|
In the above case, the GM's solution to the PC/NPC money/gear acquired issue was to remove what he considered a relatively minor encounter with a group of cultists. The value of their loot was then transferred to the NPC in question, causing no net change in treasure acquired throughout the book (And as the party frequently uses Greater Teleport to hit major locations to sell/buy gear between books, the exact gear he gave her didn't matter much.). Further simplifying things, he used a Legendary weapon whose main benefits were in its statistics granted by the Mythic Powers (It wasn't that impressive on its own), so its acquisition didn't really alter the party's power.
However, I will definitely yield that upgrading the gear on these NPCs constantly bears a potential risk on its own, and that the process of changing encounters, shifting gold from one encounter to another in terms of equipment value and then levelling NPCs is time-consuming at best, tedious at worst, so it's a pain I can definitely relate to you on. Our GM was usually somewhat grateful for brief breaks just so he could take some time with updating encounters, rather than feeling rushed with limited available time.
As I said, at the moment I am not really able to dedicate that much time on statting out complex new NPC's, which is why I am so grateful for Scorpion_mjd's work.
I have none, to be honest. So far, I think what Scorpion has prepped will do just fine. But many thanks for the offer. If I later find myself in need of specific NPC's, I will come back to it.
Has anyone thought about the impact of giving Beyond Morality to the mythic bad guys? While it does not completely nerf the overwhelming damage that some players can dish out, it does absorb the paladin's smite.
I wouldn't do that to the player. It'd be as if I introduced a mythic power to negate favored enemy bonuses to specifically screw over the Ranger.
|
Eh, it's a good for the goose, good for the gander situation magnus. I've got a Worldwound walker and a player with Beyond Morality. If they take it, it's open for the enemies to use it as well.
Though, I'd normally save it for a mythic enemy that got away. "Good, evil, I don't care. I'm just going to KILL those a+!$~~*s!"
It just seems that this is something that is in the rules and can be swapped in/out with another mythic power the bad guy has.
Thus, instead of always bumping max hit points, giving extra actions and other things that are on the edge of the rules, changed rules, or even outside the rules, you can look the paladin player in the eye and say - he knew you were a paladin and had been mowing through his minions with your smite. he is not stupid, he learned beyond morality.
This is in keeping with the admonition in the AP that says that the big bad guys are watching the PCs and adapt to their tactics. Just like it seems like that they would have contingencies against favored spells that the PCs cast and/or other negating items (ring of counterspells, etc.)
We are talking about semi-diving beings with 20+ intelligences in many cases and buckets of access to divination magic. Why would they not use items/spells/feats/powers that specifically negate PC advantages?
I am not saying do it to every bad guy, but the big bosses and maybe the mythic challenge bad guys.
Sure, anything PCs can do the enemies can too. Although probably not Minagho as she isn't mythic. And only for a very limited set of enemies as it doesn't feel like a learned ability.
|
|
Sure, anything PCs can do the enemies can too. Although probably not Minagho as she isn't mythic. And only for a very limited set of enemies as it doesn't feel like a learned ability.
If I was modifying the AP to make it more challenging, which I will be with a party of 6, Minagho would be a key candidate to bump the difficulty on.
I don't know if I would give her Beyond Morality, but I will give her something.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Session of June 4th 2014:
Six players in attendance.
Pretty standard session, although we got the Child of the Crusades background story done this time. All characters have advanced to tier four. Two fights, against two Bodaks (which died very fastly, but scared the players a bit, since they made the Wizard eat six negative levels) and then against the Nabasu Skulgrym and two Drocha swarms.
Skulgrym sadly didn't last very long, since he got perforated very pointedly by the Ranger and the others. His gaze attack did manage to inflict a staggering 15 permanent negative levels, which were spread around four characters, though. Sadly the link ability Scorpion_mjd gave him didn't go into effect, since he heard the party from two rooms away and was specifically trying to hit the Ranger with it. Since he delayed his turn after her, she critically wounded him and he was finished off by the Barbarian before she could get her turn again. Oh, well.
