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hey now!
i was literally a Red-Haired Step Child as a kid! and the middle kid to boot! (you wanna talk forgotten i got stories!) surely there is a different analogy that can be used:)
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No RPG that I've played has not needed to be modified in some way to run the way I want it to. Ever. Not in my 20+ years of gaming. I buy big books full of tools for my storytelling. This one is no different.
Paizo puts out good quality stuff that needs only de minimis tinkering on my part to run the way I want it to. They give me options I wouldn't have thought of myself and I find their world setting fun. Also, trying to compare what you see as failings in their products to cars and appliances not working is laughable. It's comparing apples to bricks. I don't think it's helping your arguments any...
Minor tinkering, sure. Not whole scale rewrites of stat-blocks. Mind you, I do the rewrites anyway because I run different level characters through it than what you should, but that's just me. WotR needs a rewrite for characters as-intended.
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They needed to think out their areas more as well, I am just concluding the Gray Garrison ( I know i am not to far in) and all the 1/2 Tiefling rooms with 6 in them seems under thoughtout. I know they want the PCs to feel like the building is full. They should have made it more of a challenge, you have 4 PCs, 1 Paladin PC, 4 Mongrelmen archers and you call a room with 6 1/2 characters in it a challenge?
This was the First AP I bought from Paizo, I loved the idea of the world wound, seemed so amazing. I am just rewriting rooms as I see fit and awarding the XP Paizo says too.
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Yeah, but if a new car comes out and then suddenly wheels start serially falling off, people still get angry at the manufacturers. Why exactly are we supposed to have such low expectations for our RPG products?
I'm not really arguing that there wasn't a bad product here, I'm arguing it was the rules element of WotR, not Mythic Adventures per se. If the tires fall off a particular model of car and both that design of tires and that model of car are new...listing the fact that they fall off as evidence that it's the car and not the tires is a poor argument on all sorts of levels.
Now, I'm aware you disagree with the basic point that WotR is at fault rather than Mythic as a whole, but if you want to present a compelling case, you're gonna need to present non-WotR examples of Mythic not working. Whereas all the complaints I've read thus far about Mythic use WotR and only WotR for evidence (while several other people seem to be using Mythic in homebrew games with some success). That doesn't inherently mean those complaints are wrong...but it means they're being presented with poor evidence and are thus not the most convincing arguments ever.
Um... how about the fact Mythic Power Attack is broken, and that it is entirely possible for a Mythic character to do 1,000 damage with one critical hit?
Or the fact that Mythic Archmage allows a player to replicate a Feat that adds four spell levels... for the cost of one Mythic power point and thus can be used at low level as many times as they have Mythic points... and in doing so cast two spells a round?
And let's not forget the 3rd Tier ability that replicates the Hero Point ability of an extra standard or move action... but using just one Mythic point, which regenerates daily, compared to Hero Points that take leveling up to return?
And you say it's not broken.
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They needed to think out their areas more as well, I am just concluding the Gray Garrison ( I know i am not to far in) and all the 1/2 Tiefling rooms with 6 in them seems under thoughtout. I know they want the PCs to feel like the building is full. They should have made it more of a challenge, you have 4 PCs, 1 Paladin PC, 4 Mongrelmen archers and you call a room with 6 1/2 characters in it a challenge
I had the exact same complaint and I pointed it out to my players post-book-I, and they responded that if they hadn't allied themselves with the mongrelmen they wouldn't have had the rangers, and if they hadn't taken care of Anevia they wouldn't have had Irabeth, so they felt like they were being rewarded for their good behavior by getting ridiculously-easy fights.
On a -COMPLETE- side note but continuing in the "Complaints" thread, I've run or played in 3 full APs and parts of a fourth, fifth, and sixth, needing nothing more than the core rulebook and expanded spell lists.
I expected to play with mythic rules in this AP. But at the same time as mythic rules, they're throwing in warfare from Ultimate Campaign, multiple NPCs to manage at all times, and enemies with classes and feats from all the "big 5" books (CRB, APG, UC, UM, UE).
It's kind of like when I was a kid and I bought all the "difficulty 3" model rocket kits, built them, and flew them, and then made the mistake of getting a "difficulty 5" kit and learning that difficulty level was measured in orders of magnitude, not simple little things like, "Can you cut a straight line?"
