Paladin liches give a vow to protect a sacred temple as long as it stands. And voila, their souls are bound to the temple and they can neither die nor leave it.

Then, a thousand years later, a bunch of adventurers come across some ancient ruins that were abandoned centuries ago and suddenly a lich rises from under the rubble and SMITES them for desecrating the holy site.

>>51490413
I like the idea of an illithid Lich pickling himself since and focusing most of his psionic powers to enthrall a big bad monster to carry his jar around

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>>51490510
Illithid liches are common

>>51490413
I am stealing the memetic lich idea, thanks!

>>51490627
Phooey

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>>51490468
I wish they brought the Deathless back. They had great potential.

>>51490413
The Lich of love is a thing in our world... one old character is bound to his wives who in turn cant be killed as long as he lives. They dont age or become skelletal or such shit either...
And tzhey all love each other.. yes its dangerously magical realmy but i like the idea...

>>51490413
"Ordinary" liches are good enough for me. I don't understand the need to "gimmick up" monsters instead of giving them a memorable personality and creating an organic plot around them.

>>51492351
Because monster properties may be just as memorable as personality if not more so.

And because you can do both at the same time. Shocking, isn't it?

And people do things in RPG's not out of need, but because they want to. A good day to you.

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It's not really a 'lich' if it isn't undead in my opinion, but I once did a thing where I made every major type of magic in DnD an 'immortality' condition a specialist of the school could manage to create.
>Abjuration
You have warded your body to be essentially protected from the ravages of time and age itself. You have an invisible skin-like bubble that surrounds you and keeps out carcinogens. The bubble can be popped momentarily but will reform in a few hours and the bacteria inside you killed.
>Conjuration
You become an outsider and essentially 'summon' yourself to this world. Your actual physical form is locked away somewhere, but you can be banished. You can resummon yourself when you are able.
>Divination
Imagine being able to predict all possible futures and taking the best one to ensure longevity. This doesn't protect much against aging but by being able to see all possible timelines you can avoid dying from old age by just rearranging small objects or disturbing certain dust particles in just the right way.
>Enchantment
You swap bodies with other younger people, controlling their minds permanently.
>Evocation
Your body is a shell that holds your true self, a powerful energy. Pick an element; you are healed by that element instead of harmed and if your skin is punctured you release a huge amount of it from you in a shockwave.
>Illusion
You become a living illusion. You can only exist where people can notice or perceive of you.
>Necromancy
Traditional Lich, duh.
>Transmutation
You can just transform yourself into a younger version of yourself as long as you want, this 'replaces' your true form of your old self.

>>51492321
ah fogot to add, evil is not necessary

In addition to the traditional liches, I have caveman liches (who animate fossils and use magic by drawing magical cave paintings), lich pirates (who ride inside undead whales), plague liches (pretty much Nurgle sorcerers) and priest liches who instead of some dubious prospect of heaven offer eternal life here in the physical world as a sentient undead.

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>>51490413

Unitologists-from-Dead-Space-inspired liches?

>>51490413
Artificers:
>Slowly replace parts of themselves with enchanted replacements until all that's left from their original selves is their mind, their soul, and their magic

Alchemists:
>Potion of eternal life. May not work quite like the layman assumes...

Mad scientist/Eclipse Phase:
>Infolife characters with lots of backups.

Warlock?
>Become partly-inhuman, thanks to your pact-patron, resulting in immortality of a different sort.
(Wait. Does that qualify as lichdom? You're not exactly undead...)

Art-based magic:
>Paint/model/create yourself, at the apex of your skill, so that when you are done, your followers step into your workshop, and find your former corpse, withered with a paintbrush/sculpting tool in hand... Then you tell them to prepare for the next stage in your plans as they jump in surprise

Druid:
>Become the woods

Fighter:
>Meet death and best it, time and again, reclaiming your youth and vigor each time you battle

Thief
>Steal your dying day, escape Hell, etc.

>>51493357
>Druid:
>Become the woods
It really sounds like the drood just gets high as a kite and dies from overdose as he's convinced of his immortality

>>51490413
Bardic "liches" could be themselves affected depending how the song changes over time. Its powers, deeds and weaknesses changing depending on local popular version. You would need to defeat the manifestation by telling its story of defeat. Better, yet, GM could make players telling their story be an actual dungeon crawl/adventure player would have to go through. Player could spice up the story with their input.

