More level 20 and / or mythic APs


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For what it's worth, there are ways to do that more reasonably - for example, a mythic game where everyone takes mythic class abilities instead of picking talents from a list. Maybe limit what feats can be taken, too - nothing giving big damage boosts.


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Elegos wrote:

I will say that 1 tier of mythic can be a delightful spice to upgrade a campaign where thematic. Just be prepared to give any significantly challenging encounter mythic power of its own. Now my group already had some serious optimisation going so adding mythic was more of a multiplier then an additional, so I had a bit more work to improve the stats then just "increase them a bit" But it did give me the chance to change book four Barzillai Thrune from "dude with 15 inquisitor levels and some gnarly boosts," to "cave sized genius loci with an avatar form the size of the tarrasque that controls the very battlefield with a thought"

I would be incredibly hesitant to increase the amount of mythic beyond 3 tiers at 20th level.

You wouldn't have this version at hand to be shared with others? I'll be running Hell's Rebels one of these days (okay, probably "years" is a better description of the timeframe) and I'm not averse to giving the opposition to the PC's a boost. Just upped Rasputin to tier one, for example.

Liberty's Edge

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magnuskn wrote:
Elegos wrote:

I will say that 1 tier of mythic can be a delightful spice to upgrade a campaign where thematic. Just be prepared to give any significantly challenging encounter mythic power of its own. Now my group already had some serious optimisation going so adding mythic was more of a multiplier then an additional, so I had a bit more work to improve the stats then just "increase them a bit" But it did give me the chance to change book four Barzillai Thrune from "dude with 15 inquisitor levels and some gnarly boosts," to "cave sized genius loci with an avatar form the size of the tarrasque that controls the very battlefield with a thought"

I would be incredibly hesitant to increase the amount of mythic beyond 3 tiers at 20th level.

You wouldn't have this version at hand to be shared with others? I'll be running Hell's Rebels one of these days (okay, probably "years" is a better description of the timeframe) and I'm not averse to giving the opposition to the PC's a boost. Just upped Rasputin to tier one, for example.

As someone running both Hell's Rebels AND Reign of Winter, I want both of these!


Ill dig out my notes for Thrune in bith his vase mythic form and his "ascended" avatar form. I will say his build was pretty tailored to fighting my party, so if you dont have a lot of sneak attack and archery in your party, maybe tweak it.

Also fun fact: Endless Hatred combined with the spell instant enemy is horrific.


So I'm seeing a lot of people complain about the numbers with mythic and how to use the system to make it work but I haven't really seen anyone mention anything about actually fixing the system. So if anyone has any ideas on that I would love to hear it. (Granted this might be covered in third-party material. I don't know, I don't buy third-party material.)

Also Elegos if you could send me a copy of those notes to that be great. Unless you're just going to post them in the forum.


Isn't fixing the Mythic rules Legendary Games' thing?

I highly recommend picking up their Mythic Rules expansions.


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Mythic Solutions from Legendary Games (also is part of the Mythic Heroes Handbook) does a good job of paring back some of the more egregious rules abuses, but does almost nothing to prevent the incredible escalation of numbers mythic represents.

Bear in mind that a CR = APL encounter is expected to use up approximately 20% of a 4-member party’s resources over the course of 3-6 rounds of combat (let’s say 4).

When a single level 16 tier 8 (allegedly equivalent to a level 20 character, but I’d peg them a lot higher, like level 30+) is capable of delivering 1000 points of damage per round, that 4-round survival requires having approximately 16000 hit points with a whole party going to town on it. Not to mention attacks that bypass DR, spells that ignore SR, and what have you.

Nobody, as far as I know, has taken the time to crunch the numbers, but we know what hit points and AC should look like up to CR 25 (560 and 43 for anyone checking). And the numbers for CR 26 as currently designed are linearly scaling upward (600 and 44), but those numbers don’t even represent a single round of output from a single character who is CR minus 6. And it’s not the AC that’s the problem (44 is a good number to be aiming for, there), but the hit points need to be, what, 25 times the stated amount?

