Mythic Rules: What is the Accepted Wisdom?

[voska66]

Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

My concern with balance is relatively simple: at what general power level (CR) is a party of Level X and Tier Y actually in danger of losing a fight?

I know well that CR is an imperfect measure, but I still think that these numbers are helpful for generalizing.

So, I'd still appreciate the people who have experienced actual numbers telling me just how much of a bump they feel the given tiers give -- especially since it does not appear to be uniform across all tiers.

Certainly it is possible to get more accuracy than the system presented in the book. CR + 1/2 Tier is evidently not accurate at all!

I find the APL + 1/2 Tier CR works quite well. If you have and APL 9 party with 6 tiers then you have CR 11-15 to work with. There are things to avoid. Don't do a single bad guy encounters. Those are failure for non mythic characters and mythic just makes that even wore increased action economy. If you are running published game run the monster as normal but at 1/2 tier in extra bad guys to join the fight. I found that works the best.

So for example with the APL 9 party. If the adventure has a single Fire Giant, a CR 10 encounter. If they are tier 6 increase to 3 fire giants.

The 1/2 tier breaks down at higher levels. I found 1/2 +1 worked a bit better for high levels.

[Rerednaw]

Our group just hit L10/MT3 in Wrath.

2H pally, evangelist cleric, Archer pally (me), Arcanist, TWF Rogue (yes a rogue!!!) and the GM:

Doubles minions.
Applies the Advanced Template twice.
Maxes all hp.

The GM also made home versions of certain Mythic feats/path abilities and so forth.

With the tweaks we've pretty much been on par.

IMO you're going to have to do some rebalancing. Mythic adds a myriad of high power plus high synergy options in a system already replete with them. Some feats and abilities are a bit problematical as they really skew the power curve. Others are barely better or even worse than core feats.

On the positive side, martials get a considerable boost. If you prefer casters...well they also got a lot of toys.

The advice about abandoning the solo boss concept has been true since 3.0. And it still holds. Even with dual initiative for a boss, the party can out-action the boss. So make sure the boss has a solid group of lieutenants.

[Senko]

Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

@Senko

I'm not entirely clear on your meaning. Are you saying that there are mythic options that are unnecessarily limited? Please elaborate.

Essentially what I was saying is that there are mythic path abilities that can be taken which are primarily role playing flavour additives e.g. immortality (the path ability not the generic powerup which also has the same name) or the one that lets others get divine spells by worshiping you that don't neccessarily impact heavily on a campaign or increase a players power level but which are also hard to aquire outside of mythic options and fun for players to choose.

As well as that you need to be aware that even with the large power up that comes from being mythic Tier X you can have a big power gap between two mythic players if one is chosing those kind of flavour options while another is chosing to maximize his power. Essentially if one took sanctum while another took channel power.

Channel Power: Expend 1 use of mythic power, make a spell do 50% more damage, ignore spell resistance, double duration if greater than 1 round, saves take a -4 penalty (-2 if the being saving is mythic).

Sanctum: Create an an extradimensional space, can summon a door by concentrating for 1 minute, size is six 20 foot cubes per tier, is permanent and persistant (can store things there), 1 unseen servent per tier, if you dismiss the door all creatures other than your familiar inside get shunted out, familiar can enter and leave from any square adjacent to you.

Sanctum is fun but channel power is a lot more effective in combat and both are 6th tier archmage choices.

[Ckorik]

Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

My concern with balance is relatively simple: at what general power level (CR) is a party of Level X and Tier Y actually in danger of losing a fight?

I know well that CR is an imperfect measure, but I still think that these numbers are helpful for generalizing.

So, I'd still appreciate the people who have experienced actual numbers telling me just how much of a bump they feel the given tiers give -- especially since it does not appear to be uniform across all tiers.

Certainly it is possible to get more accuracy than the system presented in the book. CR + 1/2 Tier is evidently not accurate at all!

I don't really know that it's the tiers that blow things up. I would say it's the feats. And then I would say it's specific feats and mythic spells.

Mythic vital strike for instance - makes your vital strike do more damage minimum than you could have done rolling max dice. And that's on a normal hit - it is logarithmic in power on a crit and scales in a logarithmic fashion with the rest of the vital strike feat chain.

It is so overwhelmingly good that if you try to optimize at all and don't take mythic vital strike then you are gimping yourself.

But if someone takes mythic weapon finesse for instance - honestly that doesn't do much at all. Two characters with one mythic tier that take these two feats will be very different - one you won't hardly notice is mythic except when they spend power to do something cool - the other is going to stomp all over your game and make it call them daddy.

And that's just one example - if the mythic vital strike guy takes mythic power attack and continues to optimize while the mythic weapon finesse guy doesn't - by tier 3 you will be looking at the difference between a walking deity and just a very powerful character.

It's not as simple as 'tier = higher CR' - it's more than some feats and spells (when made mythic) are just downright broken - if you limited mythic to tiers (with stats and path abilities only) and did not allow feats at all (or hand picked them avoiding broken ones) you wouldn't have the problems I think - at least not the rocket tag ones. Your players will still be able to pull off higher damage - in that case you'd need to watch for the normal level CR breaks in damage - that is around apl 11 and 18 - both points without mythic see very large increases in damage - I'd say mythic tier + player level = 'real level' in terms of damage (without the broken feats added in) and so you will see jumps when your players are at those marks.

