The point of these threads is to help current and potential DMs of Wrath of the Righteous deal with some of the complications of the mythic aspects of this adventure path. This thread is specifically for Demon's Heresy.
My players love mythic and the two books up till now have been fun and challenging for them, but things have started to fall apart in this book. My players are intelligent adults who have been playing pathfinder since its inception and following the rules closely. They are the kinds of players who have lists of spells and items that they might one day use. When they buff, they make lists of the spells they will be casting and the order that they cast them so we can track the rounds fairly. They use divination and scrying a lot, and do a lot of teleporting. These are intelligent ways to play, but they take a lot of careful consideration for a DM in a book set up to be both mythic and free form, like Demon's Heresy. Below are some issues we've encountered and how I have or have not handled them well as a DM.
1. Riftwarden Orphan - Issue: the recharging of magical items in this campaign gets out of control when your party is expected to spend a month+ slowly exploring the world wound. My players have realized this and sunk a lot of energy into crafting wands because it lets them basically have all of the buff spells they can ever dream of without having to sink spell slots into it.
Solution: (well, not really) So far, the most devastating single encounter of part 2 of this book has been when my party fought the Vrocks in the molten scar, had 3 party members get stunned flying over lava, fall into the lava, and drop over 50,000 gp of gear. Lava is an awesome way to bring players literally back to earth and make them think twice about just flying over every environmental hazard. Its inclusion in this book was well done.
But, issue: that one hurt my PCs feeling pretty bad. They recognized it was their own fault for getting too cocky with their mythic characters, but 50,000gp isn't that much for this point in campaign and the party has the time in this book to build most of that stuff back up. They are a lot more careful now, and long term, taking their gear away should not be a DM's tactic on a daily basis.
Overall, I think the Riftwarden Orphan issue will mostly work itself out over the course of the next three books, as the party hits more pressing deadlines, so I am just taking it on the shoulder as a DM, and letting my PCs enjoy the rush of feeling like they have unlimited rechargeable magic at the tips of their fingers (well, wands). This sort of leads into issue 2...
2. Sandbox exploration and mythic tiers 3 + 4 are really tough to balance. Demons and Demon Worshipers can't teleport to Drezen (a must or it would be destroyed quickly), so the party has a pretty intense safety net to fall back into after every major encounter in the world wound. Big solo monsters are about half as effective against mythic PCs as their non-mythic counter parts. But if you group too many of the encounters in this book together, you will quickly run out of villains and even interesting random encounters to throw at your party before it all starts to feel the same and you will be dishing out way too much XP. We actually threw xp out the window for this whole campaign at the start of this book, when we realized that there is just no good way to keep it balanced for mythic PCs. This also increased their drive to get to the bottom of the major plot lines over XP farming through the worldwound, which has greatly reduced the slog.
3. SCORIZSCAR. Don't let your party find her in her lair. They will annihilate her within a round, maybe two. They will be undetectably invisible, immune to acid, and in complete control of the fight. They will then pick of a wand of stone skin that will make you cry and have to rule that recharging wands with material costs require expending the extra money of the material components. Save her to drop on them in the middle of some smaller random encounter in the world wound and they are spread out so they have to try to move around her to group up and teleport out. Let the Plagued One and her party find the lair before the party and make your PCs storm it to get the dragon's horde.
4. Drake riders. Absolutely awesome villains the PCs will never face in a challenging manner unless you make them a cohesive team that flies and fights together. All it will take is one successful fly-by charge with power attack and the lance for your PCs to fear them like the monsters they are, but Teleporting undetectable invisible PCs will never give them the opportunity for that to work. I saved them to use during the rescue operation at Areushalae's redoubt, when the PCs have to be able to get the succubus out of the tower before they can teleport away with her, and it was the first time in this book that the PCs felt like they had to fight extra smart or face the real threat of death.
5. Armies. Even if you avoid the mass combat rules forw sword of valor, or you abandon them after that book. Make armies of cultists and demons be present in the worldwound, occupying some of the hexes your PCs want to explore. I failed to do this early enough and now the only way I can make the worldwound feel like the threatening place that it is, is to have acidic frozen eyeballs fall from the sky for a week on end and have more major encounters happen in the hexes that contain open lava.
6. The sanctum. To deal with the open ended time element (and because we have tossed out XP tracking), I have Xanthir Vang (who I reworked spell, feat and mythic path selection into being an actual mythic conjurer), get ahold of a new Nahyndrian Elixir every 12 days that he uses either to make a new mythic villain or boost himself or an existing villain. Some of the monsters fail their saves and are destroyed, but this seems like the only way to make it clear to the PCs that the longer they take, the more mythical trouble they will face.