The fix is a beast: first, a correct APL adjustment for mythic tiers needs to be introduced so that above tier 4, the APL skyrockets to account for the path abilities mythic characters now have, and then the creature numbers on table 1-1 need amending for CR 26+ to account for the necessary hit point targets, and that still might not quite do it. The alternative is a massive nerf to mythic abilities.

I want to do it. I want to be able to say “look, guys, I managed to get mythic working right, here’s the numbers, let’s rebuild the WotR encounters, and create the new paradigm of monster creation for CR 26-30 so that things can be an actual challenge”. It’s a lot of work, and I doubt I could manage it in any sort of reasonable timescale (I’m already waaaaay behind on two writing projects). About all I’m confident of is that it can be done.


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Derry L. Zimeye wrote:


As someone running both Hell's Rebels AND Reign of Winter, I want both of these!

Here you go.

Looking forward to Barzillai. :)

Owner - House of Books and Games LLC

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Wow, this certainly brings back memories of being told how unplayable epic games were. I certainly hadn't been running an epic campaign for years at that point so I clearly had no idea what I was talking about.

I'm not going to debate damage output, it really doesn't matter. Really.

The same thing is true for mythic play that was true for epic play, namely that once you realize information is the true coin of the game and that plot is more important that opponents you'll be able to play at literally any level/tier (for once literally is being used correctly. Boo yah!).

Is it a hell of a lot of work to run? Hell yeah, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't. Do they sometimes one-shot things that I thought might be a challenge? Of course. Are there games where we have zero combat whatsoever? Yep. And if there's no combat, the fact you can have DPR bajillion becomes sorta irrelevant.

(but it can be quite fun though :)

I'll be honest, I've started some combats and after a round or two said "you'll have no problem with this, I'm just going to move on, everyone take (roll) 34 damage" and have never heard a complaint about skipping combat so they can get to plot elements.

A final interesting aspect of crazy power level games is that I never ever worry about how they're going to solve a problem. When I'm writing material for low-level games, I always make sure there's at least two ways to resolve predicaments, ideally three - the martial way, the caster way, and the thinky way. Now, I don't bother, I just set up a scenario.

"At the end of the last game they activated the portal, which teleported them elsewhere, but elsewhere has been partially destroyed by an asteroid and the location is actually in space, so they'll have no air and be falling within 5-20 feet of a rough cliff. Any who are within 100' of the destination will be attacked by a dozen fallen (Bestiary 6) who haunt the place. And it's a heavy gravity area so it's 1d10 per 10 feet with no limit because there's no air to slow the fall."

How the hell would they get out of that? No clue.

Would some of them die? I suspected so (I was wrong, I didn't think of casting rope trick ... they wanted to use sanctum but that takes a minute and you fall a long way in a minute).

Would the fallen make it more challenging? I figured so, but hadn't expected it to be solely because they clogged the rope trick so others couldn't get in (serendipitously protecting themselves from the cleric's channels).

Would some of them take massive falling damage? Probably (wrong again, the wizard immediately threw a wall of force below the lowest character).

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gbonehead wrote:


A final interesting aspect of crazy power level games is that I never ever worry about how they're going to solve a problem. When I'm writing material for low-level games, I always make sure there's at least two ways to resolve predicaments, ideally three - the martial way, the caster way, and the thinky way. Now, I don't bother, I just set up a scenario.

This is a key component for running any high level or mythic game well - make your plots impossible. The players will figure something out.

It's really hard to write prewritten adventures this way, though.


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They don’t have to be impossible, but the key is to not have a solution of your own (this is not easy), and present a situation that can’t just be solved by hitting things with a big stick.

