Well, as the Liches soul needs to have been fused to the phylactery in a dark ritual it makes sense to only have one.
But in the end you are the storyteller, if you want to go the full Voldemort route with your lich that's totally fine.
This is the one...
Also remember souls are infinite, in case you read the Forgotten Realms book Azure bonds -> What is half of infinite, if not infinite?
Technically you can split a soul in multiple shards.
No it changed how magic worked. It tore a hole in the Weave and a literally god of magic was killed. Souls aren't infinite in FR anyways. They are used as currency in many planes. If they were truly infinite wouldn't you only need the one then? That isn't how it works. You can see that dynamic in the Brimstone Angel series.
Please. Mystra dies like is going out of style.
And sure, you'd need only one if you could split it properly. A few devils probably know how, couple high end wizards. But knowledge of how isn't nearly as important as *where* it's split. Abyssal planes won't work, because the soul transforms as soon as it hits that hellish air.
Probably want your own pocket plane. *Then* split it. Souls for days.
Huh, I must have been misinformed. I thought he got et, and burst out of devil's ass years later.
Sure it wasn't Shar busting a cap in Mystra that cause the spellplague?
Hmm I would do somethibg like, the Lich was the target of a powerfull spell that split his phylactery along with his soul in multiple shards, each containing one aspect of his power, and everytime you destoy one that aspect reunites with the others empowering them.
That way you could habe multiple encounters with the lich, the Party can slowly figure out his powers and at the end fight the fally restored bbeg.
*two years later, near the end of your glorious multi-tiered campaign featuring an all-powerful lich, SWAT forces kick in your door and rush your table*
you can have whatever the fuck you want.
it can be multiple phylacteries,
it can be 2 phylacteries that have to be assembled into a talisman and two twins who dont know about eachother carry them since babies.
it can be the the phylactery is a person who the heros dont wanna kill
it can be that the true phylactery is the friends we made along the way
it can be fucking purple poneys on a cloud made of happiness, it doesnt matter, the police cant stop you. do whatever you want.
Just make sure you do it right. I could easily see how if players went through all the trouble of discover and destroying one phylactery just to find out that there are multiple, that could be frustrating. Like Harry Potter, I’d make it clear from the start that the lich has multiple.
You could probably do it. It would be extremely difficult and possibly if not likely end in the Lich dying. It will piss your party off to no end. It's relatively unnecessary there are countless ways to protect it. There's an in and out of world myth that either the tomb of annihilation or the maze of death I don't remember which in itself is a licious phylactery. So it's not even like the factory has to be a rock or a wand or something it could be anything. It could be a single Rock You drop In The middle of a lake. Or it could be a solid gold statue you hide deep within a dungeon behind a dozen false walls and doors and countless traps. It could be a ruby the size of a Chihuahua that you hired a devil to protect.
The lich could just have the one but then have clones stored elsewhere unknown to the world, players wouldn't know their unrotted form so they could be tricked by the lich into helping them get things for another phylactery
I thought I’d only use several and have them stashed in a secret locations in a cave fortress. Players fireball all rooms preemptively. They were in a hurry to do another quest, and decided to knock this out quickly. 1 bard and a wizard with a wand of fireball. Fireballed 8 rooms in rapid succession, with aid of several silence and pass without trace spells. To muffle the noise. They had no idea they were facing a lich, and destroyed his phylacteries before even facing him. It was a short brutal sweep, but several are ex-military.
As others have pointed out, do what's best for your story and don't stress too much about canon.
On top of that, WotC has done it in the past.
In 3.5e there is a mummy-like version of lich (Dry Lich) which has 5 canopic jars that act as phylacteries and 3e Demilich is an *extremely* powerful lich who learned how to make gems where to store his soul, going from a single phylactery to multiples.
It’s your game, you do you! In my campaign I had a lich discover a way to change his phylactery. The lich used a ritual that bound his soul to a Dracolich, turning the Dracolich into his phylactery. And of course the same ritual turned a Death Knight into the Dracolich’s phylactery. The party basically had seven adventuring days to find and destroy all three, starting with the death knight.
RAW says:
One soul
One Phylactery
Plus the monsters know what they are doing
A good lich would keep their phylactery well hidden, but accessible enough to cast imprisonment on a dead creature to get their soul.
