| Drax_Morningdark |
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I feel your pain.
I am running a WotR mythic game with 5 players including 2 tenured university professors, a person with degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and an individual with a PhD in Theoretical Physics. Their characters are mathematically perfect killing machines optimized to make their GM cry. One round of combat typically runs 3-4 hours and involves synergistically beautiful overlapping abilities unleashed with almost poetic lethality.
That being said, even now in Baphomet's realm, I am able to get the big fights to last between 5-10 rounds with tension and challenge, but the ridiculousness of what these PCs can do at MT 7 redefined what my definition of "power gaming" was. I am amused when a PC laments that an attack "only" does several hundred hit points of damage in a single strike.
I knew what lay ahead based on many threads' helpful posts about the perils of WotR and the mythic rules set. I posted this advice elsewhere but repeat some ideas here:
1. Use Scorpi0n_mjd's modified stat blocks for all opponents (I rebuilt them even more, but they are a great start.)
2. Give every monster with mythic ranks the Advanced Template.
3. All monsters have maximum hit points; then I multiply a creature's final HP total by its mythic rank. If you keep mythic power attack/vitalstrike/foebiter in the game, this is an essential step to avoid one-hit kills from fighters.
4. No death from massive damage for any mythic creature.
5. Add creature's mythic rank to every stat block component, saves, SR, DR, every stat. These monsters need to save against PCs with ridiculous CL and other checks. Give them a fighting chance.
6. DR for demon lords and anything MR 9-10 is not bypassed by any means.
7. All mythic creatures have the innate ability to negate critical hits to regular hits or any single hit with a mythic point expenditure once per round or once per initiative, whichever greater.
8. Mythic Paragon allows MR >10 for some elite foes (Hepzamirah, Baphomet, Deskari.)
9. I collapsed encounters into enormous, ridiculous, scenarios reflective of their opponents' logical reactions to extremely powerful foes. It is difficult to manage admittedly, but giving your BBEGs worthy minions and cannon fodder is critical to challenging mythic PCs.
10. Demon Lords have unprecedented dominion over their realms. In the Midnight Isles, I had Baphomet actually take control of the Nahyndrian mines themselves as part of his incursion into Nocticula's Realm, changing walls, creating doorways, isolated PCs with foes, etc.
I have some other tricks up my sleeves, but bottom line is that if you are going to run this campaign, around MT 3 PCs start rapidly outpacing mythic monsters and you better be ready for it.
It is probably too late for you, but anyone thinking of playing this story should give careful thought to nerfing many mythic abilities or removing them from the game altogether.
I removed Undetectable because it is ridiculously broken. I do allow foebiting as well as mythic vital strike (and give it to their foes.) I gave opponents Legendary Weapons and any mythic ability in play is available for any opponent. Baphomet and Deskari have Domain Immunities, for example.
I am finishing Book 5 and will post what I did to Deskari and the final volume after I do it, but I significantly altered the final confrontation with Deskari and have radically changed parts of Books 4 and 5 to craft the story.
It's been a lot of work, but I am enjoying the challenge of competing with 5 amazing minds to create a compelling story.