I'd forgotten about that use of wish.
Yeah, I'd allow wish to allow someone who already knows what demi-plane inside of the Hut (remember that the Hut has hundreds, if not thousands, of demiplanes inside of it!) to aim for to get into that demi-plane. Otherwise they'd just wind up inside of the Hut (which can be plane-shifted to).
I'd assume that Baba Yaga would make new demiplanes to at least host her power and her death in. So PCs porting into the island realm where her death was first found would be coming up empty-handed, and realize they need to explore elsewhere.
I'd also assumed Baba Yaga immediately knows that a group of adventurers just got ported into her Hut, and possibly into the former location of her death. She just might be annoyed.
I would assume that a mythic wish would make normal wish look like kiddie pool stuff, since in the playtest the mythic version of a spell was normally way better than the non-mythic version. A mythic wish or miracle should be ludicrous.
James Jacobs already posted in another thread that mythic is meant to be the "top." A further escalation to "super-duper mythic" probably won't happen.
I'll note that as a CR 30 being, Baba Yaga's technically stronger than most demigods. I believe the majority of whom clock in at the CR 26 to 28 range.
Baba Yaga and Cthulhu are the only known CR 30s. The various beings who are getting statted in Mythic Adventures (sample mythic beings), Bestiary 4 (kaiju, two other grea told ones, 3 empyreal lords, 3 abyssal lords), Wrath of the Righteous (6 more demon lords), and Mythic Realms (Tar-Baphon, Arazni, and others) all weigh in at a lower weight-class.
As best I can tell, Baba Yaga is intended to be the strongest "mortal" in the entire campaign setting. Any mortal that surpasses her moves right into full-blown god territory and stops being mortal.
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Yeah, I'd allow wish to allow someone who already knows what demi-plane inside of the Hut (remember that the Hut has hundreds, if not thousands, of demiplanes inside of it!) to aim for to get into that demi-plane. Otherwise they'd just wind up inside of the Hut (which can be plane-shifted to).
I'd assume that Baba Yaga would make new demiplanes to at least host her power and her death in. So PCs porting into the island realm where her death was first found would be coming up empty-handed, and realize they need to explore elsewhere.
Whereas I'd assume that Baba Yaga would actually destroy the sanctuary demiplanes the PCs had been to, other than Grandmother's Cauldron, precisely to prevent them from exploiting their knowledge. Why not? Now that they no longer play host to her power, death, life, and blood, what more use does she have for them? What value do they hold beyond sentiment? Does Baba Yaga recognize sentimental value? She will need to hide her power, death, life, and blood somewhere, but would she hide them in the same places?
Furthermore, I'd rule that for the wish to work, the plane you're trying to reach must exist. Wishing to travel to Buyan, if Buyan no longer exists, will not let you get inside the Dancing Hut. To expand upon my earlier remark, a wish might say something like "transport me [and persons A, B, C, etc.] to the island of Buyan within the demiplane of Buyan within the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga" and be expected to work provided Buyan exists. A mythic wish might say something like "transport me [and persons A, B, C, etc.] to the location of Baba Yaga's death" and be expected to work despite being beyond the bounds of a vanilla wish, without risking a perversion of the intent.
As I did not participate in the mythic play tests...the nasty bad mythic tiers did not impact my campaign yesterday...how could they?
The mythic adventures book has not hit my flgs and I can't use what I haven't gone over well before my gaming session.
I repeat the finest advice I have ever gotten from my first dm...George Laking..."Never stat up anyone or thing you do not want your players to kill or destroy!"
Baba Yaga had stats...and with anything involving heroes...ended up in the bone yard...as did an impressive chunk of Siberia!
Heroes kill the bad guys.
But it was an awesome fight!!!!! One for the history books in my games.
Thanks for an awesome adventure and an epic send off for one of my gamers who, due to work, is not with my group for the near/distant future.
Baba Yaga and Cthulhu are the only known CR 30s. The various beings who are getting statted in Mythic Adventures (sample mythic beings), Bestiary 4 (kaiju, two other grea told ones, 3 empyreal lords, 3 abyssal lords), Wrath of the Righteous (6 more demon lords), and Mythic Realms (Tar-Baphon, Arazni, and others) all weigh in at a lower weight-class.
At least one of the Demon Lords in Wrath of the Righteous is going to be CR 30 - the BBEG. Nocticula is as well I think. And Alleran is correct, James Jacobs has mentioned that Pazuzu will also be CR 30 in Bestiary 4.
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I actually like some elements of mythic play, but I'm nervous about elements that make 9th level, reality-altering spells suddenly seem like "oh, just a regular wish? hah! That's just a regular wish, so it doesn't count!"
