Protectors of Golarion (Wrath of the Righteous AP)

Game Master Sensen

Just to be sure I have this clear, Vhane is still up and fighting, right?

Believe so. He's definitely still on the map and looking "more surprised than hurt" from Azira's attack. In context, I think "fallen" probably means his fall from grace, going from a paladin to an antipaladin.

Yes, Verene's got it in one. He's only somewhat injured. (Though a lot more than I'd've liked in the first turn, but such is life.)

I didn't even do enough damage to drop myself, and I'm no dwarf, lol (though, technically, that was the surprise round, not round 1... if it was round 1 I could have iterated and potentially hit him twice more).

True, true. Still, he hasn't had the chance to do all of the nasty things he could do to you. :P

Having nasty things done to you once in a while can be exhilarating, although I’m decidedly not into traitorous dwarves.

Not to be a downer, but this is still the surprise round, so unless there's a Merixia power I'm not understanding, she can only take a single move or standard action, as well as one swift and any free actions as normal. (Thesius and Azira are both using the mythic power Fleet Charge, which gives you a move and an attack for the cost of a swift action.) Can she both get over to Staunton and swing, perhaps by a creative interpretation of the standard-action-half-charge rule since her speed is now 40'? She would provoke from the minotaur though. If not, can that attack maybe be applied as her first attack next turn? It was a great attack. :(

Damn, I completely spaced that out. I’m sorry, everyone. I… honestly have no idea what to do now.

EDIT: Maybe make her action in the surprise round activating Holy Lance, since that one only lasts for four rounds, and attack in Round 1?

You could do a partial-charge against the closer minotaur, I think?

There's also the Amazing Initiative feature each of us has as a rank 2 mythic being. Once during your turn, you can spend a mythic point to gain a standard action which can be used for anything except cast a spell. I am not entirely sure if a your turn during a surprise round counts as 'your turn', though. But if it does, and you think it's worth mythic pointing to get to Staunton asap, that would work.

That aside, i dont think anyone has really taken advantage of this feature yes, but it is potentially really strong. Other than extra attacks or movement you could also activate domain powers 'for free'. I've seriously considered multiclassing Elliot into cleric just for the luck domain power so he can roll all his attacks twice during a round. Otoh it's also a way for Elliot to use hexes without losing attack potential.

Oh, great call, Elliot!

Oh perfect, I forgot about that ability. That should allow Merixia's turn to just take place as described at the cost of 1 mythic power.

If our GM allows it, I’ll burn a MP to keep my turn as is. It would be very in character for Merixia in righteous fury mode to instinctively give herself a boost in order to close with the enemy faster. (And those were some good rolls. I would hate to lose them.)

I don't see why your turn during a surprise round shouldn't count as your turn, but that does mean that I'll have another thing to keep track of with enemy mythic creatures. sigh

I'll check back on what you've actually done when I can. :P

On a less pleasant note, I realized that I've (once again) forgotten that the holiday on Thursday is, in fact, two days long, meaning that I won't be able to post this Friday, either. I am almost certain that I made this mistake last year, too, and I apologize for not realizing it.

I mean... I kinda hope Staunton is somehow still standing after that. My soul craves drama. He hasn't even delivered his villainous monologue yet!

Based on the fact that your 37 hit, I’m pretty sure I just did (another) 131 damage to him… if he’s mythic and has the guardian path (which seems pretty plausible for an anti-paladin boss) he may be able to negate the crit or make the lowest attack miss, but either way he’s still taking around 100 more damage.

That said, I think all BBEGs have the “dying words” ability, which lets them deliver a final monologue as an immediate action before being cleft in twain.

The mythic 'dying words' ability in action:

https://m.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=monty+python+-+the+b lack+knight+-+tis+but+a+scratch

It seems extra appropiate with us cutting through fullplate with swords like it's paper.

Yeesh. This is aggravating. I seriously need to consider how to give your enemies lasting power, because this is ludicrous.

