i dont remember its in an early interview about skyrim i think it was a podcast. also m'aiq doesnt realy talk about what bethsda DONT want to put in game but more like what they didnt put in a specific game that the community wanted. because its happens often that they add stuff he was talking about in previous games.

:banghead:
Comments like these make me stomp kittens!


Actually, this gave me few ideas how to make them more balanced (most your idea about Restoration not working on them).
I will make those changes when I get some sleep (have been up more than 24 hours). ^_^


Bethesda made fun of lot of stuff.
Also, one thing that Todd himself said is that as time goes, people and opinions change.
For all we know they could make next TES be a MMO in space.

Vampire/Werewolf is one thing... a lich on the other hand... preety much damn near impossible.

An epic long quest... Perhaps with an ingame effect on story that can be made to still be canon in the long run. Say the communities of skyrim find out their hero is really a lich? Rumors will sprout that it's a lie, that it's true, that it's all a conspiracy
But really, one honking HUGE quest to becoming a lich with some serious downsides beyond the simple social side... Any player lich should have the disadvantages of any regular lich, and maybe more. Perhaps player liches will not be able to remove Ny clothes they wore during their transition to lichdom? As though the flesh and clothing had rotted into one piece. Makes people want to be a lich by being naked, however, without armor they will be vulnerable during their transition, no? It would be really cool to be a lich... Good for machinima too.

Argonian liches would be AWESOME.

Here's how I think they should be made:

Transformation

If you get killed by a necromancer or a lich (only in a few select dungeons and your intellegence/willpower is your highest skill you should have a 50% chance of awakening on a bloody alter deep within, of course I think that if your streangh/endurance were the highest skills, you were a Nord, and got killed by draugher there should be a 75% chance you become a draugher... so I think there should be an undead for each two-atributes.


Surviving

First of all you should be attacked on sight by guards and other none-cowardly npc's, your fatigue regenaration is set to zero, and your weapons get coroded 25 points each time you use them... because of all these downsides surviving is extremely hard and can only be achived by a skillful mage... one of the easiest ways to survive is to cast 'reanimating' (a spell you will be givin' which will bring a permanent ghost follower up from the cost), and summoning an undead army.


Power

For each npc you kill you will absorb a permanent 0.05% of his/her mana and his/her skill in all the magic schools... you'll also have a 0.25% chance of aborbing each spell the npc has..


Community

Other liches will not imeadiatly let you into their caves, before your allowed entrance you must first perform a quest... anything from slaughter every inhabitant of [INSERT VILLAGE NAME HERE], to gather some bonemeal... the more quests you do for a lich groupthe more services they will allow you... the first one is entrance, then rest, then they will simply reward you with a random spell... and finally them may offer to join you as companions...


The fall

The only way to cure yourself should be a huge quest for meridia, (daedra of life)... of course it should be a HUGE quest which starts off as random slaughterrings of undead and finally ends with a short viset to her realm and your cure...

Lich could be very much killed in OB and I really think we should be able to do it. This goes hand to hand with necromancy too, after all Necromancy is what turns you into a lich.

Been there done that. (Completed thieves guild in Oblivion)

I like Liches and want to be able to turn into one. But NOT in Skyrim. Because it is probably meant for Dovahkiin to restart a new dynasty. With heirs and such. Kinda hard feat in undead form.

Yeah, look what a risk it was and how it deterred people from joining the Dark Brotherhood. Oh wait... :facepalm:

But yeah, what the hell....let's have vampires, liches, were[insert entire bestiary for no fewer than 200 variants of lycanthropy]s, Sloads, Imga, and anything else anyone has suggested. Then do away with 10 races, 'cause with so many "transform into whatever you want" options, who cares what you start as?

I will admit that I don't know too much about liches in TES lore, but outside of TES liches are more or less zombies that retain their ability to think (and everything that goes along with that: spellcasting, etc.). One thing I've always liked about lich lore is the phylactery, where the spellcaster's soul is stored as part of the transformation--the only way to kill these liches is to destroy their phylacteries. But that doesn't really fit with the TES version, I don't think.

