[JasonByrne]

Hello GURPS forum! Long-time player, first time posting. Any advice on forum etiquette would be greatly appreciated.

I've seen this forum debate the finer points of stopping a Lich from rising during the two-day period of death before the spell takes hold. My question concerns whether you have encountered a player that tried to use Remove Enchantment to destroy a Lich, after arising in all its strength.

We had a character facing an NPC Lich, who used Ogham symbol magic to word a syntactic "Lich-Buster" spell, essentially Identify, Isolate, and Destroy Enchantment (Control-Control-Weaken-Magic). This allowed the symbol magic to identify its own target, negating the penalty for the caster not knowing the Lich Enchantment, as well as independently disentangling it from other Enchantments that might be present, removing the stacking penalties for removing one Enchantment of several. 9 magic to cast, with the noun "Magic" doubled by the verb Control, 42 seconds time to cast finger-drawing.

We let the Lich Enchantment resist Lich-Buster in a quick-contest. Finger-drawing was at -3, with another -2 for four Words. All the same, with a well-timed Luck, Lich-Buster won the quick-contest, and the Lich was returned to death instantly.

Syntactic magic can be hard for the GM to wrangle. Would you assess anything further to hinder the effectiveness of this spell, if it were your game? Lich takes a good two years to achieve; it seems uneven to allow it to be diffused in 42 seconds.

Any advice would be welcome! Thanks very much, and a pleasure to meet you all!