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Drakevarg
2009-11-14, 11:42 PM
Just an idle question at the moment since I don't get in many campaigns, but in your opinion, what are the best methods of protecting a lich's phylactery?

Though not strictly nessicary, I'd prefer it if you kept your schemes to the core books.

My current thought is to find some object-targeting variation on contingency, then have it set to send of a couple dozen high-level doom spells and teleport back to me if it ever takes any damage. (Problem being, of course, that contingency has SEVERAL limiting factors that keep me from doing precisely that.

Or, make the phylactery out of adamantium, disguise it as a random rock, protect it from any kind of scrying I can think of, then go out into the middle of a mountain range and drop it. Or in the ocean. Or on another plane. Or in the middle of a mountain range in the ocean of another plane.

Mando Knight
2009-11-14, 11:44 PM
Traps. Lots of 'em. Make the Phylactery itself a self-resetting trap of some sort. Also, a permanent Magic Aura spell to disguise its nature would help.

deuxhero
2009-11-14, 11:51 PM
Whatever you do, make any protections from scrying exclude your spells.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-11-14, 11:52 PM
Plane where Transmutation and Abjuration are prevented, with no gravity, probably achieved through Genesis. Cube of Walls of Force. Place inside a constant-effect Dimension Lock item, that can be deactivated for 1 round at a time, and a backup spellbook. Should be fairly invulnerable.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-11-14, 11:53 PM
Just an idle question at the moment since I don't get in many campaigns, but in your opinion, what are the best methods of protecting a lich's phylactery?
Drop it in an outhouse.

AslanCross
2009-11-14, 11:57 PM
Drop it in an outhouse.

Considering how adventures slug it out in sewers and dank dungeons with oozes and otyughs, I don't think fecal matter is a good enough defense. All the wizard needs to do is cast Prestidigitation afterwards.

9mm
2009-11-15, 12:06 AM
... make it a gp piece, wear something else that looks like it must be a phylactry.

(this may not be supported by RAW or RAI, but the look the players faces when a lich shows up in the loot bag is hilarious)

golentan
2009-11-15, 12:11 AM
My best mechanism so far: Find the Artifact that preserves the multiverse (if there is such a device in your universe). Sealed evil in a Can, keystone of creation, whatever it happens to be. Make it a phylactery. Point out to extraplanar GOOD forces that it's destruction will necessitate the death of the universe as a logical consequence, then hand it over to your mortal enemies (without telling them it's the phylactery, and after making sure they aren't with any nihilistic cults) as a sign of good faith.

Word of advice though. Keep it from the inevitables. The whole "Everyone must Die" thing means that the Marut are actually okay with killing the multiverse to get to you as a matter of dogma. I recommend Celestia as a good place to invest in securities.

And the best part is even if someone tries to destroy you the armies of heaven will show up to stop them, or a ragtag band of misfits will foil their plan, or what have you.

The DM's options for getting rid of you boil down to "Sigh, okay, tag back in in... 4 days." or "Rocks fall, everyone dies." And if it's for an NPC, you get to prevent the players with a Sadistic Choice.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-11-15, 12:15 AM
My best mechanism so far: Find the Artifact that preserves the multiverse (if there is such a device in your universe). Sealed evil in a Can, keystone of creation, whatever it happens to be. Make it a phylactery. Point out to extraplanar GOOD forces that it's destruction will necessitate the death of the universe as a logical consequence, then hand it over to your mortal enemies (without telling them it's the phylactery, and after making sure they aren't with any nihilistic cults) as a sign of good faith.

Word of advice though. Keep it from the inevitables. The whole "Everyone must Die" thing means that the Marut are actually okay with killing the multiverse to get to you as a matter of dogma. I recommend Celestia as a good place to invest in securities.

And the best part is even if someone tries to destroy you the armies of heaven will show up to stop them, or a ragtag band of misfits will foil their plan, or what have you.

