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So, after reading some suggestions in this forum about how Mythic rules might be used as a substitute for "epic" rules -- i.e., a way of advancing "past" 20th level -- I decided to test a little and see how that worked and felt.
Disclaimers:
-- Yes, I know some people feel, including some designers, that levels 15+ are not intended for PC play. Others, however, feel the opposite and that if there are rules for it, one should be able to try to play it if the group is amenable, and do enjoy a very high level game. This post is for the latter folks' interest. It is not to suggest that folks should have to play very high level games or that this is the best way to use mythic rules, it's just something I wanted to try out, and I do not expect this to be of interest or use to all comers. For those who might be interested, I hope it is useful.
-- We started late and had a couple distractions (some of which were aged 3 and 5) so we didn't get to finish the playtest --- the final fight got missed. We got through two big high level combats and some other description, roleplaying, and general gaming stuff in a few hours which is pretty good, though, considering the massively high play level.
-- I am tired and thus rambly and apologize sincerely for any incoherent thoughts.
Adventure Notes:
-- Party was 5 20th level characters, a dwarf monk 20, human cleric (theologian) 20, human paladin (warrior of the holy light) 20, dwarf barbarian 20, and a halfling fighter 2/rogue 10/shadowdancer 8. Books used were Core, APG, UC, UM. 20 point buy, standard WBL (880,000 gp). Some of the characters had been used in previous campaigns and while they needed to be tweaked to get rid of some old house ruling (I didn't want to use house rules for a playtest), some of them do reflect a character built up from lower levels rather than one built for 20th play. We would have had an elf arcane archer but the player couldn't make it. Players were a wide variety of veteran to very new to Pathinder, though everyone had played some version of D&D before.
-- I structured the adventure based off the suggestions for adventure design/scaling the adventure in the Mythic playtest pdf. The story was different, but I even kept the downed sacred tree and the driving deific force being the god of nature (but in this case the god of nature was the one who gave the PCs mythic power, in order to fight the minions of a god of destruction). So it went like this:
--- 1st encounter: Mythic leader + Ordinary minions (Mythic fire giant from book plus sards from Bestiary 2)
--- 2nd encounter: Moment of ascension (communing with nature god)
--- 3rd encounter: Ordinary leader + Mythic minions (20th level cleric--from NPC Codex with different domains--plus several Agile Mariliths with some augmented stats)
--- 4th encounter: Skill challenge/hazard (big earthquakes and fissures and debris flying and such)
--- 5th encounter: Mythic big bad (Tempest Behemoth with 4 mythic ranks) (the fight that didn't get finished)
--- Adventure was outdoors in a sacred forest. A mythic fog limited some visibility and there would have been a bunch of weather hazards in 5th encounter.
-- Characters gained 1 mythic tier at 2nd encounter. They should have gained 2nd after 4th encounter but time prevented that from happening. Monk and Barbarian went champion, paladin went guardian, cleric went theologian, and shadowdancer went trickster.
-- We opted to ignore lesser trials, per one of the rules updates (which is good as honestly a 20th level character could meet most listed lesser trials without much effort and with no mythic abilities whatsoever).
Stuff of note that happened during play (spoilering the rest to keep this sane):
-- In the 1st encounter, the shadowdancer attacked the mythic fire giant on the surprise round with a vorpal kukri, rolled a 20, and beheaded it. Seems like a mythic creature should somehow not be so easily one-shotted -- at least not by a magic item rather than the awesome might of the attacking character. So ironically 1st fight was just a fight between non-mythic PCs and monsters, tried to get through it quickly to get to other stuff to actually playtest rule (I actually should have cut the fight short), the mythic monster was largely a non-entity. I don't mind creatures getting one-shotted--it's bound to be expected at high level especially, but not quite what any of us expected.
-- Agile mariliths held their own okay but had trouble hitting (hard to find creatures that I wanted for the scenario at the right CR). The second attack for the agile template is really useful and while an agile marilith would be brutal for a lower level party it was a moderate challenge for these guys, and actually MADE them a challenge since they could always try to move and still ultimately get a full attack. One thing is Paladin's allied defense ability forced one marilith to roll two dice for each attack -- that's 20 dice I had to roll for a full attack! Really not fond of mythic abilities (or any game mechanic) that make the GM have to do more work, especially in a higher level game where a lot has to be tracked and rolled to begin with.
