pming
Legend
Hiya!
Why? Easy, because the lich is hiding from a high level paladin who is tracking him down. .. .. No, wait. I mean that he's here because he recently escaped utter destruction by a group of high-level adventurers who destroyed his lair...the lich barely escaped with his phylactery and his here for some peace and quiet after re-hiding his guts and is now planning his revenge. .. .. Actually, scratch that. He's here because he is planning to meet with a Vampire Drow and his Succubus lover for an evil pow-wow about possibly joining forces to take out a mutual enemy. ... ..etc, etc, etc. And those were just off the top of my head. It's all up to the DM.
^_^
Paul L. Ming
I'd just nit pic a bit here and say that it wasn't "written-in as a viable strategy". From my experience, the vast majority of encounters/areas in a 1e module had virtually zero "consideration" for what the PC's might do. Not always, sometimes a blurb out "the PC's will probably try to..." notations when dealing with some particular crafty/experienced baddie. But usually all of that was up to the DM. Case in point...This seems to answer my question pretty well.
I think I alluded to that idea -- the idea that TPK was more acceptable back then. What seemed unreasonable with that first D1 encounter was that was the first and explicitly unavoidable and seemed to me to be a TPK if combat was chosen. I have been disabused of that last idea (not 100% a TPK), so, yeah, all good. So duplicity, stealth, and combat were all written-in as viable strategies.
This. "Why". This is one of the things that the DM asks himself and comes up with a reason for his own campaign. IMNSHO, this is a far superior method of writing an 'adventure module'; it gives only an interesting and/or believable "thing" and lets the DM and players fill in the blanks. In this case, it's only giving an interesting "thing" (a lich in a cave in the 'middle of nowhere'), and leaving the "Why?" up to the DM.It never occurred to me at the time, but looking back I wonder why an evil wizard would go through all the rigmarole of attaining lichdom just to lay down in his pyjamas in a random tunnel in the middle of the Underdark, surrounded by only a few magic mouths:
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Why? Easy, because the lich is hiding from a high level paladin who is tracking him down. .. .. No, wait. I mean that he's here because he recently escaped utter destruction by a group of high-level adventurers who destroyed his lair...the lich barely escaped with his phylactery and his here for some peace and quiet after re-hiding his guts and is now planning his revenge. .. .. Actually, scratch that. He's here because he is planning to meet with a Vampire Drow and his Succubus lover for an evil pow-wow about possibly joining forces to take out a mutual enemy. ... ..etc, etc, etc. And those were just off the top of my head. It's all up to the DM.
^_^
Paul L. Ming