The critical hit deck defuses a lot of critical hits, depending on how you use it. In my group, we used in the last AP in the way that every multiplier gets his own card. That took a lot of ugly critical hits (bows and stuff like that) and turned them into interesting effects. Some lethal, some not so much, some annoying.
The the other group where I am a player, only one multiplier gets a card, the rest happens normally. That adds some flavor, but criticals by axes and bows are still pretty damn deadly.
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When the fall of the dice can quite literally shatter a APL +3 or 4 enemy, something's wrong.
I've seen 300+ damage from my lance charging, smiting paladin player. So I threw road blocks.
He took Burst Through.
Like I stated in another thread, my book 4 PCs took out a Thanatotic Titan. Mythic encounters are hard to make actually mythic.
What the hell was the development team exactly thinking? I think everybody who is reading this has noticed that I am speaking out a lot against the mythic rules, but its stuff like this which justifies it.
You can't expect a group to take mythic opponents seriously when they can one-shot them this easily.I get quite a lot of grief from people who apparently can't conceive of the developers screwing up this much, but the evidence that they have is staring me right in the eye. And, no, that my party is non-standard size and built with 20 points is no valid excuse here. That critical hit would have happened with maybe three points of damage less if I were in the exact parameters the AP expects the party to be and would have one-shotted the mythic Vrock even without the damage it already ate from the ranger (since by the normal parameters his HP would not have been maxed).
Seriously, guys, playtest your systems better, don't put it on us GM's to correct blatant and obvious mistakes like that. Or at least put opposition in those modules which is worth that term.
I don't know what to tell you, other than that I don't think it was because of a lack of playtesting. During the playtest phase I pointed out rather early that the developers were putting too much offense and too little defense into the system. I think they just were too invested in a "Let's make everything better" mindset, and didn't have time to change their design goals. The best we can do for now is just houserule and work around it.
And maybe hope for errata. Oh God please let an errata happen, lol.
When the fall of the dice can quite literally shatter a APL +3 or 4 enemy, something's wrong.
I've seen 300+ damage from my lance charging, smiting paladin player. So I threw road blocks.
He took Burst Through.
Like I stated in another thread, my book 4 PCs took out a Thanatotic Titan. Mythic encounters are hard to make actually mythic.
I heard tales about some characters doing 700 damage in one round, so I hope that I know what I'm getting into. However, I am at the moment quite shocked about the absurd damage coming so soon after things still seemed more or less balanced only a few weeks ago.
I don't know what to tell you, other than that I don't think it was because of a lack of playtesting. During the playtest phase I pointed out rather early that the developers were putting too much offense and too little defense into the system. I think they just were too invested in a "Let's make everything better" mindset, and didn't have time to change their design goals. The best we can do for now is just houserule and work around it.
And maybe hope for errata. Oh God please let an errata happen, lol.
Yeah, I guess so. But thanks for your efforts during playtesting, I am sure that a lot of those flaws were seen and pointed out. The developers often are not very good at applying feedback about the more egregiously abusive new rules they put out. :-/
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You might want to put a smiley behind statements like the first one, people who aren't aware of the context you said it in might take it as an insult. :p
I hope that the nerfs to mythic power I have done in my campaign might make recharging wands for profit impractical.
Magnus, was your Paladin using Litany of Righteousness in addition to Smite/Mythic Power Attack/Mythic Critical? What exactly was he using during his attack? Might help to isolate the damage options.
I'm assuming the double PA from Mythic Power Attack is one of the big problems; but being a Paladin might be one of the key factors in your issue.
Just Divine Favor + Smite + Mythic Power Attack + Mythic Improved Critical. I think he might have activated his Divine Bond for some extra damage, too. And since he hit his first attack directly as a crit, he got to double his smite damage for that attack, too.
But the damage would have been only about 40 points lower if it had been a fighter or ranger and he even only used a one-handed weapon. The problem is not with the class, but with the mythic feats.
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What weapon's he using? Long sword? Smite would add around 20 damage on the first attack, multiplied to 60. So in the instance of a paladin smithing an outsider the effect of a criteria is extremely exaggerated. I'm curious how the damage gets up that high. Even mythic power attack only adds 9 damage at level 10, assuming they're at the recommended level. I'm running the fame now and, while they aren't ifar into book 3 I haven't seen a lot if issues...yet.
