However, to keep it on par with the original, a class ability should be created:
Meta-compatibility: The Psionic-Theurge (or whatever) is able to use his meta feats with any of his two spellcasting/manifesting classes, at a rate of +1 spell elve for every two power points added and viceversa. Overpower is the only exception to this rule.
Edo.
my 0.2 cp.
Edo.
Originally posted by Otakkun
No no, you've got it all wrong. MT would be a first step BEFORE getting into whatever PrC moves you over to an AB. I recall from some book (it was either something about the VA or D&P) where an old preserver lady had read something about how to ecome an AB and started attending classes with small children about the way (dual to psion). This would do the same trick, but in a more 3E way.
Edo.
Note: I just re-read this and it's pretty strongly worded, but I'm too tired to correct it (it's 3:30am here). Nobody take anything personally, ok? Good. I don't wanna have to send Drik (my .5Giant Fighter2 bodyguard) after you.
I wasn't clear enough, I appologise... in the first part of my post, I addressed why it's bad to base an epic PrC on something like the MT. In the second part, which i didn't separate very well, I addressed why it's bad to consider using that class as a model for a stepping stone to an epic PrC.
To wit:
A) It's a bad idea to use the Mystic Theurge as a stepping stone for an Advanced Being PrC (even if it's disguised ever not so gently behind prerequisites that would otherwise require 40+ levels to aquire) because you've just elevated the MT PrC to 'gotta have it' status. That's wrong. This is not an acceptable option in terms of game dynamics.
and
B) It's a bad idea to base an epic PrC on the Mystic Theurge because with 2 spell levels every level, adding anything else would absolutely destroy any semblance of balance that there ever was to that PrC. Again, you would elevate a PrC to the level of 'No-Brainer' and you again run into the brick wall of game dynamics. By alternating special features and double spell levels, you destroy the purpose of the class, which is to allow multiclassed spell casters some sort of salve to their save DCs.
You cannot allow any PC to overshadow any other PC consistently. Any attempt to 'use' an MT type PrC to gain enough 'supposed' spell levels is doomed to failure for exactly this reason.
Trying to use the Mystic Theurge as a basis for anything Advanced Being related is trying to take the easy way out of a tough and sticky situation and is nothing more than a blatant cop out and an excuse for not using your head.
I kinda feel strongly about this situation, in case no one has noticed.
The MT is not the way to go. Giving AB's their own special feat lists, like psionic characters have now is much more flexible and easy to balance. Think for a moment, does it really require absolute mastery of two subjects to be able to combine them intelligently? No, it doesn't. That's as unrealistic as it is stupid. The 20/20 requirement in DS2 worked fine in DS2 because of the way the XP system worked, nothing else. Drop it. Get over it. Stop thinking in 2e terms.
Require mastery of one subject and fifth level spells/powers in the other. So far so good. Give the AB PrCs the following skills, amongst others, but make sure that these are on it: Spellcraft, Psicraft, Knowledge (All, individually) and 4 skill points + Int bounus / level. Give them just one new class ability: Psionic Enchantment. Then give them a spell level every OTHER level and a bounus feat every 5. Why? Because in Epic Levels, spells that aren't epic level just don't matter, they really don't. and the number of epic spells you can have memorized is your Knowledge (relavent skill)/10 and how high a save DC you can have for an epic spell is based on your Spellcraft or Psicraft roll. Let single classed mages have high save DCs for their standard spells; with their extra skill points, ABs will cream them, every time. Not that the Wizards are going to need them, but the Clerics, Druids and Psions will.
Class Ability: Psionic Enchantment
The Advanced being can stack his appropriate Knowledge (Arcana/Nature/Religion) ranks with his Knowledge (Psionics) ranks to determine his available epic spell slots per day. Spellcraft and Psicraft ranks also stack for purposes of casting epic spells.
Here's a nice little epic spell that a moderately high level dragon could cast but that only a high level single classed wizard could manage:
Dragon's Intellect
Transmutation
Spellcraft DC: 119
Components: V,S
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: 10 days
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
To Develop: 1,071,000 cp, 22 days, 42,840 XP. Seed: fortify (DC 17). Factors: increased duration, 1,200% [10 Days] (+24 DC), increased statistic bonus, +49 (+98 DC), increased casting time, 10 minutes (-20 DC).
