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[scriver]

You keep it where your heart was so that you'll have a heart of stone of course

[Grim Portent]

Don't liches need access to their souljars in order to feed by cramming other people's souls into it? Which they need to do in order to remain "sane"?

That was something new added to D&D 5e, prior to that liches didn't need anything to maintain their phylactery. One big unspecified evil act to create it, but no evil required to maintain it. Now it's an evil act to create it, and regular human(oid) sacrifice to maintain it.

Given that 5e decided to make the evil race/monsters more inherently evil than prior editions, the change was probably largely to make liches always be a legitimate target for 'good' characters without the potential for moral ambiguity or subtle cunning.

[Kagus]

While simultaneously making it an even worse option than just clone-wishing yourself into immortality.

[heydude6]

The only problem with that is that it kills the “sleeping Lich in a cave” trope. That’s when adventurers explore a random cave and runs into a lich hiding out in there that hasn’t been seen for centuries.

Though liches genuinely are tough, it always seemed to me that going into hiding has always been a bigger aspect of their survival.

[Great Order]

Remember the first rule of D&D: You can change the rules to your liking.

[MrRoboto75]

I remember Libris Mortis had a bard who was a lich, which is weird but technically possible as they're arcane

[scriver]

Didn't demiliches use to be ascended liches, or am I confusing the name for something similar?

[Culise]

Don't liches need access to their souljars in order to feed by cramming other people's souls into it? Which they need to do in order to remain "sane"?

That was something new added to D&D 5e, prior to that liches didn't need anything to maintain their phylactery. One big unspecified evil act to create it, but no evil required to maintain it. Now it's an evil act to create it, and regular human(oid) sacrifice to maintain it.

Given that 5e decided to make the evil race/monsters more inherently evil than prior editions, the change was probably largely to make liches always be a legitimate target for 'good' characters without the potential for moral ambiguity or subtle cunning.

It was probably also done to reduce exploits that allowed certain DMs and players to dump the phylactery someplace completely inaccessible from the outside, completely nondescript ("grain of sand on a beach" level), or both.  By forcing them to regularly maintain the magics, they have to create some way for them to access the phylactery from the outside that can be traced, rather than making the only path that needs to be taken from it one accessible only from the inside. 

That said, 5e doesn't seem to give a time frame other than "periodically," though the soul itself disintegrates after 24 hours.  Per rule 1, I imagine a DM could rather logically rule that a lich can maintain a phylactery for far longer by sleeping/hiding, reducing the drain on it.  They can then just wake up every once in a while, snatch a soul to recharge it, do whatever they want for a while, then take another nap. 

[MrRoboto75]

Saw Gurps: Y2K at the used bookstore, thought "yooo they made a tabletop version of Yiik: A Postmodern RPG"

[Cthulhu]

I really don't like that change.  Mechanics and exploits aside (Dm can just say no) the entire point of becoming a lich is so you can focus entirely on your arcane research and shenanigans, if you still have to eat it defeats the purpose.

And yeah, 5e a demilich is a lich who couldn't feed and degenerated to an insane predator.  Before a demilich was a lich who's gone so far beyond that he doesn't even need an immortal body anymore, and just lies around as a skull while rationally deriving the entire universe with his giant magic brain.

I kind of get that, it's a weird use of "demi" but I still prefer the old ones.

[Kagus]

So, I've recently gotten myself recruited as a "Dedicated guest player" for an ongoing campaign, where I'm getting inserted into the caravan come Tuesday. I just need to do some reading on the GM's wiki so I can acquaint myself with the lore behind the significant world events, major factions, this caravan, recent plot lines, the custom chess-like he's built in as a minigame...

Then I can make an acceptable character! Who might end up dying relatively quickly, as he doesn't pull punches and long rests are now "half-gritty" in that they're two consecutive nights without incident. And given that we're currently in the middle of a demon-ravaged wasteland with low visibility and the DM has specifically and repeatedly voiced the necessity of making sure the character is "built with good sustain", I have the impression that ~40 hours without something going bump is  unlikely anytime soon.


Also I'm attempting to go for a melee tank of sorts, since the party composition sounded like it didn't have any real frontliners in it. This'll be interesting.

[Loud Whispers]

Sounds like a rare opportunity to go full barbarian

[Grim Portent]

I find myself in an introspective mood, and I wonder why so many groups I've been in reject the concept of just being evil and owning it. Almost every PC I've ever encountered was fundamentally evil and self serving, willing to knife a guy for a handful of coins provided they didn't like him, defile bodies, loot from temples, break deals, flout cultural norms, belittle the superstitious and prejudiced to their faces, manipulate, steal and lie.

About the only thing I can say was consistently good about the PCs I've seen was that they were all anti-child cruelty and (mostly) pro-equality. Still casually violent and greedy, the desire to protect children and minorities (including fantasy one) being about the only redeeming quality.


Why have we never just gone 'fuck it' and overthrown a monarchy to implement our own regime of tight leather and spiky metal armour? We always just meander along picking up breadcrumbs with personal goals that we have little agency to achieve. I want to see more PCs with personal goals like 'fabricate a claim to the throne and start a civil war,' or 'use sectarian violence and rabble rousing to propel myself into a position of high office in my city.'

