mythic heroism question


Rules Questions


so regular heroism says +2 to attack rolls, saving throws and skill checks. but mythic heroism takes that to +4 and adds damage to the list of things it buffs. is one entry a typo? is mythic heroism not supposed to have damage or is regular heroism supposed to add damage?


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

I would treat it as it does what it says it does until an errata is fortcoming. I very much doubt heroism was a typo as its been around for an awfully long time. I would guess the mythic version gaining damage was a mistake, but I doubt they ever officially change it as its not really game breaking and the text itself is fairly clear.


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Since the Mythic Advantures book hasn't gone for a 2nd printing, we don't have an errata for it.

My opinion is that the mythic heroism spell is too powerful in it's current form and should be banned.


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Why would we operate under the assumption that one of these is a typo?

Heroism is a 3rd level spell. Greater Heroism is (usually) a 6th level spell, and adds +4 to attack/saves/skills, immunity to fear, and temp HP = CL.

Ascendant Spell is a metamagic feat that lets one use the Mythic version of a given spell. It adds five spell levels. Thus, by-the-book we would expect Mythic Heroism to be equal to an 8th level spell... and it's only marginally better than Greater Heroism (no temp HP, no fear immunity, but +4 damage per swing and lasts longer).

Getting a new ability is absolutely nothing new for a mythic spell. Mythic Haste basically gives martials Pounce, for example (extra move action each turn, 50' speed increase). Mythic Magic Missile ignores spell immunity, increases its total damage by 140%, and goes from medium range to "If I can see you, I can hit you and there's not a thing you can do about it".

Mythic Heroism is just par for the course.


You are forgetting the duration, mythic heroism has 10 minutes per level where greater heroism has 1 minute per level.


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Which I explicitly stated, aye.

But again: unless you believe Ascendant Spell is seriously overpriced, Mythic Heroism is functionally an eighth level spell. If it's not massively better than Heroism and still better than Greater Heroism, there's a problem.


I really don't care if you view it as an 8th level spell or not, it's one of the best mythic spells, better than a lot 4th and 5th mythic spells, and most importantly I have seen it disrupting the game and making the DM's life harder.


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Wait...

More powerful than "you cannot be killed by hit point damage" that can be augmented to "No ally within 30 feet of you can be killed?" Or, more hilariously, nothing within a mile? [Deathless]

More powerful than the ability to cast Dominate Person from the other side of the planet, or perhaps another dimension? [Nightmare]

More powerful than mind controlling somebody with the ability to break through Protection From X spells without trying and forcing them to re-roll Will saves to break free? [Dominate Person]

More powerful than the ability to neutralize everyone within a mile of you? [Baleful Polymorph]

More powerful than totally removing the few weaknesses of what's probably the best area-control spell in the game? [Cloudkill]

More powerful than an automatic grapple (not grapple attempt, they're just grappled) on one 10' cube per level, with an automatic pin the turn after they're grappled, plus damage, for ten minutes/lvl...

Okay, I actually have to break the repetition thing I was doing and shift away from the point I was making to say: what the hell, Mythic Wall of Thorns. If I'm reading that properly you cannot do anything against it but run the hell away. It's a full-round action to move through it and it auto-grapples everything adjacent to or within it, so you have to break the grapple with your standard (if you can, it's 10+CL+tier), then you can only move around (like any Druid worth his salt isn't going to be imprisoning you or bubbling himself) or away. Sure, you can break it by using edged weapons to cut it... if you have reach weapons to avoid the grapple and a couple hours to work, and if the Druid augments the wall's grapple even has reach. You can burn it, but only with magical fire-- hope the Wizard prepared Fireball or you're screwed. And, as icing on the cake, the Druid can walk through it just fine. Hello, Flyby Attack.

This thing is basically Prismatic Wall three levels early, more than twice the area, and the wall reaches out and attacks you. That's just brutal.

So. Mythic Heroism. Sure, it's better than stuff like Augmented Elemental Body... but it's nowhere near the big guns of Mythic spells. Like Wall of Thorns.

I'm honestly curious though: how exactly did it disrupt the game?


Forum ate my long post.

It's nice that you selected, mostly, 5th level (usually augmented) mythic spells to compare a non-augmented 3th level mythic spell.

You can counter mythic wall of thorns quite easily, it's called freedom of movement, and you might be able to bypass it by flying over it (depends on the terrain) or dimension door your way across it (again depends on the terrain).

Mythic heroism is a spell that has a long enough duration to last (usually) the entire dungeon.
If the entire party has it and their opposition doesn't then the party's capabilities are at least a couple levels higher than they should be and the opposition is effectively weaker.
If some of the members of the party have it and some don't, then the members that do have it have capabilities that are at least a couple of levels higher than they actually are and are severy outperforming the party members that don't have mythic heroism.

