Since it looks like we won't get to play again until January, I want to get my impressions of the latest encounter for our playtest.
Players:
Dwarf cleric 12/Hierophant 6
Human Sorcerer 12/Archmage 6
Human Superstitious Barbarian 12/dual path champion/guardian 6
Human monk 12/Champion 6
Human fighter (Lore Warden) 12/ Guardian 6
Elven Urban ranger 12/Trickster 6
Human Paladin 12/Marshall 6
After entering the Forest of evil, the party was attacked by a half dozen Trackers of death:
6 wargs with advanced template, ranger 9/ML 4 CR 16 (Full encounter was CR 21).
Important notes: The wargs had power attack, furious focus, greater vital strike and both mythic power attack and mythic vital strike. They also had magic collars which gave them bonuses to strength, constitution, natural attack, defenses and allowed to talk amongst themselves telepathically.
The Wargs snuck up on the party. With their superior stealth the only party member who had a chance of detecting them before they attacked was the ranger, and he failed. Suprirse round: 4 wargs attacked the elf (their main preferred enemy), while 2 went after the human barbarian (their other preferred enemy). The 4 wargs tore the elf apart, doing more than 300 points of damage. The barbarian had DR 10/epic, and absorbed one of the wolves' blows, but still took nearly 100, and was tripped.
Round 1: Initiative: For amazing initiative, I decided to just give +2 per tier, with no bonus round. Still, that gave the party +12 before other bonuses. No surprise, the party went first. The sorcerer rolled highest. I had successfully scared the party, so the sorcerer went all out, casting a mythic magic missile, with dazing metamastery, and also adding persistant and heightened, firing off 10 magic missiles, with the wargs needing to hit DC 26 twice with their will saves or be dazed for 4 rounds. Two of the wargs saved, although one had to use a mythic power roll to make it. The barbarian used a fleet charge to stand up, eating a opportunity attack, and ripped into the one warg that still could act near him. The monk, paladin and fighter finished off the other one which could still act. 3 rounds later, the other Wargs were down. Encounter over. Cleric cast mythic raise dead* on the ranger, used his unlimited cure light wounds to heal up the injured, and they continued.
*The cleric had asked for a mythic raise dead spell, which we worked on making. First point meant no negative level, 2 more mythic points meant no need for diamonds. I'm not sure it was balanced, but for the encounter it really made no difference.
Final cost to the party: Sorcerer down 4 mythic points. Barbarian down 1 mythic point. Cleric down 3 mythic points. 1 sorcerer 6th level slot, 1 cleric 5th level slot. Experience earned over 400,000 total.
Feelings about the fight: Mythic tiers need to add to saving throws for monsters. +10 will for a CR 16 creature is a joke. If we were doing fast track experience, they would have levelled from this fight. The mythic raise dead didn't really make a difference, as they could have just carried some diamonds instead. Metamastery might be broken.
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I don't want to sound snarky, but all we have learned from this is that dazing spell can win an encounter by itself. And that is not a news for anyone.
Yes, but the combination was nasty. The sorcerer has a charisma of 34 (19 base, +3 from level increase, +6 from equipment, +6 from mythic level). Metamastery meant that the dazing metamagic didn't increase the level of the spell, so persistant plus heightened made the DC 26. The mythic magic missile meant nothing could stop it, not even spell resistance (not that the wargs had it in the first place but...) And the will save after constructing the worgs using mythic rules was only a +10. If the sorcerer could have fit the spell focus (evocation) feats in, it would have been even worse. Fortunately, the player decided to mostly take only metamagic feats.
Now I might have not constructed the beasties correctly, which is always a possibility. Base Worg was +3, +2 from advanced template, +3 from Ranger levels to will save. I also added another +2 from a custom item. Perhaps I should have given them a more powerful resistance item in the first place. Still, even a +1 to saves per mythic tier would have meant they would have only needed two 12s, and with a 1d8 mythic power to boost the one of the saves if only one roll failed, perhaps more than just 2 would have saved.
A few things jump out at me here.
First, I'd be interested in seeing the Worg stats individually. Worg Ranger 9 / Mythic 4 doesn't really feel like a CR 16 enemy to me, just after crunching a few basic numbers. Damage without favorite enemy seems sort of lacking, saves are weak, it lacks immunity of any meaning type, and has a very limited offense on the whole. In short it's a 13 hit die base monster with all of the associated problems. Combining them into a CR 21 also doesn't feel right to me, because the encounter is very one dimensional and because none of the abilities of any one foe seem that meaningful as a CR 21. This isn't a criticism as much as an observation.
Second, dazing spell remains pretty strong against massed lower CR enemies instead of a single strong opponent. It seems like with the character in question (the sorcerer) you've really got someone built for exactly this sort of situation - e.g. multiple weaker enemies without great saves.
Third, as others have observed offense seems to scale much more easily than defense in mythic.
