-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
What Happens When You Go Lich?
- Thread starter Valicor
- Start date
Jeremy
Explorer
The advancement line you are referring to references whether or not the creature has a change in how it advances, by HD or by Class levels. It has nothing to do with the speed.
Perhaps I should rephrase. If each of those characters seperate of the other defeats a CR 16 Dragon, the templated fighter without breaking a sweat and the kobold in the fight of his life, would they both get the same amount of experience from it? Would they both advance and learn as much from the experience?
I say no. While the same level, the templates afforded one so many abilities that it wasn't challenged and forced to grow to win.
So it doesn't learn as much.
Hence advancement is slower.
Or in mechanics, the one is a higher effective level.
As to
If you are telling me the lich template has 0 ECL and the half dragon and fiendish templates do have ECL then I think I'll just leave you to whatever it is you'd like to do and take my opinion elsewhere.
Might I recommend you go read up on what ECL is and what purpose it serves?
Lich's most certainly have ECL. Anything more powerful than the standard races when used as a PC has ECL. Unless you are stating that liches are no more powerful than core races.
Actually, nevermind. The number of arguments, examples, and analogies I've presented in this thread is rather astronomical and I've yet to have a single person agree with my point of view or even see my point. At this point it is extremely frustrating and bordering on angering to me. So I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to bow out of this discussion guys. It's no longer worth the stimulation to me.
Sorry for any offense I may have rendered.
Perhaps I should rephrase. If each of those characters seperate of the other defeats a CR 16 Dragon, the templated fighter without breaking a sweat and the kobold in the fight of his life, would they both get the same amount of experience from it? Would they both advance and learn as much from the experience?
I say no. While the same level, the templates afforded one so many abilities that it wasn't challenged and forced to grow to win.
So it doesn't learn as much.
Hence advancement is slower.
Or in mechanics, the one is a higher effective level.
As to
If you are telling me the lich template has 0 ECL and the half dragon and fiendish templates do have ECL then I think I'll just leave you to whatever it is you'd like to do and take my opinion elsewhere.
Might I recommend you go read up on what ECL is and what purpose it serves?
Lich's most certainly have ECL. Anything more powerful than the standard races when used as a PC has ECL. Unless you are stating that liches are no more powerful than core races.
Actually, nevermind. The number of arguments, examples, and analogies I've presented in this thread is rather astronomical and I've yet to have a single person agree with my point of view or even see my point. At this point it is extremely frustrating and bordering on angering to me. So I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to bow out of this discussion guys. It's no longer worth the stimulation to me.
Sorry for any offense I may have rendered.
Jeremy said:But I wasn't being vehement about the fact that Artoomis's pseudo class is did or did not have skills/bab/saves. I was very vehemently restating that CR (+2 in this case) is NOT equal to ECL (+5 in this case)(2 != 5). So I'm not a total loon.[/B]
I know you said you are stepping out of this topic (as I already have) but I thought I should point out that no, you are wrong.
Right now, a Lich Wizard 12 is supposed to have a CR of 12, yes?
With the Lich PrC, the same character would instead be a Lich 5 Wizard 12. By standard rules, every level an NPC possesses increases CR by 1. So said Lich 5 Wizard 12 is now CR 17.
Just wanted to point that out.
Shard O'Glase
First Post
Couple point the prestige class thing yeah for everyone, someone can make a way to ban liches not by just coming out and saying nope no liches in my game, but by rule 0 the method so that it is so unapealing no one will ever do it.
HP d12 big freakin deal, I haven't seen a wizard yet who at best breaks even if turned undead, most I've seen would actually lose HP, con bonuses and con items make a big difference now folks.
Lich abilities, all nice and dandy, but even with turn resistance +4 getting blasted back to your jar can and will happen semi-frequently.
Negative energy, sure it coul dbe sen as a boost that it now heals you if your cleric is evil and or you don't have a cleric in the party, but for good liches uck if the cleric can't burn to heal me I'm in deep doggy doo.
Various immunities are all very nice, but I wouldn't give up 2 spell casting levels for them and neither would any decent powergaming wizard out there except maybe at 17th level. And guess what unless you are throwing money at the pcs at most levels no one will take those immunities for having to run around naked either.
If someone wants to blow 120,000 gp and 5,000 exp for an process to make them fairly cool, but has limitations and they can't change their mind after words once the disadvantages start cropping up I say let them.
HP d12 big freakin deal, I haven't seen a wizard yet who at best breaks even if turned undead, most I've seen would actually lose HP, con bonuses and con items make a big difference now folks.
