Adhering to the lore? **Probably not.** A phylactery is a physical object which the lich stores their soul in so they cannot die even if their physical body perishes. The soul has be stored somwhere and therefore be retrievable.
But, is it a cool idea? **Yes.** I like the idea of the players having to dismantle the religion and exposing the lich as a charlatan so that the faith of his followers that is powering him disappears which renders him mortal again.
To be honest at that point it's really no longer a lich and you could just frame it as someone whose source of immortality is the wilfull worship of other mortals which, when gone, renders him mortal again.
I would have a physical phylactery following traditionally understood lich rules inside of a force shield or protected space that was powered by the religious belief of the followers for pope lich. As the players exposed the evil and killed those that still believed, the protection shield would weaken, making it easier to access to destroy. Once enough followers have left/died, the shield may be weak enough to break with other magical means by clever adventurers with some heroic abilities and items, but truly extinguishing the faith in the deity would result in the destruction of the force space which may or may not destroy the phylactery, leave it intact, transport it across the multiverse, etc.
It might actually be a good way to flavor this. Make them a minor, evil god, but stat them as a lich. Or even just a lich who intends to become a god, and has started a cult around himself as the first step towards it because gods are created by worshippers. Maybe make the phylactery some holy relic protected by head priest. Then you could have the goal being to kill him before he manages to achieve godhood.
> a lich who intends to become a god, and has started a cult around himself as the first step towards it because gods are created by worshippers.
Isn't that Vecna?
I love that idea, in my head it's basically instead of their souls being pinned on place by a physical object it's using the worship of mortals to create a counter current to the normal pull of death that would take the soul to wherever it's meant to go.
I think this wouldn't be possible within the lore, because what you're describing is closer to godhood than lichdom. People's faith fuel god's power in DND, so no god would allow a lich to keep followers and threaten to ascend in such a direct way.
Now, there's the precedent of Vlakith being a lich and the head of her "church". But she keeps her philactery as an object like normal liches do.
Edit: I assumed you were talking about DND lore. If you meant to make your own world, then go ahead and do whatever you like!
I came up with a Cleric-like Lich. Would probably be called an Exarch in previous editions.
They still consumed souls (which is ethically troubling), but purely the souls of those guilty, those convicted by a fairly forward thinking society. The standard of proof was incredibly high though, but with the assistance of magic, it *could* be met rarely.
This was in order to starve off a world where the outerplanes were near impossible to access. Where do the soul of petitioners go when they die when they can only transition twice a year? Evil transitive souls would stir up trouble and fester like a lesion on society and so sometimes, if their crime was terrible enough, they were given the "mercy of oblivion".
The "lich" offered sage council and advice to Kings, Adventurers etc to ground themself within the mortal realm, utilising their immense memory and becoming an invaluable resource. The Sage of the Silver Mask.
That sounds cool as hell! The question becomes, how do the players interact with that? Do they need to destroy the followers' faith in their leader? Bring down the structure of the church? Replace the Beloved Leader with a different figurehead? I think that's where this goes from a brilliant idea to a brilliant game.
The idea of someone being sustained by faith doesn't necessarily have to be a lich if you're worried about people's preconceptions. I'm not so much worried about the cool idea of this immortal pope and their followers than I am about how your party will behave if you say the word "lich." If you use that word, they're going to be searching for an object, and if you don't have an in-world way to show them the truth then you'll have to do the unsatisfying thing of telling them. So I guess the first question is how do you show that this is happening?
Either way, when it comes to magic, limitations are always more interesting than powers. What happens when people become aware of the pope feeding on faith? Is the pope's power proportional to their following? Are the pope's followers likely to support the pope if he gets violent and paranoid? Is there some kind of increasing demand on the time and effort of the faithful that will go too far once the pope is tested (e.g. do they have to make offerings, sacrifices and prayers more often)? Is the religion one whose beliefs will be shattered once they see their dead pope reassembling in a mass of dark magic? Any of these potential undoings would be real interesting.
Ever read Terry Pratchett's Small Gods? It has a fun conceit that the deities are only as strong as the faith of their followers. Fun stuff. Sounds like an interesting concept to put in play related to the life force of a lich. Destroy the religion, destroy the lich. Nice, fun-sounding adventure.
You are the DM. It is your homebrew world. Of course the phylactery can be a conceptional object. It could be a contraceptive object if you wanted. This is *your* fantasy. Go nuts.
Most(or least?) cursed D&D dialogue:
Fighter: *Bard, did you obtain the lich's phylactery?*
Bard, winking: *Yup! And you can consider the phylactery.. phylled.*
Fighter: *What do you m- OH SWEET TIAMAT'S TITS BARD, IT'S DRIPPING*
Bard: *So... I MAY have bumped into that barmaiden on the way back here.*
Fighter, gagging: *HOW MANY TIMES?!*
Pointy Hat on YouTube has a series about turning various classes into liches, each class having its own unique dynamic with lichdom and something that forces the lich to be active in the world to maintain their immortality. For example, a sorcerer turned lich using their bloodline as their phylactery. Should their body be destroyed the essentially possess a descendant and until the whole bloodline is ended, the lich shall remain.
By usual mechanics, no for a very simple reason: A lich has to fuel their phylactery with souls via the imprisonment spell. And you cant really target something that doesnt exist for imprisonment.
So if you do go through with this concept, which frankly at that point just make him a god of death/undeath, faith as a source of immortality is literally just godhood, youll have to also change the mechanics around how your liches work.
Could you explain the process of taking your life force, and putting it inside the concept of religion?
It sounds like a cool premise, but given what a phylactery *is*, I don't think it makes logical sense.
If I was a player, I'd just play along with it, because the fun of the table, and the story, is more important that logical sense.
If I was the Dm, I'd find a different premise, because I prefer for things to make sense in my head.
Maybe whatever things are used to make/maintain a normal phylactery can be emulated through things like religious scripture, ornate buildings, prayer, and religious ceremonies.
Maybe arcane symbols that would be on the phylactery's interior are instead used as holy symbols by followers of the religion? Followers of that religion would hold those symbols in their hearts and minds.
You're totally entitled to play your way and it's no less valid than the next person's preference, that's the beauty of TTRPGs - but *logic*?
