What we have here is a picture of a creature that has no reason to fear anyone or anything. Lair actions that include summoning a spirit to inflict a whopping 15d6 of necrotic damage “grounding” itself to a PC, so that the PC takes half the damage that the lich would have taken and regenerating a spell slot.Legendary actions that include Frightening Gaze, Disrupt Life, an additional use of its basic Paralyzing Touch attack and lobbing a cantrip (probably ray of frost, since its other two cantrips lack direct combat applications).Rejuvenation, which means that “destroying” it is only a temporary setback unless its phylactery (read: horcrux) is also destroyed.“‘Begone, unholy abomination’? Oh, that’s so cute.” Turn Resistance, which gives it advantage on its Wisdom saving throws against the Turn Undead feature.Like a vampire, a lich fails saving throws so rarely that it will invoke Legendary Resistance anytime this happens, without worrying about conserving its three daily uses. Legendary Resistance, which lets it reroll a failed saving throw.Agents of a lich must be powerful enough for it to consider them useful, and they’ll generally be ambitious enough for service to a lich to seem like a reasonable arrangement.Īside from its spells, what powerful features does a lich possess? (Spoiler: Not likely.) Or, barring all that, someone whom the lich has magically dominated. Or someone who fears the lich’s power and hopes that he or she can earn privileged treatment by showing sufficient loyalty and obedience. Or someone who considers the lich’s long-term goals to be aligned with his or her own. Follow-up question: Who on earth would sign up to be an agent of a lich? Well, who on earth would sign up to be an agent of Adolf Hitler? The answer is, someone of like mind-in the case of a lich, another evil wizard hoping to gain access to its voluminous reservoir of arcane knowledge. No lich will ever leave its lair unless it must, in order to do something that it can’t get an agent to do for it. Why, then, would it ever leave? Good question. And it’s proficient in both Perception and Insight, so not only does it notice you’re there, it knows what you want.Ī lich receives additional, powerful lair actions when it’s encountered in its lair. It has truesight-the ability to see in darkness, into the ether, and through illusions, transmutations and invisibility-out to a range of 120 feet, along with a passive Perception of 19. It can’t be charmed, frightened, paralyzed or poisoned, and it never suffers from exhaustion. It gets sizable bonuses to Constitution, Intelligence and Wisdom saving throws (notice that two of the “big three” are in that bunch) resists cold, lightning and necrotic damage and is immune to poison damage and to physical damage from nonmagical weapons. A wizard who becomes a lich must also necessarily be a genius and a world-class spellcaster, and the lich retains these traits as well.Īlthough it’s only as strong as an average humanoid, all of a lich’s other ability scores are exceptional, most of all its Intelligence. It’s what you get when a wizard decides he or she wants to be immortal, reads the fine print on the contract, and says, “Yeah, I’m down with that.” To become a lich to begin with, a wizard must necessarily be monomaniacal, as well as malicious, sadistic and/or vengeful, and the transformation of undeath intensifies these traits. The lich (rhymes with “itch,” not “ick” or German ich) stands out not only as the alpha undead creature going all the way back to the days of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons but also as the only type of undead creature that’s undead because it wanted to be.
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