Lawful good lich? Possible?

[Soldarc]

Can i become a lich as a lawfull good character? and if yes. Can i do all the lich stuff and still be lawfull good or do i need to aligment change to open up some powers/quests?

[Soft Lockpick]

Messaggio originale di edmek55555:

Messaggio originale di Soft Lockpick:

In universe becoming a lich requires a lot of human sacrifice.

Lich isn't the same as Necromancer.

Same logic applies. I sacrifice a bunch of murderers and low lifes in order to gain the power necessary to effectively fight for my altruistic purpose. Making things like that black and white is sort of just the writers imposing their own personal opinions into the lore. Which is totally their right, but being a lich isn't necessarily evil thing whichever way you spin it. In pathfinder it is evil because that is the rule. That's pretty much it

If your argument is "human sacrifice isn't evil if you do it the right way" you might be evil.

[Angry Trash]

Messaggio originale di Soldarc:

Messaggio originale di Serpentarius:

while you can't be a good lich, you can be True Neutral, all the paths are avaiable for a True Neutral so the alginment cap is pretty soft, akin to that of a Cleric

Does that mean that you dont have to be of evil aligment to do the Lich specific quests to progress in the Lich mythic branch?

Mythic Quests generally pull you closer to their ideal alignment, but the mythic branches are like the gods in that they accept other related alignments. Lawful Good is the ideal angel, but they will accept the other goods for example.

[Naked Granny]

Messaggio originale di Soldarc:

There are good aligned high elf liches in DnD.. espessially in Ebberon.. So the concept works.. I have not read all the lore of Pathfinder though, so the it might go against specific lich lore there... But powers are not inherantly good nor evil.. it depends on how you use them and to what end.

Those are in a completely completely different setting. If you like those settings, go play those games.

And no the concept did not work in those settings either, and those specific characters provoked legendary backlash from fans and Baelnorns never became popular and authors and players avoided ever mentioning them again.

In this setting .... yes, undeath is by definition evil. Absolutely and without mitigation - evil.

This setting is not like Forgotten Realms. Golarion does not work like Abbeir-Toril / Faerun. At all.

[dulany67]

Messaggio originale di Aunt Tony:

Messaggio originale di Nepnep:

I totally understand that its a contradiction but it is also a shame. Would open up so many role play opportunities xD.

Ah yes. Of course.

The famous roleplay scenario in which you completely ignore all morals, ethics, logic and definitions of words in order to destroy the most fundamental premise of the game setting's metaphysical cosmology, history and lore.

You could RP a character who slips into evil in desperation and despair. It's not that far from LG to LE.

[edmek55555]

Messaggio originale di Soft Lockpick:

Messaggio originale di edmek55555:

Same logic applies. I sacrifice a bunch of murderers and low lifes in order to gain the power necessary to effectively fight for my altruistic purpose. Making things like that black and white is sort of just the writers imposing their own personal opinions into the lore. Which is totally their right, but being a lich isn't necessarily evil thing whichever way you spin it. In pathfinder it is evil because that is the rule. That's pretty much it

If your argument is "human sacrifice isn't evil if you do it the right way" you might be evil.

I mean, the death penalty has been a thing pretty much since humans have existed so at least I am not alone I guess haha

[Midnight]

I'd like to point out that we're talking about a universe where good and evil are not merely ephemeral moral concepts, they are genuine metaphysical force.

As in force of good can literally hurt you.

How do you have a good soul in a shell of negative energy that burns you?

[Nepnep]

Messaggio originale di Aunt Tony:

Messaggio originale di Nepnep:

I totally understand that its a contradiction but it is also a shame. Would open up so many role play opportunities xD.

Ah yes. Of course.

The famous roleplay scenario in which you completely ignore all morals, ethics, logic and definitions of words in order to destroy the most fundamental premise of the game setting's metaphysical cosmology, history and lore.

Only the lore. As far as morals/ethics go, raising the dead is EVIL, but I don't have to kick a hundred puppies to move my alignment to evil just to raise the dead.

