Paladin forced to work with lich?

Anyway that a paladin would work for a lich, for an extremely short time? If it means saving the realm.

>his god says he has to do it

Done.

Pope Lich I tasks him with the mission of utmost secrecy: finding his holy phylactery so their god can purify it.

Saving the realm, sure.

Just so long as it's not doing evil shit in the process.

The lich has proof that his only goal in mind is to collect books and scrolls from being deterred from time. Even if the paladin hates him, he could he could think logically that a being who brings forces to assist in combat would be helpful. Also for a bit more of a bonus the lich only uses the corpses of criminals, so no one innocent is harmed.

Alter Self is a second-level spell, Nondetection is third. There's no reason for the paladin to know it's a lich, or evil at all.

Iirc, in 3.5e there were actually Good aligned liches in the Book of Exalted Deeds. Can't remeber what they were called though. But basically their purpose was to cheat death in order to continue spreading good and defending the realm for as long as possible.

I belive that Spoony did a video to this end, but he can rant for a while, so I'll give a TL:DR. The gist of it was that some sort of creature was killing off the townsfolk under the lich's protection, and somehow had figured out how to evade the lich's scrying. The paladin had to help the lich or let the townsfolk die.

Was that a different time than when he as a Paladin wound up working for Strahd?

I knew I had forgotten something. They're both powerful LE undead, so I just switched it with lich and was done with it.

>Paladin's deity is specifically aligned against undead
no

>Paladin's diety is NOT specifically aligned against undead
sure. As long as the lich doesn't directly cross the Paladin's ruleset on a regular basis

>Paladin's deity is specifically aligned against undead
Sure! The lich has to renounce necromancy, however, and agree to resurrect into a mortal body.

Goku and Vegeta it.

Lich shows up saying "So, I know you hate me and everything. But this Demon King? He's bad. he's real bad. He makes me look like a boy scout. So if we're going to SURVIVE this...and it kills me AGAIN to say this....I'm gonna need your help."

Deathless?

>the lich only uses the corpses of criminals, so no one innocent is harmed.
Necromancy in general is considered evil by preventing their undead thralls souls from passing on.
Doesn't matter who it is. It's considered desecration either way.

The paladin could be manipulated by the Lich, similar to how Spoony's Paladin was.

An evil dude is seeking to unleash a great and terrible power. The lich is the last person who attempted to utilize that same terrible power for his own ends a thousand years ago. He was stopped and contained, but not destroyed because they never found his phylactery.

Hannible Lecter it up. The lich is THE foremost authority on this evil plan, because its his goddamn plan and now some chickenshit upstart is trying to steal his thunder. The Lich is not good or even really reformed, but he doesn't want the new guy to succeed and he is willing to help the paladin save the day in return for his freedom. Or, perhaps, just access to books. Eternal prison is incredibly fucking dull, and he doesn't like being so behind on his research.

What the Poster above said
or Lich has had a bullshit amount of time to think and realized that the plan sounds good but was really shit in the end, so he's given up on it and is now going about things in a different way, like thinking straight subjugation via mass undead armies is awesome but having an entire nation that will die for you and willing let themselves be turned into various undead to please THE GREAT UNDEAD SAVIOR (basically lawful/neutral evil/neutral) long story short, Liches have lots of fun and interesting things they can do thanks to the fact that death is no longer an issue for them

>Paladin can't prove lich is evil.
>Paladin's god actually doesn't give a shit about the undead unless they're doing shady shit.
>Lich is actually legit good and the paladin discovers this before encountering him.


Alternatively, one of my favorites for making good and evil people work together was to include an evil character who was trapped under a suped up greater geas that forced him to do good deeds. Plus some alignment disguising magic, and hey-presto you have a chaotic evil hero.

"Unleashing the helforce and destroying the world... I'll be honest, it did have some appeal to me once. Oh, don't look at me like that sir knight. I was young, brash, fresh out of a mortal existence of being constantly hunted, ostracized, and attacked for my research into the dark arts. I was then, as I am now, an unappreciated genius, and many of my colleagues met their end by the swords of men like you."