In my last session, the scenario was that the PCs were trying to convince a large number (about 50) of green dragons to be reasonable neighbours. Didn’t have a clue how to handle it beyond some vague ideas of skills that might be usable to persuade the dragons. The players came up with some fantastic ideas on what skills to use and what their arguments were (even when the cleric failed a Knowledge (History) roll and annoyed the dragons). In the end they ended with a loose truce with the dragons (which includes intervening if the dragons come under attack and guess what my next major plot line is going to be?)


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Chemlak wrote:
They don’t have to be impossible, but the key is to not have a solution of your own (this is not easy)

So true. As a DM I try to just think "could I solve this?" I don't worry about how.

For instance, in a "there's a serial killer in town" scenario, as long as there are threads to pull on all is well. Someone who knows the killer's identity. Physical clues left at the scenes. Suppliers who provided weapons or poisons or outfits to the killer. I don't worry about defining any of those, as long as I as a DM know they exist and I haven't designed a "there's a killer who leaves no trail, is unknown to anyone, and has no connections to anything else" situation.

As the players decide where they'd like to investigate, I start to fill in the blanks.

How is a problem solved? However the PCs would like to solve it.

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Anguish wrote:
Chemlak wrote:
They don’t have to be impossible, but the key is to not have a solution of your own (this is not easy)

So true. As a DM I try to just think "could I solve this?" I don't worry about how.

For instance, in a "there's a serial killer in town" scenario, as long as there are threads to pull on all is well. Someone who knows the killer's identity. Physical clues left at the scenes. Suppliers who provided weapons or poisons or outfits to the killer. I don't worry about defining any of those, as long as I as a DM know they exist and I haven't designed a "there's a killer who leaves no trail, is unknown to anyone, and has no connections to anything else" situation.

As the players decide where they'd like to investigate, I start to fill in the blanks.

How is a problem solved? However the PCs would like to solve it.

Given that the context of impossibility was in relation to high level adventuring, now I'm envisioning a high level version of "there's a serial killer in town." I'm imagining some sort of powerful undead like a graveknight or lich, which spends centuries meticulously calculating its next victim and constructing the crime in such a way as to confound mortal and magical investigation, before retreating to its inhospitable remote lair to spend centuries planning its next strike. All for incomprehensible evil ends, like slowly wiping out the genetic markers that would one day produce the chosen one. Or something like that.


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So the proposed solution to it being impossible to design interesting and challanging encounters using the mythic rules is to ignore the rules and just run the game as a storytelling framework were you almost never use the rules...
That can indeed be a fun game and campaign however it is not a solution for making the mythic rules playable it is advice to ignore them.

Epic for D+D Could be broken but the escalation curve was much slower and the published monsters seemed to be able to put up at least some resistance. My experience is limited to 1 epic game which did not get very high so I could be wrong.

The dragon problem is easily solvable strictly by the rules the +62 of a not terribly optimised pc in Diplomacy would sort it out. (That's not how I would run it but RAW it would work pretty well and I am sure I can easily get that diplomacy bonus over 100 if I try)

And indeed Anguish investigations are not a lot easier for mythic 20/10 characters than for level 20 characters but once they quickly find your serial killer , which they will because they are good you will still find that the capturing/killing of the villain is terribly anticlimatic.

"At the end of the last game they activated the portal, which teleported them elsewhere, but elsewhere has been partially destroyed by an asteroid and the location is actually in space, so they'll have no air and be falling within 5-20 feet of a rough cliff. Any who are within 100' of the destination will be attacked by a dozen fallen (Bestiary 6) who haunt the place. And it's a heavy gravity area so it's 1d10 per 10 feet with no limit because there's no air to slow the fall."

Mythic spell casting for Life bubble and Mass fly, as far as I can tell fallen are CR8 so the 20/10 mythic party just ignores them, so not an example of a proper challange for a high level mythic party . It may be a TPK for a lower level party for whom fallen are meant to be a challenge but not an example of how to challange high level mythic parties

As has been said mythic rules are meant to be superheroic rules if we judge them as a superhero rpg , they are still rubbish. Properly written superhero rules can cope with superhero power levels and I have at least 6 of those systems which would work better. In fact converting Wrath to Champions(Hero System is the current name) would be a lot more fun and not a lot more work than trying to run it with pathfinder which sums up the mythic rules quite nicely when to get a balanced encounter out if it changing the system is easier than balancing the current one.

