Second Bake pass:

Well, I don't have a lot to say at this point, just trying to get to bed before 4 AM. I think I'm going to manage, provided that I don't end up talking too much in this post. In addition to finishing up the baking, I've also been optimizing the poly count considerably since my last attempt. Currently, I'm sitting comfortably under my 15,000 limit with the lich at ~12,000, the staff, scabbard and dagger at 2,536 with a total of 14,529 triangles. I also threw in a couple of renders of the textures: