ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Liches. Former powerful mages, that managed to come back from the death.
They are mentioned among the undead races when creating a character, so I thought I'd come up with some ideas.
Liches would not be a very viable class for non-magic users, and would probably start with a strenght penalty, and magic boost.

Talent tree: Lich
1) Gift of Undeath
- raises your spellpower and spell critical chance. Scales with talent level.
2) Curse from Beyond the Grave (Activation)
- places a random negative curse on 1-5 (at level 1-5) of the target's equipped (non-artefact) items. Nasty, especially when used by NPC liches.
3) Animated Armor (Passive)
- uses the caster's magic stat instead of strenght to meet armor strenght requirements
- reduces fatigue. Scales with talent level and magic
- you do not need the normal armor talents to be able to wear heavier armors. This talent tree uses the same mechanic. (level 1 gloves and boots, level 2 helmets, level 3 mail armor, level 4 shields, level 5 plate armor IIRC)
- reduces the weight of armor being worn. Scales with talent level and magic
4) Drain (Activation)
- drains a percentage of the target's primary resource, and adds the same percentage to your primary resource. Does not affect paradox or equilibrium. Scales with talent level and magic.

Lichdom is actually planned to be a part of the Necromancer class. One means of salvaging it would be to allow undead necromancers to play liches from the start. (Darkgod was thinking that undead should not be allowed to play as necromancers at all; not sure if he went with that.)

Currently in the SVN undead can not become liches with the talent. As to racial restrictions on the class I haven't checked recently.

The NPC liches though could probably use some love now that there's a proper necromancer class. *imagines an npc lich casting impending doom on a player*

Also the current MoRE already has a Lich race. It will be renamed Risen in the next version, but he idea will be the same.

martinuzz wrote:2) Curse from Beyond the Grave (Activation)
- places a random negative curse on 1-5 (at level 1-5) of the target's equipped (non-artefact) items. Nasty, especially when used by NPC liches.

Noooo.

For the most part, ToME doesn't do permanent resource management (like potions, etc). This extends to not having monsters permanently damage the player's equipment, I think, which would come down to the same problems. The game is also totally balanced around the idea that equipment is 'permanent'; nothing can damage, destroy, or curse it once it's been generated and the player has equipped it. It isn't possible to add something like what you're describing at this point without wrecking the game's balance.

(Unless you meant for the curse to be temporary, but I don't think there's any easy way to do that.)