7. Wild Arcana. There are entire threads about the complications of this power, but the only point I want to draw to it here, is that the more source material that comes out with new situationally relevant spells, the more broken and impossible this ability is to manage on a game by game basis. My players have taken to plotting different scenarios and the spells that could solve them for days before a session now, because I don't let them sit there during an encounter and take an hour looking through the 300+ spells their character could cast every round. But even so, every book that comes out with a spell in it makes mythic campaigns a bigger headache to run, and will eventually make this adventure path unplayable without creating a bunch of ground rules for the party in terms of what materials they should be allowed to use. Anyone starting this campaign, I would recommend up front to limit inspired blessing and wild arcana to major core spells, and any supplement spells are limited to their actually daily allotment of spells, to cut down on slog.
Of course, I didn't do that, and trying to walk that back now would really upset my players that have invested untold, and wildly unhealthy amounts of time and financial resources into developing their own constantly updating spell lists.
Whew! Long post. Feel free to offer any thoughts, questions or advice about running Demon's Heresy, and I will provide updates as my party moves on to invading the Ivory Sanctum in the weeks ahead.
Don't give any more mythic ranks after this AP.
It gets really broken after this, I don't think any of the issues you have identified even registered as problems compared to what you have coming your way.
Deskari needed 16000hp .... to last 3 rounds
Crafting you are worrying about too much book 3 is really the only time the players have time to craft they are on the clock in all the other books. I gave my PC wizard a free retrain of all crafting abilities when I realised how little use he would get in this AP (Compare to RoRL or Shackled Skulls where they have lots of downtime).
Also I had slowed recovery of mythic points to a much lower rate than normal to try and put a speedbreak on the pc's doom abilities they almost never wasted any on recharging items.
I never use XP and this campaign is a really bad one to use it in so good choice there.
Wild arcana the problem is not the legion if minor spells it is more teh extra large number of maximum level spells. The favored trick of my pc's was 2 limited wishes one to give the target a save penalty the other to punch an extended litany of righteousness through and double the Paladins damage (1500hp a a round without rolling says hi)
A problem you have not noticed yet is Mythic Haste if you have not already nerfed it do so. I banned it.
You really do not need a pc casting 3 spells a round.
When I ran this one it was the last where I could keep opponents challanging without overkill, they still cleared the end dungeon in one sweep despite me having set it up as an ambush but they felt threatened.
Book 4 is great if you really prep the city and give the players lots of sidequests to really appreciate it. Mine were buying up slaves in an operation run by the merchant from book 1 and then planeshifting them back to Dreznan. The relationship with the succubi was also great.
Book 5 is where it became impossible to keep opponents challanging without being silly with their hp , and I REALLY recomend finding someway to nerf mythic to keep things interesting for you. Book 6 the power of mythic killed my fun which is a pity as the plot is great
Sorry realised I just ranted again, I should have made a new year resolution not to post about mythic rules
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I successfully GM'd this campaign through all 6 books, but not as written. We used the Mythic Solutions 3rd party release to help tone down mythic, and we used the buffed version of the stat blocks floating around in the WotR forums. In hindsight, I would also stop progressing tiers at 5 and keep the PCs about 1 level behind the book recommended level starting with book 4.
OP, none of the issues you encountered are insurmountable. Try being transparent and find a solution as a group.
Don't give any more mythic ranks after this AP.
This is an interesting idea, but one that will probably kill the campaign. As I said, my players have invested a lot of time and money into the idea that we are running this campaign from start to finish and a big reason they have done so is because they are beaming like little school children at the idea of being level 10 tier 10 and facing down demon lords. I am sure that I am going to be seriously burned out on mythic by the end of this campaign too, but for now I think my players are pretty all in, so I will have to burn those bridges when I come to them.
Crafting you are worrying about too much book 3 is really the only time the players have time to craft they are on the clock in all the other books. I gave my PC wizard a free retrain of all crafting abilities when I realised how little use he would get in this AP (Compare to RoRL or Shackled Skulls where they have lots of downtime).
Also I had slowed recovery of mythic points to a much lower rate than normal to try and put a speedbreak on the pc's doom abilities they almost never wasted any on recharging items.
glad to see my instinct not to overreact is solid here. They have cohorts doing all of their crafting with lists of what to craft next so they will continue crafting away as the PCs descend into the abyss, but I agree it will get relatively minor going forward.
I never use XP and this campaign is a really bad one to use it in so good choice there.
Thanks, that became pretty clear pretty quick, halfway through the second book.
Wild arcana the problem is not the legion if minor spells it is more teh extra large number of maximum level spells....
I see your point but to me that kind of creative problem solving is the appeal of mythic so it is tuff to nerf without defeating the point of a mythic campaign. My problem with Wild Arcana is that it slows actual playing time down, and is really tough to DM respond to, because the players will spend days/weeks/months/years combing the spell list to find those killer combinations and no writers were going to be familiar enough with the entire pathfinder range to handle it in their villain builds and tactics. Like I said, I am sure by the end of this campaign I am going to be right there along side with you, committed to never running another mythic campaign again. But I am here now and just trying to offer up my experience for others to consider. The story of Wrath has been really fun and my players love the epic feel of it, but I am worried about the attrition potential every time my PCs level up and get access to a new level of spells.