-- Players used 1-4 uses of mythic power, all to activate abilities and not to modify die rolls. At 20th level they're definitely more "boosts" than massive bursts of power they might be for a lower level character on a mythic path.
-- In my opinion, best abilities I saw in action were the monk's champion fleet attack ability (I may be misremembering the name) and the shadowdancer trickster's surprise attack ability, which was of incredible use. These were great boosts but still reasonable for their level. I wonder if it is the same for lower level mythic PCs or if this "scales" okay regardless of level.
-- Generally speaking, the players and I agreed that the best abilities seemed to be ones that improved mobility and overcame action economy issues.
-- The paladin did have some swift action overload, as I have noticed others report as well (he managed what to do in what order per turn very well though).
-- No one died. One character got swiftly knocked from near-full to unconsciousness and another got pretty badly hurt. Healer characters kept on top of keeping people in fighting form.
GM Notes on Prep and Results:
-- I really like the idea of the quick mythic templates for quickly adding some mythic oomph to a monster. I DON'T like that most of the templates were for boosting defenses. Honestly, that was useless to me. The monsters I was using actually had pretty decent defenses on their own, and apart from maybe a few more hit points and AC, I had absolutely zero interest in wanting them to have additional immunities or DR or whatever (calculating DR is a huge pain when everybody's got multiple attacks; everyone in this game had +5 weapons meaning all DR was auto-bypassed except DR/epic and that was a godsend for helping combat go faster). What I DID really really want and had no way of getting was boosting my monsters' attack bonuses. The PCs all had very high ACs, as is to be expected, and the only way to get monsters who had high enough attack bonuses would have been to choose monsters whose CR was so high it would not have warranted making them mythic at all.
All the added defensive abilities do is drag out combat longer--a chore at 20th level and I know from past experience in normal games even in lower level combats as well. A few extra hit points, save bonuses, and maybe some magical healing is all that's needed if you really want a monster to survive longer (this is from my observations not just from running this playtest but from running a level 14-20 campaign that lasted 2 and a half years).
I don't honestly care if my enemies get dropped in a couple rounds (that's likely to happen anyway even with the defensive bells and whistles added), I just want them to have given the PCs a good scare and actually hit and damaged them before they die (or the equivalent with spells or supernaturala bilities). I want the PCs to have to use resources to fight the monsters, but I don't want them to just have to sit there and chip away slowly like a sculptor with chisel while the monsters sit there and get hit but can't do anything to harm the PCs in return (in a non one-shot, sensible monsters would just run in a scenario like that).
-- The guidelines for building a mythic creature using the full ranking system weren't very helpful for high levels. If you want to beef up a 22 hd creature, the suggestion to give them half their HD in mythic ranks was not useful as that would have been 11 tiers and there are only 10. Also, it automatically makes any high CR creature WAY higher in CR -- and again, if you want a creature that can HIT a party of a certain APL, you need to START with a creature of the appropriate CR or they won't be able to hit the party under the current rules, as mythic does nothing to boost attack bonuses. And yet adding half again their hit dice in mythic ranks would often make that creature too high a CR to be a suitable challenge.
So I took the "GM's discretion" option, and gave the behemoth 4 ranks, to the CR 26 or so I wanted it to be. It was powerful enough to be able to hit the party and do nasty things but wasn't ridiculous (by 20th level combat standards). And I think it would really just be okay to leave how a mythic creature is leveled to the GM's discretion.
Also, the first time I statted up the creature, I overlooked that I was supposed to give the monster mythic power beyond the boost the die roll. THEN, trying to come up with what the other 5 mythic powers should be was difficult. The suggestion to use the path powers as guidelines wasn't very helpful as they were very PC/humanoid/weapon using oriented. I looked at the sample monsters for ideas instead. I decided to boost some of the behemoth's existing abilities for the most part, including allowing it to maintain its Storm of Vengeance SLA as a swift action for up to 5 rounds and making a concentration check or spending a use of mythic power (storm of vengeance is duration concentration, making it a poor combat SLA for a big bad character--and I can't imagine what kind of fight would feature more than one tempest behemoth! So I thought if it could cast the spell and maintain it while also doing other things, that would make it much more impressively mythic). At the same time, I also felt like especially with such a powerful monster, that adding a mythic rank wasn't necessary except to allow their damage to be considered "epic."
