Should I make my campaign mythic or not.


Advice


I apologize ahead of time for the long post and all the reading.

First of all i should give the back story for my campaign. the back story lies in my friends campaign that i helped him make. The campaign took place centuries after most current campaigns after a militaristic warlike nation has dominated all of the inner seas and even more. Well the story should have probably been mythic but my friend wasn't comfortable running a mythic campaign so we didn't make it mythic. The reason it should have been mythic was because the lore behind my character was he was something i created called the guardian. Essentially in ages long past two minor deities ended up going to war against each other Van'dalygon the Dragon of the Black Flame, and Zargoth The Demon of Death. They went to a war that threatened to destroy the world so the gods chose a warrior, a champion of sorts. Zargoth killed many out of hate and anger toward the living and ended up angering Van because he was a god of survival patron of the dragons so when Zargoth started killing dragons he flew into a rage. The original guardian who took up arms and defeated the rampaging gods and imprisoned them in to separate sets of swords. Zargoth swore revenge upon the world claiming to return one day. However Van realizing how much life had been destroyed due to his rage asked the guardian to take up his weapons against evil in order to prevent any atrocity of this magnitude from ever happening again. So the first guardian was born as the guardian he is immortal as long as he fights for good. A guardian is chosen based on his qualities of character and once another Possible guardian is born he is tested and if he takes up the mantle then the current guardian becomes mortal and trains the new guardian before living out a mortal life. Our story takes place with the current Guardian Garrett Church (my character in the campaign) who is trying to stop the main villain Vance who was the best friend of the former Guardian who killed his best friend after falling under the influence of the two Demon swords years ago. so he kills his best friend then goes to infiltrate and take over the Imperium (evil nation) using them to dominate the world and trying to start a war to engulf the world as the legend says Zargoth will be reborn when the world is engulfed in chaos "as brother kills brother and the ground soaks with blood the hate and chaos shall free the demon lord from his prison to bring the end of days and eternal darkness." so needless to say good triumphs and Garrett and his companions who gain some of Garrett's powers from Van and are now known as guardians defeat Vance and seal him away into the swords along with Zargoth and end the war allowing the Alliance (good nation united under the guardians) to reign.

My campaign takes place 10 years later after the Imperium is almost exterminated. However all is not well in the world Garrett and Claire (the main two guardians) have left and haven't been seen for ten years the Ranger guardian is also missing Edward the cleric of the group goes on to lead the Alliance in the chaos. Well Vance was a master strategist and foresaw his possible defeat and so he made a contingency plan he had a mighty military general named Mathius make a deal with Zargoth that in 10 years should the Imperium remain or not he would "ascend" essentially becoming a very powerful Balor lord slightly weaker than a demon lord. His goal is to release Zargoth and Vance in order to continue their work. The new heroes are pulled into this war in order to uncover Mathius plans (at this point they have no idea what his ascension means all they know is he made a deal with Zargoth for power and has risen from the grave) and to stop him. They encounter the guardians along the way (including the missing ones) and see all these fantastical things the guardians do and meeting creatures of legend trying to stop the rebirth of a demon lord.

My issue is i don't know whether or not to do a mythic campaign or if i do when i should implement it. I plan for them to encounter Mathius and have him change into the Balor lord around 15-17 level and they will be forced to flee as he will be far to powerful that would be a good time for them to need the mythic powers as at this point it is believed Garrett, the only one who could possibly stop Mathius, is dead. however they will find him alive but with no memory and i figured when they restore his memory he would make them guardians as well. The guardians themselves are definitely in the mythic realm so it wouldn't be out of the question. However i have never been in a mythic campaign let alone run one so i don't know if it is worth it or not. Garrett's class alone is a high fantasy class i made myself.

So in short i wanted advice from people who have done mythic campaigns on whether or not it is worth introducing the mythic system and if so should i do it as soon as possible or would i be able to introduce it at level 15-17 which would work story wise.


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Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

tldr


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Mythic is super busted. I don't have to read the post at all to tell you not to use it.

But tldr is just a jerk thing to say.


I'm sorry but with respect, I'm with j b 200 here. Kind of gapped out.

The question you ask has two aspects to it. One is mechanical, the other is plot.

Mechanically, a couple mythic tiers on top of characters that are already high-level shouldn't be terribly disruptive. This, from someone who finished Wrath literally 24 hours ago.

Plot-wise, um, if there's a world-changing epic scope to your planned story, yes. For instance, a game that involves say, preventing a second asteroid-impact, sure. One that simply involves uniting warring nations, maybe not so much.

