Pinning this as a correction: Overlapping spell effects do not stack! So you might want to sequence the cloudkills and replace them with more symbols and walls of force. My apologies for the incorrect info acolytes. ANOTHER EDIT: The contingency with the sending spell would not work. Replace it with Far Step or a similar spell.
@@TheJoelft Sure! So spells that are AoE spells that affect an area do not stack. So, cloudkill would not allow for multiple procs of damage at the same time. I don't think this would apply to instant damage effects like fireballs, but I'm not sure actually. As for contingency the spell must target the caster so he could only send a sending spell to himself; not very helpful!
So the party once left their wizard stuck 10,000 years in the past during a cataclysm known as The Fall. They could have, at almost any time, went back and opened the portal up to look for him (they basically had the key and the wizard didn't). Instead, they just left. When they finally got back to the main city they found it under siege by a Lich that had built up a staggeringly massive undead army without anyone noticing. Well, he did have 10,000 years and the knowledge of how history played out to help him along.
Some of the best antagonists are former PCs who just...Had A Bad Day. Sometimes they don't even need a Bad Day, if they were minmaxed murderhobos to begin with.
@@HaloInverse the secondary antagonist of my friend's current campaign was at one point my old PC who died due to a murderhobo's negligence and had his corpse merged with a lich lol. Very bad day, very bad day indeed.
@@HaloInverse oh, you best bet he's still hanging around. I'm pretty sure every place he went to has earned him at least one bounty right now, and that's not even considering the fact that the lich is attempting to possess him lol
To me, the point should be that it will be almost impossible to kill a lich if approaching it on its terms. If a campaign calls for the destruction of a lich, I think the campaign should include the laborious steps to research the lich, find out its weaknesses and countermeasures to its wards, slowly stripping the support from it or maybe luring it out. The destruction of a lich should not be an encounter, but an entire campaign.
@@The_Archlichdon’t feel like it’s necessary to be inflammatory to 5e players when that style of lich is almost entirely on the DM to do the heavily lifting on execution of actually making it fun for their players. Frankly I know DMs more capable of doing something like this now days then I did back in 3e or PF 1e. If your goal is just to beat your players and not make the process engaging and sporting for them then that’s not a great DM
@@The_Archlich Sometimes it's more fun to call people out than actually criticize their poor choices. Doesn't mean you hate them or even dislike them. Tough love and all that. Also, how smart are your players that you built Xanax and thought: "Yeah, this is a reasonable amount of traps to subject them to."?
My favorite lich I ran had a portal that went to a "desert" It was the location of his second tower on the moon. The players were horrified that they no longer had oxygen or gravity (things the lich really didn't need to worry about)
Even better in older editions since the easy spells to protect you from this were planar protection spells which offer no benefit if you're still on the prime material plane.
@@godofthunder4242 Bingo! They see what they assume was another plane. OOOOoooHHH! Better prepare! Use up that last spell slot you'll be fine! Fast forward to a bunch of dorks in armor floating and blue.
kinda reminds me of the skateboarder lich whos phylatery is on a comet with an orbit that comes just close enough to earth to maintain the spell every 10 years
@@MogofWarsee THIS is how lichs should be portrayed, extremely smart, petty, ingenious and dryly humerus. In my mind the best example of how lichs should act actually comes from warhammer 40k, the dynamic between trazyn and orikan are exactly how I imagine 2 lichs interacting and this reminds me of that.
"Planeshift runes to the worst places you can think of" Imagine pulling up on a lich and he just instantly sends you into a room full of people trying to make small talk with you.
Even worse: it's just a Demiplane filled with all the people who previously attempted to kill the Lich, and it's a Dead-Magic Zone; because the first person who got sent there was a Wild Magic Sorcerer who had used their last Spell Slot before their party got teleported into there; with their first spell of the day being Wild Magic with a Dead Magic Zone effect. Now the Lich just dumps people there with no clue about their fate, because he cannot even Scry on the location, due to the Dead Magic Zone, so he presumes everyone just died; but it gets so much worse, because the plane itself provides the required sustenance, and the characters won't even age until returning to the Prime Material Plane; so they are stuck there in a room with an ever-increasing number of inept adventurers for all eternity until they get crushed to death, or they decide to end their lives on their own terms.
@@dabluflcn Worse: it only ends once the speaker has cast Ritual Cast Geas & Cast Mass Suggestion at 9th level, coercing everyone present into buying into the Time Share, at which point they then get burdened with crippling debt; the worst part is that the property has Asmodeus as the landlord, and the property is managed by his daughter; it's located on the 8th level of Avernus, and the daughter is constantly renovating the building, burdening the Time Share investors with crippling debt for a place they will likely never be capable of visiting.
I like to imagine Liches meeting for symposiums to discuss immortality tactics, and the passive-aggressive mind games that would ensue. Lich 1: "I've got over 40 cloudkill glyphs surrounding my phylactery." Lich 2: "Bah, you should always diversify your phase 2 glyphs. It only takes one jackass with poison immunity to get through all that magic. I use a combination of cloudkill, circle of death, and prismatic sprays to keep them guessing." Lich 1: "That's overkill. After the ten shield golems (all of whom are carrying a pair of magic missile wands), my ever-expanding collection of standby skeletons, and the anti-magic field airlock, there's no chance a warforged ends up at my phase 2 line." Lich 3: "Oh, to be a young lich again. It's nostalgic, listening to you two go on about glyphs. I long for that lost passion." Lich 1: "Don't tell me you don't use glyphs, I won't buy into your paranoia psy-op." Lich 3: "Oh I do. I just prefer Modify Memory." Lich 2: "What?! That doesn't even kill them! What memory could you possibly erase that would stop them?" Lich 3: "It's not about the memory you take, but the one you give. I just make them think we talked out our differences, bonded over a cup of tea, and agreed to stop fighting. They always leave after. I like to think of them as... hyper-competent familiars. Sometimes they'll learn the Sending spell *just* so they can chat me up later. I've got a lot of information out of random heroes that used to hate me, I have my homunculus compile it all. I need six archive demiplanes just to fit it all. One even sent me a post card last month with a picture of his newborn. He named him after me. So precious." Lich 1 & 2: "... What the hell is wrong with you?"
ok, the comedy made me roll on the floor laughing, but the modify memory into making the party believe they actually found the phylactery and destroyed it...
My personal fave: prep a 2nd lich lair, completely different and significantly easier than the real one. Put some glyphs of modify memory around each entrance to the lair. If ALL party members fail the save, the lich modifies their memory so to believe they've already defeated the lich. Don't tell your players this, RP it by running your fake dungeon. Killing the lich and destroying their phylactery should feel a little too easy. Be sure to railroad them to leave the way they came. As they walk over that area on their way out, reality resumes, and they'll hopefully return home thinking they've defeated the lich. They'll likely realize their mistake eventually, especially if they looted anything. Since any memories they have of the inside of the lair are fake, anything they think they took isn't in their packs like they'd expect. It's best not to have any magic equipment in the fake dungeon that a PC might want to equip. Depending on the circumstances, you might let them notice that their spell slots and abilities haven't actually been expended. Also, in reality, no time would've passed while their memories were being modified. If they left the lair with serious wounds, they should immediately notice they're healed. Keep in mind, just because they realize something's off, doesn't mean they automatically know their memories have been modified and the entire dungeon was fake. Let them figure it out. But, if the confusion ends up ruining everyone's fun, you can have a helpful NPC detect that their memories have been modified. If and when they return, the fact that the layout of the dungeon is completely different should serve as confirmation that their previous experience was fake. Depending on how long it takes them to solve the mystery, the lich might add more defenses or relocate entirely by the time they return.
One addition Josh, I would not tell or inform my players of them not being wounded or not having spent their spellslots. Their perception has been altered, so until they roll a perception check well they would just notice small things to be different. But if they do not check their inventory, or check how they are doing then I would chuck that up to them being so deep in the new memories that they just don't realize. That said I would not lie to them, and I would lower the DC every day or the further away they get from the lair.
I always loved the idea of a Lich that works for a township. The town keep sending adventuring parties to their doom and in return he provides them with menial labour. He even gets invited to festivals and is quite the storyteller. Town needs that dangerous, dryad infested forest cleared out? Need some help building that log cabin? Too cold to hunt for game/food? Want help planting crops? Ask the Lich that lives in the tomb down the road. Skeletor won't mind as long as you keep sending "adventurers" his way.
I love these types of villains who are willing to cooperate to achieve their goals as opposed to just being one dimensional genocidal maniacs An evil ruler who takes great care of his subjects since he knows that a happy and safe population is a productive one will likely be very difficult to overthrow as he'd most probably have the peoples' support in most cases, barring only the most righteous fanatics
See? This. Likeable Liches in the front... Death, gore, sacrifice and unholy experimentation in the back. :) Like Pablo Escobar, except he's a Lich who likes to play management simulators with towns and cities. Just make their personality entirely detached from reality, happy to have tea with the players, actually talking about their own accomplishments whilst bragging about their war crimes... You know, Rimworld player stuff. :D Bonus points if the nearby villagers have stockholm syndrome to the point of attacking the players on sight after getting wind of their favourite DOOT boye having been slain.
I imagine the characters get to the town and see undead around the town and the townspeople acting normal. They ask the first townsfolk they see what is going on and they ask in a jovial reply, " Oh hello there! What a great day we're having." The npc then gets jabbed in the chest by their buddy and they quickly change their tune, "Thank the gods, adventurers! We have been plagued by an undead menace for many years. You must help us!"
I like this, though I think its worth mentioning the Lich breaking a staff of the magi is a great way to really scare your players, since that explosion is no joke.
Unless they changed it in 5th edition, that would require a Disjunction spell by the lich. Any 15th level spellcaster should be able to recognize, and counter a Disjunction since that spell takes a full round to cast. Break his concentration and the spell fizzles.
I had my Lich place their phylactery on a rather nice blue sapphire that was a family relic passed down in the royal family, the heroes of my story literally didn't know that it was underneath their nose at all locked away in the kingdoms vault, or draped around the princesses neck at the ball. It was amazing watching them scramble for a solid in game three months to find this thing. Eventually one of them was like 'wait a minute.' While they DID kill the Lich, they're now fugitives of the kingdom because they failed persuasion checks. Everyone thinks hiding them is the best thing to do. I say, put it somewhere that's so common nobody thinks it's bad. If you REALLY want a fun lich, change their stats around. I once made a Paladin Lich. Party went in thinking it was some Wizard only to be met with what is basically a Warlock on steroids. Dude was throwing eldritch blasts, swinging a warpick, and wearing heavy armor while floating around. One of my greatest creations.
@@freeb455 First and foremost, the Paladin Lich I used in my example, was altered from the main stablock the regular Lich has. I did make a fully homebrewed Paladin Lich, but that's harder to use. Oathbreaker Paladin Lich Strength : 20+5 Dex: 16+3 Con: 16:3 Int: 14+2 Char: 16+3 ---------------------------------------------------------- So, this was a 8th level former adventurer, who put 7 levels into Oathbreaker, and one into Warlock (fiend) Aura of Hate - allows allies within 10 feet of you to get a +3 (one minimum) to attack rolls using the charisma modifier. (So all his undead minions he fights with, as long as they're within 10 feet) Eldritch Blast Command Burning Hands Crown of Madness Darkness Inflict Wounds Hellish Rebuke ------------------------------------------------- I gave him three magic items Armor of the Guardians - While this armor was originally created for good, my Paladin stumbled upon it, and used it for evil means. Mask of the dragon queen - requires attunement Shield of the Hidden lord (nice +4 to AC) Weapon - Warpick (literally just a regular warpick, nothing special) Ring of Air Elemental Command (must attune, and kill air elemental, but you can fly around.) Of course, I could keep adding ALL the information, but you can pretty much fill in the rest with whatever you want. This Paladin Lich was an absolute beast with all the resistances though
I feel like this could spark a whole campaign arc if the party is morally neutral and steals the pretty gem. After failing to kill the lich through various decoy phylacteries, you then reveal that the real villain was the loot they found along the way. And potentially sold to a trader 3 in game months ago. (Have I just re-created a worse version of Guardians of the Galaxy?)
@@Erebus2075 You do realize there are spells to conceal things right? Nystul's Magic Aura. You place an illusion on a creature or an object you touch so that divination spells reveal false information about it. The target can be a willing creature or an object that isn’t being carried or worn by another creature. When you cast the spell, choose one or both of the following effects. The effect lasts for the duration. If you cast this spell on the same creature or object every day for 30 days, placing the same effect on it each time, the illusion lasts until it is dispelled. The treasury had multiple secret passages to allow the royal family to escape with some money in the event of an invasion. The lich used this to enter, cast this spell, and then leave. Or if you want to use my reasoning, he had one of his little evil underlings do it for him, since he couldn't use magic himself. As long as thirty days went off without anybody messing with the stone, which if it's locked in a vault only to be shown for special occasions is plausible. The ONLY time anyone could've figured out it was "evil" was through dispelling. I love your sarcasm, but there are ways in D&D to make things appear not as they are. Of course, I know you're going to say "but detect magic" nobody ever thought to detect magic on it. As it appeared to never have magic in the first place unless it was worn, which never cursed anybody, or have negative impacts. Generally speaking, everyone thought "Whoever puts this on, this cool rock looks enchanted." It's not an amazing reason, but since it did nothing negative nobody was concerned about it.
Had a lich build his tower over a river with a seemingly docile water elemental beneath, the faces my players made when the nearly dead lich just opened a chute and dropped his phalactery into the river for his bound elemental to carry to a sea base… beautiful. If I run a lich he’s either got a (literal) list of exit plans or a painful gut wrenching gauntlet to get through before you even see him.
Try adding in a Darkness Glyph along with it so they can’t teleport to the Elemental or just in general. Rather than Counter-spell a Glyph could have a Darkness spell. Most spells require sight and most characters will not have Dawn up or have Devil’s Sight. Glyph holds the Concentration and the spellcasting of at least 1 PC gets shut down while the Lich’s Truesight ignores it.
I think one of the funnest ideas for a Lich's phylactery is the realization the lich might have had that "Simpler is often better". Step 0: Cast Nondetection on yourself, really just keep that on all the time. You're a powerful caster, a level 3 spell and 25gp worth of diamond dust every 7.5 hours for safety isn't too much to ask. Step 1: Construct as small a Phylactery as possible, preferably in the form of some small opaque gem that might casually be mistaken for a rock. If otherwise possible: an object of such extreme insignificance as a bead of sand or a mustard seed. The original phylactery may even have had a powerful transfiguration spell cast upon it. Step 2: Cast Sequester on Phylactery. Step 3: Cast potent arcane wardings upon the Phylactery as normally afforded all Phylacteries - making it very difficult for conventional methods to destroy or harm. Often times such protections include immunity to non-magical damage. Step 4: Place the phylactery in the most obscure non-magical place imaginable - preferably far from civilization. Such valid locations as buried deep in a desert, the bottom of an ocean, in the top of a mountain too high for mortals to breathe, at the bottom of an acid lake and of course - my favorite: an insignificant crater on a moon. Step 5: Finally cast other contingency related spells that trigger in emergency if the phylactery is actually somehow damaged or moved too far and other emergencies. Step 6: Stand back and revel in your simple budget phylactery defense plan, now you won't have to divest entire countries of their magic scrolls over the course of centuries in order to adequately protect your soul! Step 7: Meanwhile, build up that dream phylactery vault you've always wanted, you deserve it! Mean time your phylactery will be safely guarded by its gross mundanity and obscure locale.
..But is it truly safe? I like to think that with 20 INT you fall prey to Overthinking. Also, I think liches are competitive, ruthless predators and hunt other liches if an opportunity presents itself. Simply because of something close to a Prisoners Dilemma. Maybe its best to keep the phylactery close..!
Maybe this is part of the reason the trope of them being smug is so popular. Also, is there a way to keep anyone from detecting what spells are on it if somehow someone finds out it is magical?
Yeah, nice idea. I though prefer them to make their Phylactery as the "common" ruby of sapphire and try to get it into king's treasury. There is nothing more amusing when the heroes get rewarded for the "destruction" of the evil-evil lich with his ACTUAL Phylactery and leave none the wiser. Gives good opportunities for insanely funny comebacks.
The negative energy thing always got me too. Even in the background lore, there have been liches who made their home in the negative energy plane due to their own unique physiology. Having them even vulnerable to negative energy is like having a fire elemental getting damaged by alchemist fire.
Here's a thing I did once. I made a Lich that invented a new type of phylactery called a "Bio-Phylactery" that was tied to every person he managed to subjugate on his island lair. Whenever he took a significant amount of damage, it'd automatically transfer into an NPC, causing them to drop dead instead. It was a bit of a puzzle fight where if they kept charging him blindly, they'd kill every person they were trying to save in the process. The people were also cursed so that they could not tell the party about this mechanic. The only thing they could say was "we'll all die if you fight him" It was very fun to run.
They broke the bond between the Lich and his Phylacteries using a high-risk wish spell that could have killed everyone the Lich was tied to in the process, but they ended up rolling a Nat 20 on the arcana checks and managed to successfully break their curse. This Lich was more of a minor villain of the campaign so I was perfectly fine with this outcome, but if I ever run this kind of villain again, I have a lot more ideas now. @@interesting...6009
End? They don't end. You _may_ find the last of the contingencies the lich has already implemented, but they don't end. It's entirely valid to have a party "encounter" a lich that was vanquished five hundred years ago, they're just tripping over a few more contingencies that never got cleaned up after its defeat.
Absolutely, I'd _definitely_ watch those. I've always watched videos from Runesmith and the like about those concepts, but I've never seen the most optimal things you could do with monster tactics, it's always just "an average example that'll challenge but not kill experienced players." NAH man, I want something that's one party member away from a TPK IF THEY'RE LUCKY, I don't want some piddly little challenge. I want my players to enter without any prior experience and come out as hardened veterans that could take on the original Tomb of Horrors AND LIVE. I'd love a maxed-out series like that.
@@RandomInternetStranger this right here lol! I find all these tutorials on "How to min max your PC to piss off your DM" and I know my players find them. I gotta get a little unholy revenge
I still like the idea of a Lich tricking an ancient dragon into protecting his phylactery, by just using a priceless artpiece as phylactery, I'm pretty sure it's easy to get that into the hoard of an Ancient Dragon.
If you can craft 9-level scrolls, craft one Simulacrum and as many Shapechanges as you can spare resources on. Wish for simulacrum of a dragon that guards your phylactery. Every following day after that, until you run out, hand it Shapechange to transform in a monster, acquiring all its features(including resistances/immunities) without losing its own, use Change Shape feature of dragon to become humanoid, and Wish for Simulacrum of it. Be wise with the last form, it retains HP(half of it) and physical abilities. After you are done, hand it Sim scroll and make it use it on itself. Sim Sim shall be your backup in case someone beats Sim - with just one Shapechange scroll you can get Sim up again. In fact, if you are willing to discard Sim, you can Wish for Sim Sims Simulacrum, and use Sim Sim Sim as completely disposable unit. However its gonna be a hella glass cannon: that based on Ancient Gold/Red Dragon has mere 68 hp. It should have ALL immunities that exist in the game, meaning the ONLY ways do damage it are magical piercing/bludgeoning(to which it has resistance as Treant). Now, it can be Dispel Magci`ed, but if you used Flumph it is immune to it. Anti-Magic Field phases it out, but as soon as AMF falls it is back. EDIT: You might also Clone Sim to make it non-magical. Then you can Sim the Clone for disposable minions. EDIT Edit: And Clone the Sim Clone Sims also.
