Wrath of the Righteous - A Failed AP


Wrath of the Righteous

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Just thought I would post an update here. I've been DMing Wrath of the Rigteous for some time now and we made it through book 3 and partway into book 4. The campaign started out great, with cool challenges, fun NPC's and a relatively well balanced set of encounters.

Once my players became Mythic though, everything went to hell. Power creep quickly outstripped the NPC's and basically everything came down to me asking the Wizard what he did (his initiative bonus started at +17 and only got higher) then scrapping the combat because his first action usually prevented the enemy from acting and the rest of the party did so much damage that they never got a change to retaliate.

I started using Sc8rpi8on's updated stat blocks in book 2 and this helped for a while, though my players began to feel that I was sniping them when I would knock one of them out of a fight with a well coordinated attack. By the time we got into book 3 though, the combat went back the other direction even with the updated stat blocks. Nothing lasted long enough to even act in combat, so there wasn't much point.

At that point I made the decision to completely scrap combat rules and just let players roleplay their way through everything. It was an interesting experiment but without a structured system it devolved into me describing combatants and my players telling me exactly how they demolished them before they could even act. The moment I tried to narrate a challenging fight they told me how they would completely stomp it without ever breaking a sweat.

I got tired of it, and last night I made the decision to fold the campaign and chock it up to a failed AP. I verbally told them how the AP concluded and next week we will begin Mummy's Mask with a different DM.

I'm extremely disappointed. The Mythic rules took a compelling story about Good VS Evil and turned it into an absurd game of rocket tag. The average party will walk through 80% of the stuff in this AP without batting an eye, and the enemies that do challenge the PC's will absolutely murder them. I may try and run this AP again in the future but I will certainly scrap the Mythic element from it. I like the story, but I just cannot stand the Mythic rules.


I think most of it was just not mythic but the game gives you more boons than you know what to do with. Stat bumps, artifacts, i think the game was designed around high wealth as well.


Ocule wrote:
I think most of it was just not mythic but the game gives you more boons than you know what to do with. Stat bumps, artifacts, i think the game was designed around high wealth as well.

No, it was the Mythic Rules. The high WBL and the massive number of boons and artifacts certainly contributed to it, but they were nowhere near as bad as the Mythic Rules themselves.

It's a bad system, poorly playtested and broken beyond belief. It's too easy for even novice players to break the game with those rules, let alone veterans of 3.x


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I agree, although my buffed encounters could challenge my PCs. I just don't find one shot kills very much fun for both sides.

I also folded the campaign about 3/4 of the way through book 4. I withheld the ending in case I try it again, but without mythic rules.


Seannoss wrote:

I agree, although my buffed encounters could challenge my PCs. I just don't find one shot kills very much fun for both sides.

I also folded the campaign about 3/4 of the way through book 4. I withheld the ending in case I try it again, but without mythic rules.

That's what I was running into. Anything that could survive the PC's for more than a round or two could kill a PC in one round, so my players constantly complained. Either encounters were too easy and died before they got to act, or they were too hard and I had to obviously pull punches to avoid constant player death. Even as it was I still ended up killing two of my players with poorly timed critical hits during full round attacks. On the other side of the coin, my players can do math. I can't just add a pile of HP's to every enemy or they will know I'm just artificially dragging out combat which is no fun for anyone.

We never got to the fight against Baphomet, but my players all joked about how they were going to kill him if he showed himself, and I was seriously considering proving just how wrong they were. Instead I decided to just pack it up and call it a failure. Oh well.


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I really think the main issue is that Paizo treats character level as affected by mythic tiers as just adding 1/2 of their mythic tiers to effective level, when really from what I've found each tier really is like gaining a whole new level.

The AP itself is based on the mythic tier = to 1/2 character level equivalent that's why it suffers.

In my homebrew game I treat each mythic tier as being equal to a character level, and determine what CR would challenge them to what degree considering that.

I also find mythic rules can be great ways to create interesting variants of monsters for the PCs to have to deal with even in games where the PCs aren't mythic, but it's best to treat MR as each being roughly equal to a 1 point boost in CR with them.