No offense meant... I opened the thread meaning to help. It's just that I'm already in a 17-novel series reading push.


Expect power levels to get way out of control if you allow high tier mythic play. That said, 1-2 ranks won't outright break things, though it'll considerably strengthen whoever picked Hierophant, Archmage, or Champion, as it'll allow the first 2 to now cast any spell they want, regardless of spells known or prepared, and Champions can just dish out the pain hardcore.

Also high tier mythic you could say have everyone just take the initiative path ability so they just always go first in combat which will pretty much guarantee dead boss before it even gets to act, or someone gets a legendary item that can cast Wish as a spell-like ability 1-3 times a day so the entire party can now just wish for things multiple times a day with no material cost.

Mythic is a nasty can of worms, and it's up to you to decide how much you're gonna let it go.


I wouldn't go as far to say TLDR, but I would suggest in the future for the OP to better paragraph his post, so as to present a more cohesive projection.

That being said, Mythic rules add an extra amount of power (quite a lot) and options, and the ability to combine and synergize these options can lead to complications, which leads to designating time to solve them, which leads to delaying the gameplay.

If your players are really, and I mean really well-versed in the rules, and can configure what they want to do for their turn on the fly (and there aren't more than 4-5 players), then Mythic Rules can add a certain spice to it. Truthfully, even handpicking certain Mythic rules and abilities to function under a houseruled system (which is what we did in a previous campaign) can really add balance and improve player gameplay. It also gives the GM more options to throw enemies at players.

However, this creates a separation of creature types. Mythics and Non-Mythics, which essentially equates to the current Caster/Martial disparity, more-or-less. Non-Mythic mooks are going to be a complete waste of time to throw at Mythic PCs, and Non-Mythic PCs are probably going to get stomped against a Mythic BBEG. At that point, you essentially just go "Everything's Mythic," and then some of the flair is lost.


Darksol the Painbringer wrote:


However, this creates a separation of creature types. Mythics and Non-Mythics, which essentially equates to the current Caster/Martial disparity, more-or-less. Non-Mythic mooks are going to be a complete waste of time to throw at Mythic PCs, and Non-Mythic PCs are probably going to get stomped against a Mythic BBEG. At that point, you essentially just go "Everything's Mythic," and then some of the flair is lost.

Pretty much. Pathfinder has always been a game of rocket tag, but in creating a Mythic monster to be a challenge for Mythic PCs, it's basically going to devolve into the PCs kill it in turn 1, or it kills the PCs when it goes, unless you probably put some kid gloves on it, like, not actually using power attack. A particularly powerful mythic ability unique to monsters is Mythic Initiative, which while it doesn't allow the monster to go first in initiative, it does allow it to have 2 turns in a single round, which can be devastating.


yea unfortunately my format for my post wasn't the best i tend to have run on sentence but i cant edit it now so its stuck that way.

Thank you to the people that did read it.

The point about the players ability to make decisions quickly is probably why i wont go mythic because i have a new player in my group so it might make things too complicated.

However they are only lvl 7 now so I have plenty of time to decide.

So instead does anyone have more suggestions to make this more of a fantastical campaign for my players in the beginning they are seeing the Guardians do amazing things and they are supposed to emulate them as heroes.

My goal by the end is to have them go from seeing the guardians do things and going "that was amazing how did he do that" to them being able to go "that was amazing i cant believe we were able to do that"

I want them to reach that hero status that makes a campaign memorable.

Owner - Gator Games & Hobby

You might want to check out Path of War if you're looking for "How'd he do that?!"

It adds a bunch of abilities that give a lot of shock and awe to the non-casters, who (martial v. caster disparity aside), look pretty similar at high & low levels when it comes to their visual impact.


Giving them 1 or 2 mythic ranks is a solid means of doing so. As mentioned, expect your casters to become exponentially more powerful than they already were, especially if they are spontaneous as it bypasses their weakness of limited spells known by allowing them to suddenly have every spell at their fingertip at the cost of a single mythic point that doesn't use a spell slot, also that spell is +2 CL.

As for mythic feats, expect people to go down the vital strike tree, as mythic vital strike is pretty crazy, and mythic rapid shot is extremely nice.

Not allowing mythic to progress beyond that will nip a lot of the particularly powerful paths and combinations from being used, while still simply having say those earlier mentioned things, will be typically more than enough to make them feel powerful, on top of the basic mythic stuff received, like surge, and hard to kill.

