Vampires vs Liches

Both of them are undead, but which one beats the other most of the time? Which should scare you more in a game?

Which is the superior form of undeath?

Vamps usually have a couple of built in weaknesses like having to suck blood to survive and no sunlight, while the lich really just has to stop you from messing with his phylactery. If they live long enough they usually get stronger and learn some powerful magic and build/populate an impenetrable lair. Both would need some type of long term goal to help keep their immortal minds from slipping into madness which I think the lich would be more prone to as it doesn't have to worry about survival as much as a vamp.

Common Lich pros:
>Immortality
>Invulnerability far in excess of vampire
>Not required to feed
>Are your own master
>Standard undead advantages

Common Lich cons:
>Only available to spellcasters
>High barrier to entry even for spellcasters
>Standard undead weaknesses
>Phylactery is vulnerable
>Few to no extra powers you didn't already have
>Can't feel physical pleasure

Common Vampire pros:
>Immortality
>Difficult to kill
>Faster to recover than Lich
>Can feel physical pleasure
>Massive list of extra powers; which powers are a crapshoot
>Low barriers to entry
>Potentially available to anyone

Common Vampire cons:
>Massive list of weaknesses; which weaknesses are a crapshoot
>Often forced to serve the one that spawned you
>Standard undead weaknesses on top of any others
>Required to feed
>Lich can probably enslave you
>Teenage angst forever
>forever

Lich is generally the superior option for being harder to kill, harder to enslave, and having fewer weaknesses. However, if you're not a powerful spellcaster already it simply isn't an option. Meanwhile any random jackoff can get bitten and become a vampire, potentially becoming pretty powerful once they throw off their master. Or maybe they don't have to serve a master. Vampires are a crapshoot in general, almost everything about them depends on the setting.

Of course, neither is the true patrician's choice, the Revenant.

>Which is the superior form of undeath?
Lichdom is chosen, vampirism is a disease.
They are both pretty shitty to become thou.

>Revenant
>patrician's choice
>accomplishes goal
>dies

Well, going by the most common renditions of these two undeaddies. Vampires normally have some set of powers and that's that, while Liches can use all sorts of regular and necromantic sorceries in addition to their innate undeadly qualities. Only some vampires wanted to become what they are now so they're reluctant little emos, while liches are such bad asses that they usually wanted to become what they are from the get-go and are lovin' it. Vampires are sexier, Liches are scarier. Some vampires try desperately to hold onto the morals and ethics they held onto once in life, while liches have ditched all that quite long ago. While vampires follow instincts to survive and are banished from daylight, liches can do whatever the hell they want and are more focused on finding ways to turn the entire world's population into undead or global domination, pure and simple.

Is this really worth a discussion, or can we say that the stereotypical lich is so much more evil and powerful that it's way outta the stereotypical vampire's league?

The number of posters didn't increase when you made this post, are you the OP?

I swear you've made this thread before, it's an oddly specific subject to fixate on.

Vampires are for social people who don't want to die, liches are for antisocial people who don't want to die.

Liches are going to be on average way stronger than your average Vampire, but the thing about Liches is that other than the whole immortality bit and the phylactery they really don't gain anything noteworthy just by being a Lich, where as Vampires get perks just for being in the Kool Kidz Klub.

At the end of the day I would say Liches are more scary than Vampires based on the principle that a Lich is guaranteed to be strong but a Vamp can be a bitten random jerkoff

I posted twice in a previous vampire thread with Lugosi as the OP image. It wasn't the same topic.

There's nothing preventing a vampire from learning magic. Just look at Strahd. Not that he would beat Vecna in a duel.

FALSE PREMISE, MILK DRINKER. Draugr is the superior form of undeath.

>Tears it's way out of Hel for any reason it damned well pleases
>Was a warrior of esteem in life, bears enough strength in unlife to tear flesh from bone unassisted
>Can make itself increasingly swole to the point where it's weight alone can crush men and livestock
>Can transform itself into fucked up animals, including a giant flayed bull
>Can not be killed unless its head is torn from its neck, with the body being burnt to ash and tossed into the sea
>Can only be subdued by means of unarmed combat, weapons are basically useless against it.
>Disease, darkness, and madness preceed its path.

Eh just shitpost all day and you'll live forever.

this form of undeath is literally fighter's lichdom, its perfect

Liches don't need any sort of sustenance (fuck 5e), don't have weaknesses besides those all undead have, and can't be killed unless your phylactery is destroyed (which will never happen if you're smart). And if you want to look pretty you just have to cast a spell. It's pretty obvious who the winner is.

