What is the purpose of lichdom?

What is the advantage of lichdom over other forms of eternal life like vampirism? Sure you dont need to drink blood but in a couple of settings, becoming a lich either rots your sanity away just doing the ritual or you need to eat souls anyway or else. Woulnt a wizard smart and powerful enough to reach lichdom find a simpler way to stave off death?

A. The wizard was a fuckup/idiot who got in over his head and wound up lichifying himself mostly unintentionally
B. The wizard in question was desperate and didn't have the time or wherewithal to go another route. (Dying of a magical disease or the like.)
C. The wizard was basically an insane VtM fan and in love with necromany to the point where he decided to become undead. (Remember, you can't spell necromancy without "romance".)
D. Got his ass cursed somehow and wound up that way through outside forces.
E. The wizard was so morally corrupt that it actually affected his magic which in turn transformed him. (The D&D "alignments are objective universal rules" route.)
Pick one.

fpbp

>Vampirism
burn to dust in the sun, have to constantly suck blood to survive, lose the ability to access basic human pleasures but the biology that desires them still remains
>bathing in virgin blood
messy, need to put up with virgins
>Witch/Warlock pact
beholden to some evil dick, usually need to suck the youth out of young people, see issues with bathing in virgin blood
>Become Lich
remove the biological drive to eat, sleep, or fuck. Gain immense magical power plus immunities to suffocation, poison, mind control. Get pursued by lawful good dicks but let's be real, it's not like that wasn't happening already if you were researching how to be a lich. And all you have to do to keep sane is keep reading new books and trying new shit which shouldn't be too hard when you can literally craft new planes of existence.

>What is the advantage of lichdom over other forms of eternal life like vampirism?

Vampirism has a shitton of limitations that lichhood doesnt.

>Sure you dont need to drink blood but in a couple of settings

Because thats dumb.

>becoming a lich either rots your sanity away just doing the ritual or you need to eat souls anyway or else.

Difference being that liches only eat souls if they want to, vampires NEED to drink blood.

>Woulnt a wizard smart and powerful enough to reach lichdom find a simpler way to stave off death?

No, lichhood is the ultimate conclusion of unenlightened immortality.

>beholden to some evil dick
Are you implying that going through lichdom doesn't make you the eternal bitch of Orcus?

so the only way to reach better immortality is inherently spiritual?

Do vampires create gods? No? Then fuck off.

I don't play in Forgotten Realms, so yeah, that's exactly what doesn't happen.

>Well, in MY setting...

Liches need at least one soul per day to not waste away, so yeah, they do need to eat souls.

om mutant fetus hum
om mutant fetus hum
om mutant fetus hum
...
How many more times until enlightenment, sensei?

:)

What setting? I've never played a setting where liches need to consume anything at all.

The thing about vampirisim is: RAW bin D&D, there's no downsides, but - well, By Rule Zero, and for the sake of narrative consistency, there are a metric assload.
*DEPENDING ON THE SETTING* vampirism has hooks and clauses attached to it the likes of which the common person is unlikely to accept in the face of eternity. These hooks are inclusive of and by no means limited to:

>Rigorously enforced bedtimes (punishable by death if you get seen in the daylight)
>Potential Subservience / bondage under a "sire". (Because Chad Swolefang sucked out your virgin blood in the first place, now you have to do what he says... and if he dies, you die too.)
>Unpleasantly limited dinner menu. (Who are we going to feed from tonight? A virgin's blood? What a surprise.)
>A wide variety of compulsatory behaviors (I must count *ALL* the grains of rice.)
>Rigorously enforced rules of etiquette (Ever seen "Let the Right One In"? Remember the bit with crossing the threshold?)
>Massive numbers of "allergies" (Garlic, running water, daylight, holy symbols, assorted others depending on the relative awareness of the GM).

the 5e MM definitively mentions it. although it also says that if they dont they eventually waste away into demiliches so eh.

Lichdom has the least limitations out of all forms of immortality short of divine ascension.
>body reforms if destroyed
>lacks weaknesses such as the vampire's sunlight vulnerability
>least upkeep unless you're in a setting that does some bullshit like needing to eat souls
>bitches love the skeletal mage-king aesthetic

Does it have to be a sentient's soul? If the only condition is "A soul", then could the lich like siphon a cockroach a day to keep himself going?

