Combat balance in mythic gameplay - Ongoing campaign coverage


Wrath of the Righteous

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Oh! At first I thought you meant you were quitting running the campaign! ^^;;

I have considered one other alternative to Mythic: the players regenerate Hero Points by one point per day (and can regain them through heroic deeds that didn't use Hero Points to perform)... and slowly increase the number of Hero Points available (perhaps one per tier).

And I'm going to indulge in a trial WotR campaign. Six NPCs (Bard, Cleric, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, and Sorcerer) with 25-point builds and base Hero Points. No Mythic. I want to see how viable they would be; initially beefing up encounters but eventually keeping it as-written as it grows more difficult. I'm curious as to how they'll do; I think I'll avoid using any Mythic even for the creatures outside of base abilities that are in the character write-ups. (Thus no Mythic Surge, Mythic spells, or the like.)

My suspicion is that they should do just fine up through Book 5.


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magnuskn wrote:

This and next week there won't be a new entry, due to work schedule.

Which won't be a problem in three weeks, since I quit. No, not (only) because of the schedule thing, but because of other reasons having to do with the companies desire to control their employees every move. :-/

Anyway, no WotR session for two weeks, which makes nobody happy.

Well thats a bummer on multiple levels. Hope everything works out in the long run.


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Thanks. :) So do I.

Silver Crusade

Well that was a nice read (and kinda depressing) :), finally up to date on your group. Mine hasn’t played in months and we currently try Splittermond (which has its own problems).


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Yeah, we will play again on Tuesday, so we'll see how it goes then. The party actually is low enough on resources that I am beginning to worry that the rest of the Ivory Sanctum may be a bit too much at this point.

Grand Lodge

Magnuskn, if you're up for some minor reshuffling of Xanthir and need to potentially make him a bigger threat, I'd recommend giving him legendary item for one of his other path abilities, and giving the item Undetectable. This confounded both of my groups to different degrees. And if your group doesn't have a cleric that can pull Invisibility purge off (or Xanthy has moved to be clear of it's area of effect...), he'll get a lot of mileage out of the ability.

I also had him drop the doom combo of black tentacles and vortex of teeth (3.5 spell that I uplifted just for him, and didn't let my players get ahold of mind you) to go along with the cloud kill.

And I actually had one of my players running Arueshalae for that fight (the paladin was off on his own little side quest for a bit, so his player ran a heavily redacted Arueshalae). She did okay just getting into the right position and putting the hurt on foes and picking off stragglers with her bow. The player was using her mythic power pretty regularly to sneak attack, so that helped. (I also swapped improved crit for precise shot...)


magnuskn, doesn't James Jacob's comment in the other thread change your mind about finishing this? OTOH you've done a lot of great work already.


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I am not stopping with this AP so far, I only had to put it on hiatus for two weeks, due to RL.

Speaking of that, I am off for the written examination for the foreign affairs department of Germany. Me and a thousand other people around Germany, so let's see if I do okay. I got the karmic advantage of it being my birthday, at least. :p


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@Magnus Good luck man.


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Good luck sir!


Viel Gluck!


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Thanks, you guys. It went... well, I guess. Aside from the knowledge test of laws (something I never touched before studying for this), I think I did passingly well on all other topics.

We'll see if it is enough to be in the 10% of the over 2000 people who took the test in all of Germany and advance to the oral exam.


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Session of July 22nd 2014:

Five players in attendance. Pretty standard session today, picking up from the two week hiatus. Basically two big fights, against a.) the colloxus demon, four blackfire adepts and two scions of Baphomet and b.) afterwards against a greater thanadaemon and its summoned elder styx water elemental. The two fights and prior exertions burned enough resources that the party had to rest one hour (via recuperation) to feel confident enough to advance to the final fight against Xanthir Vang. Since I was concerned that the party might not be up to the fight against Vang in their current state, I dropped some Nectar of the Gods (six vials in total, so one per character) on them. In my game, that stuff is a minor artifact, so I am not anxious that they can produce their own. Vang already had retrieved two doses for himself prior, so I can boost him a bit up if needed.

