Combat balance in mythic gameplay - Ongoing campaign coverage


Wrath of the Righteous

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Krinn wrote:

Hmmm, I don't think you can get more than 1 bonus action with amazing initiative... in fact "You can't gain an extra action in this way more than once per round."

That said, I banned the usage for amazing initiative to get extra actions (mythic haste too) since the action economy is so strongly in the hands of the PCs (7 of them) that they don't need any extras...

Actually he used his Champion ability to get the extra action to move and attack, but he shouldn't have been able to use that, either, since he had activated Smite Evil on the same round. So, yeah, my bad on overlooking that during play. It's all pretty academic, anyway, the next character in line would have killed Mistress Anemora for sure.


captain yesterday wrote:
Krinn wrote:

Hmmm, I don't think you can get more than 1 bonus action with amazing initiative... in fact "You can't gain an extra action in this way more than once per round."

That said, I banned the usage for amazing initiative to get extra actions (mythic haste too) since the action economy is so strongly in the hands of the PCs (7 of them) that they don't need any extras...

egads! 7!

good lord you're even more a glutton for punishment then Magnuskn:-P

Yeah, what can I say... I feel bad at turning down new players at my table :)

However I will have to make a strict maximum of 5 players in the future...

Part of me wants to find a way to eliminate the Mythic part of this game, I may even have a way in-story to do it (basically, they find and awaken Aroden by lending him their Mythic Powers), but then again it's all a "who cares anymore" and just let the players feel awesome Mythically curbstomping anything, while also fearing for their lives from time to time.

Note to self for the future: NEVER allow a touch AC 18-20/x3 melee weapon ever again (monowhip), especially in the hands of a swashbuckler! :)

WotR has become the crazy session, I don't even enforce wealth by level anymore since really the party could just have a masterwork dagger each and still slaughter everyone.
As an experiment, I'm also running 4-people Iron Gods and that's still sane... I even risked TPK multiple times, last one being 3 trolls ambushing the 4th level party and since they didn't flee outright as they should, they lost 2 party members... good for them that the survivors came back to recover a piece for reincarnation.


While my players were on Tier 1, I forbid the extra action for Mythic. I also eliminated the Initiative bonus. In fact, I've done my best to nerf Mythic despite the fact I like it. It is just... not well designed. And this is absolutely tragic. It had great potential. But the failure to account for higher level play (and the failure to ask players to create high Tier/level characters to see where the game breaks) makes Mythic into something that just doesn't work once you get to the third Tier from the sounds of things.

If I ever did run WotR, I would be rewriting encounters to begin with... and if I did allow Mythic it would be in the form of regenerating Hero Points. I might allow some of the other Mythic Path abilities, but I suspect I'd end up rewriting the entire Mythic ruleset so to balance it out.

Then again, one thing I stated early on was that the Mythic Re-Feats are often broken, and was a lost opportunity for truly Mythic feats rather than enhancing existing ones.


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Session of December 2nd 2014

Five players in attendance.

Well, I managed to get a challenging fight out of the Soul Foundry, by simply having Khoramzadeh, Terendelev and the two other NPC's which were inserted by Scorpion (the Son of Shax and Shaohaz) ambush the party before the Soul Foundry itself.

Three PC's dead if not for Augmented Mythic Deathless, one really dead. One Miracle cast to get them fighting again, the dead PC only being temporarily alive (she had been slain by a death gaze after being drained of 17 CON). She, the Ranger, was brought back via a True Ressurection scroll they had lying around.

Khoramzadeh died of massive damage (yay, rolling a one ^^), Terendelev was caught in big K's death throes and died, the Son of Shax escaped and will appear again in Threshhold.

I'm wrapping up this campaign in two sessions. We'll be having a break between the holidays, so I want to start out the next year with RotRL.

I guess I'll go descriptive for most of the upper level of Threshhold, have Diurgez Broodlord and some other dudes confront them before going through the Worldwound and then have Areelu and Deskari confront them down at the roots. Those will be two quite involved fights and I hope to have the time to finish out some of the descriptive stuff, too.

After that, a review of the AP in a new thread.