>Not Ghosts

Plebians, every one of you.

Pros:
>Live forever
>Look like you did in life
>No outstanding weaknesses
>Literally all you have to do to become one is kill yourself and have some regrets or something.

Cons:
>No physical pleasures
>Sometimes you can be banished by Catholics

Only patrician undead choice.

>Liches don't need any sort of sustenance (fuck 5e)

That idea predates 5e. Also worth noting some of the older versions of the lich say that anyone who possesses the lich's phylactery has the lich under their command, but of course these things vary depending on the setting.

It's not a good comparison in the first place though, vampires are more like a race (some of which may be weak and other powerful, basically like humans or elves) while liches are usually more like a "prestige class" on top of being a high level caster.

>Not mentioning the actual best choice: Wight
>Wight Lord if we're talking Pathfinder

Pros:
>Low barrier of entry
>Gather more minions than a vampire and much faster
>Smaller list of weaknesses than vampire
>Doesn't have a phylactery to worry about
>Quicker recovery than both

Cons:
>One Devine spell can wreck your shit but at least you get a save
>The Lich is probably more powerful
>If you were raised by another you have to throw off your master, but that isn't the only way to become a Wight
>Constant hunger for life force much like vampire's thirst
>Unless your lucky you don't keep your classes (bonus if you were just some peasant before. Start now!)

Liches are dead wizards, vampires are sneaky social skillmonkeys, revenants and draugr are determined fighting men, and mummies are dead clerics, I think we've got it. Where the fuck are they going to adventure?

Senior prom

>Look like you did in life
>Pro

Not all of us weigh 300 lbs user

Con:
>stuck in some shitty rotting house forever

I wish I only weighed 300 pounds

>Not being a free-roaming ghost like in your chinese cartoons

Would a three-hundred pound ghost be any different from a three-hundred pound vampire?

>having regrets isn't a con

>Disdainful nerd lich who's captain of the chess team.
>Socialite cool kid vampire who's too much of a flirt for his own good.
>Sportsball hooligan draugr with a hair trigger.
>Long suffering mummy get it cause he's team mom with an overbearingly religious family.

They, through various reasons of their own, end up stranded together in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Prom is tonight. They have roughly twelve hours to make it across three states in time to pick up their dates.

Fuck yeah I'd play it. Hell, Detroit Rock City with undead is something I'd actually want hard enough to try and run it.

Yes because bricks weigh more then feathers

>"So Akenaden want to come to my party this saturday? Its gonna be killer!"

>"I can't, my mummy's making us all go to temple to worship Horus or something, its gay. She keeps telling me 'how do you expect to get into the Reed Fields of Paradise if I don't worship Horus', and I keep telling her 'Mum, look, that book was written like three thousand years ago by grandpa its not something you should use to run your life!'"

It would look different than a 300 pound lich, which I guess would be a Giant lich or something.

Liches superior, Bitches love Liches.

A really wide ribcage?

>accomplishes goal
>dies

The only bad thing about liches is there's no game, video or tabletop, where you can just play as a lich character from the start like in Yggdrasil.

I'm strangely disturbed by my growing skeleton fetish.

Your post isn't helping.

It's funny how so many D&D worlds have Vamp vs Lich

Kas vs Vecna
Strahd vs Azalin
Kaius vs Vol

Any others?

Its okay because you're only self-inserting as the skeleton.

But did he start as a lich? Isn't this probably class evolution from Wizard?

He started as a Skeleton Mage, so he was still a "lich" in the sense of being an undead magic caster. D&D will never even let you play as a skeleton outside of unusual circumstances.

Sorry to give you a boner.

That haunt was for your protection. The Shadowlands suck and then ghost mayor turns you into a weakly weeping brick, disembodied undeath is the worst thing.

I've been attracted to fictional skeletons for a long time now. It's great, give in, it doesn't make you a creep, they're cartoons.

>not wanting to die after having fulfilled all your dreams and the very purpose of your existence

Enjoy your eternity of bored insanity trying and failing to chase the high of actually feeling satisfied ever again.

>Vampire is relaxing in bed with his latest conquest.
>Her dad throws open the door.
>"I KNEW IT!"
>Raises up a crucifix.
>the girl yells "Daddy, no!"
>Vampire flips up out of the bed onto the wall, hisses at the crucifix, then scuttles out the window.

>accomplishes goal
Just set unrealistic goals.

>NOT WANTING to
>live exactly as long as you need,
>accomplish all of your dreams
>and achieve perfect happiness.
Well. OK then. Here you go.