The party returned to Drezen, sold off their loot (Drezen has grown a pretty hefty Base Value and has lost its ruined status in my game) and got to buying some new stuff. The player of the Paladin is making some seriously scary calculations about how much damage he can put out with Litany of Righteousness and his now legendary Radiance.
The party then teleported to Nerosyan and bought some more items and then had 15 days of downtime. The Cleric of Himself is building a cathedral in Drezen. Since I felt that the Ranger got a bit short shrift in her backstory compared to him, I gave her a bonus feat, Celestial Companion, so that her animal companion gets a bit better.
Anyway, in the night of the 15th day Arueshalae contacted the Sorcerer (who is a follower of Saranrae and has a backstory which meshes well with hers. We'll have to see if he also will make a good romantic interest ^^) and the party has decided to seek her out in her redoubt and help her against the demonic onslaught.
Oh, and the player of the Wizard decided that he wants to play another character, because he feels the class is too complicated. Which is a bit strange, because he already played a Wizard a few years back, but it's his decision. I made him wait until next week, since the party was still out about in the Marshlands during this sessions, but we'll talk this weekend what his new class is going to be. So far he wants to play a simple two-handed weapon Fighter. I am trying to push him a bit to play something more interesting, like a Swashbuckler or Samurai. We'll see where it goes. :p
The Cleric of Himself kind of reminds me of the Ur-Priest from 3.0/3.5. There was also an old entry in the 'Murphy's Rules' cartoon in Dragon magainze that went on how a 1st/2nd edition cleric could worship himself and get 1-3 level spells.
Ya, I told my paladin player that Litany of the Righteous didn't exist as a spell. Its really unbelievable how unbalanced that is.
Or, more specifically I told him that there would be an evil version of it and I was going to give it to Staunton Vahne. He decided not to take it.
I didn't use Scorpion's stats for that fight, they might not have been out yet and it was my first book 3 fight so it went by really quickly. But I'm surprised at all the negative levels, my PCs had a knack of making nearly every saving throw and made all of those abilities moot.
|
|
Honestly, considering hit points in this AP, it's less broken so much as I like your response: "There's an evil version." I would have taken it. No reason an antipaladin shouldn't get nice toys too.
Mind you, Staunton was already a murder machine in our session. The GM tweaked him only a little, but it was damned effective.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Litany of Righteousness is somewhat balanced by the fact that it allows Spell Resistance, and Paladins are at Character Level -3 for their Caster Level. That makes it VERY difficult for them to land it on most enemies it's worth using on in this campaign.
Ah, very helpful information. That is going to deter the Paladin a bit.
The paladin in my group was a caster with eldritch breach which makes SR nearly a joke. I disliked a 2nd level spell being able to potentially do 100s of points of damage. (my group also included a melee friendly cleric for that good aura)
If a caster, even a Paladin, denotes some effort to overcoming SR, then it becomes laughably easy. There are many items that can add to SR checks, and several feats too. Especially if he takes Piercing Spell combined with an Otherworldly Kimono. Fortunately, it's unlikely a Paladin is going to be able to take Spell Perfection, so he won't be able to abuse Spell Pen. Greater Spell Pen. and Mythic Spell Pen for auto-win SR checks.
Yeah, well, so far my guy has not done so.
If a caster, even a Paladin, denotes some effort to overcoming SR, then it becomes laughably easy. There are many items that can add to SR checks, and several feats too. Especially if he takes Piercing Spell combined with an Otherworldly Kimono. Fortunately, it's unlikely a Paladin is going to be able to take Spell Perfection, so he won't be able to abuse Spell Pen. Greater Spell Pen. and Mythic Spell Pen for auto-win SR checks.
There are usually better things for a melee character to take than feats or Mythic abilities to enhance spellcasting. Even for a Paladin. I do agree that the Otherworldly Kimono would work rather well but I find that item to be way unbalanced for the price, simply because of the 1/day Maze.
A character can reasonably buy or craft that item well before they can cast 8th level spells and it's basically an auto-win against anything that doesn't have a decent intelligence. Also, it's not a spell so it does not allow SR. Anyway, that's a discussion for another thread....