[Kagus]

being evil and owning it.

Because if they accept and embrace being evil, they go from being casually violent and greedy to being professionally violent and greedy. Now they're giving themselves an evil allowance, but if they identify as evil they'll start trying to fill an evil quota. And only madness lies down that path.

Veneers make a difference! Sometimes, anyways.

Sounds like a rare opportunity to go full barbarian

'Tis indeed, they even lost their old barbarian a couple sessions ago!  I've tried to stock up on beefness, but didn't want to go the tried-and-true standard of Bearbarb. Opted for Beast instead, for the reaction +d8 to AC (and sundry). With shield and the ridiculous stats we're granted, I'm at a fairly respectable 18 AC standard.

Speaking of stats... He uses a fixed array that we can then make two adjustments to: Subtract 2 from one stat to add 2 to another, and subtract 1 from one stat to add 1 to another.

That fixed array is as follows: 16, 15, 14, 12, 12, 12. Soooo... With mountain dwarf, my level one stats were 20 STR, 18 CON, and 14 DEX. We also get a free feat at level 1, which I decided to throw at Resilient: Wisdom to patch my WIS saves up a touch. Also get one free uncommon magic item. Nabbed a Periapt of Wound Closure, figured I'd done a decent job of becoming reasonably tanky.


Fight starts, and I make sure to move ahead of the squishies. It was at this point, everything went wrong... I was too far away to safely rage, so I just positioned myself and started dodging. Ettin comes up, rolls two attacks with disadvantage against my 18 AC... Ends up with 22 and 24. Got smacked for just over half my health on my first round of combat.

Then the other ogre-ish-thingy comes over, and does a sweeping club attack... DEX save, it's an effect I can see so I get advantage on the roll, and if it does half damage on a success I can use my reaction to negate it via Shield Master!

Yeah, with advantage I got as high as 13, failing the save. Down to 9 hitpoints.

My turn rolls around, and I pick myself up while raging to get my defensive tail. I swing my hammer at the ettin, and... Fumble. But at least making an attack preserves my rage!

Then the Ettin stands up and flat out crits me. The rage neither reduced the damage to leave my conscious, nor saved me from being instakilled because 33 damage ain't enough to take me down.

"Ah!" I think, "Now I get to make use of my Periapt and auto-stabilize at the start of my turn!" except, no, I get healed and brought back to consciousness. Then the ogre does his swingy club thing again, DEX save, and with advantage I roll... 6 total. This is supposed to knock me prone as well, but I was already lying down from last time so we just interpret this as me getting smushed even deeper into the dirt.

Despite having lost my rage, this apparently didn't stop my character from getting angry enough to stand back up, slap the ettin for max damage on my warhammer, and then shield-bash the ogre to the ground which allows another member to get a good hit off thanks to the prone advantage. Then I got hit and knocked unconscious again.


Thanks to the prodigious healing afforded me by the party and my well of hitpoints being deep enough to avoid instadeath, I did manage to get back on my feet right at the end of the fight. Hilariously, the DM Deus Ex Machina reinforcements swooped into the field of battle just as we finished off the last mook, leaving them all dressed up with nothing to do.

Combat wraps up, some minor looting and RP happens, and we're informed that we get to have a short rest while walking back to rejoin the caravan. "Ah!" I think again, "Now's my chance to make fantastic economic usage of my Periapt, since it doubles the healing I get from spending hit dice! Despite only having 10hp now, I'll probably only need to roll one die to get back to good health!" And so I roll my big ol' beefy Barbarian d12 hit dice.

...1

Fuck. Roll another.

...1

Fuck. Roll a third!

...7

Beh... Alright, fine.


So, yeah. I survived, but pretty much all my cool shit buttons built into making this character tanky failed to activate thanks to hilarious rolls and teammates actually propping me up every time I went down. Great success, in other words!

I mean, I did kinda do my job... The big nasties basically failed to put so much as a single scratch on anyone else, thanks to rolling abysmally when dealing with any of the other party members. I joked that I ate all their good rolls for the good of the team

[Kagus]

We've been granted a level up post-session, so now everyone's level 5 going in to tomorrow's session which is described as a "giga combat sessions" where "striiiiiiict discipline" will be enforced due to the large number of players.

Since we're going up against some nasty nasties including at least one vrock, I decided to use a bit more of my hit dice to patch up (last session ended on a short rest, and rules allow for you to progressively choose if you want to roll another die or not during the healing process, so... It's technically kosher, just with a very long indecisive delay in between rolls).

...and have concluded that this character is just fukken cursed.


On my big beefy barbarian d12, I rolled... a 1 and a 2.

This brings the roll summary of all five hit dice to: 1, 1, 1, 2, 7. Thank goodness I get to double those amounts, but for chrissakes man...


...aaaaaaand it was at this moment I realized that I've been failing to add my +CON mod to any of the rolls, so I should actually have considerably more health than I do. To the point of going over my cap, given the periapt of wound closure. Durr.