Charge headfirst into the heart of myth with Pathfinder Player Companion: Mythic Origins! Whether your character's incredible powers come from physical mastery, eldritch energies, divine favor, or indomitable forces of will, this volume will bring your mythic character to new levels of power and greater renown in the award-winning Pathfinder campaign setting.
Mythic Origins presents a player-friendly overview of the roles of mythic characters in the world of Golarion, as well as a slew of new options and fresh ideas for mythic characters made with the rules from Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Mythic Adventures. Discover where the Inner Sea region's most powerful beings first gleaned their power, how the deities interact with their mythic godlings, and what kinds of abilities the forces of Golarion are capable of wielding. Join the ranks of the mightiest heroes with Pathfinder Player Companion: Mythic Origins!
Inside this book, you'll find:
Details on what it means to be a mythic hero or villain on Golarion, including how and where one can gain mythic power and hot spots in the Inner Sea region where mythic activity is rumored to thrive.
Universal path abilities tied to each of the core deities of the Pathfinder campaign setting, attainable by godlings and favored servants of the gods.
New path abilities for each of the six mythic paths, allowing archmages to walk among the stars and champions to span miles with a single leap.
Mythic versions of the Inner Sea region's most iconic spells, allowing harrowers to infuse their readings with mythic power and Lamashtu's faithful to further enhance the waters of their foul god with vile energies.
A new path ability and example trials that enable mythic heroes to become mortal heralds of their chosen deities.
New spells, mythic variants, and magical items and artifacts befitting a mythic character.
This Pathfinder Player Companion is intended for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and Pathfinder Campaign Setting, but can easily be incorporated into any fantasy world. This book is designed as a companion to Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Mythic Adventures.
Written by Dennis Baker, Philip Minchin, and Russ Taylor.
Cover Art by Kieran Yanner.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-569-3
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
Despite its name, Mythic Origins doesn’t really deal much with the origins of mythic characters, apart from adding a category of mythic character known as a godling. Indeed, most of the book is simply new mechanical options, primarily new path abilities, but also a few new spells and magic items. Make no mistake, this is a book of “crunch”. While this is typical of Player Companion books, Mythic Origins goes beyond even many of them. There is next to no “fluff” at all, apart from a couple of brief descriptive paragraphs or sidebars here and there. To be honest, the amount of new options in here is a little overwhelming. This isn’t because it’s a big book (just 32 pages like all Player Companions), but it’s the fact that it comes so soon after Mythic Adventures itself. I still haven’t had a chance to use or get used to the breadth of options introduced in that book, and suddenly there’s a whole pile more here to remember and consider when making a mythic character. More so, the new abilities in this book are actually rather generic. There’s not a lot that makes them Golarion-specific, so they lack that added touch of flavour to make them memorable. Even the godling abilities, which are tied to specific Golarion gods, lack anything that really makes them stand out as anything other than abilities tied to generic gods.
First off, I haven’t read the Mythic rules, so I don’t know if the rules options presented in this book are balanced or “good”, but I’m going to assume they are and the quality of the rules hasn’t influenced the score I’ve given.
Now on to my thoughts on the book…
I found this book rather disappointing; it provides very little information on Golarion, what is there is basically confined to a couple of sidebars. The Mythic Origins in the book are basically “a god did it” and a few suggestions in the aforementioned sidebars of mythicy things different groups in Golarion do. Mythic Realms did a better job providing a range of different origins for a mythic characters power, along with rules mechanics to support those origins. Most of the new mythic abilities are presented without any connection to Golarion.
The fact that the majority of this book is just new rules content (generally focused on new mythic tier abilities) made if feel like it was just 30 pages of content that they couldn’t fit in the Mythic Adventures core book, which isn’t the reason I purchase the Player Companion line.
Also of note is some repeated content; some of the mythic abilities are repeated between path descriptions, a simple “see page xx” would have sufficed and allowed there to be more usable content in the book, this is especially bad for a book that is only 32 pages long. Also, I feel that the Player Companion line needs to figure out the purpose of pages 4 and 5; pages 2 and 3 detail what’s in the book, and then pages 4 and 5 often also do this. Something to think on for future books I guess.
Ring Side Report- A review of Pathfinder Player Companion: Mythic Origins
Originally Posted at www.throatpunchgames.com, a new idea every day!
Publisher-Paizo
Price – ~$13
TL;DR-Great, well-done book, but you have to ask yourself if you will EVER use it- 98.75%
Art-Basic Pathfinder art. If you like what they've put out before, you will like this too. Well-done, clean, and non-obtrusive. 5/5
Mechanics or "Crunch"-This book is basically a well done splat book. It adds to your character's options pretty comprehensively. Something to note, most of the book focus on divine characters. There are non-divine options in the back, but much of the front of the book is spent focusing on giving divine options for each major god. However, if you will not use the Mythic rules, this is not the book for you. 2.5/2.5
Story or "Fluff"-Well done again with an asterisk. If you want more divine stuff, this is the book. Learn about your gods and how you came from them. Great. If you want to be something non-divine, there is not as much for you. This is right in the description of the book, so no surprises, but still a little disappointed. 2.25/2.5
Execution- This book has a nice, clean Pathfinder setup that really helps with finding anything as well as deciding if you need this book right from the front of the book. If you like the previous books like I did, this is well done. 5/5
Book Quality- Again well-done. Nice glossy paper with good binding and no ink smearing. 5/5
Final Thoughts-This is a good companion book. My only problem is I will NEVER use this book since I usually play Pathfinder Society which doesn't use Mythic rules. I know this going in, so I'm not surprised. I would want a bit more non-divine fluff/cruch, but all my negative comments are basically small things. Well done, just make sure you are going to use this book before you buy it! 98.75%
Looking forward to this one. I just hope that there will be some Tian-xia mythic origins in this book for all the ninjas and kitsunes and such out there :)
Looking forward to this one. I just hope that there will be some Tian-xia mythic origins in this book for all the ninjas and kitsunes and such out there :)
This has me thinking....mythic paths that are connected to the various races would be really interesting.
Either way, this is one of the books that makes me glad I finally just went ahead and subscribed already. :)
Did someone forget the updated product description, or am I just being impatient? I'm really interested in this, so I'm looking forward to a bit more detail.
I don’t want to sound like an entitled jerk or a broken record here, but are we getting an updated product description? I’m assuming it just got lost in all the hustle and bustle around the office during the con season, so I’m just curious. Being blind, I really look forward to getting that extra mojo from the updated description to help set the tone of the product in my mind. The blog post gave me a better idea of what’s in here, but like all gamers, I want more! Either way, I’m buying it, like every other Paizo product (except for map supplements for obvious reasons). Enough said. Keep up the good work!
Wow your right, I just noticed the product info hasn't been updated. I hope they update it soon along with the Bestiary 4's product description as well.
Will there be more options for mythic witches in this? I felt kind of cheated for them especially since I can remember only one picture of the iconic witch in the book.
The PDFs are starting to go out for subscribers now. I'd comment on the rules content in here, but right now, sadly, I'm just overwhelmed by how much I flat out hate the art for the Mythic versions of the Iconics from the APG and the Ultimate series. They're all just... I know art is subjective, but I'm sorry. There's no way to say anything but I hate it. All of it. They're all terrible. There's either no changes at all from their pre-Mythic appearence or else they're not even recognizable. The worst of it is a change that flies in the face of the entire history of the character till this point. Yes, Gunslinger Barbie, err, Lirianne, I'm talking about you.