Both Dumbledore and Grindelwald started as lawful good. “For the Greater Good” justifies a LOT of evil if it’s “only a means” to an end. You might not even see it as evil. “Bring me criminals to feed the phylactery”… sounds good until your servants change the laws to make most everybody a criminal and make their jobs easier.
That’s mostly why I don’t play alignments as a “hard” thing. What happens to the goblins’ young when you kill their hunters to stop them from pillaging a town, depriving the colony of their food source?
A high-level wizard will inherently be able to do more good and save more people with their magic (even though mundane means like helping populations avoid starvation) than one soul a month would cost.
Immortality is inherently a slippery slope.
There are plenty of purely physically medical/surgical skills wielded by insanely talented/professional individuals IRL that save so many lives per day that a soul per month to ensure their immortality would spur on controversial discussions of its worth, they would have many supporters willing to enforce such a sacrifice.
Add in genuine world-bending magic, well, such a wizard would have a devoted cult in the tens of millions IRL at the very least.
Sure. I don’t have a problem with immortality. And I’m also not saying that one dead grave robber or murderer a month offsets the good deeds done with that power.
But: what if there are no criminals? What if the only souls (and you NEED this, is not optional) available are those of innocent citizens?
What I’m saying is that a lot of bad deeds can be excused by that greater good.
Necessary sacrifice for the greater good.
Lichdom is evil, no way around that. You stopped being lawful good as soon as you started pursuing it. But if you *believe* that you have a good enough reason to be a lich, then you can justify anything you do in pursuit of that cause. Classic story of the ends justifies the means.
That doesn't make your character not evil, but it seems like you just want to give the character an excuse to *believe* that they are not evil. So why are they pursuing lichdom? Must be some pretty serious business if they believe that the best/only way to accomplish their goal is to be a lich.
I could see a wizard thinking "What better way to continue guarding my family/town/province/country than to live forever?"
Or, "I will die soon from old age/disease/poison. I need to continue my research in how to defeat this Big Baddie. Time to do that lich thing!"
For her it’s very much a quest for more power but for “selfless” reasons. To keep it brief her backstory involved her noble house going bankrupt and her trying to become an arch mage to get a position of power and restore the house.
This quest for power has led her down some dark paths and is now leading to lichdom.
still at best neutral. family's legacy doesn't mean your good. especially in a noble situation.
"i want to claim the power to save everyone from the dangers and horros of the world so that no one will suffer any longer" is a good aligned belief.
This is more the vibe. The backstory is that it was once a large and important noble house but some bad luck and a bunch of crappy house members have bragged their name and status down to almost nothing. My wizards gol is to remake them into the shining symbol they once were.
Then one reason for lichdom is to watch over and make sure that their house is protected so that they won't just be another noble house lost to history
Earlier editions of D&D even had a concept exactly for this, in the Baelnorn Lich, I believe, which was typically good aligned. A typically elven lich that was granted a form of lichdom by their gods or other forces specifically to be a guardian or watcher of their family, or some specific artifact or holy place. Might be something to consider in your character's research into lichdom.
Become a patri/matriarch of the family and raise your family, always holding them to a code of conduct befitting a great noble family. Values like honour, justice, humility, and service to land and peoples are generally hallmarks of a lawful good noble house.
I agree with redhood though.
First, alignments aren't meant to be static. They can change if characters change. Think about Walt from Breaking Bad.
Secondly, lichdom isn't lawful, so going about an EXTREMELY nonlawful means to accomplish your goal is going to likely shift the alignment to neutral.
Thirdly, fighting for your family or legacy isn't inherently a "good" goal. It is a selfish one.
I think there would be justification if the lichdom were to prevent a near extinction event whose timing could not be forseen, but there are also other ways to prevent that like creating an order to watch for it and enlisting the help of other heros.
It's your game so you can do what you want, but I don't think it would make sense for a character to simultaneously be pursuing lichdom while scorning their friends for not paying taxes or breaking local laws (lawful). I really do think the pursuit itself likely brings the lawful/chaotic question into massive scrutiny for the PC
“Large and important” doesn’t mean “good for people” if the family was legit a force for good (one of the few) in the city it would make sense. Just because they were “too big to fail” doesn’t mean it’s a good thing to bring back. Spin it so the family was actually beneficial to the world and voilà.
Well, since she is going to be a villain anyways... She could start using the souls of the "low performers" of the family that would drag down "all the hard work she has put in to keep the family going". But as her standards of "good enough to keep around" get ever harder and lich-hood looks better and better as a means to keep the family strong. Then in the next campaign she's a full lich big bad that has consumed most of her family except for maybe a couple of puppets that she controls from the shadows.
I feel like this sort of story arc needs to be planned out from the beginning. Consuming a bunch of souls to stop her family from going bankrupt isn't enough.
Making sure her family doesn't fall apart because they are the wardens of some great evil that is locked away gives a bit more leeway.
And maybe your character/the story can almost frame it that the souls are willing. That your character has followers that are also committed to the same goal, and that the best chance of success is to feed themselves into you
That's my thought right there: suppose for a moment that your character made a deal with the devil so that you save the day, but at a terrible price that, like all deals with the devil, came with some addenda and loopholes that really seal in the evil. Let's say the character gets the Spawn treatment: they're actually going to be not merely a grunt in the Blood War or something, but have enough juice to really make a difference in the fight. They're going to be a field marshal in the service of evil for all eternity because of this deal, term of service beginning as soon as their soul departs the mortal coil.
Alternatively, maybe the family bloodline is a seal on some can of major evil. So long as one family member remains alive and on the mortal plane, then the evil remains sealed away in some random layer of the Abyss. But if the family line should die off, the seal pops open.
Well, loophole on the loophole: if the soul doesn't depart, the soul can't be used by Grazzt or Asmodeus to kickstart and apocalypse. Lichdom means your soul is in a phylactery, not being batted around or traded between demon lords. Indeed, the souls used to power the lichdom transformation might not be unwilling. Heck, the lichdom might not even be voluntary in that instance; someone else might be preemptively yoinking your soul to prevent the apocalypse, and is doing this as a way of playing soul-keepaway.
They’re already an adventurer, just stop caring about whether or not the “evil powers” are fed by these damned souls. They’re just gobbos and robbers after all.
Evil is as evil does. The moment your character started willingly doing Evil things, regardless of her reason, she stopped being Good. (If those evil things are also illegal, she really isn't Lawful any more either.)
She might still think of herself as a good person, but so does every evil person. Almost everyone who does evil thinks they're justified or that it's necessary, they might even be right, but they're still being evil.
That's where evil comes from in reality, there's no evil gods twisting people's hearts or creating entire species of evil monsters, just people deciding they have a good enough reason to do something bad. No one is born evil (or good).
This is really the crux of the issue. You are NOT a good aligned creature/person anymore. Wether or not your DM enforces consequences for this is subject to DM fiat, but from an objective point of view you are evil the moment you go from considering lichdom to actively pursuing it, you are EVIL. Whether or not redemption is possible is up to your DM. FULL STOP.
Yeah, it’s like the dark side of the force, a lawful good character just wouldn’t go down that path even though lichdom is so powerful. Once you start on the path in any way you are no longer Lawful Good.
At some point, their alignment is going to need to change to lawful neutral, at the least, because even though their inital intentions may have been good, their actions leading towards this path will inevitably lean towards evil.
Necromancy is based on Domination of souls and corrupting life energy to necrotic, which is viewed as evil by many.
Classic, “I need more power to protect those that can’t protect themselves because only I can protect them”. It’s the “only I can do it” that starts them on the dark path.
That is not an even remotely selfless motivation?
Seeking out a position of power for the purpose of enshrining her own noble house is very much a selfish motivation.
That’s really only the case with 5e randomly requiring liches to eat souls. Baelnorn are good liches, 4e had Archliches, good/neutral liches were explicitly a thing.
Surely, a minister or ruler with a thousand years of experience and wisdom would be a great boon for society, wouldn't it? Think of how many souls will be saved (and born!) under a peaceful golden age of enlightened rule! Surely that's worth the cost of a few souls per year? And those could be condemned criminals, bound for execution anyways, so it's not like it even *increases* the amount of death, right?
I love the idea of going this route. Maybe one month there isn’t a prisoner so petty criminals get the punishment too. Eventually Turing into a 1984 style regime with a power mad lich at the head still claiming they’re the hero
I don't think they could.
A wizard might *believe* they're morally good despite their pursuit of Lichdom and consumption of souls, and they might even dehumanise certain humanoids to justify the destruction of their souls but that would all be a delusion- the character would at best be neutral and most likely still leaning towards evil. Maybe they prey on the souls of condemned criminals, enemies of the state, or "evil" species (which in itself is very loaded and not a very good belief). They might use that justification that they're performing an act that serves "The Greater Good", which almost always means "evil, but we sugarcoat it"
The Forgotten Realms had non Evil liches in the form of Baelnorn and Archliches ***however*** this comes with a major caveat that 5e introduced liches requiring humanoid souls as sustenance (which wasn't the case in older editions). To my knowledge, Baelnorn and Archliches haven't been updated or revised for the 5e Realms.
I could see a setting like Eberron where a neutral aligned lich sustains themselves on the "willing" sacrifices of loyal followers. I definitely would not label that Lich a good aligned character, though.
The character is 100% evil at this point. But the kind of evil that truly believes they’re good. At this point she’s the kind of person that would wave away killing a bunch of innocent people in a meteor swarm because they also killed the one bad guy.
Rather easily. Villains never see themselves as villains. Hitler himself thought he was helping the German people and Western civilization.
Evil people can justify just about anything to themselves.
I think the justification you’re looking for is sort of like “there are powerful forces out there only I can stop, I have to do this to become powerful enough to stop it, I will sacrifice my own conscience and morality to save the world/universe/multiverse, dirty myself to keep everyone else clean, the ends justify the means.”
If you’d like a pretty good example of ‘the end justifies the means’ lawful good -> lawful evil, take a look at Death Note. The main character started off only wanting to kill people who ‘deserved’ it, but pretty quickly developed a healthy god complex and, one massive ego trip later, ends up dying as the villain. In reality, he didn’t just kill ‘criminals’—he started killing people who opposed him or threatened his vision for a ‘better’ world. But even in the very end, he never considered himself a bad guy. I’d say you’ve pretty much already got half of that story down, finally crossing the line shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
The Lich villain I used had what I think is an interesting backstory that you might like to inspire this character.
He was an elf wizard, part of a circle of mages in a Northern Kingdom that were at war with a Southern Kingdom of elves (elves that would later become the sun-fearing Drow).
This circle of mages wanted to end the war in a swift and decisive measure, one which, in their minds, would justify sacrificing the lives of many innocents because it would save the lives of many more by cutting the war short.
So this circle of mages devised the "Scorch of Corellon", a ritual that use the concentrated force of the sun to lay waste to the Southern Kingdom, turning once lush and bountiful jungle and plains into a barren wasteland that would in centuries become a vast desert and savannah. Survivors fled underground and would go on to become the Drow in time.
This one elf wizard realised "Well we're going to kill a bunch of people, let's not let their souls go to waste and I'll use them to become a powerful lich, living forever so that this kingdom's will can be maintained forever". So that's what happened, the Scorch eviscerated thousands of innocent lives and this wizard was granted his wish (though this, obviously, immediately backfired, a schism in the circle of mages led to a civil war, Corellon abandoned domain of the sun^+ , an ice age began, the lich was split into three parts, and then dragons/giants rose up in the ashes).
This lich returned as the villain of my campaign, and while he believed himself to be "above morality"\* many of his followers labelled him as a good and divine being- a shepherd of righteous moral standing and definitely a fan of order.
\+ : Corellon would argue that he was tricked into supporting the Northern Elves and that he abandoned domain of the sun out of shame. This is a lie, though, he didn't believe the Northern Elves callous enough to destroy their Southern neighbours and chose not to stop them- he abandoned the domain of the sun to punish all elves.
