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I began running the Wrath of the Righteous Adventure Path with my group, and even in the beginning, I was incredibly hesitant to use Mythic tiers and powers. I had played around with the playtest version in my last campaign, the Jade Regent, and it was less than encouraging. Still, I figured if the campaign was designed to handle it, it should be alright; I was wrong. The whole time, the entire adventure felt just a bit too easy.
Of course, despite me asking for feedback after each session, none of my players told me until recently that they were either neutral or against the Mythic abilities and shared my concerns. I have talked with them about it, now that we are all finally on the same page, and we've agreed that carefully extracting the mythic tiers and abilities from their characters is desired by all parties. That's great.
Here's my dilemma: I've no desire to scale the module down (as I said, it was too easy before for them; they are a pretty balanced team), and I am sure they can handle it, but I still want them to feel like the mythic heroes they are supposed to be. Problem is, I cannot figure out what kind of items or powers would make suitable rewards. I have considered a handful of ideas, such as giving the oracle who is interested in closing abyssal rifts access to the Riftwarden prestige class, or the dragon/elemental dual blooded sorceress the half-dragon template, but my struggle is finding something for everyone that A) does not simply recreate the overpowered capability removing mythic tried to prevent, and B) feels fair and balanced (amongst themselves, at least) so that none of the players feel like they're being short-changed.
Both fortunately and unfortunately, they are all drastically different players and value completely different things, most of which I often fail to predict with better than 50% accuracy. Anyone out there have some ideas?
*EDIT: The party is comprised of: an Oracle who follows Sarenrae's teachings and is heavily knowledge oriented, A Silver Dragon/Cold Elemental cross-blooded Sorceress who came from the north originally seeking revenge, a constitution Witch who loves his slumber hex and building a cult following in every game he plays, and a Cleric of Shelyn who just recently replaced the Paladin who was originally being played, because the player decided he loves clerics much more (always is one), so I know little about him.
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We are well into the third module (not time-wise, but they've skipped ahead to part 3 thanks to some mass quantity divination spells) and they're still ahead of the curve, even though their level and tier are within or below the expected range. They've never needed the mythic power to survive though - even their mythic enemies (save for the first one in Module 2; you know the one I mean) can't harm them. Only twice have I killed one (the same one, the Oracle. She's squishy) - once at the abandoned cathedral, which let me do something interesting with a later villain, and once in the citadel, when they decided to try breaking in early and I swarmed them with cleric cultists who were garrisoned there. The second time she received breath of life in time though, and the sorceress finally stopped the channeling clerics.
We started this campaign during a time when several of the players were on a min/maxing craze, so the party was designed to be deadly, with the exception of Ms. Knowledge Oracle. Still, with that in mind, if you've got any ideas, I'd love to hear them. I told them when we were discussing the mythic revoking that "what I would love to see from you is your characters doing awesome things, not necessarily powerful things." I'd love to see them get into an epic fight with a small group of powerful enemies and not simply Slumber and Coup de Grace them (the witch's favorite tactic, I might add).
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Hmm, your further then I thought. That far ahead I don't have any good ideas on items/powers to give them to replace Mythic. However, I would recommend a couple of things.
First: Maximize the HP for the enemies.
Second: Advanced and Mythic Templates are your friend, sprinkle them on everything if your party is rolling over their enemies.
Third: Add more, the book only has one big bad? Throw in two, and modify the fluff to make it work.
Fourth: Don't worry about what the original CR of each encounter, a maximized party should be able to handle something 2 or 3 CR above them. Increasing the CR (without increasing the xp) will slow them down.
Fifth: They are fighting a semi organized enemy (at least as far as we are); survivors, observers, and rumors can reveal your part's tactics to other enemies who can take precautions against them. I'm sure they've all heard of the Sleep/Coup de Grace king in your party and will have spells or items to shore up their weakness to that... play smart enemies like they are smart, that means preping for possible encounters against the party. But don't make all of the enemies immune or resistant to it.
Are you removing mythic from enemies?
You said they jumped a huge swath of content. Are you sure they can handle the current content?
As mythic goes up in tiers you can, of course, do every increasingly awesome things. I have trouble seeing how a mundane group can handle mythic encounters unless you're just not using the mythic abilities, or are missing using some abilities, or they're just poorly written enemies. But, generally, mythic is a whole new level of play. Just taking it away from the PCs may run you head long into a wall where you're fine and then you go splat in the next room over.
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@PleaseDontKillMe
Maxmizing enemy HP in the past has not helped against the nonmythic versions of these players. It just prolongs fights horrendously. I already abuse the advanced template, and I've been adding the mythic to enemies that I don't want insta-slumbered for sure. Believe me, CR has gone out the window as far as these guys are concerned.
And that last one basically hits on my final plan for making things difficult. I finally managed to get a few survivors out of their brutal encounters, so eventually the demons will have a few more plans in mind.
@EricTheCleric
Hero points are, once again, another empowering system these guys (myself included in some cases) have managed to break. Plus, it is a much less interesting reward than what I would hope to produce.
