Does anyone have any ideas for the advancement and the built that that the formidable pyreen should have?

Number in levels or ability scores?

I am in the quest of creating him in accordance to what the timeline of Athas mentions but I need all the help I can get.

Is there any official source where I can find any statistics of him or any line even implying a power with its roots in the system?

Best I’ve seen:

Rajaat, The First Sorcerer, the War Bringer
Male pyreen; CE
Pyreen 13/Psion (egoist) 20/Arch Psion 5/Wizard 30/Arch Defiler 20/Arch Mage 10/Shadow Wizard 12/Cleric (Rain) 10/Elementalist 5/Elemental Master 5
Templates – First Sorcerer, Elemental Avatar
Character Level: 130

Hope it helps.

130 character levels. That’s nuts. Probably should be using divine rules past say 60 or so.

Na, that would suggest a connection with the divine in a land that has been forsaken by them. I would love to see someone make him. He’d be a terror to behold… not to mention what his time locked away has done to him.

Wouldn’t a lvl 130 have massacred the sorcerer kings when they rebelled? Would a lvl 130 need champions to fight the cleansing wars?

I think that’s the only bench mark we have to go on (unless anyone remembers something else?). The 3.5 dark sun handbook on this website has SKs in lvl 25s and 30s, In Dregoth Ascending, Dregoth is CR49 and is described as the second most powerful of all SK after Borys.

I just can’t picture the SK standing up to him (and barely trapping him, of course). Rajaat has to be incredible, but if he’s too high I have trouble making sense of it.

Remember, the downfall (in my opinion) is that once you go past level 16 or so, whoever goes first is going to win. So level 20, 30, or 130, still boils down to going first.
In addition, Rajaat is crazy… and while the SKs beat him, they don’t have to kill him to do so. They just need to trap him, which when you throw magic stuff into it, might not have been as difficult to do. Lastly, Rajaat does kill 2 SKs before they actually get him down.

I agree that the side that goes first gets a better chance to win. But if the level difference is too great it won’t matter as much. What you said helps make sense of how “low level” SKs could trap a high level Raajat, but lvl130 still seems too high.

I suppose a fun 1 shot adventure/playtest would be to have players control SKs and attack raajat (and lower Raajats level if they keep failing), but that’d take too much time for me or my friends.

How does Rajaat’s craziness factor in? crazy or not trapping was probably the only way they could deal with him? What kind of magic could they throw at him to trap him? (I’m just asking because in some times it seems easier to kill something than subdue it, so it’d be cool to hear someone else’s ideas on it.)

Insanity does interesting things to people, and if they think that they are the end-all be-all it might be a situation where Rajaat simply doesn’t believe that he’s in danger. The other side of it is that he is disillusioned enough to believe that no one, particularly his own creations pose a threat to him. The last kind of crazy is kill everything around you that poses the least bit of threat… and I think that would probably be a pretty short fight… then again, give him enough limitations and he might just be a 130 HD commoner with no spells prepared.
Another option would be something like a beholder eye and remove all magic/psionic effects that would even effect epic level items/spells… and somehow trap him. Maybe the pristine tower?

I just thought of one hundrend more ungrounded happenings that haunt the prism pendant series such as why a bunch of 15th-18th lvl characters with no

psionic abilities destroy the sorcerer kings:creatures of power so immense as to rival that of the gods without actually being ones AND with the mindset of

war each and everyone of them as they have fought and won wars that spanned milleniums and had the analogy in experience and (as the system

demands) levels.

In other words I think that SKs in their true forms and as they are known through their deeds in the athas timeline should rival Dregoth as written:

and some more to Oronis and Dregoth for a total 75-78 each. Boris the scourge of the land should be around level 80th or 85th if numbers don’t add up

well for the lvls (it happened, he actually needed some more for a forgotten reason).

Finally rajaat would be comfortable with 120-130 levels on his back as to actually be the strongest psionicist and mage who ever set foot on the face of the

actually calls for trully insane levels of pesonal power and determination.

As to how they beat him.They actually could with 12 of them and high quantities of preperation and luck.We are talking about epic levels when the battles

warlords who have fought his wars for milleniums.