While that's very cool and flavorful, if we're talking "pure pragmatism," a Lich with thousands of years at his disposal would be remiss not to rely on layers of planeshift fuckery and instant death traps. Why would you even keep your phylactery on the material plane for example? Dragons can be defeated, even befriended, and they're usually dumber than liches (especially most evil dragons) even if they are fairly intelligent.
My lich's phylactery is an amulet given to their champion who's decked to the nines in magic armour and weapons, whose only job is to circumnavigate the world and slaughter everything in his path This way, his phylactery is constantly being filled by death and constantly on the move If he dies, he'll rejuvenate near someone who is basically a bodyguard and he can just teleport back to his lair (the bodyguard has a spellscroll of teleportation circle that the lich will supply him after every rejuvenation)
@@The_Archlich if you are famililar with "The Order of the Stick" webcomic, the lich antagonist does exactly this. Although I cant remember if his cleric bodyguard knows that his amulet is a phylactery.
A lich was a high level wizard... level 18 to 20, before undeath. They have potentially had a thousand years of more to research or gather EVERY ARCANE SPELL EVER CREATED. I never run the book stat block spell list. The lich has a lot pile that would make Tiamat drool in envy... and it's mostly magic as they have little use for gold. They might just have their undead servants cart the gold out in wheelbarrows and dump it. The lich is a magical researcher, obsessed with seeking new, better, more powerful spells and magic items. They would have accumulated spell scrolls in ceiling high stacks. They'd have rooms lined with shelving for potions. (and only potions the lich could use... no healing potions) They'd have permanent "Guards and Wards" spells cast to cover almost their entire lair. They'd have glyphs of warding cast in ways a mortal could not, because the lich is not mortal. Unseen servants, undead, and possibly even some living persons who might even worship the lich as if it's a deity (which would amuse the lich greatly) Now... run THAT lich....
Yeah I feel people have kind of lost the plot on the whole part where they were compared to demigods on the regular, but I can't besmirch newer players for not fully understanding what a lich is truly supposed to be if it isn't a baby still securing its lair.
Well, why? The players can only beat him by exploiting his hidden weakness escape room riddles anyways. It would never be any random encounter fight but a boss kill exploit the players have ti discover and apply correctly.
I usually think giving the Lich a damage transfer affect to undead he controls helps him be less squishy without direct HP boost. Whether its half or all the damage dealt to the Lich it being transferred evenly among the undead will make it difficult to target him first before dealing with the many mobs.
This is cool, and it allows the AoE blasters to feel really cool since they'd be very effective against this tactic! I bet a lot of players would enjoy said fight.
Or (if you're feeling extra evil) you could spread it evenly to all creatures in the room. Paladin smites the lich, and the cleric and wizard go "ouch !" while all the undead just shiver a bit.
You forgot to mention the Lich’s lair actions, which allow them to get infinite spell slots of 8th level and under. You also probably should’ve mentioned that a smart Lich will prepare Negative Energy Flood and cast it on themself and their undead minions to grant a bunch of temp HP (and then recover the slots with the lair actions).
Yeah there's a fun idea this guy on reddit had where if you piss the lich off enough they just start scrying you over and over, teleport on you and shoot a bunch of spells at you. Teleport back to a tp circle in their lair, wait a couple rounds until they get their spells back, tp back, rinse and repeat. It was hilarious if not a bit of a dick move (which is very on brand for the bone gang) Also in 5e liches take necrotic damage according to the stat block. They don't heal from it in fact they aren't even immune to the fucking damage, which is stupid as shit.
@@The_Archlich The energy resist/immunities make more sense if you remember that Radiant=/=Positive energy and Necrotic=/=Negative energy. Necrotic is entropic which will rip apart anything living or dead. The fact that positive and negative energies don't exist is why healing spells don't hurt the undead anymore.
@@The_Archlich you gotta imagine how bored liches are after living for potentially thousands of years. Someone pissing them off is just an excuse to be incredibly, relentlessly petty
@@The_Archlich This makes me think of a book where the favorite tactic of the lich was just teleporting around a battlefield casting disintigration beams on any annoyance. Followed by more exotic and higher tier magic if the first ambush attack was survived. Given that it wasn't a turnbased setting this was a terrifying tactic as the lich just teleported in the middle of a group sprayed around some beams and teleported out again.
One other thing to remember is that undead (including the lich itself), constructs and other potential minion type thingies don't need to breathe. There should be entire chambers with toxic or absent atmosphere. Bonus: without oxygen, you don't have oxidation, meaning the zombies will stay fresher and iron golems don't rust
8:25 The protective Counterspell Glyphs should be triggered by Dispel Magic, not Counterspell, because Glyphs can’t be Counterspelled anyway, since they’re objects and Counterspell only targets creatures.
I much preferred 3.0/3.5 liches. So you take a psudeo-dragon familiar You give him the potion to turn into a draco-lich. You perform the rites to make him a demi-lich You now have a tiny bejeweled dragon skull that is your familiar and can eat souls. IT JUST COSTS MONEY.
This video is where its at. You'd think Rule 1 would be to roll up the treasure and then equip the lich with all the useful armaments. And Rule 2 would be that the Lich would realize his dungeon was being invaded at some point (ex. alarm spells, scrying, and incorporeal undead that exist just to report intruders) and use all that prep time to cast spells, create more minions and prepare ambushes. Apparently tons of DMs don't think of that.
Reminds me of a Vampire encounter I've always wanted to run where a Vampire Lord has a bunch of mirrors with demons bound inside that can each turn invisible and change their size and are under an illusion to look like him. They are charmed to behave exactly like him when they can see him and turn invisible and do nothing if they can't. The bound mirror demon's don't know there is at least one golem enchanted to not have a reflection which is morphed to look like the vampire lord. If anyone comes in and accuses him of being a vampire the golem will bring them to a mirror and demonstrate this isn't true. They'll bring the victim as close as possible to mirror, hold them in place, smash them face first into the glass, release the mirror demon, and the golem and demon, who both look like the vampire lord will begin to do battle with the victim who has a face full of glass, is concussed, and is fighting 2 fake copies of the same creature. Meanwhile the real vampire lord is somewhere being telepathically shown all of this from the perspective of both the creatures and from a small spider which acts as a security camera. If the victim lives- the Vampire Lord will know they might actually be in trouble, luckily they can see how this challenger fights through this little trick.
One thing I never see people talk about enough when it comes to liches is that they are not the strongest. That's why you throw them at your party all the time. The whole point of a lich is that when they die, they don't truly die! This allows the lich to be the perfect recurring villain, constantly appearing to pursue some goal in short bursts. And when that goal fails or backfires, and they die, they can just return! Fighting a lich shouldn't be about waiting until the last moment, storming their castle, killing them, and destroying their phylactery. By that point, you should have "killed" the lich several times already. Each time the lich should change up their spells to counter the player's spells and learn the player's tricks, growing wiser with each encounter. Fighting a lich should be like watching a TV show where the villain shows up to try and achieve their goal. Maybe they're successful, maybe the heroes thwart them, but instead of the heroes letting the villain go (which we all know your party isn't going to do), it's more like, "Yeah, sure, you killed me, but I'll just come back." The final assault on the lich's lair should be the grand finale, where you now have to fight the lich on their terms.
depends on the lichs age i think. I could see younger liches using such straight forward reckless tactics but older more established liches would likely not even do much above ground. A established lich would likely have control of several "tools" in places of reasonably high power to do things for them. "Oh you want 10000 scrolls by the end of the month? Sure, would you like them acquired legitimately or illegitimately?"- some guy put into power by the lich "You need 500 living slaves for secret reasons? (emergency phylactery food or skelebone infantry) Perfect i know a few nobles who wanted their homeless population to disappear before the royalty tour anyways so ill just send them your way."- one of the many corrupt nobles in fantasy settings. Power comes not just the individual, but the collective as well. Destroying a established lich would be similar to fighting a plague; seemingly everyone is the cause and you must either steadily erode its footing before dealing with the source or burn everything down with it. It would also not be out of the question for a 200 year old lich to be THE thing that made a country in the first place and just has the royalty ruling it because its a waste of time to do so personally. Unlimited time is NEVER to be underestimated. If we compare a human now to a human from Egyptian era the only difference our knowledge and yet the difference in power between the egypt of then vs egypt of now is insurmountable for MERE humans. Together we are not just human, but ideas forged through the fires of time perfected, beyond the perfection of yesterday. A human is a weak creature capable of nothing note worthy other than thinking too much and jogging slowly over vast distances. We however, we are capable of holding information, transferring it, refining it and using it to surpass our physical limitations to build towers that reach the sky; to change the seasons as we see fit, to make staffs that spit iron at our foes rendering them a sunder and to build winged wagons that traverse the stars we once thought were the heavens themselves! WE abuse the ever living shit out of unlimited time and have a intelligence rating of 10 in dnd. Imagine what something twice as smart as US could do with unlimited time? I can't, after all im just A human.
Story of my favorite ever lich and BBEG: The campaign was set around the party being dragon slayers and so far they had been very successful slaying various dragons. They’d heard tale of an adult black dragon who has terrorized the towns surrounding a forest for decades before seeming disappearing after collecting many magical ingredients and artifacts. The wizard correctly deduced that he was attempting to become a draco lich and that he very well may have finished his ritual already. The party traveled through the gnarled and decayed forest for days headed towards the mountain at its center where they were certain his lair was. However a few miles before encountering the base of the mountain they came across a magical barrier surrounding a small portion of the forest. This barrier kept not only them out, but also seemingly the regional effects of the dragon. Inside this barrier was a picturesque meadow with healthy wildlife and at its center a small cottage and farm. They could see a young beautiful human woman tending the garden and farm out front. The party broke a few of the runes that kept them out leaving the rest in tact and went in. Inside they realized that while inside it appeared that the forest on the outside in its entirety was also picturesque. They cautiously approached the woman and she greeted them kindly. Invited them in and served them dinner and offered them a place to sleep. They poked and prodded full of suspicion but found that she really did seem to be just a normal woman who had no idea she was living in a magical terrarium. As far as she was concerned she was living an easy going life happily married. This detail caught their attention. So she begun to gush over her loving and doting husband. However he was temporarily away on business. Suspicious they search the house over the night and find nothing sinister on the grounds or in the house, except a single painting of the woman and her husband. A darkly dressed and handsome man who they rightly guessed was most likely the black dragon. The next morning before they leave again to set out for the dragons lair they are offered breakfast by the woman and politely decline only for the front door to open revealing the man they are almost certain is the dragon. He gravely insists they stay for breakfast and so now with their target in range they agree. The breakfast goes off with thinly veiled threats and brimming anger from the dragon who seemingly just wanted them to leave and never return. When the woman left to tidy the kitchen and the dragon in disguise and the party were alone. The party however refused leave him be and offered to fight him then and there revealing his nature to his seemingly oblivious wife and potentially endangering her, or allow him to leave with them through the barrier and allow her to remain oblivious. He chose to leave with them for her sake and the fight began. The dragon lost pretty quickly however because of how the fight played out he fell onto the barrier shattering it. He reverted forms back to human as he died and begged the party to look after his wife after they killed him now that the barrier was not there to protect her. They vowed they would and finished him. The wife saw this and refused to leave with them and refused their protection opting to stay here with her dead husband so she could tend to his corpse and their home even as the swamp began to encroach. The party left her there, she wasn’t a threat, just a normal human peasant woman. They ascended the mountain to be sure he’d never made a phylactery. Finding his lair they find it in ruins with magical components and notes strewn about along with a complex ritual circle on the ground that had 5 of 6 components in place. Reading his notes they find that he had everything he needed to become a lich, except the most vital piece. To murder someone you truly love in cold blood. So the lich sought out someone to fall in love with. He found it but what he didn’t expect was how much that love ended up actually meaning to him. He ultimately decided he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t sacrifice her soul to become a Lich and so destroyed his lair in a rage. Initially it seemed his raids had stopped so he could focus on the ritual but turns out they had remained stopped because he’d given up his evil ways to be with his wife. The party left the lair as it was feeling unsatisfied and returned to the city they lived in. A few weeks later they get a sickening feeling and see even in the great distance the mountain emit an enormous beam of necrotic magic into the sky. They quickly return to the mountain to find that the dragons wife had found his lair, and dragged his currently humanoid corpse up the mountain and sacrificed herself as the final component in order to bring him back as a draco Lich and now they were here in his lair and he was headed straight for their city. Along with his new phylactery, his wife.
@@nickanderson412 the wife’s soul was also consumed by the ritual so her body was little more than an unthinking corpse puppet. The dragon did not take this well since the party had effectively broken their promise to the dying dragon and did everything in his power to take everything he could away from the party. At one point he let the party all teleport away from a failed attempt to take his life. However he counter spelled a single casters teleport leaving him stranded alone. I sent the other players out. He had to try and fight his way out, failed, died, and was promptly resurrected as a lich himself under the dragons control, who the dragon sent back to pretend he’d narrowly escaped with his life. This player kept up the charade for over a year before eventually they came across a book of wishes that could bring anyone back from the dead or even begin someone on the path to godhood. The dragon commanded him to take it and teleport back to him and he pulled it off. The party realizing what happened, hunted the dragon down only to find he had used every wish in the book to reconstruct his wife’s soul. Seeing this the party was legit just like “give us our friend back and we can just let all this go and forget about each other.” And the dragon surprisingly agreed and held up his end of the bargain. The party didn’t see the dragon again for almost 2 years irl time.
Disguise self is a 1st level spell. Appear human, live in a bustling city. Have a permit and necromancy license. Send adventurers on quests. If the party ever figures out what you are, well... you know much more about them than they know about you.
@@CrizzyEyes Because I'd rather live in a city than use a simulacra as a VR game of living in a city? I don't feel like the simulacra gives me an added benefit so much as a distraction. Liches already have a built-in respawn mechanic. A simulacrum costs 1500gp and it's a 12 hour casting time. And it's a copy of an individual. And repairing it costs 100gp per hp, which is pretty ludicrous and means it's cheaper to recast (other than the 12 effin' hours) than to rebuild... It's not useless, but this isn't a situation I'd use it in, you know?
@@DannyboyO1 But if you're pretending to be a normal person in a city that's a very large time and effort investment that could be spent on magical research, working towards some greater goal, etc. It's not a very attractive option for a lich.
@@CrizzyEyesNah, you just enchant a belt with disguise. (Hats can come off in a stiff breeze especially since you don't really have hair.) The thing about research, it's seldom a solo endeavor. You need to be able to deal with people pretty regularly. But also, not every lich has the same motivations. They just, like, need to be a fairly powerful spellcaster who... learned the ritual to cheat death. Maybe they're just *really* into birdwatching these days, and enjoy being retired.
@@DannyboyO1 I try to think about character motivations from the beginning. Why does someone become a lich? It's a profane ritual only accessible to the most powerful of spellcasters. In my mind, that person must be unilaterally devoted towards some kind of larger than life goal, because they're defying the rules of life to achieve it. Not only that, but the most powerful spellcasters are usually quite devoted to begin with. While I don't doubt there are people out there who would be happy bird-watching for eternity (elves, for one, especially the way they're described in 5e), it's quite another to suggest they'd be happy transgressing directly against the gods to do so. After all, if you respect nature, surely you respect the circle of life. You'd have to come up with a setting/cosmology where dying isn't the natural order of things for this to make sense. By "large time investment" I mean that the lich has to actually be there, personally, unless something like a simulacrum is used. They have to maintain a false identity and do enough menial tasks associated with a normal life to seem plausible. Otherwise people will start to wonder where the hell this random person came from and that would be a thorn in the lich's side, at a minimum. Medieval cities aren't quite like modern cities in that there was still a great level of personal interaction and people knew each other. Not knowing your neighbors isn't really a thing in a pre-modern society because it's a necessity.
Simple way for doing trolling as a Lich: - Lure party in dungeon with a pg-proof door. door opens towards outside. - give order to minion to activate a immovable rod to block the door - teleport away for extra salt
My lich just hides his phylactery in an invisible box behind a loose brick in the 3rd room of his dungeon. I have had players do many wacky things, but I've never had anyone actively try and take apart the dungeon itself while they go through it.
That's a fun one. I've done a couple like that, but what'll get you is the nerds playing wizard who keep detect magic up the whole time they go through the dungeon. Unless you use nondetection on it (or Nystul's Magic Aura might work?), they may stumble across it.
I like to think that while liches are creatures you can reason and bargain with, they are also always functionally insane. You can't know what landmines are present that could set off a truly psychopathic rage, thus causing the lich to set off any number of absolutely bizarre counter measures. Maybe a skeleton army, maybe cloudkilling an entire town, maybe illusions to make it seem like someone loudly broke wind whenever they turn exactly 45 degrees from their current orientation.
It might be overkill, but it seems to me like Xanax's contingencies could do with more Time Stop - perhaps in combination with the intrusion alerts to give him time to prepare a response. Just in case, of course, but imo a bit of time stop is always good. Seriously though, great video - enjoyed the dry humor and good ideas. Edit: Actually thinking about it, my thought probably just falls under "respond appropriately" and he should just use a scroll that he keeps on his person.
I like that. May be adding that in the future! Also check this shit out homie; someone on reddit had some cool insights: www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/prm1k5/comment/hdk9ms1/?context=3
8:44 My go-to panic button for liches is the Bricks of his halls are always filled with skeletons. Skeletons that, at the wave of his wand, can be resurrected with Create Undead Glyphs. But only AFTER the walls come crumbling down on your party, revealing the Skeleton Archer Death Squad on standby. Every roof of the building is LINED with skeletal archers, each with 6 arms and three longbows of course, more than enough to out-DPS the party. If they ambush the lich in his home, the walls come crumbling down on the party, the bones within them animate and attack the dazed and wounded party, while the archers on the nearby roofs of the mansion turn and aim up. Now the party is in a deathbox of arrowfire, wounded, surrounded, and the Lich is escaping with his scroll of teleport. They have One Round before they have to hunt him down in the panic bunker beneath the mansion.
I love that you named him after an anxiety medication and made him more bugfuck paranoid and terrifying than the most unhinged war criminals imaginable.
I can really appreciate running D&D as a hardcore combat-focused RPG, where the players are trying to kill the DM, and the DM is trying to kill the players. Gygax would be proud.
I'm not trying to kill them perse, but the lich is and they better be ready for that. Things in dnd are trying to kill you, and I think people worry too much about something having the capability to kill players if they fuck up. Adventuring is a dangerous trade, and in my book dangerous means someone might die.
@@The_Archlich The more I play TRPGs, the more I've become interested in having adventures: in telling stories WITH my players, instead of working so hard on creating enemies and obstacles for them. I find the collaborative storytelling aspect of RPGs incredibly engaging. Player death, in that context, should be about creating tension, or bringing a narrative to a conclusion. Its just a shame that D&D is TERRIBLE at creating such an experience. But D&D is the only game people know, or worse, is the only game they're willing to learn. So whenever I run D&D, I stick to dungeon crawls, where the terrible habits players can learn (paranoia, munchkin-ing, thread-less backstories) are rewarded, and player death is a sign that the players have to up their strategies and synergies, and not something that brings the story to a stop. Its a shame that 4th ed made that process so much easier, but finding players who will play 4E in public is harder than finding players who've even heard of Cortex. Regardless, very entertaining video!
@@The_Archlichthis isn’t a setup about having the power to kill the players if they fuck up, this is a setup which is specifically built to be impossible to kill without plot contrivance, absolute minmaxxed charop characters played by munchkins who workshop every action they take, or OTT game cheese exploits lmao.
