really.

If 99% of undead are evil... then the only time you'll hear a story about a misunderstood one... is if you choose to tell it.

And if undead are usually neutral, like every other intelligent creature, then you never have to hear a story about a special snowflake misunderstood undead.

It's much like drow. There is are creatures called drow in Scandinavian mythology that are neutral. Gygax and Greenwood through out all of the mythological precedent and made their own 'evil' drow..which is what directly lead to Drizzt. Drizzt's story doesn't make sense unless the other drow are evil, which they weren't until Gygax made a radical departure from mythology.
The only way to eliminate "misunderstood special good undead" is to eliminate evil undead as a default. You have no one to blame but yourself.


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Liches are complicated. In the passages read in Undead Revisted, Liches seems to be infected with horrible paranoia/madness that drives them to become evil more or less.

Then they have to worry about if they're being challenged/absorbed enough in their machinations because if they lose their drive, they become mindless(Or close to it) Demiliches! and their soul is destroyed.

It's like every pause in activity for a Lich is when some folks wake up feeling apathetic about going to work, except it grows increasingly more difficult to find the willpower to keep moving forward.

I like to think this is why most Liches are evil. Good often goes unopposed after awhile whereas Evil is constantly plotting. A lich who has any reason to wonder if adventurers are gonna bust in and try to destroy him has an easier time to continue existing since he can always kill time by making traps and horrible monsters to defend him while investigating his next lead. The good "lich" when completing a task always runs the risk of "Okay now everything in the area is pretty safe, now what. Oh cra-*Turns into Demilich*"

It's my opinion that this is why most liches aren't hiding out in some inaccessible demiplane. They WANT to be opposed so that they can build more willpower to stave off becoming a Demilich.


James Jacobs wrote:
... based almost entirely on my lifetime of immersing in the horror genre and seeing PLENTY of stories about undead. Time and time again, the ones that are the more interesting to me are the ones about evil undead...

I generally feel the same way here.

Undead make great bad guys evil undead and can really power stories. The only really decent story ideas that involve non-evil undead (aside from ghost stories) are ones that basically end up as a tragic morality tale about the dangers of necromancy. YMMV.

For those of you that say "Nowhere does it say in the bestiary that they have to do anything evil to become a lich..." well, it is up to your GM to fill in those details. That's what GMing is about - the game designers can never fill in every detail and a part of the GM's job is to improvise when these questions come up.

It is of course noteworthy that anyone undergoing the transformation willingly is completely comfortable with ordinary mortals reacting with horror upon seeing them. Such people are unlikely to be of good alignment.

I personally use a concept in my games where being undead doesn't necessarily make you evil, but undead is a kind of evil subtype. So a skeleton is actually neutral as it is completely mindless, but it detects as evil and is vulnerable to game effects that target evil creatures, such as smite evil or protection from evil. So even a good vampire or lich, if allowed, would still be vulnerable to the same things that evil undead are vulnerable to.

As to liches having no demands for sustenance the way things like vampires and ghouls do, I am inclined as a GM to suggest that this need not be so; they could have a drive included by the GM, such as a craving to inspire terror in mortals. They would not "need" this to survive, but it would give them a rapturous pleasure much as vampires get from drinking blood; in a sense they "feed" on fear. This ties in well with their fear aura ability.

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I just started reading the article on liches James Jacobs mentioned above. The funny thing is, the very first paragraphs in that article almost seem as though they had been written as a response to some of the questions presented here.

"...those who pass beyond death in this manner invariably turn to evil..."

The article even mentions misguided folks who "stumble upon lichdom with hope in their hearts". Heh, I guess it's true what they say about good intentions.

The article is a good read, recommended if Golarion canon is your thing.

By the way, I wonder if/how psychic liches are different--I haven't gotten my copy of the Occult Bestiary yet. Are they also invariably evil?


Psychic lich would be a terror indeed...

One of the ways to stop psychic casters os fear effects... but liches, being undead, are immune to mind affecting effectz...


