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For the intro to the playtest for my players, I wanted to test something a bit different from what I assumed most would test. So we tested Mythic PCs and mostly-non-mythic NPCs.
We aren't too experienced with high level play, so we tried to keep that in mind for our results. I also haven't had the time to fully read the document. There might be some issues with action collision going on, but I trusted the players for this one. We didn't have much time since we started at 7 and had to be done by 9:30, so rules checking was kept to an absolute minimum.
The encounter was as follows:
- In a fire god's temple, with lots of lava and fire everywhere.
- 2 Tor Linnorms as the "mooks". Originally started in lava puddles, and rose out.
- 1 hekatonkheires titan who decided to "drop in" half way through.
I guestimated this encounter to be about CR 25, partially due to the large number of resources they used up to deal with the dangerous terrain. I ruled that the titan still counted as mythic for its abilities, because it is quite mythical and had Epic DR.
The party was as follows:
- Human monk. Originally was using the guided (Wis to-hit and to-damage, instead of Str) property to leverage her HUGE Wisdom, but I wanted Core line PF only. So she took Weapon Finesse (Mythic). The monk had 10 strength. She also had the dimensional dervish feat tree. Champion path.
- Human wizard. Nothing out of the ordinary here. Archmage path.
- Dwarven forgemaster cleric (from ARG). Nothing out of the ordinary here. Heirophant path.
- Half-orc fighter. Greatsword user, the usual. Champion path.
- Half-elf summoner. Had the dimensional dervish feat tree, and was using Twin Eidolon the whole time. Marshal path.
Powerlevel of game: These guys weren't hugely optimized. Even the summoner didn't pull out any crazy rule-tricks.
They were at full resources.
Most Basic Results:
- The +20 Init bonus ensured that rocket-tag went to the side of the PCs. Combat didn't last more than 2 rounds due to it.
- The monk did more damage than the fighter, took no damage in return, and made far more saves.
- The summoner and his eidolon did more damage than the monk and the fighter combined.
- The level 20 abilities had more sway over the encounter than the mythic ones did, other than the +20 initiative.
Rough recounting of events. Memory is a bit hazy.:
- Initiative rolled. They all go before the monsters except for the dwarf cleric, who goes after one of the monsters, but before all the rest. Even with the +20.
- Monk goes first. Uses Dimensional Dervish to pummel one of the linnorms. The linnorm is in a pool of lava, but the monk teleported on top of his massive head and just laid waste. Dimensional Dervish really helped here, although Mythic Weapon Finesse played a large part. Due to just focusing on Dex and Wisdom, the monk was able to have a ridiculous number of ki points, so he was able to dimensional dervish quite often. He hit with about 5 of his attacks, missed with the rest. He did about 120 damage, I think. May have been 140. He uses dimensional dervish to get away.
- Summoner is up. Lets everyone use a move action for free with his marshal power. Fighter and eidolon use that to move up closer. At this point, we let the summoner roll at the same time as his eidolon. Eidolon pounces on a linnorm using reach to avoid the lava. He can only miss on a 1. He actually rolls a 1 with one of his 7 natural attacks, so "only" hits with 6 attacks. He forgot about haste. Deals about 240 damage with his attacks. The summoner does the same, but doesn't miss any of his attacks. At this point the linnorm was dead before half of the summoner's rolls were tallied. I was nice and said the eidolon took the curse. It fails, but is immune to fire, so it was 'just' permanently staggered.
- Fighter is up. Uses champion's power to "pounce" the remaining linnorm. Swallows the AoO, but is missed. He attacks, and hits three times. Deals about 90 damage.
- Wizard is up. Tries to use Polymorph Any Object to turn the remaining linnorm into a pair of leather shoes. Can't bypass the SR, so it fizzles.
- The only remaining Linnorm is up. It crawls out of its pool, provoking AoO from fighter. Fighter hits it, deals some minor damage. Something around 30-40.
- Realize that the Eidolon, despite being staggered, still has reach, so it gets an AoO too. Drops another 30-40 HP.
