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I'm going to let the players have their crazy abilities. The mythic monsters they fight are going to have equally crazy abilities whether it is equivalent PCs built like characters or mythic monsters of legend that can shrug off even the attacks of mythic enemies. How else did they survive to become creatures of legend if they couldn't?
Mythic Template
Mythic Rank: A creature with the mythic subtype gains 1 to 10 mythic ranks, representing its overall mythic power. Its rank is generally equal to 1/2 its original CR.
Armor Class Bonus: Add the creature's mythic rank to all of its armor classes including touch and flat-footed. A mythic creature is harder to strike.
Bonus Hit Points: Add 100 hit points times the creatures mythic rank. Multiply this amount x 2 for four PCs, x3 for 5 PCs, x 4 for 6 PCs. If you feel the creature needs more hit points, add more until you have a creature capable of surviving long enough to make for an interesting and challenging battle. For pure brute creatures, doubling the above numbers might be necessary.
Damage Reduction: A creature with 5 to 10 Hit Dice gains DR 5/-. A creature with 11 or more Hit Dice gains DR 10/- base. Add the creature’s mythic rank to its damage reduction. If the creature already has damage reduction, it adds epic to the qualities needed to bypass that reduction. If the damage reduction granted from this subtype has a larger numerical value than the creature's original damage reduction, increase the creature's original damage reduction to the amount of the epic DR. For example, a monster with DR 5/bludgeoning that gains DR 10/epic from the mythic subtype gains DR 10/bludgeoning and epic. There are enough ways to bypass damage reduction in the game, give mythic creatures damage reduction that works.
Spell Resistance: If the creature has spell resistance, add its mythic rank to its spell resistance.
Mythic Power: The creature gains the mythic power and surge universal monster abilities. Creatures gain a number of mythic surges equal to twice their mythic rank. The monster's surge die depends on its rank, as summarized in Table: Mythic Subtype Abilities. Multiply a mythic creatures mythic surges by 2 for 4 PCs, by 3 for 5 PCs, by 4 for 6 PCs (and continue the progression as needed).
Ability Bonus: At 2nd rank and every 2 ranks thereafter, the monster gains a permanent +2 bonus to an ability score. If it has multiple bonuses, it can apply them to the same ability score or to different ability scores.
Mythic Feats: At 1st rank and every 2 ranks thereafter, the monster gains a mythic feat. It must meet all of the prerequisites for this feat.
Mythic Attack: Add the creature’s mythic rank to its attack and damage rolls and any special attack DCs the creature has.
Mythic Defenses: Add the creature’s mythic rank to all of its non-attack powers whether auras, special defenses, or anything else to do with the creature.
Mythic Durability: A mythic creature can spend a mythic surge to heal 25% of its hit points as a free action.
Mythic Resilience: A mythic creature can cancel any powerful effect used against by using a mythic surge as a free action shrugging off the attack. A critical, a spell that lands, or any effect used against. It can cancel the effects of a mythic feat like Vital Strike or Power Attack by spending a mythic surge.
Mythic Saving Throws: Add the creature’s mythic rank to all its saving throws. If a mythic creature makes its saving throw, any effect used against has no effect. Mythic creatures shrug off attacks. If a mythic creature fails its save, it takes only half damage or half the effect (duration, ability damage, etc.) from the attack.
Mythic Regeneration: A mythic creature’s regeneration should be multiplied by its mythic rank for creatures with an established rate of fast healing or regeneration. If a creature does not have a starting regeneration, 5 or 10 times its mythic rank is a good starting point. Multiple by 2 for 5 PCs, x 3 for 6 PCs. A mythic creature’s regeneration cannot be halted until the creature is rendered unconscious.
Mythic Initiative: Add a mythic creature’s rank to its initiative. A mythic creature gets to take an extra standard action ten lower its regular initiative.
Mythic Power Renewal: A mythic creature can renew one its powers by spending a mythic surge. For example, a mythic dragon can use its break weapon the following round by spending a mythic surge rather than waiting 1d4 rounds.
Additional Mythic Abilities: The monster gains a number of mythic abilities equal to its MR + 1. Such abilities can be drawn from the mythic path abilities or the mythic abilities listed with the monsters, or it can be a new ability you create by taking inspiration from those abilities. These abilities should be thematically appropriate for the creature.
Some new monster abilities are especially powerful; at the GM's discretion, they can count as two abilities toward this total. For example, the mythic fire giant's fire vortex ability could count as two mythic abilities.
In place of a mythic ability, the monster may gain a universal monster ability, such as rend or pounce.
CR: When you're finished adding abilities to the monster, add 1/2 the monster's mythic rank to its CR to determine its new CR. Evaluate the monster at its new CR using Table: Monster Statistics by CR to make sure it falls within the expected values for its new CR.
XP: Change the creature's XP award to match its new CR. Don’t worry about xp too much. The main reward for defeating mythic creatures is completing a mythic challenge.
There is a problem with this. It will result in a Total Party Kill.
You see, there are two problems with Mythic. The first is increased Initiative/Actions. The second is increased damage output.
Your template negates the damage output of your players without lessening the damage output of the monsters. Thus your monsters could end up one-shotting or full-round-killing a character in one round while not having lost a huge percentage of its hit points.
The second round the monster will kill a second character. However, the group will have lost one source of actions and be inflicting less damage on their enemy.
The third round a third character dies. The final character might try to flee but will probably hope they can end the monster in time and bring his or her dead foes back for resurrection. And finally the last round your monster will kill the final character. Total Party Kill. It will have lost a lot of hit points but not enough to matter.
Increasing hit points and recovery of hit points is not enough. You also have to nerf the damage output of the monster. Otherwise you have a situation where your players can't kill the monster and can't survive being in combat with the monster.
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Nice idea, piccolo, but I fear, that you might have overcorrected a bit. Negating player abilities isn't fun for your players so I would suggest a slightly different approach... stolen from Starcraft 2.
Hardened Life
Your life force is particularly resilient, to attacks that would destroy lesser creatures. Once it has received more than 1/4 of its maximum hitpoints as damage, it receives 20 x tier temporary hitpoints (that last for up to 1 minute), increases it's natural bonus to armor class by half its tier, and becomes immune to critical hits until the beginning of its next turn.
And while you did setup your template as a catch all solution, I feel that essentially mythic opponents have to be handcrafted, to provide a proper challenge. Increasing the hit points, and giving everybody the potential to have additional actions seem like the right thing to do.
However to increase GM workload, fixing the players should be quicker.
There is a problem with this. It will result in a Total Party Kill.
You see, there are two problems with Mythic. The first is increased Initiative/Actions. The second is increased damage output.
Your template negates the damage output of your players without lessening the damage output of the monsters. Thus your monsters could end up one-shotting or full-round-killing a character in one round while not having lost a huge percentage of its hit points.
The second round the monster will kill a second character. However, the group will have lost one source of actions and be inflicting less damage on their enemy.
The third round a third character dies. The final character might try to flee but will probably hope they can end the monster in time and bring his or her dead foes back for resurrection. And finally the last round your monster will kill the final character. Total Party Kill. It will have lost a lot of hit points but not enough to matter.
Increasing hit points and recovery of hit points is not enough. You also have to nerf the damage output of the monster. Otherwise you have a situation where your players can't kill the monster and can't survive being in combat with the monster.
We will see. This template does not apply to mythic NPCs. They will be built using the same abilities as the PCs.
This applies to mythic monsters. Monster damage output is far, far behind PC damage output. They do not in general benefit from magic items, class abilities that boost damage, and the various buffs a PC party uses. They are usually big, single monsters with limited damage output that does not in anyway whatsoever match the damage output of a PC party. I am only concerned with reducing the damage output against these big, mythic single party creatures.
Second, the PCs have healing. Most people think of combat healing as a waste of time. In our groups, my players are not comfortable without combat healing. Why? Because I build encounters where they need it. If the cleric/healer decides to go full offense, he will see the party die. That is the intended feel for my players. The risk of death and the need for mitigation is something I build in.
Not sure how you guys are assuming the PCs will get killed. I ran Kingmaker to level 20. Once you reach the teens, opponents including dragons have next to no chance against your PCs unless you massively boost them up. They are buffed with prayer, haste, all kinds of magic items and abilities to boost attack rolls and damage with huge power attack numbers and widened crit ranges. I run with six, four of them damage dealers.
That means I have to compensate for the damage output of four optimized damage dealers along with a wizard and cleric going off on a single huge mythic creature. That mythic creature on his best day might have 6 to 7 attacks that don't do as much as even the lowest damage PC.
Nice idea, piccolo, but I fear, that you might have overcorrected a bit. Negating player abilities isn't fun for your players so I would suggest a slightly different approach... stolen from Starcraft 2.
Hardened Life
Your life force is particularly resilient, to attacks that would destroy lesser creatures. Once it has received more than 1/4 of its maximum hitpoints as damage, it receives 20 x tier temporary hitpoints (that last for up to 1 minute), increases it's natural bonus to armor class by half its tier, and becomes immune to critical hits until the beginning of its next turn.And while you did setup your template as a catch all solution, I feel that essentially mythic opponents have to be handcrafted, to provide a proper challenge. Increasing the hit points, and giving everybody the potential to have additional actions seem like the right thing to do.
However to increase GM workload, fixing the players should be quicker.