Any one of the three would make my job harder (mythic rules, running multiple NPCs, warfare rules). Having me dealing with all three in one book (Book 2) means we have to skip a week of gaming just to give me enough time to figure it all out.
As several people have said, you expect to buy an AP module, spend an hour or two reading it, do a few more hours prep work to "make it your own", and you run it.
Book 2 looks like it's going to take me 20-30 hours of prep work. That's a LOT to ask. There should be a bit more warning that, "We integrated a lot of our expanded rulesets here, so if you're a fairly vanilla GM be ready to do a lot more studying and prep than usual."
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Um... how about the fact Mythic Power Attack is broken, and that it is entirely possible for a Mythic character to do 1,000 damage with one critical hit?
Or the fact that Mythic Archmage allows a player to replicate a Feat that adds four spell levels... for the cost of one Mythic power point and thus can be used at low level as many times as they have Mythic points... and in doing so cast two spells a round?
And let's not forget the 3rd Tier ability that replicates the Hero Point ability of an extra standard or move action... but using just one Mythic point, which regenerates daily, compared to Hero Points that take leveling up to return?
And you say it's not broken.
Uh...all those are powerful, not inherently broken. The enemy can have them, too, after all...
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The point would be is do you want to be able to slay the most powerful beings in the game in one hit? That doesn't sound epic to me. The most popular culprits are vital strike and power attack. And to be guaranteed to be able to make a full attack each round.
Also the path abilities are very poorly balanced. (look at fleet charge and anything else, or wild arcana) It is often difficult to tell which abilities should be 1st, 3rd or 6th tier.
I feel this is beyond the point of minor tinkering and to the point of major re-write, not that I expect that to happen. I do hope the mythic rules collect dust and get swept beneath the rug.
@DMW: So you're saying an ability that can kill a character at full hit points and with significant magical buffs in one strike without the chance of a saving throw is not broken. And that such an entity, with a lucky die roll, could kill off over half of a Mythic party in one round... without even being the Big Bad... is acceptable.
Do you know see the problem with this situation? Who wants to spend weeks or a couple months playing a game only to have an enemy walk up to them and kill half of the party in one round and the other half in the next round? We're talking something that can cause Total Party Kills without much effort, just as players can use it to eliminate Demon Lords in their home realm, without breaking a sweat.
No. This is not what Dungeons and Dragons is about. It's not what Pathfinder is about. Mythic fights are along the lines of Hercules slaying the Hydra or Perseus beheading the Medusa. One-shot kills are boring.
Some people are making it work by rewriting the rules.
You are saying the rules as-is are fine.
No. They're not.
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Some people are making it work by rewriting the rules.
Actually, I was talking about the people running Mythic as-is in home games, who mostly don't seem to be having problems. Almost literally every complaint I've heard about it has either been pure theorycrafting or based exclusively on WotR.
You are saying the rules as-is are fine.
No, I'm not. I'm saying "I had problems in WotR." while a legitimate complaint, isn't good evidence that Mythic is messed up or broken...not on its own anyway. Mythic might be broken, I don't get that impression looking at it, but others do...but without actual evidence of some type (other than a specific AP being problematic) I'm just really not convinced one way or the other.
No. They're not.
Evidence? Not just "This looks broken." because I've heard that a lot...and then not had it be a problem at all in actual play (a Color Spraying Heavens Oracle leaps to mind...).
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Paizo puts out good quality stuff that needs only de minimis tinkering on my part to run the way I want it to. They give me options I wouldn't have thought of myself and I find their world setting fun. Also, trying to compare what you see as failings in their products to cars and appliances not working is laughable. It's comparing apples to bricks. I don't think it's helping your arguments any...
It's not an exact analogy to be sure. But nonetheless, for some reason when it gets to creative work we are supposed to accept that faulty products can and will be sold to us. And when we complain, we are told to write our own, if we want to complain. That is an insane standard to have and I used the car analogy to point out how ridiculous it is.
Yeah, but if a new car comes out and then suddenly wheels start serially falling off, people still get angry at the manufacturers. Why exactly are we supposed to have such low expectations for our RPG products?I'm not really arguing that there wasn't a bad product here, I'm arguing it was the rules element of WotR, not Mythic Adventures per se. If the tires fall off a particular model of car and both that design of tires and that model of car are new...listing the fact that they fall off as evidence that it's the car and not the tires is a poor argument on all sorts of levels.
