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There's nothing that can really make definitive statements about it.
Personally, I think the process of becoming a lich (the rituals, and foul acts you must commit in the lead up to the transformation) turn you irrevocably evil. It taints your soul. It's going to mess you up mentally, assuming you weren't already. If you were already off the deep end, there may not be significant changes.
It's also hard to answer your questions because "go crazy" could mean different things to different people. If you mean, go completely out of control and become unpredictable. No, I don't think there is any such thing happening. If you mean "become an evil callous a~*%@$+ willing to sacrifice anyone or anything you don't personally value in exchange for continued existence so you can continue doing what you want to do" then yes. It also depends on what you mean by cynicism. I don't think becoming a lich will make you a cynic in the sense of you think others are only doing what is in their interest. But you will only do what is in your interest.
For me, I like to think of Arthas/Lich King from Warcraft.
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Transforming into a Lich, at least via the archetype and the rules + fluff surrounding it, does change a person no matter what.
However the extent of this varies from person to person, and there will be no one answer.
They won't automatically become insane, or grow more cynical or anything like that. But the transformation carries with it aspects which can be dramatic changes for some.
Lets take look at of the text me have on the issue.
The path to lichdom is long and winding, with many pitfalls that overcome all but the most accomplished and precise spellcasters. Despite the trials you underwent and decades spent sequestered away with magical tomes, you know with every fiber of your being that it's all been worth it. You devised a unique and incredibly evil ritual to tear your soul from your body, and you painstakingly crafted a receptacle to house your freed soul. Immortality now lies within your grasp.
Regardless of what paths they pursue, nearly all liches are obsessed with their soul cage, spending untold hours and a veritable fortune to protect it, surrounding it with magical and mundane hazards, and guarding it with powerful, loyal defenders.
After years of study and careful planning, you finally completed a soul cage to house your soul and successfully performed a ritual to transform yourself into a lich. Now, neither death nor time can prevent you from pursuing your studies and achieving your grand ambitions. You gain the undead trait and the basic undead benefits. Your undead craving is for knowledge.
While you don't eat or drink the same food as humanoids do, you usually have thirsts and hungers related to your undead state, such as a ghoul's hunger for humanoid flesh, a zombie's craving for brains, and a vampire's desire for blood. Additionally, while you don't sleep, you enter a state of quiescence for at least 4 hours a day to recuperate, which lets your undead flesh reknit and recover naturally. Many undead choose to rest when the sun is at its highest.
Overall the first and important thing to consider is: Its your character, play them how you want and in a way makes sense for your group, game and story. Everything else is fudgeable.
In terms of what you comes as part and parcel of the existing fluff, you have a character who is taking a inherently evil act and pointing at themselves for generally selfish reasons.
They gain an obsession around keeping their soul cage safe.
They gain a literal, actual, hunger for knowledge and information.
So those can be some strong behavioural and RP changes for a character, but there can also be characters who this won't be a huge change for.
How much does turning into a lich change a person?
The rules and mechanics of it are deliberately left vague. It is deliberately left up to the players at each gaming table to decide the details on.
This: from the introduction to the Lich Archetype
The path to lichdom is long and winding, with many pitfalls that overcome all but the most accomplished and precise spellcasters. Despite the trials you underwent and decades spent sequestered away with magical tomes, you know with every fiber of your being that it's all been worth it. You devised a unique and incredibly evil ritual to tear your soul from your body, and you painstakingly crafted a receptacle to house your freed soul. Immortality now lies within your grasp.
Becoming a lich requires much more than just magical knowledge. It demands fierce intelligence, bold ingenuity, incredible determination, unending patience, and a strict adherence to perfection, along with incredible skill as an artisan, for each lich must create their own soul cage. A mispronounced word or flaw in the construction of your soul cage would end not in immortality but ignominious death. You have all these skills in abundance and now, with your ascension, you've proven your superiority beyond a shadow of a doubt.
