Okay, ran my first home created adventure using mythic rules. Here is a summing up of what happened.
Adventure: Players are granted mythic powers by a strange individual they meet and are charged to save a nearby village from destruction.
Characters:
All characters were 8th level, made using a 33 point buy with no stats less than 10 or more than 17 before racial mods. All of them took one mythic tier, choosing different mythic paths.
Jonquil, elven evocation archmage wizard, mythic options were arcane surge, path ability abundent casting, mythic feat was mythic spell (magic missile)
Boren heavyhand, human guardian fighter using falchion, mythic options were fleet chage, path ability always a chance, mythic feat was mythic power attack
Sir Gaul, human defender fighter, dagger and shield specialist, mythic options were sudden block, path ability ally defense, mythic feat dual focus.
Thistle the gnome hierophant oracle of flame, mythic options were inspired spell, path ability faith's reach and mythic feat mythic spells (fireball)
Prudence the human marshal bard, mythic options were decisive strike, path ability was additional order (surprise strike), mythic feat was mythic weapon finesse
Min Na the human trickster ninja, mythit options were surpise strike, path ability was feat of dexterity and mythic weapon finesse
Player notes/questions: Does abundent casting affect magic missile? GM ruled that if you could either have an extra magic missile that affect a different target, or if all missiles targeted one enemy a mythic point lets you target a second individual with all missiles. If mythic powers are granted to you, why do you suddenly have mythic flaws? GM answer: There is always a cost for great powers. Mythic power attack: If you use a 2 handed weapon, is the bonus +3, +4, or +4.5? GM ruled +4.5, round down. There ae not a lot of feats for either the archmage or the hierophant, but hopefully that ill be fixed later. There were also no bard mythic spells besides cure light wounds, again this will hopefully be added later.
GM notes during character creation: Not all flaws are created equal. One character had to eat a sunflower seed every day, while another character took double damage from electricity. one took penalties to saves from the conjuration school, while another took material weakness: silver, so silver weapons automatically confirm crits, and the crit mutliplier was +1. The players hated having to decide befofehand about lesser trials. I suggested everyone take improbable victory and mythic challenge, as if they succeeded in the adventure (a great trial), they would get those anyway, so they only had to choose one other trial. The character who took the dual focus feat got an additional +5 mythic points, vs the additional mythic power feat which only grants +2.
Encounter one: The village
The party enters the village, to find out about what threatens the village. The bard, oracle and ninja just destroyed this non-combat encounter with the bonus +1d6 from skill checks. They easily found the spy and discover the danger in the forest. The villagers confirm that anybody who goes into the forest for a ways doesn't come back out, and no one goes in at night. One worrisome detail: The bard got the guardian to have a fight with a bar patron and make it last at least 8 rounds while she inspired him, to get one of her trials (performance victory) out of the way. I allowed it, but was uncomfortable about the implications.
Encounter two: The forest
The hellipede test of destruction: The party faces hellipedes (4 HD large giant centipedes with the giant, advanced and fiendish templates added, but no mythic powers). They start with 10, +1d4/ round added to board. The encounter was designed to continue until either one member drops or they defeat 30 hellipedes, although the party didn't know that.
Surprise round: guardian and oracle were suprised, but the hellipedes rolled lousy in initiative. Everyone held for buffs, wizard cast haste, bard cast good hope. The champion fleet charged, rolled well and cleaved two hellipedes in one round, dropping them both, fulfuilling his devastating swipe trial (The champion had a question about whether adding 1d6 to a roll meant he could use it for critting. I said I'd allow it, but he critted both anyway.) The ninja charged regularly, also critted a pede dropping it. The hellipedes charged. The one on the ninja missed, the two on the guardian needed a 20 and also missed. One managed to score a hit on the champion, but made the poison save (barely, thanks to the good hope).
round 1: The wizard used a mythic point to fire off his mythic magic missile spell at the nearest creature. Thanks to my ruling on the abundent casting, he used a second point to fire also hit another one with them. both were injured but neither was killed. the guardian moved up next to the champion, triggering 4 AOOs, but all missed. He also used sudden block on one, (one of the ones injured by the wizard), and killed it. He then stabbed at the other one the wizard injured, killing that one as well. The bard used a swift action to give a decisive strike order to the champion, who critted again, killing another pede. The ninja used a surprising strike, then full attacked the pede which attacked him, hitting 4 more times, killing it. The oracle burned a point to use his mythic fireball. All 3 remaining pedes failed their save, and they were all killed, which also completed his deliver soul trial. At that point, no pedes were left, so I decided that another couple of pedes per round weren't going to be slowing them down any, so ended the encounter. (The ninja did ask for a couple more, so he could finish his unexpected strikes trial. I hand-waved that one as well.) 3 shots of a clw wand to the champion, and we kept going.