@@Dorsidwarf nah man. It is a paranoid immortal being. If you fight him on his terms you WILL and SHOULD die. That is the point. It is a being that most likely has planned some continent spanning ritual in the next few hundred years and is dedicated to that goal, and players should approach him as tho that were the case, with carefull planning, research and finding ways to gain the upper hand outside of combat. If you just want a big dumb body for a big fight, stuff like Tarrasque and some dragons is out there
Plot contrivance? Plot contrivances like what? not assuming the 3000 year old wizard is stupid? preparing your own insane magic wards to combat his madness? finding weaknesses in the BBEG to fight him on your level? people too often confuse a challenge with "immpossible" and a solution with contrivance.@@Dorsidwarf
My question is how on Earth does the party even have a chance to defeat this? That's far too many glyphs to successfully detect and dispel, not to mention the combat power of the Lich himself and all the minions.
One lich completely by itself with no defensive preparations is a medium difficulty encounter for a party of four level 20 characters (which should be doable even with minimal magic items). As the video describes the party would need several epic boons, several powerful magical items each. Epic Boon of Perfect Health makes you immune to poison which would cut off all the cloudkills. There are epic boons that make you immune to various forms of damage. While necrotic isn't one of them, no reason you couldn't custom up one considering fire, ice, thunder/lightning are already offered (along with the poison one). You'd basically need to walk into the encounter ready for what you were getting. My high level character is a cleric (life) with a 26 Con and a 30 Wis. Everything went into those, he basically has no other magic items. Starts combat out with Holy Aura. So good luck catching him with a Wis or Con save based spell. When we stopped playing had 5 epic boons, he was immune to cold, fire, disease, and poison. Truesight, and gm hand waived spell mastery for cure wounds (which had no effect on combat, just meant with enough time he could top the party up without a long rest, plus help the common folk). Now party that with a Sorc2/Wiz18, and a Sorc2/Bard18, 20 zerker, and a rogue/warlock (don't remember the mix). All of the same power level (though they took normal items instead of stat books). That is the kind of party you send after a lich like this. Sending some fresh faced 18-20s into an encounter like this is asking for a tpk, especially if they just stroll into it thinking they are getting a lich straight from the monster manual.
Personally I’m of the philosophy that you put players in dangerous situations and it’s up to them to come up with a solution, none planned out by you ahead of time. Not usually a problem since players are always surprising. So long as you signpost the danger well enough it shouldn’t be frustrating even if they lose
Walk into lair with barbarian and wizard with active antimagic spell Grapple the lich Leave the lair Rest of party with scrolls of 9th level dispel magic with readied actions outside the lair to cast as soon as the antimagic field drops Take long rest Repeat process with phylactery if it isn’t able to be smashed nonmagically with barbarian This assumes you’re able to find a way to get to the demi plane (which I think isn’t supposed to be forgotten realms canonical as liches and their phylacteries are supposed to be bound to the material plane, ah well) but thats going to be narrative and campaign/DM specific, as its not like you could torture this out of the lich reliably
@@Corvothing24 If your DM runs a bbeg lich and gives you portable antimagic, he gave you the dub. Also, if your caster wants to use it, they have to come with as it's concentration, and even then antimagic isn't going to stop the kyuss worms about to eat them from the heels up, or the bone boy arrow squad
Pretty easily actually. They simply wish the demiplane out of existence, and scatter the contents in the astral plane. It is not a 100% permanent solution, as the phylactery can still be found at some point, but while in the astral plane no time passes, so the lich doesn't reform and timer based contingencies never trigger. It might burn your ability to wish, but it is consistent with other planar mechanics effects and wish's ability to reverse lower level spell effects so I would let if fly as a DM (though this scheme would not be what a lich would do in my worlds anyway, on account of these sort of weaknesses). The assumption that the demiplane is hard to find is a stretch. It is entirely possible that anyone can find it simply by casting demiplane themselves looking for the phylactery of the lich in a death-trap of a demiplane. That is the nature and contents of the plane, and by RAW should be enough to get there. The idea that you can put that much magic in a place and still expect it to be subtle is a naive reading of the rules. This is why a lich in my game would never do this. Demiplanes are cool, and reasonably secure, but they are not designed to withstand high level attack, so are not suitable places for a 'fortress'. The planar foundations are artificial and so inherently weak, and those can be attacked. Even if we limit possible spells to only those that really exist, in universe an intelligent lich could not discount the possibility of a wizard researching a custom spell for finding and dissolving demiplanes. The only difficult to defeat protections listed were the ones that move the phylactery, and only if a wish dissolving the demiplane triggers them*. You then have to find it again, and blow up the next location, but this is more of a faff than actually hard (compared to killing the lich the first time). Divination can reveal to you where the lich will reform if you do not intervene (that's not protected), and with this current set of protections that will be the new location of the phylactery. Then you need to get into the details of how the reforming takes place to decide whether servants can place divination protections on the reforming lich, but then we are getting into storytelling territory. You find yourself playing interplanar 'catch the pigeon'. The other thought is to attack the contingencies. If you believe there will be contingencies that will move the phylactery out of the chamber, you don't even need to find the chamber. If you find the golem and the new secure location you can just push the button yourself and let the defences place it into your hands. It requires a very cooperative adversary for those glyphs to be relevant. At the most basic level a party sends an iron golem in first to set them all off. The defences look diverse, but they are actually all just variations on 'kill things in the room' and 'stall and move the phylactery out'. The bigger issue is that by giving the lich powerful magic items you have made the first time it loses basically game over for it. It is such a reduced threat that the phylactery is almost unimportant on account of not defending the items. *Contingencies on a timer are either on the phylactery itself, so would fail when dropped into the astral plane (timer fails), or in some other location, in which case there is already an external setup for removing the phylactery and we can just attack that instead.
The Lich has been my favorite monster since I first encountered them in "Van Richten's Guide to the Lich". I have yet to see a party defeat a Lich in one of my games.
This is an AMAZING video. I consider myself a hardcore DM and am always looking for ways to make my BBGs more interesting. Your video is just the kind of inspiration I'm looking for in a D&D video. If you can keep up this level of quality and cover other boss monster (vampires, death knights, drakoliches, etc.) I think you could do really well. You got my like and subscribe.
This is actually the most helpful D&D related video I've ever watched. After my 12th level party popped an intermediary BBEG like a balloon, I was beginning to panic planning out the main BBEG, the lich. Thank you so much
Remember always two things; a Lich has time, and a Lich can wait. While your regular run of the mill evil baddy might need to complete the dark ritual during the summer solstice under an eclipsed bloodmoon on a holy day, A lich would always remember "Eh... maybe I'll get it next time. Is it really worth confronting these people, who will be dead by the next time this rolls around?" A lich need not have urgency in its plans, because lich's always play the long game. Remember; they forsook their immortal soul for immortality and power. Death is what they played the game against and they won, meaning there's no reason to kick death in the dick any time soon. The other advantage liches have, often, is moral oblivion. There's nothing too horrible to do if it means gaining power or their goal. However, if they got to lichhood to begin with, they had to plan and play the long game BEFORE They became a lich. Liches are the planners, they love to get one over on people... particularly gods that don't like Liches, so vastly intricate plans that are completely unreasonable to a mortal person and take hundreds of years to set up? Totally in the Lich's wheelhouse. But always remember... a Lich has time.
Hopefully you didn't make the mistake of following this, if you did you have now handed your party magical items far more powerful than they should ever get their hands on.
@@alistairbolden6340 awfully presumptuous of you, only based on a short comment that was only intended as support for the author of the video. 1) You have no idea what the powerlevel dynamics at my table are 2) you have no idea what my players want to do at the table and 3) I didn't even mention ANYTHING about magic items, what the BBEG was, or any details about my world. Go fuck yourself and leave your grandstanding to r*ddit circlejerks.
what if we splice two loyal servants to our skeletal Litch from the waist up, facing away from each other in a triangular formation? that would make him immune to flanking, and let him, or them in this case, use more magic items, spells, etc., does this have potential or are we better off just using 3 separate Litches?
The simulacrum should stall for time, “Thank goodness adventurers, time to end my creator’s tale, I share his memories, I’m so weary… sit down and have some cocoa while I start from the beginning, like many other tales of woe, this one starts with a woman….” Meanwhile Xanax just taking his time brushing his teeth having some cofee at a small table in his M Mansion before heading over to the demiplane to take care of business.
I think I created the perfect Phylactery-hiding measures (I don't blame you if you decide not to read it all lmao): When the party first fights the lich, he simply refuses to back down or flee from the fight; after all, he'll just reform in his Phylactery Demiplane. If/when the party finally defeats the lich, he leaves behind a tuning fork that's set to the Material Plane and a small model of a chest (as in, the container). This is the Material Component for Leomund's Secret Chest. Within the chest are 2d100 gems, all of which have been enchanted with Nystul's Magic Aura. All of them appear to be Enchanted with Evocation magic. For the Lich, he can simply cast Locate Object, but for anyone else, it'd be absolute hell to do anything except just sell them (and even then, what morally good adventurer would ever sell gems that could be maliciously enchanted?). One of those gems is a Sapphire worth 1,000 GP, the Material Component for the Instant Summons spell. This Instant Summons spell brings forth a tuning fork, tuned to a Demiplane. This Demiplane is the first of several. I'm pretty sure that the only for the players to summon forth this tuning fork on their own would be either to get the lich themself to do it, or for them to break every gem in the chest (or maybe every Sapphire, with an Investigation or Arcana check at like DC 15 or something), in order to find out which one was the special one. I'd rule that you roll 2d100 and on 200, you successfully summon the tuning fork (roll something like 2d20 for the Sapphires, with 40 being the successful roll, if they narrowed it down to Sapphires). But don't fret, you haven't smashed every valuable thing owned by the lich; there is still a chance to make absolute bank off this Undead bastard yet: The first Demiplane is filled with all the expensive and/or magical items the Lich found useless. Martial weapons with simple Enchantments, probably some armor with the same, plenty of Wondrous Objects of Uncommon Rarity and below, you get the picture. I'd just let the party members pick out whatever Magic Items of Uncommon rarity they want. However, hidden amongst these is another small model chest, only able to be seen with very good Passive Perception or a high DC Investigation check (set the DC as you please; I usually just make it 15 for max-level party members. When the chest is found, repeat stage one (I'd do it with only Sapphires and Advantage on rolls or just skip ahead and give the party a level of Exhaustion in exchange or something). I usually have the Lich cast Instant Summons daily to determine if the chest was found, or as soon as he gets his body back if he was defeated. In the second Demiplane, Glyphs and Symbols line every surface except for a pillar in the center with a tuning fork on it (if my math is correct, there's a total of 216 squares that can be used, and the size limit for Glyphs and Symbols is just "it can't be larger than 10 ft total" so just make them infinite). The Glyphs are all Counterspells set to activate "when anyone other than [the lich] casts a spell," making it impossible for anyone other than the lich to cast spells in the Demiplane without a solid chance of failure (good luck even escaping by yourself in worst-case scenarios), in addition to Symbols of every kind (roll a d8 to determine which effect happens at the beginning of the players' turns). And at the third Demiplane, this is where you choose whether you actually want to run this or if it's just a theory to see how impossible you can make it to find a lich's Phylactery. On one hand, the "this is 100% impossible route," have an effectively endless loop of Demiplanes that, theoretically, lead to the Phylactery. Have his Phylactery be a coin, a rock, a grain of sand or some other extremely small item and fill each room completely with them, other than the Sapphire that leads to the next room. Have Counterspell Glyphs on all surfaces in every one of the rooms, with the same conditions as the ones in Demiplane 2. OR, the "I'm gonna run this" option: In Demiplane 3, decide if you want this to continue even longer or not. If not, make Demiplane 3 the final room. If you do, there are three options: 1.) Make the room filled with items the lich deemed useful, mainly powerful Magic Items. I'd allow the players to pick whatever Magic Item they want, with some restrictions depending on your own personal opinions of course. This time, I would cast Sequester on either a Sapphire for the Instant Summons spell, set to a tuning fork to the final room, or just the tuning fork itself instead. I'd explicitly tell the players "you'll wanna take a Long Rest, the final room is next" or something along those lines. 2.) Have the lich's most powerul minions be in the room, which engage the players in a mini-boss fight. Give the mini-boss(es) backup in the form of Glyphs and Symbols that synergize with the creature(s). Have a Sequestered tuning fork or Sapphire lead to either a sick joke (the Phylactery was hidden elsewhere and this wild goose chase amounted to nothing) or the final room. 3.) There's just a piece of parchment on the ground that reads "you fools! My Phylactery isn't even in a Demiplane. You'd best hope you manage to find a way out!" The room has countless Counterspell and Feeblemind Glyphs with triggers that are the same as Demiplane 2. For the final room, I'd just use the Main Demiplane section from this video. SCREW YOU I'M NOT MAKING ANOTHER SECTION TO THIS COMMENT, YOUR COOL FINAL PHYLACTERY DEMIPLANE IS UP TO YOU.
The major flaw with this level of prepping a bad guy like this is that it is not playing within a limited amount of resources. I see this as being less challenging and more frustrating. Also, spell effects from the same spell that overlap don't stack in 5e. There are other logistical issues here with spell slots like: needing two ninth level spell slots to be able to store a 9th level spell in a 9th level Gylph. This adds to the overwhelming amount of resources needed to justify doing this. Because, the only other ways to do this is to: Give them another 9th level slot, or have them win the megamillions and give them a boat load of 9th level scrolls. This is brute forcing a single villain that is just going to die instantly when the party casts Gate on him after the bard spends a few months learning his true name. I think a much better way to run a lich is that they have an agenda, and certain people/creatures agree with that agenda. So the lich has plentiful allies, and even political ones. In the words of Thusla Doom: "Steel isn't strong boy, Flesh is stronger."
Yeah a better method might be to come up with a resource limitation, then create foreshadowing earlier in the adventure that describes the resources that the lich possesses, then use those limited resources to create an incredibly terrifying defense for the lich.
I'd agree, and even go so far as to describe running a Lich (or any villain/antagonist) this way as being adversarial DMing. You're no longer running the game, you're just trying to kill your players with your power as the DM. As much time as Liches do have to prepare, and as intelligent and paranoid as they are, they don't have unlimited resources.
And not just unlimited resources, the naive interpretation that the rules as written extend into infinity and corner cases. RAW is a simplification of the universe, and when you push it this far it just breaks. In particular, the interpretation that adversaries need to see your demiplane to get access to it is suspect. The spell reads a bit like there is security in obscurity. People cannot access your demiplane on account of not being able to identify it, rather than there being any sort of bar. A demiplane with a few magic items, and maybe even a particular soul, is not trivial to find. That does not imply that a demiplane maintaining dozens of near epic spell effects doesn't attract attention. It is lit up like a Christmas tree. People may not need to know much specific about it to be able to find it, and it is entirely possible that it will be noticed by something not even looking for it. That is assuming that the demiplane even remains stable when you try to put that much magic in it! Then there is the assumption that just because no way is listed to simply destroy the demiplane that none exists! Sequester in particular has effects on time when cast on creatures, and a phylactery contains a soul. It does not seem like a spell you can cast on a phylactery and just expect things to still work as expected. The protections on the demiplane are also overkill but ridiculous. The only relevant defence is the one that removes the phylactery. Everything else can be defeated by sending in a few cows. The effects that remove the phylactery can be 'hacked' to deliver the phylactery out of the chamber, so may even turn out to be a liability. If obscurity is possible then the PCs cannot win irrespective of the lethality of the defences. If the phylactery can be found then these defences can be easily circumvented. There is absolutely no depth to the defence at all.
The whole time the video was going I was just thinking to myself, when is the part where all of the players and the dm start having fun? If I wanted to contrive this much bs I'd just run the session hammered without a single page of notes. (That was our first session and we had a blast lol)
One of my favorites is to set a lich up running a small prosperous kingdom, with skeletons being used to provide the labor pool & militias, while the living run businesses using said labor pool and go about living a rather comfortable life (until they die on their own and join the labor pool). As for his phylactery, well.... that's in a small underground chamber with no entrances, exits, or air -nothing but the phylactery, a spellbook with teleport, and a clone spell that triggers (then promptly dies) when the lich's body is rendered inanimate.
Idea: Make a Lich heal when it takes necrotic damage, and then give it a(or several) spellcaster minion(s) that cast Circle of Death on it and any martials in range
if possible, make those minions to heal when they take necrotic damage. it would be a pain in the ass since the hero party would need to one-shot all of them at the same time. also, give them Mirror Image to confuse the hero party.
This is a bit like the heal from Negative Energy under Pathfinder (1E) rules. I would say if you are going to include this, also allow healing spells to damage the Lich, with a difficult roll for success of course, to give the party a choice between healing themselves or trying to use those healing slots on the Lich itself. It would make sense that if necrotic damage heals a lich than the opposite would also be true.
That used to be a thing in older editions. Everything was way scarier back then. A lot of creatures really lose their teeth in 5e, but I think there are good and bad sides to this. 5e is good for simplicity, but you lose a lot of the real danger from older editions where dying was quite common.
@@The_ArchlichRevival was also way easier, because dms one shotting their party on complete accident was way easier as well. and dms pulling "hand your character sheet over you breathed wrong" which this kind of reeks of? Was even more common then today, tho it's still everywhere. The hyper aggressive player vs dm fuck collaboration what's that, style of dming that thinks anything less than 5 tpks means the DM has somehow "lost". There's always issues of this with big bags tbf, but any lich especially in 5e capable of all this is very very dumb to not just easily murder the party for supposedly being so smart. You can have hyper dangerous enemies without it feeling like you hate the people your playing with and wish to murder any fun they can have, which this can easily do if your not very careful. I agree a lot has been lost in 5e but admittedly it's not the fangs I'm usually annoyed with, it's the lack of uniqueness on a lot of stuff. Most special creatures have lost all the features that made them special and their lore cut some pretty important details for the sake of TO MUCH simplicity.