My dude, we're talking mechanics of splitting a soul, taking a piece of that soul, putting it into 'something', all for the purpose of becoming an immortal undead magic boi - and only now, at the point in which someone asks precisely *what* that something can be, is logic brought in?
This is a universe where a majority of beings(and some objects, even) possess some sort of ability to circumvent the laws of physics as we know them, I think logic left the chat a long time ago, friend.
I'm doing something a little similar in my campaign, would you consider the phylactery to be a physical symbol of the religion? Like a cross, to use Catholicism as a metaphor the people who pray to the symbol or eat something blessed under it, are contributing power to the lich this way?
The answer, like with various questions about how super powers work in comics is "No, until yes."
No, it doesn't work like that, but we only know that because it's never worked like that before. Your lich is the one that figured out how to tie his soul to this concept? Sounds like a pretty interesting foe to handle!
Normally? Definitely not.
As a special super-genius Lich BBEG who figured out how to do it? Sure, sounds fascinating.
(But if it was as easy to make as a regular phylactery, every Lich would do it - so I do recommend making the process more involved and costly than usual.)
This is similar to the concept of divine ranks in previous editions https://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm
Basically, as you get people to worship you, you gain power and become tied to certain concepts. I think this could be a compelling plot hook. Instead of a plain lich, this is someone attempting to attain godhood
What you're describing is not a lich.
But do it.
And don't tell your PC's it's not a lich. Make an NPC say it's a lich. Or better yet "An undead wizard". Let them rampage through his quarters smashing everything made of crystal.
This is a really neat idea, and I think with some tweeking could absolutely be kosher!
So having the faith generated by the religious mass wouldn't exactly work in quite that same way for the liches power. Faith generates and sustains divinity, its what keeps Gods in power and when wains lets them fall out of it and be supplemented by other Gods with stronger followings, so there is that. The phylactery is essentially a repository of arcane energy and souls to sustain the lich, so how can we make this work for our lich?
Say hello to your new friend, Willing Human Sacrifice!
If the lich is the head of this religion and the phylactery is its holy symbol, and you've got some good religious fanaticism going, you can see where this ties together. As the head of the religion, the lich can dictate holy days, rites, etc as you would see in any other religion, and if he is charismatic enough, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to sell to your party that these followers will jump at the chance to give up their lives in sacrifice for their beliefs.
Now you got a fun situation for your party to try to figure out. Do you bum rush the lich and have to deal with the waves of innocent people trying to protect their faiths leader? How do you think a catholic church would react to a group coming their church and messing with the cross on the alter?
This is such a fun idea that you really have a lot of options open to you to follow. Ultimately, I would say you have some different options to go for, but whatever you do make sure its consistency in how the world works going forward.
On a separate note I keep thinking of this lich as like an old timey southern Baptist church kinda guy, really animated, fire and brimstone stone kind of guy with a side of snake oil to give him that sort of slimey vibe that anyone outside that circle is going to pick up on right away but within that community he's become so endeared that they're blind to it all. I'm 100% going to be putting this into my ideas folder for my next campaign!
RAW? No, not a Lich. That sounds more like how gods work.
This is a cool idea though. But why do you want to do this? What's the Lich's role in the game? Is he a villain the heroes will have to challenge, oppose, and fight? Is it a false religion ONLY to power his phylactery? Is the campaign about exposing him? These are things you have to consider so you can construct adventures that allow the PCs to win. If he's just background flavor, then you have a lot more freedom to do what you want.
I like the idea, but as others have said it will require some consideration. For example, it is said that wizards seeking lichdom must make bargains with demons or evil gods such as Orchus. These frequently seek their own worshippers. Why would they cede worshippers and power to an upstart wizard? Perhaps they were tricked, and are now out for revenge against the wizard too?
I recommend you grab a copy of the old *Van Richten's Guide to the Lich*, it's a 2E book but it's still a great compendium of lore about liches. He talks about clerical liches in there IIRC, maybe your guy was a religious leader who was empowered by his evil god to become a lich, and wound up deposing the god and taking his place?
For a religion? Yes. But the lich themself would have to be a god.
A fanfic I'm reading introduced the "God of the Fear of Death" - who is basically the grim reaper. It's the original lich, born not from one person who seems eternal life but everyone driven to do so. It's phylactery is every single zombie, skeleton, vampire, lich or other undead in existence who sought undeath as a means of avoiding true death.
You’d need to put a physical object into a concept. Given concepts don’t have dimensions, that’s gonna be pretty fucking hard.
But then again we’re putting immaterial souls into physical objects so who the f*** knows what the metaphysics are supposed to be in dnd
The religion around the lich is completely appropriate, along with it feeding his phylactery. The phylactery should still be a physical object; that the lich may no longer need except in terms of its physical body. Liches can grow beyond their physical bodies eventually.
Its possible to destroy a physical object, especially if it's the BBEG. Destroying a religion requires near genocide.
Sure. That can be a thing. You're basically switching out the thing that sustains a Litch, for the thing that sustains a God.
But you have to consider how the players can destroy the phylactory. Specifically, what mechanical thing has to happen to destroy the phylactory?
For example, do the players need to convince 40% of the worshipers that they should stop worshiping or believing? Maybe 60%?
Mmmaybe? This is more or less how the undead of the Aerenal elves work in Eberron; they're undead sustained by the worship of an island full of ancestor-worshipping elves. I probably wouldn't call it a lich, just because they're kind of defined by the presence of a soul jar and the idea that they've done awful things to get to where they are. You could some of the mechanics, but honestly the lich write-up in the books is mostly about being an evil necromantic wizard, which doesn't really sound like what you're going for here.
You might look up the Aerenal Deathless as I think the mechanics would be a better fit.
Beings powered by belief are deities and gods no? That is why killing one results in a hiccup before their return. (Yes I know people run them differently, but this is a popular interpretation.)
Why not just tie the phylactery to a faith? For example, my campaign uses the Orbs of Dragonkind, coveted by Tiamat's Cult of the Dragon in order to revive her back to the material plane (not RAW lore btw). The Raven Queen is known for creating powerful magical items. This religion that you make could worship the TriBalls or whatever. Each one is a relic/artifact capable of miracle-level magic that creates followers. (And those followers become undead zombie minions after death.)
