That's a binding issue, Cap. ;)
I have contemplated one other modification to the Mythic rules. Seeing that part of Mythic replicates the Hero Point system, and also seeing that most of my players don't bother USING Hero Points, I was thinking of allowing players to use multiple Mythic Points to enact Hero Point abilities - in essence, five Mythic Points replicates one Hero Point.
Any Mythic ability that replicates a Hero Point ability would also be revised to need five Mythic Points to use; if those abilities are available only at a specific Tier (like the extra action) then they cannot be used before said Tier (but still would cost five Mythic Points).
The advantage to this is that you don't need to keep track of Hero Points any longer. The disadvantage is that Mythic characters become slightly more powerful at a lower tier - but also have an incentive not to use Hero Points as keeping a reserve of at least five points could prove quite useful.
oh i don't know, my copy of Sword of Valor started to come apart almost immediately, seems a little broken to me:)Duct tape. It fixes anything ;)
thats what i keep telling my doctor! She disagrees;) and yes im aware its a binding issue it sucked at the time because i have very little spending money as a one income household then car broke down and i couldnt exchange it. Its all good tho:)
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If we based an APs 'failure' on the binding then all of them would be failed APs.
With Mythic Adventures I really expected something that changed the tone and style of the game. I expected Greek myth style super heroes in the tradition of Hercules and this is exactly what I got. I'm very happy with the end product and the fact that Paizo was able to pull it off so folks could have those kinds of games at any level of play. There are some bits that need work, I don't discount that, but I feel they delivered on what they promised.
I'm also curious if there were other folks out there who didn't expect the tonal shift and perhaps that's why it hasn't been as well received.
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honestly thats what got me excited for MA, my wife and kids pick the run across the wall, smash monsters thru walls type of abilities rather then the i take a gazillion actions or put all their eggs in one basket for maximum damage type of abilities:)
Any thoughts on the Hero Point conversion?
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Yet the AP was written by professional RPG designers.I don't think Mythic Adventures is a failed product. The only issue here is that the AP that utilizes is didn't properly account for the spike in power that mythic provided.
In a homebrew setting, a GM can easily compensate and plan around the mythic capabilities of their PCs. But if you're running this AP as written, you're a little hamstrung.
It was written simultaneously with the mythic rules, with no real time to playtest individual encounters or similar things, and little timne to adjust to changes in said rules.
That's a hell of a disadvantage to be operating under, even for professionals (James Jacobs has said it's the hardest AP he ever had to work on, for example).
Back when 3.0 was older than mythic rules are now, WotC was still professionally publishing "CR 20" creatures whose most powerful attack was Longsword 1d8+3/18-20x2. ;) Getting encounter balance down in a new combat system can take a while.
It does seem that - no matter whether it's down to flaws in Mythic Adventures or in the AP - WotR could have benefited from more time for the writers to familiarize themselves with mythic rules.
thats what i keep telling my doctor! She disagrees;)
Duct tape. It fixes anything ;)
Duct tape is good enough for bandaging that I occasionally opt for it even when there are real bandages at hand.
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Alright, I gave up.
We started book 5 tonight and we got through the Iomedae encounter. Did the arrival encounter.
Then I started poking at the random encounters with a high percent chance every hour, multiple days in each realm.
I used Book 5's random encounter table in book 4. I don't want to use Book 6's encounter table for Book 5.
I did run them through a few CR 21+ encounters. Which they trounced and laughed at.
So yeah. I just gave them a run down of what happened.
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Our group's pretty optimized. We found the Ivory Labyrinth encounters until the Father of all Worms laughable. An encounter with 3 Balors went ... eye openingly. However, once we reached the Prison, the story started to shift. The gateway fight was a relative breeze, but within the Prison, several of the fights were difficult. They ran quickly in terms of rounds, but there were always moments when the fight could have turned very far south for the party:
Tarry Demodands, which he advanced to give better DCs on the reflex saves, were walking problems for our DPS. The Inquisitor's Reflex Save, even upgraded, is fairly normal for his class, which means it's pretty much crap. He lost his sword to the demodands at least once in each fight, which significantly dropped his damage output and slowed fights. It slowed the Torturer match a lot more than expected.
