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Running a campaign where the final goal is to find and kill a lich. Problem is, no one actually knows what the main baddie is, and I don't want to go out right and tell the players it's a lich.
Any ideas what signs might point to a lich? I was personally thinking something like dead plant and animal life near the lair, people going missing from the nearby town, maybe missing bodies from the cemetery, but those could point to a lot of things.
What else would point to a lich specifically?
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Maybe you could say that there were some low level people exploring a cave and when they thought that they saw a skeleton they ran toward it and became so terrified that they ran away all the way back to the nearest village.
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While the process for becoming a lich varies from lich to lich, it pretty much always involves doing some horrific things. It is likely that their could be records, stories or other clues about the bad things that were done in the process.
In addition, before being a lich, the person was a powerful spellcaster. That sort of person often leaves a mark on history, so information about a powerful spell caster in the area in the past could be a clue.
Of course how the detail all add up depend a lot on what this particular bad guys story is, how long he has been a lich, and what he was doing prior to becoming the threat that he is.
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While the process for becoming a lich varies from lich to lich, it pretty much always involves doing some horrific things. It is likely that their could be records, stories or other clues about the bad things that were done in the process.
In addition, before being a lich, the person was a powerful spellcaster. That sort of person often leaves a mark on history, so information about a powerful spell caster in the area in the past could be a clue.
Of course how the detail all add up depend a lot on what this particular bad guys story is, how long he has been a lich, and what he was doing prior to becoming the threat that he is.
Pretty much this
Dave Justus has the best idea, over-all, I think.
Basically, the history depends on your villain, how big the dude was in history, and what he had to do to become a lich.
That said, to throw a few more at you:
- a strange rash of disappearances that have the victims turn up later with paralysis, seizes various people across the city. Though the victims are able to be restored by magic, they have no idea what happened.
(The lich is looking for things, temporarily paralyzingly victims, then probing their minds. He then erases his presence/the memories of their time together from them.)
- a rash of sudden night terrors are reported in household that are visited by the strange wondering "curse" above (or instead of the above).
(The lich under forced quiet and invisibility is wondering the house, terrifying the people that fall into its aura, even while asleep.)
((This one won't directly point to a lich, but it'll start to show up weeeiiiird inconsistencies with anything other than a spellcaster with some sort of terror effect - after the first couple of exorcisms do nothing, of course.))
- make use of divination and contact other plane and commune as a method of maximizing their information - make it vague, sure, but plant leading clues so they are pointed to places to investigate or hints to explore more of.
- a minor angel, like a cassisian, is rescued and released; it can tell the heroes that a "frightening skeleton" is doing stuff with magic - and that's about all. This is especially useful if the familiar of that adventuring group Young Nasty Man mentioned, above. Perhaps they were a broken adventuring group or had become drunkards telling their tales of terror and failure, but then "got better" - only the wizard's familiar disappeared.
(The adventurers were fracked down by the lich, who proved their mind and then filled them with unconscious agenda and similar effects, stealing the wizard's familiar (after it couldn't alter the thing's memories) and slowly using the young adventurers as cat's paws to do less morally upright things. The wizard is still a drunk, with terror from its familiar, a deep-seated sense of guilt and confusing conflicting feelings of doing the wrong thing, but being convinced that it's the right thing to do...)
((Could even be that the young adventurers were the ones to "awaken" the lich in the first place, having stirred it from its tomb and unwittingly revealed a valuable secret in town. The lich has now stirred and is doing stuff because of them. It has modified them enough that they no longer believe their own scary skeleton story, "And anyway, it was a zombie with tattoos, not a skeleton; the plebeians always get that wrong... but, yeah, it was me at to be a method of generating interest/covering our failure. We just stupidly assumed we'd get jobs by hanging out in taverns. Whoops. Anyway, now we've got our heads on straight, and I've got a job to do, see ya..." and uses them to get reports.))
And so on.
To help more, the lich's nature and history of the place could be good.
Hope that helps!
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Also, remember- the lich's main advantage is not staying (re)dead. So if he had a personal grudge against someone, then he could definitely throw himself at that person over and over again until the guy dies.
So how to use this: an old swordsman in the area (maybe a well respected knight captain? or anyone with decent guards, I suppose) had recently been killed by some undead beast. While there were no survivors to serve as witness, he had previously been attacked by a powerful undead that he could just barely destroy at an earlier date.
How to fit that with history is that the person targeted had wronged a powerful spell caster years and year ago (whether this was an actual wrong, or just catching the spell caster doing evil is up to you, of course). The spell caster had sworn revenge, and left to gain more power. Upon becoming a lich, the spell caster thought "yeah, this works. Might as well get to it".
