First off, I'm running this campaign with Spheres of Power and Automatic Bonus Progression. Second, the party consists of the following characters:
Dwarf Paladin of Torag - Strength-based 2-Hand Champion. High defenses and damage, Divination and War spheres (Divination for the senses for Blindsense and Improved Uncanny Dodge, War for mass combat)
Human Cleric of Sarenrae - Guided Hand Hierophant. High crit range and strong party buffs plus some healing and condition removal. Has an AoE debuff that only works on evil creatures.
Half-Elf Card Caster Magus - Thrown Weapon Trickster. Took Path Dabbling for Limitless Range. Has Destruction for blasts, Time for group Haste and Blink/Displacement, and Warp for positioning allies and preventing demons from teleporting away.
Human Psychic - Control and Support Archmage. Has the Death sphere for debuffs, Mind for buffing and control, and Telekinesis for damage and utility. Took the Abomination discipline for thematic reasons and can hide his spellcasting.
I've already done a lot of work retooling fights and converting NPCs to the new system - it's a lot faster than it used to take which is nice, but thanks to Mythic I'm having some trouble challenging the players. We're about to finish Book 2 and while there have been some dangerous moments most of the villains can't compete. Staunton lasted 2 rounds, then rose as a Graveknight and died in 1 round afterwards - that was after I increased his level and tier then added two more powerful NPCs to the combat. I can do character builds easily enough, but I need some ideas for countering the party that don't just cause arbitrary difficulty - I want interesting combats that last longer. I've even been maximizing enemy HP for a whole book - nothing has been working so far.
I don't know much of anything about Sphere magic to start off with. But from what you've described of their casting abilities they outstrip what is expected from 7th level PF characters.
But in short... cheat. For enemy casters they need to start pre-buffed or as much as you feel comfortable with. When combats last around 2 rounds they can't afford to take a round to only cast one defensive spell.
Use templates more, like the agile mythic template. Design important encounters so they can resist your party's usual tactics.
Don't use XP, so you can throw more challenging encounters at them.
I believe James Jacobs said that the Mythic Tiers:Difficulty was one of the things they screwed up, given it was their first application of brand new rules... And that he thought they could have progressed Mythic Tiers about half as fast as they did for the game to be more balanced. So cut their Mythic Tiers in half, and see how it works out.
I don't know much of anything about Sphere magic to start off with. But from what you've described of their casting abilities they outstrip what is expected from 7th level PF characters.
But in short... cheat. For enemy casters they need to start pre-buffed or as much as you feel comfortable with. When combats last around 2 rounds they can't afford to take a round to only cast one defensive spell.
Use templates more, like the agile mythic template. Design important encounters so they can resist your party's usual tactics.
Don't use XP, so you can throw more challenging encounters at them.
Put simply, Spheres separates magic from the 8 schools into 20 "spheres", each of which has a basic ability which can be used for free by decreasing its power or requiring concentration to maintain (for instance, Destruction has at-will blasts dealing 1d6/2 CL but by spending a spell point they deal 1d6/CL, and Time can allow you to grant a single creature Haste through Concentration each round or you can spend a spell point to make it last Rounds/CL).
They certainly outstrip the expected combat capabilities of your average PF characters (and they're Level 9 right now, not 7) but their out-of-combat utility is severely decreased as a result of Spheres. It's something of a trade, and I've always been good at building stuff that's powerful and challenging (just ask the cleric, who finished an epilogue to Kingmaker that went up to Level 20).
I have been adding extra creatures to each fight, increasing the class levels of named enemies, and rebuilding everything from the ground up to be more on-par with my expectations of difficulty. However, my group has exceeded my expectations and it's more than a little worrying. They just fought Staunton Vhane (Antipaladin 10 // Champion 3), Barrid Isen (Sorcerer 10 with a CL 13 conjured "eidolon" with multiple buffs), Nurah (Bard 8, just support), and Kiranda (Succubus Swashbuckler 3) simultaneously - a CR 15 encounter according to my calculations. And they crushed it in about three rounds total, including Staunton's rebirth as a Graveknight (which I decided was fueled by his mythic power since otherwise they would've destroyed it immediately).
I feel like Dispel Magic on the enemy's part would be a good start, mostly to remove the 30% miss chance the Magus provides. Are there any ways to prevent or counter Smite Evil that I don't know about? The Cleric has an aura that prevents any alignment-specific buffs and debuffs that the evil creatures use so I can't exactly Smite them back easily.
And I haven't used EXP from the moment I started. Too complicated :P
Okay, a couple quick easy fixes off the top of my head.
First: add 10 hit points per level of the party to each monster.