Lich abilities, all nice and dandy, but even with turn resistance +4 getting blasted back to your jar can and will happen semi-frequently.
Negative energy, sure it coul dbe sen as a boost that it now heals you if your cleric is evil and or you don't have a cleric in the party, but for good liches uck if the cleric can't burn to heal me I'm in deep doggy doo.
Various immunities are all very nice, but I wouldn't give up 2 spell casting levels for them and neither would any decent powergaming wizard out there except maybe at 17th level. And guess what unless you are throwing money at the pcs at most levels no one will take those immunities for having to run around naked either.
If someone wants to blow 120,000 gp and 5,000 exp for an process to make them fairly cool, but has limitations and they can't change their mind after words once the disadvantages start cropping up I say let them.
Apology
Jeremy,
I'm sorry about the above post. It was unneccesary and you are right about my misguided (read: wrong) use of the Advancement.
I found the references to effective level in chapter 2 of the DMG and found +2/+3/+whatever for various templates, but not for the lich. The absense of the lich proves nothing, other than they didn't do a comprehensive job.
Part of my problem is that after years of buying Dragons and the endless D&d supplements I'm sticking to core rules in 3e. ECL isn't defined in the 3 core books, but a partial attempt at ECL is in the DMG under playing monsters as characters. I didn't buy the FRCS and don't HAVE the full rules for ECL, but it is clear how it works.
I understand your point about the ECL of a lich, really I do, I just personally don't like it and don't think it is a solution that works for me (I'll get to that in a different post). I have no doubt it (or a PrC) works for plenty of other people and I certainly didn't mean to post anything telling anyone they had the "wrong" solution. You (and others) have some great ideas and I'm not intending to attack those ideas.
I'll get back on point on the next post, but I didn't mean to make anyone angry and I regret having posted the above posting. Sorry.
rendarkin said:
Jeremy,
I'm sorry about the above post. It was unneccesary and you are right about my misguided (read: wrong) use of the Advancement.
I found the references to effective level in chapter 2 of the DMG and found +2/+3/+whatever for various templates, but not for the lich. The absense of the lich proves nothing, other than they didn't do a comprehensive job.
Part of my problem is that after years of buying Dragons and the endless D&d supplements I'm sticking to core rules in 3e. ECL isn't defined in the 3 core books, but a partial attempt at ECL is in the DMG under playing monsters as characters. I didn't buy the FRCS and don't HAVE the full rules for ECL, but it is clear how it works.
I understand your point about the ECL of a lich, really I do, I just personally don't like it and don't think it is a solution that works for me (I'll get to that in a different post). I have no doubt it (or a PrC) works for plenty of other people and I certainly didn't mean to post anything telling anyone they had the "wrong" solution. You (and others) have some great ideas and I'm not intending to attack those ideas.
I'll get back on point on the next post, but I didn't mean to make anyone angry and I regret having posted the above posting. Sorry.
Last edited:
My problem with templates
Let me ramble briefly (I'm not sure where I'm going, so partially this is just me thinking rather than comingin with an agenda) on my concern/problem/thoughts with templates:
Unlike the previous editions 3e made a stab at gauging characters powers. First you have level, then the DMG gives you an average GP/level of treasure. These let you, at a glance, see if a random party is equivalent to another. In the simple case a 5th level average party is equal to any other average 5th level party.
Then it starts to get fuzzy. How about a party on the low-end of average treasure against a party on the high-end? What about a party full of 25 point buys against a 32 point buy party or against a party that rolled 4d6 but rolled like demons? Suddenly you have factors that are still within the guidelines but unaddressed in the rules. Perhaps a 6th level party would lose against a 7th level party with 10 more points of stats, but what the ECL in this case?
Then it real gets weird. Templates. Monster races. They made ECL to try to gauge this and it's a good attempt. For monster races (where you have a base monster HD), it makes sense because you just tack on the character class right after and there's no gap in the acquisition of levels. The whole problem with this, for me, is in the weird case of an established character getting a template. It doesn't seem right that a 10th level wizard lich would have suddenly have a gap to 11th level or that a 17th level cleric lich would have a similar gap to 18th level. It should be difficult, very difficult, to become a lich. It should take work and be expensive as hell (they got the GP right but the xp and level reqs wayyy too low in 3e for my campaign, but I can always Rule 0 that...). but once you become a lich you shouldn't suddenly hit a 25,000 xp hole that you have to climb out of.
But it's not just templates. As I've said a couple of times lately artifacts (minor or major) can be acquired in a campaign and they have no market value. They have a tremendous impact on the character, but can't be calculated expressly because they have no value by design. What's the ECL of a 10th level fighter with a Hammer of Thunderbolts? Surely he's tougher than any other average 10th level fighter, right? But how much tougher?