The Exchange

magnuskn wrote:
Yeah, there is probably a story we never heard about how that swordsman was a demigod come down to challenge Indy. :p

The true story behind that is pretty funny. Harrison Ford was down with some kind of sickness when shooting this scene, and just didn't have the energy to pull off the kind of extended boss fight encounter that was intended in the script. After consulting with Spielberg, they decided to go with the gunshot instead. Kind of funny how some germ improved such a classic movie.


magnuskn wrote:

Session of December 2nd 2014

Five players in attendance ...

After that, a review of the AP in a new thread.

Almost done, eh?

Good luck with the last one, Deskari (and the one from scorpion) è a total beast ...
Are you gonna have also 4 advanced Balors?


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Maybe, depending on how many other opponents I am cramming into the roots. After all, Areelu will be there already. Also, Advanced Balors are kind of a joke at this point, even four of them. They die from one critical hit and our Ranger can kill two of them per round.


magnuskn wrote:
Maybe, depending on how many other opponents I am cramming into the roots. After all, Areelu will be there already. Also, Advanced Balors are kind of a joke at this point, even four of them. They die from one critical hit and our Ranger can kill two of them per round.

Then i have a suggestion for you. Remenber the pit of maggots that goes around all the evil fortress? Well ... take the chosen of deskari and gave him the worm that walks template.

The only difference is that, every time it dies, if his remains falls in the pit of maggots, he is rejuvinated in 1d4-1 rounds. the only way for your pcs to completely defeat it is to destroy his integrity and then seal its remains into a force effect and completely fry them.

If monsters die easily, let the respawn. it's up to the pcs avoid that they return.


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I'm fine with ending the campaign the way it has gone for the last months. This session just yesterday was pretty good, while the victory for the PC's was scarcely in doubt, it really took a toll on their resources. Since they are on a timer, this may prove to be an impediment in their final fights.

Silver Crusade

Seannoss wrote:
Yup. I'm hoping that less and less people talk about Mythic Adventures and it gets swept under the rug. Then we can all move on to something better.

I think that would be a bad move, that particular system deserves a fix.


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I'll happily lock the book away forever. I think level 1-20 are epic enough for everything. If the Paizo writers wouldn't enslave themselves to needing to fill XP allotments, they could do final AP modules with levels 17-20, which, believe me, are epic and complex enough in themselves to satisfy all the people wanting a high-powered experience.


Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Doing away with XP would be an incredible thing. XP is so archaic. I like what the APs do. Tell the GM that the players should be about so and so level at this point. Now, if only they would take the next step and create less encounters in the APs. But, make the remaining ones more meaningful.

Not every damn room has to have an encounter.

I will be running this campaign for some friends in a few months. I will not be using XP. I will be cutting encounters. I want quality encounters, not quantity.

I also plan on going full bore with mythic. I will keep a running tab of how much damage is dished out round by round in my fights. My enemies will have no hit points written down. Fights end when I feel like it. Or if a player happens to pull off some spectacular moment.


why would you torture yourself so, there are so many great Adventure Paths why not choose one of them


Mogloth wrote:
Doing away with XP would be an incredible thing. XP is so archaic.

Don't see the point of making such a drastic change, honestly, since they already give you what you want at the beginning of every adventure anyhow. There are those of us that still enjoy XP, actually. I know my players very much enjoy the tangible reward at the end of every game.

Additionally, as mentioned already, XP doesn't hinder anything when it comes to progression through adventures. Make more higher CR fights instead of all these APL -2 ones we're getting, include more story awards for roleplaying XP, and you could easily get up to 20th in six books (if so desired). Again, this matters not to me, as I have no problem with them cutting it off at 17th or so at AP's end.

I do so love archaic things! History is awesome!


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Sub-Creator wrote:
Additionally, as mentioned already, XP doesn't hinder anything when it comes to progression through adventures. Make more higher CR fights instead of all these APL -2 ones we're getting, include more story awards for roleplaying XP, and you could easily get up to 20th in six books (if so desired). Again, this matters not to me, as I have no problem with them cutting it off at 17th or so at AP's end.

Sure, if the writers at Paizo would look at things this way. However, they obviously do not, as evidenced by comments by James Jacobs how XP totals prevent them from doing AP's to higher levels and how there are some gamers who get upset at "free XP" for not-fighting encounters.

