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Dragon Kings
Explore the 10th Level of Magic.
Only the most powerful characters are destined to rule Athas. Warriors with vast armies of followers campaign for glory; rogues become masters of illusory magic to further their deadly schemes; spellcasters who can also master psionics open whole new tomes of magic available only to them - the most powerful spells ever! And not only do they gain greater magic, the spellcasters take on entirely new forms when they advance beyond 20th level - clerics can attain elemental form; preservers mutate into magnificent avangions; defilers can actually transform into dragons themselves! Learn of these advanced beings, the new magical spells available to them, plus new psionic devotions and organizations, military vehicles and army lists, and more, all within the pages of Dragon Kings!
Only the most powerful characters are destined to rule Athas. Warriors with vast armies of followers campaign for glory; rogues become masters of illusory magic to further their deadly schemes; spellcasters who can also master psionics open whole new tomes of magic available only to them - the most powerful spells ever! And not only do they gain greater magic, the spellcasters take on entirely new forms when they advance beyond 20th level - clerics can attain elemental form; preservers mutate into magnificent avangions; defilers can actually transform into dragons themselves! Learn of these advanced beings, the new magical spells available to them, plus new psionic devotions and organizations, military vehicles and army lists, and more, all within the pages of Dragon Kings!
160 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1992
1 person is currently reading
50 people want to read
About the author
Timothy B. Brown
24 books2 followersTimothy B. Brown is a writer and game designer, primarily of role-playing games. He has worked at TSR, Game Designers' Workshop, and Challenge magazine. While serving as the director of product development at TSR, Brown oversaw the creation of the company's enduringly popular Ravenloft and Planescape game lines. He also co-created the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dark Sun setting with Troy Denning, Mary Kirchoff, and the artist Brom.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 4, 2020
It's pretty clear that all of Dragon Kings was planned from the beginning, not least because they outright say it in the introduction, but because a lot of things from the original boxed set make more sense in the context of the rules here. Immortal sorcerer-kings? Defilers apparently living longer than preservers? The ruined nature of the entire world? All of those get their call out.
And the ideas found in here are amazing. Wizards who are also psionicists transforming into dragons? All the sorcerer-kings are also dragons, and the templars have spells because the sorcerer-kings are bonded into connections with the elemental planes? Clerics who actually become elementals? Druids walling off their guarded lands with swams of insects or summoning hundreds of giant lizards to fight for them? Fighters attracting huge armies and clashing with their foes across the face of Athas? Awesome!
Well, some of the ideas. I'm not even sure why the Order--the group of psionicists who pretty much seem tailor-made to smack down any PCs who actually want to change something about the world--exists, unless it's for the previously-stated reason. And gladiators pretty much just get slightly better at personal-scale fighting, and a -2 armor class bonus doesn't mean much in a world where the wizard gains 30 tons of weight, a -20 armor class bonus, burning sand breath, and super-powerful magic. And thieves are still the worst class. For example, their ability to fight doesn't get any better, which means even wizards fight better than they do.
Then again, if you wanted balance, you wouldn't even be looking at AD&D 2nd Edition.
The mechanics to back all that up definitely aren't up to par. The fighter's huge armies all require the BATTLESYSTEM(tm) rules to adjudicate, so there's pages and pages of statistics that mean nothing to me, and there's not really any warning that it's required other than the few times it's used in the boxed set. Obviously, using the main combat system to resolve it would take weeks, but the least they could have done is include another system for doing it that doesn't require miniatures, terrain, and so on. The Rules Cyclopedia had one for BECMI, which I think originally appeared in the Companion Set, so it's not like this would be a new idea.
Also, the concepts behind dragons and avangions are great, but the mechanics of becoming one fall apart with the slightest glance. Halfway through becoming a dragon, the wizard essentially goes insane and rampages all across Athas as their body is wracked by the pain of their transformation. So how, then, is the actual spell cast at those levels?