>>51493385
You say that... but then you hear the story of that one old, bearded guy who used to live here, keeping the peace between the woods and its critters and the local city, and decide to find his grave for its epic loot.

And as you go along, things keep going wrong; animals steal your supplies, the trees' limbs keep slapping you around, you can never easily ford a river or other obstacle, no effort at navigation works any way but going out, and the weather keeps turning just right to make you less happy, and there's no game around when you're hunting... And you can never shake the feeling of being watched.

And the GM never stops smiling, amusedly.

Then you try to break out the torches and oil, and the trees get up, proclaim that the spirit of the forest has pronounced you vermin, and start kicking your ass.

>>51493387
That's REALLY fucking cool. Bonus points if the only way to win is to trick the lich into admitting his defeat.

Barbarian: get so angry at your death that you will yourself back to life

A pyromancer lich who gas bound his soul to a particular flame.

Typically he keeps it on a handull of embers he keeps lit and safe with magic, and as long as they are in that state he is no more powerful than a normal master pyromancer who has has a few extra centuries of practiced.

When desperate or wrathful, can touch the embers to some part of the scenery to let the fire spread, his powers growing as it does.

>>51490413
A variation I've been considering is liches who, instead of making items their phylactery, preserve their soul in their original body, and then project it into the recently deceased to possess their still functioning bodies.

Bard: Write a song so good it will be sung forever.
Druid: Plant a grove of trees that will give fruit and shade to your descendants.
Fighter: Win an impossible battle that will change the course of history.
Wizard: Use black magic to turn yourself into an undead abomination.
Paladin: Do heroic deeds that will remembered forever in ballads and epics.

>>51493837
Paladin: drink the Kool-Aid from the Holy Grail. If your faith isn't strong enough, you just die.

Most of these aren't even liches. Being remembered isn't being a lich.

An illusionist who preserves their soul within the eyes of those wh behold their works. They are immortal as long as at least 1 living peson can see them.

>>51494062
Wow, I like that. You think, therefore I am.

>>51493980
This.

>>51493980
>>51494386

OP and some people ITT are using the term 'lich' in this instance to refer to any Wizard who has gained a form of immortality, not just the undead type.

It's an interesting concept nonetheless, but to avoid confusion using another term like 'Immortamagus' or just 'Immortal' might be better.

>>51494688
I'm OP and I definitely refer to the undead type of liches. What other people in this thread presume, however, is none of my business.

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>>51494688
>Immortamagus

>>51494857

I was hoping at least one person enjoyed that.

>>51493387
Nah. Bardic lich IS the song. The only way to truly defeat him is to ensure everyone stops singing his song.

>>51495637
The moment people start going off key or change the lyrics in any way the lich dies.

>>51495962
Or becomes retarded

>>51492321
>This dangerous spell makes me immortal... but there is a trade-off... it also makes my loved ones immortal. This is the price I must pay.

>>51496617
Tradeoffs are for SUCKERS

>>51490413
>You can't deny these concepts are very cool.
Fuck you, those are shit. When did druids start using necromancy? If you want to do druid-like eternal life do reincarnation or something, but I would imagine most druids have some sort of acceptance of death in the order of things and would not be as obsessed as /tg/ is about immortality.

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Tell me /tg/, in a thread full of non-traditional necromancy, why do you fail to include The Caretaker as inspiration?

>>51493385
>>51493454
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/invent-new-monsters-and-or-revamp-preexisting-ones.7263/page-11#post-2196416
There is a secret ritual by which certain dying sorcerers extend their lives. What the rest of the world knows of the ritual is only that the sorcerer requests certain twigs be placed in their grave, near their head. Shortly afterward, a tree of the species the twigs were taken from sprouts from the sorcerer's grave with unnatural rapidity, forming itself into a shape eerily reminiscent of a human body. If, later, one digs up the grave, one finds that the sorcerer's body has completely vanished; all that remains is a massive, dense tangle of roots...

As I have said, these trees bear an eerie similarity to a human body. And people say that, especially at night or on dark cloudy days, when one passes them one has the feeling that the tree is watching you. And when the wind blows the wood of the tree creaks and sighs, as old trees do, but it is said that there is something peculiarly frightening and unwholesome about the noises these trees make at such times; one cannot escape the feeling that one is hearing a sort of voice...

