Honest question:
In the confines of normal Pathfinder lore, how deeply should the average Lich phylactery be hidden?
Minimum requirement is 11th level spellcasting and some gold, which we all know that downtime crafting can pretty much undermine all cost requirements...
11th level Wizards have access to 6th level spells... how well can a "fledgling" Lich hide their phylactery?
A 17th level Wizard/9th level spells... can the party possibly find it within any reasonable story arch, at this point?
At what point does the party have to kill a clone and possibly find the exact tuning fork, or whatever nonsense, that the Lich comes and goes as it pleases (even if the party can kill it every time) and the story has to go on without the Lich being put to rest permanently?
The whole point of the Lich, is its insatiable lust for immortality and the knowledge of the inevitable... how foolish and absent minded do you think a Lich has to be to leave its tether to immortal knowledge just laying around in the open?
How do you possibly use this without just giving it up to the table, unless the campaign revolves around it?
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While depositing your phylactery in a deep cavern somewhere (possibly on another plane) and then sealing off the cavern seems like great security, it's not that great if you've enemies with serious magic and a motive to cause you problems. Keeping it somewhere close, where your own abilities can provide some defence is both safer and importantly feels safer.
While depositing your phylactery in a deep cavern somewhere (possibly on another plane) and then sealing off the cavern seems like great security, it's not that great if you've enemies with serious magic and a motive to cause you problems. Keeping it somewhere close, where your own abilities can provide some defence is both safer and importantly feels safer.
In my Kingmaker campaign, the party gets to fight one of the oldest sentient monsters in all of Golarion... Vordakai, a cyclops Lich from before Skyfall!!!
10,000 year old Cyclops Lich that literally witnessed Skyfall... the party killed him... doesn't matter that it happens before the party is even truly scary yet, just there he is, and how to best him, right there in the story... WELL before I think the oldest being in Golarion should have fallen.
Honestly, I hate Kingmaker for not allowing Vordakai a more fitting end.
He is truly a forgotten king of monsters/monster king...
But I don't want to sidetrack the original topic.
How do you give credit to your Lich, without it becoming the entire quest?
A personal demiplane with Forbiddance targeting all but a small "receiving" area and store your phylactery (plus spare spellbook and whatever else you need) in an area that can only be accessed by teleportation. This makes it so only creatures of your alignment can reach your soul.
Hard part is getting both Forbiddance and Permanency on your spell list.
SEE!!!
Now you need to surpass alignment gate spells, AND somehow possess the EXACT tuning fork, AND still overcome the planar bound guardsmen on the other side, plus whatever WEIRD traps that certainly possess each and every threshold...
Keep in mind the lich respawns next to it's phylactery, so they have to be able to get back out (especially considering they don't have any gear, though a smart lich (i.e almost all of them) will stash some backup equipment near the phylactery.
Honestly, it's easier to hide a tiny yet extremely indestructible box in the vastness of infinite reality, than it is to try defend against a party of high level adventurers...
A Lich SURELY knows this.
You can be a Wildshaping Incorpreal Lich, with minimal investment... think of the places you can hide your phylactery... be an octopus in the plane of water... or whatever...
Keep in mind the lich respawns next to it's phylactery, so they have to be able to get back out (especially considering they don't have any gear, though a smart lich (i.e almost all of them) will stash some backup equipment near the phylactery.
A backup stash of equipment is literally a joke for the Immortal!!!
The gear stashed is from the best knights that failed their saves...
Only the best get near the phylactery, and the Lich raises near that gear!
