The fact is that a lich has always been an undead, and that there are technical reasons for it that have been explained in great details by man including me.
Warforged are a bit more complicated because, along the editions, their status has varied a lot from construct to humanoid (although always "living"). In addition, this poses a lot of technical problems in particular about health and spell effects, a problem which is doubled because, as a PC race, it has to be balanced with other races and not cause a problem for healers to have two sort of healing spells,etc.
So, if anything, we should get clear about the status of a lich and not try to make links with something like the warforged which is extremely problematic, for which people have many different opinions and which is really campaign specific, in addition to digging into things that are again campaign specific like the origin and destination of souls.
So what stops someone in FR from making a Lich that is a Humanoid? If you can use technology to turn a Construct into a Humanoid, what's to stop magic from being used to turn a Lich into a Humanoid?
Warforged aren't construct plus extracted living soul, they are actually constructs that 'manifested' souls:
An unexpected breakthrough produced sapient soldiers, giving rise to what some have only grudgingly accepted as a new species.
Basically they got so advanced that they evolved souls (evident by the fact they're humanoids and resurrection/healing magic works on them).
Warforged are no longer produced as part of the Treaty of Thronehold that followed the end of the Last War, which declared that House Cannith (who first developed the warforged and were the only house that could make them) would no longer manufacture sapient creatures. This was actually part of the emancipation of the Warforged; another race wouldn't have control of the propagation of their species.
Also, it's not actually known if warforged are immortal; the oldest are only a few decades old and the effects of time on a warforgeds body and mind aren't know.
1) So Warforged are a species that does not need to eat, breathe or sleep. And they don't make more of themselves. That sounds very much like a Construct to me, not a humanoid. This sounds like another "Who cares if the rules make sense, we just want to add sexy vampires robots to the game and have them be easy to heal for the party cleric."
2) Also, what general in the world has ever said "No" to having more soldiers? Esp. ones who have obvious advantages over other, more common ones? There is a lot of lore missing here, and current piece-meal answers do not feel satisfactory as a result.
1) It's funny that in spite of mechanics that clearly and undeniably show Warforged are not undead you insist on looking for arguments that they could be anyway, but when it comes to them maybe being constructs a few superficial similarities are plenty for you. Warforged don't sleep, but they do need to rest - not unlike Elves in that regard. They don't make more of themselves because they are not allowed to; they are barred from access to creation forges as much as anyone else. One of the main rumors about the Lord of Blades, the most famous Warforged in Eberron canon, is that he either is already creating more Warforged or is trying to make it possible for him to do so.
2) What general in the world has ever said no to denying the other side elite soldiers? Besides, the Treaty of Stonehold is the result of lengthy, complex negotiations that the generals probably didn't have a decisive vote in. Warforged are very much the Clone Troopers of D&D, and Star Wars already explored that their creation is morally suspect and tantamount to slavery. It's not hard to consider why the powers that be might have had very valid reasons to put an end to arforged creation in the treaty. And Eberron is WotC's pulp adventure, noir intrigue setting. It's not supposed to have nothing but clear lines. The mysteries and missing pieces are there by design.
Just like to add on the soldiers thing... production rate also matters. This is one of the traditional reasons Orcs are associated with being good with war. Traditional lore gives them high reproductive rates. Who knows what the production rate for warforged is?
important to note that warforge cost almost nothing, are better then any other soldiers ont he battlefield. the keypoint is... warforged in eberron are considered as weapons of mass destruction since most of them are first and foremost designed for war only. the fact they stopped the production might have to do with it becomeing a problem later on with course of armaments. much like we had in our own real world. imagine a country with warforge being created, if any other country stops production, then that country stops being a main power. no country wants to be easily outnumbered and becoming slave to a more powerfull nation. thus warforge creation was abolished because it became a really really stupid argument of war. when wars are determined by soldiers and how fast you can pump them out.... then does that war have any meaning to begin with ? all of those are reasons why the treaty stopped the forges. much of it having the same repercussions of our own nuclear war to armament we had back int he days. and now we have dismantled most of them going back to traditionnal war that are less destructive by just hitting a button.