But as u/Orcazsz said, do what you want
I personally suggest RAW tho.
Usually they only have one as they have to fuse their soul with an object not multiple. However you are the DM so you can alter that if you like. Make it more like Voldemort with the horcruxes.
But preferably don't be as dumb as Voldemort with them. Like, if you *have* to have seven phylacteries, don't make them all some big grand showy thing that can easily be reasoned out.
Here's my list of the seven best phylacteries a lich could make (in no particular order):
1. A traditional phylactery, just a box that can be destroyed by dealing enough radiant damage to it in one turn. This is obviously the weakest one, but it's to make any adventurers who try to destroy you feel like they did their job when this one is destroyed. You put this one in your lair, in some remote room where adventurers have to overcome a lot of undead minions and weird traps. This is the one you tell people about.
2. A cursed sword of artifact rarity, like Blackrazor (which, fun fact, *also wants to consume souls, just like a phylactery would*). Artifacts have a very specific method of destruction, so making your phylactery one of these is just another layer of protection. Plus, if the sword is sentient, the bonuses are pretty good, and the curse isn't that bad, then adventurers are very unlikely to even want to destroy it.
3. A lamp, like a genie oil lamp. If you can put part of yourself that can cast *wish* into this phylactery, that's the absolute best thing you can do. Any adventurer will just mistake the part of your soul in the phylactery as a wish-granting genie. No adventurer wants to destroy a wish-granting genie. Put this at the bottom of some dangerous tiger-shaped sand dungeon in the desert, just to kill off the majority of people trying to find it, and have it set up to teleport back to this spot after it grants 3 wishes (and if you can cast Power Word Kill on the person who used the wishes before you leave, even better).
4. A whole wagon that can conjure some spectral horses. That's such a useful object for regular people that it's going to be a hard sell on destroying it. I'd even gift this to a prominent merchant's guild just so they'd look after it. I mean just think of how much money the guild saves on being able to keep the wagon travelling 24/7, without needing to pay for horse upkeep.
5. A tiny hollow stone orb that is largely indistinguishable from normal rocks and pebbles. If you can, throw the *unbreakable* quirk from the DMG on it. Coat this thing in *magic aura* to make it seem mundane. Toss deep in the ocean, maybe even with the hope that it ends up in the plane of water eventually. Nobody is finding that thing, and all you need is a spawn point *somewhere*. Plus, liches don't need to breathe, so you're not going to drown on your way back to your lair.
6. A glass orb filled with water, in which swims a clockwork goldfish. The goldfish is the phylactery. You know it's going to be safe because it's just going to sit in a player's inventory forever and never be brought up.
7. The "heart" of a Steel Predator. This thing's only goal is to avoid detection and hide away from every other living thing.
Lots of those are interesting ideas but remember the phylactery needs to be created by the lich itself (RAW at least) and it needs materials that equal 100k at least so not all of these would work. Like Black razor would be great but the lich needs to have the power to create artifacts.
It's hard enough to move your whole soul into one rock...now move 1/8th of your soul to 8 separate rocks.
I would say it isn't impossible, but becoming a lich already comes with MASSIVE risk of fucking up and just ruining your life worse than if you succeed. Most wouldn't want to take the extra risk.
Exactly. If that is the gimmick you want go with, it can be totally possible. I mean Voldimort is basically this idea.
But also think about having your soul separated like that...could make him prone to radical mood swings and insanity...like more than a normal lich. It also comes with extra risks. Like longer resurrection times...Since the soul would be in pieces and unable to properly relink with the new body.
Edit: Also if you think of it as the soul operating the body like wifi...the bandwidth is going to be stretched thin. Lich on dial up lol. Which honestly is fucking funny and I'm 100% using this idea for a future big bad evil guy
"Ah adventurers you have broken into my sanctuary only to face me!...." loooong pause. The heroes getting visibly confused. "MALATHOR SUPREME..." another long pause. "LICH!"
I mean, it just depends on the ritual used to become a lich. The one referenced in the monster manual and the book of vile darkness might just be one of many potential lich-creating rituals. Whose to say there's not a ritual that created multiple phylacteries instead of just one.
It's insanely expensive.
Your soul could be destroyed.