And I am not that big a fan of needing to go to level 20, either, because as soon as level nine spells become available, things get wonky. The fight from this week in the AP featured three uses of the Time Stop spell, after which our Sorcerer was so buffed to the gills with mythic spells that he was basically untouchable.

But my point was that those three last levels would suffice for any type of campaign to give it the final "epic" touch, outside of maybe killing gods. I'm pretty sure that normal level 20 characters would have a decent shot at killing Deskari as he is presented in the book.

Sub-Creator wrote:
I do so love archaic things! History is awesome!

As a historian, I'm fully in agreement that history is awesome. However, if people enslave themselves to following archaic rules which make it impossible to get a better experience, then that becomes a problem.


One of my players suggested to ditch mythic entirely and make up my own "mythic" cool stuff, some special power that is specific for each character that is not limited by existing rules (that don't work), doesn't break the system and lets each player feel "mythic" in its own right. I already have my own ideas to make it so, but they are incompatible with mythic as is, if just for power creep.
I hope that everyone eventually will be ok with this so we can delete mythic from the campaign and use regenerating hero points (max = 3+"tier", regain 1 per day) and alternate ascension instead.
I wish I started WotR a couple months later so I would have known beforehand.

I agree that XPs are useless if you know the system.
Unexperienced players might need them because hard encounters effectively grant the correct amount of XPs toward next level, but the more a player knows the system, the less challenging an average encounter becomes, but it still would grant the same XPs (theoretically) despite it being much easier.
An easier encounter should give less XPs, even if it's the same encounter on paper but against differently experienced players.

That's why I would use "number of challenging encounters" instead of XPs and eyeball from there. Different players get different encounters, but the "challenge" should be the same difficulty. I do think that this approach is more advanced though, and an experienced GM doesn't need a book to tell him how to do that. The same isn't true for an unexperienced GM, so here's the XP table.

Silver Crusade

Call me crazy, but since high level play is already pretty broken (at least the CR system tends to break down) a campagin from level1/tier1 to level 11-15/tier 5-10 sounds really good to me, once mythic is fixed. Of couse such an adventure has to be written with mythic in mind, and learn from the WotR mistakes.


Normal levels are broken by level 17, but Mythic is broken by tier 3...


@Krinn: You can find Mythic Feats that I created which aren't just reskinned Pathfinder Feats in the WotR forum somewhere. That might be a handy starting place.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I like your idea Krinn, and my gaming group has done similar things to that in the past. Its a good balance and still lets your PCs feel special as they can do something others can't.

And you are crazy Sebastian :)

I'm curious too. Is your want of more mythic coming from a GM perspective, player, story.... or? This is from curiosity and not trying to start anything negative.

Silver Crusade

Seannoss wrote:

I like your idea Krinn, and my gaming group has done similar things to that in the past. Its a good balance and still lets your PCs feel special as they can do something others can't.

And you are crazy Sebastian :)

I'm curious too. Is your want of more mythic coming from a GM perspective, player, story.... or? This is from curiosity and not trying to start anything negative.

Low level Pathfinder tends to suffer from a distinct lack of options, at least compared to high level play, obviously magic item availability is a big factor here, and I think mythic rules can help here.

Unfortunately we didn't get a mythic option for players to avoid the Christmas tree effect, but the rules certainly have potential.

And frankly, some abilities are just fun, or make the game better.

Obviously something like mythic power attack would not survive unchanged, but other fun abilities just might ^^

What can I say, I have watched a lot of anime in my time^^


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I like the flavor stuff like divine source, there is unfortunately too little of this.

I also love the cool stuff like the one where you throw people thru walls or the spray blood one, or the one where you can reposition people, seems like you could do a lot of three stooges type schtick with that:-)

Dark Archive

So what I'm seeing implied by this experience is to run players at non-mythic, but accelerated (and possibly ad-hoc) XP to well beyond level 20.

Keeping the monsters mythic seems fine, for plot necessity if for no other reason.

Is that the right practical upshot for a potential DM to take?


Sarcastro wrote:

So what I'm seeing implied by this experience is to run players at non-mythic, but accelerated (and possibly ad-hoc) XP to well beyond level 20.

Keeping the monsters mythic seems fine, for plot necessity if for no other reason.

Is that the right practical upshot for a potential DM to take?

