Gentlemen

Gentlemen.

How do we keep liches, the quintessential BBEG, fresh and exciting?

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By keeping them away from Veeky Forums

Don't use them. At least, not so often.

You'd be surprised how fresh an idea can be when you just give it a break. No use running it to the ground with a 100 examples of subversion until the lich isn't even a lich anymore.

Trying new systems and settings helps with this greatly. Then, when you've got enough time away from the idea, you can come back to it and have the concept not feeling as tired.

Play them straight and play them well; don't try to reinvent the wheel. A well-done cliche is better than a poorly realized original concept.

Perhaps more importantly, use them sparingly. They're only the quintessential BBEG because the GM decided they would be. Why not pick another monster or being to be the BBEG?

The paladin has the anti-paladin
The cleric has the ur-priest
What can the lich have, other than an anti-lich?
That's right! Where the lich is a humanoid reduced to mere bones, an anti-lich is a humanoid who has everything except his bones! Truly a disturbing and menacing enemy!

Wicked martial arts skill.

By making Death Knight Liches

The Lich is actually just a dwarven miner that told death to fuck off while he finished doing his job.

The issue is that he keeps unleashing unspeakable evils, and won't stop mining until his job is done.

Not with formaldehyde. Tghat's not exciting at all. Instead, try herbs and spices. Add a dash of curry spces for that extra zing.

Just make them completely skeletal. Everyone loves a skeleton. I see way too many liches that are just dry corpses with coarse flesh still clinging to their bones, and it's dull.

>lich
>fresh
>not rotting and smelly

Improvements

Very potent

Exactly like this user said - play them straight.

Don't go full retard trying some "new and very cool subversion" when you use liches - just do it like a "regular" lich.

Playing some kind of "good but very misunderstood" lich is dumb as fuck, they're inherently evil/powerhungry beings, and just play them as such.

Facing a lich should be absolutely terrifying - when you walk into the completely dark and empty base (except for mindless abominations or other undead), you should KNOW this is the home of a lich. You should feel the massive amounts of power just welling off it, and the players should really notice the fact that this being is a absolute monster.

Now - i'm not talking about literal meme-tier evil with killing cats and taking candy from babies, no. Liches are old and absolutely ruthless - they do anything for their own gain and to fulfill their desire, whatever that is.

We're talking Mengele/Unit 731 tier experiments here simply to find out the true nature of man. Experiments where it breaks the mind of men simply to find out how they tick.

And none of this is done out of evil. No - like a baby pulling a cats tail, the Lich does not realize why it is wrong - the Lich does not understand why the death of others is a bad thing as long as they somehow could be of use to it.

youtube.com/watch?v=FrlymHW0qU8 Highly related.

You gotta find beauty in simplicity.

This user gets it.

Excellent illustration, too. None of that fleshy undead crap. "Jafar but with leprosy" is the worst kind of lich.

>like a baby pulling a cats tai
>mfw finding out from my parents that I was the reason they had to get rid of their two beloved moggies.

I know I couldn't help it, being a toddler and all, but it made me really sad.

he accidentally the lich and now has to struggle with being pure evil, also isnt a bad guy just needs release

scratch that, he accidentally becomes the lich but is just consumed with the evil

His phylactery is another lich. They were bros in real life and continued broing it up in the afterlife.

Weird rituals and Gentle Repose.

He bought a gun.

>literal meme-tier evil
Skeletor was best lich and you know it.

If I'm running a lich villain, I'm modelling them on Known Space protectors. Total outside context problem for the party; way smarter, way faster mentally, and unafraid to chew up the setting to get their way. Even their own death may further their plans. Free will, including their own, is an illusion. How, seeing the best path while freed from the tyranny of biology, could you not take it?
Kill one man to save ten. One million to save ten million. Sacrifice 100 men to save a village of 50? The village can burn.
And even then, their goals are abstract and unknowable to the PCs.

The phylactery of that lich is also another lich, on the other side of the planet. Liches are linked together in phylactery chains, such that they need to be taken down in order to be thwarted, and any attack on one is an attack on all of them and responded to as such.

I never saw players going above 5th level, so, by using them when needed. The day my players face a dragon or a lich, they'll have starry eyes, cause they never did.

What season is The Lich in? He gets brought up as a character on Veeky Forums all the time but I don't want to watch all of Adventure Time

Look up mortal recoil and mortal folly, both are excellent episodes with him in it.