As a lich, you understand better than any the power and potential of magic. Many liches strive to increase their magical skills and foil the magic of any who dare oppose them. Others delve so deeply into necromantic arts and foul rituals that their flesh can burn the living, causing biological processes to falter and filling those who behold them with uncontrollable fear.
Regardless of what paths they pursue, nearly all liches are obsessed with their soul cage, spending untold hours and a veritable fortune to protect it, surrounding it with magical and mundane hazards, and guarding it with powerful, loyal defenders. Some liches prefer to secure their soul cage through obscurity rather than force, enshrouding it in magical abjurations or illusions to hide it from prying eyes. The most gifted crafters among liches tinker and improve their soul cage over time, rendering it nigh indestructible. This is a dangerous proposition, undertaken by only the most confident and arrogant magical engineers, as physically altering one's soul cage could have unintended consequences on its function. Many wizard liches instead learn to tap into the soul cage's magical energy from afar to fuel their own spellcasting.
That doesn't mean that it is required to be followed in order to play the Lich archetype.
Similarly, the Lich Dedication feat doesn't list any specific requirements of 'going crazy'. Just the Undead craving for Knowledge required by the dedication feat and the Basic Undead Benefits.
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How much does turning into a lich change a person? Well, that is, will the wizard go crazy much, or will he generally remain himself, but acquire a greater share of cynicism? How preserved is the original personality (if it was corrupted enough to decide to become a lich at all)
In addition to what people have mentioned, there's also some general clues from the nature of undeath in Pathfinder.
Undead have their vital/life aspect forcefully removed from the usual connection to positive energy, and replaced with one to negative energy. As far as mental state goes, the vital aspect is responsible for instinct and the base desires- hunger, etc. Negative energy is a destructive force, and Book of the Dead has a good deal of discussion about how that impacts even mindless undead. For intelligent creatures, connection to negative energy seems to be a hand on the scale, pushing for a dislike of the living, and twisting those instinctive desires to something else.
To paint a picture, I imagine that the nature of how that works in the case of a lich is very appealing to egotistical mages. "Well of course I don't mind getting rid of that bother of hunger and sleep and replacing it all with a desire for knowledge, that's hardly any change. I've been using a Ring of Sustenance for years now." But it's not curiosity or a passion for knowledge, both things associated with the mental aspect. All that wiring there for hunger, sleep... ripped out, and in place of "a warm meal" and "a good night's sleep after you've had a long day", there's just knowledge, and a Ring of Sustenance doesn't do anything for that. The part of them that instinctively felt that things are better alive than dead, which they overcame to carry out a very unpleasant ritual, isn't just gone, it's been replaced by the opposite.
So, overall, the wizard's personality is much the same, but underlying instincts are changed. For an unusually self-reflective wizard who makes a regular practice of examining their feelings honestly, they might do a certain amount of compensating for the change. In most cases, though, I would imagine wizards have a tendency to consider themselves highly rational, and they would have very little experience in candidly acknowledging how their emotions, instincts, and desires play into things.
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You're tearing a piece of your soul out via a heinously Evil ritual, throwing it in a cage, and replacing it with an anchor made of entropy.
There's a reason most liches aren't warm, fuzzy folks.
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The ritual to become a lich being unique to each lich is important because it ensures that the ritual is always something that will affect you deeply and be something that you would never do unless you were willing to trade everything for power. Maybe you're someone who could sacrifice a city's worth of people and rationalize it away; they're strangers, weaklings, no one you should care about or bother to remember. Doing this would be evil, sure, but likely not evil enough to become a lich. It's far more likely that your ritual will require you to sacrifice someone who has gained your trust and respect. Don't just betray the world's values, you have to betray what few virtues you hold dear, whatever shred of humanity a hopeful do-gooder might cling to.
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How much does turning into a lich change a person?