I might actually go the other way. There are several complaints about numerous encounters with the CR under the party's effective level. This begins, by most reports, in the basement of Drezen. If the party is a level or two behind where the module recommends, some of these underpowered encounters remain challenging to the party.

So, if you slow experience, but keep mythic in place, you may still have challenging situations.

Take this with a grain of salt because I am only just finishing up book 2.


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No, the problem is that party damage vastly outpaces monster HP, to the factor that one critical hit will do something like 500-600 damage from a martial character and casters can generate something like 500-1200 damage, depending on the spell. Slowing XP progression won't solve that. The math behind the entire system is atrocious and it is a prime example of bad design.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
magnuskn wrote:
No, the problem is that party damage vastly outpaces monster HP, to the factor that one critical hit will do something like 500-600 damage from a martial character and casters can generate something like 500-1200 damage, depending on the spell. Slowing XP progression won't solve that. The math behind the entire system is atrocious and it is a prime example of bad design.

Sounds like the wrap up thread has almost started. Damage can be kept lower by removing a few mythic feats and possibly by strict RAW interpretation. But even 'only' 200-300 damage will make for short encounters as printed.


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Session of December 9th 2014

Four players in attendance. Hopefully next week it'll be all six, since it will be the last session of the campaign.

The party entered Threshhold and I basically handwaved every combat encounter other than the one I had prepared. It's a bit of a shame about the three Raspers and three ancient black dragons, but I want to get this over with.

Half the session was looking through Threshholds different rooms, casting dimensional locks and collecting information and treasure. The combat encounter was the party against Diurgez Broodlord, a veteran Devastator, the Echo of Deskari and some Fallen Angel which had been prepared by Scorpion.

Aaand that fight was pretty anticlimactic. The Sorcerer cast three mythic augmented fireballs in one round (there is some mythic spell from one of the additional books which gives you more swift actions for ability damage) and put out somelike like 1800 damage to three of the four enemies. Diurgez died, the Echo of Deskari died and the Devastator was pretty damaged. Before the round was over, they died, too.

In return, the party ate a lot of damage from Diurgez retributive abilities and the Fallen Angel critted the Sorcerer and then beat the snot out of the Samurai.

The group then proceeded to clear out the rest of Threshhold and is now facing, as a cliffhanger, Areelu Vorlesh, Grimkrak, Korramzadeh reborn and Deskari himself in the roots of Threshhold room. We'll pick up from there next week. I hope to write my review over the weekend and be ready to post it on Tuesday.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Should I ask how someone gets up to a 600 pt fireball? Could see empowered and maximized for around 250... probably some ways to get +1 or 2 per die for another 25 or 50 but that's still not close.

But this shows further oddities in mythic too. Like how the iconic spells of magic missile and fireball are much better than equivalent spells.


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I was totalling damage, not just adding the three fireballs together.

Although if he was really going for it, with Channel Power and Intensify Spell + getting more caster levels, I wouldn't put it beyond the realm of possibility that fireballs for 500+ points of damage would be possible.

Anyway, he used maximised spell and empowered spell with spell perfection and other mythic stuff to get his results. He didn't take Channel Power on purpose, because he thinks it makes damage insanely preposterous.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

That makes more sense. And I agree, channel power bugs me too. Hopefully your review can include a few words about tier abilities not being balanced among themselves or against other classes. Like channel power vs the one that lets you take maximum damage from a spell. I offered that one for free to any PC, no one wanted it.


Augmented mythic maximized empowered fireball: 200 (maximized 20d10) + 10d10 (empowered)

Average damage: 255

Add Channel Power (+50% damage) 300 + 15d10

Average damage: 382.5

=====
Intensified gets a little hairy. In theory, since you're using a mythic surge, you're at CL 22, giving you +2d10. That puts us at 330 + 16.5d10 for an average of 420.75, but I haven't looked up how Intensified interacts with Maximized or Empowered.

But let's go ahead and say it stacks optimally, and the PC has enough feats/traits to get to the dreaded CL25 allowed by Intensified.

That puts us at:
375 + 18.75d10 = 478.125 average damage.

Yep, if they all stack, Magnuskn is right; you can go ahead and roll up a 500 hit point fireball that ignores fire resistance and immunity.