There is a show I am watching at the moment called Overlord. It's about a relatively normal guy who finds himself suddenly an all powerful Lich in a fantasy world. One of the things he notes early on is that being undead dulls his emotions and sense of empathy. He recognizes that seeing people get killed (and killing people himself later) should freak him out, but instead he is simply moving forward in a methodical manner. Even moments where he is clearly angry about something it's a cold detatched anger that doesn't get in the way of his thinking.

He's probably about as close as you could get to a "good" Lich and frankly he's slipping fast


Is he named Tammy?


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I'm actually playing a Lawful Neutral lich right now, turned against their will into an undead (and kind of incomplete - the template is weaker than usual). They might've gone evil anyway were it not for one of the setting's top adventurers pounding some sense into them. XD

The current adventure has the characters working to restore and rebuild a city, and my character's goal is to turn their district into a magic schooling area where students can get a high-quality education at a very affordable rate, with the character being the supervisor of the whole thing. So rather than locking themselves at the bottom of a tomb or something, they're going to be surrounded by people and working on a long-term goal, probably for a very long time go come.

The lich is an iconic template, and I figured I should have a story that was at least vaguely plausible before I started messing with it. XD


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Milo v3 wrote:

What if they became a lich only to stop a greater evil that they have prophifised to defeat... but in 350 years. So they used lichdom to ensure they would be there, and in the time between now and then, simply continued to commit good acts to try and redeem their "For the greater good" evil acts.

Note: This isn't a hypothetical to just make an extreme example, this was an NPC I've used previously.

Because, given how prophecies work, he'd compromise his morality to become a lich, degrade into maddness, and, 350 years later, the "greater evil" turns out to be said lich.

That having been said, since the cycle of life goes Birth->Life->Death->Rebirth, and becoming Undead essentially throws a spanner into the works, Undead should be Chaotic or, at the very least, non-Lawful because it goes against the natural order of things. Mindless undead could very well be Evil just due to the fundamental nature of Negative energy. But Undead with their mind left intact would could be any alignment within the restrictions previously mentioned (either Chaotic or non-Lawful depending on how stringent you want to make it).

Which, of course, leads to another concept; what, exactly is the nature of Negative Energy? Mathematically speaking, positive and negative are completely relative terms; it doesn't matter which is which so long as you are consistent. Note how we have the Material plane which is, by and large, where living mortals live. Then you have the Ethereal and Shadow planes which correspond to the Material. All three essentially overlap and take up the same space, but at a different "frequency". What if there is a fourth place that follows the same rules? Material<>Ethereal<>Shadow<>Anti-Material. Note that denizens of the Shadow plane are affected by the Sun Blade in the same manner that Undead are. This implies that Shadow Plane entities are powered by Negative Energy. I think that there is a hypothetical Anti-Material plane in which Living creatures are powered by Negative energy while Undead are powered by Positive energy. In essence, a living creature from the Material plane who got himself to the anti-Material would be, from their perspective, an Undead. However, the Shadow plane is the closest you could get and it would be, to them, as the Ethereal plane is to the Material. But that's getting all into theory-crafting and such.


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Milo v3 wrote:
LazarX wrote:


Sure, just blithely ignore the fact that in order to choose the path, you were a mass murdering SOB who killed tons of innocent people in horrific ways to get there to start with. You're talking about someone who was essentially a sociopath on the order of Jeffrey Dahmer or Hannibal Lector combined with a megalomanical power fixation to boot.

Those kind of people don't simply wake up one morning and decide to become angels. In fact, they never do.

What if they became a lich only to stop a greater evil that they have prophifised to defeat... but in 350 years. So they used lichdom to ensure they would be there, and in the time between now and then, simply continued to commit good acts to try and redeem their "For the greater good" evil acts.

Note: This isn't a hypothetical to just make an extreme example, this was an NPC I've used previously.

Well...no one here is going to show up and tear up the sheet with the Lich's stats on it. If you want to run a home game with a good or neutral lich, that is fine.

Personally I would never run a lich like that, as I prefer the Golarion fluff. That the process of achieving lichdom involves evil acts that result in the utter loss of humanity in the individual performing those acts. To me, choosing the path of lichdom implies a priori that the person is evil or become evil. I see that as different from a sapient who accidentally/against there will becomes undead like a ghoul or vampire, who at least initially I would expect to keep their alignment.