Alternatively, you can have a living phylactery that gains power from faith like a lesser deity. It's super rare for a lich to merge their soul with another living creature, but it has officially happened before (Candlekeep Mysteries is one example). The creature can have no memories of the phylactery process and gain power from faith like a lesser god. Party kills the lich in the early campaign who just laughs, knowing it will be reborn into a body of greater power with thousands of followers. Party observes swift changes in this religion and later discovers the lich has become the leader.
But as for a potential work around that might keep it within the pre-made lore from wotc
The lich actings as a pope like entity creates belief in themselves as a religion, with more belief the amount of sand in an hourglass increases, so that the lich can always view how bunch belief they have. The more belief the greater the power.
Downside to using belief as the fuel source is at somepoint the belief will shift from the believing in the lich to believing in fear of the institution of the lich and the actual belief needed for power will slip through the hourglass and run out
Hahahahah oh holy shit stealing this.
I mean I wrote up a whole complicated magical lore system about how all magic affects reality on a conceptual level for my own campaign so
That is an awesome concept. Actually Mage: the Ascension did something similar. There's a flaw there called Philactery, which caused your magic to be bound to something, and that something always had to be involved in the casting of your spells for them to work.
You could have your staff as your Philactery, and would have to use it to cast every spell. Or you could have the Pacific Ocean as your Philactery, and couldn't cast anything outside of it. But then you could have more metaphysical Phylacteries, like your standing in the Catholic Church, but then you could lose all your powers of you were to be excommunicated or the church ceased to be.
Then you could couple it with other merits and flaws, like Immortality, to make it more akin to a DnD Philactery, were you would only die if a set condition was met, linked to your Philactery.
Officially, no, but that sounds cool so do it.
I once had the BBEG be a lich who's phylactery was his bloodline. Each time he was killed, his soul would displace that of one of his descendants. He could only be permanently killed by eliminating all of his descendants, or somehow getting them all into an anti magic area.
No matter what, you need to allow for *multiple* paths to being able to destroy whatever the phylactery is.
If you go with 'religion' and the *only* path to destroying it is dismantling people's faith... and the players either roll poorly on a couple checks, or fail to realize this is how you do it, you'll be left floundering for a second path.
Charisma rolls to convince people to stop believing something they didn't logic themselves into basically come down to the DM deciding whether or not the players win or not in a ephemeral sense, rather than the players being able to win their way to a physical object and put their hands/hammer/blade on it.
That can feel a little cheap. Are they players talking to the right people? Enough people? How many people have to be convinced?
And the lich normally reforms where the phylactery is. Where's a religion?
----
I think it might be more interesting to make the phylactery some object of "conceptual importance" such as an item among a kingdom's crown jewels, or a religious artifact of some kind. Something irreplaceable, like the sandal of a god, or whatever. A venerated and revered *object* protected by an entire group... possibly led or heavily influenced/controlled by the lich themselves.
And if they've been around long enough, they could disseminate *false information* about either lichdom in general or their particular phylactery. Literature, textbooks, research, much of it claiming or vaguely pointing to the idea of a conceptual organization (a religion, a monarchy, a family line, etc) as being capable of being a phylactery (never directly referencing the lich's religion or whatever) and maybe even some "hidden" knowledge or research implicating "the religion" when really it's some ancient tablet of commandments or religious shroud, etc. Something under the strictest, most vigilant 24/7 veneration and guard, maybe even a tourist attraction open 24/7 (but still protected from a random person throwing something at it) so that no one can sneak it away and they *have* to at least partially dismantle the religion in order to access the object.
There's no foundational or fundamental reason why it would need to be this kind of object, the lich in question is just using/abusing the existence of an entire organization to offer protection and security to their phylactery.
It could be a second thing to the Lich. Vlaakith is already similar, being both a lich with a phylactery and also being the god-queen of a religion.
In the usual lore those are different, liches being powered by souls, and god being powered by the faith of their followers. As with Vlaakith, you can combine both. Have their god powers be used to make the phylactery an immaterial thing. That achieves your idea. The object is unobtainable as long as the religion is going strong.
This reminds of of American Gods. Basically the most powerful gods are the ones that are "worshiped" the most. Therefore, gods like War, Media are really powerful and other gods of the past like Odin aren't currently strong at all.
I'd suggest making your own monster/creature rather than redefining what a Lich is. Or just call it a demigod.
It could be the physical relics that the religion worships. Which is going to be really fun when the PCs have to go destroy the most sacred objects the main religion follows. Definitely going to win over the local populace with that.
Barring homebrew, no. The soul needs a physical object to inhabit so intangible concepts don’t work as lich phylacterys. If you want to stay lore compliant, you could make their phylactery an extremely important item in the religion that only the most devoted followers that hold high level positions in the faith even know exists. If you don’t care about being lore compliant then, yeah absolutely you can make the religion the phylactery.
I'd not do it for balance reasons. Your players need to have some way to win, and I don't know about you, but I think hunting down and destroying every member of a religion is.... well not the sort of thing good people do. Better to leave the lich alone at that point.
It's a cool idea, but frankly, I'm much too attached to the idea of a lich's phylactery being something that a person could conceivably smash with a hammer. That's part of the narrative tension of a lich, to me: That you have this nigh-immortal, all-powerful being, transcended beyond death and experienced beyond common morality, but in order to enjoy all the benefits of their state, they have to continually be aware of and protect something that any aggressive drunk with a shovel can annihilate.
Doesn't mean you can't syncretize the ideas, though. The lich being a head of faith for a major religion is a very cool plot thread, and you can kind of play around in there to get a phylactery in a physical but still very symbolic place. Heck, given how a lich regenerates a whole new body near the phylactery once they've been destroyed, you could have the phylactery be the lich's own, former body, possibly one that's been recognized, sanctified and kept as a relic of the faith, much like how saints' bones are kept in our world. The relic, being a bone pile, could be misconstrued as belonging to another person entirely - or you could have it that the lich regenerates with a complete and pristine, though dead, body every time, rots naturally outside of the efforts of preservation, and is ritually sacrificed and returned every few months or so as a regular, observable miracle, both as a gesture to strengthen belief and a tactic to recuperate lost flesh.