Just as much as one needs…
"How much does it turn the mind? Why, it makes us fabulous! I could never have completed so many profitable seasons of the Necromancer had I not died first!" The most famous celebrity of the Pact Worlds tut-tuts at the old-fashioned views being expressed in this forum.
"No wonder Golarian disappeared during the Gap, if this is any example of the opinions being expressed there..."
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"How much does it turn the mind? Why, it makes us fabulous! I could never have completed so many profitable seasons of the Necromancer had I not died first!" The most famous celebrity of the Pact Worlds tut-tuts at the old-fashioned views being expressed in this forum.
"No wonder Golarian disappeared during the Gap, if this is any example of the opinions being expressed there..."
Not the same setting though ;-)
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Thematically the ritual to become a lich should involve crossing some lines that you realize cannot be uncrossed, and you have to live (or unlive) with that.
The other thing is that even thereafter your existence has different assumptions than the existence of people other than yourself, and over time you're likely to lose perspective as a result. It's like how "staying home and not seeing people for months at a time" during the height of the pandemic made people rethink certain assumptions about "how one dresses and behaves in public" except that in the specific case of a Lich you are also an evil monster who doesn't go out or see people.
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There was a thread once that asked whether people would want to become a lich in the real world. Many who said yes maintained that their mind/personality would not change.
Me, I said No. Because immense power can ruin your self. And so can immortality. And the likelihood of remaining the same person when having both through becoming a lich was zero in my assessment.
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Not the same setting though ;-)"How much does it turn the mind? Why, it makes us fabulous! I could never have completed so many profitable seasons of the Necromancer had I not died first!" The most famous celebrity of the Pact Worlds tut-tuts at the old-fashioned views being expressed in this forum.
"No wonder Golarian disappeared during the Gap, if this is any example of the opinions being expressed there..."
Joke's on you, Zo! cameos in a book of Return of the Runelords! :P
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Joke's on you, Zo! cameos in a book of Return of the Runelords! :PNot the same setting though ;-)"How much does it turn the mind? Why, it makes us fabulous! I could never have completed so many profitable seasons of the Necromancer had I not died first!" The most famous celebrity of the Pact Worlds tut-tuts at the old-fashioned views being expressed in this forum.
"No wonder Golarian disappeared during the Gap, if this is any example of the opinions being expressed there..."
??? Sorry, I am missing what you mean.
Joke's on you, Zo! cameos in a book of Return of the Runelords! :P??? Sorry, I am missing what you mean.
"It means my stardom is timeless. Sheesh. Don't you realize that Eoxians are eternal, baby?"
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Joke's on you, Zo! cameos in a book of Return of the Runelords! :P??? Sorry, I am missing what you mean."It means my stardom is timeless. Sheesh. Don't you realize that Eoxians are eternal, baby?"
I get it, thank you. But Undead Eoxians will be usually Evil in PF2, even though that is not necessarily the case in SF, AFAIK.
Hence why I was talking about different settings.
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What's this about needing to devour souls? That sounds like something D&D might do, but I'm pretty sure Pathfinder liches are entirely self-sustained, at least for practical timescales in the low millennia count.
How much does it distort the mind? As much as the GM (and/or player if it is a PC) decide based on the needs of the story. No more, no less.
Final answer!
How much does turning into a lich change a person? Well, that is, will the wizard go crazy much, or will he generally remain himself, but acquire a greater share of cynicism? How preserved is the original personality (if it was corrupted enough to decide to become a lich at all)
Distort is such a loaded word. A wizard who becomes a lich already has a unique mental state. Being immortal would change that unique state further, as would having only a skeletal body. Being infused with negative energy might also have an effect. These might not be bad things though. In fact, it could be a joyful and fulfilling experience.
If you look at the liches we know, they seem to be rational and ambitious. The do not possess an undead hunger, other than to ensure that their immportality is not ended by the untimely destruction of their soul cage. That is a very rational fear, especially for NPC liches. Liches also typically have the same cravings for magical power that they had as wizards.