The DM's options for getting rid of you boil down to "Sigh, okay, tag back in in... 4 days." or "Rocks fall, everyone dies." And if it's for an NPC, you get to prevent the players with a Sadistic Choice.Death is not the only way of destroying someone in D&D. Flesh to Stone no longer works, but Rope Trick+Imprisonment does, as I'm sure similar effects still do.

golentan
2009-11-15, 12:22 AM
Death is not the only way of destroying someone in D&D. Flesh to Stone no longer works, but Rope Trick+Imprisonment does, as I'm sure similar effects still do.

Sing it with me: CONTINGENCIES!!!! Freedom is an okay one, but if you're letting anyone in touch range of you anyway you have other problems. And you can always contingency a destroy undead spell on yourself. Melting your own face off to avoid defeat may be unpleasant, but it is effective.

Edit: Undeath to Death is what I was thinking of. Target yourself, voluntarily fail the save.

Mando Knight
2009-11-15, 12:22 AM
Plane where Transmutation and Abjuration are prevented, with no gravity, probably achieved through Genesis. Cube of Walls of Force. Place inside a constant-effect Dimension Lock item, that can be deactivated for 1 round at a time, and a backup spellbook. Should be fairly invulnerable.

Make the phylactery the backup spellbook. Also, memorize, but never write down, the location of the isolated plane/demiplane. If your main lair is raided by adventurers and the phylactery's location is inscribed somewhere nearby, they may be able to get in before you regenerate.

Coidzor
2009-11-15, 12:24 AM
Drop it in an outhouse.
Considering how adventures slug it out in sewers and dank dungeons with oozes and otyughs, I don't think fecal matter is a good enough defense. All the wizard needs to do is cast Prestidigitation afterwards.

I think that basically that phylactery defense is a mug's game was his estimation of the scenario.

Personally I like the lark of turning the phylactery into an innocent, immortal person and one's self into an angelic being of some sort, rescuing a kingdom that you may or may not have rigged to be in peril and kingless, and establishing oneself as the savior king.

Engineer phylactery as royal princess daughter, and so on and so forth.

Optimystik
2009-11-15, 12:54 AM
Secret Chest?

Or something more off the wall... making your phylactery be another lich?

golentan
2009-11-15, 12:59 AM
I think that basically that phylactery defense is a mug's game was his estimation of the scenario.

Personally I like the lark of turning the phylactery into an innocent, immortal person and one's self into an angelic being of some sort, rescuing a kingdom that you may or may not have rigged to be in peril and kingless, and establishing oneself as the savior king.

Engineer phylactery as royal princess daughter, and so on and so forth.

But, see, then you'd be the Evil Overlord(lady). And she'd be your Beautiful Daughter. The one the hero is obligated to seduce. Do you really want the hero doing that to your soul? A bit necroerotic, no? Plus she might kill herself to stop your reign of tyranny. My general rule is only give free willed beings power of life and death over you by their life if you have power over something worth more than their life over them. Plus, people will have accidents, I'd rather not entrust the well being of my soul to whether or not someone always doublechecks before crossing the street, ya know?

Alleine
2009-11-15, 01:19 AM
I think I recall a protection involving polymorph, petrify, transmute rock to mud, and then tossing the mud into the ocean. The only real problem here is where do you respawn at when your phylactery is strewn across the world?

BobVosh
2009-11-15, 01:41 AM
Secret Chest?

Or something more off the wall... making your phylactery be another lich?

I've seen this before. Where the other Lich is your phylactery. And you are his. Works best if it is like spelljammer where you can be ANYWHERE.

Also someone on here once mentioned a Dry lich with the 5 phylactries. Sounded like fun. PAO them twice into princess, start up rumors about the 5 princesses of the desert which never age. Make sure they are LG/etc so no one suspects them. I'm setting up a campaign arc around this, see how long it takes my party to figure it out.

Fishy
2009-11-15, 01:42 AM
How about a variation on the Psionic Save Game hack?

The Phylactery is a canister filled with Quintessence, topped off with a self-resetting trap of Forced Dream. Drop someone in, and the Phylactery manifests Forced Dream on them and then locks them out of time.

