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Has anyone thought of just maybe using the Terrain and having the PCs make survival checks and such to be even able to stay in the Abyss and world wound for longer then a few hours at a time?
What about having them make hourly checks to resist the corruption of the abyss? Each time they fail then gain negatives to saves and start to lose some sanity, they can't "cure" this because it is the Abyss itself that is perverting them, They can leave the abyss for 24 hours to rest and be tended too. The longer they stay the more likely they are to be corrupted. Also each step into one of said Demon Lords Citadels doubles the saves they have to make.
We all know that the Demon lords are watching them come, make them more prepared so by the time they get to them they are weakened or they are so low on resources rock-et-tag becomes something they don't want to play.
Also if they bring NPCs with them (no idea if people's parties did) have them roll 2 saves per hour as they aren't "Mythic" and can't just resist such power. Irabeth fallen and turned into a Anti-Paladin would be hard on the party and on her wife.
Has anyone thought of just maybe using the Terrain and having the PCs make survival checks and such to be even able to stay in the Abyss and world wound for longer then a few hours at a time?
What about having them make hourly checks to resist the corruption of the abyss? Each time they fail then gain negatives to saves and start to lose some sanity, they can't "cure" this because it is the Abyss itself that is perverting them, They can leave the abyss for 24 hours to rest and be tended too. The longer they stay the more likely they are to be corrupted. Also each step into one of said Demon Lords Citadels doubles the saves they have to make.
We all know that the Demon lords are watching them come, make them more prepared so by the time they get to them they are weakened or they are so low on resources rock-et-tag becomes something they don't want to play.
Also if they bring NPCs with them (no idea if people's parties did) have them roll 2 saves per hour as they aren't "Mythic" and can't just resist such power. Irabeth fallen and turned into a Anti-Paladin would be hard on the party and on her wife.
I really like your idea. My only concern would be that under these contions the 15 minute adventuring day would become 10, and then 5 to compensate. If you were to add in a empowering effect for the demons then that would at least give the PC's a difficult decision to make once the effects start accumulating.
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All demons should be stronger in the Abyss than they are on the material plane. Why not give even lesser demons a boost when they are on their home turf. The PCs are the invaders and the Demons and other natives to the abyss should take full use of their powers there. Banishment? Dismissal? Dimensional lock/anchor? Make the PCs even regret coming here.
Question, what about multiplying an aspect of Mythic creatures HP by their Mythic Rank/Mythic Tier?
For example, take the HP gained from their HD alone and multiply it by their MR/MT or something. So, if you use the Mythic Lich which has d8 HP, 13 HD and MR 7, if you did the above, he would have (4.5*13)7+147=556.5 HP
Maybe make it apart of Mythic Toughness and start giving that feat to all the Mythic creatures?
You could re-write Mythic Toughness as:
Mythic Toughness
Benefit: Multiply the hit points gained from your hit die by your mythic rank or the number of mythic tiers you have before adding in additional hit points from having a high constitution score, toughness and the like.
Take someone like Cthulhu and he'd have 2,232 HP if he had Mythic Toughness instead of the 774 he has as printed.
A Mythic Wyrm Red Dragon would have 1,123 HP instead of 518 HP.
A Mythic Fire Giant would have 467 HP instead of 197 HP.
Although those number look nuts (but are probably about right in reality), I think you're definitely on to something. There has to be a sweet spot between creatures being one-shot and lasting too long.
Trouble is it all depends on your group - for example, are you using the mythic rules as written or using the suggested nerfs, do you have 3,4,5 etc players as the more you have the more damage per round they will produce, have you given the monster duel initiative to increase their round by round action economy?
You see, although your suggestions are great, each group will have to use them differently.
Mythic Toughness (monster feat)
Benefit : Gain hit points equal to HD x mythic level/rank.
It would certainly help.
How would it change the dynamic if the PC tiers were treated as class levels and encounters were adjusted accordingly?
Say for example, you have 4 PCs who are Level 17 / Tier 6, so their APL is 20. We now want to treat them as APL 23.