I can't worry about unhappy players too much. Paizo did such a poor job designing their high level game at this point that if I don't give the opponent the ability to negate attacks, the opponent will die. A lot of people overlook a spell called Prediction of Failure, which is a no save spell that gives a -4 save and attack rolls. Then there is Euphoric Tranquility a no save spell that gives an entire party at least one free round to destroy an opponent, possibly more if the individual has a weak will save.
The physical damage dealers are already focused on obtaining Foebiter as a legendary weapon ability...all of them...all four. Calculate the damage output of four damage dealers...two of them smiting paladins...with Foebiter on their weapons. The barbarian is an optimized Invulnerable Rager Come and Get me Barbarian with better DR than any mythic creature using Paizo's rules. He is building up his con to have 600 hit points. He will get Mythic Combat Reflexes and reach for unlimited attacks of opportunity with Come and Get Me. So basically anything that attacks him within his reach that isn't invisible gets attacked back.
Then there is the Fleet Charge for all the Champions. The wizard mapped out an 800 point average damage disintegrate that he might get higher with a Metamagic Rod Maximize with a DC 38 Fort Save. He is using an arcanist with the Destined Bloodline for the archetype he chose. His capstone is automatic confirmation of spell crits.
How I feel you must challenge the PCs without banning their abilities is make it a fight not only of hit point and ability attrition, but mythic power attrition. The big bad mythic monster will have to use almost all of his mythic power for defensive options while the PCs will focus all their mythic power on offensive options. This is how my parties usually work.
They will try to land the big killing blows. If I leave the rules as is, they will kill the big mythic beast or dragon in a round or two. They will hit. Between four of them rolling multiple attacks using haste, they will get one, two, or more crits each round. As soon as they land a crit, they will expend mythic power to boost the damage each and every time. Which will cause their damage to spike to insane levels past what is already pretty nutty damage.
Our games average around level 12 to 15. We just quit a Carrion Crown campaign at 14. We ran Kingmaker to 20. Our Way of the Wicked Campaign is at 14. Running a high level game is a matter of negating what they can do using tactics or abilities or letting two equally powerful characters swing hard at each other and see who is standing at the end.
NPC parties don't do too bad a job putting up a fight, unless the wizard decides to target the non-casters I set up for physical damage dealers to fight (which he usually does and the opponent caster does as well). I don't need to modify them much, which is why I didn't.
But the big creatures die way too quick. If you throw some dragon or some big brute out there that a Paizo module designer built up as this "powerful enemy", it's going to die. They are not powerful. They are weak. The opponent wizard often neuters them before they do anything dangerous. Then your physical damage dealers hit a stunned, dazed, held, or otherwise incapacitated bundle of hit points.
I don't want that to happen against mythic creatures. So I made this template to create longer battles that end up being an attrition of mythic power. I think it should work somewhat effectively for accomplishing what I want to accomplish. I'll modify if it is too strong or too weak. I have a group of min/maxers (save for one player who still loves to find devastating spell combinations), I don't mind canceling their abilities to make fights more epic. In fact, I feel it is the most effective way to prolong fights and create a challenge.
You're the GM. You can allow or disallow any rule you want. If they don't like it, they can find a different game. Just be sure to apply those rules to the monsters and encounters as well.
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Small note. My 10th level group with 1 Mythic Tier ended up fighting Black Magga. They killed her on the third round before Magga could attack. They took far less damage because of environmental issues. Despite the fact I didn't bring the PCs to negative hit points or the like, they felt it was a very tough encounter because they were spending Hero and Mythic Points left and right and at the end of the fight had used most of their Mythic Points.
Just to give an example. I gave the Crag Linnorm in Kingmaker 2000 hit points. The non-mythic party killed it in 5 or so rounds with minimal damage received. There's not much that can stand against a Come and Get Me Barbarian. A mythic Come and Get Me barbarian with Mythic Combat Reflexes is going to be a stupid level of tough. That's the kind of lack of oversight by Paizo that is getting annoying.
How can Paizo put an ability like Come and Get Me in the game, then in mythic completely remove the only factor that somewhat slowed the ability down: number of AoOs. No other class gets to counter-attack against visible opponents within reach an unlimited number of times. As far as using distance, big deal. The barbarian pounces if the ranged target is far away.
It's reached a point of absurdity. Unless they start immediately correcting overpowered abilities like Come and Get Me and more than a few no save spells, they make things far more broken than they otherwise would be with new rule creation like mythic. It makes me want to play their game less and less.
It's certainly interesting. I might give it a try, just to see how it runs on an enemy or two. If it comes off too strong, I can always remove it mid-battle.
Might I recommend the Mythic Alternative Feats I have linked to in other WotR articles?
Honestly, at the moment I'm planning one (and only one) change to my mythic creatures:
Negate Critical: Any mythic monster can use one mythic surge to negate any critical, vital strike, foe biter, or any other damage-multiplying ability or abilities that have just hit it.