In any case, so far the line-up for the final fight of module four looks like this: In the corner of the good guys, all six party members plus Arueshalae; in the corner of the bad guys, Xanthir Vang, four blackfire adepts, one glabrezu, two advanced retrievers, two apocalypse locusts, one shadow demon. I am not sure if I should add even more to Vangs line-up, since he had an additional hour to get ready. In any case, this will be getting seriously complicated to run, although I am pretty sure that the deck is going to get cleared fast of some of the more minion-like opponents.

My main concern is to get Vangs defences up early in the fight, so that he has his mythic Globe of Invulnerability + his mythic Wall of Force up in round one. Otherwise, I fear that he'll get an angry barbarian to the face and that would seriously cramp his style for the rest of the encounter. After that, he should be free to do stuff at will until he runs out of minions + summons.

Grand Lodge

If he knows they're coming, he could throw a sacrificial summons right outside the door to report in to him when the heroes arrive. Alternatively, Invis (with Undetectable) going. Even if they can purge or something, he'll have a round or two of free and clear prep casting.

Good luck. This fight was an exciting one for both my groups (6 and 7 players).

Tentacles and vortex of teeth (or Cloudkill for a edition proper spell) put the tension levels at just the right place for me.


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Yeah, he already knew that they are coming, the party did not try to disguise their approach. ^^

I've determined that I'll keep the opposing force at its current level, with the additional summons Xanthir already will do per round, it is going to be incredibly complex, anyway. That's seven enemy types, plus Xanthir, plus Arueshalae to manage. oO


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Yeah, there is severe GM prep and time management as mythic combats advance. Seven enemies should be plenty for you. You can always use readied actions to have him cast one of those spells as PCs enter. By the time my PCs were this level I had casters start the fight with most or all of their spells in place as they can't afford to waste rounds while buffing.

Silver Crusade

Your setup for the fight could work, but without a look at the current abilties of your players it is kinda hard to say.

Have you already changed the spell selection of the blackfire adepts? As written their spell selection is rather weak.

Tactical acumen could be a very fitting buff for Xanthir Vang, since he could summon dozens of weak creatures to provide enhanced flanking bonuses to his minions.

If you have access to the old Dungeon magazines with the Age of Worms adventure path, there could be plenty of ideas, but I would personally cover the room with black tentacle spells (and cover them in Illusions).


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I am using the upgraded version of Xanthir provided by Thanurel. I've changed out some spells for the adepts, so that won't be a problem.

Flanking bonuses won't really help as much as you'd think and I am unwilling to have to deal with even more creature types in this combat and especially even higher creature numbers.

I am not concerned that this fight will be too easy, rather that it will be too complicated to finish in one session. It'll depend a lot on how quickly the party can clean out some of the different monsters. As for the difficulty, it's a combined CR of about 19, so it should be okay for a level 12, tier 4 party of six PC's.


You could let the PCs run Arueshalae to take some of the work off of you.


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It's definitely a possibility, but I'll have to choose one who can deal with two characters (or more, if some people show up late) at the same time.


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Session of July 29th 2014:

So, yeah. Should have gone with more crazy.

Five players in attendance. To start out the session, I cranked the internal clock a few minutes back and had Xanthir confront the party as a projected illusion (who gives a crap about "how does that work?"). My players really were not in the mood for some witty banter so we proceeded quickly to the actual encounter.

So, I wanted to use Thanurels version of Xanthir for this fight, but I noticed that the entire tactic of hiding behind a Mythic Wall of Force could not work in reality, since no spells could pass in and out of the WoF. So no summons from Xanthir and no spells. Hm. Scorpion was so kind to send me a version of Xanthir which he thought could do some decent damage and so I went with that. Problem is, that version did not have Mythic Globe of Invulnerability. And that is what broke Xanthirs neck.