Daddy only wants to protect his little girl.

>Enjoy your eternity of bored insanity trying and failing to chase the high of actually feeling satisfied ever again.
So long as I'm pretty.
I'd sell my soul to the devil to become a beautiful vampire woman. If either the devil, souls, vampires or women were real.

It's like you're trying to be unhappy.

I think most 4channers are like that, user

I figured there was going to be a skeleton pun in response, but I had hoped for it tibia good one.

Depends if you go full horror or black comedy. I played a Mutants and Mastermind game where each of us played a typical horror monster (Lich for Zombies, Vamps, Werewolf, and a creature from the Black Lagoon). My character started as a hillbilly human who was an apprentice to a high level Alchemist. He wasn't sociable but was fairly intelligent, strong, hyper aware, and a crackshot with a rifle (Think the intelligence of Dell Conahger/Engineer from TF2 with the personality of Fuzzy Lumpkins and Foghorn Leghorn) His wizard mentor used him as a guinea pig for an immortality serum. The chemicals caused a chain reaction and killed the mentor but my character survived as a Lich. Since all of the other monsters thought he was a bumpkin, they tried seizing it to steal all of the Alchemist's goodies. My character booby trapped the entire castle like a morbid version of Home Alone and fought off invasion for over 300+ years. Now adventurer and monster alike tried to seize my castle because of the challenge but my character was just grumpy old Billy Bone that wanted them to stay the fuck off of his property. Deep down though he enjoyed the challenge as it kept him sane while he experimented with new traps and alchemical shotguns/rifles to snipe intruders.

Some of my more favorite lines
>Vamps
Dang fangers! Why don't you make like a bat outta hell and suck somewhere else!
Next time I catch your sparkly ass around here, I'm getting the UV Buckshot!
I see you scrunching yur face! That's what you get for sneaking around here, a face full of aerosol garlic!
>Werewolves
I catch you shitting in my yard again a silver bullet is going straight up yur ass!
I'm gonna split ya down the middle and make a bitch outta ya diddle!
Don't make me get the newspaper! I've been rolling it up for 200 years and counting!
>Human Protagonists (most anime styled for some reason)
That's it! I'm getting my weeb whacker!
Gun beats sword around these parts, cowlick!

Look up dungeons: the dragoning, somebody whipped up some homebrew to do just that actually. And before you ask, there's far more op stuff in core anyways.

>weeb whacker

Unrelated to the topic but related to the picture, how come they never had Marceline interact with the Lich? Or Hunson Abadeer? Maybe that'll happen some time between now and when the show ends.

>Vampires vs Liches

Based purely on averages? Lich. The average Lich will always win against the average Vampire because the 'average' Vampire is not the most exceptional Vampire (I'm going to be speaking in general fantasy terms overall because that will be most conducive to discussion) and is more akin to just a normal Human whom can regenerate, bite people real good, suck blood, look AMAZING, and MAYBE shapeshift or control Animals.

Lets, though, take this into a more, "ideal vs ideal" kind of situation and pit the 'best' Lich vs the 'best' Vampire:
This is just my onion on the matter, but Liches I primarily view as Mad Scientists: they want to learn, they want to research, power is just a means to an ends and that ends is 'true' power through knowledge. Liches build spend their time and money developing inventions, spells, theories, writing texts, they make a lot of their own shit and aren't really interested in supliferous details or shenanigans.
Vampires on the other hand appear to typically be socialites: they just want to have a good time, they care about how they're seen, talked about, they enjoy looking good, they love ruling and having People to serve them just as much as they love being served People (kek), and in that sense Vampires are more 'Rulers' than anything else. (Not to say that there aren't Vampire Scientists or Scholars, it's just not their main 'theme' for the most part.)

If we're going full strength and full infrastructure then It'd be a Coin toss between whoever the narrative or story needed to win since while a Vampire might have an Army a Lich can just MAKE something to combat or circumvent an Army.

Vampires can be casters too

You could be both.

The true master race is the unelemental

Pros
>made of negative energy
>have all the upsides of an undead without the downsides
>damage dealt by you is permeant
>noclip through things
>explode on death
>16+ strength
>the smallest of you have a CR of 10
>alignment: any

Cons
>-4 int -2 dex

+/-
>you look like a black hole
>can really only normally be with undead
>destroy non-magical items with a touch
>slight negative stigma

But the best casters aren't vampires. They're either humans or liches.

I don't think even the ideal Vampire would be anywhere near as autistically dedicated to casting as the ideal Lich, though.