Miss the 3.5 days where there was a lot of support for Lich's including the classes of Dread Necromancer, Pale fist Monk(For that unarmed lich combat), Necromancy specialist wizards, tons of items for expanding on the lich's functionality as well as the normal necromancers functionality, and ton of side content to make a lich themed around just about any setting. My favorite thing was a lich who was capable of holding roughly 15800 some odd HD of undead under its direct control just through a combination of dread necromancer(Which had a stat bonus buff to its control cap per level) and undead control cap increasing items, among the corpse crafting feats to buff up all those undead, and templates that could be manually applied, as well as scummy tactics that most sane mortals would not normally employ. Some of our BBEG's Lichs best gimmicks were: A invisible skeleton with two bags of holding acting as a disposible assassin(Since only extremely high level spellcasters NPC wise would have Planeshift as a spell, being RIPPED into the astral plane was a death sentence for most people.) Had to invest in a permanancy spell with see invisibility and later true sight before that stopped being a regular occurance. (we rolled with most civilians being level 1, guards/soldiers 2, and experts level 3. Legendary heroes were level 12, which meant the kingdom REALLY couldn't handle a level 20 lich.) Scrying/Scrying protection abuse: There was an amulet that when someone scried upon the wearer, it'd do an insane amount of damage to the person scrying them, but the best part was the lich didn't wear one, his bodyguard, however, all did. Queue a young divinier cleric exploding in bloody gore when 8 of these amulets go off at once. The lich also used scrying to check on people we met after we first annoyed it, and went out of his way to strip allies from us if we weren't careful (For a good while we weren't until we started going back the way we came traveling the country side and found out what happened to a lot of the npcs we had gotten help/helped in the past. The use of spawn, evil magic item mechanics, mind control spells: To further bolster his already insane armies of the undead which he had been forming into a citadel, the lich would use evil aligned magic items(which when picked up by a non-evil entity, inflicted level drain) to kill peasants(which caused wraiths to appear a few days later due to the method of death) by using undead rogues to place negative energy arrows into the quivers of farmers, hunters, and archers and use their spawn mechanic(Things slain by the wraith become a wraith under the progenitor wraiths control.) to amass a spooky ghost legion atop the physical undead, the strongest of which (and the ultimate progenitors) were forged from awakened undead loyal to the lich. Mind control spells were often used to create infalliably loyal minions who could not be convinced that the party was saving the world, and would often be used as well to create sleeper agents when the skeleton assassins with bags of holding failed to get the job done later on. Mind control was also how the lich got around to having expendable magic items, since he would go around collecting artificers to both deny the would be heroes access to custom crafted magic items, and also fund his own legions of the damned with enchanted gear specifically built for undead. (For Artificers, making a piece of gear locked to a particular race/class made it cheaper for some reason, which means even though you looted an elite guard or commander of the lich's army, you're going to have a hard time using something that was made for a 'Awakened Spellweaved Corpsecrafted Skeleton Devoted Defender' if you aren't both the race and the class. The class was easier, but the constant magic item use checks meant that only really our sorcerer and bard were able to 'trick' complex items to letting us use them with their relatively high Use Magic Device checks, when the item wasn't evil to begin with anyway. Crafting Tricks of evillll: As it turns out, we couldn't just 'bleed' the lich of magic items and destroy them til he ran out, a legion of the dead meant he could mine resources tirelessly, and with items like: Liquid Pain(A crafting substitute for the XP costs of creating magic items), Ambrosia(The good variant of Liquid pain, albeit, also horrible in implication due to the 24 hour cast time), Rituals(one of the books allowed included ritual sacrifices that could be done for 'evil craft' gold/xp which tainted the item used with it with evil, making it harder for us to collect gear without being evil ourselves due to the evil magic item level drains), and more. Those were just a handful of examples.
The glyph on the only entrance the party thought was a series of arcane locks, was in fact, a series of modify memory glyphs that supplanted the memory the party entered and defeated the Lich and left.
I regularly give my Bosses player feats. A great one that makes sense for this Lich is the Mystic Conflux from Tal'Dorei Reborn. The Lich can cast Identify once without using a spell slot and can have *Four* Attunements at the same time. Powerful yet fair. If you want to low ball the 4th item, a Pearl of Power or a Proof Against Detection are always viable choices.
You could totally use this for almost any wizard. Obviously, you have to tone it down a lot, but really any capable wizard would have similar defenses and preparation’s.
Enjoyed the video, I'm always enthused when finding the Gygaxian legacy is alive and well. I will watch you career with great interest, assuming more videos are to come.
This was a lot. Very cool thought went into it, i struggle with imagining how I'd -run- a monstrous situation like this and keeping it fun for players. I've never run for a table of power gamers and my imagination tells me I'd have trouble toeing the line between keeping the lich's secrets so it's dangerous and interesting, and having my players completely confused and dying with no in-game explanation
When it comes to something like a Lich, I recommend a WHOLE HEAPING PILE of narrative frontloading for everything. That's a lot of talking... but with each step towards confronting the lich, the players need to be made to feel like this is a bad plan. It's always a bad plan. They cheated death itself, for immortality and power. They have had all the time in the world to think up plots within plots going on like the Mandelbrot set. They've had the time to master Chess, Cards, Go, Shogi and Pokemon. They know, logically, the countermove to most moves and... as I say elsewhere... Lich's always play the long game. They have the time.
It can be challenging, but in all reality they should never actually be messing with a lot of this stuff. I think the point is to think of perma-killing a lich that's been around for a while as a quest of epic proportions in its own right that will likely take the help of kings and the greatest heroes of the land. Usually you're coming into contact with a minority of liches because most are just sitting in some fuck off cave somewhere pondering their orb and making money moves in other dimensions. Generally you beat a lich rather than killing them. Think kind of like Sauron from LoTR minus the whole being a god(ish) thing. A level 20 party could easily body this lich without the fight being on its terms, but with the fight being on its terms, it should almost always win.
Great video. Most people don't bother using Glyph of Warding like this and imo it's the most broken thing in the game. Played an Arcane Cleric who did basically what you described. Spent all campaign pumping resources into my glyphed out demi-plane. Right before facing the BBEG (it was Bhaal) in his home plane the party hopped in the demi-plane. Got to do a few funky things like putting Tensor's Transformation on the barbarian. Upcast aid, bless, holy weapon, etc for the whole party. My character even had a contingency set up in case he ran into his one weakness, Prismatic Wall. The only quick way out of the wall was to put his gear in a Leomund's Chest, kill himself, land in a clone body at home base, summon the chest and Plane Shift back to the final fight.
Don’t forget you are also the DM you can just give the lich a reaction that teleports him 60ft and replaces himself with a skeletal Minotaur in his place.
Or a skeleton minion that is dressed to look like the lich, and the lich can puppet it. So the players are trying to fight through the minions to get to the lich, and instead are using up their good stuff on a regular skeleton.
Yeah my party hated me for one of the 'Lich campaigns' I ran. They found the Lich's hideout, battled through undead galore, rumbled the tumblers on no less than three massive ornate doors with images of dragons, each with a goblin inside before finally reaching the throne room, fought the lich who didn't monologue much but got right to business and casted a few spells, only to find out it's a normal skeleton with five magic rings and one was the partner to the 'Ring of Voices' which allows the master ring wearer to cast their voice to the slave ring bearer. and a parchment that said "The Lich is in another cave" the barbarian player slammed the table with both hands and RL raged. They did calm down after finding a few goodies the Lich left to taunt them, a couple of weapons, two spell scrolls which the wizard could add to his spell book for free, (30) Arrows of pure light and a magic bottle which could be used once a day to create any liquid from minor healing potion to food stuff and there being four rations of whatever they used it for. Was very handy since the home brew I ran forced them to actually locate or travel with some food or suffer a small penalty each day they didn't eat.
Some bits to look into: Alhoons (Mind Flayer Lich) Death Tyrant (Beholder that WILLED itself into Lichdom) Also, consider pulling from older editions and their source books, such as 2e AD&D's Van Richten's Guide to Lichdom - covers everything about Liches, their powers, lair abilities, limits (if you wanna use them), stages of Lichdom, and Salient abilities (extra abilities the Lich can gain via a very special ritual, such as Animate Dead on Touch). Something else to think about: 5e Liches are not that scary, most can take them down at mid level. 2e Liches however were built to be monsters, you needed a full party who are all at least level 20 just to stand a chance. 5e holds your hand, 2e cuts off the hand & force feeds it to you.
This is super useful. I intend to use it in my campaign for my bbeg. This video actually inspired his design, so kudos. In a twist of fate, my players faced a 'lich' tonight. As a birthday gift to myself, I wanted to try running high level DnD. The setup was, the players with their low level characters visit an extra planar circus. The most popular of these attractions is an illusionist wizard, running a game (DnD within DnD). The players put on some magic headbands, and experience the illusion they're high level adventurers in a dungeon known as the tomb of puzzles. After a satisfying *four hours* of their brains liquidating from simple logic and arithmetic puzzles, they finally reach the lich. Even with beefed up stats, this dude got his rotting teeth punched down his dusty throat in the first turn due to a critical hit from the paladin. Each party member was playing a 'twentieth level' character (their characters, experiencing the illusion) and were given as such, level twenty character sheets, and three magic items of their choosing. The real kicker was, these were inexperienced novice players. Had they been competent, ol' Amoxicillin would be a pile of grinded calcium dust turn one. This was a lich. With lair actions. Beefed up AC and hit points. Supposedly deadly to four level twenties according to encounter balance websites. We had to pause as it was late as fuck (puzzles took them forever, they really weren't that hard, just very basic algebra and color theory, mixed with logic and riddles) However, he's down to half health. Amoxicillin is in fact not chilling. His only saving grace is concentrating on invisibility as the 15 foot barbarian swings around his lair and the two casters bombard the shit out of his study. Not exactly a "real" lich, but it goes to show how badly lich should beefed up from the template the SRD provides, lest he be turned into a microwaved raisin without even getting a turn.
I've watched all of your videos, and here I return. Great content; really good. It makes me sad to see the number of comments calling this unfair, as a player and a dm this seems full of restraint heh. At t4 play I don't see this being a huge obstacle of the party tbh, depending on how much time they have.
Nice to see a video that bumps up the lich stat wise that has some funny humour for my gremlin brain. Kinda felt it’s stat block was underwhelming in the 5e monster manual. Great video from a small creator, I’d love to see more
I watched this video and in my next session I had my party come rush back to their city that was being under attack from the BBEG. He was located in the throne room and they fought through hoards of demons and other hellish creatures to get there. After a long fight, they made it to the large entrance to the throne room but as they opened the door to see him wearing the crown and the queen dead on the floor, they failed to see multiple glyphs containing 5 Destructive Wave spells and a few Plane Shift spells. They all nearly died and were transported to the Astral Plane. I just imagined that it went down like they opened the door, saw the BBEG on the throne laugh at them, then they flickered through multiple different realities while being launched around with giant destructive waves. Tis was a really cool scene to DM.
A mechanic I used for a BBEG that wasn’t a lich but was heavily magic item based. I gave him the ability to shuffle his atunements around as a bonus action or as a Legendary action. This way they had an absolute litany of magic items, many of which were acquired during the campaign and had the heroes actually try to stop their acquisition (sometimes they succeeded and made the final fight easier). This meant that the boss had strengths and weaknesses that were constantly shifting around in different ways, Metroid boss style.
I’m introducing my BBEG, an Illithilich, today and having this video is useful to appropriately buff him later. Magic items are definitely something I forgot, but I am bolstering him with essentially 20 levels of Necromancy Wizard and a Mythic Phase if within a certain distance of his phylactery. So this should be fun. I hope my players enjoy fighting undead and Aberrations for the rest of the campaign.
13:23 wish also can specifically undo an event/roll in the last round so you definitely can reform the phylactery Edit this also technically includes damage rolls, this you can make them roll DAMAGE against the phylactery with disadvantage
I like the idea of the bosses main chamber whole floor being Stones held up by the undead underneath so if you fail a dex save on any of your steps, the Pat Beneath You crumbles and you're surrounded by hundreds of skeletons with swords carrying heavy stones
Kinda fun to see someone do a monster build normally I see op player based builds and as I DM I love this gives a lot of cool ideas for how I could buff my own monsters and make them more unique.
This was a really great video, of course then I instantly subscribed to your channel and went to your home page to see what content you'd made since then... and was immeasurably disappointed! Please make more of these! Even if they are for monsters you like less than the Lich, or aren't final boss encounters. I've personally spent a lot of time trying to figure out how dragon lair encounters should work if properly prepared. I was really disappointed by a dragon that was hyped up as the final boss of a campaign I was watching on YT. I'd love to see you tackle dragons, or any other boss creature that you thought was interesting.
I love the idea of liches as some kind of immortal CEOs. I mean they had hundreds of years to prepare and their plans are most likely also quite longstanding, so instead of having a BBG that flails wildly in its chaotic plans you should have a guy that came up withthe most efficient way to for example gather souls and undead to drain a sea so that he can gather thousands of tons of salt for some insane continent spanning ritual. Someone that has general process of dealing with typical adventurers in timely and efficien manner, simply someone you can only defeat if you gather A LOT of info and come up with a plan more convoluted than his. Lich should be a campaign, not an ecnounter
Imagine a CEO Litch that has so much wealth built up over time that basically the entire civilized worlds economies would all crash if he was killed and no longer directing his wealth to prop up various economies. Wizarding schools suddenly going bankrupt because they lose their major source of funding.
2.8K subs. ... _My man keep making instructional videos like this and you can add two 0's in no time._ Great voice, good sense of humor, actually knowledgeable, great and easy to remember channel name, algorithm blessings... Besides, i'd like to see more of this. It's... actually really enjoyable. :) Just, if you want to, know this is an option. ;) EDIT: Also, subscribed.
Thank you. I hope you're right! If I can make a living off of this, I'll be able to make way more comprehensive stuff, like maps, example battles, monster statblocks, and a bunch of other stuff. It would be cool af.
I don't think stacking Cloudkill works, as multiple magic effects of the same name don't stack. However, you could pack those spare glyphs with a bunch of other lingering effects, like Sickening Radiance (this is extra juicy, because if you manage to trap the party there for the whole ten minutes, they have to make 100 total saving throws, and failing more than five of them results in death by exhaustion), Wall of Fire, and Incendiary Cloud, as well as a bunch of instantaneous spells for more damage and control spells like Hold Monster to ensure whatever's in there fails their saves. Mixing up your spells like this will also help protect against immunities to individual damage types.
All of these dastardly tricks combine into a lich that's more of an eternal ass that your team of powerful adventurers probably will have to end up negotiating with rather than killing. They can keep killing him and robbing him of magical items and foiling his worldly plots, but he can just keep coming back and messing with them at all hours of the day. Unless he's truly the main villain of the story, eventually they will get tired of each other and compromise begrudgingly. Which is really funny to think about in terms of how exactly that would go down and the effects on the world.
I'd argue that the lichdom corrupts the soul and it can no longer inhabit a living body without consequence. Should the phylactery be destroyed and the soul transfers to the clone I would likely have it transform the new body into a modified Boneclaw
That's devious and I would run that in a heartbeat. Bonus points for a lich that is hundreds of years old and thus, no one remembers his original appearance, thus allowing him to plot revenge and possibly infiltrating the party at a later point
I would argue yes, and moreover I would argue that it's almost necessary to make sure you don't fuck up and become a Boneclaw. Any smart would be lich would have that lined up in case they botch the ritual, which is quite likely that they will at least once or twice. So even if J Craw comes in and ruins our fun, I would still allow this at my table for players and NPCs.
This is very tomb of horror esque with the design and I love it, the lich is intelligent and paranoid and I think you nailed it with all the contingencies
This is absolutely wild, I love it. I've never played high-level DnD before, so I don't even know where I'd begin trying to take this guy down as a player. As a DM, the only way I can see being fair to the players is having the party seek out records of those who knew the lich before they became a lich and get information that way. Maybe they could somehow trick him into thinking they've stolen his real phylactery by producing a perfect replica of it, getting him to try to summon it from their hands and accidentally summoning his real one from the demiplane. It'd be a nice book smarts vs. street smarts play. Basically snagging him the same way Jafar got got in Aladdin, and playing off the inherent weakness that leads to all liches, the fear of death, to make a mistake like that.
In 3.5 i had a Lich with a fake phylactery hidden in the basement of his castle. It was inside a room lodged in one of many giant gelatinous cubes. By the time the adventurers killed the oozes, opened the anti-acid boxes and discovered that there was no phylactery, the Lich had already left with the real one on a zombie dragon he made from the roof and made the whole castle crumble on them. They survived. Funny enough, the Lich was later cast by another villain in a random plane via a well of many worlds and they never met him again. The party disbanded. (So sad)
Pinning this as a correction: Overlapping spell effects do not stack! So you might want to sequence the cloudkills and replace them with more symbols and walls of force. My apologies for the incorrect info acolytes.
ANOTHER EDIT: The contingency with the sending spell would not work. Replace it with Far Step or a similar spell.
Can you explain why it wouldn’t? Curious on the RAW
@@TheJoelft Sure! So spells that are AoE spells that affect an area do not stack. So, cloudkill would not allow for multiple procs of damage at the same time. I don't think this would apply to instant damage effects like fireballs, but I'm not sure actually. As for contingency the spell must target the caster so he could only send a sending spell to himself; not very helpful!
Depends, if the Lich is several centuries old then instead of 5e spells they might have access to 2e or even 1e spells.
You should make more of these. Very well done.
@@toddkes5890hell, if they're good enough, c they might even have had a chat with the god(dess) of magic and obtained an exception!
So the party once left their wizard stuck 10,000 years in the past during a cataclysm known as The Fall. They could have, at almost any time, went back and opened the portal up to look for him (they basically had the key and the wizard didn't). Instead, they just left. When they finally got back to the main city they found it under siege by a Lich that had built up a staggeringly massive undead army without anyone noticing. Well, he did have 10,000 years and the knowledge of how history played out to help him along.
Some of the best antagonists are former PCs who just...Had A Bad Day. Sometimes they don't even need a Bad Day, if they were minmaxed murderhobos to begin with.
@@HaloInverse the secondary antagonist of my friend's current campaign was at one point my old PC who died due to a murderhobo's negligence and had his corpse merged with a lich lol. Very bad day, very bad day indeed.
@@PhantomGato-v- Nice. I hope said murderhobo is still in that game - vendetta from beyond the grave, and all that.
@@HaloInverse oh, you best bet he's still hanging around. I'm pretty sure every place he went to has earned him at least one bounty right now, and that's not even considering the fact that the lich is attempting to possess him lol
Fighting an arc lich - no biggie.
Fighting an archlich who has a vendetta agsinst you - you're boned
To me, the point should be that it will be almost impossible to kill a lich if approaching it on its terms. If a campaign calls for the destruction of a lich, I think the campaign should include the laborious steps to research the lich, find out its weaknesses and countermeasures to its wards, slowly stripping the support from it or maybe luring it out. The destruction of a lich should not be an encounter, but an entire campaign.
Exactly which is something a bunch of these 5e children who are used to headbutting all their problems away don't seem to get.
@@The_Archlichdon’t feel like it’s necessary to be inflammatory to 5e players when that style of lich is almost entirely on the DM to do the heavily lifting on execution of actually making it fun for their players. Frankly I know DMs more capable of doing something like this now days then I did back in 3e or PF 1e.
If your goal is just to beat your players and not make the process engaging and sporting for them then that’s not a great DM
@@Exaltable;-;
@@Exaltable I'm just being mean. I don't hate my red headed step children. The crusty old edition guys are even worse lol.
@@The_Archlich Sometimes it's more fun to call people out than actually criticize their poor choices. Doesn't mean you hate them or even dislike them. Tough love and all that.
Also, how smart are your players that you built Xanax and thought: "Yeah, this is a reasonable amount of traps to subject them to."?
My favorite lich I ran had a portal that went to a "desert"
It was the location of his second tower on the moon. The players were horrified that they no longer had oxygen or gravity (things the lich really didn't need to worry about)
Even better in older editions since the easy spells to protect you from this were planar protection spells which offer no benefit if you're still on the prime material plane.
@@godofthunder4242 Bingo! They see what they assume was another plane. OOOOoooHHH! Better prepare! Use up that last spell slot you'll be fine!
Fast forward to a bunch of dorks in armor floating and blue.
kinda reminds me of the skateboarder lich
whos phylatery is on a comet with an orbit that comes just close enough to earth to maintain the spell every 10 years
@@vincentgrinn2665 bruh
@@Jernfalk its a great read if you havnt seen it before
Bonus points, his decoy phylacteries are the actual phylacteries of rival liches that he's stolen the way one would a rival mascot.
And a third lich hired the adventures as a way to kill both rivals
@@hero_triple3796 And then it turns out the OG lich did a switcheroo, and the Quest giver just hired the party to destroy his own phylactery.
Ima steal all your ideas, dang, so nice!
@@MogofWarsee THIS is how lichs should be portrayed, extremely smart, petty, ingenious and dryly humerus.
In my mind the best example of how lichs should act actually comes from warhammer 40k, the dynamic between trazyn and orikan are exactly how I imagine 2 lichs interacting and this reminds me of that.
@@gentlyvillainousYou obviously meant Trollzyn the Infinite Jester and his buddy Trollikan the Diviner of Dry Jokes.
