D&D 5E A lich must periodically feed souls to its phalactery...

[Melkor]

P.203 of the 5E MM states that "A lich must periodically feed souls to its phalactery to sustain the magic preserving its body and consciousness."

It also mentions "A creature imprisoned in the phylactery for 24 hours is consumed and destroyed utterly."

Does this mean that a lich requires a soul every 24 hours to preserve its state of lichdom or it is destroyed?

Thanks.

 

[iserith]

No, there is no set rate for soul feeding, but you could say that it does as a way to set up a potential avenue for the PCs to weaken the lich before the final showdown. "A lich that fails or forgets to maintain its body with sacrificed souls begins to physically fall apart, and might eventually become a demilich." This takes it from a CR 21 to CR 18. Not a bad tactic for players to pursue.

 

[Shiroiken]

No. It just means that if a soul is stolen, their allies have 24 hours to find and destroy the phalactery to save it.

The actually amount of time is meant to be vague, so that individual DMs can determine how often it has to be done, or ignore it if they don't care (every billion years, for example).

 

[Luz]

No, there is no set rate for soul feeding, but you could say that it does as a way to set up a potential avenue for the PCs to weaken the lich before the final showdown. "A lich that fails or forgets to maintain its body with sacrificed souls begins to physically fall apart, and might eventually become a demilich." This takes it from a CR 21 to CR 18. Not a bad tactic for players to pursue.

Unless you come across Acererak in his lair, which is CR23!

 

[Celebrim]

Interesting.

"Does this mean that a lich requires a soul every 24 hours to preserve its state of lichdom or it is destroyed?"

No. Because the game isn't focused on being a lich and doing your best to supply yourself with a steady supply of souls to consume without attracting enough attention that a legion of Paladins comes down on your head, they are clearly leaving it up to the DM to the interpret this flavor as they wish and make it relevant mechanically only as they feel it would be interesting for the scenario.

My impression is that liches are rarely disturbed and equally don't go out of their way to leave themselves a mechanism for feeding. This implies:

1) It may be that many would be liches aren't even aware of this part of the bargain.
2) Even if they are, their dietary needs are generally quite low. I'd guess consuming their HD in souls per 100 years likely keeps them from falling apart, though in my game I've always assumed that they grow increasingly torpid over time. If it requires less power, it's hard to explain why any would ever fall apart. If it required much more power, liches would have to behave very differently. This flavor would explain the reason for the 'malnutrition', and the torpor the cause of the eventual 'starvation'.

 

[SkidAce]

Similar to [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION], I would (from the DM side) make it vary with activity. If the lich is sitting around studying cosmic mysteries, low soul intake.

If the lich is pulling a skeletal knight routine and leading armies....lots of souls required.

 

[SkidAce]

Here is a plot idea for you...maneuver your or one of your party members into a situation where you will be fed to the phylactery...so you can discover its location and destroy it....


hehe....ooops, backup got here to late.....

 

[Riley37]

A python takes a certain number of hours to swallow and digest a rat.
The python is then well-fed for a much larger number of hours.

Taking 24 hours to digest a meal does NOT mean that you then immediately need another meal.

Perhaps the duration before the lich needs to feed another soul to the phylactery depends on how active the lich is - lots of travel and spellcasting on one end, vs. sitting quietly in its throne all day on the other end - but I am not an expert on lich metabolism.

 

[Sunseeker]

I would say no. I think that based on the amount of power a lich uses on a a regular basis, would be a good way to determine how often it needs to 'eat'. An inactive lich could potentially live for hundreds of years on a single soul perhaps, while one who is actively using their magic, raising undead armies and fighting off adventurers, could need several souls per day, which is potentially, exactly why they're waging war and raising undead armies.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It almost makes it sound like becoming a lich is an evil act :-/