play a warforge in your game, see yourself how out of balance the game become. its easy to figure out why it became a problem in eberron. can't gain exhaustion is the main factor here. no need to stop for eating, no ned to stop for the ocean because no breathing. can cast spells, can play musics, can heal. can wear armor reguardless of type. warforge groups can attack day and night without ever needing a rest. sure magical ones may need some rest to recharge spells, but why would they ? they have cantrips that still helps them achieve their goal. undeads on the other hand, have much of that without the intelligence behind them, which makes constructs a much more viable counter part.
all of this into considerations... you realise how fast other races gets outmatched in the long run. all of these played a role into the decision of stopping the forges.
Pardon, but where, exactly, is there any sort of cost accounting for Warforged creation? "Cost almost nothing?" Great! Then my first level artificer makes an army of Warforged.
Seriously, think about their design.
Who knows how long it takes to grow the 'root-like cords?' Or brew the alchemical fluids needed, or what materials are needed for either. Or similarly, creation time for the framework and other mechanical aspects? And that is just the mechanical side of production.... who knows what is involved giving them souls/spirits or whatever equivalent they have and how long acquiring or producing such takes and at what cost?
And as for not suffering from exhaustion, not only is no such immunity listed in the rules, resting provides the same benefits that it does for other humanoids. For other humanoids, exhaustion removal is one of the benefits of resting. Further evidence that they are not immune to exhaustion.
The very fact that the House who was producing them did not simply win the Last War is proof that they are not produced as cheaply as you suggest. On the Day of Mourning, Cyre was outnumbered 3 to 1. Cyre using warforged was enough to trick their enemies into believing the numbers were closer but that did not change the actual numbers. If they were so easy and cheap to produce, why would any nation using them ever be outnumbered?
in a world of magic, where does it says it is hard to create and cost a lot ? i mean the fabricate spell can do all of what you asked about in a matter of seconds. spells can become permanents you know. also enchantments exists. there are plenty of thigns that can explain how the creation of anything can be done. there is also the fact that warforged literally became a race by itself in a matter of a few months int he game. the forges that do them literally pumped them out in great numbers, that would be meaning that materials to create them were a plenty ! there is proof int he story itself that makes warforge a easy thing to create.
and yes, i would let your artificer level 1 create an army of warforge... but it would take time and you would literally have to make another character to play the game. also without plans and all he'd be starting from the beginning and thus would need to make prototypes first. you know go through all the hoops to get to mass production.
following the example above... imagine guilds having invested so much into making such a thing into mass production, to think they couldn'T get to mass production would mean they would of lost everythign for sake of an experiement. thats not what hapenned... every guilds wanted a forge now to make their own army of robots. that literally changed the way the world worked because of how easy it was to create that.
let me give you another example... asmodeus wanted a race for himself... he wished for a single race to become devil looking people... boom tiefling were literally born that day. if a big bad like asmodeus can do it, with that much ease... why wouldn'T other people be able to do it ? reguardless of who had the idea, those people created a whole new race. imagine us in our real world, it might have taken us over a hundred years to create cars... but look at how easy it is now to create them ! the same applies to warforge, it might have been a feat of strength to create one at some point, but when they got to the point of mass creation, it was trivial to them.
thats exactly why it became a problem and why the nations had to do something about it. the same thing hapenned to us with nuclear bombs.
Nuclear weapons are not mass produced though. Nor are they anywhere near equivalent to 1 to 1 with ground troops. The better analogy with nuclear weapons would be strategic level ritual magic, something not really existent in the rules currently. One warforged is nowhere near equivalent to a nuclear weapon.
And in your world, Warforged can be incredibly easy to make. However there is ZERO evidence that was true in Ebberon. If level 1 artificers can make them and if there are fabricate based factories churning them out at massive rates, where is the proof? Why was Cyre so badly outnumbered?
