Unearthed Arcana: Path of the Lich

Description

Liches are powerful spellcasters who have conquered death through the relentless pursuit of arcane power. All liches undergo a ritual that binds their soul to a spirit jar, a personal and well-protected object that allows the lich’s destroyed body to re-form as long as the object is intact.

Lich Rites

The path to lichdom is unique to each who walks it. To complete the transformation, aspirants must fulfill a personal and often profane ritual. The Lich Rites table contains examples of such rituals to inspire your journey.

1d6	To Conduct Your Ritual, You Must…
1	Consume one hundred souls to strengthen your magic.
2	Decipher and recite a forbidden incantation from a lost tome written in a dead language.
3	Use ancient abjuration magic to conceal yourself from the gods of death.
4	Pen a blasphemous verse and perform it in a defiled temple.
5	Craft a potion from your victims’ remains and imbibe it beneath a full moon.
6	Corrupt your soul so completely no afterlife will accept it.

Path of the Lich Feats

The following Path of the Lich feats represent one path a character can take to become a lich. To complete the Path of the Lich, begin by taking the Lich Initiate feat, followed by any other Path of the Lich feat you choose. Finally, when you reach level 12 or higher, take the Lich Ascension feat.

What I would like them to clarify here is whether, once you start this path, you are expected to take a Path of the Lich feat every time you gain a feat. The general intent seems to be clear enough: you take Lich Initiate first, Lich Ascension at level 12 or higher, and the middle feats are flexible. Even so, I think the wording could be a little cleaner, because right now it leaves just enough room for confusion.

Liches Across the Multiverse

While the most infamous liches in D&D represent evil incarnate, liches can vary in alignments, motivations, and deeds. Those who achieve lichdom make their mark on the multiverse as demigods and despots, mentors and protectors, masters and manipulators.

These storied beings include the following:

• Renwick Caradoon. Founder of the Knights of Samular in the city of Waterdeep.
• Szass Tam. Thay’s zulkir of necromancy.
• Vecna the Archlich. Oerthian king and demigod of secrets and evil magic.
• Vlaakith the Lich-Queen. The ironfisted leader of the githyanki.
• Zlan. The frozen amalgamation of the seven liches who created the Crystal Shard.

All liches have in common their arcane prowess, their undead nature, and the sequestering of their souls. For more on liches, see the Monster Manual.

One thing I have really liked about this UA is that it keeps finding room for little bits of lore and canon context instead of presenting these paths as pure mechanics. If this ever ends up in a full book, I would love to see much more of this, even a few pages on figures like Vecna, Vlaakith, or Szass Tam rather than just a sentence each. It helps immerse the reader in what a lich actually means in D&D.

Lich Initiate

Path of the Lich Feat (Prerequisite: Level 4+, Spellcasting or Pact Magic Feature)

You take the first steps toward lichdom, which involve creating your spirit jar, a magical vessel that anchors your soul to the world of the living in the event of your body’s destruction.

You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Creating Your Spirit Jar. Choose a Tiny object of great significance to you. Roll on or choose from the Spirit Jars table to inspire this object. You spend a Long Rest anchoring your soul to this object, allowing you to consume the souls of the living to bolster your own power. You can have only one spirit jar at a time. If you create a second spirit jar, the old one is destroyed.

1d6	Your Spirit Jar Is …
1	An acorn from a forest destroyed long ago.
2	A love letter from a deceased paramour.
3	The inkwell that you used to scribe your first spell or prayer.
4	The defaced holy symbol of a god you’ve denounced.
5	A bell whose toll becomes lower with each soul you collect.
6	A desiccated body part, such as an eye, finger, or horn, that was once part of you or someone you knew.

Spirit Jar Destruction. Your spirit jar’s Armor Class equals your spell save DC, and it has a number of Hit Points equal to your spellcasting ability modifier plus your character level. If your spirit jar is destroyed, you gain 2 Exhaustion levels, and you can’t use the Soul Siphon ability until you create a new one.

Soul Siphon. When you reduce a Humanoid enemy to 0 Hit Points, you can consume its soul and gain a boost of arcane energy (no action required). On your next turn, the first creature you hit with an attack takes extra Necrotic damage equal to 1d6 plus your spellcasting ability modifier. You also gain this benefit if someone else reduces a Humanoid enemy within 10 feet of you to 0 Hit Points. A soul consumed in this way can be restored only by a True Resurrection or Wish spell.

This path already feels more accessible than Path of the Death Knight. If you can cast spells, you can at least consider it, which makes a lot of sense for the fantasy. Half casters, full casters, Pact Magic users, and some martial subclasses can all get in the door.

