CombatOwl's page

Well, a few thoughts.

Enchantment is the least useful of the various schools of magic, there are entire groups of monsters, like undead and constructs who are immune, and races like elves who are resistant.. someone once did a comparison, and litterally 20% of all foes out there are immune to enchantment spells.. that said, your spell focus feat should be in abjuration, if your really going to be a counterspeller.

Ok, so what schools are the least useful from your viewpoint? Well, if it wasn't for the fact Read Magic and Detect Magic are Divination spells, I'd suggest that one, counterspelling divination is sort of silly.. you could still take it, and then spell all of your cantrips for those two spells.. sense you can still memorize a spell of your opposition school by taking up 2 slots (Which is in essence giving up the extra slot you got for specializing, which sucks, really.)

So, personally, I'd consider the following three schools for your choice of opposition schools, Divination, Illusion, and Enchantment.. with necromancy out there if you really don't like one of those choices.

Enchantment is, of course, still quite useful against undead and constructs... because you can mind control a horde of humanoids who ARE vulnerable to enchantment to go do your work for you. Enchantment is also extremely efficient from an action economy standpoint--even if some of the enemies are immune to it, those that aren't effectively start giving you extra actions every round.

Divination is also, by far, the single most useful school of magic out there--because it allows you to probe ahead for information about what you're going to face. That way you can prepare the spells that are most effective for those specific problems. Not to mention the insane utility of see invisibility and true seeing.

Necromancy is, by comparison, quite useless. Circle of Death is as good as it gets, and the hit die limit makes its utility limited. Evocation is also a bad choice unless you devote the feats to add useful metamagic effects to your evocations (I'm looking at you, Dazing Spell). Dealing hit point damage is just about the least useful thing you can do as an arcane caster. If your enemies are focusing on dealing hit point damage, consider yourself lucky.

As useful as illusion is for utility, it has all the problems of enchantment but none of the action economy benefits. Aside from invisibility, it's not a great choice. Losing invisibility hurts, but you can fix that very specific problem with items.

Thanks for the all the responses, especially CombatOwl's in-depth analysis.

I did not make clear what (besides repetition) is annoying about this. I'll give an example. Today, the party finished the third book of the Shattered Star AP, wherein they fought a creature with two solid magical weapons (two-weapon fighting) and a total of five attacks.

First round: Grease on the creature's saddle (it was riding). DC 17 Reflex save. No problem. The enemy makes that save on a roll of 6+. Enemy closes with meat shields in doorway. Can't get to sorcerer.

Second round: Sorcerer casts grease on the enemy' main magical weapon. Enemy makes save, starts full attack. After two successful attacks, it finally fails its save on the third iterative attack of five. It loses its main weapon. Makes two more attacks with off-hand weapon.

Third round: Sorcerer casts grease on the enemy' secondary magical weapon...

You get the picture. It's got a low save, but it works eventually. Even if the villain can pull out a backup weapon, it's still not the main magical powerful weapon he starts with. I suppose I could put a weapon cord on every weapon.

As others have pointed out, grease cast as a way to disarm an item is an all-or-nothing thing. Grease is cast. Target makes a save for the item vs. grease. If the target makes the save, the item doesn't get greased at all. The greasing is not automatic. What they mean by "a saving throw must be made in each round that the creature attempts to pick up or use the greased item" is that if the initial Reflex save fails, when they pick the weapon back up (which triggers a Reflex save), they have to keep making Reflex saves when they use the item.

That could have been written more clearly.

No matter what level the PC's reach in my game (they are now 10th), the first thing the sorcerer does in any combat against an armed enemy is to hit the enemy's weapon with grease. The next round, he does it again against any other weapon or shield. Or maybe against the saddle the enemy sits in.

Put him in his place with your own sorcerer who does a better opening move than grease--which is really not a great choice. Make him regret wasting his opening action on something so poor as grease. I mean really, how high can that save really be? 19?

Or, better yet, stop putting the party in a position where the enemies always have their weapons in hand and whatnot. Anyone with +1 BAB can draw a weapon as part of a full attack, after all. Give the NPCs improved unarmed (or spiked gauntlets...) and let them draw their weapons AFTER the "Famed Grease Sorcerer" acts. Or, hell, use knights with locked gauntlets.