I don't know what to tell you, other than that I don't think it was because of a lack of playtesting. During the playtest phase I pointed out rather early that the developers were putting too much offense and too little defense into the system. I think they just were too invested in a "Let's make everything better" mindset, and didn't have time to change their design goals. The best we can do for now is just houserule and work around it.
And maybe hope for errata. Oh God please let an errata happen, lol.
Yeah, I guess so. But thanks for your efforts during playtesting, I am sure that a lot of those flaws were seen and pointed out. The developers often are not very good at applying feedback about the more egregiously abusive new rules they put out. :-/
I don't know, they didn't even fix some of the simpler things that were pointed out during the playtest. Like, I created an entire topic that pointed out how in theory it is possible to kill almost anything with a rather simple (though high level) combo: Augmented Mythic Meteor Swarm + Maximized Metamagic (Metamastery) + Channel Power. This can do 800+ points of damage that ignores spell resistance, fire resistance and immunity, and it only gets worse if the caster has a +damage bloodline arcana or a metamagic rod.
It is almost impossible to survive without evasion (yes, ironically rogues have an advantage here). Most characters can't even get enough hit points to survive that even if they make the saving throw. And you know what... if something does somehow live through the nuclear explosion you could just use a quickened metamagic rod to cast another one. At that point, unless you evade the spell, every monster in the bestiary that isn't outright immune to it or doesn't have a special destruction condition dies.
(this is why I recommend at least banning metamagic rods from enhancing mythic spells, or setting a limit on how much mythic power can be spent in one round)
Cat-thulhu: Mythic power attack is applied before and after the crit. So 9 x 2 is +18 damage, which is then effected by the crit multiplier for the weapon so +54 damage in this case. Pretty good returns for one feat.
Tangent: Thanks for the idea about the crit deck; the card added something fun and different. And would also remove the above problem.
Although my frustration with the mythic rules may have peaked and last night was probably my last session. Are there threads out there for how to make high level/mythic campaigns work, or feel like the rest of the game?
Hurray for us bad GMs :)
Alright, here's the calculation:
Paladin's STR is 20, the weapon (Radiance) is a +2 longsword. The Divine Bond adds another +2 on top of that. The Divine Favor spells another +2, for a base damage of 1d8+11. He uses mythic power attack for a +9 bonus to damage and smites evil, for another +9. Both those bonuses get doubled, because critical hit with mythic power attack + first hit on an evil outsider, so before multiplying we have 1d8+47. This now is multiplied by three, because the character has mythic improved critical, for a total of 3d8 + 141. Seems like he rolled high (I didn't check, the player can be trusted), because it ended up at 162 damage.
If he'd been a fighter with a two-handed weapon, it wouldn't have ended up much differently, so I don't think it's the paladin class which is the problem here.
The simplest solution is to negate the doubling of criticals for Mythic Power Attack prior to other critical bonuses. If you want to only semi-nerf it, then have it just add a +1 to the multiplier (so it's like Mythic Improved Critical).
Given the existing advantages to Mythic Power Attack, it's not that significant a modification outside of not allowing one-shot kills on most targets. (Seriously, you'd think people would use Rapiers all the time because you could easily get x6 with criticals using Power Attack 25% of the time. Who cares that it only does 1d6 damage when you're adding +150 or more per critical hit?)
It definitely sounds like Mythic has some serious problems. I'm still using it in my campaigns, but I'll be nerfing stuff left and right, so to not kill my players quickly with some lucky rolls, and so that they are actually challenged by non-mythic enemies.
In regards to the point with the rapier, I think you can take Mythic Improved Critical only once per weapon...
The funny thing is that it sounds like the Paladin missed one of his chanced to upgrade Radiance: it should be a +3 weapon at that point, so his damage should have been even higher, lol.
Yes. But that brings the critical range for the rapier to x3. Mythic Power Attack doubles its bonuses so it's a x6. I wasn't precise in describing it, but it still is unpleasant to enemies to face a 12th level fighter-type that 25% of the time does 64 damage just from the Mythic Power Attack, even before doing 3d6 damage and whatever was from strength and other bonuses. In theory, just doing a full attack without adding further attacks, he could do a minimum of 201 damage with a non-magical rapier and a 10 strength if he critted three times with his three attacks.
