Mythic APs


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Are there any plans for another mythic AP?

It's clearly popular and there are a number of 3rd party products that support the rules.

Will Paizo write a second Mythic adventure?


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I dearly hope not. Wrath of the Righteous has a great story, but the mythic rules make the fighting aspect (as usual a very large part of any AP) extremely unbalanced in favor of the players and have the great potential to ruin a lot of campaigns if applied liberally.

I'd advise against doing another full mythic AP. Individual mythic opponents, yeah. The rules are good for GM's who want to even the odds a bit against powerful non-mythic parties. But as soon as player characters hit tier three, they run roughshod over any CR-appropiate opposition.


Agreed. I ran a mythic Kingmaker game and I only let them get to Mythic Tier 3 to give them a taste before running WotR. Even then most fights were what we call at my table "roflstomps". Even against mythic opponents. Was a fun game though.


On the flip side I'm gming for my best friend and as a solo character mythic has been a boon to our campaign :)


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I'd guess so, but solo AP's are not exactly the common experience.


True. Its actually sandbox play set in varisia. I've been using Rotrl encounter tables and printing off city maps if I don't already have them. Currently he is level 10/mt 4 and plays like 4 eighth level characters (vanilla ranger with boon companion).

Scarab Sages

stuart haffenden wrote:
Are there any plans for another mythic AP?

I expect to see the occasional mythic encounter in future AP's.

I doubt we'll see another AP written for mythic characters.


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I hope that they don't do any more mythic APs either. WotR has been very frustrating to run, so much so that my player's feel guilty about how quickly opponents go down.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I agree in that I hope they don't. I guess Wrath of the Righteous has a good story (I wouldn't know, as my group has turned it into a combat simulator and forgos any noncombat elements, which annoys me, but I don't know how the GM feels). The premise, at least, seems pretty awesome.

I was willing to give mythic a chance, and thought it could be something good. But in the hands of powergamers (like my party members), it is a horrible addition. We are at level 12 with 5 mythic tiers, and I am not having fun at all. But I am trudging through because the GM is a nice guy and the premise behind the AP is pretty cool.

The only AP I am not having fun in seems to be the only one that is lasting through to the end. /sigh

Scarab Sages

Seannoss wrote:
I hope that they don't do any more mythic APs either. WotR has been very frustrating to run, so much so that my player's feel guilty about how quickly opponents go down.

I've been considering running a PbP WotR campaign.

If I decide to do so, it will come with the caveat: difficulty will be scaled to match the PC's.

At that point, I might as well be adjusting a non-mythic campaign.


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To be honest, I think you probably should try it that way. You may have to tone down some opponents, but the AP is by far not as difficult as the writers make it out to be in their forewords.


I think when you can basically chuck out huge damage that ignors even immunity you're in for a rough ride as DM.


Probably the best balancing tactic would be to lower the number of mythic points available and ensure you avoid one encounter/day scenarios.


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The first one is what I did (I also nerfed the mythic power regeneration to 1d4 per day), the second one, well, it'll happen in WotR in a certain module.


stuart haffenden wrote:
I think when you can basically chuck out huge damage that ignors even immunity you're in for a rough ride as DM.

You mean similar to what happens with smite evil bypassing DR entirely? Or, the several divine spells that bypass immunities in the CRB? Or, the automatic grappling opponents that don't need to make a CMB check? Or, how you could be compelled to move up to and attack someone in melee before the errata'd Antagonize feat? Or, how vampires can be slain in two rounds with CRB spells?

LOTS of things already do "unfair" things that bypass very strong defenses entirely. You shouldn't get caught up in them.


No, mythic is on an entirely different level in my experience. YMMV


To introduce a whole new rules set and only release one product using those rules would be a little crap imo.


Guys most of Paizo's recent APs are quite on the easy side (so i don't think that it was only the fault of mythic rules) and most importantly it was the large scale use of mythic rules, hopefully next time it will be done in a better way.

As you can tell i really want another mythic AP but i can understand how it might be a little soon for Paizo to do so, a better approach (imo) would be to make a mythic module or two.

Also is there any 3pp that has made a mythic AP or module? it seems like a there is a market for those things.


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I think releasing another mythic AP has the vast potential to ruin another AP, so yeah, still greatly opposed.

It's much easier to scale an AP up than down, so if you want a mythic AP so much, lobby Paizo for releasing some sort of "mythic upgrade companion" to a normal AP. Don't ruin it for the rest of us.