[ TO SUMMARIZE MY RAMBLING 80ish CR rajaat:
piling on more levels isn’t the answer/needed. Going off of “canon” info (SRD/Deities and Demigods, DS3_r7, Dregoth ascending,this site, prism pent), an 80CR Rajaat would explain all that happened, fit all canon stats, and not raise contradicting issues. I’ll work it out below ]

I guess it comes down to balancing flavor (from books, ect) with mechanics

Just adding more levels to everything would support how SKs and rajaat can do stuff. But then leaving the heroes lvl115-18 does not support the timeline events/prisim pent in FY1-10. Doing that only seems to half support the flavor.

Maybe the answer isn’t “just pile on more levels to everything.” Just because a plane lacks gods doesn’t mean you need a stand in for an all powerful god, just someone of extreme power. Creating magic could analogous to inventing/discovering science principles in the real world. the scientists aren’t all powerful, they just discovered something about the world and applied it in a new way. Rajaat doesn’t need to be a supreme god, just the most ingenious and powerful character to ever exit in athas that discovered something about the world and applied it.

The SRD http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAnd… says that most gods are “20HD outsiders with 30 to 50 character levels.” so a CR80ish rajaat could be decent for someone that has godlike powers but ISN’T a god. This would be low enough for CR20-55ish Champions (given Dregoth and Sk’s stats from this site, the closest thing we have to canon stats) to ambush and trap (with surprise, sanity, planing, and luck on their side). If there are still issues we can add special apilities to rajaat to explain them…like an ability trying rajaat to magic/the world that prevents the champions from outright killing him, or an ability tying him to elemental rain.

With SK CRs in 20-50ish, lucky heroes (CR15-18 in the DS3_r7, again the closest thing we have to canon) with powerful artifacts or planning could take out some Sks (it’s still a streatch, but it works better than CR60+).

That being said, I don’t always like doing everything “canon.” The game should be what is most fun for Dms and players, and sometimes flying against canon is the most fun. But building Rajaats 80CR from canon sources like wizards of the cost and Athas.org (SRD/Deities and Demigods, DS3_r7, Dregoth ascending,this site, prism pent) matches what Darioth Dark was asking for, a line implying rajaat’s power with roots in the system.

I would have Rajjat tied to shadow, and as such shade, the dark, and the night.

Oddly a character level of 80 would be logical to use (and when I say logical I mean perfectly logical,not something just to make the Prism Pendant heroes win) in a Pathfinder setting.

Epic levels in pathfinder are insanely difficult to get and advance at,as they follow a geometrical sequence of advancement:1million XP from 20 to21, 2 millions from 21 to 22, 4 millions from 22 to 23 ect.

As such they can excuse what Rajaat and the others did in the milleniums of their continuous existences.

Aside from that I would like to point out that in the wotc forums about epic classes and levels there are debates about the gods and cosmic beings like the celestial paragons being too weak.

The only product of such convesations is that they need a drastic rebuilt from ground up using of course the official rules.

If I remember the lines written on the board about a question that goes like “why are the gods the archfiends and the celestial paragons so weak”?
the answer was “Take a moment to laugh at the wotc cosmic beings and move on”.

On top of that the deities are (even when used as written) at that level of power at the begining of a campaign and they change during the course at the rate of 30.000 XP per week of inactivity at the very least.

At last in my point of view rules of a system are there in order to give the novelical stories one comes up with a practical meaning.
I just think of the possibility of such a conversation with one of my friends.

1-HEY! Whats up? What are you writing?
2-Well an NPC of the Dark Sun campaign for mostly historical reasons and maybe for adventuring some day.
1-What has this guy done in his life?
2-Well.. he invented magic,he was history’s top psionicist …(half an hour later)..that should be about all.
1-Sweet and what level is he?
2-Well… LOOK A FLYING MONKEY,(runs away to avoid the humiliation).

I like your point about the pathfinder xp, it makes the whole thing a lot easier to fit together. I think im going to have to try pathfinder now :D

As for the god’s relative power to everything, we could still use them for a rough approximation for CR80-ish (or 70,90,it’ll never be exact). Even if gods are re-written to be more powerful, you could logically say that someone with “god-like” power (yet isn’t a god) will of course be less powerful and the CR80 approximation will still hold. We just need rajaat to be the most powerful/inventive on athas. Besides, there’s no gods on Athas so some rough fudging is do-able (An extreemly powerful epic NPC could be viewed as god-like just because there’s no real gods for comparison.)

Im kind of currious about the 30,000xp per week idea. I don’t have the money to buy as many products as I’d like, so i only have access to the SRD website. What’s the reasoning behind the 30,000xp? does it mean gods in the "present"of a campaign are now extremely more powerful compared to when their plane/cosmology started?