I've said it in a couple of threads now and I'll repeat it here: The damage output becomes stupid because of the sheer number of multipliers involved. Instead of adding thousands of hit points or rewriting the critical rules, just say, "Nah, that doesn't affect me, 'cause I'm cool. You have to defeat me using good old-fashioned regular damage rolls."
We'll see how it works, but I have yet to see any of my monsters brought low by anything other than the sheer number of damage multipliers floating around there for mythic PCs to take...
Might I recommend the Mythic Alternative Feats I have linked to in other WotR articles?
I'm not really looking for nerfs, thanks though =)
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There is a problem with this. It will result in a Total Party Kill.
You see, there are two problems with Mythic. The first is increased Initiative/Actions. The second is increased damage output.
Your template negates the damage output of your players without lessening the damage output of the monsters. Thus your monsters could end up one-shotting or full-round-killing a character in one round while not having lost a huge percentage of its hit points.
The second round the monster will kill a second character. However, the group will have lost one source of actions and be inflicting less damage on their enemy.
The third round a third character dies. The final character might try to flee but will probably hope they can end the monster in time and bring his or her dead foes back for resurrection. And finally the last round your monster will kill the final character. Total Party Kill. It will have lost a lot of hit points but not enough to matter.
Increasing hit points and recovery of hit points is not enough. You also have to nerf the damage output of the monster. Otherwise you have a situation where your players can't kill the monster and can't survive being in combat with the monster.
We will see. This template does not apply to mythic NPCs. They will be built using the same abilities as the PCs.
This applies to mythic monsters. Monster damage output is far, far behind PC damage output. They do not in general benefit from magic items, class abilities that boost damage, and the various buffs a PC party uses. They are usually big, single monsters with limited damage output that does not in anyway whatsoever match the damage output of a PC party. I am only concerned with reducing the damage output against these big, mythic single party creatures.
Second, the PCs have healing. Most people think of combat healing as a waste of time. In our groups, my players are not comfortable without combat healing. Why? Because I build encounters where they need it. If the...
You have six players, which is so far better than 4, it isn't funny.
And single enemy encounters do not work, I have started writing a thing about that, but it is far from complete.But it bears repeating, single enemy encounters are broken in any level of pathfinder, with or without the mythic rules and it is pretty tough to fix that.
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I can't worry about unhappy players too much.
Thats a very unfortunate statement, since this is pretty much the point of playing the game.
Of course I get where you are coming from, I decided against changing the player site since we already started (had I know that later adventure path volumes would be .... well water under the bridge).
However you can still make changes on the player site of the equation.
Oh and consider liberal use of this beauty:
This broad belt is constructed of
steel plates polished to a gleaming
finish. The belt grants its wearer a
+2 enhancement bonus to Dexterity.
Treat this as a temporary ability
bonus for the first 24 hours the belt
is worn.
Three times per day, the wearer can use mirror image
to bring forth illusory duplicates that persist for 6 minutes
or until destroyed. These function as normal images from
that spell, except any ranged attack (including ranged touch
spells) that strikes and destroys an image rebounds onto the
attacker, using the attacker’s original result to determine
whether the attack hits.
If the wearer expends one use of mythic power to activate
the belt, the mirror images replenish when the wearer is hit.
This functions as above, except each time an attack hits the
wearer instead of an image, the belt creates a new image, up
to the spell’s limit of eight images. Unlike mirror image, the
effect doesn’t end when the images are gone. If there are no
more images, the belt continues to create new images for the
effect’s full duration.
And I might regret this, but here is a link to my very much unfinished musings:
Warnung, long not properly formatted or spell checked yet.
Go to How to fix single enemy encounters, using (among others) the mythic rules.
...There is a problem with this. It will result in a Total Party Kill.
You see, there are two problems with Mythic. The first is increased Initiative/Actions. The second is increased damage output.
Your template negates the damage output of your players without lessening the damage output of the monsters. Thus your monsters could end up one-shotting or full-round-killing a character in one round while not having lost a huge percentage of its hit points.
The second round the monster will kill a second character. However, the group will have lost one source of actions and be inflicting less damage on their enemy.
The third round a third character dies. The final character might try to flee but will probably hope they can end the monster in time and bring his or her dead foes back for resurrection. And finally the last round your monster will kill the final character. Total Party Kill. It will have lost a lot of hit points but not enough to matter.
Increasing hit points and recovery of hit points is not enough. You also have to nerf the damage output of the monster. Otherwise you have a situation where your players can't kill the monster and can't survive being in combat with the monster.
We will see. This template does not apply to mythic NPCs. They will be built using the same abilities as the PCs.