Killing you makes you respawn near the phylactery, as normal. Destroying the phylactery frees the prisoner inside, then your Dominate/Mindrape/Programmed Amnesia kicks in and they immediately activate Forced Dream. The last however many thousand years retroactively never happened, and time resets to right before you dropped the guy in.

I think if you make the whole thing out of Riverine, any effect that could disenchant the Phylactery-ness of your Phylactery will also set off the time-bomb.

Reinboom
2009-11-15, 01:52 AM
Greater teleport to the moon (less atmosphere to blur the sight of the next part), with supplies to build a rather large observatory. Using the observatory, locate a suitably distant nondestructive cosmic body, preferably a different moon. Greater teleport there. Repeat until bored. Use one of the methods of another poster on said moon.
Greater Teleport to each observatory and deconstruct it.

It's ok, you're a lich. Not like you need to breath.

Korivan
2009-11-15, 01:53 AM
In a forgoten rhelms book, a lich created a large, powerfull golem, that when damaged, broke apart and became many smaller, still very dangerous golems. Then within a chunk that didn't break apart, hid a permenent prismatic sphere, protecting the phylactery.

As a joke...i hope, someone come up with an undead tarresque. i think this trick was done in 2nd edition, i dont really recall. Anyways, make it out of an item immune to acid, and EXTREMELY resistent to being crushed, wear it, and use Fly to dive right in its mouth. A combinationg of DR and Acid immunity spells should see you long enough to imbed the Xitem into its body, let its awsome regen powers seal up your thingy. Use the big T as your next body. Never played as a lich or fought the big T in 3rd edition, so not sure if it works.

Also, I like the idea from the forgotten realms book (war of the spider queen i think), but make it a adamantium golem, give it the ability to rust everything except itself (variation of the Blueshine ability from MIC), along with some support from various traps, monsters, hidden locations, magic defenses, and the complete lack of telling anyone. Do some research on some areas that you've never been to personally, pick a nice hazardus place thats toxic, radioactive, etc, build the dungeon of death, then use whatever means you have to kill your builders, and prevent thier souls from going to the underworld.

And remember, this is your characters life, would he/she spare any expense to get the best defense?

BobVosh
2009-11-15, 01:55 AM
Greater teleport doesn't work that way. Only for the planet. There is a ninth level spell in a pathfinder module for that, or wish could do it.

At least that is my understanding of "plane." Spelljammer seems to make it clear that a planet is a planet, not a crystal sphere.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-11-15, 01:57 AM
I've seen this before. Where the other Lich is your phylactery. And you are his. Works best if it is like spelljammer where you can be ANYWHERE.Tal no lookieMy original idea was a group of 5 Lich casters, including a Blackguard, Cleric, Beguiler, Wizard, and Bard. They adventured together before falling to evil, and trust no one other than each other. Any deaths, and the Beguiler and Bard vanish, Wizard goes Batman, and the Cleric and Blackguard go hunting. And my group thinks our current DM runs evil casters. :D

Temotei
2009-11-15, 02:01 AM
In a forgoten rhelms book, a lich created a large, powerfull golem, that when damaged, broke apart and became many smaller, still very dangerous golems. Then within a chunk that didn't break apart, hid a permenent prismatic sphere, protecting the phylactery.

I love that series. War of the Spider Queen. I think that's the fifth book, but I could be wrong. I was thinking the same thing for defenses...hehe. Wasn't there something else, for when someone did get through the sphere? Like an explosion?

BobVosh
2009-11-15, 02:02 AM
Tal no lookieMy original idea was a group of 5 Lich casters, including a Blackguard, Cleric, Beguiler, Wizard, and Bard. They adventured together before falling to evil, and trust no one other than each other. Any deaths, and the Beguiler and Bard vanish, Wizard goes Batman, and the Cleric and Blackguard go hunting. And my group thinks our current DM runs evil casters. :D

Surprised ya'll don't hide in individual demiplanes with a permanent nightmare bodyguard/caster of astral projection.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-11-15, 02:05 AM
Surprised ya'll don't hide in individual demiplanes with a permanent nightmare bodyguard/caster of astral projection.That's the Wizard's plan, but if you can beat those defenses on one, you can beat them on the rest, so they all use different survival methods.

