How should Liches be characterized? Comically evil all the time? Villainous but with many strange idiosyncrasies which can make them seem less dire in some cases? Or should Liches always represent an extreme threat to the player whenever encountered?

>>96185188 (OP)
Depends on the lich and the setting, but I think a big part of it should be being batshit insane.

In my setting, becoming a lich is extremely hard because it requires a deliberate act of will. The ritual is involved and requires immense effort and specific points. You can't accidentally become a lich or be forced into lichdom, the way you can with being a vampire. Every step of the process requires that you WANT it. Which makes the final step the hardest.

Basically, you need to die: becoming UNdead requires you to have been dead, after all. But you can't commit suicide, that means you want to die, but trying to become a lich you must want to live. So you can't slit your wrists or drink poison. You can't tell someone to just spring it on you out of nowhere because then you don't have time to perform the ritual. You need to be killed by someone else, while conducting the ritual, and you need to do absolutely everything you can to stay alive.

So liches are people who have to be absolute masters of doublethink. When you add in that they have to be incredibly evil (you have to take innocent lives as part of the ritual too), you end up with undead creatures of immense magical power who just CANNOT FATHOM the idea of caring about anything other than themselves and their goals, and are mentally incapable of experiencing self-doubt, and when confronted with something that goes against their worldview, insist that the world is wrong and they're right. Like, for example, if a lich came up with a plan that required killing the seventh son of a seventh son, and they get their hands on a kid, but it turns out the lich made a mistake and this is actually the sixth son of a seventh son, the lich WOULD NOT believe that they could've made a mistake, carry out their plan anyway, and when it doesn't work, insist that they did everything right and someone else fucked up somewhere.

I really like Skerples' vision of them.

>>96185188 (OP)
Imagine what it's like for a Lich. You bargained your soul for immortality, commited unseakable acts and cast aside your humanity to become undead, just so you would finally have the time to achieve your chosen goal or field of study.
Now think of a some high strung mathmatician who has been disturbed counting to ten million by a football bouncing off their head, forcing them to start over. Now imagine this happening to you countless times over the centuries. Yes, you have tried killing the mortals who disturb you, you have tried killing their families and burning their lands, even wiped out entire armies and countries in an attempt to get some peace and quiet, but the fuckers just won't leave you the fuck alone! They are still keep coming, like a never ending stream of ants! AAAAAAGH! I'M GONNA KILL EVERYTHING UNTIL NOTHING IS LEFT ALIVE TO BOTHER ME EVER AGAIN!

>>96185188 (OP)
IMO Liches are like Dragons.
They're not a threat that cannot be taken down, but they are sufficiently powerful AND smart that you should have good reason for trying to stop one, you should have contingencies, you should have countermeasures, and most importantly you should have to take steps to prepare yourself before you can make it through the first round of making it mad.

For a dragon, that's "have ways to not die to its colossal opening salvo of breath", for a lich that's "have ways to not die to its colossal opening salvo of death-magic"

They are the endgame and shouldn't just be something you can 2hufag your way into making look boring.