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Lich

Lich

What is your strategy for confronting the fantasy creature Lich in Dungeons & Dragons?

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The Lich's Phylactery

More info on this creature: Source 8

Lich

If of a level high enough to match it, usually higher, chances are, you have a number of options, both magically and just brute force (if you can get to it past its defenses), and if you're lower level, don't encounter one to begin with, and if you do, spend all turns and actions running, at double or whatever speed is possible - they just aren't typically things you want to deal with if you don't have someone in your party who smiles in anticipation when they see one. The only thing worse, and to me, unjustifiably more powerful, is a Dracolich.

Lich Reviews RPG & Card Board

I think its fear aura is going to sort out the mice from men for you. Seriously I would not want to fight one unless for a very good specific reason. In which case I would go highly prepared for a fight expecting a lich to battle. Otherwise running seems best. Regroup and go around or find a good reason to kill it. At this level tactics include some kind of holy attack and sheer luck.

Lich

Most of the liches I have faced where up to no good and needed to be taken out that was the main reason we were there. A lich usually has a army of protection in monsters, spells, traps, and puzzles. Facing a lich is no easy task and you best have some mages to back you up. Just getting close to a lich is hard enough even at higher levels.

Lich

Minor tangent, it is lich-related, but dracolich - still...

On another forum last night, actually a chat, a guy played 4th edition D&D said "I have to work on my new main bad guy for my group of players, they totally punked out my last one, a dracolich."

I said "Uh... They punked out a dracolich? Maybe it's something obvious I'm missing, but how could a group possibly have 'punked out' an undead dragon sorcerer?" He said "They just kept casting Sleep over and over on it it. I actually responded ". . ." and finally said "I don't... Think... I'm pretty sure that isn't right. You can't use Sleep on undead, also likely not on dragons, and the chances of being able to affect a sorcerer of a level high enough to be the main villain of the adventure - there are so many reasons that simply wouldn't work." His response was to post "This is 4th edition. Undead are immune to poison, disease, fear, but not sleep" and an annoying little tongue-sticking-out smiley.

I just literally shook my head and typed back, "Even if that's true, which I highly doubt, it's YOUR game, you know that isn't right, so you just change it and put things the way they're supposed to be, and make undead immune to sleep, charm, etc. Because honestly, that is just absolutely ridiculous."

After almost ten minutes of complete dead silence in the chatroom, another user PM'd me and said "I don't want to say anything in front of him, but he's how bad rumors and misconceptions get started - it plainly says in the undead section that undead do not sleep. This is why there are still 'edition wars' going on, people saying one edition is better than another, and one edition has all these problems. It's just people not reading or using common sense."

Even if you COULD cast sleep on a dracolich, potentially, you should have about a 2% chance of the spell working, so... What rules was this guy using?!

Lich

Rather off topic, but...
Sadly this sort of thing happens all the time. So many different rules go into DnD. It is inevitable that the GM will mess up and miss something no matter how basic. The players should have pointed it out and not taken advantage.

I can see him not wanting to admit that you were right because that would mean that the entire battle was a wash. You did the right thing in questioning and pointing it out though.

Liches are not something you fight willy nilly. If you need to know exact tactics on fighting a lich you are pretty much lich food already. Fighting a lich is pretty basic in that it is undead. There in lies its one true weakness.

Lich

Rather off topic, but...
I have not looked at fourth Edition all that much but the parts I have looked at it makes me want to avoid it.

I think a dracolich or any other lich is too much for starting level characters and they will never face one unless they went someplace that they should not ever have gone. I will warn characters that they may not want to do that but if they ignore those warnings they may come across one. I play Undead creatures to the most of their strengths. Vampires, ghasts, wrights, and liches are fun to throw at party members. I know a person who used to be 6th level fighter who has a vampire following him about slowly and purposely stalking and taking his life and levels.