Long story short, the +4 to attack, damage, saves and skills for the entire dungeon at the cost of a 3rd level spell and a mythic point is TOO much of a benefit.


When you tell me to pick 5th level spells, I pick 5th level spells, aye. I took this line:

Quote:
better than a lot 4th and 5th mythic spells

To mean that you believe that Mythic Heroism is more powerful than many, if not most, 4th and 5th level Mythic spells. The obvious counterpoint would be to find 4th and 5th level spells that can be used to do things like commit mass murder or take over a nation or just utterly destroy whatever is in front of you. Did I parse that improperly?

Augmented-versus-not... not really. Deathless' baseline effect doesn't cost any mythic power; so the 'nothing within 30' of me can die unless I let it' version is the one comparable to Mythic Heroism.

Cloudkill's augment is on when you need it, off when you don't. The major weakness its Mythic version solves is it running out of steam against bigger bads; while it's still viable against them it's not nearly as good. Right up until Mythic kicks in and it turns back into a save-or-die.

Dominate Person has no augment.

Nightmare I was looking at augmented. Because seriously, that spell is hilariously ridiculous. An 8th-tier Bard could conquer Golarion with that. A 6th tier Bard/8th tier Wizard/Witch/Sorcerer can seriously alter it with some well-placed Triggered Suggestions. That's a campaign-destabilizer if I ever saw one.

If the entire party has Mythic Heroism up... well, how big's your party? Figure four people, assume there's no familiar or animal companion because using them in Mythic is a huge liability, screw Augmenting Heroism 'cause that one's kind of weak... so we're looking at four MP. 3rd level spell slots are probably negligible at the point that it actually lasts the entire dungeon.

Figure the Party Wizard isn't an idiot and went Archmage, so he has Arcane Surge or pre-errata Wild Arcana as an option. +2 to hit/saves/skills and +4 damage for the party cost him four auto-Quickened, screw-your-SR-I-roll-twice, screw-your-saves-you-roll-twice (unless you're Mythic), screw-my-spell-slots-I-don't-need-them spells. That's... a pretty big deal.

I'd still do it, mind. Probably not until tier 4 or 5, but I'd do it. But it's important that we keep opportunity costs in mind, and 4 MP is significant. I'd be looking hard at my spell list to see if I was better off saving those MP for later. That's going to depend a lot on party composition though. I know the Mythic game I'm in, spending 4 MP like that isn't going to be an option for a good while.

If the Party Wizard is distributing his buffs unequally then it's going to cause problems whether it's Mythic Heroism or regular Haste or Protection From Evil, so that one... mreh? The problems on that end are existent by virtual of the Wizard being stupid with his buffs, not the buffs themselves. About the only time I could see something like that going on in a reasonable game is if somebody took one of the various 'my-buff-lasts-24-hours' tricks and the dungeon dragged on longer than expected.

It's certainly a powerful spell, and Heroism/Greater Heroism have always been among the best buffs in the game so the Mythic version following in their footsteps isn't surprising... but as I look over the upgrades that most of the decent Mythic spells got, I can't say I'm all that surprised or concerned by Heroism. Mythic heroes needing a stronger upward adjustment on APL than what the book suggests isn't anything new, so they should be fighting like they're a few levels up.

As for Wall of Thorns... I'm seeing no reason why you can't build up like you can any other Wall spell, so I'd expect either a dome around the Druid or a dome around whoever he wants to screw over. No Flying there. Freedom of Movement works, but you hopefully have the Ring or got it up beforehand because otherwise I'm dropping the wall on top of the party Cleric and Wizard so they can't cast-- 'cause if they can we're a Fireball or Flame Strike away from the Druid being sad. Same for D-Door. FoM could also be dispelled, which would probably be priority #1 for the Druid on Flyby Attacks.

There are ways around it, certainly, but the spell itself counteracts the majority of them if you place it right.


I could go and talk about each one of the spells you menioned but since i have already done so but the forum ate my post i have no desire to that again.

Look you have your opinion on the spell and i have mine, i have seen it in gameplay during the WotR game i play in and it was both troublesome for the DM and troublesome for the party when during book 2 only the cleric and the bard had that spell on them and the rest of the party didn't, and continued to be troublesome for the party during book 3, at book 4 all of the party has that spell (usually) always up and running and it's only a problem for the DM.

You might not have problems with things that cause problems for the DM when he uses APs or modules but i do have a problem with those things, because i buy the APs in order to DM and play in games because i don't have the time to create my own campaigns.


I'm actually running a Runelords game right now. I love the APs.

The GM of the Mythic game I'm in is home-building, and I love that too... but I don't have the time nor the inclination; when I get back to home-building a world it'll be for Splicers, not PF.

