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I put this in this forum because my question specifically relates to play through this AP. For some background, I just started this a month or so ago and my guys just finished the gray garrison and became mythic. We have:
Human Paladin 3 (Divine Hunter) of Iomedae/Ranger 2
- Marshal
Human Barbarian 5 (Urban Barbarian, Invulnerable Rager)
- Champion
Human Sorcerer 5 (Draconic)
- Archmage
Human Cleric 5 of Sarenrae (Mendevian Priest)
- Hierophant
Now, no one player is particularly "powergamey" or anything, thought hey do pick smart choices. The divine hunter went with rapid shot/mythic rapid shot, the cleric is going into Exalted, annnd the barbarian picked mythic power attack.
Now, I've avoided changing any actual feat/spell so far. I *did* house rule a few things:
- Mythic Power is equal to 3 + Mythic Tier (instead of double tier)
- Mythic Power regens at the rate of 1d4/day (instead of all/day)
However, I've heard Mythic Power Attack is probably the worst feat of the bunch, specifically because of the "the bonus damage doubles on a crit before being multiplied by the crit itself" part. I'm wondering... is that a big enough problem to be worth taking away, or do most leave it?
I can see that at 12th level, a character 2-handing with power attack will be getting an extra 18 damage using power attack, so a crit would bring that up to 36 before being multiplied with the other bonuses.
Is 18 damage a big deal at that point? I got a little knee-jerky and nervous about it at first, but when a PC can deal out hundreds of damage by then, is house ruling mythic power attack to remove that "doubles before a crit" part really worth it?
Power attack (and its mythic counterpart) are strong, yeah. The enemies can use them too. I'm curious how people have seen this feat work in their own campaigns and if they feel it's even worth changing.
Thanks!
You'd be surprised at how quickly all that damage can start adding up, especially when they combine Mythic Power Attack with Mythic Improved Critical to increase the crit multiplier.
Quick Math: Mythic Power Attack with a x3 crit multiplier (from Mythic Critical). 18x2x3=108 bonus damage. Up from 24 bonus damage on a x2 crit from Power Attack WITHOUT those two mythic feats.
I would recommend nerfing the feat so that it works like Mythic Deadly Aim. Just a damage increase and no additional fancy stuff.
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Nerf Mythic Power Attack so it's like Mythic Deadly Aim. There's no reason for the two mythic feats to be so disparate.
The other problem of course lies with how broken critical hits are - they should work like non-Mythic Vital Strike - the only thing they multiply is the weapon dice. (So a x3 critical of a 2d6 weapon would be 6d6, with power attack, strength modifiers, and other adjustments added in AFTER the weapon damage without modification.)
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Small note - do not allow Archmage core abilities to cast Swift spells. Have it be a Standard Action, much like the Hierophant version. This is why: The feat Swift Spell adds 4 to the level of the spell. Mythic ignores this entirely, doing away with the need for the Feat and allowing wizards to cast two spells a turn. It's broken.
However, I've heard Mythic Power Attack is probably the worst feat of the bunch, specifically because of the "the bonus damage doubles on a crit before being multiplied by the crit itself" part. I'm wondering... is that a big enough problem to be worth taking away, or do most leave it?
My sense is that even people keeping most of the rules (like myself) tweak Mythic Power Attack to make it just like Mythic Deadly Aim; i.e., as having no special clause regarding criticals. (Though to be clear, I've left most of the rules the same just because I wasn't sure at the start of the campaign as to what to change, not because I think they're balanced!)
One reason for the dislike of this particular feat is that it's clearly strong enough as is, without any such boost. But I think that's only part of why this is the least popular Mythic feat.
Another reason is the desire to make Mythic Power Attack and Mythic Deadly Aim symmetric. (Why is the Mythic version of the former supposed to be better than the latter?)
A third reason (and the one that decided it for me and my players) is that this extra clause makes calculating critical damage much more complicated and confusing.
Usually on a critical you calculate the usual damage minus bonus dice, multiplying that by the critical modifier, and add the bonus dice. Done.
With Mythic Power Attack, on a critical, you need to calculate the usual damage (minus bonus dice), then multiply the power-attack part of it, and then multiply it all by the usual critical modifier.
Except wait! Paizo's official "multiple multipliers add instead of multiply" ruling (which they've said applies to Mythic Power Attack too) means that the power attack damage doesn't get multiplied by the usual multiplier, rather, it's just that the original multiplier is increased by a factor one greater than the factor that multiplies the rest of your damage... So an attack from a x3-critical multiplier weapon that does 1d8 base damage + 9 mythic power attack damage + d6 extra dice damage will, on a critical, do 3d8 (base x3) + 36 (mythic power attack x4) + d6 (extra dice) damage...
And given how long, involved and complicated mythic fights are already, each extra bit of complication is a real drag.
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So, I'm confused a bit by the higher crit multiplier thing. Isn't that always a factor with normal power attack? Am I misreading?
Here's what the feat says:
"In addition, the bonus damage from this feat is doubled on a critical hit, before it’s multiplied by the weapon’s critical multiplier."
So no matter what the crit multiplier of the weapon, the power attack damage is only doubled. Again, at 12th level, that's +18 damage from a 2H power attack. If you crit, that becomes +36 damage, then it gets multiplied---- and okay, wow yeah I'm a moron, with a x3 weapon that becomes an extra 54 damage. Geeeezus.
Okay, may need to reconsider this.
So, I'm confused a bit by the higher crit multiplier thing. Isn't that always a factor with normal power attack? Am I misreading?
Here's what the feat says:
"In addition, the bonus damage from this feat is doubled on a critical hit, before it’s multiplied by the weapon’s critical multiplier."So no matter what the crit multiplier of the weapon, the power attack damage is only doubled. Again, at 12th level, that's +18 damage from a 2H power attack. If you crit, that becomes +36 damage, then it gets multiplied---- and okay, wow yeah I'm a moron, with a x3 weapon that becomes an extra 54 damage. Geeeezus.