You counter with 'Well, it is easy for Asmodeus!,' completely ignoring the fact that he was doing so as a Greater God. Last I checked, mortals are mortals, not gods, greater or otherwise.
the same is pretty much true for your definition of it being hard to make. and my fact is from eberron, with the forges making hundreds of warforge per day ! that is literally in the books !
and now i wonder what is your definitopn of mass produce if you think ten of thousands of nuclear warhead is not mass production...
We are getting very off topic here but you do realize that the military strength of most nations is rather more than tens of thousands, right? And there certainly are not '100's of nuclear weapons' produced each year let alone each day.....
100 nuclear weapons a day ? how about 50,000 in 5 years !
but hey continu to think warforge were not a great thing... i read enough of it to know they were !
actually, you could bring back an undead to life by just castiung the ritual of ressurection or reincarnation. so yeah, you can bring back a lich to life. but that implies that you can bring backt he soul into its body, which you'd need to find its phylactery first.
it was also said before that fixing a vampire from undeath is as easy as resurecting him. when magic is involved everything is possible. so if you want a lich to be anything else then undead, go for it.
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The point of making a Lich a Humanoid would be for it to retain all or most benefits of being a Lich while also being able to benefit from heal spells. So from a lore perspective, rather than from a meta-game-y "rules be rules!" perspective, if there is strong enough tech to imbue a Construct with a gosh-darned soul to make it Humanoid, why not do the same thing with a Lich?
The fact is that a lich has always been an undead, and that there are technical reasons for it that have been explained in great details by man including me.
Warforged are a bit more complicated because, along the editions, their status has varied a lot from construct to humanoid (although always "living"). In addition, this poses a lot of technical problems in particular about health and spell effects, a problem which is doubled because, as a PC race, it has to be balanced with other races and not cause a problem for healers to have two sort of healing spells,etc.
So, if anything, we should get clear about the status of a lich and not try to make links with something like the warforged which is extremely problematic, for which people have many different opinions and which is really campaign specific, in addition to digging into things that are again campaign specific like the origin and destination of souls.
So what stops someone in FR from making a Lich that is a Humanoid? If you can use technology to turn a Construct into a Humanoid, what's to stop magic from being used to turn a Lich into a Humanoid?
Warforged aren't Constructs, at least not in 5E. Similarly, you can't turn a Lich into a Humanoid without it no longer being a Lich. So, from a player's perspective, what'd be the point?
The point of making a Lich a Humanoid would be for it to retain all or most benefits of being a Lich while also being able to benefit from heal spells. So from a lore perspective, rather than from a meta-game-y "rules be rules!" perspective, if there is strong enough tech to imbue a Construct with a gosh-darned soul to make it Humanoid, why not do the same thing with a Lich?
Putting a soul in a Lich stops it from being a Lich. Assuming for argument's sake that such a thing can be done, it wouldn't be a good thing for the Lich unless it came to regret its decision and wanted to be "normal" again.
The point of making a Lich a Humanoid would be for it to retain all or most benefits of being a Lich while also being able to benefit from heal spells. So from a lore perspective, rather than from a meta-game-y "rules be rules!" perspective, if there is strong enough tech to imbue a Construct with a gosh-darned soul to make it Humanoid, why not do the same thing with a Lich?
that point is completely useless if you take into consideration that even if one destroys a lich, it will come back full health and all 1d10 days later. if you have unlimited time and you have unlimited life, then whats the point of healing one self ? the same is true for dragons... humans kick their asses, they flee, wait a 100 years, those humans are gone. nobody remember them and the dragon can now do whatever it wants. because dragons can live 2500 years.
a lich who doesn't hide his phylactery well, would be a bad lich. it deserve to get wrecked, but a good lich who hides his phylactery well... is one that will outlive any opponents. so why would he needs healing ?
PS: another question that goes for you sir... if you want to solve liches healing dependency... then why not just remove all vampires weaknesses, after all they are weaknesses and vampires shouldn't have them right ?
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A bit of a silly addition to this crazy discussion....
Lorewise, dwarves are constructs too. The original dwarves were manually created by Moradin, each soul is supposedly forged by the god (given the number of dwarves, the god is probably using casts, which explains why all dwarves are so same-ish).
