Lichdom

[Zephyr2011]

I've been thinking about the ingredients, and about players who may want to become liches without performing evil acts in the process.

 

Certainly the easiest route to obtain a filled soul gem is to, well, fill it -- but the use of black soul gems and the capturing of NPC souls is considered to be "evil" by evil. And many consider harvesting human(oid) bodies for their organs to be an evil act as well. (None of the other ingredients are particularly rare or "evil", so these should be the only ones I have to worry about.)

 

Seems like it wouldn't be hard to produce a couple of Radiant quests -- a shadowy information broker can provide the PC with information about the location of the ingredient he's after, for a price of course.

 

I'm thinking human hearts could be found on either necromancers or Forsworn, while filled black soul gems could be found on necromancers. The player then just has to go get it. (This also helps PCs who don't use Soul Trap, for whatever reason, as well as helps out with the (non-respawning) ultra-rare ingredient of the human heart (only 11 in vanilla Skyrim).) Any other types these ingredients should be found on (or near, if I can figure out how to just put them nearby with the Radiant Quest system)?

 

Edit: And for those who think this feels like a cheat, I could easily separate these out into a separate .esp: Don't want them? Don't activate them!

 

 

For ingredients, I think the placement sounds like a good idea, although personally, I think making this incredibly hard to find is a good thing. Lich's are supposed to be the epitome of necromancy and generally evil, it makes sense that if someone wants to be a lich they either have to get their hands dirty or go through a heck of a lot of work to accumulate the supplies in a morally correct manner, just my thought. Maybe make the human hearts and filled gems in certain dungeons with really beefed up guards. Just a thought, I think that lichdom should be a complex moral decision, it is the tearing of your soul from your body after all and if you're into power you should have to think of those consequences extensively. Just my personal opinion though.

 

On the subject of multiple phylacteries, when I think of a phylactery, I think of a horcrux like from Harry Potter (probably where she got the inspiration tool. Sorry to anyone who doesn't like the series, the comparison is just apt I think). You can make multiple horcruxes but each one holds an equal fraction of your soul. When you put this into phylacteries, you could make more and split your soul further. This would make you more secure as many of your phylacteries would have to be damaged before you could be weakened measurably and would make reverting to your weaker form a less painful and extreme situation. The price though would be that all of your phylacteries have to be extremely close together for you to get the same bonus as only having one existing phylactery and having it with you. Lore wise I'm not sure that multiple phylacteries are what makes one a higher class of lich. According to DnD lore, what makes a lich more powerful is ascending not just beyond mortality but beyond their bodies and becoming a "demilich" (which I realize is what you call your weakened state) where only a very small vessel that contains the soul, whether it be a phylactery, a hand or what have you, remains and the essence of the demilich roams the cosmos with more magical power than most people can even conceive of. No clue how you would implement that whole aspect in there and I think that if someone were to become a demilich it might be gamebreaking as to be consistent with the lore they'd be virtually invincible in every way. An exuberently long and drawn out process to break free of your body completely and exist purely from your phylactery might do the trick, but it'd basiically have to be three-fold as difficult -or harder- than the initial ascension to lichdom. From there you could walk around like a spirit (the effects of the Philter of the Phantom come to mind) and do your business but your phylactery would be constantly hunted down and people would attempt to destroy it. Whenever someone attacked the phylactery you would be yanked from whatever you're doing to defend your phylactery (unless you're in Sovngarde or Skuldalfn but it seems kinda bogus that a demilich, or any lich for that matter, would even be allowed to go to Savngarde or for any person to cooperate with them) and hopefully it doesn't get destroyed and you don't die, since by that point the thing your controlling is just a projection of your phylactery. This would be a TON of work and probably completely unnecessary to any lichdom mod but I just kinda got going on this tangent...my bad.