Aside from that issue, I think mythic rules are tons of fun, and great conceptually, but I wouldn't run the AP as is. However I might take elements from it here and there at some point and use them (personally I never straight up run APs, just not my cup of tea, however I do own some of the PDFs for this one).


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This is somewhat discouraging to read as a new DM who has been greatly enjoying the first book of WotR. My PCs just hit 3rd level and haven't yet become mythic, so i wonder what changes if any i should consider before they ascend. i know that i'll always end up finding a need to tweak things as i go, but i'd rather not give them something awesome and then nerf it if i can simply avoid giving them something overpowered in the first place.

i don't want to scrap Mythic entirely, as my players and i are all looking forward to it, but i wonder if a middle ground would work. Any thoughts on whether progressing the PCs along the mythic path at half pace would be a good solution? (i know we wouldn't get through all 10 tiers that way.)


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OK, if I run this I'll know not to run it in Pathfinder! Seems like a good candidate for 1e AD&D...


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Aldarionn wrote:


We never got to the fight against Baphomet, but my players all joked about how they were going to kill him if he showed himself, and I was seriously considering proving just how wrong they were. Instead I decided to just pack it up and call it a failure. Oh well.

If you use the book baphomet he is easily one rounded by any fighter.

Puny gods, indeed.

Oh, be ready for the paizo crew to come in here and call you a bad DM, because the rules are perfect, same with the ap, only a bad dm would have problems with mythic gameplay


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I started to slow things down but only after tier 4 or 5, I realized things a bit too slowly. I would also consider the slow track for xp.

I also nerfed or removed what I consider broken feats such as power attack and vital strike. And put a limitation on fleet charge, the mythic stat bumps and some of the mythic abilities from tiers. I think the biggest power jump is for the melee types who got really good mythic feats and could make better use of extra actions.

Go through the book and see what looks too over the top for you, your group and the game you want to run. My players agreed with and worked with me for all of these changes.


Mrs. H. I think the Mythic stuff can be a lot of fun, so I wouldn't eliminate it personally.

However you might want to consider a few changes.
One possibility is just to have the players gain tiers more slowly if you think they are becoming too powerful for the encounters they are going up against. The other is to do what I do and treat mythic ranks or tiers as each roughly equal to one character level and adjust encounters accordingly... however with a AP probably just easiest to adjust how fast they gain tiers slightly if they prove overpowered, and maybe occasionally to give a monster slightly more HP if you think they are very likely to just one shot it otherwise.

I also run playtest combats in my games every once in a while (especially for new characters, but even for existing characters sometimes doing out of continuity playtest combats can be good) to see where they are at power level wise, and to allow for them to get a better feel for how their characters handle, and so I can get a good idea of where they are at power level wise.


I like mythic, but I admit that I have to wonder if the solution to getting mythic to work properly is just to ban mythic feats in general. There really wasn't any reason why chracters needed those kinds of numerical buffs unless you really want them to become absurdly powerful, lol. And let's face it: the mythic feats are almost all just about numbers.


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I think what I dislike most about the Mythic Adventure rules is that they are basically a set of rules without a good audience.

Novice players are going to build bad characters that don't use any kind of broken combination of abilities, and as a result most Mythic enemies of any appreciable level will kill them. Badly. On the other hand even a mildly experienced group is going to put together a party of characters capable of curb stomping anything they come across with very few exceptions. Those exceptions will cause a TPK.

There's no middle ground with Mythic. There's no happy medium for anyone. The numbers are too big on both sides and someone ends up dead way too fast which is not fun for anyone.

In my particular case I ended up with a Conjuration Wizard that had an initiative bonus that was usually 15+ points higher than the enemies and access to every spell in the game. He never had to worry about Spell Resistance (if he ever cast anything that allowed it) due to Mythic Spell Penetration and Eldritch Breach, and since he had ranks in all of the pertinent Knowledge skills he was able to find exactly what spell would ruin any given encounter.