Notes: Interestingly, the haste only benefited them once (the ninja's full attack), while the mythic fireball pretty much ended the battle. Decisive strike using the biggest hitter the party has looks like it is going to be one of the most effect things the bard is going to be able to use. The mythic magic missile is not as effective as the wizard hoped.
encounter 3: trap
The party reach the entrance to the cave, and enter. at the back of the cave was a locked door. the ninja easily picks the lock, and they open the door. There is a loud puff of air, and the gas trapped in the chamber ignites by the lantern. The damage is minimal (12 points), but the guardian rolls a 1, so he burns a point to keep any of his items from possibly being destroyed (by adding 1d6 to the result). A couple of shots of clw, and they check the 20' chamber behind the door. There is another door on the other side, and the ninja determines that it can only be opened if the first door is closed. Quick perception checks are made, and they discover the chamber is also trapped. Using his feat of dexterity to add +20, the ninja clears the trap easily, and the party goes on.
Notes: there are no rules for mythic traps. There really should be.
encounter 4: mythic driders
The party enters a cavern, and spots 4 mythic driders! The driders spot them as well. Fight!
Surprise round: No one is surprised. The mythic driders are using the agile template, plus the mythic subtype bonuses, so it is unsurprising they rolled high on their initiative. The ninja asked if he could use the feat of dexterity to add 20 to his initiative. I allowed it, so he actually got to go first, charging and hitting one. The one the ninja hit took a step back, and all 4 driders fired off lightning bolts. Since the ninja didn't have evasion, and takes double damage from lightning, he wasn't pleased, but at least auto-saved vs the attack. The wizard took 3 of the 4 bolts to the face, and dropped to -1. The others got pretty pounded too, with only the champion getting lucky in placement, and only taking one bolt, that he saved on. The guardian charged, but missed the drider he attacked. The bard took a step forward, and cast good hope, to help on those saves. The wizard laid there, but since was hard to kill automatically stabilized. The champion charged as well, and critted (he's being the crit machine today). Didn't kill it in one shot, but badly hurt it, and definitely got it's attention. The oracle was torn between throwing a mythic fireball or healing the wizard, and the fireball won out, catching all four driders. One saved, but three did not. The one that the champion pounded drops, and two are on fire. The driders got their second action, two of them tried to put themselves out, one failed to do so. I ruled that the burning magic revalation added to the fireball's damage as well. The one that saved fire off a web, catching the wizard, oracle, bard and ninja, but only the wizard (being unconscious) failed the save.
Round 1: The ninja steps out of the webbing, and attacks the drider with a surprise attack, but misses. The drider still on fire keeps on trying to put himself out, but failed again. One slides over to attack the champion, but the guardian uses shield ally, so he misses (well, he would have missed anyway) and the guardian misses on the counterstrike. The other one, being a little smarter decides to fire off another lightning bolt, catching the ninja and the bard. Both save, but the ninja is really bad off, and the bard isn't too happy either. The guardian full attacks, but misses all four times (the drider's AC is 30, after all). The bard carefully works his way through the webbing, and gives a decisive strike order to the champion. The champion gleefully swings, but misses. The champion takes his action, and full attacks, hitting both times. (He didn't crit, but he did have a possible one at least.) This kills the drider, dropping it. The oracle decides now is good time to heal the wizard, cast a cure moderate. The driders take their second action. The one on fire decides he has had enough, and flees (since they move 60' after all). The other drider moves away, but fires off a string of magic missiles at the ninja who has really annoyed him. (He may also be the only one who can catch them.) This drops the ninja, but doesn't come close to killing him.
Round 2: The other drider flees. encounter over. The party burns through most of a wand getting themselves back up and running. This also gave them the mythic challenge trial compltion.
Notes: Although the driders were more defensively oriented, this was a much nastier fight. I'm still not sure whether dual initiative should be able to be used on surprise rounds, but allowed it. I also realized I made a mistake afterwards, since it takes a full round action to put out the fire, but on a surprise round, they only have standard actions. Didn't make much of a difference in the end. I'm also not sure I built the driders correctly. The rules for monster creation may need to be cleaned up and improved a bit.
Encounter 5: The necromancer
While the party is a bit tired, they push on. They don't find the driders, but they do find at the end of the cave a necromancer and his little friends. At the back of the cave is a glowing disk, throbbing with strange energies.
