Mythic Rules: What is the Accepted Wisdom?


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I'm considering adopting the mythic rules for a campaign already in progress. Despite my avatar name, I actually don't know all that much about Mythic. I've skimmed the rules, and I feel I have a decent grasp of what's going on there, but experience has taught me that, well, only experience can teach you!

It's been a year now, and Wrath of the Righteous has come and gone. There are bound to be droves of people out there who have some direct experience with the Mythic rules who can tell me what the next result was on their campaign.

What's the consensus?

It doesn't take much to predict that even if it is functioning completely to spec, it's going to play complete havoc with a lot of normal campaign assumptions. That's fine. In a lot of ways, that's what I'm after; the campaign I'll be (maybe) adding this to is already the most over-the-top one I've ever run.

But once the dust settles, is there anything that's just too broken to touch? Anything I should exclude at the outset? Any popular house rules that keep things on track? I'm also interested in links to past threads that you feel explore this issue meaningfully.

All constructive feedback is appreciated!


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When you introduce Mythic, let go of the idea of a big "Boss" monster.

Seriously, let it go. It no longer works.

Instead, put plenty of really strong things. In addition to your big thing. Make sure you block all movement lanes if you use the big thing.

High tier Mythic characters put out INSANE amounts of damage.

Unless everything has 1000+ HP and DR 15/-, don't bring that weak shit in here and expect it to survive more than a round.

This is what a high level Mythic combat looks like. With a few errors (I couldn't have Charged and done TWO Mythic Vital Strikes, but I could do one, and that was plenty.).

And that's actually much tamer than the "Us vs Hastur, Godzilla, and Mothra" fight that immediately preceded it. That one was just longer.


I've made and played with some mythic chars.
Maxed Fighter 20 point buy
lvl 12 MT2 rogue 26 point buy
lvl 10 MT2 Alchemist 26 point buy
lvl 13 MT2 Fighter 26 point buy

Here is my opinion. 1 mythic tier gets the party's feet wet in the system. I would hold off on the rest of the tiers until they hit 20. If someone starts lagging behind, just throw tiers at them.

Mythic combat tends to either be an endurance test (endless waves of critters, lots of CC), or rocket tag (APL+8 or more CR encounters). I would try to push the party into optimizes for endurance as opposed to rocket tag. To me rocket tag makes the game feel cheap and more or less decided during the initiative roll. I would try to avoid that. The more real options your players have the more agency they will feel like they have.

This means way more work on the GM side. Large encounters with lots of mooks could run slow. Running slow is the worst thing you can do as a GM, so you will have to work extra hard to make sure the extra mooks don't make the game run slowly.

EDIT: Seriously though. Slow games are dead games. If you go, "hold on party I have read up on my NPC's abilities" that will kill the session.

EDIT2: Seriously whatever you do. Don't be slow. Turn speed is key.

EDIT3: I really can't stress this enough.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I would just dabble in very low levels of mythic. I don't feel that it adds anything productive to a game. There are plenty of things I'd avoid, unless you like those 1000 hp swings.


Mythic works find just keep in mind it amplifies exist problems. So at low levels it not too bad and high levels all those problems of high level player 10 times those problems.


I am currently running a game with 5 Level seven tier three characters. I would say that we subjectively find mythic very enjoyable, however it completely changes the paradigm of the game.

Your PC's will be simply amazingly strong in almost every way.

CR is a thing of the past, and as said up thread single boss monsters even at CR + 6 are easy meat usually.

It does make your PC's feel like legendary hero's but it definitely creates an enormous amount of work for the GM as you will have to hand tune everything based around your particular group and their builds.

The only thing I have had to ban is mythic vital strike as it is amazingly a no brainer choice.

In short Mythic creates more work for the GM and can also amplify the difference between a low system mastery player and a High system mastery player, but can be a great amount of fun.

Now if you want any details please feel free to ask but that is the TL;DR.

Hope this helps.


Great feedback so far, don't be afraid to go into detail if you have time. I will read it.

So what I'm getting from you guys is that the CR guideline of APL + (Mythic Tier *.5) is not accurate. Is this just a ratio that's off, or is there some unquantifiable factor at work? Is it the action economy? Is it closer to APL + Tiers?

In the AP I'm running (an off-the-rails version of Legacy of Fire), the players are 9th level and have just finished Book 4 (designed for level 9-11, they took it with levels 6-9).

My plan is to cut directly to Book 6 (levels 14-15), and I'll power up most of the creatures from Book 5 and run that after, if necessary.

So, we have a party that is clearly already running above APL, and I'm dropping them into an APL + 5 module.

If what you all are saying is true, adding mythic tiers should easily close that gap? What are the most important factors in this?

My plan is to take a 9th level party, and have them fight one to three Mythic bosses before gaining their first tier. At that point I'll put the Mythic progression to simmer on a low heat, maybe one every three levels. They'll continue to have mythic bosses, though.

Legacy of Fire Spoilers!:

The idea is that the players will become the new Templars of the Five Winds, but Nefeshti is reluctant to use her wishes to grant them Mythic power due to the wishwarping around Pale Mountain, owing to Jhavul's ritual.