While depositing your phylactery in a deep cavern somewhere (possibly on another plane) and then sealing off the cavern seems like great security, it's not that great if you've enemies with serious magic and a motive to cause you problems. Keeping it somewhere close, where your own abilities can provide some defence is both safer and importantly feels safer.
the data on the lich actually suggest most do not keep their soul item close at all:
"Rejuvenation (Su): When a lich is destroyed, its phylactery (which is generally hidden by the lich in a safe place far from where it chooses to dwell) immediately begins to rebuild the undead spellcaster's body nearby..."the fact he is formed nearby (but not in fact have to be touching the item ) can let him hide it in some very obscure places\items that he himself doesn't fit. i think any lich that doesn't fully coat his item in lead (or put in a box coated in lead) to prevent detection magic is just lazy.
a general lich in my games would have his item coated in lead, hidden inside an artifact of great value (something like a Ming vase only without an opening), that is then hidden in the walls of the room, with no doors to it - actually build the walls with the item embedded in them. and the whole wall be in some demi-plane that the lich has made sure has no tuning fork attuned to (permanency cast, then fork destroyed) nearby would be gear including a tuning fork to the prime material plane to go back with. of course wall and such would be part of dungeon crawl filled with every kind of trap and such imaginable including a fake vault(with fake soul item) just to keep whoever might stumble there and survive happy.
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^But if the phylactery is in a magic-detection-blocking box (lead or otherwise), will it be able to function?
yep lead in pathfinder only prevent detection magic. it doesn't prevent plane travel or teleportation etc. when the lich die his soul is transported into the item. and nothing in the Phylactery creation say it need divination spells to create, hack the creator can also be someone with no divination spells in his spell-book.
it's not like in the old school where some gm made it an anti-magic material that can block all magic.
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Honest question:
In the confines of normal Pathfinder lore, how deeply should the average Lich phylactery be hidden?
Minimum requirement is 11th level spellcasting and some gold, which we all know that downtime crafting can pretty much undermine all cost requirements...
11th level Wizards have access to 6th level spells... how well can a "fledgling" Lich hide their phylactery?
A 17th level Wizard/9th level spells... can the party possibly find it within any reasonable story arch, at this point?
At what point does the party have to kill a clone and possibly find the exact tuning fork, or whatever nonsense, that the Lich comes and goes as it pleases (even if the party can kill it every time) and the story has to go on without the Lich being put to rest permanently?
The whole point of the Lich, is its insatiable lust for immortality and the knowledge of the inevitable... how foolish and absent minded do you think a Lich has to be to leave its tether to immortal knowledge just laying around in the open?
How do you possibly use this without just giving it up to the table, unless the campaign revolves around it?
Personally my take on it has always been unless a specific lich is extremely petty, vengeful or under some time constraint the party never kills them. They are generally intelligent spellcasters who have sacrificed their mortality for eternal life. A life bound by one small, fragile item as you say they're not going to put that out in the open they're going to hide it. They are also going to put a difficult but not impossible to find item out there for any group of heroes to "locate". If they fight and win no harm, no foul, rehide the object or "create" a new one. However if they lose well they lost a fight in the place they are at their strongest why on Golarion would they jeapordize their existence by telling the heroes they failed when they can just move to a secondary location, lay low for a few decades and let the heroes they know can beat them die of old age before resuming whatever plan was interrupted.
Its also why these ancient evils tend to resurface every hundred, thousand years. They were just outwaiting their enemy and those "pretenders" who are weaker than the true "Draklord of Derkholm" are not actually pretenders its just that their legend grew over the century/ies they were waiting to try again. Some may even use this spreading tales of their "apprentices" so no one realizes they're actually the same lich coming back again and again.
No, the written about phylacteries have made it an approachable task.
But honestly they shouldn't.
A resourceful and intelligent lich should have their own private demiplane. Demiplanes are basically impossible to get to without already possessing a tuning rod attuned to the plane, this was clarified in the Planar Adventures handbook. The process to even make one takes like a minimum of a week of being on the plane.
So, an intelligent lich would make a small demiplane with just enough resources to get him back on his feet. Some basic gear and spell book, maybe a tuning rod attuned to the plane so he can leave and come back with replacement gear. But it should basically be impossible to reach without wish or miracle spells.
Conversely, the adventurers should know this, and should be looking for the lich when they attempt to leave their hidey hole with the attuned rod and use that as the opportunity to seize the means to get to the demiplane.
There are also other means of incapcitating/capturing a lich that don't involve trying to kill it. And those should be pointed out to players as well.
Honestly, I think the written lore makes the destruction of lichs too easy.