Now, I'm aware you disagree with the basic point that WotR is at fault rather than Mythic as a whole, but if you want to present a compelling case, you're gonna need to present non-WotR examples of Mythic not working. Whereas all the complaints I've read thus far about Mythic use WotR and only WotR for evidence (while several other people seem to be using Mythic in homebrew games with some success). That doesn't inherently mean those complaints are wrong...but it means they're being presented with poor evidence and are thus not the most convincing arguments ever.
What I said was that the story of WotR is good, but the mythic rules are broken. Your argument, however, is good in one part, because the balancing in WotR also was very bad.
But as Tangent pointed out, the mythic rules have their own problem, the most fundamental one is that they transform the game into even more ridiculous rocket tag and at a much faster and higher pace than before.
Check in with some of the people who are adding Mythic to Runelords or Reign of Winter. I'm not a good judge for this because my groups meet monthly and are not that far into Mythic just yet.
Evidence? Not just "This looks broken." because I've heard that a lot...and then not had it be a problem at all in actual play (a Color Spraying Heavens Oracle leaps to mind...).
I think there were more than a few play examples in this thread alone.
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Evidence? Not just "This looks broken." because I've heard that a lot...and then not had it be a problem at all in actual play (a Color Spraying Heavens Oracle leaps to mind...).I think there were more than a few play examples in this thread alone.
Yep. Basically all from WotR. Which runs into the "Is it Mythic in general that's the problem, or this AP specifically?" question I've been mentioning since my first post in this thread.
Examples not from WotR are what I'm looking for.
@DMW: So you're saying an ability that can kill a character at full hit points and with significant magical buffs in one strike without the chance of a saving throw is not broken. And that such an entity, with a lucky die roll, could kill off over half of a Mythic party in one round... without even being the Big Bad... is acceptable.
I won't argue that there aren't things in mythic that needs to be fixed. However, I've said this before and I'll say it again: if you are a mythic character who doesn't have the ability to negate attacks and/or critical hits then it is your own fault for dieing in one hit. Even with mythic, the game only becomes rocket tag if you don't bother with defense.
I'm running two converted APs - Runelords and RoW. The one where there is power creep ongoing is Runelords... but that's ALSO the AP which only has players at 1 Mythic Tier, and has higher stats than the other game (rolled stats).
Thus I honestly cannot tell which part of it is the stats, which part is the Barbarian with a 20 Strength (before Rage) using a two-handed weapon, and which part is the Mythic. I do know that in the RoW game (the game without the Barbarian), an encounter that used six Mythic Foes (basic template) against five Mythic players (one player was out for that game so her character remained back with the dogsleds) proved harder than expected. Certain templates may in fact be better than others (such as the one that gives an extra action each round at -20 Initiative). But then, I've tended to overestimate the power of that group for a while (such as the pre-Mythic encounter with three medium Ice Elementals nearly killing two 3rd level characters).
There is ALSO the fact I've already modified Mythic with some of my suggested nerfs, including to Mythic Power Attack and only allowing stats to go up +1 instead of +2 for even Tiers. Thus I'm not playing a "pure" and "unadulturated" Mythic and thus my examples are not a control.
We'll have to see how things go in the future.
How many abilities exist to negate attacks? There aren't many. And none of the designed NPCs or monsters have them.
The "counter" for Mythic players is being able to stop one attack. And you have to choose to stop the attack as an Immediate Action and very likely BEFORE the to-hit roll has been rolled because Sudden Block is having the creature make two attack rolls and choose the lower one. So you can't use it to force a reroll or prevent a critical hit.
If you're using a Mythic Monster, then Block Attack lets the monster roll to hit once per round to try and not be affected by an attack. But which hit do you block? And what if you have two Mythic warrior-types fighting your monster?
So no, defense isn't a cure against Mythic Overkill. Fixing the critical hit system so that modifiers (ie, strength, power attack, and other bonuses) are not multiplied does help somewhat, as does nerfing the Archmage so they don't get Swift Spells just by using a point of Mythic (or not allowing two spells cast a round when Mythic was used).
now i really want to play this just to see for myself:) with parameters of course
15 point buy
no extras like devotion awards or scales or wardstone fragments
and especially no paladins!
the mythic feats can be crossed later
So no rangers either? How about inquisitors? Bane, holy or axiomatic weapons?