Thumbnail: I'm behind 7000 skeletons
Video: I'm behind 7000 demiplanes
The old switcheroo
Fr
More like "I'm behind 7000 demiplanes and 7000 pipe bombs"
"Planeshift runes to the worst places you can think of"
Imagine pulling up on a lich and he just instantly sends you into a room full of people trying to make small talk with you.
Even worse: it's just a Demiplane filled with all the people who previously attempted to kill the Lich, and it's a Dead-Magic Zone; because the first person who got sent there was a Wild Magic Sorcerer who had used their last Spell Slot before their party got teleported into there; with their first spell of the day being Wild Magic with a Dead Magic Zone effect. Now the Lich just dumps people there with no clue about their fate, because he cannot even Scry on the location, due to the Dead Magic Zone, so he presumes everyone just died; but it gets so much worse, because the plane itself provides the required sustenance, and the characters won't even age until returning to the Prime Material Plane; so they are stuck there in a room with an ever-increasing number of inept adventurers for all eternity until they get crushed to death, or they decide to end their lives on their own terms.
He sends you to your ex's house.
@@fhuber7507 Flaw in that plan: my ex wants to shag me hardcore. I know the motion of the ocean, and got a big ship.
To a ski resort in Colorado but you can’t leave the room you find yourself in until the time share pitch ends. It never ends.
@@dabluflcn Worse: it only ends once the speaker has cast Ritual Cast Geas & Cast Mass Suggestion at 9th level, coercing everyone present into buying into the Time Share, at which point they then get burdened with crippling debt; the worst part is that the property has Asmodeus as the landlord, and the property is managed by his daughter; it's located on the 8th level of Avernus, and the daughter is constantly renovating the building, burdening the Time Share investors with crippling debt for a place they will likely never be capable of visiting.
I like to imagine Liches meeting for symposiums to discuss immortality tactics, and the passive-aggressive mind games that would ensue.
Lich 1: "I've got over 40 cloudkill glyphs surrounding my phylactery."
Lich 2: "Bah, you should always diversify your phase 2 glyphs. It only takes one jackass with poison immunity to get through all that magic. I use a combination of cloudkill, circle of death, and prismatic sprays to keep them guessing."
Lich 1: "That's overkill. After the ten shield golems (all of whom are carrying a pair of magic missile wands), my ever-expanding collection of standby skeletons, and the anti-magic field airlock, there's no chance a warforged ends up at my phase 2 line."
Lich 3: "Oh, to be a young lich again. It's nostalgic, listening to you two go on about glyphs. I long for that lost passion."
Lich 1: "Don't tell me you don't use glyphs, I won't buy into your paranoia psy-op."
Lich 3: "Oh I do. I just prefer Modify Memory."
Lich 2: "What?! That doesn't even kill them! What memory could you possibly erase that would stop them?"
Lich 3: "It's not about the memory you take, but the one you give. I just make them think we talked out our differences, bonded over a cup of tea, and agreed to stop fighting. They always leave after. I like to think of them as... hyper-competent familiars. Sometimes they'll learn the Sending spell *just* so they can chat me up later. I've got a lot of information out of random heroes that used to hate me, I have my homunculus compile it all. I need six archive demiplanes just to fit it all. One even sent me a post card last month with a picture of his newborn. He named him after me. So precious."
Lich 1 & 2: "... What the hell is wrong with you?"
I love it. Lich 3 is the most evil of all of them, and he doesn't even kill anyone.
Subtle evil is the most dangerous.
The most wholesome lich of them all. But also the most dangerous.
ok, the comedy made me roll on the floor laughing, but the modify memory into making the party believe they actually found the phylactery and destroyed it...
I need a novel like this
My personal fave: prep a 2nd lich lair, completely different and significantly easier than the real one. Put some glyphs of modify memory around each entrance to the lair. If ALL party members fail the save, the lich modifies their memory so to believe they've already defeated the lich. Don't tell your players this, RP it by running your fake dungeon. Killing the lich and destroying their phylactery should feel a little too easy. Be sure to railroad them to leave the way they came. As they walk over that area on their way out, reality resumes, and they'll hopefully return home thinking they've defeated the lich. They'll likely realize their mistake eventually, especially if they looted anything. Since any memories they have of the inside of the lair are fake, anything they think they took isn't in their packs like they'd expect. It's best not to have any magic equipment in the fake dungeon that a PC might want to equip. Depending on the circumstances, you might let them notice that their spell slots and abilities haven't actually been expended. Also, in reality, no time would've passed while their memories were being modified. If they left the lair with serious wounds, they should immediately notice they're healed. Keep in mind, just because they realize something's off, doesn't mean they automatically know their memories have been modified and the entire dungeon was fake. Let them figure it out. But, if the confusion ends up ruining everyone's fun, you can have a helpful NPC detect that their memories have been modified. If and when they return, the fact that the layout of the dungeon is completely different should serve as confirmation that their previous experience was fake. Depending on how long it takes them to solve the mystery, the lich might add more defenses or relocate entirely by the time they return.
My dad would hate this lmao, he despises any narrative similar to "and it was all a dream" 🤣
2 identical lairs. Completely similar. teleportation runes to the fake lair in about every doorway. Try and make them question if it's the same lair.
That's evil 😂
That’s an absolutely fantastic idea for a lich dungeon.
One addition Josh, I would not tell or inform my players of them not being wounded or not having spent their spellslots. Their perception has been altered, so until they roll a perception check well they would just notice small things to be different. But if they do not check their inventory, or check how they are doing then I would chuck that up to them being so deep in the new memories that they just don't realize.
That said I would not lie to them, and I would lower the DC every day or the further away they get from the lair.
I love how the early game is trying to keep the players alive, while the endgame is trying to keep the monsters alive
I always loved the idea of a Lich that works for a township. The town keep sending adventuring parties to their doom and in return he provides them with menial labour. He even gets invited to festivals and is quite the storyteller. Town needs that dangerous, dryad infested forest cleared out? Need some help building that log cabin? Too cold to hunt for game/food? Want help planting crops? Ask the Lich that lives in the tomb down the road. Skeletor won't mind as long as you keep sending "adventurers" his way.
*Rapidly taking notes*
I love these types of villains who are willing to cooperate to achieve their goals as opposed to just being one dimensional genocidal maniacs
An evil ruler who takes great care of his subjects since he knows that a happy and safe population is a productive one will likely be very difficult to overthrow as he'd most probably have the peoples' support in most cases, barring only the most righteous fanatics
See? This. Likeable Liches in the front... Death, gore, sacrifice and unholy experimentation in the back. :)
Like Pablo Escobar, except he's a Lich who likes to play management simulators with towns and cities. Just make their personality entirely detached from reality, happy to have tea with the players, actually talking about their own accomplishments whilst bragging about their war crimes... You know, Rimworld player stuff. :D
Bonus points if the nearby villagers have stockholm syndrome to the point of attacking the players on sight after getting wind of their favourite DOOT boye having been slain.
I imagine the characters get to the town and see undead around the town and the townspeople acting normal. They ask the first townsfolk they see what is going on and they ask in a jovial reply, " Oh hello there! What a great day we're having." The npc then gets jabbed in the chest by their buddy and they quickly change their tune, "Thank the gods, adventurers! We have been plagued by an undead menace for many years. You must help us!"
@@LoLaSn So what's the evil part, if the people are prospering, healthy, and happy?
I like this, though I think its worth mentioning the Lich breaking a staff of the magi is a great way to really scare your players, since that explosion is no joke.
Unless they changed it in 5th edition, that would require a Disjunction spell by the lich. Any 15th level spellcaster should be able to recognize, and counter a Disjunction since that spell takes a full round to cast. Break his concentration and the spell fizzles.
@@Chaun1998 They did change it. It's just regular old action now.
omg WHAT@@The_Archlich
If the lich made (or ordered it made), giving the staff any form of "thermal exhaust port" if you will, seems reasonable.
@@Chaun1998it never needed a spell. You could just break it back in pathfinder 1e
I had my Lich place their phylactery on a rather nice blue sapphire that was a family relic passed down in the royal family, the heroes of my story literally didn't know that it was underneath their nose at all locked away in the kingdoms vault, or draped around the princesses neck at the ball. It was amazing watching them scramble for a solid in game three months to find this thing. Eventually one of them was like 'wait a minute.' While they DID kill the Lich, they're now fugitives of the kingdom because they failed persuasion checks.
Everyone thinks hiding them is the best thing to do. I say, put it somewhere that's so common nobody thinks it's bad. If you REALLY want a fun lich, change their stats around. I once made a Paladin Lich. Party went in thinking it was some Wizard only to be met with what is basically a Warlock on steroids. Dude was throwing eldritch blasts, swinging a warpick, and wearing heavy armor while floating around. One of my greatest creations.
@@freeb455 First and foremost, the Paladin Lich I used in my example, was altered from the main stablock the regular Lich has. I did make a fully homebrewed Paladin Lich, but that's harder to use.
Oathbreaker Paladin Lich
Strength : 20+5
Dex: 16+3
Con: 16:3
Int: 14+2
Char: 16+3
----------------------------------------------------------
So, this was a 8th level former adventurer, who put 7 levels into Oathbreaker, and one into Warlock (fiend)
Aura of Hate - allows allies within 10 feet of you to get a +3 (one minimum) to attack rolls using the charisma modifier. (So all his undead minions he fights with, as long as they're within 10 feet)
Eldritch Blast
Command
Burning Hands
Crown of Madness
Darkness
Inflict Wounds
Hellish Rebuke
-------------------------------------------------
I gave him three magic items
Armor of the Guardians - While this armor was originally created for good, my Paladin stumbled upon it, and used it for evil means.
Mask of the dragon queen - requires attunement
Shield of the Hidden lord (nice +4 to AC)
Weapon - Warpick (literally just a regular warpick, nothing special)
Ring of Air Elemental Command (must attune, and kill air elemental, but you can fly around.)
Of course, I could keep adding ALL the information, but you can pretty much fill in the rest with whatever you want. This Paladin Lich was an absolute beast with all the resistances though
@@notleviathan855 Ty, this'll be useful
I feel like this could spark a whole campaign arc if the party is morally neutral and steals the pretty gem. After failing to kill the lich through various decoy phylacteries, you then reveal that the real villain was the loot they found along the way. And potentially sold to a trader 3 in game months ago. (Have I just re-created a worse version of Guardians of the Galaxy?)
so kings and royal mages through generation had no idea or ability to detect this... ok sureeeee...
@@Erebus2075 You do realize there are spells to conceal things right? Nystul's Magic Aura. You place an illusion on a creature or an object you touch so that divination spells reveal false information about it. The target can be a willing creature or an object that isn’t being carried or worn by another creature.
When you cast the spell, choose one or both of the following effects. The effect lasts for the duration. If you cast this spell on the same creature or object every day for 30 days, placing the same effect on it each time, the illusion lasts until it is dispelled.
The treasury had multiple secret passages to allow the royal family to escape with some money in the event of an invasion. The lich used this to enter, cast this spell, and then leave. Or if you want to use my reasoning, he had one of his little evil underlings do it for him, since he couldn't use magic himself. As long as thirty days went off without anybody messing with the stone, which if it's locked in a vault only to be shown for special occasions is plausible. The ONLY time anyone could've figured out it was "evil" was through dispelling. I love your sarcasm, but there are ways in D&D to make things appear not as they are.
Of course, I know you're going to say "but detect magic" nobody ever thought to detect magic on it. As it appeared to never have magic in the first place unless it was worn, which never cursed anybody, or have negative impacts. Generally speaking, everyone thought "Whoever puts this on, this cool rock looks enchanted." It's not an amazing reason, but since it did nothing negative nobody was concerned about it.
Had a lich build his tower over a river with a seemingly docile water elemental beneath, the faces my players made when the nearly dead lich just opened a chute and dropped his phalactery into the river for his bound elemental to carry to a sea base… beautiful. If I run a lich he’s either got a (literal) list of exit plans or a painful gut wrenching gauntlet to get through before you even see him.
"Or"??? Good sir, might I suggest *_Both.gif_*
Try adding in a Darkness Glyph along with it so they can’t teleport to the Elemental or just in general. Rather than Counter-spell a Glyph could have a Darkness spell. Most spells require sight and most characters will not have Dawn up or have Devil’s Sight. Glyph holds the Concentration and the spellcasting of at least 1 PC gets shut down while the Lich’s Truesight ignores it.
I think one of the funnest ideas for a Lich's phylactery is the realization the lich might have had that "Simpler is often better".
Step 0: Cast Nondetection on yourself, really just keep that on all the time. You're a powerful caster, a level 3 spell and 25gp worth of diamond dust every 7.5 hours for safety isn't too much to ask.
Step 1: Construct as small a Phylactery as possible, preferably in the form of some small opaque gem that might casually be mistaken for a rock. If otherwise possible: an object of such extreme insignificance as a bead of sand or a mustard seed. The original phylactery may even have had a powerful transfiguration spell cast upon it.
Step 2: Cast Sequester on Phylactery.
Step 3: Cast potent arcane wardings upon the Phylactery as normally afforded all Phylacteries - making it very difficult for conventional methods to destroy or harm. Often times such protections include immunity to non-magical damage.
Step 4: Place the phylactery in the most obscure non-magical place imaginable - preferably far from civilization. Such valid locations as buried deep in a desert, the bottom of an ocean, in the top of a mountain too high for mortals to breathe, at the bottom of an acid lake and of course - my favorite: an insignificant crater on a moon.
Step 5: Finally cast other contingency related spells that trigger in emergency if the phylactery is actually somehow damaged or moved too far and other emergencies.
Step 6: Stand back and revel in your simple budget phylactery defense plan, now you won't have to divest entire countries of their magic scrolls over the course of centuries in order to adequately protect your soul!
Step 7: Meanwhile, build up that dream phylactery vault you've always wanted, you deserve it! Mean time your phylactery will be safely guarded by its gross mundanity and obscure locale.
..But is it truly safe? I like to think that with 20 INT you fall prey to Overthinking. Also, I think liches are competitive, ruthless predators and hunt other liches if an opportunity presents itself. Simply because of something close to a Prisoners Dilemma. Maybe its best to keep the phylactery close..!
Maybe this is part of the reason the trope of them being smug is so popular. Also, is there a way to keep anyone from detecting what spells are on it if somehow someone finds out it is magical?
don't lich's cast level 1, 2, and 3 spells for free anyways?
@@NegatveSpace Wouldn't the Sequester spell prevent people from finding out that it's magical in the first place?
Yeah, nice idea. I though prefer them to make their Phylactery as the "common" ruby of sapphire and try to get it into king's treasury. There is nothing more amusing when the heroes get rewarded for the "destruction" of the evil-evil lich with his ACTUAL Phylactery and leave none the wiser. Gives good opportunities for insanely funny comebacks.
The negative energy thing always got me too. Even in the background lore, there have been liches who made their home in the negative energy plane due to their own unique physiology.
Having them even vulnerable to negative energy is like having a fire elemental getting damaged by alchemist fire.
Here's a thing I did once. I made a Lich that invented a new type of phylactery called a "Bio-Phylactery" that was tied to every person he managed to subjugate on his island lair. Whenever he took a significant amount of damage, it'd automatically transfer into an NPC, causing them to drop dead instead. It was a bit of a puzzle fight where if they kept charging him blindly, they'd kill every person they were trying to save in the process. The people were also cursed so that they could not tell the party about this mechanic. The only thing they could say was "we'll all die if you fight him" It was very fun to run.
well, sounds like sacrifices must be made, for the greater good those people must die
that's so beautifully evil
Solution: systematically murder everyone on the island, *then* go for the lich.
How did the party end up beating the lich?
They broke the bond between the Lich and his Phylacteries using a high-risk wish spell that could have killed everyone the Lich was tied to in the process, but they ended up rolling a Nat 20 on the arcana checks and managed to successfully break their curse. This Lich was more of a minor villain of the campaign so I was perfectly fine with this outcome, but if I ever run this kind of villain again, I have a lot more ideas now. @@interesting...6009
I love this. The intense overplanning is exactly what a lich would do and will make a party feel so confused about when the infinite contingencies end
End? They don't end. You _may_ find the last of the contingencies the lich has already implemented, but they don't end. It's entirely valid to have a party "encounter" a lich that was vanquished five hundred years ago, they're just tripping over a few more contingencies that never got cleaned up after its defeat.
Just do an entire series for other monsters like this and you’ll have a promising RUclips career. The algorithm brought me here and I want MORE!
on GOD
I'm here to request the next episode of this series.
same
Absolutely, I'd _definitely_ watch those. I've always watched videos from Runesmith and the like about those concepts, but I've never seen the most optimal things you could do with monster tactics, it's always just "an average example that'll challenge but not kill experienced players." NAH man, I want something that's one party member away from a TPK IF THEY'RE LUCKY, I don't want some piddly little challenge. I want my players to enter without any prior experience and come out as hardened veterans that could take on the original Tomb of Horrors AND LIVE. I'd love a maxed-out series like that.
@@RandomInternetStranger this right here lol! I find all these tutorials on "How to min max your PC to piss off your DM" and I know my players find them. I gotta get a little unholy revenge
I still like the idea of a Lich tricking an ancient dragon into protecting his phylactery, by just using a priceless artpiece as phylactery, I'm pretty sure it's easy to get that into the hoard of an Ancient Dragon.
If you can craft 9-level scrolls, craft one Simulacrum and as many Shapechanges as you can spare resources on.
Wish for simulacrum of a dragon that guards your phylactery.
Every following day after that, until you run out, hand it Shapechange to transform in a monster, acquiring all its features(including resistances/immunities) without losing its own, use Change Shape feature of dragon to become humanoid, and Wish for Simulacrum of it. Be wise with the last form, it retains HP(half of it) and physical abilities.
After you are done, hand it Sim scroll and make it use it on itself. Sim Sim shall be your backup in case someone beats Sim - with just one Shapechange scroll you can get Sim up again.
In fact, if you are willing to discard Sim, you can Wish for Sim Sims Simulacrum, and use Sim Sim Sim as completely disposable unit. However its gonna be a hella glass cannon: that based on Ancient Gold/Red Dragon has mere 68 hp.
It should have ALL immunities that exist in the game, meaning the ONLY ways do damage it are magical piercing/bludgeoning(to which it has resistance as Treant). Now, it can be Dispel Magci`ed, but if you used Flumph it is immune to it. Anti-Magic Field phases it out, but as soon as AMF falls it is back.
EDIT: You might also Clone Sim to make it non-magical. Then you can Sim the Clone for disposable minions.
EDIT Edit: And Clone the Sim Clone Sims also.
While that's very cool and flavorful, if we're talking "pure pragmatism," a Lich with thousands of years at his disposal would be remiss not to rely on layers of planeshift fuckery and instant death traps. Why would you even keep your phylactery on the material plane for example? Dragons can be defeated, even befriended, and they're usually dumber than liches (especially most evil dragons) even if they are fairly intelligent.
My lich's phylactery is an amulet given to their champion who's decked to the nines in magic armour and weapons, whose only job is to circumnavigate the world and slaughter everything in his path
This way, his phylactery is constantly being filled by death and constantly on the move
If he dies, he'll rejuvenate near someone who is basically a bodyguard and he can just teleport back to his lair (the bodyguard has a spellscroll of teleportation circle that the lich will supply him after every rejuvenation)
I think this fits well for a cleric or cult leader lich of some type who is very much willing to rely on their congregation/followers more readily!