In order for them to gain the power, they will need to restore reality to its original order by slaying Jhavul's most powerful wishcrafted minions. Once enough of them have been destroyed, Nefeshti will take the risk of elevating the PCs to Mythic Power.

Basically, they're 9th level now and I need the benefit of your collective experience to pace the addition of Mythic correctly.

This particular campaign is not sheepish about power acquisition, and since I plan to continue from Legacy of Fire into Necromancer's 3.5 City of Brass boxed set, higher Mythic tiers are not out of the question. The question is when and how. And I'd very much like to learn from what you all can share with me.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

if you're going to do a mythic campaign, you will find it's a much better idea to introduce mythic tiers right at the low levels, even at first level.

Mythic tiers are force multipliers, the higher the level of the characters, the more impact they have.

This actually works very well. You can have a workable Hercules or other mythic type character and have them work at low levels, and keep a low entropy campaign, instead of trying to make him a 20th level something to convey a suitable majesty.


Also, what can I expect to happen at JUST level 9 tier 1?

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:
Also, what can I expect to happen at JUST level 9 tier 1?

The results will be highly variable. I'll give you an example.

Lets say you give a mythic tier to a first level sorcerer. And lets say she picks the ability Wild Arcana. She can spend that one point to cast any spell on her spell list even if it's not a known spell at a caster level 2 levels above her own.

At first level, one mythic point spent means one first level spell cast at CL3.

At 9th level that same point with the same ability gives her up to fourth level spells cast at CL11. 5th if she happened to be a wizard, or cleric.

This is why I call the mechanics force multipliers.


From a player's perspective, Mythic is a hell of a lot of fun. It's a pretty massive shift in power that can twist some accepted things on their heads-- 1/2 BAB classes can't melee, 'cause even if they can Polymorph into something awesome their BAB and melee stats suck, right? Well... Mythic can solve the BAB problem for shapeshifters (there's an ability specifically for that) and the extra stat points and such can help solve the melee stats issue. Suddenly they're threatening.

On the absolute simplest terms of that, classes with nothing to do with their swift actions can suddenly become awesome, because it's easy for even the humble Fighter to burn a point of power, move up to his speed, and get an attack off, thus setting him up to full attack your face in.

On the other hand, it is a huge power swing. I did the math for one particular character of mine at level 20/tier 10, and while she's got a few advantages beyond Mythic (a handful of 3.5 stuff and gestalt, though at this point it's pretty much all one class fueling damage), and her average nuclear strike is a little over 4000 damage.

The other issue, and the one that you might need to look into, is that not all classes are equal for Mythic. My GM has had to apply some pretty heavy houseruling to give the party Alchemist/Kineticist something useful to do with his mythic tiers. Pet classes have it especially bad, since their pets pretty much turn into cannon fodder-- even the Synthesist starts looking weak (personally, I wouldn't even take a Master Summoner into a full mythic game). Also, are your players relatively similar in optimization abilities, or is there a large disparity there? This can make a huge difference too. While most of us spent our first Mythic feat on awesome stuff like Dual Path, one player took... Mythic Dodge. One of these things is not like the other.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I would say that it's a lot better to start mythic at lower levels then to level characters up to 20, and then start applying mythic.

There's not really that much more of an "accepted" wisdom regarding mythic than there every was about epic. But in my opinion, it's a lot easier for a GM to work with it at lower levels than at higher ones.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:
Also, what can I expect to happen at JUST level 9 tier 1?

It's interesting you asked that, as my own homebrew campaign introduced Mythic Tier 1 to the characters as they were at 10th level. Similar to your initial expectations going into it by reading the book and making some standard assumptions, I figured the encounters needed to be bumped up by +1 CR or something along those lines. I found that was woefully inadequate, and that even at Tier 1 the PC's having Mythic qualities was a game-changer. It really caught me off-guard as a DM I must admit. It wasn't the ability to use 5 mythic points to surge d20 rolls that was the big deal, or even the choice of mythic path ability to get in an extra attack or spell with those same points (though they trumped Hero Points for the players which was somewhat anticipated). To some extent it was the PC choice of their mythic path abilities (as some are definitely more powerful than others), but mostly it was the choice of the Mythic Feat for each PC. Choices such as Mythic Power Attack and Mythic Weapon Finesse transformed our supporting marital characters into much more serious martial threats, chewing up the standard encounters, and Mythic Arcane Strike wasn't bad either.

Currently my game has them at 12th level, so I've seen just a couple levels of the Mythic impact there. I'm not saying it was a campaign wrecker by any means, but as a DM I have to really think about the encounters in a different way than I did before. From a story standpoint it's been as fun as I thought it might be, but let's just say when a player asked "hey do you think we'll get a shot at Tier 2 soon" my response was a resounding 'nope' without much thought. At least for the time being.


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

IMO, mythic is best in (relatively) small doses (probably no more than 6-8 tiers, which is about 12-20 mythic encounters total, over the course of an entire campaign); even Mythic Adventures recommends that characters gain at most one mythic tier for every two character levels. Thankfully, mythic trials are primarily narrative events under the control of the GM (as opposed to straight XP), so it's fairly easy to tailor the frequency and upper limit of mythic tiers gained by the PCs in the course of a given campaign.