Anyway, you can hint at 'powerful undead' and that should be enough. Obviously, the locals don't know the knowledge (religion) checks to figure out that it is a lich. Keep the details hazy, and they might think it is any of the other kinds of famous undead. Lich is an obvious first answer, but keep it sketchy enough that they aren't sure- that will serve well enough as a warning and hint.
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Do they need to find the lich, or do you want them to draw that conclusion?
Leave clues about the person he was. Is he a recent lich? Ancient? What's his story? Did he find out he had some horrible illness and needed to find a way out of it? Would his religion prevent him From going to a healer? Were healers available? Maybe he worshipped an evil deity and sought to serve that deity better For eternity. Who did he worship?
How would they find him? Is there a cult following him? Is he kidnapping virgins?
Maybe introduce some lichkin? Lich-like lesser undead that foreshadow the true lich's presence.
I'm thinking of some kind of uber-ghoul or the like. Maybe 10 to 15 HD and the lich's supernatural attacks without the spells. I'm inspired by the undead from Mark Lawrence's "Prince of Thorns" series.
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Maybe introduce some lichkin? Lich-like lesser undead that foreshadow the true lich's presence.
I'm thinking of some kind of uber-ghoul or the like. Maybe 10 to 15 HD and the lich's supernatural attacks without the spells. I'm inspired by the undead from Mark Lawrence's "Prince of Thorns" series.
"Experimental material".
You gotta practice before you stick your own head into the evil magic doohickey. It is part of why becoming a lich is rather explicitly evil.
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You could have the main villain be "the Bhadguvof Family", and through roleplay/discovery they realized that the "current head" of the family is really the same person as the original.
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Giving hints about how old he is is a good idea. Especially if they keep pushing the date further and further back
If you want to use the lesser lich idea use a lesser simulacrum. Heuvuca also works
The players might hear about someone that has previously fought the Big Bad. Then they might have to go find his body and find it an undead of some sort. Boss fight so they can speak with dead his body and learn more about Big Bad
Big Bad could use the nightmare spell to torment one or more of the players during which they might get a few glimpses of him
One idea is that if he has an arcane bond that can be easily interpreted as a phylactery. Hearing about it could make the players think lich
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Why did he become a lich, what are his current goals? The signs that a sorcerer terrified of what awaited in the afterlife turned himself undead to ensure he never had to face it are different to the signs left by the power hungry sorcerer who turned undead as part of his plan to conquer the region with an army of undead. One might be a cave noone returns from alive, the lich killing all who find him so they don't discover his secret and tails of a powerful sorcerer who had a near death experience and became paranoid or lost his mind as a result before vanishing without a trace, preferably in a similar location to the cave. The other would be disappearances, sightings of large bands of undead, perhaps the head of the local militia disappears and the room smells of rotting flesh, maybe there's a chunk of zombie he managed to cut off before dieing that lets the players realise necromancy is involved.
There are lots of great specific ideas here already so I will offer some more general advice.
Whenever I have a mystery in my game there is a temptation to look at the situation from the players point of view and then construct a chain of clues that lead to the answer. And whenever I have constructed a game this way I usually hit problems when the PCs miss a vital clue that breaks the chain. And even if the chain works, the players can feel like they have been railroaded.
What I find works best is to do the reverse; construct exactly what happened without the PCs in mind and then the clues become obvious. Back to the opening post, my advice is: determine what the Lich has been doing in recent times, the Lich's family history, their own history, that is: what they did as a mortal and how they became a Lich. Once you know this in detail the clues will become obvious and there will be multiple ways to uncover the truth. And if the PCs look for clues in areas that you had not considered in advance then you are better placed to add extra clues on the fly, like when PCs cast Speak with Dead or Blood Biography in places you didn't expect.
A GM created a family of powerful arcane jerks that each sought lichdom. There were three ghosts and several other 'failures' our party dispatched, blissfully unaware of any further plots. Part of our problem was a heavy rotation of players and the evils of school. nearly 20 players with only a max of 7-8 a game means being handed every clue was a waste. Only when two of the girls were trying to get a friend to come for a game did the light go on. They had both killed a ghost on separate nights and reasoned where there are two, there might be more.
More high end undead, including a nasty vampire who let slip she was the agent of a BBEG. I was in finals when they went door kicking into the lich liar. The lich eventually fell back on faking as a vampire and they staked everything they could find.
Only when it all kicked off again did anyone suspect a lich. Clues we had in abundance, but we were buying stakes when we needed bazookas.