I mean, if they're at that level, and the sorcerer actually does open every fight with grease, let that become a part of the legend surrounding that character. Attach embarrassing lube-related nicknames to him and have the enemies taunt him with it. Have random street people recognize him and get a laugh out of it. Make it socially embarrassing to be a mighty sorcerer relying on such an innocuous and unimpressive spell. Let the party approach a quest giver for something to do... and have them get turned down because of the Greased Pig's reputation as a pathetic spellcaster. Grease is amazing at first level, but it's kind of sad if that's your first opening move at level 10, and enemies should totally make use of that when taunting the players. Let the kingdom's bards sing songs about the sorcerer's incompetence.

I'm not saying illegitimate, but it is so boring I want to cry. The player is a dear friend and great roleplayer, but this tactic is so useful that it never stops.

Stop letting it be useful. Give some NPCs lightning reflexes and decent Dex scores occasionally. Start using more ranged combat--grease only has a range of "close", after all. It won't be much help against a charging knight with ride-by-attack. It's entirely possible for that night to be out of the spell's range by the time he's done. There's lots of ways to work around grease, and if you want him to stop using grease then you need to adopt grease-resistant tactics.

I'm halfway to stopping play over how bored I am with sorcerers and witches who do the same thing in every fight. It's a class seemingly designed specifically to bore GM's.

Instead of considering it boring, treat it like a challenge to find ways to make grease less-than-useful.

Help me A) come up with some better counters to this tactic,

There are four main problems with the grease spell (used in the way you describe) at this level.

1) It only targets one item. Meaning that it only has a chance to disable one enemy. This is VERY poor action economy for a 10th level sorcerer, who has access to black tentacles if nothing else.
2) It has low save DCs because it's a 1st level spell. If the caster is using heighten spell to raise the DCs, then this is no longer a weakness--but a lot of players don't think about using heighten spell for that purpose.
3) It only has close range. Again, that can be addressed with metamagic, but VERY few players actually bother with that.
4) The effect it causes really isn't that disruptive to a well-trained enemy. Dropping your weapon? So what, draw your backup weapon. It's also rather easily avoided (give the enemy improved unarmed, let them use locking gauntlets, etc).

This really suggests six main methods of putting shame to grease.

First, you can choose to exploit the poor action economy of grease by using a larger number of weaker enemies. This may or may not work out well depending on the party composition. If you have people who can dish out a lot of AOE habitually, this is a poor solution. If instead the party is optimized for fighting singular bosses, then this method can work wonders.

Second, you can make use of the low save DC of grease. Lightning Reflexes and a level of Rogue gives you a +4 on your Reflex saves--that's a pretty minimal investment for a fighter but makes grease a lot less likely to work. Remember; not every fighter needs to be single classed, and not every rogue needs to be obviously dressed as such. Even better would be two levels of Rogue, since that also nets you Evasion and a rogue talent. Figure out what his save DC for grease is and find a way to get a reflex save on some NPCs that equal his grease save DC -10.

Third, exploit the close range of grease. At 10th level, he has a range of 50ft on grease. Let enemies attack from beyond 50ft. One way to do that is with archery (which is quite deadly in Pathfinder). Another way is to make use of mounted combat rules--it's entirely possible to build a mounted combat character that can one-shot the average 10th level sorcerer in one round when starting beyond the range of a close range spell.

Fourth, use enemies that just don't care about grease. Monks do not care one bit about grease. Neither, frankly, do rogues. An alchemist would also handle it wonderfully--a bomb-throwing alchemist begins throwing with his hands empty, and his bomb-making ability is a supernatural ability that isn't actually dependent on any target-able gear. Alternately, do a melee smash alchemist. Obviously another sorcerer could handle it fine. Even classes that are very equipment dependent can use locking gauntlets or unarmed combat ability to laugh off a grease spell.

The other two methods of dealing with grease are general methods of dealing with any spellcaster.

A) Use counterspelling. Let the enemies hear about the famed Grease Sorcerer, and have hired their own spellcaster to counter. Since grease is only a first level spell, even a low level spellcaster can put that 10th level sorcerer to shame with counterspell. In fact, letting a first or second level apprentice shut down his grease tactic would simply drive home the point about it.

