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Just finished running a playtest game with 14th level/7th mythic tier characters. The characters were taken from a Slumbering Tsar game I'm running in which they're currently 14th level (with 20 point buy) and the players added 7 tiers. I had them increase their treasure/wealth up to 400,000.
Gobby Firebomb
goblin alchemist 14/trickster 7.
Focuses on versatile bombing, has wings discovery, and had a dragon simulacrum.
Notable mythic abilities: Enduring Elixir
Gnaww Breaker
goblin barbarian (true primitive) 14/champion 7
Focuses on absurd damage output and has the superstitious rage power. To stick with the superstitious theme, he refuses to use most magic items that require activation (so no flying ability, generally).
Notable mythic abilities: Fleet Charge, Critical Master (twice), Precision (several times), Power Attack (mythic)
Isis Avanne
human wizard 14/archmage 7
Absurdly high Intelligence, focuses on conjuration magic, and has extreme bonuses to spell penetration and caster level checks. She also uses planar binding to keep a movanic deva around, and has an improved familiar that uses wands like crazy.
Notable mythic abilities: Dual Path (hierophant), Metamastery (4 times), Sustained by Faith
Lily the Condemned
human cleric 14/hierophant 7
Doesn't really focus on any one area too much, just a well-rounded cleric.
Notable mythic abilities: Inspired Spell, Dual Path (marhsal), Rally, Faith's Reach, Sustained by Faith
Creatures
Advanced Giant Agile Froghemoth (CR 16)
Advanced Giant Savage Froghemoth (CR 17)
Advanced Invincible Black Scorpion (CR 18)
The group took this encounter with ease, although that's to be expected with the CR difference. Isis used prismatic spray and sent the agile froghemoth to another plane before it got to use its dual initiative. The black scorpion's poison would have wrecked the creature it attacked, the dragon simulacrum, but it was also removed by a save-or-die spell (I can't remember which), and Lily was able to neutralize poison (just barely making the caster level check). Gnaww beatdown and destroyed the other froghemoth.
Thoughts
This was just a warm-up fight that was supposed to be easy and deplete party resources. Mission accomplished - Isis used 2 prismatic sprays very early. Gnaww got an auto-confirmed crit thanks to Critical Mastery - this did huge amounts of damage.
Creature
Agile Magicbane Bandersnatch (CR 21)
The bandersnatch was able to sneak up on the party and charged/pounced in the surprise round. It randomly targeted the movanic deva. It shredded her in the first round (after the surprise round). The rest of the party had a very difficult time with it because of the magicbane ability, but Gnaww's extremely high hp and damage output eventually put it down.
Thoughts
The acting twice in one round really made the bandersnatch's offense much more potent. However, the real difficulty in this fight was from the antimagic field the creature radiated. I don't think this was a good playtest encounter because the field changes everything so drastically.
Creature
Mu Spore (CR 21)
This was the first non-mythic creature, and it got steamrolled. It had one turn in which it breathed its spores (which the party was barely fazed by thanks to mythic saves). It's ability to grapple as an immediate action was nice, but again, Gnaww auto-confirmed a critical hit.
Thoughts
A non-mythic creature gets wrecked by the absurdly high initiative modifiers of mythic characters, and mythic saves makes their abilities kind of lackluster.
Creature
Mythic Wyrm Black Dragon (CR 24) - see this post for its stat block.
This encounter was the final one of the adventuring day. The party came across a lake in a swamp with an island in the center, and a small building on the island. Situated throughout the lake were pillars that rose up to 15' out of the lake. Little did they know that the entire lake was hallucinatory terrain. Most of the party was flying, and the dragon simulacrum carried those who were not. It set Gnaww down on the island, and he fell into the 200' deep pit the illusion was covering.
Down in the pit was swamp water 60' deep. The party followed Gnaww and healed them, while the dragon watched and cast spells in preparation. It burst out of the water and breathed acid on several of them.
This encounter saw a lot of uses of mythic power on acting twice in the same round. It eventually ended with Isis dead, Gobby about to die, and Lily plane shifting herself and Gnaww away.
Thoughts
The dragon was overall too powerful for the party. Its AC was too high, its SR was too much, the Combat Expertise (mythic) feat was utterly brutal (+9 AC for 1 minute at the cost of 1 mythic power!). A dragon acting twice a round is pretty nasty also, although it didn't make a ton of difference, since the party was mostly doing the same.