 

On the lich appearances: have you given thought to how you are going to handle that? I know a lot of people want too look like a rotting corpse but I think it would be easier to keep the mesh the same and just throw on some new textures, similar to how vampires are handled, and over time you look more and more... rotty. With vampirism the textures change as you starve yourself of blood more and more, you could handle this similarly with just simple time passes making the character look rotten, possibly expose some bones and such without actually changing meshes (this also makes the whole armor and equipment issue MUCH easier to deal with, as in, eliminates it, and no need for new animations). This still gives a pretty good affect and in terms of playing time, it's unlikely that your file save will span multiple years so the lich likely wouldn't be given enough time to decompose to a full on skeleton or horrid zombie looking thing like the dragon priests (you could also explain away the slow rate of decay as part of the ludicrous amount of magical energy the lich has). If you already have the meshes, textures and animations done or nearly so then that's awesome and this idea is completely pointless but I just thought I'd throw it out there. Also, for your weakened state you could use the Philter of the Phantom effects I mentioned earlier rather than the dragon priest model. (the Philter of the Phantom is found in Shroud Hearth Barrow near/in Ivarstead if you want to check out its affects, fun stuff)

 

Some people have mentioned other bonuses such as boosts to necromancy. In the destruction perk tree, there were three perks cut from the original game: Fire Mastery, Frost Mastery and Storm Mastery. These still exist in the creation kit (I actually made a tiny plugin for myself that threw them back in) and they reduce the cost (magicka that is) of their perspective element's spells. You could implement this into the mod, making re-animation spells cheaper for liches, I'm not sure if there are filters for summoning spells that differentiate between the daedric, familiar and undead schools but that would be worth looking into as well. That seems much more immersive and fitting for liches than just a generic bump to conjuration.

 

I hope my thoughts/ramblings have helped give you some new ideas or different ways to approach and implement your own. Best of luck with the rest of the mod, I'm incredibly excited for it.

 

-Zeph

[kromey]

For ingredients, I think the placement sounds like a good idea, although personally, I think making this incredibly hard to find is a good thing. Lich's are supposed to be the epitome of necromancy and generally evil, it makes sense that if someone wants to be a lich they either have to get their hands dirty or go through a heck of a lot of work to accumulate the supplies in a morally correct manner, just my thought. Maybe make the human hearts and filled gems in certain dungeons with really beefed up guards. Just a thought, I think that lichdom should be a complex moral decision, it is the tearing of your soul from your body after all and if you're into power you should have to think of those consequences extensively. Just my personal opinion though.

On this I think we're in agreement. However, not everyone enjoys super-hard quasi-quests, nor does everyone like to be dependent upon rare drops (that being one of the biggest reasons I quit WoW). Doing the Radiant quests to make the rarer/"evil"er ingredients a bit easier to get your hands on is simple, and by doing it as a separate file those who don't want that little helping hand don't have to have it.

 

According to DnD lore, what makes a lich more powerful is ascending not just beyond mortality but beyond their bodies and becoming a "demilich" (which I realize is what you call your weakened state) where only a very small vessel that contains the soul, whether it be a phylactery, a hand or what have you, remains and the essence of the demilich roams the cosmos with more magical power than most people can even conceive of.

On the subject of "my" demilich versus DnD demilich:

"demi-" is a prefix that literally means "half", although more generally just means "less". For example, a demigod is a very powerful being, but not yet as powerful as a god -- literally, it's "less than a god".

 

In DnD, the "demi-" in demilich refers to the creature's physical form -- physically it is less than what it once was, although within the context of DnD (which emphasizes power in any form rather than physical size) this nomenclature makes little sense, and in fact the author of the original material introducing the demilich has expressed regret over that decision.

 

An exuberently long and drawn out process to break free of your body completely and exist purely from your phylactery might do the trick, but it'd basiically have to be three-fold as difficult -or harder- than the initial ascension to lichdom. From there you could walk around like a spirit (the effects of the Philter of the Phantom come to mind) and do your business but your phylactery would be constantly hunted down and people would attempt to destroy it. Whenever someone attacked the phylactery you would be yanked from whatever you're doing to defend your phylactery (unless you're in Sovngarde or Skuldalfn but it seems kinda bogus that a demilich, or any lich for that matter, would even be allowed to go to Savngarde or for any person to cooperate with them) and hopefully it doesn't get destroyed and you don't die, since by that point the thing your controlling is just a projection of your phylactery. This would be a TON of work and probably completely unnecessary to any lichdom mod but I just kinda got going on this tangent...my bad.