It is said that these trees are cursed, for anyone who cuts one down or otherwise destroys one dies within a year, by sickness or accident or violence, but always before the year is out.

It is said that in some places there are entire groves of such trees, spreading, slowly turning into forests. It is said that if one digs around in these groves, one finds that all the trees are interconnected at the roots, and somewhere in there, perhaps at the foot of the biggest, oldest tree, or perhaps near some fallen decayed trunk, one will find an old grave...

>>51498673
>REEE STOP IMAGINING THINGS THAT DON'T FIT INTO MY TINY BRAIN

>>51490510
>>51490627

There was a psionic lich called the Spectral Savant.

They were etheral but had to drain PP from living beings because they couldn't produce it themselves. A big part of them was the fact that they were not automatically evil either.

>>51490413

Turn the Bard one into a Greek Tragedy where the ending scene requires someone to be killed as was the case in actual plays.

This way as long as the play exists the Bard Lich can be summoned back by subtly influencing the person who reads the play to perform it.

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>>51498673
>When did druids start using Necromancy

When they Hang themselves to see their own death, sacrifice their eyes to drink the brew that foresees the future and binds themselves to fate so they may transcend it, using the sacrifices of the future in Wild Hunts to keep immortality.

A lich need not be a spooky skeleton man, but a Dark hearted person who sacrifices for immortality.

>>51498673
Why are you instantly assuming it's a D&D druid? It may be a Lovecraftian druid who worships terrible ancient gods and puts people into wicker men.

My HIgh Elf Artificer who despised traditional arcane spellcasting kinda became one. He thought spellcasting was way to chaotic. Over time he gradually built up a sizable following of people who agreed with him much to the party's loathing. After we defeated the BBEG he assumed control of the biggest trading city and basically started a witch burning and became their god king. In another campaign we went to the city and over the last 400 years he'd turned it into the most advanced civilisation around. Golems doing hard labor, people were all engineers and traders, public healthcare and education. Weird thing was he was the only person in charge of everyone and had been for so long, no one had seen him in 300 years either.

Eventually we found out he'd managed to create a magical network and put his soul into it necromancer style. He could possess all the Golems, turn on and off all security systems at will, watch everyone and even move around the buildings.

It was pretty cool stuff.

Space ships powered by wizards essentially.

Some wizards elect to have their souls implanted into the core of a ship and basically become the AI of the ship. In return they have full legal status as people and can choose their crews at will.

Many are made famous by their shape and their vocation some being simple traders and others being infamous pirates.

Moving the Core from one vessel to another can have traumatic effects on the Wizard in it such that their personality can change to match the type of vessel their soul cores are placed in. Some have had this happen to them so much that they have long since forgotten who they used to be.

>>51492407
I really like the divination
You don't really change yourself in anyway, just dodge death indefinitely

>>51490413
I did a lich that only reveals his horrible true nature in direct moonlight so he can go about being a seemingly good citizen during the day and do secret horrible shit at night.

Cliche sounding but I love doing the "You don't know your benefactors the way you think you do." thing with PCs.

>>51490413
>can't be killed as long as these animals are alive
>the animal grows to be the largest and scariest beast in the wood
That's like painting a big red target on your phylactery and then putting a bounty on it. It can defend itself, cool, but it still seems like a really bad idea.

>As long as the song/story spreads and survives the bardic lich can reform either physically or as a living song/story possessing hosts
I'm reminded of TATARI from Type-Moon.

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>>51493387
A bardic lich already exists

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>>51493626
Reminded me of Howl's Moving Castle and Calcifer
The hidden embers being a sentient fire, an extension of the lich, that fuels a moving fortress roaming the wilderness far away from anyone who might try to harm you
Like an AI running your base

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>>51490413
Oh my!
You used my used my bardic lich idea! Gonna make me blush.

Going along with that theme I thought it'd be neat to have alternative "liches" for different types of magic.

Illusion liches that exchange their bodies for semi-real illusions. Their phylactery could be a permanent illusion somewhere in the world, from a bird on a tree to a whole small village that doesn't realise they're illusions.

Cleric liches that become eternal beacons for their god's faith and power, their body withering away to become like those mummified monks but ablaze with channelled divinity. Protecting the holiest of temples, giving council and wisdom or actually leading a church, even being worshipped as a demi-god.

Less magic school-specific but I also thought some kind of book/text/story could contain a powerful spellcaster, sort of another kind of memetic lich like the bard one.