-- I'd like to see some more simple mythic templates that are more offensively oriented but are very simple, and I'd like to see much better ways to boost a creature's mythic power. I also feel like adding mythic rank +1 abilities are too many and a little overwhelming when doing combat prep, at least without an easy list of abilities to choose from.
-- I'll reiterate from above that generally mythic powers that the PCs had that forced ME to have to roll more dice (attack and keep lower, roll miss chances, roll miss chances for crits, etc. etc.) were really irritating -- it's hard enough, especially at the high level we were going at, to keep track of a bunch of creatures and their abilities than have to roll extra stuff on top.
Player Feedback:
-- Many players felt they wanted more interesting "story" elements to mythic play. The mythic rules are heavily combat mechanics oriented with not a lot of stuff to either turn the tide in combat in a more narratively interesting way or use abilities outside combat to influence events. They felt that "mythic" should mean more than "kills something really well" and "hard to kill." More specificially...
---- One player mentioned the GameMastery Plot Twist cards as a cool way Paizo came up with for PCs to have narrative influence on a story. The nice thing about those cards is that they have some mechanical boost but also an option for a way to make the story flow differently. He felt that those had suitable "mythic" flavor and that he'd love to see something like that implemented into mythic play. While I know requiring owning cards for a mechanic would not be a good thing, maybe the ideas behind the plot twist cards could still influence another way in which perhaps a PC could use mythic power -- or they could at least be suggested as an option.
-- We also talked about using perhaps something akin to Fate system's fate points, where you can mildly change the environment or situation with the expenditure of a point. This would be a hard thing to govern--it is a very much a "GM's discretion" thing, but my players and I agreed that mythic works best "at GM's discretion" in general.
---- Another player mentioned Exalted as a good example of "mythic" done right, in her opinion (note: not mine). One thing she really liked from that game was the idea of "Stunts" -- you describe a really cool action, and if you do a good enough job of explaining it, you can get a bonus to rolls during your attempts to doing it. I actually feel myself Exalted has its own problems, but I agreed with her it did have a way of encouraging players to be creative, and that did help the game feel "mythic." I do feel PC creativity is essential to a system like this so that it feels like you are building legends rather than just handing the players a bucket of extra powerful abilities.
-- One player commented that she felt that the mythic abilities were interesting as a boost for high level but, in her words, "I can't imagine using these rules at low level, they seem way too complicated for that purpose. I wouldn't want to play a low level mythic game." This player was one who was less familiar with Pathfinder than others, but is a veteran gamer in general.
-- The players prefered abilities that gave a simple boost--an extra attack or bonus or a special ability that was easily moderated.
-- The players did not like the weaknesses and felt they were very unbalanced. They didn't mind the idea of the fatal flaw, but the implementation they felt was poor. A HUGE issues was -- how do you moderate what is an appropriate weakness based upon what strengths the players have to start with. For example, if a character takes School Aversion (EVocation) but has Improved Evasion, the effects are likely to hit him as often or as horrendously. Or, if you are immune to a certain kind of mind-affecting ability or all mind-affecting abilities, is insanity really an issue? This is especially an issue at high levels of course--20th level characters already have a mess of immunities and resistances, but this can hit even at quite low levels (a dwarf with a bonus to saves versus spells is less likely to be hurt by certain weaknesses than a human with the same weakness, and is that fair?). Can the paladin take hubris even though he is immune to fear?
It's also weird if the PCs take these weaknesses when they are already along in their adventuring career-- if you have spent 5 levels with DR 10/evil or whatever, and suddenly plain wood bypasses your DR, that seems strange unless it's explained well.
I will note the weaknesses that were liked were ones that were hard to avoid, like dependency (even if you don't need sustenance, you need the food to keep your mythic power) and generally ones that didn't contain the phrase "if you fail a saving throw..." or "versus x kind of spell"--those were the ones that brought up all the "but what if I am immune to...?" questions.
I'll also note I think the weaknesses that were taken were dependency, material weakness (3 characters took that), and furious rage.