Okay, having spent some time thinking, I do think I'll need to call for another round of "suggest how to make these combats at all challenging." Admittedly, you did plan this out as a surgical strike, so it makes sense it won't be a climactic sort of boss battle as it is intended (presumably they intended it to be after at least a few encounters), but I'm still annoyed that Staunton will probably go down before acting, and the fact that this isn't the first time a big "boss" type character has done so - last time was even pre-Mythic!

So, do you guys have any suggestions as to how I can modify further encounters to make it less likely you'll just blow them away before they have the chance to go?

When we get to fully buff and ambush someone there’s not much that would be able to hold up. I think the AP’s intention (or hope?) is for you to enjoy our heroic triumph over evil as much as we do. That said, if you really want to prolong some of the combats, there’s a few tricks you could use in the future…

- illusions: mirror image is kind of obvious (so, likely to get dispelled quicker), but can eat a few early attacks; displacement is likely to go unnoticed until someone does waste an attack, and then remains a problem until dispelled; major image can potentially trick us into wasting short duration buffs and/or attack spells at the wrong time; and disguise self can do the same by getting us to ambush the wrong person.

- transmutations: kind of the same idea as the last illusions- alter self (or other creature-appropriate spells) can get us ambushing the wrong person; or, BBEG can disguise themselves as a lackey or animal companion or whatever so we don’t ID them until it’s too late for extra buffs (though that requires the ability to transform for long periods, or some warning that we’re coming).

- support: with this much damage this fast, it might not have mattered, but adding a cleric with good hp and crap combat ability can add a ton of durability without dramatically altering the encounter- shield other effectively doubles the boss’ hp and healing spells plus quick channels can add even more (though the last one may end up healing some of us too).

edit: you could also introduce a very limited series of profane artifacts (like “Stormking Medals” or whatever) that are single use items that automatically trigger on the wearer’s death… a resurrection effect probably wouldn’t match what they are, but they could maybe summon a demon with a CR similar to the wearer’s that bursts out of their corpse, or something like that? Having it replace the BBEG means less shift in action economy, but it would probably double (or more) the length of the encounter, and if the demon retained at least some of the BBEG’s memories/personality it could still monologue.

Okay, some suggestions:

I would make 'mythic templates' for noteworthy enemies by their role in the encounter. Like, a 'tank' template, a 'melee striker' template, a divine or arcane 'caster' template and a 'ranged damage' template or such.

Then just pick a few mythic ranks of an according mythic path (like Guardian for Tank, Champion for striker etc) and add those bonusses to those profiles accordingly. You can potentially add like three or four tiers to this like one rank for a normal enemy, to rank 2 or 3 for ordinary 'bosses', to rank 5 or 6 for strong bosses and rank 9 or 10 for 'godly' enemies. Now, you have a few ready stat blocks you can use to instantly and easily buff the desired enemies. Each of us has probably looked at a mythic progression path and can probably whip up one possible ability package for you to use on the fly.

I also guess that not every enemy should be mythic, but for an act boss like Staunton I wouldn't find it strange for him to be like mythic rank 5 while we are at level 2. To counter him dying on turn 1, I wouldn't find it stange for a high-ranking agent of Deskari and or Baphomet to have Contingency cast on them that I.E. casted Heal on them when they drop below like half health or such, perhaps as a divine gift. Another potential way to buff enemies is to give them Multiple Initiatives each round. Like that they always act at the start of the round and halfway through the round or such, like at their initiative and at init +10 and/or -10 or such (you can probably borrow from d&d's 5e system of 'Legendary Actions' for bosses which are designed to give boss enemies more of a chance to fight back in the action economy).

That aside, I think one of the problems is that most enemies are caught (mostly) unaware combined with that mythic tier adds so much damage that the rocket tag aspects inherent to Pathfinder become even more apparent. Other than increasing enemy HP or making them mythic too, one other option might be to set traps, chain encounters together, or give enemies more ways to win initiative. The mythic ability 'display of dexterity' for instance allows you to always roll a 20 on initiative checks at the cost of 1 MP. As the PC's we face a lot of enemies per day and have to conserve our MP more than enemies.

All this said, I know for a fact that there have been shared-prep GM threads for this AP that have notes on how to greatly soup up enemy difficulty. Those can probably be found with a little digging. If you wish I could reach out to a gm who has ran with those before.