That's broken. Undoing the doubling for Mythic Power Attack fixes that a little.
You can power attack with any weapon, you just can't 2-hand a rapier. Instead, you should be using something like a scimitar, or falchion, or katana, or falcata. With one of those three weapons, you end up with either 15-20x3, or 17-20x4 with Mythic, and each one can be use 2-handed.
If using one of the few two-handed weapons that has a 18-20 critical range, the damage I described increases by nearly 50%.
Of course, considering someone could in theory use two rapiers and two-weapon fight with them....
The funny thing is that it sounds like the Paladin missed one of his chanced to upgrade Radiance: it should be a +3 weapon at that point, so his damage should have been even higher, lol.
Uh, no? The next upgrade happens later in Ivory Sanctum? Unless I missed one since the second module, but that won't be to the detriment of the player.
Perhaps rule that the smite damage doesn't get multiplied on a crit?
How does nerfing one class help with the problem? The other martials are not very far behind, so I don't see how punishing one guy helps here.
It sounds like criticals themselves are broken.
Here's an alternative revision to Critical Hits.
Critical Hits now act as pre-Mythic Vital Strike. You get extra damage dice according to the critical multiplier, but no longer multiply strength bonuses, power attack bonuses, or weapon magic bonuses.
To speed things up, you could also rule that the damage dice do automatic full damage. Thus if you critical with a Long Sword, for instance, you'd do 16 damage plus other bonuses... or 24 damage plus other modifiers for Mythic Critical Strike.
You could also keep Power Attack as-written, at which point JUST the Power Attack is doubled.
In the case of your Paladin mentioned above, he'd now do an automatic 71 damage for his Critical hit. This is still significant and quite nice, but prevents one-shot kills.
The funny thing is that it sounds like the Paladin missed one of his chanced to upgrade Radiance: it should be a +3 weapon at that point, so his damage should have been even higher, lol.Uh, no? The next upgrade happens later in Ivory Sanctum? Unless I missed one since the second module, but that won't be to the detriment of the player.
It starts as a +1 Cold Iron Longsword. It upgrades to +2 at the Grey Garrison, +3 at the temple in the Worldwound, +4 during the Ivory Sanctum and becomes a full fledged Holy Avenger at the Midnight Fane. I think that's all of the upgrades.
It sounds like your player did miss one of the upgrades.
At the end of Sword of Valor, radiance gets an additional +1. It is hidden in the text on page 53.
At the end of Sword of Valor, radiance gets an additional +1. It is hidden in the text on page 53.
Ah yes, I forgot about this one too.
Ah, I see, the +3 upgrade was in Sword of Valor and hidden in a place where I really wasn't looking anymore for statistically relevant stuff. I'll give the upgrade to the PC as soon as Tuesday hits.
There is no further upgrade in a temple (I guess Aldarion meant the fane) before the Ivory Sanctum, however.
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Huh, despite reading it many times over I completely missed the line about doubling the bonus on a crit. I think ill house rule that out, I'm. Happy with the +3 instead of +2. On that note I've also house ruled out the ability to negate the penalty. Power attack simply upgrades the bonus.
With that noted I can see the problem. I think I may have to adjust things as we go, we usually discuss rules we don't like and house rule themm anyway. It's always going to be an issue with such a large and varied rule set.
One thing I gave thought about is adding an extra bit to the rules about using MP. "Using MP requires an immediate action, unless an ability states otherwise."
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The upgrades and qualities of Radiance adjust as follows (assuming a paladin uses it):
Worldwound Incursion
First found in lair of vile and vicious: +1 cold iron longsword
If used in final battle: legendary +1 cold iron longsword
Both instances are covered in the description of Radiance in the Appendix
Sword of Valor
Clean the chapel (Area D, top p21): +2 cold iron longsword
Take part in Liberation of Drezen (concluding the adventure 4th paragraph: +3 cold iron longsword
Demons Heresy
Recover Yaniels Armour, claim as own or donate to a worthy (Area Q12,bottom p52): +3 holy cold iron longsword
The Midnight Isles
Rescue Yaniel from Minagho (A6, bottomof p16): Fully fledged holy avenger
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Session of May 20th 2014:
Quite a session. Four players out of six in attendance.