Final Thoughts:
-- At 20th level, mythic does feel less "mythic" and more a mild set of boosts to an already near godlike character, which is probably of little surprise. I WILL note that I DO like the idea of advancing 20th level with mythic tiers because--as much as I hate adding defensive abilities to monsters--making PCs harder to kill at this level is a GOOD thing. The blessing and curse of such a high level of play is you can have one-shot-kills very easily, and the mythic tiers protect the PCs from that a little, and I think that is good. It also, again, helps PCs and monsters alike with action economy issues which is VERY helpful at high levels.
-- We all thought (I think) this is a good substitute for "epic" in contining the adventures of a 20th level set of heroes. It is less complex than epic, even if some players felt some of it was still too complicated, but adds some neat bonuses. You do still hit a hard edge of how high you can raise your CRs and add mythic ranks, however, because of PC ACs skyrocketing and monster to-hit, well, not. My players who especially like narrative play like the idea of mythic tiers advancing when suitable deeds are done, and I think that is especially good for such very high level play where really, you know you can kill a dragon by sneezing, so the point and goal is more how to build a legend out of it.
-- We all thought there is an important balance to strike between adding some power and cool mechanical options while not making the rules too complicated, and the mythic rules do lean a little too hard towards complicated at the moment.
I'm sure I'll have additional and hopefully more coherent thoughts later, and maybe some of my players will post as well. I hope this is useful to somebody. I can say, in final conclusion, that we did have a lot of fun, so the ultimate goal was achieved.
I will post my thoughts a couple days when I can collect them after my work week is done.
That would be awesome.
I want to add that my favorite part was the dwarf barbarian charging through the blade barrier with a baby on her back. (The party rescued a baby, then kept it with them through the earth shattering quest. Not something I had planned... long story, but it was suitably heroic, I think.)
Oh, one more thing in terms of feedback on the mythic rules: I found the sample treasure fairly underwhelming as stuff to give to high level characters. I realize some of it could be easily upgraded (to higher hit bonuses and such) but I felt like in a lot of cases the PCs wouldn't want to exchange any high level gear they had for the mythic stuff, even with the abilities granted by mythic gear that boost mythic power. The only ones that really stood out to me were the nectar and ambrosia, which are useful to any mythic character.
One thing that would have been useful to me instead of specific items would be "templates" you could apply to existing magic items to make them mythic. Something like "this boost's the item's enhancement bonus by +x per character level and the PC can spend a use of mythic power to make the item do [really cool thing]." That would have been cool, and I could have transformed an item of the PCs' existing equipment rather than give them stuff I knew they'd largely be underwhelmed by if given as written.
Things in general that scaled with character level as well as tier would resolve a lot of issues that make some abilities better or worse at high or low levels.
All right, my thoughts:
The path ability of the hierophant that I chose was inspired spell. I used it once, to cast overland flight by duplication via miracle. That was quite useful, as I was literally the one spellcaster in the party. And as a prepared spellcaster, that limited boost of versatility was something I knew would be useful from experience (as I was playing the same cleric as I had in the previous campaign). Now I'd had time previously to consider which ability I wanted and considered them all carefully, but immediate returns on investment are always nice.
My first tier ability was Reach of Faith. Experience had taught me previously how perilous it is to get close to an ally and spellcast. While my concentration checks were through the roof, you never know when the enemy is going to decide 'quick, kill the spellcaster!' Using this ability to effectively apply the Reach spell metamagic feat to all my spells could be a lifesaver in many fights. If we'd kept going, I would be able to give others a divine power spell at reach, once I found the ability to cast personal spells on others, which could be fun :)
Feat selection was one thing I didn't like. The playtest feats did not feel mythic; they felt much more like 'epic' feats, which in many cases were more of the same. I opted to gain another regular feat and took Lightning Reflexes. I got a lot of use out of it and it made a difference all on its own, something which many of the mythic feats would not have done.
I never opted to use mythic power to boost a d20 roll. I was rolling well enough on saving throws that I never felt the need to boost one, especially if our Warrior of the Holy Light paladin had activated his nimbus of light ability and boosted us a bit more. I didn't have to make a lot of attack rolls either, and the one I did was a melee touch attack against a rather big critter, so no help was needed.
The small boost to hp from gaining a mythic tier meant nothing at our level. The only person who probably could have benefited was the monk, who was dropped to -3 hp in the first battle. OTOH, I can see how 4 hp would be quite helpful when added to a 1st level character.