It has been my experience (GMing a couple of mythic games) that the gap in mythic tiers/ranks is more pronounced than the level gap. Like, a handful of level 2 PCs against a level 5 NPC isn’t generally that big a gulf, but a tier 5 mythic NPC seems to have a pretty big advantage over tier 2 PCs. I’d be willing to help out with some kind of ‘simple mythic template’ if that’s a direction you want to explore, but I do think you should exercise a little caution with slapping too much mythic stuff on anything.

Given that I have never GMed in my life, all I can do is second Elliot’s suggestion to reach out to other GMs who have run this AP. They’re not going to think any less of you for asking for advice, and I bet a lot of them would be happy to share what worked for them! Nothing boosts a person’s ego quite like being asked for help with a difficult task. Given that Paizo apparently failed to playtest WotR or the mythic system in general at all, balancing combats here is most definitely a difficult task for any GM.

I’m not positive how accurate it is, but I’ve been told that the ‘balance’ (or lack thereof) in this AP is (at least partly) a design decision- like it’s intended to be glorious heroes laying waste to the demon hordes, rather than a gritty battle between good and evil.

And, +1 to Elliot’s contingency suggestion. I didn’t mention contingencies because in my mind they were too high level for us right now, but something like a “Blessing of Baphomet” that triggered a heal spell once on the BBEG when he gets below 25% would be a great way to extend boss fights without otherwise changing the dynamics.

The reality is, we have a five-person party with two strikers instead of the normal one or zero, and they're both very damage-per-round focused. (As well as quite tanky for different reasons.) I won't say overtuned, by mythic standards, but very, very powerful. Because of that, us getting in a surprise round at all was the big thing here — and the fact that Staunton apparently had only +2 for Initiative. At that point, yes, something is needed to beef him up, whether it's two initiative counts like the chimera, or Display of Dexterity to always get a 20 on initiative, or like 5 additional mythic tiers, or something. Action economy is everything in Mythic Rocket Tag. The one fight where we've really struggled, it was because the enemies had roughly 3x as many hit points and 1.5x as many actions as the vanilla encounter. (6 advanced/HP-maximized brimoraks vs. 4 regular brimoraks.)

I should have pushed back harder on teleporting into the next-door room after I had already said Verene was "picturing his office," since in-character she was not confident we could easily get through the interior doors of the citadel in order to make this a true ambush. As I said then, dimension door directly into the office would have ensured there was no surprise round, and everyone started the combat with Round 1.

If you would like some plug-and-play improved monster and boss stat blocks that other WotR GMs have already done and kindly posted, that don't require you to spend a lot of time on changing the regular AP stat blocks before each fight, something like this publicly available doc is I think what Elliot was referring to. (It's from this thread.) Just with a quick search of his name, I don't think this version of Staunton would have survived meaningfully longer, but he would have probably gotten a turn and done serious damage during it, with at least 3 attacks at +17 before any smite good effects are applied.

For this particular fight, to keep him from completely going down before getting to act, you could definitely use your discretion, as Elliot and Azira say, to have some kind of contingency or magic item activate for Staunton on his turn. If you want something that already exists in the rules, there's always something like the aegis of recovery or lesser talisman of life's breath — reasonably cheap single-use items it would make sense for an important commander to have. Or some first aid gloves on a subordinate. And unlike, say, the determination armor quality, the former options don't give us an extra 15,000 gp when we kill him and take it. :) Not that that wouldn't be a great armor quality for Merixia to have!

That’s assuming his armor isn’t horribly cursed, or unholy, or haunted by his malevolent ghost…

I think the above recommendations are great. There is also the advanced template which is basically hit dice * 2 extra hit points and +2 to everything else.

I'm definitely not against you ramping up bosses to make them more durable.

@GM- I just had a thought about this current arc that might be helpful. It wouldn't specifically help longterm but it might provide a more satisfactory conclusion for Drezden. I'll PM you about it.

Thank you all for your help - Unfortunately, I caught an unfortunate cold and am in no real state to process all of the suggestions.

