Hi all, 

I am a new Dm, slightly less new player, and I'm struggling with a choice one of my PC's has just made.

He wants to create a lich PC, so he is starting out level one as a recently turned lich, and the transformation was by accident so he has no idea what has happened to himself and is slowly going through the changes and discovering his magical potential. He wrote this wondrously rich back story which is so much fun to work with, however I know precious little about lich's. I've read the 1e and 2e lore as much as I can find, but a few questions remain.

1. Would a lich instinctively know where or what his phalactory is if the transformation was involuntary?

2. Can the phalactory be a living thing, say a normal dragon egg/embryo? With the intent being the phalactory would become the dragon when it hatched. I'm intrigued by Acererak's making Tiamat one of his phalactories. But did she survive unscathed because she is a God?

3. If the lich's phalactory was, say a wooden box, and someone cast knock on it. Would it open to reveal the piece of paper with the spell on it, or would it kill the lich? Would it affect the lich at all?

4. Finally, at what point would a Marut be sent after said Lich? To restore the balance in the universe etc.

Thanks for any and all help, I really appreciate it! 

If you are a new DM, you should limit PC classes to official stuff.  Stick with the official material so you do not have balance issues with homebrew.

I think a level 1 lich is going to be a tough project for a new DM--even moreso when the lich is in a party with a level 1 barbarian, a level 1 cleric and/or a level 1 rogue. They just don't fit together very well in my mind. Liches are inherently super powerful even from the moment of their creation because of what came before them.

1. I have always treated the phylactery as an object the lich picked as being important. Therefore, the lich would know what it is, what it represents, and where it is at all times.
2. The phylactery contains the soul of the lich. It seems a little weird for the object containing the lich's soul to be a living thing that contains its on soul. It's your call.
3. This is completely up to you. I would say that the lich would be unaffected even by destroying the phylactery, but the lich would probably know about it.
4. Marut + level 1 lich = short campaign. It might be kind of funny if the lich kept getting smashed and had to pop back out of its phylactery later, only to have the Marut show up again several sessions later.

All in all, it's a fun thought exercise and if you want to take this on, then more power to you, but it's tough to see this running smoothly in practice. If you do it, I'd love to know how it goes.

So when I read this, I kind of meshed together a few different characters from pop culture. 

It could be the Lich was Goku’d (Amnesia) and that’s why it’s not inherently evil. 

It could be that he was a wizard powerful and evil enough to actually become a lich, then was Amnesia’d by someone else who has his phylactery to control him (Davy Jones style). But by giving them amnesia, it weakened them to “level 1.” So this other person needs the lich player to become strong enough to be a valuable weapon under his control. The other person has the phylactery, and the lich can “feel” the direction of it, but not know what it is until he sees it. 

The phylactery being a living creature sounds like Voldemort with horcruxes and Nagini. If that were the case with a dragon, it would seem to me the souls would fight over control, or the dragon would try to eject the lich soul when it got strong enough. Then the challenge is keeping the dragon in egg form until the lich is powerful enough to comfortably control the dragon without fear of being overthrown.

But you say they already have a backstory. So that may be useless. 

I’d play him as an undead race of a wizard class. Maybe a boon and a bane to make it interesting and balanced. 

If you’re into humor, the Marut can be tied up with bureaucratic red tape for as long as you want. As in, he needs to wait until a council has determined the contract has been broken, needs to obtain and file the proper forms to begin the hunt, needs to obtain permission from the proper channels to authorize the hunt, etc.

It is a daunting task indeed, but we are having a lot of fun working out the quirks together. The beurocratic red tape is definitely needed. Maruts are horrible at lvl 1! 

I like that comparison of Voldemort and Nigiri, if the dragon egg hatches I'll try keep that relationship in mind. Another player managed to find the dragon egg in question, and it is quite funny watching it all play out.

Thanks so much for all the advice, it is much appreciated!

While it seems like a fun idea, Liches usually are purposefully "formed" by high level casters in order to achieve more power. There is some text in the Curse of Strahd campaign that allows a player character to become a lich, but even then it is limited to those who can cast 9th level spells. 

In all likelyhood, I dont think that a lich would be a good fit for trying to homebrew as a player character UNLESS the PCs are already high level. 

On top of that, liches usually conduct the ritual *on themselves* to become a lich. Liches are crazy powerful - a wizard isn't usually going to do the ritual for someone else to gain all that power and leave the wizard in the dust. The lich-making ritual would also (IMO) involve selecting the phylactery and probably sacrificing a bunch of innocent NPCs to power the ritual. Not something you typically do by accident. There's a lot of planning going on there.

On the other hand, you could set up like an entire in-world community of liches that are kind of do-gooders and just super supportive of each other. They could have AA-style meetings. Sort of like Terry Pratchett's "Black Ribbon Society" for reformed vampires. Maybe that sort of lich AA-program went out, found a lich, wiped its memory, and are trying to work them through a twelve-step program...

See, that is what I was initially worried about. Cause everything I read seemed to say that its not the kind of thing that just happens... So I went with a sort of idea that this guy did the ritual on himself, and then through whatever means caught the amnesia bug and the memories he now has are falsely implanted by some evil doer who wants to keep him from realising his full power until the evil guy can figure out what the philactory is and work out how to control him. Thing is, my player doesn't know this, so it makes for an interesting twist that I can throw in if they get bored at higher levels.

Aha! That "Black Ribbon Society" bid is golden! Somewhere in the world that has to exist.

Again, thanks for all the input, I really appreciate it. 

Maybe make the "twist" of the backstory not that he was given amnesia by an evil guy but that it was done by a group of adventurers who were trying to prevent HIM from doing evil deeds as an all-powerful lich.