People got their panties in a bunch over Iomedae giving you a chin scrape. Can you imagine the response from an actually challenging AP overall?

Scarab Sages

leo1925 wrote:
Also is there any 3pp that has made a mythic AP or module? it seems like a there is a market for those things.

Mythic is being heavily supported by 3pp.

I truly believe 3pp is where nearly all new Mythic content is going to originate.

Scarab Sages

stuart haffenden wrote:
Probably the best balancing tactic would be to lower the number of mythic points available and ensure you avoid one encounter/day scenarios.

I was thinking:

  • Increasing number of opponents per encounter
  • Avoiding the 1 encounter/day play style
  • Giving players a reason to invest in some defense instead of pure offense

Increasing number of opponents per encounter would be the biggest balance change. Removing the characters action economy advantage and the ability to trivialize an encounter with burst DPS or a single save/suck spell will be important.


Just chiming in that mythic works great in a solo campaign. Now that my player's druid has a couple mythic tiers, I worry a lot less about killing her by mistake.


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Buri wrote:
People got their panties in a bunch over Iomedae giving you a chin scrape. Can you imagine the response from an actually challenging AP overall?

The first is a story problem, the second a mechanical issue. Two different worlds. Also, challenging fights are the ones which are looked upon most fondly from what I've seen. Xanesha is a famous fight because it was very challenging. Not many people remember any of the mook encounters.


I find mythic rules work find but they do maginify an existing problem with single bad guy encounters. In the non mythic game this is a problem due to action economy and mythic jumps up the DPR and action economy making the problem that much worse. I just try my best to avoid encounters where this occurs. I often modify encounter to add in mooks or better. Seems to be working fine in my game. No real balance issue and the player burn through mythic power points quite quickly.

Shadow Lodge

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magnuskn wrote:
It's much easier to scale an AP up than down, so if you want a mythic AP so much, lobby Paizo for releasing some sort of "mythic upgrade companion" to a normal AP. Don't ruin it for the rest of us.

I think this is a fabulous idea, and if they did it would also want such a thing for past APs. Reign of Winter, for instance, already has the scaffolding to hold Mythic content, the rules just didn't quite exist yet.

(There are some good ideas for Mythic conversion in the RoW subforum already, I know. But something formalized would be great, too.)


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

I hope they do, Mythic has been awesome. Hopefully all the whiners won't ruin it for those of us do enjoy it.


Buri wrote:
People got their panties in a bunch over Iomedae giving you a chin scrape. Can you imagine the response from an actually challenging AP overall?

You mean like Reign of Winter? Which is challenging if the GM keeps using all of the environmental rules... I mean, snow cover eliminates the ability to charge unless you use magic to ignore terrain. Snow fall will impact on the ability of ranged combatants. And some inventive use of spells along with one good Dispel Magic can quickly inflict hypothermia on a group (eliminate their Endure Elements, drench them with water, and then retreat and let Old Man Winter wear them down).

I've seen more than one Total Party Kill involving Rokhar. If you play the Winter Portal as-written, you have 2nd level characters facing some foes that can attack at will from a distance while completely concealed by falling snow.

If you don't play later enemies stupidly, then you'll have PCs who are constantly at wit's end struggling against not only their enemies... but the environment as well.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I only know the Wrath AP, it is definitely not challenging or fun. I would much rather see Paizo do other things than support mythic. We can't all be pleased but I'm already considering canceling over Iron Gods.


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Seannoss wrote:
I only know the Wrath AP, it is definitely not challenging or fun. I would much rather see Paizo do other things than support mythic. We can't all be pleased but I'm already considering canceling over Iron Gods.

Iron Gods isn't Mythic


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

True...train of thought sentence. There is already one AP that I am not looking forward too, another mythic AP would be another that I wouldn't like. Unless the writers learn how to make mythic more challenging, which is possible. It was a very new and untested system for them.


There is a simple way to make the AP move difficult: playtest it.

The Exchange

Interestingly enough, I think the main hurdle that makes designing a good mythic AP hard is an unexpected one - XP.