B) Grease on an item must be targeted--use concealment to prevent him from actually targeting the equipment. Alternately, use incorporeal creatures who have a 50% chance not to be effected at all by grease.

B) learn not to hate it and all the other boringly repetitious stuff limited casters do,

Find ways to put them to shame, since they have abandoned the strength of the arcane spellcaster.

or C) decide to call it quits.

Too many ways to deal with the problem to justify that. Perhaps take a break from Pathfinder if it's getting on your nerves? Play another game for a few weeks until you get the spirit back?

EDIT: Perhaps what really bores the heck out of me is debuffing. Even a small party of four can afford to dedicate one PC to just prevent the the enemy from doing anything interesting while the others grind him down. It makes every fight boring.

Use and abuse counterspelling. Also, the Disruptive Metamagic feat can very quickly annoy spellcasting PCs.

Vital Strike (in whatever form) is a feat which is claimed to be better for getting thru DR, since instead of (say) 2 attacks each of which has DR subtracted, Vital Strike lets you take ONE attack, but roll just your die damage 2 times, then add your bonuses. Thus DR is only subtracted once.

Some people love it, some people hate it. So I decided to do a little math...

You're attacking N times, with a weapon that does XdY+Z damage per blow
(X=# of dice, Y=kind of die [d6,d8,etc.], Z=fixed bonus)
against a creature with a DR of D.

The average value you get from rolling XdY many times is (XY+X)/2.

So N attacks of XdY+Z, minus DR for each attack does, on average
N(XY/2 + X/2 + Z – D) = NXY/2 + NX/2 + NZ – ND

1 attack of N(XdY)+Z, minus DR does, on average
NXY/2 + NX/2 + Z – D

Both attacks do NXY/2 + NX/2 damage, we can ignore them. So the modifiers to that basic damage are
Normal attack : N(Z – D)
Vital strike : Z – D

But here’s the thing : as long as the creature's DR is greater than the damage bonus, (Z – D) is a penalty, so the penalty is smaller with Vital Strike.

Example : d6+2 vs. DR=5, 2 attacks
Normal : 2*(3.5 + 2 – 5) = 1 HP on average
VitStrk : 2*3.5 + 2 – 5 = 4 HP on average

Conversely, if your bonus is greater than the creature's DR, you actually do LESS damage with Vital Strike! Weird, huh?

Example : d6+10 vs. DR=5, 2 attacks
Normal : 2*(3.5 + 10 – 5) = 17 HP
VitStrk : 2*3.5 + 10 – 5 = 12 HP

So the key is that you only pull out Vital Strike when your regular attacks aren't getting thru the creature's DR...

How much more damage do you do with Vital Strike?
(N–1) * (D–Z)
So the tougher the creature is, the more damage you do to it! Sweet!

In the first example above, N=2, D=5, Z=2 so the extra damage should be 1*(5-2) = 3, which it is.

In my experience, vital strike is only worth it if you intend to play a high mobility fighter, preferably with ranged weapons. There are valid reasons to play such a character, but you won't be a champion damage dealer.

Hurling it into a magic-dead zone (or dimension) will presumably prevent it from functioning until it's brought back out. (Why do I suddenly picture a lonely valley in the Mana Wastes chock-full of random objects - statuettes, gems, brooches, cups, rings... Woe to the first guy who drags them all out to hold a yard sale with.)

I'm sorry, but that sounds like the seed of the greatest campaign ever.

CombatOwl wrote:

Odraude wrote:

CombatOwl wrote:

awp832 wrote:

fyi though.. I don't think Mythic was really meant to be stacked along with 20 levels in anything.

try lower level games with Mythic. Right now we're around level 7 with 1 tier of mythic. loads of fun.

I dunno, 200 points of damage a round seems like an awful lot at level 7...

Actually, getting that deep into the vital strike chain requires you to be much higher than level 7

You can vital strike on a mounted charge because of the mounted charging rules.

That is true. I was assuming you were still talking about the Mythic Vital Strike + Greater Vital Strike combo.