What's this about needing to devour souls? That sounds like something D&D might do, but I'm pretty sure Pathfinder liches are entirely self-sustained, at least for practical timescales in the low millennia count.
Well, the thing in Pathfinder that each kind of Undead has to deal with a different kind of "hunger" that threatens to overwhelm your rational capabilities if you don't satiate it at least a little bit every so often.
For vampires this is blood, for ghouls flesh; Ghosts need to be regularly making progress on their unfinished business, but a Lich's undead hunger is only satisfied by *knowledge*.
It's just that if you're an evil monster who doesn't socialize and you have already violated every social norm imaginable to become a lich, the things you will do in "pursuit of knowledge" are more horrifying than "a vampire drags somebody into an alley to partially exsanguinate them."
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What's this about needing to devour souls? That sounds like something D&D might do, but I'm pretty sure Pathfinder liches are entirely self-sustained, at least for practical timescales in the low millennia count.Read the Void Shoud ability on the Lich on AoN. Devouring mortal souls, sate eternal hunger, etc.
Based on the lich dedication, their undead craving is for knowledge, not souls, and, indeed, consumption fo souls doesnt' show up in teh archetype at all.
Liches in general are described as habitually driving themselves to self-imposed isolation - putting themselves in places and conditions where there really aren't any fresh souls to be had.
Void Shroud does not appear on the list of default lich abilities. Instead, it's listed under Alternate Lich Abilities, specifically set out as a way for the GM to "create a more unusual lich". Steal Soul (which is thematically similar) is also on that alternate list.
So... by default, liches are not soul-eaters, but lichdom is a personal and idiosyncratic thing, and some do tread that much further into the darkness.
What's this about needing to devour souls? That sounds like something D&D might do, but I'm pretty sure Pathfinder liches are entirely self-sustained, at least for practical timescales in the low millennia count.Read the Void Shoud ability on the Lich on AoN. Devouring mortal souls, sate eternal hunger, etc.
Ah, yeah. Sounds like a lich that screwed up the ritual, but not enough to go full demilich. I'd use that variant for a slightly leaky soul cage.
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Consuming souls is much more of a D&D lich thing. I came to a lot of classic fantasy stuff through Pathfinder rather than D&D, and was surprised when I heard about some liches in D&D lore having to sustain themselves with souls because that's not really mentioned for Pathfinder liches.
While there were liches that consumed souls as an aditional source of power throughout DnDs history it wasn't until 5th Edition that it became something almost all liches did. Apparantly the reasoning for it was that the designers thought about all kinds of scenarios for a lich and its goals and concluded that pretty often their smartest move when encountering any real difficulty was to abuse their immortality by hunkering down and waiting for the problem to die of old age. This created the issue of either making a really frustrating scenario for the players of parties without access to high level scrying or supposedly genius liches somehow always missing an obvious tactic. By making them need to regularly send out minions to hunt for souls it created a way for any party composition to have a way to investigate and find them.
While AFAIK no Paizo designer has ever mentioned anything about it, the concept that Pathfinder liches obsesively hunger for new knowledge is another way to solve this problem. Instead of souls their minions are always out and about searching for essential magical experimental components and subjects, lost tomes of lore, etc.
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While AFAIK no Paizo designer has ever mentioned anything about it, the concept that Pathfinder liches obsesively hunger for new knowledge is another way to solve this problem. Instead of souls their minions are always out and about searching for essential magical experimental components and subjects, lost tomes of lore, etc.
...and the great part about this is that it forces them to engage with the world, but doesn't necessarily force them to do so in an actively hostile way. Like, a lich can totally be sating its undead hunger by finding some way t make lots of money and then winning auctions for rare tomes... or by buying all those rare and valuable experimental components... or by hiring adventuring parties!
Like, seriously, Baranthet's little fact-finding expedition is absolutely the sort of thing that a lich might happily finance, for all of that sweet, sweet information.
