Peacelock's page

So I did get a response from Maya via email. It reads:

Quote:

Thanks for reaching out again, and thank you for putting those threads up! This is something the Devs will look at in their own schedule, but I can confirm you’ve done everything exactly how they requested it! Once they look into it, they’ll either respond in the thread on their own accounts where needed or include it in any upcoming Errata. Thanks for making it easy for us to find things!

Guess it is dependent on designers reaching out in the forums.

I'm a little disappointed. I had hoped there would be some internal pressure to get answers out to the community and that it would be easy to search it since it would be published under Maya's account. Feels like its status quo, but maybe designers will be a bit more open to coming back to the forums?

I just hope the rules team reads this thread and the 2025 errata suggestions thread at all.

This was a blast to read, thanks for updating your guide!

A few miscellaneous thoughts:

- I wonder if the discrepancy between your own thoughts on GW and WoW and the polling results is because a lot of the problems in those adventures are their myriad small errors not obvious on an initial read. I know the first time I read through GW in preparation for running it I didn't notice a huge number of small issues that became persistently annoying in play.

- I feel like popular perception of AV has swung too far in the opposite direction. AV is very group dependent and not very newcomer friendly, but if you like dungeon crawling and tough combats it's an absolute blast that easily merited its previous high rank.

- I miss 6 book APs so much. 3 bookers just don't have the same gravitas or sense of long term adventure. It doesn't help that the 2 best 6 book APs for PF2E, Age of Ashes and Strength of Thousands, don't have Foundry modules so playing them online is a big pain.

I'm surprised Prophesized Monarch performed as well as it did. It seemed very weak to me when I read through it. Did you apply the weakness from Decree of Execution to every damage type the party did on an attack? If so, I can see how your party melted Treerazer. Thats an insane amount of damage, though weakness isn't supposed to work like that.

Were there any other abilities from it that were noteworthy?

I know that it’s a more than a bit unclear in the books what exactly an instance of damage is, but my understanding is that weakness to all does in fact work like that and that’s how it’s automated on the PF2E Foundry system with behind the scenes guidance from the Paizo devs.

In it, an instance of damage is effectively defined as each damage type within a single source of damage (whether that be attack/spell/hazard/whatever). So if a monster with weaknesses to both fire and slashing gets attacked by a flaming longsword, both weaknesses are triggered. However, as the book describes, a monster weak to slashing and cold iron only takes extra damage once since both those weaknesses would key off the slashing damage in a cold iron longsword.

It’s the same reason champion reaction resistance applies to each damage type in an attack or spell rather than to the collective damage like hardness would. It sounds like you may not be running Resist all/weakness all RAW. (though like I said with how unclear the books are about what constitutes an instance of damage that’s totally understandable)

Re: Monarch, while DoE is certainly the highlight, the other decrees, Bloom of Health, Kneel before the rightful heir, etc are all very solid and many don’t cost mythic points.

We had another level 20 test a few days ago, where they beat a mythic Thanatotic Titan + friends with some difficulty and then absolutely clowned on a level +5 Treerazer. (Treerazer Nat failed the save for Decree of execution, got Weakness 20 to all damage, and was quickly melted) The Party was a Wildspell Wizard, Prophesied Monarch Champion, Eternal Legend Exemplar, and Apocalypse Rider Cleric.

Prophesied Monarch seemed very good but not broken, in a similar vein to Broken Chain and Eternal Legend (sans Fight Through Oblivion from the latter).

For Wildspell, I'll just quote what my player shared with me:

"All the Wildspell features that don't interact with Spellsurge are okay - Mana Explosion - to strong - Mythic Heightening and Imbue Spell. Imbue Spell deserves a special mention as it is one of the strongest caster feats in the game if you use it as intended to cheat out actions every combat. One action 7th level haste? I love it. One action tempest of shades? Crazy good, and you can Imbue a spell before every single fight so it is consistently strong. The broken part stems from the fact that it doesn't have any limitations on spells with longer cast times so you could do something silly like Imbue a Plane Shift and if you're losing a fight use it to teleport away instantly.

Spellsurge is awful and and desperately needs buffs. The default range sucks, the action cost is insane considering what it gives, it costs a mythic point for no reason, and enemies can use it against you, bafflingly. Spellsurge holds Wildspell back so much and desperately needs buffs and even with buffs to keep pace with what other paths are capable of."

Not much to say about Eternal Legend: it once again showed it's very good.

Apocalypse Rider at level 20 felt fairly underwhelming, the Horse just got knocked out almost immediately without even soaking any damage for the party because what killed it was AOEs.

The Titan once again didn't feel mythic despite multiple mythic abilities.

In general the two takeaways I'm getting most from these sessions are that the player facing mythic rules aren't bad but the destinies are severely imbalanced compared to what you'd expect in this system, and that the rules for mythic monsters just aren't very exciting. The monster abilities are mostly just various barely-diegetic ways of prolonging fights without actually making them more interesting. Also Mythic Defenses (the auto reroll on crits against mythic enemies level 20+) continued to just be the absolute opposite of fun.

Based on these 4 sessions, I'd highly encourage GMs to homebrew custom powerful mythic actions/abilities for monsters rather than use the ones from the book. I'd also encourage heavy homebrew rebalancing of the destinies (some nerfs to Celestial and Mortal Herald, probably just ban Fight Through Oblivion for EL, and generous buffs to Wildspell, Apocalypse Rider, and especially Archfiend and Beastlord. Keep in mind, the imbalances here are not like typical PF2E "imbalances" that are small and not a big deal, these are genuinely massive. Depending on your choice of Destiny, mythic PF2E can feel like a normal game of PF2E or it can feel like Godbound or Exalted 3rd edition. And when the characters with the power of the latter are in the same party as those with the power of the former, it can just feel really bad.

