Not just the templarate, of course. Most people set the levels of the Sorcerer Monarchs between 50 and 80 levels. That was because there was no way to produce a credible SM in 3.5e using the rules that the templarate had at the time.
My DS epic rules can produce credible SMs at the same level that the SMs had in 2e. That is level 40 to 50.
It’s good to get insight into what people were thinking at the time. Its fascinating.
Blimey. How come the power scaling went that high for these guys?
Because of the rules that they had from Legends of Athas. They had to pile on the character levels for the Sorcerer Monarchs because they would not be powerful enough under the Legends of Athas framework. My Epic Athas work has credible SMs from 40 - 50 level (with 50th level being Borys the Dragon of Athas). It’s more than a happy coincidence that they are the same level as they were in 2E in my version.
No disrespect to Legends of Athas, which really is a nice product. I used that as my starting point and then placed a new framework atop it, so it is compatible. It adds to Legends of Athas for the most part, rather than replaces.
40-50th level characters? Really? The power scaling is ridiculously high. There is no need to make them that high especially in 3rd edition. At that rate just keep them statless and say they succeed at anything they want. Give them Prismatic Dragon Stats Spending all this time making these toons for what? No one can fight or beat them, except in the novels.
In my 35 years of gaming I never got a game past 25th level, let alone 40th level, not to mention that’s just their levels. What about their CR or the CR with their armies, templars, etc included.
What are they even doing that is challenging enough to actually accumulate even 1 XP at these levels?
I’m not sure how they went from 21st level characters to this. They should be on par with the archfiends/demonlords (total CR 25-28) with Borys about CR 30 max.
All of the SMs are beatable under the right circumstances. Borys and Dregoth are the real challenge.
They were 40+ level in 2E. Hamanu 43, Nibenay 44, Dregoth 49, Borys 50. 2E DS used a different way on counting and counted levels of psion and wizard once, so Borys was “level 30”. But his real levels was wizard 20, psionicist 20, dragon 10.
I don’t think you can add the CR if SM’s templars unless they are part of the fight. With my versions, a good rule of thumb is that the CR is their character level + number of salient feats + number of ranks of metamorphosis. At high levels CR tends to break so guessing is all you can do.
They gain XP slowly, but generally not through combat. Lucky for the PCs because of the SMs could XP farm they’d be dead meat.
They were 40+ as I explain above. The templarate had the SMs at 50 - 80 levels for 3.5. I’ve got them at the same level they were in 2E.
The archfiends/demonlords that were published are not necessarily the true forms of those creatures, but lower powered aspects. Check out The Gates of Hell , by Dicefreaks Publishing for what a real archfiend looks like.
Speaking of this, my work on advanced being rules (salient feats) is almost complete. Complete Sorcerer Monarch statblocks for all SMs coming in the next few months.
Here is another quote from xlorepdarkhelm.
Well, with the +1 manifester level/+1 spellcaster level each level of Advanced Being, your point becomes more or less pointless. Plus, due to a mechanics problem with 3/3.5E, requiring such a heafty toll on Manifester and Spellcaster classes results in substantially weakened characters. Multiclassing works as written for non spellcasters/manifester. However, when dealing with spellcasters/manifesters, it cripples the characters. You an either take my word for it, or check it yourself. A 20 Wizard/20 Psion will be grossly overpowered by a 40 Wizard, or hell, even a 30 Wizard (or Psion). A 40th level character will be able to be defeated by a 30th level character, due to how spell/power resistances, and DC’s works. This doesn’t work. Now, you cannot completely get rid of one or the other, or else it won’t quite mesh up correctly. So, there’s a comprimise - which was 6th level Psionics and 9th level Magic.
Why did I come up with it like that? Contrary to popular belief, it was not because of Psychic Warriors - that was merely a convinience. It was because, in order to not totally screw the character, it’s necessary that both abilities are not maximum - once again, before you argue with me on this, I strongly recomment playtesting it, or sifting around on boards where people are constantly talking about it. WotC even acknowledged this problem within the book Unearthed Arcana, where they provided a means for caster level/manifester level to keep increasing even when you aren’t raising that class, to help mitigate the effects.