I still want more high level AP's just not anything mythic


ryric wrote:


Given that the context of impossibility was in relation to high level adventuring, now I'm envisioning a high level version of "there's a serial killer in town." I'm imagining some sort of powerful undead like a graveknight or lich, which spends centuries meticulously calculating its next victim and constructing the crime in such a way as to confound mortal and magical investigation, before retreating to its inhospitable remote lair to spend centuries planning its next strike. All for incomprehensible evil ends, like slowly wiping out the genetic markers that would one day produce the chosen one. Or something like that.

Interesting scenario would work just as well for none mythic pc's and be more fun. I might use a ghost for the villain instead of the lich but that may be the influence of recent games where I have used a lot of ghosts.


JohnHawkins wrote:
So the proposed solution to it being impossible to design interesting and challanging encounters using the mythic rules is to ignore the rules and just run the game as a storytelling framework were you almost never use the rules...

That's certainly not what I said, or at least intended to convey. My point was that PCs have a lot of choices how to address a problem and a designer shouldn't pick in advance what the solution is. As the PCs make their choices, the rules should be applied. If you're replying to someone else, please ignore this.

Quote:
And indeed Anguish investigations are not a lot easier for mythic 20/10 characters than for level 20 characters but once they quickly find your serial killer , which they will because they are good you will still find that the capturing/killing of the villain is terribly anticlimatic.

In my experience - and I've now both played and run several campaigns that went post-20th, plus mythic - the tension in high-level/mythic combat is different from lower-level. At our table, the epic, Orcus-must-die combats involved plotting and planning from the PCs, where a bunch of abilities were combined to succeed. If everyone does their job and the dice don't frown, the combat is over/decided in one round. If something goes wrong, someone's probably going to die.

It's fun, but a different kind of fun.

Quote:
As has been said mythic rules are meant to be superheroic rules if we judge them as a superhero rpg , they are still rubbish. Properly written superhero rules can cope with superhero power levels and I have at least 6 of those systems which would work better. In fact converting Wrath to Champions(Hero System is the current name) would be a lot more fun and not a lot more work than trying to run it with pathfinder which sums up the mythic rules quite nicely when to get a balanced encounter out if it changing the system is easier than balancing the current one.

The only problem I have with that is that I disagree with it. We find the mythic rules fun. Not regularly, not always, but a dip into those rules when the story is "epic" really lights things up.

It's kind of refreshing to have some section of the rules that aren't just "more". By that I mean the endless parade of "light" / "lesser darkness" / "more light" / "darkness" / "daylight" / "deeper darkness" / "sunlight" / "greater darkness" / "supernova light" / "heat-death-of-the-universe-darkness". The game where first you get poisons, then you get abilities to mitigate poisons is fine, and fun, but it's also fun to us to have things eventually able to go off the rails.

I think we had an encounter in Hell's Rebels where with a few PCs' actions and mostly or entirely pre-mythic abilities, we had a situation where a BBEG had to make 8 Reflex saves or be paralyzed. It was awesome because we worked together to make that possible. Yes, it trivialized the encounter once it worked but if the BBEG had freedom of movement we'd've been screwed. Mythic is like that, only more. At least for us.

Quote:
I still want more high level AP's just not anything mythic

Fair enough.


My personal experience was that the Mythic Rules allowing for really absurdly powerful characters fixed the problems with high level play. After all, combats aren't going to be too long and complicated if the PCs can just kill everything in one or two turns.

My concern about a level 20 AP without mythic is that towards the end every fight is going to get really long (in actual minutes of play) and unwieldy.

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