This applies to mythic monsters. Monster damage output is far, far behind PC damage output. They do not in general benefit from magic items, class abilities that boost damage, and the various buffs a PC party uses. They are usually big, single monsters with limited damage output that does not in anyway whatsoever match the damage output of a PC party. I am only concerned with reducing the damage output against these big, mythic single party creatures.
Second, the PCs have healing. Most people think of combat healing as a waste of time. In our groups, my players are not comfortable without combat healing. Why? Because I build
You are correct about single enemy encounters. Action economy destroys any chance that single enemy encounter works unless you allow them to output damage capable of nearly decimating a single PC every round requiring the healer to use his actions to heal and possibly knocking the number of actions down.
I just go with large hit point pools, so players can hit hard and the thing can take it. Big brute creatures should be able to take multiple hits from multiple enemies for a good long fight. Otherwise they wouldn't have lived as long as they supposedly have.
[
I can't worry about unhappy players too much.
Thats a very unfortunate statement, since this is pretty much the point of playing the game.
Of course I get where you are coming from, I decided against changing the player site since we already started (had I know that later adventure path volumes would be .... well water under the bridge).
However you can still make changes on the player site of the equation.
Oh and consider liberal use of this beauty:
This broad belt is constructed of
steel plates polished to a gleaming
finish. The belt grants its wearer a
+2 enhancement bonus to Dexterity.
Treat this as a temporary ability
bonus for the first 24 hours the belt
is worn.
Three times per day, the wearer can use mirror image
to bring forth illusory duplicates that persist for 6 minutes
or until destroyed. These function as normal images from
that spell, except any ranged attack (including ranged touch
spells) that strikes and destroys an image rebounds onto the
attacker, using the attacker’s original result to determine
whether the attack hits.
If the wearer expends one use of mythic power to activate
the belt, the mirror images replenish when the wearer is hit.
This functions as above, except each time an attack hits the
wearer instead of an image, the belt creates a new image, up
to the spell’s limit of eight images. Unlike mirror image, the
effect doesn’t end when the images are gone. If there are no
more images, the belt continues to create new images for the
effect’s full duration.And I might regret this, but here is a link to my very much unfinished musings:
Warnung, long not properly formatted or spell checked yet.
Go to How to fix single enemy encounters, using (among others) the mythic rules.
I have to have fun DMing as well otherwise the game doesn't happen. I'll never be able to make the players perfectly happy, while also making DMing fun. So players that are unhappy with my decisions that don't want to spend time DMing can learn to live with it or DM themselves while I rip apart their campaign using poorly designed rules that I exploit.
Let's be real, players whine about anything you take away from them. That's why we rely on game developers at Paizo to do a good job designing balanced rules before they are released. Mythic Adventures was a giant failure on their part, thus I must do what is necessary to make it playable without being too concerned about the occasions when players get denied their abilities.
There are plenty of creatures that are non-mythic they will be able to obliterate. They'll be able to use their abilities fine, but the mythic creature will be able to withstand them as they should be able to do. I have no idea why Paizo decided to make a set of rules where even mythic creatures are killed as easily as they are by mythic PCs. It's the worst example of a lack of balance they have yet released.
Ok, I'm tossing out the troll as a generic staple of many fantasy games. But it's low enough level to point out some issues with this system of yours that will only be extrapolated as it goes.
New AC/touch/ff: 18/13/14
New HP: 463 (assuming the standard 4-man party)
Gains DR 5/-
+2 increase to one ability score (likely strength)
1 Mythic Feat
+2 attack/+2 damage
All saves +2
Regeneration increases to 10 hp per round
These are the straight increases to what the Troll already has, not including any extras like Mythic Resilience or Durability etc.
The big one here, is the increase in HP. You're talking a CR 6 creature has nearly 500 HP against a party that, at best, should be about Level 6/Tier 3. They will be utterly annihilated by this troll. Regend 10 and DR 5/- are nothing to sneeze at, and it's HP at this point is just plain ridiculous. It's going to be neigh-impossible to bring down by any but the most OP builds it goes up against.
By sheer virtue of it's HP alone, this thing would remain a threat even up until Level 10 range. That's not even taking into account what you speculate might be necessary for a pure brute character of doubling the HP bonus even further to that of 863 HP.
Lets go all the way in a different direction. Let's say generic CR 20 creature with 10 Mythic Ranks.
It gains a bonus of 2,000 HP because it's up against a 4-man party. This is on top of the ~370 HP it has normally.
It gains DR 10/- if it doesn't have it already.
It also gains Regeneration 50 or 100 as advised by your statement that '5 or 10 times it's mythic ranks is a good starting point'.
So, now you have a creature that will have between 2,000 and 4,000 bonus HP (if you deem in necessary), and regeneration of 50 or 100. Not only that, it has the ability to outright deny critical hits against it depending on it's remaining surges and heal 25% of it's health as a free action.