Korivan
2009-11-15, 02:08 AM
I love that series. War of the Spider Queen. I think that's the fifth book, but I could be wrong. I was thinking the same thing for defenses...hehe. Wasn't there something else, for when someone did get through the sphere? Like an explosion?

good knowledge check (FR Books), forgot about that, ya, something about glyphs or something that were linked to the whole house, that regrew after being dispelled. Would have killed the drow too but for contingency teleport I believe. Good lessen learned, have a dimensional lock on the area, don't want that mage escaping.

Reinboom
2009-11-15, 02:10 AM
Greater teleport doesn't work that way. Only for the planet. There is a ninth level spell in a pathfinder module for that, or wish could do it.

At least that is my understanding of "plane." Spelljammer seems to make it clear that a planet is a planet, not a crystal sphere.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/planes.htm

I see only a suggestion that "separate planes are like planets". I do not see any restriction further than this.
In fact, other places in the SRD suggest that planes and planets are wholly separate. For example, "The Void" card description or the Well of Many Worlds.

Rainbownaga
2009-11-15, 05:47 AM
Personally I like the lark of turning the phylactery into an innocent, immortal person and one's self into an angelic being of some sort, rescuing a kingdom that you may or may not have rigged to be in peril and kingless, and establishing oneself as the savior king.

Engineer phylactery as royal princess daughter, and so on and so forth.

Personally, i think it's much more fun to contrive it so all the evidence points to your phylactery being a royal princess or innocent maiden. Thus when the brave knight overcomes the moral dilemma and finally brings himself to kill her, you can show up and laugh at him.

Good times :smallbiggrin:

Drakevarg
2009-11-15, 06:08 AM
Truth be told, my guess is that you have more or less two... maybe three options with phylacteries.

One, make your phylactery out of something completely nondescript and hide it somewhere completely nondescript. Hells, the One Ring managed to stay hidden for 3000 years because it fell in a pond. And this is a shiny semi-sentient artifact that WANTS to be found. Now take a random rock that DOESN'T want to be found. Chances are reasonably good that no one is going to find it anytime soon. The only possible flaw is that a particularly stubborn hunter might repeatedly kill you and narrow down it's location based on where you're first spotted upon resurrecting. (This could be avoided by teleportation or not simply not being a high-profile individual. Not particularly an option for my character, who's a cleric intending on being a quasi-benevolent dictator pretending to not be undead. [Lawful Evil, though more of a Well-Intentioned Extremist.] Not terribly relevent to the main discussion, but it certaintly plays into my decision making.)

Two, make your phylactery into whatever, but then ward the **** out of it. Place it on a different plane, put up loads of protective enchantments and explody things to discourage would-be destroyers of your soul-hidey place, surround it with constructs with the direction of "kill anyone who enters this room who isn't me." The works. The reason I would consider this one kind of impractical is that phylacteries make you regenerate near by them. If you decided that it would be stuffed inside a prismatic sphere, this could be inconvienient. Another thing to consider, especially if you're a PC Lich, is to NOT take from the DM's artifact-protecting dungeon design book. Those generally are designed as vaguely survivable. Chances are you want yours to make the Tomb of Horrors look cuddly. The exception, of course, is to make it so YOU can LEAVE. Being immortal is totally awesome when you can't leave your room lest ye be evicerated in seventeen different ways and promptly respawned back in your room.