Dragon's Intellect gives the creature touched a +50 enhancement bonus to Intelligence for 10 days.
The trick is to give Advanced Beings more skill points, especially in Knowledge (Arcana/Nature/Religion/Psionics). Why? Because it's those skills that determine numbers of epic spells. Let other puny mortals have high save dcs on their standard spells. Advanced Beings, with their ability to 'combine' magic and psionics, are able to use their ranks in BOTH Knowledge (Arcana) and Knowledge (Psionics) to determine the number of epic 'slots' per day. That's their advantage and we should play up to it, not come up w/ silly mechanics that do everything but explicitly break the rules.
Advanced Beings should be Epic Spellcasting PrCs, not puny mortal magic users.
While "gateway" prestige classes are not typically the norm in d20, there is precedent in Dragonlance. One must be a Crown Knight prior to being a Sword Knight, and one must be a Sword Knight prior to being a Rose Knight. Likewise, one needs to be a Steel Legionnaire prior to being a Legion Mystic, Legion Scout, or Legion Sorcerer.
The question that should be asked is whether a psychic theurge should be a prerequisite for an Avangion or Dragon prestige class.
My answer is no. An Avangion or Dragon should have, IMO, the ability to manifest X level of psionic powers, and to cast X level of spells. While a psychic theurge can escalate the rate at which you achieve this, I wouldn't have it as a requirement. I especially wouldn't have dragon/avangion abilities added to the advanced benefits that one gets through the psychic theurge!
My suggestion (and just that) is that an avangion or dragon should require X level of manifester/spellcaster levels. The transformation process should be similar to a dragon disciple's, and I would recommend going back and forth between spellcaster levels and manifester levels for the class. For example, have spellcaster levels at odd levels, and manifester at even.
Just some thoughts.
Have you seen anything like this or have you any idea how to deal with this? Please, leave the advance beeing for the other thread.
...and here something more specific.
by Dawnstealer
The Advanced being can stack his appropriate Knowledge (Arcana/Nature/Religion) ranks with his Knowledge (Psionics) ranks to determine his available epic spell slots per day. Spellcraft and Psicraft ranks also stack for purposes of casting epic spells.
I've always liked this approach the best.
But how to reflect the bodily changes to dragons, as Amoun puts it? That's really the heart of the matter.
I no longer remember who the idea came from, but allowing dragons to take feats in combination with XP-costing rituals to gain a Prestige Race seems the most streamlined one. While Prestige Races aren't part of core (but still as an article in Dragon), the PS3E team uses the mechanic with great effect.
At least it's something to consider.
I did the lower psionic requirements for two reasons. First, as psionics and spells blur the lines severely at epic levels, I felt requiring mastery of both psionics and the arcane as a little redundant; and second I wanted it to be possible for a psychic warrior/wizard combination to be available for dragons/avangions. Plus, the 2nd-edition dragons & avangions always seemed to be using psionics to augment their arcane spells (the term "psionic enchantments" gives that impression), not so much the other way around.
I also made the race requirement to be humanoid or giant - basing the size increases/physical changes of the dragon or avangion off the character's original height and weight. It does make a half-giant which somehow achives the ability to become an advanced being a larger dragon (and thus more physically dangerous in most cases) however their racial ability penalties also makes it much more difficult a prospect for them to attempt it.
Dragons are able to (at great expense) circumvent (accelerate) their development process and skip to the next "stage" (PrC) before being completely developed with their current stage. This results in an underdeveloped dragon in the end (as skipping to the next stage stops any further development in the current stage), but does grant the dragon the increased spellcasting power provided by the new stage. Avangions can't. Overall, I have the total levels for full development of a dragon being 35, while an avangion be 40 levels (on top of whateever else the character was working on prior to it) It is a slower progression, but I was figuring that considering how much easier it is for a wizard to gain levels in d20 than wizards could do in AD&D 2nd Ed. (exp wise), it probably can reflect about as long a time period.