I don't think that most Paladins will pump their CL to bypass SR with Litany of Righteousness, especially if they are doing a power build. They tend to be too feat intensive to allow for it. And if they Dual Path to specifically take that one ability it seems to be a bit of a waste. Most Paladins want abilities from Champion, not Archmage. I guess they could dual path Trickster, then use Path Dabbling to get Eldritch Breach but I don't know what Trickster abilities a Paladin would want either.
The paladin in my group was a guardian/hierophant with boosted spell casting and still did the most melee damage. Hooray for mythic rules and being a paladin in this AP. He was also balanced with no dump stats, not exactly a power build I've seen on the forums.
|
|
If a caster, even a Paladin, denotes some effort to overcoming SR, then it becomes laughably easy. There are many items that can add to SR checks, and several feats too. Especially if he takes Piercing Spell combined with an Otherworldly Kimono. Fortunately, it's unlikely a Paladin is going to be able to take Spell Perfection, so he won't be able to abuse Spell Pen. Greater Spell Pen. and Mythic Spell Pen for auto-win SR checks.
Yeah, there are ways specifically. I'm the Transmuter in a campaign, so I've seen several options to do that, and I explicitly focused the caster's feat selection to enable them to be able to consistently cast against Mythic foes. The result, naturally, was that in Book 5 the GM and I have an unspoken agreement not to bring up SR unless it isn't a Demon and has Balor-level SR, or it's got a name worth remembering for more than one round.
I believe I've had to roll on SR against one opponent in book 5. Maybe two. I only remember one with the SR needed to force me to roll "Not a 1." Bastard nearly wiped us. Yay for Deathless. However, because our enemies are now very familiar with the powers we've displayed against their minions, Spell-Immunity Fireball, Spell Immunity-Baleful Polymorph, Spell Immunity-Disintigrate have all become downright commonplace with divine casters, and non-divine casters have taken to carrying potions of Resist Fire and beads of newt prevention around with them when they logically are in a position to know we're coming.
So, yeah. It's very doable with two regular feats and a mythic feat to put casters, even secondary casters like Paladins into realms where the SR of any 'by the book' creature is largely meaningless, especially by Book 5. However, it requires the investment of feats which limits other options for secondaries (while for primary casters, it's much less of a challenge.).
Session of June 11th 2014:
Five players in attendance. The new character was introduced (a Samurai reskinned to a medieval knight image, since the player liked the class better than the Cavalier) and in the same move the Wizard was removed from the party, via order from Queen Galfrey. She needs the Wizard for vital research into closing the Worldwound and has sent the Samurai, who obtained his mythic power via involuntary consumption of a Nahyndrian crystal, to not leave a gap in the party.
The party went to Arueshalae's redoubt via teleport (it took a few rounds to transport everybody) and a huge fight ensued. Which ended after four rounds, when the two Retrievers were each downed by one character in one round, the Lord of Swarms (who had escaped last time and replaced the normal Derakni) was also downed by one player in one round and everything else was obliterated in short order. Since the players have discovered the Foe Biter legendary weapon ability, thing are really going a bit even more cray-cray now. :-/
Arueshalae introduced herself and I think I portrayed her pretty okay, emphasizing that she wants to redeem herself but still has those old impulses and also playing her a bit flirty, even against her own wishes (hence those old Succubus impulses). She gave her Spherewalker's Staff to the Cleric and had an atonement cast on her and the players are willing to give her a chance. I'll have to play up the opposition in Drezen to introduce more resistance into it, so that it becomes an actual roleplaying issue.
Well, the party advanced to level 11 (it's again going very fast) and I'll have to adjust things upwards a bit again, because they are outpacing even the upgrades now. Although their defense is not that good, the Ranger was almost insta-gibbed by a lance-wiedling Incubus on a Rift Drake and if the Paladin didn't have the Neutralize Poison mercy, the Ranger would have been a goner.
Ya, even my players joked about how every other week they were either gaining a level or a tier. Made it challenging to adapt to their increasing power level as a GM.
Even after running into the tower and regrouping that was still a longer fight for my PCs.
Your description makes me feel better about saying 'no' to legendary weapons.
