What does one sacrifice in order to become a lich? Is the magic and or ritual inherently evil?
And, related, would someone who became a lich for a noble cause still be detected by detect evil? Ignoring that the alignment detection spells are silly of course.
I'm curious what Veeky Forums thinks.
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>D&D:
A lot of money.
Yes.
There's a special elf good-guy lich that's good aligned. They still know it's a bad idea, but sometimes they need to do it for reasons.
The specifics of the sacrifice are left up to the DM, but to quote the d20 SRD (d20srd.org
"The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil and can be undertaken only by a willing character."
According to that source, it's some bad juju. The process itself requires evil, and because D&D morality works by actions, not intention, there does not appear to be a RAW way to get around it being evil.
That's an interesting bit of fluff, I hadn't seen that.
Wouldn't worry too much about getting around detection really, this is more for curiosity/world building than anything.
Undead have an Evil aura no matter their actual alignment. They detect as Evil even if they're Good.
When you think about it, that's actually kind of sad.
I would suggest it involves not only the ritualistic murder of numerous sentient creatures, but also the enslavement of their life force.
In a universe with a bona fide afterlife, there's not too many things nastier than holding someone's soul hostage.
Maybe it requires the help of some evil being who might have other horrible, taboo requirements . Or maybe you just need that creature's help to learn the ritual.
So destroying the lich also releases dozens or hundreds of souls who may have been trapped in a horrible limbo for centuries.
Eberron has a race of elves that reanimate their ancestors as positive-energy fueled undead, so they're always good rather than always evil, rather than the typical negative-energy method, but granted those are just fancy zombies rather than liches.
Homebrew method I use for my games is an extremely powerful sorcerer willingly being raised from the dead. The inherent nature of necromancy points the Lich to being evil no matter what, though they still retain their moral facilities.
This is actually the BBEG of my current game, an ancient 'good' lich.
In my games, becoming a lich is essentially breaking the bonds between your mind and the aetheric plane, giving you incredible magical powers, but driving you insane in the proccess. Most people who become liches are anarchists or people who misguidedly think they can control the magic.
What kind of insane are we talking about here?
Seems to me they tend to have a bad rep because of a few things
1) They are/were top o' the food chain wizards, superman-like levels of power, see
(smbc-comics.com
2) They are above bodily harm and death
Reason 2 is the capstone on top of the whole "master of creations might" bit, but just hammers home the point that these guys have infinite time, superpowers, and no reason to fear most consequences. They are just so beyond the concerns of the mortal they once were that they operate on a different plane.
So if their mind is separated from the plane of dreams and consciousness, does that mean they cannot distinguish between nightmare, fantasy, and reality, all of which they are master of?
>What kind of insane are we talking about here?
Well, once your magical power reaches a certain point, you start to see... things.
Like reality-warping triple Hastur sort of things.
And then some wizard becomes a lich to work on developing an augmented mind capable of dealing with the different input. Aboleth fetuses may or may not have been used in the making.
A thousand souls that are sacrificed which will fight for control of the Lich's body during the ritual. However, if these souls willingly gave themselves up to be sacrificed then there is no drawback. The Lich gains all memories of souls that willingly submit. Fighting for control during the ritual causes the Lich to lose anywhere from 0-50% of his personality/memories, any higher and another soul will take over his body or they die.
Why can't there be a reason to be evil that doesn't involve the generic "it kills many people!!" explanation? The very existance of PCs kills many people and they're seen as good half of the time.
In the supernatural cage match, is this like fertilization of a human egg? Or would one powerful soul be able to shoulder everyone else aside and take the body themselves.
That could be a character all right.
>noble fallen paladin fights even in death, to prevent the powerful body falling into the wrong hands
>sneaky thief finds a spiritual loophole and comes into possession of an ageless and powerful body. hijinks ensue
>angelic secret policemen possesses the body, uses it to uproot evil from the inside of the magical underworld
>rival wizards astrally projects himself into the ritual, assumes his enemies guise and systematically starts destroying his life
>demon acting on intel of orcus/vecna possesses the lich, sets about a new reign of terror on the mortal plane, his new body keeping him safe from banishment
That's why I think damning their souls to an eternity of torment is a good add. It's an act of total selfish horribleness. The trapped souls could haunt the area around the lair and spread horrible dreams wherever it goes.
