Wrath of the Righteous - A Failed AP


Wrath of the Righteous

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

What were the good ideas? There were some but not so many to keep going forward.


James Jacobs wrote:
If I did this again, I'd be in a better place to develop a more well-balanced and well-made AP...

I'll be honest, I'm not sure if the APs can be balanced at all with the current bestiary monsters. In our game the GM took the book 5 boss (a CR 26+ monster), and give him 10 real mythic tiers and over 1000 hit points. We two rounded him, and the boss even used a wish to get himself back to full health after we almost killed him in the first round.

This is also after the GM heavily nerfed our characters by restricting some of the better mythic powers and feats... without those nerfs we would have one rounded this higher than CR 30 monster.

The problem is that the developers added too much offense to a system that already has rocket tag problems at high levels. I knew that this was going to be an issue with mythic as soon as I saw Mythic Power Attack and Mythic Meteor Swarm in the playtest. Short of setting limitations where the players can't get mythic feats and can't get offensive powers I don't know how you could write another high level mythic adventure path with the current power levels set in the Bestiary. At least, while expecting it to be balanced that is.

Of course, if you do manage to do it I will be very impressed ;)


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

Yep, the devs vastly underestimated the damage output PC's have at the high (meaning: after 3rd ^^) tiers. Now, the problem here already is that they have published a lot of mythic creatures and redoing all their hitpoints would be awkward. I wonder if the writers are willing to go to that length.

Then again, I've said since the alpha of the CRB that at high levels hitpoint totals for opponents (and PC's, to be perfectly honest) are way too low compared to the damage output of a normal party.

magnuskn wrote:

Have hitpoints and AC been adjusted upwards for the higher CR monsters?

A problem I generally encountered in my campaigns was that at higher levels, players were able to put out several hundreds of points of damage in a round, making fights even against a dragon generally last only about two to three rounds.

That's from June 2009. ^^

Dark Archive

Just curious....

Can this Adventure Path be run without mythic tiers?
How much work would be involved in adjusting the encounters?
Could the monsters continue to use their mythic tiers, while keeping mythic tiers unavailable to the PCs?


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Yes, it can and has.

Not too much; really, if you just don't bother using the active Mythic abilities then you just have a somewhat-tougher monster.

And yes, monsters can use Mythic against PCs. It'll be a tougher fight. I say this having used a Mythic half-fiend gargoyle against my non-Mythic group and it proved quite the challenge.


If your party optimizes a great deal, you can probably just remove the mythic and go. (possibly adding hero points, but even that might not be needed).

If they're a more casual group, you may have to throw additional buffs at them, since the last few adventures do ramp up a great deal (just not enough to match the insanity that is high level/high tier mythic).

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
magnuskn wrote:

Yep, the devs vastly underestimated the damage output PC's have at the high (meaning: after 3rd ^^) tiers. Now, the problem here already is that they have published a lot of mythic creatures and redoing all their hitpoints would be awkward. I wonder if the writers are willing to go to that length.

Then again, I've said since the alpha of the CRB that at high levels hitpoint totals for opponents (and PC's, to be perfectly honest) are way too low compared to the damage output of a normal party.

magnuskn wrote:

Have hitpoints and AC been adjusted upwards for the higher CR monsters?

A problem I generally encountered in my campaigns was that at higher levels, players were able to put out several hundreds of points of damage in a round, making fights even against a dragon generally last only about two to three rounds.

That's from June 2009. ^^

Yeah, you were running your games for 6 turbo optimizers since 2009 and you were curious why HP totals eyeballed at 4 non-optimized PCs are too low. Shocker!


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Hit points for both the enemies and PCs are a joke when it comes to mythic output. We can all cheat for the NPCs and hand wave their HPs but the character's HPs are written down. There are many foes that can drop a fully healed player in one round or one attack.

If mythic is supposed to be fantasy super heroes then each rank or tier should grant an extra 50-100 hp.


Seannoss wrote:

Hit points for both the enemies and PCs are a joke when it comes to mythic output. We can all cheat for the NPCs and hand wave their HPs but the character's HPs are written down. There are many foes that can drop a fully healed player in one round or one attack.

If mythic is supposed to be fantasy super heroes then each rank or tier should grant an extra 50-100 hp.

That . . . does nothing, except increase the math. If my players are gaining 100 additional hit points every tier, and my baddies are increasing 100 hit point with every rank, I'm just blowing up the math department, but doing nothing to fix the problem. As far as gameplay is concerned, you're increasing the fights by--what?--a round? Half a round? Still not superhero material here.

