It's a general truism that stronger souls provide more sustenance to soul-eating monsters. That means that higher level characters are considered more desirable- that was why the Tomb of Horrors was created, to lure powerful adventurers to the demilich at the center of it (at the time, demilichs were stronger than regular liches, 5E changed that to match the fact that "demi" as a prefix means something is lesser).
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Going by some of the books, they can go for pretty long spells if they have to/choose to. In one book there was a paladin's wizard brother who made himself into a lich and sealed himself inside a tower pretty close to a stronghold of his brother's order to watch over one part of a set of magic rings. I want to say he'd been in there for a century or two by the events of the story, and one would hardly expect an order of paladins to miss a bunch of mysterious disappearances right on their doorstep. Though he was also obviously pretty inactive for the duration, given that the order had no idea he was there.
Personally I wouldn't go for the basic soul consumption liches need to survive powering them up as well. Feeding a soul into a phylactery is like recharging a battery, and I'm reasonably sure attempting to put more charge into a battery than it can hold is at best pointless and at worse a bona fide Bad Idea. They can do all kinds of other fun necromancy stuff if they want a power boost from the souls in any case.
I'm a couple of years late to this lol but I do remember reading how hags will "sell" souls to ignorant liches who visited (I think Hades) in a kind of inter realm bazaar of evil. The thing I read said something about how hags take advantage of liches due to their ignorance of the actual value of souls.
Somehow, I can't see a spellcaster who becomes powerful enough to become a lich being ignorant of how much souls go for in the Lower Planes.
Eh, idk; Voldemort in Harry Potter is kind of a textbook case of that sort of wizard. The guy was skilled at the technical stuff, but really sucked at planning ahead of his immediate goal or understanding a perspective that didn't fit his own worldview. Granted, going by the numbers a Lich has +9 to Insight while a Night Hag only has +7 to Deception, so on that basis the implication is a Lich should know what's what enough to not make the mistake, but I like the idea of a Lich who's too much an obsessive researcher or ivory tower elite to have a firm grasp on things like bargaining.
Somehow, I can't see a spellcaster who becomes powerful enough to become a lich being ignorant of how much souls go for in the Lower Planes.
Eh, idk; Voldemort in Harry Potter is kind of a textbook case of that sort of wizard. The guy was skilled at the technical stuff, but really sucked at planning ahead of his immediate goal or understanding a perspective that didn't fit his own worldview.
A lot of that came down to the author having the same weakness.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Somehow, I can't see a spellcaster who becomes powerful enough to become a lich being ignorant of how much souls go for in the Lower Planes.
Eh, idk; Voldemort in Harry Potter is kind of a textbook case of that sort of wizard. The guy was skilled at the technical stuff, but really sucked at planning ahead of his immediate goal or understanding a perspective that didn't fit his own worldview.
A lot of that came down to the author having the same weakness.
Mmm, it was at least partly deliberate; being too clever/proud to do the boring but practical thing with his Horcruxes is specifically called out a few times. And regardless of what specific example is cited, the idea that book smart /= street smart is hardly unprecedented.
Yeah, but under D&D rules it's going to be rather difficult for a spellcaster who lacks a decent amount of worldly (and otherworldly) experience to survive long enough to amass the power needed for lichdom.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yeah, but under D&D rules it's going to be rather difficult for a spellcaster who lacks a decent amount of worldly (and otherworldly) experience to survive long enough to amass the power needed for lichdom.
Depends if you treat the XP model as universal, or only applicable to adventurer types.
Seems odd that someone who wasn't willing to go out and try to gain power by force would care enough to become a lich in the first place. It's never been described as something that's easy to do.
Seems odd that someone who wasn't willing to go out and try to gain power by force would care enough to become a lich in the first place. It's never been described as something that's easy to do.
I like the idea of a lich who has a long standing feud with a powerful being. Due to extenuating circumstances, the being was unable to deal with the lich before the lich established itself; and the lich has (up until recently) not been powerful enough to deal meaningful damage to the being.
The party eventually had to decide between helping the lich achieve its goals, or siding with the being to purge the ancient undead from the material realm. Epic fight ensues regardless of choice, very likely that some of the party die in the ensuing chaos. Depending on how useful the party was, maybe they get rewarded for their effort/sacrifices.
In D&D 5e, liches do not need to consume souls regularly; their immortality is maintained through their phylactery, which stores their soul and sustains their existence. So it's just another case of the DM sets it all.
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“If you define yourself by the power to take life, the desire to dominate, to possess...then you have nothing.”
It's often seen as a means of obtaining immortality, a pathway to further power (though it seems you need to be really powerful already to attempt it), and maybe a stepping stone on the way to apotheosis.
It is also something that no sane, right-thinking person would ever go through.