If anyone else has been playing or running mythic games, please let us know how your experience has compared to mine and my players' games!

Thank you so much for the feedback! Would love to hear from other folks' actual in-play experience, particularly over the course of an entire campaign or several sessions of play. Particularly encoutners that focus on Moderate (80 XP) or Severe (120 XP) encounters. The way the math works, more than Severe encounters are still gonna be really tough on mythic characters, and I also suspect/hope that having those actual confrontations with mythic monsters and challenges NOT be every single encounter, but instead be interspersed with non-mythic challenges will help to keep the mythic ones more memorable while simultaneously helping with the restoration of mythic points between encounters (since longer sessions with fewer mythic challenges = you're auto-filling more often by starting a new session, and also since having more non-mythic encounters doesn't in theory lower the rate at which you're gaining mythic points by falling your calling or doing legendary accomplishments).

Like hero points, a GM really should be keeping an eye on these PC resources and if a PC is struggling to keep up, consider being more generous on those opportunities to reward Mythic Points for following callings or accomplishing things. Those two elements are difficult to hard-code into published adventures.

You're very welcome! (and I echo the request to hear play experiences from other GMs or players here to see how their experiences matched up or contrasted to my group's)

FWIW, at least in these tests, I'm not sure I'd completely agree about the really tough bit for more than extreme encounters at least once they're level 16+. During the levels 16 and 20 tests, all 4 (technically 5 even since 130 xp is less but still extreme) extremes were won by the players, and 3/4 of those were absolutely smashed with little difficulty.

That said, those were mostly skilled players with 1 encounter days and some of the stronger destinies in their party, so if it was a boss fight at the end of a dungeon crawl and the destinies of the party were on the weaker side then it could certainly look a lot different. As always, attrition is an X factor that's hard to account for.

Thanks for your playtests, this is good info to read. I wonder if games feel more mythic at lower levels, where Mythic Points have more of an impact on checks.

I always had the impression that Mythic Points were meant to be spent on skill checks and similar at lower levels, and then move to your destiny-specific actions as your level increased. It sounds like either my assumption was wrong, or the philosophy doesn't quite fire, given how much it sounds like the party spent their points on mythic Strikes and casting spells, instead.

Dragonchess Player wrote:

The comments about how uneven the mythic destinies are in the stress test encounters is useful information. From my read-through, several of the mythic destiny feats definitely look more useful outside of combat than in combat.

That's also been my takeaway. It makes sense, since mythic play is arguably more focused on giving players control over the narrative as opposed to making them super-effective in combat, but it does make doing playtests like this somewhat difficult, and, unfortunately, those more narrative-focused feats are still going to compete with the combat feats in your mythic feat slots.

No, I'd say your initial impression there was correct with the caveat that it might take significantly longer than you'd expect before that changeover happens (for example all the way up to level 19 mythic casting is hard to top for many destinies), and that for some destinies they just don't really get mythic point abilities good enough to compete with Strike/Casting/Godspeed. For destinies with strong abilities that used mythic points, they definitely got used in the levels 16 and 20 test. (moreso the latter)

Re: narrative, I get where you're coming from but a lot of the strongest combat destinies in these tests also get some of the most powerful narrative and utility abilities, while some of the weakest destinies in these tests (like Beastlord) don't get much in the way of narrative power options. They're two totally different power measurements that don't seem to have any sort of inverse relationship (eg where one destiny is weaker in combat because they have stronger narrative feats or vice versa).

Great stuff!

Peacelock wrote:

2. So long as it's kept to 2 saves only, mythic resilience isn't quite as bad as I'd feared it would be.

This kind of surprises me, though I guess in a test like this folks will have their full set of spells pretty frequently. It's going to feel a lot worse after some attrition where you might not have any of "the right save target spell" left, since everything else isn't going to be effective.

Honestly I was surprised too, and going into this test I was pretty sure I'd despise Resilience as a mechanic. But at least with the ones with only 2 saves it felt surprisingly fine. The casters were able to get around it by either spamming force barrage, healing/buffing, or finding the non-resilient save and targeting that. I think it helps that these were mostly very proficient players. In any sort of mythic campaign I think if casters go into it knowing resilience will be a thing and prepare accordingly with a variety of spell options they'll be okay.

That all being said I could definitely see "using mythic casting lets you bypass resilience" being a potential house rule at my own tables.

I realized I never left feedback on Mortal Herald since I was going down the list in the WoI table of contents lol.

Mortal Herald: Similar to Broken Chain and Eternal Legend in that it's in the "generally fun, balanced, and powerful" category with the caveat that a few of its abilities should really cost mythic points but don't. (I also have some concerns about the ability to inflict weakness 10 to all damage for a full round being too strong but I haven't seen it in play so maybe I'm overrating that feat)

Individual Mythic Destiny Thoughts from my players and I:

Apocalypse Rider: Tested at level 12 so not too much data on destiny-specific abilities, though the mount wasn’t any more tanky or useful than a normal horse so it mostly just kept getting knocked unconscious.

Archfiend: The central ability, Manifest Realm, is just way too weak and action intensive to be worth using. You lose so much momentum activating it, and every time the Animist player used it failed to accomplish a single thing. Your actions at higher level play have a premium opportunity cost, and you need to spend multiple turns, multiple feats, and multiple mythic points to unleash such powerful effects as… 4d8 damage to a single enemy (with a save of course). Or to teleport within your realm… but only to places which you have an unobstructed view to, so the Archfiend’s plan to be able to teleport out of Verex’s stomach was foiled despite the realm existing beyond the monster. Pretty much the only thing worth a damn is the level 18 feat Imprison Foe, which is admittedly an incredibly powerful ability that should not be underestimated, but it’s a shame everything else is just so laughably weak and not worth using.