@@The_Archlich if you are famililar with "The Order of the Stick" webcomic, the lich antagonist does exactly this. Although I cant remember if his cleric bodyguard knows that his amulet is a phylactery.
Im having violent flashbacks to Xanax's dungeon rn, bravo homie
I used to have a dream id have a mouth full of xanax and couldnt swallow them
Were you able to beat him? I just cant see how
What about Zoloft's? or Ri-talin's?
@@badusernamsummon a level 15 gun
A very unexpected reference! @@shatteredteethofgod
A lich was a high level wizard... level 18 to 20, before undeath. They have potentially had a thousand years of more to research or gather EVERY ARCANE SPELL EVER CREATED.
I never run the book stat block spell list.
The lich has a lot pile that would make Tiamat drool in envy... and it's mostly magic as they have little use for gold.
They might just have their undead servants cart the gold out in wheelbarrows and dump it.
The lich is a magical researcher, obsessed with seeking new, better, more powerful spells and magic items. They would have accumulated spell scrolls in ceiling high stacks. They'd have rooms lined with shelving for potions. (and only potions the lich could use... no healing potions)
They'd have permanent "Guards and Wards" spells cast to cover almost their entire lair. They'd have glyphs of warding cast in ways a mortal could not, because the lich is not mortal.
Unseen servants, undead, and possibly even some living persons who might even worship the lich as if it's a deity (which would amuse the lich greatly)
Now... run THAT lich....
Yeah I feel people have kind of lost the plot on the whole part where they were compared to demigods on the regular, but I can't besmirch newer players for not fully understanding what a lich is truly supposed to be if it isn't a baby still securing its lair.
Well, why? The players can only beat him by exploiting his hidden weakness escape room riddles anyways. It would never be any random encounter fight but a boss kill exploit the players have ti discover and apply correctly.
The only real justified way to run a lich, is to have him be secretly behind all the other "BBEGs" that the PCs have fought for their entire careers.
I usually think giving the Lich a damage transfer affect to undead he controls helps him be less squishy without direct HP boost. Whether its half or all the damage dealt to the Lich it being transferred evenly among the undead will make it difficult to target him first before dealing with the many mobs.
Especially if you make that into an item and the party has a necromancer.
@@Ed_man_talking9 strategicaly and movement wise 3 litches are better. Thematicaly your idea is a LOT better and cooler
This is cool, and it allows the AoE blasters to feel really cool since they'd be very effective against this tactic! I bet a lot of players would enjoy said fight.
I really like this idea, and it lends itself well to the massive armies that a lich can control better than base dnd magic does.
Or (if you're feeling extra evil) you could spread it evenly to all creatures in the room. Paladin smites the lich, and the cleric and wizard go "ouch !" while all the undead just shiver a bit.
You forgot to mention the Lich’s lair actions, which allow them to get infinite spell slots of 8th level and under. You also probably should’ve mentioned that a smart Lich will prepare Negative Energy Flood and cast it on themself and their undead minions to grant a bunch of temp HP (and then recover the slots with the lair actions).
Yeah there's a fun idea this guy on reddit had where if you piss the lich off enough they just start scrying you over and over, teleport on you and shoot a bunch of spells at you. Teleport back to a tp circle in their lair, wait a couple rounds until they get their spells back, tp back, rinse and repeat. It was hilarious if not a bit of a dick move (which is very on brand for the bone gang) Also in 5e liches take necrotic damage according to the stat block. They don't heal from it in fact they aren't even immune to the fucking damage, which is stupid as shit.
@@The_Archlich The energy resist/immunities make more sense if you remember that Radiant=/=Positive energy and Necrotic=/=Negative energy. Necrotic is entropic which will rip apart anything living or dead. The fact that positive and negative energies don't exist is why healing spells don't hurt the undead anymore.
@@The_Archlich you gotta imagine how bored liches are after living for potentially thousands of years. Someone pissing them off is just an excuse to be incredibly, relentlessly petty
@@The_Archlich
Actually negative energy flood give temp hitpoints instead of damage to any undead regardless of their immunity to necrotic damage
@@The_Archlich This makes me think of a book where the favorite tactic of the lich was just teleporting around a battlefield casting disintigration beams on any annoyance. Followed by more exotic and higher tier magic if the first ambush attack was survived. Given that it wasn't a turnbased setting this was a terrifying tactic as the lich just teleported in the middle of a group sprayed around some beams and teleported out again.
One other thing to remember is that undead (including the lich itself), constructs and other potential minion type thingies don't need to breathe. There should be entire chambers with toxic or absent atmosphere. Bonus: without oxygen, you don't have oxidation, meaning the zombies will stay fresher and iron golems don't rust
Living spellcasters also need air to speak the incantations required in their spells. Holding your breath just isn't an option for them.
All the more reason to put that b!tch on the moon.
8:25 The protective Counterspell Glyphs should be triggered by Dispel Magic, not Counterspell, because Glyphs can’t be Counterspelled anyway, since they’re objects and Counterspell only targets creatures.
Interesting, I didn't know that. Thank you for your contributions to evil today!
@@The_Archlich Well, time to recast all of those for the next 5 years...
I much preferred 3.0/3.5 liches.
So you take a psudeo-dragon familiar
You give him the potion to turn into a draco-lich.
You perform the rites to make him a demi-lich
You now have a tiny bejeweled dragon skull that is your familiar and can eat souls.
IT JUST COSTS MONEY.
This video is where its at. You'd think Rule 1 would be to roll up the treasure and then equip the lich with all the useful armaments. And Rule 2 would be that the Lich would realize his dungeon was being invaded at some point (ex. alarm spells, scrying, and incorporeal undead that exist just to report intruders) and use all that prep time to cast spells, create more minions and prepare ambushes.
Apparently tons of DMs don't think of that.
Reminds me of a Vampire encounter I've always wanted to run where a Vampire Lord has a bunch of mirrors with demons bound inside that can each turn invisible and change their size and are under an illusion to look like him. They are charmed to behave exactly like him when they can see him and turn invisible and do nothing if they can't.
The bound mirror demon's don't know there is at least one golem enchanted to not have a reflection which is morphed to look like the vampire lord. If anyone comes in and accuses him of being a vampire the golem will bring them to a mirror and demonstrate this isn't true.
They'll bring the victim as close as possible to mirror, hold them in place, smash them face first into the glass, release the mirror demon, and the golem and demon, who both look like the vampire lord will begin to do battle with the victim who has a face full of glass, is concussed, and is fighting 2 fake copies of the same creature.
Meanwhile the real vampire lord is somewhere being telepathically shown all of this from the perspective of both the creatures and from a small spider which acts as a security camera. If the victim lives- the Vampire Lord will know they might actually be in trouble, luckily they can see how this challenger fights through this little trick.
One thing I never see people talk about enough when it comes to liches is that they are not the strongest. That's why you throw them at your party all the time. The whole point of a lich is that when they die, they don't truly die! This allows the lich to be the perfect recurring villain, constantly appearing to pursue some goal in short bursts. And when that goal fails or backfires, and they die, they can just return!
Fighting a lich shouldn't be about waiting until the last moment, storming their castle, killing them, and destroying their phylactery. By that point, you should have "killed" the lich several times already. Each time the lich should change up their spells to counter the player's spells and learn the player's tricks, growing wiser with each encounter.
Fighting a lich should be like watching a TV show where the villain shows up to try and achieve their goal. Maybe they're successful, maybe the heroes thwart them, but instead of the heroes letting the villain go (which we all know your party isn't going to do), it's more like, "Yeah, sure, you killed me, but I'll just come back."
The final assault on the lich's lair should be the grand finale, where you now have to fight the lich on their terms.
depends on the lichs age i think. I could see younger liches using such straight forward reckless tactics but older more established liches would likely not even do much above ground. A established lich would likely have control of several "tools" in places of reasonably high power to do things for them.
"Oh you want 10000 scrolls by the end of the month? Sure, would you like them acquired legitimately or illegitimately?"- some guy put into power by the lich
"You need 500 living slaves for secret reasons? (emergency phylactery food or skelebone infantry) Perfect i know a few nobles who wanted their homeless population to disappear before the royalty tour anyways so ill just send them your way."- one of the many corrupt nobles in fantasy settings.
Power comes not just the individual, but the collective as well. Destroying a established lich would be similar to fighting a plague; seemingly everyone is the cause and you must either steadily erode its footing before dealing with the source or burn everything down with it.
It would also not be out of the question for a 200 year old lich to be THE thing that made a country in the first place and just has the royalty ruling it because its a waste of time to do so personally.
Unlimited time is NEVER to be underestimated. If we compare a human now to a human from Egyptian era the only difference our knowledge and yet the difference in power between the egypt of then vs egypt of now is insurmountable for MERE humans. Together we are not just human, but ideas forged through the fires of time perfected, beyond the perfection of yesterday.
A human is a weak creature capable of nothing note worthy other than thinking too much and jogging slowly over vast distances. We however, we are capable of holding information, transferring it, refining it and using it to surpass our physical limitations to build towers that reach the sky; to change the seasons as we see fit, to make staffs that spit iron at our foes rendering them a sunder and to build winged wagons that traverse the stars we once thought were the heavens themselves!
WE abuse the ever living shit out of unlimited time and have a intelligence rating of 10 in dnd. Imagine what something twice as smart as US could do with unlimited time?
I can't, after all im just A human.
Story of my favorite ever lich and BBEG:
The campaign was set around the party being dragon slayers and so far they had been very successful slaying various dragons. They’d heard tale of an adult black dragon who has terrorized the towns surrounding a forest for decades before seeming disappearing after collecting many magical ingredients and artifacts. The wizard correctly deduced that he was attempting to become a draco lich and that he very well may have finished his ritual already. The party traveled through the gnarled and decayed forest for days headed towards the mountain at its center where they were certain his lair was. However a few miles before encountering the base of the mountain they came across a magical barrier surrounding a small portion of the forest. This barrier kept not only them out, but also seemingly the regional effects of the dragon. Inside this barrier was a picturesque meadow with healthy wildlife and at its center a small cottage and farm. They could see a young beautiful human woman tending the garden and farm out front. The party broke a few of the runes that kept them out leaving the rest in tact and went in. Inside they realized that while inside it appeared that the forest on the outside in its entirety was also picturesque. They cautiously approached the woman and she greeted them kindly. Invited them in and served them dinner and offered them a place to sleep. They poked and prodded full of suspicion but found that she really did seem to be just a normal woman who had no idea she was living in a magical terrarium. As far as she was concerned she was living an easy going life happily married. This detail caught their attention. So she begun to gush over her loving and doting husband. However he was temporarily away on business. Suspicious they search the house over the night and find nothing sinister on the grounds or in the house, except a single painting of the woman and her husband. A darkly dressed and handsome man who they rightly guessed was most likely the black dragon. The next morning before they leave again to set out for the dragons lair they are offered breakfast by the woman and politely decline only for the front door to open revealing the man they are almost certain is the dragon. He gravely insists they stay for breakfast and so now with their target in range they agree. The breakfast goes off with thinly veiled threats and brimming anger from the dragon who seemingly just wanted them to leave and never return. When the woman left to tidy the kitchen and the dragon in disguise and the party were alone. The party however refused leave him be and offered to fight him then and there revealing his nature to his seemingly oblivious wife and potentially endangering her, or allow him to leave with them through the barrier and allow her to remain oblivious. He chose to leave with them for her sake and the fight began. The dragon lost pretty quickly however because of how the fight played out he fell onto the barrier shattering it. He reverted forms back to human as he died and begged the party to look after his wife after they killed him now that the barrier was not there to protect her. They vowed they would and finished him. The wife saw this and refused to leave with them and refused their protection opting to stay here with her dead husband so she could tend to his corpse and their home even as the swamp began to encroach. The party left her there, she wasn’t a threat, just a normal human peasant woman. They ascended the mountain to be sure he’d never made a phylactery. Finding his lair they find it in ruins with magical components and notes strewn about along with a complex ritual circle on the ground that had 5 of 6 components in place. Reading his notes they find that he had everything he needed to become a lich, except the most vital piece. To murder someone you truly love in cold blood. So the lich sought out someone to fall in love with. He found it but what he didn’t expect was how much that love ended up actually meaning to him. He ultimately decided he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t sacrifice her soul to become a Lich and so destroyed his lair in a rage. Initially it seemed his raids had stopped so he could focus on the ritual but turns out they had remained stopped because he’d given up his evil ways to be with his wife. The party left the lair as it was feeling unsatisfied and returned to the city they lived in. A few weeks later they get a sickening feeling and see even in the great distance the mountain emit an enormous beam of necrotic magic into the sky. They quickly return to the mountain to find that the dragons wife had found his lair, and dragged his currently humanoid corpse up the mountain and sacrificed herself as the final component in order to bring him back as a draco Lich and now they were here in his lair and he was headed straight for their city. Along with his new phylactery, his wife.
Brutal.
@@nickanderson412 the wife’s soul was also consumed by the ritual so her body was little more than an unthinking corpse puppet. The dragon did not take this well since the party had effectively broken their promise to the dying dragon and did everything in his power to take everything he could away from the party. At one point he let the party all teleport away from a failed attempt to take his life. However he counter spelled a single casters teleport leaving him stranded alone. I sent the other players out. He had to try and fight his way out, failed, died, and was promptly resurrected as a lich himself under the dragons control, who the dragon sent back to pretend he’d narrowly escaped with his life. This player kept up the charade for over a year before eventually they came across a book of wishes that could bring anyone back from the dead or even begin someone on the path to godhood. The dragon commanded him to take it and teleport back to him and he pulled it off. The party realizing what happened, hunted the dragon down only to find he had used every wish in the book to reconstruct his wife’s soul. Seeing this the party was legit just like “give us our friend back and we can just let all this go and forget about each other.” And the dragon surprisingly agreed and held up his end of the bargain. The party didn’t see the dragon again for almost 2 years irl time.
@@jamesmoore2232 This is an incredibly interesting story. What happened when they saw him again?
@@jamesmoore2232 Agreed, I also want to know what happened next!
@@RazielSoulshadow I responded with the entire synopsis of the entire rest of the campaign to the other guy.
Lich Xanax enters the room. His overwhelming presence causes you to disassociate for 8 hrs.
Disguise self is a 1st level spell. Appear human, live in a bustling city. Have a permit and necromancy license. Send adventurers on quests. If the party ever figures out what you are, well... you know much more about them than they know about you.
Except, why do that when you can just have a simulacrum do it that is enchanted to allow you to see through its eyes and hear through its ears?
@@CrizzyEyes Because I'd rather live in a city than use a simulacra as a VR game of living in a city? I don't feel like the simulacra gives me an added benefit so much as a distraction.
Liches already have a built-in respawn mechanic. A simulacrum costs 1500gp and it's a 12 hour casting time. And it's a copy of an individual. And repairing it costs 100gp per hp, which is pretty ludicrous and means it's cheaper to recast (other than the 12 effin' hours) than to rebuild...
It's not useless, but this isn't a situation I'd use it in, you know?
@@DannyboyO1 But if you're pretending to be a normal person in a city that's a very large time and effort investment that could be spent on magical research, working towards some greater goal, etc. It's not a very attractive option for a lich.
@@CrizzyEyesNah, you just enchant a belt with disguise. (Hats can come off in a stiff breeze especially since you don't really have hair.) The thing about research, it's seldom a solo endeavor. You need to be able to deal with people pretty regularly.
But also, not every lich has the same motivations. They just, like, need to be a fairly powerful spellcaster who... learned the ritual to cheat death. Maybe they're just *really* into birdwatching these days, and enjoy being retired.
@@DannyboyO1 I try to think about character motivations from the beginning. Why does someone become a lich? It's a profane ritual only accessible to the most powerful of spellcasters. In my mind, that person must be unilaterally devoted towards some kind of larger than life goal, because they're defying the rules of life to achieve it. Not only that, but the most powerful spellcasters are usually quite devoted to begin with.
While I don't doubt there are people out there who would be happy bird-watching for eternity (elves, for one, especially the way they're described in 5e), it's quite another to suggest they'd be happy transgressing directly against the gods to do so. After all, if you respect nature, surely you respect the circle of life. You'd have to come up with a setting/cosmology where dying isn't the natural order of things for this to make sense.
By "large time investment" I mean that the lich has to actually be there, personally, unless something like a simulacrum is used. They have to maintain a false identity and do enough menial tasks associated with a normal life to seem plausible. Otherwise people will start to wonder where the hell this random person came from and that would be a thorn in the lich's side, at a minimum. Medieval cities aren't quite like modern cities in that there was still a great level of personal interaction and people knew each other. Not knowing your neighbors isn't really a thing in a pre-modern society because it's a necessity.
Simple way for doing trolling as a Lich:
- Lure party in dungeon with a pg-proof door. door opens towards outside.
- give order to minion to activate a immovable rod to block the door
- teleport away for extra salt
My lich just hides his phylactery in an invisible box behind a loose brick in the 3rd room of his dungeon. I have had players do many wacky things, but I've never had anyone actively try and take apart the dungeon itself while they go through it.
I've done that as a player.
There is an impossible variety of places to hide such an object that I'm shocked that they would ever be found.
That's a fun one. I've done a couple like that, but what'll get you is the nerds playing wizard who keep detect magic up the whole time they go through the dungeon. Unless you use nondetection on it (or Nystul's Magic Aura might work?), they may stumble across it.
Consider the interior of a load-bearing column for that perhaps? Small space for the phylactery that can only be reached with some engineering.
@@The_Archlich I believe a small bit of lead or solid feet of stone blocks detect magic kek.
Jesus Christ that explanation on protecting a phylactery was psychotic and amazing
Psychotic and Amazing; I could think of no better compliments to a lich!
I like to think that while liches are creatures you can reason and bargain with, they are also always functionally insane. You can't know what landmines are present that could set off a truly psychopathic rage, thus causing the lich to set off any number of absolutely bizarre counter measures. Maybe a skeleton army, maybe cloudkilling an entire town, maybe illusions to make it seem like someone loudly broke wind whenever they turn exactly 45 degrees from their current orientation.
It might be overkill, but it seems to me like Xanax's contingencies could do with more Time Stop - perhaps in combination with the intrusion alerts to give him time to prepare a response. Just in case, of course, but imo a bit of time stop is always good. Seriously though, great video - enjoyed the dry humor and good ideas.
Edit: Actually thinking about it, my thought probably just falls under "respond appropriately" and he should just use a scroll that he keeps on his person.
I like that. May be adding that in the future! Also check this shit out homie; someone on reddit had some cool insights:
www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/prm1k5/comment/hdk9ms1/?context=3
8:44 My go-to panic button for liches is the Bricks of his halls are always filled with skeletons. Skeletons that, at the wave of his wand, can be resurrected with Create Undead Glyphs.
But only AFTER the walls come crumbling down on your party, revealing the Skeleton Archer Death Squad on standby. Every roof of the building is LINED with skeletal archers, each with 6 arms and three longbows of course, more than enough to out-DPS the party. If they ambush the lich in his home, the walls come crumbling down on the party, the bones within them animate and attack the dazed and wounded party, while the archers on the nearby roofs of the mansion turn and aim up. Now the party is in a deathbox of arrowfire, wounded, surrounded, and the Lich is escaping with his scroll of teleport. They have One Round before they have to hunt him down in the panic bunker beneath the mansion.
I love that you named him after an anxiety medication and made him more bugfuck paranoid and terrifying than the most unhinged war criminals imaginable.
I can really appreciate running D&D as a hardcore combat-focused RPG, where the players are trying to kill the DM, and the DM is trying to kill the players.
Gygax would be proud.
