RPG Review – Monster Focus: Liches

By Endzeitgeist

This pdf is 6 pages long, 1 page front cover, ~1/2 page of SRD, leaving us with 41/2 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

After a short list of knowledge DCs, we kick off this pdf with 4 new feats:

• Life Siphon: When a lich damages foes via his touch, he heals an equal amount of damage. Neat!
• Supreme Fear: Bolsters your fear aura, making the conditions incurred more serious and lessening the time it takes until those who saved successfully can once again quake in terror. Nice one!
• True Channel: Harm Undead with d8 instead of d6 and ignore channel resistance to will-saves to halve damage. Even with the 6d6 channel requirement, this feat is overpowered in my opinion.
• Twin Phylactery: Create a second backup phylactery – cool one, though personally, I prefer the take from Gaming Paper’s Fractured Phylactery-module.

We also get 4 new alchemical items – an essence versus death magic, a drink to help versus fear-effects, a crystal to slightly reduce the results involved in becoming a lich and a component that makes all creatures affected by horrid wilting when it is used in conjunction with it exhausted. Those that save, instead are fatigued.

We also get 5 new spells: Black Blade brings the iconic necromantic blade to PFRPG – but the nomenclature is unfortunate – Black Blade in PFRPG has since taken another meaning. Channel Protection is interesting not only for liches in that it allows them to make a shield that absorbs channel damage. We also get a new Power Word spell to enslave foes (Wizards will hate that one!) and one that allows you to use a light version of a phylactery with Soul Vessel. There also is a deadly buff spell at level 8, the unlife shroud.

We also get 5 new magic items: The evil cousin of blessed books, a mace of disruption, two special phylacteries (that also can be used as headbands, not only as phylacteries) and a sacred shield that can be sacrificed to prevent the wearer’s death via death effects.

Next up are three variant liches: Apprentice Liches at CR -1 are on a timer and will collapse unless they find a way to revert their degradation. Blackfrost Liches at CR +0, are vulnerable to fire and may emit deadly blasts of conical ice and ice-cold, damaging auras – nice. The CR+1 Gloom Liches may be deteriorating, but they become faster, can exert greater control over their forms etc. – awesome one!

Finally, we get 3 adventure hooks – while not brilliant, they are neat and have some nice potential.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn’t notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to a printer-friendly 2-column standard and the original pieces of b/w-artwork are nice for the low price point. The pdf has bookmarks, but doesn’t need them at this length.

All right, this supplement once again hits closer to home than the last Monster Focus I read – but honestly, the True Channeling feat still is broken. The magical items aren’t that mind-boggling and while the templates are nice, they’re nothing I haven’t see before – while a solid addition to a lich’s toolkit, this pdf fails to excite me to the level where I’d truly gush about it. All in all, a solid 4-star offering.

Endzeitgeist out.

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