Mythic Adventures - Update 12 / 21 / 12


Mythic Adventures Playtest General Discussion

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Ssalarn: Right, that's what I was thinking too. Spell-completion items I'd be inclined to rule as actually casting a spell as per the following rule:

PRD: Combat — Activate Magic Item wrote:
Spell Completion Items: Activating a spell completion item is the equivalent of casting a spell. ...

Just wondering if I'm reading too much into that for purposes of addressing The Forgotten's question about Amazing Initiative.

Digital Products Assistant

Removed some back and forth posts. Please stay on topic and revisit the messageboard rules.


Ssalarn wrote:
Laithoron wrote:

Counterspelling requires a readied action and a readying is a standard action. So far so good.

However, depending on HOW you counterspell, that could potentially run afoul of the 1 spell per round rule. Casting dispel magic or another spell yourself in the same round that you already cast would probably be problematic, but a ring of counterspells requires no action to activate.

As for activating a magic item, as I read it, spell-completion items would fall under the same rules as spellcasting while using wands, staves, etc would be a legal use of the extra standard action.

Can anyone else provide rule analysis to support or refute this interpretation?

Everything you're saying seems backed by the rules for Spell Trigger. The only place I see a possible issue is Spell Completion items like scrolls.

Now that I think about it, classes which have standard action abilities which are NOT spells (such as witch curses, alchemist extracts, spell-like abilities...) become more powerful because they aren't hindered by the one spell/round limit.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Matrix Dragon wrote:
***Now that I think about it, classes which have standard action abilities which are NOT spells (such as witch curses, alchemist extracts, spell-like abilities...) become more powerful because they aren't hindered by the one spell/round limit.

Agreed.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Only suggestion I can make is to actually playtest it - see which of the following happens:

1) Swings combat vastly in favour of non-casters
2) Improves non-casters to be more in line with casters
3) Maintains the status quo

I will soon be moving my own playtest group up to Tier 3 (from Tier 1), and intend to run as per the 12/21/12 revision is written. If time permits (the holiday season has seriously screwed up my testing schedule) I'll be looking at tweaks involving higher numbers of Mythic Points and allowing casters to take advantage of Amazing Initiative.

After tonight's 4 Balor romp at CR 24, that is.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Chemlak wrote:

Only suggestion I can make is to actually playtest it - see which of the following happens:

1) Swings combat vastly in favour of non-casters
2) Improves non-casters to be more in line with casters
3) Maintains the status quo

I will soon be moving my own playtest group up to Tier 3 (from Tier 1), and intend to run as per the 12/21/12 revision is written. If time permits (the holiday season has seriously screwed up my testing schedule) I'll be looking at tweaks involving higher numbers of Mythic Points and allowing casters to take advantage of Amazing Initiative.

After tonight's 4 Balor romp at CR 24, that is.

Let us know how it goes for you. The changes instituted so far seem to maintain the status quo (at least in our group so far), though Mythic in general seems to give martial characters a little bit more to do initially, while forcing classes who normally have regularly used swift actions to make some choices (or MoMS monk and bard had the most frustrating time of it initially).

It seems like the biggest issues people have expressed have been in playing high-level, low-tier games.


I haven't been able to test it yet, but I can see one positive effect of the new Amazing Initiative: players will have more chances to use 'fun' abilities that take standard actions, but were considered inferior to either a full-round attack or spell. Bloodline abilities, feats like cleave and vital strike, magical items... suddenly all these standard action abilities that players ignored could become a lot more viable since players will be able to use them by spending a mythic point.

The only class I'm worried about is the witch. Weren't they already considered extremely powerful just because their hexes are so good? Now they will be able to use two hexes a round (or a hex and a spell) at the cost of a mythic point.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Matrix Dragon wrote:

I haven't been able to test it yet, but I can see one positive effect of the new Amazing Initiative: players will have more chances to use 'fun' abilities that take standard actions, but were considered inferior to either a full-round attack or spell. Bloodline abilities, feats like cleave and vital strike, magical items... suddenly all these standard action abilities that players ignored could become a lot more viable since players will be able to use them by spending a mythic point.

The only class I'm worried about is the witch. Weren't they already considered extremely powerful just because their hexes are so good? Now they will be able to use two hexes a round (or a hex and a spell) at the cost of a mythic point.

Most witch hexes that can be used offensively are still limited by their ability to affect a given target only once per day, so I think it shouldn't give them too much upswing over the other classes, probably no more than they would have had with the prior version of Amazing Initiative.


