He could have been an arcanamach for Kalak a really long time ago. Maybe he left Tyr before the Veiled Alliance was even a thing.
The animalistic phase thing is an issue though.
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Thereās an epic spell in Legends of Athas meant to be used by Farclunn in the Black Flames adventure so he can be killed and yet not die.
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Which epic spell is this? Are you sure itās actually included? Before Legends of Athas was released, the statblocks of all the Sorcerer Monarchs were promised, and there are people out their claiming that the statblocks are actually in Legends of Athas.
I think heās referring to Epic Simulacrum.
As simulacrum, except the duplicate has the full levels or Hit Dice of the real creature. Furthermore, the duplicate upon its death does not revert to the material from which it was initially created, but becomes inert, and if made of flesh is susceptible to decay. The dead body has noāspecialāpropertiesāthatātheārealācreatureāsācorpseāmightāhave and a speak with dead spell fails automatically in the case of a duplicate of a living being. You receive a +10 insight bonus to your Disguise check to determine how good the simulacrumās likeness is in relation to the original.
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Ahā¦ I see. I have misgivings about advance being simulacrums, but then again, the advanced being dragons in Legends of Athas cannot function as written.
This seems to be more suited anyway.
Fission is a 7th level psionic power with a couple of drawbacks. But it does make death less final.
Whatās the reason they canāt function as written? Iāve adapted them for my own use to work with my house rules, but I donāt remember anything actually wrong with them. Maybe the Hamanu was unable to actually qualify for the class due to his Phy War levels if I remember correctly, but that was more an issue with his class breakdown than the PRC itself.
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Well, for one, a fully metamorphosed dragon would have a dexterity score of less than 0 and be completely immobile due to the effects of size increases under the rules in Legends of Athas. That, among other issues, is the reason we donāt have Sorcerer Monarch statblocks and Legends of Athas is still in beta.
The size increases are only a total of -4 Dex, -2 for Med to Large, -2 for Large to Huge. Size increases beyond that donāt have Dex penalties.
What character are you playing with a Dex of 4 or less?
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I guess I confabulated from fine to large. You are right - they will have low Dex but wonāt be incapacitated.
Even so, any advanced being character, whether defiler or persever, will be far weaker than a single clsssed character of the same level. The dragon and avangion prestige classes are crippling. The champion template exists solely to cover these gaps but does nothing for non champions.
The only way to make the rules in Legends of Athas work is to have absurd numbers of character levels. There is a reason why the stats were never produced despite a public call for people on the Wizards forum to produce stats by either Jon or Flip.
Thatās typical of nearly any multiclass character though, especially any kind of caster in 3.5. Two equal people, one dedicates all time to learning one thing, another splits among 2. The one who dedicated all time to one thing will be better at that one thing, the one who splits will be a bit weaker but have more options.
Every multiclass or dual progression PRC is inherently weaker in the class specific features, but gains options and potentially other features to make up for it.
A cerebremancer isnāt a good PRC because it makes you the most powerful Psion or Wizard, itās because you donāt lose too much, but gain the ability to just.. end an encounter. They can manifest and cast spells 7 times in a single round. Spell, quickened spell, Schism power, quickened schism power, opportunity power, last turnās twinned spell, last turnās twinned powerā¦ wipe out entire encounters yourself. Go up against a single classed wizard or psion of the same level and you might have a rough time of it but for everything elseā¦ Meanwhile that single classed wizard or psion will take a few rounds to resolve the same encounters.
Dragons lose what.. 1 CL and 4 ML over the course of the class, gain 5 special psionic enchantments and 3 bonus feats plus the ability to defile from animals. They were already behind on ML so thatās not a big surprise, they also gain 2 āfreeā epic spells and if they have been actually turning into a Dragon, some decent physical abilities.
The others also lose some casting and manifesting in exchange for new abilities. If you are trying to replicate 2e, yes, 3.5 is very different.. but also, in 2e dual class meant after you had made all sorts of enemies, you suddenly dropped all your power and had to fight them with the abilities of a nobody and rely heavily on physical abilities as the some of the weakest physical classes there were. Hope you made enough friends who will carry you back into power.
