Contributor
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We've had two sessions in our game, and Monday we'll have the third, kicking the PCs up to level 8/tier 3. A brief look at my players:
Adam: Human cleric/hierophant of wine (healing, cursing). Adam focuses on variant channeling both positive and negative energy. He causes nausea with a high save DC in living things, which dominated two of the first three encounters.
Clay: Human fighter/guardian. Part of a duo designed to make one warrior extremely tough and another extremely potent. Uses entire build to max AC and then swap positions with his teammate, Chad.
Chad: Builds for high impact damage, using an exotic longspear (2d4, reach, brace) to deal a ton of damage from reach, but with little thought for his own protection. Uses a teamwork feat to swap places in and out with his high AC, high DR companion.
Alex: ratfolk alchemist/trickster. Alex was sick our first session and made his character the second. Monday he starts throwing bombs, but we've already discovered the most useful trickster abilities for alchemists are only available at third level. Will likely take dual path and/or use some of Lucent's suggestions for trickster abilities.
Tyler: human heavens oracle/marshall. Tyler is one of the most subtle and adept control mechanics I've ever seen. Right now, he's using a lot of levitate and mythic color spray. Not much use in the first two encounters, but bad for my invisible stalkers.
Daniel: human monk (zen archer)/champion. Daniel experiments with all sorts of mechanics. He's the mercurial fullblade type. This monk uses a rope dart for great damage.
The game revolves around mythic heroes tracking the escaped god Apsu, who will eventually try to destroy the wirld with water and fire in his bid to reunite with Tiamat. To that end, they had to riddle with the great sphinx, who tested them with combat after every riddle.
The arena is a huge amphitheatre, a circle 200' in diameter. First combat was a group of advanced caryatid columns with longspears. Just the change in weapon gives them more punch. The PCs are surrounded and intitiative is rolled. Everyone is 5th level with one mythic tier.
Tyler levitates Daniel so the columns get rope darted for a reasonable amount. Clay positions himself in front of the party as often as possible, and Chad deals out most of the damage. The combat is pretty tough for the PCs, since the columns have reach, decent damage, and DR 5/-. But Clay's AC and Chad's reach protect the party most of the time. Adam does get knocked unconscious, but there are two divine spellcasters, so Tyler makes sure Adam gets back up and Adam funnels some light healing into the frontline combatants. At 5th level with one tier, no one can hit Clay without a 20. Danial causes great damage, but Deadly Aim lowers the monk's attack roll by enough that he hits inconsistently.
Second combat is four huge anteaters. The idea is supposed to be that the PCs struggle with the terrain and sand trap, while the anteaters hit infrequently but cause immense damage. But it's designed without knowledge of the PC builds and the anteaters are SCREWED when forced to save against Adam's channel ability. So long as he keeps them nauseated (six consecutive turns at least two of them blow their WILL saves vs nausea), the rest of the party gets in some damage, with Daniel and Chad shining again. Even Tyler resorts to a melee attack. High hp and AC keeps the vermin in the combat for a while, but they stumble around unable to attack. They'd have been finished off even quicker if Adam hadn't misread variable channeling. He deals half damage in addition to sickening them. Anteaters get humbled and only deal a bit of damage.
Third encounter is the first one with mythic bad guys. Two advanced, agile invisible stalkers. Their initiative is badass - going on 37 and 17. This allows them to charge and then full attack before anyone else goes, revealing a host of possibilities for monsters, alchemists and rogues. The stalkers are feeling pretty good about themselves and one charges the high AC guy who can't hit anything. The other charges Daniel. I cause a little damage and do better on the immediate full attack. I'm relying on difficult ground and natural invisibility to help, and I plan to use flyby attack to start circling the party and causing damage until they figure something else out. Alas, one guy fails his channel save and becomes nauseous and the other gets caught in a divine color spray. Tyler uses an oracle ability to lower a stalker's effective HD for the purposes of being sprayed and my stalker passes out cold. Still invisible, the stalker occupies some attention while the PCs try to locate it and effect a coup de grace on the helpless target.
So they level up to 8 and 3 tiers for Monday. We've discovered a few things I'd like comment on:
As a GM: designing the next encounters taught me the beauty of mythic templates for my encounter design. Just adding agile or a spellcasting template makes designing mythic and nonmythic encounters faster and easier. A question about mythic templates: do references to the CR indicate the creature's original CR or final CR? Frex, a blue dragon with the arcane caster template will cast more, higher level spells if the final CR is used to calculate the results of the template. My inclination is to use the original CR. My other question revolves around what ELs other GMs are designing for. Six tier 3 characters is almost like 12 other players. They go twice per round if they choose, they gain extra swift attacks, add to their caster level and more. We'll be testing those ideas Monday, but I predict these players will be comfy fighting against CRs 3-5 places higher than their level+tier.
Also, how do you feel about mythic traps? ANyone designing those with or without mythic spells?
As a player: We've debated whether to keep playtesting amazing initiative. Seems like there will be a fix but we don't know what that will be. What are your tables doing for that? Also, my players are asking about reasonable transfers of abilities form one path to another. The guardian wants armor mastery. The alchemist wants wild arcana, but neither path really suits him, and he thinks of Dual Path as punishment. A potential solution is path dabbling, but then that's not available until tier 3 and leaves him stuck with fickle attacks for his first to choices. Not bad, but not every alchemist wants to be built with only fickle attacks or the archmage path. How are your players answering these concerns?
More Tuesday after I throw them dragons, dread wraiths, medusas and magical traps.
Note to self don't be in front.
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Very interesting feedback, some questions if you don't mind:
-what type of stat generation did you use?
-did the characters have equipment (wealth) based on their level or level +tier?
-other than the monk not a lot of those classes have a lot of class based swift or immediate actions, was this a factor in your playtest, considering, that so many mythic abilities use those actions?
-25pt buy
-wealth for level no bonus for tier
-most of us just tried to play with random mechanics. No real though to the actions type
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Contributor
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My guys tend to tinker with ideas to see if they'll work (Swap Places fighter/defender, attack-from-high-ground by flying up and then falling with-your-lance-pointed-straight-down, rainbow effing pattern caster, and worse). I'd say actually if there's one thing that interrupts their plans, it's watching the swift action economy each round. I discover from time to time that swift and immediate actions jack up their interpretations of a build.