Third, and probably the most risky in my opinion, would be to make your phylactery into something the good guys don't WANT destroyed. The cosmic keystone, sealed evil in a can, whatever the campaign's MacGuffin happens to be (so long as it isn't a "destroy the MacGuffin" type quest). The risky part comes in where you have to tell everyone that the object that keeps you not dead exists at all. Obviously with type 2 the Giant Fortress of Certain Horrible Death that suddenly popped up on the Plane of Unpleasantness might draw some attention, but since Unpleasant Certain Horrible Death happens to anyone who so much looks at it sideways is going to be turned into red mist, not much of a problem. Having the Shiny Thing that Keeps The Existance Existing be your soul-hidey place may keep the heroes off of it, but now all the doomsday cults want to smash it. Then again, if it is smashed, your inability to respawn is pretty much moot, so I suppose it's a sound theory. (Assuming, of course, you are even capable of obtaining said important thing, which being theoretically Something Very Important might not be as easy as it sounds.)

My, look at all that text. Right, I'll let you have your say now.

PinkysBrain
2009-11-15, 08:29 AM
If it's not sequestered Vision, legend lore or even divination can find it (lead doesn't help, those are not of the scrying subschool).

So to truly hide a phylactery you need someone with mind blank continuously active (otherwise you can simply divine your way to the guy casting sequester) to cast sequester on it each week ... oh and you have to find a way to force your phylactery to fail it's save against the sequester.

Johel
2009-11-15, 09:13 AM
Take a kobold.
Cast Dominate Person on him.
Cast Mind Blank on him
Give him your phylactery.
Cast Imprisonment on him.
Cast Discern Location to know where he is now.
Cast Greater Scrying to look at the area.
Cast Greater Teleport to get there.


If you can, take the sphere to another place
A room, 30ft x30ft, where you'll cast the following spells :

Forbiddance
Permanency + Symbol of Death
Permanency + Mage’s private sanctum


Add a Simulacrum of yourself, with a easily breakable item on which you'll cast "Refuge" and a ring of Sustenance. The Simulacrum is attuned to the Symbol and is instructed to break the Refuge item whenever somebody enters the room and survive. This will teleport you back.

If you can't take the sphere yourself, "Wish" for the sphere to be teleported right at your side. Then proceed with the room.

Brendan
2009-11-15, 09:19 AM
Remember, if you get smashed you reform next to the phylactery, so you shouldn't have it in some sort of unescapable plane or uberdeadly area. I would suggest duplicating it millions and millions of times into unmarked boxes on a warehouse/werehouse(animated to flee or crush all adventurers who try to get it) and put that on a personal plane that casts lots of death and debuff spells on everyne who enters except for you, with a few contingencies.

Reinboom
2009-11-15, 09:25 AM
Remember, if you get smashed you reform next to the phylactery, so you shouldn't have it in some sort of unescapable plane or uberdeadly area. I would suggest duplicating it millions and millions of times into unmarked boxes on a warehouse/werehouse(animated to flee or crush all adventurers who try to get it) and put that on a personal plane that casts lots of death and debuff spells on everyne who enters except for you, with a few contingencies.

Do mind, however, that you are undead. As an undead, you are immune to many things that might otherwise be considered highly deadly to anyone else. Such as lack of oxygen.
I highly recommend emphasizing this aspect. For example, replace all oxygen in said personal plane with nitrogen.

Frozen_Feet
2009-11-15, 09:55 AM
Or radon, for added inconvinience. Also, naturally high levels of negative energy will make living creatures want to stay out, but heal you.

Sir_Elderberry
2009-11-15, 10:09 AM
I really think we're going about this the wrong way. The first thing you guys are doing is "what sort of ultra-badass thing can I create that can't possibly be beaten". Problem is, there's always some sort of ubermagic combination, and if not, there's always divinities, artifacts, and the like.

No, instead, my phylactery will be a grain of sand that I deposit in the middle of the largest desert in the campaign setting. Find that, adventurers.

Reinboom
2009-11-15, 10:25 AM
I really think we're going about this the wrong way. The first thing you guys are doing is "what sort of ultra-badass thing can I create that can't possibly be beaten". Problem is, there's always some sort of ubermagic combination, and if not, there's always divinities, artifacts, and the like.

No, instead, my phylactery will be a grain of sand that I deposit in the middle of the largest desert in the campaign setting. Find that, adventurers.