This guy is going to outlast the PCs because it's difficult as hell to kill. It also means that, in this campaign, you force casters to play in the most optimal method possible: buffing, control and debuffing.
In this campaign, casters know that even something like a Mythic Empowered Intensified Maximized Fireball or something isn't going to do jack to a Mythic Monster.
Instead, they're going to spend all of their effort buffing their allies to even crazier heights, while tossing out as many debuffs and save-or-sucks as they can, and dropping battlefield control to deny enemies as many actions as possible.
You're talking stuff like Uber Debuff Witches dropping Evil Eye, Misfortune, Bestow Curse for -6 saves, Bestow Curse for penalty to ability score, Limited Wish for -7 on it's next save etc. Start tossing enough of those on something and it'll be all but guaranteed to fail any saving throw you want.
My point being is that these changes are way, way too over the top. While it's true that monsters won't have the ability to do the same amount of damage that PCs do, the big thing to keep in mind is that the monsters often have the same generic feats that are the biggest offenders. Many, many monsters have both Power Attack and Vital Strike. So a Mythic Monster is likely to have them too. So they're going to be capable of similar damage output, even if it's not the same as what a Mythic PC can.
The big thing to remember is that Mythic does almost nothing to increase the defenses of the PCs outside of certain path abilities. So a 20th level PC is still going to have between 150 - 300 hp depending on class/con bonus. If a monster is capable of dropping 1 PC in a round or two, while surviving the onslaught of entire party for multiple rounds, you basically have a TPK machine because the PCs cannot withstand the same punishment.
Think about it. Say the PCs have 3 HP, and can deal 10 HP per round. The monster has 40 HP and can deal 1 hp per round. This means, that through sheer method of 'toughing it out' the monster will beat the PCs because he can last longer than they can.
Thank you for supplying the math I was too lazy to supply to help support my view.
Monsters with this template become a Total Party Kill machine. You could have six or eight Mythic characters and they STILL would have trouble defeating this thing, and would still lose most of their companions.
You want to know how to defeat a party of Mythic heroes? I'll tell you: it's the same method you defeat a Magus or Gunslinger. You use lots of smaller enemies to eat player actions.
For instance, let's take Black Magga above. If I had used an Ogre Fighter who had specialized in bow use then in all likelihood he would have been able to seriously inconvenience or kill Black Magga even before being directly attacked: the 12 ogres that swarmed Magga would once more eat up actions, while the archer continues to eat more and more hit points from Magga with each successful shot.
It's all action economy.
You can beef up a solo encounter so it's unkillable. That's easy, just apply the Advanced Template to it three times, and its armor class is now +12 and the only way you hit it is on a natural 20. And it'll eat the party alive. It's why I dislike the Advanced Template (and now just boost monster stats to compensate for higher player stats - you can let your players have a 25 point build and compensate for it with +1 to every stat of each and every monster, while a 35-point build is +2 to every stat).
Getting back to action economy and minions: let's take Karzoug from the original Runelords. If what I've heard is correct, originally you faced him on his own. Parties that made it that far and beat his initiative would often eat him for breakfast. But once he was given a blue dragon and three giants to act as a buffer, he would last a little bit longer. Depending on party and GM tactics, he could last for several rounds or even defeat a party in a hard fight.
The same is true for any foe in WotR. Baphomet is child's play to beat because he shows up by his lonesome. But if he used Project Image and summoned minotaurs, then he'd prove to be a greater threat to the party. And the only time you should allow a solo encounter is if the group was nice and stealthy - otherwise, the enemy will call for reinforcements.
With that, you should find Mythic not to be nearly as overpowered.
Tangent101,
You remember the owlbear at the end of Kingmaker module 2? I gave it 700 hit points. They killed it in four rounds without taking much damage with non-mythic characters.
My PCs will average around 500 or more damage output per round at high level. You think 2000 to 4000 hit points will be much? It won't.
It's your game. You can kill off your group with overpowered monsters if you want. I know that I will run combat scenarios using my group to see how they cope so to know if I'm overdoing things.
I will say this. My group took the third path when it came to Reign of Winter, dressed up as guards, went right to the second floor, captured the captain of the guard, talked her into betraying the witch in charge (because why should she throw her life away when woken up after being brought to negative hit points?) before finally luring the guards one at a time to be slaughtered on the 2nd floor. (I didn't bother with that combat.)
PCs will inevitably not act in the way you expect. Either they will outwit your plans and use Negotiation with Trolls on Skull Pass, or just barge right in for the slaughter with snowmen and ice elementals. You can never tell. Upping hit points won't solve everything. And as I said, you could very well end up with a Total Party Kill on your hands.
Besides. I'm not the one who did the math showing how your "template" was broken. That was the previous poster.