You then have an encounter that was CR 22 consisting of 1 CR 20 and 3 CR 17. We now want to increase that to a CR25. So we’ll double the encounter (CR 20 x 2, CR 17 x 3 and add in a CR 21).
This would increase the enemy’s action economy and the overall challenge to the party.
As a side, I’m playing this sometime in the future. I’ve been avoiding spoilers, but this thread caught my attention. I know the DM pretty well, and I don’t see him adjusting stats. However, increasing or adding in some opponents to match the party may be a simple solution for us. I’m just wondering if this may be going too far.
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Well... I made a big long post but it got eaten by the 'No Store' monster. Anyway, I have not run WotR, but I did participate in a Legacy of Fire campaign that went Mythic at the end of book 3. The GM was lazy and only skimmed Book 4 and just 'winged it' most of the time (with my help), but we did some crazy stuff in it.
Between the Barbarian 2-handing a greataxe, the Fighter 2-handing a Falchion, and the Fighter with Mythic Power Attack and Mythic Improved Crit, and the Wizard with ultimate versatility (and Dazing Fireballs), combat became a joke.
Like at one point we fought, in one encounter, a Mythic Marilith, 2 normal Mariliths, 10 Vrock (who attempted to summon then danced) and 10 succubi (who summoned then charm bombed). The Mariliths all attempted to summon another Marilith with 1 success. Anyway, my Wizard threw out a Dazing Wall of Fire which forced a number of creatures were then dazed for 4 rounds. Every round after if they took damage they had to save again or reset the daze duration.
With Rime Fireballs tossed around liberally and a few buff spells, the Wizard managed to control the fight. Meanwhile, the Barb and Fighter ran around slaughtering everything in 1 or 2 shots.
My Monk (I played two characters, a blaster Wizard and a Monk), ran up to the Mythic Marilith, and over the course of 3 rounds, disarmed her of all her weapons and kept her focused on him. He whittled away at her HP, holding her off until the Barb and Fighter could make it through the horde to get to her (I just jumped over everything). We won that encounter with only myself taking any damage, and most of that came about from the Wall of Fire(s) the Wizard dropped (he always made his save vs Daze).
Another time, we had got into an encounter with 10 Nelfeshnee, 10 Vrcok, 10 Succubi, and 10 of another demon I can't remember. We were running around slaughtering them when mid fight, a CR 20 Tarn Linnorm burst it's way through the wall 300 odd feet across the room.
Now, the Fighter and I selected very similar abilities. I had Fleet Charge, Impossible Speed, Aerial Assault and Fleet Warrior (we were level 13/MT 3), while he selected Fleet Charge, Impossible Speed, Sunder Storm and Fleet Warrior. The Wizard had also dropped a Mythic Augmented Haste, which grants +70 ft movement and an extra move action.
So we both had 30 ft movement as a base, +30 from Impossible Speed and +70 from Haste (Monk move speed doesn't stack) so we could move 130 ft per round. We used the Haste Move action to move 130 ft, then the Fleet Warrior movement to move another 130 ft, and then used Fleet Charge as a swift action to close the distance on the Tarn Linnorm and make a free attack; then we full-attacked.
Between the Fighter and I (mostly the Fighter; I did land my signature combo a 'Komet Kick' where in I jump really high and add falling damage plus Elemental Fist to the strike), we did over double it's max HP in damage after sprinting nearly 300 feet across the room to drop this beast.
The GM relies on me to bounce ideas off of, but ultimately makes decisions himself. I helped design some encounters for him, but the Tarn Linnorm was a total surprise. After the Linnorm, we broke up for the summer months (we always take summer off). Since then, the GM and I have talked and he's considering ending the campaign because he can't handle the crazy stuff we've done. He's thrown us up against multiple encounters where bad stuff should have happened, but between the Fighter able to 1-shot most enemies (or at least full round them) and the Wizard able to land cripple blasts+debuff/control, nothing stands a chance.
I have to point out, the Fighter player is new to TTRPGs and had only played a few sessions in the Curse of the Crimson Throne game I'm running that is on hiatus. Other than the one character, he's never played Pathfinder before. He built his character by reading the CRB and choosing what he thought were obvious choices.
