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[buddycounts]

I cannot believe this has not been added yet and I hope it gets added in the future because there are many possibilities when it comes to lichs and even many types of lichs.

To become a lich I would think one would have to be a spell caster and become a necromancer then do some sort of spell, drink an evil concoction, and have an item to use as a phylactery.
Another way could be finding a spell to use to prolong your life and "accidentally" become a lich
Would also be cool for there to be spell books that are artifacts that can teach you how to use certain spells or become a mage
Maybe also have wizard/lich towers that are something like necromancer towers except with spell books, many traps, and heavily gaurded... I love this game cause of all the possibilities!

There could even be elven lichs like Baelnorns and maybe an "anti-spell" that only works on dwarves where any magical effect is useless on them; good or bad

This game has so much potential that it is mind blowing

Note: maybe the only way to become a spell caster, besides starting out, is to convince a wizard to train you or maybe a lich if you are evil/undead or the lich is good

Sorry that I an a bit all over the place...

[ArchimedesWojak]

dont worry once Myth&Magic is released thats when shit gets real

[A_Curious_Cat]

How many lichs does it take to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop?

[NW_Kohaku]

I just mentioned this over in the other thread, but if you consider how the game treats necromancers, necromancers basically are liches already.  Necromancers do not age, and are not considered living by undead... which implies they're undead, already.

Aside from a few mechanic differences like having to make a phylactery, the only thing being changed here is to just use the terminology of D&D.  It's fine for Dwarf Fortress to have its own unique take on lore, and for mods to exist for those who want to explicitly be playing D&D or Warhammer or whatever.

[applejuice]

I just mentioned this over in the other thread, but if you consider how the game treats necromancers, necromancers basically are liches already.  Necromancers do not age, and are not considered living by undead... which implies they're undead, already.

Aside from a few mechanic differences like having to make a phylactery, the only thing being changed here is to just use the terminology of D&D.  It's fine for Dwarf Fortress to have its own unique take on lore, and for mods to exist for those who want to explicitly be playing D&D or Warhammer or whatever.

The term necromancer is to indicate one with the ability to raise the dead, the definition of the word does not imply the person to be either living or dead, which defaults to the standard of being alive.

Bickering over different names in terminology in this case, is basically like saying: Well let's call these tool things a wheelbarrow, we use those to dig out rocks from a mountain!
Even though, in a different universe as DF you COULD do this, it's not something you SHOULD do. This is because it makes little to no sense for beings from our universe and just works highly confusing, because we already have certain names for certain things.

A vampire is a being that drinks blood. You could also just change the name to "mother in law" (I mean like... Really... You should!) but then you're just insulting all vampires in general and that's just mean :') Please don't be mean <3


That said; I can get over the fact that a Necromancer is considered undead, because a vampire can also be a necromancer. A Lich on the other hand, per definition is always a necromancer, as one cannot become a Lich without having magical powers over life and death A necromancer is not per definition evil; however, the "fact" that it goes wrong 95% of the time, that is another story all together.

All that said and done... IN MY ONION (that's like an opinion... but with LAYERS, because onions have layers! Just like Ogres).
As a >NEW PLAYER< I think it was cute as F*CK!* what happened when I sent an expedition out (my friend showed me the world map and how missions work *YAY*). My expedition rescued someone in a cage in an abandoned monastery, which turned out to be a necromancer who then joined my fort after saving him!

To my biggest horror: there was a Bugfix that ruined this just now

Compromise: Change the current Necromancer into Lich. Add the old Necromancers so they can come visit again! And whatever you do; please don't un-cute the game Thank you very much <3

[Shonai_Dweller]

Necromancer visitors has been a confirmed bug since day 1. The game just isn't set up to be able to handle them. Maybe later when specifics of control of one person over another is introduced, then yes necromancer visitors can come back. But 47.04 necromancers were a buggy mess with a couple of laughs. Not worth keeping, not enough time or inclination to build, test and bugfix a framework for them to work properly right now.

Rescuing demons and prisoner necromancers is likely to still result in them coming to your fortress though. Nothing about that was in the announcements.

[NW_Kohaku]

The term necromancer is to indicate one with the ability to raise the dead, the definition of the word does not imply the person to be either living or dead, which defaults to the standard of being alive.

Except this game treats them quite clearly as undead.

DF doesn't necessarily need to use the exact same terminology in the exact same way as D&D.  A necromancer in D&D is just someone who uses necromancy-school magic, and someone who wants to cheat death by using a magic ritual to make them immortals that rule over undead is called a lich.  In DF, when someone wants to live forever, they cheat death by using a magic ritual to make them immortals that rule over undead... called a necromancer.

What space is there, then, for a "lich" to be different from a "necromancer" in DF terms?

[Eric Blank]

Part of it i believe is the actual act of dying. While necromancers gain the secrets of life and death and thus learn how to avoid death and make themselves permanent, removing their bodily needs, and make the undead ignore or even obey them, they are technically still alive despite using the not_living tag. They never actually died and can die from things like blood loss or suffocation which don't affect the undead. The game uses the same tags in a lot of places, and there isn't a tag specifying 'still alive, but opposed_to_life creatures will ignore them.'

Liches on the other hand are those who died, and then returned from the dead, and are thus undead. They don't necessarily have to have power over other dead creatures, just being able to return from the dead repeatedly until their philactory is destroyed, but are functionally undead.

[Bumber]

So, like mummies, then?

