...and it's why creating undead is (99.999% of the time) an evil act.So you're telling me there's a chance.https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baelnorn_lich
Though I don't know if such things exist on Golarion. Never played PF1.
Does not exist in Pathfinder. As a lich has to do some serious Evil Things for the Transformation in Pathfinder, even if he would somehow not be Evil at the start after it he would be Evil.
And as I am not a fan of good lich I am glad for it. Just one of the many Problems I had with FR
To be fair a Good Lich is not impossible in PF, Liches have free will just like anything else and can be redeemed. It just... takes a while. There is however a canon example of a Neutral Lich though, so it's possible.
That said, yeah, becoming one is definitely a highly potent Evil Act.
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Although it should be noted that it took thousands of years of enforced self-reflection for that lich to shift from evil to neutral - a process that for most liches would result in a demilich rather than a non-evil lich.
The first Carrion Crown has a non-evil ghost in it, and I think non-evil ghosts have shown up a couple other places; ghosts seem to be the most common undead to not be evil.
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In the case of a lich, I feel it just shouldn't be possible without magical intervention.
There are plenty of discussions online about how, if you don't age, don't sleep, don't eat, don't have any of the biological drives that humans do, your thought process will inevitably become totally alien in time.
If nothing else, it gets harder and harder to see people as people when their life-spans are a mere fraction of your own. What's one life worth, what's one hundred lives worth, when they all seem to live as long as flies?
In the case of a lich, I feel it just shouldn't be possible without magical intervention.
There are plenty of discussions online about how, if you don't age, don't sleep, don't eat, don't have any of the biological drives that humans do, your thought process will inevitably become totally alien in time.
If nothing else, it gets harder and harder to see people as people when their life-spans are a mere fraction of your own. What's one life worth, what's one hundred lives worth, when they all seem to live as long as flies?
I tend to agree, although you do have to do some work to explain why that argument doesn't also apply to gods.
Creative Director
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In the case of a lich, I feel it just shouldn't be possible without magical intervention.
It's not a lich if it doesn't follow the "magical intervention". That's part of the whole point about what makes a lich a lich. The more things you change about it, the less it's a lich, which is fine but you should name it something else unless you're deliberately trying to confuse people.
I mean, you wouldn't replace a vampire's blood drinking with flesh eating and its energy drain with paralysis, yeah? That's a ghoul, not a vampire.
In ANY event, discussions of what sorts of undead might exist and what makes them what they are and so on in a game are always interesting, but when these sorts of questions are posted in the Pathfinder forums and not in, say, the Homebrew forum or Gamer Life forum, please don't be surprised when us here at Paizo seem to get "defensive" when it comes to justifying our creative decisions here. As creative director for Pathfinder, I feel like it's irresponsible for me to blur the lines about what things are in our game, so in most cases I just don't take part in threads like this, but sometimes I can't resist myself... :-P
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It's not a lich if it doesn't follow the "magical intervention". That's part of the whole point about what makes a lich a lich. The more things you change about it, the less it's a lich, which is fine but you should name it something else unless you're deliberately trying to confuse people.In the case of a lich, I feel it just shouldn't be possible without magical intervention.
I think he meant that changing alignment to Good for a lich should require some magical intervention, not that there's no magical process in creating a lich... ;)
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I think he meant that changing alignment to Good for a lich should require some magical intervention, not that there's no magical process in creating a lich... ;)It's not a lich if it doesn't follow the "magical intervention". That's part of the whole point about what makes a lich a lich. The more things you change about it, the less it's a lich, which is fine but you should name it something else unless you're deliberately trying to confuse people.In the case of a lich, I feel it just shouldn't be possible without magical intervention.
Yes, sorry if I wasn't clear. Loengrin has the right of it.
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Well I think it might also need Intelligence, though I wouldn't mind being proven wrong if someone has a source on a mindless Zombie/Skeleton turning Good or such.
I imagine it is a case by case basis.
But also a Ring Of Sustenance and Necklace of Adaption bypasses most of this for even the most ordinary person.
RE: Alignments of outsiders; idk play Planescape then.
I feel like
is a good model for how you redeem a lich without magical interference.