Take Marona from Phantom Brave for example. For all intents and purposes, she would be a "Good" aligned necromancer (or lich in this case). Pretty sure the OP is trying to do something similar.

While we are on the topic of alignments, I also want to express my frustration that being "Good" moves me away from Lawful (and away from my class req of monk). Wth?

[Serpentarius]

Messaggio originale di Soldarc:

Messaggio originale di Serpentarius:

while you can't be a good lich, you can be True Neutral, all the paths are avaiable for a True Neutral so the alginment cap is pretty soft, akin to that of a Cleric

Does that mean that you dont have to be of evil aligment to do the Lich specific quests to progress in the Lich mythic branch?

I didn't dip into Evil until I did an evil choice during the rank 8 quest for roleplay purposes and even then i negated that back to neutral 1 alignment choice later. The only issue is that the choices for lich are all "Evil" aligned, so it's a bit difficult to stay out of evil range.

That aside it's like a clerical alignment lock, you need to be at most 1 step away from your target, which for Lich is Evil. so you can be lawful neautral, Chaotic Neutral or True Neutral and still be fine AFAIK. can't be good though, at least.. not until your done with the entire path and at that point I think it would be hard to find enough choices to go Good.

[Angry Trash]

It's odd that it's pulling you away. I'm trying to move to Lawful Good after being Neutral Good, and I've maxed good such that I'm dragging against the outer edge but it doesn't try to recenter me and it's not stopping me from approaching Lawful

[Soldarc]

Messaggio originale di Serpentarius:

Messaggio originale di Soldarc:

Does that mean that you dont have to be of evil aligment to do the Lich specific quests to progress in the Lich mythic branch?

I didn't dip into Evil until I did an evil choice during the ran 8 quest for roleplay purposes and even then i negated that back to neutral 1 choice later.

This is what i wanted to know :) so i dont make a character and notice 40 hours into the game that i cant progress because of aligment. Thanks

[Soft Lockpick]

Messaggio originale di edmek55555:

Messaggio originale di Soft Lockpick:

If your argument is "human sacrifice isn't evil if you do it the right way" you might be evil.

I mean, the death penalty has been a thing pretty much since humans have existed so at least I am not alone I guess haha

If you think the death penalty is the same thing as human sacrifice you might be evil too...

[Homer Morisson]

Messaggio originale di Aunt Tony:

Messaggio originale di Nepnep:

I totally understand that its a contradiction but it is also a shame. Would open up so many role play opportunities xD.

Ah yes. Of course.

The famous roleplay scenario in which you completely ignore all morals, ethics, logic and definitions of words in order to destroy the most fundamental premise of the game setting's metaphysical cosmology, history and lore.

THANK YOU!
Exactly my thinking too!

Obviously, first and foremost, in a singleplayer game, ppl who intentionally want to play the game "wrong" do not hurt any other players directly, but:

Indirectly, they can... to me, immersion, right after the narrative itself, is king in any RPG, and that means that if I play a Pathfinder (c)RPG, I expect the world to behave in accordance to the lore, core rules of said universe/IP.

So to me, even seeing it ingame that somehow a Lawful Good Lich were allowed to be created would be a major detriment to said immersion, as that goes completely against the Pathfinder lore/rule definition of what a Lich is, and more importantly: how a Lich is created, what is required of the prospect Lich to turn himself into one of the most powerful Immortal Undead creatures.

In Pathfinder, while there are multiple ways to Lichdom, every single one of them requires the prospect to perform acts of unspeakable evil, like for example to "harvest" the soul of an infant by killing it and then stealing its soul, by harvesting tens or even hundreds of additional souls for power, by slaughtering entire villages and communities.

The list goes on, but the theme is definitive:
There simply is no way for any Non-Evil character to turn himself into a Lich without, in the process, becoming at least Neutral Evil.