I do have a pdf with my revised version of avangions & dragons, if you are interested in checking it out, e-mail me for a copy of the file.
Originally posted by taotad
I've always liked this approach the best.
But how to reflect the bodily changes to dragons, as Amoun puts it? That's really the heart of the matter.
I no longer remember who the idea came from, but allowing dragons to take feats in combination with XP-costing rituals to gain a Prestige Race seems the most streamlined one. While Prestige Races aren't part of core (but still as an article in Dragon), the PS3E team uses the mechanic with great effect.
At least it's something to consider.
Heh, Dawnstealer, I like it.
I'm going to completely change my stance on transformations. I used to think that feats would be a good way to do it, but now, I have a better idea:
WIth the power of Epic Spells, any sort of codified transformation seems pretty useless. You can use the Transform seed to do just about anything, and with the Fortify seed, you can accomplish the rest.
The 'steps' to becoming a dragon are actually Epic Transform spells of varying power levels, scaled to the Knowledge/Spellcraft ranks of spellcasters. One you can cast at 23rd CLevel is, of necessity, going to be less powerful than one you can cast at 30th CLevel.
What I imagine Kalak, Dregoth and Kalid-ma were doing is using the following new mitigating factor to help them accomplish in one spell what it would have taken them many 'stepping stone' spells to accomplish.
New Epic Spell Mitigating Factor:
-------------------------------------------------------------Spellcraft DC Modifier
Sacrifice 100HD of living beings------------------------------- -1
This manages to take into account all of the varying details of Advanced Being Transformations.
There is still a need for an AB prestige class, and it should focus on making casting Epic Spells easier than for a standard Wizard or Cleric or Druid or Psion.
My 0.2cp
Roger.
Originally posted by Star Gazer
Heh, Dawnstealer, I like it.
I have no idea where that came from!!
Anyways, that's a good idea as well, but being something as advanced as Advanced Beings indeed are, it should be a complex mechanic, involving more then just epic spells.
It should be a happy union of feats, sacrifice, spells, and PrC's.
It occured to me why the Dragon Kings would want plenty templars.
They just want them to help beefing up their epic spells with spell slots. That would mean some serious high-power casting.
My mind just can't grasp all the mechanics involved in doing so.
Originally posted by taotad
Anyways, that's a good idea as well, but being something as advanced as Advanced Beings indeed are, it should be a complex mechanic, involving more then just epic spells.
It should be a happy union of feats, sacrifice, spells, and PrC's.
It occured to me why the Dragon Kings would want plenty templars.
They just want them to help beefing up their epic spells with spell slots. That would mean some serious high-power casting.
My mind just can't grasp all the mechanics involved in doing so.
Why not keep it simple? Let AB's stack their ranks in Knowledge (arcana) and Knowledge (psionics) and Spellcraft and Psicraft, that's a big benefit. W/ the extra skill points they are already powerful. No need for extra dodads and gizmos. To me, dragon/avangion xformations have alwyas been about securing power, changing into a form impregnable from normal attack... there really isn't a need to model it at all. Think of it as a 'fad' amongst the powerful wizard/psions of the day, it could have been any shape really, dragon just seemed to incite their fancy... probably from some old legend or something. The only reason no powerful single classed wizard has done it is that the champions have been successful in destroying them before such an event could occur and the psions of the Order have their secrecy and have no need for such ostentatious displays of power.
Simple is best. With complexity you really run into the Law of Unintended Consequences really quickly, and that is a bad thing.
Oh, and I know why a bunch of low-level punks were able to defeat Kalak: feedback damage from his spell: he only had a few hit-points left!
However, please remember that a 20/20 character is actually a poor, POOR, POOR build in 3.X, and that it would make absolutely no sense for "champions" to have that kind of spread. How did the actually gain enough XP to get there? I can hardly see a wizard/psion 20/10 ever gaining a level if they have to deal with CR 30+ encounters.
Also, how can you call "champion" someone who should be, by all means, easilly defeatable by anything near his CR?
This is one of the many reasons why some sort of MT for psi/arcane and psi/divine should be created for the DS setting. I can even see it being an EPIC PrC, with no pre-epic part at all. That way the character would increase both his main casting level and his "new" one at the same time.