The party was confronted by Xanthir Vang, four adepts, two Greater Apocalypse Locusts, one Glabrezu, one Shadow Demon and two Vang's Retrievers.

Combat started out with Xanthir dropping a Mythic Cloud Kill on the party and casting Greater Invisibility. The party began to act and the Glabrezu just imploded. The two Locusts blasted the Paladin and Sorcerer, whom both made their saves AND/OR were warded against fire and thus were not affected/made their save against the Accursed Brand ability. Then the cleric and the sorcerer got their turns and both Greater Dispel Magic'ed (both with a Surge) Xanthir, who was completely stripped of all buffs by that.

Meanwhile the Shadow Demon got into the fray, did absolutely piddly nothing with his pounce, the Retrievers got into it, one managed to miss with his eye beam the other hit the barbarian for about 60 points of acid, the adepts began to shoot empowered magic missiles, first at the cleric, then, when they noticed that he had spell resistance up, the barbarian. The ranger and samurai both got into position. Next round, Xanthir dropped Mythic Black Tentacles on the ranger, samurai, paladin and barbarian, re-cast Mirror Image and use his dimensional steps to hide behind a Retriever.

The barbarian wasn't even touched by the tentacles, tumbled between the two Retrievers, failed at that and they both fricking missed him (rolled a 3 on both attack rolls), thanks to the Haste and Blessing of Fervor on him. He used Great Cleave on Xanthir and thus got rid of all the new Mirror Images again.

The ranger and samurai both delayed on the sorcerer, who dispelled (again with a Surge) the Black Tentacles. The ranger then did a full attack on Xanthir, used Instant Enemy on him before that and that was that with poor Xanthir Vang.

I'll spare you guys the details on the mop-up after that, suffice to say that the barbarian ate tons of damage but was healed up enough by the cleric to survive.

So, yeah. That wasn't nearly as dangerous for the party as I thought it would be. I am getting quite frustrated at this point. Again. Not because I want to kill the party, but because so much of the AP is a waste of time. Basically, every combat.

So, I am thinking about a few possibilities.

1.) I clench my teeth together and work through the entire AP until its end. That would at least stand as a testament for new GM's on how this AP failed at providing any kind of challenge to players after a certain point (i.e. as soon as module three begins). I am quite loath to do this, because of obvious reasons by now.

2.) Go to the other extreme, skip every combat and just make the rest of the AP a narrative experience. Some other GM already did that (Seannoss, Aldarionn or someone else whose name I am forgetting right now). This has the advantage of skipping the tedious and useless combat part (because at this point I really could just handwave it), but I think it won't be too popular with my players, because they kind of dig their status as superpowered people. It also has the disadvantage of my next AP, which will be homebrewn, not being ready at this time.

3.) Somewhere in the middle. I find trash mobs (i.e. "non-boss monsters") to be incredible unnecessary at this point. They really eat just time and do nothing of note to the party. So, to not rob the players of the experience of playing high-level characters (one of the big selling points was "you get to play as level 20's late in the campaign!"), I might just skip the trash and only do boss fights. It will save time, but still gives me enough of it to prepare the next campaign.

I'll have to pass it by my group. The next two weeks they won't be there completely, though, since two of them are on vacation.

Anyway, Wrath combat is tedious at this point. It's a foregone conclusion who wins. Did really nobody at Paizo do the math on what happens if people take the very obvious feats / path abilities?


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It probably didn't matter, but like most spells Instant Enemy wouldn't work on Vang. There are too many ways around DR but Vang should have been fairly well defended.

This does drive home the point that my PCs weren't nearly this disruptive, or powerful and still would have cruised through this AP as printed.


Or talk to the group and see if there is some way to salvage Mythic - perhaps by not allowing Mythic re-Feats (and letting them choose other abilities instead) and disallowing certain Mythic spells that are overpowered.

But I doubt they'll go for that one.


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Ya, my talk with my PCs involved me telling them that we weren't continuing. This was after they had already talked me into continuing for an extra month or two.