[Eric Blank]

In the same vein, yes, but more powerful magically in life as opposed to any old dead leadership figure that got a tomb

[applejuice]

Except this game treats them quite clearly as undead.

DF doesn't necessarily need to use the exact same terminology in the exact same way as D&D.  A necromancer in D&D is just someone who uses necromancy-school magic, and someone who wants to cheat death by using a magic ritual to make them immortals that rule over undead is called a lich.  In DF, when someone wants to live forever, they cheat death by using a magic ritual to make them immortals that rule over undead... called a necromancer.

What space is there, then, for a "lich" to be different from a "necromancer" in DF terms?

It's not about "following D&D or not," it's the entire fantasy genre that has it defined in a certain way and D&D is not nearly as old as LotR and other works of Tolkien.
Diverging from "standard fantasy format" creates needless confusion, which was my point on the earlier post.
Every aspect that you change towards what people already know / are familiar with, makes the game harder to get into.

Eric said it rather nicely as well by the way.

Part of it i believe is the actual act of dying. While necromancers gain the secrets of life and death and thus learn how to avoid death and make themselves permanent, removing their bodily needs, and make the undead ignore or even obey them, they are technically still alive despite using the not_living tag. They never actually died and can die from things like blood loss or suffocation which don't affect the undead. The game uses the same tags in a lot of places, and there isn't a tag specifying 'still alive, but opposed_to_life creatures will ignore them.'

Liches on the other hand are those who died, and then returned from the dead, and are thus undead. They don't necessarily have to have power over other dead creatures, just being able to return from the dead repeatedly until their phylactery is destroyed, but are functionally undead.

This is the standard definition for a Lich indeed. Although; to become a Lich you need to know Necromancy, do some ritual imbue your Phylactery, etc, so a Lich will always have power over other undead. But perhaps another Lich or someone could do that for you, I guess, maybe.

So, like mummies, then?

In the same vein, yes, but more powerful magically in life as opposed to any old dead leadership figure that got a tomb

Basically, yes
Usually the difference is that Liches are also Magic users, whereas Mummies are not.

And then someone makes a movie called "the Mummy" where the Mummy uses magic *facepalm*
The movie was okay to watch, entertaining but not the best I've ever seen either.

So, back to NW_Kohaku:
The changed definition of Mummy from the standard in the fantasy genre is one change in that entire movie, easy enough.
Now apply this to DF; where there are thousands of things in the game, each of which could be different than what is "standard."
If you'd have to learn thousands of things that diverge from what you already know, you'd be a rocket scientist by the time you learnt how to play the game. Except... that you can't actually make rockets, but only learned how to play a game

I love niche games, I love indie developers, I absolutely hate dumbing down a game to make it suitable to the lowest common denominator, that said there is also another argument at play here;
There is "difficulty" and there is "needless difficulty." If you take Chess as an example; the game is really easy to get into, you can learn all the "legal moves" on the board in less than a day, but beating a "grandmaster" at Chess, is easier said than done.
You could include rules with Chess such as; you are not allowed to capture a piece towards the left on Tuesdays, but this is creating "needless difficulty" which doesn't enhance the gameplay and if you go completely overboard you can also make it unplayable.

DF is FULL of little details, lots of them which are adorable and awesome! Plenty of which add needless difficulty without enhancing the playing experience.
How many "double items" are in the game? Items that have the same purpose as another item without much / any significant difference.
Coffer vs Chest, they're the same thing, just different material. The different name is only confusing.
Cage vs Terrarium, this difference I can get behind! Because you can keep a Cat in a Cage, but you won't keep a Cat in a Terrarium.
Barrel vs Large pot, they're the same thing again, except that they're not the same thing...  This is one of those things that make the game needlessly hard to get into, because they do the same thing, are the same item, except some workshops require a specific item (Barrel) to be used instead of a Large pot.
The problem you create with using a ton of different names for the same thing, is that it creates confusion. Especially if you have items that are very similar in names and of completely different uses as you can easily misread; Coffin / Coffer. I mean; that's QUITE the difference between them, but I've built the wrong one by being too fast more than once

So yeah, please add even more stuff to figure out so I can spend a whole day looking at the Wiki pages, instead of actually playing and enjoying the game #Sarcasm

[For example; I saw this suggestion for advanced farming, which makes total sense, blew me away, but PLEASE, NO! I don't want to get a degree in agriculture to grow some crops in DF. (Although, I do agree there can be some tweaks and improvements made to farming for sure and make it a bit more enjoyable as well!) But instead of over the top complicated farming, I rather do SCIENCE!! ]


Anyway: Which part could there be for Necromancer vs Lich in DF? The current Necromancer is actually pretty much a Necromancer as it's seen in standard fantasy, with the exception of that they are all evil in DF (apparently?!), which isn't needed if you ask me You could add the Lich to fill that role, get an even more powerful enemy (One that can lead groups of Necromancers!!) and that's fully undead and almost unbeatable and unlock a quest to go find the thing to kill it!

Necromancer visitors has been a confirmed bug since day 1. The game just isn't set up to be able to handle them. Maybe later when specifics of control of one person over another is introduced, then yes necromancer visitors can come back. But 47.04 necromancers were a buggy mess with a couple of laughs. Not worth keeping, not enough time or inclination to build, test and bugfix a framework for them to work properly right now.

Rescuing demons and prisoner necromancers is likely to still result in them coming to your fortress though. Nothing about that was in the announcements.

I can keep them? *YAY*
It IS worth keeping!! It's fun and adorable! <3