That guy is thinking about an Intoner, the bardic equivalent of a lich.
Anyone wanting a ton of fun ideas for variant liches should check out Pointy Hat's channel, he's doing a whole series on custom lich types for different kinds of spellcaster (and he also just did a Barbarian Lich type, the Scourge, so he's branching out to non-spellcasters too).
Great call. I very heavily based him on the Intoner, with some adjustments for him being an orator/teller of tall tales instead of a musician. And yes, if you're not watching Pointy Hat get on that ASAP!
I also endorse Pointy Hat and his content. It's on YouTube, and he's also recently been streaming multihour world building sessions on Twitch (I think on Saturdays). Lots of good stuff, presented in an entertaining way.
So you basically have to unperson him to kill him? Let's just petrify him and chuck him in a demiplane and call it good enough.
The petrification trick works on any lich to counter its phylactery. Unless the lich has prepared some way to counter it, which they might have because liches are highly intelligent generally speaking and don't just sit in a room waiting for adventurers to come and whack them.
Assuming you're knocking them out first, their best bet is Magic Missile targeted at themselves. It won't miss, and it's enough hits to kill them instantly. The players could use Dispel Magic to get rid of Contingency, but Glyph of Warding protected by Nystul's Magic Aura would be a bigger problem. Luckily, Nystul's Magic Aura only works on objects, not surfaces, so make sure to move everything not nailed down. Alternately, use an antimagic field, and then carry them out of their lair before dropping it.
The lich could also have a task force to find and destroy their petrified body. Ideally you toss it into a Demiplane, or better yet, True Polymorph them into something with a really low Wisdom, then Imprison them in a Hedged Prison and destroy the special material component. But that takes high level spells and you'll need to rest to get them back or bring the statue to someone that can cast them.
But if a lich is smart enough to set all this up, it's still easier to try to get around it than go after their phylactery. Though you may as well try casting Demiplane and look for a plane where the contents are the lich's phylactery, and the purpose is to hide the lich's phylactery. It's probably also going to contain a ton of traps, which will either go off or prevent you from going there in the first place because you didn't guess all the traps.
Huh, I saw VaranSL from dumpstat posted something similar a year or so ago. Did variant liches for all the classes. I liked it enough it based my current adventure on it.
Is that video the only lich one Pointy Hat has done? Or are his villain videos about liches in part?
Edit: oh yeah that's it. Villain videos are in the Which Lich playlist.
Sometimes DMs put a lot of thought into their homebrew setting and like anything else it can be more interesting than what ever is going on, like trying to remember Jacob's name.
So... I had the idea that the villain of my game would be a sort of "folk hero" who wrote (and often greatly exaggerated) records of his adventures. Being a bard, he found a way to achieve eternal life through his stories; as long as people kept reading about his adventures, he would maintain his undeath. Worked great until he realized he would need to create new stories to keep people interested. No problem, he could just create a demiplane where adventurers would come in search of treasure, and transport them into perilous and outlandish situations. Now he has new material for his stories! Hopefully they don't catch on to the fact that these stories are made up... because then he'd have to make sure they could never leave...
He should look into starting a religion, you can get a solid few thousand years of people talking about you if it does well.
That would work great if there weren't actual gods in this universe. I think he'd get found out pretty quick lol.
I feel this too hard. I feel so bad for my partner right now who has to hear my constant babbling about my newest homebrew setting lol.
