Liches - Without cheesy tactics

It's important to go after the city gate lich quickly (after you've gotten one or two quest under your belt) so you have a good weapon against the undead that stalk you in chapter 3. I do it by casting a number of spells: protection from evil; protection from fire; haste. You can go in with just three fighters and maybe one mage. Two fighters should attack at melee and one with the three shot short bow, the mage should fire a magic missile immediately to see if he can interrupt before casting. You can then cast some kind of magic removing spell, keep using magic missiles, or have the mage leave the scene. This number of attackers should remove the lich's defenses and he will die.

For the first time in the game I met a lich yesterday, the one in gate district. I have read many tactics on killing liches but most of them were cheesy to say the least. Like walk out and come back 3 mins later, set traps where they appear etc. There are tactics like using protection scrolls which are nice but still you are using something which is very rare in the game.

My battles with this lich were all disaster. The best result I got I think was with Anomen having two succesful bolts of glory for 30 something damage each but even than it was a wipe out for me. My party may not be strong enough yet. I have my monk(lvl11), Minsc(lvl11), Yoshimo(lvl13), Anomen(lvl13) Jaheira(cant remember), Aerie(cant remember). I used two breach and 1 spell thrust with Aerie multiple times and the god damn thing still had some protection!

My question is, if you choose not to use cheesy tactics, not to use protection scrolls and not to use the special ability of an item(like daystar), is there still a way to kill these guys? If there is what level should your chars be?

You're asking at what point you can beat a lich to death without having to think about it too much? Maybe forty?

Nah.. just load your mage up with melf's minute meteor!!!! ....and maybe a protection spell or two

The Robes of Vecna and the Amulet of power together drastically reduce your casting times, which isn't really necessary anyway as the meteors only have a casting time of 3.

The meteors mess up his spell casting and generally make Mr Lich very cranky. I don't find this tactic cheesy at all.. it's just like standing there with a fighter and hitting something until it falls down and then hitting it some more, except that you do it with magic.

Speaking of that gate area lich - I didn't use any cheesy tactics and also didn't have much trouble.. Funny thing was that I set Jaheira to cast Dispell on him to remove the prots so that my fighter and rest of team can beat the senses out of it, BUT just as the Dispell was about to hit the lich he cast Time Stop and did all his stuff (Meteor Swarm, Prot. from Evil, Pit Fiend) and when Time Stop wore off, Jaheira's Dispell hit him. Now funny was that it removed his Protection from Evil as it seems, because as soon as Pit Fiend was summoned it turned on lich heheh.. My fighters were busy running around headlessly (due to dang spell) and Aerie died to Meteor Swarm, Jaheira, Nalia and Yoshimo were trying to hit the lich but to no avail due to protection spells (apparently I did not rest inbetween and that Dispell was last one I had memorized - Aerie had also one but she catched one Meteorite with dire consequences heh). So there I was and lich was getting pounded by the Pit Fiend he summoned himself heh.. Lich wasted all of his high lvl spells on Pit Fiend and then it went poof at one point (Mazed I think, I think I saw that slap on it last) and by that time lich had no prots on and my fighters were "back"...

After that lich died soooo fast...

But that aint all - I got the stuff and left the room and went with main char above, to those 2 thieves, rest of the team was below. While I was listening to their dialogue, suddenly my screen started to roll combat messages: Pit Fiend attacks Minsc! Minsc attacks Pit Fiend! And so on and so on. I thought - what the hell!? Ran down and blast me blimey, there was the Pit Fiend making mess in tavern! Dang, folks in tavern died left to right, my group was pounding the fiend, damn bartender went also red on me.. Only one who stayed "blue" was that serving girl.. I didn't get any reputation hit though, killed the fiend, but barman still is red to me heeh.. Oh well, can't please them all I guess.

T'Lan

I, as many of you, got also this Quayle/Aerie quest to help Raelis'Shai. Well being the benevolent person I am I went to help Haer'Dalis, got to the mage tower (tower? heh, cellar actually) and found Haer.. I had Nalia next to me who was detecting the traps and disarming them and she said that "He has some powerful charm on it, not sure of Dispell will even help". Well, I thought I try and cast Dispell Magic on Haer - nothing, it actually hit me and Nalia. Then I thought I try out "bigger guns" and cast Secret Word or something like that on Haer, off of the scroll I had. Blast it! Damn tiefling turned red and charged me! He didn't actually hit me almost, I turned off group AI and thought that if I kill the mage, maybe Haer will "cool off". Went to mage, killed it but nothing! So I just scrambled out of the place, but damn Haer kept following me and screaming heheh.. At some point I lost him on some map and I went then back to Bridge District, to that theatre - I hoped that Haer had come to his senses. We all got to Raelis only to see them turn red on me and before I could blink my eyes, fight was lose... I had party AI on this time. Biff the Understudy went down to Jaheiras shot (dang STR belt with sling of seeking does some nice damage), others were also shooting and throwing.

Talk about the mess.. I was called to help them and at the end there was bloodshed. So, advise - never cast any big time combat debuffs on someone whom you think this may help - they will not understand that you wanted to do good heh..

T'Lan

Armisael, no not without thinking about it I mean without using anything special like items or scrolls, what should be the average level of a party of six to be able to defeat a lich. What spells would be used? The melfs minute meteors sounds like a very effective spell for example. I know bolt of glory has potential too. Hope I was clear this time.

The easiest way to beat a lich is with physical attacks (meteors included), since they'll generally have more spell protections than you can poke a sword at. Use true sight to prevent it from invoking a simulacrum or a mislead. Use breach or dispel magic to remove its physical defenses, and then attack it with all you have. If you can, summon skeletal warriors, they leave liches for dead - note all liches have a spell trigger with the death spell in it, so don't waste, say, a nishruu in this manner. The biggest problem is avoiding its more annoying spells, like symbol. Just hope and pray you manage to kill it before it starts firing off fingers of death and disintegrations.

[WOLFGIR]

Well this debate has been up sometimes before and I have manage to kill some liches, though it has never been easy..
Simple way, thoose bastards in bridge district and gatedistrict: use as many conjur elements, monster smmoning, cacao and other stuff and let them fight it out for you, if you summon enough badies the lich will use up some of his best spells on your summoned creatures,but don´t summon too many since you can only have five extra creatures or so at a time, when death spell, prison, death and symbol has been cast, give him hell!!


Howl with me, alot of candybars in the chritmas tree, yummy!

3 cheesy steps
runaway, rest,backsab. Over and Over and Over show that lich whos the DADDY.