Furthermore, when roleplaying your alignment correctly, I don't see any justification for how a Lawful Good character would EVER even consider embarking on such a path, unless potentially if corrupted by an Evil Outsider or something, but that would then also invariably end with the LG character's "fall from grace".

Last, but certainly not least:

There are so precious few (c)RPG games that give us properly-written Evil paths, and when you add full reactivity from the world, your companions and the ability to perform monumentally Evil deeds, the list is even that much shorter.

That's relevant because of what it takes to write characters and their alignment "paths" within the story, i.e. for there to be a Lawful Good dialogue path for the Lich, a significant amount of resources from the writing pipeline would have had to have been devoted to it, which invariably would meant that those resources would have detracted from the focus on the Evil narrative alignment "path".

As I said, there are precious few games with properly developed Evil options, but there are a plethora of games with expansive options for Good character builds, so please, people, don't try to turn the few games with full-on Evil support into just yet another "main focus on Good, Evil just as an afterthought"-disappointment by repeatedly asking for nonsensical (within the context of the universe/IP) forced-Good options (which obviously isn't just directed at the OP, but at all those threads and requests I've seen since the Kickstarter began).

So please don't give the devs any ideas about officially turning the few Evil classes/paths we got at all into yet more of the same Goodie-Twoshoes stuff.

So long story short:
If you want to be able to "officially" play as a LG Lich, Pathfinder isn't really the "right" universe for you... there are games, older ones though, that officially allow for that, and as like as not there'll be a mod for WotR to unlock alignment from Mythic Paths, if it isn't even already included in Bag of Tricks yet.

[Chieth Kieth]

lore answer: a lich is a spellcaster who wouldn't be satisfied by all the power in the universe so he sandblasts his soul with evil until it's so small he can fit it in a box. he's ten thousand years old. the lives of mortals mean less than nothing to him, they're like ants. he would torture and kill a thousand people if they slightly inconvenienced him. the gods hate him. everyone hates him. he's the enemy of life itself. he's the definition of evil.

gameplay answer: people who want to do bad ♥♥♥♥ and play with evil toys but don't want there to be any consequences for doing so are the absolute worst people to have at your table. if you want to play a lich and do evil necromancer ♥♥♥♥ go ahead, but suck it up and deal with the roleplaying consequences. you just want to have your cake and eat it too.

[Serpentarius]

Messaggio originale di Soldarc:

Messaggio originale di Serpentarius:

I didn't dip into Evil until I did an evil choice during the ran 8 quest for roleplay purposes and even then i negated that back to neutral 1 choice later.

This is what i wanted to know :) so i dont make a character and notice 40 hours into the game that i cant progress because of aligment. Thanks

I made a few edits to the post to clarify some stuff, might wanna give it a reread.

[Homer Morisson]

Messaggio originale di Nepnep:

Messaggio originale di Aunt Tony:

Ah yes. Of course.

The famous roleplay scenario in which you completely ignore all morals, ethics, logic and definitions of words in order to destroy the most fundamental premise of the game setting's metaphysical cosmology, history and lore.

Only the lore. As far as morals/ethics go, raising the dead is EVIL, but I don't have to kick a hundred puppies to move my alignment to evil just to raise the dead.

Raising the dead isn't the same as becoming a Lich though.
To become a Lich, you definitely have to kick the hundred puppies to death, and then some.

And what's more, it isn't just that the process for becoming a Lich is invariably extremely Evil and cruel, involving a staggering amount of victims, it's also, as has been said in this thread before, that Undead Creatures themselves, in Pathfinder, are by definition Evil creatures.

There simply is no such thing as a Good-aligned Undead, or rather:
No such thing a not-Evil-aligned Undead.

And that goes doubly so for Liches, who are among the most vile, most Evil of all the Undead.

And even in WotR, which obviously uses a shortcut to Lichdom, you not only have to use knowledge that you full well know was gained through unspeakably cruel and horrifyingly Evil means, you'll then yourself also continue with definitively Evil actions over the course of your Path towards becoming a true Lich.