He had all of the strengths of a Wizard with none of the weaknesses. The Cleric did the same thing. Between these two characters, every enemy ended up stunned, staggered, blind, weaponless or otherwise incapacitated long enough for the Paladin and whichever character my 4th was playing to demolish them. Anything with a weapon was neutered with a Persistent Grease with an enormous save, most Demons were blinded with Holy Smite, and most anything else had a Celestial Ankylosaurus summoned on them via Speedy Summons, sometimes two or three. Rime Cones of Cold were also very popular. Anything that was able to pass their saves or shake off the status effects (like the Woundworm) caused mass chaos because he caught them in a tight space and could easily full round anyone in the party but the Paladin.

The ability to have access to every spell in the game takes all of the strategy out of playing any kind of spellcaster. It makes them all the same. That one ability was probably responsible for 80% of our problems. The rest was due to all of the massive damage stacking feats that melee characters can take.


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I have to say though, the players who complain about rocket tag bring it upon themselves in my opinion. There are a lot of very good defensive powers in mythic, and I have to ask why they didn't pick any. If a mythic character dies from a crit, it is his own fault for not having an anti-crit defense.


Aldarionn,

What do you mean by "the ability to have access to every spell in the game"? i think this is something i haven't run across yet.


Mrs. H. wrote:

Aldarionn,

What do you mean by "the ability to have access to every spell in the game"? i think this is something i haven't run across yet.

that is the archmage / heirophant path ability

Grand Lodge

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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I think it's unfair to call it a "failed AP." The story is pretty solid. The Mythic mechanics can be problematic. However, I don't think it approaches the level of "failure."

-Skeld


Oh, Wild Arcana/Inspired Spell. Gotcha. Yeah, those are pretty crazy—especially with the caster being treated as two levels higher, even if they are restricted to a spell level they can cast.


I agree, except that any of those issues were already issues with core Pathfinder in general, and I work around them, generally, the same way.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I thought the arcane/heirophant ability would be overpowering but they weren't that bad with some modification. I had more issues with melee being unbalanced. Most of the enemies have such high saving throws that it became pointless to cast spells on them that required saves. So all casters turned into buff bots, not what the players wanted to play. Mythic magic missile however...


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Skeld wrote:

I think it's unfair to call it a "failed AP." The story is pretty solid. The Mythic mechanics can be problematic. However, I don't think it approaches the level of "failure."

-Skeld

Allow me to clarify. My attempt at running the AP failed. I don't mean to say that everything was a total failure because I do agree that the story is pretty cool and there are a lot of good NPC's and Villains. But the system caused my game to devolve into something that was pretty much unplayable so I found that to be a failure.

This was not my first time DMing, nor was it my first AP. Other AP's we have run have concluded just fine. This one was just not a good fit.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

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Aldarionn wrote:
(his initiative bonus started at +17 and only got higher)

If your party's wizard was rocking an initiative bonus that high, then your players are probably pretty strong optimizers. Which means you were probably going to have trouble running the AP as-written even without mythic rules.


Ross Byers wrote:
Aldarionn wrote:
(his initiative bonus started at +17 and only got higher)

If your party's wizard was rocking an initiative bonus that high, then your players are probably pretty strong optimizers. Which means you were probably going to have trouble running the AP as-written even without mythic rules.

I'll give you that.

+3 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative, +4 Familiar, +2 Trait....There was another +4 from somewhere but I cannot recall where.

Edit: +2 from Elf. The bonus was +15, not +17. Still ridiculous.

Silver Crusade

Aldarionn wrote:
Ross Byers wrote:
Aldarionn wrote:
(his initiative bonus started at +17 and only got higher)

If your party's wizard was rocking an initiative bonus that high, then your players are probably pretty strong optimizers. Which means you were probably going to have trouble running the AP as-written even without mythic rules.

I'll give you that.

+3 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative, +4 Familiar, +2 Trait....There was another +4 from somewhere but I cannot recall where.

Edit: +2 from Elf. The bonus was +15, not +17. Still ridiculous.

