I want to be able to make a normal 1st-level character and then progress him normally beyond 20th with the exception of attack/save progression (and perhaps other things I'm forgetting).
Let me suggest a paradigm shift for looking at the mythic rules.
Instead of running them concurrent to 1-20, treat them like 21-30. You could really even stretch them out, double the levels, just adding more feats or chances to pick up path abilities, so immortality isn't achieved until the equivalent of level 40.
I would really like a book to support levels 21 to 50 (and beyond). I think Paizo has all that is needed to make a working epic system.Level 50, working, in a d20 system? * snorts *
As for me, I've seen level 50 play in 3.0 work, and I don't doubt Paizo is capable of making a better system. You need players with a minimum of maturity and willingness to cooperate with the DM (and a DM with the same), but then, immature and uncooperative players are quite capable of messing up the game at level 1 as well.
Everybody willing to cooperate and being mature at all times really does away with the need for a system at all. "Make Stuff Up: The Game", as well as "Horribly Unbalanced Characters: The Game" would both work under those circumstances too, so long as people knew what they were letting themselves in for.
Half the point in having a system is to do the work of making things fun on that level so you don't have to.
As for me, I've seen level 50 play in 3.0 work, and I don't doubt Paizo is capable of making a better system. You need players with a minimum of maturity and willingness to cooperate with the DM (and a DM with the same), but then, immature and uncooperative players are quite capable of messing up the game at level 1 as well.I would really like a book to support levels 21 to 50 (and beyond). I think Paizo has all that is needed to make a working epic system.Level 50, working, in a d20 system? * snorts *
There are two different considerations there: The game as a social activity between players, and the game as a purely mechanical thing, built around the game statistics.
The game actually breaks in a mechanical sense at higher levels, once bonuses and values start to diverge sufficiently. It can still be playable given the right group of players, as long as they agree not to break it, or play in such a fashion as to not be too abusive of certain things; in other words, a social contract to minimize the effects of mechanics coming apart. The mechanical elements can also be band-aid fixed with some house rules, magic item distribution and judicious GM fudging.
It's sort of similar to how we are all here despite the existence of nuclear weapons. There's basically an agreement not to break the game by blowing each other up too much. This is usually the case in games too. People generally share a mutual interest in the game going along for as long as it has to, so they find ways to cope. That doesn't mean the system itself doesn't break apart, even without going into the kinds of terribly cheesy things you could do with the 3.0 epic rules as they were written.
There's also the matter of observer bias. What some people think "works" might be an awful state of affairs for others.
making player characters "too powerful" is an illusion given that the DM can do anything). The abilities in Mythic Adventures as it stands (and I realize it's a playtest) seem more geared to getting higher numbers and making characters more difficult to kill.
People opposed to higher levels don't think characters are too powerful, we think the math breaks down. Clerics can't fail will saves, while a fighter can never pass one. If you aren't a rogue, ranger or monk, you never pass a reflex save.
Mythic adds a little to the numbers sometimes, but it's usually conditional. The growth in power is more lateral. It's new abilities, not new bonuses.
Other than bigger spells, what exactly is missing?
I can see a system that has epic feats that are used to both enhance character abilities and make game flow better. For example, a feat tree that allows you to do average sneak attack damage (or spell damage), and then increase it 4 points per d6, 5 points per d6, and eventually, automatic maximum damage. Maybe requiring 11d6, 15d6, 19d6, and 23d6.
Maybe an epic feat that adds half your character to your poor saves? Or just a base epic rule? It would then be +5/6 to poor saves and 2 + 1/2 to good saves, which isn't that bad of a difference between good and bad saves. But I don't know how that would work with multiclassing. Dang.
Players can be too powerful. There's no point on an absolute scale above which players are objectively too powerful, but for any given game there's a limit.
The GM can indeed do anything, but he doesn't want to do "anything" he wants to do only some kinds of things.
If your game is about breaking into evil castles, beating traps and puzzles, fighting through minions and killing the boss, you have to spend a great deal of time and effort restricting overly powerful characters so they don't just turn on their trap-o-vision, divine the answers to the puzzles and walk straight through the walls to where they want to go.
Once that starts to happen, you're continually temporarily removing powers from PCs, so why the hell do they have them in the first place? If there's no limit, eventually, everybody's games would have to be the same, because the GM would be strong-armed into making it all about character powers vs character powers and constantly countering instant-win abilities.
Not that there's anything wrong with that kind of game, just that it's only one of infinite options.
I've played with ELH. I probably still have it in a box somewhere.
You aren't necessarily stuck on paths. You can get stuff from other paths, so the Fighter/Wizard/Arcane Archer can still get special abilities that apply to both magic and attacks with the bow. They do have to decide, are they more of an archer or a caster, but I don't think that is as limiting as you seem to think. Most of your complaints feel like you browsed the book, decided you didn't like it and haven't tried it. No, it is not exactly the thing you were hoping for, but I think it's massively closer to your actual desires that aren't based on levels than you think.