>>51490468
For a paladin lich, what about becoming their holy sword/shield/armour? Guiding/possessing new generations of heroes for great threats.

>>51490510
There's actually a brain in a jar undead along that lines.
Alternatively, there's a prestige class to turn completely incorporeal and a race that already has the ability. A disembodied mind works as well as a brain in a jar imo.

>>51492407
I had similar thoughts for summoners. Them "unsummoning" themselves from the world, hiding their soul out in the planes and only acting through a summoned fraction of their being.

>You swap bodies with other younger people, controlling their minds permanently
There's a psionic power like that.

>>51493503
I had similar thoughts but along the lines of a barbarian who dies while raging and just never notices and stops, there's actually an ability for the frenzied berserker prestige class that lets you fight past death for the duration of your frenzy.

>>51493711
In some versions, normal liches actually already rebuild their body from corpses left with their phylactery.

>>51490413
i know pathfinder gets hate on here but for druid lich i think this is the best
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/moss-lich-cr-2

>>51500690
>big red target
I guess it would be a trade off, also if the beast grows into like a nigh indestructible turbo-powered giant monstrosity there really wouldn't be any reason for the lich to assume that anyone would take the risk and bother with trying to kill it especially if it just stays away from habitation
The lich of course wasn't counting on the PC party of murderhobos to mosey by and just fuck shit up because reasons

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So the thing about liches is that the basic idea behind them is that they are a magic user who stuck their soul in an object and possess another object to act as their body, right?

Well, that brings to mind a few questions

1. Are their limitations on what the wizard could make their "Body"? I mean, they all use their own corpses and stuff but couldn't they use the body of something else? Or an inanimate object? Could a geomancer make his "body" a hill or mountain? Could someone make a star their body? How do they choose their body? Is it something they could force onto a living person?

2. When the thing that holds their soul is destroyed, they die, but what if it is just damaged? Are they damaged as well? If part of it is broken off or lost does the mind in it lose memories or get brain damaged? Would an ancient lich with a weather worn phylactory be a magical retard or amnesiac?

3. Is it possible for a lich to be an unwilling immortal? For instance, if they somehow place their phylactory beyond even their reach and then after 10,000 years of living they just get tired of it and want to die but can't. Could a lich give people a quest to go kill itself?

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>>51495637
>>51495962
>>51496545
Keep in mind that it's still a bard too and if anything their bardic magic would probably be enhanced so only the most recklessly prideful would rely on just popularity.

There are magics to force people to dance or laugh and even spells to make a particular tune stick in someone's head so they just can't get it out to the point of distraction.

>>51499109
Yeah there's so much potential variation with all the different mediums bards can use for their "music".
You could pull some king in yellow stuff, town after town caught up in a frantic self-destructive performance or have bardilich rap/slang spread among the poor minorities of the nation or an insidious nursery rhyme stealing away children pied piper style.
Let's not forget the undead roots either; how about a band of musical skeletons?

>>51501612
>3. Is it possible for a lich to be an unwilling immortal? For instance, if they somehow place their phylactory beyond even their reach and then after 10,000 years of living they just get tired of it and want to die but can't. Could a lich give people a quest to go kill itself?
Generally if their body gets destroyed then they reform at their phylactery so it would normally be impossible for them to truly lose it.
You could create a scenario where they don't have access to their phylactery, though, like if someone more powerful has it in their possession.

>>51499085
If you go back to TSR, there are also a Lich, Psionic in one of the Ravenloft domains.

>>51501648
>You could pull some king in yellow stuff, town after town caught up in a frantic self-destructive performance

Exactly, I love shit like this and http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-701 for example.
>Go to a theater performance only to have it turn into a bloody summoning ritual for an ancient bard.
Hide your daughters everyone.

>>51501612
>1. Are their limitations on what the wizard could make their "Body"?
Given that the oldest liches are just animated skulls, I think it's firmly set that a traditional lich is bound to the body he was born with.
>2. When the thing that holds their soul is destroyed, they die, but what if it is just damaged?
I think there's an arbitrary threshold of damage, after which the phylactery is considered destroyed. It's a fairly moot discussion, because most phylacteries are very simple objects that are hard to damage without destroying them.
>3. Is it possible for a lich to be an unwilling immortal?
I don't see why not, a lich can easily grow weary of immortality and just long for death. I had a story in my setting where a bunch of ancient dead wizards were turned into liches posthumously by the founder of necromancy, and not all of them liked being summoned back to the physical world, so he had to hide their phylacteries.

