Dnd 5e Pc Lich Pdf

Building a Lich Character in DnD 5e

Most people trying to make a lich PC hit the same wall: the rules don't actually give you a clean path from level 1 wizard to undead spellcaster. The core mechanics are scattered across the Dungeon Master's Guide, a few third-party sources, and a handful of homebrew documents that vary wildly in quality. I've walked several groups through this process over the years, and the ones that work well share one thing in common—they treat it as a campaign milestone, not a character option you pick at the table. The official route starts at wizard level 18, where you can perform the ritual described in the DMG to become a lich. You need a phylactery, which means crafting a magic item that typically takes 60 days of in-game work and costs around 50,000 gold pieces. You also need specific spells prepared and a series of ritual components. After that, you die by any means, and your soul transfers into the phylactery. Thirty days later, you resurrect as a lich with all your wizard levels intact plus the standard undead benefits.

Converting Your Build to a Dnd 5e Pc Lich Pdf

Once the character is built and the DM has approved it, packaging everything into a PDF is straightforward but worth doing properly. I keep a template folder on my drive with the character sheet, phylactery details, spell progression, and a separate stat block for the GM. When exporting, I use a tool like Canva or Google Docs print-to-PDF rather than browser print functions, which tend to mangle column layouts and overflow tables. Set the export resolution to 150 DPI if the document includes hand-drawn notes or maps. That's plenty legible and keeps the file size reasonable. Anything over 300 DPI for a text-heavy document just bloats it unnecessarily. The actual content of the PDF should include the standard character sheet, the phylactery description with its location and defenses, the special undead traits applied to your stats, and a reference page for the phylactery destruction rules since your DM will need those handy during the campaign's climax. Keep the whole thing under five pages. DMs don't want a novel sitting on their desk before session one. I ran into a specific problem with one character where the phylactery was buried inside a portable hole. The DM had ruled that since the hole existed in the extradimensional space, the phylactery couldn't be destroyed by normal means, which effectively made the lich immortal as long as someone kept reloading that hole. It took us about three sessions of arguing through the rules before we landed on a compromise: the phylactery could be destroyed if the portable hole itself was destroyed first, but that required a specific artifact we'd have to track down. The workaround was rewriting the phylactery's description to include a clause that it could be targeted directly if the DM deemed the protection too absolute. Always get that clause in writing before the character reaches level 18.

The Mechanics Break Down

There are a few things that almost nobody explains clearly when you're first reading about lichdom. The first is that becoming a lich doesn't make you immune to death. You still have a normal hit point budget, and if you drop to zero, you fall unconscious like any other creature. The phylactery only matters when you actually die and your soul tries to leave your body. If someone destroys your phylactery before that happens, you're just a regular spellcaster with weird flavor text. The second thing is the spell preparation change. As a lich, you keep all your wizard spells, but you gain access to a small set of additional necromancy spells that reflect your new nature. These are listed in the DMG and they stack with your existing spellbook, they don't replace anything. Some DMs get confused about this and try to force you to choose between your old spells and the new ones. That's incorrect by the rules, and it's worth pointing out early so there's no disagreement later. The third thing is the divination resistance. Other creatures can't target you with divination magic, and they have disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws against your spells. This is a significant combat advantage that casual readers often miss because it's buried in a paragraph of flavor text. In practice, it means scrying on your character becomes nearly impossible, which changes how your DM approaches investigation scenes. Plan for that.

Common Problems and Workarounds

The biggest issue I see is that players try to use the lich transformation as an escape hatch for a dead character. The rules explicitly require the character to be lawful, and most importantly, you have to be alive when you perform the ritual. There's no way to become a lich after dying unless the DM runs a very specific adventure module designed for that scenario. I've seen players try to argue their way around this by claiming their character's death was temporary or that they were already half-dead. It doesn't work. The DMG is clear on this, and any reasonable group will shut it down. Another problem is the phylactery location. If you bury it in a place that's practically unreachable, the campaign loses tension. A lich whose phylactery is sitting in a vault three kingdoms away and guarded by an army isn't a compelling villain or a playable character. It's just a plot device that makes the story impossible to resolve. I recommend working with your DM to place the phylactery somewhere that's dangerous but achievable, preferably tied to an ongoing faction or location in the campaign world. This gives the DM hooks to use against you and gives the party a reason to care about tracking it down. File size is a practical concern too. If your PDF includes high-resolution images of maps or hand-drawn illustrations, it can easily balloon past ten megabytes. Most messaging platforms and file-sharing services have limits between five and twenty-five megabytes depending on the service. Compress the images before embedding them, or use a dedicated asset library for background textures instead of original artwork. This keeps the document professional without hitting upload limits.

What the Rules Don't Cover Well

The DnD 5e Pc Lich Pdf format works best when it includes everything the table needs in one place rather than forcing everyone to flip between the PHB, DMG, and supplementary materials. I always include a quick-reference section at the front with your new hit points, the resistance list, the spell bonus list, and the phylactery destruction conditions. This saves roughly ten minutes per session that would otherwise be spent searching for the right rule on the wrong page. There's also no official guidance on what happens if a lich loses access to its phylactery temporarily. Can you still cast spells? Can you still use legendary actions? The rules assume permanent destruction, not temporary loss. In my experience, the most common ruling is that temporary loss prevents resurrection but doesn't affect active gameplay. Your character keeps all abilities until the phylactery is either recovered or permanently destroyed. Make sure your DM states their ruling clearly before the campaign reaches that point, because the moment it comes up, everyone at the table will want an answer immediately. If you're looking for a cleaner starting point than hunting through third-party websites for unofficial documents, the official DMG chapter on creating NPCs gives you the foundation. From there, the process is mostly about coordination with your DM and keeping documentation organized. The PDF format is useful because it forces you to consolidate everything into a single reference that your DM can actually use rather than flipping through three different books during play.