No surprise round. (okay, technically there was, but it involved a beastie running away warning the boss that the bad guys were coming. ) 6 ghasts with the savage template added, plus a level 10 MR 3 priest of Urgathoa (built using PC rules. I know amazing initiative is going to change, but I'm using those rules for now.) The party spent a round buffing before they went in, the bard casting his last good hope, the wizard casting haste and the ninja vanishes. Of course, that gave the priest a couple of rounds of buffing too. The entire cave is desecrated, with an altar to Urgthoa set up in the corner. Initiative is rolled, the guardian burns a point to boost his initiative, but only rolls a 1.
Round 1:
The priest with his amazing initiative goes first, casting unholy blight on the party. The champion and the ninja are both neutral at least, but everyone else is of good alignment. Only the champion and the guardian failed their saves, and only the guardian was sickened for 1 round. (the champion burned a point to try to make the save, cause he was close, but rolled a 2 on his d6 and didn't get it. The guardian's save was low enough not to bother.) The ninja goes next, and moves after the nearest ghast. While doing so, he walks over a mythic glyph of warding, which explodes. Fortunately, no one else is nearby. Unfortunately, he fails his save. He does take out the ghast. The wizard rolled well on his initiative, and goes next. He decides to use his class ability to put up an ice wall, blocking the priest from the rest of the battle for a few rounds, hopefully. Priest burns a mythic point to take a second action (He also rolled well), And decides to summon in a bearded devil with a mythic template (from his mighty summons path ability). I was unsure how the full round casting interacted with the amazing initiative, so I ruled while it took his entire action to cast, and the bearded devil would appear at his second initiative point, he would still act next round on his first point. Oracle uses faith's reach to hit the ninja with a cure critical. The champion uses a fleet charge, attacking one of the ghasts and killing it, then takes a 5 foot step full attacks another, killing it as well. The guardian moves up, but mins his roll and is sickend, so doesn't kill the ghast. (The ninja, champion and guardian all made their saves vs stench.) The bard fires sound burst, catching two of the ghasts, including the injured one. low damage, but both ghasts failed their save. Only one ghast remains that can act on this round. It full moves and dives through the portal. He had previous orders.
Round 2:
The priest casts dispel magic, getting rid of the wall of ice. This may not have been his best choice. The ninja steps up, full attacks the injured, stunned ghast and finishes him. The wizard moves and casts a spray of mythic magic missiles, killing the final ghast. The bearded devil shows up, and the priest does not look pleased at how things are going. The devil leaps at the the champion, swinging its glaive, but misses. The priest moves next to his altar and casts slay living on the champion using faith's reach, hitting the champion. The champion survives the slay living... barely. The oracle fires off another mythic fireball, but the priest had cast spell resistance, and the oracle's fireball does not penetrate, and the bearded devil is immune to fire. The champion full attacks the bearded devil, killing it, then asks if he could fleet charge after the full attack. I didn't see any rules against it, so I allowed it. He moved at the priest... and walks right over another mythic glyph of warding. The champion drops to -19, but thanks to hard to kill (and a good con score), is not dead. Yet, anyway. The guardian chooses to move up next to the priest, choosing to carefully step through the square where the champion was, and hits the priest. The bard casts detect magic, and spots two other glyphs, letting the party know where they are.
Round 3: The priest takes a 5' step, and casts defensively. He casts hold person on the guardian, but the guardian rolls a 20, and saves. The ninja carefully picks his way past the wards, and tries a surprising strike on the priest. The wizard runs up, touches the champion, and teleports them both back to the oracle. The priest casts defensively again, and touches the ninja with a mythic inflict critical. The ninja fails the save and is dropped to -15 (and sickened for 10 rounds.) The oracle casts a cure critical on the champion, healing him enough to wake him back up. The champion stands up, and moves out to go pick up his sword. the guardian full attacks, hitting 3 times. The bard pulls his rapier, moves towards the fight and gives an advance order, allowing everyone to make a move. (This is mostly to get the champion to his sword, but it does move the spellcasters closer to the fight.)
Round 4: The priest is nearly surrounded and injured, so he uses a channel energy to injure others and heal himself. This drops the champion (again) and sadly kills the ninja. The wizard fires a battery of magic missiles, punching through the spell resistance and hitting the priest hard. The priest goes again, and casts greater command, giving the command to flee. The remaining party all saved, although the guardian had to burn a mythic point to not flee. Fortunately, this wasn't an actual fear effect, so the bard's hubris didn't kick in. The oracle pulls out a scroll and moves up, casting breath of life on the ninja, bringing him back to life, but still unconscous. The guardian full attacks, hitting three times again, and finally the priest drops. massing clw wanding later, everyone is back up.
