So, our GM recently let us get a single mythic Tier in our ongoing campaign, and I would like to share a bit about how that went and what I noticed about the mythic rules so far. I'm not going to focus much on how much this one tier affected combat because we are using a few house rules (such as gestalt). Instead, I'll focus on aspects of the mythic rules that I don't believe were affected by our house rules.
First, I have to say that adding the first tier was relatively painless even though two of the players had not even started to read the playtest when we got the mythic power. The rules were nice and straightforward, so we never had to stop mid game and argue over anything either.
Our Mythic Path Choices
Here's a quick overview of what I remember each player choosing for his mythic powers. We were all at level 7 at the start of this playtest. Try to ignore the fact that we were using gestalt characters and think of us more along the lines of multiclass characters here:
Sorcerer/Oracle (me): Archmage w/Wild Arcana, Dual Path (Hierophant w/ Recalled Blessing), Faith's Reach, Weakness: Cold Iron
Fighter/Rogue: Trickster w/Surprise Strike, Dual Path (Champion w/ Fleet Charge)
Fighter/Paladin: Champion w/Fleet Charge, Weakness: Acid
Barbarian/Druid: Guardian w/Beast Fury, Ally Defense, Mythic Cleave
I have to mention that I had a bit of a dilemma when choosing my Archmage Arcana (and the equivalent Hierophant one), but not the good kind I think. Arcane Surge is very useful for low to mid levels because of the way it forces non-mythic targets to have to roll their saves twice. However, I think at higher levels Wild Arcana would be better in most ways. Wild Arcana lets you cast any spell on your spell list, add free metamagic (up to your max spell level), and increases your caster level by two. If you have persistent spell metamagic you can almost emulate the benefits of Arcane Surge, but even against mythic targets. It may be a good idea to adjust these abilities so that they are roughly equal to eachother at most levels.
I should also mention that you may want to clarify the wording of Surprise Strike so that it states that melee attacks made with it must be within your reach. The player who choose this ability interpreted it as meaning that he could make a melee attack at any target within 30 feet when he used this power.
Performance in game
Most characters seemed to benefit a lot from gaining their Mythic Tier. I used Arcane Surge to great effect, the two fighters made heavy use of Fleet Charge to get full attacks in very often.
The only abilities that I saw which seemed weak were the ones used by the guardian. Beast Fury seemed a bit weaker than Fleet Charge just because an animal companion is by design weaker than a fighter... yet the mythic point cost is the same. Then again, if this was an eidolon instead of an animal companion, I could see this being a bit more even. Also, it seems a bit uneven to me that the fighters were using mythic power to move up to opponents to get full attacks in, while Ally Defense only has a chance of deflecting a single attack. Shouldn't Ally Defense (and Sudden Block as well) protect a person against an entire full round attack, or even protect him for an entire round?
It seems that currently the mythic powers that we can gain lean very heavily towards offence. Spellcasters essentially gain the ability to cast improved versions of their most powerful spells several extra times per day and martial characters can get full round attacks in more often. We each gained a few hit points and got 'Hard to Kill', but also received flaws which could lead to us being killed very quickly if they were used against us. It seems like at Tier 1 a fight between mythic characters is essentially a rush to kill the other person first with defense mattering little since there doesn't seem to be much that mythic gives you that helps with defense.
Thoughts on Lesser Trials
The roughest part of the playtest was the trials in my opinion. All of the Archmage trials seemed impossible for my level (and because we were not fighting mythic creatures). There were also some problems with the Hierophant trials. For example: it was completely impossible for me to heal one of the players to full health with a single spell for the Master Healer trail, but what is to stop us from bashing in the head of some random peasant and then healing him for the trial?
We ran into a few issues with Skull Supremacy. Can it be completed by simply making an opposed check? What is to stop you from simply finding something that requires a DC of 0 (like crafting a very simple item, or seeing someone who is standing next to you)? I also ran into a situation where I used a mythic point on a skill that I absolutely didn't want to fail, and then rolled high on the MP and the d20 and beat the DC by 20 since the check was easier than I thought.. Since I hadn't chosen the trial, this meant that I regained the mythic point that I had just used. That just seems a bit... odd. Basically you can just throw a random mythic point into a skill check, and then gain it back if you happen to roll high.
Overall, the Trials seemed very metagamy since at our level many of the trials were impossible to do 'accidentally'. We started thinking of absurd things we could do like fighting eachother to pass the trials. We then had to make the conscious out of game decision to *not* do this, since we knew that things probably were not supposed to work that way.
I like the idea of the trials, but currently they just seem to bring the wrong feel to the game. I don't think Hercules went around thinking "hey, I have to go defeat five creatures in six seconds to get stronger." Well, maybe some 'mythic' characters set up challenges for themselves like this, but right not it feels forced and doesn't have many guidelines on what a proper 'trial' is.
Closing Thoughts
Yea, a good amount of this was negative, but that's just because I'm trying to make sure some things are brought to dev attention. Overall the party really liked the mythic rules and we had a lot of fun with it. They did a great job of making combat more interesting and making us feel powerful.
I should note that our GM felt that the first mythic tier was giving us more than a single level's worth of power. Personally, I felt that it was just on the high end of a single level's worth of power. Which is scarier, a lvl 7 tier 1 Kitsune Sorcerer casting Hold Person at DC 22 that you have to save twice against, or a level 8 Kitsune Sorcerer casting a DC 25 confusion against an entire room? I think they're pretty even and simply each have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Arcane Surge is very useful for low to mid levels because of the way it forces non-mythic targets to have to roll their saves twice. However, I think at higher levels Wild Arcana would be better in most ways. Wild Arcana lets you cast any spell on your spell list, add free metamagic (up to your max spell level), and increases your caster level by two. If you have persistent spell metamagic you can almost emulate the benefits of Arcane Surge, but even against mythic targets. It may be a good idea to adjust these abilities so that they are roughly equal to each other at most levels.
Especially if we want arcane surge to be viable for mythic villains. Something else, too:
"If the spell requires a saving throw, any nonmythic targets making such a saving throw must roll twice and take the worse result. In addition, when using this ability you can roll twice and take the better result on any check made to overcome spell resistance, adding your archmage tier to the result."
The way it's worded, it's unclear if the rolling twice against spell resistance will work on mythic characters.
The way it's worded, it specifically calls out nonmythic targets in the first sentence, then says "any check made to overcome spell resistance" in the second. It seems clear enough to me that the spell resistance rerolls are for mythic and nonmythic characters alike. Still, they have a tendency to edit things for space instead of making it absolutely clear for the readers, or just assume you'll know what they mean. They should never assume with written rules.