Second: cut the treasure found in half.
Third: don't give out artifacts unless they are essential.
Fourth: make sure you are following the letter of the rule for Mythic. It is quite easy to make mistakes and end up with overpowered players who in fact are accidentally cheating.
Fifth: give all of your boss encounters the Mythic Agile simple feat - simply put, they get a second full action at +20 to their initiative. Yes, that means they can cast spells twice a round (or four times if they have Swift spells), or get two full sets of attacks a round.
You might very well find doing all of these makes the monsters too powerful - in that case, probably drop the hit points bit and add a little more treasure. ;)
I believe James Jacobs said that the Mythic Tiers:Difficulty was one of the things they screwed up, given it was their first application of brand new rules... And that he thought they could have progressed Mythic Tiers about half as fast as they did for the game to be more balanced. So cut their Mythic Tiers in half, and see how it works out.
While that's probably true I don't think it's going to work - they're very excited for this system, and so am I. Cutting back on the tiers would work at the expense of our enjoyment. I'd prefer to bring the enemies up to their level rather than bringing the party down.
As for being immune to smite, yes. There is a universal path ability called Beyond Morality.
I'm not sure what to suggest, it sounds as if sphere magic has thrown in an additional wildcard to the mix. What you described would have crushed my PCs, or made them run away. Also a three round fight isn't terrible in mythic.
If your only problem is the enemies going down too fast, then give them more HP. Or look at abilities like mythic dodge, mirror dodge, etc... I'm sure there are mythic abilities that remove miss chance too, or feel free to make some up. The whole design philosophy for mythic monsters is basically give them cool abilities.
Have you searched this section for Scorpion's monster designs? I've heard that they can help for a long time.
As for being immune to smite, yes. There is a universal path ability called Beyond Morality.
I'm not sure what to suggest, it sounds as if sphere magic has thrown in an additional wildcard to the mix. What you described would have crushed my PCs, or made them run away. Also a three round fight isn't terrible in mythic.
If your only problem is the enemies going down too fast, then give them more HP. Or look at abilities like mythic dodge, mirror dodge, etc... I'm sure there are mythic abilities that remove miss chance too, or feel free to make some up. The whole design philosophy for mythic monsters is basically give them cool abilities.
Have you searched this section for Scorpion's monster designs? I've heard that they can help for a long time.
I'm working on adding a couple high-level NPCs to the Chorussina fight actually, and the first I made is a rogue with a level in Swashbuckler and the Swordplay Style feat tree. High AC (28+5 with Mythic Combat Expertise) and the Deadly Dodge Trickster path ability. This means 37 AC and up to 2 deflected attacks per round. Every time an enemy attacks her and misses they provoke an AoO, and if she successfully parries an attack she gains another +4 AC against that enemy. If she manages to Sneak Attack it'll decrease that oppopponent's attack by -6 and they won't be able to 5' step. That means she can prevent them from moving away easily and can use Duelist's Dodge to avoid an entire full attack from melee. The party will have to debuff or immobilize her to win, and since the psychic has Telekinesis he can accomplish that. I'm also putting a Planar Anchor in the room which will hopefully prevent teleportation (it requires a CL check) and a caster who can both grant and force rerolls. This is a test encounter to see if high AC proves to be a challenge (the paladin has +22 on his high attack when buffed with Rage, Heroism, and Haste on his high Bab attack, and her normal AC will be 37 (Deadly Dodge is assumed). Her Touch AC is similarly high (26 with Deadly Dodge and Combat Expertise).
I think she will be a difficult for with her abilities, and while her damage is somewhat low without Sneak Attack it shouldn't be hard to get (we're using an altered Sneak Attack which deals +2 rather than +1d6, multiplies on a crit, and applies whenever the target is suffering from a negative condition such as Sickened or Shaken in addition to flanking and losing Dex to AC).
I have not heard of Scorpion's monster designs, so I'll check that out when I get home. Thanks!
Okay, a couple quick easy fixes off the top of my head.
First: add 10 hit points per level of the party to each monster.
Second: cut the treasure found in half.
Third: don't give out artifacts unless they are essential.
Fourth: make sure you are following the letter of the rule for Mythic. It is quite easy to make mistakes and end up with overpowered players who in fact are accidentally cheating.
Fifth: give all of your boss encounters the Mythic Agile simple feat - simply put, they get a second full action at +20 to their initiative. Yes, that means they can cast spells twice a round (or four times if they have Swift spells), or get two full sets of attacks a round.