>>51501648
>how about a band of musical skeletons?
The whole concept is worth it just because of that.

>>51501648
>an insidious nursery rhyme stealing away children pied piper style
Freddy was a bard lich?

>>51500974
>In some versions, normal liches actually already rebuild their body from corpses left with their phylactery.
Usually corpses though, right? I was thinking of putting them into bodies that could still be made to function again. That way, you get a reason for them to be power-hungry and looking to rule shit as well, because they'd need to have considerable influence to ensure there's always a fresh corpse available in case their current possessed body is killed. It makes immortality a lot more tempting as well, that they don't lose so many sensations.

>>51505974
>corpses
*decomposed corpses

>Become Lich
>Craft the greatest sword/axe/mace ever made
>Indestructible
>Enchantments out the ass
>+1 billion
>So fucking strong, no adventurer could resist
>Passed down family lines for generations
>The weapon is actually your phylactery
>The more it kills, the stronger you become
>In the event you're ever defeated, the next time it is used to kill, you will be revived

Seems like a strict downgrade from traditional phylacteries, but is a neat idea.

>>51504975
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOGhAV-84iI

SIMPSONS DID IT

>>51506223
>Indestructible
>downgrade
I fail to follow

>>51506223
>>Become Lich
>>Craft the greatest sword/axe/mace ever made
>>Indestructible
>>Enchantments out the ass
>>+1 billion
>>So fucking strong, no adventurer could resist
Simple, no trouble at all.
IF YOU DON'T EVEN PLAY THEN FUCK OFF!

>>51490413
I did remember one thing from the Warhammer Fantasy RPG.

A Flame Wizard was experimenting with something. Nothing unusual here. The unusual part was that he was so consumed with the whole experimentation that he forgot to eat, drink, sleep and so on to the point that when someone entered his chamber...and there was no wizard anymore. A Lich!

The guy didn't even realize he turned into one. Imagine his surprise.

>>51506362
Still quite vulnerable to things like disintegrate or sphere of annihilation, as long as you can strip the enchantments away first.

Compared to a regular phylactery which can be hidden in an airless, gravity-less plane using Genesis (or perhaps just the negative energy plane), Dimensionally Locked and inside of dozens of permanent force wall cubes surrounded by layers of death traps, antimagic fields and various other nasty shit that makes Tomb of Horrors look like a playground.

>>51506622
>Compared to a regular phylactery which can be hidden in an airless, gravity-less plane using Genesis (or perhaps just the negative energy plane), Dimensionally Locked and inside of dozens of permanent force wall cubes surrounded by layers of death traps, antimagic fields and various other nasty shit that makes Tomb of Horrors look like a playground.
Number of Liches actually using this plan instead of placing the phylactery in a boring old dungeon: ~0

>>51506622
>>51507264
That's because when the lich reforms he has to make his way out of the fucking anti-magic field death-trapped cubes of force he set up, you fucking idiots.

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>>51498775
good

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Artificer Lich?

>>51507468
This is a very cool story, but I call bollocks. If what he told is true, then his was the most boring campaign in history.

Mathematician lich: he bound his soul to a precise numerical value that can only be obtained by solving an impossibly difficult differential equation, requiring genius level intelligence to even make sense of. He ascended to lichdom in order to find the ultimate equation that sums up the entire universe. After finding this equation, he would become omnipotent. Unfortunately, his attempts to solve it eventually began to screw with the reality. Economies of entire countries crashed overnight as one plus one became three instead of two. A party of adventurers was therefore sent to find the mad genius and stop his research.

>>51507720
The mathematician lich's castle is surrounded by enchanted asymptotes, lines that the adventurers can approach, but never cross. The castle itself uses Penrose stairs, making it nigh impossible to navigate. And when they attack the lich, they find that he rewrites the formulas used to calculate damage in the system.

>>51506392
I seriously wouldn't want to be this lich who dies once and for all after losing track of his epic sword phylactery, because the adventurer wielding it fell into lava.

Even then, the possibility of reforming next to a stupidly powerful adventurer is enough to dissuade me.