Silliness aside, warforged are considered to be humanoids instead of constructs in 5e for the same reason that PC centaurs arent Large Monstrocities like the NPC centaurs. It creates weird rule interactions and odd immunities, creating unfair advantages that simply hurt the game. PC rules are different from NPCs because it breaks the game otherwise.
Likewise, Liches are undead specifically because they are seeking out the questionable immortality of undeath. Liches are undead because thats the whole point. If they wanted a construct body, a wizard could conceivably do it, but that's fundamentally different from what's happening here. Liches are specifically embracing the advantages of undeath. Liches are undead because thats the whole point of being a lich. A lich that's not undead simply isn't a lich.
Though, given the objective nature of the afterlife, I'm not really sure of the benefits of choosing this path when you'll basically be immortal as a soul-outsider anyways. Maybe its just that evil wizards are afraid of the Lower Planes?
The thing is that, although your soul might survive, if you are evil (which is the basic case of a spellcaster seeking undeath as a mean of continuing his existence), you will probably be reborn as a powerless larva first, and your chances of rising through the ranks of whatever plane you end up with are slim. Much better to keep your power and your spells in an undead body, or so it might seem.
That's actually not entirely true; I mean, hitting the lower planes is still pretty bad, but turning into larva is not as common as people think. If you're a petitioner, like the vast majority of souls out there, you go directly to your gods' realm as a regular soul and work for your god with your full memories and abilities intact - we actually see this with the war between the Orc and Goblin gods. If you're going to the Hells, you can actually strike a bargain to become a higher ranked devil upon death - Mephistopheles is known for prizing wizard souls and recruiting them to his service.
The only ones that really end up as larva are those who are corrupted by the various fiends without swearing themselves to a god's service somehow. Or renounce their gods. Or just get flat out kidnapped while in line waiting for judgement, but that's pretty rare. Fiends do have their tricks to get souls, but they definitely don't get first pick.
Now, I suppose that the evil wizards might not like the idea of being someone else's servant (which is kind of what I meant by afraid of the lower depths, I suppose) but I just want to say that turning into a larva isn't necessarily a given.
thing, each planes have their own ways of getting souls... but the lower planes all gets taken by the river styx, which literally erases the memories of the soul thats gets out of it. thus yeah... thats said, each planes have their own... there is literally no way for you to get to carceri unless its by accident or by someone planeshifting you there via a portal or something. the abyss is the same, unless you get there by other means, there is no way to end up there. though the styx goes in numerous lower planes, it still doesn't get everywhere.
also, while one gets out of the styx by being a Lemure, not a larva, thats hades and the styx do not get to hades. its also untrue about lemure not able to get higher ranks. on the contrary, being a lemure is a punition for devils. and also a way for devils to live forever. in case of emergencies if a war is lost, the general just transform his army to lemures which is just a few seconds. and his whole army will reappear in hell a few days later. contrary to all other form of devils, lemure cannot be killed, even on their own planes of existence. they always are reborn from the styx. so again, being a lemure is not all that bad, though its really a torture to be one. most devils or souls do not start as a lemure for long. as generals needs armies, so the promotion to the first tier of the hierarchy is often attained by any lemures. fromt hat point on, climbing hierarchy is just a question of ambition and how to achieve that ambition.
good wizards can also want lichdom. its not limited to evil people... but its mostly evil people. the problem is that the soul once it gets to other planes, changes based ont eh plane. even if one would end up in mechanus. the mechanus plane resonate and changes one to a lawful alignment. fey creatures never want that to happen for sure. so one can simply be afraid of the changes that each outer planes brings. the ideal is to keep the soul from going to the outer planes, reguardless of what planes they are. i mean even you as a player... would you ever want to go to elysium knowing that once you get there you'll forever be mentally changed to have a bliss for it and never want to leave it ? i mean your familly wont matter to you, your friends wont either. by the time they get to you in the after life you just will have completely moved on and will have completely forgotten about them. its the same for every single outer planes. they all forces you to live there and be one of them. completely losing who you were in the process. if you knew that was gonna happen, wouldn'T you want to try everything to keep yourself once you are dead.
in the real world, we don't know what the afterlife is, but in d&d we do... its not just a question of choosing your desired place to be. its a fight against all odds to not forget who you are. this is why lichdom is often chosen, even by good wizards. though much rarer. this is also why the more beneficial clone spell came to be something.