Cwethan wrote:

You might want to check out Path of War if you're looking for "How'd he do that?!"

It adds a bunch of abilities that give a lot of shock and awe to the non-casters, who (martial v. caster disparity aside), look pretty similar at high & low levels when it comes to their visual impact.

Being lvl 7 already this seems unlikely unless they decide to do a rebuild. That said, Path of War is highly recommended, especially if the party martials are feeling lacking compared to the casters.


Dart1920 wrote:

yea unfortunately my format for my post wasn't the best i tend to have run on sentence but i cant edit it now so its stuck that way.

Thank you to the people that did read it.

The point about the players ability to make decisions quickly is probably why i wont go mythic because i have a new player in my group so it might make things too complicated.

However they are only lvl 7 now so I have plenty of time to decide.

So instead does anyone have more suggestions to make this more of a fantastical campaign for my players in the beginning they are seeing the Guardians do amazing things and they are supposed to emulate them as heroes.

My goal by the end is to have them go from seeing the guardians do things and going "that was amazing how did he do that" to them being able to go "that was amazing i cant believe we were able to do that"

I want them to reach that hero status that makes a campaign memorable.

Some of the most basic things can allow players to accomplish very powerful stuff. Implementing a Special Points system to allow players to select Traits (or Feats) can be a start, and is what our group uses. These are rewarded for keen observations, ingenious use of tactics, or even some fun/interesting roleplay activities. Though these can in general be rewarded for defeating encounters (especially if certain conditions are met for defeating encounters). These points can then be spent for Traits, other feats, etc. 10 Points can be turned into a Trait, and 20 points can be turned into a Feat (though I'd be sure to limit the Feats if a player just wants extra feats, and I'd try to force them to select some of the more unorthodox feats, ones that people don't normally take). Here's an example of how that works out in our group:

In our last gaming session, I was a 4th level Druid with Variant Multiclassing into Barbarian who can cast 2nd level spells. The GM allowed me to take a Magic trait that allows me to cast a Cure spell 1 level below my maximum spellcasting ability, and cast it as a Swift Action 1/day after I received 10 Special points. In the next encounter, we were surrounded by desert ants. The Magus got swarmed by a few of them while myself and the Alchemist were still inside a 10x10 cart. In a single round, I was able to:

-Kill an enemy adjacent to me and the Magus with a Scythe while I was Raging.
-Deraged, then moved to an ally who was getting swarmed by enemies.
-Cast a heal spell on him as a Swift Action. Also got into position to prevent him from getting flanked, as well as soak up some oncoming attacks.

Quite frankly, I saved the Magus' life while crushing one of his many foes in a single round. By normal standards, I could only do one or the other. Being able to do both with everyone at the table kind of sitting there dumbfounded by my flash of insight (considering the last few encounters, my tactics were horrible) would certainly mark a sense of amazement in a PCs accomplishment.

And that was just a regular CR-equivalent fight.


As long as your a master encounter craftsman then go ahead, otherwise no.


I believe it takes a very creative, very experienced DM and similarly experienced players to pull off a mythic game. If you have players that don't know their characters backwards and forwards, players that optimize at the expense of the story and the table's fun, or players that stop reading feats, spells, or rules halfway through, DO NOT USE MYTHIC.

IF, however, you feel your table meets the above criteria, definitely incorporate it. My mythic Kingmaker AP is still one of my best gaming memories.

Silver Crusade Contributor

I highly recommend picking up this product. It'll help you address some of Mythic's most blatant balance concerns before deciding whether it's best for your campaign. ^_^


I used Mythic in my homebrew, but it was 'limited' - to wit, they didn't receive the Mythic benefits and abilities if the adventure they were on was not a Mythic event, which read as 'critically vital to the overarching storyline'. Give you an example:

The PCs start off as 3rd level characters in or near a city of 10k. Each is a respected member of their community; the human fighter is a very competent smith, the gnome monk was an expert calligrapher, the halfling rogue was a respected locksmith and trap-construction expert, the witch was a well-known herbalist, the priestess was also a barmaid. Due to a murder (at the priestess-barmaid's tavern, in fact), the characters are drawn into the investigation - one to determine the origin of the blade, another to decipher the blurring oil had made of an inked parchment, one to care for the body, one to open up the small chest (which had contained a fire-trap that failed to go off when her rival, their first choice, had tripped it) then determine the local source of the fire-trap, and one to help diagnose and heal the suspect of the drugs he'd taken/been given - said suspect being yet another PC.

