Common Lich and the Time of Troubles

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I don't get it. During the Time of Troubles all magic stopped until Midnight became Mystra. So if a lich is magically tied to its phylactary, and sustained magically,... Did they perish or what?

 

Magic did not stop during the Time of Troubles just became unstable and unpredictable when Mystra was not able to control the weave. The only time magic actually stopped in Faerun (afaik) is when Karsus (unsuccessfully) tried to become the god of magic and caused the destruction of Netheril.

Forgotten Realms has its share of inconsistencies though so in cases like this it is very likely that the author simply has not bothered to think about it from the said perspective.

 

And the emphasis that is placed on Elves being magical beings and being affected by the Weave, so what happened to them?

 

Biside from the headache.

 

Times of Troubles affected the human gods, the elven pantheon was never affected by the times of troubles, it would have been a bit hard for AO to banish them too considering that they rule over much larger domain than just the elves of Toril. I also believe that the Mulhorandi pantheon or gods of Kara-Tur were unaffected because it was the deities of Faerun that broke the rules. Also I'll have to disagree with the notion of elves being magical, while they certainly have crafted some of the most powerful and ancient magic they are not beings consisting of pure magic or anything and therefore were not destroyed.

A nice inconistency btw in FR is that Bane supposedly killed off all the assassins on Faerun together with Myrkul by some ritual to make him god again, however some of the more famous assassins such as Artemis Entreri was left unharmed. FR is simply made up of dozens of different writers and the longer this has gone on the bigger mess Forgotten Realms is becoming in defining what exactly is canonical and what is not.

 

Artemis Entreri I always considered to be more of a mercenary then Assassin. Thats not to say he didn't kill people for money.

Anyway back on topic it is quite likely that SOME Lichs died during the Time of Troubles due to magical backfire, however since magic seemed to only (mainly) backfire when the spells were cast, not if they were already there (it's the difference between having a wand and using a wand) the spells tying them to the phylactary would not of been affected unless they were tampered with or put to use. (the Lich's physical body is destroyed)

 

Well rulebooks and even the novels quite clearly describe Entreri as an assassin.

And yes hypothetically it's possible that plenty of liches were destroyed but it's just that canonical Forgotten Realms do not make any mentions of such happenings as far as I know. In the end the DM is responsible for inteprenting the rules and happenings so he'll have to come up with the answers for such questions if and when necessary.

 

It's kind of amusing looking at the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting Book (3.0 ed). Artemis, despite being described as one of the best assassins in Faerun, is a 18th level character with 1 level of assassin. Much like how Drizzt is a level 16 character with 5 levels of ranger. It really begs the question if most of your class levels are as not what you are described as, how exactly to you retain such a title? Artemis and Drizzt have, by far, most of their class levels as fighter in 3rd edition (you'd think fighter was their primary identity).

 

Hmm, I think the books describing Entreri as being one of the best assassins were talking more about his chosen occupation, rather than his character class.

There really is nothing to say that you need Assassin class levels to become an murderer for hire. Perhaps we have a mindset that an assassin is the sneaky-thief kind of character, who poisons his target or stealthily knives him in the back, but a powerful fighter could conceivably just barge into his target's home, kill all his guards, survive all his traps, and just finally slay his target, a powerful mage could teleport in, etc, and they could still be considered assassins.

 

I think there's a certain oots comic about this, yes, here we go