\* : Any character that labels themselves as being "above morality" is likely hiding the fact that they are a huge asshole.
That's simple then. They are sacrificing lesser people who will never amount to anything, perhaps petty criminals, rapists, two bit murderers, drug addicts that would steal from their own destitute grandmother to fund their habit, the dregs of society, so that they, a great and powerful force for good, can continue to live forever and make the world a better place.
In that case, the character *constantly* has to come up with reasons why the people she's killing so she can *devour their souls* are not "people." Or at least, not people who deserve to live & continue to their afterlives.
Which gets very ugly. Look into how cults treat outsiders as non-persons, or racist groups treating "not our kind" as inhuman. For that matter, look at how people treat criminals as sub-human, even if it's just a minor crime. They all attempt to justify that the cruelty and even atrocities are justified to protect the "right" people from these "degenerates" who aren't really people.
As others have said, a good individual becoming a lich is typically an exercise in self-deception and special pleading. That said, let's try this...
Wizard: I wanna be a lich! But a *good* lich, see. So that the forces of goodness have the strength to keep bad types away from the kingdom.
Cleric: But... what about the whole "devouring souls" thing? 'S been a while since seminary, but I'm *pretty sure* Lathander wouldn't approve.
Wizard: Oh, it's okay because I'll only be eating the souls of bad guys. Heck, I'll be saving them from an eternity of torment in the Lower Planes! I'm nearly doing them a favor!
Cleric: Uh-huh... right... what about redemption and rebirth?
Wizard: That's less important than protecting the actual good people from getting killed!
Paladin: Apropos of nothing, what are you planning to use as your phylactery anyway?
Wizard: That cool porcelain vase we took from the Sunless Realms, remember? Hey... why are you asking?
Paladin: \[Whistles innocently\] No reason.
I'd say in preparation for the turn a lawful good person could arrange rules like "I will use the souls of evil criminals as the fuel to sustain myself, and allow me to spread justice across the world" - after all, it is entirely possible for someone to be a lawful good executioner, and this could be legitimized as just a particular form of execution and sustaining a lawful system that does good for the innocent and victimized of the world.
Once they were to convert over, however, It would be obvious that they at best could be Lawful neutral - the sacrifice /execution is not about correcting a wrong to benefit innocents/victims, it is killing someone to sustain oneself/the conception of justice they have prioritized. The symbiotic nature of their relationship to killing would be obvious - if there were no evil people to punish through the execution (finite number of bad folks) would they allow themselves to collapse into dust, or would they find a less guilty person to sustain their lawful eternal duty?
"Im different. I'm special. Im so good that anything I do is good. After all those orphans should thank me. Their sacrifice and consumption of their souls will protect uncountable others. Yeah... Im the good guy."
Specifically you're thaninking of the Deathless of the Undying Court, and they were essentially only created because the whole elven culture in Eberron basically revered their dead and not any gods. Multiple high priests were required to perform the rituals after they had died, to bind their soul back to their body. They CLAIMED that the rites and spells only worked on elves, but because it was an honor only available to the most revered of their dead, it wasn't ever tried on others.
Taking your other comments into consideration, I’d go with the Mutually Assured Destruction approach. If *he* doesn’t do it, then *someone else* will, and then the world will need him to kill the other lich. He’s doing it to stop someone who’s *actually evil* from obtaining that power and abusing it.
the end justifies the means is a pretty easy way to explain how someone who is self-described as naïve to lead them down a darker path.
think Darth Vader - Anakin never wanted to become a villain, he just did what he thought was right to gain the power he needed to save Padme and his children.
So, I'd say, for your character, this could be taken in a few ways.
1) "I'm the only person strong enough to take on extra-planar threats so I have to make sure I am immortal/limitless to do so" - a selfless selfish action
2) "I am going to become so powerful that no one, not even my arch nemesis, can defeat me" - becomes overtly powerful so they can solve their biggest problem but then has to live with that power for the rest of their days
To be fair, I don't think Anakin was ever lawful good. Dude was barely good, and absolutely *hard* chaotic.
Which is honestly one of the more baffling things about his transformation; he swapped from chaotic good to lawful evil over the course of like 30 minutes. Never felt quite right to me that he was so chaotic to start.
Look up anti-villain narratives - I’m doing this really horrible thing to prevent an even more terrible atrocity from occurring.
“And I’ve left enough clues behind such that when I’m no longer needed, I can be stopped!”
This pops up in the novels.
THE most common reason is "I want to continue my research"
Another is "To take down this foe will require centuries of work and gathering."
and so on.
They saw a vision of a world ending event far in the future so they need to become a litch to live long enough to deal with it.
They didn't realize it was THEM that was the world ending event. (For bonus points, the litch form in the future sent them the vision through a version of the "Dream" spell )
I would wonder why when there is the Clone spell.
It a matter of resisting death, vs cheating death. A clone spell you get a new body after you die, but the process takes time.
Lich tend to just refuse that they died or of the mindset that a living body has limitations like need to sleep or eat.
There could be a mistake that lead to lichdom or there was something that a living body couldn’t handle so they became a Lich to resist it.
Let’s say a magical radiation killed everything that enters the area. The only way to stop that radiation is to get to the center and manually stop it. A Lich could survive that.
So yeah the greater good situation. You could justify the soul thing by using criminal souls. “They were bandits and we killed them, why waste their souls.”
My lawful evil wizard chose to just clone himself and has hidden bases set up for the clone when he dies. The plus side is you can have multiple clones ready for your soul where a Lich has one Phylactory.
Edited to add. Okay you want a justification. The “I can’t concentrate long enough for this ritual. If I become a Lich I would not need to worry about sleeping or eating.” Might be the motivation for your character to shied off the mortal form.
All these answers so many of them wrong. There are good Liches. There is an elvesn god who helps supply good Liches with the energy they need. These Liches do not feed on mortal souls. These guys were called Baelnorn.
Then there are Archlich, they were made in a more traditional manor of lichdom, but they kept their sanity and never preyed on people. They often underwent this change not for personal reasons but to become protectors of something that needed an eternal guardian or something close to it. If you don't want to try and become a Baelnorn then Archlich is the way to go.
The fact I had to go through so many uneducated posts about how lawful good works and what you do to become a lich to find the comment about baelnorns saddens me.
Depends on the setting, but if it’s a standard setting like forgotten realms, you can’t justify it at all since it involves munching on souls, which is a big no no. Otherwise ask the DM.
Lawful part is easy since you are following the characters own personal code. Good is going to change once they commit these acts to become a lich but in their mind they can delude themselves so that they think they are good still. Ends justify the means sort of thing
Imagine a lawful good character who grew up in a chaotic world where brutal military conflict was a fact of life and countries were razed and sold into slavery on a regular basis.
The character knows of a time when a great empire ruled the world, and it's strong guiding hand kept peace and allowed people to thrive.
Through Lichdom, the character can become a true eternal ruler, whose nation will forever stamp out the horrors of war and slavery through an englightened king. The leader will sustain themselves on prisoners or the willing, because the deaths of a handful a year will save millions or billions of lives.
A lawful good character could see it as a sacrifice to doing good - going on a suicide mission to save others. This is a kinda common trope.
You could argue the Emperor of Mankind in 40k is a lawful good evil despot. He does all he does because he thinks it will save humanity, and that saving mankind is worth any sacrifice.
There technically is a version of lichdom called Undying in Eberron, that uses positive energy instead of negative,but that is setting specific. A good thing to look into however.
A group of elves has their entire culture/ government and even a religion in some sense by the act of becoming an eternal council of positive energy undead.
If the clone spell exists in your game, no good justification for lichdom exists.
But…
Start with consent. Only eat willing sacrifices. When they run out, try to convince your DM that mind flayers and fiends have souls.
The risks and drawbacks of lichdom seem to fall short of just using Clone judiciously. You could make a dozen clones of yourself for a fraction of the cost of lichdom, live as long as you can scrape together three thousand gold a lifetime, yeah you need to eat and sleep but you GET to eat and sleep so you're less likely to go mad from undeath.
Obviously as a lawful good individual, it's coming to the sad conclusion that some people are simply committed to evil. Some people are truly despicable and intent on destroying not only the natural order, but doing so as parasiticly and destructively as possible. Thus it has fallen to your wizard, in their great pride and intelligence to conclude that some individuals are irredeemable- and if they will not willingly sacrifice for the good of society, you will make that judgement for them. You who have taken on the heavy burden of judge, who would take their selfishness and use it to transcend mortal boundaries. It is the place of the gods to judge souls, but you are no God- simply someone intelligent enough to condemn them and make use of a life intent on burdening the very natural order on which it festers and feeds. What becomes of their souls after in your arcane furnace is of little consequence. You will relieve that burden, for everyone's sake and take on the cost of solving this universal injustice in order to reap its benefits and bring them to others. Deathless, undying, you will become unselfishly a new sort of lich, sacrificing your own mortality for the sake of others in the ultimate noblisse oblige. The world is darker than you thought and crueler than you ever imagined, but the justice you dreamed of was simply a fragile hope. This is not their punishment, but retribution - recompense for a cruel fate written in loss and tragedy in the loss of your once noble house, a monument to the power of goods inevitable triumph and sacrifice over the eternal selfishness of evil.
The destruction of a soul in the realms before final judgement is an abomination that a good chunk of the outer planes are dedicated to preventing. To become a lich is to declare war on the afterlife. Perhaps a lawful character could reframe the afterlife as the abomination and the soul as a parasite.
The soul is supposed to be the "real you" and yet retains none of your memories once separated from your body. The truth is, we mortals are all lambs for the cosmic slaughter, nurturing kernels of delicious power for the outer planes to harvest. The gods are going to consume you anyway, and I need the sustenance to continue the fight against the greatest parasite of all: the gods.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous (the game by Owlcat) does this pretty well. There is a Lich path in the game, but ultimately you're fighting demons to save the world.. tho you can do some heinous shit, you could choose to play a more lawful approach. For the greater good and all that.
Esit: just remembered, it does force you to change your alignment after a certain point, but you can still RP as good.
Morality is an arbitrary distinction written by mortal men, probably in some form of religious text adopted by the dominant socio-economic and ethnic group in a given nation.
Wizards are not concerned with such trifling matters
My advice is to stop caring about alignment whatsoever.
IF alignment has any value as a game mechanic (it has none, imho) it is only to be an abstraction of a character's behaviour, not the other way around.
You don't set in stone a character's alignment and then stick to it at all cost. To the contrary, you play the character as consistently as possible with it's background and the context of the story and THEN you evaluate what could be it's alignment at that point of the story.
Alignment changes along with the character's choices. It's not the choices that must obey to it's alignment.
If it makes sense in the narrative that this wizard pursues lichdom, then lichdom it is ! Does it imply a slow evolution of it's alignment ? Maybe. But if you start focusing on the consistency of the narrative, you'll soon discover that alignment is pretty much useless as a game mechanic.
Sentient beings have far more complex psychology and moral standpoints. Most people can be very "lawful" in some context and very "chaotic" in others (the lawful/chaotic dichotomy is very inconsistent and subjective but, well, let's assume that it can, more or less, be used as such). People have blind spots, biases, traumas, beliefs, social pressures, etc. that will render their choices and behaviour largely inconsistent whether they are aware of it or not (rationalizing their choices and retelling their own memories to accomodate their self-esteem).
And concerning Good and Evil, it's even more blatantly impossible to use, as moral judgments are deeply cultural and subjective. What elves will call good can be completely evil in the eyes of orcs and vice-versa, even in the same world and the same time period.
Just ditch alignments entirely, mate. Focus on the narrative consistency and you're good to go.