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If you are buried properly with pennies over your eyes, you can afford to pay Charon to take you across without the swim. Furthermore, you are confusing the Styx with the Lethe. Lethe is forgetfulness. Styx gave Achilles his nigh-invulnerability (missing only his heel, whereby he was held during the dip).
In D&D Lore the Styx makes people forget. Gygax gave it that property back in 1e
For the record, I don't particularly consider Planescape to be the authority on how souls work. Not only is Planescape from 2nd edition, but it described things from the perspective of its philosophical-faction-central setting. IIRC, the old 3e fiend books (Tyrants of the Hells and Hoards of the Abyss) worked differently with how their respective planes dealt with souls. Indeed, in this particular book, the Abyss denizens just ate any souls that arrived, for no other reason than they liked eating them, instead of how Planescape handled the issue (again, iirc).
Well, I don't actually have any of the old books anymore, so I'm just going by memory. But I feel confident enough to say that things have changed a bit.
For the record, I don't particularly consider Planescape to be the authority on how souls work. Not only is Planescape from 2nd edition, but it described things from the perspective of its philosophical-faction-central setting. IIRC, the old 3e fiend books (Tyrants of the Hells and Hoards of the Abyss) worked differently with how their respective planes dealt with souls. Indeed, in this particular book, the Abyss denizens just ate any souls that arrived, for no other reason than they liked eating them, instead of how Planescape handled the issue (again, iirc).
Well, I don't actually have any of the old books anymore, so I'm just going by memory. But I feel confident enough to say that things have changed a bit.
Not that this isn’t an interesting side topic in its own right, but I’m a little unclear on why it matters for the actual topic. The official mechanics for becoming a Lich are pretty clear about the caster becoming undead (have to die, actually die, and prevent their soul from passing on) and being evil (need to sacrifice another’s soul to become a lich, and keep consuming them to persist). Other soul-related info pertaining to the setting doesn’t really change any of that.
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Not that this isn’t an interesting side topic in its own right, but I’m a little unclear on why it matters for the actual topic.
Well, I was mostly replying to Lyxen's reply to my comment wondering what the benefits of going lich versus going outsider are. Immortality looks differently when the afterlife is an objective fact. So, we're actually talking about lichdom versus petitioner-hood, for lack of a better word.
The stuff about devouring souls is pretty much new to 5e (demiliches did devour souls, but it was never specified why; normal liches seemed perfectly able to go for centuries without eating).
In AD&D (Von Richten's Guide) creating a phylactery required enchant an item, magic jar, permanency, and reincarnation, and then the wizard would drink a specialized poison, which included, along with various poisons, 'a heart (preferably of a sentient being)', and then on drinking the poison, either died, or became a lich. Nothing was said about the soul. Also, the archlich (good-aligned lich) and baelnorn (good-aligned elf lich) were introduced sometime in the 2e timeframe, using a somewhat different set of spells.
In 3.5e, 'The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil'. Other than that, it's a Craft Wondrous Item action. The archlich and baelnorn were introduced again.
In 4e, becoming a lich was a ritual that called upon Orcus (presumably evil). Not much detail given. The Archlich was available as an epic destiny.
The stuff about devouring souls is pretty much new to 5e (demiliches did devour souls, but it was never specified why; normal liches seemed perfectly able to go for centuries without eating).
Also, for some reason in 5e they flipped the demilich power-wise. AFAIR demilich has always been the more powerful version of lich, now it's almost a lesser version of it.
D&D Lore is a muddled mess of inconsistencies and retcons. It is best to define the lore of your game world yourself instead of sifting through all the various editions and trying to piece it all together.
