Experience gain at higher levels / tiers


GM Feedback


I have only recently started running a mythic campaign. The story is my own creation so the playtesting hasn't really gotten too far yet. I love the concept for Mythic immensely, and look forward to throwing epic baddies at my PC's in a bid to murder their faces.

I have however been looking ahead and have discovered one issue that could be a major problem at higher levels/tiers: the XP curve is ridiculous.

(Author's note: Now I'm going to throw some numbers out, so feel free to double check and see if I go wrong or if I have missed something)

If I read correctly, as a GM we are supposed to award the players XP in accordance of the CR of the encounters, factoring in the adjustment for mythic tiers. The only problem is that when the players get into higher levels they can advance from level to level not in 2-3 ADVENTURES, but in 2-3 ENCOUNTERS. For instance

Spoiler:
A party of with APL 21(14th level/7 tiers) has an encounter of average difficulty (CR 21). The XP reward from this encounter is 409,600. With a party of 5, that's 81,920 XP per player. On slow progression a player hits 14th level at 665,000 and hits 15th at 955,000, a difference of 290,000. That means that they can hit the next level after 4 AVERAGE encounters on SLOW progression. An epic encounter (CR 24) would grant 1,228,800 XP (245,760 per player) and level them up almost instantly.

Mind you, this is only at character level 14 and is the recommended '1 tier per two levels' guideline in mind. I also factored it on a slow progression, as recommended. In other words, what I'm saying is that as far as I can tell this method will never work. There is no way that I can see that could fit that many greater trials in between level gains to stay on the recommended tier progression.

That is why I have devised a method that I intend to try out for my campaign. I plan on giving my players XP based not on the CR of the encounter, but instead I will subtract their mythic tier from the CR of the encounters they face. For example, my party is still only APL 3 (level 2/1 tier) so I am designing the final encounters to my adventures at CR 6. However, I will only be rewarding them the XP of a CR 5 fight. But to compensate for the lack of XP, I will be rewarding the players with the LOOT of a CR 6 encounter.

I think this particular method has several advantages. The first obvious one is that there is no longer any worry about the party leveling too quickly and outpacing their mythic tier progression. Secondly, by awarding loot based on the higher CR I can direct where I want my party to go with relative ease. Yes, sure, you guys can go into the cave. You can even find monsters there that are a challenge, but the loot is going to suck because I don't want you there.

Finally, I feel I should note I am running this campaign on a moderate XP progression. My justification for this is that I have done the math to see how many encounters it takes for a party to level (factoring in encounters at APL-1, APL and APL +1, 2 and 3) during moderate progression and I like the numbers (I can post these somewhere if anyone wants to see them). The party will be getting a God-awful amount of loot (versus a slow campaign), but the fact that my primary villain has access to as much money as he needs (through a fantastic character bio, might I add) will allow me to easily match them in terms of gear. At least for fights that are key to the story.

At any rate, those are my current thoughts on the system, from a GM perspective. Please feel free to comment or bring things I missed to my attention.


Hopefully, Jason can provide an update on this but I can say that they are most definitely aware of this issue. It was brought up near the beginning of the playtest and Jason mentioned then that they were working on an adjustment system or solution of some kind.

The method listed in the playtest document was just thrown in for the playtest. The method you've suggested (subtracting the Mythic Tier from the CR) seems the be the primary "go-to" for most people trying out the Mythic rules at the moment. I know it's the one I use.

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