I question how that is any more well hidden than hiding it on a random moon, especially given the number of stars (not even considering their complimenting planets, and those planets' moons) in our universe can be estimated to outnumber the grains of sand on earth 100 : 1.
I offer you this formidable scale, and question, how I went about it the wrong way.
Further, you can always get a small group of sorcerer peons with arcane sight, or enchant folks with true seeing and comb the desert (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtkK3eijBso).

Johel
2009-11-15, 10:29 AM
I really think we're going about this the wrong way. The first thing you guys are doing is "what sort of ultra-badass thing can I create that can't possibly be beaten". Problem is, there's always some sort of ubermagic combination, and if not, there's always divinities, artifacts, and the like.

No, instead, my phylactery will be a grain of sand that I deposit in the middle of the largest desert in the campaign setting. Find that, adventurers.

They can find the place, narrow it down to a good 10mx10m, then apply a lot of "Telekinesis" + "Disintegrate".
So we want the place to be well-guarded.

I like the idea, mind you.

NEO|Phyte
2009-11-15, 10:48 AM
Or radon, for added inconvinience. Also, naturally high levels of negative energy will make living creatures want to stay out, but heal you.

Ironically, RAW, the same applies for suitably high levels of POSITIVE energy, with the added bonus that the living can't protect themselves with a simple Death Ward. Not that any sane DM would let this work, but hey.

PinkysBrain
2009-11-15, 11:14 AM
Positive energy is less of a problem, you can always cut yourself.

NEO|Phyte
2009-11-15, 11:18 AM
Positive energy is less of a problem, you can always cut yourself.

A action spent cutting yourself is an action not spent bypassing the assorted obstacles between you and the phylactery, especially when the golems don't have to kill you, just delay you until the plane does its work.

Sir_Elderberry
2009-11-15, 12:49 PM
Well, yes, it's better to hide your phylactery IN SPACE, but I was keeping earth-bound, like most campaigns. And if you enchanted a grain of sand, I assume you'd still keep it magic'd up to disguise it from divination.

AtopTheMountain
2009-11-15, 01:04 PM
I always liked the idea to implant it inside the body of a random, innocent civilian (preferably right behind the heart) so that the PCs have to kill him to get to it. Especially effective if one of the players is a Paladin or LG Cleric.

Another way to make this more effective is to do that, then cast Imprisonment on them. :smallamused: Cue evil laughter.

EDIT: Unfortunately, this would cause you to reform in a small cube underground if you ever were destroyed. That puts a slight damper on your evil plans.

Dusk Eclipse
2009-11-15, 02:22 PM
How about this.

Build your stereotipical dungeeon of doom, filled with traps, undead monster and whatnot. Then in the last room filled with loot you place a decoy, something that would obviously be a Phylactery, lets say a scrying ball made out of a gem, let's say saphire with some gold, platinum and silver embeded. Protect that decoy with all the magic wards, traps, etc Use magic aura to give the decoy one.

Put your real non-descript phylactery in a secret room behind the loot room, guard the room but not too much so the adventurer's won't get suspicious.

Now when the adventurers get to your loot room, they will go for the decoy and leave your real phylactery in peace.

Drakevarg
2009-11-15, 03:11 PM
Before creating the phylactery, cast the spells mind blank, sequester on all of your materials, greater invisibility, plane shift to a particularly remote dimension, then greater teleport to a particularly remote location in that dimension.

Create your phylactery out of a Fine adamantium marble. (More of a bead, really...) Cast permenant image to make it resemble a grain of sand or pebble. Cast Nystul's magic aura to make it seem unenchanted. Cast sequester on the phylactery again, just for good measure.

Plane shift back to the Material Plane. Greater teleport to a particularly remote desert, forest, mountains, or really any place where a pebble wouldn't seem out of place. Make sure, of course, that this area is not somewhere likely to attract any attention or have any particularly destructive event happen. (For example, placing it by a volcano or near a dragon's lair would not be a good idea.)

Drop the phylactery. Go home and enjoy being immortal. However, once a week, cast mind blank and greater invisibility again and head back to re-cast sequester and Nystul's magic aura on your phylactery.

