Ok, its one thing to become dead unintentionally... but in D&D you have all these dudes, necromancers, crazy wizards, and others, choosing intentionally to become high-powered Undead beings: Vampires, Liches, etc.

The question is: why?  If you're high level in D&D you have so many ways to get reliably resurrected, and means to extend your human longevity, why would you choose, even if you were evil, to take on a form that is riddled with disadvantages, that any high-level cleric could theoretically turn to dust with a prayer and a wave, and that really offers very few benefits in return?

RPGPundit

Usually it's a about a broken heart. There was that elven chick and at first it was great. But after she left you decided you never wanted to feel love or anything again.

1) Probably not all methods are available in all times and locales.
2) Adventuring clerics, esp. high-level ones, may not be as common.

Otherwise, if I had a crack at quasi-immortality, I'd probably go with magic jar, which is highly flexible and even a lot less ghoulish than becoming a rotting cadaver.

Because who wants to have to eat or sleep or even breathe?

That's just time spent away from one's arcane studies.

Quote from: RPGPundit;448525The question is: why?  If you're high level in D&D you have so many ways to get reliably resurrected, and means to extend your human longevity

I would reverse the question: why would a Cleric continually raise you from the dead or extend your life? Are non-divine means to extend your life (such as alchemical brews and the like) themselves coming without their own drawbacks (I as DM would surely implement some myself)?

Assuming some type of similarity between the game world's religions and our own, most Clerics will believe in some sort of afterlife or natural order or cycle in which your body dies and your spirit departs to higher realms, to be reincarnated or whatnot. Why a Cleric would go against his own religion is kind of beyond me, especially if it goes directly against the order of the world in some way. In the game world, I could certainly imagine examples of this happening (like say, an Emperor of the Church who felt so vindicated by his deity that he was raised over and over to keep fighting his crusade and fulfill his higher purpose), but that would be the sort of element that would come with dire warnings, and historical lessons of their own (the forementioned Emperor, by wanting to fight his crusade so much as to break the natural order of the world, ended up losing the favor of his deity, and ended up cursed, his armies with him, the whole religion wiped out, or worse).

an actual player: because of a comic strip called (IIRC) "Jerry the Vampire"

("Garfield" didn't turn out to be such a great idea, either.)

imaginary characters: preferring it to the alternative of being merely dead

QuoteIf you're high level in D&D you have so many ways to get reliably resurrected

What "D&D" are you smoking in that pipe? By the books with which I am well acquainted, resurrection is (A) uncertain, (B) possible no more times than the constitution score with which you started play, and (C) no remedy for conditions such as having reached your allotted span of years per the aging rules.

Quoteand means to extend your human longevity

... which, even if it also extends youth, merely delays death from aging and does nothing about other causes -- whereas undeath negates the former and either provides outright immunities to, or makes less likely, many of the latter (while introducing new vulnerabilities, 'tis true)

How much would a "Hit Only By Magic" feat be worth? How about an "At-Will Level Drain" power?

The main problem is that resurrection won't keep you from getting old.

Besides that, I'm not sure many deities would want to raise you. If you are evil and dead, the good won't have you back and the evil just wanted your soul anyway. If you were raised by some evil cleric, you would probably end up working for its god - failure to do so kills you or something.

Becoming a lich is the only way to take the god factor out.

The same reason why anyone does anything in D&D: for the KEWL POWERZ.

d12 hit dice.

Being a lich also carries with it the power of having a phylactery that automatically rezzes you when someone kills you. Now, in published materials this is always some showy box thing about arm's reach from the lich, but if you read around on the internet, you'll find tons of great ideas for disguising it, which can de facto make you impossible to stop permanently. Bonus points for coating it in a thin sheet of lead to block most detection spells for spotting it.

The D&D games I played in the 90s lichdom was usually the result of a failed attempt at apotheosis.

Quote from: misterguignol;448555The same reason why anyone does anything in D&D: for the KEWL POWERZ.

And the Chicks, don't forget the hawt Vampire Chicks!

Quote from: hanszurcher;448575The D&D games I played in the 90s lichdom was usually the result of a failed attempt at apotheosis.

I like that idea.

Heaven doesn't want you and hell's afraid you'll take over.

Maybe you're so full of hate that you want to spend your time roaming the negative material plane - when you're not utterly destroying the minds and bodies of pesky adventurers, or the scions of your enemies - looking for a way to end it all.  I mean IT.  ALL.  Like, everything.  The universe.  It's the raison d'etre given to Acaerack in Return to the Tomb of Horrors, yeah?

of course, ultimately...



"BECAUSE IT'S MORE FANTASTICAL THAT WAY."

A few possible reasons:

(1) Lack of information or access to alternatives. Anyone can be bitten by a vampire and -- BAM! -- immortality (of a sort). The powerful spells you need to achieve non-undead longevity tend to expensive, so undead kind of become the immortality slums.

(Alternatively, one could imagine an ancient epoch in which those better alternatives didn't exist at all. So you might have an ancient generation of undead that just didn't have any other option and might even be bitter about all those youngsters walking on their immortal lawns.)

(2) A necro-fetish.

(3) Liches actually do have a large advantage: Their phylactery. Sure, eventually some fuckin' hobbit is going to toss it down a volcano or an obnoxious kid with a scar on his forehead is going to hunt them all down with a little help from his friends. But until then, there are few better guarantees than a good phylactery (or ten).

I had a player with an undead female necromancer in one of my games, she was polymorphed by a paladin using a scroll into a tree for about two game years after attacking the Paladin's party in a classic PvP alignment duel...

This started one of the longest wars ever in my game, lasted almost a year real time.

Was a blast to GM. Split the parties and had independent sessions for the good and evil parties and joint sessions whenever they attacked each other.