What are you doing with Wights and Liches?

[larsdangly]

You might have noticed we now have 2 different versions, each, of the Wight and the Lich (the Wight appears in Legacy Edition core rules and the Book of Unlife; the Lich in Adventures and Unlife). They are basically the same idea, but differ markedly in capabilities. E.g., core rules Wight is hurt only by magic items and spells and heals itself using Drain Strength; Unlife Wight doesn't have these qualities. The two Liches have similar differences.

What are you doing about this in your campaign? Are you using one version and not the other? Using both as different 'varieties'? Neither?

[hcobb]

I have my own Liches that derive from the existing rules.

[larsdangly]

How so? Are you combining a few existing spells as permanent enchantments of some sort? So, you simply don't use 'official' Wights and Liches at all?

[hcobb]

My complaint is that the Lich published in Tomb of the Wizard-King has the life energy of over a thousand living wizards and should simply be creating new elementals and zombies every few minutes until all of Cidri is overrun.

My hack is that wizard staves remain active after death (ITL 18) and a ghost retains the knowledge it had in life (ITL 84) and that the Mana stat is knowledge, and can be replenished through contemplation. (ITL 148) This gives a ghost-stave 3 Mana a day vs a living wizard's 25 fatigue (ITL 154).

So a Lich (the stave cast Zombie on the wizard's own corpse) in a tomb is performing magic very slowly over hundreds of years rather than being the overwhelming spell caster of the Overlord anime.

My only ruling on Wights is that branded crossbow bolts have very little effect on them.

[larsdangly]

I'm confused about the start of all that; how do you see the Lich in Wizard King as having the spell casting resources of thousands of mages? He possesses pretty high spell casting ST, but it is not out of line with what you would expect of any high IQ wizard that knows Staff V and perhaps has a ST battery or two lying around.

But I do like your suggestion that a spirit of an experienced wizard could make him or herself a 'zombie puppet' using existing spells.

[hcobb]

Adventures page 5/2: "Liches regain 1d-2 hits (minimum of 1) every turn, including ST lost to hits and to spell use"

So that is two fatigue regained per turn by the one and only fatigue regenerator in the entire fnording game. (Compare with vampires and werewolves or even wights that need to use Drain Strength on the living.)

So the lich simply creates a ST 30 elemental or zombie every five minutes, 288 times a day. These zombies then rot over the next 30 days so over eight thousand are active at any given time.

On the elemental route he loses 22% of his elementals every day so only has an army of 1300 elementals, all at ST 30.

[larsdangly]

Don't werewolves and vampires and trolls all regain 1 ST per two turns? How is that qualitatively different?

Anyway, that high rate of ST recovery means a Lich, a la the Adventures volume, would be a highly accomplished enchanter, but it would not let him or her cast an individual spell that cost more than his or her full-ST reserves of spell casting power.

[hcobb]

ITL 83 "Vampires and werewolves heal I hit of physical damage every other turn, unless the wound was made by a silver weapon."

Note not fatigue lost to spellcasting.

Adventures page 5/11: KALINORE THE WIZARD-KING ST 20, Phylactery also ST 20. (Page 5/2 says that this is "just like a staff")

So it takes 50 turns to regenerate the 100 fatigue needed to fully recharge the Phylactery. Ergo he can cast a 35 point spell every five minutes, 24 by 7.

So an army of eight thousand zombies with STs of 15 to 30. Every time a zombie rots to ST 15 he recasts Zombie to bring it back to ST 30.

[larsdangly]

Sounds good. I've often worried that I couldn't think of a valid way for an evil 'Arawn/Skeletor' sort of figure to have an army of scary zombies.

[hcobb]

While TFT wizards are very powerful (in D&D terms), a TFT Lich is at the level of Ainz Ooal Gown.

If you use my Lich rules instead then the Lich King needs to have dungeons full of humans in cages to Drain Strength from all the time.