The big one here, is the increase in HP. You're talking a CR 6 creature has nearly 500 HP against a party that, at best, should be about Level 6/Tier 3. They will be utterly annihilated by this troll. Regend 10 and DR 5/- are nothing to sneeze at, and it's HP at this point is just plain ridiculous. It's going to be neigh-impossible to bring down by any but the most OP builds it goes up against
By sheer virtue of it's HP alone, this thing would remain a threat even up until Level 10 range. That's not even taking into account what you speculate might be necessary for a pure brute character of doubling the HP bonus even further to that of 863 HP.
Are you doing the math for the PCs?
You're going to have a minimum of three characters doing damage to the troll. The main fighter type will average two to three attacks against the troll hitting nearly every time with a crit every so often.
The second damage dealer will be optimized in a similar fashion.
You apparently don't use combat healing. Our party does. When not doing damage (the fourth damage dealer and healer), the party healer will drop back and heal fairly miniscule damage this troll does.
Let's look at the current party if it were four people:
Mage: Buff with haste. Maybe use a color spray to stop owlbear from attacking for a round or some similar type of spell. Or add some damage with magic missile or scorching ray.
Barbarian: Raging. Hit roll: 1d20 +7 str -2 power attack +6 BAB +2 reckless abandon +1 haste +2 weapon = +15/15/10
Damage: 2d6 +10 str +2 weapon +6 power attack = 2d6+18
Average 25 per hit. Hits at least twice.
After DR. 40 damage per round. No crit.
Paladin archer. Smite evil. Hit roll: 1d20 +4 dex +5 Charisma +6 BAB -2 deadly aim +2 weapon +1 haste +1 point blank shot(maybe +3 with enhancement. He usually gets keen) with Manyshot = +17/+17/+11
Mythic power Sudden Strike. additional +17
damage: 1d8+2 str +2 weapon +4 deadly aim +6 smite evil =1d8+14
DR doesn't matter because Smite Evil. Three hits per round.
54 points of damage.
So total damage output per round for four person party fighting this mythic troll.
Barbarian: 40
Paladin: 54
Total Damage per round: 94
Trolls total damage per round: Far, far less. And it gets healed by the cleric.
So the party is outputting 94 damage per round divided by 463. It will take them about 5 to 6 rounds to kill the troll even with its regeneration. This will depend on the number of mythic surges and what they chose for their mythic stuff. So five or six rounds is outlasting the PCs? I doubt it.
So according to the math you used, my troll will last 5 to 6 rounds. This does not include damage from the cleric or mage or any debilitating effects they may use.
I think my template is close to where I want it.
Lets go all the way in a different direction. Let's say generic CR 20 creature with 10 Mythic Ranks.
It gains a bonus of 2,000 HP because it's up against a 4-man party. This is on top of the ~370 HP it has normally.
It gains DR 10/- if it doesn't have it already.
It also gains Regeneration 50 or 100 as advised by your statement that '5 or 10 times it's mythic ranks is a good starting point'.So, now you have a creature that will have between 2,000 and 4,000 bonus HP (if you deem in necessary), and regeneration of 50 or 100. Not only that, it has the ability to outright deny critical hits against it depending on it's remaining surges and heal 25% of it's health as a free action.
This guy is going to outlast the PCs because it's difficult as hell to kill. It also means that, in this campaign, you force casters to play in the most optimal method possible: buffing, control and debuffing.
In this campaign, casters know that even something like a Mythic Empowered Intensified Maximized Fireball or something isn't going to do jack to a Mythic Monster.
Instead, they're going to spend all of their effort buffing their allies to even crazier heights, while tossing out as many debuffs and save-or-sucks as they can, and dropping battlefield control to deny enemies as many actions as possible.
You're talking stuff like Uber Debuff Witches dropping Evil Eye, Misfortune, Bestow Curse for -6 saves, Bestow Curse for penalty to ability score, Limited Wish for -7 on it's next save etc. Start tossing enough of those on something and it'll be all but guaranteed to fail any saving throw you want.
My point being is that these changes are way, way too over the top. While it's true that monsters won't have the ability to do the same amount of damage that PCs do, the big thing to keep in mind is that the monsters often have the same generic feats that are the biggest offenders. Many, many monsters have both Power Attack and Vital Strike. So a Mythic Monster is likely to have them too. So they're going to be capable of similar damage output, even if it's not the same as what a Mythic PC can.
The big thing to remember is that Mythic does almost nothing to increase the defenses of the PCs outside of certain path abilities. So a 20th level PC is still going to have between 150 - 300 hp depending on class/con bonus. If a monster is capable of dropping 1 PC in a round or two, while surviving the onslaught of entire party for multiple rounds, you basically have a TPK machine because the PCs cannot withstand the same punishment.