Only a few of the tier abilities are 'wow' (like resting twice a day) until you hit the 'you don't die - you reform after death' type stuff - those are blatant in what they do so you should be able to decide for yourself if you want that kind of game or not. Resting twice a day is really cool - however that can play out similar to how the game runs already with the '15 min adventuring day' a lot of parties already do.

[Ravingdork]

kestral287 wrote:

Oh so very threatening. I'm also amused by just how devastating a blaster-caster can get at the higher tiers; Mythic Empower and (especially) Mythic Maximize are awesome. If you can't get a Fireball into four-digit damage with those, you're not trying.

Not sure what you mean by that since there is no mythic metamagic beyond Ascendant Spell.

[LazarX]

Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

So people aren't really interested in seeing where the APL adjustment actually lands, tier by tier?

That's because there isn't a hard and fast rule that corresponds tier and APL, despite the fact that Paizo claims that a tier is no more than a one half CR jump.

There's some justification for that. A tier impacts very differently depending on the original APL of the group. If the game is kept low level, a tier does not force multiply as much. But even with all things the same, the variability thrown in by min-max approaches makes the calculation even more wooly.

Let's put it this way, a system savvy min-maxer will inflate a mythic game far more than he will a standard one. Between those extremes, there's a lot of uncertainty in how mythic impacts an "average" campaign.

In our own Wrath of the Righteous group we've got two charcters to compare. One player is playing a fairly standard Aasimar Paladin and has made certain choices for the character, including choosing not to play a Vengeance Paladin. While she's a heck of a tank and can smite and summon (she dual pathed Guardian and Hierophant) and at Level 11/tier 4 she can cast Summon Monster VI from her mythic points, she's totally outclassed in standard damage by the Oread Monk who becomes Large at every encounter and to whom doors and most barriers mean nothing.

So you really can't make assumptions simply by number of tiers as both characters are of the same level/tier number.

[kikidmonkey]

Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

@kikidmonkey

What is it about Mythic that enables you to ignore money? I use a house rule in this campaign (a Wealth rating). The characters are all supposed to be super rich princes, so they have access to pretty much whatever they want; but I've also house-ruled the big six enhancement bonuses out of the game, so the swag tends to be more interesting.

I'm curious because this is the first mention of a wealth interaction with mythic I've seen. Could you (or anyone) elaborate?

Due to our mythic level, plus party make up, we can effectively lie/cheat/steal anything our black little hearts desire.

My character, for instance, can create illusions that cannot be identified by spellcraft, detect magic, arcane sight, etc by non mythic creatures, and combine that with DC's of 20+, I, if i were so inclined, could literally be printing money. In a couple of mythic levels I can take an ability that lets me make my illusions REAL for 30+minutes.

I simply do an illusion of a diamond, trade it for cash, leave.

then you have the "Display of _____" powers giving you a +20 on a roll.

Without severe restraint or leashing, even mythic 1 heroes can get pretty much whatever they want.

[kestral287]

Ravingdork wrote:

kestral287 wrote:

Oh so very threatening. I'm also amused by just how devastating a blaster-caster can get at the higher tiers; Mythic Empower and (especially) Mythic Maximize are awesome. If you can't get a Fireball into four-digit damage with those, you're not trying.

Not sure what you mean by that since there is no mythic metamagic beyond Ascendant Spell.

... Yeah. I don't have the Mythic book, so I've been using d20pfsrd for sources and apparently they have 3rd party Mythic stuff mixed in on the feats list. Mythic Empower/Mythic Maximize are on there and are pretty awesome, if irritating to get (Mythic Empower requires tier 5, Maximize tier 7).

Ah well. Ignore some/all of my ramblings then-- though personally I don't think those two are any worse than the norm for mythic feats.

[Gray]

I’d love to know how this turns out if you don’t mind posting how the game goes. I’m in the process of re-booting a campaign that went on hold at 19th level, and may see what I can plan for a few mythic tiers. At the moment, I’m leaning toward having PC levels = Mythic Tiers for estimating CR.
Regarding Legacy of Fire, I’ve run that one, and even without mythic, I had some problems you may want to be aware of.

Legacy of Fire spoilers:

Once the PCs have access to several wishes and powerful magic, some of the existing encounters aren’t much of a threat. For example, by the time they entered the final dungeon, the whole group was flying and invisible all the time. In that entire dungeon, there are only two enemies who have the ability to see invis; the Erinyes, and the BBEG.
I went off script a bit by having BBEG move his harem into the final room with him as he was watching the PCs mow over his minions. I also ignored the suggested tactics. So the PCs entered the final room to find, several Erinyes archers spaced about the large room, and BBEG who was itching to get in full attacks. It was an epic arial fight over the lava flow, but some poor tactics led to a TPK.

[Eltacolibre]

I use legendary games mythic supplements to actually make decent challenges. Villain and the dragon mythic paths in particular are very effective.