Similarly, the avangion has to randomly abandon the group and adventure alone for a significant chunk of each level above 20, and for the few levels where they have to travel with a group, they need a different group each level. It's like it's tailor-made to piss off all the other players. Or they had to find some way to shoehorn the character tree back in.
Also, look at this:
I assume they were trying to say that multi- or dual-class clerics who are not specifically cleric/psionicists can't be elementals, but it's pretty badly worded if that's the case.
The 10th level spells are mostly pretty neat, and it's true that "The existing 9th-level AD&D game wizard spells do the same old stuff, just bigger and better," but I think they should have just gone whole hog and banned the Wish and Limited Wish spells. There's really no where else to go once a character's power include "do anything," and there is a section dedicated to dealing with this, but really, "it doesn't exist" is easier. Plus that way, people won't be wishing to turn the Sea of Silt back into water or whatever.
Finally, this really bothered me: the spell Pure Breed takes a half-(foo) and turns it into one half or the other, either into the mother's race or the father's race. It works on half-giants, and even says that PCs turned into giants become NPCs. First of all, half-giants are a magically-created race and, despite the name, aren't half anything. Second of all, the spell requires dust from the grave of the parent of the "desired race," and because both the half-giants' parents are half-giants, it wouldn't work on them anyway. This is a really minor nitpick, I know, but it bothered me all out of proportion to how much space it takes up in the book.
Dragon Kings is full of fantastic, evocative ideas, and rules that are messy at best and nonsensical at worst. In the end, it evens out to something that's not bad. Definitely worth reading for inspiration even if the players never rise to the level necessary to interact with the contents.
And the ideas found in here are amazing. Wizards who are also psionicists transforming into dragons? All the sorcerer-kings are also dragons, and the templars have spells because the sorcerer-kings are bonded into connections with the elemental planes? Clerics who actually become elementals? Druids walling off their guarded lands with swams of insects or summoning hundreds of giant lizards to fight for them? Fighters attracting huge armies and clashing with their foes across the face of Athas? Awesome!
Well, some of the ideas. I'm not even sure why the Order--the group of psionicists who pretty much seem tailor-made to smack down any PCs who actually want to change something about the world--exists, unless it's for the previously-stated reason. And gladiators pretty much just get slightly better at personal-scale fighting, and a -2 armor class bonus doesn't mean much in a world where the wizard gains 30 tons of weight, a -20 armor class bonus, burning sand breath, and super-powerful magic. And thieves are still the worst class. For example, their ability to fight doesn't get any better, which means even wizards fight better than they do.
Then again, if you wanted balance, you wouldn't even be looking at AD&D 2nd Edition.
The mechanics to back all that up definitely aren't up to par. The fighter's huge armies all require the BATTLESYSTEM(tm) rules to adjudicate, so there's pages and pages of statistics that mean nothing to me, and there's not really any warning that it's required other than the few times it's used in the boxed set. Obviously, using the main combat system to resolve it would take weeks, but the least they could have done is include another system for doing it that doesn't require miniatures, terrain, and so on. The Rules Cyclopedia had one for BECMI, which I think originally appeared in the Companion Set, so it's not like this would be a new idea.
Also, the concepts behind dragons and avangions are great, but the mechanics of becoming one fall apart with the slightest glance. Halfway through becoming a dragon, the wizard essentially goes insane and rampages all across Athas as their body is wracked by the pain of their transformation. So how, then, is the actual spell cast at those levels?
For the high levels of dragon metamorphosis, the process actually must take place on either an elemental or the Astral plane. No structure or riches are required, but the caster must travel to his plane of choice with no fewer than 200 Hit Dice of living creatures from the Prime Material plane. The living creatures must be no fewer than 10 Hit Dice each and must willingly travel to the plane and participate in the casting. The actual casting time is 24 hours, and the caster must have the full cooperation of at least three powerful beings from that plane for the entire time. Locating beings willing to cooperate should be easy, but getting their cooperation requires exchanges of favors, quests, etc.; preparation time is equal to the time it takes to convince the planar beings to cooperateDoes that make sense to you? Requiring a nearly-insane, rampaging monster to intelligently bargain with otherworldly beings, all of which takes place off screen becuase it specifically says the GM takes control of the character during the animalistic period? Because it makes no sense to me.