Once the innocence of the last is established and the murder caught, they head to a nearby city to determine who his contact was, and why the murderer had been siphoning off a significant amount of city funds. They discover that a barbarian invasion of their home city is imminent, and rush south to warn the city - but their contact is only one of a triumvirate, and the other two aren't happy with him, so a certain delay occurs. The PCs head out to see if they can't delay the invasion, and (during a classic dungeon exploration) wind up discovering that this is but the first domino in a sequence of events that Must Not Happen. At that time, they gain their first Mythic tier and associated powers.

This enables them to delay the advance of the invading force, but they are still forced back to their home city, where they wind up being key to victory.

After this event, however, the mythic power goes dormant, and though they go on several adventures, it isn't until they travel far to the north (to discover what was forcing the barbarians to move south) that their mythic power returns, in time to help them eliminate the demon-possessed leader of an even worse barbarian horde, the Ptarmigan halfling barbarians. (Don't laugh. They have cavalier beast rider/barbarian mounted fury mammoth riders. And quite a few other nasty surprises.)

And that's how it goes. It doesn't help them stroll through adventures, but it puts them on a level where they can meet the serious problems and have a hope in hell of getting out alive and victorious.

Silver Crusade

I'd seriously avoid mythic too, it doesn't add enough for the headaches it brings, and it only widens the martial/caster gap.


From what I've seen and experienced, I can only advise you to NOT use Mythic.

It's very poorly designed and adds a lot of problems and headaches for little to no real benefit. Not to mention it makes caster/martial disparity even worse!

My suggestion is "Avoid it like the plague!".


I ran a game from level 3 through 20. We introduced mythic around... level 9 I think.

I didn't put ANY restrictions on it.

Casters did become more powerful, but what Martials got was WAY cooler/more noticeable.

I highly recommend trying it out.

Does it break the game? Yup. It's designed to.

Is it fun? Absolutely... so is it really broken?

Go Mythic, you will NOT regret it. As GM, you have unlimited resources, so you can just scale up if you need to.

Or you can just let them trample everything they meet. That's pretty much what we did, it was super fun.


little something of what I hav to say from my experience, since opinions look divided on the subject:

Using mythic in my game was a headache.

I added myhthic in my campaing from level 9-17 (MR 1 to 5 in between)

Pay attention to was the players are picking, because some bonuses are game-breaking, other are just crazy good. For exemple :

Thnaks to mythic power attack, the falchion wielding fighther no longer had to weigth wether an enemy was worth the penalty to hit for the increased damage. Also, almost every round, a critical hit would land for over 100+ damage.

The Mythic paladin pretty much one or two-shotted every enemy it could msite, thanks to mythic vital strike.

The arcanist when from 3x CL 8 fireballs per day to 6x CL 10 fireballs per day, 3 of wich are cast as swift actions, and also had acess to every spell he didin't know thanks to mythic spellcasting.
Also, he could craft every magic item in the book without any mundane feat.

Sure, you can scale up everything else if you want to and have tons of fun doing it,
but past level ~13-14 and MR 3-4, I started hitting a wall where there's only so much you can add to boost your monsters.
The prepared Pit fiend was below "boss-fight" difficulty for them at this point...

Edit : Oh, I almost forgot. The worst was the "extra standard action for 1 mythic power" at MR3 I think, wich thep layers quickly understood was very useful to either :
1) close in instantly on their opponent to deliver a full-attack on the first round of combat (wich also made it the last...)
2 ) Deliver a SECOND mythic vital strike
3) use the "total defense action" at the end of your turn. Sure, you're giving up your AOO for the but also add a free +6 dodge to your AC, every round, at no cost.

Something to think about...


Gurior wrote:

little something of what I hav to say from my experience, since opinions look divided on the subject:

Using mythic in my game was a headache.

I added myhthic in my campaing from level 9-17 (MR 1 to 5 in between)

Pay attention to was the players are picking, because some bonuses are game-breaking, other are just crazy good. For exemple :

Thnaks to mythic power attack, the falchion wielding fighther no longer had to weigth wether an enemy was worth the penalty to hit for the increased damage. Also, almost every round, a critical hit would land for over 100+ damage.

The Mythic paladin pretty much one or two-shotted every enemy it could msite, thanks to mythic vital strike.

The arcanist when from 3x CL 8 fireballs per day to 6x CL 10 fireballs per day, 3 of wich are cast as swift actions, and also had acess to every spell he didin't know thanks to mythic spellcasting.
Also, he could craft every magic item in the book without any mundane feat.