Because mythic encounters work best when tied to a narrative structure, adding mythic (when, where, and how often) should be something that is planned out in advance to suit a particular campaign/story arc, instead of a "random" or one-off thing (or worse, frequently encountered). The GM also needs to do a bit more foreshadowing than normal and work the mythic elements into both the setting and the current adventures. One of the biggest things for some GMs is to ensure that the actions of mythic PCs have consequences to the campaign setting (success, failure, and collateral effects): because mythic is tied so heavily to the narrative structure of a campaign (by design, it seems), the setting needs to be brought into higher relief than just "a place to sell loot, buy/upgrade equipment, and rest between adventures."


Vorduvai, that is a fascinating analysis. I'd be keen to hear more from you since that's pretty close to what I'm planning.

The party right now is shaping up to be as follows:

Suli qinggong ki mystic monk (of the four winds) 9th
Elf Magus (Hex Crafter) 9th
Hobgoblin Cavalier w/ Griffon Mount 9th
Human barbarian 9th

The first three on the list are new to the party, the barbarian is the only holdover from the last chapter.

Note that I don't have to add mythic right away, either. I could add it in any time one or more levels from now.

So there's no full caster. The most egregious aspiring optimizer is probably the magus' player, but I'm not to worried about being able to keep the pressure on.

However, if any of these build sets off red flags, like maybe someone is using an internet build meant to work with future mythic stuff, I'd like to know.

It's been mentioned that the cavalier might be in trouble because mounts don't get good mythic support. He's also the party's only evil PC, which means he may be left out of the mythic party initially... I have tentative plans for a diabolical pact to serve in place of the mythic power the rest of the party.

This is all excellent food for thought, keep it coming!


Dragonchess Player wrote:
Because mythic encounters work best when tied to a narrative structure, adding mythic (when, where, and how often) should be something that is planned out in advance to suit a particular campaign/story arc, instead of a "random" or one-off thing (or worse, frequently encountered). The GM also needs to do a bit more foreshadowing than normal and work the mythic elements into both the setting and the current adventures. One of the biggest things for some GMs is to ensure that the actions of mythic PCs have consequences to the campaign setting (success, failure, and collateral effects): because mythic is tied so heavily to the narrative structure of a campaign (by design, it seems), the setting needs to be brought into higher relief than just "a place to sell loot, buy/upgrade equipment, and rest between adventures."

I'm pretty well situated as far as the contents of this paragraph.

Mythic power would be coming at a point that has been foreshadowed for something like 5 years of real-life time. We're approaching the end of the campaign arc, and the players know they're up against an incredible opposition.

There will be consequences to the setting. I am not afraid to depart from the canon. In fact, I have already razed the brazen peaks and made them a efreet-ridden hellhole on a scale outpacing what might be in the AP. And for those who know the details on the campaign, there's a certain sealed-evil-in-a-can that is probably going to feature after all, despite the events as-written.

Based on what's been said here, I will probably stay in the very low tiers of mythic until the end of the AP, then progress to the planes and the City of Brass before I start adding more in. I'm okay with things getting über at that stage, that's sort of the point!

But I am heeding your words of warning... and collating.


As someone who is in a game where we are Lvl 9 Mythic 1, i can tell you some things

Casters can sling spells like no one's business, up to 5 times/day casters basically have a free quicken spell.

Our Paladin took display of strength, and that is just so, so, handy.

I think ALL of our melee characters took Mythic Power Attack, and THEY asked for it to be nerfed. That's how good it is.

Mythic Surge can be an absolute life saver.

*EDIT*
Also, mythic powers can grant some massive narrative bonuses, even to Martials. Even with our single rank, our GM has to have some major events happen to keep us in our place.

Currently we have to stop this fire elemental being from destroy everything in it's path, to do so, we had to find a gem that can contain/weaken/whatevswhoknowswesureashelldont the elemental, and to do that we had to find out who had it, where he hid it, join his personal guard, find the gem, and pull the person who found it back onto this plane of reality. This took place mostly over two days.

Which is good, because with what we have and can do, we can basically just ignore money. So he has to keep us...occupied.


Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

My group just finished book 3 of WotR. These are the things that I have learned:
1) APL adjustments should be +1 per tier, instead of +1/2. The characters damage output is going to skyrocket, so you will need much stronger fights.
2) Your players will never have the "I don't have the right spell memorized today." issue, ever. With Wild Arcana and the divine equivalent, any silver bullet spell is just a standard action away, so don't expect it to be an impediment that the Golum is only vulnerable to transmute stone to mud.
3) Amazing Initiative and Mythic Haste significantly reduces the issues with action economy and this will kill your fights. Seriously, I would say at least half of the Mythic Points used each session was for the extra standard action with Amazing Init, often times every round in big fights. For classes without mythic spellcasting this was more like 2 to 1.
4) High CR can sometimes mean something the players can't get through. CR is calculated with the assumption that you can get past certain obstacles. CR5 assumes someone in your party can fly, CR 7 assumes you can Raise Dead, CR9 assumes you can teleport. However if you are only level 10, but tier 5, you are fighting CR14-16 monsters and they might have abilities that the game assumes your characters have that they have not yet gained access to. Just keep that in mind.

