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I'm looking for some fun ideas to do with some information we came across in a recent game I'm playing in. A friend and I are playing in a game together and he is playing a character with a level in samurai and he has taken my character as his master. I am playing a true neutral Warpriest of Horus. We are 5th lvl. The other two party members are a bard and a paladin. In the course of the game he triggered a haunt that gave him full and complete knowledge of how to become a Lich. He, being a non-arcane character basically has no interest in the information at all. My character doesn't have any immediate use for the information either. However she sees him as a gift to her from Horus and therefore thinks this information was given to him providentially and must, therefore, have some use. I'm trying to come up with some creative and fun ways that the characters might make use of this incredibly powerful information. Thoughts?
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Figure out how to fiddle with it enough to become a graveknight instead?
Tell the paladin, so he can stop you if you ever act on this information?
Or perhaps it's a hint from the GM of things to come (if the GM wants your warpriest to become a lich, then there's context I don't have).
In any case, the information you have may not become relevant until at least level 10, so it may just be some ominous foreshadowing.
If you're not particularly concerned with the consequences, I'm sure you could find a necromancer who'd pay dearly for the information.
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Lich doesn't require Arcane magic, divine can certainly do it as well.
That being said, Horus isn't particularly a lich type deity so I wouldn't expect your character to leap to the conclusion that your God wants you to become a lich, and since I assume you all have at least paladin-compatible alignments no one would want to do whatever nasty things are in that particular lich ritual in any event, not to mention that a ritual for one person might well not work for another.
My guess would be the real use of this information is that it is related to a lich that is still around. Perhaps the ritual contains keys to some weakness he has, or at lest his identity and possible whereabouts. Certainly you should be able to know what his phylactery looks like, which can be a big help if you have to confront him. Of course, level 5 is a long way from being able to deal with even a 'weak' lich, so direct uses of this information are not likely to come up soon.
You could though use the information you have to find out more. Who was the person that used that ritual, are their any indications they are still around, and what, if any, activities are they engaging in (probably via proxies.)
And of course if the lich is around and becomes aware of you investigating him, that is likely to lead to all sorts of interesting things.
Important question: lich or baelnorn? These are similar, but different.
Also, it may be possible to alter the lich ritual to the other.
Also, in the course thereof, it would require reversing the polarity of this process.
Another possibility is to use this to alter the nature of the ritual to maybe become a deathless councilor.
If you're looking for trickier ways of doing something with it: maybe you can replicate the process (in theory, not practice), but alter it in some key way to either make liches that follow it much weaker to the powers of light or even just auto-atone them into defacto servants of Horus (complete with alignment change).
Full disclosure, I mostly know Horus from Forgotten Realms, so he may well be different here. :)
Oh, and in case it wasn't clear: maybe you could use the old ritual to develop new previously not-extant rituals to become new positive energy deathless instead of negative energy undead.
Another possibility is that it's a non-evil ritual, that won't shift your character's alignment, but most fluff is against that.
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Lich doesn't require Arcane magic, divine can certainly do it as well.
That being said, Horus isn't particularly a lich type deity so I wouldn't expect your character to leap to the conclusion that your God wants you to become a lich, and since I assume you all have at least paladin-compatible alignments no one would want to do whatever nasty things are in that particular lich ritual in any event, not to mention that a ritual for one person might well not work for another.
My guess would be the real use of this information is that it is related to a lich that is still around. Perhaps the ritual contains keys to some weakness he has, or at lest his identity and possible whereabouts. Certainly you should be able to know what his phylactery looks like, which can be a big help if you have to confront him. Of course, level 5 is a long way from being able to deal with even a 'weak' lich, so direct uses of this information are not likely to come up soon.
You could though use the information you have to find out more. Who was the person that used that ritual, are their any indications they are still around, and what, if any, activities are they engaging in (probably via proxies.)
And of course if the lich is around and becomes aware of you investigating him, that is likely to lead to all sorts of interesting things.
I agree that she wouldn't jump to the conclusion that her god is now asking her to become a lich, but she would think that the information has been given to her for some reason or use and she needs to figure that out. Are divine liches different from arcane liches...are they called something else or are they basically the same thing. I know divine casters can be necromancers but I guess I always associated Liches with wizards\arcane casters.
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Important question: lich or baelnorn? These are similar, but different.
Also, it may be possible to alter the lich ritual to the other.
Also, in the course thereof, it would require reversing the polarity of this process.
Another possibility is to use this to alter the nature of the ritual to maybe become a deathless councilor.
If you're looking for trickier ways of doing something with it: maybe you can replicate the process (in theory, not practice), but alter it in some key way to either make liches that follow it much weaker to the powers of light or even just auto-atone them into defacto servants of Horus (complete with alignment change).
Full disclosure, I mostly know Horus from Forgotten Realms, so he may well be different here. :)
I dont know what a baelnorn is. Are they like...non-undead versions of liches? Are there non-undead versions of liches? I'm not sure what the inverse of a lich would be, like an avatar maybe? Or demigod?
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You can even be a witch lich.
An awakened goblin dog with spellcaster levels can become a witch lich that makes you itch.
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Important question: lich or baelnorn? These are similar, but different.
Also, it may be possible to alter the lich ritual to the other.
Also, in the course thereof, it would require reversing the polarity of this process.
Another possibility is to use this to alter the nature of the ritual to maybe become a deathless councilor.
If you're looking for trickier ways of doing something with it: maybe you can replicate the process (in theory, not practice), but alter it in some key way to either make liches that follow it much weaker to the powers of light or even just auto-atone them into defacto servants of Horus (complete with alignment change).
Full disclosure, I mostly know Horus from Forgotten Realms, so he may well be different here. :)
I dont know what a baelnorn is. Are they like...non-undead versions of liches? Are there non-undead versions of liches? I'm not sure what the inverse of a lich would be, like an avatar maybe? Or demigod?
Sort of, but not exactly, no.
There's a... lot to explain, here, so... sorry. I'm going to be really, really wordy.
(You may already know much, most, or all of this, but, in my ignorance of your knowledge, I'm going to be overly-talky. Just ignore the bits you know. I'm also going to provide a lot of links - mostly to d20pfsrd.com (a free website with all sorts of Pathfinder rules on it), but also to pathfinderwiki.com and a smattering of other sites with various game information - to let you see what liches are really like, and to give you a good view of various or alternative liches across the game's history.)
Liches are powerful undead spellcasters of pretty much any type - so long as they have Craft Wonderous Item and a CL 11, they can become a lich (if they properly follow the procedures/rituals and stuff). It also costs a literal fortune to become a lich - it costs more than an 11th level character normally has to spend just to purchase the cost of the phylactery (for a comparison, your phylactery, if it could be sold, would be in the same price-range as a minor artifact: 240,000 gold; it cannot be sold).
I'll let you know (out of character) that, in general, in Paizo-published canon, there are exceedingly few non-evil liches ever, and it has been hammered home many a time that even those few eventually become evil. In part, this is noted as being because the procedures and rituals themselves are (hypothetically*) really, really debased and vile ().
*
In PF canon, as well, each person has an entirely different ritual/formula that they have to follow in order to become a lich - they must work at supplying the correct and individualized procedure that is unique to themselves and none other.
Your GM may not be playing strictly by PF canon, however, especially as it seems a non-caster acquired the full formula. This could mean several things, and I'll go over several of them.
The first four answers are the more Golarion-canon-compatible answers:
- 1) Your devoted ally may have come across the method to acquire the lich creature corruption template, in effect, finding out how to be a lich, even though he's not a caster.
- 2) Your devoted ally may have come across the method to become a lich... for someone else (possibly someone who became the lich, and then was destroyed). Note that if anyone other than the person said formula was developed for attempts it, they are likely to become either a forsaken lich or lich shade or something equally disappointing that either drives you irrevocably insane (or even insane), or otherwise make sure you have a very, very bad day. It's also possible the formula would only work for your ally... if he became a spellcaster that hit CL 11th.
- 3) You're ally discovered a way to become a lich that will work for you, but turn you evil.
- 4) Your ally discovered a formula you can use (either because it's generic, or because it's tuned for you), but it makes you a different kind of lich.
> > 4a) moss lich: doesn't actually make you evil, also not, technically, a lich.
> > 4b) familial lich; these are pretty evil
> > 4c) dread lich ; these are evil
> > 4d) psychic lich; these are evil
From here on out, things are either non-canon-compatible, or refer to unique instances, and probably other campaign settings. It's worth noting that the idea that driving a would-be lich insane or exploding them into the wrong undead, or a corruption template was never something that clearly existed in canon prior to PF - well, the transformation into a lesser undead was (I know of two instances), but in both instances it was the result of a would-be lich attempting the ritual before it was powerful enough (so not yet 11th level); make of that what you will.
- 5) Your ally discovered a way to become a lich, but not turn you evil (it may or may not turn you some other alignment; i'unno).
- 6) Your ally discovered a generic formula that functions for anyone, that will allow them to become a lich. This may or may not turn people evil.
-7) The ritual makes you into a baelnorn instead (or allows you to change it so that you can). (See also: here and if you're interested in seeing a really, really, really old-school version, see here.)