Whee?


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Add a bloodline ability for +1/die too to break 500.


Seannoss wrote:
Add a bloodline ability for +1/die too to break 500.

Especially if they went Orc/Dragon crossblooded.


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Anyway, I'll have to find a way around this, because it'd be a bit anticlimactic if the fight turns out to be "wait for the Sorcerer to get his turn, end fight." ^^


Counterspelling the fireballs or a globe of invulnerability may well help take out fireballs. Or Spell immunity Fireball. It won't stop some other trick but if the player is counting on one spell it will take that out of commision


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Spell immunity wouldn't work but I believe globe would. Not that you can fit many large to gargantuan creatures inside of one.


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I'll have to look it up over the weekend. :)


Seannoss wrote:
Spell immunity wouldn't work but I believe globe would. Not that you can fit many large to gargantuan creatures inside of one.

Why do you believe spell immunity would not work?

It provides immunity to spells below 4th level which SR works against this is a perfect description of the Fireball spell, mythic fireball does not as far as I can see change any of this. A heightened fireball may get around it by boosting to 5th level but I cannot think of any other way around it. I could of course be wrong


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Ooops! Got my mythic spells mixed up. Magic missile goes right past SR, not fireball.

The Exchange

JohnHawkins wrote:
Seannoss wrote:
Spell immunity wouldn't work but I believe globe would. Not that you can fit many large to gargantuan creatures inside of one.

Why do you believe spell immunity would not work?

It provides immunity to spells below 4th level which SR works against this is a perfect description of the Fireball spell, mythic fireball does not as far as I can see change any of this. A heightened fireball may get around it by boosting to 5th level but I cannot think of any other way around it. I could of course be wrong

Spell immunity might not work, depending on RAW vs. RAI when you apply Channel Power

Channel Power wrote:
You gain the ability to channel raw arcane power into a spell. You can also expend one use of mythic power when casting an arcane spell to increase its damage by 50%. If the spell has a duration greater than 1 round, the duration doubles. Any saves required by the spell take a –4 penalty, although for mythic creatures, this penalty is reduced to –2. This spell ignores any spell resistance the targets have, although targets immune to the spell or to magic still retain that protection.
Spell Immunity wrote:
The warded creature is immune to the effects of one specified spell for every four levels you have. The spells must be of 4th level or lower. The warded creature effectively has unbeatable spell resistance regarding the specified spell or spells. Naturally, that immunity doesn't protect a creature from spells for which spell resistance doesn't apply. Spell immunity protects against spells, spell-like effects of magic items, and innate spell-like abilities of creatures. It does not protect against supernatural or extraordinary abilities, such as breath weapons or gaze attacks.

emphasis mine


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Session of December 16th 2014. Final Session.

Aaand we are done. Finally. Six players in attendance, which is good for the end of a campaign.

The session began with the party confronting Deskari, Khoramzadeh reborn, Areelu Vorlesh and her familiar Grimkrak in the roots of Threshhold. I was thinking about adding some balors as trash mobs, but ultimately decided against it, because of time constraints.

The session started with a few harsh words between Deskari and the party and then initiative. The entire opposition used Mythic Improved Initiative, with the Paladin still going first, because he rolled a natural 20 and also had the whole initiative stuff.

Since the party was 200 feet away from everybody (they phased out of the ceiling, with the opponents in three corners of the room), he only cast a buff and tried to get nearer to Khoramzadeh.

Deskari took his turn and used his swarm ability to damage the party. Half of them made the fortitude save of DC 44 to avoid being nauseated. He also cast an area Greater Dispel Magic to debuff the party a bit and then his turn was done. His potential should have been more in melee range (or at least 100 feet range). Areelu got her turn and cast a Horrid Wilting. Sadly all the memorized quickened spells had too short a range. Grimkrak went mythic invisible and started for the Paladin.

And then the Sorcerer got his turn, which pretty much ended the encounter. Using several extended Time Stop spells, he buffed himself to the gills and then cast the following combination (with legal mythic methods, as far as I know):

Greater Dispel Magic + Moment of Greatness to do a targeted dispel on Deskari, dispelling the Greater Spell Immunity, Freedom of Movement and Unholy Aura on Deskari.

Limited Wish to give Deskari a -7 to one save.