Ascended Celestial: One of if not the most powerful destinies, it gets handed multiple abilities as constant passives that other destinies would need to spend multiple actions plus mythic points to achieve equivalent effects. And when they do use actions? The comparison gets absurd. While spending only a single action and no mythic point, Celestials can have a 120 ft radius buff aura, quicken themselves, gain temp hp, and get additional free actions to trip or shove whenever they damage a creature. Wildspell needs to spend 2 actions and a mythic point to get a 10 foot radius aura with much more limited effects. Their damage is off the charts, they get many powerful passive buffs, and many strong abilities that don’t cost mythic points. Watching this in action at both level 16 and especially at level 20 was awe-inspring. Frankly, it’d probably too strong even if most of the other destinies got significant buffs over their current state.

Beast Lord: This felt completely indistinguishable from a normal level 20 Druid who’d taken the animal companion feats. None of the abilities achieved anything, the companion failed to hit an enemy even once the entire session despite being buffed up and most of its attacks being vs on level creatures, and the fact that it’s still subject to mythic immunity RAW just felt mean. I wouldn’t recommend anyone take this as it stands. Like, it’s not great when the whole group just felt overwhelming pity for a char who is supposed to be “mythic.”

Broken Chain: A really strong destiny that nonetheless felt pretty well balanced as well. Some very strong support and debuff abilities, some of which don’t require mythic points, made it feel great to play and have in a party. If every destiny was about this powerful, I think they’d be in great shape overall.

Eternal Legend: Like Broken Chain, this is a very strong class that has some very powerful abilities and isn’t overly hungry for the highly limited mythic points. If it weren’t for one feat, this would probably be the best balanced of all of them from a “feels powerful and ‘mythic’ but not gamebreaking” standpoint, but sadly Fight Through Oblivion exists. With that level 20 feat, you become nearly invincible and enemies can only knock you out of the fight by either hard disable spells like dominate or just spending 4 rounds running away from you. If those aren’t options, you can trade blows basically forever with any enemy and win without even trying. Even at level 20 on a mythic destiny, that feat should not exist in its current form IMO.

Godling: Only tested at level 12 so far so most of its unique destiny benefits haven’t really been showcased yet. It’s very dependent on another player for its abilities, which can be a challenge when the other players want to use their own mythic abilities instead.

Prophesied Monarch: Not tested yet, but will on the 17th.

Wildspell: Not tested yet, but will on the 17th. At least on paper it seems incredibly dependent on spamming mythic points for its abilities to function, so it took me begging a little to convince my playtesters to try it out haha.

A couple of months ago on reddit, James Jacobs asked for playtest feedback on level 12-20 Mythic play and seeing as I was also very curious how these rules worked in practice, I decided to organize some playtest sessions! So far I've run 3, one each at levels 12, 16, and 20, with more upcoming over the next couple months. So far aside from myself there's been about 10 people involved in the playtesting, and we've playtested nearly every path at least once.

Methodology: In each test, the players assembled mythic parties of 4 characters with mythic as the only variant rule or house rule in play. I normally have plenty of house rules, but for this I wanted to keep close to RAW in order to test how mythic interacts with the game as written. They were built using the standard treasure for new characters table with one additional item of player level (since that table puts you one behind on fundamental runes compared to what the game expects, skewing results down). At level 20, the characters also received the new mythic fundamental runes, with spellcasters given other high level items to compensate for not being able to use mythic weapon potency or mythic striking. Each party was also composed of either 2 melee martials and 2 casters, or 2 melee martials, 1 ranged martial, and a caster, in order to ensure an imbalanced party comp didn't skew results.

Each test pitted the party against multiple encounters, both mythic and non-mythic, with full rests between each. (the idea for this was to test them at peak capacity rather than make it an attrition challenge) The mythic monsters followed the guidelines from War of Immortals, both for encounter building and monster building. Encounters were all balanced as either severe or extreme, as the mythic encounter rules suggested that mythic chars would significantly outperform standard chars and these were 1 encounter in-game days.

Session 1 - Level 12

The party consisted of a Godling Wizard, an Archfiend Animist, a Mortal Herald Exemplar, and an Apocalypse Rider cleric (Battle Harbinger class archetype).

I first tested to see if mythic significantly outperformed regular PF2E chars at this level via 2 non-mythic 160 xp extreme encounters, 1 vs a horde of lower level dragons and 1 vs a solo lesser death. Despite these being winnable fights for a normal party (albeit very tough ones), the mythic party got trounced both times. Mythic didn't seem to be a massive power difference at 12 contrary to my expectations.

The 3rd fight was a severe mythic encounter with +2 solo mythic brute and 2 level -2 monsters. The -2s got deleted very quickly thanks to aoe mythic casting spells, but the mythic monster stuck around for a while and was mostly just hurt by the martials. Mythic resilience came up a little bit, but the casters were able to mostly avoid it once they realized this monster was mythic by healing or targeting other defenses. It just felt almost exactly like any severe with a level +2 with two level -2 lackeys, and the party beat it quite easily.

Takeaways: (these include observations by both me and my players that we discussed following the sessions)

1. By far the most used mythic stuff was mythic casting/strike plus godspeed, and mythic points disappeared extremely quickly despite being refreshed between encounters. Usually by the end of round 3 almost everyone was out of points, at which point the game largely becomes identical to standard PF2E

2. Casters felt stronger vs non mythic enemies, while martials felt stronger vs mythic enemies. Mythic casting really lets casters boost their odds in a way the system doesn't usually allow, but it's quite limited.