5) it is loads of fun for your players and they will love unloading on big baddies!!!


You can check this thread http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rq1q?Mythic-Adventures-lets-fix-it#34

- I would love to talk more about things people find bad in Mythic and what fixes are for them... but responses tend to clump around people who think that melee doing 1000 points of damage is fine and trying to balance the game is 'nerfing melees' - and others who just want to pan the entire system.

Some mythic stuff is broken - honestly I don't know what or all of it - you can see some suggestions I have in the other thread.

One suggestion that we are using is to treat a mythic game like a superhero game - and add the 'earth shattering' narrative to combat - don't be afraid to make things over the top and 'comic-book like' and you can enjoy what it does and use it to tell a cool story.


Another point would be to get very serious about what actions do what - you get one swift per round - and immediate actions take your swift for the next round - because it's an action type that typically doesn't have multiple uses outside of mythic (quickened spells and certain class features that use swift or immediate) it's easy for players to get too many actions in a single round - it's a good idea to have players make a cheat sheet of what abilities they have and what actions they take so you can limit the mythic power that's actually usable.

If you find a power that is too powerful balance seems to be best found adjusting # of rounds it's active - action type - and mythic power cost - between those three things you can keep things from getting out of hand.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I've been using Mythic in Jade Regent, and being the sneaky GM that I am I treat tiers as "virtual levels". So right now the PCs are level 7/Tier 2 (APL 9), and need 105,000 xp to reach level 8 (normally the amount needed for level 10), and increasing their tiers based on the narrative. This was so I could avoid some of the pitfalls of higher level play. I plan to cap the PCs at Level 10/Tier 3 to keep the challenge decent and letting them take additional feats whenever they would otherwise level, and Mythic abilities (though only tier 1/tier 3 abilities).

From what I've seen going more than three tiers into Mythic drastically changes the power level of the PCs.

Scarab Sages

Just wanted to add that Mythic allows players options that are either restricted or not available if they're playing for choice rather than power e.g. taking the immortal path option to live forever even if your a rogue/fighter/etc. Yes there are ways to get these things but they're generally difficult. Other examples are not needing a spellbook so you don't need a bag of holding to lug the equivilent of a library around to have access to your spells or sanctuary to get a private demi-plane of your own.

Don't get me wrong it amplifies problems in the system especially if you have a party where some are trying to build massive powerhouses and others aren't. Its just that it offers things that either don't exist or are limited in the system but honestly have little impact on game play. If I make my human immortal it wont affect most campaigns, if I have my wizard able to prepare spells from memory rather than a babobs book it won't impact most campaigns (yes there are times it will). If I have my fighter not needing to eat/drink/breathe it can impact some things but no more than you can get via rings he just now has those slots free. If my Kitsune doesn't need to sleep it just means she's got a bit of free time to pursue her own interests while everyone else is catching some sleep (or she gets stuck with watch duty over and over again).


I'm wrapping up an E6 Mythic Legacy of Fire game (one session left). Players are topping out at level 6 + 20 bonus feats (APL 10-ish) with 5 mythic tiers (final APL 15-ish). The PCs became mythic in Book 1 and have gained roughly one tier per 2 effective levels. I deliberately excluded tier 6+ because of the crazy abilities it allows. In hind-sight, less is more when it comes to mythic. I could have gotten a similar game experience with only 3 tiers rather than 5.

For encounters, setting CR = APL + Tier is a good start. At higher levels, you may need to bump CR even more. Mythic is like an exponential multiplier. I can see how the higher the level, the more of a multiplier mythic becomes.

I made very few changes, but only because many of the tiers came before the PCs were getting E6 bonus feats. The PCs were very limited on Mythic feat choices since they needed to have the base feat as a prerequisite. As a result, I didn't have to face some of the shenanigans others have reported with things like Mythic Improved Critical, etc. However, I changed Mythic Power Attack to eliminate the additional multiplying on a crit, and it was a great change.

We are all having tons of fun, but the game has gotten a bit silly. I think the longest encounter in the entire campaign has gone 5 rounds. Most last 2 or less. In many, some PCs/creatures never get a turn. It isn't that the encounters are easy, they just don't last long and are very much on a razor's edge. And if the PCs "hold back" to conserve their mythic power for later encounters, the fights get really tough. There have been no deaths, but plenty of unconscious PCs, which made for some tense moments. It either goes really, really well for the PCs (ROFL-stomp) or really, really bad (near-TPK). There is nothing in between unless the PCs hold their mythic power.

When it comes to monsters, non-mythic monsters of an appropriate CR work fine as do those with a Mythic template added. True Mythic monsters will be noticed by the players, use them sparingly for good effect. Until your group sees it and gets used to it, be careful using monsters with Dual Initiative - they often get to go twice in a row unless a PC delays to prevent it. That being said, Dual Initiative is a great way to make a monster special and challenging.