The Drow Cleric was a royal pain. Due to the ability to move her blade barriers, she would drop effectively 3 damage dealing spells on the majority of the party each round and found ways to limit how many actions were used against her by various characters. Her demodands kept melee DPS busy while she remained in the area. It took several rounds to whittle her down.
The Linnorm was updated to the Father of all Linnorm's template. He nearly dropped the party without a speck of mythic power in the opening round through breath weapon. A couple failed saves and limited resistances left us dealing with ridiculous damage initially. The fight was over in three rounds, but nearly went south in each round, the healer tapped out just to keep pace with his raw output.
The Mythic Iron Golem and the Mythic Minotaur were a joke. Neither stood a chance and were little more than speedbumps. The Marilith, sadly, proved far less a challenge than expected. Her demodand backers proved more dangeorus than her, as they targeted lower AC foes in the back. When she hit, it was credible damage, but the ACs on both melee DPS were just too high for her to strike with her massive number of attacks.
The Herald was a brutal match: Two characters failed their Maze Save - A Melee DPS and Arushalae (who had been given the heart). As the inquisitor was a worshiper of Iomedae, his standard tactics were to level he and the Planetar NPC who was tag-teaming with the cleric just to keep him alive. It became a fight to bring him down slowly, blowing around 9 mythic power on the Inquisitor's part while two characters spent most of their time keeping him and only him alive. A well-placed bit of non-lethal damage give the round needed to Miracle Arushalae and the heart out of the Maze.
Baphomet: The fight lasted 4-5 rounds. It was over in lightning speed, but in Rounds 2 and 4, we nearly lost both melee DPS. Ardapast, even boosted through Ascension to be mythic, was effectively on 'add crowd control' along with the Planetar and Arushalae. All three of them spent their entire time killing summoned balors. A well placed Dimensional Lock blocked a Labyrinth Minotaur from joining the fray (which might have resulted in a very different scenario, given Baphomet's rather brutal damage.
One round, the first, it looked like it would be over immediately. The GM had quadrupled and maximized his hit points, but otherwise left him unchanged. The Inquisitor dumped literally all bout about 6 mythic power he had left into overkilling everything with Foe-Biter in that round while he and the Paladin battlemind-linked a full slew of attacks. The damage was ungodly, around 2000 hit points. Baphomet rebounded by bringing the Paladin to dead and turning on the Inquisitor as he realized the Paladin should have been dead but didn't drop due to Deathless and Diehard (His line in the scene: "Well... that's new." Baphomet had been observing the party's tricks for months in game. Deathless was a newer spell being used by the Transmuter.).
The Balors followed up with a bevvy of Greater Magic Dispels on the Inquisitor and Paladin. The latter was made legitimately dead after Deathless was dispelled, and the Cleric had to put a ridiculous amount of mythic healing using one of their abilities to bring them back up the next round as if through a breath of life, having spent the previous round doing much the same to the Inquisitor.
In the end, the characters brought Baphomet down, but the Paladin died at least once, and the Inquisitor was dropped once. Arushalae nearly died due to Balor explosions, the Planetar and Alderpash (both Ascended) were badly hurt at the end.
Upshot of the above: The GM's found a need to adjust, mostly in terms of hit points with the key NPCs. Their abilities are usually nasty enough to brutalize us given the chance. It's just a matter of dealing with the massive damage bomb that Foe-Biter represents in the hands of several classes, especially as both of them are running auto-confirm crits on mythic enemies through powers. He's already looking at the validity of Heavy Fortification to negate the need partially for 4x enemy hit points and dropping back down to a more reasonable 2x max.
However, we found that movement conditions significantly altered the flow of the fight, and CMD/Reflex saves are still very solid ways to control our Inquisitor. However powerful, the GM has still challenged us. really, it didn't seem to be enemy abilities that were the issue, but simple raw survivability.