The folks who maintain those beliefs either fail the process or quit, or pursue any of the various other methods that magic users can have access to that lets them live longer, either literally (immortality, transfer of consciousness into a construct, polymorphing into a long-lived creature, hibernation, messing with time, reincarnation, cloning, etc) or metaphorically (finding a worthy individual to pass your goals down to, or establishing an organization to continue your work after your demise)


Milo v3 wrote:
Pan wrote:

If I was writing the story over the years the lich would forget their "greater good" mission and it simply wouldn't matter any longer. The lich would move on completely oblivious to morality and simply be evil.

At the 350 year mark a band of adventurers would convince the lich to look into its past and remember why the lich was on that journey. The lich then defeats the greater evil but as a result destroys itself thus restoring its soul and being redeemed.

Why would simply being immortal change someone core identity so completely? Especially only in a couple hundred years. Why would they forget the whole reason they became the monster they are now? Why would they forget the purpose they potentially damned their immortal soul for? Do lich in your setting have severe memory issues? If anything, a lich memory of why it became a lich would be better, since memory is represented in this game through knowledge and intelligence checks, and lich get a bonus to mental stats.

I think you could have an evil lich who still was "devoted to a good cause". but the descent into lichdom and subsequent loss of humanity would profoundly alter how they pursue that goal. I lich for instance devoted to finding a cure for how horrible plague would be more likely to use live vivisection, or experiment with modified versions on unwitting villages to study mechanisms of contagion. A lich devoted to stopping some evil god from being released might take a proactive approach, and wipe out any village that might contain worshippers, or hunt down and kill the people that the prophecy foretold would bring about the gods release while they are still babies.

Basically with noble lichs, I think you get into "Stare into the Abyss long enough and the Abyss stares back into you" and "The ends justify any means" plot tropes.


Also it seems like the Paizo solution to "Undead are 99% evil" and reconciling them with tropes about good undead often seen in fantasy fiction, is simply to create outsiders/constructs which for all purposes function the same way but are not undead.

the companion for the spiritualist class is effectively a ghost, but counts as an outsider. Similarly, the Prana Ghost is an outsider which also pretty much fills the "ghost for good reasons" niche


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James Jacobs wrote:
As an aside, I would certainly love it if folks recommended books or movies or whatever that give great examples of non-evil undead. A few that come to mind as personal favorites would be "Near Dark," "The Devil's Backbone," "Nazareth Hill," and "The Others."

I really enjoyed "The Haunter". Of course, it deals with ghosts, which are already the most likely "non-evil undead".


I've seen non-Evil Liches done well. And I had written one up for a short story myself, as I mentioned in an earlier post.

Either way, I'll stick by what others have said. If even a fiend, a being made of pure evil, can turn good, then an undead like a lich certainly could.

Alignment is not a fixed state, however. Nothing's stopping that lich from going back to evil later, and then going back to good if given even more time (and chances) to do so.


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For those using negative energy as an reason:

Negative energy is neutral.

The harm spells are non aligned, and Dhampirs can be good pretty easy. And Dhampirs are powered by negative energy.

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TriOmegaZero wrote:
LazarX wrote:
How many mass murdering sociopaths in history do you think have "redeemed" themselves? Spoiler: The answer is NONE.
Have you read the iconic Slayer's backstory?

Despite his past, he's no Hannibal Lector. He did his killing for a cause (and a goddess mind you) that he believed in, not because of the utter lack of empathy of Alec Baldwin's trademark character.

There's also no evidence that he either regrets his actions, or has changed his viewpoint.

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Milo v3 wrote:
LazarX wrote:


Sure, just blithely ignore the fact that in order to choose the path, you were a mass murdering SOB who killed tons of innocent people in horrific ways to get there to start with. You're talking about someone who was essentially a sociopath on the order of Jeffrey Dahmer or Hannibal Lector combined with a megalomanical power fixation to boot.

Those kind of people don't simply wake up one morning and decide to become angels. In fact, they never do.