Something that I felt would have been helpful would have been the addition of a few skill points. Mythic characters are supposed to be even further from the norm than your usual adventurers, and I wondered that there were no options to boost skills beyond mythic power or aspects of the mythic feats.
Concerns and future thoughts:
I personally wonder what would happen if we gave our party a full ten mythic tiers and then fought a CR-appropriate creature. If the creature gained AC in any significant amount, I wonder how the party's offense would manage to keep up. Mind you, our party's players were not optimizers of the highest caliber, but they weren't incompetent either. Given the chance, I'd probably enjoy seeing how such a fight would play out.
As we only had one mythic tier each to enjoy due to time constraints, no one took Dual Path. My hierophant would have enjoyed taking a few champion abilities for flavor (stanch wounds and to the death), so I'd be curious to see how different combinations of mythic abilities work out.
Immortality: Still looking for a way to give any character the ability to eliminate their maximum age the way wizards, alchemists, and certain monks can.
Learning curve. While adding a few hp to any character is easy, mythic power is front-loaded slightly in and of itself with the addition of the first tier. Then you have to choose a path, then one of three abilities all heroes on that path take, and finally pick one more ability from a list of abilities for that path that are available at that tier. I'd done my research and homework weeks before, but for a new player (or one who isn't quite so zealous :) ), this could be daunting. And I imagine when I see the finished book this summer (preferably sooner!), I will find a large enough selection of abilities to make me reconsider my options all over again. Measuring out even the basic abilities all mythic characters gain over a few more levels would be useful.
Finally, I think it could be cool to let these heroes start changing their very being as they advance. Things like transform their type from the common humanoid (X subtype) to fey, outsider, undead, construct, etc. For example, my cleric Morag might well become some strange outsider (as she transcends the concerns of the earthly plane and experiences all the planes have to offer, the better to understand the fates of all souls). Or she might become fey (the living embodiment of Death on the mortal plane). Transformitive options could stand to be explored, beyond the traditional polymorph or reincarnate spells.
Overall, I was not disappointed at all. I had high hopes upon reading the playtest document and when the playtest was done I'd wished we had more time to continue. Part of it is that I'm very attached to my character and more time would have allowed us to flesh out the story more, but also just to see how our characters developed. Since I wanted to come back for more, that's a good sign :)
Feat selection was one thing I didn't like. The playtest feats did not feel mythic; they felt much more like 'epic' feats, which in many cases were more of the same. I opted to gain another regular feat and took Lightning Reflexes. I got a lot of use out of it and it made a difference all on its own, something which many of the mythic feats would not have done.
I felt the same way about feats from a GM's perspective, building mythic monsters.
I'm not sure who took extra feats and who took mythic ones, but I don't recall the mythic feats really coming into play.
Something that I felt would have been helpful would have been the addition of a few skill points. Mythic characters are supposed to be even further from the norm than your usual adventurers, and I wondered that there were no options to boost skills beyond mythic power or aspects of the mythic feats.
What do you think you could have accomplished with extra skill points that you could not accomplish?
Asks the GM of the player whose character rolled a Heal check and got a 42, based on her 20th level character build alone. Plus equally high results on various relevant Knowledge checks.
Mind, I'm not being snarky, but I am surprised you felt that need, and would like to know more of your rationale.
At HIGH levels, skill checks are largely, in my experience as a GM of high level games, inconsequential. The ones I need to call for most often are opposed checks (Stealth vs Perception, Bluff vs Sense Motive, Acrobatics vs CMD) and Knowledge checks and anything where the degree of success is relevant (you might succeed on a monster lore check at DC 25, but if you achieved a 35, you probably know even more about said monster). Certainly, where someone doesn't have a skill trained, a skill check might be called for (Acrobatics comes in often for that).
But skill DCs seldom go over 20 or 25 at most, and a high level character who has trained a skill can easily beat a DC 30 or even 40 check easily (and we had our Shadowdancer with the +50 to Stealth checks). And there frankly aren't many skill challenges, to coin a phrase, that call for such a thing--that is indeed a challenge of high level campaigns (not necessarily mythic ones), making skills remain relevant/not auto succeed all the time. It would indeed be nice to have examples of higher level skill challenges for designing high level or high difficulty games.
