bb@lanl-a.UUCP (10/27/83)
============================================================================== Liches are nasty, but some are nastier than others. Laura makes several good points about liches having gobs of magic of their own, a well fortified & guarded lair, unknown spells, etc... In my campaign there is a lich that fits that description to a T. My players only met an undead servant of his and a small army of 5000 zombies and suffered much hardship defending a city from them (level losses, disastrous expenses dealing with mercenaries, etc). They decided to flee the country that surrounded the desert the lich resided in and did so after destroying the servant and scattering the army by bringing down a dam at a critical moment. They barely came to the attention of the lich. However, it seems reasonable to me that liches of far weaker power and in far weaker positions could exist. Also, restrictions on liches not mentioned in the MM will also serve to make them available as opponents for weaker pcs, and less fearsome in general. The big point about liches is that they are dead. Being dead gives them some advantages and powers not associated with the living but being dead also has its problems. A lesser lich might find it impossible to stand the light of the sun like a vampire, might be confined to a certain area or territory that it cannot leave without being destroyed. Such conditions might be part of the magic that created it, esp. if the magic used to create the lich was the liches alone, ie, if it didnt get help from greater powers to become a lich. Human or mortal magic is not nearly as powerful as deity magic, even wish spells have limits that can translate into restrictions on a liches power. What would happen to a MU lich whose spell books deteriorate over the centuries and who doesn't have and can't get the ingredients necessary to make copies or other magical items? What about a powerful MU put to the torch but 'saving' himself with a powerful wish to find himself entombed with none of his magical paraphenalia but the other powers associated with lichdom? The only spells he knows were perhaps only those he knew before he was burnt. Another restriction that some might find useful is that because the lich is dead, any hurts done to it's body never heal, though hit points might still go back up. Thus severed limbs do not necessarily reattach, though they might still retain some semblance of the undead life it once had. Such a lich would be VERY wary of adventurers getting into its lair and would perhaps go out of its way to avoid such encounters. Or perhaps it knows of magic to attach fresh limbs to its decaying body and is always ready to welcome a fresh load of spare parts for it. Because a lich is dead, it has less interest in the living world unless it has a consuming hatred of all living things, and is much more interested in the world of the dead, and planes like the Negative Material. The Sand Lich mentioned above controls a large desert that was once the center of his empire when he was a living sorceror king. He and his kingdom were smashed but he managed to ensorcel an entire region and now rules again. The human kingdom that surrounds him calls him OverLord and Undying Emperor, but he just doesn't seem interested in interfering with human empires anymore. His control over his dead/undead subjects (at least 500000 died with him when he cast his great changing spells) is limited by the size of the desert and he raises armies and such only rarely and for obscure reasons. Qualities such as curiosity, inventivness, creativity are more related to life and life forces and the way I see it, a lich would not posess any of these, or possess less if it had them before it made the Big Switch. Thus, in my campaign, liches are dangerous threats, but only if you go looking for them, otherwise you are likely to be left alone. (Not even my group is powerful enough for liches to appear as wandering monsters.) b2 Bryan Bingham ...ucbvax!lbl-csam!lanl-a!bb