This session was cut short by a communal decision to not go into the fane without the player of the ranger, who has the Touched by Divinity background. However, we got the fight against Scoriszar the Woundwyrm done and, wow, it was a pretty tense affair.
The encounter used the upgraded encounter area provided by Scorpion in his modified statblock for Scoriszar. Meaning that characters who moved into the cave would be teleported into a random side (N,W,S,E) of the cave and subjected to a Greater Dispel Magic at CL 15. Additionally, each round started in the cave would bring a Fort DC 25 save vs. an effect from the Prothean Warpwave table (with a 20 being a Disintegrate at CL 15). I also had upgraded the Woundwyrms constitution by eight points and maxed his hitpoints and given him a constant Unholy Aura effect to get his AC and saves up a bit more. So the encounter really was suitably epic, with Scoriszars AC being at 34 and his HP at 396. I was considering doubling those HP after last weeks events, but held off on that to see what would happen in the fight.
Right off the bat, everybody but the ranger was dispelled of most of their buffs. The barbarian found himself on the east side of the cave, in total darkness and with the Woundwyrm not far away, in the southeastern arm of the encounter area.
While the rest of the party got their bearings, cast Light spells as needed and moved in the direction of the dragon (who was not difficult to locate, as I had him issue a threatening rumble from his huge chest), the barbarian first got a face full of acid, made his Reflex save and decided to still go for the dragon directly. That proved to be a mistake, as Scoriszar made an attack of opportunity, hit and grappled the barbarian. When it was the dragons turn, he dropped the barbarian and full attacked, dropping the player character in one turn, stable at -14 HP.
That got the players attention. Meanwhile, the constant saves vs. DC 25 Fort each round began to take a toll, with some PC's getting ability damage. With most of PC's still approaching the dragon and the player of the ranger not being there, the player of the cleric (who manages her character when she is not present) decided to send her animal companion, Brutos the giant wolf, forward to attack Scoriszar, to buy time for the other PC's to arrive in melee or even get a line-of-sight. About the same thing which happened to the barbarian happened to Brutos, only that Scoriszar's full attack ripped the poor beast apart completely, at something like -60 HP. At the same time, the cleric failed his save vs. the chaos effect in the cave and got confused for one round, hitting his head on his own armor spikes. The wizard got it worse, failing his save and turning into a stone statue.
Finally, the paladin got into melee range and avoided the attack of opportunity by casting Grace. He got in his first attack with Smite Evil (only hitting with a surge) and scored some 40 points of damage. The cleric also managed to finally arrive and hit a succesfull Slay Living (I rolled a 2 on my save, which was just the number which could fail).
By this point, the combined damage of the paladin, cleric and ranger approached only about 160 points of damage, since AC 34 still is somewhat difficult for them to hit, especially after getting most of their buffs dispelled. And then, disaster struck the Cleric, with him failing his Fort DC 25 save and me rolling a nat 20 for the effect. 30d6 of Disintegrate damage rained on him and he got struck for 118 points of damage. He barely survived by using Absorb Blow. At this point it really wasn't looking that good. The sorcerer was burning mythic power to (unsuccessfully) cast Break Enchantment via Wild Arcana on the wizard, the ranger wasn't doing so hot, since the Woundwyrm was not a demon and she had to content with the DR 10/good and law, her animal companion was dead, the barbarian was down, the paladin had lost half his HP in the retaliatory attack by Scoriszar and the cleric just was zapped to 3 HP.
So, the paladin decided to use the Talisman of Pure Good on the Woundwyrm. Looking at its entry, it only would work on a divine spellcaster. Now, we all know that dragons use arcane magic but can choose spells from the cleric list, so I thought me adding Unholy Aura as a constant effect to Scoriszar would make him susceptible. Also, I really had to fear that the encounter was about to kill the party and since I want to continue this campaign, it was a good way to get everybody (but the dragon, of course) out of this situation with some dignity. So, the earth opened up and swallowed Scoriszar. Encounter over.
Well, not totally over, since everybody still had to run out of the cave and not leave anybody behind. The barbarian got a Cure Moderate Wounds from the cleric, before the latter ran as fast as he could out of the cave and the paladin got the stone statue of his brother, the wizard, on his shoulders and everybody left. Well, aside from the barbarian, who failed his save before reaching the cave mouth and was also turned to stone. :p The paladin moved back into the cave, got teleported and dispelled, cast light again, made his save and got the barbarian out.