Finally, that charisma seems obscene, and further reinforces my feeling that those mythic gains are poorly done right now. In perspective, it is 10 points higher than my 14th level wizard's intelligence score. Wow.
Fair enough:
Trackers of death
Mythic Advanced Warg Ranger 9/ML 4 CR 16
NE Medium Magical Beast
Init: +4 (+8 in forest) Senses: Darkvision 60', Low Light Vision, Scent, Perception +28 (+32 in forest)
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Defense
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AC: 26 , 16 touch, 22 flat-footed (+2 armor, +4 dex, +8 natural, +2 deflection) (+3 natural armor with barkskin)
hp: 170 (13d10+105)
Fort: +15 Ref: +16 Will: +10
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Offense: speed 50' (60' with longstrider)
melee: bite +26 (3d8+68) +4/+8 vs elves, +2/+4 vs humans
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statistics
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Str 26 (30), dex 19, con 18 (20), int 10, wis 18, cha 14
BAB: +13, CMB: +26 CMD (+30 vs trip)
Feats: Run, Skill focus (Perception), Weapon Focus: Bite, Improved Natural Weapon (Bite), Power Attack, Endurance, Furious Focus, Vital Strike, Skill Focus (survival) , Improved Vital Strike
Skills: Perception +28, Stealth +22, Survival +28 (+32 to track), Intimidate: +14, Knowledge (Nature): +12 Swim: +27 (+4 to Perception, Stealth, Survival in the forest)
Class Abilities: Favored Enemy: Elf +4, Favored Enemy: Human +2, Favored Terrain: Forest +4, Favored Terrain: Swamp +2, Woodland Stride, Swift Tracker, Evasion
Spells: 1st: Longstrider, Entangle, Hunter's Howl: 2nd: Barkskin, Hunter's Eye
Mythic Abilities: Natural armor +4, +40 hp, DR 10/Epic, mythic bonus (+1d8 4/day)
Mythic Feats: Mythic power attack, mythic vital strike
Equipment: Warg Collar: +2 deflection bonus, +1/+1 to natural attacks, +4 str, +2 con, +2 armor, +2 resistance (56k value)
Why is the damage on the bite so high? I don't know that I've seen something with such a low strength with a +68 bonus.
mythic vital strike doubles all damage.
mythic power attack increases the damage to +3. The bite of the Warg counts as using a two-handed weapon.
So, +15 strength, +18 from power attack, +1 from the collar is +34. with mythic vital strike, that is doubled so the damage is 3d8+68.
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This doesn't seem in the least bit problematic to me. You have a party with an effective level of 20 (+2 for the 3 party members above the traditional 4) who handily defeated an enemy group who were 1 CR higher than they were.
This happens all the time and isn't unique to Mythic.
I do agree that saves have to be looked at for mythic, though simply adding on progressions similar to class levels seems to boring and un-mythic.
Yes, except for the fact the players would hae earned more than 50,000 xp each from what was a not very challenging fight. If we were using the fast xp track, they would have leveled from this one fight. Even on the slow track, they would level after 3 such fights.
The super high DC for casters plus the fact that ML doesn't add bonuses to saves by default is a bit troubling, but I could have fixed some of it myself by giving the worgs a higher resistance bonus on their "item". I was more pointing out that when you build monsters by the default rules, you need to be extra careful about saves, and the monster build rules may need to be tweaked a bit.
The fact that it would only take 3 APL+1 encounters to level the party on the slow xp track is what has me more worried.
Yes, except for the fact the players would hae earned more than 50,000 xp each from what was a not very challenging fight. If we were using the fast xp track, they would have leveled from this one fight. Even on the slow track, they would level after 3 such fights.
The super high DC for casters plus the fact that ML doesn't add bonuses to saves by default is a bit troubling, but I could have fixed some of it myself by giving the worgs a higher resistance bonus on their "item". I was more pointing out that when you build monsters by the default rules, you need to be extra careful about saves, and the monster build rules may need to be tweaked a bit.
The fact that it would only take 3 APL+1 encounters to level the party on the slow xp track is what has me more worried.
Setting aside everything else about your specific example that might be up for debate - optimized players, sub-optiminal monsters, ect - this does hit on a very good point.
Something does need to be done about XP for such encounters - whether it is subtracting your mythic level from the CR of the opponent for the purposes of determining your XP award or what.
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This kinda just shows to me that casters are still hilariously too good, and nothing has really changed with mythic, in fact casters scale BETTER(!?!).
It would be cool if a martial class got to play and do cool things like casters can
You are absolutely wrong, but don't let that stop your "CASTERS R OP" argument.
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This kinda just shows to me that casters are still hilariously too good, and nothing has really changed with mythic, in fact casters scale BETTER(!?!).
It would be cool if a martial class got to play and do cool things like casters can
Aren't there options for martial types to do just that?
Multi-classing is one option, and isn't the Magus the attempt at creating the balance of martial and magic?
I could be misunderstanding some people's posts, but sometimes i get the feeling that there is a serious dislike of pure casters.