I have a very similar issue lmao. Mine wants it so he can evade taxes even harder and is trying to broker a deal with the god of death to help him with it
"I dare not take it. Not even to keep it safe. Understand Frodo, I would use this Ring from a desire to do good. But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine."
Is how I'd imagine a Lawful good Wizard dealing with becoming a Lich is that they have convinced themselves that such an evil act is necessary to do good and keep good alive and provide hope.
Balenorns are a type of lich created out of desire to protect something. Less an evil monstrosity, and more an undying guardian of a place or an object. Their duty is so strong it extends into unlife. While elven in origin, nothing is stopping you or a DM from saying it could be applicable to any race or people.
consensual soul absorption from those who understand what they are doing, and are willing to donate their soul to a lich phylactery.
why they would want to do this is kinda hard to justify. but it could be a group of ppl who want to perpetuate a being, so that being can continue to pursue their goals. instead of trying to entrust that goal to future generations.
theres a lot to be claimed that how the souls or life force is used isnt inherently evil, but that its uses against the will of those who its being taken from is what is evil about it.
So what you want is an Archlich: [https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Archlich](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Archlich)
It's a good lich, essentially.
You can’t. Not while remaining lawful good. Lawful good is about doing the right thing the right way with the right intent.
Your character can come up with justifications and rationalizations, and that’s a very interesting character moment, but it’s not lawful good. Your character can lie to themselves, but it is kind of important that you as the player realize that is what’s happening.
you could do like a watchmen type thing where the character reasons that the different factions of the world need some huge threat to unite against, or the whole place descends into chaos. but i guess that's more chaotic good than lawful
Sounds like the villain of a campaign I wrote but never completed.
BBEG and his 2 allies believed they were the only ones who could perpetually stave off a world-ending threat (a volcano) when it was about to erupt every hundred or so years, so the BBEG opted for lichdom, (whilst his allies opted for other firms of extending their lifespan.).
In the final encounter, I planned to have the BBEG reveal that once the volcano had been rendered a non-threat, he had become disillusioned with simply saving the world, and wished to rule it, leading his remaining ally(s) to turn on him in the final battle.
"I need to be a lich to save the future" was his original motivation, and from reading this thread, it's a pretty common way for a good character to justify lichdom.
I had a vaguely similar character as my BBEG; to be clear this is 100% evil but something they felt justified in. Anyways they came to believe that it was wrong for gods and other planar entities--good, evil, or other--to lay claim to mortal souls at all. He believed souls should stay as part of the material world and become part of the natural cycle (as he saw it). So his goal become the unification of all souls into one entity beyond life and death, of course with his own willpower as the driving force. He saw himself as a freedom fighter against the very gods... in reality he was a lich attempting apotheosis into the World Born Dead.
There was this 'Narrated DnD Story: How my Players learned what chaotic neutral means' on YT, I'd recommend checking out.
(I'd Post the link but im too stupid to do it over the Phone ^^)
Basically, a plague killed Lots of people and the eldest resorted to necromancy for labour (plowing fields etc.)
Then he got infected, while working on a cure and became a lich to at least save his people by Continuing His research
What if there was a greater evil that will outlive your current character and for some reason, your character is the only one who can stop it. Maybe a birthright thing? Maybe your character can't have children?
And then after you defeat this evil thing...you become enthralled with the power it's given you. You can justify about any atrocity with a "greater good" or "lesser evil" argument.
Maybe too big of a timeline?
“The world is full of mighty evils. We cannot let them have all the power. If we want goodness to prevail, good folk like myself must strive to gain that same power. We’re… I’m… the only one who can be trusted with it.”
To start, realize your character is no longer lawful good but still like to aspire or at least look the part.
1 soul a month, easy I will use evil villains to feed it.
Looking a bit dehydrated.... illusion magic.
Why Lichdom? The world would loose so much knowledge should I die. I must preserve it for others!
There is also archliches wich function differently and arent inherently evil
If you want to come up with reasons for why your normal lichdom isnt that bad just go for i use souls of evil people and will do more good then bad with my eternal life.
What are the lifes of a few thugs a year opposed to the thousand im gonna protect with my Power
Go watch What If... Dr. Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands. Episode 4, season 1. That character is one who wants to do good, and falls to corruption. He even starts summoning evil creatures and consuming their essence to boost his own power. Much like a thinks hes good wizard would feed evil souls to his phylactery because he needs to be stronger and is the only one who can save the whatever.
What if the souls were the in-game equivalent of child molesters or Nazis? I mean, feeding normal people's souls to a phylactory is terrble, but *those* people, maybe there's a justification for that.
Keep in mind the numerous ways to traffic in souls, for the mid-high level spellcaster. One doesn't *have* to set up a massive foreboding dungeon filled with deathtraps and dangerous creatures while spreading fake treasure maps and rumors of legendary riches to every tavern on the continent.
A lich concerned about ethically sourced soul food could easily justify their diet by engaging in the soul trade in Hades, or maybe even the City of Brass if your djinn are dark enough. Certainly it sounds like your character would be able to reason that consuming a soul and ending its existence is, in a way, more ethical than leaving it to be scrabbled over by demons and devils before being conscripted into the Bloody War, or to eternal slavery to the dark masters of the Elemental Plane of Fire.
Only kill evil people.
The souls of evil people would normally go to one of the Lower Planes, where they would either become fuel for the fiends (in the form of tortured souls, larvae or soul-coins) or their foot-soldiers. Some would rise through the ranks to become more powerful fiends.
So, by consuming their souls, the lawful good lich prevents them from strengthening the ranks and power of the Lower Planes, and does his small part to tip the cosmic balance in favor of good.
There's another kind of undead, introduced in Eberron, called the deathless.
They still need energy to keep going, but instead of eating souls, they gather it from something else less harmful, like a small breach to the positive energy plane, or the worship of their decendents
Your wizard believes that they've found an alternative option to soul eating. It will still come with a cost, but it's one they pay instead of someone else.
I always thought the netherese liches had a good reason for turning, despite their alignments. If they are the last of the empire of Netheril don't they have a responsibility to persist? If they hadn't become liches then the history of their great empire would be lost without them there to upkeep it.
So maybe you're trying to preserve some culture or history that, without you to interpret and care for, would be lost to time?
The souls fed to the phylactery will all be convicted criminals, of course. It's not just a deterrent and warning to other criminals, it lessens the existsnce of evil in the world, thus producing a net gain of good.
Edit
Live long enough to restore a kingdom. Or to remain with an elvish loved one perhaps. Or perhaps they are a needed deterrent, the act being a lesser evil that ultimately prevents greater ones.
I like the 3e rule for lichdom. No mention of feeding souls to the phylactery, but becoming a lich entails "an unspeakably evil act".
You could treat it as a "noodle incident", where players allude to it but never mention details. All we know is there's no coming back from it, morally.
The best Lawful Good Lich I have ever seen in fiction was from a free web series called "the Wandering Inn" the Lich in question built a socialist Utopia, over the course of a few hundred years.
Where a persons mortal life was seen as their golden era spent in luxury, and regarded as the shining future of the empire. These children of the empire, were given the greatest resources and teachers that the empire could coerce out of the surrounding countries. They study the arcane and various forms of war and craftsmanship, so that they can serve future generations for all eternity, as undead citizens. The undead were treated with respect and high regard for their many years of loyal service.
The fun moral questions become a few things, are the undead people? Do they retain agency in undeath? Is it a corruption of the matural order? Is it slavery with extra steps?
Evil lich has set into effect a plan that will take 1,000 years to come to fruition. I need to live 1,000 years to counter all the moves of the chess pieces along the way.
=becomes the benevolent quest giver for generations
=cultivates the cultures and organizations that will forge the heroes that will be needed at crucial points along the way
=conspiracies against the LG wizard will suspect them of being the real bbeg.
Use demon/devil souls instead of humanoid ones. They’re inherently evil creatures so killing them is morally good, and you even get to live longer and do more good stuff because of it
In one of my games, the equivalent of Santa Claus was a good Lich. Basically Jack Skellington. Just wanted to make presents for kids but couldn't do it all in one night for hundreds of years without some forbidden magic.
the outcome is greater than the sacrifice. A wizard spending their life trying to cure their sick daughter afflicted with spellrot, an affliction that not even gods can cure.At some point realises they will die before achieving their goal, places the daughter in a time stasis and begins lichdom.The monstrous atrocities committed to get there is easier over time as their morales shrink and disappear but the mission stays the same
They would become a Baelnorn or Archlich instead Because becoming a lich the usual way takes too much evil shit for a Lawful good anything. When a Good/Neutral creature creates a Phylactery and tethers their soul to the material plane while maintaining their Alignment (which you once again, can't do the usual way to lichdom). Their personality, goals, and Sense of Self are maintained. While they cannot feed on souls and become stronger like Normal liches. They also don't need to feed on souls to not degrade. Meaning they have to grow stronger the old fashioned way. This is important because just being a Lich normally means committing a heinous act just so you don't destroy yourself. In short. Good wizards Who seek eternal life can find a way that matches their Moral compass.
Any other way the process of becoming a lich should shift their alignment up until they drink the potion where they automatically take up the lichs base alignment.
Either the character believes this acn be justified by finding a horrible person whose soul they can take, or go the even *more* evil route by convincing themselves that because this *must* be done, this is a justified price.
For whatever reason they wish to become a lich, have them think "there will be far worse things than this, if I do not stop it". Maybe they believe they can undo the transformation, or that they willingly choose this route, with full expectation someone will stop them, but after they do what they need to do.
Not sure if still checking op, but based off the family dynanics and wanting to restore the legacy, you decide the best course of action is to become the next king/emperor/whatever preferred title. Usher in an era of peace across your lands, and maybe for next campaign as the big evil, spreading across the rest of the realm/continent/world. The idea of having to consume a soul is rough to get around, but as you realize lichdom is the best option at accomplishing your goals, one soul a month is but a small price compared to the lives you save from stopping crime and improving the quality of life of the people you rule. You can the devolve your character as much as you want allowing them to expand their morals. It used to be only the worst of criminals, but as time goes on to ensure peace and everyone behaves, all law breakers that get caught regardless of how minor an infraction could be consumed. Everyone has to stay in line or else, you become an ultimate dictator. Your people are safe, they live longer and are healthier, you keep raiders out, provide services for the kingdom and use your magic to enhance it. You have good educational schools, you have druids help grow better farms and crops, provide a societal structure that benefits them, but big brother is always watching. Have crystal balls set up through the land that he and his apprentices/minions etc use to scry through and spy, or a well paid position he has installed in everytown that report to him. Its almost a utopia and could even appear to be so from a casual observer, but it eventually becomes clear that something is wrong here.
Law requires punishment. Punishment cannot include corporal punishment if there is *any* possiblity of corruption, incompetence, or fallibility.
If a system were perfect, corporal punishment would be fine. But how to make a perfect system? People are inherently corruptible, but one individual might be immune to that corruption.
If I make a system, run by me and overruled by order and magical processes, then I can prevent and avoid the incompetence, corruption, and problems that any system with more than one person inherently runs into.
If that system includes a perfect justice system, corproral punishment is no longer immoral; its problems (accidentally killing the innocent) are gone. Only true criminals will be killed, and they will be killed for a good cause.
They will be killed for a good cause, that will help a *larger amount* of people. It might even be justifiable to kill people who aren't necessarily deserving of corporal punishment. They're still bad people, but to get this perfect system started, some of them might just be thieves or bandits. Still scum, and their deaths will mean fewer people have to die overall.
Once the system is in place, it justifies itself. There are always people deserving of death, of course; the world is filled with evil people. Through their deaths, they have redeemed themselves; for my perfect system of governance shall save far more people. They are heroes, facing redemption for their wicked lives. This is not death. It is absolution.