Unfortunately for you it is very challenging to impossible to design an enemy that can take 6 PCs actions, nothing is designed to be able to do that. That's not even including mythic or higher levels, you're dealing with an entirely different kind of monster.


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Seannoss wrote:
It probably didn't matter, but like most spells Instant Enemy wouldn't work on Vang. There are too many ways around DR but Vang should have been fairly well defended.

Eh, even if it didn't (I am not sure if I'd support that, although on a purely RAW level you are probably right), she would have done something like 48 damage less and he would simply have been finished off by the next guy in the initiative. For a moment I thought about saying "piercing damage obviously can't work against a Worm That Walks", but then why would he have DR 15/-?

Seannoss wrote:

Ya, my talk with my PCs involved me telling them that we weren't continuing. This was after they had already talked me into continuing for an extra month or two.

Unfortunately for you it is very challenging to impossible to design an enemy that can take 6 PCs actions, nothing is designed to be able to do that. That's not even including mythic or higher levels, you're dealing with an entirely different kind of monster.

Oh, it would be "Boss + minions" for the third option. I am not so crazy as to do "Six against one boss" encounters, those would be beyond useless.

Grand Lodge

The "boss fight" approach for books 4-6 is what I'm considering as well. Narrating most of the story, but having them play out the 3-4 major encounters of each book, likely lumping multiple enemies together to make those few fights more tough and memorable.

The other idea I had was to continue through book 3 as normal, but create some plot device that strips the party of all their Mythic power. I'd level them up a little extra to compensate, but have them continue through at least books 4 and 5 without Mythic characters, using the fast-leveling suggestions in the forewords. And then, at the end of Ivory Labyrinth and the party reaching 20th level, give them back their Mythic tiers to head into the final confrontation against Khorramzedeh, Areelu and Deskari.

I'm not sure which path I'll be taking yet. Both sound appealing for various reasons.


Yeah, Mythic needs some serious nefs done to it before it's a viable system.

My group volunteered me to run Wrath because I have the most knowledge of Mythic and Pathfinder in general. One of the things they wanted to try, was playing a Paizo AP completely unmodified. So I told them, "Well, then we're doing 4 or 5 people, with 15-pt buy. You guys get to choose which of our 9 players aren't joining the game."

I mean, if I'm being volunteered to, essentially, be a living DVD player (kind of why I don't play PFS), then I'm not going to be handling the responsibility of telling friends, "You can't play in this game".

Anyway, when it does come time to play Wrath, I mean to go in with Mythic heavily house-ruled, hoping I can tone down some of the crazy that goes into it.


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Lol... whoops, I meant monster in a more descriptive term; as in you have a big mess with that many players and untested rules.

Have you ever considered something more math-y? Like with 5 players they all do 20% less damage and 40% less with all 6 there.


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At this point, I don't think my group is ready for a second (or is it third?) round of nerfs to the system. Doing a radical solution, likely option three, is most sure to not have them completely want to abandon the campaign. I'll have to talk to the players in the next weeks, until then it'll be business as usual.


Seems to me that an increase in hit points above any you have already made could give some longevity to the encounters.

A few simple gr. dispel magic counters waiting to prevent, at least in the number of rounds, the PC's from dispelling everything so fast would give extra actions to the bosses. Give them all double initiative also.

DR/- would seem more effective than DR/mythic.

Talk to your players, because if I was one of them I would want the AP to continue with mythic - even if that meant a partial re-build to change out the problematic parts.

Player numbers, as you've mentioned, giving so many actions is clearly making your job all the more difficult. I'm in a group of just 3 players without any full casters (Monk, Magus & Bard) and even with 25pt characters we're finding the encounter challenging - mainly due to no full casters or natural healer. But we're having a blast.

Perhaps the best way to use this AP is to limit it to 3 players and also limit the classes available.


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I couldn't imagine doing this AP without a dedicated healer or caster. Maybe the encounters would work as written then.