As for the general "why"? Well, the lich is a spooky undead wizard, and violating a taboo like mass murder is a proxy for violating the laws of nature. If you want liches who gain immortality by traveling back in time to devour their infant selves alive or by learning forbidden guitar riffs, well that's your prerogative.
"They said I was an idiot for taking Skill Focus: Psychiatry! Who's the idiot now?!"
The mere act of the ritual itself could be a cancerous effect on reality. Not only would it permanently weaken the fabric of the universe as a whole, but it also would create an area (where you performed the ritual) that would be desecrated forever. An incredibly evil act not because it directly affects anyone else negatively, but because it sickens reality itself and perverts all laws of nature. You become a walking-talking blight on the world, where life dies at your touch and your very presence salts the earth you walk on.
At least to me it looks like a handwave to use genocide as a way to produce something. It's like you're too gay to say nature itself has a course of action and breaking that is naturally evil.
>Okay, so I really want to make this one guy have a dick sprouting from his forehead
>Look for magic, every book says making dicks sprout from foreheads is a no-no and is against the universal Clean Forehead law
>But that one mad guy found out that by killing 500 elves and trapping their souls in a stone I can make that one guy have a dick sprouting from his forehead if you throw the stone on his face. Then you can throw the stone in a pond or something, the souls themselves are lost anyways.
I remember there was a character class in a Dark Sun splatbook called a "Defiler." You gained power by removing it from the world around you. I'm thinking a Lich would be like that, but on a massive scale. Your very presence in an area creates plagues. Plants wither and die. More and more creatures are born with birth defects. And all the while you grow more powerful.
Now that's the take I like on EVIL things. No "muh morals", no "everything living is sacred", just good ol' actual consequences.
If you want a good "Lich" so bad then go find a bunch of willing souls that want to support you even in death. This sounds more like a paladin thing though, or someone witnessing their entire village dying only to have the spirits of their loved ones asspull them to victory with a powerup.
I don't understand your retarded gibberish. Try again?
>What does one sacrifice in order to become a lich?
Everything.
>Be a lich who strives to do good
>Use your aura of evil to blend in with the most foulest of evil beings
>Strike from where they least expect it
By most D&D rulesets, the ritual to become a lich is always unspeakably evil. There have been attempts at setting specific good undead, like baelnorns in Forgotten Realms or the Deathless in Eberron, but those are completely different undead types (deathless is even a completely different subtype to undead) and generally the whole point of using a different name is that they're *not* liches, which are evil by definition.
Why not both?
Violate the laws of both gods and men.
However, if there's more than a handful of liches wandering around, there ought to be a corresponding number of holes in reality.
Or go more subtle and instead of requiring a huge, grimdark sacrifice or reality rending fuckery, just require something that's a bit more of a twisted mindfuck
>murder and consume your first born child
>provoke a brother and sister to commit incest and teach their child the dark arts
>befriend a stranger in need and be their loyal friend for three years. Then torture and murder them without explanation.
And then there's the long and expensive ritual. Perhaps "the still beating heart of your closest companion" is just one item on a list of otherwise mundane items needed for the formula and reagents.
I like this description. I have always been a fan of magic effecting the world on a much more perceivable and raw level, and a ritual so foul, so completely filled with raw evil that it rends the very land, reality, and the natural cycle around it is perfect for a lich's birth. Kind of plays well into a lich's evil and fear aura. It's literally a walking, talking abomination of everything in life, to such a degree that it's mere presence fills the living with revulsion, as their own bodies are trying to reject the impurity of the natural order right in front of them.
My issue with those has always been that it removes the point of liches. Like, if you could have all the power and benefits of lichdom, without the public vilification and extreme allergy to paladin witch hunts, why wouldn't you take that route?