Similarly, the avangion has to randomly abandon the group and adventure alone for a significant chunk of each level above 20, and for the few levels where they have to travel with a group, they need a different group each level. It's like it's tailor-made to piss off all the other players. Or they had to find some way to shoehorn the character tree back in.
Also, look at this:
No multi- or dual-classed cleric can opt to become an elemental.Read strictly, only human characters who are clerics and psionicists can become elementals, but no dual-classed character can become an elemental, therefore becoming an elemental is impossible. Sucks to be you, clerics!
Prerequisites: Only human characters who have attained 20th level as both a cleric and psionicist can proceed as a character elemental.
I assume they were trying to say that multi- or dual-class clerics who are not specifically cleric/psionicists can't be elementals, but it's pretty badly worded if that's the case.
The 10th level spells are mostly pretty neat, and it's true that "The existing 9th-level AD&D game wizard spells do the same old stuff, just bigger and better," but I think they should have just gone whole hog and banned the Wish and Limited Wish spells. There's really no where else to go once a character's power include "do anything," and there is a section dedicated to dealing with this, but really, "it doesn't exist" is easier. Plus that way, people won't be wishing to turn the Sea of Silt back into water or whatever.
Finally, this really bothered me: the spell Pure Breed takes a half-(foo) and turns it into one half or the other, either into the mother's race or the father's race. It works on half-giants, and even says that PCs turned into giants become NPCs. First of all, half-giants are a magically-created race and, despite the name, aren't half anything. Second of all, the spell requires dust from the grave of the parent of the "desired race," and because both the half-giants' parents are half-giants, it wouldn't work on them anyway. This is a really minor nitpick, I know, but it bothered me all out of proportion to how much space it takes up in the book.
Dragon Kings is full of fantastic, evocative ideas, and rules that are messy at best and nonsensical at worst. In the end, it evens out to something that's not bad. Definitely worth reading for inspiration even if the players never rise to the level necessary to interact with the contents.
Read
June 2, 20224/32 of my Dark Sun series, and in some ways, the end of the first wave of Dark Sun material. That is, I've since learned that Dark Sun started as a war-game setting where everything would be fighting everything and everything would be powerful. Though the concept changed as it went from war-game setting to rpg campaign, that general outline is still visible; and this is the book on high-level play that fulfills the second half of that promise.
As the intro notes -- and more rpg books should continue to have intros that describe what the book is trying to do -- this book presents rules on high-level play that (a) defines the world of Athas (the world of Dark Sun) and (b) might have gone in the first core box, only there wasn't enough room (which is a good reason why some of this stuff is here) and it might've spoiled the novels (which is not so good a reason why some secrets were held back).
So here's the big reveal: in the core book, we learned that Athas is a resource-poor world where over-use of magic has killed the world; and there are very powerful sorcerers who control the seven remaining cities and sometimes a dragon rampages around the world. What this book reveals is that those sorcerers are slowly being transformed into dragons through high-level magic and that the rampaging true dragon is actually a sorcerer who completed the change.
That's all very interesting, and I kind of feel like that info should have been in the core, or maybe in some additional book that was like the secrets of Dark Sun. (Note also that this book has info on the sorcerer kings, but there's still a whole slice of Athas's history that isn't yet revealed to the DM/players.)
But instead of just being "secrets of the world," the remit of this book is "high-power play for all characters," and that leads to a sort of lopsided discussion. That is, magic users who reach 20th level can decide to switch classes to psionicists, and when they reach 20th level in that, then they can transform into magical creatures depending on their magic. (That is, defilers turn into dragons, of which there are at least 8 in the world; preservers can turn into good avangion, which are angel-insect-looking creatures, of which there is maybe one?) Then you can start casting really epic spells -- and, in fact, half of this book is new magic and psionic powers.
