Liches
We all know the basic description of a Lich: "Undead wizard skeleton who does big evil magic and keeps returning from destruction unless you break their soul jar." Yes, yes, straight forward stuff. We've all heard it.
BUT: Consider the source. Who told you this? Was it the murder hobos who swept through town, destabilized the local economy, entranced the impressionable youths with wild stories of action and adventure, thought they could get free drinks from the tavern through some magic ability they called 'nat twenty', and started a fight with the sheriff because they wanted his hat, before stumbling off towards the suspected tomb of the lich?
Those assholes? You believed THEM?
Look, sweetie, they were lying to you. They probably broke into some fancy looking mausoleum, found a corpse ceremoniously displayed on a throne, stabbed the hell out of it, and called it done. And when the lich returns in a week from his beach vacation to continue his evil plans? "Oh no! I guess we didn't destroy the soul jar, or whatever." Lies. Lies told by cowards and confidence folk who quickly skip town after.
Absolute nonsense.
While they were correct in that liches are magical, most often wizards, they are certainly not "undead" or have any sort of soul jar trapping their soul within. They are a living creature, though they lack souls to be bound. Yeesssss, "lich" does mean "corpse," but it's a name given based on the stories of the murder hobos mentioned above. The correct name for them would be "mageiaphage" but I'll be damned if I'm going to remember how to spell that.
It all starts when some dumb bastard (wizard, it's always a wizard) tries to do something stupid like "live forever." Really all they end up doing is separating themselves from Fate. A task that's harder, but not as dramatic, as it sounds. Once unhitched from this wagon, Reality doesn't know what to do with them.
This, as you might guess, causes a few side effects.
They stop aging. "When were they supposed to die? Fuck if I know." says Reality, washing it's hands clean of having to deal with any sort of physiological process related to the matter. "I'm not paid enough for this."
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Or maybe they do age, they just don't die from aging. Some sort of janked ass hobbit "oh I feel thin" bullshit. I alternate on which I think is cooler. You do the one you like most.
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They stop breathing and eating. Natural food anyway. Metabolic processes of all sorts refuse to function, trapping the body in a stasis.
They're fueled by magic. While they've been rejected by the Order of Reality and Fate, Chaotic Magic has no qualms about working with such rule breakers.
They're hard to hurt. Again, what the fuck is Reality suppose to do with them? How do they get hurt? How bad? No one knows. The Fate chart is fucking EMPTY.
Alright, but what does this mean? It means, mechanically, that any attack on them does exactly one (1) damage. BUT it also means that they must spend hit points to get magic dice at a 1:1 ratio. Any that don't return effectively damages them. Any repeated numbers are ignored, for the purposes of Dooms.
Additionally, any magic applied to them, in which they are the target, is automatically absorbed by the lich and used to heal instantly, absorbing at the same 1:1 ratio as before. A mere touch from them is enough to drain magic (mechanically magic dice) from a magic user or item. Liches are literally out here chomping on scrolls as one would a handful of trail mix. There is no upper limit, however at zero (0) "health", they're out of sustaining Magic and Reality comes crashing in at the suddenly void space where the abomination used to be.
"If they don't breathe, eat, or die, how are they not undead?"
Because, jackass, one of the defining features of a corpse is that it doesn't learn. Can't teach them shit. Dumb as hell. Now, living bodies with their electric powered neural networks? Them things are good at learning. Still dumb as hell, but good at learning. Liches are able to continuously learn and study magic as they could before they were changed, being able to gain a deeper connection to Magic to the point of generating bespoke spells for their own devices.
"What if they enter an anti-magic field?"
Using magic to make an anti-magic space? Makes as much sense as the bullshit the ysalamiri do. Get the fuck outta here.
Stats
HD 5 (20 HP)
Def As Leather Att Arcane Blast (1d6)
Int 18 Morale 12
Disposition Disinterested
Spell List Any 12 + 2 Bespoke
Bespoke Spells
These should be weird and powerful, suited to the personality of the lich that created them. Really give a reason for the players to want to preserve the skull of the lich. (To suck the spell markings out of the skull.) I had intended to make a few, but now I'm just going to steal some from His Majesty the Worm for examples.
Do You Doubt Me, Traitor?
R: - T: Self D: [Sum] rounds
Any successful attack against the lich causes the attacking character to make a Save vs Magic. Failure means an item of the GMs choosing is removed from the attacking character's sheet. The item can't be used in anyway until the next long rest. Valid targets include: Name, Class, Spells, Attributes, etc.
Faithful Servant, Tender Companion
R: 100' T: Area D: Permanent
The lich calls forth a clone of any dead person from the party's past. This clone knows everything the actual person would have known in life. The clone has [Dice] HP and permanently loses 1 HP per day. For [Burn] dice, the lich may experience a sense of the clone at a 1:1 ration.
May Failure Be Your Noose
R: - T: Self D: [Dice] rounds
If a PC fails an attack against the "lich" it may automatically make an attack against the same PC.
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