This promotes selfish play from players by encouraging them to perform heroic deeds that have the potential to hurt the party or hog the spot light from everyone. The trials should be group based, not individual. That's fine for a one on one session, but for anyone who's played Battlefield the annoyance of dealing with players who only care about their "achievements" does not belong in Pathfinder. So that right there should be an easy fix. My group already uses a Party Exp progression that has encouraged teamwork from the get go. Mythic adventures should be structured in a similar way. It should never be about making YOU awesome, but about making ALL of you awesome.
My initial thought is "scrap this whole idea", but obviously a ton a work went into Mythic. I really want it to work, but as a GM I feel no incentive to use this over the Hero Points out of the APG (still the best book Paizo has released). Making a monster mythic looks like fun, until you start doing the acid test and realize how easy it is to make something that's almost unstoppable. They do feel legendary though, as do the magic items. One could argue that these things should always feel this way anyhow.
The Paths for the players work for me, but the feats do not. They're souped up versions of already existing feats and in many cases should exist as feats for higher level characters. Mythic feats should affect Mythic abilities, not offer a slight improvement on an existing feat. It reminds me too much of the Incarnum feats from 3.5 (of which I possessed the same gripe), it seems surprisingly lazy considering how well structured the Paths are.
The spells are inspiring. The only issue I have is that I'd rather see a "Spell Secret" mechanic that would cost a feat to open up a spells true power to you as opposed to the Mythic requirements and the expenditure of a MP (mythic point).
Please understand, I want this to work, but as a GM I cannot in good conscious encourage bad play from my players. If the option for group rewards is established it will go a long ways towards easing most of my concerns. Thank you.
Did you even try to playtest this, before saying scrap everything maybe you should instead look at it with an open mind.
I don't see how this promotes selfish play at all, my playtest of this tonight went very well my players had a fun time and an enjoyable evening was had. (That is a WIN in my book)
My players had fun designing their characters and went into a lot of detail giving themselves a good background. Something up until now none of them thought to do.
I very much like where this is going and will definitely pick up MYthic when it comes out.
While I agree with some points, your condemnation of Mythic is a bit overdone.
Your primary complain seems to be with the Lesser Trials, which (given the current response) will likely see some change in the final product. You can influence this by going to the trouble of making playtesting reports that expose (or, perhaps, disprove) the numerous issues people have found with the rules. Paizo is open to comment, they just strongly prefer game reports to analysis.
On the Mythic Feats, I agree that many of them would be better as base feats. The Mythic skills feats would encourage normal, non-mythic people to take the +2/+2 feats in the first place. Mythic Weapon Finesse is a big jump from "no Dex to damage except Dervish Dance" to "dex to damage always," while Mythic Power Attack is a fairly minor boost. I found the mythic saves feats a bit odd, as they give you a substantial boost... when fighting non-mythic foes. Hopefully Wrath of the Righteous only puts the Mythic enemies as bosses, I guess. But again, if one wants to influence Paizo, one must post playtest reports to prove this.
I agree that many of the Lesser Trials encourage metagaming and forced behavior, while others are just luck or GM fiat. However, even if the final product does not reduce or eliminate their importance, it does not necessarily destroy the product. I plan to utterly ignore Lesser Trials (along with the number requirement of Greater Trials) and leave Mythic as a strictly GM-based system (rather than weird combo GM-chart thing). If you really have a problem but like idea of the rest of the book, I'd encourage you to do the same.
I actually deleted several paragraphs from my initial post because they come off as adversarial. I'm very glad I did.
Realmwalker: I'm glad your playtest went so well. My group is currently finishing up Carrion Crown, then going to a friends campaign for a few months and then back to my campaign world. Unless my other friend wants to scrap his adventures (which won't start until towards the end of the playtest) we will have no opportunity to perform a proper playtest.
That doesn't mean I can't have an opinion.
I'm a future thinker who looks for the right and wrong in things. I've participated in past playtests and have over 25 years of experience at role-playing games. This wasn't me shooting off at the hip. I see a vast amount of redundancies in Mythic's design compared to other, failed games. If you've ever played 4th edition you'll see some striking similarities between that and this.
I was hoping to initiate discussion and was curious if others held a similar belief in what is inherently wrong with Mythic. Of course it's fun now, it's new and shiny and everyone feels awesome. Many games start out this way, but few games retain it in the long haul.
Believe me, if I could dedicate the time to this that I and my group did when the APG was being playtested I would in a heartbeat. Sadly, I'm just concerned that something so glaring obvious to me is being overlooked by all the kids in the candy store.
I'm rather impressed that you managed to squeeze an editions-war comment in there.
You are more than welcome to your opinion, it is just snap judgements saying everything needs to be scrapped and you don't like when you have not given a chance to actually see how it works kind of works against the whole idea of us "playtesting" these rules. "armchair game designing" is not what is needed but actual "playtesting" seeing in game where the rules succeed or fail.
Just because you seem to think something is glaring obvious to "you" does not make it the rule for everyone else. That is why we playtest things, nothing like an actual game to find where things obviously fail.
Case in point during my playtest I built a rogue based around the Dex to damage debate, found out in game that did not have a major impact, how ever Surprise Strike was very powerful as I could use my Mythic Power 5/day ability to make an opponent flat-footed and bypass his DR. The added opportunity to get my sneak attack in with out having to need a flanking buddy definitely made more of a difference than being able to add an additional +2 to my damage on my attacks. Everyone at my tables agreed Surprise Strike > Weapon Finesse (Mythic), and that Weapon Finesse (Mythic) compared to most of the other combat option was far from over powered with in the Mythic rules set.