Specifically- he's been imprisoned for thousands of years and will do anything to be set free, including making a solemn promise to "be good from now on" and meaning it enough to follow through.
Liches are evil because of the atrocities you need to commit to become a lich- they have a big heap of bad karma to overcome. It's not like vampires or ghouls where they are compelled to prey on people, which probably keeps them evil.
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It's not like vampires or ghouls where they are compelled to prey on people, which probably keeps them evil.
Eh. We have at least one canonical Neutral vampire. He's pretty chill, really. What the vampiric diet makes really hard is being Good. Some basic ethics and brains and you can manage Neutral pretty well.
It's not like vampires or ghouls where they are compelled to prey on people, which probably keeps them evil.Eh. We have at least one canonical Neutral vampire. He's pretty chill, really. What the vampiric diet makes really hard is being Good. Some basic ethics and brains and you can manage Neutral pretty well.
Well, the non-evil vampire has to stay eternally vigilant to not give into base hungers. Once the lich has overcome the tremendous karmic debt they've accumulated, there's really nothing besides "expediency" pushing them to do evil things.
Well, the non-evil vampire has to stay eternally vigilant to not give into base hungers. Once the lich has overcome the tremendous karmic debt they've accumulated, there's really nothing besides "expediency" pushing them to do evil things.It's not like vampires or ghouls where they are compelled to prey on people, which probably keeps them evil.Eh. We have at least one canonical Neutral vampire. He's pretty chill, really. What the vampiric diet makes really hard is being Good. Some basic ethics and brains and you can manage Neutral pretty well.
And the fact that the vital essence powering their body pushes them toward destructive instincts. Being creatures with a spirit, this is not insurmountable, but more than nothing. Possibly have to contend with the kind of impulses and personality traits that drive a person to commit atrocities in the name of furthering their own ambition, but if we're talking about undeath redemption arcs here we're at least assuming there was a shred of humanity (or other mortal ancestry-ity) somewhere in the equation that bends them toward altruistic acts.
Step 1) Sneakily slap a PF 2e label on the Horror Adventures
Step 2) Edit text for the optional Alignment change rules to mandatory.
Step 3) Give to naive GM
Step 4) Explain crunch disconnect as experimental rules/Playtest
Step 5) Become Lich, cast Protection from Evil 6 times
Step 6) Profit
More seriously, you want non-evil undead in your game, houserules it. Because after a lot of threads on it I still don't think it's going to change.
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There is no such thing as karmic debt.
Separately, liches aren't evil because of the ritual they do. They're evil, therefore willing to do that ritual. Very evil, given how the ritual has often been described as inexplicably evil. Who knows what that ritual does to their minds?
PF2 notes liches spend years researching this evil act so becoming a lich is a profound choice requiring much dedication toward selfish, evil ends. PF2 describes liches as desperate, vengeful, fearful, and causing inevitable suffering. So not much free will in that last portion. Later, liches are often driven insane, a point soon reasserted.
Not to say stories might not require exceptions, but those liches would literally be exceptional; having exceptional reasons or an exceptional story. I'd think their natural empathy (assuming their original species had any) would've been stunted to begin with and perhaps burned to ash by lichdom.
Not to say stories might not require exceptions, but those liches would literally be exceptional; having exceptional reasons or an exceptional story.
Sure they're exceptional, but to quote Discworld, 1 in a Million chances tend to crop up 9 times out of 10.
Or to put it in other words, Main Characters tend to be the exceptions, and by extension Exceptional. And this doesn't always mean PC, it can also just mean notable NPCs. Not to say it's likely to be a recurring thing in the canon setting or anything, but if a GM wants it to be a thing then it absolutely can, whether it's actually plot relevant or not.
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So, funny thing. Many years ago, my oldest brother got a chance to ask Gary Gygax about his thoughts on the ‘Outsiders can’t be raised from the dead’ thing in 3rd edition, and it does apparently stem from AD&D. Specifically, Elves and Dwarves. They didn’t have souls, they had spirits, which weren’t quite the same and were explained away by the fact that they weren’t creatures actually native to the Prime Material Plane. This got applied to anything not native to the Prime, and got ported over into 3e as something that Outsiders dealt with.