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[NullForceOmega]

Not really nearby, in the same dungeon, but a very different location.  Didn't matter, wizard, cleric, and druid in the party.  It wasn't staying hidden, after all, there were only so many highly reflective magical objects in the place.

Edit: immune to lightning in 3.0 as well.  But druids get screwed for high-damage options at certain points.

[Neonivek]

If I was a lich I'd typically hide it in a thick walled off room.

That would have outright defeated detect magic.

[NullForceOmega]

We'd already cleared the dungeon, as in nothing was left capable of even slowing us down.  We killed a warband of two hundred orcs on our way out (tip, never, ever give your players a confined space that the enemy must move through to fight from underground, unless they need the advantage) three fireballs, two ice storms, two flaming spheres, and everything except the chief was dead.

I don't often abuse the hell out of a situation, but when I do I leave DMs crying.

[Neyvn]

He kept his phylactery nearby? It's like he didn't even want to be a lich (which I guess he wasn't, anymore, once you killed him and smashed his phylactery). Hiding your phylactery somewhere secret and hard to reach is lichdom 101.

I once designed a Lich that didn't even realize that he had become a Lich, more that a Necromicon knockoff tricked him into making himself a Lich and it itself was his Phylactery, BUT cause the book was alive it kinda had the ability to Teleport itself and so forth. Was planning on using him as a reoccurring villain that allowed me to drag the players to a new area. BUT that game ended after people left for Uni...

[Jimmy]

Also Liches, being undead, are immune to critical hits in 3.5e as well.

In our Pathfinder campaign, one of our party members ended combat Confused after we'd killed the enemy. Rather than risk him continuing to hurt himself, our monk decided to throw something at him to knock him out. Checking their character sheet, it appeared they only had a bar of soap from their starting equipment that had been long forgotten. Well, roll to hit, says the DM. Natural 20. Roll to confirm. Natural 20. Roll again just for giggles. Natural 20. Boom, no save, out like a light.

[NullForceOmega]

Arrow of greater undead slaying.  The rolls were to determine whether or not it could overcome the lich's spell resistance.

[BlackFlyme]

Can't remember any fights I've had against any liches. Closest I can remember are two Grave-Knight fights. They are a lot more convenient to kill permanently, since they literally wear their phylactery equivalent. I heard a story about a lich that chose a coin as his phylactery, permanency'd a bunch of non-detection magic on it, then left it in the middle of a street in a busy city. Not even the lich would know where it would be.

Though there is a new type of lich introduced in a recent Pathfinder bestiary called a Psychic Lich. Their phylactery is a book/scroll/readable-thing that contains the lich's complete life history. They also create an "astral legend' in the Astral Realm, which is another phylactery of sorts. You need to use the book to destroy the legend.

The book can recreate the legend if the legend is wiped. The legend can reform the book if the book is destroyed. And if you read the book or otherwise watch the lich's legends, then the lich will reform at only one-tenth the amount of time it currently has left before it would form normally.

The bestiary also introduced three new playable races, but only one seems to be meant for players.

[UXLZ]

Love the cunning of the first lich. I'll have to remember that. Don't they feed souls to their Phylactery, though?

The bestiary also introduced three new playable races, but only one seems to be meant for players.

That's a bit of a weird sentence.

[BlackFlyme]

The races are all defined by their class levels, as they do not have racial Hit-Dice, which technically makes them a playable race. One is literally an altered Samsaran, and is roughly about the same power level, I think. The other two seem a bit too strong to be allowed for players, but are instead meant for DMs to use.

A Duergar Tyrant, which is like a Drow Noble, in that it has immediate access to very powerful abilities, including several mid-game abilities available to a Telekinetic Kineticist, scaling Spell Resistance, and better attribute bonuses than their non-empowered version.

The other is a new race called Munavri. They have innate Spell Resistance, though not as strong as the Duergar Tyrant's or the Drow Noble's. They have an amazing stat spread, with +4 Dex, and +2 to Con, Wis, Int, and Cha, but with a -2 to Strength. They do have light blindness though. Not as powerful as some of the other races, but still more powerful than most.

[Flying Dice]

Eh. Light Blindness is a "drawback" only insofar as that it can't be totally mitigated for 10gp like Light Sensitivity can. Instead you have to drop 3500gp on a Raptor's Mask or (if you're a sucker) burn a feat.

I mean, assuming your DM allows conversion of items that weren't snagged by Paizo already.

[Kadzar]

A random thought I want to drop here so I can get it out of my skull: So, has anyone ever had a good experience with cults? Or I should say enjoyable, or maybe satisfying. Because, in my group, cults have always been a drag, and I think I figured out why.

They always seem to be devoid of humanity (or whatever race they are in question) in a way that's not really addressed. Always loyal to the death, with no really good explanation of why they're like that. They don't have goals other than serving their cult and are highly resistant to persuasion or interrogation. Rarely do they even have goals that don't perfectly align with the rest of their order.

The way I see to fix that is to give them more human motivations and causes for why they do what they do, or else go the opposite direction and emphasize their inhumanity in some way, like having them hiding out in a village, and you don't know who is a cultist and who is innocent.

[Bohandas]

or else go the opposite direction and emphasize their inhumanity in some way, like having them hiding out in a village, and you don't know who is a cultist and who is innocent.

Like ISIS sympathizers

there is a new type of lich introduced in a recent Pathfinder bestiary called a Psychic Lich. Their phylactery is a book/scroll/readable-thing that contains the lich's complete life history.

Like Lord Voldemort?

[NullForceOmega]

I've used religious motives a couple of times, but generally I find cults to be a little... Excessive.  They make for okay faceless badguys, but generally just suck as real villains, their goals are just too limited and their motivations too bland for solid use.  Just my two cents.

[Flying Dice]

They're like any other Opfor, only as interesting as the effort that went into them. It's just that you have to be more creative with their motivation and methods. It's actually pretty easy to turn even a relatively straightforward LE-styled cult into a prolonged, intricate plot. Instead of having them doing Nebulous Evil Things^TM, have them filling roles that their opposites aren't, providing stability and safety in dangerous areas (albeit with a rather higher rate of corpse output from their methods), running regular rites that don't orient around unwilling sentient sacrifices, perhaps dipping a bit into necroindustry, &c. Things that make them a legitimate part of their community, generating genuine non-cultist support.

Or make them cultists of a non-Evil deity, or a cult which worships a non-divine figure. Hell, just about anything except the stereotypical evil cultists trying to summon a demon or break an old bit of magic, or fucking whatever, the same old batch of robed fuckers.

But yes, if it's a gaggle of faceless hooded Evil Cultists^TM operating out of the local conveniently abandoned building trying to do Something Nasty and Wrong, yawn.

[Kadzar]

@Flying Dice: Exactly. I've seen too many adventures treating cultists as basically zombies with human (or whatever race) stats instead of people. There never seems to be a logical explanation of why anyone would join these cults in the first place. Maybe they might be misguided about the true nature of their object of worship, or, as you proposed, maybe they actually are beneficial to their worshipers, though they could still have an unsavory side to them.

And even if you do have basically brainwashed minions for cultists, you can still add some interest to them. For instance, one of the cultists could turn out to be the parent of a cute kid from the village, so you'll either have to find a way to save them from the influence of the cult or live with the fact that you had to kill that kid's mother or father (don't harp on the players about how They Did a Bad Thing in this case, but, rather, have the kid show up occasionally as a subtle reminder of what went down).