Although there are other ways to limit mounted charging, both mythic and non-mythic.

Sure, it's always possible to deal with melee fighters, but the point was that it was still rocket tag. Even at low levels, that kind of damage is rocket tag against equivalent CR encounters. Even against CR+4. Mythic Vital Strike is even worse on a mounted charger than the classic GVS+MVS complaint.

CombatOwl wrote:

awp832 wrote:

fyi though.. I don't think Mythic was really meant to be stacked along with 20 levels in anything.

try lower level games with Mythic. Right now we're around level 7 with 1 tier of mythic. loads of fun.

I dunno, 200 points of damage a round seems like an awful lot at level 7...

Actually, getting that deep into the vital strike chain requires you to be much higher than level 7

You can vital strike on a mounted charge because of the mounted charging rules.

That said, even without the lance...

Level 7 with normal fighter strength by that point (22, from your +2 str item and being a human with 18 base strength and +2 racial) =

2d6 (greatsword) gets multiplied to 4d6 by Vital Strike. You begin with 4d6+9. Suppose you have a +2 sword, that's 4d6+11. You power attack for an additional +4. Overhand Chop (on a Two-Handed Fighter) puts that at 4d6+18. Weapon Training gives you 4d6+19. Mythic Vital Strike ups that to 4d6+76.

If you went large with enlarge person, that would be 6d6+114. That's on a pretty conservative build for that level. There are quite probably other ways to boost your static damage that would directly improve that. I don't play fighters that much, so you'd really need to ask someone else for advice. I know you could take a dip in barbarian for more str, if nothing else.

CombatOwl wrote:

Odraude wrote:

I'm not finding the no save ability on a first tier power. If you're talking about Arcane Surge, it allows two saves, take the lowest on non-mythic. Which is still nice, but not auto fail.

Geas has no saving throw. Wild Arcana lets you cast any spell of a level you can cast that is on your class list. Meaning that arcane casters that can cast 6th level spells can cast Geas on a target as a swift action--and the subject gets no save to resist.

Symbol spells can get kind of stupid with this too.

Ah, derp, good call. Though, it's probably a better way to make a boss waste a remove curse.

My Geas against a spellcasting boss would begin with a prohibition against casting spells... Honestly even if the DM limited me to one prohibition, that seems like it would cripple them enough to let me get off another Geas on the next round.

fyi though.. I don't think Mythic was really meant to be stacked along with 20 levels in anything.

try lower level games with Mythic. Right now we're around level 7 with 1 tier of mythic. loads of fun.

I dunno, 200 points of damage a round seems like an awful lot at level 7...

I'm not finding the no save ability on a first tier power. If you're talking about Arcane Surge, it allows two saves, take the lowest on non-mythic. Which is still nice, but not auto fail.

Geas has no saving throw. Wild Arcana lets you cast any spell of a level you can cast that is on your class list. Meaning that arcane casters that can cast 6th level spells can cast Geas on a target as a swift action--and the subject gets no save to resist. This is quite literally an I Win button, since Geas has no HD limit either.

Symbol spells can get kind of stupid with this too.

The only really broken things I've noticed so far are the various abilities which let you cast any spell as a swift action, because none of them seem to limit you to standard-action spells only. In particular, geas/quest is a no-save auto-win button balanced by a 10-minute casting time. However, if you're a 12th-level/1st-tier caster, you can use geas/quest to compel a level-appropriate opponent to do whatever you want, with no save, as a swift action.

Noticed that, did you?

Though that's certainly not the only really broken thing out there--Mythic Vital Strike, for example.

The text for Mythics says loads along the lines of unimaginable power and effortless might, comparable to gods themselves. Is this just flavour or could a campaign involving deities alongside PCs really work now?

Sure. The real question isn't "can a mythic character kill a god?" Because the answer to that is an unequivocal yes. The real question is "can a mythic character kill a god in the first round?" The answer to that is merely a "probably."

If the gods are like the gods found in 3.5e, then absolutely a mythic character could slaughter entire pantheons for fun before breakfast.

