[D&D] Why Choose Lichdom?

Of all the routes to immortality, why in gods name would they pick the one where their body dries out and decomposes?

>Brooch of Perpetual Youth
>Clone
>"The Rite of Transformation" - Telmiirkara Neshyrr - (Ancient Elf Magic)
>"Becoming a Monster" ritual a la Savage Species
>"Renegade Mastermaker" Become a Construct
>Vampirism
>Make a deal with a fiend for immortality (for a cost that isn't your soul).

There's a lot of options for immortality. *MOST* of them are better than lichdom, so far as I can tell.

What's the benefit of choosing lichdom?

look at your picture user

it's fuckin' awesome

undeath bring lots of good side and not bad sides.
liches in particular are very powerfull caster, other kind of undead are not always. who wouldnt want to be a spellcasting skellington?

and if you count archlich, no alignment restriction (but there existence is highly debatable)

There's also the elven druidic/high magic baelnorn.

But living forever without being a decomposing corpse sounds preferable to the alternative.

Harder to kill and the power of undeath as well as not worrying about daylight? Honestly for someone who cares solely about their mind and life the body decomposing is a minor issue

Clone seems the best option.

Brooches of Perpetual Youth aren't too shabby either, it just takes up your neck slot and has to be replaced every decade or so like changing a battery, so you age a few seconds each decade.

And if you just want magical research time, the easiest option is to move to the astral plane and set up your wizard lab there. No aging. The Githyanki are way less likely to bother you while you mind your own business than a bunch of rambunctious adventurers.

And you always have the option of making yourself into a half-fiend or half-celestial or half-fey via a template. That can get you (if not immortality) at least a drastically expanded lifespan.

vampire isn't a great option, but neither is lich. They're some of the worst routes to immortality.

Has the condition where a lich has to feed souls to its phylactery always been a thing?

If not, then being able to study without ever focusing on anything else seems good. Anything that still ages will be distracting as your body changes. Clones will be distracting when you die and have to go from your vat to your notes again.

A skeleton is in stasis. It does not change. It reaches its final state and never leaves (until some uppity adventurers trigger the alarms in your lair and you have to deal with them but y'know).

Clone is nice but requires time and is subject to tampering

A magic item that merely prolongs life males you easy to kill

Astral plane similarly makes you easy to kill

Getting otherwordly powers means you are subjected to another being and also easy to kill

None of those options give you undead powers like paralyzing touch or damage/condition immunities

Lichdom is simply the simplest from an upkeep perspective (no need to worry about anything except hiding your phylactery, maybe feeding it souls every few years) and also gives you more power over life and death

The souls thing has not always been the cas, no. That was not the case in 3e, IIRC was also not the case in 2e. Am not familiar with 4e liches.

>You will never become an akalich.

don't need to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom
get to live forever
AND I get to kill people?
sounds like a win to me

As far as I'm aware, it's new to 5th edition. There was one AD&D source where a lich needed to ritually consume a humanoid's heart once a century to sustain its existence, but that was in Ravenloft (Van Richten's Guide to the Lich).

Forgotten Realms?
It's Mystra's fault, back in ancient netheril, fucking Liches were EVERYWHERE, they were so oversaturated in OP PLZ NERF caster-fluff that the rites to Lichdom were a COMMON BOOKSHELF ITEM.

In addition to this, there was the deity sponsored Spontaneous Lich, a process that could occur if someone furthering the cause of Magic across the Realms with item crafting or spell-weaving was nearing their death bed as they worked on their project, accidentally phasing into Lichdom unaware of the change, which would remain until they had completed the project, then they would die and turn to dust.