Naturally, inform absolutely no-one about the phylactery's creation or existance, and pretend you aren't undead. Since at this point any self-respecting caster would be warding themselves on a daily basis by that point anyway, I don't think it's nessicary to point out the wards for that.

The biggest flaws I see in this plan are a) How do you find your phylactery again? And b) I'm pretty sure I've left numerous gaps in my anti-detection wards.

What'd I miss?

Foryn Gilnith
2009-11-15, 03:12 PM
You need a really high CL to stop Metafaculty.

Drakevarg
2009-11-15, 03:24 PM
Hm... I suppose alot of the anti-scrying problems could be solved by simply giving it a coating of lead...

Vizzerdrix
2009-11-15, 03:40 PM
Someone mentioned keeping a book by your lichbox, but the cost of maintaining a second Baccob's blessed book with an up to date spell list is rather steep and over your life time can get to the point of requiring a library for all your spells.


What should a lich's Backup spellbook contain? let us assume we cut out all but a few level-0 spells to save on page space.

What should the back up be made out of? A 15gp off the shelf model, or some of those nice options from Comp. Arcane?

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-11-15, 03:45 PM
To avoid the whole backup spellbook issue, all of my liches use the Eidetic Spellbook ACF from Dragon...#313, I think? Basically, you give up Scribe Scroll and your familiar, but you no longer need a spellbook; everything is stored in your head and you "inscribe" spells with magic incense. Best investment an immortal wizard can make.

Shhalahr Windrider
2009-11-15, 03:45 PM
They can find the place, narrow it down to a good 10mx10m, then apply a lot of "Telekinesis" + "Disintegrate".
So we want the place to be well-guarded.
And that's just assuming the only people disintegrating sand are the ones looking for it. No telling when and where some massive arcane battle with lots of terrain damage is going to take place. Or maybe its just some weird desert creature with a powerful acidic breath weapon and a drooling problem. And so on.

Security through Obscurity is no Security at all.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-11-15, 04:22 PM
Someone mentioned keeping a book by your lichbox, but the cost of maintaining a second Baccob's blessed book with an up to date spell list is rather steep and over your life time can get to the point of requiring a library for all your spells.


What should a lich's Backup spellbook contain? let us assume we cut out all but a few level-0 spells to save on page space.

What should the back up be made out of? A 15gp off the shelf model, or some of those nice options from Comp. Arcane?The main thing that book needs is Greater Teleport and Plane Shift. The impenetrable box I had it in could only be exited by a teleportation after temporarily deactivating the Dim Anchor. You'll also want your standard array of defensive buffs and your favored combat spells. Everything else is basically unnecessary, since the first thing you'll likely do is visit a magic item shop. Fill a new book there, and then use it to get your original book back.

Drakevarg
2009-11-15, 05:31 PM
And that's just assuming the only people disintegrating sand are the ones looking for it. No telling when and where some massive arcane battle with lots of terrain damage is going to take place. Or maybe its just some weird desert creature with a powerful acidic breath weapon and a drooling problem. And so on.

Security through Obscurity is no Security at all.

The problem with that theory is that it is thinking from a real-life point of view. If you hid your phylactery way out in the boonies that you specifically picked because NO ONE EVER GOES THERE, and it happens to be destroyed by a giant mage battle, that means that the DM running the campaign is a railroading jerkass. Now if you, say, hid it in the garden in front of the King's castle and the undead hordes invaded or something, it may be reasonable to have the phylactery get destroyed in the process. But the point of Security though Obscurity is that the phylactery is hidden precisely where that WON'T happen. And if there was some plot-related reason for such an event to happen way out in the Middle-of-Nowhere Woods, you would probably know about it and simply move the damn thing.

