Ancient Lich

[Darker_Dreams]

If there are any non-human liches why not simply change it to "leave their mortal form behind" and get more inclusion without serious drawbacks.

as for saurian liches... given the saurian lifespan and propensity towards magic it'd make a certain amount of sense for necromancers to be a bigger part of their society. That's probably something that should be explored and played to or discredited.

[A-Red]

Yes, but, as it is written here, it almost solely limited to humans. The only elvish lich I remember is Mebrin in TSG. Can you name anymore? Name three mainline instances, and I guess we could change then.

There's also the elves in Two Brothers--they didn't have necromancy yet, but they wanted it. There's also Karrag, who's a dwarf. So clearly it's not exclusive, but plenty of evidence seems to suggest it's mostly a human art.

[johndh]

How about female necromancers? AFAIK, all of them in mainline campaigns who have any dialogue are all male, or are already liches. So yeah, more diversity of species and gender would be nice when it comes to practitioners of black magic.

[thespaceinvader]

'leave its mortal bones behind' works. 'Mortal form' doesn't because of the retention of the original skull. I'll find a way to remove the word 'human' there too. Female necromancers are accounted for by the use of the word 'it' to refer to a lich. Dead folk have no gender in this case, partly for precisely this reason, partly because it makes them sound less human.

[Darker_Dreams]

This might be a semantic quibble (though with the use of gender in some UMC it may not) or it might be something that needs addressed elsewhere; are units still male by default, is it possible to give units a neuter gender, and, if so, has this been done for the undead?

I actually chose "form" because the shape/form of the lich can shift dramatically away from that of the mortal it once was. Aside from the skull, which is as much a bone as part of the form and is potentially a relatively trivial part of the overall form, the form is what's malleable. Granted the shift is through the replacement or addition of component parts (bones). Then again, is it possible for a lich to add non-osteoloid or dessicated component to the form? Creepy thought for you; a lich that cares what it looks like, so it replaces the part that keeps it looking mortal- skin. An entire body's worth. Necromancy can help with preservation, but over the long run this is still going to require regular replacement...

[A-Red]

How about female necromancers? AFAIK, all of them in mainline campaigns who have any dialogue are all male, or are already liches. So yeah, more diversity of species and gender would be nice when it comes to practitioners of black magic.

Maybe not characters, but the unit line has a female alternate, so about half of necromancers ingame are female.

[johndh]

Maybe not characters, but the unit line has a female alternate, so about half of necromancers ingame are female.

Indeed. That's why I specified that it's the ones with dialogue that are all male. Female necromancers exist, but they're not given a speaking role.

Then again, is it possible for a lich to add non-osteoloid or dessicated component to the form? Creepy thought for you; a lich that cares what it looks like, so it replaces the part that keeps it looking mortal- skin. An entire body's worth. Necromancy can help with preservation, but over the long run this is still going to require regular replacement...

That had certainly crossed my mind. Liches seem more like "evil genius overlord" than Ed Gein, though. I can picture some kind of undead doing it, but it doesn't seem particularly lich-like to me. Maybe a deathblade, with their fondness for cutting things, or a banebow who was a trapper in life and still has a penchant for skinning things.

Anyway, something I touched on in the "Undead - how do they work?" thread that I feel relates more to this discussion:

I can certainly imagine a point where a lich might decide that its body (or what's left of it) is nothing more than a burden anymore, and shedding it would be advantageous. Who needs limbs when you can boil someone's brain with your mind?

This brings up the idea of a spectral lich, who decided that this fragile skeleton, with its vulnerability to rocks and inability to pass through walls, was just an unnecessary hindrance. Since we've established that an ancient lich can do basically whatever it wants with its body, and by that point the lich probably has a magical alternative to every physical action it could possibly take anyway, it makes sense that it could leave its body entirely. This is something akin to the concept of a demi-lich in D&D. Advantages include levitation and greater resistance to physical damage, like the ghost line. Of course, with ghostly ectoplasm, it would probably retain a limited ability to interact with the physical world anyway, so the only disadvantage would be nostalgia.