Then bonuses from mythic tiers and mythic improved initiative... also they should have played a diviner. Really, initiative is pretty easy to break if that's what you want to do.


Riuken wrote:
Aldarionn wrote:
Ross Byers wrote:
Aldarionn wrote:
(his initiative bonus started at +17 and only got higher)

If your party's wizard was rocking an initiative bonus that high, then your players are probably pretty strong optimizers. Which means you were probably going to have trouble running the AP as-written even without mythic rules.

I'll give you that.

+3 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative, +4 Familiar, +2 Trait....There was another +4 from somewhere but I cannot recall where.

Edit: +2 from Elf. The bonus was +15, not +17. Still ridiculous.

Then bonuses from mythic tiers and mythic improved initiative... also they should have played a diviner. Really, initiative is pretty easy to break if that's what you want to do.

A lot of that came in to play later on. Mythic Improved Initiative and Amazing Initiative put the player at a +24 Initiative at 10/3 with a +4 Dex item. It wasn't hard to break at all.

Grand Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Aldarionn wrote:
Ross Byers wrote:
Aldarionn wrote:
(his initiative bonus started at +17 and only got higher)

If your party's wizard was rocking an initiative bonus that high, then your players are probably pretty strong optimizers. Which means you were probably going to have trouble running the AP as-written even without mythic rules.

I'll give you that.

+3 Dex, +4 Improved Initiative, +4 Familiar, +2 Trait....There was another +4 from somewhere but I cannot recall where.

Edit: +2 from Elf. The bonus was +15, not +17. Still ridiculous.

I understand. How did you generate ability scores?

-Skeld


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

Well, this is very discouraging. Aldarionn and Seannoss were two of the most active people on this board and people I could bounce ideas off. Overall, this does not bode well for my own WotR campaign.

I'm already about to talk to my group if we want to scrap mythic rules altogether and instead use the system Story Archers group went with, i.e. give a level for every two tiers, so that the party ends up at level 25. That Aldarionn and Seannoss both scrapped their campaigns gives me some iron to my spine in pushing harder for this than I originally intended. I don't want this campaign to end the same way nor would I want to have a game of rocket tag or one-sided slaughter for the next year.

I'm pretty open to declaring this AP a failure, although not on the merits of the story or how the books were structured, but on the merits of tying the anchor of Mythic Adventures to it. To me it seems that the people in this thread who are poo-poo'ing the problems of the system haven't really played with it in this commercially published AP. I don't know about you, but if I am sold a car which has a very high chance of just blowing up after driving it for a thousand miles, then I am quite sure that the problem is with the car, not me.

Dark Archive

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Ive completed the Adventure path and to be fair it is a very good Ap (IMO) and while yes while it does have problems I dont think it is all directly due to mythic rules alone (More a combination of things such as problems with high lvl play, the fact you get a lot of extra stuff besides the mythic at points, general encounter design and tactics and also the fact the books were being worked on while the mythic rules werent fully finished.)


Kevin, could you give us a little more information on your group that finished the AP? Number of players, how experienced they were, point-buy, etc.

It looks like the AP is problematic for large and/or experienced groups, but the GMs of these groups are also the more vocal so it would be good to have more data points.

Liberty's Edge

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My group hasn't had problems yet but we're just now winding down Book 2. They're characters are based on 15 point builds though. I plan to update the Mythic Battle Thread once we get into the thick of things.


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From the sound of things, the following might help fix the Mythic Rules - though part of this is also dealing with problems with the core rules.

1 - Alter the Critical Hit System so that it does not increase strength, class, or feat modifiers. In essence, a Critical Hit would act like non-Mythic Vital Strike.

2 - Triple or quadruple the Hit Points of Mythic opponents.

3 - Halve the damage of Mythic opponents

4 - Disallow the combination of Meta-Magic Feats and Mythic Spells

These four things would fix a lot of the problems with Mythic. You don't have the probability of one-shot kills. You also have enemies who can stand up to a Mythic Hero and last for a while... but who also cannot just kill a player with one hit.