Sure, you can scale up everything else if you want to and have tons of fun doing it,
but past level ~13-14 and MR 3-4, I started hitting a wall where there's only so much you can add to boost your monsters.
The prepared Pit fiend was below "boss-fight" difficulty for them at this point...

Sounds about right.

Mythic basically throws CR out the window (the book says to add half the tier to CR, this is simply NOT true).

You can make up whole new monsters, it's great.

Also, having the martials suddenly be able to do (gasp) a hundred or two hundred points in a hit... who cares?

Yes, casters get more powerful too, but martials start to actually get NEW stuff (seven league leap, I think it's called, very fun).

We played all the way up to 20/mythic 10 and everyone had fun. There was a mix of casters and non-casters, no one complained.

It was great.


Speaking as someone who enjoys the hell out of both running playing and running mythic:

Mythic PCs are completely bad-ass, and can face threats well beyond the reach of lesser groups.

Being able to face those threats is one of the main points of mythic.

Being able to actually utilize those threats is also on the main points of mythic.

Mythic monsters got much more fun for me to design and run when it finally clicked that a mythic monster can have damn near anything as a power.

Anyways.

Much like the regular game, mythic does have some powers and options that are simply too good, and you'll want to adjust those should they come up in your game.

(Though that brings up something - if you're the sort of GM who seriously dislikes modifying the existing rules, then you're going to find yourself pretty unhappy. Mythic depends on GM flexibility to work.)

Scarab Sages

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From experience using Mythic on a home brew i have the following statements

1) The previously stated impact on power levels is true. It took me the better part of 6 or 7 sessions to learn to balance the challenges as far as DCs and CRs especially if you are using non mythic monsters. Just give yourself some time and hopefully your players will be patient as you figure it out

2) Make sure your players know their abilities and are versed in what their classes and mythic powers do. Otherwise you have a round of combat taking way too long as players try to figure out what to do.

I think that is all I have at the moment. I may come up with some more as I think about it more.


Schuyler Atkinson wrote:

From experience using Mythic on a home brew i have the following statements

1) The previously stated impact on power levels is true. It took me the better part of 6 or 7 sessions to learn to balance the challenges as far as DCs and CRs especially if you are using non mythic monsters. Just give yourself some time and hopefully your players will be patient as you figure it out

2) Make sure your players know their abilities and are versed in what their classes and mythic powers do. Otherwise you have a round of combat taking way too long as players try to figure out what to do.

I think that is all I have at the moment. I may come up with some more as I think about it more.

Point number 2 is very important.

I suggest reading over all the mythic rules at least twice (you don't need to memorize them, just get an idea of what they can do) and phase them in one tier at a time.

Do NOT jump into multiple tiers being added at once, it gets weird and difficult.


Gurior wrote:
and also had acess to every spell he didin't know thanks to mythic spellcasting.

I recognize that this is part of "and, and, and". That said, frankly the availability of spells/powers was easily the most enjoyable part of mythic for me as a player.

"Can you cast X?" "Why, yes!"

It was truly refreshing to have access to situationally-useful spells without having to resort to "tomorrow, buddy".

As it happens, as a DM, in the Runelords game I'm running, the wizard adores arcane bond, and I've assisted my cleric in crafting something similar for his cleric. A limited number of "what I need, when I need it" spells a day is truly awesome, without breaking the game.


Personally, I love mythic for games like this. My own home group is getting some mythic tiers thanks to the world-spanning scope and such. That said, going FULL mythic is a little... wonky. I recommend keeping the mythic level down, maybe giving them a max of 5, closer to 3-4 if you ask me. It gives the game a certain flair that I really enjoy, and does help with martial-caster disparity at the beginning. When you get into high mythic tiers the disparity widens again, but to me 3-4 is a good spot to finish off a game.


I do enjoy playing mythic games , mostly cause i love having +20 on CHAR skill checks or any spell on the go...

But all this can indeed get out of hand.

I would say it mostly actually deppends on you , the GM , if you think you can deal with the extra power you are about to give the players , then go ahead , just know they will get quite crazy compared to normal PCs.


Mythic bad, hero points better. Use hero points.

Scarab Sages

They do different things there not easy to compare hero point are to add a little flair to the game mythic is an entire subsystem for taking on different threats.


Do you want an entire new set of heavy rules to add to base rules to gain nothing better in flavour, take a lot of pain building adventures, and having PC and NPC sheets filled with far more stuff than you and players can remember to use?
Or not?

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