I'd like some clarification on this question because it seems to me that Liches do not become Liches through the means associated with most other Undead. The soul within the lich phylactery is their own soul, not that of another creature. They themselves to undergo the process to become a lich, unlike ghouls, skeletons, ghasts, etc. They did not become Undead as a direct result of being attacked by an Undead creature (as is the case of vampires). They are not cursed by their unfulfilled goals or desires, as is often said of ghosts since they largely consider their lich form to be an improvement over their previous form.
So other than the rules telling us that a Lich is Undead, what makes a Lich Undead?
The fact that their true form is a rotting skeleton.
D&D Lore is a muddled mess of inconsistencies and retcons. It is best to define the lore of your game world yourself instead of sifting through all the various editions and trying to piece it all together.
Yes and no. Yes, there are some inconsistencies and retcons and specificities for some editions, but there are a number of constants:
Liches are undead and evil, and so is the ritual to become them. (as an aside, the Van Richten Guide is a Ravenloft book, so a specialised setting book and considering that it is Ravenloft, hard to consider that it's not evil)
There are a few specialised exceptions but with very restricted access.
Souls after death do not retain much of their former existence, and even the continuity of the soul is not assured in particular on the lower planes.
A lich do not think its evil, to it, it does the right thing for itself. thats a point to which i would literally argue about, good or evil do not matter here. because good and evil is a morality thing and is literally different from one being to another.
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D&D Lore is a muddled mess of inconsistencies and retcons. It is best to define the lore of your game world yourself instead of sifting through all the various editions and trying to piece it all together.
Yes and no. Yes, there are some inconsistencies and retcons and specificities for some editions, but there are a number of constants:
Liches are undead and evil, and so is the ritual to become them. (as an aside, the Van Richten Guide is a Ravenloft book, so a specialised setting book and considering that it is Ravenloft, hard to consider that it's not evil)
There are a few specialised exceptions but with very restricted access.
Souls after death do not retain much of their former existence, and even the continuity of the soul is not assured in particular on the lower planes.
A lich do not think its evil, to it, it does the right thing for itself. thats a point to which i would literally argue about, good or evil do not matter here. because good and evil is a morality thing and is literally different from one being to another.
Doing the right thing for yourself at the expense of others is pretty much a textbook definition of evil. It doesn't matter if the lich is deluded enough to think otherwise, becoming one (and persisting as one) requires deliberately committing evil.
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What about archliches? I heard there was a monster in 2e called the archlich which is basically a non-evil lich. (Of course now Tomb of Annihilation calls Acererak an archlich which is really confusing...)
So what stops someone in FR from making a Lich that is a Humanoid? If you can use technology to turn a Construct into a Humanoid, what's to stop magic from being used to turn a Lich into a Humanoid?
100 nuclear weapons a day ?
how about 50,000 in 5 years !
but hey continu to think warforge were not a great thing...
i read enough of it to know they were !
actually, you could bring back an undead to life by just castiung the ritual of ressurection or reincarnation. so yeah, you can bring back a lich to life.
but that implies that you can bring backt he soul into its body, which you'd need to find its phylactery first.
it was also said before that fixing a vampire from undeath is as easy as resurecting him.
when magic is involved everything is possible. so if you want a lich to be anything else then undead, go for it.
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The point of making a Lich a Humanoid would be for it to retain all or most benefits of being a Lich while also being able to benefit from heal spells. So from a lore perspective, rather than from a meta-game-y "rules be rules!" perspective, if there is strong enough tech to imbue a Construct with a gosh-darned soul to make it Humanoid, why not do the same thing with a Lich?
Warforged aren't Constructs, at least not in 5E. Similarly, you can't turn a Lich into a Humanoid without it no longer being a Lich. So, from a player's perspective, what'd be the point?
Putting a soul in a Lich stops it from being a Lich. Assuming for argument's sake that such a thing can be done, it wouldn't be a good thing for the Lich unless it came to regret its decision and wanted to be "normal" again.