I like the idea of this type of super-lich, as the next step up beyond lich. It's definitely beyond what I want to accomplish for the first release, but I'll keep it in mind and may add it for Lichdom 2.0.

 

On the lich appearances: have you given thought to how you are going to handle that? ... Also, for your weakened state you could use the Philter of the Phantom effects I mentioned earlier rather than the dragon priest model. (the Philter of the Phantom is found in Shroud Hearth Barrow near/in Ivarstead if you want to check out its affects, fun stuff)

For now at least the lich will simply look like the player does. Exactly like the player does. Not unlike werewolves while in human (or mer) form. I'm neither a modeller nor a texturer, nor am I looking to recruit one until I've got something working.

 

I'll check out the Philter of the Phantom, although it looks like it makes the player all ghost-y? In the CK that's the "ethereal" effect I believe, and part of that is that the player cannot be damaged -- which is kind of the opposite of making the player more frail and vulnerable.

 

Some people have mentioned other bonuses such as boosts to necromancy. In the destruction perk tree, there were three perks cut from the original game: Fire Mastery, Frost Mastery and Storm Mastery. These still exist in the creation kit (I actually made a tiny plugin for myself that threw them back in) and they reduce the cost (magicka that is) of their perspective element's spells. You could implement this into the mod, making re-animation spells cheaper for liches, I'm not sure if there are filters for summoning spells that differentiate between the daedric, familiar and undead schools but that would be worth looking into as well. That seems much more immersive and fitting for liches than just a generic bump to conjuration.

Ooh, good idea! I'll have to look into this, I think resurrection is indeed a separate magical effect from conjuration, so that should be doable.

 

I can say though that I don't want to restrict liches to necromancy (or rather, I don't want to restrict their bonuses to that sub-school). While it's true that necromancy is what creates them (well, with a bit of smithing and alchemy on the side), that doesn't mean they only get their bonuses there...

[kromey]

Well, talking about Ancient liches with multiple phylacteries, i always thought that multiple ones are like replacements, for example, the body gets destroyed, the "Active" phylactery damaged, so the liches soul goes from the damaged one to another phylactery, so creating multiple ones, would be something like "1-ups" :D

 

But that's just my take on it, its probably not like that :psyduck:

Hm, interesting take on it. Make extra phylacteries to put off your inevitable defeat, thus potentially allowing you to "die" multiple times in the same fight before you even have to worry about being downgraded to demilich...

 

Without some sort of con, though, this feels almost like a cheat. Maybe each additional phylactery beyond the first weakens you in some way, e.g. a hit to your maximum Magicka, to represent your soul being "diluted" between multiple vessels?

 

In terms of bonuses, you'd probably want to make something related to enhancing necromancy. After all, liches are the paragon of necromancers, right?

Well, not necessarily. Necromancy is what makes liches possible, but that doesn't mean an Illusionist couldn't invest the bare minimum of time into that sub-school to make himself a lich, before returning to the study of his true calling...

 

Maybe something that would enhance your undead minions, perhaps raising the cap by 1 or 2?

That's already on the list of benefits of being a lich. Well, extra minions, that is -- it seems to be a single actor value that defines how many summons/undeads the player can control, and I don't think I can tweak that to allow extra undead minions without also allowing extra daedra...

 

if i were a lich with zombie hordes i'd want to have spells and buffs i could use on them.

Ooh, I like this. Raise a zombie and then cast spells on it to make it stronger, or tougher, or... I could work up a set of these spells, set them up to only work on undead the player himself has raised, and for a bit of tactical management set them so that only one such buff can be active on a zombie at a time -- it's either stronger or tougher, but never both.

 

I'll keep thinking about this, but I do like it...