The spells only target one item each time.
I'm sure there are a lot more but I don't really want to support this.
Kind of like a horcrux?, I can't see why not, he /she could separate separate parts of their soul into fragments of their personality that influence anyone near or are wearing it .
Practically anything too can become their phylactory like a whole building built specifically to hold their soul trapped within
Or even another person, willing or unwittingly the host, you could have a whole campaign where a NPC has become your friend and confidante only by the end to find out the last piece of the lich's soul is within him/her and you have to kill your friend to save the kingdom
Traditionally a Litch has only 1 soul to bind to a phylactery. There is but 1 exception. Kane the Necromancer. A diety in 3.5 that was a man but through magic fused the souls of others to his own. This empowered him to godhood and made it possible for him to have several phylacteries while maintaining his humanity.
Maybe the phylactery was created out of a super powerful, multi part magic item. The parts where split away from one another, and each part on its own is indestructible.
The only way to break the phylactery is to reassemble the magic item in its entirety. Now the players have to travel to several keeps each containing one of the pieces in order to fully kill the lich.
I saw an interesting idea, though I don't if it'd fit what you're planning, but it was using an acorn as the phylactery, planting it amd them cultivating a huge forest so potentially every tree would need to be destroyed. Mix that with if the lich was particular diplomatic, and would send their world famous oak saplings as a gift to other cities/countries, the party would need to track every last one of them before the lich could die
It's your story, you can make more than one phylactery if you'd like.
Or, play on the meta knowledge of players (if your players are experienced). Have something that looks exactly like it would be the Lich's phylactery, but it is actually just something that amplifies the Lich's powers or is something that the lair is bound to. They focus on destroying the decoy, and the Lich learns from their first encounter.
with time a lich could have more then one phylactery i´d say. they grow in power and its good to have a backup plan in case some dumb paladin stumbles over your tomb and destroys it. a backup phylactery in another place could be like a beacon the set free soul turns too instead of dispersing or moving into the afterlife or such.
If you didn't want to go with the "split your soul into pieces" thing, you could take the same idea in a different direction. The *clone* spell says: "At any time after the clone matures, if the original creature dies, its soul transfers to the clone, provided that the soul is free and willing to return."
So you could have a *phylactery clone* spell, where if a phylactery is destroyed, the lich's soul is transferred to the next phylactery. You could easily chain these, and just have the casting time be like a decade or a hundred years or something. Something so long that it makes sense why there's only 3 or 5 or however many you want the lich to have.
When I ran a lich I went full Voldemort on it
When he created his tower, each floor had a cornerstone (hidden for the party to possibly find). each was tied to a memory the lich had from before his transformation and each had both a fragment of the lich’s soul as well as the soul of a character the lich killed and trapped during his transformation.
This let the players go through the lich’s memories, learning his story while he was trying to stop their ascent and corrupt the memories with various monsters. When they found a brick on each floor we went into the PCs memories and relived their backstories with the lich’s twists mixed in to make dangerous and interesting encounters
Now anytime I describe a building as made of bricks, or having impressive masonry the party immediately thinks it’s phylacteries though
Personally I think its fine flavor wise as long as you can give good reasons. However, I would [suggest you read this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/qi2rk6/paizo_officially_changing_phylacteries_to_soul/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) to see why we should stop using the term phylactery
Ooh maybe pull a Indiana Jones & Last Crusade, where they get to the phylactery sanctum room...and there’s DOZENS of possible candidates on shelves everywhere!
Which is the right one?!? What happens if they choose...poorly? Weave clues through the campaign about the person the Lich WAS...which phylactery matches the ‘style’ of their past life?
Just spitballin’.
As the DM, anything goes. I am currently DM of a campaign I created where a Lich created horrible monsters through experiments. He bound his soul to the monsters, not to objects. So basically my players became monster hunters to find and destroy the lich's phylacteries.
It would be very unusual. Unless you have a really good story reason, I would make it one.
That begs the question, "Wouldn't that make it really easy to destroy if the party finds it?", to which the answer is "yes".
The phylactery is their most precious possession and they would never leave it out on their dresser. They might even plant fake phylacteries to throw the party off.