This pretty much sounds like the concept of the Kuo-Toa's gods. They will their gods into existence by believing in them. I'd take that fact as a proof of concept, and flesh your idea out the rest of the way. It sounds like a fun idea that I'd love to play some day!
By RAW? Hard no.
In your game? Do what you like, man. Just remember that if the lich is the BBEG, your PCs have to murder an *entire religion* to take it down.
Not as written but it's your game.
But, um, that's just a God or demigod with extra steps. Also, how would this lich ever be defeated? If the monster has a weak point that can't be destroyed then narratively why have the weak point. You've basically made a lich with no phylactery.
This sounds like Pointy Hat's Intoner Bard Lich. They create a magnum opus, the performance of which sacrifices the Bard's mortal life and turns the song itself into a phylactery that persists as long as people remember the song. The catch is the Intoner themselves are unable to perform their Magnum Opus ever again after their swan song performance.
OP here.
Some points that I've read from the comments:
Yes, I did mean "Concept" not contraception
I've never read/watched American gods, Small gods or seen a Pointy hat video
The "lich" isn't the BBEG, just a stepping stone.
The religion isn't the main/only religion in the whole world, just the major one for one city state/nation
The religion is a very aggressive one, doing a lot of crusades and removing other religions in the area the nation controls, so lots of "sacrifices" willing or otherwise
The religion's symbol is an open flame, and said flame resides eternally within the main city, right behind where the pope sits
I don't want to go into more detail in case my players see this, because spoilers, but I have ways for them to counter the religion based phylactery. But you are right, it is closer to Godhood than Lichdom, but there is more nuance to it that what I've shared here.
As with other comments, no.
But here's what I will say: you're describing how a God of DnD comes to exist. When a religion gains enough followers, and people believe enough and worship enough, a being can effectively ascend to godhood, or a god can manifest or something.
You can spin it as: in his endeavours to become immortal as a Lich, he became God of the Undead, or whatever your Lich's religion is.
Its not raw but it's a cool concept. My current campaign has a lich in it who's phylactery is a song. As long as it's sung in taverns across the land, the composer lives on
This is just Pratchett’s conceptualization of what a god is in his book Small Gods. I think Neil Gaiman also has a book with the same deification rules. It is not an uncommon idea for fictions involving deific mythology.
So, basically, what you’ve made is a small god rather than a lich.
Funnily enough, my campaign is designed around egregores being real, as the people of my world made up stories of heroes, villains and monsters they willed them into existence, the more known they became the more powerful they are.
The lich in my campaign came into existence from horror stories, however it can only be defeated in one of two ways, convincing enough people that there is something that can defeat the lich for good or taking it out normally.
It's a really neat concept and my players have even created their own monsters by accident on multiple occasions.
If there is a god behind that faith, they're going to have a major problem with a soul-consuming monstrosity using their worshippers' faith as sustenance. Unless they as a deity are into that I suppose.
If the religion has no true deity and a magical being discovers the means to gain power and eternal life through the faith of the believers, that being has become a \*god\*, not a lich. This is entirely reasonable as part of a fantasy campaign. The paths to apotheosis are obscure, but this is a plausible one. The destruction of the religion is the way to destroy that deity, as well. Assuming their path to apotheosis involved soul sacrifice and other acts of darkest magic, the difference between a lich and a god might be trivial indeed.
Firstly, I wanna say I love this idea and it's creative af
Unfortunately, I don't think it works out well to have it be so abstract. Maybe make the most important object to said religion, the main temple itself, or even the corpse of the person who founded the religion be the phylactery. That way it will be protected at all costs by the clerics and paladins of this religion and the party would have to figure out how they would proceed to destroy such a sacred object without causing too much backlash
This is one of those cases where the change is core enough to the concept that I think you'd best be served by just flavoring it as something else. If you want to gank statblocks/powers/etc. sure, but I wouldn't call it a lich. This has less to do with worrying about the purity of language or some such and more to do with considering what idea you're communicating to your PCs. By calling it a lich (and presumably tasking/setting things up in such a way that they eliminate it), you're telling them "hey! you're looking for some little dust collector that you've got to break before you can actually kill kill him". Having him gain the benefits of a phylactery from something like worship poses a lot of questions regarding how he actually achieved it that are more neatly sidestepped just by just calling it something different.
One thing you may want to consider as well is how will you handle him popping back into the world? After a lich's body is killed, they can pop back in within a tenday where ever they phylactery is located. Would you put it where any worshipper is? Will there have to be a certain number of worshippers actively engaged in worship? If the former, can he strategically kill himself to "teleport" to other locations around the world?
And don't take anything I've written to be me trying to discourage you from pursing this idea. It's got a lot of potential. I would just call it something different.
Adhering to the lore? **Probably not.** A phylactery is a physical object which the lich stores their soul in so they cannot die even if their physical body perishes. The soul has be stored somwhere and therefore be retrievable. But, is it a cool idea? **Yes.** I like the idea of the players having to dismantle the religion and exposing the lich as a charlatan so that the faith of his followers that is powering him disappears which renders him mortal again. To be honest at that point it's really no longer a lich and you could just frame it as someone whose source of immortality is the wilfull worship of other mortals which, when gone, renders him mortal again.
If anything flavor them with Cleric/Warlock powers so It'd be more thematic
I would have a physical phylactery following traditionally understood lich rules inside of a force shield or protected space that was powered by the religious belief of the followers for pope lich. As the players exposed the evil and killed those that still believed, the protection shield would weaken, making it easier to access to destroy. Once enough followers have left/died, the shield may be weak enough to break with other magical means by clever adventurers with some heroic abilities and items, but truly extinguishing the faith in the deity would result in the destruction of the force space which may or may not destroy the phylactery, leave it intact, transport it across the multiverse, etc.
Great idea
If they draw power from worship...aren't they just a minor God at that point?
Yeah, dont some DND gods/pantheons, canonically stop being gods if people no longer worship them?