As for the whole "narrow down and randomly vaporize until you hit it" thing? One of the basic points of phylacteries is that they have no idea where it is. If they where it was, it'd be more or less two options; they hear about it somehow and know the geographic area it's located in. ("Your grain-of-sand-sized soul jar is somewhere in the Sahara Desert." Yeah, that'll let 'em find it in a few million years.) Or, they scry it's location and know exactly where it is. At which point, you'd probably want to have a spell that informs you if the object is ever scryed, and you put it somewhere else and kill the scryer in question.

Foryn Gilnith
2009-11-15, 05:40 PM
that means that the DM running the campaign is a railroading jerkass
Or he, also, is thinking from a real-life point of view instead of adopting gamist conventions.


And if there was some plot-related reason for such an event to happen way out in the Middle-of-Nowhere Woods, you would probably know about it and simply move the damn thing.
How do you find the damn thing? The example given was a grain of sand - pretty hard to track down for any length of time.

Yukitsu
2009-11-15, 05:47 PM
When adventurer is not paying attention, cast flesh to stone on their youngest child, enchant them as the phylactery, then un-stone them. Time magic shenanigans are likely required.

ShadowFighter15
2009-11-15, 07:52 PM
You know; if a lich in Eberron had suitable motivation, he could probably rip-off a Kundarak bank. It could start off that he just leaves his phylactery in a safety deposit box in one of their branches, while setting up an uber-warded decoy in his lair. If he ever gets killed; he'll reform inside the safety deposit box and then he just has to bust out of there, which shouldn't be too hard for a spellcaster that strong. Plus, I imagine a lot of Kundarak banks are set up to keep people from getting in, rather than getting out.

HandofCrom
2009-11-15, 09:28 PM
I'd say put something in your lair that screams phylactery. A big cool item, trapped and warded like hell, that explodes in a burst of negative energy when destroyed. Maybe put it in something nasty like a powerful golem or undead monstrosity.

The real phylactery, of course, is nondescript, enchanted against scryings and detections, and stored in a safe deposit box under a boring pseudonym in the bank.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-11-16, 02:52 AM
You know; if a lich in Eberron had suitable motivation, he could probably rip-off a Kundarak bank. It could start off that he just leaves his phylactery in a safety deposit box in one of their branches, while setting up an uber-warded decoy in his lair. If he ever gets killed; he'll reform inside the safety deposit box and then he just has to bust out of there, which shouldn't be too hard for a spellcaster that strong. Plus, I imagine a lot of Kundarak banks are set up to keep people from getting in, rather than getting out.Someone's been reading their Evil Overlord list.

Dixieboy
2009-11-16, 03:04 AM
I think I recall a protection involving polymorph, petrify, transmute rock to mud, and then tossing the mud into the ocean. The only real problem here is where do you respawn at when your phylactery is strewn across the world?

You don't, it's basically shattered.

PhoenixRivers
2009-11-16, 03:12 AM
My favorite one was bestowed upon my party at middish levels. They had recently come into a possession of an estate, of which there were many things. The previous owner liked a neat and eccentric home, so had many items enchanted with permanency and prestidigitation.

The phylactery was the metal ring around the base of the chandelier, just on the inside of it, surrounded by lead. It had an aura alteration to look like any of the other couple hundred minor effects in the house.

Whenever he died, his minions raised hell for a couple weeks, and the PC's were kept on the road while the lich spawned, and left.

ShadowFighter15
2009-11-16, 06:45 AM
Someone's been reading their Evil Overlord list.

Well I plan to write a fantasy novel someday, and to write my own adventures for D&D, so I consider it research. :smallbiggrin:

unre9istered
2009-11-16, 10:53 AM
As far as I know this is an unbeatable defense for a phylactery barring DM/Divine/Artifact (read: RAW breaking) interference:

Cast Genesis to create a small empty sphere plane, alternately just find such an existing plane.

In this plane place your phylactery.

Cast a Delayed (metamagic from CA) Forbiddance over the entire plane. Then planeshift out.

If/When you are destroyed you will reform in this plane. This is the only way anything (barring previous statement about RAW breaking stuff) can get into this plane because of the forbiddance. When you're ready to leave dispell the forbiddance, then recast it (delayed again) and planeshift out.