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that point is completely useless if you take into consideration that even if one destroys a lich, it will come back full health and all 1d10 days later.
if you have unlimited time and you have unlimited life, then whats the point of healing one self ?
the same is true for dragons... humans kick their asses, they flee, wait a 100 years, those humans are gone. nobody remember them and the dragon can now do whatever it wants. because dragons can live 2500 years.
a lich who doesn't hide his phylactery well, would be a bad lich. it deserve to get wrecked, but a good lich who hides his phylactery well... is one that will outlive any opponents. so why would he needs healing ?
PS: another question that goes for you sir... if you want to solve liches healing dependency... then why not just remove all vampires weaknesses, after all they are weaknesses and vampires shouldn't have them right ?
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A bit of a silly addition to this crazy discussion....
Lorewise, dwarves are constructs too. The original dwarves were manually created by Moradin, each soul is supposedly forged by the god (given the number of dwarves, the god is probably using casts, which explains why all dwarves are so same-ish).
Silliness aside, warforged are considered to be humanoids instead of constructs in 5e for the same reason that PC centaurs arent Large Monstrocities like the NPC centaurs. It creates weird rule interactions and odd immunities, creating unfair advantages that simply hurt the game. PC rules are different from NPCs because it breaks the game otherwise.
Likewise, Liches are undead specifically because they are seeking out the questionable immortality of undeath. Liches are undead because thats the whole point. If they wanted a construct body, a wizard could conceivably do it, but that's fundamentally different from what's happening here. Liches are specifically embracing the advantages of undeath. Liches are undead because thats the whole point of being a lich. A lich that's not undead simply isn't a lich.
Though, given the objective nature of the afterlife, I'm not really sure of the benefits of choosing this path when you'll basically be immortal as a soul-outsider anyways. Maybe its just that evil wizards are afraid of the Lower Planes?
That's actually not entirely true; I mean, hitting the lower planes is still pretty bad, but turning into larva is not as common as people think. If you're a petitioner, like the vast majority of souls out there, you go directly to your gods' realm as a regular soul and work for your god with your full memories and abilities intact - we actually see this with the war between the Orc and Goblin gods. If you're going to the Hells, you can actually strike a bargain to become a higher ranked devil upon death - Mephistopheles is known for prizing wizard souls and recruiting them to his service.
The only ones that really end up as larva are those who are corrupted by the various fiends without swearing themselves to a god's service somehow. Or renounce their gods. Or just get flat out kidnapped while in line waiting for judgement, but that's pretty rare. Fiends do have their tricks to get souls, but they definitely don't get first pick.
Now, I suppose that the evil wizards might not like the idea of being someone else's servant (which is kind of what I meant by afraid of the lower depths, I suppose) but I just want to say that turning into a larva isn't necessarily a given.
thing, each planes have their own ways of getting souls...
but the lower planes all gets taken by the river styx, which literally erases the memories of the soul thats gets out of it. thus yeah... thats said, each planes have their own... there is literally no way for you to get to carceri unless its by accident or by someone planeshifting you there via a portal or something. the abyss is the same, unless you get there by other means, there is no way to end up there. though the styx goes in numerous lower planes, it still doesn't get everywhere.
also, while one gets out of the styx by being a Lemure, not a larva, thats hades and the styx do not get to hades.
its also untrue about lemure not able to get higher ranks. on the contrary, being a lemure is a punition for devils. and also a way for devils to live forever.
in case of emergencies if a war is lost, the general just transform his army to lemures which is just a few seconds. and his whole army will reappear in hell a few days later. contrary to all other form of devils, lemure cannot be killed, even on their own planes of existence. they always are reborn from the styx. so again, being a lemure is not all that bad, though its really a torture to be one. most devils or souls do not start as a lemure for long. as generals needs armies, so the promotion to the first tier of the hierarchy is often attained by any lemures. fromt hat point on, climbing hierarchy is just a question of ambition and how to achieve that ambition.
good wizards can also want lichdom. its not limited to evil people... but its mostly evil people.
