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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 5426559" data-attributes="member: 8461">I think they'd have roughly the power-level of some of the stronger abominations, maybe even above, considering the sheer number of levels it'd take to achieve that form.In 2E terms, you needed to be a 20th-level wizard (defiler or preserver) and 20th-level psionicist to become a dragon or avangion, which was then a subsequent 10-level evolution.In 3.X/Pathfinder, that'd be a bit harder to do, as multiclassing in those rules is different from 2E dual-classing. Ultimately, if we kept the whole thing of needing to be 20th-level in both an arcane spellcasting class and a manifesting class (if not already epic-level spellcasting and manifesting, even if only slightly), this could easily catapult a fully-transformed dragon into the lower-mid 50's in terms of how many levels they'd have.The quickest way, IMHO, would be to take 11 levels of wizard, another 11 levels of psion, and then 10 levels of <a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/prestigeClasses/cerebremancer.htm" target="_blank">cerebremancer</a>. Presuming that dragon/avangion is a 10-level prestige class, then you're at a fully-transformed state by level 42....ahem.That said, while dragons and avangions are exceptionally powerful, insofar as natural abilities, psionics, and manifesting, they can't normally grant spells. The Sorcerer-Kings were unique in that regard. The original Dragon Kings book said that they unintentionally each attracted a "living vortex" creature which let them grant spells (as power from the Inner Planes) to their templars. Defilers and Preservers: The Wizards of Athas retconned this by saying that they could grant spells due to their connection to the Dark Lens (a major artifact).The two aren't necessarily irreconcilable, if you assume that it was the Dark Lens that somehow attracted/bound the living vortexes to the Sorcerer-Kings. Either way, however, it's highly unlikely that future advanced beings could do so; note that the future Sorcerer-King Atzetuk (Dragon #319) did manage, however.I don't know that you'd need a separate series of templates, presuming that you made the prestige class epic enough.The real trick would be denoting that you'd have requirements that would need to be filled per level of advancement in the PrC - rather than just to start taking levels in it.To be fair, what was depicted in the novels and the game world didn't match at all with the advancement requirements in Dragon Kings or Defilers and Preservers. Those books talked about how various monuments for channeling the necessary power had to be built to advance through each stage, and that despite the dragon's "animalistic stage" where it was in too much pain to think clearly, it still had to forge alliances with powers on the elemental planes, etc.In other words, the requirements for advancing need to be overhauled, somewhat.I do agree that Paizo's version was much too watered-down, though.I don't think I agree with this. The advanced beings were so powerful because they were combined 30th-level manifesters and spellcasters, alongside the physical enhancements of their transformation. That's impressive, but not so impressive as true deities. Hence why Dregoth (the undead Sorcerer-King) wanted to become an actual god so badly.Isn't that more of an indictment about how lame the official 3E deity stats were? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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