Liches don't give a shit about Orcus in the Forgotten Realms either.

Yes

Nah

Problem solved, then.

i think its proportional so you'd need, like a thousand cockroach souls to equal a human one.

Does it actually say that though, or are you just assuming? Because rules as physics is comedy gold.

i think im assuming. its been a while i looked at the MM entry for liches.

Being able to reconstitute yourself from a jar of pickles after you die is pretty handy.

>Jar of pickles
That is god damned genius.

I got you.

>Woulnt a wizard smart and powerful enough to reach lichdom find a simpler way to stave off death?
Lichdom is the best way anyone could find in their short lives.

Welp, it only says "a creature". That's good enough for me. Cockroachmancer is go.

It also doesnt specify how often, just 'periodically'.

DnD kinda goofed liches. I dont mind they put that in to stop them from just dissapearing from the world so they now stick around as villains (or become cockroach farmers in some other dimension), but the whole demilich thing is kinda strange going from 'ascended lich' to 'bargain-bin pocket lich'.

Yea, i can like the whole needing souls thing but the demilich rewriting im not a fan of. I liked the idea of a lich reaching some kind of magical apotheosis were his body is more of a nuisance to him than anything by this point.

No, it says towards the end that the creature is destroyed after one day.


Although it doesn't say that the *soul* is destroyed, and implies that it isn't when it says that only divine intervention can resurrect the creature.


So...

Think about it. If I exploited potions of longevity and found simulacrums were not safe enough to extend my life I would also opt to take the path into lichdom. I practiced all my life to attain my mastry of the world around me. Upon death I would lose all this knowledge and become a petitioner. I want to see how my choldren grow up, and have children of their own. Protect them and aid them as best I can. I want to provide knowledge and wisdom to my country. I would also like to see things evolve and grow. Living thousands of years and deciding when to finally snuff out life instead of letting other outside influences decide that for me?

nah man, i would do some evil to be a force for good for decades on end.

That is a real weird thing, since it was supposed to be not whatever the Lich who made the Tomb of Horrors name was.

Or Vecna.

>A lich who decides it would just be easier and safer to farm cockroaches for souls
>Sets up his lair in a warm cave with a bunch of skeleton roach farmers
>Researches the perfect setup for large scale roach farming and ensures they are all in peak health
>Every evening takes a stroll through the ranch, his grinning skull warmly looking at his roaches
>His phylactery is just a big jar always stuffed with thousands of cockroaches

Being a roach lich sounds kinda comfy

Frankly having a trinket that houses your immortal soul seems like a huge pain in the ass. I don't want to spend the rest of eternity worrying about my fucking knick knacks getting smashed by some cheeky hobo.

Dude, just become your own phylactery. Like, a golem suit or some shit.

I'm not sure. You can interpret this.
"Soul Sacrifices. A lich must periodically feed souls to its phylactery to sustain the magic preserving its body and consciousness. It does this using the imprisonment spell. Instead of choosing one of the normal options of the spell, the lich uses the spell to magically trap the target's body and soul inside its phylactery. The phylactery must be on the same plane as the lich for the spell to work. A lich's phylactery can hold only one creature at a time, and a dispel magic cast as a 9th-level spell upon the phylactery releases any creature imprisoned within it. A creature imprisoned in the phylactery for 24 hours is consumed and destroyed utterly, whereupon nothing short of divine intervention can restore it to life. A lich that fails or forgets to maintain its body with sacrificed souls begins to physically fall apart, and might eventually become a demilich."

Do roaches even have souls?

There's still probably better ways. You become a lich because you're paranoid as shit of being destroyed.

Wow, that's rude dude.

>No, it says towards the end that the creature is destroyed after one day.

Yeah, but it says nothing about how often the lich needs to do this. It speaks only of the process of maintaining the phylactery, not the duration its effects last.

Equating that with how often it needs to is like saying vampires need to pop their fangs in a new person after sucking the last one dry.

