[MODULE] Reformed Liches

Elm said:

Should the phylactery effect the city in any way? or Or maybe just for a time after a Lich is summoned?

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I've thought about it, but for now it doesn't.

Elm said:

Should summoning a body (lich) reduce population? Like vampire feeding.

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No. For one thing, I don't think it's possible. Should knights reduce the population of the city when they change horses?

Elm said:

Can more than one phylactery reside in the same city?

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Nothing prevents them from being on the same tile as other phylacteries. The phylactery itself is immobile and it's almost impossible to become a phylactery when there already is one on the tile. But if you happen to get two phylacteries on the same tile, they wont explode or anything.

Will phylacteries be able to travel from city to city through the nexus or other portals?

I'm pretty sure that Airlifting (which is how Nexus Portals and Obsidian Gates work) only works on DOMAIN_LAND units, and that Phylacteries are probably DOMAIN_IMMOBILE. I haven't downloaded or tested this modmod (I probably will, to look at the code and write something similar but different for my version), but I strongly suspect the answer is no.

civ_king said:

go tell that to Tebryn Arbandi and Abashi

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Valkrionn said:

That's not really a phylactery, but a rune. Different kind of magic.

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Plus, he said 'valuable'.

Maybe the Phylactery could be made similar to the Pieces of Barnaxus? The Lich could carry it, and when he's killed it would be dropped with the promotions the lich had? That still leaves the problem of another unit picking it up...

I've uploaded version 1.1 .

It adds some bad effects for the city unfortunate enough to be the home of a lich; Twinsoul, an upgrade of Twincast for liches; compensation for barbarian factions for not getting affinity and some art. Everything but the art can be easily disabled by deleting a directory or two; or editing the MLF file.

I had to reorganise the files a bit, so delete your old files and extract the zip to NormalModules. I took the opportunity to rename the module Reformed_Liches (from ReformedLiches).

If you load both v1.0 and v1.1, the game will break in ways I can't be bothered to imagine.

Onionsoilder said:

The Lich could carry it, and when he's killed it would be dropped with the promotions the lich had?

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COULD carry it, sounds fun.
but HAVING to carry it, doesn't. The point of a phylactery is that it's usually kept sepoerate from the lich himself, so he can regenerate safely if he falls in battle. It would be nice perhaps, to allow other units to carry it.

Oh, I think phylacteries should be indestructible by normal means, but have a Life spell (banishment maybe) that destroys them if cast while standing on the same tile.

A other intersting Idea could be that the phylacterie is a field improvment that either can destroyed like a dungeon or change ownership of the Lich if someone other gains Cultural Influence over the improvment.

The more I think about it, the more I like having an immobile Phylactery Guard, rather than making some sort of jewellery that can be passed around like a bottle of Crown.

Even assuming the phylactery is small enough to be carried and harmless enough to not flay the flesh from your bones as you touch it, liches aren't the most trusting of people. They would consider letting anyone have their phylactery with the same cheer I would consider letting Stevie Wonder perform brain surgery on me.

If the ruler is really insistent, maybe they'll hand over a bauble:
"Here you go, my phylactery."
"Only a glass bead? Well you know how thieves are, if it was valuable it would have been stolen twice today already."
"The blood stained marble altar encrusted with rubies and emeralds, encircled with bands of platinum and menacing with spikes of turtle shell, radiating unholy energy that I have in the centre of my lair? It's, uh, a piece of abstract art."
"Why do I reform there instead of near my phylactery? Hmm... Oh, I know, being destroyed is a traumatic experience, so every time I reform, I instantly teleport there to relax a little. Soak in the atmosphere of my art gallery."

And just because the Phylactery Guard is destroyed, it doesn't mean the phylactery is:

Imagine a paladin, having fought through a horde of horrors, each one more horrific than the previous. He comes upon an altar radiating an aura of evil and uses his last strength to bring the Holy Avenger down upon it. Both sword and altar are annihilated and the lair starts to fall apart. Summoning energy he didn't know he had, the paladin emerges from the exit just as it collapses, having survived the last trap set by the lich.

Meanwhile, the phylactery is safe, having long since been buried in a deep hole under the altar, and the lich prepares for a short holiday, contemplating death, the universe and everything. The phylactery will resurface in a few millennia; someone will dig for treasure, or erosion will remove the soil, or something. Nothing stays buried forever.

Updated to version 1.2 .

A few minor updates for RiFE. bHeld no longer prevents spellcasting, so an effect to prevent spellcasting when Soul Shifted has been added.

Also Wildmana occasionally creates Phylactery Guards, which in turn creates Liches and they then create Skeletons which rampage. This might be too strong so any Phylactery Guard with the Held promotion turns into a normal Lich. If you start next to a death node, you'll still see a Phylactery Guard, then two Liches, but by the third turn there should only be the one Lich with hordes of skeletons.

Finally, I'm using Inno Setup to create an installation package, rather than just making a zip. Much easier for me.

Thanks for the Update. Will use it in my next RiFE Game.

is the wandering lich able to get xp to his parent phylactery? Because otherwise that would be strange to be able to reform a body, but it has 0 xp.

Vorpal+5 said:

is the wandering lich able to get xp to his parent phylactery? Because otherwise that would be strange to be able to reform a body, but it has 0 xp.

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In Fall Further, when summons die they grant a portion of their xp to their summoner.

The wandering Lich cannot use xp in any way, and the only way to update promotions and xp total is deleting the Lich, promote the Phylactery and summoning a new Lich.


The Summoner trait increases the xp gained, I think it's half the xp for Summoner leaders, one quarter for non-Summoners. I'm a bit displeased about it since it means that Summoner leaders have better Liches than others, but there's not much I can do. Non-Summoner Liches gain +100% xp from Combat, but that doesn't compensate fully.

If you use the new Mana Guardian Fix, the Mana Guardian Lich should be able to get promotions normally. I haven't tested it extensively and the only ones available are pretty much Combat.

odalrick said:

"The blood stained marble altar encrusted with rubies and emeralds, encircled with bands of platinum and menacing with spikes of turtle shell, radiating unholy energy that I have in the centre of my lair? It's, uh, a piece of abstract art."

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Did someone have a strange mood lately?

Phylacteries? Those things that Jews wear? I'm talking about the origins of the name.

The word Phylactery comes from a Greek word for "amulet," which they also used to refer to the Tefillin some Jewish groups wore.

nzk13 said:

Phylacteries? Those things that Jews wear? I'm talking about the origins of the name.

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It's the thing Liches use to store their souls in DnD. I don't know where they got the name from.

well, MagisterCultuum's answer actually helps me. I don't know how he picked up knowledge of Greek, but he did.

Death, the universe, and everything. huh. Shouldn't you put that in something like this:

Douglas Adams:

Death, the Universe and Everything.

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or...

Death, the Universe, and everything.*

*Copyrighted by Douglas Adams

I've had your mod installed for a while and just now got in a position to use liches. While they feel right in a general sense, I was playing as D'tesh, and they seem like a step down from the Council of Four units. Sure the phylactery guards are massively powerful as a D'tesh player is loaded to the gills with Death mana at that point, but they're immobile. The lich itself, while having great summons of its own needs a Chosen or something to protect it. Maybe you could make your lich get the (RiFE 1.3) D'tesh affinity?

Or, as I don't know what changes you made codewise to make the lich unit a summons, maybe I should be asking Valk to let liches get that promo?

Or maybe Council of Four shouldn't be allowed to become liches, logically speaking? I don't know but this is a neat mod, and it seems to me the civ based on undeath ought to be able to make use of it.