You ever wonder why Wizards bother with shit like Lichdom when becoming a Vampire is far easier and has a significantly higher quality of life?
>>98341625what setting?
>>98341629Sorry, I meant to clarify: The classic D&D / Pathfinder Lich with the phylactery and all that shit.
But I want to be a cool skeleton wizard
>>98341625Vampirism is the result of obsession with the carnal (or just bad luck in a dungeon I guess but go with me here). It's about getting addicted to sensation and then (rather than letting it destroy you) making it everyone's problem forever.Lichdom is about obsessive ambition. The need to excel and exceed in magic, and living forever not out of lust for life or fear of death but because infinite time is a useful element of your journey to the outer limits of the arcane.A wizard who wants to live forever for research purposes won't want the distraction of constant bloodthirst (especially if meeting that need with intellectual efficiency means you just get hungrier because lol curse). A wizard who wants to be a vampire can get vampirised easily. A wizard who just fears death can try to cheat the reaper a bunch of other ways.
>>98341654Well, I mean - What do you even *do* as a Lich? You can't enjoy shit any longer.
>>98341637Fewer upkeep requirements and weaknesses on a lich.>>98341660You pursue intellectual pleasure and perhaps the pleasure of subjugating others.
>>98341660Study and learn magic. That's it. It's just grim determination to learn it all and master the most intricate secrets at the heart of it. Not for power - that's incidental - but for the lunging need to know.Nobody who's happy becomes a lich. Nobody becomes a lich to become happy either. It's easy to say "you'd have to be nuts to want that" because that is indeed true.
>>98341625Vampires cant endure the sun, meanwhile a lich lives forever if he's clever about hiding his phylactery.
>>98341625Because vampirism affects the mind and soul, Lichdom is the only method that allows you to control your soul while undead.And a lich is objectively stronger than a vampire; bloodsuckers have thousands of weaknesses, and lichs only have one (having your phylactery broken).
>>98341625No, I don't ever wonder that.It's inane.
>>98341625Vampires have way more weaknesses, but more importantly, you become a lich because you want to seclude yourself in a dungeon and study magic forever. Vampires have to interact with normal people and be social.
>>98341625>>98341637Virgin wizards don't know about patriarch aged demigod vampires
>>98341625because the common young vampire isn't all that due to his many weaknesses+ the vast majority of vampires outside of the domains of dread die before they get to a age where they evolve out of these weaknesses and then get to rival demi and then lesser gods in strenght (the old van richten's guide to vampires had age categories for vampires which the bg3 ritual references... 7000 souls just to skip two age ratings)and if you don't want to be a shitty common vampire for literally hundreds of years (which again most vampires don't even make it to that age in dnd) then you need to seduce a succubus to the point where she feels true love (also meaning no magic) for you and wizards... aren't a charisma classthe phylactery is also a better respawn mechanic than the coffin one vampires in dnd have in most editions >>98341926liches still need to kill people for souls (and really old editions even need to spill fresh blood of the slayn on their phylactery) as it's meant to be the most evil immortality so if anything they have a harder time in seclusion because vampires could technically live on a herd or cult thing
>>98341625Traditional games?
>>98341625The pro move is being a lich but disguising yourself as a vampire.
All of these life extension methods are cope. Merely living for a long time is not comparable to living forever.
>>98341625Vampires in 3.5 lose their soul, IIRC
>>98341625>and has a significantly higher quality of life?>Vampire: cannot be exposed to sun or running water, turned off by garlic, has to drink blood>Liche: can be exposed to sun, running water is no problem, ignore garlic, no need to eat or drinkyou were saying?
>>98341625Vampire are almost always subservient to their progenitor. If not straight up mind-controlled by them.It sucks ass. Big time.Lich are their own boss.
>>98341625Need big breasted vampire gf
>>98341660>>98341678In one of the AD&D1e books it outright said most liches kill themselves before they turn 300 because of how depressing being a lich is.Everyone thinks they're going to be the super wizard who discovers everything about the universe, few are ready to deal with the fact that eventually you run out of things to discover or that each discovery now takes decades of research only to realize you made an error 73 years ago that completely invalidates everything.It's also said that this is why so many liches are fucking insane psychopaths because that's the only real pleasure they can still get.
You become a vampire if you´re a Chad or a CoomerYou become a Lich if you´re a Trucel or a Chud
>>98347691What about death knights, mummy lords, and wraith lords?
>>98341637Why did you phrase the OP as a question?Anyway, liches are superior to vampires, including not dying in sunlight.
>>98341660Who says you can't enjoy anything? Just polymorph if you want to have sex or whatever.
>>98347671That's pretty much what I'd expect. People always over estimate their own mental resilience.Not me, though. I'd handle it.
Can a vampire become a lich?
>>98347671Liches sound a lot like really really dedicated academics, including the suicidality.I'm not going to regret working towards and achieving my Ph.D., right?
>>98347803
>>98347786A the DM I'm saying, no, the process of lichdom requires a wizards living soul in the ritual.