Kinda removes liches from their niche. You seek lichdom because you, selfishly or not, desire immortality and increased power. These are not altruistic goals, even if you want to use them for good. Liches, and all undead, should all be evil because that is their purpose. A 'good' lich is still not good, because they have perverted the natural order and broken the laws of the world.
>What does one sacrifice in order to become a lich?
what you value most in the entire world
>A lich with the Super Badguy Evil League being the inside informant for Good Guys Non-nonymous
I support this.
I think you're mistaking me for another poster. I never wanted a "good lich", I just like lich explanations that don't rely on "people are sacred and hurting a person is a direct violation of nature itself, and that's why liches are baddy bad evil guys". There are many ways of explaining evil way better than saying human sacrifice is the worst thing in the universe.
A paladin who believes the only way to destroy a great evil through an act of evil to achieve it. I'm sure there are plenty of paladins who are willing to damn their souls to save the lives of countless others.
Of course its always folly and the paladin either
A: Becomes an even worse evil than what hr damned himself to destroy
B: Just becomes a instrument of that evil after damning his soul.
Only game I ever saw a character actually turn into a lich was when she was trying to duck out of a curse that was slowly killing her, and switching over to undeath would let her "live" and retain her magic.
She needed to ritualistically kill several people to power her new phylactery, and since she didn't know the correct invokations involved, she needed to sell out her friends to get the information on how to do it, and used their souls to fuel her transition.
She was a fellow PC, and along with the BBEG of the campaign arc, killed 2/3 of the party that night. Many tears were shed, and the character was retired, and became a major villain herself in a much later campaign.
>Draw a complex spell circle with the soil taken from holy sights, mixed with the burned ashes of those killed in prayer
>Peel the souls from twenty good men
>Shred these souls with the foulest of dark magics, ensuring they will suffer agony eternal
>Weave the shredded souls into an ethereal rope and bind it tightly around your own soul and your phylactery
>With a blighted knife, forged of the purest silver from desecrated churches, and tarnished by being soaked in the blood of a first love, carve your still beating heart from your chest
>Recite the black words of the grave and etch sixteen blasphemies against life, nature and the gods, onto your heart in ink
>Drive your heart, knife and all, into the midst of the spell circle
>Your soul, tethered to the phylactery, is ripped, screaming, from your body, as the beyond tries to pull your soul away, those you have sacrificed in this accursed ritual reach through, tearing at your very being
>The release of such powerful magic, combined with the foulness of a ritual of pure evil and the spilling energies of the underworld all combine in a cataclysmic release of power, devastating the sight and blighting the land for miles around
>Once the smoke has cleared, it is done. You have crossed the line that should never have been crossed, you have done what can never be forgiven. You have attained lichedom
>Wears a dark, crimson sash over his robes, real creepy like with evil runes
>When he finally reveals the truth and flips on the evil badguys, he takes the sash, flipping it over and tying it around his neck to become a gallant, bright red scarf of justice.
In my setting, there are two ways to become a lich. One involves sitting in box and starving and mutilating yourself for weeks, and is not evil. The other involves many spell components which can only be obtained in an evil manner, making it a decidedly evil spell.
In never has once explained what it meant by that, however. Just "Take it from us, guys, Liches are always evil, so are dragons unless they're reflective."
D&D is a system that assumes objective morality of some sort exists, and derives a lot of that from traditional folklore which isn't necessarily rational or self-reflective.
If you don't like it you don't have to run D&D, or alternately you can treat the gap as an invitation to write your own explanation.
Elves possess ancient lore, dragons fly and breathe fire, heroes wield magic swords, and dark wizards perform blasphemous rituals to attain power and immortality... it's all just the baggage of the genre.
Change it if you like, but sometime in the seventies, some guys in Wisconsin plugged the ideas into their fantasy game because they enjoyed a certain flavor of genre fiction and thought all that stuff was fun and cool.
>The party is outnumbered and captured by faceless goons
>Ordered to be taken in individual cages to an inner sanctum for interrogation
>It's a lavish room the Lich has set up
>Reveals that he's the mole feeding them information, followed by handing over a written letter full of more secrets, plot relevant secrets
>Weakens the cages via MAGIC and lets them bust out to make it appear they broke free unassisted
>Shows them a secret tunnel that leads to freedom, with a warning to go quickly since he'll alert the guards to keep up his guise
Someone needs to do this and do it good.
