The Lich is probably the most enduring contribution to pop culture that D&D has made. While there were characters who embodied the undead wizard in older fiction, like Thulsa Doom in the Conan books (which was kind of combined with another character for the James Earl Jones character in the movie) to evil overlords who would endlessly come back if a magical artifact was kept intact (like Sauron with his ring and Khoschei the Deathless's egg) D&D codified this type of character and gave it an enduring name: Lich, and archaic English word just meaning "body," but which now has a kind of elemental association with dark, evil, and extreme power.
And with these feats, you, too, can become one those enduring undead masters of the arcane.
Like the Path of the Death Knight, you'll begin with an Initiate feat, the prerequisites for all the other feats. Then, you'll have to pick up at least one other intermediary feat before getting the capstone Lich Ascension feat.
Liches are, in most settings, always evil (same for Death Knights) but there are some potential, maybe, paths in which you could become a more benevolent Lich. These are "villainous options" though. In the grey blurb, they do mention that liches can vary in alignments and motivations. Oddly, though, I think that the general lore is that death knights cease to be death knights if they atone, while a Lich's transformation is not really based on their moral outlook but on the steps they have taken - it's just that those steps tend to involve consuming others' souls, which is pretty evil basically any way you look at it.
Still, I'd actually be somewhat more open to the idea of a non-evil Lich who just uses very obscure and esoteric necromantic rites that might not involved condemning anyone to oblivion.
But let's get into the feats.
Lich Initiate:
Prerequisites: Level 4+, Spellcasting or Pact Magic feature.
Ability Score Increase: Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1, up to 20.
Creating Your Spirit Jar: Choose a tiny object of great significance to you (or roll on a table). You spend a long rest anchoring your soul to the object, allowing you to consume the souls of the living to bolster your power. You can only have one spirit jar at a time and the old one is destroyed if you create a second one.
Spirit Jar Destruction: Your spirit jar's AC is equal to your spell save DC, and it has a number of HP equal to your spellcasting ability modifier plus your character level. If the jar is destroyed, you gain 2 Exhaustion levels and you can't use the Soul Siphon ability until you create a new one.
Soul Siphon: When you reduce a Humanoid enemy to 0 Hit Points, you can consume its soul and gain a boost of arcane energy (no action required). On your next turn, the first creature you hit with an attack takes extra Necrotic damage equal to 1d6 plus your spellcasting ability modifier. You also gain this benefit if someone else reduces a Humanoid enemy within 10 feet of you to 0 HP. A soul consumed this way can be restored only by a True Resurrection or Wish spell.
Like the Lich you are trying to become, I don't think you need the Spirit Jar to be anywhere near you. Indeed, it might best to lock it away in some secure and/or remote place. Soul Siphon is pretty powerful given that there's no limit on use, but it also only works on Humanoids.
It's also... yeah, not really easy to imagine that flavored as anything other than evil. Note also that the boost is only to attacks, so if you're relying on saving throw spells for your damage this will not come into play a lot. Still, melee Bards, Warlocks with Eldritch Blast or Pact of the Blade, Sorcerers with Sorcerous Burst, or just a good old Fire Bolt can all benefit.
Arcane Restoration:
Prerequisite: Lich Initiate Feat
Ability Score Increase: Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1, up to 20.
Essence Rejuvenation: When you use Soul Siphon to consume a soul, you can choose one or more expended spell slots to recover. The spell slots can have a combine level equal to no more than 4. Once you use this feature, you can't again until you finish a Short or Long rest.
Again, you're limited to humanoids to harvest souls, but frankly, dang. Indeed, while we're probably imagining full casters using this, an Artificer, Ranger, or Paladin could also follow this path and that four levels-worth of spells looks amazing to someone who might only have 2nd level spells at this point. And that's per short rest, not just long.
What this doesn't work well for is Warlocks, who won't have any spell slots lower than 5 a level after they pick up this feat.
Transfer Life:
Prerequisite: Lich Initiate Feat
Ability Score Increase: Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1, up to 20 (unlike the Death Knight ones, these seem universal, which honestly makes sense).
Soul Transference: When you use Siphon Soul to consume a soul, you can choose a creature within 60 feet of yourself to gain Temp HP equal to your proficiency bonus plus your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum 1).
We'll need to be at least level 8 (actually, I suppose an Eldritch Knight could get this at 6 in theory) so we're talking a +3 PB and probably a +4 to our spellcasting ability for this, so that 7 Temp HP. It's no action required, but maybe not stupendous.
Undead Grasp:
Prerequisite: Lich Initiate Feat
Ability Score Increase: Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 up to 20.
Paralyzing Touch: You know the Chill Touch cantrip, or if you already know it, you gain another cantrip of your choice. You choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma as your spellcasting ability for this when you pick this feat.
When you deal damage with Chill Touch, you can expend a level 1+ spell slot to attempt to paralyze the target. The target takes an extra 1d10 Necrotic damage per level of the spell slot consumed, and must succeed on a Con save against your spells ave DC or have the Paralyzed condition until the start of your next turn.