On page 29 of Deities & Demigods a sidebar titled “DEITIES AND SPELLCASTING” exists.
It states that a deity is considered to have a safe cushion of around 30000xp available every week for spellcasting and magic item creation.

Most people don’t even consider of the deities leveling up but to be honest there is no upper limit in the level system and deities do gain xp which is proved by the statement of them having xp available for all those purposes.

As such I’d like to add that on the same book on page 31 there is a behind the curtain sidebar that states the purpose of the deities having the statistics presented there.

It states that the deities are built around the notion of being impossible challenges of every character of 20th lvl or lower and closes the text with two sentences:“…don’t hold this book up as the ultimate truth of deity statistics.If the power level of the deities as presented in this book doesn’t work for you, change it.”

Thus.
In order for the deific stats to play a role either of academical interest or for adventuring (for epic levels characters,not for 20th lvl suicidal loonatics or people that really got in a lot over their heads) they have to be rebuilt.

It sounds like the 30,000 xp is only for purposes of item crafting, not leveling up. But they could level up by other means.

But going off of everything u said i agree the gods would need to be rebuilt for epic campaigns. though i think the SRD/deities and demigods as is could still give a rough idea of rajaat’s power like in my 2 rambling posts.

part of me actually wants to try writing him now lol. maybe someday if theres time.

“I would have Rajjat tied to shadow, and as such shade, the dark, and the night.”
-———————————————-
To Fezzik: why shadow? I’m just asking because i only have access to free athas stuff so there might be something im missing. would this be after or before his imprisonment?

I kicked around the idea that Rajjat understands, at some point, the sun and life on Athas can’t handle the strains of magic, so he needs to find another source. This could be something that he already tried, and resulted in the obsidian planes… which I would tie to magma paraelemental plane and to the plane of shadow.

After he was banished for the first time, I would tie him to the dark, in general. After all, he’s trying to escape the black and is working with what he has, which is the plane of shadow. It would give him an excellent reason for anyone to not kill him, as either it would unleash something terrible, or get rid of something integral. It’s certainly what I would do given the situation. I’d tie myself to the darkness so completely that it cannot exist without me, so while you could possibly banish me again, you couldn’t afford to kill me… and as such, you could only hope to contain me.

Mechanically that would be truly difficult to translate.

But the reverse might be easier and safer to pull of (just think of some player or NPC with enough motivation and power killing Rajaat and with him the shadow the night and the dark:bad idea).

What I found in the heroes of horror was something of that might be the solution on the problem of why the champions didn’t kill him.

On page 47 of that book I found the soul-locked creature.
It’s mechanics are similar to those of a ghost’s rejuvination ability:when slain it doesn’t actually die but reforms in 4d20 days (or double that amount if its body is completely destroyed) after a successful level check DC16 (laughable for Rajaat as he has both the levels to succeed it and the proper immunities to ignore the at
attempts of others making him fail it).

There is only one way to kill such a creature and it is always at the DM’s discretion.
In this case lets make it that for him to die,all shadow should cease to exist on the planet (even for a moment).

That would contribute to the theme that he is tied to shadow AND the fact that killing him was truly harder than restraining him.

How about it ?

If it’s what the group really wants, then I see nothing wrong with just killing rajaat off. it could be a fun and epic adventure that would be rememberable for years. If his death does destroy some important part of the world, then the pcs should be able to go on another adventure (to fix the disaster their good intentions released..which makes sense to me, it would feel wrong to kill him and just have no negative results, it is rajaat after all.)

As for Rajaat being rejuvenated, it could be a fun for pcs to try and stop the process (and forever kill rajaat) within the time limit. and you could probably pull in all kinds of power groups and the sorcerer kings.

So either way i think there could be some really fun play. Even if rajaat is killed off many parts of the world are still damaged, many in athas won’t even know the history anyway, and a lot of what makes up darksun will still be around.

Why not make Rajaat invincible through ordinary combat, but allow him a single weakness that the PCs can identify and attack. This weakness may be a magic artifact or an ‘Achilles heel’. The challenge should be figuring out how to reach Rajaat long enough to strike him in his weakness.

By adopting this approach, the PCs won’t necessarily have to be epic level to confront Rajaat. Also, personally, I find this sort of climax far more rewarding than a standard combat scenario.

How would this be possible in the system?
It is actually a classic but very appropriate concept.
What are your suggestions to flesh it out without cheating?