Anyway, I don't understand why a lich (TES or otherwise) would have the ability to conceal the fact that it is a lich, other than possibly the use of illusion magic (is that what you were talking about?). But that would require constant and massive effort, which is why most liches dwell in deep dungeons and hide behind their hordes of undead minions. Doesn't sound like the ideal role for a TES hero.

I feel a bit sorry for anyone for whom the suggestion of a lich character in a fantasy game immediately brings to mind "overpowered," and not all the cool stories and fun gameplay that could and would result. Even game designers would do well not to be too preoccupied with [PC] balance in single player games, and without intending any offense, I don't see many game designers in this thread. Leave the boring stuff (balance, technical implementation) to the people who're good at it.

More on topic: Yes, I'd love there to be a lich system in place. Can't go wrong with acquired templates, really, especially as many TES protagonists are essentially granted one or more by the game's main quest! Morrowind did this rather well.

Do I think Beth will actually implement a playable lich template? Nope.

As an aside, I'd do things very differently for the playable lich. Immortality (arguably their biggest "feature") could be made a lot more interesting than a simple health regen mechanic, for example. It'd be trivial to create some kind of phylactery system (essentially an in-character, limited quicksave/quickload) that wouldn't help the lich win battles, but would potentially prevent them from dying as easily as a mortal. I do like your disguise idea though, OP.

Integrating your various lich powers (excepting any attribute increases, fixed resistances, and the like) into the leveling system -- specifically, perks -- would probably be the best bet, as that allows diversity within a given template as well.

I like the idea that Liches would have their own perk sets. If Vampires and Werewolves are in, perhaps they will as well.

Anyway, it's a nice idea, I like it. I don't play any evil mage characters though, so I wouldn't really benefit. The idea of transforming into something horrible in a sick exchange for power should serve as the pinnacle of power for evil characters. Although, this bring me to wondering why there aren't any "good" or "neutral" transformations for characters that like to play morally good/neutral characters, but that's another topic for another time.

Thinking about it, if Liches were in, evil characters would have the option to choose transformations based on their skill set. If you are a Combat character, you would be a Werewolf, and if you are a Stealth character, you'd be a Vampire. If you a Magic character, you'd want to be a Lich. I think this idea has some merit, but seeing as this hasn't been done before, I'd say that it's doubtful this would make it in. Heck, the only reason I believe Vampires and Werewolves will make it in is because they have been done before.

I like the idea of becoming a lich, just like vampirism and lycanism, except of cause it'd have to be through some sort of ritual or something rather than just contracting a disease.

There needs to be some downsides though. For example; you have to consume souls in order to keep your strength, otherwise you begin to decay and become weaker, so say you start with a bonus multiplier of 0. Consuming maximum souls will increase the effectiveness of your bonuses by 100%, but being deprived would remove all bonuses and decrease all your attributes by -50%. This would make being a lich harder rather than just becoming an unstoppable instaraqe death machine. This would also allow you to become a lich without being entirely evil, you could for example buy soulgems and consume the souls stored in them to keep your strength, rather than having to kill to keep yourself going.

Becoming a Lich would be fun. Perhaps the Mages Guild(or whatever it has transformed into) will still interact with you as they do with Vampires(or at least they did 200 years ago). I think a neat way to balance out the Lich would be a penalty to health regeneration instead of a bonus. The Lich s a walking corpse. There should also be some kind of ritual that is needed to maintain the forces reanimating the Lich like devouring souls or something like that. Liches are really cool for mage characters but I would also like to see the possibility of becoming a Draugr.