But it is worth noting that WotR is close to universally considered to be horribly balanced by AP standards, largely because Mythic was apparently more powerful than anticipated. So... for that specific AP, if it was run straight, no, I'm not concerned about something that broke it. If Mythic Heroism is the worst thrown around, then things could have gotten much, much nastier.


Anything that just increases player +'s is easily worked with. The actual problem are those spells listed above (amongst others) that fundamentally change the way the game is played.

Mythic Heroism - you still go in dungeons, grab the Sword of Valour, fight the foozle. Mythic Cloudkill? The cloud will do the dungeon for you.

Not to mention a variety of unavoidable save-or-you-suck (sometimes with no save) abilities that hamstring poorly written mythic enemies.


for the record, heroism is a second level bard spell, which is what im playing that is planning to pick up mythic heroism.

its gonna be great, combine with inspire courage and inspired defense mythic power it will be +8 attack, +8 damage, and +8 saves. :D


baconwing wrote:

for the record, heroism is a second level bard spell, which is what im playing that is planning to pick up mythic heroism.

its gonna be great, combine with inspire courage and inspired defense mythic power it will be +8 attack, +8 damage, and +8 saves. :D

I've got a mythic bard in a game as well, and I use a similar tactic.

You'll probably want to talk to your GM, though. Inspired Defense says "the competence bonus against charm and fear effects instead applies to all saving throws", while Inspire Courage actually applies a morale bonus against charm and fear effects.

My GM ruled that the path ability should say morale instead of competence, which means it doesn't stack with mythic heroism. The attack and damage bonuses still do, though.


leo1925 wrote:

Forum ate my long post.

It's nice that you selected, mostly, 5th level (usually augmented) mythic spells to compare a non-augmented 3th level mythic spell.

You can counter mythic wall of thorns quite easily, it's called freedom of movement, and you might be able to bypass it by flying over it (depends on the terrain) or dimension door your way across it (again depends on the terrain).

Mythic heroism is a spell that has a long enough duration to last (usually) the entire dungeon.
If the entire party has it and their opposition doesn't then the party's capabilities are at least a couple levels higher than they should be and the opposition is effectively weaker.
If some of the members of the party have it and some don't, then the members that do have it have capabilities that are at least a couple of levels higher than they actually are and are severy outperforming the party members that don't have mythic heroism.

Long story short, the +4 to attack, damage, saves and skills for the entire dungeon at the cost of a 3rd level spell and a mythic point is TOO much of a benefit.

I've found 10 minute per level spells last about two combats at least until you are high level. But then you usually end up having it dispelled.


voska66 wrote:
leo1925 wrote:

Forum ate my long post.

It's nice that you selected, mostly, 5th level (usually augmented) mythic spells to compare a non-augmented 3th level mythic spell.

You can counter mythic wall of thorns quite easily, it's called freedom of movement, and you might be able to bypass it by flying over it (depends on the terrain) or dimension door your way across it (again depends on the terrain).

Mythic heroism is a spell that has a long enough duration to last (usually) the entire dungeon.
If the entire party has it and their opposition doesn't then the party's capabilities are at least a couple levels higher than they should be and the opposition is effectively weaker.
If some of the members of the party have it and some don't, then the members that do have it have capabilities that are at least a couple of levels higher than they actually are and are severy outperforming the party members that don't have mythic heroism.

Long story short, the +4 to attack, damage, saves and skills for the entire dungeon at the cost of a 3rd level spell and a mythic point is TOO much of a benefit.

I've found 10 minute per level spells last about two combats at least until you are high level. But then you usually end up having it dispelled.

Two battles in a dungeon?

Dark Archive

I know this is a slightly old thread but I'd like to chime in.

Currently playing Wotr. 8 sorceror / 2 Archmage. Mythic Heroism was one of the first things I chose to get. I use it on myself and the party paladin. It's really really good.

That being said..... bestow grace (wand) has been betrer for saves and a combination of orc bloodline touch of rage w/ sorcorous Robes of arcane heritage and bloodline mythic power gives me a +8 attack/damage/ will saves buff to put on the barbarian and inquisitor. They have opportunistic gambler so It lasts 1d4+1 rounds. I can apply it as I cast another buff with sorcerers robes. The barbs courageous raging sword adds +2 more.
+10 morale atrack damage will saves bonus at level 8. They miss on ones. The dm has us fighting multiple things 1.5-2x our CR with max hp or doublr max hp. They still last 1-3 rounds tops. Seriously ....stop complaining about heroism And acdept that mythic campaigns have silly broken stuff all over. That is all ;)


... Did you really revive a two month old thread to tell people to stop complaining?

The fact that the thread is dead and there are no similar threads means that everybody stopped complaining... two months ago.

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