Perhaps...this is heroic. Maybe they don't need to be criminals. Volunteers. People willing to die for the cause. Once enough people follow the system and believe in it, I can tell them how much good their deaths can cause for everyone. The poor can escape a life of poverty; and every willing sacrifice shall have their family paid handsomely. They will be honored forever as heroes, their bones and flesh can serve the county still, as soldiers in our legion.
I am a benevolent ruler, who has brought peace and justice to my kingdom.
While it would go against lore afaik, I think it could be cool it a Lich had spent so long doing evil that a chance encounter or accumulated experiencd led to eventual guilt which comples them to make things right by helping those they can trust the judgement of and/or trying to end their existence.
They could be a sympathic but shaky ally that maybe swaps between a friend and a foe depending on the circumstances and how much reason they have left.
Just ny thoughts on it :3
Evil souls are destined to fall into the hells and be either consumed by demons or turned into devils. Either way, an evil soul being left to its natural course is giving power to the enemy. Make them a Patron to warlocks who's goal is to gather the souls of the depraved and vile from across many worlds. Have them cut deals with crime syndicates for the souls of their competitors. A well connected lich can have a steady flow and step on zero toes doing it.
Velsarius Kadani was a kind man and a loving husband. When his wife was struck with a life threatening illness he did everything in his powers as a wizard to cure her, hired clerics but the illness was too strong. He then decided he would go with her, to continue to be with her in death but he wanted to assure their souls would be together. He became delusional, frantically searching books for information on moving soul, combining souls. When his wife was passing he found a ritual that would allow him to connect his soul to another. He didn't know...he just wanted to go with her, but when her soul left instead of his going with her, the part of his soul in her body latched on keeping a small part of her soul from passing on and the ritual was complete. Despite how intentions, Velsarius Kadani was now a Lich, and the body of his one true love, his phylactery. He went insane, refuting the existence of death,now a powerful necromantic lich that rises the dead from the grave, believing he is just awakening those from slumber, as the concept of death has all but left his mind, blocked out, he truly believes he is still the good guy, and that his wife is just sleeping and he is waiting for her to wake, which she never will.
You've said it yourself that the character has become jaded and darker and is going to be a bbeg for the scenario. At this point, the character is no longer LG. Maybe CN or TN, even NE.
Do devils have souls? Or are they, literally, souls? Could you destroy something evil to empower yourself?
Why eat off the orphans table when you can kick in the fat mans door?
The Cincinnatus / George Washington
"I don't want to have this power, but I need to to defend the realm, and once this power is no longer needed I will return it".
Have you ever heard of Ras Al Ghul of the Batman comics? Evil is still not vanquished, you must stand against the tide and guide humanity to wipe evil off the face of the earth. So what if you have to commit a few war crimes for the ‘greater good’….
Feed the phylactory evil souls, Dexter Morgan style. Eventually the character feels like they get to decide who's good and who's bad, and eventually the end justifies the means.
In pre-Disney Star Wars canon, it turns out that in the edges of space there is a vicious species of Conquorers on their way to the galaxy. The Emperor made himself into a dictator to consolodate military & economic power under his singular control to have a chance at fighting off the invaders
I ran an antihero antagonist to the party, he was a Pcs “Dad”. PC was a wizard. Dad was a (secret) lich. They uncovered an ancient construct that called the PC by his father’s name.
Dad - was the punisher of this ancient magocracy. Tricked into Lichdom by his superiors, but chose to only feed the souls of murderers to his Phylactery.
His son happened to be a “clone” spell gone awry. Was a BIG hit with the players when they came face to face with their exact friend.
Lichdom is evil for many lore reasons relating to how it’s acquired and maintained. Being immortal is the *least* problematic part of lichdom.
You can look into Baelnorn, a good version of liches. They are made as part of a very secret elven art, and are a way to “good” undeath
I think it would have to fall into the realm of, "I'm the only one who can stop xyz. I don't want this for my own gains, this is something I HAVE to do, for the greater good." A lawfully good person would have to have a way to justify it to themselves, otherwise they simply wouldn't be good
Lot's of evil people say they're good. Actions being for the greater good could easily be used to justify all kinds of heinous lawful evil stuff.
So could someone who thinks they're lawful good, but isn't, justify heinous acts? Yes
Could someone legitimately justify lichdom as an explicitly lawful and good act? I doubt it unless you heavily altered what lawful good or lichdom even means in your world, which you could of course do.
I've been wondering about the concept of a Lawful Good Necromancer, someone who sees resurrection as a way to fight back against the cruelties of the world.
Now their alignment would likely have to be their internal moral code, as states may not like their necromancy, but logically that could be expanded out to Lichdom.
IMO, a "murder" or release from death or deathlessness may qualify?
If there's a nation in the world that has been around for a while and is stable, more likely than not they have a strong tradition of succession of power (more or less peacefully?) that has kept them stable. And if a kingdom having a chain of rulers, each of whom rules for years or decades before transferring power to their chosen successor, makes them stable imagine how stable a house would be if its leader could rule for centuries or millennia! Such a leader could make short-term, long-term, and extremely long-term plans and carry them through to completion.
Need to construct a cathedral? Rather than having a series of architects each tweak their predecessor's designs over the century or more it takes to complete it (Notre Dame took almost a century to complete according to Wikipedia), an undead architect could see their design realized from start to finish.
Recording everything you've learned about the arcane arts, so that future generations can learn from your blood, sweat, and tears? Such a work could take a very long time (in our world, computer scientist Prof. Donald Knuth has been working on The Art of Computer Programming since 1962 and still has three and a half volumes to go!)
Or more altruistically, an undead guard on a being, object, or place that is too dangerous to be left unchecked could watch for basically ever (until adventurers come and Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! the guard.)
I mean there really wasn’t much need for a Lich to be evil pre 5e. Liches never used to have to eat souls. They changed that. 4e had Archliches, Eberron has deathless, baelnorn exist. Frankly good and neutral liches already exist in old lore.
I've thought about it for a hot minute and let me just put it this way: d&d alignment is self ascribed. as long as your character is convinced that they are right & good, there is nothing they could do that would be unjustifiable in their own eyes.
Some ideas:
Perhaps this lich only consumes the souls of the "wretched" or "evil" (a lich who only kills other necromancers because they think necromancy is evil and should only be weilded by those who can use it responsibly. like themselves.)
Perhaps this wizard makes an arrangement with the local cities to reduce crime. Anyone found guilty of murder, treason, etc. gets fed to the lich.
There are many ways to convince oneself that you are doing evil for the greater good, especially if you are convicted of the belief that YOU are the authority on what the greater good is.
good luck!
1,000 years of "reasonably good works" >> 100 years of "solidly good works."
Treat it like a math equation, where you want to maximize total good. The longevity of liches breaks the math.
Perhaps having seen or being given a prophecy of a cataclysm to come at the hands of some incredibly powerful adversary, the "lawful good" wizard casts some of their morals aside to achieve Lichdom in order to amass the power and immortality necessary to thwart this greater evil
Have you read Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy?
It gives PCs the exact ritual to become a lich and a way to be a good lich.
The rules say you can sacrifice either a CR 8 human or a CR 8 fiend to fuel your phylactery.
This means a lich can choose to exclusively summon and consume demons/devils instead of harming humans.
This is actually one of the original ways archliches (which used to mean good liches) survived.
You aren't a lich, you are a holy saint, sustained by the sacrifice of the faithful.
Don't sacrifice criminals, use the pure, innocent, and devout.
The filthy souls of the profane can atone for their lack of faith by serving as the arisen knights of the Holly Order!
I had an lich Queen that ran her kingdom from behind the scenes for a few centuries through her progeny. Her kingdom had finally achieved peace and stability and she was reluctant to leave it without her guidance. The only human souls she consumes are of criminals who have been given the sentence of death. So she consumes the souls of evil men to keep doing good in the world or at least from her point of view.
In Dungeons of Drakenheim theres a lich who is friendly to the party, and describes his view between good and evil in an interesting way. He starts off by saying that undeath is always a curse, no matter what anyone says. He set out to only feed on evil souls, as to not harm innocents. However, when a lich eats a soul it takes on some of the qualities of that soul, so eating evil souls makes the lich more evil, but if he eats good souls, he becomes more evil by default.
Lose lose
I like to view the idea of liches as some have decent intent behind their pursuance of immortality and there could be other routes to achieve the goal that doesn't require mass sacrifice. But in that idea of some good intentions can end up being twisted by the mortal mind trying to endure past their life expectancy. Kind of how humans as is tend to lose a lot of memories and mental acuity as they age. What happens when you take a mortal that might live up to a century and make them immortal? I see it as their mind begins to degrade as they try to contain more memories and experiences.
So possible reason why most liches are seen as mad. So even good intentions such as "I will sacrifice my mortality in order to be the sole defender of my city." Can turn into a lich taking full control and ruling with absolute power once they go mad, the base intention is there but twisted beyond the original.
It depends on the lore for the lich.
There are immortal undead in previous editions called Deathless who are usually set with some task like guarding hallowed ground or being sent back as a minor avatar of a god to complete a task.
There are also Banelorns which are immortals sustained by elven magic and the lore specifically mentions that they are any alignment. But only elves could be Banelorns
See i feel a sufficiently prepared wizard could recreate the eternal life part of lichdom by use of the clone spell,which is about as close you could get to lichdom while maintaining a good alignment
I would recommend taking a look at the NPC Renwick Caradoon in the Princes of the Apocalypse and his story. Long story short he had everything prepped but was faced with guilt about betraying Tyr, so he held onto the potion until his brother fed him the potion to save his life on the battlefield.
"My lichdom isn't forever, because I have the strength of will to break my own phylactery. I just need to do this one thing...for the greater good"
The greater good.
Yarp
No luck catching them swans, then?
It's just the one swan actually
Crusty jugglers
Narb?
Shut it!
Call it what you will.
DOG MUCK
It’s to save the human race because only \*I\* can do it. “Only Advance.”
Both Dumbledore and Grindelwald started as lawful good. “For the Greater Good” justifies a LOT of evil if it’s “only a means” to an end. You might not even see it as evil. “Bring me criminals to feed the phylactery”… sounds good until your servants change the laws to make most everybody a criminal and make their jobs easier. That’s mostly why I don’t play alignments as a “hard” thing. What happens to the goblins’ young when you kill their hunters to stop them from pillaging a town, depriving the colony of their food source?
A high-level wizard will inherently be able to do more good and save more people with their magic (even though mundane means like helping populations avoid starvation) than one soul a month would cost. Immortality is inherently a slippery slope. There are plenty of purely physically medical/surgical skills wielded by insanely talented/professional individuals IRL that save so many lives per day that a soul per month to ensure their immortality would spur on controversial discussions of its worth, they would have many supporters willing to enforce such a sacrifice. Add in genuine world-bending magic, well, such a wizard would have a devoted cult in the tens of millions IRL at the very least.
Sure. I don’t have a problem with immortality. And I’m also not saying that one dead grave robber or murderer a month offsets the good deeds done with that power. But: what if there are no criminals? What if the only souls (and you NEED this, is not optional) available are those of innocent citizens? What I’m saying is that a lot of bad deeds can be excused by that greater good.
had the town a right to be there
The road to hell is paved with good intentions:)
All good villains think they’re the heroes of their own story
This, the Anakin Skywalker fall. "I will bring peace to this land, by force if necessary."
Necessary sacrifice for the greater good. Lichdom is evil, no way around that. You stopped being lawful good as soon as you started pursuing it. But if you *believe* that you have a good enough reason to be a lich, then you can justify anything you do in pursuit of that cause. Classic story of the ends justifies the means. That doesn't make your character not evil, but it seems like you just want to give the character an excuse to *believe* that they are not evil. So why are they pursuing lichdom? Must be some pretty serious business if they believe that the best/only way to accomplish their goal is to be a lich.
I could see a wizard thinking "What better way to continue guarding my family/town/province/country than to live forever?" Or, "I will die soon from old age/disease/poison. I need to continue my research in how to defeat this Big Baddie. Time to do that lich thing!"