- Linnorm uses breath weapon, but people mostly shrug it off due to the Tier 5 ability. fighter wasn't too happy about being at the start of it, but came out mostly fine.
- Dwarven cleric moves up and does...something. I don't remember what. It didn't help much.
- Titan drops down, everyone takes damage. Memory is getting hazy here.
- Monk comes teleporting in with Dimensional Dervish. Wrecks the linnorm due to haste, mythic weapon finesse, greater heroism, etc. Teleports out again with dimensional dervish.
- Summoner proceeds to kill the linnorm with another 220+ damage, teleports out again with dimensional dervish. Eidolon does a poke with its one natural attack it can do, since the summoner used his marshal ability, but this was before the summoner acted.
- We realize that the linnorm should've taken the damage too from the titan dropping. This wouldn't have killed it, but would've made the monk killed it.
- Monk rolls saving throw to avoid curse, misses it by 1 but spends the point to add to the roll. Even though he rolled ridiculously low on his saving throw, he still got within 1 of the DC. Not bad.
- We retcon the summoner's turn so that he attacks the titan. Does ridiculous damage.
- The fighter does ~120 damage by critting twice with his greatsword, and a few other attacks. Misses a few others, and I don't think he was power attacking.
- Wizard starts summoning something.
This is the point where my recollection gets really hazy. But it all ended with the summoner full-attacking the titan and doing ~240 damage again. The titan died before it could act. The titan, by DM fiat, fell on the eidolon crushing it forever and ever. It was just unconscious though, until the dwarven cleric cast prismatic sphere. It failed all of its saves and died right before the insanity, I think. It got teleported to the elemental plane of puppies.
Questions that popped up:
- "Does the titan get to attack everyone within reach when an AoO is provoked?"
- "Haste works with unarmed attacks, right?"
- "How does the tier 5 mythic saving throw ability interact with Improved Evasion?"
Results:
- Thoroughly trounced enemy. As to be expected, but I was hoping the titan dropping in would've been interesting.
- Amazing Initiative is very strong. It ensures that player's get to go first in rocket tag.
- The non-mythic abilities seemed to dictate more than the mythic abilities, except in a few circumstances.
- Mythic Weapon Finesse really helped the monk out, by letting him stay at 10 Str (well, 16 with the belt). As stated above, he out damaged the fighter in no small part due to this. If I had allowed Guided, I don't think it would've been a fair contest at all. The monk made sure he had 3 ways of moving and being able to flurry, which also helped a lot.
- Dimensional Dervish feat line was a huge help to the monk and the summoner.
- Mythic abilities weren't used every round.
- SR was still a huge issue, although there may have been an ability to help the wizard out and he just didn't choose it.
Plans for future playtesting:
- Not doing level 20. Maybe level 19. The capstones had a huge effect when applicable. Skewed results too much.
- Rolling randomly to determine which encounter in the day we're in, and then figure out a way to stimulate using up resources. Roll dice to see how many 9th level spells you've used, how many ki points, etc.
- Core Rulebook + APG only. Dimensional Dervish skewed results a lot, and there were other feats too. This is mostly to keep a more "level" balance-field. Add more books and there are too many factors.
- No summoners. This felt more like a playtest of the summoner than of the mythic rules.
- Keeping copies of the character sheets and tallies of how many times people hit, were hit, saved, etc.
Players are eager to test it out at lower levels, since they think mythic abilities will have more of a sway over the power level then. They want to add it to Way of the Wicked, but I'm not sure there's a good place for that yet.
Seems like the CR was a bit low in comparison to APL considering you add Mythic tiers to APL, this encounter was at the same level making it far too easy for a bunch of level 20's with 5 tiers. Without the dimensional dervish tree this fight probably would have lasted a bit longer, maybe drop a character if a lot of attacks were focused on just one character.
Wizard could have used mythic power to add 1d8 to his CL check to beat spell resistance and make himself a fine pair of shoes.
Wouldn't the APL be about 25? This encounter adds up to CR 25+ by my math, and the terrain was disadvantageous to most of the PCs.
