Episode: 3202
Title: HPR3202: A big Question
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3202/hpr3202.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 18:43:22

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 3,202 for Tuesday, 10 November 2020. Today's show is entitled
A Big Question,
and is part of the series' tabletop gaming. It is the first show by new host Poric Jerome Fallon
and is about 19 minutes long
and carries a clean flag. The summary is
in his first show. Poric asks a big life question,
well okay more like an undead question.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge
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Music
Hello, my name is Patrick Yvonne Fallon
and I have a question. The question is about something with D&D
which is short for Dungeons & Dragons,
a tabletop role-playing game. We're going to call it a tabletop RPG from now on.
In Dungeons & Dragons, who play characters
and you do an adventure with set character.
I only know how to create characters
for level characters by the way,
and my sources are going to be the player
who's player's handbook,
dungeon master's guide,
and most importantly, the monster manual.
For all I know,
you can't be an undead first level character
or at least one of the better undead,
more powerful ones. Specifically ones which I like are the vampire and Lich.
Now the question is,
what if you could be a vampire Lich?
I'm asking this question because as I record, it's Halloween.
Which undead would be better to be a Lich or a vampire?
We're going to have a look at the differences
and pros and cons of each undead.
First a Lich.
You all probably know what a vampire is,
but not many people know what a Lich is.
A Lich looks like a zombie from all I can tell from the art and the description.
On page 203 of your monster manual.
But Lich's are not zombies.
You should definitely not get them confused.
A Lich is basically a great wizard who wanted to live eternally forever.
To complete that they had to figure out how to become a Lich.
So a Lich basically has a very important item, a factory.
You can compare it to the things Voldemort has
and then you need to destroy all those stuff to kill Voldemort.
Basically to kill a Lich permanently you need to destroy it for a Lich.
Now Voldemort isn't a Lich.
You become a Lich by first creating a factory,
then killing yourself and your soul goes into the factory.
You do need to actually feed the factory with sacrificed souls,
which you feed into it.
So your soul stays bounded to the material plane,
which is basically like a birth or whichever planet you play on.
Lich's have great magical power.
They can do power world kill,
which instantly kills anyone with a low enough hit points.
Basically, the HP life thing,
and they can cast tons of other spells.
They have legendary actions,
resistances and lair actions,
which only legendary creatures get.
This basically means that they are very, very dangerous.
Also, if you kill a Lich and it still has a factory,
it will reform in 1D 10 days,
basically from 1 to 10 days.
His body will reform,
and he will come back from his temporary destruction to hunt you down,
kill you or do whatever he wants.
He also has turn resistance.
Turning on dead is basically scaring them.
Turning on dead works only for on dead,
and it's quite effective,
not a loss of on dead actually have this.
For instance, a vampire doesn't have this,
so that's a big weakness of a vampire.
Every resistance, basically,
they have advantage on saving throws against it,
and they roll the dice twice,
and they pick the highest number,
which comes up.
They have some good resistances
to cold lightning and the crossic damage,
basically just like cold is like snowy or stuff.
Lightning is like lightning,
that's where your flesh withers away from your bones,
and stuff that's...
Yeah, if anyone plays Minecraft,
they would know it as the withering effect.
That does necrotic damage,
if you were translated.
They also have immunity to poison,
bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing
from non-magical attacks,
so basically if you have any weapon,
it has to be a magical weapon,
they don't get harmed by said weapon.
They also have immunity to being charmed,
exhausted, frightened, paralyzed, and poisoned,
but many other on dead also have those condition immunities.
They also have a true site,
which is quite handy,
and armor class of 17,
just with natural armor,
some okay hit points,
and normal 30 feet of movement speed.
And last,
they have the action of paralyzing touch,
which is basically touching a creature,
deals 3d6 cold damage,
and the targets must do a save,
basically roll dice to see if you get effect or not,
for quite a high DC difficulty class,
or be paralyzed for a minute,
which is effectively 10 rounds of combat,
which is quite long.
You don't want to be paralyzed for that long.
And now for vampire.
Vampires have regional effects for their lair,
with something which an Lich doesn't have.
They also have legendary actions,
but they have way more in traits and stuff.
They have legendary resistance like Lich,
but they have regeneration,
basically means each turn they get 20 hit points back,
if not from reagents,
damage or holy water,
or if they're in the sun,
or running water.
Most of the cool stuff they have,
like changing shape,
or escaping when it's missed back to its coffin,
when it's zero hit points,
is not into effect when in sunlight or in running water,
which is to up the vampire weaknesses.
Their weaknesses are as follows.
They can't enter how usur residents
without having an invitation.
They're harmed by running water.
They get a stake,
if they get a stake through their heart,
they are paralyzed.
I don't know if it's specifically
when they're in the resting place,
or when it's in the other time,
and they take damage from sunlight.
They have a pretty good on-arm strike,
and which they can also use to grapple a target,
and they can bite someone,
which even does even more damage.
They have a multi-attack,
and one turn, which is very powerful,
and they can charm someone,
and they have a children of the night action,
which they can only do once per day,
which basically calls on bats, rats, or wolves.
They have a 16 natural armor,
which is lower than the one of the Lich.
They've got 144 hit points,
normal speed of 30 feet.
They've got damage resistance to necrotic,
bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing
from the non-managical attacks.
Basically means that they get to take half damage,
and they've got pretty good strength,
thick-starting constitution,
which is better in their case,
better than the Lich.
They also can climb walls,
because they've got spider climbs,
so basically they can walk on walls.
There's also vampire warriors and spellcasters,
which have higher ace challenge rating,
but still lower than a Lich,
and vampire spawn,
which is basically a weaker version of the vampire,
which is obviously created by their lethal bites.
You can find all this information on page 297.
Now, we got to ask ourselves,
what's all this information got to do with the question as hand?
Well, if you go to page 295,
you find a little block called player cap erictors as vampires.
This tells us what vampires play a character suit
turning to vampires get.
Basically, there's physical capabilities,
their resistances,
and I would assume if it was for Lich,
also in Unity's,
their vision, dark vision in this case,
traits and actions.
They also go into more detail there.
They also notes that their alignment changes,
which basically means if someone is good or evil,
and if they follow the law,
or not, it's a bit like a guide on how to play the character.
They also note that the dungeon master
might take control of the character
until it's brought back to life,
or it's not a vampire anymore.
So, we're going to compare the vampire
and Lich in these following specific things.
Okay, so now we know what to look for.
Let's compare the two creatures.
First thing,
the physical powers of each creature.
Vampire clearly has a better stats there,
in that regard.
Then the damage resistances and communities,
and conditioning communities,
to the Lich winch at that one by sharing numbers.
I'm just traits.
This one is a tough one.
The vampire has pretty good traits,
yet each of them doesn't work in sunlight.
And they of course have vampire weaknesses,
which are pretty bad if you want to break into someone's house,
or some babe, or swim in a river or anything like that.
And you are quite susceptible to any adventure
or vampire hunter you come across,
especially when you're asleep.
The Lich has way less traits,
yet they do have turn resistance,
which the vampire does not.
And so they may be.
They do have regenerate.
They don't have regeneration.
They do have rejuvenation.
Basically, they reform after they die.
They come back.
They also have spell casting,
but I'm not going to consider spell casting
and character usually will have spell casting
if it's a magical person,
otherwise they won't.
The only reason Lich's have spell casting
is because they were wizards in their formal life.
They both have legendary resistance,
and that's equal.
And that's basically all traits.
It's very equal there.
Now, actions is a clear win for a vampire.
It's in, well, I think it's a clear win.
The paralyzing touch is fine in all.
It paralyzes people,
but the vampire can charm those people,
and they can make multiple attacks,
which is pretty epic for a player character.
Of course, another pro for a plus for a vampire
is that you just have to have the monster manual.
The monster manual tells you exactly what a player character has as a vampire.
You don't have to go somewhere else.
If you have the monster manual,
you know what you expect from being turned into a vampire.
That's basically it.
Yeah, there's nothing else there.
There's own needed vision,
which I might not have mentioned.
I don't know.
Well, that's pretty equal.
Lich has true sight, which is little rarer.
Vampire has dark vision,
but it's both pretty good.
It's 120 feet, which is usually the farthest it goes.
Although, probably the Lich will win.
And maybe if you personally with the traits,
I think because of the vampire's weaknesses,
the Lich might have the upper hand there.
Well, that was basically it.
On the you think is better on dead to be?
What?
A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A.
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