After that, the next Break Enchantments were successful, the two revived PC's made their system shock saves and, after getting a Planar Adaptation from the wizard, some of the others went back in to get the Woundwyrms hoard, which was quite substantial. The party then moved on to the fane, which will be the topic of next weeks session.
I must say, I was very pleased with how the encounter turned out. The substantial upgrades to the dragon and to the encounter area (most of them from Scorpion_mjd's statblocks, a few more alterations from myself) really made this memorable and worthy of what the AP itself was promising. Had I run the encounter as it was written, however, I think it wouldn't have been nearly as good, since all those extra effects were put there by Scorpion. Many thanks to him!
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Agreed that the fight doesn't work without modifications. I'd run it completely by the book and had to fudge the total HP and the DC of the polymorph to leave any lasting effect on the party.
I like how yours ran though. And just think, you've gotten the single charge of the talisman out of the way, so you don't have to worry about it being used on Hepzamirah or another named NPC down the road.
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Yeah, that was a nice side-effect. :p But since Scoriszar was advertised in the AP as being one of the most difficult fights of the module (which is laughable in his normal write-up), I think this version of the fight made the use of the talisman justified. :)
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Actually, when you think of it... this is also true of Reign of Winter - the start of it, at least. Think of it: being unable to charge or five-foot step seriously diminished the ability of the party to effectively fight in many of those first situations. Add in rules for hypothermia, and you've a group both fighting the environment and fighting in an unfavorable environment.
I have to wonder how many GMs used this for Book 6 of Runelords. Having heavy snow conditions would significant diminish the ability of even high level players to just mow over opposition.
Now let's consider the Worldwound. There are environmental factors that are mentioned briefly in the game. Play them up. Mix them up. Have areas where the gravity suddenly increases so it takes two movement points to move, and you can no longer five-foot step... and have it NOT be difficult terrain so that most spells won't overcome the effect. Have vines snake out and entangle the party when they're attacked by demons - the land itself corrupted and acting against them. Have them hit by acid rain just before they reach a major battle... and need to have weapons and armor make saving throws or take on the Broken condition - and the PCs would have to burn Mythic Points to get the Make Whole spell since I doubt they memorized it.
Even better, by having the environment itself as a threat and an ongoing threat that gets nastier and nastier the further into the Worldwound they go... you further enhance the Mythic aspect of the heroes. They CAN continue on when non-Mythic allies are forced to retreat. (And strip them of their non-Mythic cohorts in this situation! Have those allies physically unable to continue, with significant morale problems.)
Turn the Worldwound against the players. Not just the monsters.
Yeah, I really got to use the environment more against the players. I'd wish the writers of the AP itself would follow your advice better in their official write-ups.
Actually, when you think of it... this is also true of Reign of Winter - the start of it, at least. Think of it: being unable to charge or five-foot step seriously diminished the ability of the party to effectively fight in many of those first situations. Add in rules for hypothermia, and you've a group both fighting the environment and fighting in an unfavorable environment.
I have to wonder how many GMs used this for Book 6 of Runelords. Having heavy snow conditions would significant diminish the ability of even high level players to just mow over opposition.
Now let's consider the Worldwound. There are environmental factors that are mentioned briefly in the game. Play them up. Mix them up. Have areas where the gravity suddenly increases so it takes two movement points to move, and you can no longer five-foot step... and have it NOT be difficult terrain so that most spells won't overcome the effect. Have vines snake out and entangle the party when they're attacked by demons - the land itself corrupted and acting against them. Have them hit by acid rain just before they reach a major battle... and need to have weapons and armor make saving throws or take on the Broken condition - and the PCs would have to burn Mythic Points to get the Make Whole spell since I doubt they memorized it.
Even better, by having the environment itself as a threat and an ongoing threat that gets nastier and nastier the further into the Worldwound they go... you further enhance the Mythic aspect of the heroes. They CAN continue on when non-Mythic allies are forced to retreat. (And strip them of their non-Mythic cohorts in this situation! Have those allies physically unable to continue, with significant morale problems.)
Turn the Worldwound against the players. Not just the monsters.