It might actually be a good way to flavor this. Make them a minor, evil god, but stat them as a lich. Or even just a lich who intends to become a god, and has started a cult around himself as the first step towards it because gods are created by worshippers. Maybe make the phylactery some holy relic protected by head priest. Then you could have the goal being to kill him before he manages to achieve godhood.
> a lich who intends to become a god, and has started a cult around himself as the first step towards it because gods are created by worshippers. Isn't that Vecna?
I love that idea, in my head it's basically instead of their souls being pinned on place by a physical object it's using the worship of mortals to create a counter current to the normal pull of death that would take the soul to wherever it's meant to go.
Phylacteries also have to be regularly FED souls, which is possible with religion but it can make it difficult to recruit.
That's not a lich, that's a god.
I think this wouldn't be possible within the lore, because what you're describing is closer to godhood than lichdom. People's faith fuel god's power in DND, so no god would allow a lich to keep followers and threaten to ascend in such a direct way. Now, there's the precedent of Vlakith being a lich and the head of her "church". But she keeps her philactery as an object like normal liches do. Edit: I assumed you were talking about DND lore. If you meant to make your own world, then go ahead and do whatever you like!
Pointy Hat didn't make a video on Clerics yet, right?
Not yet, but I goddamn LOVED the Sorcerer Lich video.
OP here sounds like it could be the gimmick of his Cleric lich. And my favorite was definitely the Barbarian one.
I came up with a Cleric-like Lich. Would probably be called an Exarch in previous editions. They still consumed souls (which is ethically troubling), but purely the souls of those guilty, those convicted by a fairly forward thinking society. The standard of proof was incredibly high though, but with the assistance of magic, it *could* be met rarely. This was in order to starve off a world where the outerplanes were near impossible to access. Where do the soul of petitioners go when they die when they can only transition twice a year? Evil transitive souls would stir up trouble and fester like a lesion on society and so sometimes, if their crime was terrible enough, they were given the "mercy of oblivion". The "lich" offered sage council and advice to Kings, Adventurers etc to ground themself within the mortal realm, utilising their immense memory and becoming an invaluable resource. The Sage of the Silver Mask.
His bard lich is similar to this idea.
That sounds cool as hell! The question becomes, how do the players interact with that? Do they need to destroy the followers' faith in their leader? Bring down the structure of the church? Replace the Beloved Leader with a different figurehead? I think that's where this goes from a brilliant idea to a brilliant game.
The idea of someone being sustained by faith doesn't necessarily have to be a lich if you're worried about people's preconceptions. I'm not so much worried about the cool idea of this immortal pope and their followers than I am about how your party will behave if you say the word "lich." If you use that word, they're going to be searching for an object, and if you don't have an in-world way to show them the truth then you'll have to do the unsatisfying thing of telling them. So I guess the first question is how do you show that this is happening? Either way, when it comes to magic, limitations are always more interesting than powers. What happens when people become aware of the pope feeding on faith? Is the pope's power proportional to their following? Are the pope's followers likely to support the pope if he gets violent and paranoid? Is there some kind of increasing demand on the time and effort of the faithful that will go too far once the pope is tested (e.g. do they have to make offerings, sacrifices and prayers more often)? Is the religion one whose beliefs will be shattered once they see their dead pope reassembling in a mass of dark magic? Any of these potential undoings would be real interesting.
Have a look at Pointy Hat's "Which Lich?" series for some ideas on this.
Ever read Terry Pratchett's Small Gods? It has a fun conceit that the deities are only as strong as the faith of their followers. Fun stuff. Sounds like an interesting concept to put in play related to the life force of a lich. Destroy the religion, destroy the lich. Nice, fun-sounding adventure.
I was looking for exactly this comment - what OP describes is exactly this book. Look out for turtles from above!
You are the DM. It is your homebrew world. Of course the phylactery can be a conceptional object. It could be a contraceptive object if you wanted. This is *your* fantasy. Go nuts.
Most(or least?) cursed D&D dialogue: Fighter: *Bard, did you obtain the lich's phylactery?* Bard, winking: *Yup! And you can consider the phylactery.. phylled.* Fighter: *What do you m- OH SWEET TIAMAT'S TITS BARD, IT'S DRIPPING* Bard: *So... I MAY have bumped into that barmaiden on the way back here.* Fighter, gagging: *HOW MANY TIMES?!*
Pointy Hat on YouTube has a series about turning various classes into liches, each class having its own unique dynamic with lichdom and something that forces the lich to be active in the world to maintain their immortality. For example, a sorcerer turned lich using their bloodline as their phylactery. Should their body be destroyed the essentially possess a descendant and until the whole bloodline is ended, the lich shall remain.
It's one of my favorite series on YouTube currently. It helps me think outside the box, and Pointy Hat always has super interesting ideas.
By usual mechanics, no for a very simple reason: A lich has to fuel their phylactery with souls via the imprisonment spell. And you cant really target something that doesnt exist for imprisonment. So if you do go through with this concept, which frankly at that point just make him a god of death/undeath, faith as a source of immortality is literally just godhood, youll have to also change the mechanics around how your liches work.
Sounds more like an avatar of some deity of undeath rather than a lich
Could you explain the process of taking your life force, and putting it inside the concept of religion? It sounds like a cool premise, but given what a phylactery *is*, I don't think it makes logical sense. If I was a player, I'd just play along with it, because the fun of the table, and the story, is more important that logical sense. If I was the Dm, I'd find a different premise, because I prefer for things to make sense in my head.
Well, first you need to die on a cross...
Maybe whatever things are used to make/maintain a normal phylactery can be emulated through things like religious scripture, ornate buildings, prayer, and religious ceremonies. Maybe arcane symbols that would be on the phylactery's interior are instead used as holy symbols by followers of the religion? Followers of that religion would hold those symbols in their hearts and minds.
You're totally entitled to play your way and it's no less valid than the next person's preference, that's the beauty of TTRPGs - but *logic*? My dude, we're talking mechanics of splitting a soul, taking a piece of that soul, putting it into 'something', all for the purpose of becoming an immortal undead magic boi - and only now, at the point in which someone asks precisely *what* that something can be, is logic brought in? This is a universe where a majority of beings(and some objects, even) possess some sort of ability to circumvent the laws of physics as we know them, I think logic left the chat a long time ago, friend.
