A couple of weeks ago we answered the question, “What is Mythic?” That answer spoke to the foundational mythic rules you can find in War of Immortals, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only possible answer to the question.

The base system for mythic characters tracks alongside your character’s level. At low levels, mythic power is explosive; though highly limited in its applications, it provides a significant change in outcome when it’s applied. As you level up, your mythic power becomes more predictable and you gain access to a wider array of possible applications, but the degree to which it shifts the dial of success normalizes somewhat, reflecting the character’s growth into a mature mythic figure capable of reliably battling mythic threats. This was not the only concept for how mythic rules could be deployed, however. While working on this project, we imagined several alternative ways people might want to experience the mythic system.

Starstone Cathedral Transformed. Art by Sandra Posada.

What if you wanted to have an experience where you had one mythic character surrounded by a group of highly competent non-mythic characters, a la cult classic cartoon Mighty Max? What if you want the pacing of the mythic elements of your story to exist separately from standard level-based progression, either having your mythic power grow more slowly or instead having your mythic power outpace your level for more high-risk/high-octane adventures?

While we think that the mythic rules published in War of Immortals represent the ideal version of the system as we would like people to experience it, we wrote all kinds of alternate ideas that didn’t match that experience and didn’t fit inside what was already an impressively meaty book. Rather than letting those ideas gather dust in an untouched folder, we thought we’d share them with you!

On the War of Immortals product page, you’ll find a link to a web PDF product titled “Mythic Variant Rules” that gives you a variety of new ways to play with the mythic system in your home games! These rules aren’t necessarily as stable a table experience as the ones we printed in the main book, but we expect that the right group might find them invaluable and a great way to push the boundaries of the game. We’ve also made sure to attach the ORC license to this product, to ensure easy use of these alternate rules and ideas by any 3pp contributors out there!

Pop on over to the product page, preorder War of Immortals if you haven’t already, and download this free expansion product today! You’ll also notice that while we were putting this PDF together, we went ahead and slipped in a handful of clarifications onto the final page to make your battles in the War of Immortals just a little bit smoother and easier to use.

Michael Sayre (he/him)
Director of Rules & Lore

While mythic stories often focus on heroes who use cunning and strength to outwit or overpower their foes, Pathfinder is also a world of high magic. Powerful spellcasters might leverage an understanding of the four essences of matter, mind, spirit, and life to unlock the secrets of reality, or they might create bonds with magical entities who channel the power of one of the four traditions of arcane, divine, occult, or primal magic into them. Whatever the nature of a character’s spellcasting ability, they are certain to extend to entirely new heights by blending it with mythic power.

Not including mythic feats and mythic items, there are two types of mythic magic presented in War of Immortals: mythic spells and mythic rituals.

Samo awakens the ocean.
Illustration by Oleksii Chernik

Mythic spells can only be cast by mythic characters, and they require expending a Mythic Point as part of their casting. These spells cover all four traditions and cover all spell ranks from 1st to 10th. They span the gamut from the whimsical 3rd-rank travel by turtle, which summons a massive turtle that can eventually carry you and an entire army across oceans, to devastating spells of ultimate power, like the 10th-rank incarnate spell summon Oliphaunt of Jandelay, which brings forth a manifestation of one of the most fearsome avatars of annihilation to obliterate your foes.

Mythic rituals take longer to cast, requiring a primary caster capable of making a given check at mythic proficiency and a number of supporting casters, but their effects are even farther-reaching and typically more permanent. The terrifying 8th-rank awaken curse ritual imbues a curse with life and sentience, transforming it into a predatory force resistant to being counteracted and capable of spreading itself to new victims. The potent 9th-rank ocean’s roar ritual can bring a great body of water to life, transforming a lake or sea into an elemental capable of causing tsunamis and choosing who it allows to travel across, under, or through it.