The really powerful lich uses something more abstract for his phylactery. Like the color blue.
You would have to be Kumagawa Misogi to kill him >:-)
I'm not familiar with the source of Kumagawa Misogi, but I take it he likes to destroy stuff, and is probably good at it.
However, how would one go about forcing their soul into the color blue?
For one, the Lich-to-be is supposed to craft their phylactery... how does it craft 120,000gp worth of blue?
I really like the idea of the abstract phylactery... it's terrifying.
I just don't understand how it works within the rules of Pathfinder Lichdom.
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If Eschew Materials negates the need for a tuning fork, especially unique tuning
forks, then tuning forks are pointless... and so are personal planes.
Yes, I know what the feat says it does...
And as a GM, I can tell you what it doesn't do.
Plus, most tuning forks have printed prices, and GM's are "strongly encouraged" to assign gold price values to unique tuning forks specifically to keep them from being ignored by a spell component pouch or Eschew Materials...
The word priceless seldom means cheap, most certainly more than 1gp.
But this is not the time or place for this debate, back to the discussion of Phylacteries and Liches...
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I wouldn't count the need for a tuning fork as a serious obstacle to getting to a private demiplane. It's a focus with no value, even with the Planar Adventures chart that gives tuning forks value (unique tuning forks, for which a private demiplane is an explicit example, are "priceless"). so can be bypassed with relative ease. Chief among them Eschew Material Components and Robe of Components.
I don't think those work, or at the very least a GM would be well within reason to not let it work.
No, the written about phylacteries have made it an approachable task.
But honestly they shouldn't.
I don't think phylacteries should work cross planes, or a soul traveling to a phylactery across the planar boundaries has a chance to get caught by a psychopomp or pulled into Judgement.
Sure, build a dungeon to protect your phylactery. Hiding it in your personal demiplane is just spiting the players who want to kill the lich. If the lich is that precious to the GM, they should write the next Overlord.
But the rules don't prevent it, so season to taste.
What I'm talking about it is a high level, potentially returning many times enemy.
I guess my point or problem is that lichs are often underplayed, IMO. They're old intelligent beings. It should be incredibly difficult to defeat them.
I think the stories where they're easily bested does them a disservice.
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yep lead in pathfinder only prevent detection magic. it doesn't prevent plane travel or teleportation etc. when the lich die his soul is transported into the item. and nothing in the Phylactery creation say it need divination spells to create, hack the creator can also be someone with no divination spells in his spell-book.
it's not like in the old school where some gm made it an anti-magic material that can block all magic.Lead only prevents detect magic from working. Does any other divination spell mention lead? Certainly the big boy detect spells don't mention it and I can't find any special properties for lead in pathfinder.
The only thing special about a Lich as opposed to any other CR 19+ encounter is the Lich resurrects itself. Once you know you are fighting a Lich use a non-lethal method to capture the Lich and render it harmless like you would for any NPC that you know has allies that can cast True Resurrection. Various transformation magics and Imprisonment are top recommendations.
all of the following spells mention lead in them. most of the detection spells have a part saying along the lines ' The spell can penetrate barriers, but 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt blocks it." (locate object mention only lead as something that block it 'The spell is blocked by even a thin sheet of lead.') :
Air of Authority, Burdened Thoughts, Carrion Compass, Curse of Magic Negation, Detect Animals or Plants, Detect Evil, Detect Magic, Detect Mindscape, Detect Poison, Detect Radiation, Detect Relations, Detect Secret Doors, Detect Snares and Pits, Detect the Faithful, Detect Thoughts, Detect Undead, Diagnose Disease, Fabricate Bullets, Find the Path, Fireball, Firestream, Gravity Well, Illusory Script, Implant Urge, (Lead Anchor, Lead Blades, Lead Plating,) Lightning Arc, Lightning Bolt, Locate Gate, Locate Object, Mage's Private Sanctum, Message, Preserve, Transfiguring Touch, Unconscious Agenda
some of course mention lead in other context ( i just searched 'lead' in the spell section of the archive of nethys)
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@Kasoh, why wouldn't it be possible to cross planes? I know you acknowledge that it is allowed by the rules, but why don't you agree with it? Planar travel and Lichdom go hand in hand. So much so that sometimes Liches choose not to return as they meander through the planes, and their remains become Demiliches.