Creature
Treerazer (CR 25)
This was an interesting fight. Treerazer's defoliation ability should have hurt the party a ton, but thanks to mythic saves, it wasn't that bad. Treerazer also suffered severely from action economy - most of the characters were acting twice per round, some of them twice before he even acted once. Antiplant shell was dispelled when he put it up, so one of his primary defenses was negated. Even so, he very nearly killed Gnaww, and would have if he hadn't rolled a natural 1 twice in a full-attack routine.
Thoughts
Non-mythic creatures are really at a huge disadvantage against high mythic tier creatures. Amazing Initiative and Mythic Saves really wreck them.
1) Amazing Initiative - I think it's probably too strong. Why would characters not use it every round in just about every difficult fight, especially when they've got quite a few tiers and tons of mythic power?
2) Mythic Saves - I get that mythic characters are supposed to be on another level than non-mythic creatures, but this ability just about wrecks every non-mythic creature that relies on any ability that allows a save.
3) Metamastery - This ability is kind of weird right now. For a mere one mythic power, all your spells are, say, persistent, or heighten, or dazing, etc. Isis used it on quicken, which brought up two issues: first, you only get one swift action per round, so quicken with it doesn't really work, and second, is it really intended for all spells to be able to go past the 9th level limit? A maximized wail of the banshee, for instance.
4) With no scaling of caster level inherent to mythic tiers, spell resistance becomes a huge problem. Isis failed a lot of these checks, even though she had a very high +22 to the check (14th level, +2 Spell Penetration, +2 Greater Spell Penetration, +4 from otherwordly kimono). The mythic wyrm black dragon and Treerazer had 35 and 36 SR, respectively, which was very difficult for her to overcome, and would be nigh-impossible for somebody less optimized.
5) Isis has a strong focus on summoning in the Slumbering Tsar game. Summoning loses all appeal with mythic tiers added in - the creatures you can summon just aren't worth it.
6) The mythic spell list is really, really small right now. I know it's just a playtest, but it's hard to get an accurate read on how useful mythic spells will be currently.
From what I remember, he didn't really use mythic abilities all that much except for Amazing Initiative.
I'd like to see you pit these PCs against Lorthact or the Tarrasque; you give good, thorough feedback. :)
Also, would you be interested in testing these PCs against a runelord I'm fan-statting up?
We were doing this playtest because our regularly scheduled game was not able to happen due to the holiday. We're back to those games now, and I don't think we'll be doing anymore playtest games, sorry.
One more bit of feedback - Critical Master is good. Really, really good. Auto-confirming crits is a huge part of the capstone for a 20th fighter, and I'm not sure allowing other characters access to it earlier is that good of an idea. It reduces the cachet of the fighter capstone, and is very, very powerful.
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Just finished running a playtest game with 14th level/7th mythic tier characters. The characters were taken from a Slumbering Tsar game I'm running in which they're currently 14th level (with 20 point buy) and the players added 7 tiers. I had them increase their treasure/wealth up to 400,000.
Gobby Firebomb
goblin alchemist 14/trickster 7.
Focuses on versatile bombing, has wings discovery, and had a dragon simulacrum.
Notable mythic abilities: Enduring ElixirGnaww Breaker
goblin barbarian (true primitive) 14/champion 7
Focuses on absurd damage output and has the superstitious rage power. To stick with the superstitious theme, he refuses to use most magic items that require activation (so no flying ability, generally).
Notable mythic abilities: Fleet Charge, Critical Master (twice), Precision (several times), Power Attack (mythic)Isis Avanne
human wizard 14/archmage 7
Absurdly high Intelligence, focuses on conjuration magic, and has extreme bonuses to spell penetration and caster level checks. She also uses planar binding to keep a movanic deva around, and has an improved familiar that uses wands like crazy.
Notable mythic abilities: Dual Path (hierophant), Metamastery (4 times), Sustained by FaithLily the Condemned
human cleric 14/hierophant 7
Doesn't really focus on any one area too much, just a well-rounded cleric.
Notable mythic abilities: Inspired Spell, Dual Path (marhsal), Rally, Faith's Reach, Sustained by Faith
Creatures
Advanced Giant Agile Froghemoth (CR 16)
Advanced Giant Savage Froghemoth (CR 17)
Advanced Invincible Black Scorpion (CR 18)The group took this encounter with ease, although that's to be expected with the CR difference. Isis used prismatic spray and sent the agile froghemoth to another plane before it got to use its dual initiative. The black scorpion's poison would have wrecked the creature it attacked,...
You make Isis sound like a God! Haha. Isis is my character by the way. Inside joke.