Why no Lich in the mage kit? Or HLA...
Diomedes33
Member Posts: 144
In my RP days, if I played a mage, he would always be tempted to transform into a lich in search of more power. Don't see why it couldnt be done in this game being that liches are actually in the game.
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As a Bhaalspawn any death of Charname is a permadeath, so that seems to make lichhood difficult to achieve.
Sounds peachy.
Edit: GODhood.
I did a short run with an all-undead party where CHARNAME was a lich, but it's obviously blatantly overpowered.
More reliable and possible... If an npc died, I would like the opportunity to mummify them, or raise them as a zombie.
Lichdom can be completed quite quickly, but requires an act of considerable evil.
Evil acts include.
Popping all the bubble wrap before posting a valuable artifact.
Serving half a litre of beer as a pint.
Finding a begger and making them eat broccoli.
So you see... Lichdom is easily achievable in the time frame available.
Only game that i have ever seen that let's you play as a Lich, was the Might and Magic series. M&M 7/8/9 let you become a Lich as your class promotion. Sadly, Ubisoft got ahold of the M&M franchise and didn't have playable Liches in M&M X.
There are plenty of games out there that let you play as a Vampire, plenty that let you play as a Werewolf, yet almost none that let you play as a Lich. Not even TES series has allowed you to become a Lich yet (although there are some awesome mods for that).
Stupid idea is stupid. Just give yourself kilswd01.itm with EEKeeper (change it's weapon type if you're desperate enough), have fun.
In the mod it turned your character into a proper lich, changed your alignment to evil, with undead immunities to energy drain, death effects, stun, confusion, fatigue, cold damage etc. But it also gave you vulnerabilities to anti-undead spesific weapons and spells. I don't remember the name of the mod, or how it implemented lich spell immunities among other things. But it is doable.
Either way, if you can be a half god, half elf/orc, and half wtf ever; that makes as little sense as being a bhaal spawn that became a lich/
The reason you can't become a lich is because it would be redundant.
Because being a god is overrated?
Why just be the Lord of murder when I can be the murder god of the undead?
But I could see a Dread Necromancer base class being adjusted and implemented that deals only with necromancy spells and turns you into a Lich at level 20.
http://alcyius.com/dndtools/classes/dread-necromancer/index.html
I can sort of agree with the arguments against being a lich since you're the reincarnation of the god of murder and have the option to ascend out of it.... thing is, I also agree with lichdom beforehand for more awesomeness and to help combat other bhaalspawn in ToB...
Only drawback is that while yes it takes us mere mortals a long time to get out of chapter freaking 1 if you do everything let alone complete the game.... you're on a rampage to find Imoen and kick irenicus' face in, so you don't really spend enough time rp wise to become one, let alone research it.
Remember you've went from being a beard-less boy (or non-dwarf female) and killing sarevok to a jaunt down the sword coast to being snafud by irenicus in the space of what? A few months to a year?
Factor that and you're in your what? Mid 20s? You aren't even on par with half of what Gorion knew if you go knowledge base let alone becoming a lich.
You're just stronger due to being an avatar of a god.
So in the interest of rp and sticking to the story line... I'd say no. Don't add to the core game.
"Turning" undead and "dying and rising again as undead" aren't synonymous, as I already stated. I don't understand where the "dying" part comes into play if you're just placing your soul in a phylactery and filling your empty shell with negative energy. You didn't die, you transformed I to the undead. So where does this "you have to die first" come into place?
The end result is undead yea, but aren't you using magic to change yourself on a biological level to get there? Some people become liches to escape death, so one would assume that the process or one of the processes to lichdom in fact bypasses death to become undead.
Take, say, a zombie. It's a reanimated corpse, so they died - but now they're undead. They didn't go from living to undead, they went living->dead->undead. You could even argue that "undead" be interpreted as "no longer dead, but not alive again", in which case it would fit nicely with the whole Lich theme.
I am not well-versed in D&D lore, but I do seem to recall that the process involves creating a powerful potion, which takes years to research and get the ingredients for etc. That potion when drunk will actually kill the imbiber, however if they did everything correctly they will then RISE AGAIN as a lich some time later. How and when the whole phylactery thing comes into play I'm uncertain. I'm sure there's volumes of material that explain it in detail.
A lich is an undead. To become **UN**-dead. You must first be dead.
A lich however CHEATS death by placing it's soul in limbo so to speak. In this case a phylactery....
If you want an easier way to... justify it.... read Anne rice and the vampire chronicles. (Vampire lestat, interview with the vampire.
Your body dies. It's dead. Your conciousness remains. In terms case of her vampires, their essence, humanity, elfanity, dwarfity.... soul... is within the body.
The body is dead. It's just powered by the engine or essence or soul that once inhabited it.
It's why you have to burn them alive (fire or sun) so the soul has nowhere to go but on to the next phase of its journey.
In the case of a lich it's in a jar/amulet/refractory/ect.
You can get really creative and speculative if you want. Davy Jones from pirates of the carribean was a lich. So was Barbosa and his crew in dead man's chest.
Voldemort from harry potter was a lich.... Dorian grey... I could go on...
They were all walking talking corpses that quite simply had cheated death... or if you prefer... knew they were dead but simply required some stupid poorly scripted CHAR NAME to come along, hold up a mirror (flashy wand, rusty old knife, gold coin) and say nope. Ur dead, now give me ur lewts.
So... do ya really wanna be a lich?
Me... I'd rather be the prodigal child of the god of freaking murder and embrace that and become a god than some dam lich where any idiot can come along and gank me because I left my soul on a fence post somewhere.
*grin*
To rebuttal or not to rebuttal? I've been gone a while so let's do it!
-laughs-
I can agree with you to a degree, what I don't agree with the most is the vampire lich comparison. Because even if we throw out the type of vampire brim stokes brought into the spot light with his story Dracula and look at actually mythological type of creatures that closely resemble vampires as we know them today. The Jiangshi for example, the are by definition reanimated corpse, meaning the original consciousness has left the body, that person has died. Most depictions of becoming a vampire follow along the lines of most depictions of becoming a traditional zombie, the infected dies before their transformation is fully completed, and not every time is it the conscious of the original being that remains in control
This is where different series have their own interpretation of what a vampire is, what defines a vampire, does the vampire retain its human conscious, does it gain a bestial conscious; and should they be allowed to sparkle in the in the sunlight? But one this that remains the same is the most basic ideas of a vampire which is the will or necessity to drink blood or plasma.
A lich other hand, @Lord_Tansheron actually has the right idea. You first need to define what "death" is and the processes of achieving it or escaping it. My original question stayed close to the bare basics of what makes a lich, placing ones soul in a phylactery, and this will make one undead. Yet there maybe series out there that use phylacteries in a similar manner but doesn't male the character undead, just unable to die through normal means.
Yea ye, I know, I just straw manned that last bit hard. So lets just look at DND lore for a minute. If in its lore, if dying is actually a requirement, then that's all that is really needed to be said, but if the lore only speaks of placing one's soul into a phylactery. Then there is no evidence that they actually die, and dying is being attached to it because of the preconceived notion that before there can be undeath, or unlife there first must be death. Its understandable notion, one that I wouldn't even argue against if its lore written. But, if that notion isn't lore written then I see no reason that going from living to lich, does not and can bypass death or dying.
I mean death is no longer just ones body no longer functioning properly, but a very important part of death is the loss of consciousness or the consciousness nolonger being attached to the body or at least the evidence that the consciousness is no longer there.
With that said, being the god of murder is just as boring as being a lich.
HASHTAG DRAGONLYFE