So, had a crazy idea and wanted to shoot it past the board to see how others felt about it.
Obviously this is something of an idea for a BBEB of a Lich. As I've understood in the rule books. A phylactery can vary from jars and boxes with written spells and organs to any small object like rings and whatnot. So my idea is to take four simple coins. A single coin of copper, silver, gold and platinum and make them all a phylactery. Then distribute them amongst the common people. These coins would constantly change hands, be split apart and in the end could travel the land in various random directions.
For added problems, coins could possibly end up in the Kings treasury, a dragon's hoard, a sunken pirate chest. Making finding them all nearly impossible save for the greatest of heroes.
Now I understand there's always a chance that these coins could fall into the hands of a cleric or Saladin who could sense the evil within these coins. But the chances of all 4 finding their way into holy hands seems nearly impossible.
Paladin...damn auto correct. Posting from my phone..
Jordan Nguyen
Yeah, but an ordinary Jeweler might meld them down for components. You'd be better off using small Gems. Those would be traded and protected, possibly mounted in Jewelry, but couldn't be melted down and likely wouldn't be cut any smaller.
Caleb Williams
We had this thread every goddamn week in 6 years now.
Can you execute it well enough without it becoming a giant "fuck you" to players? Will your players be interested in chasing a single villain over a shitton of sessions just because they couldn't find a single coin? Does the lich just pops out near a coin in 1d10 days without requiring corpses, dust of dead humans, or time to regenerate the body? Do you have an in-universe reason for a lich to do a possibly mega-super complicated thing like that instead of just hiding his one phylactery good enough?
If you can answer those questions then maybe it will work. Personally, I've heard this shctick a shitton of times, and it got old really fast. Defeating a great evil by destroying a source of its power and immortality made through ritual sacrifice while overcoming impossible odds sounds like a good and thematic story. Chasing a shitton of coins with detect evil on sounds like a slog.
Luke Martin
Shit, never considered that..
Colton Butler
Beneath the Lich's tower is a permanent gate to the Negative Energy plane, leading to an ancient castle floating in the void.
Modified negative energy plane where a black sun casts rotating beams of concentrated negative energy across the castle like a lighthouse, PCs have to get behind something when the light shines on them, and it revives and empowers any undead it touches.
Various fights to establish the theme. Trying to get undead somewhere out of the light before you kill them, fighting githyanki looters and trying to control the safe zones.
Then the phylactery is alive, a massive corrupted heart fed on negative energy. The PCs have to fight for control of the rocks floating around the arena, keeping the Heart out of the light while staying out of it themselves.
Pardon if this sounds a bit Harry Potter, but what if the phylactery was in the bloodline of a house of nobles - the descendants of the ones who first slew him - who have since married into a number of royal families in cities across the continent. They all have a birth mark of a sigil - and as the bloodline spreads the rich grows more powerful and in turn he ensures the continuity of power and survival of those in that genealogy - not to mention all the bastards from "ius primae noctis."
You might have it so that as a last Aku level trick he imparts his essence onto the original hero before the final blow was delivered to his previous vessel. The mark left appears as a scar and he thinks nothing of it. The hero returns home, marries the princess, sires a child, finds that it's marked. They keep it a secret for fear for their lives and so it goes for generations until it is lost to time... until the lich returns with immense power hundreds of years later.
So in essence the party must track down the descendants of the bloodline and either kill them or find a way to remove the taint. Many of them are innocents - peasants - orphans, and others still are in positions of government nigh unreachable without the use of subterfuge and morally questionable action.
Henry Evans
Phylactery set: * Arrows that use their targets to make more phylactery arrows. * Phylactery maker weapon that can turn anything into a phylactery after harming a target. Kill things, stamp objects/persons. * Entire quarry that ships stone grave markers far and wide.
Colton Gomez
They all have a star shaped mark on their left shoulder...