You see, Mythic PCs should obviously face foes who are at a much higher threat level than than other PCs without mythic ranks. A 14th level group of adventurers with 6 mythic ranks will EASILY deal with anything with CR lower than, say, 17. The solution to this COULD have been an easy one (only give them CR 17+ encounters), but it runs into the aforementioned XP problem. Namely, 14th level PCs with X mythic ranks still get usual XP for defeating CR 17 foes. Since that is usually a very hard fight that grants a ton of XP, you run the risk of having the PCs level up waaay to fight if every "normal" fight for them is CR 17 and a tough fight could be CR 19 or something.

This, I think, is the reason that CRs is WotR are so tame. I mean, it doesn't take a genuis to figure out that adding mythic ranks to the PCs render "appropriate" CR fight pointless, and yet these kinds of fights are pretty common in WotR. I guess it's because the developers and adventure writers didn't want to go overboard with the XP they gave, which really constrains the difficulty you can have on fights. Sure, the XP advancement WAS somewhat faster than usual, gaining 1 - 2 extra levels per adventure, but the difficulty in terms of CR was still waaaaaayyyy lower than it should have been.

I actually want to see another mythic AP (I'll not run it, most probably, but I will certainly enjoy reading another story with such an epic scope). However, I hope Paizo would find a way to work around the XP problem, which should enable them to design the adventures better. Other things to *really* avoid are: 5 minute adventure days, solo boss fights, last adventures that aren't epic.

The Exchange

Tangent101 wrote:
There is a simple way to make the AP move difficult: playtest it.

"Simple" is different than "doable". Was this famous guy who once came up with this neat, simple idea to lift the entire world (a long enough pole and solid ground to stand on). Didn't mean he could do it.

Likewise, playtesting is VERY time consuming, and has a VERY little capacity to predict what actually goes down in play (even small differences in player decisions could easily kick you away from the carefully playtested). Paizo certainly doesn't have the resources to manage it, and most GMs who buy APs don't have the extra time to playtest it in addition to all the other prepwork it requires.

In short, while your solution is simple, it's not practical in most cases, which is why it isn't common.


Paizo, I believe, already admitted that they badly underestimated the effect of Mythic on the players. They seemed to try to correct that somewhat in vol. 6, but not enough. I would like to see another mythic AP, to have a chance to play instead of GM, but it would have to be a major upgrade in challenge. I'd also like to see another AP reach 20, but that's probably beside the point.

I think the big thing that needs to be fixed, is that Mythic tiers should be considered 1 level upgrade, not 1/2. Also, they should probably try a couple adventures with the option of a tier here-or-there, to make them and their audience a bit more comfortable that they have the balance sorted out. If they can do that, I would really like to see more mythic.


There is another solution: Slow the pace of Mythic Advancement. You can have a Mythic AP that does not reach Mythic Tier 10. Or even 8. You could even modify Mythic for the AP so it goes to Tier 5... but that the capstone ability activates at that point.

The Exchange

Tangent101 wrote:
There is another solution: Slow the pace of Mythic Advancement. You can have a Mythic AP that does not reach Mythic Tier 10. Or even 8. You could even modify Mythic for the AP so it goes to Tier 5... but that the capstone ability activates at that point.

I don't like this solution much. I think if you are using mythic in an AP, it has to have a story driven reason - which is, to tell a story you usually couldn't, with the PCs facing some of the most powerful entities in the setting and participating in even more Golarion shattering events than usual. So, if they are doing mythic, I'd rather they go all in and reach level 20/mythic rank 10.

Although, I suppose using just a few mythic tiers to allow higher CR encounters, to speed up XP advancement and get to level 20 would also be OK.


If you want it to be Level 20/Tier 10 but are worried about the higher XPs, set the game to Slow Advancement and still go to level 20 and Tier 10. If you need bigger encounters to provide an actual challenge, then slow the pace of advancement so the extra XPs don't matter as much.

And you can have a Mythic campaign that doesn't go to Tier 10. My Reign of Winter campaign is using the Mythic Rules. I plan on going to at most Tier 6. The PCs will likely reach level 20. And I'm rewriting encounters to cope with this; however, I'd already been doing this as the group was level 3-4 when they started the campaign.

It seems when converting a non-Mythic AP to Mythic, in most cases it won't go to Tier 10 because of the relative lack of encounters that would work as Mythic Trials. And let's be honest - a lot of the Mythic Trials for WotR were lackluster at best.


Lord Snow wrote:


Likewise, playtesting is VERY time consuming, and has a VERY little capacity to predict what actually goes down in play (even small differences in player decisions could easily kick you away from the carefully playtested).