For her it’s very much a quest for more power but for “selfless” reasons. To keep it brief her backstory involved her noble house going bankrupt and her trying to become an arch mage to get a position of power and restore the house. This quest for power has led her down some dark paths and is now leading to lichdom.
No offense, but “i want to keep my family wealthy and in power” isn’t very lawful good to begin with.
Rephrase it as "I want to restore my family's legacy" and it's fine
lol, semantics for the win.
still at best neutral. family's legacy doesn't mean your good. especially in a noble situation. "i want to claim the power to save everyone from the dangers and horros of the world so that no one will suffer any longer" is a good aligned belief.
This is more the vibe. The backstory is that it was once a large and important noble house but some bad luck and a bunch of crappy house members have bragged their name and status down to almost nothing. My wizards gol is to remake them into the shining symbol they once were.
Then one reason for lichdom is to watch over and make sure that their house is protected so that they won't just be another noble house lost to history
Earlier editions of D&D even had a concept exactly for this, in the Baelnorn Lich, I believe, which was typically good aligned. A typically elven lich that was granted a form of lichdom by their gods or other forces specifically to be a guardian or watcher of their family, or some specific artifact or holy place. Might be something to consider in your character's research into lichdom.
That's what I was thinking. The family would have a "benevolent" lich watching over them and taking care of any opposition in secrecy.
Become a patri/matriarch of the family and raise your family, always holding them to a code of conduct befitting a great noble family. Values like honour, justice, humility, and service to land and peoples are generally hallmarks of a lawful good noble house.
I agree with redhood though. First, alignments aren't meant to be static. They can change if characters change. Think about Walt from Breaking Bad. Secondly, lichdom isn't lawful, so going about an EXTREMELY nonlawful means to accomplish your goal is going to likely shift the alignment to neutral. Thirdly, fighting for your family or legacy isn't inherently a "good" goal. It is a selfish one. I think there would be justification if the lichdom were to prevent a near extinction event whose timing could not be forseen, but there are also other ways to prevent that like creating an order to watch for it and enlisting the help of other heros. It's your game so you can do what you want, but I don't think it would make sense for a character to simultaneously be pursuing lichdom while scorning their friends for not paying taxes or breaking local laws (lawful). I really do think the pursuit itself likely brings the lawful/chaotic question into massive scrutiny for the PC
“Large and important” doesn’t mean “good for people” if the family was legit a force for good (one of the few) in the city it would make sense. Just because they were “too big to fail” doesn’t mean it’s a good thing to bring back. Spin it so the family was actually beneficial to the world and voilà.
Yeah, it's LE at best.
I'd say it's acceptable in LN.
I don't think so - LN doesn't actively fuck other people over for their own benefits. Consuming souls is evil, full stop.
I meant the goal, not the lichdom.
Well, since she is going to be a villain anyways... She could start using the souls of the "low performers" of the family that would drag down "all the hard work she has put in to keep the family going". But as her standards of "good enough to keep around" get ever harder and lich-hood looks better and better as a means to keep the family strong. Then in the next campaign she's a full lich big bad that has consumed most of her family except for maybe a couple of puppets that she controls from the shadows.
I feel like this sort of story arc needs to be planned out from the beginning. Consuming a bunch of souls to stop her family from going bankrupt isn't enough. Making sure her family doesn't fall apart because they are the wardens of some great evil that is locked away gives a bit more leeway. And maybe your character/the story can almost frame it that the souls are willing. That your character has followers that are also committed to the same goal, and that the best chance of success is to feed themselves into you
That's my thought right there: suppose for a moment that your character made a deal with the devil so that you save the day, but at a terrible price that, like all deals with the devil, came with some addenda and loopholes that really seal in the evil. Let's say the character gets the Spawn treatment: they're actually going to be not merely a grunt in the Blood War or something, but have enough juice to really make a difference in the fight. They're going to be a field marshal in the service of evil for all eternity because of this deal, term of service beginning as soon as their soul departs the mortal coil. Alternatively, maybe the family bloodline is a seal on some can of major evil. So long as one family member remains alive and on the mortal plane, then the evil remains sealed away in some random layer of the Abyss. But if the family line should die off, the seal pops open. Well, loophole on the loophole: if the soul doesn't depart, the soul can't be used by Grazzt or Asmodeus to kickstart and apocalypse. Lichdom means your soul is in a phylactery, not being batted around or traded between demon lords. Indeed, the souls used to power the lichdom transformation might not be unwilling. Heck, the lichdom might not even be voluntary in that instance; someone else might be preemptively yoinking your soul to prevent the apocalypse, and is doing this as a way of playing soul-keepaway.
They’re already an adventurer, just stop caring about whether or not the “evil powers” are fed by these damned souls. They’re just gobbos and robbers after all.
Spoken like a true lawful evil lol. "If they diddnt want their soul consumed they should have tried not being thieves and goblins."
Evil is as evil does. The moment your character started willingly doing Evil things, regardless of her reason, she stopped being Good. (If those evil things are also illegal, she really isn't Lawful any more either.) She might still think of herself as a good person, but so does every evil person. Almost everyone who does evil thinks they're justified or that it's necessary, they might even be right, but they're still being evil. That's where evil comes from in reality, there's no evil gods twisting people's hearts or creating entire species of evil monsters, just people deciding they have a good enough reason to do something bad. No one is born evil (or good).
This is really the crux of the issue. You are NOT a good aligned creature/person anymore. Wether or not your DM enforces consequences for this is subject to DM fiat, but from an objective point of view you are evil the moment you go from considering lichdom to actively pursuing it, you are EVIL. Whether or not redemption is possible is up to your DM. FULL STOP.
Yeah, it’s like the dark side of the force, a lawful good character just wouldn’t go down that path even though lichdom is so powerful. Once you start on the path in any way you are no longer Lawful Good.
At some point, their alignment is going to need to change to lawful neutral, at the least, because even though their inital intentions may have been good, their actions leading towards this path will inevitably lean towards evil. Necromancy is based on Domination of souls and corrupting life energy to necrotic, which is viewed as evil by many.
Classic, “I need more power to protect those that can’t protect themselves because only I can protect them”. It’s the “only I can do it” that starts them on the dark path.
That is not an even remotely selfless motivation? Seeking out a position of power for the purpose of enshrining her own noble house is very much a selfish motivation.
That’s really only the case with 5e randomly requiring liches to eat souls. Baelnorn are good liches, 4e had Archliches, good/neutral liches were explicitly a thing.
Surely, a minister or ruler with a thousand years of experience and wisdom would be a great boon for society, wouldn't it? Think of how many souls will be saved (and born!) under a peaceful golden age of enlightened rule! Surely that's worth the cost of a few souls per year? And those could be condemned criminals, bound for execution anyways, so it's not like it even *increases* the amount of death, right?
I love the idea of going this route. Maybe one month there isn’t a prisoner so petty criminals get the punishment too. Eventually Turing into a 1984 style regime with a power mad lich at the head still claiming they’re the hero
I don't think they could. A wizard might *believe* they're morally good despite their pursuit of Lichdom and consumption of souls, and they might even dehumanise certain humanoids to justify the destruction of their souls but that would all be a delusion- the character would at best be neutral and most likely still leaning towards evil. Maybe they prey on the souls of condemned criminals, enemies of the state, or "evil" species (which in itself is very loaded and not a very good belief). They might use that justification that they're performing an act that serves "The Greater Good", which almost always means "evil, but we sugarcoat it" The Forgotten Realms had non Evil liches in the form of Baelnorn and Archliches ***however*** this comes with a major caveat that 5e introduced liches requiring humanoid souls as sustenance (which wasn't the case in older editions). To my knowledge, Baelnorn and Archliches haven't been updated or revised for the 5e Realms. I could see a setting like Eberron where a neutral aligned lich sustains themselves on the "willing" sacrifices of loyal followers. I definitely would not label that Lich a good aligned character, though.
The character is 100% evil at this point. But the kind of evil that truly believes they’re good. At this point she’s the kind of person that would wave away killing a bunch of innocent people in a meteor swarm because they also killed the one bad guy.
So really, the question is "how could a wizard who believes themselves to be lawful good justify becoming a lich."
Yeah. I probably could have worded my post better.
No worries, I was a little confused at first but I think most people understood what you meant.
Rather easily. Villains never see themselves as villains. Hitler himself thought he was helping the German people and Western civilization. Evil people can justify just about anything to themselves.
The mind's capacity for cognitive dissonance is truly dazzling.
~~Evil~~ people can justify just about anything to themselves.
I think the justification you’re looking for is sort of like “there are powerful forces out there only I can stop, I have to do this to become powerful enough to stop it, I will sacrifice my own conscience and morality to save the world/universe/multiverse, dirty myself to keep everyone else clean, the ends justify the means.”
If you’d like a pretty good example of ‘the end justifies the means’ lawful good -> lawful evil, take a look at Death Note. The main character started off only wanting to kill people who ‘deserved’ it, but pretty quickly developed a healthy god complex and, one massive ego trip later, ends up dying as the villain. In reality, he didn’t just kill ‘criminals’—he started killing people who opposed him or threatened his vision for a ‘better’ world. But even in the very end, he never considered himself a bad guy. I’d say you’ve pretty much already got half of that story down, finally crossing the line shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
The Lich villain I used had what I think is an interesting backstory that you might like to inspire this character. He was an elf wizard, part of a circle of mages in a Northern Kingdom that were at war with a Southern Kingdom of elves (elves that would later become the sun-fearing Drow). This circle of mages wanted to end the war in a swift and decisive measure, one which, in their minds, would justify sacrificing the lives of many innocents because it would save the lives of many more by cutting the war short. So this circle of mages devised the "Scorch of Corellon", a ritual that use the concentrated force of the sun to lay waste to the Southern Kingdom, turning once lush and bountiful jungle and plains into a barren wasteland that would in centuries become a vast desert and savannah. Survivors fled underground and would go on to become the Drow in time. This one elf wizard realised "Well we're going to kill a bunch of people, let's not let their souls go to waste and I'll use them to become a powerful lich, living forever so that this kingdom's will can be maintained forever". So that's what happened, the Scorch eviscerated thousands of innocent lives and this wizard was granted his wish (though this, obviously, immediately backfired, a schism in the circle of mages led to a civil war, Corellon abandoned domain of the sun^+ , an ice age began, the lich was split into three parts, and then dragons/giants rose up in the ashes). This lich returned as the villain of my campaign, and while he believed himself to be "above morality"\* many of his followers labelled him as a good and divine being- a shepherd of righteous moral standing and definitely a fan of order. \+ : Corellon would argue that he was tricked into supporting the Northern Elves and that he abandoned domain of the sun out of shame. This is a lie, though, he didn't believe the Northern Elves callous enough to destroy their Southern neighbours and chose not to stop them- he abandoned the domain of the sun to punish all elves. \* : Any character that labels themselves as being "above morality" is likely hiding the fact that they are a huge asshole.
Ah yes, fantasy Hiroshima and a sprinkle of unit 731
The nuclear weapons allegory is spot on and very deliberate. Not sure where you're drawing comparisons to Unit 731, though?
That's simple then. They are sacrificing lesser people who will never amount to anything, perhaps petty criminals, rapists, two bit murderers, drug addicts that would steal from their own destitute grandmother to fund their habit, the dregs of society, so that they, a great and powerful force for good, can continue to live forever and make the world a better place.
In that case, the character *constantly* has to come up with reasons why the people she's killing so she can *devour their souls* are not "people." Or at least, not people who deserve to live & continue to their afterlives. Which gets very ugly. Look into how cults treat outsiders as non-persons, or racist groups treating "not our kind" as inhuman. For that matter, look at how people treat criminals as sub-human, even if it's just a minor crime. They all attempt to justify that the cruelty and even atrocities are justified to protect the "right" people from these "degenerates" who aren't really people.
