CR and APL with Mythic Tiers

[Pendin Fust]

The 2nd combat scenario is in it's final stages. A CR 2 Werewolf with the Mythic subtype (tier 1). Party was Level 2 / Tier 1 (same party as here, but with one level advanced).

CR2/MR1 Werewolf in hybrid form (named Tooth) and 2 CR1 wolves.

Werewolf was doing ok for a bit due to his high AC and his DR 10/epic and silver. Bad rolls abounded, but, I believe the CR equivalency suggestion in the Mythic Playtest is a bit underpowered. Or the monsters are underpowered for their Mythic tier.

A party of 6 level 2 PC's(which would normally be APL+1 for CR equivalency) with Mythic Tier 1 equates to CR 4 according to the playtest suggestion (+1 for Mythic Tier, and +1 for more than 5 members).

Mythic Werewolf should be CR2/MR1 in this case which is CR3 equivalency. And then 2 CR1 wolves. This should have been a challenge for the group, and indeed it looked that way at first as it was hard for them hit.

Sleep on the wolves and Hideous Laughter on the Werewolf (all who failed their saves) brought this combat to an end inside 5 rounds.

I'm starting to think that an average challenge for an all mythic party should be APL+Mythic Tier+2. Anyone else running into problems with PC's steamrolling?

[Epic Meepo]

Pendin Fust wrote:

Anyone else running into problems with PC's steamrolling?

In my playtest for a 2nd-level party of four, adding 1 tier was almost exactly offset by adding +1 to the CR of all encounters, provided you ban the overpowered 'to the death' champion ability. Easy encounters remained easy and difficult encounters remained difficult. (Feel free to play along with my playtest campaign and see if you get the same results.)

Incidentally, my adventure involved wolves, as did the playtest described in the OP. My PCs slaughtered the wolves with minimal effort even without a mythic tier. I suspect the problem here may be underpowered wolves, not overpowered mythic characters.

[Pendin Fust]

Thanks Epic Meepo...were your PC's 15 point or 20 point builds?

So far, the fights I've expected to be easy, were easy. 4 Zombies and 2 Kobolds, straight from the Bestiary. That was cake. 2 Wolves and a Mythic Werewolf at level 2/Tier 1? I expected it to be a bit harder but it just wasn't. Granted, some bad dice rolls for the GM, but that happens.

I asked the group what they think about APL+1+1+2 for the next encounter (+1 for 6th member, +1 for Mythic, +2 for a challenge). At level 2/Tier 1 this should be a CR6 encounter, I'll be interested to see the results.

[Epic Meepo]

My PCs were 20-point builds, but I took steps to remove character build as a variable in my playtest: I ran my PCs through my entire playtest campaign once without rewarding any mythic tiers, then went back and played it again with mythic tiers and proportionally higher encounter CRs. So I'm comparing the performance of my mythic PCs (against level-and-tier appropriate encounters) to the performance of the exact same characters without mythic tiers (against similar level-appropriate encounters).