the problem is that the soul once it gets to other planes, changes based ont eh plane. even if one would end up in mechanus. the mechanus plane resonate and changes one to a lawful alignment. fey creatures never want that to happen for sure. so one can simply be afraid of the changes that each outer planes brings. the ideal is to keep the soul from going to the outer planes, reguardless of what planes they are. i mean even you as a player... would you ever want to go to elysium knowing that once you get there you'll forever be mentally changed to have a bliss for it and never want to leave it ? i mean your familly wont matter to you, your friends wont either. by the time they get to you in the after life you just will have completely moved on and will have completely forgotten about them. its the same for every single outer planes. they all forces you to live there and be one of them. completely losing who you were in the process. if you knew that was gonna happen, wouldn'T you want to try everything to keep yourself once you are dead.
in the real world, we don't know what the afterlife is, but in d&d we do... its not just a question of choosing your desired place to be. its a fight against all odds to not forget who you are.
this is why lichdom is often chosen, even by good wizards. though much rarer. this is also why the more beneficial clone spell came to be something.
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In D&D Lore the Styx makes people forget. Gygax gave it that property back in 1e
For the record, I don't particularly consider Planescape to be the authority on how souls work. Not only is Planescape from 2nd edition, but it described things from the perspective of its philosophical-faction-central setting. IIRC, the old 3e fiend books (Tyrants of the Hells and Hoards of the Abyss) worked differently with how their respective planes dealt with souls. Indeed, in this particular book, the Abyss denizens just ate any souls that arrived, for no other reason than they liked eating them, instead of how Planescape handled the issue (again, iirc).
Well, I don't actually have any of the old books anymore, so I'm just going by memory. But I feel confident enough to say that things have changed a bit.
Not that this isn’t an interesting side topic in its own right, but I’m a little unclear on why it matters for the actual topic. The official mechanics for becoming a Lich are pretty clear about the caster becoming undead (have to die, actually die, and prevent their soul from passing on) and being evil (need to sacrifice another’s soul to become a lich, and keep consuming them to persist). Other soul-related info pertaining to the setting doesn’t really change any of that.
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Well, I was mostly replying to Lyxen's reply to my comment wondering what the benefits of going lich versus going outsider are. Immortality looks differently when the afterlife is an objective fact. So, we're actually talking about lichdom versus petitioner-hood, for lack of a better word.
The stuff about devouring souls is pretty much new to 5e (demiliches did devour souls, but it was never specified why; normal liches seemed perfectly able to go for centuries without eating).
In AD&D (Von Richten's Guide) creating a phylactery required enchant an item, magic jar, permanency, and reincarnation, and then the wizard would drink a specialized poison, which included, along with various poisons, 'a heart (preferably of a sentient being)', and then on drinking the poison, either died, or became a lich. Nothing was said about the soul. Also, the archlich (good-aligned lich) and baelnorn (good-aligned elf lich) were introduced sometime in the 2e timeframe, using a somewhat different set of spells.
In 3.5e, 'The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil'. Other than that, it's a Craft Wondrous Item action. The archlich and baelnorn were introduced again.
In 4e, becoming a lich was a ritual that called upon Orcus (presumably evil). Not much detail given. The Archlich was available as an epic destiny.
Also, for some reason in 5e they flipped the demilich power-wise. AFAIR demilich has always been the more powerful version of lich, now it's almost a lesser version of it.
D&D Lore is a muddled mess of inconsistencies and retcons. It is best to define the lore of your game world yourself instead of sifting through all the various editions and trying to piece it all together.
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The fact that their true form is a rotting skeleton.
A lich do not think its evil, to it, it does the right thing for itself.
thats a point to which i would literally argue about, good or evil do not matter here.
because good and evil is a morality thing and is literally different from one being to another.
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Doing the right thing for yourself at the expense of others is pretty much a textbook definition of evil. It doesn't matter if the lich is deluded enough to think otherwise, becoming one (and persisting as one) requires deliberately committing evil.
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What about archliches? I heard there was a monster in 2e called the archlich which is basically a non-evil lich. (Of course now Tomb of Annihilation calls Acererak an archlich which is really confusing...)
Most evil doesn't think it's evil; doing what's best for yourself without concern for how it affects others is pretty standard sociopathy.