I always thought this hilarious when I saw friends playing FF games, too. "Look how much cooler this is!" they'd tell me. "My tabletop character has 16 hp at level 3, but my FF character has 500!"

My response: "And how much do the enemy hit you for in FF? 80-100 points of damage a shot? How much different is that than your tabletop character getting hit for 3-4 points a shot? None, except you've got more math to work out."

Tossing hit points around means nothing unless you cut back on damage output. Problem is that doing this makes it feel less mythic in the eyes of many. The system is rather broken, of that I absolutely agree, but throwing out hit points arbitrarily won't fix that.

Well, except it'll make it even easier for PCs to walk through the game, because now they don't have to worry about getting hurt hardly at all while taking down the big bads in a round or less.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Combat in the game is based around to hit bonuses, AC and the ratio between damage and HP primarily. To fix combat the relations between those should be changed. I consider altering HP to be the easiest fix and basically fixing that math and adding a round or two to combats I think is needed.

Your quick idea of cutting down on damage is pretty much the same thing. And the idea behind mythic does seem to be having the heroes walk through the game.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Sub-Creator wrote:
That . . . does nothing, except increase the math. If my players are gaining 100 additional hit points every tier, and my baddies are increasing 100 hit point with every rank, I'm just blowing up the math department, but doing nothing to fix the problem. As far as gameplay is concerned, you're increasing the fights by--what?--a round? Half a round? Still not superhero material here.

Yeah, well. Paizo increased the math mostly one-sidedly on the part of damage output, while neglecting to adjust monster AND PC durability. I mean, what are we supposed to do? We either increase HP across the board or we nerf the insane damage output. Otherwise the mythic endgame (which begins as soon as tier 3 rolls in) consists of "who wins initiative wins the fight".

As I said, I already pointed out that normal high-level combat is skewed towards rocket tag in 2009 and I've repeatedly pointed that out during the last five years. I got an unusual group make-up (six experienced players, of which two build mechanically good characters and the rest mostly takes standard stuff, nothing crazy), but since I am buffing encounters all along the way and later in the campaign start combining three or four encounters into a single one, I think the point still stands that opponents die too quickly in normal high-level play.

Nobody seems to have bothered to do the math for the mythic damage vs. durability and now everybody who runs this AP or a new mythic game will have to deal with it. Hell, I'd love to know if James and the others will adjust existing mythic opponents any time in the future. As those monsters are now, mythic is a sad joke. On them.


Our DM is using the crit/fumble cards - no option. At first I was like really? But now I can see this has been an excellent idea. It stops the crazy crit builds dealing crazy damage both sides of the screen.


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We just did two marathon sessions to finish Book 2.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: While mythic is beginning to show cracks, the major weaknesses of Book 2 were overall design, rather than mythic itself.

DETAILS:
- As I mentioned upthread, the major mythic issues are the fighter's critical hits (Tangent101's made his suggestion many times now, and some people are using the critical hit deck) and the casters' pool of additional spells allowing them to uber-buff the fighter. There were three fights (Konneshka, Jestak, Janeamine) that were 1-rounded because of mythic crits. Add Foe Biter and other crit enhancements and it really seems like you HAVE to house-rule crits and/or get rid of all the mythic crit abilities to make this campaign playable. On the other hand, Eustoyriax took quite a beating, including several crits, and still lasted a few rounds.

The other weaknesses are more fundamental:

- Too many NPCs during the army march. With 6 "assigned" NPCs (Irabeth, Anevia, Aravashnial, Aron, Sosiel, and Nurah) and a GMNPC, I had no chance to roleplay any of them to any degree. So by the time the party caught the traitor in their midst, they had no connection to that NPC at all and just shipped the traitor back to the queen in a saddlebag.

- We out-and-out discarded the army combats. I think most groups do. The notion, "Oh, you're mythic heroes now, but we're reducing your fights to single die rolls," does not appeal. And what happens if the army loses? Sure, there are rules for the party infiltrating Citadel Drezen anyway, but even if they erect the Sword of Valor there are still hundreds of enemy troops outside. Saying, "Oh, they slaughtered your army of paladins but the Sword of Valor makes them all run away" is a bit far-fetched, to say the least.