When he got Mythic Tiers, he bought the book, read through it, and then chose what he thought would be cool and good. Mythic Power Attack and Mythic Improved Critical, he said, seemed clearly obvious choices and a natural extension of choices he'd already made.
That's my big issue with Mythic. When you make the obvious choice of the natural progression of your character, then you tend to break Mythic. Character has Power Attack, obviously he's going to pick up Mythic Power Attack. If he's got Weapon Finesse, then obviously he's going to pick up Mythic Weapon Finesse. If he's got Spell Focus, then obviously he's going to pick up Mythic Spell Focus.
It's like the designers never considered the idea that players would choose the follow the natural progression of their Non-Mythic choices.
very insightful Tels, well said:)
i will say a couple of observations on what can be done in future APs that utilize mythic adventures, they are just a couple and very simple (more a jumping off point really)
they need to add more hit points and more abilities that prevent parties from absolutely dominating the battlefield, i might have more but thats just off the top of my head:)
Between the Barbarian 2-handing a greataxe, the Fighter 2-handing a Falchion, and the Fighter with Mythic Power Attack and Mythic Improved Crit, and the Wizard with ultimate versatility (and Dazing Fireballs), combat became a joke.
Like at one point we fought, in one encounter, a Mythic Marilith, 2 normal Mariliths, 10 Vrock (who attempted to summon then danced) and 10 succubi (who summoned then charm bombed). The Mariliths all attempted to summon another Marilith with 1 success. Anyway, my Wizard threw out a Dazing Wall of Fire which forced a number of creatures were then dazed for 4 rounds. Every round after if they took damage they had to save again or reset the daze duration.
Another time, we had got into an encounter with 10 Nelfeshnee, 10 Vrcok, 10 Succubi, and 10 of another demon I can't remember. We were running around slaughtering them when mid fight, a CR 20 Tarn Linnorm burst it's way through the wall 300 odd feet across the room.
What were the PC class and tier levels on these encounters?
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To clarify, my GM was lazy in that he didn't want to read book 4. So he skimmed through it, and then just made up stuff on the fly.
For example, do you know those little toy mazes where you have to tilt them to guide a ball through the maze to land it in a hole to win? Well, he turned that into an entire dungeon room.
Basically, it was a big maze with Mythic Minotaurs running around in it that he made immune to fire, and in fact, gained fast healing when taking fire damage. In addition, 20 ft. diameter steel balls would be dropped into the maze and then a Fire Giant who operated a control booth would pull levers to try and tilt the maze to squish us. Also, the oustide wall of the maze had meta grates on the walls. Whenever the maze would tilt, the high point would have lava drip into the maze and begin flooding corridors. So we had to avoid the minotaurs, the giant steel balls, and the lava.
There was a Dimensional Lock on the room so we couldn't teleport out of the maze, unless you happened to be a Minotaur (go figure). It ended up coming down to myself and the Fighter using our increased speed to run as fast as we could around the maze to find the exit, and hunt the minotaurs, while the rest of the party (which had a Barbarian, Oracle of Life, Bard, and Range/Rogue in it) to stick together and fend off the minotaurs and follow behind us.
He told me afterward that he didn't think up that idea until about 10 minutes before the session started as he was fiddling with one of those toy mazes. He had no idea what we were going to do that session as he never bothered to read the AP book to find out what was going on, so he just threw us into that instead.
It was a really cool session, but anytime the Fighter or the Barbarian got a hold of a Minotaur, they dropped it almost immediately. He decided that when it came to the 4th book, he wasn't really going to read much of it, and just threw encounters together. Some of them were really harrowing, some of them were a laughing stock at how easy we were. Funnily enough, the ones he thought would be hard, we stomped through, but the ones he thought would be easy, we had difficult with. Like a room with 5 Bodaks and a Banshee in it. Oh, and in the next room were some giant assed spiders (I think they were Bebiliths) and a Nightwalker. We were 11/MT 1 at the time, and the scariest part of this fight were the Bodaks and the Banshee because they both had 'auto-lose' abilities. Especially the Bodaks,
Sorry, I was just trying to get a grasp of the party level vs the encounters. My high level games tend to be crazy without mythic. I wouldn’t be shocked by a 17th level party dropping a Tarn Linnorn (CR 20) in one round of full attacks. If you were playing PCs who were 11th/ tier 1 at that point, then yes, I'm with you.