This was back when Lichdom was fairly underdeveloped as a magical transformation and it was more of a way to cheat death through the use of a Magic Jar spell, a specially prepared poison, and chosen ritual sites, and featured the level loss attributed to most undead, and this was featured in Dragon Magazine's A Blueprint to the Lich, notably, the Lich had to maintain itself even after they made the transformation or risk degenerating into a Demilich

By the 2nd Edition we had Van Richten's Guide to the Lich, which featured most of the content in Blueprint to the Lich, but now the rites of Lichdom had made some progress, Lichspells, Lich power rituals, innate Lich abilities, and better maintenance of the body came along, in effect, the Lich became more of a stable state, along with further unqiue specialized versions of Lichdom, each with the process of Demilichdom that is far more sophisticated than the original 'Wizard life hack'. It still had many of the similar rituals and failures involved, as well as listing the consequences of failure to transform.

And 3E-3.5 Progress on Lichdom as a Transformation was so sophisticated, that it actually went back to 1e and figured out a way to perform the Spontaneous Lichdom transformation by making it central to the creation of a Phylactery in stages that accumulate to the full Lich transition, effectively tricking the forces that be into undergoing the sort of airborne god-given process of Lich transformation, ending at the phylacteries completion which finalizes the transformation by forging the all too well known connection with the plane of negative energy, which actually makes the user undead outright. The prior stages are accumulating the old telltale signs of negative energy corruption educing an "undead-like state" which is a common reoccurign theme in D&D since 2E with the Mortibund to 3E-3.5 with various PrC and Base Classes that had this kind of progression as class feature, or in this case "Half-lich" (A term used officially for Liches midway transformation in many D&D works) The better spellcaster would be able to complete the Phylactery in one go, becoming a Lich and gaining the template, but some progressed at a slower pace, (Lich Monster class template) The only difficulty involved with this transformation is, infact getting one's soul into the Phylactery, which, is in practice, the older rules for the ritual detailed in 2E, because Ravenloft's Demiplane of dread, whilst not articulated in 3E-3.5 did have callbacks to mention that the World Serpent Inn can get you in and OUT of Ravenloft, made mention that the canon Strahd was still the 2e one, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft being a remake of the 1e adventure. And some of the Lich Salient Abilities mentioned in VR's Guide are in-fact, covered in Monsters of Faerun under the Lich Variants section. In-fact, the stage 4 of progression into Lichdom already has the user exist as a Lich, but in the same manner as a 2E Lich, with the same kind of bodily regeneration.

The Modern Phylactery is so sophisticated that even Vampires can use it, noted in the Undermountain Moudle of the 3rd edition, where the Twisted Rune had a Vampire use a Lich's rejuvanation ability via a Phylactery, thanks to how easy it is to abuse Vampire coffin rules from 2E-3.5 and because the Twisted Rune are a hilarious guild of dick-ass Liches.

Dracoliches are the only ones who retain their older state of Lichdom, as this made sense, due to Draconic Ecology in how their bodies grow making it impossible for a phylactery to simply Produce a Dragon body to possess from scratch. Though this does not excuse the Cult of the Dragon and by extension, Sammaster from not getting a decent Transmuter on board when he was developing the ritual under Mystra's protection.

Lichdom is also a highly valuable commercial service in distribution amongst the denizens of the lower planes, to the degree that it has been actively proven that Liches, Devils, Demons, and though not referred to directly in VR's Guide, presumably Orcus, that they guard this information fiercely and trick mortals into evil acts to fuel compensation for sharing the information, or the like of the use of Limited Wish and Wish spells due to Souls-XP Cost in crafting, the whole alignment change from Lichdom tends to occur when the user becomes one through using the Atrocity calls to undeath trick, or through using a clearly botched, or otherwise tainted and disinformative version of the ritual, but I should note, that Liches are fundamentally evil for a number of reasons which VR covers, Baelnorm are under Divine supervision, and Archliches will always be weaker than the standard Lich because the regular Lich as so much more to gain from being evil alone, and fuelling the proliferation of the will of Negative Energy itself.

Elan.

Also, vampire is a whole lot of weaknesses for zero useful benefits for any caster type.

>What's the benefit of choosing lichdom?