This is nirvana fallacy.

They should probably rigorously test combat encounters.

My guess is that they do not do this, instead they just play. It seems like not a lot of testing if you "test" for 4 hours but actually spend most of that talking


leo1925 wrote:
Guys most of Paizo's recent APs are quite on the easy side (so i don't think that it was only the fault of mythic rules)

Just a though, most paizo aps are pretty tough for the first 2 books, and then after book 3 are a cakewalk.

hmmmm


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I would like testing, but it would also be an impossible task.

What four classes should they test for? How many viable combinations can you come up with? Skills, feats, treasure?

There may be a good balance in there but it would be challenging to say the least.


Yes, testing is hard.

Ok?


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CWheezy wrote:
leo1925 wrote:
Guys most of Paizo's recent APs are quite on the easy side (so i don't think that it was only the fault of mythic rules)

Just a though, most paizo aps are pretty tough for the first 2 books, and then after book 3 are a cakewalk.

hmmmm

This is the truth.

Also, I would, too, like to see another AP which goes to level 20. You can put any type of story in there, since we really didn't need the mythic rules to put some super extra power on the already stupidly powerful player characters you have from level 15 on forward. Wrath of the Righteous story could have easily be done with normal characters, if they are allowed to advance to level 20.

Because, seriously, what can't a party do which can cast level 9 spells? Quite a lot of classes begin to do that at level 17 and you can cram a lot of extremely powerful enemies into those last three levels of the game.

Liberty's Edge

Starfinder Superscriber
Lord Snow wrote:
I actually want to see another mythic AP (I'll not run it, most probably, but I will certainly enjoy reading another story with such an epic scope). However, I hope Paizo would find a way to work around the XP problem, which should enable them to design the adventures better. Other things to *really* avoid are: 5 minute adventure days, solo boss fights, last adventures that aren't epic.

The quickest workaround is : use the Slow track.

I suspect that would go a long way towards mitigating the issue.

Of course, if an AP is going to take characters from level 1 to 20 in the adventure time that most take characters from 1 to about 14, XP will need to be a bit more plentiful. (I've seen some complain about how free Dragon's Demand is with extra story award xp, but they were necessary because part of the goal was to get characters up to level 17.)

In most (but not all) games I run, I much prefer just to tell the players "OK, now is the time to level up" rather than track experience. APs even provide you all the guidance you need to do this.


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The only problem mythic rules has is the same problem any high level adventure will have, you can't write anything at that level that will appropriately challenge "your" party. "Your" party is going to be different from anyone else's so the DM has to "improvise, adapt, and overcome" as the saying goes. Honestly guys, this should be done in any AP. Publishers will quite often lose with the high level stuff because the module is perceived overkill(couple encounters from Savage Tides got that treatment as I recall) and people complain, or too easy and people complain. Lose/lose situation, glad I don't do that for a living.... End result? Middle of the road APs that require some doctoring.

An adventure path is the bare bones, as the DM you breath life into it, if you don't you aren't doing your job. I'm not trying to say this in a bad way at all, but I see people shaking their heads over Wrath and I utterly fail to see how a DM couldn't help but slaughter the playerbase wholesale.......with a little DM addition here and there of course.

Think of yourselves as chefs, something like Wrath is the turkey. Now spice it up, cook it, and serve it to your players. If you don't, all it is, is a dead bird, and no one wants to eat that.

And before you ask, no, I'm not going to tell you what I'd do because what I'd do is for my table not yours. Works for me sure, for you though, maybe not so well eh? Customization is key.

As to the OP's question, I hope they write another. This last one was pretty fun. That is, me and mine had a good time anyway.


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Vexous gets it!


One thing I do as a GM is run playtests of difficult encounters to determine if my players will be able to handle them or not. I then might suggest to the players courses of action ahead of time to cope with the situation. Mind you, sometimes this doesn't work.

Here's an example:

Spoiler:
The Raven Swarm in the Pale Tower in RoW. As-written, the Swarm forces players in its area of effect to make two saves a turn. One is to determine if the character is blinded for the rest of the combat. The second is to see if they are nauseated for one round (and thus not be able to hurt the swarm). It does not matter how high the character's armor class is. This is automatic damage. And the two saves are on different stat-lines suggesting at least one save will be failed.