3. Basically no one used Destiny specific mythic abilities. The Archfiend opened their realm once and it accomplished absolutely nothing since monsters at this level usually have high movement.

4. Building a mythic monster was more confusing than it really should be since there's a lack of guidance on how to assign abilities that cost a mythic point. It's not based on level because there's very high level mythic monsters in this book with only 2 abilities that take mythic points and at least one lower level creature with 3 such abilities. You just get the list and that's it. (notably the template abilities are not on this list except for the ability in the caster template). There's also some discrepancies between the text and the table, with the table saying that mythic reroll and mythic defenses are mutually exclusive features while in text the former is just one of many abilities and the latter is given to all mythic creatures of level 20 or higher. It felt very slapdash, to say nothing of the whole "resistance and resilience are equivalent features even though the former gets completely bypassed" thing.

5. Overall this mostly just felt like a normal PF2E session. The 2 abilities and 2 resiliences I gave the level 14 mythic brute didn't make it feel epic or legendary, just slightly more of a damage sponge than normal. Mythic Striking and Casting were both a notable numbers bump but they didn't make as big a difference as you'd expect. It definitely felt more notable for casters as it's generally harder to raise DCs and lower saves than it is to buff attacks and lower AC, but even that was really limited to just helping them get rid of low level lackeys a bit faster. It really didn't "feel" mythic, especially after the points quickly ran out.

Session 2 - Level 16

Party was a Broken chain Barb, Celestial Gunslinger, Eternal Legend champ, and a Mortal Herald Sorc

The 1st fight was a 160xp horde encounter against a bunch of aeons (2 kolaruts, 4 Akhanas, a bythos, and a marut), but it was easily stomped via mythic aoe spells and the champ's shield of spirit.

2nd was a solo 160xp vs a Bastion Archon, this one was much harder, party narrowly won thanks to a lucky crit fail on normally cast eclipse burst and while it was subtle mythic definitely made a difference (eg it made a slow into a fail instead of success, helped a couple Gunslinger attacks hit, and helped one person stay conscious via a mythic ability)

Lastly, the 3rd fight was vs a Mythic level 18 Star Archon Mythic Striker plus a Weak Giylea and aTrumpet Archon, for a low extreme 130 exp encounter. The party won fairly easily, and I'm not sure mythic made a difference. It once again felt like a pretty normal fight. The mythic enemy didn't feel very mythic, just had mythic resilience and a reroll that it used (had some other stuff but didn't get a chance to use it before it died).

Takeaways:

1. We expected it would feel notably more mythic than the level 12 test, but it still just felt like normal PF2E for the most part. Even in the fight vs the Bastion Archon, where mythic helped eke out a narrow victory, might have gone exactly the same way had the players had a different variant rule buffing them instead like the ever common Free Archetype.

2. So long as it's kept to 2 saves only, mythic resilience isn't quite as bad as I'd feared it would be.

3. Players used some destiny specific abilities more, but mainly abilities that didn't cost a point like Broken Chain's Cry of Rebellion or Celestial's Armaments.

4. Mythic points still run out very quickly, and it's becoming increasingly clear that having a large number of decent things you can potentially do with mythic points matters much less than 1-3 very good things you can do with them. And again, in a normal campaign environment players are working with much less points per fight than in these stress tests.

Session 3 - Level 20

Party was an Eternal Legend Barb, Archfiend Animist, Druid Beastlord, and Celestial Monk.

Only 2 fights this time as playing at level 20 with new chars meant that fights took longer. The 1st was a 4v4 vs 4 level 20 planar scions (a Nessari, a Balor, a Veranallia, and a Yamaraj). The party cleaned this up easily and it was definitely the most mythic-feeling of any of the encounters so far, albeit not equally between the players.

The second fight was vs. the new published monster Verex-That-Was, and frankly, it was kind of awful. From the GM side, Verex is just a really boring monster to run, with barely anything to do other than move, attack, and use swallow whole. From the player side, mythic resilience on all 3 saves felt awful (especially for the druid), mythic immunity made the Beastlord's companion largely worthless since none of its features ever make it a mythic creature, and mythic defenses (where all crits against it get rerolled) was just the absolute opposite of fun. At least resilience feels a bit diegetic (this monster just has really high saves), defenses feels like whenever you roll a crit a Paizo dev personally comes into your play session and says "akshually you didn't, try again lol." There's just no causal relationship or narrative weight to it and it feels dreadful. This fight eventually devolved into the 2 casters stuck in the monsters stomach while the 2 martials slowly chipped away at Verex's health (boosted significantly by undying myth ressurecting him when he first reaches 0) until he finally went down because his damage output is actually pretty low.

Takeaways:

1. This session the players absolutely felt mythic, but it varied greatly between the paths. For example Celestial and Eternal legend were basically power fantasies of the sort you could find in something like the Owlcat WOTR CRPG while Beastlord just felt like a normal level 20 Druid who'd taken the animal companion feats. You could REALLY feel how wildly imbalanced the paths were compared to each other. Some of them would be underwhelming as a normal archetype and others make you into a god killing superweapon, the gulf is utterly massive.

2. Mythic Defenses as a mechanic is just really unfun and immersion breaking. It doesn't make the monster feel mythic, it just makes it feel annoying.

3. In a similar vein, Mythic Resilience in all 3 saves feels substantially worse than having it in just 2 as the other mythic monsters I'd used did.