> Keep your magic
> Shitton of immunities
> You were old anyway
> No trusting anyone else; it's all your own work.
> Once it's done, you're nigh-unkillable
> Ritual has to be interrupted to fail, which means they have to deal with your defences first
> Relatively common and documented
> No alignment restrictions

>the easiest option is to move to the astral plane and set up your wizard lab there
Why not go lich anyway and set up in the negative energy plane? Adventurers will take constant damage, you'll take constant heals and so will your undead staff.

Then 4E and 5E Happened, and this long-term Lichistory was erased in favour of shafting Everything to fat-fuck Orcus, Mr "Literally has the grand fucking total of FIVE Statblocks over the course of 3E-3.5". and All because of aims to compete with Pathfinder making Orcus their poster boy. Great fucking Job WoTC.

The point is, Lichdom is a popular transformation, and in the context of a world where word travels by bard, mouth, or on rarer ocassion Divination, Liches are heard about the most above all, in children's stories, history, myth and fable, it's no wonder it's the first thing to come to mind to an aged dying spellcaster, despite it being this deadly flytrap.

Vampirism is Objectively better if you've massive Epic-level ambitions in sight, but it's a massive pitfall to learn anything coherent about their kind, because Fat-Fuck Orcus rolled in one day with the Vampire Lord ritual, and everyone forgot about age categories, Kanchelsis, and Van Richten's guide, which is hilarious because by 3.5 Kanchelsis was still canon, and Vlad Tolenkov all the way from 1e is his high priest shagging Lloth, and THIS is the reason why Drow like vampires so much, next to them accidentally writing a completely different version of Kanchelsis in a Web Enhancement, and making a quest where a Vampire planned on using a Deific Aging device to kill the material plane so he can rule over what is left

Despite it being canon that aging effects work on vampires and easily bump up their powerlevel to the absurdity of the sheer TPK that a vampire is past the age of Strahd Von Zarovich when they hit the Patriarch Age, so this guy literally almost accidentally destroyed the universe by unleashing a slew of CE Elder Evil tier Demigod vampires that would have raped everything in sight.

>No trusting anyone else; it's all your own work.
Actually, you have to sell your ass to Orcus to become a lich.

>Clone seems the best option.

Yes, lets kill myself to make sure a guy that is 100% like me and think its me survive

I was kinda ok with how 4e handled it. They kept the old-school Lich as Archliches (Aka: Fuck you Orcus, I'll do it myself) while allowing Orcus to sell bargain basement immortality.

Clones get your soul implanted in them when you die. You're basically getting extra lives.

> No alignment restrictions
> No trusting anyone else; it's all your own work.
I want this meme to die. Necromancy, and by extension, lichdom was created by an archdevil, and not out of kindness of his heart, but to further his agenda. You can't just become a lich - the knowledge comes directly from Prince of the Undead, and at a price of becoming his bitch.

Because lichdom is merely the first step on a long road. Which path you walk makes no difference, for they all lead to the same root. It only matters that you start walking.

>Might not be found in a lot of settings, doesn't stop murder
>Easier to hide a rock than a fully grown meat puppet, and fewer things are likely to nibble on it, still have to do all the shitty things affiliated with being alive like eating/shitting/feeling pain
>Elf shit, also doesn't stop murder
>3E is shit, also doesn't stop murder
>3E is shit, also doesn't stop murder
>Vampires are garbage, most of your personality is destroyed and replaced by hunger like some kind of fantasy meth addict
>LMAO you think they'll not ruin everything that makes your life worth keeping around, good job kiddo

>All settings are the same.
Lmao

>Inb4 if you don't play Greyhawk or some equally bland D&D Generica setting you're a snowflake.
Sorry you can't write for shit m80

> No alignment restrictions

The final act for becoming a lich is kinda horrifically evil in every edition.

>No alignment restrictions

>Alignment
>Any evil.

>The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil and can be undertaken only by a willing character. A lich retains all class abilities it had in life.

Right there on the template.

Fine, my vampires don't drink blood and don't burn in sunlight. They sparkle. Learn to write lmao!