Types of DR don't really matter in this campaign as there are several ways to bypass any type of DR. That was fairly disappointing.

Scarab Sages

magnuskn: minor question, but are your players enjoying the battles? do they feel like things are a challenge? I often over-compensate myself as a GM when I think there isn't enough challenge, when from the PCs end they've been on the edge of their seat for hours.


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They enjoy the aspect of just smashing opponents into pieces, but they are not very much "on the edge of their seats", because they too have noticed how OP they are compared to their opponents.


seannoss wrote:

I couldn't imagine doing this AP without a dedicated healer or caster. Maybe the encounters would work as written then.

Types of DR don't really matter in this campaign as there are several ways to bypass any type of DR. That was fairly disappointing.

Our DM has given the scales some healing abilities.

The scales have 2 charges -
Pre mythic - 1 charge -swift action to heal self 1d8+5 or 2 charges to heal 1d8+5 to all allies within 20ft.
Post mythic - 1 charge plus 1 mythic point -swift action to heal 10 hit points per mythic tier or 2 charges plus 2 mythic points to heal 10 hit points in a 20ft.

Also we have a 3rd tier universal power available that grants 1 additional charge and boosts the healing to 10 points X (tier + 2). So at tier 3, if you take it, you would heal 50hp's per charge.
There isn't any way of regaining charges other than sleeping the night.

So far it's worked out pretty well, we've only had 1 death but that was res'ed via magic item.

Silver Crusade

I need some more time to commit some things to virtual paper, but I think, that changing the enemies is the solution here. Nerving the players, leaves a bitter taste.

Silver Crusade

Can you explain why please?

Seannoss wrote:

It probably didn't matter, but like most spells Instant Enemy wouldn't work on Vang. There are too many ways around DR but Vang should have been fairly well defended.

This does drive home the point that my PCs weren't nearly this disruptive, or powerful and still would have cruised through this AP as printed.

EDIT: oh, this:

Quote:
Worms that walk are immune to any physical spell or effect that targets a specific number of creatures

Although, is Instant Enemy considered physical in and of itself? Hmmm.


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I don't think Great Cleave works on Mirror Image.


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JFK68 wrote:
I don't think Great Cleave works on Mirror Image.

Not per RAW, since Paizo inexplicably decided to buff the best second level spell in the game and then, when people were justifiably upset and confused by that decision, clarify via FAQ that, yes, they wanted Mirror Image to be even more OP than it already was throughout 3.0 and 3.5.

I don't roll with that, hence (Great) Cleave/Whirlwind Attack work just fine to get rid of Mirror Images. Arcane casters are OP enough already and that way those otherwise almost useless feats have some value at high levels.


I wouldn't say those feats were anything like useless but I tend to agree that MI is somewhat OP for its level. Trouble is, too many classes depend on it to survive low level play.


magnuskn wrote:
JFK68 wrote:
I don't think Great Cleave works on Mirror Image.

Not per RAW, since Paizo inexplicably decided to buff the best second level spell in the game and then, when people were justifiably upset and confused by that decision, clarify via FAQ that, yes, they wanted Mirror Image to be even more OP than it already was throughout 3.0 and 3.5.

I don't roll with that, hence (Great) Cleave/Whirlwind Attack work just fine to get rid of Mirror Images. Arcane casters are OP enough already and that way those otherwise almost useless feats have some value at high levels.

Granted, I'm coming into this late, since I never really played 3/3.5 AD&D, but only Pathfinder, I'm going to say that they actually kind of weakened mirror image from 2E, since you can actually dispatch images without even rolling high enough to touch the actual individual. In 2E, if you didn't hit the AC of the real creature, you didn't touch a single image either. The PF mirror image spell says that if you come within 5 of hitting the target creature's AC, you've still dispelled an image. That only makes it easier to get through the spell, at least from my own personal history. Do players hate the spell? Oh yeah! When my monsters/villains use it, I hear a collective grinding of teeth around the table! I'm fine with that though, because it does give my enemies a little more longevity in combat, which makes things more exciting at the same time.