4. Verex in general, despite being a level 24 mythic monster with multiple mythic abilities, did not feel mythic in the slightest. He just felt like a giant bullet sponge who did nothing but survive for a long time and swallow people without access to freedom of movement/Unfettered Movement. It was worse than unbalanced, it was just plain boring.

5. At this level, Mythic Casting becomes a lot less powerful now that it's only a +2. Mythic Strike is a little better since for most classes it's still a +4, but in general they're both pretty undramatic. If you don't have strong ways to use mythic points from your destiny (and many of the destinies frankly don't give you many effective ways of using them) it's possible to feel less mythic than you did at level 10 or 12.

6. It's tough to say how much of it was due to them having stronger mythic destinies, but the two martials severely overperformed the 2 casters here, though the Animist definitely still pulled their weight.

That's all for now, got another level 20 test in a week's time and there'll be more after that! (I won’t be able to update this post by then, so it’ll by a comment below) I'll also follow up with a separate comment about mine and my player's thoughts on the individual destinies, which vary wildly in both power and subjective fun factor. For those of you who have also had the chance to run or play mythic in this level range, how do these results match up with your own?

Some clarification requests related to the mythic rules, all of which I've seen people confused on what is intended:

1. Is it intended that Wildspell's Spellsurge focus spell (an aura around your character that much of the mythic path keys off) costs a mythic point to cast? There's been a lot of speculation that this wasn't intended as it makes Wildspell's mythic point economy really rough (for example to make the aura 30 feet costs a second mythic point), it makes taking Wildspell as a non-mythic archetype largely impossible, and it would be super easy to tag a focus spell in a mythic path as mythic without remembering that any spell with the mythic trait costs a point.

2. Do mythic player characters count as mythic creatures for the purpose of ignoring mythic resistance? There's been confused debates on this all over the internet (with many threads or discussions coming to different conclusions) mostly because the mythic strike feat says it bypasses mythic resistance, which any PC that could take it would already bypass if mythic PCs are mythic creatures. People also point to how mythic resistance in monster building is valued as equivalent to mythic resilience, when the former is possibly completely ignored by mythic PCs while the latter effects all PCs regardless of mythic status with no way to bypass it, as evidence that mythic PCs might still be subject to the resistance. (since it's weird that two equivalent features have one that would be completely ignored and one that's very powerful)

3. Is it intended that Mythic Magic works for non-spellcaster PCs?

4. Are the Beastlord and Apocalypse rider companions intended to be mythic creatures? It never says, but it feels to a lot of people like an oversight and the former even has a feat named Creature of Myth.

5. Are there any plans to patch Mythic to make it more compatible with classes that right now don't interact with some of its most important features (Kineticist is the big one that tons of people have been asking about, but also Summoner, Magus, and Swashbuckler all chafe on not being able to use mythic proficiency for strikes/spells without giving up on using your main class features)

6. Artisan's calling has the anathema "use a weapon or item crafted by someone else, except for the purpose of learning its function so you can understand how to create it yourself" which has been widely noted as being problematic and very difficult to follow as it disallows the use of any items you pick up as loot or buy and most campaigns don't have nearly enough downtime to craft every item a character would conceivably use, is it intended to be as punishing as it seems?

7. Mythic Defenses, the level 20 mythic monster ability that causes rerolls of critical attack rolls against them, is incorrectly combined into the mythic resilience entry of some of the monsters, including the Oliphaunt of Jandelay and Agyra, and the Oliphaunt has a research track that ends in discovering a way around its "mythic resilience" that is described as the crit reroll that is actually covered by mythic defenses. (this one is less a question and more pointing out the issue for getting errata lol)

8. Is it intended that several previously non-mythic rare rituals like Create Demiplane, Freedom, and Imprisonment are now mythic-exclusive, or should they still be considered rare for non-mythic chars and this is just automatic access? (lots of lore confusion on this one since PF lore is full of non mythic high level chars using these)

For a non-mythic question: How is the Exemplar’s Titan Breaker Ikon transcend intended to work? Currently the two readings are either “immanence damage increases” that at the majority of levels don’t increase anything or that it’s intended to scale to the point that it’s eventually doing +3 damage dice and +32 flat damage which is far more powerful than any other power attack style two action ability in the game. (This question caused a big argument in a previous thread, to my fellow commenters let’s not rehash that please)

I forgot to include one more WoI question in my other comment, which is how is Titan Breaker’s transcendence intended to function?

The ability reads “ Your spirit is so dense it takes on tangible force. Make a melee Strike with the titan’s breaker. This counts as two attacks when calculating your multiple attack penalty. If this Strike hits, your additional spirit damage from the ikon’s immanence increases to 4 plus an extra die of weapon damage. If you’re at least 10th level, it’s increased to 6 spirit damage and two extra dice, and if you’re at least 18th level, it’s increased to 8 spirit damage and three extra dice.” For context, the immanence effect is plus 2 damage per weapon damage die.

Nobody can figure out how it’s supposed to work since the two possible readings of it seem either too bad to be true (your damage bonus only increases very slightly for 1-2 levels then doesn’t increase at all from the base damage until the next upgrade because 2xdamage dice already equals the “increase”) or too good to be true (the damage increase is also per die which results in some ludicrously large flat damage bonuses).

I’d add to this that lately we’ve seen several temp buffs that add a non stacking property rune which should also be errated so they don’t become useless. These are even worse than blade ally since they don’t really save your party gold. (since you still want to buy property runes because these buffs cost actions to activate in combat) Two that come to mind are:

1. Blade of the Heart, for the Starlit Sentinel Archetype.

2. The Kineticist Aura Kindle Inner Flames after it heightens at level 12 (this one is especially egregious since before level 12 it gives a flat 2 that does stack with runes, and then at level 12 it basically loses the damage bonus entirely because it no longer stacks. You also can’t choose not to heighten it.)

