Hiding a Lich’s Phylactery

[Necrosnoop110]

I am DM and my party is trying to track down the BBEG Lich's Phylactery. Any suggestions on how to handle this? (Party level 16th) I want to make this really hard but not impossible.

Thanks,
Necro

[Raineh Daze]

So you still want them to find it? That makes this so much harder...

Any place where it's heavily physically guarded and not just warded against divination and random mishaps would probably be a dead giveaway. Could make it somewhere linked to the lich's past, which gives a starting point to try and locate it, I guess?

[Jackinthegreen]

I recommend looking through Harry Potter 6 and 7, if you have the books.  Each of the horcruxes is pretty much like Voldemort's phylactery.  Linking it to the lich's past is definitely one of the big ones.

[Necrosnoop110]

(1) I have a plot device that will give them progressively more accurate clues on where it is located.

(2) How do I prevent auto-win divinations that will reveal its specific location, like Contact Other Plane and the like.

Thanks,
Necro

[bruceleeroy]

Nondetection. Works against divination spells, which includes contact other plane. A lich would be capable of temporarily boosting his CL to astronomic heights in order to hide his phylactery. Bead of karma, consumptive field, etc. Would result in a caster level check against a DC  that's likely off the RNG for the party.

[Raineh Daze]

Can you put a mindblank effect on a phylactery somehow? Wait, this makes no sense as a question or suggestion. 

[Bauglir]

To make optimal use of nondetection, construct a magic trap that casts it at some augmented caster level as defined above, that triggers every day, so that you don't have to revisit. Then, you must go about concealing your traps using overly complicated trap shenanigans. This part is optional, but silly, and technically offers greater protection so that they can't use divinations to find magic traps you've created or something. There's probably a simpler way to accomplish the same thing, but eh.

First, you construct a large wheel, which is spun whenever a trap is triggered (set this trap to trigger once every 10 hours or so). On this wheel, you mount at least two nondetection traps at opposite ends, each with an antenna which is used to determine what is considered touched for the purposes of the spell's targeting. The lower pole of the wheel should be adjacent to the trap that casts nondetection on your phylactery*. The upper pole touches yet another nondetection trap, which itself touches the upper pole. Whenever the wheel completes a turn, another nonmechanical trap sets off the triggers for all of the nondetection traps involved. A diagram follows.

(click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

__|
T1 <=> T2
--|    |
--|    *
__|    |
<-T3 <-T4
--|

T1 and T2 cast nondetection on each other, T4 casts nondetection on T3, T3 casts nondetection on the phylactery. Whenever the wheel rotates, T2 and T4 switch places.

*Technically, you could cut out a nondetection trap here and just have the lower trap touch the phylactery directly, but people are likelier to complain about a machine that never suffers a mechanical failure than they are about one that never suffers a magical failure.

[8wGremlin]

For odd shinanigans you can by RAW hide the phylactory on the positive energy plane.

Undead sent blown away by the damage, and are In actual fact healed and gain temporary hp there.

Anyone who does go there, will need to deal with the positive energy effects on living creatures (they tend to go boom)

Plus who would look for a lich's phylactory there?

[Nytemare3701]

Make it a gold coin. Circulate into other currency along with X other enchanted gold coins that detect as evil.

OR:

(click to show/hide)

Now the Catholic and Orthodox churchs' obsession over artifacts makes sense... due to confusion over time and/or spotty record keeping, almost any ancient relic could be the REAL phylactery of Jesus, and therefore all of these objects are treated with the utmost care, even to the point of worship.

Conveniently, the symbol of worship is the Cross, and is so widespread that any cross could possibly be his phylactery. Hot Damn that's a lot of Horcruxes.

Genocide as the only method of killing a lich? HOLY FUCK YES.

[MirddinEmris]

Make it a needle. Put needle in the egg, egg in the duck, duck in the rabbit, rabbit in the chest, hang chest on the oak with golden chains and put oak on the Buyan island. Have fun)

[phaedrusxy]

Make it a gold coin. Circulate into other currency along with X other enchanted gold coins that detect as evil.

OR:

(click to show/hide)

Now the Catholic and Orthodox churchs' obsession over artifacts makes sense... due to confusion over time and/or spotty record keeping, almost any ancient relic could be the REAL phylactery of Jesus, and therefore all of these objects are treated with the utmost care, even to the point of worship.

Conveniently, the symbol of worship is the Cross, and is so widespread that any cross could possibly be his phylactery. Hot Damn that's a lot of Horcruxes.

