Depends upon your players and the size of your gaming group. I have five regular players and we started at 20. They are optimizers, and about the time they reached third mythic tier I started to wish I had started them at 15. But really, it would not have made a significant difference, as either way as a DM you will probably have to do a little work at about the end of the second/beginning of the third book, as many other DMs have. It isn't a tragedy or anything, just keeps you on your toes when it comes to crafting a game that is both entertaining and challenging.
If you have more than 4 players, 15 pt buy is plenty. If you have fewer than 4, 20 should be fine. If you are at 4, I recommend 15 pt buy unless they are complete non-optimizers.
The first book gives the option to earn a stat bump. Likewise, mythic gives stat bumps. And there are crafting times to make the stat bump items, so there is really no need to have high pt buys.
That said, characters may be a bit fragile in the first book depending on how the dice fall.
20PB is more than good enough. Your players will very quickly become uber-powerful. If you are using 20 PB, make sure you set minimums for stats, like only one stat below 10. This will help to prevent the players from dumping everything so they can start with 2 18s or something like that.
I would suggest you talk to your players before you start and let them know that you may need them to retcon their characters to remove a particularly good ability/feat etc. Ex: I had to ask my Ranger to drop clustered shot, because she was so good that it was making the game boring.
|
If you have more than 4 players, 15 pt buy is plenty. If you have fewer than 4, 20 should be fine. If you are at 4, I recommend 15 pt buy unless they are complete non-optimizers.
One of them is a good optimizer. Others are just terrible at making functioning characters. So he kinda compensates for them.
20PB is more than good enough. Your players will very quickly become uber-powerful. If you are using 20 PB, make sure you set minimums for stats, like only one stat below 10. This will help to prevent the players from dumping everything so they can start with 2 18s or something like that.
Always had a rule. No stats below 10 except for roleplay reasons.
I was thinking of going with 20, and amping up the important encounters if necessary.
Okay. I'd say 20-point builds and don't use the Mythic rules. Instead, they get regenerating Hero Points, with a maximum hero point of 3 plus their effective Tier (thus at Tier 10 they'd have 13 Hero Points). It is much easier for players to use Hero Points than having to remember a new skill set, and it's not broken like Mythic becomes.
If you are using Mythic? 5-point builds. And no stat below 10, not even for racial modifiers.
If your group is non-optimizing then mythic will be fine. If you have a group of Super-optimizers then mythic can start to get out of hand real quick.
Okay. I'll explain it simply. If you use Mythic without modification, then you will either get sick and tired of running it within the fourth book, or your players will get bored out of their skulls. You will see players doing critical hits that inflict hundreds of points of damage. Paladins that can one-shot Demon Lords. A complete and utter lack of anything challenging. It's like playing Doom in God Mode, on a computer that isn't powerful enough to run it, so each step takes a minute and while you can kill anything, it takes forever to finish.
Mind you, APs take months to finish. But an AP that doesn't challenge the players? Becomes sheer and utter boredom.
There are two ways to fix this. The first? A massive rewrite of the monsters and the like. Even this just turns things into Rocket Tag with whoever hits first (and criticals first) ending a fight. The second? A massive rewrite of the Mythic Rules.
Or, you can use the Hero Point system. Any Mythic monsters use Hero Points instead. All players get Hero Points that regenerate. Fights are still easy in places because whoever created the AP dropped the ball by making a number of fights easy even for non-Mythic players... but at least it won't be the utter slaughterfest that Mythic makes it.
Trust me on this. If you made your players use 5-point builds without anything under a 10? It will be very difficult for the first pre-Mythic book. The second? Fairly tough. The third book? They'll walk through it in all likelihood.
There's a multitude of forum posts about how WotR dropped the ball and how Mythic is broken. Even a group who never played Pathfinder before would find the game, once they get Mythic, easy.
I think 20 pts is fine... players do like feeling heroic.
I would suggest taking a long look at the mythic rules to decide if you want to use them. They are broken and unbalanced as written. And even un-optimized players will discover that easily enough.
But there are thousands of posts here that delve into that.
{. . .}
Or, you can use the Hero Point system. Any Mythic monsters use Hero Points instead. All players get Hero Points that regenerate. {. . .}
Has any consensus been reached about how fast the Hero Points should regenerate? I have heard about this option several times, but not this particular detail.
I've seen people say one per day. Others suggest the Mythic Tier per day... and a few even would have them regenerate in full each day.
Considering that regular Mythic recharges fully daily, then either you could go with recharge full Hero Points daily but don't grant Hero Points for heroic actions that didn't use one, or limit the regeneration of Hero Points and allow player actions to possibly regain a point. And of course leveling up.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'll just post a link to my review on this board of the AP. Draw your own conclusions from there as to what you think appropriate. The less I need to think about this AP, the happier I am. :-/
|
The standard AP assumption is 4 players @15 point buy, who are not optimizes.
With this AP you could probably go with a 10 point buy, as once they become mythic the AP encounter design fails to capture their raw powerwell and the encounter power urge falls short of the players powercurve, even on most critical encounters. Particukarly bad was module 3 where they often fight 1-2 encounters per day maximum.
Essentially plan for a lot of encounter tweaking, as you will need it.