Slippery slope argument, but down the road I could see "oh, that's just a mythic wish? Can the JV stuff. You have to have a Super-Duper Mythic Wish to get past this here Super-Duper Mythic door."
Demigods should have some sort of "harmful wish prevention" ability or power or contingency, sure, but it really stinks if the hirterto most powerful spell in the universe suddenly just doesn't have enough adjectives in front of it to count.
Mythic seems cool as a power boost concept, but not as a "you must be this mythic to enter" restriction.
If that is your only concern - rest assured. Paizo has made it clear that there are 3 ranks of power - the regular power levels from the core rule book, the mythic power level, which mostly describes super powered entities like demon lords, and then there is the power of gods - which will probably never be given game stats because it's so much above and beyond what anyone else is capable of doing. It's not even remotely comparable enough to host under the same principle rules.
So there should not be a "slippery slope". People always seem to forgot that mythic stuff is incredibly uncommon. Through 99% of all adventures and places, nothing mythic will be found. So when something mythic does finally pop up... it should feel special. The game mechanics should reflect that the PCs are trying to handle something that is beyond their normal experience. Preventing their 9th level, reality altering spells from having full effects against mythic opponents (especially those of beings like Baba Yaga, literally the strongest mortal in existence) is fine. If mythic was only another tacked on power level it wouldn't accomplish it's purpose - to create an distinct gap of power between mythic creatures and non mythic creatures.
I do not see Wish on the list of Mythic spells in the beta-test. Just as an FYI.
Mythic Wish was not in the play-test, but Wish is specifically one of the spells Baba Yaga has the mythic version of (any spell in her spell list with the little "M" next to it).
I assume Mythic Wish is what lets Baba Yaga do things like make permanent versions of limtited duration Grand Hexes.
My bad on the CRs - when Bestiary IV was announced Cthulhu was announced as being the only CR 30 thing in it, and to be representative of what CR 30 entails. If that's changed then that's changed.
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Been looking into the Mythic rules for a wile now and something occured to me.
Shouldn't Baba Yaga's armor bonus be +15? She gets 13 armor from Enduring Armor (3 base + 10 from mythic tier), however she has the Mythic Paragon feat which increases her tier by 2 for determining effects, so it should be 15 (3 base + 10 tier + 2 mythic paragon).
I assume mythic paragon can boost you over the normal maximum or it would be pointless to have at tier 10.
Also, has anyone thought about having the players assist newly crowned Anastasia in slaying a linnorm in order to mark her right to rule (as per Ulfen tradition?).I'm sure Turin has.
Sure have. ;-)
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Been looking into the Mythic rules for a wile now and something occured to me.
Shouldn't Baba Yaga's armor bonus be +15? She gets 13 armor from Enduring Armor (3 base + 10 from mythic tier), however she has the Mythic Paragon feat which increases her tier by 2 for determining effects, so it should be 15 (3 base + 10 tier + 2 mythic paragon).
I assume mythic paragon can boost you over the normal maximum or it would be pointless to have at tier 10.
It looks like I missed applying Mythic Paragon to her enduring armor. Good catch!
Sure have. ;-)Also, has anyone thought about having the players assist newly crowned Anastasia in slaying a linnorm in order to mark her right to rule (as per Ulfen tradition?).I'm sure Turin has.
Fafnheir? xD
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It looks like I missed applying Mythic Paragon to her enduring armor. Good catch!Been looking into the Mythic rules for a wile now and something occured to me.
Shouldn't Baba Yaga's armor bonus be +15? She gets 13 armor from Enduring Armor (3 base + 10 from mythic tier), however she has the Mythic Paragon feat which increases her tier by 2 for determining effects, so it should be 15 (3 base + 10 tier + 2 mythic paragon).
I assume mythic paragon can boost you over the normal maximum or it would be pointless to have at tier 10.
No big deal, she's almost impossible to hit already, I doubt that +2 is going to make much difference.
By the way, what were Baba Yaga's starting statistics? I'm trying to reverse engineer them, but I can't quite figure out how you did it without having any inherent bonuses (but the stat block doesn't mention any) even with the advanced template and 25 point buy.
I almost feel like we can assume a +5 Inherent Bonus to every stat for Baba Yaga.
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I'm at home and not near my notes right now, but I did check on what I had her base stats as. Her Intelligence started at 18 and then got her human bonus. Thing is, it looks like I calculated 23 points instead of 25 (where I lost that 2 points I'll never know).
Also, yes she has used wish to max out her inherent bonuses. Don't know how that explanation went missing from the statblock.