Notes: I'm not too sure how summoning is supposed to worth in amazing initiative, especially if it summons somthing that also has dual initiative. The priest casting twice a round was brutal. The ghasts never got a chance to show off, oh well. Also, there doesn't seem to be a way of detecting mythic flaws. The priest had one, but there was no way for the party to find that out.
Encounter 6: Final batte
The party decides to push through the gate to the other side, even though they are low on mythic points. There they discover a mythic ice devil! There is also a large crystal holding the gate open.
Round 1: I decide both parties are surprised, so we skip the surprise round. The good hope buff is still running, which helps a little bit, but still... Ninja goes first, suffering from a negative level. He charges, going for a surprise stike which since the devil is flat-footed, hits. The champion does a fleet charge, then full attacks. He misses on the fleet charge attack, but still hits twice on the full attack. The guardian moves up next to the champion, hits but mins the damage, and only gets a few points past the epic DR. The oracle readies a to counterspell (with dispel magic) in case the ice devil uses a spell-like ability. The wizard makes a knowledge check, figures out that all they need to do is break the crystal to destroy the gate and then escape back before it closes, informs the rest of the party about this. The ice devil goes, and goes for the champion. The guardian uses his ally defense to try to keep the champion alive. While all 3 attacks with the spear hits, this still really helped since the first attack would have been a critical otherwise, which almost certainly would have killed him. The champion still loses over 3/4 of his hp, and is slowed. The bard goes, and gives an advance order, trying to get the champion back next to the crystal. The champion moves back to the crystal, but eat an AoO which drops him to single digit hps, and not many of those.
Round 2: The ninja uses his last mythic point to try to surprise strike the ice devil again. but misses. His follow up full attack, one of his attacks hits, but barely breaks the epic DR, doing like 2 pts of damage. The champion attempts to sunder the crystal, and succeeds easily (yay mythic power attack!) The Oracle hits the champion with a cure crit, then dives through the gate. The guardian full attacks, but misses all attacks (now that it is no longer ff, only 20s are able to hit the ice devil). The ice devil attacks the guardian, but only hits with his first two attacks (The guardian has a higher AC.) The guardian tries using sudden block, but it doesn't help with the miss, and the counter strike also misses. The guardian is slowed. The oracle gives another advance (well, retreat) order, and everyone dives through the portal, which closes on the next round.
Game over.
Notes: Fortunately, the party didn't have to kill the ice devil, as there is no way they could have survived that. I wasn't sure if the advance order could be used on a slowed target, but I allowed it. I'm not sure if I ran everything correctly, there were some confusing bits here and there.
Final thoughts: The players had a lot of fun, although there are still some issues that needs to be cleared up. We may try again in a week or two, after a rebuild and see about trying higher tiers.
The players had a lot of fun, although there are still some issues that needs to be cleared up.
Would you mind listing those issues for easy reference?
Some of these may have been answered elsewhere, but this is what we found:
How does abundent casting work with magic missile?
Mythic power attack with two handed weapons, +3, +4, +4.5?
Needs more feats, especially for casters, but that will come with the full rules. Also, only bard spells that were mythic were the cure line.
Flaws not created equal. One character had the flaw of needing to consume a sunflower seed once per day, another one took double damage from electricity. Also, the fact that if mythic power is granted, why they suddenly had flaws.
Issues with the trials system, trials not created equal. Characters doing Out of character actions to try to resolve flaws. (bard had champion pick a bar fight, and then inspire the champion just to get the performance victory).
dual focus feat is much more powerful than the additional mythic power feat (the character who took it got +5 mythic power points, vs the +2 from the feat).
No mythic traps.
How dual initiative works on surprise rounds, and how it works with things like mythic summoning, and adding the agile template.
Monster creation rules are a bit confusing, needs to be cleaned up.
No way of detecting mythic flaws.
How does the marhsall advance order work on a slowed ally?
If you are supposed to be able to handle higher level CR, no easy way of improving chances to hit, especially for medium BAB classes.
Ally defense against high BAB doesn't do much. If the monster already hits on a 3, making it roll twice doesn't matter that much. (Although it did help prevent a crit.) Also, against a full attack, does it work on all attacks, or just the first one?
There were a few things that I know I made mistakes with, but that is mostly not being familiar with the mythic rules. I just made a ruling and kept going.