The other encounters don’t seem good challenges either. In an encounter with an epic marilith (CR 21), 10 vrocks and 10 succubi are basically just taking up space no matter if mythic is involved or not. The only other threats were the two other mariliths. Again, depends on what level you were at that time.
Against level 11/ tier 1 PCs, bodaks aren’t a big threat either at CR 8. The banshee is in range. Regular minotaurs are speed bumps, and even a mythic minotaur is still not close to a challenge for 11th level PCs.
What were the PC class and tier levels on these encounters?Between the Barbarian 2-handing a greataxe, the Fighter 2-handing a Falchion, and the Fighter with Mythic Power Attack and Mythic Improved Crit, and the Wizard with ultimate versatility (and Dazing Fireballs), combat became a joke.
Like at one point we fought, in one encounter, a Mythic Marilith, 2 normal Mariliths, 10 Vrock (who attempted to summon then danced) and 10 succubi (who summoned then charm bombed). The Mariliths all attempted to summon another Marilith with 1 success. Anyway, my Wizard threw out a Dazing Wall of Fire which forced a number of creatures were then dazed for 4 rounds. Every round after if they took damage they had to save again or reset the daze duration.
Another time, we had got into an encounter with 10 Nelfeshnee, 10 Vrcok, 10 Succubi, and 10 of another demon I can't remember. We were running around slaughtering them when mid fight, a CR 20 Tarn Linnorm burst it's way through the wall 300 odd feet across the room.
Um, the encounter with the Mariliths we were level 12/MT 2, and the encounter with the Tarn Linnorm we were level 13/MT 3.
We had:
- Female Elf Admixture Wizard focuses on Blasting/Control. Heavily specialized in Fireball, and mainly adds metamagic to Fireball to achieve her control effects if possible. Went down the Archmage path. I played the Wizard.
- Male Human Dex based Monk of the Four Winds that uses Crane Style and focused a lot on maneuvers. I intentionally opted not to get a lot of AC boosters due to my already high AC. I will note that I am testing some changes to the Monk class to make it not so awful. A lot of little tweaks, most of which never got used, but the big one being the Monk can add Wisdom to attack rolls (not damage) in addition to his strength/dexterity. He's much more accurate, but I do piddling for damage. Went down the Champion path. I play the Monk, by the way.
- Male Human Vanilla Fighter that uses a Falchion because we were playing a desert campaign. He figured Falchion was more iconic in a desert than a greatsword. All of his feats, except for Death or Glory (which he thinks is an awesome fun feat) are from the Core Rule Book. At least, I think so. Went down the Champion path.
- Female Human Vanilla Barbarian. The player for this Barbarian knows nothing about Pathfinder. He only gets to play sporadically, and when he shows up, we just give him a character for whatever campaign we're playing, and let him roll dice. I built this Barbarian to be more of a TankBarian then a face smasher. He's got a high strength and con, and Dragon Totem for more DR and energy resistance. He went Champion, but didn't take Mythic Power Attack because the GM said, "One character with Mythic Power Attack is enough as it is. Take something else." In fact, here is her charactersheet; she's 1 level behind because our policy is that new player come in at the lowest level of the group and one character missed a session and didn't level with everyone else.
- Female Human Vanilla Oracle of Life focuses almost entirely on healing and buffing. Hierophant, this guy can heal like a boss.
- Male Human(?) Vanilla Ranger/Vanilla Rogue that focuses much more on the face aspects. He's got a special Scimitar from the second book that is a +2 Fire Outsider Bane Cold Scimitar, and he has a hatred for Fire Outsiders and his favored enemy is Fire Outsiders. So against Fire Outsiders, he kicks serious ass. Against everyone else... not so much, at least not without buffing help. I'm not entirely sure as to what race he is, because he came in at around level 5 and had a Hat of Disguise. He constantly changes personalities and appearances more often than a socialite changes clothes when she goes shopping. He actually set up 3 gangs in Ketapesh and is the head of each gang, but under a different personality. But each of the 3 gangs are rivals of the other 2. He did this so as to put pressure on his gang members to force them to 'be the best that they can'.