(Sidebar: the intro also notes that they wanted spells that weren't just "more powerful fireball" but truly world-shaping. I am not sure they met that standard in the spells given.)
But what about non-magic classes, like your fighters and thieves? Oh, they just get better at what they do, or maybe gain new powers like the thief's ability to... bribe officials? Why is that a power the thief can only gain at 21st level? Really, the non-magic classes are really underdone in this book, especially since something like the fighter's ability to gain followers is really treated like a problem to solve (how to put the focus on the PC rather than their followers?) rather than a power or opportunity.
This book also fulfills the original vision of this as a war world by adding in stats for various vehicles and armies, which aren't very interesting to me (this is all back when TSR was using their BattleSystem rules for war), but I do love the illustrations still.
So I think there's some good ideas and intentions here, but I question why those ideas are fleshed out here, and think that the intentions weren't entirely fulfilled. The book also claims that these high-level rules can be used in other worlds, but I doubt that, especially the most interesting rules about defilers/preservers; and even the best parts of this book are probably the little snippets of Dark Sun legends and stories.
As the intro notes -- and more rpg books should continue to have intros that describe what the book is trying to do -- this book presents rules on high-level play that (a) defines the world of Athas (the world of Dark Sun) and (b) might have gone in the first core box, only there wasn't enough room (which is a good reason why some of this stuff is here) and it might've spoiled the novels (which is not so good a reason why some secrets were held back).
So here's the big reveal: in the core book, we learned that Athas is a resource-poor world where over-use of magic has killed the world; and there are very powerful sorcerers who control the seven remaining cities and sometimes a dragon rampages around the world. What this book reveals is that those sorcerers are slowly being transformed into dragons through high-level magic and that the rampaging true dragon is actually a sorcerer who completed the change.
That's all very interesting, and I kind of feel like that info should have been in the core, or maybe in some additional book that was like the secrets of Dark Sun. (Note also that this book has info on the sorcerer kings, but there's still a whole slice of Athas's history that isn't yet revealed to the DM/players.)
But instead of just being "secrets of the world," the remit of this book is "high-power play for all characters," and that leads to a sort of lopsided discussion. That is, magic users who reach 20th level can decide to switch classes to psionicists, and when they reach 20th level in that, then they can transform into magical creatures depending on their magic. (That is, defilers turn into dragons, of which there are at least 8 in the world; preservers can turn into good avangion, which are angel-insect-looking creatures, of which there is maybe one?) Then you can start casting really epic spells -- and, in fact, half of this book is new magic and psionic powers.
(Sidebar: the intro also notes that they wanted spells that weren't just "more powerful fireball" but truly world-shaping. I am not sure they met that standard in the spells given.)
But what about non-magic classes, like your fighters and thieves? Oh, they just get better at what they do, or maybe gain new powers like the thief's ability to... bribe officials? Why is that a power the thief can only gain at 21st level? Really, the non-magic classes are really underdone in this book, especially since something like the fighter's ability to gain followers is really treated like a problem to solve (how to put the focus on the PC rather than their followers?) rather than a power or opportunity.
This book also fulfills the original vision of this as a war world by adding in stats for various vehicles and armies, which aren't very interesting to me (this is all back when TSR was using their BattleSystem rules for war), but I do love the illustrations still.
So I think there's some good ideas and intentions here, but I question why those ideas are fleshed out here, and think that the intentions weren't entirely fulfilled. The book also claims that these high-level rules can be used in other worlds, but I doubt that, especially the most interesting rules about defilers/preservers; and even the best parts of this book are probably the little snippets of Dark Sun legends and stories.
December 3, 2022
More interesting as a way to provide bizarre hyper-powered adversaries than for PC options. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...
February 27, 2026
Beaucoup de régles, peu de settings.
May 1, 2015
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13225758
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13225758
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews