Lichdom

[KILLERZombie135]

My thoughts on the idea of being weak against blunt or sharp weapons I'm going to have to vote blunt weapons. As a walking corpse flesh and organs are the least of your problems but fracturing bone to the point of imobility now that could be a problem.

 

The only reason (that I think) zombies are effected by slashing weapons in d&d (lore wise) was because you kill a zombie by damaging its brain stem

Edited January 15, 2013 by KILLERZombie135

[Nereidian]

not sure if this has been mentioned but the Lich no matter what form they are in should be pretty vulnerable to silver weapons as they are undead. might it be a good idea to include a permanent resurrect body spell so you can always have a minion with you?

[kromey]

I'm pretty sure a Nether lich is a lich who's phylactery got damaged and is trying to fix it.

Nether Liches were normal liches, but, for a certain time were weakened by a destruction of one of their Phylacteries.

From UESP

Yup, just looked that up myself -- so the Nether Lich is actually what I'm calling a demilich; I may change to using that to integrate more fully into TES lore...

 

The TES equivalent of the "superlich" is the Ancient Lich, which gains its extra power through the construction of an additional phylactery.

 

My thoughts on the idea of being weak against blunt or sharp weapons I'm going to have to vote blunt weapons. As a walking corpse flesh and organs are the least of your problems but fracturing bone to the point of imobility now that could be a problem.

This makes sense to me. How much extra damage do you think would be appropriate? 20%? 50%? 100% (double damage!)? Just a flat damage bonus (like silver weapons)?

 

Also, if we're going with blunt weapons do more damage on the basis of bone breakage, axes should also get a damage boost, as despite having a blade they're really just blunt-force weapons delivered to a smaller area; while this means you can more easily miss bones altogether (e.g. a hit to the gut isn't likely to break any bones, whereas a mace or a warhammer to the gut can still break ribs or even do damage to your spine), it should still get some of the same benefits -- maybe half the extra damage that blunt weapons get? (Swords, while plenty capable of breaking bones, because of the way they are balanced typically do their damage via cuts and such; it's axes being balanced right behind the striking edge -- just like blunt weapons -- that makes them more likely to break bones. (Sometimes I worry about my sanity, knowing things like which weapons break bones more readily... :ohdear: ))

 

not sure if this has been mentioned but the Lich no matter what form they are in should be pretty vulnerable to silver weapons as they are undead. might it be a good idea to include a permanent resurrect body spell so you can always have a minion with you?

Ah, silver weapons! I didn't actually realize they were in vanilla until now (as mentioned previously, I've never done the Companions quest line and never had any encounters with Silver Hand...). Based on their description, silver weapons' extra damage is likely based on the undead keyword -- since as a lich you'll have that keyword, that should automatically apply, but I'll double-check that.

Edited January 15, 2013 by kromey

[skulleris]

Also, basic restoration spells don't work on undead minions, so they wouldn't work on the Lich either.

 

But Dawnguard did add "Heal Undead" spells that heal undead creatures. So i feel, that after becoming a lich, your basic Healing spell would become obsolete, instead you would require to find a spelltome (or a master of restoration, like the Colette Marence, the restoration teacher in the College of Winterhold) to teach you the spell.

[skulleris]

http://i.imgur.com/GgbKI.jpg?1

 

Just a quick, photoshopped img of my idea of how a Phylactery could look

[kromey]

Also, basic restoration spells don't work on undead minions, so they wouldn't work on the Lich either.

 

But Dawnguard did add "Heal Undead" spells that heal undead creatures. So i feel, that after becoming a lich, your basic Healing spell would become obsolete, instead you would require to find a spelltome (or a master of restoration, like the Colette Marence, the restoration teacher in the College of Winterhold) to teach you the spell.

Oh? Hm, that may be an issue, especially as I've decided I like the "no natural health regen"; if a player doesn't have DG and the standard restoration spells don't work, it'd be really hard for a lich to survive long at all...

 

I will have to look into that, and if it's indeed true that restoration spells won't work on a lich I'll have to figure something out for those folks without DG...

 

http://i.imgur.com/GgbKI.jpg?1

 

Just a quick, photoshopped img of my idea of how a Phylactery could look

Very nice! Now if only someone could whip up the mesh and texture for that...

[KILLERZombie135]

My thoughts on the idea of being weak against blunt or sharp weapons I'm going to have to vote blunt weapons. As a walking corpse flesh and organs are the least of your problems but fracturing bone to the point of imobility now that could be a problem.

This makes sense to me. How much extra damage do you think would be appropriate? 20%? 50%? 100% (double damage!)? Just a flat damage bonus (like silver weapons)?

 

Also, if we're going with blunt weapons do more damage on the basis of bone breakage, axes should also get a damage boost, as despite having a blade they're really just blunt-force weapons delivered to a smaller area; while this means you can more easily miss bones altogether (e.g. a hit to the gut isn't likely to break any bones, whereas a mace or a warhammer to the gut can still break ribs or even do damage to your spine), it should still get some of the same benefits -- maybe half the extra damage that blunt weapons get? (Swords, while plenty capable of breaking bones, because of the way they are balanced typically do their damage via cuts and such; it's axes being balanced right behind the striking edge -- just like blunt weapons -- that makes them more likely to break bones. (Sometimes I worry about my sanity, knowing things like which weapons break bones more readily... :ohdear: ))

 

I think that warhammers/maces should do 20-40% more damage, don't make it to high because we don't want lich slaying weapons. On the axes front they should do more because there not just designed to break bone they are made to cut limbs off so roughly a 30-50% damage increase

 

On the healing spells for undead there isn't a self healing spell and I know for a fact that there are hardly any self undead healing spells on the nexus because there is not need vampires can use regular self healing spells

Edited January 15, 2013 by KILLERZombie135

[kromey]

Hm... while it certainly happens, severing limbs in combat is actually really hard to do, so I'm not comfortable giving axes a bigger damage boost than blunts.

 

I think I'll give both axes and blunts a 40% boost for now, and see how that works out. (And woo be the lich facing a silver axe!!)

[kromey]

I've updated the OP to include the new ideas people have posted that I've decided to incorporate.

 

Additionally, I struck out the 50% magic resistance as, on top of 50% magic absorption, I felt that one was just making the lich too powerful -- after all, there needs to be room to grow into becoming an Ancient Lich!

[sweetsnowboarding]

As your on the subject of phylacteries, back when True Lichdom was being worked on, they got on the subject and I recommended saereks skull key for an idea? not sure what you guys think of that?

 

here is a picture

 

Edited January 15, 2013 by sweetsnowboarding