It gets harder for spellcasters who are capable of casting permanent spells and making magic items. They actually convert their hard-earned xps into permanent magic. So while, in effect, they get an ECL (they are literally spending their xps that WOULD have put them up levels), they end up breaking the treasure curve and have more magic items and powers than their level would allow. If my 15th level wizard is happy to keep bleeding off his xps and make items, he can have as many items as he wants (assuming he doesn't get killed). The DMG saying a 15th level character has, on average, 200,000 gp means nothing if I make item after item, staying at 15th level. What's the effective level of a 17th level wizard who saved up the 25,000 XP to cast 5 wishes (via back-to-back scrolls) to get a +5 inherent bonus to Int?
My point is this: The character level and average gp values are a nice starting point for a system to evaluate the power of a character. We never even HAD a system before; even raw levels didn't correlate (few would argue in 2e that a 10th level thief equalled a 10th level fighter, for example). But there are so many missing factors that it only helps to begin to make an approximation in any but the dullest of campaigns (meaning campaigns which don't have anything weird or unusual in them to raise these various issues). People can (and have) come up with solutions to one or some of these issues (make a PrC that gives you a template at the end, for example), but most of the individual soluations haven't struck me as "right" yet -OR- (the big issue) they don't all fit together to make a coherent, integrated SYSTEM of character power evaluation.
I'm not knocking anyone's solutions and, sadly, I don't HAVE a character power-gauging system designed to submit. Obviously I don't advocate just giving up since the existing rules are incomplete, either.
So I'm fervently looking under stones and poking in on thought-provoking groups to try to get the info to find (or make) such a system. There's a lot of clever people out there and an elegant solution's gotta be reachable.
It just might take a while longer
Thanks for letting me ramble. Sorry for any grief I caused.
Let me ramble briefly (I'm not sure where I'm going, so partially this is just me thinking rather than comingin with an agenda) on my concern/problem/thoughts with templates:
Unlike the previous editions 3e made a stab at gauging characters powers. First you have level, then the DMG gives you an average GP/level of treasure. These let you, at a glance, see if a random party is equivalent to another. In the simple case a 5th level average party is equal to any other average 5th level party.
Then it starts to get fuzzy. How about a party on the low-end of average treasure against a party on the high-end? What about a party full of 25 point buys against a 32 point buy party or against a party that rolled 4d6 but rolled like demons? Suddenly you have factors that are still within the guidelines but unaddressed in the rules. Perhaps a 6th level party would lose against a 7th level party with 10 more points of stats, but what the ECL in this case?
Then it real gets weird. Templates. Monster races. They made ECL to try to gauge this and it's a good attempt. For monster races (where you have a base monster HD), it makes sense because you just tack on the character class right after and there's no gap in the acquisition of levels. The whole problem with this, for me, is in the weird case of an established character getting a template. It doesn't seem right that a 10th level wizard lich would have suddenly have a gap to 11th level or that a 17th level cleric lich would have a similar gap to 18th level. It should be difficult, very difficult, to become a lich. It should take work and be expensive as hell (they got the GP right but the xp and level reqs wayyy too low in 3e for my campaign, but I can always Rule 0 that...). but once you become a lich you shouldn't suddenly hit a 25,000 xp hole that you have to climb out of.
But it's not just templates. As I've said a couple of times lately artifacts (minor or major) can be acquired in a campaign and they have no market value. They have a tremendous impact on the character, but can't be calculated expressly because they have no value by design. What's the ECL of a 10th level fighter with a Hammer of Thunderbolts? Surely he's tougher than any other average 10th level fighter, right? But how much tougher?
It gets harder for spellcasters who are capable of casting permanent spells and making magic items. They actually convert their hard-earned xps into permanent magic. So while, in effect, they get an ECL (they are literally spending their xps that WOULD have put them up levels), they end up breaking the treasure curve and have more magic items and powers than their level would allow. If my 15th level wizard is happy to keep bleeding off his xps and make items, he can have as many items as he wants (assuming he doesn't get killed). The DMG saying a 15th level character has, on average, 200,000 gp means nothing if I make item after item, staying at 15th level. What's the effective level of a 17th level wizard who saved up the 25,000 XP to cast 5 wishes (via back-to-back scrolls) to get a +5 inherent bonus to Int?
