So, I walked into my FLGS on Monday and what did he have but a copy of Mythic Adventures.I bought it out of curiosity more than anything,and it helps keep him in business.
Reading it I got the feeling that certain creatures in RotRL need to use these rules so I'm experimenting with them starting with Wet Papa Grazuul at Skulls Crossing.
If it works then I'll use more Mythic foes but my party walks through encounters enough for me not to want to make them Mythic also.
Has anyone else had the same feeling?
I'm thinking about doing it myself. I just recently started RoTRL and my players pretty much cakewalked the first few fights (I think the worst it got was the fighter who got really unlucky vs. one of the early 'boss-fights' and got dropped to 2 hp), pretty much ending them inside of 3-4 rounds with no real danger to themselves. I'm considering applying a few touches of mythic just to bring the campaign more in line with a proper adventure, and not a stroll through free-cake valley.
That's an interesting idea! I have a group of 5 players, (also, Leadership, 2 Animal Companions, Improved Familiar...) 25 point buys, optimized builds (Uh, well, I helped half of them build their characters)
...so I've been applying different templates to the monster just to make the battles more interesting; higher AC, up to double HP, more damage... Whatever to make it more engaging. Oh, and just plain more bad guys. To help match the action economy.
But yeah, trying out mythic rules sounds interesting! I've had half a mind to pick up the pdf and that's certainly one more reason to.
I'm starting a Mythic Runelords tomorrow, I won't be making everything mythic, but the encounters will be buffed to compensate for the party's extra power (for example, the initial goblin raid is going to have the party fighting all 30 of the raiding goblins, not at once, but in larger waves than the 11 or so they fight in the base adventure. Not CR appropriate, but it's the day's only combat and they're going to treat it as such. Plus, it'll really cement the whole "Heroes of Sandpoint" thing). I've remade Nualia into Antipaladin 2/Cleric 5//Heirophant 3, gave Korovus, Ripnugget, Malfeshnekor, and The Sandpoint Devil into mythic creatures. I'll post how things go when we get to those encounters.
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So I started a mythic RotRL during the play test for Mythic and we are about to start book three this coming Tuesday. Something important to consider that if everyone has mythic no-one has mythic. I've kept it to the main bosses of each book having mythic so:
For book two I had Aldern, Justice Ironbriar and Xanesha mythic. The fights against Aldern and Ironbriar were difficult however the Xanesha I'd used proved to almost be too difficult, I used Tangent 101's Xanesha that's posted here in these forums and then applied the Divine monster template. I toned down Xanesha during the fight and still someone died.
Anyways, the way I am doing it is the players get a Mythic Tier after each book, I am not really role-playing it that much more just treating it like a level up in awesome powers. It also gives my players an easier time kind of figuring out their builds and how they are going to go about it.
Its important to remember that while mythic gives players some cool abilities or some awesome feats it doesn't increase their saves/bab/skills. Instead of adding AC to creatures I've found adding DR has made more a difference. Scaling the encounters by increasing teh AC means creatures will become unhittable in certain circumstances but adding DR 5/7/10/- can knock out a strong amount of damage but still let the players have hope because they are hitting the creature.
I'm actually backpedaling slightly on my incorporation of Mythic... but only so I can introduce it at a thematic moment. I've decided rather than using the Mythic mini-module in the Mythic Adventures book to instead craft my own scenario. This is partly because that module gives everyone three Mythic Tiers, which may be confusing to my players (none of whom had played Pathfinder prior to my campaign) especially as I'd planned to leave the module by taking away two of the Mythic Tiers. In the end I realized this would be too confusing for everyone. Instead...
Any of my players on here? Scat! You want to be surprised, don't you? :P ;)
The party will, after dealing with events in Magnimar, get a call from a messenger on horseback who just about killed his horse galloping all the way to Sandpoint. The problem? Someone broke down the wall the town had put in to keep people out of the Runewell area. Further, when the Sheriff and a half dozen guards went down to investigate, they were hit with magic and only the Sheriff made it back - barely alive.
When the party goes into the dungeon under Sandpoint, they'll be met by a half dozen zombies (the dead guards), several monsters (I've not yet decided what - maybe hobgoblins or bugbears with class levels), Tsuto and Lyrie... and Nualia who'll enter the Runewell as the party is fighting the cannon fodder. (I'm thinking if Tsuto is badly hurt, Lyrie will try to dimension door out with him.)