I realized that given one PC shows up a turn, if combat started quickly then the entire group would be wiped out (my players don't have hot dice - while I know "statistical averages" exist, my group is the low end of the statistical curve getting the bad rolls while other gaming groups are the lucky ones. ;)

So my solution? Suggest to the warrior/wizard to take Web as a spell.

What happens? The group bluffs their way into the encounter. Their bad luck with die rolls result in one round of combat at which point both players in there are nauseated (but not blinded). But then a guest-player's character rolled a natural 20 for a Bluff check. And the group proceeded to wind such a bizarre story that while their die-rolls were bad, I chose to ignore the dice 'til the end. And when the group then suddenly swarmed the priestess and killed her in one round, the raven swarm never got to attack again. The Web spell never got used.

I provided the group (or one player at least) with a spell to deal with a situation. The reason for this is that as GM, my job is to ensure the group enjoys themselves. Having everyone die because of bad die rolls is not fun. It would be like playing Elder Scrolls with a character you have to spend an hour to build... but if you die, you can't reload a save point. You're just dead.

As GM, I will modify an encounter so that it is harder or easier so the group has a chance to prevail. Challenge Ratings only go so far for this - part of this may be because you allowed rolled stats, or because you have veteran players. Or you may have reckless players who never think things through. The Adventure Path or module is a blueprint for the game, but you can (and should!) change things.

This is called fudging. I know a number of people here hate fudging and consider it cheating. I say that's bullshit. We are GameMasters. We don't cheat. We are storytellers using dice and other people's ideas to craft a story with the help of our friends. But the dice and the modules are just writing materials - ultimately we tell the stories using our heads and our hearts.

Tell the story right. Make the ending one the players enjoy. And never make it about yourself. You as the GM don't "win" if the players lose.


Vexous wrote:

The only problem mythic rules has is the same problem any high level adventure will have, you can't write anything at that level that will appropriately challenge "your" party. "Your" party is going to be different from anyone else's so the DM has to "improvise, adapt, and overcome" as the saying goes. Honestly guys, this should be done in any AP. Publishers will quite often lose with the high level stuff because the module is perceived overkill(couple encounters from Savage Tides got that treatment as I recall) and people complain, or too easy and people complain. Lose/lose situation, glad I don't do that for a living.... End result? Middle of the road APs that require some doctoring.

An adventure path is the bare bones, as the DM you breath life into it, if you don't you aren't doing your job. I'm not trying to say this in a bad way at all, but I see people shaking their heads over Wrath and I utterly fail to see how a DM couldn't help but slaughter the playerbase wholesale.......with a little DM addition here and there of course.

Think of yourselves as chefs, something like Wrath is the turkey. Now spice it up, cook it, and serve it to your players. If you don't, all it is, is a dead bird, and no one wants to eat that.

And before you ask, no, I'm not going to tell you what I'd do because what I'd do is for my table not yours. Works for me sure, for you though, maybe not so well eh? Customization is key.

As to the OP's question, I hope they write another. This last one was pretty fun. That is, me and mine had a good time anyway.

This is nirvana fallacy again.

"You can't please everyone, so why try" is a pretty lame standard to hold a company to imo.

Maybe I just don't "get it"


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Aside from being insulting (in essence Vexous is belittling the ability of any GM who thinks of the mythic rules as very problematic for AP's), the essence of the argument is wrong. AP's are written to challenge parties, otherwise very difficult opponents like Xanesha wouldn't even happen. The base problem is that (IMO) Paizo has not accounted very well for the spike in player character power which happens around levels 10-12 and monsters don't ever catch up in the core game.

Mythic puts another system on top which was not playtested as thoroughly as it should have been, especially for the high levels and where it was obvious from the day the book was released that mythic monsters did not keep up in their abilities with player character abilities. As such the base problem I mentioned above was multiplied.

AP's are written with the assumption of four core characters with moderately experienced players (i.e. players who have played together for less than a year). Even those kind of player characters (the expectation of which is an oxymoron for an AP which features an entire new system on top of the existing core) would be way too much for the AP as written, just by how powerful the mythic rules make any player character.


CWheezy wrote:
leo1925 wrote:
Guys most of Paizo's recent APs are quite on the easy side (so i don't think that it was only the fault of mythic rules)

Just a though, most paizo aps are pretty tough for the first 2 books, and then after book 3 are a cakewalk.

hmmmm

I give you the 1st book of an AP almost always being tough due to the fragility of low level characters, but the 2nd book isn't always tough.

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