My guys are coming up to the Grey Garrison now, and I'm concerned about the mythic rules myself and have voiced as much to the group. My guys want to give them a try, though, so I'm going to forge forwards with them until such time as the game becomes un-fun for everyone (at which point we move on to a new story to tell). Some of them optimize better than others, but on the whole they're a relatively balanced group.

What I am thinking of doing, though, is scrapping the devotion point bonuses (I already forgot to give them the scales at the start of the module), as well as using magnuskn's suggestions on how to make the mythic options something to think about rather than something to nova with at every opportunity. I'm also going to be rocking scorpion's conversions to provide a little bit more of a challenge, and I've advised that changes to some of the feats will be made to tone them down (Mythic Power Attack, and Mythic Vital Strike being the main targets to start with).

Not sure how much that will help the longevity of the game mechanically speaking, but we shall see how we go.

Dark Archive

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4 players Not super optimisers but not entirly none optimisers either (For example ranger took favored enemy demon and improved it every chance he got but at the same time ran around with a two bladed sword)

Party was shifter (later skinwalker) Fighter (crossbowman) focusing on repeater after lvl 3 or so.

Human ranger demon hunter who used twin blade

Asimir Paladin Who went sword and board

And lastly a Gnome Magus who's favored tactic became using force punch on things.


That looks like a group my players could come up with. Thanks for the info!


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I believe that low levels of mythic can work. If I run mythic again I would work harder to bring the outlier path abilities into line. Abilities like fleet charge, precision and the arch mage/hierophant talents are much more powerful than other choices. I think more abilities should be tied to tier rank and not a have/have not scale.

Some of my issues also came from the PCs and the tiers advancing too rapidly, faster than I could adjust for on the fly. Even at 12th and 13th level the PCs were going up in levels nearly every other week. The later parts of this AP tried to cram in too many ideas and this would have been better suited for more than 6 parts.

And Kevin: with a ranger and a paladin in your group I am surprised that they didn't stomp over every fight there with the others watching. This is the AP for paladins to shine, although they felt impossible to balance with the other PCs.

Magnus: I'll still pay attention here and offer ideas, or at least until book 4.

Scarab Sages

Seannoss wrote:


Some of my issues also came from the PCs and the tiers advancing too rapidly, faster than I could adjust for on the fly. Even at 12th and 13th level the PCs were going up in levels nearly every other week. The later parts of this AP tried to cram in too many ideas and this would have been better suited for more than 6 parts.

Definately this, to the point where one of my players jokes after every evening "Level or tier up tonight?"


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

Well, I'll have to take it up with my players. Problem is, it is pretty rare for all six of them being there at the same time and I won't make a big change like that without having consulted all of them.


That's what e-mails are for.

I wonder what people think of my suggestions for fixing Mythic (and critical hits).

Dark Archive

I'm glad I stayed away from mythic rules and this AP. Looks like I saved my self some money and frustration.

Are there any options in that AP to run it without the mythic rules?


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Yes. It involves hero points and leveling them up more rapidly.

I will admit some curiosity if limiting people to Tier 5 would benefit much... but given that it's the Mythic Feats causing trouble (Mythic Power Attack, Mythic Improved Critical, and Mythic Vital Strike being the primary offenders) I'm sure a powergaming player would still cause problems with only 5 Tiers.


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Our group is level 9/mythic 3 now. We're an optimized group but we don't go about trying to find exploits and tear them wider. Our makeup is light on spell-slingers, so most combats become a tangled melee mess (which is fun).

We just finished the fight against the Mythic Hag.

Frankly, I don't know what you guys are complaining about. The fight was hard. We pretty consistently feel like we're scraping through by the skin of our teeth. The biggest complaint we have is that each round tends to take a really long time at this point because we're fighting seven different kinds of enemies at a time, and there's a lot of them. (this is true for high level games no matter what, so its not unique to this AP)

The only thing I know of that our GM does to boost things is Maximize the HP of all the enemies. (that's pretty standard in our games)

If you want to enjoy this AP, talk to your players before hand and have everyone agree to stick to middle-power concepts.