What if they became a lich only to stop a greater evil that they have prophifised to defeat... but in 350 years. So they used lichdom to ensure they would be there, and in the time between now and then, simply continued to commit good acts to try and redeem their "For the greater good" evil acts.

Note: This isn't a hypothetical to just make an extreme example, this was an NPC I've used previously.

1. Prophecy is garbage... at least in Golarion, Prophecy has a reliable metric for actions went permanently south the day Aroden died. Anyone who studies enough arcane knowledge to research lichdom, will know that fact. There are also many ways of dealing with a far future threat... You're just choosing one method out of expediency... wrapped around a core of narcissism.

2. You're essentially putting for "The Ends Justify The Means" argument. By the non-subjective standards of Good and Evil which the game runs on... that doesn't fly. You simply can not deliberately walk the path of lichdom without a major lack of empathy for the suffering and murder you cause... or the insane delusion that you're not...(which does not exempt you from being evil, it just certifies your insanity that warps your self-perception.)

3. Your argument is much like those players who argue that they'll be neutral by alternating between sinner and saint, as if Good and Evil are simply flip sides of the same coin.


LazarX wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
LazarX wrote:
How many mass murdering sociopaths in history do you think have "redeemed" themselves? Spoiler: The answer is NONE.
Have you read the iconic Slayer's backstory?

Despite his past, he's no Hannibal Lector. He did his killing for a cause (and a goddess mind you) that he believed in, not because of the utter lack of empathy of Alec Baldwin's trademark character.

There's also no evidence that he either regrets his actions, or has changed his viewpoint.

Alec Baldwin?

Grand Lodge

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Serghar Cromwell wrote:
LazarX wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
LazarX wrote:
How many mass murdering sociopaths in history do you think have "redeemed" themselves? Spoiler: The answer is NONE.
Have you read the iconic Slayer's backstory?

Despite his past, he's no Hannibal Lector. He did his killing for a cause (and a goddess mind you) that he believed in, not because of the utter lack of empathy of Alec Baldwin's trademark character.

There's also no evidence that he either regrets his actions, or has changed his viewpoint.

Alec Baldwin?

Alec Baldwin, Anthony Hopkins, one head, two arms, two legs, all you Humans look and taste alike.


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James Jacobs wrote:
...trying not to get too worked up whenever someone spells it "liche" with that extra e...

You'd really love the typo in Final Fantasy tactics that got into the finished game. When you select a summoning spell from your menu and conjure your summon, it says the name of the summon monster, does a thing, and it vanishes. There's a lich summon that appears and takes a % of Hp from enemies.

Anyway, when you summon the Lich, it announces "Rich" instead.

Grand Lodge

LazarX wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
LazarX wrote:
How many mass murdering sociopaths in history do you think have "redeemed" themselves? Spoiler: The answer is NONE.
Have you read the iconic Slayer's backstory?
Despite his past, he's no Hannibal Lector.

I wasn't talking about Zadim.


Were you talking about Tammy :-)


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
captain yesterday wrote:
Were you talking about Tammy :-)

At first, I shook my head at Tammy. But through the magic of repeated exposure and running jokes, I'm now 100% on board. :-)

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Serpent wrote:

I just started reading the article on liches James Jacobs mentioned above. The funny thing is, the very first paragraphs in that article almost seem as though they had been written as a response to some of the questions presented here.

"...those who pass beyond death in this manner invariably turn to evil..."

The article even mentions misguided folks who "stumble upon lichdom with hope in their hearts". Heh, I guess it's true what they say about good intentions.

The article is a good read, recommended if Golarion canon is your thing.

By the way, I wonder if/how psychic liches are different--I haven't gotten my copy of the Occult Bestiary yet. Are they also invariably evil?

Not a funny thing at all, but an absolutely intentional thing. Turns out, we often take information we gather from these boards and use them to fuel articles. We'd seen lots of folks asking about non-evil liches for YEARS (this is hardly a new topic), and realized we hadn't been clear enough about how lichdom works in Golarion, so that was one of the first topics we wanted to speak to in the article.