Frankly, the same could be said for us. The difference between us and the baddies is that we have someone who can drop two Mythic Heals if they get desperate at a range of 30' and pretend they're breath of life spells, who then has an AC in the mid to upper 40s. The ability to laugh at two DPS going down in a round definitely makes fights tricky. One of the closest fights we ever had was in Book 4, against the final boss. The addition of a certain updated and returning NPC who focused solely on the cleric proved nearly fatal for the party.
I wouldn't be surprised if he tries something like that again, though honestly I suspect that the final confrontations of book 6 will be hellish enough as is. Again, it's just a matter of the enemy surviving long enough to use even a tenth of their abilities.
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I just Finished book one, my PCs did the final fight or two fights I guess at the same time.
The went up the stairs to the room that Dreadnu was in, the Paladin leading them up the stairs only to get a face full of horns as he rounded the corner (they didn't clean the scrying pool).
They retreated very quickly back down the stairs, came up with the idea to scale the building and drop in to the room not containing the Abyssal Minotaur. The fighter got dropped in first and was met with cold steal, next came the Ranger/witch, both initiated the fight on the half-elf (forgot her name). They inched their way to the door to open it hoping to distract Dreadnu, they did manage to open the door and the pally rushed in to attack.
Our fighter got dropped by the scythe and our cleric took massive damage from the Axe of Dreadnu, the fight lasted about 15 rounds as spells flew and people attacked and dodged. The fighter was killed out right but saved when the ward stone was destroyed (the ranger/witch was mad about the amount of damage the ward stone did when it was destroyed as she stood close to it and tried to make a pin cushion of the Oracle).
I did't do the final fight against the Babau's because I ran it in HL prior and it was a really poor fight, the damage the Babau's could do was so minimal and the PCs would take many rounds to down 73 HP creatures with few resources left at their disposal.
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Just like every other Pathfinder book, Mythic Adventures is a toolbox.
What it is not is a brick which must be taken whole-or-not-at-all.
Far, far too many GM's here are acting as if you must allow every option in every book. This is a total and complete fallacy.
You know you group.
Paizo does not.
One of your jobs as a GM is to spot "options" which your players might use and cause in-game, numeric or mechanical trouble later and to deny or fix those options if you see trouble coming. Once again, only you can do this. Paizo cannot, because they do not know your group.
All you have to do is step up and act like a GameMaster and pick and choose a little instead of auto-greenlighting every single option simply because "Paizo wrote it".
So...learn to say no. It is an important part of your job.
As an aside to Weslocke, I did ask my gaming group about my variant critical hit rules and whether they'd like it modified further (so that it wouldn't negate certain Feats). Seeing that they didn't have any of the Feats in question, and given the system was speeding up the game... they stuck with my current system.
(That system being "if you roll a critical hit then it is auto-confirmed and you do full damage (including modifiers) times half of the modifier - thus a longsword would do a minimum of 8 damage, a longbow would do a minimum of 12 damage, and a weapon with a x4 modifier would do double damage plus double the modifiers.)
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Just like every other Pathfinder book, Mythic Adventures is a toolbox.
What it is not is a brick which must be taken whole-or-not-at-all.
Far, far too many GM's here are acting as if you must allow every option in every book. This is a total and complete fallacy.
You know you group.
Paizo does not.
One of your jobs as a GM is to spot "options" which your players might use and cause in-game, numeric or mechanical trouble later and to deny or fix those options if you see trouble coming. Once again, only you can do this. Paizo cannot, because they do not know your group.
All you have to do is step up and act like a GameMaster and pick and choose a little instead of auto-greenlighting every single option simply because "Paizo wrote it".
So...learn to say no. It is an important part of your job.
Really? That's your answer? "We can't hold Paizo responsible for bad game design, because we can change it if we need to"?
There's a difference between bad design and a basic need to adapt to your table.
Of course. Nonetheless, if an AP is written in such a way that the durability of its CR-appropiate opponents in no way holds up to common damage output of a single common mythic character, then it has been written badly. If CR-appropiate mythic monsters in general don't hold up to the damage output of a single common mythic character, then the entire sub-system has been designed badly. Both of this is in evidence in WotR and Mythic Adventures.