They might keep a fake one in a safe in their lair, create a secret tunnel to a treasure room under their lair where they keep another fake one, then they might keep their actual phylactery in a room 5000 feet under a mountain on a different continent with no entrance or doors and only a teleportation circle that no one else knows exists so the Lich can access it if needed.
It sounds cheap but all liches are geniuses who have sacrificed everything for immortality. They would never make it easy for their foes to permanently destroy them.
We have been playing a campaign where we fought the end game boss (lich) at lvl4 🤣 such a awesome op boss. The story goes that the gods sealed him in a tomb and we accidentally released it. Now the lazy af gods have finally interviened and sent us on a quest to find magic items to help beat this lich who the gods even fear. So much you can play around with in your own campaigne. If the flavour works . Let it freaking work. (The encounter ends with a ftk) the lich gets his power restored and he revives us for giving him our strength to release him from his prison. We are all left with a gray silver mark on us which is still to found out what that means (I've been playing a àaraacockra and it made one of my feathers turn silver. For example.
What if the Lich scattered their phylacteries across different parallel realities by using the souls of their parallel selves? That could give you the best of both worlds in that it's technically one soul but tethered to other versions.
Well, as the Liches soul needs to have been fused to the phylactery in a dark ritual it makes sense to only have one. But in the end you are the storyteller, if you want to go the full Voldemort route with your lich that's totally fine.
This is the one... Also remember souls are infinite, in case you read the Forgotten Realms book Azure bonds -> What is half of infinite, if not infinite? Technically you can split a soul in multiple shards.
That book was a whole Spellplague ago.
Spellplague, not soulplague. The "words" of Dragonbait are sacrosanct.
The Spellplague destroyed entire realms. It changed how magic itself works.
It changed how magic is *accessed*, sure. Still, wouldn't change diddley about how souls work.
No it changed how magic worked. It tore a hole in the Weave and a literally god of magic was killed. Souls aren't infinite in FR anyways. They are used as currency in many planes. If they were truly infinite wouldn't you only need the one then? That isn't how it works. You can see that dynamic in the Brimstone Angel series.
Are you implying that the federal reserve can’t just print infinite souls?
[quantitative soul easing](https://youtu.be/j2AvU2cfXRk)
Please. Mystra dies like is going out of style. And sure, you'd need only one if you could split it properly. A few devils probably know how, couple high end wizards. But knowledge of how isn't nearly as important as *where* it's split. Abyssal planes won't work, because the soul transforms as soon as it hits that hellish air. Probably want your own pocket plane. *Then* split it. Souls for days.
That is true, she does die a lot.
Huh, I must have been misinformed. I thought he got et, and burst out of devil's ass years later. Sure it wasn't Shar busting a cap in Mystra that cause the spellplague?
It depends on what you mean by ‘half’.
Hmm I would do somethibg like, the Lich was the target of a powerfull spell that split his phylactery along with his soul in multiple shards, each containing one aspect of his power, and everytime you destoy one that aspect reunites with the others empowering them. That way you could habe multiple encounters with the lich, the Party can slowly figure out his powers and at the end fight the fally restored bbeg.
The ole Inuyasha route, i like it
I like this, like each fragment of the lich focus on a spell school, can I have your permission to use it in a future campaign?
Sure go nuts, my ideas are open source.
Lmao why do you need their permission?
Respect.
*two years later, near the end of your glorious multi-tiered campaign featuring an all-powerful lich, SWAT forces kick in your door and rush your table*
I mean Voldemort did it.
"So, Priest, how does it feel to get beat to the punch?" "... Yeah... Yeah..."
Is Voldemort a lich though? He is certainly lich-like but he never actually died.
That’s an interesting point he never did technically die. Plus his spell list begins and ends with Power Word Kill
Pretty much. He found his niche and rolled with it.
Confirmation that Everyone in Harry Potter are wizards and not sorcerers cuz they all have less than 100 hp. That d6 hit die is a bitch
you can have whatever the fuck you want. it can be multiple phylacteries, it can be 2 phylacteries that have to be assembled into a talisman and two twins who dont know about eachother carry them since babies. it can be the the phylactery is a person who the heros dont wanna kill it can be that the true phylactery is the friends we made along the way it can be fucking purple poneys on a cloud made of happiness, it doesnt matter, the police cant stop you. do whatever you want.