Okay, may need to reconsider this.
It is even worse than that, since 36x3=108.
Multipliers make just a small damage increase quickly get out of control.
Edit: though, a very strict reading of the feat could mean that only the extra damage specifically from mythic power attack is multiplied, rather than all the damage from power attack+mythic power attack. If that is the case though, the extra math just would slow things down too much.
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I'm figuring out what our barbarian could do, even at just 8th level. It's a little... scary. Fortunately, the player isn't terribly against me changing it, especially since it would affect any enemies with it as well.
At 8th level, she's likely to have a good 22 STR with magic items.
26 with rage (+8 bonus).
Weapon is a legendary one, quite possible to be a +2 by then.
Power Attack: 2d6+12(STR)+2(magic)+9(pa) = 2d6+23
Mythic Power Attack: 2d6+28
PA (Crit, x2): 4d6+46
PA (Crit, x3): 6d6+69
MPA (Crit, No Fix, x2): 4d6+82
MPA (Crit, No Fix, x3): 6d6+123
MPA (Crit, Fix, x2): 4d6+56
MPA (Crit, Fix, x3): 6d6+84
With the change, the damage is still a nice boost, but not as crazy as without the fix. And she can easily get a x3 on her crit multiplier thanks to
So no matter what the crit multiplier of the weapon, the power attack damage is only doubled. Again, at 12th level, that's +18 damage from a 2H power attack. If you crit, that becomes +36 damage, then it gets multiplied---- and okay, wow yeah I'm a moron, with a x3 weapon that becomes an extra 54 damage. Geeeezus.
Just so you know, Paizo has ruled that these multipliers don't multiply. (This is an extension of their general ruling that multiple damage multipliers don't multiply.) If your original multiplier is xN, and you get an additional multiplier that's xM, the total multiplier is x(N+(M-1)). So a x2 and x2 get you x3, a x2 and x3 get you a x4, and so on.
So if the base Mythic Power Attack damage is +18, and you crit with a x3 weapon, it's not the case that the MPA damage becomes x2x3x18=108. Rather, the x2 and x3 multipliers turn into a x4 multiplier, so the MPA damage becomes x4x18=72.
Jason Bulmahn confirmed this understanding of Mythic Power Attack in one of the threads that came up during the Mythic Adventures playtest. Here's the link:
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Really? That seems... odd. I understand the "multiplier" rule, and came to assume that only mattered in the cases of one multiplier from one ability coming against a different one in a different ability.
IE: Ability A says triple the damage on blah, Ability B says double the damage on bleh, so when you get blah-bleh you x4 it instead.
However, this feat seems a bit more cut and dry. It's actually rather simple. It says "the bonus damage is doubled on a critical hit, before it’s multiplied by the weapon’s critical multiplier."
This isn't the case of two multipliers occurring at the same time. This is the case where it says to double (x2) *before* you multiply by the weapon's crit part. There's no confusion there to me. Balance? Yeah, but confusion? Made perfect sense.
Now, I did read through the link you posted, and think I see the problem. That's an old wording of the feat. That reads "In addition, the bonus damage from this feat is doubled on a critical hit." In that case, I can see why you'd use the multiplier rule, as the doubling happens at the same time as the other bits.
As it got changed, I'm not really inclined to use that as a true sense of how it is now, especially since the wording is fairly clear.
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The wording does not specify that, Porridge. The wording is "...the bonus damage from this feat is doubled on a critical hit, before it's multiplied by the weapon's critical multiplier."
This is from the PRD. Page 71 of "Mythic Adventures" also has the same exact wording. So if it was supposed to change then their editing department dropped the ball and didn't do their job.
I believe there hasn't been an official Erratum to Mythic Adventures yet. At least there's not a downloadable PDF of corrections like there are for other books.
The simplest solution is the best: Make Mythic Power Attack the same as Mythic Deadly Aim.
I also stand by my suggestion for modifying critical hits and for nerfing the Archmage by having the first and third Archmage ability be standard actions (like with the Hierophant versions) instead of swift actions.
Those three elements alone will help slow how quickly Mythic breaks WotR.
That's an old wording of the feat. That reads "In addition, the bonus damage from this feat is doubled on a critical hit."
Good point; it looks like they did change the wording. I hadn't noticed that.
The simplest solution is the best: Make Mythic Power Attack the same as Mythic Deadly Aim.
Yeah, no question.
i thought for crit hits the x3 is for how many times the dice are rolled for damage, an example a crit with a battle-axe is x3 so if you got a crit you roll 1d8 three times, not roll 1d8 once then times it x3. i might be wrong but i thought that was one of the changes from 3.5 to PFRPG.
It is. But then you also multiply strength modifiers, weapon bonuses, power attack, weapon specialization, luck bonuses, morale bonuses, and anything else you can put in there.
So let's say you have a Barbarian with a strength of 22 benefiting from Prayer and a +2 Bardic Song and wielding a +2 bastard sword two-handed while power attacking (with a +6 to PA) and Improved Critical. He normally hits for 1d10+23. If he critted under the old critical rules then he gets 2d10+46.
Now let's give him a couple Mythic Feats - he puts it in Mythic Power Attack and Mythic Improved Critical. Now his sword is a x3 crit. If he crits he's doing 3d10+78. I might be off on that math so it might be lowballed.
What I say is the ONLY thing for the critical that gets the multiplier is the weapon dice. Thus on a crit he's doing 2d10+23, and a mythic crit he's doing 3d10+27. On the plus side, this also reduces the damage monsters do if they crit. And it reduces the math you need to do to figure out damage.