- The combat balance downstairs is out-and-out horrible. The PCs are supposed to be level 9, mythic tier 2 when they head down. So you're expecting some CR 9 encounters, right? And then CR 10 and CR 11 encounters towards the end? A CR7 encounter against spectres? A CR 4 encounter against vampire spawn? A CR 6 encounter against babaus? A CR 6 encounter against salamanders? Notice that the best of those is party CR-2, and if the party has played its cards right it KNOWS THEY'RE THERE and will be Death Warded. They're curb stomps even without mythic. The few CR 9 creatures all have combat tactics of spending 5 or more rounds buffing themselves while their minions die, so by the time they come out it's a single CR 9 creature vs. a 9th-level party. Again, nothing but a speed bump.

The *only* CR-appropriate encounter in the entire downstairs is Eustoyriax. He's got a lot of nifty abilities. But the party's got a wand of Daylight, and Protection from Evil should be on every PC at all times by this point. Without his magic jar ability or fighting in Deeper Darkness, his offensive capabilities are virtually nonexistent.
Yeah, he lasted a good long time, flying around, trying to use Telekinesis to get people in the pit (he got the bird bard, hooray), and otherwise being a pain, but even his end was obviously inevitable when I looked at his entire sheet and said, "Wow. Just wow. I can't hurt the fighter at all. 'scuse me while he runs away and tries to pick on someone else..."

So the problem with the downstairs wasn't mythic. It was throwing CR 6 encounters at a CR 9 party. We had a guest watching the game, and he asked, "Do ANY encounters in this campaign last more than a round?"

Not when they're horrifically underpowered for even a basic party.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I could easily see their being too many NPCs, luckily my PCs left the first batch at home went they went to Drezen.

Two more things which you said and I have before; ditch the mass combat and use crit decks or some other method to handle crits.

I have mentioned this before, but as my PCs went up in level I had most casters start pre-buffed. Enemies can't sit around and buff themselves if a fight is only going to last 1-3 rounds.

I also thought that Eustoyriax was a long and boring fight as the PCs were told who and what he was. I looked at it too late but I'd suggest that others check out demon's revisited on feats to buff shadow demons.

And get used to more under powered fights, book 3 is filled with them.


I was about to post a bit about that...

The party is 9th level with 3 mythic tiers. So even if you ignore mythic, you should expect about half a dozen CR 9 fights a day, with CR 10 and CR 11 fights for challenges.

For CR under 8, you don't bother getting out the dice.

The first 12 listed encounters in Book 3? 9, 9, 10, 5, 11, 3, 3, 3, 10, 7, 8, 9.

I would expect a non-mythic group to manage that entire set in a single dungeon crawl; maybe two if the CR 11 critter got the drop on them.

The fights are so spread out that these wouldn't be particularly challenging to non-mythic PCs. This says again that it's not so much mythic at the moment, it's "why is a half page of my Book 3 taken up by a CR 3 stat block?"


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Ya, all of those puzzled me too. Some can be beefed up or expanded to become an encounter area, but as printed?? I'm not sure why they were included.

Also, so you're prepared : this part is the biggest jump in PC power that I experienced.

Silver Crusade

NobodysHome wrote:

We just did two marathon sessions to finish Book 2.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: While mythic is beginning to show cracks, the major weaknesses of Book 2 were overall design, rather than mythic itself.

DETAILS:
- As I mentioned upthread, the major mythic issues are the fighter's critical hits (Tangent101's made his suggestion many times now, and some people are using the critical hit deck) and the casters' pool of additional spells allowing them to uber-buff the fighter. There were three fights (Konneshka, Jestak, Janeamine) that were 1-rounded because of mythic crits. Add Foe Biter and other crit enhancements and it really seems like you HAVE to house-rule crits and/or get rid of all the mythic crit abilities to make this campaign playable. On the other hand, Eustoyriax took quite a beating, including several crits, and still lasted a few rounds.

The other weaknesses are more fundamental:

- Too many NPCs during the army march. With 6 "assigned" NPCs (Irabeth, Anevia, Aravashnial, Aron, Sosiel, and Nurah) and a GMNPC, I had no chance to roleplay any of them to any degree. So by the time the party caught the traitor in their midst, they had no connection to that NPC at all and just shipped the traitor back to the queen in a saddlebag.

- We out-and-out discarded the army combats. I think most groups do. The notion, "Oh, you're mythic heroes now, but we're reducing your fights to single die rolls," does not appeal. And what happens if the army loses? Sure, there are rules for the party infiltrating Citadel Drezen anyway, but even if they erect the Sword of Valor there are still hundreds of enemy troops outside. Saying, "Oh, they slaughtered your army of paladins but the Sword of Valor makes them all run away" is a bit far-fetched, to say the least.

