Lich
Medium Undead · · CR 21
- Undead
- Medium
- Tier 4
Lich at CR 21 is logged as a medium undead; alignment neutral evil. Habitat: ruins, underground, and urban. Sourced from Monster Manual (5e 2014) and Monster Manual (5.5e 2024).
Stat Block
- Challenge Rating
- 21
- Type
- Undead
- Size
- Medium
- Alignment
- —
- Speed
- —
- Habitats
- Ruins, Underground, Urban
- Sources
- Monster Manual (5e 2014), Monster Manual (5.5e 2024), Flee, Mortals!
Ecology
Liches do not have ecologies; they have territories, and those territories are dead. A lich's lair is a place where life withers slowly: gardens stop blooming, livestock fail to breed, mortals dream of crypts. Around them, undead proliferate as servants and as ambient symptoms, ghouls gathering at their doors, wraiths drifting from their moats. They claim libraries, towers, dungeons beneath cities. The lair always points to the phylactery's hiding place by indirection: by the lich's apparent lack of concern for any one location, by the casual abandonment of physical assets, the truly important secret is somewhere else entirely.
Behaviour
Liches are coldly intelligent, obsessively curious, and patient beyond mortal comprehension. They pursue arcane knowledge as a single-minded purpose, the price of their immortality. They feel little, except for the occasional pang of memory and the steady satisfaction of solving a problem. They see mortals as resources, generally, but sometimes as colleagues, taking apprentices they intend to murder for their souls. They are not insane in the manner of demons or aberrations; they are sane, just emptied. Their cruelty is functional, not gleeful, which is exactly why they are the most dangerous undead.
Origin
A lich is made, never born. The ritual of lichdom requires the murder of a sapient being whose soul is bound into a phylactery, then the willing death and reanimation of the caster. Few mortals survive the ritual; those who do are no longer entirely themselves. Some liches are hunted down and destroyed within a century; others endure for millennia, becoming archlich, demilich, or worse, beings whose original purpose is forgotten under accumulated centuries of new obsessions. The oldest liches predate the kingdoms they once served, having watched empires rise around them like seasonal grass.
Related Monsters
Frequently Asked Questions about Lich
- What is the challenge rating of Lich?
- Listed CR for Lich: 21. Match it to a party that fits levels 17+.
- What type of creature is Lich?
- The bestiary type for Lich is undead, medium size.
- Where does Lich live?
- Habitats for Lich: Ruins, Underground, Urban.