I really like this post! It absolutely makes sense for the Worldwound to be so inhospitable to the players. Plus, with the chaotic energies of the Abyss, you could literally have anything happen; for example, it could literally rain cats and dogs, and the players have to deal with infernal cat and dog swarms who may are may not be fighting each other, the party, and the demons at the same time! You can throw really weird things at the party, and it would absolutely make sense for the region.
I remember for my group, Scorzscicar was one of the most difficult encounters they faced. However, that worked for 2 reasons:
1. they encountered him in the open, and they are largely melee-based, so they got destroyed by his breath weapon. I think I eventually gave them mercy when the fighter got a 40-something intimidate check.
2. It was literally the first encounter of this Adventure that they faced. The group bee-lined straight for part 3 as soon as possible, and I tried to use the dragon to discourage them, or at least slow them down. It didn't, but it certainly scared them.
I'm really looking forward to hearing about the Hag fight. I haven't been checking the stat block thread, so I don't know if anything special was done with the location, but the constant grind of fighting there could prove interesting (as long as you upgrade the Atk and AC of the enemies. I had to, or else none of the opponents were going to hit anyone).
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Session of May 27th 2014:
Six players in attendance. The group stormed the fane without really much of a problem. The barbarian almost got splattered again due to his abysmal AC and everybody else is telling him to do something about it.
The opposition was a bit underpowered, but that was by my choice this time. I got good advice from Scorpion_mjd how to really power up this encounter, but due the short sessions we got (three hours only), I decided to not push the encounter into something too harrowing, because I wanted to get to the very important roleplaying part.
The party is spending mythic power much more freely at this time, since they know that they only will get one encounter per day. We'll see if that bites them in the ass when they finally get into something more involved with first rescueing Arueshalae and then the Sanctum.
Anyway, the cleric of Asmodeus and the ranger were both revealed as children of Iomedae this session. The cleric of Asmodeus renounced his god due to being lied by him into serving him and, since he is still smarting from his entire village being burned down and Iomedae not helping save his people, he declared that he'd go his own way and become a god himself.
Since he got the ability to grant spells, due to the Divine Source ability and is a Mythic Paragon, he can grant himself spells up to sixth level. Since, as far as I can see, his spellcasting will keep up with his tier, that works out quite fine. At least that is how I read it and I find it an interesting direction for his character. He also decided to radically shift his alignment (from Lawful Neutral to Neutral Good), due to this experience. We'll see if he can play that alignment well.
The ranger (and her player) was a bit more ambivalent about the revelation of her divine heritage. We'll see what she makes of it.
Next weeks its the Child of the Crusade background encounter. After freeing Alryss Ulthor from the demon which is impeding his rest, he'll point them at Xanthir Vang as his killer (I decided that Vangs background story would be a good link... he did kill a group of crusaders after his resurrection as a Worm That Walks.).
Wow. Seriously, wow!
Yes, that is an interesting path for that character.
And I agree - sometimes the roleplaying aspect can be more enjoyable than a hard combat. (random gaming tangent in the spoiler)
What you might want to do is hit them with a nasty random encounter as they're leaving their daily encounter. After all, random encounters CAN still occur in the Worldwound....
I may do that after the next encounter.
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Magnus, this is a random thought, but something you might consider in one or two of the later challenges to give the players a solid run for their money is to use their own tactics against them. While sometimes this doesn't work as well for monsters, you've got access to a collection of enemy humanoids with class levels who could be logically brought to bear at a later time.
In our case, one of the most devastating fights we ever had came in book four. A certain half-pint bardic pain in the patoosh got away from us during the conflagrations of Drezen's taking back in book 2 by getting lucky at a key moment. Our game master hinted at their continued trouble making from a distance for the rest of that book through and into book 3. We had thought they met an unfortunate end off camera around the end of book 3 when we found their original gear inside of the final dungeon.
She semi-surprised us by appearing in the final boss encounter in book 4, built up to I want to say Mythic 6 (It was Tier 6, I think, as I looked back and identified that their weapon was a minor artifact) and upgraded appropriately for her classes. The GM did with her what our inquisitor had been doing numerous times of late, turning attacks into touch attacks, foe-bitering attacks, making her invisibility impossible to see through, along with a few other tricks. She used proper tactics, having watched the party in action for the better part of a book, and focused her attention on the party's healer, whose heavily amped abilities had been severely impeding the ability of enemies to deal with us, as the cleric would frequently drop mythic heals in the middle of fights, undoing even major damage. However, where the cleric had robust hit points and a not inconsiderable 40s AC from enchanted armor, their touch AC was appropriately abysmal. It took roughly 1.5 rounds to drop the cleric like a bad habit.
