Phylacteries for Liches?

[Meserach]

One fo the most appealing parts, for me, of the idea of liches as given in D&D among other fantasy fiction sources, is the idea that, if destroyed, they regenerated themselves from their "phylacteries" - objects in which their soul/life force/being/whatever is bound. In consequence, the only way to truly destroy a lich forever is to destroy his phylactery.

However, FFH2's liches don't have phylacteries, and once killed, they're dead forever (right? or did I miss something?) That's fine, of course: FFH2 can and should develop it's own spins on mythological creatures, and certainly liches are pretty powerful at present already without making them come back to life as well.

That said, I do totally dig the idea of phylacteries and think that (with suitable other balancing changes made to liches) they could be really cool.

Ideally a phylactery would be an actual object that would be carried by another unit. When the lich is killed, it respawns at the phylactery (possibly after a time delay). However, if the phylactery-bearer is killed, the attacker can then seize the phylactery and destroy it, which would automatically kill the lich (or the phylactery could even be stolen and destroyed, using the Steal ability).

If you wanted your lich to be able to reappear right back in the action, this would necessitate taking they phylactery with you and giving it to some other unit to look after. This could then lead to interesting strategies where you attempt to destroy the phylactery rather than go after the lich directly.

(Of course the plausibility of such a strategy depends a great deal on who is actually carrying the phylactery - the impulse would be to give it to a very tough unit. For balance reasons it might be best to try and work out some sort of restrictions on who is allowed to carry the phylactery.)

If the whole phylactery as mobile equipment is too complicated, then you could just have liches respawn in the capital, like immortal units do.

Anyway, I'm just rambling. Someday I might have a go at modding this in myself, but I'm curious to see if others like the idea. I once again must stress that obviously you would need to make other changes to the lich to make this balanced.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

On the one hand I don't think it is possible, and on the other hand it is very very similar to the idea that won the latest unit design contest (The new Sidar Divided Soul UU, which hasn't been added yet). If that can be made to work, I guess maybe your idea could too.

(I actually just made some major changes to Liches myself. I gave them the starting promotions they used to have, took away the limit on how many you could have, removed the Sorcery and Death III requirement, and made the lichdom spell require channeling 2, unitcombat_adept or unit_vampire_lord, and either the Staff of Souls promotions (Barbatos the Lich's equipment) or the Broken Sepulcher (the unique feature on which Barbatos's spawns). I made a new Death III sorcery spell that creates a terrain feature, accursed ground, on which any living unit that dies turnd inot an enraged barbarian skeleton. I also made a spell requiring the staff of souls and channeling3 that takes control of all undead units except liches within 2 tiles.)

 

[Arqane]

Are you destroying the staff on the change to lichdom? I'd recommend that so they don't just hand it off. Add the damage if possible, and destroy the item. That way you could only have 1 lich, unless you owned the Broken Sepulcher. Either having the Sepulcher or Staff makes it way too easy to make liches your way.

From the game that I popped the Ljosalfar world spell and had the Staff of Souls/Sepulcher on turn 3, I could have been going around with many liches by turn 100 (normal speed). Don't you think 6 fireball liches are a bit much by then?

 

[Tobbe_1]

Nice idea, but i think it is

a) too complicated.
b) unbalanced,because liches become too hard to kill.

 

[Mortenart]

I think it`s a great idea, would love to see it implemented in the game.

 

[Ekolite]

Yeah, I think liches should be hard to kill.

 

[eerr]

as a balance change+phylacterie reworking it could be limited to one lich per civ, then it would work easily
(they would have to be ungiftable, and not available through other means)
the lich may be the only thing that can carry the phylactery, depends

of course, death 3 would need another advantage for people to give it to 3 archmages...

 

[BeefontheBone]

Provided you could tie a unit to equipment in some manner, which would require a chunk of Python unless I'm much mistaken, it ought to be doable, and that could be a useful piece of work for other people/modders/the team. This sounds like it would be much more suited to something like CivRPG or scenarios than a world-scale game though.

That said, tying a hero or other world unit to a piece of equipment so that its destruction kills the unit (or even its capture causes him to switch sides) would be pretty straightforward methinks. The equipment would usually just get turtled in the capital though, unless you offered huge incentives for it being (carried) in the same tile as its owner. Actually, that'd be pretty doable.

