Children of the Night: Liches

[IanFordam]

This thread is intended for discussion of the Children of the Night: Liches project. The goal is for members of the community to provide between six and twelve NPCs and associated mini-adventures. If we can reach that goal in a reasonable timeframe, then I volunteer to serve as Chief Editor and Herder of Dire Cats.

I encourage anyone who would be interested in contributing to post proposals here. Ideally, each proposal will feature both a brief summary of an NPC and a few sentences describing a potential mini-adventure. However, even if you have only a character idea or only an adventure idea, please still post it. Someone else in the community may have an idea for any missing pieces.

The NPCs should all be liches or lich-adjacent, of course. Contributors are encouraged to explore variations of the basic lich. The 2nd Edition Ravenloft Monstrous Compendium III provides a number of variant liches. Van Richten's Guide to Liches describes the mentalist lich and vassalich. The 3rd edition offers potentially-relevant wizard prestige classes such as the Cancer Mage and Blood Magus. Custom lich variants (such as Nature's Sorrow from The Book of Secrets) are also welcome. Canon lore mentions a number of liches who are ripe for expansion. However, wholly original NPCs are also very much encouraged.

Please remember that a well-designed villain is not defined by sheer arcane power or a high body count.

[Mistmaster]

My Booksworn Lich is not designed to be a villain, but a mentor. But is still a Lich.

[IanFordam]

Being a villain isn't a requirement as long as the nature of the Booksworn Lich is an essential part of the mini-adventure.

[alhoon]

I prefer the 5e / 2e version of a TRUE Lich: a very very powerful spellcaster, 18th level.

That said, what the lich embodies from what I recall is a spellcaster that was thinking so highly of himself/herself that decided dead is for other, lesser people. And was willing to stop at nothing in order to do it.

Thus, I would consider "Lich-adjacent" lesser variants of the lich, wizards haughty enough to defy death and Gods but not necessarily powerful enough to do it through creation of a near-impossible to destroy phylactery, weeeell hidden 400 ft below the earth in a room accessible only through dimension door or something.
I.e. spellcasters that simply turned themselves to undead with varying degrees of indestructability.
Examples could be a wizard who's undeath/immortality is tied to a "phylactery-like" thing that HE HAS to have on himself. Or another one that has 3 portraits (young, middle-aged, old) and each time he dies one of the portraits steps down from the canvas.
Or another one that splits his soul/life in 7 parts that he hides around the world that can be used to bring him back to life through a ritual - and the 7th part happens to be in a boy with glasses. Heh, Heh, Heh (No seriously, if you didn't catch that reference do not use it, it is copy-righted)

[IanFordam]

Those are excellent ideas, alhoon, exactly the sort of thing I'm hoping contributors develop. Thanks for passing them along!

[Jeremy16]

For what it's worth, I found these prestige classes online a while ago and thought they would make for an interesting band of Lich Hunters.

There's the Incantifier - a being imbued with magical energy that prolongs their life (but not quite a lich)


https://srd.dndtools.org/srd/classes/pr ... ifier.html

There's the Occult Slayer - a person that specializes in killing spellcasters

https://srd.dndtools.org/srd/classes/pr ... layer.html

And then there's the Spell Sovereign - a specialist that can control living spells (and no, I don't know what a "living spell" is but it sounds cool)

https://srd.dndtools.org/srd/classes/pr ... reign.html

The twist is, they aren't really heroe and they barely get along with each other because of their obsession with each of their particular missions. I was toying with the idea turning them into "the cure is worse than the disease" scenario, but couldn't figure out how to make it work. I just haven't found the time to fully flesh these things out yet.

Or, you know, someone can go the more direct route and use these classes as a template for a unique lich...