Mythic Augmented Maximised Empowered Elemental Disintegrate (2 rays), with Elemental Body and Fiery Body on the Sorcerer, for 2x360 damage + 224 in rolled damage against a DC of 40-something. Rolled high on the first save (the one with a -7 to save, though, so failed that one) and a two on the second save.

Ouch. Deskari had his Demonic Aura still on, reflecting 290 damage (which didn't even came close to killing the Sorcerer), but he fell when the Ranger got her turn and critted him twice with her bow, for 233 damage each, plus a gazillion normal arrows. She even almost killed Areelu with her remaining attacks, including a third critical hit.

The rest was the mop-up, although Khoramzadeh almost managed to filet the Ranger with his one and only full attack.

So, yeah, the campaign ended on a whimper, just as predicted. I'm posting my review thread in a bit, I just need to write down into readable form the short comments my players made when I asked them to do so.

My final words (although I'll happily reply to comments): I wish I never had started this campaign. As far as roleplaying campaigns go, this has been my absolute worst experience as a gamer and I feel like I wasted my time as a GM entirely. I'm not going to do the "I want my last year of game time back!" bit, but I will say that the only good thing I can take from this campaign is that I won't be fooled in the future in running it, because of ignorance.

What I do hope is that people who read this campaign journal will take the correct lesson from all these posts: Don't play Wrath of the Righteous, unless you plan to exclude the mythic rules completely or modify them so heavily that they are unrecognizable.

Peace out.

Scarab Sages

magnuskn wrote:

And then the Sorcerer got his turn, which pretty much ended the encounter. Using several extended Time Stop spells, he buffed himself to the gills and then cast the following combination (with legal mythic methods, as far as I know):

Greater Dispel Magic + Moment of Greatness to do a targeted dispel on Deskari, dispelling the Greater Spell Immunity, Freedom of Movement and Unholy Aura on Deskari.

Limited Wish to give Deskari a -7 to one save.

Mythic Augmented Maximised Empowered Elemental Disintegrate (2 rays), with Elemental Body and Fiery Body on the Sorcerer, for 2x360 damage + 224 in rolled damage against a DC of 40-something. Rolled high on the first save (the one with a -7 to save, though, so failed that one) and a two on the second save.

I think there may have been a problem with how Time Stop worked, but I could be wrong.

Sorcerer's turn:
Standard action: Time Stop
Swift: Quickened ???
Mythic power for another spell: Disintegrate

Deskari should have been immune to the Greater Dispel Magic and Limited Wish during Time Stop.

Time Stop wrote:

While the time stop is in effect, other creatures are invulnerable to your attacks and spells; you cannot target such creatures with any attack or spell. A spell that affects an area and has a duration longer than the remaining duration of the time stop have their normal effects on other creatures once the time stop ends. Most spellcasters use the additional time to improve their defenses, summon allies, or flee from combat.

You cannot move or harm items held, carried, or worn by a creature stuck in normal time, but you can affect any item that is not in another creature's possession.

Now, it's entirely possible there's more that I don't know, and it really probably didn't matter much anyways, but it could have stretched it just a little bit more.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

No, he didn't cast those spells during the multiple Time Stops. He used that time to buff himself up, then readied an action when he came out to use a swift action to cast another spell (Greater Dispel Magic + Moment of Greatness) then the standard action to cast another Time Stop. When he finally was done with that, he cast the Mythic Augmented Maximised Empowered Elemental Disintegrate.


While you're wrapping up, I'm curious: Many people are talking about the "great story line" of WotR as (at least somewhat) making up for the broken mythic rules.

My experience so far is the exact opposite: While the overarching scope of the story is epic ("Close the Worldwound! Kill demon lords!"), the gameplay itself is less-than-satisfying as every book is barely more than a series of dungeon crawls, punctuated by the addition of silly rulesets that don't work well at all (army combat? Performance combat? Bah!).

My Jade Regent group is LOVING exploring the world, finding new cities, discovering the plots therein, and otherwise doing things OTHER than, "Killed that, what's next?"

My WotR group was about ready to abandon the AP before I introduced them to Alushinyrra, breathing some desperately-needed life into the campaign as they get to explore an Abyssal city.

