This is intended to be akin to a play-test report of my experiences running the WOTR, to help Paizo get a feel for how these adventures are playing for when they next make a mythic adventure path (which I hope they will!), and to help other GMs who are planning on running it get a feel for what some potential pitfalls are.
I have 4 players---a Paladin, an Urban Ranger, a Separatist Cleric of Milani, and a Groveborn Sorcerer---and I'm using the mythic rules.
Like many people, I was worried about this adventure path being too easy. Following James Jacob's advice, I've been running the adventure path with a number of restrictions: (1) 10 pt buy (and no bonus points for scores below 10), (2) slow XP advancement (this generally puts the players 1-2 levels behind), (3) no crafting of magic items, (4) no purchase of magic items above a city's base value, and (5) mandatory donations (in cash) equal to [PC level wealth for their level on the medium advancement track] - [PC level wealth for their level on the slow advancement track]. (Currently (at level 14) donations have added up to 220,000gp (440,000gp-worth of magic items), but this has turned out not to matter. With restrictions (3) and (4), the party has much more money than they can spend---after donations and expenditures, they still have a 580,000gp stock pile.)
In addition, I've nerfed various spells---protection from evil doesn't provide immunity from charm or possession, blindness has the [evil] descriptor and so isn't available to good players, and so on.
Here's how things have been going, through the first four adventure paths.
The Worldwound Incursion was good and challenging, though to make the end properly trying, I gave them only 1-shot to clear out the Gray Garrison.
The Sword of Valor started off pretty easy, with a few exceptions (e.g., the Vescavor Swarms). By the middle of the adventure, the players were getting bored. But by grouping various encounters in Citadel Drezen together (grouping the Brimoraks in F1, F14 and the gargoyles in F2 all together; grouping the Thoxels in F16, the minotaurs in F17 and Jestak from F9 all together, and having the occupants of F18 and then F19 each join the battle after 1d4 rounds), and by playing the opposition as intelligently as I could, this part of the adventure remained challenging and exciting.
The Demon's Heresy was a similar story; by grouping all of the opponents in Arueshalae's Redoubt together, and by grouping the opponents in the Ivory Labyrinth into 3 big climactic battles, this part remained exciting and challenging as well.
The Midnight Isles went similarly, but has been harder to keep challenging. I started giving opponents perfect knowledge of what the players buff spells are (due to "spies"), allowing them to target specific buff spells with dispel magic and avoid attacks which buff spells (like death ward and freedom of movement) would make ineffective, and I've been having the opponents automatically win initiative (due to "readied actions"). This, and grouping encounters (e.g., in the Nahyndrian Mine, roughly grouping all of the opponents in area J together, all of the opponents in area K together, and all of the opponents in area L together), with all of them buffing each other beforehand with the appropriate spells and working in concert, made for some challenging battles.
But as it turns out, this was due to a bit of luck on my part. Afterwards, one of the players pointed out that they had forgotten they had the Flexible Counterspell mythic path ability, and this would have made the most challenging battle (against Hepzamirah and a horde of minions) much less challenging, since the player could have countered Hepzamirah's spells every turn.
At this point, we're just starting the Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth.
Here are some thoughts about the adventure path so far.
1. The players are designed to be effective against evil-outsiders, encounters with evil outsiders run about 2 CR easier than encounters against other kinds of opponents. So when grouping and/or boosting encounters, take this into account. (The wardstone shards contribute to this disparity, but even after taking them away---I made Nocticula claim them as the price for being allowed to remain in her domain---evil outsider encounters remain much easier for the party.)
2. Paizo suggests adding half of the party's mythic tiers (MT) to their party level (PL) for the purposes of creating encounters. I've heard people on these boards suggest that this underestimates the amount of power mythic tiers add, and I think this is probably right.
(Even putting that aside, it seems to me that some of these adventure paths have lower CR encounters than Paizo suggests. E.g., I usually take CR = PL encounters to be easy, CR = PL+1 encounters to be moderately difficult, CR = PL+2 encounters to be challenging, and CR = PL+3 encounters to be difficult (boss fights). So in the Nahyndrian Mine (where the party is supposed to be 14th level, and have 6 mythic tiers), I would expect a smattering of CR 17 and 18 encounters, a couple CR 19 encounters, and a CR 20 boss-fight. Instead, the average encounter is CR 15, with only one CR 18 and one CR 19 encounter.)
3. Although this doesn't have much to do with Mythic play per-se, I'll note that at higher levels, concentrated dungeons which allow for the party to buff up before hand run about 1-2 CR easier than encounters where the party runs into things throughout the day, and don't have time to prepare before hand. (My party buffs with wands of Stoneskin and Heroism---which the Riftwarden Orphan trait allows them to recharge easily---followed by Life Bubble, Delay Poison (communal), Freedom of Movement, Air Walk (communal) and Barkskin, and they use a Death Warden's Bandolier and a mythic power to give themselves a daily Death Ward effect.) So encounters in dungeon-like settings need to be boosted more than "wilderness" encounters.
how did the wardstone shards really affect it? They can be used once and then become inert. If those were used multiple times there's an issue in and of itself.
Good question. The party gets 6 of the shards, and when they realized what they did (after the Paladin used one on Radiance), they saved them to apply to weapons that would get them over the "base value" purchase limit I imposed.