An issue with the AP is how common a certain enemy type is. They aren't everywhere but if you build a character that's heavily anti demon you will be happy and powerful.
I found mythic dodge to be the best defense but its only once a round. The trickster ability for a +4 that enables an AoO isn't bad either.
You do know that the Wardstone Fragment only provides a one-time bonus, right? I know many people don't realize that so... :)
forgot wardstone fragment one time use:)
paladins derail adventures almost as much as player vs player violence:)
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forgot wardstone fragment one time use:)
paladins derail adventures almost as much as player vs player violence:)
If there is any adventure where paladins should be allowed, it would be this one. You're working with a crusade full of paladins after all! If anything, the people who are being difficult with the paladin players would be the ones responsible for derailing the adventure here.
i get the stallone paladins:) awesome f#&#ing analogy by the way! my new nickname for problem paladins:)
but honestly i mostly play with my wife and kids whom are all fans of the unlikely heroes save the land from the demons rather then the crusade vs evil
my plan right now, since its not really the type of AP for kids, is to get some of the parents of my kids friends involved in it (turns out tabletop RPGs are big with the younger crowd moving into our neighborhood:)
also i stopped playing for 17 years primarily because my brother always was a paladin and ruined every adventure i tried to run, so no i'm not a fan:) the paladin codes in faiths of purity do help cut down on the stupidity:)
My thoughts on this is to have a "Boss Fight" of the leader of the enemy army and enough soldiers to be a bit of a challenge for the player group. Then they fight this "boss-encounter" and describe the battle in terms of what's happening in the melee, but not emphasizing it. Stuff like when you get a critical hit on a foe, the Paladins charge and one of the enemy flanks starts to crumble, and when the enemy general falls the enemy army starts to rout.
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Aside, although relevant to RotW: if you're interested in seeing an example of a paladin being stuffing and stuck-up, but also still being able to play well and work well with others, I recommend reading Dave Gross' novel King of Chaos, which takes place in the Worldwound and which (obliquely) references Wrath of the Righteous.
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(Threadjack)I think part of that problem (which people have with Paladins) is related to Primacy/Recency and the fact that the alignment naming conventions put the Law/Chaos axis before the Good/Evil axis. As a result, the first thing people see is 'Lawful', so it sticks in their mind, and they quickly forget the 'Good' part- except as a sidenote or footnote- and move on to the next part of the class.
It should be obvious that 'Good' is of more importance to a Pally than 'Lawful', since all of the rest of their abilities are along the Good vs. Evil aspect of things (Smite Evil, Detect Evil, etc. If 'Law' was their main schtick, then they'd have 'Smite Chaos', etc.). Beyond that, they can commit Chaotic acts with relative impunity (alignment shift notwithstanding), but Evil acts makes them fall. I suppose it is simply a largely misunderstood class.
(/Threadjack)EDITED for formatting & Threadjack disclaimer
In my experience the problem is seldom the paladin but either players (not characters) who think it is fun to make the paladin's life hard or players who "are totally not playing evil PCs". Like "I'm no evil necromancer. I do not create undead I only control them and take them with me. See, I'm neutral."
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In my experience the problem is seldom the paladin but either players (not characters) who think it is fun to make the paladin's life hard or players who "are totally not playing evil PCs". Like "I'm no evil necromancer. I do not create undead I only control them and take them with me. See, I'm neutral."(Threadjack)I think part of that problem (which people have with Paladins) is related to Primacy/Recency and the fact that the alignment naming conventions put the Law/Chaos axis before the Good/Evil axis. As a result, the first thing people see is 'Lawful', so it sticks in their mind, and they quickly forget the 'Good' part- except as a sidenote or footnote- and move on to the next part of the class.
It should be obvious that 'Good' is of more importance to a Pally than 'Lawful', since all of the rest of their abilities are along the Good vs. Evil aspect of things (Smite Evil, Detect Evil, etc. If 'Law' was their main schtick, then they'd have 'Smite Chaos', etc.). Beyond that, they can commit Chaotic acts with relative impunity (alignment shift notwithstanding), but Evil acts makes them fall. I suppose it is simply a largely misunderstood class.