Ewww, I just thought of something frightening. One of my players is running two a two-weapon using Mobile Fighter. At level 20 a mobile fighter can make a full round attack as a standard action. By spending a mythic point for amazing initiative, he could walk up to someone and use his two standard actions to make two full round attacks. That's theoretically 16 attacks in a single round since he's doing two-weapon fighting.

Since we're using hero points, he could up that to three full round attacks in a single round (before or after moving). I may have to make a house-rule saying you can't get extra actions from mythic power and hero points in the same round.

This is just a corner case when it comes to full round attacks... but it is an example of how some classes benefit from an extra standard action much more than others. For games where the GM doesn't give mythic tiers until level 20, mobile fighter might become the go-to fighter archetype since the character would essentially get ten 'levels' of double full round attacks (when spending mythic points).

Perhaps it would be better to change amazing initiative back to something like the old version, but increase its mythic point cost so that it isn't flat-out better than every other use of mythic power.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

Matrix Dragon wrote:

Ewww, I just thought of something frightening. One of my players is running two a two-weapon using Mobile Fighter. At level 20 a mobile fighter can make a full round attack as a standard action. By spending a mythic point for amazing initiative, he could walk up to someone and use his two standard actions to make two full round attacks. That's theoretically 16 attacks in a single round since he's doing two-weapon fighting.

Since we're using hero points, he could up that to three full round attacks in a single round (before or after moving). I may have to make a house-rule saying you can't get extra actions from mythic power and hero points in the same round.

***

You've got to look at the relative powers. It's easy to say "OMG, he gets 16 attacks!", but you have to remember, this is a character who's level 20 plus Mythic Tiers. A THF of the same level could use his Amazing Initiative action to move up to the enemy, Full Attack, and then use his Hero Point to make a Greater Vital Strike, Greater Power Attack, Devastating Blow with a bunch of Crit feats and the same or less investment as the TWF, with a better chance to hit overall dealing roughly the same damage. Obviously, Mythic spellcasters will exceed even this.


Ssalarn wrote:
Matrix Dragon wrote:

Ewww, I just thought of something frightening. One of my players is running two a two-weapon using Mobile Fighter. At level 20 a mobile fighter can make a full round attack as a standard action. By spending a mythic point for amazing initiative, he could walk up to someone and use his two standard actions to make two full round attacks. That's theoretically 16 attacks in a single round since he's doing two-weapon fighting.

Since we're using hero points, he could up that to three full round attacks in a single round (before or after moving). I may have to make a house-rule saying you can't get extra actions from mythic power and hero points in the same round.

***

You've got to look at the relative powers. It's easy to say "OMG, he gets 16 attacks!", but you have to remember, this is a character who's level 20 plus Mythic Tiers. A THF of the same level could use his Amazing Initiative action to move up to the enemy, Full Attack, and then use his Hero Point to make a Greater Vital Strike, Greater Power Attack, Devastating Blow with a bunch of Crit feats and the same or less investment as the TWF, with a better chance to hit overall dealing roughly the same damage. Obviously, Mythic spellcasters will exceed even this.

The Lvl 20 THF also makes an automatic critical hit. At 19 he can take a standard action to attack and give himself a Critical threat as long as he hits, at 20, with his chosen weapon, all Critical threats are auto-confirmed. So that Lvl 20 Mythic THF is probably going to be dishing out more damage than just about any character in a single round. Hell, someone did the math once and said a properly built Lvl 20 THF could drop the Tarrasque with his single critical hit because he did over 500 points of damage.


Tels wrote:
Ssalarn wrote:
Matrix Dragon wrote:

Ewww, I just thought of something frightening. One of my players is running two a two-weapon using Mobile Fighter. At level 20 a mobile fighter can make a full round attack as a standard action. By spending a mythic point for amazing initiative, he could walk up to someone and use his two standard actions to make two full round attacks. That's theoretically 16 attacks in a single round since he's doing two-weapon fighting.

Since we're using hero points, he could up that to three full round attacks in a single round (before or after moving). I may have to make a house-rule saying you can't get extra actions from mythic power and hero points in the same round.

