How to Play as Lich in D&D 2024 | Grim Hollow

[@samuelshirley369]

For when all hope seems lost, Ben comes in with another Ghostfire Gaming banger

[@RoterGamer]

The video about the old Lich transformation was what introduced me to Grim Hollow. Since then I've been dragged ever deeper into the world of Etharis. The Lich transformation is one of my favourite, and it's so nostalgic to me. I've been looking forward to this new video and the reworked transformation.

[@ZonagonsBlackKnight]

I remember a while back when my siblings and I were trying to make a Monster Mash Party, my brother-in-law wanted to try the Lich Transformation but was disappointed with the restrictions for it. Thanks for giving us a New Lich to work with. We never got around to doing that game, so I hope we can find the time to do it eventually with the new Grim Hollow books.

[@natezabinski5615]

I'm personally going for a lich that is trying to grow roots somewhere, but wants as little attention as possible. Gather the funds to construct the perfect soul-vessel-protecting dungeon, but also use as many different pseudonyms as possible. Give the illusion that my party has a dozen different spellcasters under their employ. A rather difficult endeavor with Charisma being my favorite dump stat, but makes a very engaging story. TL;DR: I'm over the moon about this playtest.

[@infernodelta70]

Time to enact the Lich Bard baby!

[@yuen4817]

I feel like at each stage one Boone just stands out more than the others. I feel like it needs minor tweaks be perfect.

[@gregorygreenwood-nimmo4954]

As someone who has played Warfcraft 3 perhaps too many times, I now envisage a Oath of Vengeance paladin, consumed by a mad fixation to bring retribution to a particularly hated foe, who goes down the dark path of becoming a Memori Lich after finding a particular cursed blade...

[@Sir_Lorekeep]

Love some good Grim Hollow content

[@tariqramadan1521]

Wow the lich can be like a death knight

[@MarkoSeldo]

I would highly recommend going to check out Pointy Hat's "Which Lich?" series, where he makes different styles of lich based around each character class. There's a mad bucket of flavour there which could happily be mixed with this wild bucket of flavour to make a giant bucket of fun!

[@GhostfireGaming]

Definitely agree Pointy Hat’s a master of fun re-flavours of monster types!

[@nickmurphy2936]

Yesssss clerich let's gooo.

[@Noone-n9f]

Now I want to be DM to put my friends against druid lich

[@phoenyxhydra8020]

Time to become the ultimate introvert

[@markt7177]

Fun ❤

[@MarkoSeldo]

Wait. I had to use a soul from my soul vessel to like this video? Damn. I'd better go find an unsuspecting victim.

[@YawgmothofUborg]

The one im a bit sad from the playtest is , the lich doesnt have as much ability to control undead, it feels limited for this transformation but the rest is good.

[@grejny0843]

I am kinda disappointed with the Memori Lich not being its own thing, but it still could turn up great. The main problem i see in the new lich is the lack of boons you have on the subtransformations. Memori lich needs options that the normal and divine have. I would love to see more of The Immortality of the Memori lich when he fights like being able to trade hits, or runing trough spear to cut of the head of an enemy, as a feature.

[@EncontheCrow]

So you want one of their features to either be play as a martial class to "trade hits" whatever that means or have an auto kill feature on an enemy. Think they do just fine in balancing out transformations abilities than doing whatever you're suggesting here. Idk how you're disappointed with this they already made it so you're character can't technically die by normal means this way...what more could you want?

[@extaslash7077]

For sure. It kind of feels like they couldn't figure out how to give the caster lich more varied options so just combined them. First time I've been disappointed in a ghostfire decision, it was definitely advertised as a Memori lich transformation, not as a part of the lich

[@sykune]

​@@extaslash7077I am surprised they did not make a deathknight transformation but perhaps there is a copy right on the term death knight?

[@Zer0siks]

Hey, how much do you have to pledge to enroll in the play test? Wanna support but can't go throwing around stacks rn.

[@GhostfireGaming]

Any pledge tier, including the Digital reward tier, will give you access to the backer survey and therefore the playtest.

[@Zer0siks]

@GhostfireGaming Ty for the reply. Love the stuff y'all are making!

[@Tomha]

As a big fan of the undead, I always felt like Lich was a suckers game. Sure you get power, but power is a TOOL, not a goal, and the price is too steep for my taste as a Necromancer fan. Maybe it's because I'm a simple creature, but I think Vampirism is much, much more appealing depending on the setting. Especially in ones where Vampires keep their sense of touch/taste. To quote Star Trek... "Latinum (Money) lasts longer than Lust! Rule of Aquisition #229" "Maybe, but Lust can be a lot more fun." Eternity is a very long time, and even an immortal undead needs some form of respite.