- Male Elf Vanilla Bard that focuses entirely on buffing and face skills. In fact, has never dealt direct damage his entire career. The player is an old player who played extensively in older editions, and never in 3E or later. But he's very smart and has studied the books to know how to get some good buffs going (plus he asks me for advice a lot).
When it comes to actual combat, it's usually down to the Wizard, Monk, Fighter and Barbarian* to do all of the fighting. The Oracle, Ranger/Rogue and Bard try to stay out of combat, as much as possible. The Ranger/Rogue actually flits around combat and finishes off wounded enemies so the big hitters can focus elsewhere. The Oracle moves around healing and buffing, but doesn't really cast offensively.
*Barbarian often isn't present, or shows up late to sessions due to real life conflicts. We just level him up and progress him even if he isn't there because all he really wants to do is sit down, play, and have fun.
So we have 7 players, but we also have much larger combats. 4 of the players do all of the fighting, and only 3 of those 4 are there for every fight.
Sorry, I was just trying to get a grasp of the party level vs the encounters. My high level games tend to be crazy without mythic. I wouldn’t be shocked by a 17th level party dropping a Tarn Linnorn (CR 20) in one round of full attacks. If you were playing PCs who were 11th/ tier 1 at that point, then yes, I'm with you.
The other encounters don’t seem good challenges either. In an encounter with an epic marilith (CR 21), 10 vrocks and 10 succubi are basically just taking up space no matter if mythic is involved or not. The only other threats were the two other mariliths. Again, depends on what level you were at that time.
Against level 11/ tier 1 PCs, bodaks aren’t a big threat either at CR 8. The banshee is in range. Regular minotaurs are speed bumps, and even a mythic minotaur is still not close to a challenge for 11th level PCs.
Don't disregard the Vrock, they can be really mean. They have the Dance of Ruin ability which is what made them a threat.
A vrock can dance and chant as a full-round action—at the end of 3 rounds, a crackling wave of energy explodes from the vrock, dealing 5d6 points of electricity damage to all creatures within 100 feet. A DC 17 Reflex save halves this damage. For each additional vrock that joins in the dance, the damage increases by 5d6 and the DC to avoid the effect increases by +1, to a maximum of 20d6 when four or more vrocks are dancing (the DC continues to increase with additional vrocks, but the damage does not). The dance immediately ends and must be started anew if any of the participating vrocks is slain, stunned, or otherwise prevented from dancing. The save DC is Charisma-based.
With 10 Vrock, they can form 2 dancing groups, and unleash two bursts of 20d6 shock damage. Additionally, each Vrock attempted to summon additional Vrock, but they didn't get enough to form a 3rd complete circle of 5.
Also, the Succubi can summon more bodies to the field, and then proceeded to attempt to land Charm/Dominate on the players. They also moved past the main fighters to get to the squishier ones in the back.
Bodaks are nasty because if you even look at one, you are subject to it's gaze attack. Additionally, a Bodak can stare at someone as a Standard action and use it's gaze attack on them. With 5 bodaks, and us at only level 11 at the time, we could very easily see multiple character deaths if we didn't drop them. However, to avoid the gaze attacks, we had to close our eyes, which gave them a 50% miss chance.
The Banshee and the Bodaks were together in the same room, so the Banshee tried to move into range to Wail (which would deal 140 HP of damage to anyone who failed and could outright kill some of the squishier characters at the time).
It was a scary encounter because both of the creatures had other ways of attacking other than melee. I mean, level drain plus Fort save or 140 HP damage is a scary combo.
The Minotaurs tried to avoid the heavy hitters if they could, but what they were really good at, was that, in the maze, they could open and close sections of the wall (GM gave them this power). So they could suddenly close a pathway, and then open another pathway that let lave or the steel balls pour in. So they would Standard Action Open a hole, then move action teleport elsewhere in their Maze.
If they ever got caught, they would die, so they did their best to not get caught.