I've have been playing a RP once that features lichs. I'm not against liches at all. they could be a real addition to the game. but I doubt we'll be able to become one in skyrim. maybe in Tes VI.

back to that RP. to balance a lich, the GM made a simple rule. Lichs have to constantly use their magicka to live. (stunted magicka)

upon becoming a lich, a character got a bonus to intelligence and wisdom, immunities and weaknesses of undead (that were allot), and a bonus to frost and shock spells. also necromancing.
the downsides were that they couldn't regenerate their mana, and that any healing would actually harm them. on the upside, Mana potions and the like healed a lich and filled his mana.
also, liches had penalties to strength, endurance and personality.

I don't know what stops a lich to casts an illusion to look alive. just use the illusion skill, and make it a "racial ability, 1 per day, 30 minutes."

That's a pretty big generalization. Some necromancers just study the art to learn what life and death is. It's is true that a great deal with to extend their natural life or end it to become immortal. But not everyone is like that

If it's possible to become a vampire or a werewolf, I think the idea of becoming a lich is not that far-fetched... I think it could definitely be interesting.

Before I would ever consider playing as a lich, however, they would have to be a lot stronger and more fearsome than those in Oblivion. In Oblivion, liches basically were spellcasting zombies with staves. Why would I want to be that?

I remember at least 2 in OB, the haunted-manor-necromancer-lich and the dark-brotherhood-quest-target-necromancer-becomming-lich-man. So I'd say if we study necromancy, we should be able to choose the path of the lich, or the path of necromancer as raising dead etc.

I'd like to play as a lich, although I we will be able to

Yup.

Just because some people want to play a lich doesn't mean that you should put it in as one of the most dufficult and well developed questes in the game to becomse a floating, rotton corpse with an obscene ammount of power. Remember that not all of us really like using magic. On all of my stealth characters, the only magic I was using was enchantments (too bad I couldn't have and Sandal do them, then I'd be unstopable) that gave me night-eye and/or detect life.

IF they did this, they would have to make some way for every play type (steath, combat and magic) to have a way to get the ultimate power. Pigion-holing a player's play type is a great way to piss him off, Blizzard recognized that and stoped making their gear do it after vanilla. And this would do it on an even worse scale as you would force a guy that prefers to slit throats to start throwing fireballs at his target. You would have to make it something like vampires boost steath characters and lycanthropy would boost combat characters (which would break lore since transformed lycanthropes cant use weapons and armor).

Maybe, but there should be a few weaknesses as well, and no regen health that is overpowered. Racial abilities should disappear and the abilities of the in-game liches should take it's place. A trade-off that should be in is a slower spellcasting, but each spell is a bit more powerful. I don't think this will happen though, but it could be fun.
Edit: see #45 it have some good points

The problem with lichery (yes, I just coined that term), is that by definition it's about dropping all other pursuits for the study of the dark side of magic. It's about hiding out far away from interruption (or worse), and the mage following his/her obsession to the utmost.

That doesn't work very well in a game that requires content for fighters, thieves, and even the majority of mages.

Other issues that wouldn't make sense in game terms (to me at least):
- Vampirism and lycanthropy are reversible. Playing a lich should be all about burning your bridges.
- A lich adventurer or lich explorer makes no sense at all, the same isn't true for vampires or werewolves.

I could see a variety of cool quests before and after being becoming a lich (there are good lich and faction master mods out there), but to make it work in a satisfying way would require a huge amount of content that is, by definition, unique and not suitable for any other playstyle.

If Bethesda did put it in, it would be a small series of short and shallow quests, and I don't see how that would make anybody happy.

liches were overpowered enemies in oblivion, role-playing as a lich could get boring since they have too many advantages that annoyed me battling them. you would have many resistances, then summoning and stave cast over and over, so i say no :no:

I like the idea of being able to turn into one. Probably will not be doing so myself, though.

No problem with NOT dying of age. Wasn't that Neveraine crap in Morrowind mean he couldn't die of olf age as well? I don't see the problem with Liches being added. As long as they are not too powerful. Like vampire and werewolves, they have to be balanced.