Just know that if you accept a lich's money for something like that, and then don't take appropriately copious notes... well, it could go badly for you.
Of course, they still did objectively horrible things to get there, and their current life circumstances are not the sort that encourage things like compassion. There's surely plenty of liches out there who are doing horrible things and need to be stopped... but it doesn't need to be all of them.
Huh. it occurs to me that Geb's spymasters may well lean pretty heavily towards the liches, too. There's no particular limitation on what kind of information they crave, after all.
A sufficiently powerful lich may take magical precautions to appear as living and join up on expeditions themselves, after hiding away their soul cage in some deep far away place. Or possibly using the demiplane ritual if they've discovered it.
With plane shift being uncommmon and needing a key to access the demiplane it's actually a relatively secure place to leave ones soul cage with just enough equipment (spellbook) to allow you to reform and start over again. Just always make sure to leave the only key inside the demiplane before you do too much. Without the key it's basically impossible to get inside, which means it's basically impossible to get to your soul cage. Now have fun adventuring to learn new things.
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Humans have brains made out of meat, while liches don't. So I'd say there's a lot of distortion going on.
...and the great part about this is that it forces them to engage with the world, but doesn't necessarily force them to do so in an actively hostile way. Like, a lich can totally be sating its undead hunger by finding some way t make lots of money and then winning auctions for rare tomes... or by buying all those rare and valuable experimental components... or by hiring adventuring parties!Or subscribing to all research (not only magical) magazines or reports of all Golarion's academies.
And obviously, no self-respecting lich is not subscribed to Pathfinder Chronicles.
A sufficiently powerful lich may take magical precautions to appear as living and join up on expeditions themselves,It's even an existing (additional) ability: Mask Death
With the way it's written, if a lich were to go through the necessary steps to use full plate, it might be quite difficult for those performing a casual inspection to ever realize.
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With the way it's written, if a lich were to go through the necessary steps to use full plate, it might be quite difficult for those performing a casual inspection to ever realize....and the great part about this is that it forces them to engage with the world, but doesn't necessarily force them to do so in an actively hostile way. Like, a lich can totally be sating its undead hunger by finding some way t make lots of money and then winning auctions for rare tomes... or by buying all those rare and valuable experimental components... or by hiring adventuring parties!Or subscribing to all research (not only magical) magazines or reports of all Golarion's academies.
And obviously, no self-respecting lich is not subscribed to Pathfinder Chronicles.
A sufficiently powerful lich may take magical precautions to appear as living and join up on expeditions themselves,It's even an existing (additional) ability: Mask Death
This is literally the setup for the anime Overlord.
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...and the great part about this is that it forces them to engage with the world, but doesn't necessarily force them to do so in an actively hostile way. Like, a lich can totally be sating its undead hunger by finding some way t make lots of money and then winning auctions for rare tomes... or by buying all those rare and valuable experimental components... or by hiring adventuring parties!Or subscribing to all research (not only magical) magazines or reports of all Golarion's academies.
And obviously, no self-respecting lich is not subscribed to Pathfinder Chronicles.
New head-canon: the Decemvirate are 9/10 liches.
I'm generally for turning into a lich, unlike other options. And I'm sure that the option of turning into a lich could be a good advertising campaign for Tar-Baphon.
The transition to the afterlife without a transition to other planes of existence, which will allow you not to become part of the matter of the plans, will protect you from submission to a deity that you do not want to obey, and will also allow you to preserve the property that was in life.
Death to all, for free, and so that no one leaves offended!
I have significant reservations about the accuracy of... pretty much every line, but I do like your marketing spiel. I'll take two lichdoms and a side of loyal ghoul minions to go.
Best source on how lichdom affects your personallity is WOTR game since there you go through all way to become lich and its seems that overall transformation will keep you personality intact but influence of negative enegrgy that is used to keep living will slowly change your persona towards more egocentric like it did with Zacharius