- The combat balance downstairs is out-and-out horrible. The PCs are supposed to be level 9, mythic tier 2 when they head down. So you're expecting some CR 9 encounters, right? And then CR 10 and CR 11 encounters towards the end? A CR7 encounter against...

You make some very valid points, I consider those low level encounters a complete waste of time.


While I have little to offer regarding the mythic discussion - my own Mythic Kingmaker game is so stirred up in homebrew that it doesn't really serve one way or another as good evidence toward design flaws - this debate has convinced me that in my upcoming Savage Tide game I'll probably be ditching a great number of encounters that aren't really meant as direct challenges to the group, and just mainly focus on RP encounters, which could go many different ways, and "boss fights" where the PCs actually fight opponents who are challenging.


I wanted to do a comparison between the APs I've played through, so here we go:

Rise of the Runelords: Character level 7. First 12 encounters:
7, 5 (5@1), 7, 4 (2@2), 8, 7, 5 (2@3), 6, 5 (3@2), 5, 8, 3
Average = 5.83 = Character level - 1.17

Carrion Crown: Character level 7. First 12 encounters:
7 (4@3), 8, 7 (3@4), 7 (2@5), 8, 7, 7 (2@5), 7, 9, 6 (4@2), 7 (3@4), 8
Average = 7.33 = Character level + 0.33

Wrath of the Righteous: Character level 9. First 12 encounters:
11 (2@9), 10, 11, 5 (2@3), 7 (4@3), 5 (2@3), 11, 9, 11, 10, 9, 10
Average = 9.08 = Character level + 0.08

So if you ignore mythic tiers, the average encounter level does indeed fall within "normal" for an AP.

But there are three mythic tiers lying around! Even at half a level apiece, we go from 9 to 10.5 and we're at character level - 1.42, the "easiest" of the APs. (I started Crimson Throne, but the ELs were D&D 3.5 so I felt it unfair).

In short, because I love to do math and to repeat myself, both the Drezden dungeons and the first few sections of Demon's Heresy are under-CR'ed for even a normal AP, much less a mythic one.

So anyone hesitating to beef up encounters (as I have been) should just "do the math" and add those advanced templates and max HP...


Yeah, I just finished an encounter in drezen dungeon by the cellblocks.
To challence my party of 7, I had to throw at them the following:

- 3 advanced spectres with the bonuses for being spawn in a desecrated area.
- 6 advanced babaus who summoned another 2 advanced babaus on the first round before teleporting behind the party and cut off their retreat.
- 10 "cairn" (advanced) vampire spawn who fight with longsword and slam, the longsword also channeling their energy drain, with bonuses for being spawn in a desecrated area as well. They entered the fray at round 2, after benefitting from a bless spell, when the spectres already moved behind enemy lines thanks to their incorporeality.
- since the party went to face chorussina early and left the cellblocks for a couple days later, I added the dead crusader as a 10th level vampire monk under Theruk Nul's control. He got the usual bonuses for desecrated ground, his equipment as an 10th level NPC and the benefits of potions of mage armor and heroism. He entered the fray at round 2 with a stunning fist that got the party cleric and also drained him of 2 levels.
- Theruk Nul himself, fully buffed up thanks to a hidden spectre who told him when the party was approaching. He was also advanced to a cleric 9 / assassin 3, with bull's strength, eagle's splendor, owl's wisdom, greater magic weapon, magic vestment, shield of faith, spell resitance and true seeing. And he spent the first 3 rounds to cast bless on himself and all the cairn vampire spawn, divine power and righteous might. It downed the party psion in one hit and has been quite a threat until the end.

The whole corridor was cast in magical deeper darkness and the ambush happened when the party was still unsure on how to proceed and was only partially buffed, with death ward running on just one character.
The party lost a total of 25 levels to the vampires and spectres but they cleared the area in 8 harsh rounds to prevent Theruk Nul from calling in reinforcements with a Sending spell, which he was actually going to do if left on his own for another day and some Divinations about the fate of Staunton and Chorussina.

Now the party is about to face Eustoyriax, advanced with 3 levels in the Shadowdancer prestige class, buffed with shadow mage armor and a ghost touch silken armor of improved shadow and featuring a couple more mythic abilities including the ability to dispel a protection from evil while trying to possess a host and inflicting strength damage with his incorporeal attacks just like a shadow, with 12 summoned shadows (in desecrated ground) and his greater shadow companion Maranse (what remains of his soul, buffed with desecrated ground goodies), armed with a ghost touch rapier that is also poisoned with a particularly powerful version of shadow essence (as if it was 3 doses of poison).
Eustoyriax will also sport the dimensional assault line of feats, which will be very nice in tandem with his hide in plain sight ability within utter darkness.