What was your experience vis a vis "Killed that, what's next?" vs. "Let's explore this new and interesting area, and use Diplomacy and cleverness instead of just walking up and killing things?"


Mythic has been sneaking into books that are otherwise standard. Mummy's Mask and Iron Gods has one mythic enemy each in it.


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My friend who ran WotR had a very similar experience to this; he actually cut out the entire last book because he was so burned on the campaign.

Currently, our opinion on Mythic is that it is a great way to give a little extra oomph to a particularly vicious boss, and we have both used it that way a couple times. I do also like Paizo throwing the occasional mythic enemy for the same reason.

I will probably never give my PCs Mythic power, except maybe individual abilities handed out that are appropriate to the characters and not game-breaking.


MannyGoblin wrote:
Mythic has been sneaking into books that are otherwise standard. Mummy's Mask and Iron Gods has one mythic enemy each in it.

Mythic isn't a problem when the players aren't Mythic. I've used Mythic monsters on my Runelords group before I Ascended them (I'll be keeping them at Tier 2 for the rest of the campaign) and it provided them with a tremendous challenge. Of course, part of my problem is the players rolled high stats (some did - I ended up upping everyone else's stats to compensate).

Though I've turned the stat thing around by just adding +3 to each stat for every monster.

So the addition of Mythic foes in MM and IG isn't that big a deal. Indeed, Mythic can boost a lower-level monster so it's an unexpected threat. Just don't let your players get Mythic themselves... or have the Mythic only be temporary.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
NobodysHome wrote:

While you're wrapping up, I'm curious: Many people are talking about the "great story line" of WotR as (at least somewhat) making up for the broken mythic rules.

My experience so far is the exact opposite: While the overarching scope of the story is epic ("Close the Worldwound! Kill demon lords!"), the gameplay itself is less-than-satisfying as every book is barely more than a series of dungeon crawls, punctuated by the addition of silly rulesets that don't work well at all (army combat? Performance combat? Bah!).

My Jade Regent group is LOVING exploring the world, finding new cities, discovering the plots therein, and otherwise doing things OTHER than, "Killed that, what's next?"

My WotR group was about ready to abandon the AP before I introduced them to Alushinyrra, breathing some desperately-needed life into the campaign as they get to explore an Abyssal city.

What was your experience vis a vis "Killed that, what's next?" vs. "Let's explore this new and interesting area, and use Diplomacy and cleverness instead of just walking up and killing things?"

Pretty much the same from my side, although apparently my players had a bit less problems with this aspect than I did. Of course they are the people who can blow up enemies with one attack, so that's that.

But, yes, three of them said that the AP is too heavy on fights and that those fights don't even really matter later on, when mythic really gets ridiculous.

And, btw, Jade Regent is so far my favorite AP, because of the setting and the way you can interact with the world. Book three excepted, which was a dreary slog. I did a review of the AP here, if you are interested.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

And, yes, I think using some mythic monsters as a GM can spice things up. Thing is, mythic monster are way less scary than mythic PC's.


magnuskn wrote:
NobodysHome wrote:

While you're wrapping up, I'm curious: Many people are talking about the "great story line" of WotR as (at least somewhat) making up for the broken mythic rules.

My experience so far is the exact opposite: While the overarching scope of the story is epic ("Close the Worldwound! Kill demon lords!"), the gameplay itself is less-than-satisfying as every book is barely more than a series of dungeon crawls, punctuated by the addition of silly rulesets that don't work well at all (army combat? Performance combat? Bah!).

My Jade Regent group is LOVING exploring the world, finding new cities, discovering the plots therein, and otherwise doing things OTHER than, "Killed that, what's next?"

My WotR group was about ready to abandon the AP before I introduced them to Alushinyrra, breathing some desperately-needed life into the campaign as they get to explore an Abyssal city.

What was your experience vis a vis "Killed that, what's next?" vs. "Let's explore this new and interesting area, and use Diplomacy and cleverness instead of just walking up and killing things?"

btw, Jade Regent is so far my favorite AP, because of the setting and the way you can interact with the world. Book three excepted, which was a dreary slog.

Well as someone living in the Arctic Wasteland myself i would say you (and paizo) nailed it then:) its depressing, and it seems like it never ends!

Trust me, thats the Arctic:)

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