(/Threadjack)EDITED for formatting & Threadjack disclaimer
for the record i'm a firm believer it is both, but this isn't the place for that discussion:)
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I've been stalking this thread and want to finally throw my opinion into the mix.
Before the release of Wrath of the Righteous I was being pretty vocal about Paizo releasing some high-level adventure content so I signed up for a subscription and bought these bad boys and my girlfriend got me a copy of MA for the holidays. I have a pretty limited gaming budget and I don't regret any of that spent money.
I feel that neither product is broken or unplayable or, to use the OP term, failed. For me, to be failed I would have to regret buying them and have no intention to use those books that are now taking up space on my shelf and this is simply not true. I absolutely will be heavily utilizing both products and not just in the WotR game I am running.
MA has some unexpectedly powerful rules mechanics in it, I do not discount that, and it could have been playtested a little longer but these are minor and nothing outside of what comes in just about any game product. The biggest thing I like about MA is that characters with it are not just heroes, they are super heroes , and that encourages a whole different approach to playing the game. You can make a character who is just like any other only with bigger numbers but that really robs the soul from the book. In my WotR game my players really embraced the elevated tone and bought into the super heroes with the mythic flair.
WotR as a product doesn't seem failed to me as an AP. In my opinion, for an AP to 'fail' it has to, at some point, go so horribly off the rails on all accounts that it becomes completely unplayable and is just a mess. Wrath doesn't do that for me. None of Paizo's APs seem to do that so I cannot say ANY are failed APs. As an example, Serpent's Skull comes close in book 3 but doesn't dissolve into uselessness and has a ton of great material a good GM can use to pull it back together. Wrath has a great story, fantastic tone, and is generally a really awesome product that really delivers on that super-hero story.
All of this being said, I do agree that there is some failure here.
The failure, I feel, comes in the merger of the two products and the fact that they interacted in ways that no one foresaw. Mechanically, MA provided more of a power boost than expected and thus, as written, WotR doesn't balance or scale correctly. As observed, it really comes apart around the mid point, which is too bad because book 4, 5, and 6 have some fantastic bits in them.
We can throw around all kinds of blame here, but that's not terribly helpful, I feel. It's not like the intention was to release products that didn't end up working well together. Paizo has proven to be a solid development group and learns very well from their mistakes. Some great suggestions have been made for correcting the errors in the AP, which I have been utilizing successfully, and I am sure the developers are listening and taking note.
Personally, I am excited to see what they do with MA next. :D
As a brief aside, I'd like to throw out this one thought:
What if Mythic Tiers actually scale depending on the level of the character? Thus if you have a 4th level character, one or two Tiers actually do act as .5 levels. However, if you have a 17th level player, the tiers count as a full level.
On a related note, it could also be that the early tiers are half a level... but once you get to Tier 3 and above, the extra power boost raises their potency to a full level.
Its an interesting thought Joshua, I hadn't really considered the supers angle before. Probably because it wasn't what I was expecting. But that may be true as MA mostly replaces the pathfinder game instead of enhancing the core rules much like other supers rules in other game systems.
I also agree that more abilities should scale off of mythic tier, or all of them if you could find a way.
Minor tinkering, sure. Not whole scale rewrites of stat-blocks. Mind you, I do the rewrites anyway because I run different level characters through it than what you should, but that's just me. WotR needs a rewrite for characters as-intended.
I haven't had to rewrite stat blocks. I add to the encounters as is. If bad it room 2 seems like it would enhance the fight in room 1 then that bad joins.
I feel that it diverged too quickly, at third tier mythic characters easily leave normal ones behind. At that point, and further at tier 5, normal fights become a joke...which is odd as the AP kept throwing normal enemies at the PCs.
I had to spend hours each week rewriting (and fixing the numerous mistakes with) NPCs so they could be a challenge so I didn't have to resort to describing fights as other posters have done.
I don't think this AP is broken. A broken AP is Council of Thieves. That AP just stalled in book six when my players had no clue what to do.
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oh i don't know, my copy of Sword of Valor started to come apart almost immediately, seems a little broken to me:)