Yeah, well. :-/ At this point, I am stuck with running this AP, since I don't have a replacement ready. And since Arueshalae has been introduced now, I plan on using her a lot. In the AP. For roleplaying. Um, the healthy table-top kind of way.
Anywayyyy... I guess I simply got to stick it out for now and be happy that at least the story is appealing.
You can always use that Mythic Adventures artifact that sucks Mythic points and tiers out of Mythic characters...
You can always use that Mythic Adventures artifact that sucks Mythic points and tiers out of Mythic characters...
As with every other way to horribly screw over my players, I say no.
Magnus, can I bug your method of time travel off of you?
Um, could you expound on that? I don't think I mentioned time travel before? Or maybe I did, but I am not seeing the context right now.
|
|
Session of June 11th 2014:
Five players in attendance. The new character was introduced (a Samurai reskinned to a medieval knight image, since the player liked the class better than the Cavalier) and in the same move the Wizard was removed from the party, via order from Queen Galfrey. She needs the Wizard for vital research into closing the Worldwound and has sent the Samurai, who obtained his mythic power via involuntary consumption of a Nahyndrian crystal, to not leave a gap in the party.
The party went to Arueshalae's redoubt via teleport (it took a few rounds to transport everybody) and a huge fight ensued. Which ended after four rounds, when the two Retrievers were each downed by one character in one round, the Lord of Swarms (who had escaped last time and replaced the normal Derakni) was also downed by one player in one round and everything else was obliterated in short order. Since the players have discovered the Foe Biter legendary weapon ability, thing are really going a bit even more cray-cray now. :-/
Arueshalae introduced herself and I think I portrayed her pretty okay, emphasizing that she wants to redeem herself but still has those old impulses and also playing her a bit flirty, even against her own wishes (hence those old Succubus impulses). She gave her Spherewalker's Staff to the Cleric and had an atonement cast on her and the players are willing to give her a chance. I'll have to play up the opposition in Drezen to introduce more resistance into it, so that it becomes an actual roleplaying issue.
Well, the party advanced to level 11 (it's again going very fast) and I'll have to adjust things upwards a bit again, because they are outpacing even the upgrades now. Although their defense is not that good, the Ranger was almost insta-gibbed by a lance-wiedling Incubus on a Rift Drake and if the Paladin didn't have the Neutralize Poison mercy, the Ranger would have been a goner.
First of all, hats off on finding the means to switch out characters with mythic power in the setting while factoring in a way to justify the mythic. Had the samurai gone through any sort of atonement to deal with the evil influences of the crystal (willing or not in consumption)?
Oh god, Foe-Biter. Ironically, only one of our Damage-dealing melee characters has used that through book 5. Our other is well aware of it, and doesn't think poorly of the method, but until he got Dawnflower's Kiss, he was using Radiance as it upgraded. While he liked Radiance, its power set wasn't a perfect match for his playstyle as the Paladin. The Kiss, however, was a cleaner match and he may be picking up Legendary Weapon with Tier 9 finally.
Foe-Biter alone is the cause of our GM doubling and maximizing boss and mini-boss HP. However, Foe-Biter is also a wretched MP sink. If the characters are forced to encounter 2-3 major encounters within a twenty-four hour period, it can be a very serious power-draw, and by the second they may be forced to seriously think about their usage of power. Giving them excuses to blow their power and be unable to recover it quickly will force a bit of tactical thought into several of the battles.
In some cases, however, like the end of a book... they sort of just know there isn't anyone else coming to say boo before they recover, so they don't hold back.
Um, could you expound on that? I don't think I mentioned time travel before? Or maybe I did, but I am not seeing the context right now.It's the 10th. Your game session mentioned above is dated the 11th. Hence, logically, time travel. ;)
Oh, I guess the dates went off track somewhere. I'll try to correct that next week.
First of all, hats off on finding the means to switch out characters with mythic power in the setting while factoring in a way to justify the mythic. Had the samurai gone through any sort of atonement to deal with the evil influences of the crystal (willing or not in consumption)?
No, he hasn't had to. But it'll come up, somewhere later on.