>>98341625Vampires are slaves to their condition, liches are their own masterssimple as
>>98347671kek that makes liches' lives shorter than your average elf or dwarf
can a lich just turn back into a regular living human?
>>98341625No I just wonder if you have ever played games in your life.
>>98352008True
>>98352541NoYou can ascend to godhood and renounce being a god to become human again.
>>98352541Even if they had the magic to, the gods would fuck them up in the afterlife. You can't scorn Wee Jas like that.
>>98347736Fuck off martialnigger, this is a casterfag thread.
>>983416253 options for vampires:> be a mopy self-pitying drifter, use thick eyeliner, listen to bad music, write poems about how it sucks to be immortal, seduce high school girls, get put down by Van Hansen> be part of vampire high-society, realize that the rest of your immortal life with intrigue, paranoia, and backstabbing. Realize that while vampires are technically immortal, most don't even last a few years in this lifestyle.> Take over Bumfuckberg castle in one of the most backwards and isolated parts of the country, terrorize illiterate inbred peasants who don't understand the concept of hygiene
>>98347671Nah, I'd imagine liches are academic types who have carried on some kind of research they have forgotten the point of during the millenia. Or they have been locked in eternal petty rivalry with each other over some minor difference of opinion, looking to prove themselves right while mocking and humiliating their opponent. They've been doing this for millenia and show no signs of giving up and moving on to better things.
>>98353973Could be a cool campaign hook. Two bitter liches working through intermediaries are manipulating entire kingdoms as part of a bitter millennia long rivalry over some minute difference in aracana that they've both forgotten.
>>98347671And this is way D&D is calle dndogshit. Literally redtape everywhere and moralism.
>>98347671This shit is asinine. One need only look at people all around to see this isn't true at all. Flesh and blood living people already waste their time in some form of (in)activity for hours on end, only taking a break when their biology starts screaming at them, be it hunger, exhaustion or the need to take a shit, and some don't stop even then (see poopsockers). Autists are this times a hundred. If you made a lich out of the average dedicated Minecraft modder he would go on making maps and mods forever and not even notice when the sun goes cold.
>>98341625Vampirism is way too much work. Lichdom is far easier.
>>98354607>If you made a lich out of the average dedicated Minecraft modder he would go on making maps and mods forever and not even notice when the sun goes cold.Damn but thats pretty much how I imagine a Lich to be like. totally consumed in their own work and not giving any care at all to the wider world.
>>98354641>Liches are all turboautists who sacrificed their living body to devote themselves to their spergy obsessions foreverAt last I truly see.
>>98354607>If you made a lich out of the average dedicated Minecraft modderWhat'd be the generic medieval setting equivalent of that? Chess?
>>98354607Tbh you don't think those kinds are more likely to kill themselves?>>98347671>>98341678>>98341660>>98341654All this talk about discovering things, you would think that the average magic setting would actually have...you know discoveries done by lichs, but they don't seem to make much of a difference. Even if they hoard their knowledge, by game rules they have nothing that other people can't do. All their magic is stuff that everyone else can cast. I guess this is where GMs come in and we make up our own unique spells and knwledge that just liches could reach with lichdon. But thinking about it. he is probably just dabbling on shit that elfs already discovered in the past.
>>98356694I think that's the combination of the assumption that just because something is written in the books, everyone has free access to it and various monster manuals not being a place to put new spells in.But let's look at the most basic example: 5e lich has access to Power Word: Kill. Quick 5etools search tells me that only other officially published creatures that also get it are an Illithilich (a lich variant), Orcus, and Sul Khatesh, Eberron's demonic overlord of dark magic. It is pretty much lich-exclusive spell, PCs can get it because they are fucking PCs.
>>98356755That and sometimes what they're researching doesn't have immediate practical use. Being the first one to discover how some underlying rule of magic works doesn't give you extra combat spells when every two bit magician has been unknowingly leaning on that rule the whole time.One of the classic lich plots is them running some sort of ritual that takes years, decades, or centuries to pull off. Your PC wizard might technically be capable of it, but they don't have the lifespan or lung capacity to stand in one spot chanting for an entire solar year straight.
>>98354607I think the fact that back then necromancers who wanted to become a Lich had to ritually kill themselves with a poison that had a significant chance of turning them into a vegetable or even worse, an immortal vegetable, suggests that the people who took the leap for lichdom weren't necessarily mentally well to begin with.
Overt alteration of the alignment implies a total rewrite of the personality into a chaotic evil parody of the real you. It's ego death with a blood-sucking monster wearing your skin and using your tools to get more blood.
>>98341625Depending on the setting. But often Vampires are often forced to serve who turn them till they're released or the one who turned them is killed. Where a Lich doesn't have to serve anyone to become one.Another reason is young vampires don't last as long as a lich is there are more weaknesses than a lich. Since as long as a lich as long as your phylactery isn't destroyed. You just come back, vampires have to deal with dying to sunlight, holy magic, stake to the heart, sliver, etc.
>>98357313>Overt alteration of the alignment implies a total rewrite of the personality into a chaotic evil parody of the real you.Lichcels become evil autistic versions of themselves.