"I achieved undeath and, sure in my immortality, I set out to get revenge. Who wouldn't? Have you ever gotten revenge, sir knight? I HIGHLY recommend it."

"I planned to unleash the helforce, burn the surface of the world to ashes, and lord over the remaining crumbles of civilization as their eternal god king. Infantile fantasy, really. I would have wiped clean all of the progress, the knowledge, the logistics that support the civilization I wanted to rule. I had the power to end the world, and the desire to start anew, but none of the skills or patience to really enable that plan."

"This... master of shadows character you speak of? I see myself in him. He is so used to being brilliant that he can't see the flaws in his own plan. Thats the problem with operating int he shadows without peer review, no one to check your work and offer criticism without attempting to purge you for heresy most foul."

"So I suggest you stop him. I would be more than happy to end him myself, but I have doubts you would grant me the opportunity. I understand. Then, for my benefit as well as yours? Here is where you should focus your efforts..."

Balenorns?

its his die a hero or become the villain video
it wasnt a lich but a vampire

>TL;DR The lich can give the paladin a job he'd do anyway

I honestly didn't see someone posting something so elegantly written when I typed that earlier. Well done good ser.

>good
>lich
Isn't the gold standard that a lich has to do some obscenely evil thing to make their phylactery in the first place?

Not really. It's literally a soul jar thats magically binding their soul to their body and a anchor to prevent it from getting carted off to the resurrection cycle. Hell, in one of the books (can't remember if D&D or PF) there's a lich LIBRARIAN who turned so she could continue to currate this massive magical library. Far as I know any mage with a high enough spell level can soul jar stuff, the necromancy is just so they have a working body to use. Off topic but the whole lich process of soul jar body attachment could possibly be done with a construct like a golem as well, but don't quote me on that.

This is the backstory of the villain in the game I'm currently running. A paladin was told to work with a lich in order to drive back a massive demon invasion and then kill said lich afterwards when they were victorious. Only, it turned out the lich was a pretty chill guy and the paladin couldn't bring herself to kill the lich when the time came. As a result the gods stripped her of her status, banished her to the plane of shadow and cursed her to be unable to reach her final rest until she killed her undead husbando.

The paladin got pissed and decided that the gods had become blind to justice, starting a cult with the goal to invade hell and enslave the demons in order to wage war on the gods. Meanwhile the lich has grown tired of living for so long, actually repents what he's done, and wishes she would just kill him so they both could pass on into the afterlife.
He's been helping the party fight her and doesn't really do the whole "army of the undead" thing anymore, what with the paladin wielding an ancient artifact that can control the undead. It's also because of this artifact that he cannot face her directly, as she would just control him and use him as a pawn. The lich is still kind of a dick though since all of this has left him bitter.

TL;DR
Paladin is the bad guy, lich is the sorta but not really good guy

Pic related, it's the lich in question (who goes by the name Ralph now)

Sure.
Step 1: paladin falls.
Step 2: they save the realm.
Step 3: paladin and lich fight
Step 4: if paladin survives, he seeks atonement for working with a lesser evil.

DONE.

A paladin that willingly allies with a Lich is dangerously close to falling.

But it can be done if the final goal is good, or has the approval of his god, or his bare necessities for survival require it, since dying while your duty is not done would be pretty lame.

All of this however implies the paladin must destroy the lich as soon as the greater threat is vanquished and/or sabotage things so that while the final goal is reached all of the lich's secondary objectives fail miserably

The Paladin prioritises fighting the greater evil, doesn't do anything evil and when the realm is saved goes back to fighting the lich, MAYBE giving a headstart as an honorable gesture to the lich for helping to save the realm.

No fall required

>Imprisonment in general is considered evil because it is restricting the freedom of others.
>It doesn't matter who does it, it's evil either way.

That is a separate creature type called deathless that do the whole 'undead for the greater good' that some ghosts and baelnorns (good liches) do but are powered by positive energy instead of negative energy. It is stupid since the previously mentioned undead exist and it is an entirely new creature type to get avoid pussyfooting around the idea of negative energy being inherently evil not.

>and it kills me AGAIN
sensible_chuckle.gif