The "you need to adjust things for your table" paradigm ceases to be valid when the entire new system uniformly has such blatant flaws in it that every table (which has players using the commonly available damage multipliers contained in Mythic Adventures) needs to do the same adjustments.
Given that you can run non-Mythic characters through this, you almost wonder if the wrong stats were uploaded into the word processors when the game was being finalized.
Given that you can run non-Mythic characters through this, you almost wonder if the wrong stats were uploaded into the word processors when the game was being finalized.
i just wonder if those that ran WotR non-mythic have been gaming together for years or decades like our good friend Magnuskn or how much optimization was utilized?
i don't discount that there are issues (with MA and WotR) i'm just trying to find the baseline:)
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Cap, if it is easily findable in the very book itself which introduces the rules, I don't count it as requiring much experience to use.
I got this impression that everybody who is not mathematically challenged is counted as an optimizer by some people... :-/
I will admit that sometimes it's the group. For instance, I ran three medium ice elementals against a group of 3rd and 4th level characters. It wasn't meant to be a difficult encounter. Two characters nearly died and I could have killed one if I'd not switched targets (it made sense, why attack the squishy human who hasn't hurt it when the big metal thing next to it hit hard enough to crack the elemental's shell (ie, over half hit points taken). And if I'd not forgotten to use Power Attack for the first strike, that rogue probably would have died.
Yet my other group breezes through encounters without too much difficulty, and I have upgraded those encounters as well.
Looking at the one major difference, I think part of the "problem" is that one group has been able to craft new magic items. The second was not in a position to make magic items (and the crafter hasn't done anything yet), so they're reliant on magic items found in the campaign.
Given that WotR is a high-magic game anyway, I'm curious as to if anyone has tried running it without allowing any crafting of items. If you at the same time reduce the amount of magic to be what's typical for the level of the PCs, then you probably will see an increase in difficulty even with Mythic.
Cap, if it is easily findable in the very book itself which introduces the rules, I don't count it as requiring much experience to use.
I got this impression that everybody who is not mathematically challenged is counted as an optimizer by some people... :-/
well i see from my poor choice of words where you think i was calling you guys optimizers, sorry about that, no i just meant to use the experience with each other and strong grasp of teamwork example for you and yours, i meant the optimization question for those running non-mythic.
and to clarify a strong group that has palyed together for a long time and has great teamwork is something we should all shoot for!
and skill in math is not optimizing, it certainly helps learn the rules but they certainly arent married to each other:)
Given that WotR is a high-magic game anyway, I'm curious as to if anyone has tried running it without allowing any crafting of items. If you at the same time reduce the amount of magic to be what's typical for the level of the PCs, then you probably will see an increase in difficulty even with Mythic.
I banned item crafting from my players in WotR, and did a few other things to decrease the amount of magical goodies available to them. I think this probably did something to slow them down a bit, but not nearly enough... I still ran into balance problems starting in the second half of book 2, problems that got considerably worse in books 3 and 4...
(The other constraints I imposed to reduce magic item access were:
- (1) I disallowed the purchase of magic items above the Base Value of the largest settlement they have access to, unless they used a Wish (25k) to find someone who would sell that item, and
- (2) I instituted mandatory donations to the crusade at each level (they're L19 now, and their donations have added up to 880k).
But again, this wasn't nearly enough to keep the players challenged...)
Mythic rules lead themselves to optimization, just look at the feats. In order to have a mythic feat, you (usually) need to have the non mythic version first. I don't believe it takes an optimized player to take a look at power attack, spell focus, finesse or expertise and realize that if they take another feat, then it gets better.
I do agree about crafting though, and I doubt that I'll allow crafting rules in a campaign again.
I feel that the biggest issue remains is that the developers and designers didn't have much idea about what mythic characters can do, or they didn't give themselves enough time. Its pretty easy to tell by their crafted NPCs that it looks like they were trying to pull punches and designing wildly ineffective enemies.
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I got this impression that everybody who is not mathematically challenged is counted as an optimizer by some people... :-/
I think any group that is more efficient than
> sword-and-board fighter> trapfinder rogue
> healbot cleric
> blaster wizard
is considered optimized by large contingent of the forum population.