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>>51504946
>I think it's firmly set that a traditional lich is bound to the body he was born with
In some descriptions when their body is destroyed it doesn't reform out of thin air but rather a corpse near the phylactery is possessed and transformed and the existence of demi liches and those ones who are just a shadow suggest that there isn't strict magical law binding their form to the one they were born with.
If anything it may just be "tradition" and that a lich hasn't considered an alternative process. When something going wrong could mean real death more people will just stick with what's known to work.

Among much magical mastery and knowledge the process to lichdom basically involves the heart of a mage and moving your soul to a container so your body can be converted to run on negative energy before hopping back in it.
Good liches actually use their own heart while asking advice from demons will have them trying to trick you to damn yourself in order to get your soul out.

I wouldn't have the average lich able to hop into any old vessel but one who has done research and maybe played around with the ritual could potentially set up alternate bodies to move their soul back into.

>>51505465
Was there any sort of song or rhyme or set performance in that? it's been so long since I've watched it.

>>51505974
Well fresh or not it's still a corpse and I'm pretty sure undead lose most of their senses besides basic sight/hearing except where otherwise stated. Unless you wanted to make up some magical research/process for liches to prepare bodies as better hosts then you're more describing possessing the living.

It's pretty unclear how exactly the process of corpses being turned into their body goes, especially since they still seem able to decay to eventually become a demi-lich. Maybe there's some overall physical integrity or blueprint separate from their "body" that slowly wears down, maybe even fluff it as them forgetting/not caring what their original form was.

>>51507992
It's not set in stone that a lich needs to reform next to his phylactery. He can set it up to reform in a specific place as long as there is a phylactery.

>>51508005
>Was there any sort of song or rhyme or set performance in that? it's been so long since I've watched it.

One, two, Freddy's coming for you
Three, four, better lock your door,
Five, six, grab your crucifix
Seven, eight, got to stay up late
Nine, ten, never sleep again

>>51508005
If anything, the existence of demiliches proves that they have to stay in the original body. Would you like to be a bodiless skull if given any choice at all?

>>51493387
This sounds quite a lot like the Chandrian from Kingkiller Chronicles.

>>51506437
I think that was a thing in d&d too at least in earlier editions.
Some mages could get so consumed with their study that they don't even notice that their body has died and they don't need sustenance or rest anymore, some of them don't even realise they're undead and it can be hard to convince them especially as they're more annoyed with the distraction from their study.

>>51507317
>not having a one-way secret passage out for escape
Also since this is THEIR death-trap tomb we're talking about it's safe to assume that they'll know all the traps and barriers and even potentially know some secret to deactivate them temporarily or otherwise bypass them.

>>51508033
Oh yeah, that totally works.
The more I think about it the more it fits in general, though it's kinda also mixed with the whole dream-magic thing.

>>51508060
But it's not their original body, it's a significant alteration of their original body and it might actually be a corpse they've possessed to turn into an imitation of an alteration of their original body. I hope you see what I'm getting at.

As to why a demi-lich would "choose" to be just a head(or hand or pelvis, the specific part doesn't actually matter) there are a couple things I'm aware of that have been described in d&d.
That they're so ancient that most of their body has worn away and in some descriptions, the very magic that preserves their body has weakened which makes a bit more sense and goes along with the "blueprint" idea I mentioned.
The other thing is that demi-liches have grown so powerful that they are largely done with business on the material plane and seek further magical mysteries out in the planes where they don't need their physical body. That's why demi-liches are generally set up sitting around in a dusty deadly tomb. They're actually out adventuring in the planes and don't need their body to get around.

>>51508517
>some of them don't even realise they're undead and it can be hard to convince them especially as they're more annoyed with the distraction from their study.

Talk about dedication.

>>51490413
>Bard binds himself to a song known by all
>one that's passed along as a matter of tradition
>a song one would expect to have sung to them once a year, and might sing once for each of their friends and family
>Bard becomes the Birthday Skeleton

>>51508517
>I think that was a thing in d&d too at least in earlier editions.
It was canon at least as late as in Libris Mortis. Never bought anything that came after 3.5, so it may well still be canon.

>>51493357
>Warlock
How about you and some planar entity make each other as their phylacteries, so if you want one to be dead you have to kill them both simultaneously.

>>51508060
Just stick the skull in a specialized Construct.