Gonna pre-empt this by adding to what the OP said that this was suggested by Paizo Staff Maya Coleman in the errata thread, and that this thread should be used for errata questions rather than for arguing that something should be buffed/nerfed or whatever. (or arguing interpretations on answers to these questions unless the RAW is extremely clear)

Some questions related to the mythic rules, all of which I've seen people confused on what is intended:

1. Is it intended that Wildspell's Spellsurge focus spell (an aura around your character that much of the mythic path keys off) costs a mythic point to cast? There's been a lot of speculation that this wasn't intended as it makes Wildspell's mythic point economy really rough (for example to make the aura 30 feet costs a second mythic point), it makes taking Wildspell as a non-mythic archetype largely impossible, and it would be super easy to tag a focus spell in a mythic path as mythic without remembering that any spell with the mythic trait costs a point.

2. Do mythic player characters count as mythic creatures for the purpose of ignoring mythic resistance? There's been confused debates on this all over the internet (with many threads or discussions coming to different conclusions) mostly because the mythic strike feat says it bypasses mythic resistance, which any PC that could take it would already bypass if mythic PCs are mythic creatures. People also point to how mythic resistance in monster building is valued as equivalent to mythic resilience, when the former is possibly completely ignored by mythic PCs while the latter effects all PCs regardless of mythic status with no way to bypass it, as evidence that mythic PCs might still be subject to the resistance. (since it's weird that two equivalent features have one that would be completely ignored and one that's very powerful)

3. Is it intended that Mythic Magic works for non-spellcaster PCs?

4. Are the Beastlord and Apocalypse rider companions intended to be mythic creatures? It never says, but it feels to a lot of people like an oversight and the former even has a feat named Creature of Myth.

5. Are there any plans to patch Mythic to make it more compatible with classes that right now don't interact with some of its most important features (Kineticist is the big one that tons of people have been asking about, but also Summoner, Magus, and Swashbuckler all chafe on not being able to use mythic proficiency for strikes/spells without giving up on using your main class features)

6. Artisan's calling has the anathema "use a weapon or item crafted by someone else, except for the purpose of learning its function so you can understand how to create it yourself" which has been widely noted as being problematic and very difficult to follow as it disallows the use of any items you pick up as loot or buy and most campaigns don't have nearly enough downtime to craft every item a character would conceivably use, is it intended to be as punishing as it seems?

7. Mythic Defenses, the level 20 mythic monster ability that causes rerolls of critical attack rolls against them, is incorrectly combined into the mythic resilience entry of some of the monsters, including the Oliphaunt of Jandelay and Agyra, and the Oliphaunt has a research track that ends in discovering a way around its "mythic resilience" that is described as the crit reroll that is actually covered by mythic defenses. (this one is less a question and more pointing out the issue for getting errata lol)

8. Is it intended that several previously non-mythic rare rituals like Create Demiplane, Freedom, and Imprisonment are now mythic-exclusive, or should they still be considered rare for non-mythic chars and this is just automatic access? (lots of lore confusion on this one since PF lore is full of non mythic high level chars using these)

Thank you very much for including additional custom maps in this Module!

The flipmaps that got used sometimes in previous modules as fill ins just can’t compare to the quality and customization as the purpose built maps in this module. I really hope this starts a trend that continues going forward!

Just wanted to say a big thank you for creating this resource and keeping it updated! With the huge amount of spells to choose from in PF2E, a guide like this is extremely useful for me and my players.

A lot of stuff I used to ban got thankfully nerfed in the last errata wave, so right now the list is pretty small:

- Champion Archetype: Getting a full scaling champion reaction has been blatantly overpowered since the game’s launch and it still is. Yes you don’t get the later improvements like persistent damage but most of the reaction’s power is its base features, and I can personally attest that combats where half or more of the party has champ reactions just become a slog to GM for or play in.

- Greater Phantasmal Doorknob: Free Blind on a crit is just too damn strong.

- The new Exemplar dedication: Getting another martial’s full damage boosting feature at level 2 is just absurd. All other martial archetypes have either a much reduced version of their damage booster that has drawbacks or just don’t include it at all. This is like if fighter dedication gave you +2 to hit, Barbarian dedication gave you a full scaling rage, or Ranger Dedication gave you a scaling Hunter’s Edge. Very much hoping this gets errated soon.

Pretty much everything else has at least some campaigns or oneshots where I’d allow them, though it’s dependent on that case.

Strong, strong preference for both Direct sequels and to a lesser extent indirect sequels that can work as a standalone.

I love running 1-20 games and PF2E currently makes that very difficult for me to actually do since I don’t have time to go full homebrew and the only 1-20 with a foundry module (Blood lords) is one of the only 1-20s I’m not interested in at all.

Just a note though, indirect sequels as laid out in the OP oftentimes only work well for a fraction of campaigns. For example, Curtain Call only works if the 1-10 was in Avistan and the party members would be willing to abandon anything in their life to go work on an Opera. That honestly doesn’t feel very easy to use as a sequel to me. Ideally indirect sequels would have a widely applicable hook and be set up so that people from a wide variety of geographies make sense showing up. Of the current 11-20s, I’d argue Fists of the Ruby Phoenix is the only one that does that.

I’m glad to hear about the continuation section in Spore War, that kind of prompting is a good step forward should it continue.