Whatever the specifics are for your world (whether someone needs a Book of Vile Darkness, or something else to attempt it) the process certainly should not be *easy to undergo, and the knowledge can't be something just anyone can find (elsewise we would need to justify why there are not more Liches in a worldsetting) but it should come with some perks that make it appealing enough that an insane person would say, "yeah! I would totally become a shriveled husk for all eternity to attain my goals".
Amongst those perks (IMO) are the freedom from the mundane and trivial inconveniences of life. Sleep? that's just wasted hours we could spend studying magic and lore and plotting. Food? Drink? Those aren't pleasures, they're distractions! Toilet time? Who wants to be bothered with that? - it seems odd that someone would choose to undergo the process to attain lichdom if there was still some sort of maintenance involved afterward. I feel an attractive reason a villain or character does this, instead of say vampirism, is to not have to be bothered with some slavish maintenance requirement like drinking blood, or eating souls. Not that a Lich would have any issue or qualms with sacrificing souls for their own benefit, but still, it seems like a waste of time.
But: if a DM wanted to tap into this concept that Lichdom *does require fuel (souls) to avoid becoming a Demi-lich, there are some examples in D&D we can look at for guidance.
In many points of lore the Soul is an object of power, and value, and can be consumed.
Soul Coins in Avernus can fuel fiendish engines, and provide someone with "lifeforce" (temp HP). Devourers and Barghests and Nabassus consume souls for sustenance and power. There is even lore about the former god of death trying to use the power of mortal Souls to increase his own strength, until other deities said "no, don't do that" and straight up replaced him with a new god of death.
Others have mentioned above that not all souls are equal, and that more powerful souls (from higher level beings, I guess) would provide more of whatever it is a soul can provide. So perhaps it's a quality and quantity equation where for each "level" of soul consumed, the Lich is sustained for 1 day (or week, or year, what have you) - Most magical effects in D&D seem to reset with the Dawn (probably some link to a sun-god there, which is a common foil for Undead, something to think about), so a daily requirement seems logical; but then you should also consider a consequence for failing to meet that requirement (perhaps a temporary loss of HP until a soul is consumed?)
The other thing to consider is whether or not you want your Lich's activities to somehow impact its dependency on a soul-snack. Does it need more souls if it's out and about, casting spells, etc, (so the soul is like providing calories for the Lich to burn) or is it a flat "my *phylactery needs souls for its magic to keep working, but that's totally independent of *me"? I don't particularly like for former here because there is not much precedent for "well, I'm a Lich now, so all my magic is suddenly fueled by the souls of others, as opposed to how I cast magic when I was alive" - magic is still magic and unless you want make a system that codifies "1 soul can provide the power to cast 1 level 1 spell" or some such, it seems odd.
So long as what you decide has some sort of internal justification or consistency it's going to be solid enough to work with - it could even give a lower-level party an interesting way to weaken a Lich before they try confronting it.
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It's a general truism that stronger souls provide more sustenance to soul-eating monsters. That means that higher level characters are considered more desirable- that was why the Tomb of Horrors was created, to lure powerful adventurers to the demilich at the center of it (at the time, demilichs were stronger than regular liches, 5E changed that to match the fact that "demi" as a prefix means something is lesser).
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Going by some of the books, they can go for pretty long spells if they have to/choose to. In one book there was a paladin's wizard brother who made himself into a lich and sealed himself inside a tower pretty close to a stronghold of his brother's order to watch over one part of a set of magic rings. I want to say he'd been in there for a century or two by the events of the story, and one would hardly expect an order of paladins to miss a bunch of mysterious disappearances right on their doorstep. Though he was also obviously pretty inactive for the duration, given that the order had no idea he was there.
Personally I wouldn't go for the basic soul consumption liches need to survive powering them up as well. Feeding a soul into a phylactery is like recharging a battery, and I'm reasonably sure attempting to put more charge into a battery than it can hold is at best pointless and at worse a bona fide Bad Idea. They can do all kinds of other fun necromancy stuff if they want a power boost from the souls in any case.
I'm a couple of years late to this lol but I do remember reading how hags will "sell" souls to ignorant liches who visited (I think Hades) in a kind of inter realm bazaar of evil. The thing I read said something about how hags take advantage of liches due to their ignorance of the actual value of souls.
Somehow, I can't see a spellcaster who becomes powerful enough to become a lich being ignorant of how much souls go for in the Lower Planes.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Eh, idk; Voldemort in Harry Potter is kind of a textbook case of that sort of wizard. The guy was skilled at the technical stuff, but really sucked at planning ahead of his immediate goal or understanding a perspective that didn't fit his own worldview. Granted, going by the numbers a Lich has +9 to Insight while a Night Hag only has +7 to Deception, so on that basis the implication is a Lich should know what's what enough to not make the mistake, but I like the idea of a Lich who's too much an obsessive researcher or ivory tower elite to have a firm grasp on things like bargaining.