Grand Lodge

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There are some spoilers in here, so players stay away...

The exploration part of book 3 was weak, no doubt. I was able to work in a lot of character stuff and NPC interactions though. The low CR fights I just narrated through, but some of the random encounters were pretty tough (the cultist one was surprisingly challenging for one of my groups, which was nice). Pacing and guiding the exploration is important for the exploration part was another thing I found. I didn't really mind that the personal mythic trials were kinda easy, I tried to emphasis the wider, or personal, implications. There was a bit much of "look how cool ultimate campaign is everyone! Don't you want to pick it up??" in the inclusion of exploration. I didn't dislike it, it gave me a chance to seed some key items, and let the players play their characters, not the underlying doom-math, a bit more. That would be my suggestion for how to use it. It's a chance to maybe have the NPC's interact a bit more. Hogrus becoming a decent guy. The Riftwarden working with any Riftwarden Orphans to explore their legacy. Irabeth settling into her roll as leader of the city. Work on the redemption of NPC's, if that's there (Nurah is SO problamatic to one of my groups, all but one of the players want to kill her SSOOOOO bad!) Of course, I did the normal beefing up for those encounters that I felt warranted it (extra HP, advanced template, other templates, banked actions, & whatever else seemed fun/interesting).

Hell, I completely forgot about most of the raids from enemy forces, so I just narrated that as background stuff.

That's my suggestion for what to do with it. Figure out in the encounters in the broader scheme of things. Or, make them speed bumps to show how totally awesome the players are. STOMPY STOMPY!! Then I hit them with something mean to remind them that I can always Summon Bigger Fish on them... :)

Bigger spoiler than what might be above:
And the module really picked up for both my groups when they went to save the succubus. Gave them more direction after playing around in the sandbox. The paladin and the sorcerer still SSSOOOOOO wants to kill her.


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Awesome advice, Sprain Ogre!

Yeah, I did a huge setup for her at the cell in Book 2. Since we didn't have a "Chance Encounter" PC I had BOTH the "Exposed to Awfulness" and "Riftwarden Orphan" PCs react to the cell. The CN bard got nailed by a Forbiddance just trying to approach.

So now I have a wonderful dynamic where the fighter is just, "We have to SAVE her!" The sorceress is just, "She's responsible for my parents' death. Let her die!" The bard is an awesome, "I hate Desna!"
And the cleric is, "La la la! Iomedae told me last night that she likes my hair up instead of down. What do you think?"

Awesome funness!


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Just a follow-up since my writeup isn't going to come out for at least a month and I think some people on this thread might be interested:

Demon's Heresy Story Arc:

First and foremost, Arushelae's story resonates with me; I *love* stories of rescue and redemption. As I've said elsewhere, Myriana's tale was my single favorite thread in Rise of the Runelords, and I even integrated random encounters and Svevenka into that overall story arc. And that's for a throwaway, non-integral side quest!

So it's no surprise that I consider Arushelae the single most-motivating aspect of Books 2 and 3. Imagine my absolute disappointment that if PCs don't have Chance Encounter, they learn virtually nothing about her and just get a random telepathic call out of the blue that says, "SAVE me!"

This Would Not Do.

Alteration #1: I added a DC 28 Will save to even look at the wall with any kind of arcane or divine sight (for example, Detect Magic) without being stunned for 1d4 rounds. Any caster can feel the overwhelming presence of magic, and a DC 15 Knowledge: Religion check confirms that a god or goddess took action here and affected the Material Plane. NOT a common event, and this is now a holy site for that god/goddess.
As I result, I annihilated all dungeon effects (the whispers, spell suppression, and Unhallow) in the room and made it a safe resting spot. All CG PCs got Fast Healing 2, not just followers of Desna.
It had no effect whatsoever on my group, as the one CG character was already healed, they didn't rest there, and their good-aligned buffs had already been cast topside, but it made the place feel far, far, FAR more like a place a goddess had personally touched.

