100% Crunch Liches
100% Crunch Liches
Pathfinder 1e
Atrophied Lich: A lich that remains immobile and insensible for extended periods of time can grow atrophied.
Forsaken Lich: The means of attaining lichdom are extremely personal for mortal spellcasters, fraught with misinformation and peril. The smallest miscalculation in the potion of lichdom’s formula or most minute flaw in one’s phylactery can interrupt the process that infuses one’s mortal soul with overwhelming arcane and negative energies. Other times, an inexperienced wizard attempts the transformation, or erroneously consumes a formula produced for another spellcaster, instantly dying from the backlash of potent forces or condemning himself to a terminal but far more terrible end.
In these sorrowful cases, the process traps the soul of the would‐be lich outside a phylactery that will not accept it and a body that has rejected it. The potent arcane forces tampered with by the lich’s failed creation also find themselves unleashed but uncontrolled, surrounding the newly formed abomination, empowering it but also slowly consuming its essence.
“Forsaken lich” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature, provided it can create the required phylactery. Rarely, a creature unable to create a phylactery stumbles upon this state through tragic ambition.
Awakened Demilich: Under exceptional conditions, a lich’s full consciousness survives its transformation into a demilich, or a lich’s wandering intellect manages to return to its jewelled skull.
Elf Lich Magus 11: ?
Halfling Lich Cleric 11: ?
Human Lich Wizard 11: ?
Human Lich Druid 11: ?
Human Forsaken Lich Cleric 11: ?
Dwarf Lich Oracle 12: ?
Half-Elf Lich Wizard 12: ?
Pugwampi Lich Druid 12: ?
Sylph Lich Sorcerer 12: ?
Demilich: ?
Dhampir Forsaken Lich Wizard 13: ?
Green Hag Lich Wizard 12: ?
Human Lich Cleric 13: ?
Human Lich Magus 13: ?
Serpentfolk Lich Wizard 11: ?
Drider Lich Bard 11: ?
Ghaele Lich: ?
Halfling Lich Bard 14: ?
Half-Orc Lich Oracle 14: ?
Drow Noble Lich Leric 14: ?
Drow Noble Lich Wizard 14: ?
Human Lich Sorcerer 5/Dragon Disciple 10: ?
Human Forsaken Lich Ranger 15: ?
Advanced Serpentfolk Lich Cleric 13: ?
Elf Lich Magus 16: ?
Venerable Half-Orc Lich Druid 16: ?
Human Lich Oracle 16: ?
Puckwudgie Lich Druid 13: ?
Advanced Demilich: ?
Drider Lich Sorcerer 9: ?
Dwarf Lich Cleric 17: ?
Human Lich Wizard 17: ?
Advanced Serpentfolk Lich Wizard 15: ?
Ancient Green Dragon Lich: ?
Elf Lich Wizard 18: ?
Human Lich Bard 18: ?
Human Lich Ranger 18: ?
Nymph Lich Druid 11: ?
Awakened Demilich Oracle 16: ?
Old Red Dragon Lich Sorcerer 2: ?
Serpentfolk Lich Cleric 17: ?
Succubus Lich Sorcerer 15: ?
Lich: The pinnacle of necromantic art, the lich is a spellcaster who has chosen to shed his life as a method to cheat death by becoming undead. While many who reach such heights of power stop at nothing to achieve immortality, the idea of becoming a lich is abhorrent to most creatures. The process involves the extraction of the spellcaster’s life‐force and its imprisonment in a specially prepared phylactery—the spellcaster gives up life, but in trapping life he also traps his death.
The quest to become a lich is a lengthy one. While construction of the magical phylactery to contain the spellcaster’s soul is a critical component, a prospective lich must also learn the secrets of transferring his soul into the receptacle and of preparing his body for the transformation into undeath, neither of which are simple tasks. Further complicating the ritual is the fact that no two bodies or souls are exactly alike—a ritual that works for one spellcaster might simply kill another or drive him insane. The exact methods for each spellcaster’s transformation are left to the GM’s discretion, but should involve expenditures of hundreds of thousands of gold pieces, numerous deadly adventures, and a large number of difficult skill checks over the course of months, years, or decades.
An integral part of becoming a lich is the creation of the phylactery in which the character stores his soul.
Each lich must create its own phylactery by using the Craft Wondrous Item feat. The character must be able to cast spells and have a caster level of 11th or higher. The phylactery costs 120,000 gp to create and has a caster level equal to that of its creator at the time of creation.
“Lich” is an acquired template that can be added to any living creature, provided it can create the required phylactery.
Demilich: In their endless years of unlife, some liches lose themselves in introspection, and can no longer rouse themselves to face the endless march of days. Still others cast their consciousness far from their bodies, wandering planes and realities far beyond mortal ken. Absent the vitality of the soul, such a lich’s physical form succumbs to decay over the centuries. In time, only the lich’s skull remains intact. Yet the bonds of undeath keep the lich’s remains from final dissolution. Vestiges of the lich’s intellect remain within the skull, and wake to terrible wrath should it be disturbed. Traces of the lich’s will to live strengthen the skull, rendering it harder than any steel. The lich’s greed and lust for power manifest in the growth of gems in its skull. Lastly, though only the barest remnants of the lich’s eldritch might survive, a demilich aroused to anger still retains enough power to flense the very soul from any defiling its final rest.
Most demiliches achieved their state through apathy, not volition. For each decade that a demilich fails to stir itself to meaningful action, there is a 1% cumulative chance that its corporeal body decays into dust, save for the skull. Any return to activity resets the chance of transformation to 0%. Once the lich’s body decays, the lich’s intellect returns to its phylactery as normal. However, the skull rejects the return of the lich’s consciousness, keeping the lich trapped in its deteriorating phylactery for 1d10 years. If during that time the lich’s remains are destroyed or scattered (for example, by wandering adventurers), the lich’s phylactery forms a new body and the intellect leaves the phylactery as normal, returning the lich to life. But if the lich’s remains survive unperturbed, the phylactery’s magic fails catastrophically, releasing the lich’s soul and causing 5d10 points of damage to the phylactery. Regardless of whether or not the phylactery physically survives, the energies released by its failure channel into the lifeless skull of the lich, allowing the last remnants of the lich’s soul to transform it into a demilich.
For wandering liches, the process is similar, but based on the number of decades the lich spends without its intellect returning to its body. While the lich’s body still decays, its mind remains at large, only becoming trapped in the phylactery if the lich tries to return during the period in which its body has failed, but it has not yet become a demilich. Should the lich’s phylactery fail before the wandering lich returns, the skull becomes a demilich, and the lich’s mind is doomed to wander until the end of days.