Easton Moore
Liches tend to be extremely vain and horribly narcissistic individuals, considering how far they are willing to go and how much they are willing to destroy to perpetuate their own black existence just one more day. Now, putting yourself in that mind, would you put your fucking soul in a common copper coin and pass it off to god knows where? Or would you put your soul in the stolen sacred jewels of Veryrich and set it in the radiant golden crown of Rivalnation and wear it every day to show your majestic might to all who would look upon the terrible visage of the Undying King?
Ryder Cook
...
Brody Powell
...
Wyatt White
That sounds like an interesting storyline, but I have to scoff at intangible phylacteries on principle. I've seen too many phylactery concepts like "a glass of water poured into the ocean" or "the letter E" that can't be done by the book.
Luke Ward
lol! This would make for a cool story! Or a legend...bit too differant to run in a normal game, though.
Brody Wright
This is a very, very good idea. Notice how the simple idea of a heart radiating negative energy is useful both for mechanical and thematic reason. Eerie light in a castle make great scenery, and skeletons and zombies raised by energy bursts both serve as enemies and give players a hint about heart's function. When players finally reach the heart they will see it in all its horrifying glory, an eldritch artifact made with dark magic, which tells something about the heart's creator, an immortal being that considers itself above the divine law, above life itself. This entire idea follows "show, don't tell" philosophy, which allows players to be invested without relying heavily on DM's exposition.
This is a good (although not fully developed) idea. The fact that the lich made his phylactery a beautiful gem and put it into a crown shows how vain and overconfident he is, but also makes it obvious that he possesses great power and influence. The lich may be afraid to die, but he's not afraid of any possible opposition, and he issues a silent challenge to any who would dare to dispute his rule.
Although this sounds like a good idea on paper, it will be a fucking mess mechanically. As said, "metaphorical" phylacteries and things that stray from the "golden standard" of a single small magical item I MAKE A PLANET MY PHYLACTERY LEL ruin the immersion and make killing the lich really confusing and unappealing for players. Both players and characters have knowledge about liches, and they will expect them to have phylacteries. Making it downright impossible to identify and destroy one or forcing them into "the paladin falls no matter what you do" situation won't be as interesting as you believe it will be. Basically, you're forgetting that the game is supposed to be played for mutual enjoyment, and just one-upping the players by introducing your invincible pet villain.
Nathan Ross
Adding to that.
I would almost never consider splitting the phylactery. A lich is a horrifying enemy by himself: an undead spellcaster who has years, decades, centuries to set his plans in motion. He has only a single weakness that he will guard with all his immeasurable resources, but that's somehow not enough for you, and you want to either trivialize it by introducing "destroy X parts of Y" quests straight from MMORPGs, or annoy the fuck out of your players by making it some obscure bullshit like "the idea of prostate cancer". The game is first and foremost an interactive storytelling experience. Learn to tell a story about a lich that has a box filled with arcane writings as his phylactery. If you learn to tell it well you'll suddenly realize that it wasn't phylactery's fault that it was unoriginal or bland, it was your fault for presenting it as such.
Levi Watson
Your hidden idea made me think of having the players set up a multisite ritual to destroy all phylactries in the world. The players may like the chance to use a plot normally reserved for evil campaigns.
Isaiah Reed
Or just make your phylactery another lich
Angel Flores
Try this instead OP: have the lich tie his soul to a condom, then he slips it into a member of /tg's belongings. The condom will lie unused forever and thus the lich is safe.
Call it the prophylactery.
Charles Jones
ever heard the joke that mona lisa is a phylactery?
i recently made a lich phylactery a very powerful sword the party is carrying on them, theyre too stupid to get it looked at since they saw the lich use it and assumes what it does.
Christian King
A sword that they carry around with them in a scabbard on their belt.
putting a phylactery into multiple pieces has always seemed wrong to me.
That's your soul and you just cut it up. Best case scenario you just can't reform until they are united again (which could be the goal of another villain, returning a Lich long vanquished by gathering the peices) Worst case it's destroyed.
Mabey you could be interesting with it, and the PCs current patron IS the lich, having accidentally split his personality into 4 different identitys, is having an argument with himself and trying to get the PCs to destroy the other 3.