Alteration #2: I have to admit, sometimes I'm a jerk GM. I hate "me too" PCs who let others jump in and make the saves/take the damage/what-have-you and then when they hear there's a benefit, run in and say, "Me too! I'm doing it too!"
I am absolutely -NOT- accusing NoPrey's player of doing this. He's stayed wonderfully in character throughout, and is absolutely awesome comedy relief. But I have to admit, when his CN tengu bard ran into the room after hearing just how insanely holy and good-aligned it was, I really felt I needed to do *something*. So I hit him with a 12d6 Forbiddance and made him make the DC 28 Will save, which he conveniently failed.
And I have to admit, my favorite part of the entire gaming day was all the other party members stepping over the bleeding unconscious bard to study the wall. The player got a wee bit indignant, so my GMNPC cleric finally healed him after a few rounds. We're bad sometimes. :P

Alteration #3: Exposed to Awfulness. If you read Book 3, the poor Exposed to Awfulness PC gets short shrift. I felt that was another major shortcoming of Book 3. "Everyone gets a cool back story except the Exposed to Awfulness. He just finds out he isn't alone."
I felt this wasn't enough, so touching the wall and making a DC 20 Will save, he had a flashback of lying on his back in the blistering sun in the Worldwound, with a green-haired elf kneeling over him, putting her fingernails into his side (exactly where his scars are) and putting something into him that made his entire body burn with agony.
As he was blacking out, an arrow trailing a silver stream of light and stars struck the elf in the neck, exploding into light. She pulled her hand from his body and used it to pull the arrow from her neck. Black ichor oozed out. Her eyes narrowed in hatred. "Arushelae."
Then he blacked out...

Alteration #4: RiftWarden Orphan. With a DC 20 Will save (unfortunately the PC didn't make it) she sees a flashback of the senior Riftwarden speaking to her parents. "If she exists, she changes everything we know about demons and demonology. You MUST find her. You MUST save her and bring her to safety here! Good luck!"
So yeah, the RiftWarden Orphan's parents' secret mission will have been to find and save Arushelae. Fits in MUCH better with the overall story arc, and makes the orphan both hate Arushelae for getting her parents killed, and feel duty-bound to save her and complete her parents' work. Should be some awesome RP there!

Anyway, this should probably be in the book-specific GM thread, but I'm just throwing it out here because this is an active, popular thread.

Grand Lodge

I like alteration #4. Wish I'd have thought of it. Might still thread that into one of my groups narrative (if you don't mind the blatant theft!).

One of my groups had some VERY strong reaction in character. The players think it's an awesome story being told, but the characters don't see it the same way. It has made for some wonderfully intense games. Can't wait to see how it all feeds into the opening of book 5...


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Oh, steal away. "If you don't want people to steal your ideas, don't post 'em on the internet!"


I ran a mythic campaign, homebrew not wrath, but ran into a lot of the same problems as the OP, anything that could survive the PCs for a round could usually kill the PCs.

I resolved this problem by making the Advanced template mandatory for everything. Gave toughness as a free feat to everything, and then doubling to trippling the HP of every NPC.. 4x for boss type fights.

The PCs were still powerful but things actually had a chance to fight them at this point.


The simplest and easiest solution to limit the buffs is simply to consider that all magical buffs are the same type, so they don't stack !!


Would this AP work better as written (with mythic) but with only 3 PCs? (normally play with 5, but thinking maybe this would be a good AP for the weeks where some people can't make it)


Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I've been floating some ideas around in my head the last few days in regards to dealing with mythic and the insane output.

This first thing is part of making the PCs feel mythic. After they start gaining ranks in mythic they should be able to kill non mythic opponents simply by hitting them. I realize there is a feat that would let you do this. But, I am making it part of being mythic.

Think about it. If Adrian Peterson (NFL running back for those who may not know) goes back and plays in a high school game, there is no way any of them would be able to stop him. In a NFL game they can stop him. Mythic vs non mythic.

Now. Concerning mythic opponents. I would look at their stat block and see what their hit dice and bonuses would be at max. Then I would either triple or quadruple that number.

Next, every mythic opponent would have the ability to utilize a feature of a Guardian path ability. Shrug It Off. Spend a mythic point to negate a crit. In that same vein, the opponent can spend a mythic point to negate the PCs ability to bypass spell resistance and immunity.

These fights are supposed to be mythic. It's not mythic if only one side can spend points to obliterate the other side. Think about this. A usual adventuring group is 4 characters. Against 1 BBEG. If everyone in the fight has 10 mythic points, that is 40 vs 10. You're daggone right the bad guy should be able to negate some attacks from the PCs. Just by spending mythic points. No swift or immediate action necessary.

For those that may have trouble trying to imagine what a mythic fight looks like, I am going to post links to some YouTube videos depicting such. They are all Superman cartoon fights. 3 vs Doomsday. 1 vs Darkseid. 1 vs Mongul.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wcpO317Sq8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnF9Nacj-as

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwU0QkcrNVQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8VPOP7huew

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n1DGFpWRKc

Now you tell me just how many mythic points were spent during these fights.