For example, our 20th level character, a wizard/psion (17/3) has reached epic. He has decided to take a shot at becoming an advanced being, however, he knows that neither pure arcane or psionic might is enough to even start trying, so he takes a look at the PrC.
The PrC should require 9th level spells and 2nd level powers (at least, since it would make a minimum of 21 levels), and one epic feat related to casting/manifesting. This way our guy gains his first level in the PrC and gains his 18th caster level and his 5th manifester level at the same time. hardly overpowered IMO (at least for the 1st 10 levels or so). To balance this, you just give this PrC a low feat progression at that should be more than enough to balance things.
Once our beloved character has gained enough levels to gain both epic casting and epic manifesting (quite near 40th level), he could start getting headaches about what seeds and what spellcraft/psicraft checks he'll need to achieve his transformation.
What is more, just in case you think this is still too powerfull (which I don't), you could take away one manifester/caster level (he gets to choose wich one he'll forfeit) every time he gets a feat
Edo.
PD: Does any of this make any sense?
Once you have a class that offers a skill, it is always considered a class skill for you in terms of how many ranks you may have in it. You may still have to pay the cross-class points for it if you earned your skill points from another class, but that's not important.
Example:
Wizard 17/Psion 3
CLevel 20
Max Ranks in class skills, including Psicraft, Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana/psionics): 23!
It is possible to build a character, quite easily, actually that at 20th level has 23 ranks in all four relavent skills! All you need is an Int bonus of +4 (2 skills from the Wizard class, place one each in Spellcraft and K(arcana), use the other four bonus skill points for the two psion skills, and if you're human, you have one left over for other stuff).
Now, our soon to be avangion takes the Epic Spellcasting feat, he can cast 2 epic spells per day, possibly more if he's taken Epic Skill Focus (a +10 bonus...). All well and good.
Once he reaches 17/10, not too hard, there are ways to 'cheat' low spell penetration abilities for awhile, and seven levels of 'suffering' isn't too much to ask for a person who wants power...
Now, he picks up the Advanced Being PrC. He's Wiz17/Psi10/AdvBe1. Smart boy that he is, he's been buying skillpoints in his psion class skills all throughout his carreer...
He now has a max rank in the relavent skills of: 31. Using his Psionic Enchantment class ability:
Knowledge (arcana) ranks: 31+ Knowldege (psionics) ranks: 31 = 62.
He can now cast 6 epic spells per day, minimum. That's a nice jump from 3. And all at the cost of being able to easily penetrate SRs w/ lower level spells.
You can easily add 'caster levels' to Epic Spells by upping the DC to cast by +2... but, it becomes rather like using a cannon to kill a fly in many cases, which is why SK's have templars...They are NOT uberpowerful, just very specialized.
Make more sense now?
A Wiz20/Psi20 could do exactly the same thing (granted the knowledge skills don't really stack, but if you have both the Epic Spellcasting and Epic Manifestation feats, you can cast two 'different' types of Epic Spells that use exactly the same rules...) , but asking a PC to wait 20 levels for something is extreme. 7 levels is probably even a bit low, but that can verrrry easily be adjusted by requiring more manifester levels. That's ALL this PrC is designed to do. Let the transformations happen with inventive use of epic spells...and sacrifices of 100's of HD of creatures for those nasty defilers... The point is, losing SR penetration ability is not that bad, really, not for just a few levels, especially not when you start gaining them again and especially not when you consider that you can tailor your epic spells to defeat arbitrarily high SRs.
They trade SR for Epic Spells, which is what an Advanced Being should be doing, IMO. They raise whole armies, create new races and lay waste to vast tracts of land, they don't go around smashing their adversaries w/ puny mortal spells. Advanced Beings change their environment to suit their needs, they shouldn't be attacking anything head on anyways. Unless you count destroying a whole city from the comfort of your armchair head on...
That said, if any of you have Savage Species, I'm wondering whether the solution doesn't lie there - becoming an Advanced Being would involve epic spells cast as rituals that allow the casters to advance by monster levels - not very different from Prestige Classes, but a slightly different format, and perhaps more appropriate for the subject at hand.
Edo.