[Zephyr2011]

For lich's appearance I totally understand the choice to avoid the whole mesh and texture thing for now, I just thought I'd throw it out there so that whenever the time comes you might be able to save yourself (or fellow modder) some work. I'll tinker around with it a little myself just for curiosity's sake and I'll let you know if I manage to make something cool. Completely your prerogative though.

 

A note on the "Philter of the Phantom" you actually fight someone who uses the potion in the game, in Shroud Hearth Barrow. He's not ghostly or anything, he just has the appearance have one, it's purely aesthetic. You can try this out on yourself as well, your stats don't change in any way shape or form, just your appearance, that's the only reason I mentioned it. For when the person is in the demilich form just throw an ability on them with all of your intended malluses and the "appear ethereal," or whatever the exact wording is, effect on them and voila: they look less substantial and they have the painful side affects without losing the ability to equip all their stuff, granted that might warrant making the malluses greater to compensate for them having gear.

 

For the name of the "demilich" I know the nomenclature doesn't really make sense for DnD or anything, and I wasn't disagreeing with your use of it as your weakened lich title, I just decided to use it for the sake of not having to say "some super lich thingummy" all the time :tongue:

 

For the bonuses there are lots of other small things you can check for besides just bumps to certain "classes" of spells, there are perks for undead summonings so you can bolster those in strength, duration and cost efficiency, reduce the costs of "raising" and increase the duration. But you can also do things like add a boost to all fire spells when wielding a staff or anything along those lines. I was just throwing out ideas and that seemed to be the most obvious choice. You could also make certain things more difficult if you'd like such as healing spells (total opinion thing there though) you could also boost turn undead spells (to emphasize a lich's power over the undead) make wards cheaper and/or more effective. When it comes to magic you can get incredibly detailed in your fidling with bonuses and what you want to bolster, a whole myriad of options is out there.

 

 

-Zeph

[skulleris]

I'm pretty sure "Demilich" is called a Nether Lich in Elder scrolls.

[sweetsnowboarding]

Glad to see this mod reborn, real shame they discontinued true lichdom.....ehm.....about the "no evil" thing.....sorry to break it to you, but liches ARE evil, and i'm farely sure that this ritual would include some gruesome necromancy....there's not exactly a "good" way to become a heartless undead supermage...: )

[skulleris]

Well, in D&D there were liches of good alignment like the Baelnorn - the elven liches.

However, good liches are presented in Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerûn, a supplementary rule book for the D&D 3.0 rules. Good liches differ from evil liches in that they have sought undeath for a noble cause, to protect a place, a loved one, or to pursue an important quest. Becoming a lich is an arduous task and can never be forced upon an individual.

It's from wikipedia :D

And well, destroying Alduin and saving the whole world is kind of a "important quest" or a "noble cause" for sure! Don't you agree?

Edited January 9, 2013 by skulleris

[kromey]

A note on the "Philter of the Phantom" you actually fight someone who uses the potion in the game, in Shroud Hearth Barrow. He's not ghostly or anything, he just has the appearance have one, it's purely aesthetic. You can try this out on yourself as well, your stats don't change in any way shape or form, just your appearance, that's the only reason I mentioned it. For when the person is in the demilich form just throw an ability on them with all of your intended malluses and the "appear ethereal," or whatever the exact wording is, effect on them and voila: they look less substantial and they have the painful side affects without losing the ability to equip all their stuff, granted that might warrant making the malluses greater to compensate for them having gear.

I've looked at it in the CK, and yeah, it doesn't actually use the "Etherealize" effect, it just makes the character transparent -- which would fit really well with the demilich being a "ghost" of the lich's true power! :thumbsup:

 

For the bonuses there are lots of other small things you can check for besides just bumps to certain "classes" of spells, there are perks for undead summonings so you can bolster those in strength, duration and cost efficiency, reduce the costs of "raising" and increase the duration. But you can also do things like add a boost to all fire spells when wielding a staff or anything along those lines. I was just throwing out ideas and that seemed to be the most obvious choice. You could also make certain things more difficult if you'd like such as healing spells (total opinion thing there though) you could also boost turn undead spells (to emphasize a lich's power over the undead) make wards cheaper and/or more effective. When it comes to magic you can get incredibly detailed in your fidling with bonuses and what you want to bolster, a whole myriad of options is out there.