These spells and rituals aren’t the only tools your magical characters can find in War of Immortals; there are also mythic feats like Mythic Magic and destinies like the limitless Wildspell. Be among the first to follow your Mythic Calling by pre-ordering Pathfinder War of Immortals or subscribing to the Pathfinder Rulebook line today!

Michael Sayre (he/him)
Director of Rules & Lore

Welcome friends! We are now checks watch about 26 days away from the release of War of Immortals, and there’s an important question I wanted to answer for all of you. Namely, “What is mythic?”

For those of you who played Pathfinder First Edition or Owlcat’s CRPG conversion of the Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path, you might have an idea. In those games, mythic was an extra layer of power and resource that sat on top of your normal character, elevating and enhancing them to incredible levels of power via mythic paths, which were not entirely dissimilar to Pathfinder Second Edition’s archetypes (assuming you use the free archetype variant rules, and all the archetypes were super juiced with options that kick the ceiling off the base game!).

For War of Immortals, we went back to the roots of all the inspirations that went into the previous iterations of mythic rules and reimagined them from the ground up as a unique storytelling tool to enhance the narrative abilities of Pathfinder Second Edition.

Samo and Nahoa tell their story to the orcs of Belkzen. Art by Oleksii Chernik.

Mythic adventures take their inspiration from legends, folktales, and other storytelling traditions around the world. These tales use wordplay and rarefied prose to convey moral lessons and tell stories that often defy logic. Mythic heroes and villains, even at lower levels of play, possess fantastical powers that are unbound by physics, and their ability to impact the narrative of the game world is often much more profound than is typical for a PC or NPC. To tell these stories we use five essential elements: Mythic Points, mythic proficiency, Callings, mythic feats, and mythic destinies.

When you first gain mythic power, this is expressed by your mythic Calling. Your calling gives you a unique way to spend and regain Mythic Points, makes you exceptionally hard to kill, presents you with a set of edicts and anathemas related to the purpose of your mythic power, and gives you the special Rewrite Fate ability, which allows you to use a Mythic Point to reroll a skill check or saving throw at mythic proficiency.

Mythic proficiency is a proficiency tier beyond legendary. Where legendary proficiency gives you a proficiency bonus of +8, mythic proficiency gives you a proficiency bonus of +10, and you might be able to use your mythic proficiency in specific ways as early as 1st level, allowing you to overcome challenges that would normally be far beyond a character of your level!

Mythic feats give you new ways to utilize your Mythic Points. Many of these expand the types of checks or other rolls you can make at mythic proficiency. Others, like the Divert Destiny mythic feat presented below, allow you to seize control of the narrative and dictate how your story unfolds.

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DIVERT DESTINY [free-action] (FEAT 6)

Uncommon, Mythic

Trigger An attack or effect would reduce you to 0 Hit Points or kill you outright.

You defy the fate before you, calling on wells of mythic vitality to sustain your life and allow you to persevere. You expend 1 Mythic Point and survive the triggering attack or effect, lose the wounded or dying conditions entirely, don’t increase your doomed condition, and are conscious and standing with a number of Hit Points equal to 10 + your level, regardless of how many Hit Points you had before.

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The final element of the new mythic rules, mythic destinies, gives you even more fantastic abilities and helps enshrine your character with an eternal place in the game world. Characters inclined toward cruelty or entropy might gain the apocalypse rider mythic destiny and spread war or famine across the world. Benevolent characters might instead become an ascended celestial, joining the heavenly ranks as an angel or azata to fight evil for all time. Characters with stronger ties to the mortal world might become prophesied monarchs or eternal legends, mighty leaders who are constantly reborn when the world needs them most. A rare few might even seek to complete the mythic destiny of a godling, joining the ranks of ascended deities like Irori and Iomedae!

Seelah shines with a godling’s mythic power! Art by Firat Solhan.

Whatever your chosen path as a mythic character is, you have a potent array of tools and options available to achieve a destiny that will carry you beyond the heroic, past the legendary, and allow you to become truly mythic!

Michael Sayre (he/him)
Director of Rules & Lore