 

[Cuteunit]

Since I suck the teat of mages whenever I can ( sometimes hard to do, FFH seems so melee emphasizing apart from fire mana) I approve of Liches having an advantage other than freeing up an archmage slot.

 

[it-ogo]

One of the ideas which are nice for a scenario and hardly acceptable in random game.

Have a counter-suggestion: let make a phylactery only for Barbatos. His phylactery generates in random land tile if the Barbatos is spawned. It is invisible (needed bird, sand lion, Malakim territory or Revelation to see it). It may be spawned on peak so you need a unit for impassable terrain to get it. Those who is lucky to find it can decide destroy Barbatos or not depending on his needs and strategy. You can destroy him to clear the territory for yourself, keep to harrass neighbour, protect your borders or have an endless source of XP (barbarian, therefore not more then 100). Again it can be stolen from you if you like to keep...

Nice quest even for the random game.

 

[xienwolf]

Could be interesting to make Barbatos unkillable by any oether means than finding his Phylactory. Just have to hope it is near, but not in his range of control.

 

[Mewtarthio]

Provided you could tie a unit to equipment in some manner, which would require a chunk of Python unless I'm much mistaken, it ought to be doable, and that could be a useful piece of work for other people/modders/the team. This sounds like it would be much more suited to something like CivRPG or scenarios than a world-scale game though.

You might not even have to tie equipment to characters. There are other ways to implement it:

You could have it so that the Lichdom spell creates a new phylactery alongside the new Lich, but doesn't link them together. Instead, any liches that die respawn at the nearest phylactery, unless you have more liches than phylacteries (in which case they die forever). If you wanted to have the death of the phylactery result in the death of the lich, you could also have random liches die at the end of your turn until you're back down to one lich per phylactery (so, if a phylactery is destroyed, the player must disband a lich or leave the strategy to the tender mercies of the RNG).

You could have a slain lich generate a phylactery with all its experience and promotions in its own square (similar to the angel mechanic). X turns later, the phylactery turns back into the lich. The phylactery is immobile and defenseless, and it cannot be picked up like an item (you don't want to disturb the fragile regeneration process, do you?). The lich's controller must therefore defend the phylactery until the lich returns.

 

[BeefontheBone]

That makes mucho senso - I was posting off the top of my head the other day. If you wanted to remove the micro of disbanding liches (though also a bit of strategic use) for players, it could always remove the least experienced Lich until the number of liches equalled that of phylacteries.

Having phylacteries as equipment with no corresponding "pick up" spell would grant the possibility of capturing it and hence gaining control of the Lich when he regenerates.

 

[Falaris]

Hey. New here. However, I did get an 'aha! but we have something like this allready!' moment when reading this thread.

Make a lich act somewhat like Barraxus. (The golem hero, not the a-team guy, in case I got the spelling wrong).

So: The lich, when killed, leaves a phylactery. If picked up by a unit and taken to a death node (Or the cauldron, or a mage guild, or the sepulchre, or tower of death, depending on what we want), the lich is returned to life. It only exists as an item when the lich is dead.

This way they become 'somewhat' immortal, but can also be lost (virtually) forever if the phylactery is captured or destroyed by the enemy.

Regards,
Me

 

[Farmer Bobathan]

You could use the same code that is used for summoning. You could make it so that a lich can summon 1 phylactery per lich in your control and you could make it so that the phylactery can summon 1 lich per phylactery you control, there could be a different phylactery for channeling II and channeling III liches, wouldn't it make sense for a lich to loose its exp and promos, wouldn't it would also balance the phylactery a little?

How did kael & co. make it so that there was a limit on the number of a summon based on the number of units that can summon it. Also can a unit carry more than two of the same kind of equipment?

 

[Antion]

First time poster, great mod, all i play now.

How about simplify this somewhat.

If doable of course.

Lich dies, creates Phylactery item with liches former promotions/xp somehow stored.

Once a unit picks it up, they have an option to destroy it. However, if they don't, then after say 2-3 turns, every turn has a chance of the Lich returning, but consuming/replacing the holding unit.

That initial wait period could be adjusted to help balance the liches.

And not really sure how you could implement it, or if it is possible.

 

[vorshlumpf]

The phylactery is immobile and defenseless, and it cannot be picked up like an item (you don't want to disturb the fragile regeneration process, do you?).

Actually, all you need is a red wagon for this.