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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rendarkin" data-source="post: 265518" data-attributes="member: 5817">Just to fully explore this notion of charging the lich for becoming a lich, let's consider the vampire for just a moment.Now I know that people said that vampires happen "by accident" and "no one *wants* to be a vampire", but I think of the Vampire Chronicles and all the LARPers I know and I have to disagree.  The vast majority of the powers that people are bemoaning about the lich are simply the powers to any creature of Type: Undead.Like liches, vampires are immune to crits.  Vampires are immune to mind-affecting damage, most necromancy, are healed by negative energy, etc.Any old or dying person would probably willingly take vampirism, if offered, to stake, er STAVE, off death.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />It takes a role-playing session to convince a vampire to change you or some adventurer-style muscle to force the vampire to drain the victim's Con away.  It may be a challenge, but it's something a decent-level party could do.(Please, I'm not arguing how you would go about this or that "my paladin would never accept such a thing!", I'm just talking the mechanics here; bear with me).However you arrange to have a vampire change you, the rules are clear: unlike lichdom, it costs NOTHING (no xp, no feat needed) and it is a far quicker (1d4 days after being buried).So you are, say, an 11th wizard and track down a vampire.  Using your spellpower you trap it, force it to drain your Con (using a Control Undead scroll; I don't care about the details), then your golem/undead/standing spells kill the vampire and bury your body.  You rise 1d4 days later as an undead, enjoying no master to boss you around and most of the benefits that have been discussed on this thread.I know of a number of PCs that would cheerfully "force" such an "accident" to them.  Furthermore, unlike lycanthropes, the vampire template HAS no known cure; it's not a temporary situation.  Once you're a vamp, you're a vamp.So should this player be penalized 5 levels for playing by the rules?  Should the lich also be penalized 5 levels for playing by the rules (and paying on top of that)?  These are *major* Rule 0 items to say "this is wrong; you must play a 5 level PrC to get this".  I admit that as a DM I'm verrrrrry unlikely to allow a player to get a template [ANY template], but if they do, personally, I'm not going to then charge them tens of thousands of experience points for having succeeded on such a task.  Would I also charge them for getting a minor artifact?(that's why I can't stand half the PrC's in the Tome & Blood; all they are is an attempt to give a player a template)</blockquote>

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