>>51508517
>But it's not their original body
So my skull is not my body? okay...
>might actually be a corpse they've possessed to turn into an imitation of an alteration of their original body
So here's my original question: if that's another person's body, couldn't they find one that's preserved at least marginally better than just a skull?
>they're so ancient that most of their body has worn away and in some descriptions
That's the point. If they could swap bodies, they could just choose a fresher one as soon as the original one starts falling apart, and voilà.
>They're actually out adventuring in the planes and don't need their body to get around.
When any normal character travels the planes, they very much do need their bodies.

And one more point, I certainly read somewhere that female liches often try to preserve their beauty for as long as possible after ascension. If they could jump bodies, wouldn't they simply find a fresh one once the old one rots away?

And final point, liches are not treated in any source that I've read as magical spirits who can possess bodies. They're very much THE body, without soul.

>>51512497
>So my skull is not my body? okay...
Your skull is PART of your body but it's not your whole original body. I mean can you really not understand the difference?
>if that's another person's body, couldn't they find one that's preserved at least marginally better than just a skull?
>If they could swap bodies, they could just choose a fresher one as soon as the original one starts falling apart, and voilà.
The exact process by which a lich reforms/transforms a corpse into a new body isn't described in detail as far as I know but the lich is described as reforming fully as they were. If a lich lost an arm before they became a lich and didn't fix it then even if they used a body with two arms to reform after their original body is destroyed it would supposedly transform into their one-armed form. Despite this, we have demi-liches and other examples of liches in various states of decay suggesting some ongoing change.
This goes along with what I was saying about a "blueprint" for their body sustained by the magic of their lichdom that could decay in addition to them not bothering to maintain/fix it because they're more interested in arcane secrets beyond the mortal realm and things like feet and hands become irrelevant.
>When any normal character travels the planes, they very much do need their bodies.
They astrally project themselves while they leave their physical body behind in a well-guarded tomb, there are exceptions but that's the general idea.
>I certainly read somewhere that female liches often try to preserve their beauty for as long as possible after ascension
Well idk where you read that but liches tend to vary a lot from one to another and I doubt EVERY female lich has an obsession with their appearance.
>If they could jump bodies, wouldn't they simply find a fresh one once the old one rots away?
I think the issue is that you're not really understanding what's happening, the lich is recreating their body as it was before being destroyed.

>>51500690
Koschei the Deathless, the original mythological inspiration for liches, actually had his soul hidden in an animal (in fact, several animals stuffed inside each other; let's not got there). So it makes far more sense than you think.

>>51515086
Taking the concept into d&d bullshit you'd probably replace the various critters with magical beings that would turn invisible, teleport, and plane shift in addition to flying/burrowing/swimming away.

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>>51492407
>>Enchantment
>You swap bodies with other younger people, controlling their minds permanently.

>>51509998
And don't forget! Outsiders can only be killed on their home plane. Otherwise, you're just banishing them.

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One of the NPCs in the DtD (yeah it's silly but it's fun silly) is a rather non-traditional lich that draws more than a little from mummies and is designed for an artificer sort of mage more than a traditional necromancer.

Ankh-Meri-Ra, Pharaoh of the Tharket Sphere. A very, intricately designed humanoid looking golem (It's design is more or less a funeral mask of her own body) with her heart placed in the center of it.

The heart is the seat of the soul and this allows this to be her new body. She is bound to this world by her Canopic jars, if her body and heart are destroyed her canopic jars can be used to draw her heart back from the afterlife to power another body. It's not automatic like it is for many liches but she's the Pharaoh of a sphere, she has followers who are willing to do so.

>>51519021
That's the idea...

>>51507521
http://mortalengines.wikia.com/wiki/Stalkers

>>51520908
These are some kind of Frankenstein monsters, not liches.

>>51506236
Nigga how 'bout you spoil that shit! Skellys gonna get me an' play my ribs like a xylophone now...

>>51521739
Have it as something someone did to themselves for immortality.

>Centuries ago by our Earth time, a race of men on the far-distant planet of Telos (sic) sought immortality. They perfected the art of cybernetics – the reproduction of machine functions in human beings. As bodies became old and diseased, they were replaced limb by limb, with plastic and steel… and brains replaced by computers. They were immune to cold and heat… their large, silver bodies became practically indestructible. Their main impediment was one that only flesh and blood men would have recognised: they had no heart, no emotions, no feelings. They lived by the inexorable laws of pure logic. Love, hate anger, even fear, were eliminated from their lives when the last flesh was replaced by plastic.

>>51523945
...Necrons?