An example scenario that proved to be a difficult fight for my group of 5 adventurers, they were level 7 with 1 mythic tier at the time. The fight consisted of:

** spoiler omitted **

Yeah an alchemist can dish that out in crazy amounts, as a GM its important to see that a party can do that and make them waste it on fights throughout a long adventuring day so that when they get to the final boss or whatever they are a little more resource burned out and have to make every move count because failure or rolling a 1 could be debilitating.

Too often does a GM let level 10+ parties head out on an adventure, gives them one encounter then call it a day after that. The adventurers fighting a BBEG completely fresh with all of their resources is of course going to be an easy fight.

Let's try this another way. I'm playing a lockdown CC sorcerer, level 12, mythic tier 1. This character is slightly above normal--a Raelis Azata with 25 points, not standard stats for the race. I made a conscious choice not to pump my save DCs or Cha stat because of this--no stat adjustment items, no spell focus. I focused on using dazing spell to lock down groups of enemies with daze when combined with a few choice evocation spells. The DM is allowing some stuff in from 3.5e, giving me access to both chain missile and arcane thesis (chain missile). I locked down an entire encounter at CR +3 with TWO SPELLS before we even went mythic; a dazing chain missile for the little guys and an icy prison on the BBEG. An entire encounter got neutered with non-mythic abilities. But it took me two rounds to do that.

With mythic, I can go even more insane with this--forget arcane thesis and chain missile. As a swift action, I can cast any arcane spell of a level I can cast... and if I pick something at less than my full level, I can freely add metamagic to it. What? With just tier 1 mythic, I could have locked that entire encounter down on the FIRST ROUND that I acted. Now suddenly I have dazing fireballs as a swift action--no spell slot used, just a mythic power point. I can still cast my normal spell with my standard. At 14th level I could do dazing persistent acid arrows--again, mythic point only. This is complete encounter lockdown sort of broken. One or two rounds is enough to shut down an entire freaking encounter, leaving nothing but mopup work for the fighters. Seriously, 4 metamagiced CC spells in two rounds at no cost but two spell slots and two mythic points? That's not just depending on the 15 minute adventuring day to get by--that's maximized action economy. Almost no resources got used, I'm ready to go again right afterward.

That's what people mean by "mythic is just rocket tag." It's not just the crazy amounts of damage, it's the fact that initiative gets all screwed up and the party's spellcasters can double their spell volume for almost no expenditure. You can go encounter after encounter of this sort of craziness, and the mythic creatures are just flat out not strong enough to keep up (unless maybe it's a game about hunting mythic vampires).

I've found that Mythic adventures works out great and can really make a player have to decide on their resource management with swift actions and also giving them a resource like mythic points where sometimes they are spending to get that surge and not always just making another attack.

I'm glad it's worked out for you, but I know that it's not working out for my group. At least, not in my opinion. I guess I could just play something other than a CC sorcerer, and the fighters can just avoid vital strike, and clerics can just consciously choose not to raise people from the dead for practically nothing, but that's cutting out large portions of the abilities available in Mythic.

Hello all.

I was very excited when mythic adventures was in the pipeline. My group and I are very much into the mechanical end of Pathfinder, we love the system, we have a good grasp on game theory. We understand its not a balanced game.

Well, think about how stupidly broken d20 games can get. Now, imagine trying to play Exalted with d20. There you go. It "works" but it can't be much fun for the DM.

However. When we started playtesting scenarios to see how the new rules worked, we immediately started running into serious, immediate problems. Testing out some level 9/ tier 4 builds, we found that the barbarian could crank out over 200 points of damage per round pretty easily,

Uhh, you can build barbarians in that range that can (conservatively) do twice that in a round with mythic vital strike.

while a bomb chucking alchemist could fast bomb for over 300 per round easy. These builds were not esoteric rules lawyering, it was power A+B+C= Win!

Pretty much. Spellcasters get even more absurd. Sorcerers can just punch the I Win button [Mythic Power Points] times per day.

My group understands that offense intentionally scales faster than defense in the base game. It seems like all classes that use mythic get so much boosted output, however, that they literally kill everything they attack.

Yup, pretty much. It's pure rocket tag. Whoever has the highest initiative bonus wins. At late tiers... you don't even get to roll to see who goes first.