***

You've got to look at the relative powers. It's easy to say "OMG, he gets 16 attacks!", but you have to remember, this is a character who's level 20 plus Mythic Tiers. A THF of the same level could use his Amazing Initiative action to move up to the enemy, Full Attack, and then use his Hero Point to make a Greater Vital Strike, Greater Power Attack, Devastating Blow with a bunch of Crit feats and the same or less investment as the TWF, with a better chance to hit overall dealing roughly the same damage. Obviously, Mythic spellcasters will exceed even this.
The Lvl 20 THF also makes an automatic critical hit. At 19 he can take a standard action to attack and give himself a Critical threat as long as he hits, at 20, with his chosen weapon, all Critical threats are auto-confirmed. So that Lvl 20 Mythic THF is probably going to be dishing out more damage than just about any character in a single round. Hell, someone did the math once and said a properly built Lvl 20 THF could drop the Tarrasque with his single critical hit because he did over 500 points of damage.

Hmm, I would need to calculate it out, but I would think that a mythic Two-Weapon using mobile fighter would do even more damage than that once he maxes out Precision. The two-weapon fighter with maxed precision and all the appropriate feats is likely to get multiple crits every round. That *should* do more damage than a Two-Handed fighter can do with a single devastating strike.

In any case though, you have proven to me that there are other builds that can make very good use of that standard action. ;)


Personaly, I didn't like the update. I'm using the original version in my game and intend to keep it.

Trying to tone down a mythic game just seems wrong.

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I am content with most the changes, except I am a little disappointed in seeing Mythic Power now slightly favoring SAD characters over MAD. A Wizard will have more uses than a Monk the grand majority of the time. I can see where there's concern over character cranking their Mythic uses into the stratosphere- you want it to be something they have to worry about choosing, not just something that they have a billion of after a few levels. (Just my guess as to why the change, anyway.)

Now Monks and the like are going to be shorter on abilities and how far they can spread their techniques, more so than Wizards or Barbarians anyway. But sometimes that's just the burden MAD characters have to carry.

As for the Amazing Initiative change, I'll miss the second full turn (I liked how it definitively separated Mythic character from Non, right on the Initiative board), but I totally respect the call as well.

---Edited to remove a response to someone who just posted. Scrolled up and saw Chris' post about back-and-forth conversations.---


Ulmaxes wrote:

I am content with most the changes, except I am a little disappointed in seeing Mythic Power now slightly favoring SAD characters over MAD. A Wizard will have more uses than a Monk the grand majority of the time. I can see where there's concern over character cranking their Mythic uses into the stratosphere- you want it to be something they have to worry about choosing, not just something that they have a billion of after a few levels. (Just my guess as to why the change, anyway.)

Now Monks and the like are going to be shorter on abilities and how far they can spread their techniques, more so than Wizards or Barbarians anyway. But sometimes that's just the burden MAD characters have to carry.

As for the Amazing Initiative change, I'll miss the second full turn (I liked how it definitively separated Mythic character from Non, right on the Initiative board), but I totally respect the call as well.

---Edited to remove a response to someone who just posted. Scrolled up and saw Chris' post about back-and-forth conversations.---

I'm not sure how since Mythic Points are completely divorced from Ability SCores now so everyone gets the same amount (3+Mythic tier).

Scarab Sages

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Odraude wrote:


I'm not sure how since Mythic Points are completely divorced from Ability SCores now so everyone gets the same amount (3+Mythic tier).

Yeah sorry, I completely misunderstood that. I was looking at the wrong thread at one point. /sigh if I could delete posts at this point I would. Everyone feel free to point and laugh, but preferably just ignore my post.


I agree with gbonehead about the Amazing Initiative update's flaws. I didn't like the old version and I don't like this one.

Peter/Kain's formula has born fruit in my playtests at 1st, 14th, and 21st level.


There's a lot there to read, so sorry if this was answered in one of the other pages, but if flaws are now optional is there going to be a benefit to having one or is it just an optional rule that DM's can use to balance the power added by mythic?


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

So far, just an optional rule. I'd like to see a benefit side to the equation.


TheRedwolf wrote:
There's a lot there to read, so sorry if this was answered in one of the other pages, but if flaws are now optional is there going to be a benefit to having one or is it just an optional rule that DM's can use to balance the power added by mythic?

I think the idea is that the GM is the one who gets to pick the weaknesses now (if he wants to) so players won't simply pick the weaknesses they are the least likely to encounter.


So, the wording on the universal path ability Mythic Spells needs a small edit. Currently it prevents any divine caster from taking this path ability.

Currently:

Mythic Spells:
Mythic Spells (Ex): You gain mythic spells like an archmage, using your tier as your archmage tier to determine the spells gained. You cannot select this path ability if you are an archmage or hierophant.

I would suggest changing the first sentence as follows:

Mythic Spells (Ex): You gain mythic spells like an archmage or heirophant, using your tier as your archmage or heirophant tier to determine the spells gained.