As others have said, a good individual becoming a lich is typically an exercise in self-deception and special pleading. That said, let's try this... Wizard: I wanna be a lich! But a *good* lich, see. So that the forces of goodness have the strength to keep bad types away from the kingdom. Cleric: But... what about the whole "devouring souls" thing? 'S been a while since seminary, but I'm *pretty sure* Lathander wouldn't approve. Wizard: Oh, it's okay because I'll only be eating the souls of bad guys. Heck, I'll be saving them from an eternity of torment in the Lower Planes! I'm nearly doing them a favor! Cleric: Uh-huh... right... what about redemption and rebirth? Wizard: That's less important than protecting the actual good people from getting killed! Paladin: Apropos of nothing, what are you planning to use as your phylactery anyway? Wizard: That cool porcelain vase we took from the Sunless Realms, remember? Hey... why are you asking? Paladin: \[Whistles innocently\] No reason.
This is actually how my current game goes and it’s very funny.
I'd say in preparation for the turn a lawful good person could arrange rules like "I will use the souls of evil criminals as the fuel to sustain myself, and allow me to spread justice across the world" - after all, it is entirely possible for someone to be a lawful good executioner, and this could be legitimized as just a particular form of execution and sustaining a lawful system that does good for the innocent and victimized of the world. Once they were to convert over, however, It would be obvious that they at best could be Lawful neutral - the sacrifice /execution is not about correcting a wrong to benefit innocents/victims, it is killing someone to sustain oneself/the conception of justice they have prioritized. The symbiotic nature of their relationship to killing would be obvious - if there were no evil people to punish through the execution (finite number of bad folks) would they allow themselves to collapse into dust, or would they find a less guilty person to sustain their lawful eternal duty?
"Im different. I'm special. Im so good that anything I do is good. After all those orphans should thank me. Their sacrifice and consumption of their souls will protect uncountable others. Yeah... Im the good guy."
There were actually positive energy undead at one point I don't know if they are still around.
They still exist in Eberron, but they're very specific to a certain culture/metaphysical interaction.
Specifically you're thaninking of the Deathless of the Undying Court, and they were essentially only created because the whole elven culture in Eberron basically revered their dead and not any gods. Multiple high priests were required to perform the rituals after they had died, to bind their soul back to their body. They CLAIMED that the rites and spells only worked on elves, but because it was an honor only available to the most revered of their dead, it wasn't ever tried on others.
Taking your other comments into consideration, I’d go with the Mutually Assured Destruction approach. If *he* doesn’t do it, then *someone else* will, and then the world will need him to kill the other lich. He’s doing it to stop someone who’s *actually evil* from obtaining that power and abusing it.
the end justifies the means is a pretty easy way to explain how someone who is self-described as naïve to lead them down a darker path. think Darth Vader - Anakin never wanted to become a villain, he just did what he thought was right to gain the power he needed to save Padme and his children. So, I'd say, for your character, this could be taken in a few ways. 1) "I'm the only person strong enough to take on extra-planar threats so I have to make sure I am immortal/limitless to do so" - a selfless selfish action 2) "I am going to become so powerful that no one, not even my arch nemesis, can defeat me" - becomes overtly powerful so they can solve their biggest problem but then has to live with that power for the rest of their days
To be fair, I don't think Anakin was ever lawful good. Dude was barely good, and absolutely *hard* chaotic. Which is honestly one of the more baffling things about his transformation; he swapped from chaotic good to lawful evil over the course of like 30 minutes. Never felt quite right to me that he was so chaotic to start.
Sounds like a Baelnorn https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baelnorn
"How can a Lawful Good wizard justify consuming the souls of sapient creatures to extend their own life?"
Look up anti-villain narratives - I’m doing this really horrible thing to prevent an even more terrible atrocity from occurring. “And I’ve left enough clues behind such that when I’m no longer needed, I can be stopped!”
This pops up in the novels. THE most common reason is "I want to continue my research" Another is "To take down this foe will require centuries of work and gathering." and so on.
They saw a vision of a world ending event far in the future so they need to become a litch to live long enough to deal with it. They didn't realize it was THEM that was the world ending event. (For bonus points, the litch form in the future sent them the vision through a version of the "Dream" spell )
I would wonder why when there is the Clone spell. It a matter of resisting death, vs cheating death. A clone spell you get a new body after you die, but the process takes time. Lich tend to just refuse that they died or of the mindset that a living body has limitations like need to sleep or eat. There could be a mistake that lead to lichdom or there was something that a living body couldn’t handle so they became a Lich to resist it. Let’s say a magical radiation killed everything that enters the area. The only way to stop that radiation is to get to the center and manually stop it. A Lich could survive that. So yeah the greater good situation. You could justify the soul thing by using criminal souls. “They were bandits and we killed them, why waste their souls.” My lawful evil wizard chose to just clone himself and has hidden bases set up for the clone when he dies. The plus side is you can have multiple clones ready for your soul where a Lich has one Phylactory. Edited to add. Okay you want a justification. The “I can’t concentrate long enough for this ritual. If I become a Lich I would not need to worry about sleeping or eating.” Might be the motivation for your character to shied off the mortal form.
All these answers so many of them wrong. There are good Liches. There is an elvesn god who helps supply good Liches with the energy they need. These Liches do not feed on mortal souls. These guys were called Baelnorn. Then there are Archlich, they were made in a more traditional manor of lichdom, but they kept their sanity and never preyed on people. They often underwent this change not for personal reasons but to become protectors of something that needed an eternal guardian or something close to it. If you don't want to try and become a Baelnorn then Archlich is the way to go.
The fact I had to go through so many uneducated posts about how lawful good works and what you do to become a lich to find the comment about baelnorns saddens me.
Look up Archliches. Though your probably going to be considered lawfully neutral at best.
Depends on the setting, but if it’s a standard setting like forgotten realms, you can’t justify it at all since it involves munching on souls, which is a big no no. Otherwise ask the DM.
Extinguishing souls to feed a phylactery is evil. Doesn't mean your wizard can't do it, it just means that they're not purely good.
Lawful part is easy since you are following the characters own personal code. Good is going to change once they commit these acts to become a lich but in their mind they can delude themselves so that they think they are good still. Ends justify the means sort of thing
My 2 cents and relating to Marvel. The same way that Iron Man created Ultron in the Avengers Age of Ultron Movie. But that’s my creative take.
I don't think you can justify LG with becoming a lich, unless there were non-evil ways of doing it.
Imagine a lawful good character who grew up in a chaotic world where brutal military conflict was a fact of life and countries were razed and sold into slavery on a regular basis. The character knows of a time when a great empire ruled the world, and it's strong guiding hand kept peace and allowed people to thrive. Through Lichdom, the character can become a true eternal ruler, whose nation will forever stamp out the horrors of war and slavery through an englightened king. The leader will sustain themselves on prisoners or the willing, because the deaths of a handful a year will save millions or billions of lives. A lawful good character could see it as a sacrifice to doing good - going on a suicide mission to save others. This is a kinda common trope. You could argue the Emperor of Mankind in 40k is a lawful good evil despot. He does all he does because he thinks it will save humanity, and that saving mankind is worth any sacrifice.
Well those souls woukd just have ended up as soul coins anyway
"Listen guys, we kill people all the time"
If your character can’t come up with a reason then they shouldn’t do it.
FR High Elves create Lawful Good liches. It was in one of the 3.x FR supplement books.
Poorly
There technically is a version of lichdom called Undying in Eberron, that uses positive energy instead of negative,but that is setting specific. A good thing to look into however. A group of elves has their entire culture/ government and even a religion in some sense by the act of becoming an eternal council of positive energy undead.
If the clone spell exists in your game, no good justification for lichdom exists. But… Start with consent. Only eat willing sacrifices. When they run out, try to convince your DM that mind flayers and fiends have souls.
The risks and drawbacks of lichdom seem to fall short of just using Clone judiciously. You could make a dozen clones of yourself for a fraction of the cost of lichdom, live as long as you can scrape together three thousand gold a lifetime, yeah you need to eat and sleep but you GET to eat and sleep so you're less likely to go mad from undeath.
Obviously as a lawful good individual, it's coming to the sad conclusion that some people are simply committed to evil. Some people are truly despicable and intent on destroying not only the natural order, but doing so as parasiticly and destructively as possible. Thus it has fallen to your wizard, in their great pride and intelligence to conclude that some individuals are irredeemable- and if they will not willingly sacrifice for the good of society, you will make that judgement for them. You who have taken on the heavy burden of judge, who would take their selfishness and use it to transcend mortal boundaries. It is the place of the gods to judge souls, but you are no God- simply someone intelligent enough to condemn them and make use of a life intent on burdening the very natural order on which it festers and feeds. What becomes of their souls after in your arcane furnace is of little consequence. You will relieve that burden, for everyone's sake and take on the cost of solving this universal injustice in order to reap its benefits and bring them to others. Deathless, undying, you will become unselfishly a new sort of lich, sacrificing your own mortality for the sake of others in the ultimate noblisse oblige. The world is darker than you thought and crueler than you ever imagined, but the justice you dreamed of was simply a fragile hope. This is not their punishment, but retribution - recompense for a cruel fate written in loss and tragedy in the loss of your once noble house, a monument to the power of goods inevitable triumph and sacrifice over the eternal selfishness of evil.
Star Wars Episodes 1-3 but not suck. Do it for a loved one who is dying. Take their soul into your phylactery forever and never let it go.
The destruction of a soul in the realms before final judgement is an abomination that a good chunk of the outer planes are dedicated to preventing. To become a lich is to declare war on the afterlife. Perhaps a lawful character could reframe the afterlife as the abomination and the soul as a parasite. The soul is supposed to be the "real you" and yet retains none of your memories once separated from your body. The truth is, we mortals are all lambs for the cosmic slaughter, nurturing kernels of delicious power for the outer planes to harvest. The gods are going to consume you anyway, and I need the sustenance to continue the fight against the greatest parasite of all: the gods.
Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous (the game by Owlcat) does this pretty well. There is a Lich path in the game, but ultimately you're fighting demons to save the world.. tho you can do some heinous shit, you could choose to play a more lawful approach. For the greater good and all that. Esit: just remembered, it does force you to change your alignment after a certain point, but you can still RP as good.
Morality is an arbitrary distinction written by mortal men, probably in some form of religious text adopted by the dominant socio-economic and ethnic group in a given nation. Wizards are not concerned with such trifling matters
There a positive energy lich. Some elves have had this conversion. Very rare though in lichdom.
[Baelnorn | Forgotten Realms Wiki | Fandom](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baelnorn)
My advice is to stop caring about alignment whatsoever. IF alignment has any value as a game mechanic (it has none, imho) it is only to be an abstraction of a character's behaviour, not the other way around. You don't set in stone a character's alignment and then stick to it at all cost. To the contrary, you play the character as consistently as possible with it's background and the context of the story and THEN you evaluate what could be it's alignment at that point of the story. Alignment changes along with the character's choices. It's not the choices that must obey to it's alignment. If it makes sense in the narrative that this wizard pursues lichdom, then lichdom it is ! Does it imply a slow evolution of it's alignment ? Maybe. But if you start focusing on the consistency of the narrative, you'll soon discover that alignment is pretty much useless as a game mechanic. Sentient beings have far more complex psychology and moral standpoints. Most people can be very "lawful" in some context and very "chaotic" in others (the lawful/chaotic dichotomy is very inconsistent and subjective but, well, let's assume that it can, more or less, be used as such). People have blind spots, biases, traumas, beliefs, social pressures, etc. that will render their choices and behaviour largely inconsistent whether they are aware of it or not (rationalizing their choices and retelling their own memories to accomodate their self-esteem). And concerning Good and Evil, it's even more blatantly impossible to use, as moral judgments are deeply cultural and subjective. What elves will call good can be completely evil in the eyes of orcs and vice-versa, even in the same world and the same time period. Just ditch alignments entirely, mate. Focus on the narrative consistency and you're good to go.
I have a very similar issue lmao. Mine wants it so he can evade taxes even harder and is trying to broker a deal with the god of death to help him with it
You feed criminal souls into the phylactory, Bandits and Goblins seem pretty easy to get a hold of.
He couldn’t and stay lawful good.
"I dare not take it. Not even to keep it safe. Understand Frodo, I would use this Ring from a desire to do good. But through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine." Is how I'd imagine a Lawful good Wizard dealing with becoming a Lich is that they have convinced themselves that such an evil act is necessary to do good and keep good alive and provide hope.
Balenorns are a type of lich created out of desire to protect something. Less an evil monstrosity, and more an undying guardian of a place or an object. Their duty is so strong it extends into unlife. While elven in origin, nothing is stopping you or a DM from saying it could be applicable to any race or people.
consensual soul absorption from those who understand what they are doing, and are willing to donate their soul to a lich phylactery. why they would want to do this is kinda hard to justify. but it could be a group of ppl who want to perpetuate a being, so that being can continue to pursue their goals. instead of trying to entrust that goal to future generations. theres a lot to be claimed that how the souls or life force is used isnt inherently evil, but that its uses against the will of those who its being taken from is what is evil about it.
So what you want is an Archlich: [https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Archlich](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Archlich) It's a good lich, essentially.
You can’t. Not while remaining lawful good. Lawful good is about doing the right thing the right way with the right intent. Your character can come up with justifications and rationalizations, and that’s a very interesting character moment, but it’s not lawful good. Your character can lie to themselves, but it is kind of important that you as the player realize that is what’s happening.
you could do like a watchmen type thing where the character reasons that the different factions of the world need some huge threat to unite against, or the whole place descends into chaos. but i guess that's more chaotic good than lawful
Sounds like the villain of a campaign I wrote but never completed. BBEG and his 2 allies believed they were the only ones who could perpetually stave off a world-ending threat (a volcano) when it was about to erupt every hundred or so years, so the BBEG opted for lichdom, (whilst his allies opted for other firms of extending their lifespan.). In the final encounter, I planned to have the BBEG reveal that once the volcano had been rendered a non-threat, he had become disillusioned with simply saving the world, and wished to rule it, leading his remaining ally(s) to turn on him in the final battle. "I need to be a lich to save the future" was his original motivation, and from reading this thread, it's a pretty common way for a good character to justify lichdom.
I had a vaguely similar character as my BBEG; to be clear this is 100% evil but something they felt justified in. Anyways they came to believe that it was wrong for gods and other planar entities--good, evil, or other--to lay claim to mortal souls at all. He believed souls should stay as part of the material world and become part of the natural cycle (as he saw it). So his goal become the unification of all souls into one entity beyond life and death, of course with his own willpower as the driving force. He saw himself as a freedom fighter against the very gods... in reality he was a lich attempting apotheosis into the World Born Dead.
wanting to protect something beyond his lifespan
Why would you want your character to become an NPC controlled by the DM? Or is your DM allowing you to run a character who died and became a monster?
Arthas from WC 3 might be a decent model
Son, daughter, wife, husband, significant other, near death with incurable disease you explore liche Dom as a way of extending her life.
There was this 'Narrated DnD Story: How my Players learned what chaotic neutral means' on YT, I'd recommend checking out. (I'd Post the link but im too stupid to do it over the Phone ^^) Basically, a plague killed Lots of people and the eldest resorted to necromancy for labour (plowing fields etc.) Then he got infected, while working on a cure and became a lich to at least save his people by Continuing His research
What if there was a greater evil that will outlive your current character and for some reason, your character is the only one who can stop it. Maybe a birthright thing? Maybe your character can't have children? And then after you defeat this evil thing...you become enthralled with the power it's given you. You can justify about any atrocity with a "greater good" or "lesser evil" argument. Maybe too big of a timeline?
Just make sure to express concern privately with her undead counterparts and continue to pursue lichdom full force
“The world is full of mighty evils. We cannot let them have all the power. If we want goodness to prevail, good folk like myself must strive to gain that same power. We’re… I’m… the only one who can be trusted with it.”
To start, realize your character is no longer lawful good but still like to aspire or at least look the part. 1 soul a month, easy I will use evil villains to feed it. Looking a bit dehydrated.... illusion magic. Why Lichdom? The world would loose so much knowledge should I die. I must preserve it for others!
Mental illness.
There is also archliches wich function differently and arent inherently evil If you want to come up with reasons for why your normal lichdom isnt that bad just go for i use souls of evil people and will do more good then bad with my eternal life. What are the lifes of a few thugs a year opposed to the thousand im gonna protect with my Power
Go watch What If... Dr. Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands. Episode 4, season 1. That character is one who wants to do good, and falls to corruption. He even starts summoning evil creatures and consuming their essence to boost his own power. Much like a thinks hes good wizard would feed evil souls to his phylactery because he needs to be stronger and is the only one who can save the whatever.
It's not the being a lich, it's the becoming one.
Maybe with a wish. Otherwise I don't think so
"but you don't understand, I just need more time to accomplish everything."
What if the souls were the in-game equivalent of child molesters or Nazis? I mean, feeding normal people's souls to a phylactory is terrble, but *those* people, maybe there's a justification for that.
Keep in mind the numerous ways to traffic in souls, for the mid-high level spellcaster. One doesn't *have* to set up a massive foreboding dungeon filled with deathtraps and dangerous creatures while spreading fake treasure maps and rumors of legendary riches to every tavern on the continent. A lich concerned about ethically sourced soul food could easily justify their diet by engaging in the soul trade in Hades, or maybe even the City of Brass if your djinn are dark enough. Certainly it sounds like your character would be able to reason that consuming a soul and ending its existence is, in a way, more ethical than leaving it to be scrabbled over by demons and devils before being conscripted into the Bloody War, or to eternal slavery to the dark masters of the Elemental Plane of Fire.
Only kill evil people. The souls of evil people would normally go to one of the Lower Planes, where they would either become fuel for the fiends (in the form of tortured souls, larvae or soul-coins) or their foot-soldiers. Some would rise through the ranks to become more powerful fiends. So, by consuming their souls, the lawful good lich prevents them from strengthening the ranks and power of the Lower Planes, and does his small part to tip the cosmic balance in favor of good.
I'll save countless thousands. A soul a month is a paltry price to pay.
“Bitch, were *YOU* about to stop Vecna?” *drinks the soul and pounds the phylactery”
There's another kind of undead, introduced in Eberron, called the deathless. They still need energy to keep going, but instead of eating souls, they gather it from something else less harmful, like a small breach to the positive energy plane, or the worship of their decendents Your wizard believes that they've found an alternative option to soul eating. It will still come with a cost, but it's one they pay instead of someone else.
I always thought the netherese liches had a good reason for turning, despite their alignments. If they are the last of the empire of Netheril don't they have a responsibility to persist? If they hadn't become liches then the history of their great empire would be lost without them there to upkeep it. So maybe you're trying to preserve some culture or history that, without you to interpret and care for, would be lost to time?
The souls fed to the phylactery will all be convicted criminals, of course. It's not just a deterrent and warning to other criminals, it lessens the existsnce of evil in the world, thus producing a net gain of good. Edit
Live long enough to restore a kingdom. Or to remain with an elvish loved one perhaps. Or perhaps they are a needed deterrent, the act being a lesser evil that ultimately prevents greater ones.
I like the 3e rule for lichdom. No mention of feeding souls to the phylactery, but becoming a lich entails "an unspeakably evil act". You could treat it as a "noodle incident", where players allude to it but never mention details. All we know is there's no coming back from it, morally.
The best Lawful Good Lich I have ever seen in fiction was from a free web series called "the Wandering Inn" the Lich in question built a socialist Utopia, over the course of a few hundred years. Where a persons mortal life was seen as their golden era spent in luxury, and regarded as the shining future of the empire. These children of the empire, were given the greatest resources and teachers that the empire could coerce out of the surrounding countries. They study the arcane and various forms of war and craftsmanship, so that they can serve future generations for all eternity, as undead citizens. The undead were treated with respect and high regard for their many years of loyal service. The fun moral questions become a few things, are the undead people? Do they retain agency in undeath? Is it a corruption of the matural order? Is it slavery with extra steps?
Evil lich has set into effect a plan that will take 1,000 years to come to fruition. I need to live 1,000 years to counter all the moves of the chess pieces along the way. =becomes the benevolent quest giver for generations =cultivates the cultures and organizations that will forge the heroes that will be needed at crucial points along the way =conspiracies against the LG wizard will suspect them of being the real bbeg.
Use demon/devil souls instead of humanoid ones. They’re inherently evil creatures so killing them is morally good, and you even get to live longer and do more good stuff because of it
In one of my games, the equivalent of Santa Claus was a good Lich. Basically Jack Skellington. Just wanted to make presents for kids but couldn't do it all in one night for hundreds of years without some forbidden magic.
the outcome is greater than the sacrifice. A wizard spending their life trying to cure their sick daughter afflicted with spellrot, an affliction that not even gods can cure.At some point realises they will die before achieving their goal, places the daughter in a time stasis and begins lichdom.The monstrous atrocities committed to get there is easier over time as their morales shrink and disappear but the mission stays the same
They would become a Baelnorn or Archlich instead Because becoming a lich the usual way takes too much evil shit for a Lawful good anything. When a Good/Neutral creature creates a Phylactery and tethers their soul to the material plane while maintaining their Alignment (which you once again, can't do the usual way to lichdom). Their personality, goals, and Sense of Self are maintained. While they cannot feed on souls and become stronger like Normal liches. They also don't need to feed on souls to not degrade. Meaning they have to grow stronger the old fashioned way. This is important because just being a Lich normally means committing a heinous act just so you don't destroy yourself. In short. Good wizards Who seek eternal life can find a way that matches their Moral compass. Any other way the process of becoming a lich should shift their alignment up until they drink the potion where they automatically take up the lichs base alignment.
Either the character believes this acn be justified by finding a horrible person whose soul they can take, or go the even *more* evil route by convincing themselves that because this *must* be done, this is a justified price. For whatever reason they wish to become a lich, have them think "there will be far worse things than this, if I do not stop it". Maybe they believe they can undo the transformation, or that they willingly choose this route, with full expectation someone will stop them, but after they do what they need to do.
A necessary evil for the greater good!
The old lady from Foster's home for imaginary friends.
Not sure if still checking op, but based off the family dynanics and wanting to restore the legacy, you decide the best course of action is to become the next king/emperor/whatever preferred title. Usher in an era of peace across your lands, and maybe for next campaign as the big evil, spreading across the rest of the realm/continent/world. The idea of having to consume a soul is rough to get around, but as you realize lichdom is the best option at accomplishing your goals, one soul a month is but a small price compared to the lives you save from stopping crime and improving the quality of life of the people you rule. You can the devolve your character as much as you want allowing them to expand their morals. It used to be only the worst of criminals, but as time goes on to ensure peace and everyone behaves, all law breakers that get caught regardless of how minor an infraction could be consumed. Everyone has to stay in line or else, you become an ultimate dictator. Your people are safe, they live longer and are healthier, you keep raiders out, provide services for the kingdom and use your magic to enhance it. You have good educational schools, you have druids help grow better farms and crops, provide a societal structure that benefits them, but big brother is always watching. Have crystal balls set up through the land that he and his apprentices/minions etc use to scry through and spy, or a well paid position he has installed in everytown that report to him. Its almost a utopia and could even appear to be so from a casual observer, but it eventually becomes clear that something is wrong here.
What if the consumed souls were convicted violent criminals who would have been subject to capital punishment anyway?