Another big reason I’m surprised is that the largest class survey I’m aware of (conducted by Mark Seifter himself) ranked Thaums first out of all classes: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/s/hjElI6uWOv

(Not a random sampling, but 1500 people is a lot of people)

I wonder… If Demiplane data is a big source here, Exemplars and Animists would naturally have a big advantage because I believe the playtest content is free in the char builder whereas everything else needs to be bought right? It’s like how the one free subclass on DNDBeyond always ranks as the most popular subclass on that website.

Flipside-

Exemplar is one of the most popular classes we've ever created and right now ranks among the most popular classes for new characters built across almost every venue we have insight into.

Surveys, gaming platforms, and character builders both show it is more popular than even a lot of core classes. (The animist is not quite as popular but shares the distinction of being a playtest class that is more popular than several core classes.) Similarly, Guns & Gears is one of the most popular books of this edition cycle and has sold through multiple print runs faster than most books that don't have "Core" or "Advanced Player's Guide" in the title.

Conversely, a class that you'd think is popular based on the forum conversations around it, the thaumaturge, is dead-last on all those same lists. It's mechanically strong and has a whole lot of variety in its builds, but the broader audience doesn't really know what it is, the iconic doesn't help them understand that, and so only a small and very invested portion of the playerbase engages with it while the wider audience ignores it.

Wow, that’s shocking! Do you think this could be skewed due to the platforms from which the data was sourced? (Eg Pathbuilder is the most popular char builder and given its independent status I doubt its data was part of this? Ditto for foundry chars since I believe Foundry doesn’t collect that kind of data.) I run/play in a lot of games and I see Thaums all the time while I’ve seen Exemplars only in dedicated playtest games.

Not trying to cast doubt but Thaum regularly ranks really highly in informal polls conducted on most of the biggest online paizo communities while Exemplar isn’t even released. Hearing the latter is more popular than the former just screams “data error” to me tbh. But then again that could just be my own bias due to my own experiences frequently seeing Thaum so who knows.

Peacelock wrote:

For Foundry usage, will there be a token pack product for this or will the art from this book just get added to the npc character gallery module that recently released?

I mean, it'd sure be silly to release a major book packed with new character art and not offer some kind of integration with the hot new character token collection/management module, wouldn't it?

That being said, this hypothetical character token pack bursting with all-new art would likely be its own product rather than an addition to existing one, and could probably be expected to be priced similarly to the recently-released Monster Core module.

Makes sense, looking forward to it!

For Foundry usage, will there be a token pack product for this or will the art from this book just get added to the npc character gallery module that recently released?

I'm so relieved that the Community Use Policy lives on. Thank you for listening!

I’d also add that funneling all free content through Infinite is bad for the creators trying to sell products there because it inundates the storefront with free small supplements that reduce the visibility of paid premium efforts.

It would be a significant financial blow to the existing creators on the platform when their work is much harder to find amidst a sea of content that wasn’t intended for what is fundamentally a storefront to begin with.

You made the claim that Paizo would have outright failed without these. That’s the hyperbole.

That’s a fair enough criticism honestly. I can no longer edit that post, but if I could I would edit it to add a “potentially” before failing. I truly believe they were a massive factor and likely made the difference between the system’s financial success and failure (given the massive financial and logistical difficulties Paizo faced early in PF2E’s lifecycle), but I can’t state that for certain or objectively.

I also want to make clear that this doesn’t diminish the incredible work of Paizo’s staff and contracted writers in any way. It’s just that in the digital age and especially during the pandemic being accessible virtually is of paramount importance for games to find mainstream financial success.

Peacelock wrote:

Paizo owes the CUP everything. They often say how PF2E’s success saved the company, but the tools created under CUP are what saved PF2E from failing amidst the pandemic. And in the future, no new ones can be created.

That is a very bold claim.

Were these programs helpful to those who used them? Yes, but i think you’re vastly overestimating how many people used them, or that they were required to play.

Spreading this sort of impassioned hyperbole doesn’t really help anyone.

Archives of Nethys, PF2E on Foundry, PF2Easy, PF2Etools, the disability tools and fan translations mentioned in this very thread, conversions of 1E adventures to 2E, and much, much, more. Every single one of these was originally created under the CUP and many of them still are under it. I do not think it’s hyperbole to say that without them, countless people would never have adopted PF2E, especially during the pandemic.

Edit: To be clear, some of these like AoN and the foundry system were later given commercial licenses, but without CUP they’d never have existed to begin with. This change pulls up the proverbial ladder and prevents the creation of similar future tools the community will someday need.

According to a new Hephaistos update, rather than amend the policy they’re simply trying to make Hephaistos a commercial partner. To quote the creator:

“To be honest, I still wish that a special license wasn't needed. I was perfectly happy with the provisions and restrictions of the CUP, and I can't help wonder how many other creators will have this privilege extended to them.”

In other words, the fundamental issues with this new policy aren’t being addressed in the least.

Paizo owes the CUP everything. They often say how PF2E’s success saved the company, but the tools created under CUP are what saved PF2E from failing amidst the pandemic. And in the future, no new ones can be created.

Mark, why was it revoked with 0 days notice and no community feedback? Why destroy the policy that originally birthed so many pillars of your business like AoN or the PF2E foundry system?

My reading of the ORC License does not lead me to believe that such names (and any flavourful aspects beyond the stat block) are defined as Licensed Material. If they were, it would cover ALL names, not just the ones you want it to, because that's how Licensed Material is defined (§I e (2)). The only carve-out there is for Third Party Reserved Material.

Notably, section e.i. covers material related to the creation and play of player and non-player characters, but in the list of no less than 17 examples of these mechanics (which include class, job, stats, basically every other char creation thing you can think of) there is no mention of Ancestry/species/race/lineage/etc. If ancestry names are intended to be covered, it’s a glaring omission that makes me uneasy about using them.