Psychic liches are different in stats and the way magic works, but they're equally evil as normal liches. If we EVER do a non-evil lich (I highly doubt it, but who knows?) we'll make sure the world knows. There won't be any guesswork involved. It will not be subtle.


Tammy's never subtle :-)


Lol im picturing a psychedelic psychic lich...

Im sorry but I cant picture an evil stoned skeleton xD


alexd1976 wrote:
Serghar Cromwell wrote:
Isn't a corpse animated by positive energy usually just called "living"?

No more than an undead is called dead...

Maybe... negadead? Ultraliving? Man i have crappy naming ideas...

I have always liked the term Deathless


el cuervo wrote:
Bard-Sader wrote:
Zhayne wrote:
Any free-willed individual can choose its own moral and ethical path in life.
Key word being life? :p Liches aren't alive.
By game rules they are... positive HP value means you are not dead. :P

unless they're dead:-)


captain yesterday wrote:
el cuervo wrote:
Bard-Sader wrote:
Zhayne wrote:
Any free-willed individual can choose its own moral and ethical path in life.
Key word being life? :p Liches aren't alive.
By game rules they are... positive HP value means you are not dead. :P
unless they're dead:-)

Wait... POSITIVE HP is alive? So Orcs are fighting dead people..

Paizo Employee Creative Director

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Huh. Turns out Tammy the Lich IS evil. Mostly because a dwarf killed her pet dog.

Spoiler:
Tammy CR 16
XP 76,800
Halfling lich ranger 15 (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 188)
CE Small undead (humanoid, halfling)
Init +7; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +31
Aura fear aura (DC 24)
--------------------
Defense
--------------------
AC 28, touch 14, flat-footed 25 (+9 armor, +3 Dex, +5 natural, +1 size)
hp 222 (15d10+135)
Fort +18, Ref +14, Will +10; +2 vs. fear, +4 bonus vs. channeled energy
Defensive Abilities channel resistance +4, evasion, rejuvenation; DR 15/bludgeoning, 15/magic; Immune cold, electricity, polymorph, undead traits
--------------------
Offense
--------------------
Speed 20 ft.
Melee touch +15 (1d8+7 negative energy plus paralyzing touch)
Ranged +5 dwarf-bane conductive longbow +25/+20/+15 (1d6+4/19-20/×3 plus 2d6 vs. dwarf)
Special Attacks combat style (archery), favored enemies (dwarves +8, earth outsiders +2, humans +2, orcs +2), paralyzing touch (DC 24), quarry
Ranger Spells Prepared (CL 12th; concentration +15)
4th—freedom of movement
3rd—instant enemy[APG], greater magic fang, venomous bolt[APG] (DC 16)
2nd—barkskin, cat's grace, snare
1st—entangle (DC 14), gravity bow[APG], longstrider, resist energy
--------------------
Statistics
--------------------
Str 8, Dex 17, Con —, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 24
Base Atk +15; CMB +13; CMD 26
Feats Combat Casting, Craft Construct, Craft Magic Arms & Armor, Craft Wondrous Item, Endurance, Improved Critical (longbow), Improved Initiative, Point-blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Shot On The Run, Toughness, Weapon Focus (longbow)
Skills Acrobatics +3 (-1 to jump), Climb -1, Craft (sculpture) +17, Knowledge (arcana) +14, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +14, Knowledge (local) +11, Perception +31, Sense Motive +11, Spellcraft +19, Stealth +31, Survival +21; Racial Modifiers +2 Acrobatics, +2 Climb, +10 Perception, +8 Sense Motive, +8 Stealth
Languages Abyssal, Common, Halfling
SQ camouflage, favored terrains (abyss +2, plane of earth +2, underground +6), hunter's bond (animal companion), swift tracker, track +7, wild empathy +22, woodland stride
Other Gear +3 mithral chainmail, +5 dwarf-bane conductive longbow, greater slaying arrow, belt of incredible dexterity +2, cloak of resistance +1, headband of alluring charisma +2, 321 gp, 5 sp


Actually constitution is what differentiates the living from the dead, I'm guessing they realized that and deleted it, however I pounce like a cat type thingy :-)

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