The Runewell will explode with power, spraying everyone with its contents. At that moment, a Half-Fiend Nualia will emerge... attack the group... and then a couple rounds later a child will emerge as well. Nualia will be forced to flee, while the glow of the child ends up empowering the group.
The only problem is how to keep the Cohorts from being empowered. I may kill them, and then have them brought back to life as if by Breath of Life spell by the child - who is the remnants of Nualia's innocence. Because they'd died, they don't become Mythic.
Hmm...
Also, ** spoiler omitted **
-Skeld
Yes, but I do have a reason behind it.
As a result, I'm even setting up for the future with the Scribbler. The Sheriff DIDN'T lead from the front in that situation because, hey, last time he did he nearly died.
Where is this FLGS? I can find no game store in UK that is selling Mythic Adventures
Leisure Games seem to have it, as do Orc's Nest. Both in London, both do mail order.
Sadly my game fell through due to a player deciding he didn't want to bother showing up, so my game hasn't started yet. Report delayed for the time being.
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I'm planning on adding Mythic into my RotRL game, but introducing it only as part of the story. Players will get ascension when they destroy the lesser rune well of wrath, then (possibly) additional tiers when they destroy the various sihedron amulets they find.
Mythic enemies will be major named NPCs affected by rune magic and other major beasties (like the Sandpoint Devil). I'll also post on the choices we're making as we advance. We're scheduled to start the campaign in a week.
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My players are getting close to where I'm going to add Mythic to the game... more information on this other thread (with the Spoiler tag!).
Alright, so a brief rundown of how my Mythic Runelords has gone. My party is currently just past the Catacombs and going to take on Thistletop after a good night's sleep.
It started out as a 3-PC 2 man party, but they wanted the extra power of a 4th PC so I let the one controlling only 1 make another to join in later.
Since this was a mythic test and none of us like the rocket tag that is level 1, I started all 3 PCs out as mythic and adjusted the encounter to compensate. I had each PC take on a group of 3 goblins and a warchanter in the initial assault, and I increased the various goblin groups numbers. They were all slaughtered without too much issue (Mythic Spell Focus Sleep from the wizard, the paladin rolled stupidly high as that player always does, and the ranger struggled a bit due to low rolls but wasn't losing). To spice up the final confrontation at Die Dog, Die, I made the commando a level 2 ranger tier 1 champion. He ended up bringing the paladin down in one turn, but not killing her and the ranger and wizard took out him and his companions without any further losses.
Moving on to the crypt, I changed things up and left 2 flaming skeletons and a plague ogre zombie down there. The paladin nearly one shot the ogre (though that was all because I'm pretty sure that player has cheat dice and Smite rather than mythic) and the wizard wiped out the skeletons. The ogre got a retaliatory shot that really hurt the pally before she finished it off and the party split up to take care of non combat events in the town.
In the glassworks, I upped the number of initial goblins to 8, but thanks to a surprise round the wizard put all of them to sleep before they got a turn. I added 2 goblins to the Tsuto encounter, but they died before Tsuto was found and the paladin player being paranoid and terrible at RPing paladins attacked Tsuto before she asked any questions and just assumed he was the enemy. Surviving the attack (barely) he started bluffing really well and bought time to exploit an opening and escape down the smuggler tunnel (the ranger ended up getting 2 shots off before he got away, but he missed the first one and the second got blocked by deflect arrows).
Finding their way down into the Catacombs, they pushed through everything without much issue, despite me increasing most of the encounter creature numbers. The sinspawn never landed a hit, the zombies were no threat, etc. I made Erylium and Koruvus mythic though. Koruvus was dealt with in a single round, but Erylium caused problems. Between mythic dodge, summoning, invisibility, and the mythic (advanced sinspawn guardian 1) sinspawn guard she had, they struggled. I think the wizard ended up doing more damage to the party than anyone else (a 4d4 Burning Hands to destroy the summoned swarm) but the quasit just refused to die. Ultimately the fight took about 4 hours to complete, but the party did it without much real difficulty.
I hope my summary can help someone with their own Mythic Rise of the Runelords, but I'm afraid my party tends to be a bit on the high power scale when it comes to raw damage. Not optimized theoretically, just the paladin player is a power gamer and can't break out of that mindset, so it makes making challenging encounters, well, challenging.