[thespaceinvader]

Female necromancers (and Dark Sorcerers) are AFAIK not specifically given speaking roles, however they do show up occasionally as randomly chosen speaking leaders. I couldn't name a specific example though.

[Darker_Dreams]

Then again, is it possible for a lich to add non-osteoloid or dessicated component to the form? Creepy thought for you; a lich that cares what it looks like, so it replaces the part that keeps it looking mortal- skin. An entire body's worth. Necromancy can help with preservation, but over the long run this is still going to require regular replacement...

That had certainly crossed my mind. Liches seem more like "evil genius overlord" than Ed Gein, though. I can picture some kind of undead doing it, but it doesn't seem particularly lich-like to me. Maybe a deathblade, with their fondness for cutting things, or a banebow who was a trapper in life and still has a penchant for skinning things.

Think less Ed Gein and more Lady Bathory.

demi-lich

<insert simi-incoherent ranting about cool ideas given bad names>
As much as I've played D&D over the years, that's one that will always annoy me. Demi... gah. Awesome idea, should be used the heck out of. Please, god, don't call it a dimi-lich.

sorry, we all have our pet peeves.

Figured I'd throw out these links to some of the frankensteins/descriptions I'd made screwing around with lich and lich-related concepts.
demilich- discription
spectral lich/archlich
lichweight

[Simons Mith]

<insert simi-incoherent ranting about cool ideas given bad names>
As much as I've played D&D over the years, that's one that will always annoy me. Demi... gah. Awesome idea, should be used the heck out of. Please, god, don't call it a dimi-lich.

sorry, we all have our pet peeves.

Figured I'd throw out these links to some of the frankensteins/descriptions I'd made screwing around with lich and lich-related concepts.
demilich- discription
spectral lich/archlich
lichweight

lichweight? ALong with featherwight, flywight and bantamwight, I suppose. That's levels 0-4 covered, and we can use the Heavy- designations for levels up to about 9 or 10. Cool.

wight Now, that's a term not much in use anywhere that I know of. Can we use it here, somehow?

Personally I don't much mind 'demilich', or the usage of 'phylacteries' for that matter (although Order of the Stick had a much better coinage: 'soul-hidey-place'), but it is such an inescapably D&D trope. We'll never kill off the unwanted D&D connotations no matter what we do. Better never to open the door to it in the first place, IMV. It'll keep creeping in to UMC anyway, I expect.

[Darker_Dreams]

weight ... wight Now, that's a term not much in use anywhere that I know of. Can we use it here, somehow?

Yes, I fail. I can't believe I did that.
For the record, a wight is another D&D monster, though the term is being used in a significantly different capacity here though.

Personally I don't much mind 'demilich', or the usage of 'phylacteries' for that matter (although Order of the Stick had a much better coinage: 'soul-hidey-place'), but it is such an inescapably D&D trope. We'll never kill off the unwanted D&D connotations no matter what we do. Better never to open the door to it in the first place, IMV. It'll keep creeping in to UMC anyway, I expect.

Those connections may never die, and in some cases you don't want them to, but you can try to not be excessively derivative- especially of a source that derived with questionable respect for things like copyright.

[johndh]

For the record, a wight is another D&D monster, though the term is being used in a significantly different capacity here though.

Before that, Tolkien had "barrow-wights". The original meaning of the word "wight" is something like "thing" or "creature", often referring to a person, so "barrow wight" makes sense in that it's a thing or creature having something to do with barrows. If you just call it a "wight", then the term is pretty much completely missing the point. I could be wrong, but something tells me Gygax et al. did not do the research on that one.

[Darker_Dreams]

Gygax et al didn't do research?

(in my defense I knew that, I can't spell but I can read )

[termit]

termit, that may (or may not) have been a joke. Either way, the community didn't find it funny. -Ken Oh