[3.5] Assassin lich

[Aegbno]

I'm infamous in my group for coming up with absolutely idiotic character ideas.  Recent ones include a Factotum who acted like Johnny Bravo, and a tiefling Warmage who tried to find ways to use her Craft(knitting) in as many possible situations.  I don't know if you can crochet an effective, working ballista, but I'll find out.

My most recent one is an Assassin who knows exactly what'll happen to him in the afterlife and wants no part of it, so I decided he'll become a lich.  Yeah it's not the most optimized way of becoming immortal, but when a skeletal Whisper Gnome breaks into your house in the middle of the night and politely asks for your valuables, you don't say no.

You all are more experienced min/maxers than I am, so I was hoping you could answer some questions.  We stick mainly to Core for simplicity, but other stuff is allowed.  Complete X and Races of X are typically allowed without fuss, most others will have to be run past the DM.

-What's the best way to go about getting CL11 to make a phylactery?  Assassin stops at 10, leaving items or PrCs that advance CL.  Any good classes or cheap items to bring up my CL for the duration of crafting?

-What's a good way to hide or protect my phylactery?  I know the Genesis/Forbiddance trick, but that would be difficult, at best, to pull off without having to UMD scrolls.

-Any other suggestions to optimize it a bit?  The base is a homebrew class the DM came up with that's similar to Rogue, which I'll take to 6, then go into Assassin from there.  Assassin doesn't seem to have too much to keep me in there if I can get SA and casting from somewhere else and still keep that delectable Assassin flavor.

[Quillwraith]

You could maybe pick up some tricks from the Wizsassin.

[phaedrusxy]

Just take the Practiced Spellcaster feat. Your caster level is permanently increased by 4.

And assassins actually have quite a lot of good material to keep you in the class, if you can use all the spells that have been printed in splatbooks for them.

There have been a lot of threads on hiding/protecting phylacteries. I'll let you dig around for those yourself, or someone else can supply the links to them (I don't have any saved).

I remember one where you do something crazy like make a big golem/permanently animated object/undead/etc that is large enough to house your body inside of its chest cavity. Then you stick your phylactery inside of it, and cast Imprisonment on it (after you take precautions to make it undetectable by Scrying, etc).

If you die, you reform inside of it (while it is still deep under the ground), and then you cast Freedom to get out (or just Teleport, or whatever). As an assassin, instead of a typical wizard, you'll have to use more magic items to pull this off, like scrolls of the needed spells, but it can still work for you.

[Aegbno]

Cool, thanks.  I'd forgotten about Practiced Spellcaster.

Another question I meant to ask up there but forgot till just now: any feasible way of going Demilich with it?  A floating skull will have trouble shanking people and I don't think the Phylactery Transference thing will work with weaponry.

[phaedrusxy]

Cool, thanks.  I'd forgotten about Practiced Spellcaster.

Another question I meant to ask up there but forgot till just now: any feasible way of going Demilich with it?  A floating skull will have trouble shanking people and I don't think the Phylactery Transference thing will work with weaponry.

A demilich can be any body part. You could be a skeletal hand, for example.

You could also use things like Magic Jar, Shapechange, etc, so that you don't have to always run around as a skeletal hand or skull.

[bionicgeek]

I'm AFB at the moment but I wonder if there would be a way to use the Dry Lich, as I love the flavor idea.

[widow]

Hmm, how about a psionic lich.

Ardent 5/Psychic Assassin 4/Grim Psion 10/ 1 Shadowdancer (Hide in plain sight)

Ardent is Complete Psionic
Psychic Assassin: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040723d
Grim Psion: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20030628b

With the unusual ardent manifesting rules and practiced manifester, you can get 9th level powers with a final manifestor progression 17.  Lich like abilities, 2d6 sneak attack, and hide in plain sight with the shadowdancer.

[Rebel7284]

Assassin is indeed a fairly sub-par class.

I offer you three interesting alternatives:

1. I think the best combination of classes for a spellcasting assassin is:
Spellthief or Rogue 1/Wizard 4/Unseen Seer 10/Arcane Trickster 5 (or another class to finish)

There is still a problem of losing a bunch of caster levels to the Lich template.

2. Walker in the Wastes gives you the Dry Lich template for free.
Archivist 3/Dread Necromancer 1/Walker in the Waste 10/xx 6

You can use divine metamagic to persist the Ranger spell that gives you sneak attack and as far as I remember, Archivist gives trapfinding and nice skills.

3. If you feel you need to take the homebrew rogue class you referenced before to 6, you can still do Dry Lich via:
Custom Rogue 6/Ur Priest 2/Walker in the Wastes 10/xx 2

Make sure you satisfy the saves prerequisites for Ur Priest or dip something else that does (Hexblade and Savage Bard are popular options)