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I'm at home and not near my notes right now, but I did check on what I had her base stats as. Her Intelligence started at 18 and then got her human bonus. Thing is, it looks like I calculated 23 points instead of 25 (where I lost that 2 points I'll never know).
Also, yes she has used wish to max out her inherent bonuses. Don't know how that explanation went missing from the statblock.
Ah, so she has a +5 inherent bonus to every stat? That should certainly have been in the statblock, hence my confusion.
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Speaking of Baba Yaga, unless I'm missing something she has twice the number of Mythic spells she should. She took Mythic Spell Lore once and never took the Mythic Spellcasting universal path ability, so she should have ten Mythic spells. Instead, she has twenty.
She also took Accursed Critical without taking Critical Focus.
Speaking of Baba Yaga, unless I'm missing something she has twice the number of Mythic spells she should. She took Mythic Spell Lore once and never took the Mythic Spellcasting universal path ability, so she should have ten Mythic spells. Instead, she has twenty.
She knows every spell and then some O_o its Baba Yaga =P
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She knows every spell and then some O_o its Baba Yaga =P
I'll concede on the principle, but most of the other stuff she gets away with is covered in special entries in her statblock. Things like having extremely high stats, symbol of death spells inscribed on her person and the ability to create artifacts all get entries as special one-of-a-kind abilities Baba Yaga gets because she's just that awesome. So why don't these aberrations? Either there was an oversight like her inherent bonuses not being mentioned, or there's some explanation that I'm missing. I just want to know which :)
Baba Yaga has one last Mythic ability that was hidden. "Mythic Cheater" - it's only allowed for 10th Tier characters. ;)
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Speaking of Baba Yaga, unless I'm missing something she has twice the number of Mythic spells she should. She took Mythic Spell Lore once and never took the Mythic Spellcasting universal path ability, so she should have ten Mythic spells. Instead, she has twenty.
She also took Accursed Critical without taking Critical Focus.
Those are errors. I miscounted path abilities, but I can't find where Critical Focus slipped out between my working files and the end of it all. I think I miscounted path abilities because I wasn't originally going to include sanctum (since she can already sort of do stuff like that), but there were discussions about how it made sense as something for her to have almost like it was a precursor to building out the hut in extraordinary ways (which is also why she has the witch's hut hex).
Sorry for the errors folks. That was probably the most complicated statblock I've ever done (and for a long while I was kinda against even giving her a statblock, but I gave in to reason). :)
I'd joke you should have used Hero Labs to build her, but they didn't have the Mythic Rules back then so it still would have been problematic. ;)
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We have our own in-house tools we use for stuff like that, but at that time they weren't even updated. Mythic Adventures was going to print at the same time as this, so I had to wait for the final version of that book to make the final version of this statblock. It was crazy times. :)
Or maybe extend her statblock beyond the two or so pages? I think Baba Yaga deserves more and one of the bestiary creatures could have been snipped.
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There really wasn't much more to expand as far as a statblock goes. Adding the few bits I missed would only account for a line or two, and really once a statblock goes over two pages, that gets unruly. The rest of the article was the star there as far as how to adapt Baba Yaga to your adventures. I doubt many people will actually use the statblock in their campaigns, but if folks have campaigns going up against CR 30 witches, they're already doing more than what's in that statblock.
And while I adore Dear Grandmother (and would love to expand on her over time), the Bestiary only had four monsters, and as long as I'm at the helm of the back half of Pathfinder, there will always be at least four monsters in the Bestiary. :)
especially such awesome monsters, i love the baba yaga piece and the bestiary monsters awesome job! i can only imagine the difficulty involved with her stat block.
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Those are errors. I miscounted path abilities, but I can't find where Critical Focus slipped out between my working files and the end of it all. I think I miscounted path abilities because I wasn't originally going to include sanctum (since she can already sort of do stuff like that), but there were discussions about how it made sense as something for her to have almost like it was a precursor to building out the hut in extraordinary ways (which is also why she has the witch's hut hex).
Thanks for the clarification. If a GM wished to "correct" those errors, putting aside the issue of whether that is the correct course of action, which feat would you advise she swap out for Critical Focus? Which currently Mythic spells would you advise become non-Mythic?
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A simple fix would be to drop Accursed Critical and take Extra Path Ability again and take mythic spellcasting as the chosen ability (which I meant to choose instead of sanctum). Accursed Critical, while cool and totally in flavor with Baba Yaga, isn't as good as having some mythic spell choices.
Now that would be an epic Boon.
Though let's be honest. If the PCs haven't been multiclassing, then by that point a cleric would have True Resurrection which could bring her back... or a Wizard with Wish.
Couldn't Baba Yaga, as part of her wish granting as a thank you...bring back Nadya's daughter?