@Buri
No, though I'll be carefully checking to avoid non-mythic insta-kill powers.
They did, and they can. Even with the paladin/cleric exchange.
It's not that my enemies don't have the skills. It's that they never get to use them. The witch always wins initiative, and as is true for his build, immediately starts debuffing the crap out of everything. As I've said, their hardest fights have been the ones where he couldn't do exactly that due to sheer numbers. And I am not simply taking it from them. They are wanting to give it up. That's how unconcerned they are. Of course, I've read ahead, and I've seen what's to come. Honestly, they haven't even been remotely challenged yet by this campaign (or myself), and if anyone thinks that what's to come is too hard for non-mythic parties, then I would bet this is right up our alley.
@DarkWarriorKarg
Because our problem isn't that the AP is boring, uninteresting, or any other problem that would make throwing out the AP warranted.
@All
In fact, the problem isn't that things are hard for them, or that I need to know how to make things harder. The problem is that I'm not sure what kind of neat rewards I want to replace their mythic powers with.
And I am not simply taking it from them. They are wanting to give it up.
You misunderstand my usage of the word 'just.' It's exclusionary and not a sudden force.
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I want to give them something *cool*, and it can be *powerful*, but I want it to be relatively unique to each character.
Additionally, it seems I still have not made myself clear: this party is not challenged by the AP as it stands. Even were I note to replace mythic with something else, I would still be scaling enemies up, even if I might sometimes need to scale their own mythic down. Please, trust me when I say this party is invincible. They are a bunch of munchkins with incredible power who function cohesively as a unit to decimate anything that *might* be evil.
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If it helps make the point any, I'll provide their ability scores later when I can find the sheets. I think the constitution witch's constitution is nearing 30. The worst part is that I've no idea how that is, but I know it's legitimate somehow. The only thing this guy is good for is breaking the game within the rules.
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No, I want people to make suggestions about what things would be generally col, and I'll decide quietly off to the side whether or not that fits one of them. I do not lack so much creativity as to need solutions custom made and handed to me on a platter. I'm just looking for ideas or suggestions.
I have not looked, because I am not looking for solutions to "campaign problems." I am looking for suggestions on what others might give out/want to receive in the place of mythic tiers. That whole bit about my players having an easy time of it can be considered introductory prelude, and is not a subject for discussion here. I am not looking for ideas for making fights harder, or expression of concerns that removing mythic will make things too difficult. In short, I am not concerned at all here about the level of difficulty of the campaign, the strength of the players, or the composition or capabilities of my enemies. The sole purpose of the thread was to fish for some notions on where to start looking for neat rewards ideas, preferably things that are not universal such as hero points. When I say I am looking for "unique" rewards, I do not expect you, as I have said, to produce some tailored reward for one of my PCs. I mean simply that I would like for the suggestion to be something I could give to one PC if I so chose, and not the others, who would instead receive something approximately equivalent. Perhaps, for example, one might know of a really neat item a witch could receive. Another might know of a solid prestige class that the sorceress could benefit from. Etc.
On the whole, my problem truly stems, I suppose now upon reflection, from my uncertainty regarding the use of prestige classes and certain templates as rewards (as mentioned in the OP, I was most recently considering Riftwarden for the Oracle and Half-Dragon for the Sorceress); a notion, I note, which has thus far been disregarded by all who've responded. Apparently no one has any commentary on the idea).
Nay, I have not looked around. I vaguely remember a thread I saw months ago on whether or not prestige classes made good rewards or not, and I did check for that, but I couldn't find the one I thought of at the time. I have not thrown myself wholly into this matter yet, despite what the frequency and length of my responses say, and this thread was meant to be an idle knowledge farm for me to return to when I would be ready to address the issue. The campaign itself is on hiatus at the moment anyways, as one of the players wished to try her hand at GMing, and we were at a reasonable point of pause in addition to our agreement that modifications should be made, so time is not a factor.
Gear is not the issue, as I am not handing any out, apart from the basic items left lying around by the modules' baddies and heroes alike. Recently even, the PCs destroyed an entire chest full of incredibly valuable goods because the Oracle didn't mention she had a key. So they're not even gaining the whole of what's written in. So, no, I say again, gear is not the issue. I learned after spoiling my PCs in the first campaign I ran that I am a terribly awful loot-giver, and swore to provide as little additional gear as I could.
And I looked into the outsider sleeping thing, but the outsider's entry says merely that they do not need to sleep, and nowhere is it mentioned that they are immune to sleep and sleep-based effects. Now, I realize of course that the notion that outsiders cannot sleep stems from somewhere, and I thought it true before, but failed to provide evidence of it when the witch-player questioned me, and thus far I have not reversed the ruling, though I know I could. Again, not up for debate at the moment, though I thank you for reminding me to look more deeply into that matter.
I seem to have gone on for some time again. Once more, my apologies. One of these days I'll manage to cut myself off after the first sentence or two.