The catch is that to fiddle with most of those, I have to change vanilla records -- for example, to make a healing spell more (or less) potent when cast on/by a lich, I have to change the vanilla spell and/or magic effects to apply that change. While some may argue that changing things is the whole point of modding, it drastically increases the potential for mod-breaking incompatibilities, especially with any of the major magic overhauls out there.

 

My personal approach is that, when creating a mod like this one that adds to vanilla, do as little changing of vanilla as possible. Just to keep it as compatible as possible for as many people as want to play with it.

 

about the "no evil" thing.....sorry to break it to you, but liches ARE evil, and i'm farely sure that this ritual would include some gruesome necromancy....there's not exactly a "good" way to become a heartless undead supermage...: )

Sure -- just like all dragons are evil city-destroyers, right? ;)

 

There's definitely an easier path to lichdom, and that's by being an evil bastard. But that doesn't mean that a properly-motivated non-evil character couldn't find a path of their own to the same end results -- at the end of the day, necromancy, just like all magic, is just a tool, and in and of itself is incapable of having moral distinctions like "good" and "evil".

 

 

 

And now a quick progress update:

Phylacteries can now only be created or repaired at the Lunar Forge (took a bit of out-of-the-box thinking to get that to work, but fortunately one of the conditional functions is GetIsCurrentLocation, which can be run on the player and returns true only if the player is currently in the defined location -- in this case, in Silent Moons Camp, which has only the Lunar Forge), and also require a hidden perk (will be added to the player when they find the appropriate journal fragment describing the forging of phylacteries). The Ritual of Defilation, which "primes" the phylactery to receive the player's soul, was already done.

 

The Elixir of Endless Night has also been added, and it is brewed in a cooking pot (the fluff will describe the lengthy simmering it has to undergo...); it, too, requires a perk before it can be made, which will likewise be added when the player finds the appropriate journal fragment. Don't drink this stuff, though -- it does 10,000 damage to Health, which should kill anything in the game. (I may change it to a script that simply kills the drinking player, though, just to make sure I didn't accidentally create a god-item poison...)

 

Next will be the Ritual of Becoming, which will perform the final transformation into being a lich. Will require a "primed" phylactery, as well as the Elixir of Endless Night, and if luck is on my side I'll be able to script a neat little transformation process...

[Zephyr2011]

Again on the skill buffs, (sorry if I seem like a nag or an incessant child, I just want to show you your options, my sincere apologies if I come across as a jackwagon) you can use a perk system, hidden or otherwise, to bolster certain spells without modifying the current ones. To do so, create a new perk, name it and all that jazz, then go to entry point. If you were say, going to increase the duration of resurrection spells, go to entry point, select "mod spell duration" then choose the type of modifier you like, multiply value for instance, then type in the amount to modify by 1.5 or something like that say. Then to make it only affect certain spells go to conditions, spell, create a new condition with function name EPMagic_SpellHasKeyword then select the corresponding keyword, MagicSummonUndead and comparison == then input 1.00 for the value, check the or box if you are handling multiple kinds of magic duration bolsters with the same perk and they aren't mutually exclusive. You can use one perk to handle all of your lichly boosts. If you want to categorize some existing spells make a new keyword and add it to the corresponding magic effects. There's some other cool things you can do with this but that's about the extent of my knowledge. I hope this helped clear up my earlier post, let me know if you need more clarification on this or would like screenshots (heck, if you want me to make the perk for you I can do that too, just let me know your specifications)

[kromey]

I like where your head is at, Mr. Kronos (also I dig the name).

 

However, for a perk to affect a spell, doesn't the spell or magic effect have to specify the perk that it's modified by? Or am I totally misunderstanding the purpose of the Perk box in the magic effect dialog (and/or the spell dialog? don't have the CK open in front of me...)?