Did you guys know there is actually a reason to keep an undead loli with you?

Say hello to the slaymate, it’s abiltiy is to lower metamagic costs.

>literally fighter's lichdom
I think you forgot about...
Mother Fucking Death Knights!
>Rides in on a flaming horse.
>Wears bitchen armor.
>Can command unded and demon goons.
>Can cast spells and shit
>Only requirement is worshiping some shitty god, ditching them for a superior demon god then dying in anyway.
>Can only die by being retarded and letting some fuck "redeem" you.
>Is metal as shit.

>all these plebs using magic and shitty gods to get raised instead of nothing more than sheer stubborn refusal to die

This. In fact the best vampire, Castlevania's Dracula, is both a vampire with the power to dominate all beasts and dark creatures. And a lich who's philactery is the darkness within the souls of man.

An ideal vampire is capable of the social manipulations, but more than that, they're a terrifying posthuman monster that can tear an army apart single-handedly and feast on the plebs that compose their enemy, while also being an adept enough caster to eclipse any human through sheer experience

Did you ignore all the Draugr and Revenant stuff ITT?

Wasn't Strahd a 30th level necromancer?

That post was only addressing the plebs. Draugr and Revenants simply refuse to die and are thus not plebs.

Finally, a good hook for Monster Hearts.

Heh, In one of the games dead elves of the whole country rose up from their graves through sheer force of anger alone. They were so pissed when demon army were plundering their towns and forests that they stood up, took anything resembling a weapon and started killing those fuckers until they run out of demons, cultists and so on.

The only downside was that killing every demon in their country was not enough to calm them and even two hundred years later no one could set a foot there without risking being chopped into tiny little pieces by angry undead elves.

I WAS SUMMONED HERE BY 'HUMANS', WHO WISHED TO PAY ME TRIBUTE!

...

...

>That card.
So... it's useless to harmful in two player, and maybe useful in higher player counts.

...

I love this

Looks like a good way to turn around a game of commander where one person has a huge lead in life.

Lich.
The sheer number of awkward compulsions vampires must live over brings the question of whether or not it's really "you" under too much scrutiny.

>calls others plebeians
>proceeds to proclaim the literally plebbest form of undeath(seriously, even zombies have to be bitten and not immediately devoured) is the best

Doesn't say: Target Player, says "You" so you'd need to be in third, and then you'd be tied for second.

>Lord of Bones
>but no boner
Really makes one think

Ah, didn't notice that.

Fuck, last line got me.

is this going to end in a rap battle?

>Find Zombie
>Use Sculpt Corpse
>????
>Profit!

Slaymate, my old friend, where does the time go?

Literally any goal your accomplish or any thing you get, ever, will give you a high and then you'll return to your natural level of enjoyment (more or less). In order to find lasting joy in life you have to enjoy the passing moments of joy you get in between doing important stuff.

>The sheer number of awkward compulsions vampires must live over
Dracula had those taboos so he could use magic, not because he was a vampire.

Well, he was tutored by the Devil(supposedly) along with nine others in the arts of black magic.

They do get to scare you by looking into your eyes and I find that the coolest thing there is.
Plus, don't they get a bunch of OP lair actions ?

They're equal. Vampires have more perks and more weaknesses.

Liches have less perks, and less weaknesses.

On average liches are stronger because of the higher barrier of entry, but the strongest vampire beats the strongest lich.

If you get target a vampire's weakness, they're in trouble but usually have some counterplay, and likely some wards if they're old and smart. These weaknesses are probably in any fantasy world Bible, however. Even peasants probably have a good idea on what to do.

If you target a lich's weakness, all they have is their wards. Get past those and the lich is incredibly vulnerable and it doesn't even know it's in danger. But then again, good luck finding it.

You're all just jealous of my super spooky swagger.

>Liches have less perks, and less weaknesses.
you call magic "less perks", that's pretty funny

>but the strongest vampire beats the strongest lich.
i'm pretty sure wizards > vampires, mate

>If you target a lich's weakness, all they have is their wards
>all they have is their wards

On a scale of one to potato, how retarded are you?

>strongest vampire beats strongest lich
Wrong.

Strongest vampire still has to sleep, still has to consume blood, and still has to avoid things. Liches have no weaknesses that are even slightly comparable.

Magic isn't a perk of the form, it's a prerequisite. Vampires can be casters too. And both could be wizards. They have plenty of time.

The strongest liches have contingencies up the ass.

Vampires get steamrolled and enslaved.

Strongest liches are so fucking OP they don't even concern themselves with material existence