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The problem is, you get one Boon per party.
So unless Nadya is willing to become one of the Riders (and thus not see her family at all in all likelihood) she's not going to get this out of Baba Yaga.
Of course, any party who actually asks this as their boon from Baba Yaga on the part of Nadya would, in my opinion, be a group I would be absolutely proud of as a GM.
Especially as it's not like asking Baba Yaga to leave Golarion forever or to create their own Dancing Hut or any of a dozen other things they could do. And I could very well see Baba Yaga looking puzzled and asking "why?"
Of course, no matter how selfless their reason, I suspect Baba Yaga would see the most cynical aspect of it and assume the worse. Because that is her nature. But it would still be a Crowning Moment of Awesome Heartwarming. =^-^=
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Couldn't Baba Yaga, as part of her wish granting as a thank you...bring back Nadya's daughter?
** spoiler omitted **
My party told Nadya to go back to her sons at the uncle's request. I had her break down crying begging them to let her come along so that baba yaga could get her daughter back. The Cleric (soon to reclass warpriest I'm sure) was having a romantic relationship with her and he may wish for that. We shall see.
Has anyone reviewed the final fight with Elvanna and found it... Not quite as mythic as it should be? For some reason I want the combat to spill through the mirror portal and into the royal palace. And I might want to take on a few mythic tiers and maybe a few additional allies. Thoughts?
Well, if it spills into the Royal Palace, there's always Princess Cassioche, Elvanna's daughter, who no doubt supports Elvanna's bid for Ruler of Everything. (The better to take it from her later.) She has other daughters, surely, and other loyal guards in the palace. The Winter Wolf Barbarian comes to mind as a great ally in this fight.
I actually really like this idea. There's a good chance I'll end up using it. When the point in the fight comes that Elvanna realizes she may be outmatched, she steps through the mirror into her palace, triggering a phase two in the fight. Now the party has to stop her before she reaches her own sanctum and raises an entire nation against them.
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Especially since she should know that, at this point, only gods, demi-gods or her mother can actually stop the ritual. There's not actually any reason for her to be in the room anymore, except as a nervous busy-body.
Remember that the mirror gate only functions for her, so your players will have to find their own way to the palace (which is currently at least a couple solar systems away. A plane shift (to get from the Wandering Hut plane to Golarion on the Material plane), then a teleport to Whitethrone is within their abilities. If not, they can always call for Zilvazaraat to help them. They've got two days to figure it out, although the longer they wait the more likely they'll be outmatched.
They'd probably be best to dispel the gate as well, otherwise Elvanna can just step through it again when they finally reach her, and they'll have to plane shift back to the Hut...enduring Dear Grandmother's scathing remarks the whole way.
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The nuckelavees are confusing to me. Their purpose is to destroy creature who corrupt the world (by inflicting corruption on them and their surroundings)... but I don't see how the maftets could instill that rage.
They seem to have a vendetta against the Queen herself, threatening to corrupt all she holds dear if she doesn't acquiesce to their demands.
Fro the Crone Queens. There are 4 described fairly uniquely but my party has 6 players so I need 2 more to awaken each one more powerful then the previous. For the 5th and 6th I will add he simple advanced template.
So are some good ideas for adding uniqueness:
The 5th is Karina who has a famous son General Chernim. 1/day she can summon a skeletal champion fighter/13 as a 1/rd action as summon monster - 9 as a spell like ability, CL 20 can use the stats from the D20 site (https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/bestiary/unique-monsters/cr-14 /skeleton-warrior-human-skeleton-warrior-fighter-13-tohc)
The 6th is Sacha, who is known for raising taxes. So she gets Envious Urge 3/day as a spell like ability DC 21 3/day.
Also note...you can put Rasputin's daughter on the throne by recommending it to Baba Yaga...this does not cost your boon. She IS eligible as Baba's Granddaughter, so she's the 'suitable candidage' Baba Yaga is looking for.
THEN you use the Boon to ask her to leave Golarion and never return, insuring that Anastasia is not subject to the fate of her aunts.
==Aelryinth
The number of boons isn't specified, but seems to be one by PC unless Baba Yaga get pissed off.
Actually, it's just one. The entire group gets one. That's all. However, if they agree to become the three Horsemen of Baba Yaga for 100 years, they each can gain one Boon (one per Horseman).
i'm letting each PC choose a Boon, my wife wants her own dancing hut, my daughter wants to be a Horsewoman, so it would be rude to make them choose just one :) plus its all just for fun anyhow:)
One of the text mention: "Regardless, unless the PCs attempt some double cross, Baba Yaga is true to her word and grants the PCs the boons they...", kinda suggesting it's one by PC.