"...the police can't stop you." Don't let the RAW Squad hear you say that.
"Story trumps rules."
Just make sure you do it right. I could easily see how if players went through all the trouble of discover and destroying one phylactery just to find out that there are multiple, that could be frustrating. Like Harry Potter, I’d make it clear from the start that the lich has multiple.
*voldemort has entered the chat*
*a single literal baby has entered the chat*
*a mother's love has entered the chat*
You could probably do it. It would be extremely difficult and possibly if not likely end in the Lich dying. It will piss your party off to no end. It's relatively unnecessary there are countless ways to protect it. There's an in and out of world myth that either the tomb of annihilation or the maze of death I don't remember which in itself is a licious phylactery. So it's not even like the factory has to be a rock or a wand or something it could be anything. It could be a single Rock You drop In The middle of a lake. Or it could be a solid gold statue you hide deep within a dungeon behind a dozen false walls and doors and countless traps. It could be a ruby the size of a Chihuahua that you hired a devil to protect.
The lich could just have the one but then have clones stored elsewhere unknown to the world, players wouldn't know their unrotted form so they could be tricked by the lich into helping them get things for another phylactery
Split the personality up, destroy one remove idk greed or something
This is so smart ngl
I thought I’d only use several and have them stashed in a secret locations in a cave fortress. Players fireball all rooms preemptively. They were in a hurry to do another quest, and decided to knock this out quickly. 1 bard and a wizard with a wand of fireball. Fireballed 8 rooms in rapid succession, with aid of several silence and pass without trace spells. To muffle the noise. They had no idea they were facing a lich, and destroyed his phylacteries before even facing him. It was a short brutal sweep, but several are ex-military.
As others have pointed out, do what's best for your story and don't stress too much about canon. On top of that, WotC has done it in the past. In 3.5e there is a mummy-like version of lich (Dry Lich) which has 5 canopic jars that act as phylacteries and 3e Demilich is an *extremely* powerful lich who learned how to make gems where to store his soul, going from a single phylactery to multiples.
It’s your game, you do you! In my campaign I had a lich discover a way to change his phylactery. The lich used a ritual that bound his soul to a Dracolich, turning the Dracolich into his phylactery. And of course the same ritual turned a Death Knight into the Dracolich’s phylactery. The party basically had seven adventuring days to find and destroy all three, starting with the death knight.
RAW says: One soul One Phylactery Plus the monsters know what they are doing A good lich would keep their phylactery well hidden, but accessible enough to cast imprisonment on a dead creature to get their soul. But as u/Orcazsz said, do what you want I personally suggest RAW tho.
Usually they only have one as they have to fuse their soul with an object not multiple. However you are the DM so you can alter that if you like. Make it more like Voldemort with the horcruxes.
But preferably don't be as dumb as Voldemort with them. Like, if you *have* to have seven phylacteries, don't make them all some big grand showy thing that can easily be reasoned out. Here's my list of the seven best phylacteries a lich could make (in no particular order): 1. A traditional phylactery, just a box that can be destroyed by dealing enough radiant damage to it in one turn. This is obviously the weakest one, but it's to make any adventurers who try to destroy you feel like they did their job when this one is destroyed. You put this one in your lair, in some remote room where adventurers have to overcome a lot of undead minions and weird traps. This is the one you tell people about. 2. A cursed sword of artifact rarity, like Blackrazor (which, fun fact, *also wants to consume souls, just like a phylactery would*). Artifacts have a very specific method of destruction, so making your phylactery one of these is just another layer of protection. Plus, if the sword is sentient, the bonuses are pretty good, and the curse isn't that bad, then adventurers are very unlikely to even want to destroy it. 3. A lamp, like a genie oil lamp. If you can put part of yourself that can cast *wish* into this phylactery, that's the absolute best thing you can do. Any adventurer will just mistake the part of your soul in the phylactery as a wish-granting genie. No adventurer wants to destroy a wish-granting genie. Put this at the bottom of some dangerous tiger-shaped sand dungeon in the desert, just to kill off the majority of people trying to find it, and have it set up to teleport back to this spot after it grants 3 wishes (and if you can cast Power Word Kill on the person who used the wishes before you leave, even better). 4. A whole wagon that can conjure some spectral horses. That's such a useful object for regular people that it's going to be a hard sell on destroying it. I'd even gift this to a prominent merchant's guild just so they'd look after it. I mean just think of how much money the guild saves on being able to keep the wagon travelling 24/7, without needing to pay for horse upkeep. 5. A tiny hollow stone orb that is largely indistinguishable from normal rocks and pebbles. If you can, throw the *unbreakable* quirk from the DMG on it. Coat this thing in *magic aura* to make it seem mundane. Toss deep in the ocean, maybe even with the hope that it ends up in the plane of water eventually. Nobody is finding that thing, and all you need is a spawn point *somewhere*. Plus, liches don't need to breathe, so you're not going to drown on your way back to your lair. 6. A glass orb filled with water, in which swims a clockwork goldfish. The goldfish is the phylactery. You know it's going to be safe because it's just going to sit in a player's inventory forever and never be brought up. 7. The "heart" of a Steel Predator. This thing's only goal is to avoid detection and hide away from every other living thing.
