How do you make Liches interesting?

[HighTemplar]

I'm afraid its too long ago for details. In heroic tier there were fights against dragons - a black dragon fight at 3rd level which went on for about 30 rounds. A green dragon fight against a 5th level party (ftr, warlock, wizard, rogue, cleric) which lasted about 12 rounds. In paragon tier there was a 13th level party against a dracolich (wiz, ftr, warlord, rogue) which went on for at least 9 rounds by the end of the night, and neither the dragon nor the party were bloodied at that time.

It's a matter of hitting with key attacks or otherwise, and relatively low damage compared to the solo hit points.

I know that MMIII+ has done a lot to improve these matters, but... I still would be astonished if a solo went down in 3-4 rounds. Wasn't one of the ideas of 4e to reduce the combats which were over in less than 30 seconds of game time?

Cheers

[MENTION=114]Plane Sailing[/MENTION]: The duration of combat depends on many variables but most likely on the amount of powerplaying amongst your PCs. My PCs use the best combinations of powers and magic items to make sure their important dailies work and always makes combat short in amount of rounds, and every round long to play as every move counts so much...

All of my BBEG are created as PCs, so for this lich, I would definately make a Wizard (perhaps multiclass warlock, or vice versa) use the ARCHLICH epic destiny, which is great, and a strong paragon path like Bloodmage(or anything flavorful that goes with the style of your lich).

Using good feats, magic items and the geography in which the players are to confront him, you can make a great combat happen, and use the Lich's 21st lvl power to have him live and haunt them as long as they can't find his phylactery.

I would also be very cautious as to how easy/hard it will be for players to find this phylactery... Certain rituals can ruin all your plans so I sometimes spice things us using scrying countermeasures(such as forbiddance) and maybe anti-magic zones (which I haven't heard of in 4e)... the problem of divination rituals remains, but there has to be some way for them to find it hehe.