A lot of that came down to the author having the same weakness.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Mmm, it was at least partly deliberate; being too clever/proud to do the boring but practical thing with his Horcruxes is specifically called out a few times. And regardless of what specific example is cited, the idea that book smart /= street smart is hardly unprecedented.
Yeah, but under D&D rules it's going to be rather difficult for a spellcaster who lacks a decent amount of worldly (and otherworldly) experience to survive long enough to amass the power needed for lichdom.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Depends if you treat the XP model as universal, or only applicable to adventurer types.
Seems odd that someone who wasn't willing to go out and try to gain power by force would care enough to become a lich in the first place. It's never been described as something that's easy to do.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I like the idea of a lich who has a long standing feud with a powerful being. Due to extenuating circumstances, the being was unable to deal with the lich before the lich established itself; and the lich has (up until recently) not been powerful enough to deal meaningful damage to the being.
The party eventually had to decide between helping the lich achieve its goals, or siding with the being to purge the ancient undead from the material realm. Epic fight ensues regardless of choice, very likely that some of the party die in the ensuing chaos. Depending on how useful the party was, maybe they get rewarded for their effort/sacrifices.
In D&D 5e, liches do not need to consume souls regularly; their immortality is maintained through their phylactery, which stores their soul and sustains their existence. So it's just another case of the DM sets it all.
“If you define yourself by the power to take life, the desire to dominate, to possess...then you have nothing.”
Characters:
Jóni Dawnbrow | Mountain Dwarf Battle Master | LVL. 3
Atherhiwion "Jehan" Oakmane | Wood Elf Circle of the Moon Druid | LVL. 5
RIP Markus Wulfenhauer | Variant Human Oath Of Ancients Paladin | LVL. 11
Lichdom is a fascinating state to contemplate.
It's often seen as a means of obtaining immortality, a pathway to further power (though it seems you need to be really powerful already to attempt it), and maybe a stepping stone on the way to apotheosis.
It is also something that no sane, right-thinking person would ever go through.
Whatever the specifics are for your world (whether someone needs a Book of Vile Darkness, or something else to attempt it) the process certainly should not be *easy to undergo, and the knowledge can't be something just anyone can find (elsewise we would need to justify why there are not more Liches in a worldsetting) but it should come with some perks that make it appealing enough that an insane person would say, "yeah! I would totally become a shriveled husk for all eternity to attain my goals".
Amongst those perks (IMO) are the freedom from the mundane and trivial inconveniences of life. Sleep? that's just wasted hours we could spend studying magic and lore and plotting. Food? Drink? Those aren't pleasures, they're distractions! Toilet time? Who wants to be bothered with that? - it seems odd that someone would choose to undergo the process to attain lichdom if there was still some sort of maintenance involved afterward. I feel an attractive reason a villain or character does this, instead of say vampirism, is to not have to be bothered with some slavish maintenance requirement like drinking blood, or eating souls. Not that a Lich would have any issue or qualms with sacrificing souls for their own benefit, but still, it seems like a waste of time.
But: if a DM wanted to tap into this concept that Lichdom *does require fuel (souls) to avoid becoming a Demi-lich, there are some examples in D&D we can look at for guidance.
In many points of lore the Soul is an object of power, and value, and can be consumed.
Soul Coins in Avernus can fuel fiendish engines, and provide someone with "lifeforce" (temp HP).
Devourers and Barghests and Nabassus consume souls for sustenance and power.
There is even lore about the former god of death trying to use the power of mortal Souls to increase his own strength, until other deities said "no, don't do that" and straight up replaced him with a new god of death.
Others have mentioned above that not all souls are equal, and that more powerful souls (from higher level beings, I guess) would provide more of whatever it is a soul can provide. So perhaps it's a quality and quantity equation where for each "level" of soul consumed, the Lich is sustained for 1 day (or week, or year, what have you) - Most magical effects in D&D seem to reset with the Dawn (probably some link to a sun-god there, which is a common foil for Undead, something to think about), so a daily requirement seems logical; but then you should also consider a consequence for failing to meet that requirement (perhaps a temporary loss of HP until a soul is consumed?)
The other thing to consider is whether or not you want your Lich's activities to somehow impact its dependency on a soul-snack. Does it need more souls if it's out and about, casting spells, etc, (so the soul is like providing calories for the Lich to burn) or is it a flat "my *phylactery needs souls for its magic to keep working, but that's totally independent of *me"? I don't particularly like for former here because there is not much precedent for "well, I'm a Lich now, so all my magic is suddenly fueled by the souls of others, as opposed to how I cast magic when I was alive" - magic is still magic and unless you want make a system that codifies "1 soul can provide the power to cast 1 level 1 spell" or some such, it seems odd.
So long as what you decide has some sort of internal justification or consistency it's going to be solid enough to work with - it could even give a lower-level party an interesting way to weaken a Lich before they try confronting it.