Right now, your hope of extra levels is not coming true. I think mechanically this system is actually more versatile and open ended than ELH. Instead of just continuing on with the same system, it's a new system that gets layered over the original. You can choose when and how that happens as best fits your game.
Also, the +1 to saves or upping iterative attacks does nothing to solve the problem of the math. Will saves will still be unattainable for the fighter, the monk still can't hit anything and the fighter still only misses on a 1. It's the gaps between specialists and non-specialists that are too wide.
In Kingmaker, I had a dwarven Druid. At level 16 his will save was ridiculous, not counting his bonuses vs fey, spells and a couple other things he had. Most of the time he only failed on a 1, but his reflex save of +7 was pretty worthless, I don't think he ever made one.the +1 to saves at epic only keep pace with increasing DCs.
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The base bonuses to attacks and saves aren't the issue at Epic. It's all of the stacking bonuses from spells and feats and effects and ability scores of 30 and above. A base Ref save of +17 vs. one of +11 (assume 30th level PCs using the ELH progression) is bad enough, but you can work with it. When you have your Rogue with a 40 Dex and your Cleric with maybe a 16 at the most, both with a Cloak of Resistance +8, you end up with the Cleric having a Ref save of +20 and the Rogue a Ref save of +40.
You always want to add your ability score bonuses to the main stat(s) for your class, and if that's also a stat that adds to a save, the disparity only increases.
Yup, it's everything, but the ability score and base save are a big chunk. With the high DCs of creatures with a CR in the low to mid 20's, if you don't have a good save or good ability score for that save, you pretty much can't make it. If you have one, you might have chance and if you have both you're often nearly guaranteed of success.
Well, just spitballing, but a Druid, being a Wis caster, would have an 18 in their ability score, probably a +6 headband at level 16, and a Will Save adder of +10. That'd be a +17 to saves, not including Cloak of Resistance or other things. A creature of CR 16 has the average save DC of 24, meaning you have to roll a 6 or below to fail (70% chance of success). DCs, of course, vary among creatures and especially NPCs.
I made a fighter that lasted all the way to level 17. If I recall, he started with a 14 Wisdom, got a headband of +6 wisdom, and Iron Will. I forget what Cloak of Resistance I had, but with just the above, I have to roll a 12 or above to pass the average for a CR 17 DC (DC 24). That's a 45% chance to pass. A bit rough but still, a weakness is supposed to be a weakness. You can shore it up as best you can (and I did), but there will still be that chance you'll fail. Which I'm fine with. I don't need to automatically pass everything at all times, or why roll dice?
That said, these are just all averages and it is possible to raise up the DCs for spells and such. Course, prepared PCs will have spells to protect themselves and their allies.
I haven't read everything, but here's my take:
I didn't like how Epic was made in 3.5, and much prefer the Mythic system.
However, there's a fundamental thing I don't like about it: the fact that it is not a "post-20th" but rather a "rules template" to be added to normal games, over-complicating them (personal opinion) for both players and (in a far greater measure) GM. That means that the average campaign won't ever have Mythic in it; only the occasional ones where it'll be decided to use Mythic since the beginning or to add it at a certain point later on. And I perceive it like a waste, really. If I wasn't someone who loves Pathfinder books anyway, I'm not sure I'd buy the Mythic one to use it only so rarely. Maybe someone else won't ever run anymore a non-Mythic game anymore, now that the playtest is out, and thus will buy the book no matter what, but I'm not planning of playing so many Mythic campaigns.
My opinion in this moment is that I'd rather use Mythic as a "post-20th" system only (and it's rare for most campaigns I've participated in to even reach 20th, so figure), unless I want to run a 1st-and-up-Mythic-campaign somewhere in the future, but it'll be a rare thing, and the book will truly be underused.
People opposed to higher levels don't think characters are too powerful, we think the math breaks down. Clerics can't fail will saves, while a fighter can never pass one. If you aren't a rogue, ranger or monk, you never pass a reflex save.
You severely exaggerate the scale of the problem.
Save disparities only reach this scale when you are comparing a SAD character whose single ability score modifies his good save and who dumped the abilities that modify his bad save. Not when you are just comparing, say, a fighter's Will vs his Fort (I play a 15th level fighter right now and the numbers are +16 and +21 respectively).
Your druid might be an example. To get a +7 reflex save at 16th level is pretty difficult; you have to have either dumped Dexterity or else invested pretty much nothing in your Dex/reflex save. A 10-Dex druid with a cloak +4 (below what he could afford if he cared about his saves, but reasonable for someone whose priorities are elsewhere) and a belt +2 has a +10. If you had a cloak +4 and no belt, you had a Dex of 6, and likely a Wis through the roof.
If I'm even in the right ballpark, that means your problem is not coming from the math of the base save progressions, your problem is that you had a sky high wisdom and never bothered with Dex.