If you have a party that reads like a who's who of "pushing the powerlevel" concepts (Heavens Oracle, Scarred Witch Doctor, Archer Paladin, Pouncebarian, Wild Caller, etc) you're going to have a "failed" AP no matter which one you choose.

The AP is designed for groups that actually want to be challenged, not for those who want to sandbag the whole story and steamroll the plot. If that's what your group is doing, talk to them, and rebuild the characters so that they aren't as optimized. If your players complain about being nerfed, maybe pathfinder isn't the system for you. It's rather breakable to those that want to break it.

Scarab Sages

We played 15pt buy and had the same issue of just annihilating everything the DM could throw at us, and he was using the upgraded stat blocks since book 2. The most challenging fight was when he said screw it and teleported us into a room that hit us with traps of Greater Dispel Magic to strip our buffs. We landed in the center of the room and were surrounded by the last half of book 5 all at once.

We won in four rounds.

We had a paladin, a melee cleric, a caster cleric, a universalist wizard, and a psion. In the early books the melee characters destroyed everything, but by the time we were hitting level 12 and up, the casters were just forces of nature.

And it's not even a matter of rocket tag, when you've got a healing cleric. It was almost impossible to do enough hit point damage to actually kill any of the characters for a round. The DM full attacked a dead character at one point with one of those demons with eight arms each with a melee weapon (Maraleth, maybe?). Knocked the poor guy down to -200 something hitpoints. I had him back up at full health the next round.

Initiative also becomes completely broken. My cleric had +24 initiative at level 20 for the last fights. With a dex of 10. All that took was improved initiative (+4), and mythic improved init (add your tier again). So by the last session, the DM would start the initiative bidding at "so who got above fifty?" and there were usually a couple of us.

Powergaming has nothing to do with any of this, most of the brokenness comes straight from the abilities you get as mythic. Burn 1 MP to gain an extra standard action is something everyone gets regardless. You have +10 to initiative by tier 10 regardless of what you do. Etc.

We were not min-maxing hyper-optimized machines. Hell, my cleric spent a feat and mythic feat in order to have Skill Focus and Mythic Skill Focus: Profession Librarian for pure roleplay fun.


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

That are some heavy assumptions you are making, Doomed Hero. My guys are not playing optimized at all and are steamrolling everything. I'd check with your GM how much he is changing up the AP to accomodate your group.

Anyway, I've talked with two members so far, one is all for changing things up, one is so far against it, because it would make his character concept unviable. I'll see if I can find a compromise, otherwise I'll have to fold the campaign. I am not walking into a disaster with open eyes here. Could be that Shattered Star is what we are doing next, since my own homebrewn campaign is far from being ready for consumption.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I want to say up front that this is not a FAILED AP in my opinion and think the title is misleading given Aldarionn's caveat's.

I think what has happened is that Wrath was designed for four, 15-point buy with Mythic players. Not overly optimized or large groups of optimized players, which can in any AP, cause problems if the GM doesn't take a hand in preventing.

Also I want to add that this is the Mythic Campaign where the Heroes become Godlings and fight, no, KILL, Demon Lords. One Shot kills on both sides are likely given the megadamage being tossed around. I mean hell the opening scene has a Great Wyrm Dragon being Vorpled by a Juiced up Balor.

Again, Doomed Hero is on the money with "If you have a party that reads like a who's who of "pushing the powerlevel" concepts (Heavens Oracle, Scarred Witch Doctor, Archer Paladin, Pouncebarian, Wild Caller, etc) you're going to have a "failed" AP no matter which one you choose.

Scarab Sages

Anorak wrote:

I want to say up front that this is not a FAILED AP in my opinion and think the title is misleading given Aldarionn's caveat's.

I think what has happened is that Wrath was designed for four, 15-point buy with Mythic players. Not overly optimized or large groups of optimized players, which can in any AP, cause problems if the GM doesn't take a hand in preventing.