Oh god, Foe-Biter. Ironically, only one of our Damage-dealing melee characters has used that through book 5. Our other is well aware of it, and doesn't think poorly of the method, but until he got Dawnflower's Kiss, he was using Radiance as it upgraded. While he liked Radiance, its power set wasn't a perfect match for his playstyle as the Paladin. The Kiss, however, was a cleaner match and he may be picking up Legendary Weapon with Tier 9 finally.
Foe-Biter alone is the cause of our GM doubling and maximizing boss and mini-boss HP. However, Foe-Biter is also a wretched MP sink. If the characters are forced to encounter 2-3 major encounters within a twenty-four hour period, it can be a very serious power-draw, and by the second they may be forced to seriously think about their usage of power. Giving them excuses to blow their power and be unable to recover it quickly will force a bit of tactical thought into several of the battles.
In some cases, however, like the end of a book... they sort of just know there isn't anyone else coming to say boo before they recover, so they don't hold back.
Yeah, I guess when encounters become more frequent again they will have to hold back more. Although they are not stupid about it, their legendary weapons have their own mythic power uses to power foe-biter.
|
|
*nods* Book 5, we went through the last two encounters without the ability to regain mythic power. Due to a pair of bad saves, the first of those encounters was down one melee combatant and Arushalae, and due to storyline, that encounter focus-fired on the other melee combatant until it realized it had to down the cleric first about two rounds in.
It not only seriously slowed that first encounter, but the Inquisitor dumped all of his 8 MP from his sword and one or two on top of that to bring the bastard down. When he went up against the final encounter, he bled through every last point of mythic power, roughly 2/3 of it in the opening volley.
It ultimately becomes a game of finding 'just enough' threat that they feel a need to toss either a point or two here and there, or a couple serious shots of 4-6 points to down particularly nasty secondaries. Get the right combination of threats and they'll nickle and dime their way down until they reach the big bads. Won't always work, but it's definitely worked well enough on us. I think the GM now knows exactly how to scare myself and the Inquisitor to dance to his tune.
...and he's come to love abusing the heck out of Spell Immunity. Damn those signature attack spells! *laughs wickedly* Well... I'll be picking up Mythic Meteor Swarm for the last choice, so that might change things up a notch.
True, but its not like spell immunity works vs all spells. Especially mythic ones.
|
|
True, though at the same time the raw power in terms of statistical damage is generally had by spells that permit Spell Resistance, particularly in the case of Mythic Spells. There is also only one mythic version which negates the need for concern about spell resistance: Magic Missle. In the end, with Maximize, Empower, Heightening, Channel Power and 2 additional Mythic Power, you can drop a pretty significant amount of damage, but a very large amount of focus on the Magic Missile and several power selections. For the rest, spell immunity and items like beads of newt prevention tend to be useful as limiters.
Magical damage, from what I can see, is somewhat easier to mitigate at Mythic within some tolerances than it is to mitigate melee and ranged weapon damage.
Session of June 17th 2014:
Five players in attendance. Not much to report, the group spent most of their time introducing Arueshalae to Drezen and the citizen of Drezen to her, selling loot and upgrading their equipment and then at the end set out to travel to the Ivory Sanctum. I finished with a random encounter with four Warped Ones... which once again showed that the party has taken another quantum leap in damage output, given how the Samurai one-shotted one of the Warped Ones with a single foe-biter challenge attack. And it wasn't a critical. Warped Ones have 105 HP. :-/
Not to belabour the point again, but somehow I suspect that nobody in development did any sort of playtesting at all on high-level play, given how damage output is outpacing monster HP so massively and conclusively that it has stopped being even "OMG, this sucks so much that it is funny" some time ago.
Anyway, next week it's the start of the Ivory Sanctum. Given the massive damage output, I am unsure if I should just up enemy numbers and get the group quickly past the entire thing to start module four (which at least has the potential of some great roleplaying moments) or if I should massively upgrade HP to even Scorpions already upgraded opponents and as such make the fights last a bit longer and give the opposition the necessary time to actually counterattack.
Sorry to hear it. My PCs never got to that level of damage output on single attacks but I said no to several things early on.
Only obvious advice is that you're going to have to decide on campaign style. Whether or not each fight should be a challenge or when to ramp it up to Scorpion's ideas...and much more HP.