I'm not trying to kill them perse, but the lich is and they better be ready for that. Things in dnd are trying to kill you, and I think people worry too much about something having the capability to kill players if they fuck up. Adventuring is a dangerous trade, and in my book dangerous means someone might die.
@@The_Archlich The more I play TRPGs, the more I've become interested in having adventures: in telling stories WITH my players, instead of working so hard on creating enemies and obstacles for them. I find the collaborative storytelling aspect of RPGs incredibly engaging. Player death, in that context, should be about creating tension, or bringing a narrative to a conclusion.
Its just a shame that D&D is TERRIBLE at creating such an experience. But D&D is the only game people know, or worse, is the only game they're willing to learn. So whenever I run D&D, I stick to dungeon crawls, where the terrible habits players can learn (paranoia, munchkin-ing, thread-less backstories) are rewarded, and player death is a sign that the players have to up their strategies and synergies, and not something that brings the story to a stop.
Its a shame that 4th ed made that process so much easier, but finding players who will play 4E in public is harder than finding players who've even heard of Cortex.
Regardless, very entertaining video!
@@The_Archlichthis isn’t a setup about having the power to kill the players if they fuck up, this is a setup which is specifically built to be impossible to kill without plot contrivance, absolute minmaxxed charop characters played by munchkins who workshop every action they take, or OTT game cheese exploits lmao.
@@Dorsidwarf nah man. It is a paranoid immortal being. If you fight him on his terms you WILL and SHOULD die. That is the point. It is a being that most likely has planned some continent spanning ritual in the next few hundred years and is dedicated to that goal, and players should approach him as tho that were the case, with carefull planning, research and finding ways to gain the upper hand outside of combat. If you just want a big dumb body for a big fight, stuff like Tarrasque and some dragons is out there
Plot contrivance? Plot contrivances like what? not assuming the 3000 year old wizard is stupid? preparing your own insane magic wards to combat his madness? finding weaknesses in the BBEG to fight him on your level? people too often confuse a challenge with "immpossible" and a solution with contrivance.@@Dorsidwarf
Brother rlly came out of nowhere, dropped a banger video, and dipped never to be heard of again
Still subbing just in case he comes back
Catch me in 2029 baby. Be there or be square nerd.
My question is how on Earth does the party even have a chance to defeat this? That's far too many glyphs to successfully detect and dispel, not to mention the combat power of the Lich himself and all the minions.
One lich completely by itself with no defensive preparations is a medium difficulty encounter for a party of four level 20 characters (which should be doable even with minimal magic items). As the video describes the party would need several epic boons, several powerful magical items each. Epic Boon of Perfect Health makes you immune to poison which would cut off all the cloudkills. There are epic boons that make you immune to various forms of damage. While necrotic isn't one of them, no reason you couldn't custom up one considering fire, ice, thunder/lightning are already offered (along with the poison one). You'd basically need to walk into the encounter ready for what you were getting.
My high level character is a cleric (life) with a 26 Con and a 30 Wis. Everything went into those, he basically has no other magic items. Starts combat out with Holy Aura. So good luck catching him with a Wis or Con save based spell. When we stopped playing had 5 epic boons, he was immune to cold, fire, disease, and poison. Truesight, and gm hand waived spell mastery for cure wounds (which had no effect on combat, just meant with enough time he could top the party up without a long rest, plus help the common folk). Now party that with a Sorc2/Wiz18, and a Sorc2/Bard18, 20 zerker, and a rogue/warlock (don't remember the mix). All of the same power level (though they took normal items instead of stat books). That is the kind of party you send after a lich like this. Sending some fresh faced 18-20s into an encounter like this is asking for a tpk, especially if they just stroll into it thinking they are getting a lich straight from the monster manual.
Personally I’m of the philosophy that you put players in dangerous situations and it’s up to them to come up with a solution, none planned out by you ahead of time. Not usually a problem since players are always surprising. So long as you signpost the danger well enough it shouldn’t be frustrating even if they lose
Walk into lair with barbarian and wizard with active antimagic spell
Grapple the lich
Leave the lair
Rest of party with scrolls of 9th level dispel magic with readied actions outside the lair to cast as soon as the antimagic field drops
Take long rest
Repeat process with phylactery if it isn’t able to be smashed nonmagically with barbarian
This assumes you’re able to find a way to get to the demi plane (which I think isn’t supposed to be forgotten realms canonical as liches and their phylacteries are supposed to be bound to the material plane, ah well) but thats going to be narrative and campaign/DM specific, as its not like you could torture this out of the lich reliably
@@Corvothing24 If your DM runs a bbeg lich and gives you portable antimagic, he gave you the dub.
Also, if your caster wants to use it, they have to come with as it's concentration, and even then antimagic isn't going to stop the kyuss worms about to eat them from the heels up, or the bone boy arrow squad
Pretty easily actually. They simply wish the demiplane out of existence, and scatter the contents in the astral plane. It is not a 100% permanent solution, as the phylactery can still be found at some point, but while in the astral plane no time passes, so the lich doesn't reform and timer based contingencies never trigger. It might burn your ability to wish, but it is consistent with other planar mechanics effects and wish's ability to reverse lower level spell effects so I would let if fly as a DM (though this scheme would not be what a lich would do in my worlds anyway, on account of these sort of weaknesses).
The assumption that the demiplane is hard to find is a stretch. It is entirely possible that anyone can find it simply by casting demiplane themselves looking for the phylactery of the lich in a death-trap of a demiplane. That is the nature and contents of the plane, and by RAW should be enough to get there. The idea that you can put that much magic in a place and still expect it to be subtle is a naive reading of the rules. This is why a lich in my game would never do this. Demiplanes are cool, and reasonably secure, but they are not designed to withstand high level attack, so are not suitable places for a 'fortress'. The planar foundations are artificial and so inherently weak, and those can be attacked. Even if we limit possible spells to only those that really exist, in universe an intelligent lich could not discount the possibility of a wizard researching a custom spell for finding and dissolving demiplanes.
The only difficult to defeat protections listed were the ones that move the phylactery, and only if a wish dissolving the demiplane triggers them*. You then have to find it again, and blow up the next location, but this is more of a faff than actually hard (compared to killing the lich the first time). Divination can reveal to you where the lich will reform if you do not intervene (that's not protected), and with this current set of protections that will be the new location of the phylactery. Then you need to get into the details of how the reforming takes place to decide whether servants can place divination protections on the reforming lich, but then we are getting into storytelling territory. You find yourself playing interplanar 'catch the pigeon'.
The other thought is to attack the contingencies. If you believe there will be contingencies that will move the phylactery out of the chamber, you don't even need to find the chamber. If you find the golem and the new secure location you can just push the button yourself and let the defences place it into your hands.
It requires a very cooperative adversary for those glyphs to be relevant. At the most basic level a party sends an iron golem in first to set them all off. The defences look diverse, but they are actually all just variations on 'kill things in the room' and 'stall and move the phylactery out'.
The bigger issue is that by giving the lich powerful magic items you have made the first time it loses basically game over for it. It is such a reduced threat that the phylactery is almost unimportant on account of not defending the items.
*Contingencies on a timer are either on the phylactery itself, so would fail when dropped into the astral plane (timer fails), or in some other location, in which case there is already an external setup for removing the phylactery and we can just attack that instead.
A Nystul’s magic aura to mask one’s self as Xanax would go quite the long way here
The Lich has been my favorite monster since I first encountered them in "Van Richten's Guide to the Lich". I have yet to see a party defeat a Lich in one of my games.
I've read that one. It's sick as fuck.
This is an AMAZING video.
I consider myself a hardcore DM and am always looking for ways to make my BBGs more interesting. Your video is just the kind of inspiration I'm looking for in a D&D video. If you can keep up this level of quality and cover other boss monster (vampires, death knights, drakoliches, etc.) I think you could do really well.
You got my like and subscribe.
Keep in mind, traps have their own CR. Hard traps, higher CR, more exp, encounter difficulties.
This is actually the most helpful D&D related video I've ever watched. After my 12th level party popped an intermediary BBEG like a balloon, I was beginning to panic planning out the main BBEG, the lich. Thank you so much
Remember always two things; a Lich has time, and a Lich can wait. While your regular run of the mill evil baddy might need to complete the dark ritual during the summer solstice under an eclipsed bloodmoon on a holy day, A lich would always remember "Eh... maybe I'll get it next time. Is it really worth confronting these people, who will be dead by the next time this rolls around?"
A lich need not have urgency in its plans, because lich's always play the long game. Remember; they forsook their immortal soul for immortality and power. Death is what they played the game against and they won, meaning there's no reason to kick death in the dick any time soon.
The other advantage liches have, often, is moral oblivion. There's nothing too horrible to do if it means gaining power or their goal. However, if they got to lichhood to begin with, they had to plan and play the long game BEFORE They became a lich. Liches are the planners, they love to get one over on people... particularly gods that don't like Liches, so vastly intricate plans that are completely unreasonable to a mortal person and take hundreds of years to set up? Totally in the Lich's wheelhouse.
But always remember... a Lich has time.
Hopefully you didn't make the mistake of following this, if you did you have now handed your party magical items far more powerful than they should ever get their hands on.
@@alistairbolden6340 awfully presumptuous of you, only based on a short comment that was only intended as support for the author of the video. 1) You have no idea what the powerlevel dynamics at my table are 2) you have no idea what my players want to do at the table and 3) I didn't even mention ANYTHING about magic items, what the BBEG was, or any details about my world. Go fuck yourself and leave your grandstanding to r*ddit circlejerks.
@@alistairbolden6340 what if (most of) the magical items were destroyed/disintegrated on the lich's demise?
what if we splice two loyal servants to our skeletal Litch from the waist up, facing away from each other in a triangular formation? that would make him immune to flanking, and let him, or them in this case, use more magic items, spells, etc., does this have potential or are we better off just using 3 separate Litches?
The simulacrum should stall for time, “Thank goodness adventurers, time to end my creator’s tale, I share his memories, I’m so weary… sit down and have some cocoa while I start from the beginning, like many other tales of woe, this one starts with a woman….” Meanwhile Xanax just taking his time brushing his teeth having some cofee at a small table in his M Mansion before heading over to the demiplane to take care of business.
Depends on the personality. Xanax is a huge prick so he doesn't like to talk to "lesser creatures".
Thank god i brought a bag of 200 squirrels with me to release into every room of the lichs dungeon and demiplane i stupidly stumble upon.
I think I created the perfect Phylactery-hiding measures (I don't blame you if you decide not to read it all lmao):
When the party first fights the lich, he simply refuses to back down or flee from the fight; after all, he'll just reform in his Phylactery Demiplane. If/when the party finally defeats the lich, he leaves behind a tuning fork that's set to the Material Plane and a small model of a chest (as in, the container). This is the Material Component for Leomund's Secret Chest. Within the chest are 2d100 gems, all of which have been enchanted with Nystul's Magic Aura. All of them appear to be Enchanted with Evocation magic. For the Lich, he can simply cast Locate Object, but for anyone else, it'd be absolute hell to do anything except just sell them (and even then, what morally good adventurer would ever sell gems that could be maliciously enchanted?). One of those gems is a Sapphire worth 1,000 GP, the Material Component for the Instant Summons spell. This Instant Summons spell brings forth a tuning fork, tuned to a Demiplane. This Demiplane is the first of several. I'm pretty sure that the only for the players to summon forth this tuning fork on their own would be either to get the lich themself to do it, or for them to break every gem in the chest (or maybe every Sapphire, with an Investigation or Arcana check at like DC 15 or something), in order to find out which one was the special one. I'd rule that you roll 2d100 and on 200, you successfully summon the tuning fork (roll something like 2d20 for the Sapphires, with 40 being the successful roll, if they narrowed it down to Sapphires). But don't fret, you haven't smashed every valuable thing owned by the lich; there is still a chance to make absolute bank off this Undead bastard yet:
The first Demiplane is filled with all the expensive and/or magical items the Lich found useless. Martial weapons with simple Enchantments, probably some armor with the same, plenty of Wondrous Objects of Uncommon Rarity and below, you get the picture. I'd just let the party members pick out whatever Magic Items of Uncommon rarity they want. However, hidden amongst these is another small model chest, only able to be seen with very good Passive Perception or a high DC Investigation check (set the DC as you please; I usually just make it 15 for max-level party members. When the chest is found, repeat stage one (I'd do it with only Sapphires and Advantage on rolls or just skip ahead and give the party a level of Exhaustion in exchange or something). I usually have the Lich cast Instant Summons daily to determine if the chest was found, or as soon as he gets his body back if he was defeated.
In the second Demiplane, Glyphs and Symbols line every surface except for a pillar in the center with a tuning fork on it (if my math is correct, there's a total of 216 squares that can be used, and the size limit for Glyphs and Symbols is just "it can't be larger than 10 ft total" so just make them infinite). The Glyphs are all Counterspells set to activate "when anyone other than [the lich] casts a spell," making it impossible for anyone other than the lich to cast spells in the Demiplane without a solid chance of failure (good luck even escaping by yourself in worst-case scenarios), in addition to Symbols of every kind (roll a d8 to determine which effect happens at the beginning of the players' turns).
And at the third Demiplane, this is where you choose whether you actually want to run this or if it's just a theory to see how impossible you can make it to find a lich's Phylactery. On one hand, the "this is 100% impossible route," have an effectively endless loop of Demiplanes that, theoretically, lead to the Phylactery. Have his Phylactery be a coin, a rock, a grain of sand or some other extremely small item and fill each room completely with them, other than the Sapphire that leads to the next room. Have Counterspell Glyphs on all surfaces in every one of the rooms, with the same conditions as the ones in Demiplane 2.
OR, the "I'm gonna run this" option:
In Demiplane 3, decide if you want this to continue even longer or not. If not, make Demiplane 3 the final room. If you do, there are three options:
1.) Make the room filled with items the lich deemed useful, mainly powerful Magic Items. I'd allow the players to pick whatever Magic Item they want, with some restrictions depending on your own personal opinions of course. This time, I would cast Sequester on either a Sapphire for the Instant Summons spell, set to a tuning fork to the final room, or just the tuning fork itself instead. I'd explicitly tell the players "you'll wanna take a Long Rest, the final room is next" or something along those lines.
2.) Have the lich's most powerul minions be in the room, which engage the players in a mini-boss fight. Give the mini-boss(es) backup in the form of Glyphs and Symbols that synergize with the creature(s). Have a Sequestered tuning fork or Sapphire lead to either a sick joke (the Phylactery was hidden elsewhere and this wild goose chase amounted to nothing) or the final room.
3.) There's just a piece of parchment on the ground that reads "you fools! My Phylactery isn't even in a Demiplane. You'd best hope you manage to find a way out!" The room has countless Counterspell and Feeblemind Glyphs with triggers that are the same as Demiplane 2.
For the final room, I'd just use the Main Demiplane section from this video. SCREW YOU I'M NOT MAKING ANOTHER SECTION TO THIS COMMENT, YOUR COOL FINAL PHYLACTERY DEMIPLANE IS UP TO YOU.
Id love to see a Beholder video with this level of detail! this was amazing and you sir are Criminally underrated.
The major flaw with this level of prepping a bad guy like this is that it is not playing within a limited amount of resources. I see this as being less challenging and more frustrating. Also, spell effects from the same spell that overlap don't stack in 5e. There are other logistical issues here with spell slots like: needing two ninth level spell slots to be able to store a 9th level spell in a 9th level Gylph. This adds to the overwhelming amount of resources needed to justify doing this. Because, the only other ways to do this is to: Give them another 9th level slot, or have them win the megamillions and give them a boat load of 9th level scrolls. This is brute forcing a single villain that is just going to die instantly when the party casts Gate on him after the bard spends a few months learning his true name. I think a much better way to run a lich is that they have an agenda, and certain people/creatures agree with that agenda. So the lich has plentiful allies, and even political ones. In the words of Thusla Doom: "Steel isn't strong boy, Flesh is stronger."
Yeah a better method might be to come up with a resource limitation, then create foreshadowing earlier in the adventure that describes the resources that the lich possesses, then use those limited resources to create an incredibly terrifying defense for the lich.
I'd agree, and even go so far as to describe running a Lich (or any villain/antagonist) this way as being adversarial DMing. You're no longer running the game, you're just trying to kill your players with your power as the DM.
As much time as Liches do have to prepare, and as intelligent and paranoid as they are, they don't have unlimited resources.
r/im12andithinkimright
And not just unlimited resources, the naive interpretation that the rules as written extend into infinity and corner cases. RAW is a simplification of the universe, and when you push it this far it just breaks. In particular, the interpretation that adversaries need to see your demiplane to get access to it is suspect. The spell reads a bit like there is security in obscurity. People cannot access your demiplane on account of not being able to identify it, rather than there being any sort of bar. A demiplane with a few magic items, and maybe even a particular soul, is not trivial to find. That does not imply that a demiplane maintaining dozens of near epic spell effects doesn't attract attention. It is lit up like a Christmas tree. People may not need to know much specific about it to be able to find it, and it is entirely possible that it will be noticed by something not even looking for it. That is assuming that the demiplane even remains stable when you try to put that much magic in it! Then there is the assumption that just because no way is listed to simply destroy the demiplane that none exists!
Sequester in particular has effects on time when cast on creatures, and a phylactery contains a soul. It does not seem like a spell you can cast on a phylactery and just expect things to still work as expected.
The protections on the demiplane are also overkill but ridiculous. The only relevant defence is the one that removes the phylactery. Everything else can be defeated by sending in a few cows. The effects that remove the phylactery can be 'hacked' to deliver the phylactery out of the chamber, so may even turn out to be a liability.
If obscurity is possible then the PCs cannot win irrespective of the lethality of the defences. If the phylactery can be found then these defences can be easily circumvented. There is absolutely no depth to the defence at all.
The whole time the video was going I was just thinking to myself, when is the part where all of the players and the dm start having fun?
If I wanted to contrive this much bs I'd just run the session hammered without a single page of notes.
(That was our first session and we had a blast lol)
"Unless he says a passphrase and declares them not a threat"
Edna Mode ... and guest
One of my favorites is to set a lich up running a small prosperous kingdom, with skeletons being used to provide the labor pool & militias, while the living run businesses using said labor pool and go about living a rather comfortable life (until they die on their own and join the labor pool).
As for his phylactery, well.... that's in a small underground chamber with no entrances, exits, or air -nothing but the phylactery, a spellbook with teleport, and a clone spell that triggers (then promptly dies) when the lich's body is rendered inanimate.
This dude just dropped his villan masterpiece of a plan for everyone to see and just refused to follow up.
Trully one of the best channels on YT
Idea: Make a Lich heal when it takes necrotic damage, and then give it a(or several) spellcaster minion(s) that cast Circle of Death on it and any martials in range
if possible, make those minions to heal when they take necrotic damage.
it would be a pain in the ass since the hero party would need to one-shot all of them at the same time.
also, give them Mirror Image to confuse the hero party.
This is a bit like the heal from Negative Energy under Pathfinder (1E) rules. I would say if you are going to include this, also allow healing spells to damage the Lich, with a difficult roll for success of course, to give the party a choice between healing themselves or trying to use those healing slots on the Lich itself.
It would make sense that if necrotic damage heals a lich than the opposite would also be true.
@@AveSicarius I agree. it would make sense.
That used to be a thing in older editions. Everything was way scarier back then. A lot of creatures really lose their teeth in 5e, but I think there are good and bad sides to this. 5e is good for simplicity, but you lose a lot of the real danger from older editions where dying was quite common.
