Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Voadam" data-source="post: 8570208" data-attributes="member: 2209">Liches are kind of interesting in D&amp;D's progression.They are typically evil immortally undead spellcasters. But they originally did not require any predatory maintenance like a vampire or draining hunger like a wight, so they mostly were underground doing their research or were just powerful undying bad guys doing their individual thing.This sort of led to different trends in D&amp;D, making good versions and making them necessarily more evil.If they are non-predatory immortals the question becomes why necessarily be evil, sounds like a good way for a good or neutral wizard to continue past a normal lifespan.You get things like the Forgotten Realms Baelnorns where these non-predatory liches are actually good immortal magical defenders of things elven. In Eberron you get the positive energy deathless elves as well.Alternately you get development of liches to be evil. So the ritual of creating them when fleshed out in a dragon article requires evil actions and icky components to explain the evil alignment and to back up the genre tropes. Sometimes this gets developed in D&amp;D to require evil sacrifices.This trend eventually leads to the 5e lich requiring regular sacrifices of souls to power their state with failure to do so leading to devolution into a demilich state.An AD&amp;D lich could be technically evil but someone who just putters around now developing magical stuff in their lair. A party could encounter one in a dungeon and it be essentially just a magical weirdo.In 5e if you encounter a lich out of the MM they are definitely an active villain, they have sacrificed souls and will continue to do so.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Voadam, post: 8570208, member: 2209"] Liches are kind of interesting in D&D's progression. They are typically evil immortally undead spellcasters. But they originally did not require any predatory maintenance like a vampire or draining hunger like a wight, so they mostly were underground doing their research or were just powerful undying bad guys doing their individual thing. This sort of led to different trends in D&D, making good versions and making them necessarily more evil. If they are non-predatory immortals the question becomes why necessarily be evil, sounds like a good way for a good or neutral wizard to continue past a normal lifespan. You get things like the Forgotten Realms Baelnorns where these non-predatory liches are actually good immortal magical defenders of things elven. In Eberron you get the positive energy deathless elves as well. Alternately you get development of liches to be evil. So the ritual of creating them when fleshed out in a dragon article requires evil actions and icky components to explain the evil alignment and to back up the genre tropes. Sometimes this gets developed in D&D to require evil sacrifices. This trend eventually leads to the 5e lich requiring regular sacrifices of souls to power their state with failure to do so leading to devolution into a demilich state. An AD&D lich could be technically evil but someone who just putters around now developing magical stuff in their lair. A party could encounter one in a dungeon and it be essentially just a magical weirdo. In 5e if you encounter a lich out of the MM they are definitely an active villain, they have sacrificed souls and will continue to do so. [/QUOTE]

Verification