I'll try to get back to this as soon as possible, but I'm not sure when that'll be - hopefully in the next couple days, but it might be so long as the week. :(

I hope you get to feeling better soon! Take all the time you need.

Rest up and make sure to hydrate! We'll be here whenever you're feeling better.

Yeah- get well!

Take care of yourself, GM. Hope you feel better soon.

Just popping in. Hope all is going well for everyone and you're feeling better Worldwound GM. Definitely take all the time you need.

Funny enough, I got my special edition of Wrath of the Righteous over the weekend from the kickstarter.

Same here, just checking in. What Kickstarter was that, Thesius?

Owlcat Games Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous Kickstarter for the video game. Got me an Arueshalae figure among other things.

Oh wow! Glad you got your physical backer rewards, but I hope you didn't have to wait this long to play the actual game!

Oh no, we got the digital version when it came out. I just supported, but the physical copy as well because I like their products.

I am feeling more okay now. Not 100%, but better. Not sure I'll be able to post, because it's a big combat thingy, and that's always incredibly exhausting. I'll respond to things in no particular order, which means I'll miss some things.

For the record, Staunton is mythic, albeit at a lower tier than 5 (he's only champion tier 2). I agree that I shouldn't have allowed the surprise round - but the mythic dimension door conjures a literal door for what would've been... I think 4 rounds(?), meaning that you'd have to go in one-by-one, which would have been itself a nightmare to manage. Surprise rounds will inevitably lead you all to slaughtering your opposition, because you've got ludicrous numbers and tremendous action economy (which is the real kicker).

The main reason I haven't given more thought to this - or more effort to figuring out things like display of dexterity - is because I don't have a lot of confidence in my ability to balance things for the mythic 5 person party. I doubt I'll ever make it so that one of you is at risk of dying, because mythic, but still. It's a thing that requires a lot of knowledge of the system, the emotional wherewithal to adjust the stats in a meaningful way, and the ability to remember what all of the mechanical widgets do - or at least the ability to remember that they exist and therefore look them up.

I do have a few thoughts on what may happen next, but I am still debating on how to handle things in the future. There's a lot of work that would go into challenging your characters mechanically, and I just don't have the emotional wherewithal or, in truth, interest in making super big changes to the mechanical side of things.

... I definitely should've had more enemies in the room, though. Ah, well, live and learn, I guess.

Glad you’re feeling better, welcome back!

I had to stop GMing the homebrew (mythic) game I was running on the boards a while ago because I didn’t have the bandwidth to keep up with it. That said, I do have pockets of down time, and pretty decent familiarity with designing mythic enemies/encounters… if you ever want a challenge scaled up, I’d be glad to help. I won’t always be able to do it right away, but if you give me a week or two notice I should usually have time to put something together. If it helps, and if not, that’s totally cool too.

Welcome back, GM. Glad to hear you're beating the cold.

I sympathize with the frustration. It's hard to balance encounters for a mythic party, and it does take extra work that the AP should do for you and doesn't. And it's definitely very underwhelming and anticlimactic for a boss fight to end before the boss gets to act. One other easy thing is to just straight-up double the numbers of enemies for each fight. Hard to do that on a boss though.

As a side note relating to its potential use in the future, the mythic dimension door could indeed have been used by everyone in the same round — passing through the portal isn't an action and it transports each creature who uses it immediately to the destination — but per the spell description, they couldn't have taken any more actions that turn. Thus, everyone could have gotten there on the same round Verene cast the spell, not over the next four rounds.

I think, maybe, the concern with mythic dimension door is it’s awkward/unfortunate wording? It says you can’t take any other action until your next turn after passing through. If you take that to mean your turn ends when you pass through (as I think you could, the way it’s written) then at most 3 people could pass through it per round (one stepping forward+left, one forward+right, and one straight forward) and then there would be no more eligible spaces for anyone else to move to. I think (RAI) it should probably mean that after you finish the action that brought you through the portal you can’t take any other actions (and that would allow everyone to move through in a single round and position themselves), but even that has issues because if you were to charge or use an ability like fleet charge to move through it, then an attack would be part of the same action (so, technically, you’d get to make that attack before being being rendered unable to act, and that seems contrary to the intention).