So one got used on Radiance, three were used on +1 adaptive composite longbows they commissioned after the Worldwound Incursion, one was added to the +2 holy cold iron morningstar they got in in the Family Crypt (the Demon's Heresy), and one got added to the Sword of the Planes they found in the Ivory Sanctum. So all of the shards were applied to weapons they were still using at the start of the Midnight Isles.
(And I described the application of the shards as having them meld into the hilt of the weapon; I let Nocticula remove them.)
I feel that you could ramp up the difficulty much more effectively by limiting character options, rather than a 10pt stat buy. You don't have to allow all the broken stuff from the core and all the splat books.
A good suggestion, and something I'd be happy to do. Unfortunately, I think most of the things that stand out in combat appear in the Core and Mythic Adventures books. In particular, here are the abilities that have really stood out:
--Class Abilities: Paladin's Smite Evil, Ranger's Favored Enemy Bonus
--Feats: Rapid Shot, Multishot, Power Attack, Improved Critical, Heavy Armor Proficiency, Persistent Spell, Selective Spell
--Mythic Abilities: Precision, Armored Might, Critical Master, Flexible Counterspell
--Mythic Feats: Mythic Rapid Shot, Mythic Multishot, Mythic Improved Critical, Mythic Guided Hand (and, of course, the Dual Path Feat)
--Spells: The buff spells listed in the original post (mostly Core), Haste, Grease, Mythic Fireball
And most (though not all) of these are from the Core and Mythic Adventures books...
Did you realize the shards only give their bonus for 1 day?
Something I seen mentioned elsewhere on the board was "buff slots" so that characters could only hold so many magical spells on themselves at once. 1 at first and then one additional slot every five levels, so at level 15 for instance they can only have 4 enchantments on them at a time (not including magical items)
Sounds like you have been doing a great job though, running encounters together is a lot of fun. It is one of the things I like to do the most as well to make things more challenging.
One thing I plan on doing when I run this is making it so that the stat bonus's you get at the even mythic tiers can't be spent on the same stat twice, I think that will help to alleviate things a bit as well.
Did you realize the shards only give their bonus for 1 day?
...no I did not. Good catch!
That would have made parts of the Sword of Valor more challenging. I don't think it would have made much of a difference after that (since after taking Drezen the party could have easily afforded to buy Evil Outsider Bane bows outright, and they didn't use 2 of the 3 shards until the end of Demon's Heresy, and I took them away near the start of the Midnight Isles).
Still, I wish I'd noticed that myself...
Something I seen mentioned elsewhere on the board was "buff slots" so that characters could only hold so many magical spells on themselves at once. 1 at first and then one additional slot every five levels, so at level 15 for instance they can only have 4 enchantments on them at a time (not including magical items)
An interesting idea. Hrmm... (though probably too late for me to implement at this point)...
Sounds like you have been doing a great job though, running encounters together is a lot of fun. It is one of the things I like to do the most as well to make things more challenging.
One thing I plan on doing when I run this is making it so that the stat bonus's you get at the even mythic tiers can't be spent on the same stat twice, I think that will help to alleviate things a bit as well.
That would have been another good thing for me to have tried.
One thing that's really stood out is how quickly the 10 pt buy restriction stopped mattering once the Mythic tier stat-bonuses kicked in. Requiring them to spread out those increases would have helped to keep those stats from surging into the 30s...
One thing I'm doing is not implementing the stat increases for my Runelords game (which I added Mythic to) because they're already got significantly high stats (thanks to rolled stats), while the Reign of Winter game (which also has rolled stats but mostly not as high as Runelords with the exception of the thief who rolled an equivalent 54-point character, and then by almost exclusively using the blowgun and playing a rogue has been among the least effective characters in combat) will only get +1 point for each stat on even Tiers (and probably only reach Tier 5 or 6 at most).
A +5 to the stats isn't that overpowered. In fact, it's on par with what players get for reaching level 20.
Requiring them to spread out those increases would have helped to keep those stats from surging into the 30s...
As far as I understand it they must have the stat bonuses all apply to the same stat which they choose when they take their Mythic Path. I could be wrong though.
That's wrong. Back during the beta-test, the number of Mythic Points was dependent on a stat, so you didn't want to spread out the stats. They changed that with the print copy so it's a set amount. But even then, you could distribute the stats however you pleased.
Did you realize the shards only give their bonus for 1 day?
Where does it say this? I reread the room they show up in, and their item description, but I don't see any mention of this.
Did you realize the shards only give their bonus for 1 day?Where does it say this? I reread the room they show up in, and their item description, but I don't see any mention of this.
Page 65 of the Worldwound Incursion, The write-up on the Wardstone Shard, first paragraph, second sentence.
Did you realize the shards only give their bonus for 1 day?Where does it say this? I reread the room they show up in, and their item description, but I don't see any mention of this.Page 65 of the Worldwound Incursion, The write-up on the Wardstone Shard, first paragraph, second sentence.
Oh, I was confusing them for Terendelev's scales, which I've been a bit concerned about being too powerful for their level because they technically should have durations of Caster Level 19. (I'm probably going to modify them to use the character's level as their Caster Level when used.)