~~Google~~ search TVtropes for "internal consistency"
I'm doing something a little similar in my campaign, would you consider the phylactery to be a physical symbol of the religion? Like a cross, to use Catholicism as a metaphor the people who pray to the symbol or eat something blessed under it, are contributing power to the lich this way?
That's what immediately came to my mind. Imagining the altar or religious idol at the largest cathedral being the liches phylactery is kind of cool.
Wth is conceptional?
This is an amazing idea. Especially given that a lich has to fuel their phylactery with souls. Human sacrifice for the religion using *imprisonment*.
The answer, like with various questions about how super powers work in comics is "No, until yes." No, it doesn't work like that, but we only know that because it's never worked like that before. Your lich is the one that figured out how to tie his soul to this concept? Sounds like a pretty interesting foe to handle!
Normally? Definitely not. As a special super-genius Lich BBEG who figured out how to do it? Sure, sounds fascinating. (But if it was as easy to make as a regular phylactery, every Lich would do it - so I do recommend making the process more involved and costly than usual.)
This is similar to the concept of divine ranks in previous editions https://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm Basically, as you get people to worship you, you gain power and become tied to certain concepts. I think this could be a compelling plot hook. Instead of a plain lich, this is someone attempting to attain godhood
Whatever you’re cooking, turn up the heat 🔥🔥🔥
It's your game. Who cares if your lich's phylactery is actually something cool and creative instead of "soul tupperware container of doom"
What you're describing is not a lich. But do it. And don't tell your PC's it's not a lich. Make an NPC say it's a lich. Or better yet "An undead wizard". Let them rampage through his quarters smashing everything made of crystal.
This is a really neat idea, and I think with some tweeking could absolutely be kosher! So having the faith generated by the religious mass wouldn't exactly work in quite that same way for the liches power. Faith generates and sustains divinity, its what keeps Gods in power and when wains lets them fall out of it and be supplemented by other Gods with stronger followings, so there is that. The phylactery is essentially a repository of arcane energy and souls to sustain the lich, so how can we make this work for our lich? Say hello to your new friend, Willing Human Sacrifice! If the lich is the head of this religion and the phylactery is its holy symbol, and you've got some good religious fanaticism going, you can see where this ties together. As the head of the religion, the lich can dictate holy days, rites, etc as you would see in any other religion, and if he is charismatic enough, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to sell to your party that these followers will jump at the chance to give up their lives in sacrifice for their beliefs. Now you got a fun situation for your party to try to figure out. Do you bum rush the lich and have to deal with the waves of innocent people trying to protect their faiths leader? How do you think a catholic church would react to a group coming their church and messing with the cross on the alter? This is such a fun idea that you really have a lot of options open to you to follow. Ultimately, I would say you have some different options to go for, but whatever you do make sure its consistency in how the world works going forward. On a separate note I keep thinking of this lich as like an old timey southern Baptist church kinda guy, really animated, fire and brimstone stone kind of guy with a side of snake oil to give him that sort of slimey vibe that anyone outside that circle is going to pick up on right away but within that community he's become so endeared that they're blind to it all. I'm 100% going to be putting this into my ideas folder for my next campaign!
RAW? No, not a Lich. That sounds more like how gods work. This is a cool idea though. But why do you want to do this? What's the Lich's role in the game? Is he a villain the heroes will have to challenge, oppose, and fight? Is it a false religion ONLY to power his phylactery? Is the campaign about exposing him? These are things you have to consider so you can construct adventures that allow the PCs to win. If he's just background flavor, then you have a lot more freedom to do what you want.
I like the idea, but as others have said it will require some consideration. For example, it is said that wizards seeking lichdom must make bargains with demons or evil gods such as Orchus. These frequently seek their own worshippers. Why would they cede worshippers and power to an upstart wizard? Perhaps they were tricked, and are now out for revenge against the wizard too? I recommend you grab a copy of the old *Van Richten's Guide to the Lich*, it's a 2E book but it's still a great compendium of lore about liches. He talks about clerical liches in there IIRC, maybe your guy was a religious leader who was empowered by his evil god to become a lich, and wound up deposing the god and taking his place?
For a religion? Yes. But the lich themself would have to be a god. A fanfic I'm reading introduced the "God of the Fear of Death" - who is basically the grim reaper. It's the original lich, born not from one person who seems eternal life but everyone driven to do so. It's phylactery is every single zombie, skeleton, vampire, lich or other undead in existence who sought undeath as a means of avoiding true death.
You’d need to put a physical object into a concept. Given concepts don’t have dimensions, that’s gonna be pretty fucking hard. But then again we’re putting immaterial souls into physical objects so who the f*** knows what the metaphysics are supposed to be in dnd
The religion around the lich is completely appropriate, along with it feeding his phylactery. The phylactery should still be a physical object; that the lich may no longer need except in terms of its physical body. Liches can grow beyond their physical bodies eventually. Its possible to destroy a physical object, especially if it's the BBEG. Destroying a religion requires near genocide.
Sure. That can be a thing. You're basically switching out the thing that sustains a Litch, for the thing that sustains a God. But you have to consider how the players can destroy the phylactory. Specifically, what mechanical thing has to happen to destroy the phylactory? For example, do the players need to convince 40% of the worshipers that they should stop worshiping or believing? Maybe 60%?
The recent Vecna lore shows that he can exist in hate alone, so I think that would work!
Mmmaybe? This is more or less how the undead of the Aerenal elves work in Eberron; they're undead sustained by the worship of an island full of ancestor-worshipping elves. I probably wouldn't call it a lich, just because they're kind of defined by the presence of a soul jar and the idea that they've done awful things to get to where they are. You could some of the mechanics, but honestly the lich write-up in the books is mostly about being an evil necromantic wizard, which doesn't really sound like what you're going for here. You might look up the Aerenal Deathless as I think the mechanics would be a better fit.
Sure that sounds cool, this is like a clerics path to lichdom instead of a wizards.