Naturally, magnuskn, I agree with all the talk about there being major issues with Mythic play. I do admit though that one has to be careful about assessing Mythic will supplying all the problems when our own house rules can oversimplify things for our players and make it so much easier on them, as well. Not to say that said villain above couldn't have been taken down just as easily by a magic-using member of your party perhaps, if Great Cleave hadn't worked to eliminate all those images. However, the fact that Great Cleave worked on a spell it shouldn't have via a house rule can't be used as justification that Mythic makes combat too easy. That's an unfair and misleading justification.

Truly enjoying this thread and the discussion taking place here. I believe that you're doing the community a service via the keeping of this log thread, though it sounds like that may be coming to a close soon, sadly. Keep up the good fight, sir!


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Sub-Creator wrote:
Granted, I'm coming into this late, since I never really played 3/3.5 AD&D, but only Pathfinder, I'm going to say that they actually kind of weakened mirror image from 2E, since you can actually dispatch images without even rolling high enough to touch the actual individual. In 2E, if you didn't hit the AC of the real creature, you didn't touch a single image either. The PF mirror image spell says that if you come within 5 of hitting the target creature's AC, you've still dispelled an image. That only makes it easier to get through the spell, at least from my own personal history. Do players hate the spell? Oh yeah! When my monsters/villains use it, I hear a collective grinding of teeth around the table! I'm fine with that though, because it does give my enemies a little more longevity in combat, which makes things more exciting at the same time.

This goes both ways, opponents can cleave through PC Mirror Images just fine. That the "-5 to AC still destroys a Mirror Image" thing makes it a bit easier to get rid of them individually is, quite honestly, not really nearly enough of a nerf to justify that you can't cleave them nor even target the images individually with magic missiles, which had always worked in the past.

Sub-Creator wrote:
Naturally, magnuskn, I agree with all the talk about there being major issues with Mythic play. I do admit though that one has to be careful about assessing Mythic will supplying all the problems when our own house rules can oversimplify things for our players and make it so much easier on them, as well. Not to say that said villain above couldn't have been taken down just as easily by a magic-using member of your party perhaps, if Great Cleave hadn't worked to eliminate all those images. However, the fact that Great Cleave worked on a spell it shouldn't have via a house rule can't be used as justification that Mythic makes combat too easy. That's an unfair and misleading justification.

It's one small aspect of the entire fight and was not used by me at all to justify that the mythic rules are badly developed. So I have no idea why you think that I did.


The best way round MI is dispel magic.


Or closing your eyes and fighting blind. One chance in two to hit instead of one in number of images.


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Session of August 06th 2014:

Four players in attendance, two on vacation.

Not really much to report in terms of gameplay coverage. The party de-looted, to the tune of something like 62k gold per character (and that is with the party keeping stuff like the Rod of Quicken Spell and the Instant Fortress) and went on a shopping spree, which significantly boosted some characters. It won't be much fun to have to adjust to another jump in character effectiveness, but at this point it really won't make that much difference anymore. The majority of their upgrades went into survivability, in terms of armor class and better saving throws.

I set up the next module, with Queen Galfrey contacting them and the party making ready to assault the Midnight Fane. I'll have to see how I can concentrate the encounters there best. I might have to redo the architecture of the Fane a bit to provide a larger combat area.

There was some other RP elements which relate to the characters personal stories and Arueshalae, but nothing of really much note. I planted seeds for a possible redemption arc for Nocticula, but that will depend on if the party follows up on it.

The players plan to take Horgus and Aravashniel into Alushynarra, so I'll have to update the two for next week. So, some stuff to do until then. :)


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Session of August 13th 2014:

This was more like it. Four players in attendance, two still on vacation.

Given how frustrating the big fight against Xanthir was, I am shortening the campaign a bit by concentrating battles into just a few bigger ones per module, instead of the usual drip method Paizo uses (which also is wholly inadecuate for the power level mythic functions at).
I am using Scorpions upgrades, as usual.