I am sure I left out a point or two. But, this should give you an idea of how I will be running my Wrath campaign later this year.


I see a lot of stuff in here about increasing hit points, hit dice, etc... but why not introduce an entirely new mechanic altogether? If you gave mythic creatures a percentage based DR (for example, DR -/50%) that applied to all incoming damage before applying resistances, regular DR, etc, then you've addressed the need for more hit points, made DR and Resistance actually important again, and it's all behind the scenes, so the players still get to be dealing epic amounts of damage.

Thoughts from others?


I don't see the point in doing that. That accomplishes the same thing as increasing HP: enemies can take more hits. The difference is this is more complicated.

Grand Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Math is hard.

-Skeld

Liberty's Edge

So far I'm still not seeing the AP as a failed one. The only negative is that it should have been one of the few times that the npcs were optimized by the Paizo devs. Otherwise everything I hear as a complaint to me is a bonus. I expect the PCs to be do a lot of damage. It's a aP with Mythic levels. Why would anyone not expect the PCs to do more. More I read this section the more I think DMs thought that Mythic play would be the same as levels 1-20. Just that the DCs and math would be a little higher. I'm expecting a cleric in this AP to feed a army of 400+ on his own. After all what sounds worthy of myth and legend. Joe Average the cleric feeding his buddies. Or the lone Cleric say of Desna who feed an army.

I think Dms need to rethink exactly what they want players to do in a AP. If as a DM your still expecting magic and everything else to be like it's in the core than I don't think the AP is for you. If as a Dm your thinking beyond the core than I suggest running the AP.I know I'm being blunt. Yet to be honest I don't think people understand what it means to be a Mythic character imo.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I wanted an AP to be able to challenge my players, not me explaining to them how they easily cruised through any conflict. Of course, the PCs are supposed to win but there should be challenges, they should feel like that they could have failed. I don't see the point of making a story where the heroes easily succeed.

And, btw, I don't think that there's a way for a mythic cleric to feed an army of 400... but that would be mythic and cool.


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Seannoss wrote:
And, btw, I don't think that there's a way for a mythic cleric to feed an army of 400... but that would be mythic and cool.

He(?)'s referring to my post above where my 6/1 cleric was using all her mythic surges to cast Create Food and Water (now illegal under proposed errata) so she got:

3 CL 6 casts = 3x3x6 = Food for 54
5 CL 8 casts = 5x3x8 = Food for 120
===================================
She personally fed 174

Then Sosiel joined in and fed another 54, so the two clerics were feeding 228. Then someone talking about how cool mythic was doubled it to 400. And that's the figure that's showing up...

EDIT: And when you really think about it, isn't that what "myth" is? She fed 224 with the help of a second cleric. As the tale goes forward, the second cleric conveniently vanishes, the number doubles, and suddenly she's single-handedly feeding 400. I personally find the omissions and exaggerations delightful, because that's what "mythic" is all about...


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I don't think that spell has a mythic version. If it did I'd give a small bonus to those who ate it and have it augmented so you could feed an army with one casting.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
memorax wrote:
So far I'm still not seeing the AP as a failed one. The only negative is that it should have been one of the few times that the npcs were optimized by the Paizo devs.

There are maybe 2-3 opponents in each AP which could be considered optimized. Those are normally the encounters people still talk about years later on. The rest is pretty much always extremely doable by everybody.

And, no, the problem is not that the opponents were not optimized. The main problem is that the developers assumption of how durable mythic monsters are is completely divorced from the reality of what player characters really do dish out in damage. You can have characters who will one-round a demon lord of CR 29 without even crunching numbers too much. Players who really build their characters to be optimized can probably one-shot Deskari and Baphomet at the respective levels that they encounter them.

memorax wrote:
I think Dms need to rethink exactly what they want players to do in a AP. If as a DM your still expecting magic and everything else to be like it's in the core than I don't think the AP is for you. If as a Dm your thinking beyond the core than I suggest running the AP.I know I'm being blunt. Yet to be honest I don't think people understand what it means to be a Mythic character imo.

I think that you haven'd understood the main complaint people had in this thread. It is not that we don't want characters to do more. But then the opposition still needs to be scary, so that the game does not become a one-sided curbstomp for every combat. Paizo either neglected bringing the opposition up to the level they needed to be or they never even recognized the problem until after the AP and Mythic Adventures were published and people began to complain. Although I have been given to understand by people who did the playtest that they did complain but apparently were ignored.