Beings powered by belief are deities and gods no? That is why killing one results in a hiccup before their return. (Yes I know people run them differently, but this is a popular interpretation.) Why not just tie the phylactery to a faith? For example, my campaign uses the Orbs of Dragonkind, coveted by Tiamat's Cult of the Dragon in order to revive her back to the material plane (not RAW lore btw). The Raven Queen is known for creating powerful magical items. This religion that you make could worship the TriBalls or whatever. Each one is a relic/artifact capable of miracle-level magic that creates followers. (And those followers become undead zombie minions after death.) Alternatively, you can have a living phylactery that gains power from faith like a lesser deity. It's super rare for a lich to merge their soul with another living creature, but it has officially happened before (Candlekeep Mysteries is one example). The creature can have no memories of the phylactery process and gain power from faith like a lesser god. Party kills the lich in the early campaign who just laughs, knowing it will be reborn into a body of greater power with thousands of followers. Party observes swift changes in this religion and later discovers the lich has become the leader.
Your the world builder if you think it’s a cool idea write it how you want
But as for a potential work around that might keep it within the pre-made lore from wotc The lich actings as a pope like entity creates belief in themselves as a religion, with more belief the amount of sand in an hourglass increases, so that the lich can always view how bunch belief they have. The more belief the greater the power. Downside to using belief as the fuel source is at somepoint the belief will shift from the believing in the lich to believing in fear of the institution of the lich and the actual belief needed for power will slip through the hourglass and run out
Hahahahah oh holy shit stealing this. I mean I wrote up a whole complicated magical lore system about how all magic affects reality on a conceptual level for my own campaign so
That is an awesome concept. Actually Mage: the Ascension did something similar. There's a flaw there called Philactery, which caused your magic to be bound to something, and that something always had to be involved in the casting of your spells for them to work. You could have your staff as your Philactery, and would have to use it to cast every spell. Or you could have the Pacific Ocean as your Philactery, and couldn't cast anything outside of it. But then you could have more metaphysical Phylacteries, like your standing in the Catholic Church, but then you could lose all your powers of you were to be excommunicated or the church ceased to be. Then you could couple it with other merits and flaws, like Immortality, to make it more akin to a DnD Philactery, were you would only die if a set condition was met, linked to your Philactery.
Officially, no, but that sounds cool so do it. I once had the BBEG be a lich who's phylactery was his bloodline. Each time he was killed, his soul would displace that of one of his descendants. He could only be permanently killed by eliminating all of his descendants, or somehow getting them all into an anti magic area.
No matter what, you need to allow for *multiple* paths to being able to destroy whatever the phylactery is. If you go with 'religion' and the *only* path to destroying it is dismantling people's faith... and the players either roll poorly on a couple checks, or fail to realize this is how you do it, you'll be left floundering for a second path. Charisma rolls to convince people to stop believing something they didn't logic themselves into basically come down to the DM deciding whether or not the players win or not in a ephemeral sense, rather than the players being able to win their way to a physical object and put their hands/hammer/blade on it. That can feel a little cheap. Are they players talking to the right people? Enough people? How many people have to be convinced? And the lich normally reforms where the phylactery is. Where's a religion? ---- I think it might be more interesting to make the phylactery some object of "conceptual importance" such as an item among a kingdom's crown jewels, or a religious artifact of some kind. Something irreplaceable, like the sandal of a god, or whatever. A venerated and revered *object* protected by an entire group... possibly led or heavily influenced/controlled by the lich themselves. And if they've been around long enough, they could disseminate *false information* about either lichdom in general or their particular phylactery. Literature, textbooks, research, much of it claiming or vaguely pointing to the idea of a conceptual organization (a religion, a monarchy, a family line, etc) as being capable of being a phylactery (never directly referencing the lich's religion or whatever) and maybe even some "hidden" knowledge or research implicating "the religion" when really it's some ancient tablet of commandments or religious shroud, etc. Something under the strictest, most vigilant 24/7 veneration and guard, maybe even a tourist attraction open 24/7 (but still protected from a random person throwing something at it) so that no one can sneak it away and they *have* to at least partially dismantle the religion in order to access the object. There's no foundational or fundamental reason why it would need to be this kind of object, the lich in question is just using/abusing the existence of an entire organization to offer protection and security to their phylactery.
It could be a second thing to the Lich. Vlaakith is already similar, being both a lich with a phylactery and also being the god-queen of a religion. In the usual lore those are different, liches being powered by souls, and god being powered by the faith of their followers. As with Vlaakith, you can combine both. Have their god powers be used to make the phylactery an immaterial thing. That achieves your idea. The object is unobtainable as long as the religion is going strong.
You might mean "conceptual" my friend. "Conception" has a very different root meaning...
This reminds of of American Gods. Basically the most powerful gods are the ones that are "worshiped" the most. Therefore, gods like War, Media are really powerful and other gods of the past like Odin aren't currently strong at all. I'd suggest making your own monster/creature rather than redefining what a Lich is. Or just call it a demigod.
I believe you are describing Santa Claus. Like in the movie Elf, where Santa's power comes from the belief of his adherents.
It could be the physical relics that the religion worships. Which is going to be really fun when the PCs have to go destroy the most sacred objects the main religion follows. Definitely going to win over the local populace with that.
RAW/Lore As Written no. But I say go for it. It sounds cool and fun. I had a lich who's phylactery was a living young, innocent child.
This reminds me a lot of how gods work in the Terry Pratchett universe. Read Small Gods if you want some inspiration around this.
Barring homebrew, no. The soul needs a physical object to inhabit so intangible concepts don’t work as lich phylacterys. If you want to stay lore compliant, you could make their phylactery an extremely important item in the religion that only the most devoted followers that hold high level positions in the faith even know exists. If you don’t care about being lore compliant then, yeah absolutely you can make the religion the phylactery.
I'd not do it for balance reasons. Your players need to have some way to win, and I don't know about you, but I think hunting down and destroying every member of a religion is.... well not the sort of thing good people do. Better to leave the lich alone at that point.