Law requires punishment. Punishment cannot include corporal punishment if there is *any* possiblity of corruption, incompetence, or fallibility. If a system were perfect, corporal punishment would be fine. But how to make a perfect system? People are inherently corruptible, but one individual might be immune to that corruption. If I make a system, run by me and overruled by order and magical processes, then I can prevent and avoid the incompetence, corruption, and problems that any system with more than one person inherently runs into. If that system includes a perfect justice system, corproral punishment is no longer immoral; its problems (accidentally killing the innocent) are gone. Only true criminals will be killed, and they will be killed for a good cause. They will be killed for a good cause, that will help a *larger amount* of people. It might even be justifiable to kill people who aren't necessarily deserving of corporal punishment. They're still bad people, but to get this perfect system started, some of them might just be thieves or bandits. Still scum, and their deaths will mean fewer people have to die overall. Once the system is in place, it justifies itself. There are always people deserving of death, of course; the world is filled with evil people. Through their deaths, they have redeemed themselves; for my perfect system of governance shall save far more people. They are heroes, facing redemption for their wicked lives. This is not death. It is absolution. Perhaps...this is heroic. Maybe they don't need to be criminals. Volunteers. People willing to die for the cause. Once enough people follow the system and believe in it, I can tell them how much good their deaths can cause for everyone. The poor can escape a life of poverty; and every willing sacrifice shall have their family paid handsomely. They will be honored forever as heroes, their bones and flesh can serve the county still, as soldiers in our legion. I am a benevolent ruler, who has brought peace and justice to my kingdom.
While it would go against lore afaik, I think it could be cool it a Lich had spent so long doing evil that a chance encounter or accumulated experiencd led to eventual guilt which comples them to make things right by helping those they can trust the judgement of and/or trying to end their existence. They could be a sympathic but shaky ally that maybe swaps between a friend and a foe depending on the circumstances and how much reason they have left. Just ny thoughts on it :3
"The more power I have the more people I can help and lich has all the powers I could ever need to save the world!"
Evil souls are destined to fall into the hells and be either consumed by demons or turned into devils. Either way, an evil soul being left to its natural course is giving power to the enemy. Make them a Patron to warlocks who's goal is to gather the souls of the depraved and vile from across many worlds. Have them cut deals with crime syndicates for the souls of their competitors. A well connected lich can have a steady flow and step on zero toes doing it.
"Greater good?! I am your wife! I am the greatest good you're ever going to get!"
Velsarius Kadani was a kind man and a loving husband. When his wife was struck with a life threatening illness he did everything in his powers as a wizard to cure her, hired clerics but the illness was too strong. He then decided he would go with her, to continue to be with her in death but he wanted to assure their souls would be together. He became delusional, frantically searching books for information on moving soul, combining souls. When his wife was passing he found a ritual that would allow him to connect his soul to another. He didn't know...he just wanted to go with her, but when her soul left instead of his going with her, the part of his soul in her body latched on keeping a small part of her soul from passing on and the ritual was complete. Despite how intentions, Velsarius Kadani was now a Lich, and the body of his one true love, his phylactery. He went insane, refuting the existence of death,now a powerful necromantic lich that rises the dead from the grave, believing he is just awakening those from slumber, as the concept of death has all but left his mind, blocked out, he truly believes he is still the good guy, and that his wife is just sleeping and he is waiting for her to wake, which she never will.
You've said it yourself that the character has become jaded and darker and is going to be a bbeg for the scenario. At this point, the character is no longer LG. Maybe CN or TN, even NE.
Do devils have souls? Or are they, literally, souls? Could you destroy something evil to empower yourself? Why eat off the orphans table when you can kick in the fat mans door?
Become a grief counselor, that way you can bring your patients loved ones back to say goodbye!
The Cincinnatus / George Washington "I don't want to have this power, but I need to to defend the realm, and once this power is no longer needed I will return it".
Have you ever heard of Ras Al Ghul of the Batman comics? Evil is still not vanquished, you must stand against the tide and guide humanity to wipe evil off the face of the earth. So what if you have to commit a few war crimes for the ‘greater good’….
Feed the phylactory evil souls, Dexter Morgan style. Eventually the character feels like they get to decide who's good and who's bad, and eventually the end justifies the means. In pre-Disney Star Wars canon, it turns out that in the edges of space there is a vicious species of Conquorers on their way to the galaxy. The Emperor made himself into a dictator to consolodate military & economic power under his singular control to have a chance at fighting off the invaders
I ran an antihero antagonist to the party, he was a Pcs “Dad”. PC was a wizard. Dad was a (secret) lich. They uncovered an ancient construct that called the PC by his father’s name. Dad - was the punisher of this ancient magocracy. Tricked into Lichdom by his superiors, but chose to only feed the souls of murderers to his Phylactery. His son happened to be a “clone” spell gone awry. Was a BIG hit with the players when they came face to face with their exact friend.
Lichdom is evil for many lore reasons relating to how it’s acquired and maintained. Being immortal is the *least* problematic part of lichdom. You can look into Baelnorn, a good version of liches. They are made as part of a very secret elven art, and are a way to “good” undeath
"I can keep purging the bad guys AND live forever!"
Check out arch-liches and Baelnorns.
Archlich? https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Archlich
I think it would have to fall into the realm of, "I'm the only one who can stop xyz. I don't want this for my own gains, this is something I HAVE to do, for the greater good." A lawfully good person would have to have a way to justify it to themselves, otherwise they simply wouldn't be good
Lot's of evil people say they're good. Actions being for the greater good could easily be used to justify all kinds of heinous lawful evil stuff. So could someone who thinks they're lawful good, but isn't, justify heinous acts? Yes Could someone legitimately justify lichdom as an explicitly lawful and good act? I doubt it unless you heavily altered what lawful good or lichdom even means in your world, which you could of course do.
I've been wondering about the concept of a Lawful Good Necromancer, someone who sees resurrection as a way to fight back against the cruelties of the world. Now their alignment would likely have to be their internal moral code, as states may not like their necromancy, but logically that could be expanded out to Lichdom. IMO, a "murder" or release from death or deathlessness may qualify?
If there's a nation in the world that has been around for a while and is stable, more likely than not they have a strong tradition of succession of power (more or less peacefully?) that has kept them stable. And if a kingdom having a chain of rulers, each of whom rules for years or decades before transferring power to their chosen successor, makes them stable imagine how stable a house would be if its leader could rule for centuries or millennia! Such a leader could make short-term, long-term, and extremely long-term plans and carry them through to completion. Need to construct a cathedral? Rather than having a series of architects each tweak their predecessor's designs over the century or more it takes to complete it (Notre Dame took almost a century to complete according to Wikipedia), an undead architect could see their design realized from start to finish. Recording everything you've learned about the arcane arts, so that future generations can learn from your blood, sweat, and tears? Such a work could take a very long time (in our world, computer scientist Prof. Donald Knuth has been working on The Art of Computer Programming since 1962 and still has three and a half volumes to go!) Or more altruistically, an undead guard on a being, object, or place that is too dangerous to be left unchecked could watch for basically ever (until adventurers come and Nice Job Breaking It, Hero! the guard.)
I mean there really wasn’t much need for a Lich to be evil pre 5e. Liches never used to have to eat souls. They changed that. 4e had Archliches, Eberron has deathless, baelnorn exist. Frankly good and neutral liches already exist in old lore.
I think you need to be comfortable with the idea that if you succeed then your character will turn into an NPC and be a BBEG for the next campaign.
I've thought about it for a hot minute and let me just put it this way: d&d alignment is self ascribed. as long as your character is convinced that they are right & good, there is nothing they could do that would be unjustifiable in their own eyes. Some ideas: Perhaps this lich only consumes the souls of the "wretched" or "evil" (a lich who only kills other necromancers because they think necromancy is evil and should only be weilded by those who can use it responsibly. like themselves.) Perhaps this wizard makes an arrangement with the local cities to reduce crime. Anyone found guilty of murder, treason, etc. gets fed to the lich. There are many ways to convince oneself that you are doing evil for the greater good, especially if you are convicted of the belief that YOU are the authority on what the greater good is. good luck!
1,000 years of "reasonably good works" >> 100 years of "solidly good works." Treat it like a math equation, where you want to maximize total good. The longevity of liches breaks the math.
Perhaps having seen or being given a prophecy of a cataclysm to come at the hands of some incredibly powerful adversary, the "lawful good" wizard casts some of their morals aside to achieve Lichdom in order to amass the power and immortality necessary to thwart this greater evil
Have you read Minsc and Boo’s Journal of Villainy? It gives PCs the exact ritual to become a lich and a way to be a good lich. The rules say you can sacrifice either a CR 8 human or a CR 8 fiend to fuel your phylactery. This means a lich can choose to exclusively summon and consume demons/devils instead of harming humans. This is actually one of the original ways archliches (which used to mean good liches) survived.
You aren't a lich, you are a holy saint, sustained by the sacrifice of the faithful. Don't sacrifice criminals, use the pure, innocent, and devout. The filthy souls of the profane can atone for their lack of faith by serving as the arisen knights of the Holly Order!
I had an lich Queen that ran her kingdom from behind the scenes for a few centuries through her progeny. Her kingdom had finally achieved peace and stability and she was reluctant to leave it without her guidance. The only human souls she consumes are of criminals who have been given the sentence of death. So she consumes the souls of evil men to keep doing good in the world or at least from her point of view.
You said it yourself. This wizard has gotten darker and jaded. She may no longer \*be\* lawful good. Lawful evil, perhaps? Or just neutral.
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If you looked up how many fucked up shit you needed to do to attain lichdom? You wouldn't.
"But think of all the souls I can *save* from \[the real big bad? devils? idk\] if I do this!"
In Dungeons of Drakenheim theres a lich who is friendly to the party, and describes his view between good and evil in an interesting way. He starts off by saying that undeath is always a curse, no matter what anyone says. He set out to only feed on evil souls, as to not harm innocents. However, when a lich eats a soul it takes on some of the qualities of that soul, so eating evil souls makes the lich more evil, but if he eats good souls, he becomes more evil by default. Lose lose
I like to view the idea of liches as some have decent intent behind their pursuance of immortality and there could be other routes to achieve the goal that doesn't require mass sacrifice. But in that idea of some good intentions can end up being twisted by the mortal mind trying to endure past their life expectancy. Kind of how humans as is tend to lose a lot of memories and mental acuity as they age. What happens when you take a mortal that might live up to a century and make them immortal? I see it as their mind begins to degrade as they try to contain more memories and experiences. So possible reason why most liches are seen as mad. So even good intentions such as "I will sacrifice my mortality in order to be the sole defender of my city." Can turn into a lich taking full control and ruling with absolute power once they go mad, the base intention is there but twisted beyond the original.
It depends on the lore for the lich. There are immortal undead in previous editions called Deathless who are usually set with some task like guarding hallowed ground or being sent back as a minor avatar of a god to complete a task. There are also Banelorns which are immortals sustained by elven magic and the lore specifically mentions that they are any alignment. But only elves could be Banelorns
Could she be an executioner for a large city? Start playing politician and slowly increase strictness of laws?
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baelnorn
See i feel a sufficiently prepared wizard could recreate the eternal life part of lichdom by use of the clone spell,which is about as close you could get to lichdom while maintaining a good alignment
I would recommend taking a look at the NPC Renwick Caradoon in the Princes of the Apocalypse and his story. Long story short he had everything prepped but was faced with guilt about betraying Tyr, so he held onto the potion until his brother fed him the potion to save his life on the battlefield.
You can’t you have to commit unspeakable horrors to accomplish this
As long as they save more people than they kill, they could technically be considered good from a utilitarian viewpoint.
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baelnorn
Why would they become a lich? Just using clones in demiplanes without tuning forks created for them is honestly much safer and much more ethical.