Just to give you an idea of what you'll see out of a PC, here is the party fighter in action (fighter 6 + 20 feats/champion 5):

Declare full-attack.
Gets to move speed as part of full-attack (speed 60 in full plate).
Option to spend 1 mythic power to increase speed to 110.
Make first attack at full BAB.
Make iterative attack with +5 bonus (aka at full BAB).
Spend 1 mythic power to make Sudden Attack at full BAB, add Tier (+5), roll twice, take highest, bypass all DR.
Spend 1 mythic power to buy a Standard Action.
Make attack at full BAB or Cleave if multiple enemies in range.

Against mooks or in conservation mode, the sequence is move, Cleave, 1 Mythic to Cleave again. And with Mythic Cleave, enemies can be anywhere within reach.


@kikidmonkey

What is it about Mythic that enables you to ignore money? I use a house rule in this campaign (a Wealth rating). The characters are all supposed to be super rich princes, so they have access to pretty much whatever they want; but I've also house-ruled the big six enhancement bonuses out of the game, so the swag tends to be more interesting.

I'm curious because this is the first mention of a wealth interaction with mythic I've seen. Could you (or anyone) elaborate?

@j b 200

Okay, this seems like a consensus on the Level - Tier ratio. Does anyone go further? Would anyone care to take a stab at a differential modified to APL? For example, levels 1-3, CR = APL + Tier. Levels 4-6, CR = APL + [Tier *1.5], etc.

Obviously I'm just making numbers up, but is it the consensus that Tier 6 characters are actually better than APL+6?

Sure, it would have been better if the CR calculation was simpler, but since it's not, we should at least know what we're dealing with!

@Chorik

I will take some time and read that thread. This thread might be a good place to hash things out, since I think I want to keep things focused on my specific situation, rather than indicting the rules as a whole.

As far as superheros go -- I firmly believe that around levels 6-8, Pathfinder becomes a superhero game anyway. Applying superhero story structure and pacing does nothing but enhance the game and make everything more intuitive. It's a game about power fantasy, hence the massive portion of ink spent on various superpowers.

As a veteran GM, I know the action economy is a pretty huge deal. It does basically mean I have to double the number of non-mythic opposition if I want them to last at all. This is okay, though, I have adopted team initiative and I will often run clusters of NPCs using macros in Roll20. I'll find a way to make that work, now that I am anticipating it.

@Dudemeister

Capping out at three tiers seems like another consensus. At least until things get planar and ridiculous -- what would have been an epic level campaign in 3.5. I'll probably make due with 1-2 tiers. Maybe I'll give them the second tier a few sessions before end of campaign.

@Senko

I'm not entirely clear on your meaning. Are you saying that there are mythic options that are unnecessarily limited? Please elaborate.

@Mike J

Wow. If that's the situation with an E6 game, I can only imagine what standard progression plus Mythic becomes.


I would say that what a mythic tier is worth depends both on what tier and what choices are taken at that tier.

For example legendary item is fantastic, while longevity can have very little in game effect.

Tier 3 is a game changer with its ability to rest and regain spells/abilities twice in a day with one hour of rest, as is Tier 2 with the fact that a myth power gives you an extra standard.

An example of this is the fact that my barbarian player usually opens with Fleet Charge as she has 90ft move speed, followed by a full attack and if she has not dropped all enemies within reach uses a myth power for another attack.

My wizard player loves the fact that he never has to worry about his spell load out anymore, as he just memorizes a generic attack load out and has his myth power to allow him to use the utility spells he needs.

My hunter player is enjoying mythic death from above with her menacing keen scimitar to grant her the use of a 15-20 X4 weapon and a +6 to hit for both her and her animal companion.

Basically all classes have something great, but the amount of great varies and a tier can be worth anything from 1-3 levels in my opinion. The only way it can be worth less than one is if you deliberately picked abilities and feats so as to be weak, or if you were a trickster.

Trickster is by far the most lackluster path, with archmage and heirophant being the strongest.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

Mythic quickly turns a basic fight into the most dangerous game. While it is almost true that PC MythicAPL is really APL + AMT, I have seen a party with an MythicAPL of 11 deal with a CR 20+ dragon fights in hazardous terrain. That same party, now MAPL 14.5 almost defeated a CR 25 encounter, but on the hairs edge of almost is a TPK. Every fight becomes the PCs steamroll everything, or the PCs die. It became very very difficult to tune, and so the game became really broken. At lower levels when we only had 1 mythic tier it added some nice flavour, a little bit more powerful then Hero Points. It made some "boss" fights especially more interesting as the foes would get to go twice, and not be wrecked by the the action economy. After the TPK we ended the campaign. It wasn't my proudest moment as a GM, but I was relieved.


Galnörag wrote:
While it is almost true that PC MythicAPL is really APL + AMT, I have seen a party with an MythicAPL of 11 deal with a CR 20+ dragon fights in hazardous terrain. That same party, now MAPL 14.5 almost defeated a CR 25 encounter, but on the hairs edge of almost is a TPK.

Was it ever the case that encounters with a CR closer to APL+APT were sufficiently challenging to this party?