In this case, when discussing a SAD character's saves, mythic makes the problem worse than epic did, since mythic gives a flat +10 the SAD character will pump into his single score, while epic, with its x10 price mod, heavily incentivized the player to max out his +6 items of secondary stats before springing for the +8 to his primary.
In addition, mythic gives bunches of bonuses to what a character is already good at and very rarely gives any bonus at all to what a character is bad at, numbers wise. Champions add their tier to attack bonuses using their strikes, while a hierophant who put his ability in Wis instead of Str and doesn't get the strike abilities is much farther behind than his non-mythic counterpart. Champions get precision so every attack is that much higher than everyone else's. Etc.
It seems strange to me to see an argument that mythic is good and epic is bad "because the math breaks down" when mythic is, practically speaking, increasing the high level numbers disparities, while epic at least tried to mitigate it. The basic math of 10 Tiers of mythic will increase that druid of yours' save disparity by 5 points from 10pts of wisdom, while the basic math of 21-30 in epic would have seen it stay about the same.
Until there are more robust rules for 21+ (presuming mythic doesn't really work for 20+ when it's finalized - if it does, great), I think I'll house rule in a hard class cap at 20. If you want to be level 21, you have to choose a new class - you've mastered the first class.
It may create wonky math, but I don't expect we would ever use the rules beyond level 30 (if that), so I'll live with the issues.
Sean - I've seen you reference this "broken math" several times. To what exactly are you referring? Also ... there will be some people who will want to push the level envelope a little. Just a little.What other people said, plus the disparity between your good saves and your bad saves starts to create situations where:
* the fighter only fails a Fort save on a 1 but only succeeds at a Will or Reflex save on a 20
* the wizard only makes Ref and Fort on a 20 but only fails Will on a 1
* etc. etc.Which means that a saving throw effect is guaranteed to not affect some characters and guaranteed to affect other characters. So battles become a balance between "should I use a Reflex effect that'll kill the wizard, harm the fighter and cleric, and do nothing to the rogue, or should I use a Will effect that'll destroy the fighter and rogue but do nothing to the wizard and cleric?"
Having run a lengthy campaign from levels 16-19, I did not see this happen.
Note, though, characters were 15 point buy and at points below WBL (the party were not explorers and missed a lot of stuff I laid out for them, and I had trouble adding stuff in where they did go and have it make narrative sense), although not by much. I used standard CR guidelines and threw a variety of combat situations at them within appropriate CR levels (bearing gear issues in mind where appropriate). I can see higher point buy and higher gear affecting this, but those are things that can be managed by the GM and players, and are not "hard coded" into the game mechanics, past some "Big Six" reliance issues.
I will say the party dealt with most encounters easily, and more often succeeded on saving throws than failed them--regardless of what their good or bad throws were (in my personal experience, I found save DCs of monster abilities were universally too low). The rogue/fighter/shadowdancer did have a poor Will save and struggled with that a bit, but it wasn't a "succeed only on 20" ability. My cleric player complained that enemies saved versus his character's spells too often (but I felt like they failed more often than not, so that's a matter of GM versus player perception; probably both of us are wrong and both of us are right :) ).
The situations where they fared poorly were as much due to poor tactics and planning as anything else (full frontal assault when it was a bad idea). I can't think of a single time where any of them were in a "succeed only on 20/fail only on 1" situation, and if it did happen I imagine it was an unusual challenge. At least based on the monsters and guidelines provided for gamemasters in the core rulebook, you would have to be constantly be beefing up enemies much more than the guidelines suggest for this situation to be created, or the PCs themselves would have to be beefier stat wise---which I am sure happens, but the issue becomes something specifically due to stats and gear than the system as a whole.
Just want to put my 2 cents in on actually playing the game at high levels -- which I'm sure you've done yourself, Sean, being one of the designers and all, but I've heard other fellow players complain of high level math at the theorycraft level that I did not see in practice.
I do think there are some things that get problematic at high levels, but here is not the place to discuss them.
And if you scale up bonuses past level 20, they either (a) progress at a flat rate, which means you continue the existing problem, or (b) they scale up even farther than before, exacerbating the problem, or even (c) you plug in weird numbers to reverse this problem, which means the wizard is getting better at Fort faster than the fighter and the cleric is getting better at Ref faster than the rogue, which is contrary to how it should work.
I do agree flat out increasing levels past 20 can cause issues, and I am okay for one without epic rules.
I am percolating in my mind the hopes I can run a level 20 brief game using the mythic playtest, and having the characters "level" beyond 20 by going up in tiers rather than earning XP and leveling any further. If I can fight past the logistics of getting players together to do so, I'll certainly post the results in the appropriate forum.
Lead Designer
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Well, I was happy to let this thread roll along as it was a comparison of Mythic to Epic, but now it seems to have morphed into a discussion of high level math and Epic solutions, which is not really what the Playtest Forums are about.
If folks want to continue this discussion, please start up a thread in the general RPG forum. This thread is locked.
Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer