Alright, before anyone says it, I know casting Permanency does that. But what quality or qualities of a spell determine how it can be made permanent? What makes it special enough for that?
For instance, I have an upcoming game where the players are going off to look for a lich's phylactery. Why couldn't a permanent Magic Aura be used to help hide the phylactery? (I assume it registers as magical, anyway).
Anyway, that's my question for the evening.
Balance. Nothing more, nothing less.
Being able to make a spell permanent is making a pseudo-magic item, and very quickly. The ability to buff anything for extended durations is known to be a game breaker. Therefore, the number of spells that can be made permanent is extremely limited.
What you desire to be done can be done by application of the spell Sequester, I believe.
===Aelryinth
I think it's mostly down to tradition and designer choice. What made sense, seemed reasonable, and what seemed too good.
Sequester does work, and has the added advantage of making the object invisible. Still, it works only 1 day per level, like Magical Aura. But then again there's nothing that says the lich won't know when they're coming so she could cast it before they arrive. I doubt they spend 12 days looking for it in her trap and minion filled keep.
Thanks!
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Sequester does work, and has the added advantage of making the object invisible. Still, it works only 1 day per level, like Magical Aura. But then again there's nothing that says the lich won't know when they're coming so she could cast it before they arrive. I doubt they spend 12 days looking for it in her trap and minion filled keep.
Thanks!
Toss an Extend Spell on that (from a rod if you don't want to use a feat), and you're nearly at a month.
My preference - cast Magic Aura on literally dozens and dozens of other items to give them a strong, necromantic aura.
If it's not listed under the permanency spell, then it's completely and utterly up to GM discretion.
If you really want to hide a phylactery, a lead box buried underground does pretty damn well. The lead box blocks a huge amount of detection spells, and even if somebody managed to scry on it then all they see is dirt.
"Well, we know it's underground."
Other planes can get messy. On the material plane the vast majority of the inhabitants are humanoids and animals. On other planes there's...well there's outsiders. They're a lot more powerful than your average humanoid, and typically a lot more meddlesome.
Also, it's damned inconvenient to reform on another plane if you need to get back in a timely manner.
Although what's far safer is creating your own demiplane and keeping it there. You can control the entire plane of existence.
If the GM decides a rogue demiplane eats your demiplane, that has nothing to do with you making a poor decision. That means your GM is probably out to destroy your phylactery and would have found a way no matter what you did.
But we are getting way off topic.
Still slightly offtopic...
Can a lich rejuvenate if their phylactery is on a different plane when they die? I thought I'd read in one of the books that they couldn't, but now can't find the reference, it isn't in the Bestiary or Undead Revisited.
As far as keeping it on a different plane, planar travel is as rare as hen's teeth for non outsiders in my setting, so it'll be on the material plane with the players, but they just have to find it. I could hide it on another plane or even in such a place on my homebrew world where it would never be found, or at least gotten to, but then that would make the quest pointless and boring. The object of the game is to defeat the lich, not spend the rest of their adventuring lives looking for its special life force hidey hole. It needs to be found, just hard to do.
Thanks for all the suggestions, folks!
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My favorite way to hide something like a phylactery is to wrap it in gold, have some random goblin swallow it, throw an "Amulet of Proof against Detection and Location" around its neck, then cast "Imprisonment" on the goblin in some difficult to get to location.* That keeps everything on the same plane, but doesn't fit with your desire to hide it in a more mundane, scry-proof location. It's technically findable, but good luck. If your lich has access to mythic magic, you can use a mythic modify memory to have the goblin's name forgotten by everyone, just to be sure.
*This method is more useful for the old 3.0 "Hide Life" spell than a phylactery, but I ruled that a rejuvenated lich would appear at the point where the imprisonment was cast instead of at the undefined point "deep in the earth" where the goblin is cached. That doesn't seem to be a real location, else there would be a chance that someone down below would find the victim of the spell.
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I suggested a demi plane that was growing by accretion. One central demiplane where the residents created a device that drew in and attached other demiplanes. It's a crazy quilt of vaults, farms, character lairs, prisons, ect. The characters should be looking for someone who's secure storage has developed this back door.
To the original question, you don't want characters recreating a higher level spell by spending GPs. How about the phylactery BEING an "Amulet of Proof against Detection and Location".
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I once hid a lich's phylactory inside a Black Reaver. For those fortunate souls who never played Rolemaster, a Black Reaver is a sort of construct made by combining the most powerful golem in the game system with the most powerful demon possible. It's officially the single most dangerous monster in Rolemaster.
And I also issued the party with a 'Destroy Black Reaver' scroll...which they decided was too valuable to actually use and tried fighting it. After resurrecting the fallen, they...
.
.
...fought it again! And lost all but one of the characters. Then they used the scroll.
Still slightly offtopic...
Can a lich rejuvenate if their phylactery is on a different plane when they die? I thought I'd read in one of the books that they couldn't, but now can't find the reference, it isn't in the Bestiary or Undead Revisited.
I don't think it should work by analogy with the Possession spell - your soul only goes back to your body if it's on the same plane.
The lich's phylactery could be a ring or amulet. There's nothing that says it can't be further enchanted into an item. Imagine the PCs defeat the lich, loot a ring of feather falling. No real way to tell it's a phylactery other than expensive and well-made, but rings are like that unless you're already using powerful divination magics to find the phylactery.
What player is really going to suspect a ring of feather falling is a phylactery? They may even keep it, probably safer with them than anywhere else.
Could always make the phylactery an actual magical phylactery, like a phylactery of faithfulness. Since just wearing or carrying it around isn't really a threat to alignments, probably never know. Then you can be all honest, "You've found a phylactery. It looks like a little box with a strap for going around your forehead."
And the lich should have a really expensive platinum decoy box with black opals set into skull images and it should have magic mouth on it to scream "Nooooo!" when destroyed.
These are some great ideas. Thanks!
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If it's not listed under the permanency spell, then it's completely and utterly up to GM discretion.
If you really want to hide a phylactery, a lead box buried underground does pretty damn well. The lead box blocks a huge amount of detection spells, and even if somebody managed to scry on it then all they see is dirt.
"Well, we know it's underground."
Yeah, lead is a seriously underused mechanic for GMs and pathfinder modules. And as a material of the medieval world, lead is common and cheap.
For dungeons, sewer systems are a very likely place to find lead, especially lead piping.
The phylactery doesn't have to be hidden intentionally, it could have just been accidentally dropped down a drain and the lich doesn't remember where they dropped it...Perhaps the lich is having the same issues finding the phylactery that the players are.
Perhaps the lich is having the same issues finding the phylactery that the players are.
One version of the game I came up with while writing the last adventure was to have the lich hire the players to hide the phylactery themselves in a place not even the lich could find.
If it's not listed under the permanency spell, then it's completely and utterly up to GM discretion.
If you really want to hide a phylactery, a lead box buried underground does pretty damn well. The lead box blocks a huge amount of detection spells, and even if somebody managed to scry on it then all they see is dirt.
"Well, we know it's underground."
Yeah, lead is a seriously underused mechanic for GMs and pathfinder modules. And as a material of the medieval world, lead is common and cheap.
For dungeons, sewer systems are a very likely place to find lead, especially lead piping.
The phylactery doesn't have to be hidden intentionally, it could have just been accidentally dropped down a drain and the lich doesn't remember where they dropped it...Perhaps the lich is having the same issues finding the phylactery that the players are.
oooh, that's a fun idea, the Lich lost track of his phylactery and is racing the PCs to find it. I might use this.
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Kind of like this?