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I got this impression that everybody who is not mathematically challenged is counted as an optimizer by some people... :-/I think any group that is more efficient than
> sword-and-board fighter
> trapfinder rogue
> healbot cleric
> blaster wizard
is considered optimized by large contingent of the forum population.
Isn't that basically the baseline assumption? Four-PC party, non-optimized, 15 point builds, and players of average skill.
-Skeld
Pretty much yes.
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Cap, if it is easily findable in the very book itself which introduces the rules, I don't count it as requiring much experience to use.
I got this impression that everybody who is not mathematically challenged is counted as an optimizer by some people... :-/
well i see from my poor choice of words where you think i was calling you guys optimizers, sorry about that, no i just meant to use the experience with each other and strong grasp of teamwork example for you and yours, i meant the optimization question for those running non-mythic.
and to clarify a strong group that has palyed together for a long time and has great teamwork is something we should all shoot for!
and skill in math is not optimizing, it certainly helps learn the rules but they certainly arent married to each other:)
No problem and thanks for the clarifications. I strongly agree with your last statement. Recognizing that certain very standard options work strong on their own and even better together is just simple math and has nothing to do with optimizing.
Furthermore, some of the best mythic feats are upgrades for some of the most common feats taken by characters. Since you need the basic version to even get the mythic one, they tend to constitute the most logical combinations to get.
In fact, players seem to need to take the outlier path abilities and mythic feats to avoid becoming the kind of massive damage dealers many people are complaining about. They need to optimize their ineffectiveness. ^^
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Actually, these Mythic reFeats are in some ways disappointing. It would have been far better if they'd created Mythic Feats that typified "Mythic" rather than "boost damage" or the like. Eliminating the Mythic reFeats and expanding on the unique Mythic Feats would have worked better.
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I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I'm just saying that people claiming that players are optimizing when they take those feats (which are most of the principal damage heighteners of Mythic Adventures) are discounting the fact that those are the logical things to take if you need as a prerequisite the basic feat.
Really? That's your answer? "We can't hold Paizo responsible for bad game design, because we can change it if we need to"?Just like every other Pathfinder book, Mythic Adventures is a toolbox.
What it is not is a brick which must be taken whole-or-not-at-all.
Far, far too many GM's here are acting as if you must allow every option in every book. This is a total and complete fallacy.
You know you group.
Paizo does not.
One of your jobs as a GM is to spot "options" which your players might use and cause in-game, numeric or mechanical trouble later and to deny or fix those options if you see trouble coming. Once again, only you can do this. Paizo cannot, because they do not know your group.
All you have to do is step up and act like a GameMaster and pick and choose a little instead of auto-greenlighting every single option simply because "Paizo wrote it".
So...learn to say no. It is an important part of your job.
I never said that you cannot hold them responsible for anything. Go right ahead. Finger pointing is always soooo productive...
I said your job is to deny or fix anything they write that does not work for your group. Deny options, Fix options or do not use the material. Those are your choices that will actually get something resembling a result.
You either are a GM or you are not.
Choose.
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That... hurts my brain. You completely missed his point by leagues.
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@Weslocke - according to your thoughts then, if a person purchases a computer program that is buggy, it is their responsibility to figure out what is wrong and even if they do not know a programming language to program a patch for the program.
I doubt most people running Paizo products are game designers or the like. How is it our responsibility to rewrite the module so it is a challenge, especially when it is SO broken that only one in ten groups was even challenged by it as-written by the end (and I'm being generous with that percentage)?
@Weslocke - according to your thoughts then, if a person purchases a computer program that is buggy, it is their responsibility to figure out what is wrong and even if they do not know a programming language to program a patch for the program.
I doubt most people running Paizo products are game designers or the like. How is it our responsibility to rewrite the module so it is a challenge, especially when it is SO broken that only one in ten groups was even challenged by it as-written by the end (and I'm being generous with that percentage)?
I'd like to hear where that one group is, because i haven't heard about it:)
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Messageboard anecdotals are never, ever an accurate representation of everyone. People that visit these boards are a very small percentage of actual Pathfinder gamers, so it's ridiculous to make claims about "everyone" that is playing this AP based on the thoughts of a handful of diehard fans.