The ability score increase also feels correct here. If this is meant to be a spellcaster path, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma are the right options. More than anything, it just highlights the problem I had with Death Knight. That path should probably be reworked to support martial characters more cleanly, with Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution-based scaling where appropriate instead of leaning so hard on Charisma.

The spirit jar itself is flavorful, and the object table is fine. A love letter from a deceased paramour, a bell whose tone drops with each soul you collect, or a defaced holy symbol all feel like strong lich imagery. My hesitation is really with Spirit Jar Destruction. In practice, that feels less like a player-facing feature and more like a hook the DM may or may not choose to use. If nothing happens to the jar, the mechanic barely matters. If the DM decides to target it, suddenly the feature becomes a burden hanging over the character.

Soul Siphon, on the other hand, is cool. It is automatic, flavorful, and easy to run. The image of capturing a soul from one enemy and immediately turning that stolen power against the next target works really well. Part of me even wishes it could ramp if you chained kills together, because that would make the feature feel even more ravenous and memorable.

Arcane Restoration

Path of the Lich Feat (Prerequisite: Lich Initiate Feat)

You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Essence Rejuvenation. When you use Soul Siphon to consume a soul, you can choose one or more expended spell slots to recover. The spell slots can have a combined level equal to no more than 4. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a Short or Long Rest.

This is very good. Recovering up to four levels worth of spell slots off Soul Siphon is a strong benefit, and I especially start thinking about Warlocks when I read this. Even with the once-per-rest limit, this feels like one of the standout middle feats in the path.

Transfer Life

Path of the Lich Feat (Prerequisite: Lich Initiate Feat)

You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Soul Transference. When you use Soul Siphon to consume a soul, you can choose a creature within 60 feet of yourself to gain Temporary Hit Points equal to your Proficiency Bonus plus your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum of 1 Temporary Hit Point).

This one is not as exciting as Arcane Restoration for me, but it is still solid. A small packet of Temporary Hit Points in the 6 to 9 range is not bad at all, especially when it is riding on top of a feature you were already happy to trigger.

Undead Grasp

Path of the Lich Feat (Prerequisite: Lich Initiate Feat)

You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Paralyzing Touch. You know the Chill Touch cantrip. If you already know it, you learn another cantrip of your choice. Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell (choose when you select this feat).

When you deal damage with Chill Touch, you can expend a level 1+ spell slot to attempt to paralyze the target. The target takes an extra 1d10 Necrotic damage per level of the spell slot expended and must succeed on a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC or have the Paralyzed condition until the start of your next turn.

I like this a lot. Using a cantrip as the delivery mechanism and then feeding a spell slot into it for an extra rider is a really cool piece of design. The added Necrotic damage is nice, but the real appeal is being able to turn Chill Touch into a paralysis setup. I want to see more mechanics like this, where cantrips stay relevant because higher-level resources can modify them in interesting ways.

Lich Ascension

Path of the Lich Feat (Prerequisite: Level 12+, at least two Path of the Lich Feats)

Your path to lichdom is complete. You gain the following benefits.

Ability Score Increase. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.

Undead. Your creature type is Undead.

Unholy Anatomy. You have Resistance to Necrotic and Poison damage. You don’t gain Exhaustion levels from dehydration, malnutrition, or suffocation.

Frightening Gaze. You learn the Fear spell if you don’t already know it, and you always have it prepared. Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell (choose when you select this feat). You can cast the spell without expending a spell slot a number of times equal to your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum of once), and you regain all expended uses when you finish a Long Rest.

Rejuvenation. If you die, you re-form in 1d10 days if you have a spirit jar and aren’t revived before then. You gain a new body, appearing with all your Hit Points in the nearest unoccupied space.

This is where the path really comes together for me. The “at least two Path of the Lich feats” prerequisite is clearer than the earlier summary text, Undead as a creature type is just plain cool, and the resistances plus the immunity to mundane forms of bodily decline all feel right for a lich.

I also like Fear here a lot. Getting it always prepared and being able to cast it for free a number of times based on your spellcasting modifier is strong, flavorful, and easy to understand.

Rejuvenation is probably my favorite part of the whole path. If I had a player becoming a lich, I would not feel bad killing that character because the fantasy is that they come back in a new body. That is fun. It makes the transformation feel meaningful in play rather than just decorative.

Overall, I like the flavor and execution here more than Path of the Death Knight. The big reason is that this one understands its audience. It is built for spellcasters, and it consistently lets Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma carry the path. Death Knight did not feel nearly as comfortable in its own skin. Path of the Lich does.