My point is this: The character level and average gp values are a nice starting point for a system to evaluate the power of a character. We never even HAD a system before; even raw levels didn't correlate (few would argue in 2e that a 10th level thief equalled a 10th level fighter, for example). But there are so many missing factors that it only helps to begin to make an approximation in any but the dullest of campaigns (meaning campaigns which don't have anything weird or unusual in them to raise these various issues). People can (and have) come up with solutions to one or some of these issues (make a PrC that gives you a template at the end, for example), but most of the individual soluations haven't struck me as "right" yet -OR- (the big issue) they don't all fit together to make a coherent, integrated SYSTEM of character power evaluation.
I'm not knocking anyone's solutions and, sadly, I don't HAVE a character power-gauging system designed to submit. Obviously I don't advocate just giving up since the existing rules are incomplete, either.
So I'm fervently looking under stones and poking in on thought-provoking groups to try to get the info to find (or make) such a system. There's a lot of clever people out there and an elegant solution's gotta be reachable.
It just might take a while longer
Thanks for letting me ramble. Sorry for any grief I caused.
Jeremy
Explorer
I said I'm done, and I am, but I wanted to help rendarkin with a site link that really helped me. It's got a lot of good insight into 3e and monsters as PC's and gives a lot of good advice you can pick and choose from buffet style.
Check this site out sometime. If it connects with you, bookmark it and come back to it when you really want to dig into something.
3e is about what you can do, not about setting down rules about what you can't. If you want to play the reluctant vampire without spoiling anyone elses fun, you actually can in 3e. If you want to play a big dumb ogre without totally making the fighter feel useless, you can. Check out this site, it's a lot better thought out than I'll ever be.
http://www.webspawner.com/users/enbsoldarin/index.html
Check this site out sometime. If it connects with you, bookmark it and come back to it when you really want to dig into something.
3e is about what you can do, not about setting down rules about what you can't. If you want to play the reluctant vampire without spoiling anyone elses fun, you actually can in 3e. If you want to play a big dumb ogre without totally making the fighter feel useless, you can. Check out this site, it's a lot better thought out than I'll ever be.
http://www.webspawner.com/users/enbsoldarin/index.html
...
Er, well, then you modify the Lich PrC template to inherit Wizard such that advancing in Lich advances in Wizard.
Therefore it would be Lich 5 Wizard 7 (effective 12). Although this is a bit of a dodgy way to do it.
---
Well, consider the modifications I recommended above.
What if there are multiple chance at intermediate or total failure during the transformation. You might be Lich 5, Wizard 30 when you start, but one too many failiures make the average Lich 5 Wizard 12, one must remember that Lich 5 = Lich Template.
Starting CR was significantly higher. Average Lich results , after multiple failiures results in Lich Wizard 12.
Why cant you have Lich Wizard 30 ?
Surely, the average lich should have been 'living' for alot longer than a few days when you first cross his/its path. So, there is something inherintly wrong with a Lich Wizard 12.
Its like the good ol Orc Warrior problem. Not ALL orcs are warriors. Some have levels. Some monsters are significantly more powerfull. So, the template lich is effectively the worst case, minimum the lich should be. It says nothing about how the lich came to be (?).
There would definately be significant chances of loosing a N/PC during the transformation process.
The question (and I havnt been following the thread) seems to be how to figure out the strength of the party with an 'immortal' character.
Well, math would say that the strength of the party is infinite.
Bugger of a problem.
-Tim
Caliber said:
Er, well, then you modify the Lich PrC template to inherit Wizard such that advancing in Lich advances in Wizard.
Therefore it would be Lich 5 Wizard 7 (effective 12). Although this is a bit of a dodgy way to do it.
---
Well, consider the modifications I recommended above.
What if there are multiple chance at intermediate or total failure during the transformation. You might be Lich 5, Wizard 30 when you start, but one too many failiures make the average Lich 5 Wizard 12, one must remember that Lich 5 = Lich Template.
Starting CR was significantly higher. Average Lich results , after multiple failiures results in Lich Wizard 12.
Why cant you have Lich Wizard 30 ?
Surely, the average lich should have been 'living' for alot longer than a few days when you first cross his/its path. So, there is something inherintly wrong with a Lich Wizard 12.
Its like the good ol Orc Warrior problem. Not ALL orcs are warriors. Some have levels. Some monsters are significantly more powerfull. So, the template lich is effectively the worst case, minimum the lich should be. It says nothing about how the lich came to be (?).
There would definately be significant chances of loosing a N/PC during the transformation process.
The question (and I havnt been following the thread) seems to be how to figure out the strength of the party with an 'immortal' character.
Well, math would say that the strength of the party is infinite.
Bugger of a problem.
-Tim
