I remember on the old boards some builds for 3.5 SK’s that had them in the 40-50 (and some I think maybe higher) level range. I just wondered if anyone still had a copy of them floating around. I don’t actually think I’d ever need them for gameplay, I can’t see my PC’s surviving that long, but I thought they were excellently done and would love a copy for my own reference.

I’m getting ready to start a new dark sun campaign, I think my version of athas is going to be pre-pentad, with Kalak still alive and I have no intentions of killing him anytime soon. I really felt the whole pentad series of events were cheesy, my idea of the SK’s put them so far above a low to middling level group of adventurers that almost none of the occurances make any gameplay sense. Plus, I think the more big scary badguys the better.

I’m taking a lot of themes from the Black Company series of books by Glenn Cook, with easy parallels of Borys as the Lady, Rajaat as the Dominator, and the SK’s as the Taken, so all kinds of potential for political intrigue, backstabbing, and interesting alliances. Getting rid of any of them, much less 75% as the pentad did really ruins a lot of the epicness of the setting.

I think that there are few things that are more shocking than to see the death, and rise of a SK… or the freeing of one. In my mind these SK’s have spent years building power trying to get to that next level, and someone actually stood up to them, proceeded to smack them around, and even killed one of them. They know they are mortal and really always have… now it is a matter of fixing that weakness and actually solidifying their power. My question has always been, if the elemental planes are near, and they have a direct link to divine power, why wouldn’t you use that path to become the unkillable god that they are looking to be. Could you imagine a SK claiming the plane of water at its own? Another line of thought might be that they already have been attmepting this, and thus the rise of the paraelemental planes.

In my campaign SK range from level 37 (Kalak, Ababach-Re) to level 44 (Nibenay). Dregoth is 56th level, and Borys is 62nd. level.

In their builds I used the Mind Mage prc (from Dragon magazine #313). With the 10th level ability of this prc, a character may add his full mind mage class level to both his magical and his psionic class levels for the purpose of determining caster or manifester level.

I also prefer to run DS in pre-pentad times and, if any SK will gonna die, it will be by the hands of PC and not by some NPCs with deus-ex machina like “sword that makes me untouchable by a SK”.

I use then as 20th level sorcerers (defiler), 20th level psions (wayferrer), and 20th level dragons.

“In their builds I used the Mind Mage prc (from Dragon magazine #313). With the 10th level ability of this prc, a character may add his full mind mage class level to both his magical and his psionic class levels for the purpose of determining caster or manifester level.”

So it’s a nearly direct copy of a Psychic Theurge?

No, much better: the PRC adds levels in your spellcasting and manifesting class like the Cerebremancer (a 10th level mind mage has +8 level of existing class and +8 on manifesting class. The 10th level ability gives another +10 on spellcasting and maifesting class (the ability activates as a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity, but it lasts 24 hours).

So a 5th level wizard/5th level psion/10th level mind mage normally casts spells as a 13th level wizard and manifest powers as a 13th level psion. But activating the ability, his CL and ML become 23rd.

Immagine a 3rd level wizard/3rd level psion/9th level cerebremancer/10th level mind mage with the ability active: full spellcasting and manifesting powers but with CL and ML 5 levels ABOVE his total character level! Quite overpowered but… c’mon: we’re talking about Sorcerer Kings: they HAVE to be overpowered :P