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Nonetheless, dismissing our opinion is dismissing the only feedback you are likely to get. So we are representative by the very fact that we are the only ones willing to put in the time to represent the player base.
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Nonetheless, dismissing our opinion is dismissing the only feedback you are likely to get. So we are representative by the very fact that we are the only ones willing to put in the time to represent the player base.
However, you're not representing "the player base" - you're representing your section of the player base.
If, say, (and this is a totally arbitrary figure) 95% of the player base are happy with things, the 5% that are not and voice an opinion about it still only represent the 5%.
That said, it's not really up to anyone here to dismiss your opinion, the only thing that really ought to matter is whether Paizo listens to you or not. I do hope you are able to find a satisfactory resolution.
@Weslocke - according to your thoughts then, if a person purchases a computer program that is buggy, it is their responsibility to figure out what is wrong and even if they do not know a programming language to program a patch for the program.
I doubt most people running Paizo products are game designers or the like. How is it our responsibility to rewrite the module so it is a challenge, especially when it is SO broken that only one in ten groups was even challenged by it as-written by the end (and I'm being generous with that percentage)?
I'd argue here that RPG material isn't a ready-to-run program, it's a library of routines and a collection of data. The GM still needs to be a good enough programmer to put those routines and data together to create an application to do whatever they want to do.
It seems to me some kind of balancing toolkit might be useful. Techniques for identifying when a group needs a different balance that is given in a prewritten adventure, and how to quickly adjust that balance without having to waste time applying templates, etc.
I disagree. Say you purchase the game Stratego. You expect to be able to play the game using the rulebook and materials in the box, without having to guess at rules or customize rules. While you CAN modify the rules to a game (like Monopoly), ultimately you should be able to play the game as-written out of the box and have the game be fun and without play issues.
The Pathfinder Core Rulebook is such a system. It is fun to play, you don't need to customize it, and while there are some issues at higher levels for the most part it is perfectly functional.
Mythic Adventures is not, from what has been reported by multiple gamers, once you hit the 3rd Tier. And given how integrated Mythic is to WotR, the module itself becomes unplayable without significant modification starting in the third book and especially the fourth and higher.
Let's take, for example, Baphomet. The adventure suggests that even 18th level characters at the 8th Mythic Tier should have troubles with Baphomet and should be encouraged to flee. Soon after the book was published, people started talking about how Baphomet was taken down in one round.
This is the big bad of that book. And Mythic groups just curbstomp him over and over and over, until people started coming up with methods of manipulating the rules and providing ways that maybe, just maybe, Baphomet could remain a threat. This includes bringing scrolls along, hitting the group with a Mythic Time Stop, twiddling his thumb for over 20 hours, and then in the last couple of minutes summoning thousands of minotaurs and the like to act as a speed-bump before he becomes a smear on the blades of the heroes.
Rasputin was a bigger threat to players in Reign of Winter than Baphomet is to Mythic heroes... despite being a much higher CR.
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I disagree. Say you purchase the game Stratego. You expect to be able to play the game using the rulebook and materials in the box, without having to guess at rules or customize rules. While you CAN modify the rules to a game (like Monopoly), ultimately you should be able to play the game as-written out of the box and have the game be fun and without play issues.
I guess we have to agree to disagree on this one :) I've never seen any RPG as being something to run out of the box, the closest I've ever come to that are hybrid RPG/boardgames like Warhammer Quest.
I do, however, concede that if a product isn't designed to run out of the box, it should state that clearly. Then at least there's no room for claims that it isn't suitable for its expected function. In fact, some kind of indicator on APs and modules of the amount of work a GM is expected to put in could be a nice feature.
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I do, however, concede that if a product isn't designed to run out of the box, it should state that clearly. Then at least there's no room for claims that it isn't suitable for its expected function. In fact, some kind of indicator on APs and modules of the amount of work a GM is expected to put in could be a nice feature.
Honestly, you know what would be an interesting thought experiment?
The end of book stat build outs for what the devs consider to be the 'baseline' for that AP.