Technically the CR of this would be 25+ but at this high of level the math breaks down a bit and to make battles challenging the CR has to be at least 2 maybe 3 above APL. According to your account of events the terrain didn't seem to be that much of an issue if at all to any of the characters. If the whole dimension door thing wasn't a problem the terrain would have probably been more of an issue though. Props on using lava though, I feel it doesn't get enough love
Noted for the next time, thanks!
I'm kind of surprised that the summoner was out-damaging both the monk and the fighter when the summoner's eidolon doesn't even benefit that much from the mythic rules at this point. Then again, he was using the 'twin-eidolon' capstone, wasn't he? Yea, I can see that making a big difference.
Hmm, I hope that they will make it so that the high level 'rocket tag' that goes on will be reduced when mythics fight mythics.
I've already ran into that at level 1 with a party of 6 here. Level 1 and Tier 1 thoroughly trounced 4 zombies and 2 kobolds...with TERRIBLE rolls for the PC's and GREAT rolls for the NPC's. I'm going slightly higher for the next combat playtest. 1 CR2 Tier 1 and 2 CR 1's.
The marshall's Rally ability is fantastic, within a 30' radius. Pretty much everyone was rerolling. Mythic power to add 1d6 is pretty great at level 1 as well.
What EXACTLY was the summoner doing to amass 240 hp of damage with each turn? Just curious. Thanks for this thread!
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Wouldn't the APL be about 25? This encounter adds up to CR 25+ by my math, and the terrain was disadvantageous to most of the PCs.
Don't forget that it was an average fight, where your characters had most of their spells and everything, even with the environment not being friendly.
You should probably have made that encounter into a CR27 at least in order to have a good fight.
CR = APL is a good fight in a dungeon, where you lose your ressources little by little, and it should almost never happen with Mythics characters, because they can get back of all their powers/spells/etc... back by spending one use of Mythic Power.
So yeah... try to make the encounter Hard or Epic if you just test for one fight.
What was the build of the fighter? I'm quite surprised to see such low damage...
If you want my opinion, try to make the player who made the monk a fighter based on str. Then it could give us a good point of comparison for Mythic Weapon Finesse.
If you want my opinion, try to make the player who made the monk a fighter based on str. Then it could give us a good point of comparison for Mythic Weapon Finesse.
Good idea, I have a feeling that the Fighter may have been a bit under optimized compared to the Monk and Summoner.
Just checked the Summoner and there was a minor mistake made with gear, but it would've only affected his Twin Eidolon form, not the Eidolon's. It may have increased how long the encounter lasted by a turn, but I'd have to review the class again. Turns out that +16 Strength from Huge size is pretty powerful. A quick look at the eidolon's stats show that the damage is about right (and that he rolled low. scary thought.) Lots of natural attacks + high Strength + power attack = death.
I can check the fighter's character sheet later, and may be able to see the monks'. The fighter seemed like a pretty standard greatsword fighter.
I think part of the reason the mythic rules didn't matter much was that you did not incorporate them into the characters. Tier 5 is essentially when most of the realy juicy mythic powers such as Fleet Warrior and Enuring Blessings come into play. I would try again with soem actual mythic versions of the monsters while giving more tiers to see how it plays out.
For hilarity make the encounter underwater.
How did the Eidolon hit with that many attacks? Isn't their BAB relatively low? And throwing power attcak into the mix makes hitting a touch harder as well. I didn't think that Linnorms & Titans had low ACs.
How did the Eidolon hit with that many attacks? Isn't their BAB relatively low? And throwing power attcak into the mix makes hitting a touch harder as well. I didn't think that Linnorms & Titans had low ACs.
Unbuffed, the eidolon could miss both of them only on a natural 1. This was due to the +16 to strength, as well as heavily investing in Strength through items and whatnot. since natural attacks are done at your full bonus, most of his attacks would miss only on a 1, and his secondary attacks would miss on a 3 or less, I think. There are 4 points of strength that I'm not able to account for, but I assume he had the eidolon read a tome +4.