Been looking at the Mythic ruleset, and it seems like the upper tiers just bring too much. Ive also heard that it gets out of hand from people in my group.
My question is how much mythic is reasonablr? Tier 2? Tier 4? Just looking for experience and opinions here.
Either don't use it, or accept it for what it is.
I used it from Tier 1 through to Tier 10 in my campaign (gaining one tier every other level).
It is internally consistent, but accept the fact that by using it that characters will CURB STOMP everything.
Making a challenge for them will involve more work/higher numbers of opponents. Resist the urge to make everything mythic that faces them.
If you use it, let them play with the abilities, let them have their power. Challenge them with OCCASIONAL BBEG with mythic, don't make it the norm.
Mythic lets you pull out monsters you might not normally use, like dragons with class levels... those are fun :D
I would not suggest using PART of the mythic rules, I would go all or nothing.
It really depends on if your players want to be Power Gamers or not. Mythic is actually a great time to try out a non-optimized option, like a Melee Sorcerer and a high Cha/Int Rogue, or MAD class like Monk can really shine. You don't HAVE to go all the way to 10th tier, just like you don't have to take your campaign all the way to 20th level.
Tiers 1-2: Minor boost in power, real change is that Amazing Initiative helps to tip action economy even more in player's favor.
Tiers 3-6: Big jump in power; with recuperation, players can nova almost everything but mythic points and just wait an hour and keep going. This means that your players will be more willing to dump high power spells earlier. You players will start to amass a decent number of increasingly powerful Mythic powers and can really destroy an encounter quickly. That being said, a level 10/Tier 4 is fighting CR12 to CR14 fights just to be challenging, that means a BBEG may be CR16 with several CR 10 mooks. Despite their mythic powers, you can easily drop a PC in one round with a few good rolls. Risk of TPK is much higher in mythic.
Tiers 7-10: Near Immortal; your PCs will be incredibly hard to hit, and they will make almost all their saves. With Unstoppable, Immortal and Leagendary Hero, plus access to high tier path abilities this is the quintessential "Rocket Tag." Winning Initiative means the difference between killing the CR30 Demon Lord in 2 rounds or being completely curb stomped by his 10 summoned Balors.
If you're looking to not go SUPER powerful, but just kind of powerful, don't go any higher than 4th tier. This gives a very nice taste of Mythic and what you can do with it, without getting into the super game breaking options. Also, mooks are your friends, and max monster HP.
Right at tier 1 imho. Mostly if found that, once again, upgrades are heavly skewed toward offence so the only thing I could do to challenge them was either having enemy with HP in scientific notation or having them OTK the PCs, witch was not really fun. Most of the blame actually lies in the feats moreso than the powers imho.
Next mithic campaign i'm going to do i'm probably axing the feats and only allow stupidly fun stuff like beyond morality, legendary weapons, and those kind of "rule of cool" things.
I absolutely adore the ability that grants your FOLLOWERS spells, doesn't do much for you, but MAN is it cool...
Mythic is super fun, but it is a whole new game, essentially. Be prepared for making new encounters unlike any you have before. My players were regularly facing stuff CR +6-8 above their APL and having no issues at all.
Example:
At level 14/tier 7 I had them face a great wyrm blue dragon with levels in sorcerer (forget how many)-he could cast time stop and similar spells.
I had built him as a monster/PC (Advanced template, several levels of sorcerer, gear, optimized feats etc).
They managed to get him from full hitpoints to about ten left in one round. He managed to run only because they let him go (they could have easily magic missiled him or thrown rocks at him to kill him.)
its not so much the tears that are a problem. It's a few very specific abilities and combinations that just have to be nerfed or banned.
Amazing Initiative: get rid of the option to spend a mythic point for an extra standard action. This is the biggest issue with mythic games.
Mythic Power Attack + Mythic Vital Strike: Don't allow this combination unless you like your PCs to be able to one-shot anything in the game.
Any ability that allows a swift action casting of any spell of their list: Say no.
Mythic Feather Fall: Yes, really. It can be cast on objects. That means a flying mage can do 5d6x their level AoE damage to everything below them by tossing down a handful of copper coins.
Those are the big ones that I'm aware of. There's probably a few more that I'm not thinking of.
Mythic lets you pull out monsters you might not normally use, like dragons with class levels... those are fun :D
Blue Dragon Monk with kungfu kobolds :D
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Mythic really change the game dynamic early, as others have observed, right at Tier 1 the PCs become very powerful, (just the basic surge can alter probability expectations at low levels.) This dramatically changes the way you must build encounters, and has one of two consequences. Either you go with the BBEG with mythic abilities himself, to make them have a chance, or you have a dynamic combat filled with waves of combatants.
In the first case things get very dicey, very much like lobbing nuclear bombs back and forth, people will die, and the battle can become like a knifes edge, with too easy on one side, and TPK on the other. If the dynamic tension is right walking that edge is exciting, otherwise it is just disappointing.
In the second case you can have a really exciting battle, and everyone generally feels pretty awesome, but your rounds of combat become very long and convoluted as you manipulate all the foes. At higher levels this can slow already slow combats to a grinding halt. One of the most satisfying (player and GM) encounters we ran in WotR ended in a 6" tall, 12" wide pile of mini corpses Which were all left about the battlefield to emphasize the carnage.
So when does Mythic go over the top? From the beginning? or perhaps not at all, it just makes the game fundamentally different, and you can't ignore that.
Been looking at the Mythic ruleset, and it seems like the upper tiers just bring too much. Ive also heard that it gets out of hand from people in my group.
My question is how much mythic is reasonablr? Tier 2? Tier 4? Just looking for experience and opinions here.