Dropping the healer as she did and with the party in a clinch point, the final encounter came down to the transmuter being unconscious, the paladin/rogue being roughly -500 HP dead, the cleric marginally worse and the Inquisitor taking one last ditch effort to take down the last remaining NPC and blowing almost every mythic point he had to finish them off. They were the only character alive for the scripted event at the end, and an Oil of Life had to be used afterwards to begin rebuilding the party.
Basically, there is nothing saying you can't drop a PC-style threat or two into the campaign at appropriate points. If PCs are devastating as mythic, so are NPCs using the same rules. Now, admittedly, both of the other two key NPCs had maximized hit points and one of them was altered to not be 'weakened' in quite such an overwhelming way, but regardless that trio was extremely dangerous so soon after blowing a reasonable amount of mythic power just to clear all the minor mythic threats of the zone.
It has always been a practice of mine that the toughest foes PCs can fight are others with character levels. That has been true for a very long time, mythic doesn't change that.
After 5th level invisibility is nearly worthless as purge will get through mythic augmented invisibility and is only a 3rd level spell.
Even with mythic tiers I'd be surprised if the bard did that much damage (sorry bards) as she was mostly a non combatant. The boss there however is very challenging and helped me realize how ridiculous things were getting.
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Seannoss - Absolutely, unequivocally agreed. The incorporation of class levels into threats changes their abilities considerably. In some ways, it makes more of an immediate effect on an encounter than Mythic does (edit: For clarity, I mean this more with low/mid CR threats. For high CR threats, Mythic has more 'punch' in my opinion, unless a lot of class levels are given.), just compared to a creature's base stats.
It has always been a practice of mine that the toughest foes PCs can fight are others with character levels. That has been true for a very long time, mythic doesn't change that.
After 5th level invisibility is nearly worthless as purge will get through mythic augmented invisibility and is only a 3rd level spell.
Even with mythic tiers I'd be surprised if the bard did that much damage (sorry bards) as she was mostly a non combatant. The boss there however is very challenging and helped me realize how ridiculous things were getting.
As she was 'leveled' appropriately for Book 4 end-game, she was given cross-class Rogue levels and re-tooled. Purge was, however, ineffective against her due to the use of a Legendary Weapon which made her Invisibility impossible to scry past (Unless there is a ruling regarding Invisibility Purge specifically we aren't aware of.).
The now Trickster/Bard/Rogue used tactics identical to those of our Inquisitor: Unstoppable Strike, Foe-Biter and Undetecable on their legendary weapon. I believe that this was combined with Fickle Attack in particular. I didn't have a lot of rounds to gauge all of the tricks he'd put into her, but her damage output was on par with the Inquisitor, who was using a Legendary Weapon to brutal effect in combination with his banes. They may have used Path Dabbling to swipe something from Champion to further add 'punch' to their attacks.
Ahhh, no idea about Legendary Items as I didn't allow them. I could see debate about purge though as it is not a detection or scrying spell. but there should be some way around it.
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Ahhh, no idea about Legendary Items as I didn't allow them. I could see debate about purge though as it is not a detection or scrying spell. but there should be some way around it.
Heh, I could imagine there could easily be a few rounds of discussion. The table ruling was that it Undetectable protected against Purge as well, though our GM keeps tabs for official rulings on a regular basis and prefers to go with 'by the book' rulings whenever possible and reasonable.
But the short-version: A PC/NPC with class levels and some Mythic tactics of their own can really upgrade an encounter, which I think both you and I know.
Ha. Yup, in agreement there.
The problem I've always had with dropping random NPC's on the party is that they had NPC equipment. And if I gave them PC equipment, the party had it afterwards. The whole PC/NPC money difference (and the problem with expensive loot = more powerful PC's which is inherent to Pathfinder) is one of the two major reasons why NPC's are not that good as opponents for PC's. The other reason, in case you are wondering, is that building custom NPC's costs a ton of time, which I don't really have right now.