So I'm at this point where I want my players to encounter the big bad kind of early in the story (he appears in a city they are visiting). Now I don't know if I should make him a lower CR so that they may have a chance of defeating him, or have him OPd and potentially kill one or both of the players if they decide to fight. The big bad is a lich so even if they defeat him, he will come back, potentially stronger too.

My question is, should the players go up against something they can't beat in order to see the stakes, or be able to beat the lich and have him come back until they can find his phylactery?

Quote from The_Lonely_Mountain >>

So I'm at this point where I want my players to encounter the big bad kind of early in the story (he appears in a city they are visiting). Now I don't know if I should make him a lower CR so that they may have a chance of defeating him, or have him OPd and potentially kill one or both of the players if they decide to fight. The big bad is a lich so even if they defeat him, he will come back, potentially stronger too.

My question is, should the players go up against something they can't beat in order to see the stakes, or be able to beat the lich and have him come back until they can find his phylactery?

There are different ways you can handle this:

1) Have the BBEG decide the party isn't worth their time, basically treat them like pests and leave the battlefield for their minions (a more manageable fight for the party) to dispose of

2) Give the party a gazillion hints that this isn't a fight they can win, and give them opportunities to escape -- maybe a powerful NPC sacrifices themselves to give the party an opening, that sort of thing. Doing this runs the risk of the party not taking the hints and getting themselves TPKed

3) You can do a "BBEG gets stronger over time" story (think Voldemort collecting horcruxes) that would allow the party to face a version of the villain greatly reduced in power early in the campaign, but regular D&D lore for a lich doesn't necessarily fit that, so you might have to make some tweaks or otherwise come up with a good explanation for why they would become more powerful later

4) Have the BBEG not be the focus of the encounter at all. Maybe they're in disguise. Maybe the party is dealing with a more immediate, time-sensitive issue, and the sudden appearance of the BBEG seems like just a distraction from the current crisis -- even though, months later, the party might be kicking themselves for not going after them when they first had the chance

5) Give the BBEG a reason to leave before the fight is finished. I've used this one... the BBEG had a shapechanger spy hanging out with the party to figure out what they already knew. The party killed the spy when they and the BBEG revealed themselves, which forced the BBEG to grab the corpse and leave the fight to try and extract the info they needed via speak with dead

For me, if I was planning on the bad guy coming back any ways, I'd try to find a balance where they could, possibly, have an exceedingly small chance of beating him but have a real risk of death, but have a fairly clear avenue for them to be able to retreat. That way it is totally up to them. If they decide to stick it out and fight and not avail themselves of the retreat option, it is totally their choice, not yours. And if they manage to pull it off, good for them! It means they have to face an even stronger version of him later, so they are still having agency over the progression. I think too many players forget that retreat is usually an option, and if its early in the story a good time to learn it. 

Another consideration is how well do you think they would take getting killed if it happened to one or both of them and how are you handling a TPK? With only 2 players, a TPK is a pretty big possibility, so you should make sure you are comfortable with that yourself and how you will handle it before deciding if you are willing to risk that early in the campaign.

I would not change the BBEG. Consider the situation, if the BBEG can be defeated at their current level, how impressive will the BBEG be in 3+ levels when the characters are much stronger? The BBEG becomes easier to defeat, not harder, so if you set a low baseline where the characters could defeat them now you remove a bit of the tension and risk from the story even if the lich can come back later.

A lich should be challenging and scary at certain levels. If the characters decide to press on and attack, have the lich apparently snuff them out but have them wake up imprisoned as slaves working at some menial task like mining gold to pay for the liches armies or mining gems for the construction of phylacterys for the lich and their allies. However, you should also foreshadow the difficulty of the encounter and somehow let the players know that the game world will contain threats that the party can't deal with.

Finally, you could also go with the suggestion above, the lich perhaps knows the characters are insignificant and let that disdain show. However, if you want to set up such a scene then you need to create a narrative path to survival for the characters since you set up an encounter where they will lose so you need to have an explanation in place as to why they do not die.