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Whatās considered excessive character levels? Iād think you could have a reasonable SK at all but the lowest epic levels. Wiz 11/psion 3/cerebremancer 10 is 24 levels and eligible for Epic Spellcasting, so thatās the absolute minimum. Thatās only 3 caster levels behind a pure wizard.
I wouldnāt make any of the SKs that low, thatās about where Iād put them at the beginning of the Cleansing Wars personally and they probably leveled up during those (though most probably havenāt leveled since settling down as actual monarchs - Dregoth was probably adventuring with his Planar Gate, but most of the others havenāt been). Iād personally make the weakest SKs 30ish probably - the closest equivalent to the power level of a 21st level dragon in 2e would probably be wiz 11/psion 10/cerebremancer 10/Athasian dragon 1 (32 total levels). But thatās an inefficient build, and the Champion of Rajaat template is a big boost. So I donāt see why you canāt have the majority of the SKs in the lower 30s ā¦ Nibenay/Oronis would be somewhat higher and Dregoth/Borys way higher.
IMO anyone trained by Rajaat would have cerebremancer levels. āSelf taughtā dragons like Farcluun and Graytch likely would not, and so combined with the lack of the Champion template would be far weaker than a SK at the same or even slightly lower levels.
(Say Farcluun at wiz 21/psion 11/Athasian dragon 1 = 33 character levels would be a lot weaker than a Champion of Rajaat wiz 12/psi 7/cerebremancer 10/Athasian dragon 1 = 30 character levels.
And if you donāt demand 9th level psionics, only 6th, then Champion of Rajaat wiz 16/psi 3/cerebremancer 10/Athasian dragon 1 is even better.
Should probably have arch defiler or something in there but itās an example.)
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Yes but you could build a class with cerebremancer that is strictly better than the Dragon PrC in Legends of Athas. A character taking that PrC likely has to take 20 levels of the Dragon PrC to get to 9th level psionic powers, assuming the earliest allowed entry to the class.
A good thought experiment would be actually trying to build such a character. I maintain it has cannot be done. It has not been done.
The designers of Legends of Athas themselves could not design a credible Sorcerer Monarch within the 30 - 35 level parameters set out for them.
50 to 75 levels was proposed. Is it excessive? If you go by Legends of Athas, you really have no choice.
The requirement of 6th level Psionics, which I tend to believe is way to low and it requires 9th in my games.. but.. RAW. To reach 9th level psionics with of psion would require 6 additional levels of psion. you only get 2 in 10 levels of Dragon, with another 4 ML. That would put them way behind in psionics, I agree. I believe that was done to allow for Psy Wars to qualify (would take 16 levels) which was probably geared toward Hamanu.
If your assumption when doing the build is to create a character that rushes to Dragon as the most expedient way then proceeds to take only Dragon levels until they are as powerful as a Wizard/Psion/Cerebremancer in spell casting and manifesting, then yes, I donāt think thatās feasible.
That Dragon may still very well kill the Cerebremancer first even in a 1:1 duel though. Dragon Magic can be used to drain Con directly, add in stages of Dragon Metamorphosis and that becomes even better, plus the physical abilities, DR, SR, PR, and flight, and burrowā¦
My personal belief is that the metamorphosis spells should include Dragon Magic and the Psionic Enchantments should be feats available to them but I donāt think the classes themselves as necessarily bad, just not the way I would do it. As for levels, my SMs are actually much higher level, typically epic levels before they became personal students of Rajaat, lower to mid 30s as students, mid 30s to high 40s, some even into 50 before the end of the Cleansing Wars, and in the years since gaining only a level or two at best because thereās simply nothing to challenge them. They could be lower, but in my world they are akin to gods, most of them equaling intermediate or even greater gods purely in class levels but lacking potentially large amounts of outsider HD, saliant abilities, and basically, all that lovely divine power. They are nearly as possible as an immortal can be, but they are not divine. Toe to toe, they could usually beat a demi-god, even one of lesser gods if it was a surprise to the god, but most of the higher ranked gods or those with a strong martial or magical bent wouldnāt have much trouble with them. Big fish in a little pond are our SMs.
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Mine too. 9th level spells, 9th level powers should be the entry point. Most campaigns will never get there, but if they do, it will be very satisfying.