Why waste pages of the AP?
No. Just include it in the forums instead.
Why waste pages of the AP?
No. Just include it in the forums instead.
The free player's guide PDF could be a good place, too.
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Nonetheless, dismissing our opinion is dismissing the only feedback you are likely to get. So we are representative by the very fact that we are the only ones willing to put in the time to represent the player base.However, you're not representing "the player base" - you're representing your section of the player base.
If, say, (and this is a totally arbitrary figure) 95% of the player base are happy with things, the 5% that are not and voice an opinion about it still only represent the 5%.
That said, it's not really up to anyone here to dismiss your opinion, the only thing that really ought to matter is whether Paizo listens to you or not. I do hope you are able to find a satisfactory resolution.
Oh, believe me, I'm not the only one in my circle of friends who is unhappy with how Paizo is bungling a lot of their new rules. I am, however, the only one of 10 people who goes online to talk about it.
I have to agree, in general terms, with what Magnuskn is saying here. Half of the new rules and classes just seem to break whenever my groups even so much as look at them.
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I do, however, concede that if a product isn't designed to run out of the box, it should state that clearly. Then at least there's no room for claims that it isn't suitable for its expected function. In fact, some kind of indicator on APs and modules of the amount of work a GM is expected to put in could be a nice feature.Honestly, you know what would be an interesting thought experiment?
The end of book stat build outs for what the devs consider to be the 'baseline' for that AP.
Each volume of the AP used to include a couple pages of "pre-gen" characters for that volume. That section was eventually removed (maybe around the time of Kingmaker, I don't remember exactly) in favor of more other stuff. The section consisted of short write-ups/stats for a 4-PC party of the proper level to play hat volume of the AP.
People complained about how badly the characters were built (usually from an optimization stand-point). A couple specific complaints I remember were why was Valeros a 2-weapon Fighter (when that's a sub-optimal build for a Fighter) and why Merisiel had a low Int (8 I think) instead of a higher Int to maximize her skill points.
There were plenty more complaints and you can find them if you dig through the archives.
-Skeld
Mythic iconic Seelah will still one-shot most evil CR appropiate mythic evil enemies, if she takes the expected mythic feats/ path abilities.
I disagree. Say you purchase the game Stratego. You expect to be able to play the game using the rulebook and materials in the box, without having to guess at rules or customize rules. While you CAN modify the rules to a game (like Monopoly), ultimately you should be able to play the game as-written out of the box and have the game be fun and without play issues.
The Pathfinder Core Rulebook is such a system. It is fun to play, you don't need to customize it, and while there are some issues at higher levels for the most part it is perfectly functional.
Mythic Adventures is not, from what has been reported by multiple gamers, once you hit the 3rd Tier. And given how integrated Mythic is to WotR, the module itself becomes unplayable without significant modification starting in the third book and especially the fourth and higher.
Let's take, for example, Baphomet. The adventure suggests that even 18th level characters at the 8th Mythic Tier should have troubles with Baphomet and should be encouraged to flee. Soon after the book was published, people started talking about how Baphomet was taken down in one round.
This is the big bad of that book. And Mythic groups just curbstomp him over and over and over, until people started coming up with methods of manipulating the rules and providing ways that maybe, just maybe, Baphomet could remain a threat. This includes bringing scrolls along, hitting the group with a Mythic Time Stop, twiddling his thumb for over 20 hours, and then in the last couple of minutes summoning thousands of minotaurs and the like to act as a speed-bump before he becomes a smear on the blades of the heroes.
Rasputin was a bigger threat to players in Reign of Winter than Baphomet is to Mythic heroes... despite being a much higher CR.
I'm looking that Baphomet and it looks like tough fight. I think the suggested tactics in the book make him and easy kill though. Time stop is better than imprisonment. The PCs have too high of saves with mythic powers. Better maximize the damage out put. Use Time stop to get 3 balors on his side. Let them go first while he makes use of Shape change to become a huge giant then power attack like crazy, make good use of Combat Reflexes to dish out the AOO. The party might be him quick but not before he take one or two of them with him.