So, one had to be lowered (or else, the whole idea of a character who is the most powerful spellcater/manifester is really thrown out of whack by requiring a max of both at the beginning, simply because of the rules mechanics problems and limitations). Well, in every reference material for 2E I read on Dragons, Avangions, Sorcerer-Kings, etc., they are always referred to as having powerful magic, sure, their psionics are also mentioned, but mostly it is Magic. Even the term “Sorcerer-King” is not “Psionic-King” - it’s “Dragon Magic”, not “Dragon Psionics”, and so forth. I decided to work with the idea that Psionics are used to enhance magic with them, and therefore, are secondary to their Magic. So, keeping with the flavor of the setting, based on the books (both novels and game books) from 2E Dark Sun, I went with the idea that psionics should be the one to take the hit, so as to not cripple the character who is working towards transforming into an Advanced Being (as outlined in the paragraph above).
Now, my question I put forth to myself was, if I was to reduce Psionics, how much would I lower it? Well, I went with 6th level because the Psychic Warrior did not exist in 2e, and I felt that it could be plausable that a Psychic Warrior could attempt the transformation. Besides, for certian Sorcerer-Kings, I rationalized, it makes more sense that they are Psychic Warriors, than Psions (like: Borys, Hamanu), of course, that was a means for me to explain how they got special, next-level swords from Rajaat, and nobody else did - what if the Scourge and the Scorcher were given to Borys and Hamanu (or rather, to Myron originally) to enhance their already more developed melee and martial abilities, while the others had more powerful psionics to their beck and call? This also means I think Irikos and Myron were Psychic Warriors, rather than Psions, for similar reasons.
Plus, I have, just like the Cerebrmancer class, that the Advanced Being Epic Prestige Class advances the character +1 level in their previous spellcasting class, and +1 level in their previous manifesting class. So, within 6 levels, the character is (as a psion) manifesting 9th level powers. Now. Let’s see… as a wizard/psion, this means the character could potentially (ignoring the Cerembrmancer PrC for the moment) begin the process at level 28 (17 Wizard/11 Psion). Now, let’s look at what the official conversion rules booklet would say about converting a 2E character to 3E. You’d take the first class (of the dual-class), ie: highest level class, of course, since both would be the same, we’ll just pick Wizard here. a 20 Wizard would transfer to 3E as a 20 Wizard. The second class, Psionicist, then transfers across at 1/3 of the levels. So the character becomes a 20 Wizard/6 Psion (rounding down), or Character Level 26. in my system, the character would be Character Level 28, two levels higher. I think I got pretty close to the mark on that one.
Sure, the character doesn’t begin as the most powerful psionic character, but there’s other bonuses to deal with here. First, they keep advancing in their psionic class, and become more powerful each level of Advanced Being. Second, I have special rules involving my rewrite of Psionic Enchantments, which are methods and means of combining magic and psionics together to enhance a spell or power as if it is both, plus making it substantially more difficult for people to resist them if they can only resist one or the other. It technically provides more rules for enhancing magic, including rules on how to augment spells using power points, above their normal cap. Plus, being able to metapsionically enhance spells is a handy feature, especially taken into account that it is pretty much on the fly.
The character becomes quite powerful, in actuality, due to several features of being an Advanced Being, much less a Dragon - which also adds in Dragon Magic - that wonderful ability to rip the life energy of animals out in order to enhance their spells even more, the double-whammy, as a player called it, he kills by casting his spell, and then kills more with the spell.
Unfortunately, the beta rules that were released never fixed the problem of a single class character being able to beat an advanced being with multiple classes. The thread is a good read (with a bit of unnecessary acrimony), and you get a good look at how people were thinking at the time.