You might very well find doing all of these makes the monsters too powerful - in that case, probably drop the hit points bit and add a little more treasure. ;)
I've been maximizing HP and adding Con bonuses which allows enemies to survive a full attack (usually). More HP will help.
Treasure is already cut in half due to Automatic Bonus Progression, which means the essentials are covered. Nevertheless they haven't gotten much loot so far this book and won't be able to go back to a large city for gear (the book suggests Teleporting to Nerosyan but Teleport doesn't exist in Spheres except for an advanced talent the Magus can't take for another 3 levels). Keeping gear relatively unaccessible is certainly possible.
The players have already got one artifact but it's one of my own creation - they missed Radiance so I'm corrupting it with the Corruption Forge and using it later. The Cleric has the "replacement", a sword which has Flaming Burst that converts to Sacred damage against demons. It's going to become stronger, but I decide when and how.
I am using Mythic rules properly so far, it's just really powerful as-is. I made sure the Archive and Hierophant abilities to cast spells using MP are Standard actions rather than Swifts, which was a big thing
I hadn't found the Mythic Templates yet, Agile looks very useful. Thanks for pointing that out!
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1)Limit the number of MP to 3+ tier, instead of 3+ double tier. This will make your PCs think twice about spamming their Mythic abilities.
2)Don't be afraid to tell your players they need to alter their build to pull back on their power level.
In my game I had our Ranger dump clustered shot, being an archer is already super powerful, being able to almost completely ignore DR WAY too strong.
3) Disallow legendary items. They are too strong, especially in a campaign where you know you will pretty much only be fighting demons from book 3 on.
4) Don't Pull your Punches: this is a natural inclination of a DM. NPCs and monster don't use the best possible tactics because it's not fun if the PCs are dead. In Mythic, you need to go full force just to challenge the PCs. Have the Bosses Metagame: target poor saves, reselect their spells for the most powerful dumping the utility spells that aren't useful in combat, reselect feats the same way (a guy with craft wonderous item or persuasive is a wasted feat), always have a good reaction spell "prepared," have them know the PC's common tactics and have responses already queued up.
5) Accept the fact that many encounters will be very easy and that's ok. They are mythic, they should mow down the competition.
For anyone who wants some context on what Spheres of Power does and how it differs from Vancian, there's a wiki with all the rules for the system online here. It boils down to forcing casters to focus on (typically) 1-4 "spheres", or themes, rather than cherry-picking the good spells from each school. It removes many of the narrative-altering spells like Teleport, Sending, and Planar Binding while making other options more costly (Contingency is a feat and you permanently lose the spell points used for it until after it's been used, and the Dispel Magic line is a whole feat chain) and buffing certain schools to be more useful. For instance, Evocation was split into Destruction (which plays similarly to a Kineticist but more versatile), Light (which has buffs and area control/denial), and Dark (crowd control and debuffing, plus some utility such as Hide in Plain Sight). The removed powers are accessible through Advanced Talents which (in my campaign) require Mythic Power to use, need a feat or path ability to unlock, and have prerequisites.
1)Limit the number of MP to 3+ tier, instead of 3+ double tier. This will make your PCs think twice about spamming their Mythic abilities.
2)Don't be afraid to tell your players they need to alter their build to pull back on their power level.
In my game I had our Ranger dump clustered shot, being an archer is already super powerful, being able to almost completely ignore DR WAY too strong.3) Disallow legendary items. They are too strong, especially in a campaign where you know you will pretty much only be fighting demons from book 3 on.
4) Don't Pull your Punches: this is a natural inclination of a DM. NPCs and monster don't use the best possible tactics because it's not fun if the PCs are dead. In Mythic, you need to go full force just to challenge the PCs. Have the Bosses Metagame: target poor saves, reselect their spells for the most powerful dumping the utility spells that aren't useful in combat, reselect feats the same way (a guy with craft wonderous item or persuasive is a wasted feat), always have a good reaction spell "prepared," have them know the PC's common tactics and have responses already queued up.
5) Accept the fact that many encounters will be very easy and that's ok. They are mythic, they should mow down the competition.
1) Reducing MP per day wouldn't change much because they already don't use much MP. Up until the Staunton fight they didn't need to use it all day, so they just blew multiple points per round then to wreck everything.
2) To clarify, this campaign has 2 players (the Paladin and Cleric) and 2 NPCs (the Psychic and Magus) who make up the party. The Psychic and Magus both focus on buffing the party and dealing with immediate threats so the players can have the spotlight. The Paladin has great saves (as expected) and good AC but isn't usually a huge problem. The Cleric has strong buffs but the big issue is the crits, which can be negated. I control the NPC builds and decided not to take Clustered Shots or Metamagic feats just yet. Of course, the Cleric can grant their weapons Holy so Clustered Shots isn't even necessary.