@@The_ArchlichRevival was also way easier, because dms one shotting their party on complete accident was way easier as well. and dms pulling "hand your character sheet over you breathed wrong" which this kind of reeks of? Was even more common then today, tho it's still everywhere. The hyper aggressive player vs dm fuck collaboration what's that, style of dming that thinks anything less than 5 tpks means the DM has somehow "lost". There's always issues of this with big bags tbf, but any lich especially in 5e capable of all this is very very dumb to not just easily murder the party for supposedly being so smart. You can have hyper dangerous enemies without it feeling like you hate the people your playing with and wish to murder any fun they can have, which this can easily do if your not very careful. I agree a lot has been lost in 5e but admittedly it's not the fangs I'm usually annoyed with, it's the lack of uniqueness on a lot of stuff. Most special creatures have lost all the features that made them special and their lore cut some pretty important details for the sake of TO MUCH simplicity.
Miss the 3.5 days where there was a lot of support for Lich's including the classes of Dread Necromancer, Pale fist Monk(For that unarmed lich combat), Necromancy specialist wizards, tons of items for expanding on the lich's functionality as well as the normal necromancers functionality, and ton of side content to make a lich themed around just about any setting. My favorite thing was a lich who was capable of holding roughly 15800 some odd HD of undead under its direct control just through a combination of dread necromancer(Which had a stat bonus buff to its control cap per level) and undead control cap increasing items, among the corpse crafting feats to buff up all those undead, and templates that could be manually applied, as well as scummy tactics that most sane mortals would not normally employ.
Some of our BBEG's Lichs best gimmicks were:
A invisible skeleton with two bags of holding acting as a disposible assassin(Since only extremely high level spellcasters NPC wise would have Planeshift as a spell, being RIPPED into the astral plane was a death sentence for most people.) Had to invest in a permanancy spell with see invisibility and later true sight before that stopped being a regular occurance. (we rolled with most civilians being level 1, guards/soldiers 2, and experts level 3. Legendary heroes were level 12, which meant the kingdom REALLY couldn't handle a level 20 lich.)
Scrying/Scrying protection abuse: There was an amulet that when someone scried upon the wearer, it'd do an insane amount of damage to the person scrying them, but the best part was the lich didn't wear one, his bodyguard, however, all did. Queue a young divinier cleric exploding in bloody gore when 8 of these amulets go off at once. The lich also used scrying to check on people we met after we first annoyed it, and went out of his way to strip allies from us if we weren't careful (For a good while we weren't until we started going back the way we came traveling the country side and found out what happened to a lot of the npcs we had gotten help/helped in the past.
The use of spawn, evil magic item mechanics, mind control spells: To further bolster his already insane armies of the undead which he had been forming into a citadel, the lich would use evil aligned magic items(which when picked up by a non-evil entity, inflicted level drain) to kill peasants(which caused wraiths to appear a few days later due to the method of death) by using undead rogues to place negative energy arrows into the quivers of farmers, hunters, and archers and use their spawn mechanic(Things slain by the wraith become a wraith under the progenitor wraiths control.) to amass a spooky ghost legion atop the physical undead, the strongest of which (and the ultimate progenitors) were forged from awakened undead loyal to the lich. Mind control spells were often used to create infalliably loyal minions who could not be convinced that the party was saving the world, and would often be used as well to create sleeper agents when the skeleton assassins with bags of holding failed to get the job done later on. Mind control was also how the lich got around to having expendable magic items, since he would go around collecting artificers to both deny the would be heroes access to custom crafted magic items, and also fund his own legions of the damned with enchanted gear specifically built for undead. (For Artificers, making a piece of gear locked to a particular race/class made it cheaper for some reason, which means even though you looted an elite guard or commander of the lich's army, you're going to have a hard time using something that was made for a 'Awakened Spellweaved Corpsecrafted Skeleton Devoted Defender' if you aren't both the race and the class. The class was easier, but the constant magic item use checks meant that only really our sorcerer and bard were able to 'trick' complex items to letting us use them with their relatively high Use Magic Device checks, when the item wasn't evil to begin with anyway.
Crafting Tricks of evillll: As it turns out, we couldn't just 'bleed' the lich of magic items and destroy them til he ran out, a legion of the dead meant he could mine resources tirelessly, and with items like: Liquid Pain(A crafting substitute for the XP costs of creating magic items), Ambrosia(The good variant of Liquid pain, albeit, also horrible in implication due to the 24 hour cast time), Rituals(one of the books allowed included ritual sacrifices that could be done for 'evil craft' gold/xp which tainted the item used with it with evil, making it harder for us to collect gear without being evil ourselves due to the evil magic item level drains), and more.
Those were just a handful of examples.
The glyph on the only entrance the party thought was a series of arcane locks, was in fact, a series of modify memory glyphs that supplanted the memory the party entered and defeated the Lich and left.
I regularly give my Bosses player feats. A great one that makes sense for this Lich is the Mystic Conflux from Tal'Dorei Reborn. The Lich can cast Identify once without using a spell slot and can have *Four* Attunements at the same time. Powerful yet fair. If you want to low ball the 4th item, a Pearl of Power or a Proof Against Detection are always viable choices.
When your players become demigods, sometimes you need to remind them that they can still bleed
You could totally use this for almost any wizard. Obviously, you have to tone it down a lot, but really any capable wizard would have similar defenses and preparation’s.
Enjoyed the video, I'm always enthused when finding the Gygaxian legacy is alive and well.
I will watch you career with great interest, assuming more videos are to come.
Perhaps, I touched grass so it's been a long time, but I'm cooking something up that may make it out of the door this decade.
This was a lot. Very cool thought went into it, i struggle with imagining how I'd -run- a monstrous situation like this and keeping it fun for players.
I've never run for a table of power gamers and my imagination tells me I'd have trouble toeing the line between keeping the lich's secrets so it's dangerous and interesting, and having my players completely confused and dying with no in-game explanation
When it comes to something like a Lich, I recommend a WHOLE HEAPING PILE of narrative frontloading for everything. That's a lot of talking... but with each step towards confronting the lich, the players need to be made to feel like this is a bad plan. It's always a bad plan. They cheated death itself, for immortality and power. They have had all the time in the world to think up plots within plots going on like the Mandelbrot set. They've had the time to master Chess, Cards, Go, Shogi and Pokemon. They know, logically, the countermove to most moves and... as I say elsewhere...
Lich's always play the long game. They have the time.
It can be challenging, but in all reality they should never actually be messing with a lot of this stuff. I think the point is to think of perma-killing a lich that's been around for a while as a quest of epic proportions in its own right that will likely take the help of kings and the greatest heroes of the land. Usually you're coming into contact with a minority of liches because most are just sitting in some fuck off cave somewhere pondering their orb and making money moves in other dimensions. Generally you beat a lich rather than killing them. Think kind of like Sauron from LoTR minus the whole being a god(ish) thing. A level 20 party could easily body this lich without the fight being on its terms, but with the fight being on its terms, it should almost always win.
Great video. Most people don't bother using Glyph of Warding like this and imo it's the most broken thing in the game. Played an Arcane Cleric who did basically what you described. Spent all campaign pumping resources into my glyphed out demi-plane. Right before facing the BBEG (it was Bhaal) in his home plane the party hopped in the demi-plane. Got to do a few funky things like putting Tensor's Transformation on the barbarian. Upcast aid, bless, holy weapon, etc for the whole party.
My character even had a contingency set up in case he ran into his one weakness, Prismatic Wall. The only quick way out of the wall was to put his gear in a Leomund's Chest, kill himself, land in a clone body at home base, summon the chest and Plane Shift back to the final fight.
A wizard's greatest enemy is time. A lich's greatest strength is patience.
Don’t forget you are also the DM you can just give the lich a reaction that teleports him 60ft and replaces himself with a skeletal Minotaur in his place.
Or a skeleton minion that is dressed to look like the lich, and the lich can puppet it. So the players are trying to fight through the minions to get to the lich, and instead are using up their good stuff on a regular skeleton.
Yeah my party hated me for one of the 'Lich campaigns' I ran.
They found the Lich's hideout, battled through undead galore, rumbled the tumblers on no less than three massive ornate doors with images of dragons, each with a goblin inside before finally reaching the throne room, fought the lich who didn't monologue much but got right to business and casted a few spells, only to find out it's a normal skeleton with five magic rings and one was the partner to the 'Ring of Voices' which allows the master ring wearer to cast their voice to the slave ring bearer. and a parchment that said "The Lich is in another cave"
the barbarian player slammed the table with both hands and RL raged.
They did calm down after finding a few goodies the Lich left to taunt them, a couple of weapons, two spell scrolls which the wizard could add to his spell book for free, (30) Arrows of pure light and a magic bottle which could be used once a day to create any liquid from minor healing potion to food stuff and there being four rations of whatever they used it for. Was very handy since the home brew I ran forced them to actually locate or travel with some food or suffer a small penalty each day they didn't eat.
Some bits to look into:
Alhoons (Mind Flayer Lich)
Death Tyrant (Beholder that WILLED itself into Lichdom)
Also, consider pulling from older editions and their source books, such as 2e AD&D's Van Richten's Guide to Lichdom - covers everything about Liches, their powers, lair abilities, limits (if you wanna use them), stages of Lichdom, and Salient abilities (extra abilities the Lich can gain via a very special ritual, such as Animate Dead on Touch).
Something else to think about: 5e Liches are not that scary, most can take them down at mid level. 2e Liches however were built to be monsters, you needed a full party who are all at least level 20 just to stand a chance. 5e holds your hand, 2e cuts off the hand & force feeds it to you.
This is super useful. I intend to use it in my campaign for my bbeg. This video actually inspired his design, so kudos.
In a twist of fate, my players faced a 'lich' tonight. As a birthday gift to myself, I wanted to try running high level DnD.
The setup was, the players with their low level characters visit an extra planar circus. The most popular of these attractions is an illusionist wizard, running a game (DnD within DnD). The players put on some magic headbands, and experience the illusion they're high level adventurers in a dungeon known as the tomb of puzzles.
After a satisfying *four hours* of their brains liquidating from simple logic and arithmetic puzzles, they finally reach the lich.
Even with beefed up stats, this dude got his rotting teeth punched down his dusty throat in the first turn due to a critical hit from the paladin.
Each party member was playing a 'twentieth level' character (their characters, experiencing the illusion) and were given as such, level twenty character sheets, and three magic items of their choosing.
The real kicker was, these were inexperienced novice players. Had they been competent, ol' Amoxicillin would be a pile of grinded calcium dust turn one.
This was a lich.
With lair actions.
Beefed up AC and hit points.
Supposedly deadly to four level twenties according to encounter balance websites.
We had to pause as it was late as fuck (puzzles took them forever, they really weren't that hard, just very basic algebra and color theory, mixed with logic and riddles)
However, he's down to half health. Amoxicillin is in fact not chilling. His only saving grace is concentrating on invisibility as the 15 foot barbarian swings around his lair and the two casters bombard the shit out of his study.
Not exactly a "real" lich, but it goes to show how badly lich should beefed up from the template the SRD provides, lest he be turned into a microwaved raisin without even getting a turn.
I've watched all of your videos, and here I return. Great content; really good. It makes me sad to see the number of comments calling this unfair, as a player and a dm this seems full of restraint heh. At t4 play I don't see this being a huge obstacle of the party tbh, depending on how much time they have.
Thanks. I'm glad you find use and enjoyment out of my work!
As a DM of 23 years who specializes in Liches as Antagonists, I approve 👌 👍
Nice to see a video that bumps up the lich stat wise that has some funny humour for my gremlin brain. Kinda felt it’s stat block was underwhelming in the 5e monster manual. Great video from a small creator, I’d love to see more
I watched this video and in my next session I had my party come rush back to their city that was being under attack from the BBEG. He was located in the throne room and they fought through hoards of demons and other hellish creatures to get there. After a long fight, they made it to the large entrance to the throne room but as they opened the door to see him wearing the crown and the queen dead on the floor, they failed to see multiple glyphs containing 5 Destructive Wave spells and a few Plane Shift spells. They all nearly died and were transported to the Astral Plane.
I just imagined that it went down like they opened the door, saw the BBEG on the throne laugh at them, then they flickered through multiple different realities while being launched around with giant destructive waves. Tis was a really cool scene to DM.
Would love to know how the campaign progressed after that session.
doesnt a gliph take an hour to cast?
A mechanic I used for a BBEG that wasn’t a lich but was heavily magic item based. I gave him the ability to shuffle his atunements around as a bonus action or as a Legendary action. This way they had an absolute litany of magic items, many of which were acquired during the campaign and had the heroes actually try to stop their acquisition (sometimes they succeeded and made the final fight easier). This meant that the boss had strengths and weaknesses that were constantly shifting around in different ways, Metroid boss style.
1 video channel, the algorithm brought me here. Video is full of quality. Good work Archy.
As a first video, this is fucking God-Tier! Please keep making these!!!
I'm curious to see how a DM would play a Lich Warlock patron one day...
I know, right?
I’m introducing my BBEG, an Illithilich, today and having this video is useful to appropriately buff him later. Magic items are definitely something I forgot, but I am bolstering him with essentially 20 levels of Necromancy Wizard and a Mythic Phase if within a certain distance of his phylactery. So this should be fun.
I hope my players enjoy fighting undead and Aberrations for the rest of the campaign.
13:23 wish also can specifically undo an event/roll in the last round so you definitely can reform the phylactery
Edit this also technically includes damage rolls, this you can make them roll DAMAGE against the phylactery with disadvantage
This protecting the phylactery part of your video is amazing! lol
I like the idea of the bosses main chamber whole floor being Stones held up by the undead underneath so if you fail a dex save on any of your steps, the Pat Beneath You crumbles and you're surrounded by hundreds of skeletons with swords carrying heavy stones
6:50 the list... the obscene list of items... it is GLORIOUS
I'm using all of this. Thank you for making these instructions. Please keep making videos like this to beef up all the potential BBEGs
Kinda fun to see someone do a monster build normally I see op player based builds and as I DM I love this gives a lot of cool ideas for how I could buff my own monsters and make them more unique.
This was a really great video, of course then I instantly subscribed to your channel and went to your home page to see what content you'd made since then... and was immeasurably disappointed! Please make more of these! Even if they are for monsters you like less than the Lich, or aren't final boss encounters. I've personally spent a lot of time trying to figure out how dragon lair encounters should work if properly prepared. I was really disappointed by a dragon that was hyped up as the final boss of a campaign I was watching on YT. I'd love to see you tackle dragons, or any other boss creature that you thought was interesting.
Archie, please make more videos! These are incredible! I love your ideas, and I want more
Aboleth video should be coming before the end of the month.
@@The_Archlich Woooo! Thanks, looking forward to it!
I love the idea of liches as some kind of immortal CEOs. I mean they had hundreds of years to prepare and their plans are most likely also quite longstanding, so instead of having a BBG that flails wildly in its chaotic plans you should have a guy that came up withthe most efficient way to for example gather souls and undead to drain a sea so that he can gather thousands of tons of salt for some insane continent spanning ritual. Someone that has general process of dealing with typical adventurers in timely and efficien manner, simply someone you can only defeat if you gather A LOT of info and come up with a plan more convoluted than his. Lich should be a campaign, not an ecnounter
Imagine a CEO Litch that has so much wealth built up over time that basically the entire civilized worlds economies would all crash if he was killed and no longer directing his wealth to prop up various economies. Wizarding schools suddenly going bankrupt because they lose their major source of funding.
good video my dude saw it on Reddit glad I clicked it keep it up!
Thanks I appreciate it. I'm going to be moving soon, but after I get settled, I plan on making some more stuff. Not sure what I wanna do next though.
2.8K subs. ... _My man keep making instructional videos like this and you can add two 0's in no time._
Great voice, good sense of humor, actually knowledgeable, great and easy to remember channel name, algorithm blessings...
Besides, i'd like to see more of this. It's... actually really enjoyable. :)
Just, if you want to, know this is an option. ;)
EDIT: Also, subscribed.
Thank you. I hope you're right! If I can make a living off of this, I'll be able to make way more comprehensive stuff, like maps, example battles, monster statblocks, and a bunch of other stuff. It would be cool af.
I am definitely going to be using much of what you put out. I love Lichs too. Thank you. You are amazing dude.
It was the will of Io that I find this video right as I plot my next campaign with a lich final boss.
This is absolutely incredible.
I don't think stacking Cloudkill works, as multiple magic effects of the same name don't stack. However, you could pack those spare glyphs with a bunch of other lingering effects, like Sickening Radiance (this is extra juicy, because if you manage to trap the party there for the whole ten minutes, they have to make 100 total saving throws, and failing more than five of them results in death by exhaustion), Wall of Fire, and Incendiary Cloud, as well as a bunch of instantaneous spells for more damage and control spells like Hold Monster to ensure whatever's in there fails their saves. Mixing up your spells like this will also help protect against immunities to individual damage types.
All of these dastardly tricks combine into a lich that's more of an eternal ass that your team of powerful adventurers probably will have to end up negotiating with rather than killing. They can keep killing him and robbing him of magical items and foiling his worldly plots, but he can just keep coming back and messing with them at all hours of the day. Unless he's truly the main villain of the story, eventually they will get tired of each other and compromise begrudgingly. Which is really funny to think about in terms of how exactly that would go down and the effects on the world.
What if a wizard used the clone spell before becoming a lich? If his phylactery is ever destroyed would the soul then return to the clone?
I'd argue that the lichdom corrupts the soul and it can no longer inhabit a living body without consequence. Should the phylactery be destroyed and the soul transfers to the clone I would likely have it transform the new body into a modified Boneclaw
I would rule yes.
That's devious and I would run that in a heartbeat. Bonus points for a lich that is hundreds of years old and thus, no one remembers his original appearance, thus allowing him to plot revenge and possibly infiltrating the party at a later point
RaW it works perfectly fine.
I would argue yes, and moreover I would argue that it's almost necessary to make sure you don't fuck up and become a Boneclaw. Any smart would be lich would have that lined up in case they botch the ritual, which is quite likely that they will at least once or twice. So even if J Craw comes in and ruins our fun, I would still allow this at my table for players and NPCs.
This is very tomb of horror esque with the design and I love it, the lich is intelligent and paranoid and I think you nailed it with all the contingencies
Dude really just popped up, posted a sick lich vid and dipped. Legend.
This is absolutely wild, I love it. I've never played high-level DnD before, so I don't even know where I'd begin trying to take this guy down as a player. As a DM, the only way I can see being fair to the players is having the party seek out records of those who knew the lich before they became a lich and get information that way. Maybe they could somehow trick him into thinking they've stolen his real phylactery by producing a perfect replica of it, getting him to try to summon it from their hands and accidentally summoning his real one from the demiplane.
It'd be a nice book smarts vs. street smarts play. Basically snagging him the same way Jafar got got in Aladdin, and playing off the inherent weakness that leads to all liches, the fear of death, to make a mistake like that.
someone made a billion damage nuclear bomb in dnd use that
(Just compress lots of hydrogen)
In 3.5 i had a Lich with a fake phylactery hidden in the basement of his castle. It was inside a room lodged in one of many giant gelatinous cubes. By the time the adventurers killed the oozes, opened the anti-acid boxes and discovered that there was no phylactery, the Lich had already left with the real one on a zombie dragon he made from the roof and made the whole castle crumble on them. They survived. Funny enough, the Lich was later cast by another villain in a random plane via a well of many worlds and they never met him again. The party disbanded. (So sad)
You really need to make more videos like this - this was perfect
Jesus, are you SURE you aren't a Lich in real life? This is some evil planning ;) I love it!
A master necromancer never kills and tells...
You come. Post a dungeon master's guide about a lich and left, without explain. Love it.