You do bring up a good point that a higher level Psychopomp could possibly grab the soul in transition... IF it was the soul that came to the Lich, but the Lich returns to its soul... so I would imagine that a Lich in transition would be largely left alone by Death's emissaries.
@Claxon, I completely agree that it is a grave disservice any time a Lich is easily bested...
The lich's phylactery is an immortal, Nigh Invulnerable but otherwise ordinary human child. The child eventually becomes evil and terrorizes the world so that someone will discover a way to kill them and thus render the lich vulnerable.
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The lich's phylactery is an immortal, Nigh Invulnerable but otherwise ordinary human child. The child eventually becomes evil and terrorizes the world so that someone will discover a way to kill them and thus render the lich vulnerable.
Harry Potter is that you?
I do now have the image of a modern lich using the enter fiction spells of (neverwinter nights) to hide their soul in a cartoon where nothing is ever destroyed like Dipsy the tellytubby or the arkenstone from the hobbit.
I always figured a phylactery hidden somewhere in the astral plane would be way more secure and harder to find that a demiplane. See also: space.
The most famous lich in Golarion is Tar-Baphon and no one knows where his phylactery is or what it is. Or anything about it, except that he has one, because lich.
{. . .}
Do we know for sure that he has just one?
The really powerful lich uses something more abstract for his phylactery. Like the color blue.
You would have to be Kumagawa Misogi to kill him >:-)
I'm not familiar with the source of Kumagawa Misogi, but I take it he likes to destroy stuff, and is probably good at it.
You should google it.
He is, by far, the best character in the series.
It's clearly a typo, don't bust their balls (too much).
The 11th level prerequisite allow for the Lich to be used more often by keeping its CR relatively low.
If they were all 17th level/CR19+ monsters, they would hardly ever be used.
Not meaning to - I assume 1st to 2nd ed., but it threw me for a loop at first, and I was unaware of the change. What exactly is the change?It's clearly a typo, don't bust their balls (too much).
The 11th level prerequisite allow for the Lich to be used more often by keeping its CR relatively low.
If they were all 17th level/CR19+ monsters, they would hardly ever be used.
As far as I know, nothing really.
Each lich must create its own phylactery by using the Craft Wondrous Item feat. The character must be able to cast spells and have a caster level of 11th or higher. The phylactery costs 120,000 gp to create and has a caster level equal to that of its creator at the time of creation.
Lichs were always available at level 11.
So I assume they are in 2nd, also?
Correct, so I don't know what Bjorn was on about, unless they were thinking PF1 required a higher level for a caster to become a lich.
But near as I can tell the requirements didn't change.
Also, since being Undead (in pF2) doesn't come with nearly the bevy of immunities and resistances it used to, becoming undead isn't nearly as appealing IMO.
In AD&D (1st and 2nd editions) liches were 18th + casters... It got reduced to 11th+ with 3ed edition. PF1 (also known as edition 3.75 ) kept the level 11 rule.
So it's been the same since 3rd edition, which was 2000. So 20 years.
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I mean, I agree. I don't particularly like envisioning "low" level lichs. I like them to be a serious threat.
I don't however mind them being technically available at lower levels. I just prefer to imagine that the wizard did it at level 11, because it's a good insurance policy but didn't start doing anything terribly overtly evil beyond what was required to accomplish the transformation. Instead biding his time and growing power before he does anything worthy enough to attract the attention of adventurers.
According to Kingmaker, Liches can atrophy and regress below 11th level, therefore unable to use their phylactery... which is an absolute disgrace and insult to Liches everywhere.
I also believe that Liches should be used as high level threats. The idea that the spellcaster does the transformation as soon as possible as an insurance policy is awesome. They could still eat and sleep and their body wouldn't decay, so they could even pass as living to the untrained eye.