Even mythic monsters aren't getting the kind of defensive boosts they need to survive. The problem that we are having is that nothing seems to survive an attack routine by a mythic character, even if its a mythic monster of the character's CR, or higher!

Correct. This is basically everyone's Mythic Experience.

Now we understand having to hold back on builds to keep from steamrolling monsters, but it seems like we can't use huge swaths of the content in this book lest we steamroll every encounter the characters will ever have. I guess I am sad the monster end of mythic doesn't seem to hold up to the character end.

To tell the truth, neither do Mythic NPCs. It really is Rocket Tag. If a fight between mythic creatures lasts more than two rounds, something is dreadfully wrong.

I am wondering if anyone has found that the system holds up at later levels?

Not at level 12. That's the best I can tell you from experience.

To be clear, I am a big fan of the game, and while I am disappointed that I might not be able to run / play mythic, I am still a big fan of paizo.

Same. I like Pathfinder, but I am sorely disappointed with Mythic. It wasn't fun back in the playtest, it isn't fun now. I don't understand how anyone could find this game playable in the long term. How do you run a campaign with these Mythic rules? How do you have any kind of dramatic encounter when any member of the party can solo the entire encounter themselves? Big bosses mean nothing when the party fighter can one-hit-kill them with mythic vital strike.

I just don't understand it. How is this supposed to be fun? Every time I look at the mythic rules, I scratch my head and wonder what was supposed to be entertaining about winning everything all the time with no amount of tactical or strategic thought. Even if the more absurdly overpowered stuff--mythic vital strike, for example--were banned from the game, the whole of the Mythic rules seem so incongruous with the normal Pathfinder rules that it becomes virtually unplayable. I'd try to frame this as more constructive critique, but I just don't even know where to begin with Mythic. There's very little in Mythic that I actually feel improves the game from where it was before.

To be honest, I basically feel that I choose to play Pathfinder to play a d&d game--but Mythic is basically just playing Exalted with rules that don't work as well for it. If I wanted to play this sort of game, I would just play Scion or Exalted--or, hell, Rifts.

I am sad not mad! Also I am hoping someone can tell me its not all rocket tag (without just ignoring the rules and beefing up monsters). Let me know what you think, I would be interested to hear about the nature of your experiences with mythic.

Mythic might work if you multiply the monster's hit points by ten.

All this talk of 1000+ damage almost makes me want to play a fighter, but I suspect I wouldn't be able to replicate the situation to repeat these deeds.

All you need to do is take a fairly standard two-handed fighter build with power attack and the vital strike chain. Then give him a weapon with 2d4 or 2d6 damage. That's it. That's all you have to do to hit these absurd amounts of damage. It doesn't require any special setup, teamwork feats, spell support from casters, or unusual situations. By RAW, that's all that's required. It just gets better over levels and tiers as you gain strength and better magic bonuses.

The Shifty Mongoose wrote:

So, to summarize, a non-mythic, high-level character is already miles and kilometers away from even the most highly-skilled real-life person, while mythic tiers just raise the threshhold of ridiculous hijinx.

A non-mythic purple worm just bit his head off? Don't worry, he'll walk it off.

This desert sure is inconvenient. Everyone would thank me if I suddenly changed the landscape for miles around.

One afternoon, everyone along the main caravan route suddenly loses consciousness; must've been that blasted dervish dancer again!

If anything, I just want to see mythic action just for its potential for massive silliness. I should probably go Trickster, then.

PCs are already superhuman. is making them more superhuman even a problem?

some of us like playing heroes inspired by Grecian myth.

That's a totally valid style of game to play. It sounds fun, in fact. The problem is that Mythic Adventures isn't the sort of game to do that with. Mythic Adventures is not "adventuring in the style of mythic greek heroes," it's "Paizo's version of Exalted."

Unfortunately there are some very poorly worded feats and path abilities that interact horribly with the rest of the rules. For example, dealing over 1k damage on a mythic vital strike automatically. Sorcerers with no spell access limitations whatsoever who can (essentially) freely add absurd metamagic combos together to utterly game breaking heights.

I agree that a "Greek heroes" game would be a lot of fun, I just wish Mythic Adventures actually let you play a game like that.