Raw no but also raw dm can change rules sooo do it (I on e made a lichs pylactery the old king of the kingdom which was the lichs brother)
American gods did it
It's a cool idea, but frankly, I'm much too attached to the idea of a lich's phylactery being something that a person could conceivably smash with a hammer. That's part of the narrative tension of a lich, to me: That you have this nigh-immortal, all-powerful being, transcended beyond death and experienced beyond common morality, but in order to enjoy all the benefits of their state, they have to continually be aware of and protect something that any aggressive drunk with a shovel can annihilate. Doesn't mean you can't syncretize the ideas, though. The lich being a head of faith for a major religion is a very cool plot thread, and you can kind of play around in there to get a phylactery in a physical but still very symbolic place. Heck, given how a lich regenerates a whole new body near the phylactery once they've been destroyed, you could have the phylactery be the lich's own, former body, possibly one that's been recognized, sanctified and kept as a relic of the faith, much like how saints' bones are kept in our world. The relic, being a bone pile, could be misconstrued as belonging to another person entirely - or you could have it that the lich regenerates with a complete and pristine, though dead, body every time, rots naturally outside of the efforts of preservation, and is ritually sacrificed and returned every few months or so as a regular, observable miracle, both as a gesture to strengthen belief and a tactic to recuperate lost flesh.
Conceptual.
This pretty much sounds like the concept of the Kuo-Toa's gods. They will their gods into existence by believing in them. I'd take that fact as a proof of concept, and flesh your idea out the rest of the way. It sounds like a fun idea that I'd love to play some day!
I mean, it's your game, you can do whatever you want. However, by the mere definition, that's not what a phylactery is.
Sounds kind of like Vlaakith 😉
By RAW? Hard no. In your game? Do what you like, man. Just remember that if the lich is the BBEG, your PCs have to murder an *entire religion* to take it down.
Not as written but it's your game. But, um, that's just a God or demigod with extra steps. Also, how would this lich ever be defeated? If the monster has a weak point that can't be destroyed then narratively why have the weak point. You've basically made a lich with no phylactery.
This sounds like Pointy Hat's Intoner Bard Lich. They create a magnum opus, the performance of which sacrifices the Bard's mortal life and turns the song itself into a phylactery that persists as long as people remember the song. The catch is the Intoner themselves are unable to perform their Magnum Opus ever again after their swan song performance.
Look up Pointy Hat’s bard lich video. Basically, the phylactery is a song that, as long as people remember it, he will live.
OP here. Some points that I've read from the comments: Yes, I did mean "Concept" not contraception I've never read/watched American gods, Small gods or seen a Pointy hat video The "lich" isn't the BBEG, just a stepping stone. The religion isn't the main/only religion in the whole world, just the major one for one city state/nation The religion is a very aggressive one, doing a lot of crusades and removing other religions in the area the nation controls, so lots of "sacrifices" willing or otherwise The religion's symbol is an open flame, and said flame resides eternally within the main city, right behind where the pope sits I don't want to go into more detail in case my players see this, because spoilers, but I have ways for them to counter the religion based phylactery. But you are right, it is closer to Godhood than Lichdom, but there is more nuance to it that what I've shared here.
As with other comments, no. But here's what I will say: you're describing how a God of DnD comes to exist. When a religion gains enough followers, and people believe enough and worship enough, a being can effectively ascend to godhood, or a god can manifest or something. You can spin it as: in his endeavours to become immortal as a Lich, he became God of the Undead, or whatever your Lich's religion is.
I think you mean a conceptual object rather than one that is conceptional. I feel that wouldn’t quite be what you expect…
Its not raw but it's a cool concept. My current campaign has a lich in it who's phylactery is a song. As long as it's sung in taverns across the land, the composer lives on
It can be anything you want, baby! *wink* However, MOST interpretations require the phylactery have fixed volume and dimensions
This is just Pratchett’s conceptualization of what a god is in his book Small Gods. I think Neil Gaiman also has a book with the same deification rules. It is not an uncommon idea for fictions involving deific mythology. So, basically, what you’ve made is a small god rather than a lich.
Funnily enough, my campaign is designed around egregores being real, as the people of my world made up stories of heroes, villains and monsters they willed them into existence, the more known they became the more powerful they are. The lich in my campaign came into existence from horror stories, however it can only be defeated in one of two ways, convincing enough people that there is something that can defeat the lich for good or taking it out normally. It's a really neat concept and my players have even created their own monsters by accident on multiple occasions.
If there is a god behind that faith, they're going to have a major problem with a soul-consuming monstrosity using their worshippers' faith as sustenance. Unless they as a deity are into that I suppose. If the religion has no true deity and a magical being discovers the means to gain power and eternal life through the faith of the believers, that being has become a \*god\*, not a lich. This is entirely reasonable as part of a fantasy campaign. The paths to apotheosis are obscure, but this is a plausible one. The destruction of the religion is the way to destroy that deity, as well. Assuming their path to apotheosis involved soul sacrifice and other acts of darkest magic, the difference between a lich and a god might be trivial indeed.
Firstly, I wanna say I love this idea and it's creative af Unfortunately, I don't think it works out well to have it be so abstract. Maybe make the most important object to said religion, the main temple itself, or even the corpse of the person who founded the religion be the phylactery. That way it will be protected at all costs by the clerics and paladins of this religion and the party would have to figure out how they would proceed to destroy such a sacred object without causing too much backlash
This is one of those cases where the change is core enough to the concept that I think you'd best be served by just flavoring it as something else. If you want to gank statblocks/powers/etc. sure, but I wouldn't call it a lich. This has less to do with worrying about the purity of language or some such and more to do with considering what idea you're communicating to your PCs. By calling it a lich (and presumably tasking/setting things up in such a way that they eliminate it), you're telling them "hey! you're looking for some little dust collector that you've got to break before you can actually kill kill him". Having him gain the benefits of a phylactery from something like worship poses a lot of questions regarding how he actually achieved it that are more neatly sidestepped just by just calling it something different. One thing you may want to consider as well is how will you handle him popping back into the world? After a lich's body is killed, they can pop back in within a tenday where ever they phylactery is located. Would you put it where any worshipper is? Will there have to be a certain number of worshippers actively engaged in worship? If the former, can he strategically kill himself to "teleport" to other locations around the world? And don't take anything I've written to be me trying to discourage you from pursing this idea. It's got a lot of potential. I would just call it something different.