Our GM stopped at 2, and is seriously considering de-powering us completely. I blame myself. Actually, I blame my gnome sorc who can pull any spell off the list to cast as he so chooses. I have a tendency to trivialize a LOT of encounters due to proper spell selection.
I would NOT recommend banning parts of Mythic. It works as a complete ruleset, as long as you understand that it will bring the game to a new powerlevel.
Amazing initiative grants a standard action, yes, but not for spellcasting, so it's not that bad.
Mythic Power Attack + Mythic Vital Strike puts the fighter on par with casters (one-shotting in melee still isn't as powerful as 9th level spells)
Mythic Feather Fall: rule it a bit more logically than the crazy theory crafters who think it is allowable as a super killer spell.
Game balance can be maintained with Mythic, as long as you accept that the characters are basically demigods, starting at Tier 1.
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At high levels, even Tier 1 is an amazing force multiplier. Mythic is simply that good, especially in the hands of a number cruncher.Been looking at the Mythic ruleset, and it seems like the upper tiers just bring too much. Ive also heard that it gets out of hand from people in my group.
My question is how much mythic is reasonablr? Tier 2? Tier 4? Just looking for experience and opinions here.
Yeah, that was my experience with letting in Tier 1 Mythic to my campaign as well. While I wouldn't say it was over the top for me, it definitely caught me by surprise in my encounter planning. As others have stated here, for my group it was the mythic feat choice, sometimes in combination with the mythic path ability choice. Mythic Power Attack + Impossible Speed ability was one, Mythic Weapon Finesse + Mythic Arcane Strike (per Extra Mythic Feat path ability) was another combo for a rogue/arcane trickster type, the crafting wizard took Crafting Mastery path ability and was able to retrain several feats (per Ultimate Campaign rules) to beef up combat spellcasting as he never had before. My first encounters after their Tier 1 ascension were pretty woeful, and I had to rethink it a fair bit.
I still think it was fun to do and not insta-ruin for the campaign, but I did not expect that much of a plateau bump-up in power from it.
Mythic is fine imo, tier 1 for sure though. Challenging Mythic PCs isn't that hard, especially with mythic monsters and the mythic templates(the agile alone can change otherwise ineffectual monsters into appropriate threats). You can still threaten PC's with highly optimized non-mythic threats(high damage npcs, dragons using feat chains rather than default feats), but it's more work on your end as a DM which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
To a DM hesitant to use them, I'd recommend giving them a single tier at low levels and take it from there. A single tier should be taste enough to see what it's like without bloating the game's power level too much.
I found things were good from Tier 1 and Tier 2 at Tier 3 things got out of hand with Recuperation. If you thought 15 minute work days were bad, that is makes characters who can nova able to do several times a day. 1 hour of rest and mythic power point and it's like you rested 8 hours regaining all your limited use class abilities. That's where I found things got out of hand.
The entire point of mythic is to allow the PCs to confront and conquer challenges that would destroy normal parties.
So it can go over the top very quickly.
Much like the regular game, there's a number of options that are out-of-line with other options in terms of power, and you'll need to keep an eye for them.
There's a number of things I've modified in my game (which is now L20, tier 7) (sometimes nerfing, sometimes buffing), but it's on a case by case basis.
(One of my criteria is: would I be comfortable with using this on the PCs? If the answer is "no," (hi mythic vital strike!) I'm pretty likely to modify it.)
Now, one thing I do find wonky is at the upper end - I think Paizo grossly low balled the numbers and powers for CR 26+ creatures, and so you wind up with the issue that a lot of demigod-class creatures are actually pretty weak compared to mythic PCs. (Hell, some of them are pretty weak compared to non-mythic PCs.)
And so if you're playing at the upper end, you may need to make some pretty massive adjustments.
Mythic Power Attack + Mythic Vital Strike puts the fighter on par with casters (one-shotting in melee still isn't as powerful as 9th level spells)
No, it doesn't. Mythic Vital Strike does nothing except give the Fighter overkill on something he is already good at. The options for martials to expand their narrative power are shockingly limited and expensive. Meanwhile casters get unlimited spell list access at the first tier.
Any ability that allows a swift action casting of any spell of their list: Say no.
In fairness, they errata'd those powers into Standard Actions AND placed a limit on how long the casting time for the spell could be. So that one shouldn't be a problem in games anyway. XD
Really depends on how the players run with it.
Some Mythic options would be fine even in a non-mythic game - I've allowed several Mythic feats in non-mythic games with no issues. Conversely there are some options available as early as tier 1 that will dramatically alter the scope and power level of your game. Things like Wild Arcana and Inspired Spell make me deeply uncomfortable and are available right from the start.
DM: "Hey guys, so I was reading about Mythic..."
Right there is when it goes over the top.
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Wait - the fighter isn't allowed to excel, even in a mythic game?
I'll bet some of you also b$@@+ about how weak fighters are.
Mythic Vital Strike does not make the Fighter excel.
The Fighter has never had problems in combat against anything he can hit with a sword (the only thinks Vital Strike helps against). The Fighter's problems have to do with all of the things that he can't hit with a sword and all of the things that aren't in combat.
Mythic alone solves virtually all of the Fighter's in-combat issues with decent picks. Mythic Vital Strike does nothing except reinforce a strength to a ludicrous degree.
If you play a fighter and violence is not solving all your problems then you are not using enough of it! :D JK!
That's Barbarians, who can actually turn "Punch it in the face" into an out-of-combat solution. Fighters... not so much. In related news, one of these is considered a much better class than the other.
Spell Sunder may just be my favorite ability in the game.