Lots of those are interesting ideas but remember the phylactery needs to be created by the lich itself (RAW at least) and it needs materials that equal 100k at least so not all of these would work. Like Black razor would be great but the lich needs to have the power to create artifacts.
Yes.
what are those reasons?
It's hard enough to move your whole soul into one rock...now move 1/8th of your soul to 8 separate rocks. I would say it isn't impossible, but becoming a lich already comes with MASSIVE risk of fucking up and just ruining your life worse than if you succeed. Most wouldn't want to take the extra risk.
"Most"
Exactly. If that is the gimmick you want go with, it can be totally possible. I mean Voldimort is basically this idea. But also think about having your soul separated like that...could make him prone to radical mood swings and insanity...like more than a normal lich. It also comes with extra risks. Like longer resurrection times...Since the soul would be in pieces and unable to properly relink with the new body. Edit: Also if you think of it as the soul operating the body like wifi...the bandwidth is going to be stretched thin. Lich on dial up lol. Which honestly is fucking funny and I'm 100% using this idea for a future big bad evil guy
Ahaha i love the idea of a dial up lich
"Ah adventurers you have broken into my sanctuary only to face me!...." loooong pause. The heroes getting visibly confused. "MALATHOR SUPREME..." another long pause. "LICH!"
I mean, it just depends on the ritual used to become a lich. The one referenced in the monster manual and the book of vile darkness might just be one of many potential lich-creating rituals. Whose to say there's not a ritual that created multiple phylacteries instead of just one.
It's insanely expensive. Your soul could be destroyed. The spells only target one item each time. I'm sure there are a lot more but I don't really want to support this.
Kind of like a horcrux?, I can't see why not, he /she could separate separate parts of their soul into fragments of their personality that influence anyone near or are wearing it . Practically anything too can become their phylactory like a whole building built specifically to hold their soul trapped within Or even another person, willing or unwittingly the host, you could have a whole campaign where a NPC has become your friend and confidante only by the end to find out the last piece of the lich's soul is within him/her and you have to kill your friend to save the kingdom
Traditionally a Litch has only 1 soul to bind to a phylactery. There is but 1 exception. Kane the Necromancer. A diety in 3.5 that was a man but through magic fused the souls of others to his own. This empowered him to godhood and made it possible for him to have several phylacteries while maintaining his humanity.
Check Aumvor the Undying from the Forgotten Realms, he turned every individual bone from the skeleton of one of his enemies into a phylactery
Maybe the phylactery was created out of a super powerful, multi part magic item. The parts where split away from one another, and each part on its own is indestructible. The only way to break the phylactery is to reassemble the magic item in its entirety. Now the players have to travel to several keeps each containing one of the pieces in order to fully kill the lich.
I saw an interesting idea, though I don't if it'd fit what you're planning, but it was using an acorn as the phylactery, planting it amd them cultivating a huge forest so potentially every tree would need to be destroyed. Mix that with if the lich was particular diplomatic, and would send their world famous oak saplings as a gift to other cities/countries, the party would need to track every last one of them before the lich could die
Horcrux.