This allows classes with divine spell casting, such as the ranger, paladin and inquisitor to get access to a few of the Divine Mythic spells.


Jason Bulmahn wrote:


As for the Amazing Initiative change, and how it relates to spellcasters, we are actually doing a lot to give martial focus characters a lot more options in their path abilities to balance out the cool things they can do. Of course, you will have to wait on that info. I may try and post up some pieces in early January.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

Any word on that?


Another question regarding Amazing Initiative: If you've used a full-round action (like a full-attack), could you still use amazing initiative to get an extra standard action? Full-rounds are described as, well, taking the full round.


Cheapy wrote:
Another question regarding Amazing Initiative: If you've used a full-round action (like a full-attack), could you still use amazing initiative to get an extra standard action? Full-rounds are described as, well, taking the full round.

yes, spending the mythic point for this is a non action that grants extra standard action for your turn. There are already several archtypes that turn full round actions in to standard action Moblity is example of this it allows you to move and wirlwind attack (Wirlwind attack is already a full round action.) Also current setup allow to take that standard action when you want. So a fighter can trip (standard action)then full attack his prone target. The way it was setup before this change you where allowed two full round action in one round but at two different points in the rounds with a mega high bonus(makeing feat improved initive not even worth takening). which was too good to ever not do. It was depowerd to just a extra standard action on your turn and small bonus. this make it still useful and compareable to other mythic ablities, gets rid of the confusion and clunk that went with, add a extra turn at another point in round.


Ravingdork wrote:
Ssalarn wrote:
One question though, could a martial character use his extra standard action to charge? He does meet the limited to only one standard action requirement, but it's still in the same round he took a full set of turns...
I'm hoping the answer to that is going to be "no." Having an ADDITIONAL BONUS action is not the same as being LIMITED IN actions.

I believe the answer to be no as well, as charging is listed as a special full round action.

Shadow Lodge

One of the least fun outcomes of any action in Pathfinder is "nothing happens". A lot of spells, poisons, and effects are highly disappointing for both the GM and players because of this trend. If the target saves... nothing changes. I don't expect a rewrite of something this systemic, but I'm not thrilled about abilities being added to the game that basically increase the probability of the "nothing happens" result. In my opinion Mythic Rules should go the other way. Spells and poison and such should always have a diminished or temporary effect even when successfully saved against. A Mythic spell simply shouldn't be possible to avoid entirely. You can maybe mitigate the damage, but not avoid it outright. This way every action is more likely to count and you have fewer rounds of frustration where a player or NPC tried to do something potentially dramatic to get a fizzle.


Idea for amazing initiative:
Amazing Initiative: The Mythic character adds a +2 bonus per mythic tier to all initiative checks. Also, the character may spend one use of mythic power to take a standard action as an immediate action anytime (once per round). At 8th tier the character becomes able to execute a full round action instead of a standard.

-This allows those epic last minute actions: "I throw myself in front of the attack to save him".

Mythic Power: I'd rather use the ability modifier+L instead of the flat 3+L.

Flaws: The flaws could be taken to increase the number of mythic power uses available or to take an extra mythic feat.

Unrelated: I think there should be a way of displaying the mythic power, like an aura, sparks, rumbling or other sign that could make the mythic character noted and used to compare power between two mythics.


Dual Path (Mythic)
You excel in many areas, allowing you to select path abilities from two mythic paths.
Prerequisite: 1st mythic tier.
Benefit: Select a mythic path, other than the path you selected at your moment of ascension (see page 3).
You gain the 1st level ability of that path (archmage arcana, champion strike, divine surge, guardian’s call, marshal’s order, or trickster attack). Whenever you gain a path ability, you can select from list of abilities presented for both paths, as well as from the list of universal path abilities.

If a Hierophant took this Feat at first level and gained Archmage Arcana as his Dual Path.

Would he be capable of casting Arcane Spells?

Liberty's Edge

Symrustar wrote:

Dual Path (Mythic)

You excel in many areas, allowing you to select path abilities from two mythic paths.
Prerequisite: 1st mythic tier.
Benefit: Select a mythic path, other than the path you selected at your moment of ascension (see page 3).
You gain the 1st level ability of that path (archmage arcana, champion strike, divine surge, guardian’s call, marshal’s order, or trickster attack). Whenever you gain a path ability, you can select from list of abilities presented for both paths, as well as from the list of universal path abilities.

If a Hierophant took this Feat at first level and gained Archmage Arcana as his Dual Path.

Would he be capable of casting Arcane Spells?

No arcane spell slots...

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