Right? I may have to do this if I ever play D&D again.

It doesn't say sentient, just creatures. So, roach farming is the way to go.

If it's a living creature it has a soul as far as I'm concerned. And, unless there's a rule somewhere contradicting it, that's what what I'm sticking with.

I agree. I wasn't talking about the frequency there, just the duration. And, since it's not specifically stated, I say the frequency is once per billion years.


Suck it, DM.

Lichdom is like the ultimate act of agency. You take your destiny into your own hands. When one becomes a vampire there is a violent act perpitrated against yourself, not always with your consent. Then in most settings you are also beholden to the one who turned you.
A lich is there own person. They are responsible for turning themselves into a monster

I've always kind of thought of the lich as a bargain bin immortality. Its technically easier, but requires a large moral sacrifice on the caster (some abhorrent act usually, and fuck good liches, they maybe can exist, but should be incredibly rare), plus the body isn't preserved. But the lichdom ritual is guaranteed to work. Every other method has a chance of failure.

You could spend your life devoted to your god, but they might not decide that you should be an immortal avatar or servant. Even just thinking of it as a possible reward makes you not suitable.
Various esoteric rituals and artifacts without confirmed successes, and unknown costs and drawbacks exist.
Vampirism comes with all sorts of drawbacks and makes you always tied to your master. Plus it requires the original vampire to decide you should be made into one, and not just lunch.

Basically the Lichdom is the walmart of immortality. Its kind of shitty, it may not be the best way to go about it, but you know it'll work for a while and the cost isn't all that huge.

Why wouldnt they?, its not like they are robots

You start out as a body that contains your soul. Being able to put the container away in the closet while you do dangerous shit is 100% an improvement.

yeah, but you get the worst "did I lock the front door?" syndrome ever.

I imagine a lich getting halfway to his destination of evil intent and going "fuck did I remember to activate the runes? Oh shit what about pit traps, did I arm those? Fuck better go back and check"
By the time he manages to do anything he's completely out of teleport spells, and is still at least a bit anxious.

I imagine that being pretty entertaining to play. Like As Good as it Gets with the undead.

acererak

Depends on what happens to your soul when the bobble is destroyed.

Does it just go back to your body when it is destroyed and then if your body is destroyed/if it already is it goes on to the (evil) afterlife? It's probably all upside in that case

If when it is destroyed you just don't have a fucking soul any more and when you die you are just gone, then it might not be worth it, depending.

It depends on the setting and how sure that lets you be that an afterlife exists, and how fucking bad of a place you are likely going to go when you die without being a lich anyway

>What is the advantage of lichdom over other forms of eternal life ... Wouldnt a wizard smart and powerful enough to reach lichdom find a simpler way to stave off death?

D&D has a ... "Rarity" meter? I don't know the right word for it. But presented in any written lore. Lichdom is the easiest way- and i use that term loosely- to obtain eternal life. Some of the power you get with it is just a bonus.
Funny enough Vampirism is the other "easy" way commonly presented in the D&D world.

Most other forms of eternal life are suppose to be / thought to be extremely rare and maybe even believed to be a rumor. Not to mention but depending on how much or which version of planar stuff you are getting into. Finding immortality without the express permission of the Gods is a way to end up on the Inevitable Shit list. So that eternal life only lasts as long as you can avoid truck-size metal fists. Undead-ification seems to avoid the whole Inevitable notice for unexplained reasons.

This is of-course all assuming you treat said forms of immortality how the books present them. Rare. and not say... treat them like how Veeky Forums sees wizards being 1 in 8 people common. If you do take the Veeky Forums this approach then whatever- get yourself proxied by the nearest god and never worry about anything again. Can I offer you some dragon transformation scrolls? They were just laying about.

A lich abides by no known laws, other than one:

>A Lich must never let their Phylactery fall into the hands of another.

Beyond that, they are completely immortal, as their souls are melded with an object. Potentially even an object of negligible importance.

Phylacteries don't need to be a great flask of soulsauce or a big spooky orb. It could literally be a patch on a bathrobe or a quill in some old dude's basement.

So beyond that, Lichdom requires nothing more in regards to sustenance. No necessity of feeding, no necessity of breathing, you sacrifice the need for everything. A powerful enough lich may guise themself among mortals, something vampires cannot.

More often than not, the ritual to become a lich is vastly more difficult because of the utter lack of downsides, else most evil lords would just become one. For one, more often than not, it's been necessary to bind one's soul to an object using the power of other souls, meaning the initial bind involves killing any number of other people (often times innocent civilians or cultists that follow your cause.)

If a lich only required the power of but one man, there would be way more and it wouldn't likely be as simple.
Basically, your trade off is
>Have to kill a few dozen people and receive eternal life
>All food and drink turns to ash in your mouth, since dead people can't taste shit
>You are more vilified than most immortals.
>You have to be extremely paranoid about one particular object, as that object is the one lethal target.
>You cannot go far from this object
>Unless you are exceptionally adept as an illusionist, your charisma is essentially 0 to anything but evil aligned or dark-neutral aligned characters because no one wants to talk to a dead man.


Whereas with other immortals, like Vampires:
>Lol Sunlight
>Lol Blood
>Lol Holy Water
>Lol Garlic, Wooden Stakes, and Blessed Silver (In some implements)

>But you have Charisma and you can actually eat, drink, and be merry, so there's that.

I always thought an immortal wizard would find a way to get arround the no-sex thing. Like with a really good glamour spell. Or with a ghost dick/vag

>learn invisible servant
>turn the lights off

That's how you get a free maid GF to fuck with.

Just cast an animate object spell on one of those 20lb pussy and ass slabs that people fuck

Polymorph?
Transform yourself into a living creature and all the negatives are gone without sacrificing any of the positives

>the lich sets up a very profitable extermination service. All the vermin souls he can eat, and with enough left over to sell to other liches.
>with the extra cash he opens a chain of pet stores specializing in turtles.

So, what intricate bullshit does a person have to go through in order to become a lich? What is the ritual in your setting that turns regular men into the Acereraks of the world

Depends on which edition you're looking at.

One I remember was called the "ritual of endless night" or something like that. It involved some seriously messed up shit like killing a baby by your own hand, bleeding an angel, drinking a cocktail of poisons, doing rolls to determine whether you died for real instead of succeeding.

I think that as dnd went on, it became increasingly vague, but still decidedly sinister and corrupt, such that only a high-level spellcaster of indisputably villainous character would go through with it, and/or that the powers involved would quickly turn someone into a monster if they weren't already.

5e has the 'Clone' spell at 9th level.

A powerful enough spellcaster could just clone themselves and have the clone be a young adult instead of their old age, effectively making them immortal while not having to lose their dick/vag

Don't the clones sit mature to your age though? They're like contingency resurrections but they can't extend your natural life span.

Did anyone save that thread where liches are hiding their phylactery up a guys butt.

>"This spell grows an inert duplicate of a living creature as a safeguard against death. This clone forms inside a sealed vessel and grows to full size and maturity after 120 days; you can also choose to have the clone be a younger version of the same creature. It remains inert and endures indefinitely, as long as its vessel remains undisturbed. At any time after the clone matures, if the original creature dies, its soul transfers to the clone, provided that the soul is free and willing to return. The clone is physically identical to the original and has the same personality, memories, and abilities, but none of the original’s equipment. The original creature’s physical remains, if they still exist, become inert and can’t thereafter be restored to life, since the creature’s soul is elsewhere."

>"-you can also choose to have the clone be a younger version of the same creature. It remains inert and endures indefinitely, as long as its vessel remains undisturbed."

That seems pretty cut-and-dry to me that Clone can simply be used to attain the exact form of immortality a Lich has without having to worry about devouring souls, killing babies, losing appendages, and going insane.

Clone just doesn't allow a phylactery to be something as simple as a coin.

Correct me if I'm wrong though, like if there is some kind of other rule I'm not remembering that makes this not possible.

Yeah, I think I put the cap up that one user's ass.

This is proof WOTC doesnt give a single shit about high-level play whatsoever

The Virgin Lich vs. the Chad Vampire.

>impart your soul into your favorite book when you die, because you couldn't think of anything more meaningful and also muh hidden in plain sight
>Thinks that difficulty of transformation to undead=better
>killed all his friends to achieve power, fuck you Griffith
>magically removed all ways to have fun, except reading
>0 CHA, autistic screeches at anyone who disturbs him

VS

>Uses the blood of virgins to stay undead; doesn't need it but they beg him to take it
>Parties exclusively after sundown; has never been seen in daylight
>Has never eaten garlic bread, even before his transformation
>spreads rumors that holy water and silver can hurt him; in reality, openly laughs in the face of God and nature
>killed his sire immediately, has never known an undeath outside of being the head of his lineage
>23 CHA, is beloved and revered by all

The choice is obvious.

>But the lichdom ritual is guaranteed to work
Not even that. At least in 2e it requires a successful saving throw(and one that you're unlikely to make on a 2+, at that) as well as following the ritual(which you'll have to figure out on your own) precisely, otherwise you just die. Pathfinder also has some shit about failed liches.

The REAL upside of becoming a lich is that if you succeed, it's going to be very difficult to destroy you even compared to other immortals. Not only does your body need to be destroyed(which is no easy feat itself, given that you're a high level spellcaster AND have bunch of other advantages), but whoever did that is also going to have to locate and destroy your phylactery - which, if you're any good at abjuration, should be damn near impossible to find regardless of divinations used. Meanwhile, to kill, say, an outsider, you generally just need to kill their real body. And the same goes for most other forms of immortality(vampires being one of the few exceptions, but then, they have plenty of other downsides).

"Easiest" would probably be becoming a ghoul. Becoming a vampire basically requires either being bitten and enslaved by another vampire, or a divine curse. Becoming a ghoul? You just need to engage in cannibalism and you have a good chance of becoming one after you die(unless you get buried in a blessed ground or your body is destroyed).

Only failed liches are beholden to Orcus

It's the ultimate way for a wizard to protect their virginity for all time. Thus attaining ever greater power.

5e MM mention soul-eating, but not the frequency you state.

Lichdom = Total ego death
Vampirism = Potential ego death.
The difference is that Netheril popularized Lichdom, and Vampirism and the factors concerning it's state are not well known.

See

Oh, hell yes. Painfully obvious.
Time to be a lich, baby!

>I don't play in Forgotten Realms, so yeah, that's exactly what doesn't happen.

Do you play in Greyhawk?

Also, you know, the whole "sparkling" thing

Nope. Mordheim.

I'm Pickled Lich!

From the great land of Lichtenstein!

The main advantage is you're a lich, the pinacle of wizardom. Means you're so devoted to magic you're ready to do extremeley unsavory stuff for it. You're a wizard. You're a wizardly wizard who wizards.
My current PC in our high-level campaign is a lich, because she wanted to read *all the books*, and sleeping/being a mortal was time-inefficient. That's why you should become a lich. Vampires don't read, they seduce men/women, and still have to "sleep". They're bards. Liches can nerd out for eternity.
(Sure, other casters can become liches too, but the archetypical one is a wizard.)

Honestly, we don't see bardic liches nearly enough.

Play Crypt of the Necrodancer.

As a GURPS player, I look to the awesome radioactive liches in Technomancer. Created by the CIA in the 50s as a secret project to artificially imbue mundanes with The Gift, they are high level mages, AND have a shitton of immunities and powers, AND are fucking radioactive. Fucking scary as shit.

They could easily be used in other settings as capstone immortality transformations. Obviously not the preferred route compared to other transformations but in some settings either it's the only option or comes with enough bonus power to make it all worth it.

That's because bards are far better suited for emancipated spawn.
Aside from being thematically more appropriate for a bard to become undead through a grand tale of being killed, turned and then rescued by their friends, if their sire was incorporeal the bard gains a massive advantage; and, should they also manage to get the Ghostly Grasp feat (which lets them treat anything they want as having Ghost Touch modifier, and only requires 15 Charisma for which a bard should easily qualify) there's basically no downside.
Of course a sorcerer would also make a great candidate for one.