It might require a ruling, or a RAI consensus before really being usable? Maybe we could all agree that it’s probably intended to allow you to finish a move action when you pass through but that you can’t do anything else (like attack) even if the action you use to move would normally allow one? Or, it could just be houseruled to work like normal dimension door but with the better number of targets?

Ah, good to know vis-a-vis the mythic dimension door. Silly me for attempting to apply common sense to mechanics. I jest, but that could've been either way, so I don't mind it.

I will try to talk with you, Azira, when I remember - sometimes it's hard to determine which encounter you'll hit next/first, so I'm oblivious to it. xD

I will attempt to get the post up today.

Welcome back gm!

I think some very generic quick to implement stat buffs to the enemies might suffice as Thesius and Verene said. Like 2 x enemy hp, +2 to all that stats over baseline and +50% damage done or such per attack (except for AOE attacks). Optionally add at least 1 enemy already present. That takes very little time to adjust and while it might not balance this exactly, it would probably give team hero some time to use their rarer powers and eat into their resources over time.

GM, Verene has 4 mirror images up currently, meaning that the minotaur's partial charge and would-be-successful attack has a 1 in 5 chance to actually hit her instead of an image.

The dimension door spell itself doesn't say you all have to arrive in the same square, and the mythic spell text doesn't change that part of the spell. That would be very annoying for the usual use of the spell. If multiple creatures are transported, all of them arrive where the caster visualizes them arriving. If a "solid body" happens to be in the space where you would arrive (e.g. if something has changed about the space that the caster cannot anticipate, or the caster has simply targeted the spell by choosing a direction and distance instead of visualizing and that would result in teleporting into a wall or underground or etc.), then the creature so transported is instead shunted to the nearest empty space to the original destination and takes a small amount of damage. It's all in the spell description. There is no general issue with everyone arriving on the same round from the same spell. Mythic just increases the number of possible transportees and gives the option for the non-casting transportees to arrive later, if e.g. they are out of the caster's reach when she casts the spell.

Oh, whoops. Forgot the mirror images - shame on me. I somehow didn't have it on my status line.

Thanks Elliot - I'll definitely put that in for the next few fights - see what comes of it.

You make excellent points, Verene. Definitely something we'll remember in the future.

If the GM is cool with Verene's interpretation, I'm 100% on board for going with that and calling it a day.

When I read that, it seems like saying "you can’t take any other creatures with you," negates the entire original section on including other targets, and replacing it with "these creatures can see and use the portal, passing through it to arrive at the destination," means that the other creatures have to move to the square where you cast the spell (where the portal is) and physically pass through it. That's what I was basing my comments on. But, again, if Worldwound is good with Verene's reading, great, let's run with it!

Since Merixia actually landed a hit on Staunton, I'm going to say that the Legendary Item ability I picked up last tier has now activated. She might not notice right away given the rage, though.

I'm going to assume Foe-Biting is not allowed, because that's quite frankly ridiculous. So I'm going to go with Powerful and Upgradable. We already have two intelligent magic items in the party, I think three might be a bit much.

Azira, that was my initial reading, as well, especially since mythic dimension door has a duration (1 round/2 caster levels), indicating that there is a portal summoned up that you have to get to/move through. That being said, the other one simplifies things for PbP, so I think we'll probably go with that.

That sounds reasonable, Merixia. And yes, Foe-Biting is, indeed, insane. You all don't need more damage output. Upgradable is perfectly fine (although you might well say that now we have three upgradable weapons), and Powerful seems fine to me, too.

Quick note on the dispel magic - I think this is basically the correct outcome, but the caster level on shared training is actually CL 10, since Elliot cast it with Wild Arcana in order to take advantage of the greater number of targets and feats shared that triggers at CL 9 for that spell. However, the DC on affecting that shared training with dispel magic would thus be 11 + 10 or 21, so the CL check result of 20 wouldn't hit it, and the attempt would then be compared to the next-highest-caster-level spell affecting Thesius, which are the CL 8 ones from Verene.

Good thing, too, since the shared training at 100 minutes is definitely more valuable than a round or two more of haste.