Genocide as the only method of killing a lich? HOLY FUCK YES.

[ksbsnowowl]

Just sort of stream of consciousness here, so some of these things might not interact correctly.

I recently ran a conversion of Red Hand of Doom.  In RHoD there is a lich who is being blackmailed because the horde stole his phylactery.  When I ran it, the BBEG being blackmailed wasn't a lich, so the method of blackmail was the BBEG's wife being Trap the Souled into a gem.

The gem was cleverly hidden INSIDE a Red Abishai commander (abishais have regeneration).

Do a similar thing with the Lich's phylactery.  Maybe he has a Horned Devil minion (magically compelled?  Voidmind servant?) who contains the phylactery, and constantly moves about randomly under orders, in no repeatable pattern.

To make it even crazier, choose a regenerating fiend who can both teleport and plane shift.  (Don't know if there is one...)

Oh, and a simple coin could be problematic.  Some societies (vikings, for example) were known to cut coins into halves and quarters, and use them by weight.  Sounds dangerous to me.

[8wGremlin]

You could be a Lich Sha'ir and have the phylactery inside your Gen familiar, which can plane shift at will!

[wotmaniac]

Here's how one of my players hid his:

grabbed kobold to dominate.  put a Mindblank circlet on him.  have him put the phylactery in his pack.
cast Shadow Walk (or whatever you need to get both of you to the Ethereal Plane).  Cast Magnificent Mansion and take him in.
Craft Contingent Spell the shit out of him and his bag with whatever you can think of.  hit your kobold with Imprisonment.  now go on about your merry way.


not sure if this would foot the bill for your needs, though.

[Captnq]

Okay...

First of all, you need to make this cool.

You need a god he worships. The god of loss. This god has an investment in the lich's evil plans and so he/she/it works to subtle ways to manipulate the lich towards the God of Loss' true ends.

Now the MacGuffin needs to be hidden somewhere cool. I like making the access something unusual, like, you need to wait until the sun shines through two windows at the same time and bounces off a mirror to form a maze like pattern on the floor or some crap.

Then you need a Not So Big Bad Evil Guy who guards the MacGuffin. Make it a guy named Ash. He sits in a room filled with a thousand unlit candles and rotting corpses. When you arrive, he explains he is a priest of the God of Loss. Here in this room are the candles that shall never be lit, so they will never be able to reach their potential.

He does all sorts of shadow magic and crap.

He tells the players some bizzare riddle then says you can only choose one candle. For only one candle is the Lich's Phylactery. Turns out the Phylactery is under one of the many dead and rotting corpses in the room, but there are many nystal magic aura'd candles for them to choose, while the actual Phylactery has nondetection on it. WHEE!

[Bauglir]

Remember, guys, they are SUPPOSED to be able to find the Phylactery, we're just trying to short-circuit automatic win divinations and other shenanigans that bypass puzzles. That means hiding it on the Positive Energy Plane (my go-to method, given the limited visibility if nothing else), and similar tricks that render it literally impossible to find are not really the best choices.

[wotmaniac]

Remember, guys, they are SUPPOSED to be able to find the Phylactery, we're just trying to short-circuit automatic win divinations and other shenanigans that bypass puzzles. That means hiding it on the Positive Energy Plane (my go-to method, given the limited visibility if nothing else), and similar tricks that render it literally impossible to find are not really the best choices.

Well, he did say that he was dropping in a McGuffin to help them out. 


Okay, as to this:

(2) How do I prevent auto-win divinations that will reveal its specific location, like Contact Other Plane and the like.

Okay, just ignore the stuff about Imprisoning the kobold on the Ethereal-Astral.  Then you just have that "hidden in plain sight" thing going on.

[Halinn]

One of the PCs inadvertently picked up the phylactery some time back. Now every time they scry, it seems to just get mirrored or something, since it keeps showing the PCs

[altpersona]

do the unthinkable, have the lich wear it. 

[ksbsnowowl]

do the unthinkable, have the lich wear it. 

You could always make it something like an Amulet of Natural Armor +5.

A phylactery detects as necromancy magic, right?  Find some core item that is a protective item he would wear, but also radiates necromancy magic.  Maybe one of the scarabs or something?

Make it look nice, so the PC's will want the item, and possibly might not even think it is the phylactery.

Alternatively, you could borrow a concept from the Sepulchral Thief (Cityscape).  His "phylactery" becomes the single most expensive magic item on his person when he dies.  Just call it a variant type of Lich.