If so, then it sounds like Mythic significantly alters the precision of challenge rating. If not, then it sounds like the precision is ok, but the accuracy needs work.

Or perhaps you're saying that's it's possible for a specific party with good system mastery to track higher than APL+APT. That's true of CR in the core rules, so it's not so bad here.


Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:
Galnörag wrote:
Mythic quickly turns a basic fight into the most dangerous game. While it is almost true that PC MythicAPL is really APL + AMT, I have seen a party with an MythicAPL of 11 deal with a CR 20+ dragon fights in hazardous terrain. That same party, now MAPL 14.5 almost defeated a CR 25 encounter, but on the hairs edge of almost is a TPK.

Was it ever the case that encounters with a CR closer to APL+APT were sufficiently challenging to this party?

If so, then it sounds like Mythic significantly alters the precision of challenge rating. If not, then it sounds like the precision is ok, but the accuracy needs work.

I would say at tier 1 then that was true, but beyond that no. For instance my party just beat a CR12 Arcanist lich in an enviornment the lich had prepared including traps, illusions, and hiding spots, along with 2 of these, which are ridiculously nasty.

Directly before hand, as in long enough for buffs to run out but on the same day they fought packs of those to get to the lich. A pack of 3 then 4 then 4 again.

They found this challenging at level 6 tier 2, but that is like a CR 10, then 11, then 11 followed by a CR 14. It would have been easy even then except they had no way to remove the negative levels. To be honest the negative levels made the mooks more difficult than the Lich.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

From: Table: Encounter Design

APL –1 = Easy
APL = Average
APL +1 = Challenging
APL +2 = Hard
APL +3 = Epic

So in my example MAPL 11 dealing with a CR 20 encounter is BEYOND epic, and that the CR 25 vs MAPL 13.5 was a close call.

I agree that this is a guideline, and that system mastery effectively improves the parties APL, but APL +3 should be hard once you baseline against the right APL is, and we are talking APL +10-11. The point is that you can't rely on APL as a good guide line, you really have to do your thoughtful and careful balancing, but to create challenging encounters (and of course not all encounters need to be an epic challenge) you walk a thinner line between between easy to brutally murderous.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber
Covent wrote:
Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:
Galnörag wrote:
Mythic quickly turns a basic fight into the most dangerous game. While it is almost true that PC MythicAPL is really APL + AMT, I have seen a party with an MythicAPL of 11 deal with a CR 20+ dragon fights in hazardous terrain. That same party, now MAPL 14.5 almost defeated a CR 25 encounter, but on the hairs edge of almost is a TPK.

Was it ever the case that encounters with a CR closer to APL+APT were sufficiently challenging to this party?

If so, then it sounds like Mythic significantly alters the precision of challenge rating. If not, then it sounds like the precision is ok, but the accuracy needs work.

I would say at tier 1 then that was true, but beyond that no. For instance my party just beat a CR12 Arcanist lich in an enviornment the lich had prepared including traps, illusions, and hiding spots, along with 2 of these, which are ridiculously nasty.

Directly before hand, as in long enough for buffs to run out but on the same day they fought packs of those to get to the lich. A pack of 3 then 4 then 4 again.

They found this challenging at level 6 tier 2, but that is like a CR 10, then 11, then 11 followed by a CR 14. It would have been easy even then except they had no way to remove the negative levels. To be honest the negative levels made the mooks more difficult than the Lich.

By the guideline that that the APL of a mythic party is APL + Avg Tier, your APL 8 Party did a +2, +3, +3, +6 encounter. That seems to reinforce that level + tier to get APL is not sufficient.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

What are you looking to gain by adding mythic to your campaign? If you can answer that, then it may tell you which part of these answers is more important.


Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

As my players are only tier 4, I can't say if 6th tier is that much more powerful from experience. Just looking at the table though, Mythic Saves is like evasion for everything, can really take the teeth out of lots of abilities. Force of Will at 7th (6th?) can reroll any action or force an enemy to reroll, so say goodbye to crit fails, 1s on saves or crits against you from non-mythic enemies.

Just looking at the basic abilities, not even the 6th tier path powers, it does appear that high tier is going to be very hard to hurt your PCs.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber

A thing to watch is that mythic really uses up the action economy differently. Swift and Immediate actions come into play a lot more. Which means tracking them. If you use your immediate action to boost something with your mythic power, you can't use a swift on your next turn.


So, is it possible to make a non-linear CR modifier table for the mythic tiers? For sake of example, something like this below, but I just made these number up completely:
.
.
.
.
.
1st |+1 APL
2nd |+4 APL
3rd |+5 APL
4th |+6 APL
5th |+7 APL
6th |+10 APL
7th |+11 APL
8th |+12 APL
9th |+14 APL
10th|+15 APL

Because honestly this table doesn't need to look pretty. That ship has sailed. I'd like to know what the actual jump in performance is, not what the designers thought it maybe should be.

Please feel free to modify the above numbers based on your experience. It seems like 2nd and 6th tiers are a big deal, huh? Are there any tiers that really have a net +0 benefit? Also, let's try and account for PCs who are taking the obviously optimal feats (but maybe the worst offenders are nerfed a bit)

One thing is clear, this power bump is clearly much larger than the +1/2 tier system in the book!