Also I want to add that this is the Mythic Campaign where the Heroes become Godlings and fight, no, KILL, Demon Lords. One Shot kills on both sides are likely given the megadamage being tossed around. I mean hell the opening scene has a Great Wyrm Dragon being Vorpled by a Juiced up Balor.

Again, Doomed Hero is on the money with "If you have a party that reads like a who's who of "pushing the powerlevel" concepts (Heavens Oracle, Scarred Witch Doctor, Archer Paladin, Pouncebarian, Wild Caller, etc) you're going to have a "failed" AP no matter which one you choose.

And like Doomed Hero, you're ignoring the entire thread of anecdotes of people who played 15pt unoptimized builds walking through the AP without even trying.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

To add from some of us that have done this; my PCs were not optimized and didn't have any of those concepts listed. I had a sacred servant paladin (for more mythic spellcasting, all of those high power paladin spells), a 2 weapon fighter that got sidetracked into shadowdancer (uber powerful prestige class?? not from what I saw), a cleric (a divine scion, which does seem to be a very good prestige class) and a transmuter.

If the mythic rules were designed to have Pcs and monsters throw around 100s (to thousands from what I've heard)of damage per hit or round then they should have designed encounters where the enemies, and PCs, could survive that.

And I more than maximized opponent's hp, used scorpions blocks at times or redesigned my own as so many of the NPCs in this AP were horribly designed (and contained a multitude of errors).


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

And again with the assumptions, Anorak.


I'm also curious about the builds of Doomed's group. And if they missed the bit about Mythic Power Attack doubling the Power Attack damage during a critical hit prior to multiplying it by the critical modifier.

I must admit, two problems seem inherent to this. The first is critical hits. The second is the use of Meta-magic Feats in combination with Mythic Magic.

If there are no critical hits or if they were treated like non-Mythic Vital Strike, and if you can't use Meta-magic feats with Mythic spells (ie, any spell that has been enhanced because of Mythic ability), then does this not significantly diminish the damage potential of the PCs and in doing so deal with a lot of the problems?

(I suspect eliminating Mythic Improved Initiative also would be a good thing.)

Scarab Sages

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I think the biggest problem with the mythic rules is not that the mythic versions of spells were that much more powerful (though they were better, they weren't THAT much better, mostly just upping damage dice a level sorts of stuff) but that it further broke action economy, which is already the weakest part of the game.

Here is one round for my high level cleric (who was a straight CRB cleric, human, healing and knowledge domains).

Free action (from Relentless Healing 1st mythic tier ability): Intensified Mythic Heal from a distance of 30 ft (using Faith's Reach 1st mythic tier ability) to get the paladin from -200 hitpoints to positive 100.

Swift action: Mythic maximized empowered persistent blade barrier (maximized using divine metamastery 3rd tier ability [taken three times] in order to maximize all spells for a minute) placed through the mass of bad guys. Remember, mythic blade barrier is an immediate not a standard. They all make their saves and avoid damage, choose to stay in front of it.

Standard action: Do another blade barrier in same spot. Same results. (note that the previous round I also did this twice in the same way)

At this point my intelligent cloak which casts as a wizard drops enervation on the one enemy who has teleported behind us.

Second standard action: (from burning a mythic point, everyone who's mythic gets this at I think 3rd tier or so). Shape Channel at the mass of bad guys in front of me, deselecting the three party members in melee with them. Regardless of whether they save against the channel, they get pushed back thirty feet. So take 10D6/2 damage from the channel, and then get thrown through 4 mythic empowered persistent maximized blade barriers. Roll your saves twice. DC 35 I think is what it was up to. This killed four of the five bad guys in the fight regardless of whether they made every single save. I think it was something like between 400 and 800 damage to all of them, which none of them were surviving even at full health.

Move action: quick channel just for the hell of it, to heal everyone close to full.

It's the individual power of anything I did, it's the fact that without doing anything cheesy I effectively got to take 6 actions in a single round. Yeah, it burned a half dozen mythic points ... but I had over twenty and this was a boss fight, so that's not even an impressive number of resources burned.


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

And that is the kind of turn for a single character which makes this system so crazy.

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