Quote Originally Posted by Acromos View Post
Hm - this is likely not what you want to hear. Still, it's input.

The sorcerer-kings are little short of gods - I'd put their power level at 'not defeatable by anything short of plot!'

Basically, they have near-limitless magical and psionic personal power to draw on - an army of templars at their call - and thousands of years of time in which to craft defences, plan contingencies, and plant spies and informers as well as use divinations to find threats before they become dangerous.

The players - to my way of thinking - should have no chance at all against those odds. Unless the plot is very specifically designed to help them overcome the odds.
I wouldn't go quite this far. After all, AD&D 2e, whose official policy was that the Powers/Gods were so far above mortals that statting them out was pointless had full stats available for even Boris (though again, quality of those stats is questionable).

I would say that the SK's are EXTREMELY powerful by themselves, but certainly not invincible to anything but plot. A crafty, intelligent, or likewise powerful party should be able to cut them down with a lot of forethought and prep work. The key, though, is that after thousands of years, and with the resources of entire cities at their beck and call, the real power is not personal, but institutional. Going against a sorceror king really means going against entire nations on your own. For instance, it took 7 full sorceror kings and all their power to bring down Dregoth initially.

As for Dregoth sources: he was first really mentioned in the revised campaign setting, then again in City by the Silt Sea (which had some locations and fluff for him and data about his city), and he gets periodic mentions afterward, but nothing too extensive. It seems that City by the Silt Sea is really the biggest and most extensive source on the guy.

A word of caution: I know it says that Dregoth travels the planes all the time, but that's problematic since planar travel is supposed to be all but impossible (and lethally dangerous) on Athas. Of course, that gets ignored frequently in the interests of cool stories. So, two choices are to either change his ambitions slightly to cut out the planar travel and all that, or make it his goal to get off this blasted rock in the first place. Or, put into his posession an artifact that permits travel to the planes safely. The later is how the "official" material did it, giving him a planar gate in the form of a big ornate mirror.