this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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I mean… since the spell does not say that undead are excluded from revivification, you could very well just do that if you get your hands on the ghost in time.
As per the 2024 rules update (which I have beef with but am using here to make my point) :
I cast Resurrection on the lich BBEG. In 5e Resurrection no longer states that the soul must be willing to return in order for it to work, and there's no save, so it should just work if I'm able to touch him. Takes an hour to cast but we're not worried about that right now.
Does it resurrect him properly? New mortal flesh, soul stuffed into it, meaning he is now no longer immortal and loses most of his legendary actions, and the phylactery becomes inert because it's no longer containing a soul? Extending from this, is a proper resurrection just a "get out of undeath free" card and if so why don't we see it used on every undead? It specifies and wasn’t Undead when it died but I think most Undead go from Living to Dead to Undead in that order, liches included.
Does it just instantly dust him, like throwing a Phoenix Down at an undead does in Final Fantasy?
This used to be a solved problem, but between 2014 and 2024 they changed the wording on Resurrection from
to, now:
There must be a reason why this was changed. I need answers.
It’s a bit weird, but DMG page 24 (though I'm talking 2014 here) specifies that generally an unwilling soul can’t be forced back into the body. So unless a spell specifies otherwise, this would not work.
Because of how this spell is worded, assuming the Lich got killed at least once while being a Lich means he'll be unable to be targeted by this either way because he was undead when he died.
Interesting questions
In terms of going from living to dead to undead, no solid answer there. Some Lich creation stories have them dieing, some don't.
An undead creature simply isn't dead. It has an animating force that is not life, but it's not dead. Both the 2014 and 2024 rules specify a dead creature, but an undead is not dead.
Now let's saying we ignored that, yeah I think all that would happen. Every undead would be pretty difficult, casting 7th spells is hard and it's only cleric and bard. It would end up being a magical logistics problem more than anything.
They took out the willing part as it was stifling creative uses of spells from what I recall, one of the interviews/ads for the new books.