The party did some prep work and then teleported with Galfrey, Aravashniel and Horgus to the Midnight Fane. The iron doors of the entrance were closed when the party arrived. After the Sorcerer failed to open them with a Knock spell (since they were not closed by lock, but barred from inside) and peeked through the small slit in the middle, he saw two Goristro demons alerting the rest of the garrison. The martials broke open the door and the party engaged the Goristros.

All in all, it came down to a big brawl between three Goristro demons, Ursathella, Ibahaniel, the Deskari stone golem and the party. Things came pretty close for some members of the party, but in the end, they all pulled through. Notable things which happened were:

- The Sorcerer coming into his own in terms of damage, he was throwing mythic fireballs and magic missiles to great effect into the mix, empowering and maximising them to boot.
- Spell resistance of enemies took a big leap and suddenly the casters are struggling a bit to keep up.
- AC and HP also noticeably increased between what Scorpion wrote up at the end of module three and the start of module four.
- Since I didn't get any critical hits against the party with the crazy damage output some of the monsters had, nobody in the party died. If Ursathella had critted anyone, they would have been toast, to the tune of something like 480+ damage. I foresee some rocket tag coming up, although the Sorcerer is planning to use the mythic Deadless spell a lot to keep people alive.

After the combat, the party confronted Mutasafen, who negotiated an honorable surrender for himself with Queen Galfrey and agreed to be kept under custody in Nerosyan until the Worldwound is closed, after which he gets released into an abyssal realm of his choosing.

Minagho escaped by using her Dust of Disappearance. Since the cleric had True Sight up when "Yaniel" confronted the party, he saw through the deception immediately (and Mutasafen had warned the party of Minagho to boot), so that went nowhere for Minagho.

The real Yaniel was restored and is leaving with Galfrey. I had played with giving the Paladin a Sacred Avenger instead of a Holy Avenger, but I put it down to a dice roll (with even a Surge from the Paladin), which indicated that he just got the Holy Avenger.

All in all, a very positive experience this week. Let's hope the AP can keep up. Scorpions boosts really help a lot. :)

Two things which were not as positive were option paralysis on part of the players and it is taking a lot of time for them to calculate damage for their characters, since they have to take so much info into account now.


I'm just curious....why take Horgus? Galfrey I get, Aravashnial makes sense...but Horgus?

Also, thanks for this thread magnus, I'm dming this one and taking both your and scorpion's ideas to heart. My group is just on Book 2 but they are mythic now and I'd like to keep the game fun.


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Aside from him being one of the two NPC's who made an impression on the players, due to his personality, they think that he will be helpful in Alushynirra, due to his ability as a merchant. And, actually, he will, since his bonus is the one which stays useful throughout the entirety of their stay there. ^^

Silver Crusade

I could be wrong, but from your writeup, this last sessions seemed more rewarding for you as the GM, and the fact, that the deathless spell and breath of life like effects are an option, killing a character for a turn or two doesn't seem that bad.

Concerning combining fights, yeah I have come to the same conclusion, particularly since my players detest those easy fights. ^^


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

Yeah, having to worry that I'll TPK them by accident is much better than another frustrating evening of seeing monsters uselessly flail at them without a chance of winning.

I'll have to see if I can keep it up... Scorpion has done great work, but as I said in my report for this week, there are some other problems (option paralysis, even totaling damage dealt per hit) which are popping up now and of course the party will probably make many more jumps in power every time they level up or get another batch of money.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Ya, my players had issues with keeping their damage consistent too and I had to start a timer for some player's actions.

Good luck, sounds like you're keeping up with the curve so far. Although I find it humorous that between you and Scorpion that there is no medium ground and your PCs still take many brief dirt naps or die just to be saved by breath of life... which still isn't mythic.

And, not that it matters or it may be a house rule, but knock works on barred doors too.

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