3) Legendary Items don't specifically work well against certain creatures though. Foe Biting might be a problem but I can throw a few Guardians in to negate and/or reduce the damage to counter that.
4) Hahahahahaha.
Long story short - I don't pull punches.
5) I have no problem with them stomping encounters with Vrocks, Minotaurs, and Succubi. I fully expect them to win those easily, but the point is to drain their resources so the later fights are more dangerous. What I've found is these fights don't make them spend MP, which they then use to steamroll the important combats. I need more encounters to be dangerous enough to warrant using that resource so they don't enter the final rooms and have their whole day's worth of resources available.
In book 2 the characters are relativly weak, a few increases and max hp kept everything competetive.
In the long run, multiply hp by the number of the book, add twice the number of the book to AC, and pray.
By book 6 your paladin should easily average 1000hp damage per round
My only advice would be to use something I use as a player frequently in our RotRL using Spheres. Give an enemy or two some feats of the dispel magic chain and use readied actions and immediate actions to hamper the casters.
Your clarification also gives an easy answer; remove one of the NPCs.
Actually there is a second possibility: take away the Mythic for the two support NPCs. The PCs are the ones who should be mythic heroes. The NPCs are just support. Have them be so. ;)
Your clarification also gives an easy answer; remove one of the NPCs.
Removing one of the NPCs would certainly decrease the group's overall power level, but I fear that it would be too effective in that regard. Plus, I've got a lot of story threads and plots that rely on their presence planned for future books.
Actually there is a second possibility: take away the Mythic for the two support NPCs. The PCs are the ones who should be mythic heroes. The NPCs are just support. Have them be so. ;)
Without the ability to bypass Epic DR or get a save against many Mythic abilities the NPCs would be effectively worthless or even a liability. In this situation my players would never allow them to come along, especially after Irabeth was just killed during the Staunton Vhane fight.
I'm not looking to nerf the party, I'm looking to develop encounters which challenge them. All I need are ideas for ways to do this successfully.
Well, I wish you luck. I've given my suggestions.
There are several threads out there on how to tame Mythic, and I actually spoke at length in them and came up with a long list of things (like having Mythic Power Attack work the same as Mythic Deadly Aim).
The primary problem is of course the fact Mythic is broken, especially at higher levels.
So I give my last bit of advice: Fudge.
Let monsters have as many hit points as you feel are necessary to have a tough fight. Have them die when you decide they die, not at an arbitrary level of hit points damage.
One other thing though: Do your players believe they're having tough fights and are they enjoying themselves? Or do you as the GM feel they are not threatened enough? Because I'm running Runelords (with a dash of Mythic and rolled stats). And you know? I feel like the fights are not a challenge. I don't hurt the PCs very often. But the players have a blast and are enjoying themselves and tell me THEY feel challenged.
If they feel challenged and are enjoying themselves, it doesn't matter that your enemies never touch them. You're doing a good job.
Well, I wish you luck. I've given my suggestions.
There are several threads out there on how to tame Mythic, and I actually spoke at length in them and came up with a long list of things (like having Mythic Power Attack work the same as Mythic Deadly Aim).
The primary problem is of course the fact Mythic is broken, especially at higher levels.
So I give my last bit of advice: Fudge.
Let monsters have as many hit points as you feel are necessary to have a tough fight. Have them die when you decide they die, not at an arbitrary level of hit points damage.
One other thing though: Do your players believe they're having tough fights and are they enjoying themselves? Or do you as the GM feel they are not threatened enough? Because I'm running Runelords (with a dash of Mythic and rolled stats). And you know? I feel like the fights are not a challenge. I don't hurt the PCs very often. But the players have a blast and are enjoying themselves and tell me THEY feel challenged.
If they feel challenged and are enjoying themselves, it doesn't matter that your enemies never touch them. You're doing a good job.
I actually nerfed Mythic Power Attack already - it counts your BAB as 4 higher on a crit rather than doubling the bonus damage first, so it adds about +9 damage on the paladin's warhammer crits rather than +27.
Staunton was hyped up as a major player in the paladin's backstory (a dwarven traitor who ruined the reputation of dwarves in Kenabres, causing prejudice and undue hatred towards the paladin's family - a Paladin of Torag at that. Ouch). Then they fought him and he didn't stand a chance. They were certainly happy to win but underwhelmed. I want to instill the feeling that they're on a much higher level than 99% of other heroes, which naturally means enemies that matter should be just about as strong.
Thanks for the help though - you've given me a few ideas!