See, I am not a fan of that. Hamanu presents himself as a martial king, therefore he must be a psychic warrior? Ditto the idea that Nibenay, called the āshadow kingā because he is rarely seen, must be a master of shadow magic. Same energy - although I must admit in my homebrew I did throw a bone to the latter.
I might have to dispute these lauded physical abilities. The dragon skill has his basic wizard, psion, cerebremancer chasis. Three classes in non epic. What does it mean? Assuming he starts as a wizard 5, psion 5, Cerebremancer 10, he has a BAB +9 and only 1 normal attack. Or letās say he has wizard 10, sorcerer 10 instead, he has +10/+5 - two attacks. I donāt have Legends of Athas in front of me right now, and maybe it grants additional attacks like wing, claws, et al, but the chances of hitting are going to be appalling.
Assuming a character of the same character level as Borys, I feel quite convinced that even a normally produced example could defeat Borys without high optimisation. The one thing Borys has going for him is the Champion template, which was designed around the need to fix the weaknesses of the metamorphosis PrCs, so Borys will have a lot of immunities.
I donāt think the PrCs are bad but they just cannot do what they are supposed to do. So they fail by their own standards. Had the Epic Bureau not fallen apart in the wake of 4E, we surely would have seen something different in time.
Mine depends heavily on the ranks of metamorphosis. For example, in my version (which I will soon have a tool for online so people can create their own Sorcerer Monarchs), each rank of dragon metamorphosis grants 2 dragon racial hit dice. As a 10th rank dragon, Borys has 20 dragon hit dice and the highest total character levels among the sorcerer monarchs, but is not necessarily the highest in class levels. Borys would have around 55 character levels as a result.
Thatās always been the tension. How powerful are the Sorcerer Monarchs? In the original boxed I got the impression that they were something like demigods. The way they got beat up in The Cerulean Storm made me think that they werenāt that powerful after all (Troy Denning admitted to regretting their easy defeat). I tend to think of them as above epic in 3.5e terms. If there is a tier just above epic, that would be the Sorcerer Monarchs, and also other advanced beings that underwent metamorphosis.
So in my conception, one to one, a character of the same level is going to lose, unless there is extreme surprise, artifacts, or other advantages in play. Another possibility is a group of high level characters attacking a Sorcerer Monarch all at once, dividing his attention and undermining his combat action economy.
Did you actually make statblocks for the Sorcerer Monarchs, or are they not have stats because they are too powerful?
Perhaps I am missing something, but I donāt see why anyone would take 20 levels of the Athasian Dragon PrC?
If I were to build one of the weaker Sorcerer Kings (21st level in 2e) with 9th level powers ā¦ letās say Abalach-Re, since we see her fight in the PP and Kalak has canon weirdnessā¦ Iād do something along the lines of Champion of Rajaat wizard 5/arch defiler 10/psion 7/cerebremancer 10/Athasian dragon 1. Thatās only 33 levels, though her ECL would be higher due to the Champion of Rajaat template.
And I donāt see what sheās really lacking, that her 2e version (21st level dragon) could do. She has 9th level spells and 9th level psi powers, she can take Epic Spellcasting to do psionic enchantments (sheās CL 25 and ML 22, unless Iāve messed up the math), she can do the obsidian orb stuff, etc.
Thatās the rough power level Iād expect from the weaker SKs (Kalak, Andro, L-P, Abalach-Re) If I wanted to go with āKalak not a real Championā Iād give him a few more levels ā¦ though still weaker overall (lower ECL) due to lacking the template.
Next time Iām bored, I might do it.
I may well be missing something ā¦ I know youāve been involved in this way longer than meā¦ but I donāt see why. To get the equivalent abilities a 21st level dragon had in 2e requires basically 29 to 32 levels (11 wizard + 10 cerebremancer + 7 to 10 psion + 1 Athasian dragon).
Now, thatās the baseline/minimum, but I think those who were 21st level dragons in 2e should be fairly close to the baseline. Nibenay and Oronis should be notably more powerful, Dregoth and Borys far more powerful.
But not 50th to 75th powerful I wouldnāt think. Borys himself might hit 50th but heād be the only one, and only if I really wanted to ramp him up (I think I could do a plausible Borys at 45 levels + Champion template + stage X dragon ā¦ itās not like he comes across that excessively epic in the PP, and even Valley of Dust and Fireās bit about how heās basically unbeatable is more āhe will teleport away and heal, and have contingency, and have clones so you canāt actually kill him for realā than āhe is impossible to beat in a straight fightā).