Think about it. Say the PCs have 3 HP, and can deal 10 HP per round. The monster has 40 HP and can deal 1 hp per round. This means, that through sheer method of 'toughing it out' the monster will beat the PCs because he can last longer than they can.
The regeneration I might tone down. I'll have to see when I get there.
We use combat healing. I want combat healing used. I work to build encounters where it is used. I want the cleric to have to counter effects on players. So DCs of effects must be high enough to force them to both uses surges to boost saves and force the cleric/healer to remove effects.
Mages in my group already use control tactics. I don't have to force them to use those tactics. They like using those control tactics and laughing at easily defeated enemies. This is not something I have to force them to do. Them using control tactics is like the fighter using Power Attack.
If I were running a less experienced group, I'd probably tone it down. These guys are going to take every optimal feat, spell, and option available to maximize damage output, defenses, and destroying everything I throw against them. I'm not going to try to stop them from doing it. I'm going to use my beefed up template and modify as needed.
I know what my players do. They already carved apart a 2000 hit point crag linnorm in Kingmaker non-mythic. I at least didn't allow them Leadership this time. They all take Leadership when I allow it because it's the best feat in the game.
That math you listed doesn't take into account player capability. In my experience 2000 to 4000 hit points isn't that much. A prepared party can heal an immense amount of hit point damage per round on top of outputting far more damage than the opponent. So you want them to have far more hit points considering big creatures usually have very little support.
It's your game. You can kill off your group with overpowered monsters if you want. I know that I will run combat scenarios using my group to see how they cope so to know if I'm overdoing things.
I will say this. My group took the third path when it came to Reign of Winter, dressed up as guards, went right to the second floor, captured the captain of the guard, talked her into betraying the witch in charge (because why should she throw her life away when woken up after being brought to negative hit points?) before finally luring the guards one at a time to be slaughtered on the 2nd floor. (I didn't bother with that combat.)
PCs will inevitably not act in the way you expect. Either they will outwit your plans and use Negotiation with Trolls on Skull Pass, or just barge right in for the slaughter with snowmen and ice elementals. You can never tell. Upping hit points won't solve everything. And as I said, you could very well end up with a Total Party Kill on your hands.
Besides. I'm not the one who did the math showing how your "template" was broken. That was the previous poster.
The math didn't show it was broken. It showed it was where I wanted it.
I don't know what your PCs can do. I only know what mine can do. I carefully calculate damage output by the PCs, healing capability, saving throw DCs by my casters, and compare them to what they're going against. Then I design my template.That's why I'm wondering why you find the template over the top. Do you not have optimized PCs in your campaign? Maybe you don't. If you do, calculate their damage output sometime. I think you will be quite surprised at how far it is in favor of the PCs versus the monsters. It only gets worse as the levels rise.
I'll post a few combats. I know I did some calculations with an encounter at the end of the second module. There might be some problems with it due to the nature of the inhabitants capabilities. I might do something a little different with that encounter. My template is primarily for big brutes. I might make that my "Brute Mythic Template" and create something else for mythic creatures with different magical capabilities depending on my calculations.
PT, I'm the optimizer of the group, and I'm the GM. I've studied the rules and know the rules fairly well (though one of my players running a Sorceress has managed to surprise me a few times with such things as Strangling Hair and the like). When it comes time to level, I'll toss out a half dozen Feats that I suggest for them and let them choose.
Here is how unoptimized some of my players are. When one girl joined my group, I had her roll for stats. She commented on how she always rolled poorly for stats and it started bearing true for this - until I noticed two dice kept rolling 2s. I snagged them, rolled them a half dozen times and they kept rolling 2s. I put those dice aside, had her reroll with new dice, and she rolled 14, 15, 15, 16, 16, 17. She decided to play a human, put the +2 into one of the 15s, and created a human rogue with an intelligence and dexterity of 17, with her favored weapon being the blowgun. She is the equivalence of a 52 point build... and does the least damage, has nearly died several times, and has bad luck with die rolls to detect traps and the like. She only chose Deadly Aim because I strongly urged her to (and so that her blowgun now does not-quite-sucky damage).
I could create a combat encounter that matches their CR and through tactics, concentration of fire, and the like wipe out this group on paper. And yet if I tossed that encounter at them, they might do something so unexpected that they'd prevail despite the tactics and the like, because the amateur is perhaps the most dangerous of foes because they do the unexpected.
I wouldn't have it any other way. :)
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Just a short post, I needed to go to bed hours ago.
I think, most GMs will want/have to change the encounters in an adventure for their group. Quick and dirty templates like advanced and the templates in MA are welcome but sometimes you need to customize a monster.
The template in this threat is custom build for Piccolos group, who seems to be very proficient at this game.
Seems reasonable, but I always like to mention that the mythic abilities at the back end of MY, after the monster stats, are a veritable grab bag of useful powers^^