- 8) The ritual makes you into a good lich (scroll down until you get to the "lich, good" section and read up on arch liches and baelnorns) or allows you the lich template class (see the bottom of the link earlier in this entry); or you can modify the ritual to allow this to be so.
- 9) The ritual makes you into deathless (or can be modified to make you into a deathless) instead. Notice the link to the undying councilor creature type, listed at the bottom. A similar result can be achieved by way of the create greater deathless spell.
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Okay, so that's about what I've got in my list of ideas.
Let's look at Horus.
Lawful neutral.
Air, rulership, the sky, the sun.
Neat - there's nothing too out-of-character for a worshiper to become a lich; his interest in the sun (and mostly the Sun domain) mean that he clearly has a way to empower his followers to destroy undead, but he's not outright opposed to either evil or undead, so it could work.
To be honest, I was thinking more of this guy and/or this guy (mythologically the same dude as Horus; I'm more familiar with these older versions), who's a bit of a stickier wicket to handle when it comes to lichdom, although the latter of the two canonically had a mummified lawful good father (Osiris, looks like this in Pathfinder, but this
and this in the older version).
Even if you're opposed to evil, you can still possibly find a way to use the lich information to enter into a transformation of some sort.
Anyway, I hope all this helps!
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wow this is awesome. thanks for taking the time to put this all together
Glad to!
Ack! I can't believe I forgot!
In addition to the above, there is one more kind of variant lich: the dry lich. It's not by Paizo, but I figured it should be included.
It also comes associated with a Prestige Class, the Walker in the Waste PrC. Hope this helps!
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Our game keys Lichdom to the individual, each having a different 'path'. Our BBEG of a few cycles ago was trying to 'lich' and the party's task was to keep certain bits over knowledge from him. We ultimately failed at that, but knocked his skill roll down by -4, resulting in his becoming a demi-lich. A demi-lich was well in out ability to fight.
Indeed. A base lich is a CR 12, while a Demilich - much weaker in PF than previous editions - is CR 14 (more if awakened).
EDIT: ugh, spelling.
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I'd blame the GMs, they control terminology. But I could be using the wrong term, too. The key was that we knee-capped him from being more powerful. They use a +2 template for what he was intending, and a +0 for what he became.
Liches start at 11 and have numerous commutations. A fullbore, no qualifiers lich is at least 15, while others vary from the 'demilich' (10+) to the Dracolich (past 20).
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Study said knowledge for weaknesses, counters, and preventation techniques. Retire from adventuring and start teaching anti-lich seminars at major religous centers and paladin academies. Step three, profit.
Liches start at 11 and have numerous commutations. A fullbore, no qualifiers lich is at least 15,
I actually linked them earlier in my post, to the actual stat block - they're actually a CR 12 at the base. You can bump that up to 13, though, if you give them PC equipment, and 14 if you give them the advanced template.
The way it works is:
* CR 10: 11 caster levels, PC-power race, NPC equipment
* +2 CR: lich template
* +1 CR: upgrade from NPC equipment to PC equipment
* +1 CR: advanced template
while others vary from the 'demilich' (10+) to the Dracolich (past 20).
That's cool!
The dracolich concept has always been extremely weird to me - that it's any different from a normal lich.
Like, the idea of a dragon with the lich template is actually pretty solid. Not only do dragons have innate spellcasting, but they're also pretty powerful - those touch attacks with high BAB mean you're going to get hit.
Just at a quick list:
- chromatic dragons
- - > black (minimum ancient, CR 16+2 = CR 18), blue (minimum very old, CR 17+2 = CR 19), green (minimum very old, CR 16+2 = 18), red (minimum old, CR 17+2 = 19), white (minimum wyrm, CR 16+2 = 18)
- imperial
- - > forest (minimum old, CR 17+2 = 19), underworld (minimum very old, CR 15+2 = 17)
- primal
- - > umbral (minimum old, CR 17+2 = 19)
- outer
- - > void (minimum old, CR 16+2 = 18)
- planar
- - > infernal (minimum old, CR 19+2 = 21), rift (minimum old, CR 19+2 = 21)
That already seems plenty powerful, and very thematic. Dragons already have the hoard for purchasing the phylactery!
References:
- true dragons
- outer dragons
- planar dragons
But instead, every game has to come up with their own "dracolich" template.
It's weird. (Similarly: Alhoon liches for illithids. Why? I'unno! Weeeeiiiiirrrrd.)
Anyway, that's a random, rambling aside... XD
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Dragons are special, so their lichdom is also special?
Booooo~!
Hisssss~!
Get off the stage~!