So Veeky Forums, what's the first thing you do now?
just start deposing like crazy
create an empire
>Turns out nearly every undead in the country is under the Lich's control
>He uses his undead minions as a complex information web across the whole land
>When he can't personally appear before the group to spill some secrets, he uses one of his undead agents
>His agents are always wearing red scarves when they report to the party
Think of the worst, most awful thing you can possibly imagine.
Becoming a lich is ten times worse and goes on ten times longer.
Reincarnation is a big deal. Liches sacrifice the ability to reincarnate as they sever their link to the gods. This is seen as an inherently selfish, terrible act as it desecrates the soul forever and destroys the legacy of those that possessed the same soul. Most individuals also believe that the soul is a divine form of art, a way that the gods choose to express their work and liches destroy that work permanently
In my setting, it's a five-stage process.
First, you need to know the requisite spells. They're all very high-level, specific spells that by and large are only known by demons. Demons are happy to trade you the knowledge of how to cast them, though - in exchange for your soul.
Second, one of the things you learn is that you need your soul. Demons are kind of dicks like that. You can live without your soul for a time, but you start to wither pretty quickly. Basically you cut your remaining lifespan down to about a tenth of what it was going to be.
Third, you need to kill a *lot* of innocent people via those spells you just learned. 100 is the minimum. The more people you kill, the stronger you'll be once you become a lich. 10,000 will make you become a virtual physical god. And, they NEED to be innocents. And their deaths will not be quick, nor painless.
Fourth, you need to get your soul back from that demon you traded it to somehow. Obviously the best way to do this is to not have to have traded your soul for the information to begin with, by learning how to become a lich through some other means. But that's hard.
Fifth, you have to die. But - and here's the kicker - you can't simply kill yourself, or ask someone else to kill you. Becoming a sapient undead is all about having a will so strong that you are pretty much willing yourself to stay alive at all times. By definition you *cannot* have that will to live if you're killing yourself, or getting someone to kill you. Basically you have to die while struggling as hard as possible to stay alive during it.
If you do all these things, then congratulations, you're a lich: an undead monstrosity, a creature of pure malice and evil and magical might that has to feed on a new soul every month or so or cease to exist.
There is no such thing as a Good or even Neutral lich - nor a bored one. A lich that ceases to have that animate willpower, that desire to keep existing no matter the cost, simply dies.
I kinda like the hardships and irony of dealing with demons and dicks in general in the process, but many things about that system look strange. If their power as a lich is set in stone based on how many people the guy killed, why would any sensible being not become a god? it's not like he'd be strongly opposed after wiping a small 100-people town in bumfuck nowhere unless the world itself is dying and those small numbers matter - but then again, he's a high-level mage who knows high-level demonic spells, so even if he's not actively trying to be stealthy, he'll probably kill 10,000 people without any real repercussion.
Also, doesn't "struggling as hard as possible to stay alive" lose all its meaning when you know you'll just come back to life anyways? Are you supposed to geas yourself to believe you'll actually die forever? Rolling two or three will saves is one thing, but fluffing it as "you must cling to your very last breath, knowing it won't really be your last, so you can prove *someone or something* that you want to live so hard you deserve to die and keep living" is kinda stupid. Also, if killing yourself and asking to be killed isn't accepted, what is? Overthrowing kings and shit solely fo someone to come and kill you somehow doesn't count as asking for someone to kill you? Do you have to wait for someone stronger than you to come and want to kill you for no reason, and then battle to your last breath? The fuck man
My preferred take on liches is that it doesn't automatically turn you evil or require some evil actions to become one it's just that it's such a huge change to somebody's life that inevitably leads to them losing all connection with the people around them as the people they knew as mortals die off and the culture changes into something unrecognizable before their eyes so they just become extremely alienated and maybe resentful and this can lead to becoming evil, and because of this phenomenon it has that stigma to it. You could be a good lich but it would take absolutely heroic levels of willpower to stick to your principles through centuries spent basically completely alone surrounded by people you have little in common with and probably don't like too much.
what if what you value most is being a lich
well, a very shrewd businessman could probably haggle the price of the knowledge down from a soul to something less.
in other words, i can see the world's greediest merchant setting himself up to become a lich so that he doesn't have to hand any money down to future generations, and never having to give up his soul because he was able to haggle that well with those demons.