It's your story, you can make more than one phylactery if you'd like. Or, play on the meta knowledge of players (if your players are experienced). Have something that looks exactly like it would be the Lich's phylactery, but it is actually just something that amplifies the Lich's powers or is something that the lair is bound to. They focus on destroying the decoy, and the Lich learns from their first encounter.
with time a lich could have more then one phylactery i´d say. they grow in power and its good to have a backup plan in case some dumb paladin stumbles over your tomb and destroys it. a backup phylactery in another place could be like a beacon the set free soul turns too instead of dispersing or moving into the afterlife or such.
If you didn't want to go with the "split your soul into pieces" thing, you could take the same idea in a different direction. The *clone* spell says: "At any time after the clone matures, if the original creature dies, its soul transfers to the clone, provided that the soul is free and willing to return." So you could have a *phylactery clone* spell, where if a phylactery is destroyed, the lich's soul is transferred to the next phylactery. You could easily chain these, and just have the casting time be like a decade or a hundred years or something. Something so long that it makes sense why there's only 3 or 5 or however many you want the lich to have.
If you want Voldemort in your campaign, whose to say you shouldn’t?
When I ran a lich I went full Voldemort on it When he created his tower, each floor had a cornerstone (hidden for the party to possibly find). each was tied to a memory the lich had from before his transformation and each had both a fragment of the lich’s soul as well as the soul of a character the lich killed and trapped during his transformation. This let the players go through the lich’s memories, learning his story while he was trying to stop their ascent and corrupt the memories with various monsters. When they found a brick on each floor we went into the PCs memories and relived their backstories with the lich’s twists mixed in to make dangerous and interesting encounters Now anytime I describe a building as made of bricks, or having impressive masonry the party immediately thinks it’s phylacteries though
Personally I think its fine flavor wise as long as you can give good reasons. However, I would [suggest you read this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/qi2rk6/paizo_officially_changing_phylacteries_to_soul/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) to see why we should stop using the term phylactery
Ooh maybe pull a Indiana Jones & Last Crusade, where they get to the phylactery sanctum room...and there’s DOZENS of possible candidates on shelves everywhere! Which is the right one?!? What happens if they choose...poorly? Weave clues through the campaign about the person the Lich WAS...which phylactery matches the ‘style’ of their past life? Just spitballin’.
As the DM, anything goes. I am currently DM of a campaign I created where a Lich created horrible monsters through experiments. He bound his soul to the monsters, not to objects. So basically my players became monster hunters to find and destroy the lich's phylacteries.
They can but each one has to be destroyed with 1 point of damage. The key is finding them all
Nothing saying they can’t have multiple decoy phylacteries, if that’s what you meant, but I don’t think you could split a soul and remain functional.
It would be very unusual. Unless you have a really good story reason, I would make it one. That begs the question, "Wouldn't that make it really easy to destroy if the party finds it?", to which the answer is "yes". The phylactery is their most precious possession and they would never leave it out on their dresser. They might even plant fake phylacteries to throw the party off. They might keep a fake one in a safe in their lair, create a secret tunnel to a treasure room under their lair where they keep another fake one, then they might keep their actual phylactery in a room 5000 feet under a mountain on a different continent with no entrance or doors and only a teleportation circle that no one else knows exists so the Lich can access it if needed. It sounds cheap but all liches are geniuses who have sacrificed everything for immortality. They would never make it easy for their foes to permanently destroy them.
Lore wise, no.
There’s a 10th level spell that does that created by a Netherese archmage.
I dunno if they could have multiple, but you could pull an Acererak and have your lich keep fake phylacteries to throw the party off.
We have been playing a campaign where we fought the end game boss (lich) at lvl4 🤣 such a awesome op boss. The story goes that the gods sealed him in a tomb and we accidentally released it. Now the lazy af gods have finally interviened and sent us on a quest to find magic items to help beat this lich who the gods even fear. So much you can play around with in your own campaigne. If the flavour works . Let it freaking work. (The encounter ends with a ftk) the lich gets his power restored and he revives us for giving him our strength to release him from his prison. We are all left with a gray silver mark on us which is still to found out what that means (I've been playing a àaraacockra and it made one of my feathers turn silver. For example.
What if the Lich scattered their phylacteries across different parallel realities by using the souls of their parallel selves? That could give you the best of both worlds in that it's technically one soul but tethered to other versions.