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

If you're serious about going forward with this then don't worry about APL, CR or XP. You're going to have to learn what your PCs can handle and that will change with each mythic tier and feat even more so than normal levels.


Seannoss wrote:
If you're serious about going forward with this then don't worry about APL, CR or XP. You're going to have to learn what your PCs can handle and that will change with each mythic tier and feat even more so than normal levels.

I already drop XP for level by fiat.

And I'm a firm believer in comparing the statblocks instead of relying on CR overmuch.

But, if the problem is one of accuracy and not precision, it should be possible to get a whole lot closer to a genuine MAPL than the current rules offer. And that's really useful for a number of reasons.

For starters, if I was just working out of the book and not talking to you guys, I would be looking at monsters that were off by TEN OR MORE levels. Sure, I could run games and learn what to tweak, but why waste time when a simple metric can get me in the right neighborhood?

Eyeballing statblocks is still necessary to get you right on target, but CR has always been basically functional for getting you in the right neighborhood. As long as people are submitting actual numbers for what their parties have been able to handle, we might be able to get a workable tool out of this.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
kestral287 wrote:
From a player's perspective, Mythic is a hell of a lot of fun. It's a pretty massive shift in power that can twist some accepted things on their heads-- 1/2 BAB classes can't melee, 'cause even if they can Polymorph into something awesome their BAB and melee stats suck, right? Well... Mythic can solve the BAB problem for shapeshifters (there's an ability specifically for that) and the extra stat points and such can help solve the melee stats issue. Suddenly they're threatening.

VERY THREATENING. Work out some of the DPR for the polymorph forms. Last I checked, it was measured in the hundreds of damage (and that's at only tier II!). (∩▂∩)


Seannoss wrote:
What are you looking to gain by adding mythic to your campaign? If you can answer that, then it may tell you which part of these answers is more important.

Well, I'm running a campaign that is super-over-the-top, which is in contrast to some other campaigns I have going which are more "gritty".

The characters are (for plot reasons) going to become immortal supersoldiers, and mythic seemed like a good way to differentiate that from the high level game we're all used to.

Basically, I want my game to become a series of boss challenges which break the conventions of Pathfinder that my players are accustomed to. This would mean fighting mythic bosses that are higher tier than the PCs, and then the PCs will acquire tiers as a reward.

That, and there's this epic-level boxed set that I've always wanted to run after this AP, Necromancer Games' City of Brass. Since they'll be facing down "CR 30" stuff by the end of that, Mythic seems as good a method as any.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Mythic bosses can be pretty hard to beat, even for mythic characters, I find. Non-mythic anything pretty much isn't a threat anymore though. Our group once had 8th-level tier 4 characters get ROFL stomped by an efeeti fighter/guardian that we just couldn't seem to kill (at one point, its DR and energy resistance got so high it pretty much nullified all of our attacks).

It's even better once you realize mythic allows a GM to take ordinary monsters, and give them abilities poached from the universal monster rules.

For example, make a "primal troll" that possesses acid and fire immunity, as well as the split ability. It can never be killed, and the longer you fight it, the more of them there are (heck, you don't even have to fight it, it can just cut off it's fingers to make ten more, heal up, and repeat). That's a mythic threat to the world if I've ever heard of one.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

After WotR I didn't realize DR was a defense. Any champion or paladin can get past it so it became pretty worthless. And energy resistance (fire) can be blown past by nearly any fire spell. Eldritch breach makes SR pointless. Just a few examples of how mythic bumps offense only without raising defenses. I found mythic dodge worked best, but that's only one attack per round.


So people aren't really interested in seeing where the APL adjustment actually lands, tier by tier?


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

As mentioned I think it varies too much to put a number next to it. And it mostly doesn't matter. Both mythic heroes and enemies will have tiers or ranks so whatever bonus to APL they give will be mostly canceled.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Seannoss wrote:
As mentioned I think it varies too much to put a number next to it. And it mostly doesn't matter. Both mythic heroes and enemies will have tiers or ranks so whatever bonus to APL they give will be mostly canceled.

This is my thought as well.

Seannoss wrote:
After WotR I didn't realize DR was a defense. Any champion or paladin can get past it so it became pretty worthless. And energy resistance (fire) can be blown past by nearly any fire spell. Eldritch breach makes SR pointless. Just a few examples of how mythic bumps offense only without raising defenses. I found mythic dodge worked best, but that's only one attack per round.

This is what we were playing. No paladins, sadly.

Guinn Black, catfolk plains raider
Whisper, sylph storm sorcerer


When you have things like a 4th level caster at mythic tier 2 that can craft any magic item in the game at half price, balance goes out the window. And that is before noticing how everyone's offense went up to 11 while their defense didn't change. If you like rocket tag and caster shenanigans mythic is great, if you don't like these things it ends up a Swiss Cheese of banned powers and a constant balance headache.


Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:
So people aren't really interested in seeing where the APL adjustment actually lands, tier by tier?

More like it's an impossible task - a tier is worth anywhere from .5 to like +2 depending on what the person does with it, and what level and class they already are.