Seannoss wrote:
I don't think that spell has a mythic version. If it did I'd give a small bonus to those who ate it and have it augmented so you could feed an army with one casting.

It's not a mythic version. It's the Hierophant path Inspired Spell -- use a mythic surge to cast any spell available to you at your CL + 2 without using up a spell slot.

Inspired Spell (Su): You can expend one use of mythic power to cast any one divine spell, treating your caster level as 2 levels higher. This spell must be on your divine spell list (or your domain or mystery spell list) and must be of a spell level that you can cast using that divine spellcasting class. If you are a spontaneous spellcaster, you don't need to have the spell prepared, nor does it need to be on your list of spells known. Using this ability does not expend a prepared spell or available spell slot. You can apply any metamagic feats you know to this spell, but its total spell slot level must be a slot level you can normally cast.


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i will say one of the ways that Wrath has failed to me is the sense of being The Underdog.
is there even a party that DOUBTED whether they could accomplish the task at hand?

Liberty's Edge

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I get that the Paizo devs don't expect every party to be optimized so write their regular APs accordingly. A extremely short sighted view imo as I have yet to see a group where minimal optimization does not happen. To approach a Mythic AP with the same design perspective and principles was asking for the AP to fail imo.

So while I do think to a certain extent a few dms don't understand how Mythic works. I do agree with you Magnuskn. As you are correct on both points. Why the devs thought that would be a good idea is beyond me. Granted their is to be some customization on the party of dms to make a AP to work. Yet I can see if I run the AP that it will require a lot more work than usual. Can the devs explain to me the fear of optimizing a AP.

Then again it seems if the devs had a fixed idea playtest or no whatever complaints get ignored. First the touch AC issue with Gunslingers now the power level of Mythic players. What's the point then of having playtests if by and large most of the feedback gets ignored.

captain yesterday wrote:

i will say one of the ways that Wrath has failed to me is the sense of being The Underdog.

is there even a party that DOUBTED whether they could accomplish the task at hand?

To be honest it's a issue with all their APs imo. My group is not a party than min-maxes or optimizes that much beyond one person. Until I started altering the npcs to be themselves tougher and optimized they kept going through the enemies. I used tactics and ran the opposition properly. So it's not a issue with me. It's like how Rise of the Runelords is a turkey shot for any Gunslinger. Non-optimzed or optimized. There is a spellcasting BBEG in the AP that has no crowd control spells. Even though the AP is written where the players go from point a to fight the bbeg in point b.


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memorax wrote:
I get that the Paizo devs don't expect every party to be optimized so write their regular APs accordingly. A extremely short sighted view imo as I have yet to see a group where minimal optimization does not happen.

Pick me! pick me! pick me! my wife and kids have yet to cast a buff spell, my wife has a witch with a high charisma and 10 dex, 12 con. my daughter has a Flaming Katana but insists on clawing everyone's eyes out (she is a catfolk with claws) in the other campaign she has a straight up Ranger with 11 wisdom and int 19 (she is an elf, we roll, no point buy) for healing i have a Dwarven Oracle (and with the Stargazer Archetype no less!)

so nope, we do not optimize at all


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Agreed.

Some people actually role play...


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False equivalence. Optimization =/= inability to roleplay. Let's not go back down that rabbit hole.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
memorax wrote:
Then again it seems if the devs had a fixed idea playtest or no whatever complaints get ignored. First the touch AC issue with Gunslingers now the power level of Mythic players. What's the point then of having playtests if by and large most of the feedback gets ignored.

That's a damned good question. We often get "we hear you!" statements from the developers during those playtests, but then they still ignore the criticism. And one thing which bugs me to no end, they never explain their design philosophy, so that we can make a logical connection as to why certain products turn out the way that they do. Well, James does for AP's in terms of story and lore, but he is not as really involved in the crunch part of the game.


my daughter is brilliant at math, it hasn't kept her from using her claws instead of the magic Katana, she is also a great roleplayer (as are all kids) i'm also really good at math (building walls, and various other stoneworks takes alot of math) so is my wife (our son is 3 so he's working on it)
certainly a grasp of math helps to learn the system (and really the math is pretty easy) but it takes an eye for detail to exploit the holes in the game (which can also be pretty easy to find, especially in Mythic Adventures)

and yes i know i'm on borrowed time, as soon as they master the rules for themselves and really read the spells rather then go on the opposite of my recommendations i'm probably screwed:)

math makes the world go 'round

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