>D&D morality works by actions, not intention
So you can basically have a dude become a lich for the "greater good" just like Amon Jerro is a dick of a warlock
>turns out the lich regrets his previous actions that lead to him becoming a lich, and wants to atone for it
>becomes a sort of "Big Good" in the world, righting all the wrongs he caused
>his phylactery ends up getting destroyed as he makes a heroic final stand, taking out 3 big evils in the process
>in true death, he is redeemed, and as such becomes god of redemption.
If you're ready to go to such lengths to be inmortal, wouldn't you still be too scared to take the final jump?
Let's have it there, as a last resort. A failsafe in case things go awry before I finish my masterwork.
An heir to myself, with all the things I'll never be able to have but he will surely need.
Also, that whole "hero kills bbeg, but bbeg comes back from the death and even more powerful" thing
I see "And in my magical realm..." is ok here. So...
If you understand lich as an undead wizard - just make the same way you would make any other sentient undead. CAREFULLY tie the soul to the body, so that nothing is lost from personality and sanity. Make magic simulacra of muscles to move and backup bones. Shazam.
If lich is a guy with phylactely that says "fuck death", bind the soul to a masterfully crafted demonologic (or soulmancery) magic device that pulls soul to itself stronger than Afterlife does, while offering some freedom of movement, so that lich's soul can find a new body and anchor down in it for the time being.
The only obligatory sacrifice is magic energy. You gotta suck it from Chaos constantly to sustain phylactely and movement. A magic device making a hole in reality or constant concentration should do the trick.
Oh, you are too lazy to do it? You want cheap source of energy? Well, emotional energy of tortured victims may appeal to you, for it's strong, constant and close. But be warned that it may alter your mind and make you into Chaotic Evil soul-sucking asshole.
>The Penitent Lich
I find it oddly specific that some anons are answering "You have to kill 1000 babies" or "you have to torture your friend exactly 1095 days after meeting him".
Who comes up with this shit? I don't mean user, I mean narratively. Did a wizard, after years of experimenting, determine that 1000 babies was the optimal number (standing on the shoulders of giants -- until this discovery you needed approximately 3200 babies)?
I can only assume some dark god tried to think of the most hilarious way to grant immortality to humans and no other god gave enough of a shit to stop him or invent a less infantcidal method.
So, some kind of...dark protector, then? A knight, perhaps?
You find it surprising that some dark god invents a way to make humans corrupt themselves?
In my setting, to become a lich you have to have to gather up a massive amount of arcane power in one spot; something that is most easily done by sacrificing a lot of people. It's not necessary to kill anyone, but there is no way a character can fuel the transformation with just their own power. A genuine legendary artifact, some massively powerful beast's heart, and the wealth of several whole nations in ritual components, or something along those lines could also work.
>Who comes up with this shit?
Probably someone who wants to make sure you're not accidentally trying to become a lich. After all, it's unliekly you'll accidentally torture your friend exactly 1095 days and kill them with a silver blade who's first kill was made by a man against his loving spouse (and it must be a loving spouse or else you'll have to start again).
> Did a wizard, after years of experimenting, determine that 1000 babies was the optimal number (standing on the shoulders of giants -- until this discovery you needed approximately 3200 babies)?
Nah, ask your nearest high-ranking Devil/Daemon/Demon, if anyone knows profane rituals it'll be them and any chance to make things worse for the Mortal planes is a win in their books.
If I had to think up something, probably joy would be the biggest one. You can be content or satisfied, but you won't find happiness in the things you once did.
I think it'd explain a lot of the shit that liches get into. You're minus one emotion - that leads to some messed-up stuff. Losing empathy would probably be worse, though. Could do that too. It'd fit with most of the views in this thread about liches being super evil.
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