I think I'm fortunate my pcs don't really know what they are doing build wise. Scorpion's builds have been good enough thus far to handle the pcs, they're currently where Magnus' ones are.
I definitely can agree on the crit part though, if the paladin crits, especially on the first attack with smite or if he got Litany of Righteousness off, something is dead. And that the mages can regain spells so easily makes things troublesome. I think I'm lucky that the wizard archmage didn't take the spell recall ability and instead the archmage Summoner did.
Definetly noticing healing being ridiculously effective though for pcs. the cleric is averaging 60 hp per spell. Lucky he went Guardian.
But it's pretty obvious that this is entirely that my pcs don't have more than the semblance of teamwork, build less for power and more to some theme and don't have much tactics sense. I guess that makes me the lucky one when it comes to Mythic, but if that was the people the book was aimed and tested towards, they really shouldn't have stuck the skill ceiling so high.
If you have to use scorpion's stat blocks for your unoptimized, unorganized PCs then that helps state that the mythic rules and AP don't work as printed.
Entirely so.
Indeed.
My group is a few weeks behind Magnuskn, the just finished Woundwyrm and still have the Family Crypt during exploration. I have decided to slow walk their Levels. They began the book at level 8, They're level 9 now. Probably won't hit level 10 until After the Fallen Fane. I've decide to end this book at level 11/Tier 4 (instead of 12/5). I think this will alleviate many of the issues with exponential power growth, and reduce my need to rewrite every encounter. This will carry into Book 4, ending at lvl 14/tier 6, and book 5 (ending at 17/8). This also gives me a little more room to reward the PCs in book 6.
Good luck with that. ^^
Heh, true enough. It didn't occur to me until just before I logged in today.
Hope that works out for you, j b 200.
At what point does the exponential power growth start?
My players (I have 3 at them moment) and they are 8th level/Tier 2 and I haven't seen it yet. I would say my players are between average and above average with their optimizations and definitely very good players overall.
They are about to enter the Drezen Citadel and so far Soltengrebbe completely kicked their ass, the vampire has one of them dominated, their army is just about to run out of food, the 'saboteur' has run amok and my players have no clue who it is.
I have yet to use Scorpion's updated document and I haven't overhauled any encounters. I might change a spell or feat on a monster but that's pretty few and far in between. Wait- I lied- I did change the zombies in the Grey Garrison to be Gillamoor plague zombies from Classic Horrors Revisited (that was a fun little surprise for them).
In other words, this AP has been pretty challenging to my players so far but I'm worried I haven't hit this power curve everyone is complaining about yet...
At what point does the exponential power growth start?
My players (I have 3 at them moment) and they are 8th level/Tier 2 and I haven't seen it yet. I would say my players are between average and above average with their optimizations and definitely very good players overall.
They are about to enter the Drezen Citadel and so far Soltengrebbe completely kicked their ass, the vampire has one of them dominated, their army is just about to run out of food, the 'saboteur' has run amok and my players have no clue who it is.
I have yet to use Scorpion's updated document and I haven't overhauled any encounters. I might change a spell or feat on a monster but that's pretty few and far in between. Wait- I lied- I did change the zombies in the Grey Garrison to be Gillamoor plague zombies from Classic Horrors Revisited (that was a fun little surprise for them).
In other words, this AP has been pretty challenging to my players so far but I'm worried I haven't hit this power curve everyone is complaining about yet...
What class/archetypes are they playing and how are they playing them? For example, two-handed weapon, battlefield controller etc. It might be they aren't playing one of the big 'problem classes' or they aren't playing them in a way that causes problems.
There's a combination of things in play at the start of book three that help the PCs gain a lot of power, which is where their power explodes.
Around the end of the last fight they gain both a level and a tier. As mentioned the 3rd tier has many powerful abilities(oddly enough, usually more powerful than 6th tier), and it comes with the ability to take an extra standard action. That makes any melee based character a powerhouse.
Also its after extended downtime so either through crafting or purchasing the parties magic items should be more to their liking.
And the start to middle of book three has many underwhelming encounters in the CR 10-11 range for character with an APL of 11-13.