On one hand, I like how this echoes the classic Lich ability. But there are a couple problems: First is that it's both an attack and a save, so they have two chances to avoid it (though in fairness, we choose to use this after we hit - it's just are we likely to actually try casting this and getting into melee range if we aren't going to use this?) The other is that the condition ends before we get to do anything to them on our next turn.
I do think this works really well for Bladesinger Wizards, Valor Bards, and maybe Eldritch Knight Fighters, who all get to use a cantrip as the first attack in their multiattack. Paralyzing a foe and then hitting them with a weapon means an automatic crit. Great for Gishes, less great for true pure spellcasters.
Lich Ascension:
Prerequisite: Level 12+, at least two Path of the Lich feats.
Ability Score Increase: Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1, up to 20.
Undead: Your creature type is Undead.
Unholy Anatomy: You have resistance to Necrotic and Poison damage, and you don't gain exhaustion levels from dehydration, malnutrition, or suffocation.
Frightening Gaze: You learn the Fear spell if you don't already know it and you always have it prepared. You choose Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma as your spellcasting ability for it when you choose the feat. You can cast the spell without expending a spell slot a number of itmes equal to your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum once) per long rest.
Rejuvenation: If you die and you have a Spirit Jar and you are not revived beforehand, you re-form in 1d10 days in the nearest unoccupied space within 5 feet of your spirit jar with all your Hit Points.
I mean, the Rejuvenation thing is the main event for a Lich. And the only case in which I think it could be a downside is if your party needs to secure a resurrection diamond and you wind up rejuvenating before they can revive you, potentially separating you from them far away, even on another plane.
Fear is a good spell, and this gives you several free uses of it.
As I mentioned in the Death Knight post, being Undead has its downsides, even if healing spells now work on you just fine. And the damage resistances are good.
Overall Thoughts:
I don't know that I love this as much as the Death Knight one - I guess that that supplemented you with a lot of extra spells because your character might not even have been a spellcaster. Most of the Lich's features focus on Soul Siphon, which, aside from the morality of it (again, this is a Villainous option) might also wind up being unusable in a campaign with little to no humanoid enemies. That's honestly a pretty big liability for something that is the crux of this character-defining feat path.
And especially in 5.5, where lots of classic humanoid foes like Goblins or Gnolls are now classified as other creature types, it's going to be a serious problem.
The Lich Initiate feat is actually more of a liability than a benefit if you can't use Soul Siphon, as your Spirit Jar's destruction imposes a pretty major downside.
So, how would I build a Lich character?
Basically any spellcaster could work fairly well for this, and there are sort of too many to choose from. To go the classic route, you could go with a Necromancer Wizard (which we should be getting the 5.5 version of later this year). Naturally, we'd have to pick up Lich Initiate early on - for sake of argument, I'll say 4, though we could delay the whole progression and grab War Caster first and then take Initiate at 8 and Ascension at 16. So, what's our in-between feat?
Honestly, because of the issues raised here, I might go with Undead Grasp just to avoid putting all my eggs into the Soul Siphon basket. This will work on any foe (that isn't both immune to necrotic damage and also the paralyzed condition) so it's pretty campaign-agnostic. Arcane Restoration is very tempting, but I think I might want something like War Caster instead for my general spellcasting purposes.
It might be fun to use this on a half-caster, but because the feats only boost mental stats, the Artificer is probably the best choice in this case. Here, Arcane Restoration is going to be give us, proportionately, a pretty huge chunk of our spell slots back. The upcoming Reanimator subclass is the best thematic fit here, of course.
While we can siphon souls from any distance if we strike the killing blow, we might want to play a more close-range character to benefit from our party killing foes near us, which might make a hardier Cleric or Druid (or maybe Bard) a solid option. Again, I think a Bladesinger Wizard actually works really well for this.
If I had any feedback (which I will for the survey that comes out next week) I'd say that the reliance on Soul Siphon, while flavorful, is very limiting to this Path, and I'd try to diversify the means by which an ascendant Lich does their business. Also, given that they explicitly call out non-evil Liches, it'd be nice to have the Lich Initiate feat use something other than this invariably heinous act. Perhaps the Soul Jar initially just increases our ability to recover HP before it fully brings us back to life, or maybe we get some other offensive ability that isn't restricted to humanoid targets and maybe doesn't have to consume souls?
I write that realizing that I don't want to de-fang this most iconic of evil monsters, and so it might be a mistake to give them the soft-focus treatment. But again, beyond the morality of Soul Siphon, the worry I have is that a player feels trapped by this set of options if they're in a campaign without a lot of humanoid foes (something that becomes almost necessary at high levels, when humanoids are just not tough enough to challenge a party).
And with that, we come to the end of this latest UA. I think there's certainly some reworking and tuning up that these options will need, but I applaud WotC thinking outside the box and giving us some truly new and innovative options.
Note that none of these four subclasses has ever appeared in any previous 5E content (one could argue the Hell Knight is thematically linked to MCDM's Illrigger, but I don't think that counts). With so much stuff getting reprinted for 5.5, which was meant to be backwards compatible (and to a large degree is,) I'm really happy to have a UA with absolutely nothing that we've seen before. So, major points for that.
No comments:
Post a Comment