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Probably because of this -
Dragon Metamorphosis: At 5th level, you gain understanding of your metamorphosis, thus earning the next spell in your transformation without development costs.
Its actually granted every five levels of the Dragon PrC. The text is somewhat inaccurate. Because of Wealth By Level rules and no real way to bypass it (for a PC), the Dragon PrC is basically compulsory.
In terms of the NPC dragons, taking levels in the Dragon PrC is the only way to get "psionic enchantments ", which in the context of Legends of Athas are not not epic spells beefed up with psionics like in Dragon Kings from 2e, but are like feats that have utility in combat.
You are right. In 2E terms, itās not lacking at all. It has the basic structure of the 2E advanced being dragon. The issue is that in 3.5e, a single clsssed character of the same level will definitely overpower Abalach-Re. The only thing Abalach-Re has that really makes a difference is the Legends of Athas Champion template and itās wide ranging immunities. But that template was designed to patch up the weakness of the metamorphosis. What if she did not have that or it was another non champion character?
If you see the metamorphosis as largely cosmetic, thatās fine. But I view the transformation as a categorical power up. Not to the degree of SeruZmaj, but definitely able to be a single clsssed character of the same level.
Iād be keen to see it. I really want to see how other people level the Sorcerer Monarchs, how they equip them, and so on.
Involved but only in the forum, here and the WotC forum. Otherwise I am on the outside looking in just like you. No hierarchy between us, friend.
Apparent baseline, maybe. But there are many that insist that Hamanu and Borys be psychic warriors and capped out at 6th level. Dregothās statblock from Dregoth Ascending is instructive because it is the only Sorcerer Monarch statblocks in existence, using an early version of the Legends of Athas rules.
Dregoth, the Dread King: Male stage IX dragon champion of Rajaat kaisharga Wiz 7/Psion
(egoist) 8/Cerebremancer 5/Arch Defiler 10/Athasian Dragon 8; CR 49; Gargantuan Undead
(Augmented Dragon, Psionic); HD 38.
It depends on how powerful you need them to be. I need them to be more powerful than Dregoth above. However, I can achieve it without the excessive levels with the advanced being subsystem I am creating.
But that doesnāt matter for the SKs at first stage of metamorphosis (21st level dragons in 2e terms) - which are the ones Iām arguing work in the 30-35 level range.
They have to be first stage metamorphosis to even get the first level of the PrC. So to me thatās an argument that the SKs who were 21st level in 2e have no more than 4 levels in the PrC (otherwise theyād hit 2nd stage).
Thatās not really a thing they had in 2e, though, so I donāt mind if the weaker SKs arenāt good at it.
[quote=āredking, post:36, topic:2025ā]
You are right. In 2E terms, itās not lacking at all. It has the basic structure of the 2E advanced being dragon. The issue is that in 3.5e, a single clsssed character of the same level will definitely overpower Abalach-Re.[/quote]
Thatās true but I dont really see it as a problem per se because IMO there are no single classed 31st+ level characters in Athas. Maybe Gretch or something? Or maybe the Mind Lords ā¦ But do they really need to be higher than the 27th-29th range they were in 2e?
Ok, Iāll post it. Maybe not in this thread though, will start a new one
Thatās not massively different in thought process from where Iād put him, though itās a bit weaker ā¦ Iād give him (and all the Champions without āasterisksā like Kalak and Hamanu and maybe Daskinor) 10 levels of cerebremancer. Thatās 38 levels, my Dregoth would probably be low to mid 40s; I think thereās a pretty huge gap between say Abalach-re and Andropinis on the low end and Dregoth/Borys on the top end.
Without having them fully worked out (and I might do two versions for Kalak and Hamanu, who have controversial ācanonā) I would expect my versions to be something in the range of
low 30s: Abalach-re, Andropinis, Kalak (standard Champion version)
mid 30s: Tectuktitlay, Hamanu (standard Champion version), Lalali-Puy, Daskinor
high 30s to 40: Nibenay, Oronis
low-mid 40s: Dregoth
48-50: Borys the Dragon
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