John Mangrum wrote:

I can attest that I'd been noodling a short series of write-ups of "overlooked" PC species for Starfinder, taking species who had simply been mentioned in passing and providing them with stats and lore on how they fit into the setting. An expansion of this post in the homebrew forum.

I've abandoned those plans entirely now and, as far as I can see, were I to offer up or update that forum post now, I would be in violation. Sad thing is that I'd been specifically waiting for the end of SF1 with the purposeful intent of not stepping on any creative toes.

A forum post is not a publication, and is not subject to these policies. We'll be adding a clarifying FAQ soon, as this is something I keep seeing here and on other discussion channels.

The Fan Content Policy (nor the Community Use Policy before it) really covered personal use or discussion of our IP. If you write something and share it in a discord or on a forum or a subreddit, that's all good.

Considering that most people (including myself) who are considering sharing free fan content can’t afford to consult an IP lawyer about this, I’d like to clearly ask: is what you just wrote legal advice on behalf of Paizo to its user base or a personal opinion separate from the policies and views of Paizo Inc?

Mark, this series of posts seems to imply that there won’t be any large scale rollback or changes like everyone has been hoping for the past several weeks, and Paizo will continue with the current policy despite the horrific effect it has on fan projects of all kinds. Is that correct, and if so, why?

Just as a reminder, the PF2E foundry system was developed under CUP for years and those efforts lead to Foundry being a large amount of Paizo’s revenue. Had this policy been in place it would never have been created in the first place, and PF2E would have had its growth and current popularity greatly reduced.

Even though Foundry is now a commercial license, this policy kneecaps Paizo’s own future by pre-emptively killing any future project in the same vein. It’ll also lose you sales of previous edition books because in one stroke you’re destroying the 1E to 2E conversion community, which relies on OGL content and public collaboration that Infinite bans and does not facilitate respectively.

I’d also really like to see an explanation of why CUP was revoked with 0 days notice and no community feedback, as many posts in this thread have brought up how seemingly cruel that was and no explanation has ever been provided.

Thank you for listening and responding to feedback!

It would have been a lot more considerate to have temporarily reinstated the CUP while they’re considering these unknown revisions on an unknown timetable. Instead everything has just been left in legal limbo and no one has any idea if their project is dead or not.

Of course, the most considerate thing would have been not revoking the CUP with no notice to begin with.

I’m going to echo the concerns of others and say that I (subjectively) dislike the smaller style and it (objectively) causes issues of compatibility and usability. The industry standard for as long as VTTs have existed is for tokens to fill the space so it’s easy to tell at a glance exactly what spaces they’re occupying, and as a result this clashes hard with all other existing products and custom tokens.

As someone who makes tokens with custom rings in image editing software as a hobby, I can’t style match without my rings being comically small and having their finer details obscured. And for quick tokens with no pop out effect? They’ll all be incredibly small because this new style assumes all tokens have significant pop out and budgets space accordingly. For people who don’t know photoshop, most of the most common sources of custom tokens on the entire internet also either can’t do pop out at all or don’t do it well. The Token Stamp website is a huge example. Just because I personally am able to make tokens to the new spec doesn’t mean non-photoshop savvy people should be stuck with images for ants forever because non-pop out tokens have so little space to work with if they want to style match.

I bought this and the bestiaries token pack for two reasons, the token art and the timesaving. If this module has a style of token I dislike aesthetically and causes headaches that I need to spend time resolving (either warping all other tokens around its style or changing the scale of these tokens to match the industry standard) then its utility as a product for me nosedives.

I’d like to add that I very much hope free community conversions are still allowed under the revamped policy. The existing community is a huge value add to the PF2E brand and generates Paizo revenue by promoting sales of PF1E books by PF2E GMs. Limiting free fan conversions to Infinite prevents the crowdsourced collaboration that allowed many of the existing conversions to be created in the first place, and the new ban on OGL material makes converting certain adventures via infinite extremely difficult. An OGL-less WOTR would be essentially an entirely different adventure for example.

Very glad to hear a possible solution is being considered!

Just as a note, because the distinction is important, because the FCP license change went into effect immediately with no warning to anyone the impact isn’t a “potential impact” it is a present and extant one. That’s the danger of having big license changes with no feedback period or grace period.

The volunteer Foundry PF2E dev team is pretty much the best thing to ever happen to Paizo in terms of an outside force boosting the growth and retention of their fan and customer base. And while today that effort has a custom license, it was originally developed under CUP. It could not have been developed under this new policy.

This change is shortsighted because by removing the CUP, you’re pre-emptively killing the “pf2e on foundry”s of tomorrow, fan projects that will deeply benefit your own bottom line. This won’t just hurt fans Mark, it will wind up hurting Paizo too.

Mark, can I ask why this CUP news was released with 0 days notice for all affected parties? There are many free fan projects that some of your most loyal customers have spent thousands of hours on and have generated Paizo money indirectly that are now put on ice forever. Dropping this on them so suddenly just seems unnecessarily cruel. I’m not thrilled about the OGL change on Infinite but I can totally understand why you’re doing that, but removing CUP I just don’t understand.

I’d also like to ask what existing projects Paizo intended to shut down with this and why? We know from your posts here that disability tools and translations weren’t intended to be harmed, but that free databases were. Why? What about the vibrant existing 1E to 2E fan conversion community that generates Paizo revenue via necessitating sales of 1E products they otherwise wouldn’t buy? What about the numerous Foundry modules that automate rules interactions from pre and post remaster books?

Mark, I also want to thank you for answering questions here, I know it must be tricky for you since you probably didn’t make any of the decisions that lead to this and you’re answering for those people instead.