And I can see how you might want to spread your skills out more (finally I can train Linguistics and learn Terran!) but I would be concerned if that would break low level mythic characters, and make high level mythic characters too good at everything.
I personally wonder what would happen if we gave our party a full ten mythic tiers and then fought a CR-appropriate creature. If the creature gained AC in any significant amount, I wonder how the party's offense would manage to keep up.
Versus a creature made mythic, better than the monster's offense could keep up, I assure you.
Versus a legit high CR threat, not necessarily beefed mythically or only by 1 or 2 ranks, like a behemoth or ancient dragon or something, and given high high y'all's ACs were, it would likely be a battle of deaths by a thousand cuts rather than by many big damage novas. Which is maybe balanced, but boring.
Mind you, our party's players were not optimizers of the highest caliber, but they weren't incompetent either. Given the chance, I'd probably enjoy seeing how such a fight would play out.
I wish we had more time before the playtest ended to try. This is not a complaint about the playtest length, which was fine, it's about our group's ability to get a game together in a certain period of time.
Immortality: Still looking for a way to give any character the ability to eliminate their maximum age the way wizards, alchemists, and certain monks can.
I agree agelessness should be a high tier mythic ability.
Learning curve. While adding a few hp to any character is easy, mythic power is front-loaded slightly in and of itself with the addition of the first tier. Then you have to choose a path, then one of three abilities all heroes on that path take, and finally pick one more ability from a list of abilities for that path that are available at that tier. I'd done my research and homework weeks before, but for a new player (or one who isn't quite so zealous :) ), this could be daunting. And I imagine when I see the finished book this summer (preferably sooner!), I will find a large enough selection of abilities to make me reconsider my options all over again. Measuring out even the basic abilities all mythic characters gain over a few more levels would be useful.
I think this is a concern. It also echoes one of the other group's comments that she saw the mythic rules being "too complicated" for a lower level group. She is one of the folks who is less experienced with Pathfinder (but a veteran gamer) which is worth bearing in mind. If the new to pathfinder gamer goes, "This looks way too hard to teach to a low level group," that can be a problem. Mind I reckon mythic isn't intended for newbs, but still.
Finally, I think it could be cool to let these heroes start changing their very being as they advance. (snip)
I really like that idea.
My comment about skills is more of a "I wonder how this works with characters who are level 1/MT 1" kind of thing. Us high-level types can obviously manage when it comes to skills in some way, shape, or form. Sorry about that, wasn't clear.
No worries, just wasn't quite sure what you were imagining. I'd be worried about giving low level characters extra skill ranks because as they level they could become too good at everything, but I think mythic powers that gave you a massive bonus to certain skill uses would be cool. Leap tall buildings in a single bound, that sort of thing.
No worries, just wasn't quite sure what you were imagining. I'd be worried about giving low level characters extra skill ranks because as they level they could become too good at everything, but I think mythic powers that gave you a massive bonus to certain skill uses would be cool. Leap tall buildings in a single bound, that sort of thing.
Yea, currently the only thing that makes most mythic characters better at any skills than a non mythic character is the ability to use a mythic point to add 1d6-1d12 to a roll, and maybe their higher stats. It can be useful in an emergency, but you can't really achieve anything 'mythic' with just a higher skill roll.
...I have to wonder if the designers are starting to hate the fact that we are placing so much importance on the word 'mythic', lol.
Now that I think about it, the universal path abilities help skill checks immensely on their own. Still thinking about this though.
No worries, just wasn't quite sure what you were imagining. I'd be worried about giving low level characters extra skill ranks because as they level they could become too good at everything, but I think mythic powers that gave you a massive bonus to certain skill uses would be cool. Leap tall buildings in a single bound, that sort of thing.Yea, currently the only thing that makes most mythic characters better at any skills than a non mythic character is the ability to use a mythic point to add 1d6-1d12 to a roll, and maybe their higher stats. It can be useful in an emergency, but you can't really achieve anything 'mythic' with just a higher skill roll.
...I have to wonder if the designers are starting to hate the fact that we are placing so much importance on the word 'mythic', lol.
Well, if that's the word they use to describe it, it ought to fit. :)
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That's a fair point, LazarX. I'd like it to be an option to mythic characters, at least, then.