Whether that is being left for dead but surviving, or a friendly cleric surreptitiously casting revivify or another spell to bring them back, or even just an NPC surreptitiously stabilizing them. If both characters are unconscious they won't see any creatures assisting them and if the characters just lie there then other undead (which usually aren't very smart) could ignore them so that at the end the characters wake up among a bunch of corpses. An NPC with a spare the dying cantrip would be sufficient to prevent the characters dying and it would not take long to cast a couple of times ... you could even have the body of this NPC lying on top of a character with evidence that they had managed to cast spare the dying before they were overcome.

There are lots of narrative devices you could use but you want the BBEG to be obviously too much for the characters now so that they can build toward the challenge and yet you don't want a TPK, so you need to have in place the reason why they survived this battle (if they decided not to flee or were unable to do so).

oh, for sure leave the players the option! it gives the evil guy a chance to memorize faces. plus, if he gets beat up a bit he'll have good reason to hate these pesky adventurers. luckily for the bbeg he remembered to upkeep his contingency (set for damaged below half health?) and can dimension door to a safe balcony from which to monologue and fume. if/when things continue he can break his glyph warded wand to trigger a teleport home.

I'd say the lich could come fight them and knock them all very low, right near to death. He then says "You're too weak to be worthy." and leaves. This could cause the characters to work much harder to become stronger so that they can track and kill the lich.

I would have the BBEG be full power (and quite possibly has minions with him to push the fight well past anything beatable) and just make sure that the situation doesn't tempt the PCs to get into a fight in the first place. If you want to run this with a combat (depends what the point of the scene is), have some minions to give the PCs a more interesting fight; maybe he casts summon greater demon and leaves.

Quote from David42 >>

I would not change the BBEG. Consider the situation, if the BBEG can be defeated at their current level, how impressive will the BBEG be in 3+ levels when the characters are much stronger? The BBEG becomes easier to defeat, not harder, so if you set a low baseline where the characters could defeat them now you remove a bit of the tension and risk from the story even if the lich can come back later.

A lich should be challenging and scary at certain levels. If the characters decide to press on and attack, have the lich apparently snuff them out but have them wake up imprisoned as slaves working at some menial task like mining gold to pay for the liches armies or mining gems for the construction of phylacterys for the lich and their allies. However, you should also foreshadow the difficulty of the encounter and somehow let the players know that the game world will contain threats that the party can't deal with.

Finally, you could also go with the suggestion above, the lich perhaps knows the characters are insignificant and let that disdain show. However, if you want to set up such a scene then you need to create a narrative path to survival for the characters since you set up an encounter where they will lose so you need to have an explanation in place as to why they do not die.

Whether that is being left for dead but surviving, or a friendly cleric surreptitiously casting revivify or another spell to bring them back, or even just an NPC surreptitiously stabilizing them. If both characters are unconscious they won't see any creatures assisting them and if the characters just lie there then other undead (which usually aren't very smart) could ignore them so that at the end the characters wake up among a bunch of corpses. An NPC with a spare the dying cantrip would be sufficient to prevent the characters dying and it would not take long to cast a couple of times ... you could even have the body of this NPC lying on top of a character with evidence that they had managed to cast spare the dying before they were overcome.

There are lots of narrative devices you could use but you want the BBEG to be obviously too much for the characters now so that they can build toward the challenge and yet you don't want a TPK, so you need to have in place the reason why they survived this battle (if they decided not to flee or were unable to do so).

 I agree you shouldn't change the lich but if the lich means business against the party someone with spare the dying wont help, most likey the lich would use somethig like finger of death if he wants a slave or disintegrate if he doesn't and they would result in rolling new character sheets.

One possiblility is to have the BBEG not even consider the party a threat. For example the party are in the city to meet an arch mage, known to be the most powerful wizard in the land who is trying to find out more about the lich and how he can be defeated. The big bad turns up while the party are with him casts power word kill on the mage and teleports away before the party have a chance to do anything.