[@Dayhunter29]

Hi is this only for the 5e 2024 edition or is for the 5e edition as well?

[@GhostfireGaming]

The updated Grim Hollow books, which will include an update to the Lich Transformation, are designed for D&D 2024. However, due to the backwards compatibility of the system, Transformations will map onto 5e 2014 with almost no conversion required. Alternatively, we still have the 5e 2014 Grim Hollow books available on our website, until either the new books are published or we sell out. ghostfiregaming.com/store/

[@ashvandal5697]

I don't play 5e; does 5e not have a deathknight/graveknight type monster? That's typically the melee/warrior version of the a Lich. This pathway is highly reminiscent of the Lich Mythic Path from Owlcat's Wrath of the Righteous videogame. I'm not saying it's plagerism or even bad. I love the idea as I almost always play arcane spellcasters, usually evil or at least morally ambiguous, and usually have an end-goal for the campaign or story to be lichdom or half-fiend merged to rule over some demiplane or kingdom. You'd think I'd be bored of it by now, but I'm not.

[@dallasmeeker5577]

5e does have a monster known as the Death Knight, but Death Knights are almost always raised into undeath by somebody else and used as powerful shock troops or bodyguards or are cursed into undeath as a punishment as in the case of Lord Soth. They're never created willingly by themselves.

[@jonwooley3370]

I don't think weapons counting as Magical as much or any value in 2024 rules. Maybe swapping out to other optional themed damage types or making it addition damage. Also pointless if you have a real magic item.

[@laughingpanda4395]

My god, the amount of edgelords in ttrpgs just doubled i fear.

[@memeslich]

What if I told you I was a lich?

[@dezopenguin9649]

I love the expansion of lichdom to different origins and classes rather than locking it behind uber-high-level caster classes, but it still does have the one big elephant in the room in that it still depends upon trapping and consuming souls, locking it to use in evil campaigns only. Transformations like the vampire, werewolf, and aberrant horror all have temptations that can pull a character towards an evil path or create a fight for them to keep to a moral code, and even the fiend and seraph retain their free will (we need only look at the Arcanist Inquisition to see how a seraph could fall into moral evil even while fully embracing the "angelic" side of their transformation, to say nothing of more typical "fallen angel" scenarios where they give way to more mortal sins, and a very interesting character arc could be drawn out of a fiend seeking redemption). But the lich actively requires the player character to commit evil acts to use class features (entirely apart from what it may do to a setting's cosmology to make souls into a consumable resource, but that's inherent in the default lore of D&D and getting around that issue already moves into the domain of homebrew), and that places a hard limit on the transformation's as-written utility.

[@guyman1570]

Amd vampirism doesn't require committing blatant crimes? Even a relatively benevolent vampire would've needed to enslave a thrall to make it donate blood willingly into blood bags.

[@yuen4817]

Could always consume bandits and criminals

[@TradePrinceNodnarb]

To be fair. It's a lich. They eat souls. They are evil

[@dezopenguin9649]

@@guyman1570 I'm pretty sure that modern society (and the paranormal romance section of any bookstore) has shown that there are plenty of people who will willingly donate their blood to their local vampire quite freely and enthusiastically. Likewise, in real life in most countries it's quite possible to literally sell your blood for cash at the local blood drive, so in a place like Ostoya I'm certain there's a fair amount of transactional blood donation as well as coercive. Moreover, even if you entirely leave aside those options for some reason, the vampire (again, as written) doesn't need to murder their victims, meaning that they, at worst, are forced to commit assault and battery. Whereas liches are forced to commit the complete erasure of beings from existence. Not just murder, but murder-plus, as it were.

[@gregorygreenwood-nimmo4954]

It depends how you spin it. Perhaps your Lich has a particular sense of justice, trapping and consuming only the souls of the most truly, irredeemably evil of creatures as punishment for their crimes, perhaps in accordance with the Lich's religion or as part of a desire to bring retribution to evil doers in a Ghost Rider sort of fashion. Maybe it considers claiming the power of the souls of extremely evil creatures and using that power to protect the Innocent as a sort of enforced act of restitution on the part of the entrapped soul to offset the harm they caused to innocents in life. Maybe you could tweak your Lich a bit and say it siphons off only a measure of a trapped soul's potency without devouring it entirely or doing any permanent harm, , and once the Lich feels the soul has done enough to atone for its crimes in life the Lich releases that soul to an afterlife, maybe even offering prayers to its deity to intercede on behalf of that soul, presenting its time entrapped by the Lich as 'time served' (so to speak) against its crimes when it is judged by a higher power. It would be a dark and morally ambiguous sort of thing for the Lich to do certainly, but not necessarily evil in itself, or at least not more evil than the execution of dangerous criminals which is something pretty commonly seen on medieval fantasy settings.