Mythic makes it really, really easy to turn the game into extreme rocket tag.

Fleet warrior got nerfed in my game (granting 1 iterative attack every 3 tiers); foebiter will be nerfed when it finally shows up (as I might give it to an enemy, but no one in my game has a legendary weapon); mythic vital strike I'm debating what to do with, but I've been avoiding giving it to enemies because it's too good and my players are aware of that.

That being said, mythic's a LOT of fun if you can politely steer your group away from turning the game into extreme rocket tag.

Whether non-mythic foes can still fight your party will be determined by what powers your PCs take - there's a handful of powers that are aimed specifically at utterly destroying non-mythic foes (mythic hexes, mythic holy word, as examples).

Though that being said, sufficiently meanly designed non-mythic foes can challenge a mythic party. But you need to be mean about the design. Like, "this would be unfair for a nonmythic party to fight" mean.


My concern with balance is relatively simple: at what general power level (CR) is a party of Level X and Tier Y actually in danger of losing a fight?

I know well that CR is an imperfect measure, but I still think that these numbers are helpful for generalizing.

So, I'd still appreciate the people who have experienced actual numbers telling me just how much of a bump they feel the given tiers give -- especially since it does not appear to be uniform across all tiers.

Certainly it is possible to get more accuracy than the system presented in the book. CR + 1/2 Tier is evidently not accurate at all!


kikidmonkey wrote:

As someone who is in a game where we are Lvl 9 Mythic 1, i can tell you some things

Casters can sling spells like no one's business, up to 5 times/day casters basically have a free quicken spell.

Our Paladin took display of strength, and that is just so, so, handy.

I think ALL of our melee characters took Mythic Power Attack, and THEY asked for it to be nerfed. That's how good it is.

Mythic Surge can be an absolute life saver.

*EDIT*
Also, mythic powers can grant some massive narrative bonuses, even to Martials. Even with our single rank, our GM has to have some major events happen to keep us in our place.

Currently we have to stop this fire elemental being from destroy everything in it's path, to do so, we had to find a gem that can contain/weaken/whatevswhoknowswesureashelldont the elemental, and to do that we had to find out who had it, where he hid it, join his personal guard, find the gem, and pull the person who found it back onto this plane of reality. This took place mostly over two days.

Which is good, because with what we have and can do, we can basically just ignore money. So he has to keep us...occupied.

We didn't find Mythic Power Attack to be all that powerful until we realized it was 1 minute not 1 round. I decided to keep at 1 round as that seemed to work well. 10 minutes make this insane. You can basically power attack an no penalty for every fight with martial character. Casters I find burn through their mythic power points really fast.


Naw, CR +1/2 tier is serious lowballing past like tier 2.

Part of it stems from mythic ranks (what monsters get) not being nearly as good as mythic tiers (what PCs get). Mythic ranks give some defensive bonuses that are really nice if the party is low level (extra AC, DR, and HP), but completely trivial once the party is over L8 or so.

Though, enemies who actually have mythic tiers instead of mythic ranks can do a LOT more.

Though I suppose doubling or tripling the mythic power from ranks would ease some disparity, as well. Mythic monsters run out of steam too quickly, having about 1/3rd the mythic power of an equivalent tier PC.

Re: Mythic Power attack - I'm fine with it, though the "double the bonus damage and THEN multiply" on crits was completely unnecessary extra fiddliness.


Ravingdork wrote:
kestral287 wrote:
From a player's perspective, Mythic is a hell of a lot of fun. It's a pretty massive shift in power that can twist some accepted things on their heads-- 1/2 BAB classes can't melee, 'cause even if they can Polymorph into something awesome their BAB and melee stats suck, right? Well... Mythic can solve the BAB problem for shapeshifters (there's an ability specifically for that) and the extra stat points and such can help solve the melee stats issue. Suddenly they're threatening.
VERY THREATENING. Work out some of the DPR for the polymorph forms. Last I checked, it was measured in the hundreds of damage (and that's at only tier II!). (∩▂∩)

Oh so very threatening. I'm also amused by just how devastating a blaster-caster can get at the higher tiers; Mythic Empower and (especially) Mythic Maximize are awesome. If you can't get a Fireball into four-digit damage with those, you're not trying.

Gregory Connolly wrote:
When you have things like a 4th level caster at mythic tier 2 that can craft any magic item in the game at half price, balance goes out the window. And that is before noticing how everyone's offense went up to 11 while their defense didn't change. If you like rocket tag and caster shenanigans mythic is great, if you don't like these things it ends up a Swiss Cheese of banned powers and a constant balance headache.

Eh, I'm not sure it's fair to say that defenses didn't go up. You can make an absolutely brutal antimage with a couple of the Archmage's counterspell-based abilities, for example. Mirror Dodge is insanely good for just teleporting away from full attacks. The abilities aren't as prevalent as the offensive boosters, but they're definitely there.


Gregory Connolly wrote:
When you have things like a 4th level caster at mythic tier 2 that can craft any magic item in the game at half price, balance goes out the window.

That level 4 caster still has to pass the spellcraft check =P

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