First thing to say, you can make the fight more interesting and less "oh no I killed the party" by giving the BBEG an ulterior motive - they aren't there to kill the characters in a to-the-death duel with battle music - that's videogame logic. Have them trying to recover an artefact - they use their control spells to nullify the party, take the artefact, thank the party politely, then leave. Make sure the party wanted the artefact.

What sort of BBEG is the lich? Could he be a visiting royalty from his own kingdom, or something like that? Having them fight him whilst he has none of his magical items and stuff could balance the fight, and set up the whole phylactery thing. Half the point of a Lich is that they are defeated by the party and then return - which lends itself further to the BBEG having different goals than kill-or-be-killed. 

The idea of setting up the party with a hard but winnable fight, only for them to find out he's a lich, for them to seek him out in 3 levels time with a "we're way more powerful now, we can't lose" attitude, for him to say "Oh, you won last time, but last time I didn't have my stuff", and proceed with a much more deadly fight than before. mmh, I can see the players falling right into it!

You might consider this a learning opportunity for the party. If they're not good at running when they're out-classed, this might be a good time for them to learn that. If they're not good at tactics and making the most out of each other's abilities, it might be a good time for them to learn that too. As others have said, there are lots of reasons for the BBEG to totally dominate the battle but not slaughter the party. Everything from 'you aren't worth my time' to 'it will be more fun if I let you live and kill you later!' Since the BBEG is a Lich, he could also stage the fight in a place of his own choosing so he can raise a horde of disposable undead to slow the party down while he escapes.

Liches don't fear death but also don't just go around getting themselves killed. I wouldn't lower his CR to make him killable. And you don't have to kill party members just because they decide to fight. Liches are arrogant. He could bring the players very close to death and say "Your limp bodies aren't even worth reanimating" and leave. There's also non-combat options. Maybe the Lich wants a particular item and has a spy tell the players this item is needed to save the town. Your players retrieve it and the Lich appears out of nowhere, swipes the item, and disappears again. Now any time your players are given a quest by an NPC they'll be paranoid it's a trap. Now you have a BBEG that's more about mind-games than brute strength. Maybe the Lich didn't even want the item, he just wanted to toy with the players.

There are a lot of good options here. Another one is to not have the players beat the Lich, but instead give them them a one-time solution to defeating it indirectly. I would probably involve a stronger ally. 

So they wouldn't go directly toe to toe with it. They could see it or even meet it. It could be indifferent or even curious toward them at first. 

Maybe the lich could have three phylacteries and you help a stronger ally to destroy the first one. This first one would be almost handed to the players in an intro-like manner to set things up. The remaining two would be later in the campaign, with the second one being guarded by a different monster and only the last one being in the possession of the lich itself, resulting in facing the lich in battle. 

And after the players help the ally destroy the first one, the lich has a motive to consider them his sworn enemies throughout the campaign. 

The ally could be a powerful mage or cleric who manages to desperately battle the Lich long enough for you to fight your way through the lich's minions to destroy the phylactery. The ally could survive and remain in the story, maybe wounded and crippled or it could end up dying in the battle

Or maybe once the phylactery is destroyed, it could grab the lich and forcefully teleport both of them away, allowing the players to survive and letting the mage's fate remain a mystery for now. 

Maybe they could later find the ally - broken and defeated, but alive. And because they know how insanely powerful the mage was and the lich still won, it would set up how powerful the lich is and build suspense. 

Had a good example of this in my game last night. A boss character was trying to complete a ritual, and the party was trying to stop it. 

The boss had a lot of powerful spells, but he was not interested in killing the party - he was interested in completing the ritual.

So, between him and his minions, they cast Suggestion, Confusion, Power Word Stun, Bigby's Hand, and managed to lock-up the party for three rounds so far (It's a 2 parter as the spells took a while to look up and it was late when we started).

The Boss considered himself to be giving no quarter, but his goal was to stop the party from interfering - which he did well. The party so far seems to be struggling with their goal of stopping the ritual, but the important thing is that if the boss wins and the party loses, that doesn't mean death, it means consequences.

This let me be significantly more combative as a DM, and really focus on laying the "hurt" on them rather than trying to keep the combat balanced and fun. Not once did I go easy - and the players are loving it.