A problem you have not noticed yet is Mythic Haste if you have not already nerfed it do so. I banned it.
You really do not need a pc casting 3 spells a round.
My PCs are only starting to realize that Mythic Spell casting combined with Mythic spell focus is a whole new world of magic. They failed to overcome spell resistance for the first time in 10 sessions the other day and it was an actual refreshing dilemma for everyone.
When I ran this one it was the last where I could keep opponents challanging without overkill, they still cleared the end dungeon in one sweep despite me having set it up as an ambush but they felt threatened.
I am hoping that the addition of a slowly building mythic counter team, instead of just two non-cooperative mythic creatures will give the heroes some pause, but I am skeptical.
Book 4 is great if you really prep the city and give the players lots of sidequests to really appreciate it. Mine were buying up slaves in an operation run by the merchant from book 1 and then planeshifting them back to Dreznan. The relationship with the succubi was also great.
Glad to hear. My Paladin has been a real stickler about his vow against fiends. I am excited to see how he handles being stuck in the abyss trying not to kill everything.
Book 5 is where it became impossible to keep opponents challanging without being silly with their hp , and I REALLY recomend finding someway to nerf mythic to keep things...
I am on the fence about book 5 as a whole and think I will probably just run it where the PCs get one shot to get through the whole thing or not and if not, then Book 6 kicks off with a fully functional Baphomet focused on destroying Drezen while Deskari aims at the rest of Golarion. Book six looks like a lot of fun, storywise, if we can make it that far without mythic blowing up the fun.
I successfully GM'd this campaign through all 6 books, but not as written. We used the Mythic Solutions 3rd party release to help tone down mythic, and we used the buffed version of the stat blocks floating around in the WotR forums. In hindsight, I would also stop progressing tiers at 5 and keep the PCs about 1 level behind the book recommended level starting with book 4.
OP, none of the issues you encountered are insurmountable. Try being transparent and find a solution as a group.
Good to hear. I will have to check out those resources. Thanks.
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Good to hear. I will have to check out those resources. Thanks.I successfully GM'd this campaign through all 6 books, but not as written. We used the Mythic Solutions 3rd party release to help tone down mythic, and we used the buffed version of the stat blocks floating around in the WotR forums. In hindsight, I would also stop progressing tiers at 5 and keep the PCs about 1 level behind the book recommended level starting with book 4.
OP, none of the issues you encountered are insurmountable. Try being transparent and find a solution as a group.
I have not used the 3rd party stuff as it was too late when I was running it and my solution is to throw the mythic book in the attic, but I must recommend trying something, and I have heard good things about it.
Also the buffed stat blocks were very useful in books3 and 4 and later on at least gave me a better framework to build on. Also start multiplying hp totals.The other issue is that it was very easy for me to build mythic opponents that could kill the party, the problem was challenging them without making it matter of whoever won initiative killed all
the opposition.
If I just changed the alignment on the pc's character sheets none of them could survive a full attck from themselves
To tone down my doom and gloom I did finish the campaign and if you can keep mechanics from killing your joy it is a great and epic campaign.
What other campaign can your Paladin marry a Succubus and have Nocticula turn up to the wedding to give away the bride....
@johnHawkins, I am curious how into exploring the world wound your characters got, verses just wanting to dive straight through to scry and fry their way through the end bosses. This is mostly what I have been contending with, and it has been fun letting Xanthir Vang be a paranoid security freak that only employs to go after the PCs who have never been to the sanctum and to put contingency spells on the the people who have so their bodies disintegrate or explode in fireballs when they die. Then I have had Jeribeth using a resurrected Annis Hag to attempt to negotiate remotely with the PCs to betray Vang, but they, rightly, are paranoid that any advice she gives them will lead them into a trap. I made it so Areushalae does not know the location of the Sanctum because that would have quickly lead to the scry and fry, and so far my PCs are really loving the interacting with one Villain remotely while the other is doing everything in his power to make it impossible to find him.
I think the wizard has eyes on Areushalae, but I also love the story stuff about Noctucula coming up in the next book.
Thinking about your, JohnHawkins, experiences, I would almost recommend to people thinking about starting this campaign to consider playing through it in the theater of the mind as much as possible and avoid getting tangled up in the rules minutiae of mythic which slog down such a great and fun story and great story writing. If I had started my players off with that understanding, they would have bought in 100% and loved it.
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We did not do Scry and fry tactics, Either my players did not think of it or they respected that I won't use really dangerous tactics like that as the GM if they don't and they did not fancy someone like the Storm king teleporting in on them. (Disjnuction, mythic bane weapons and a couple of other things came under that heading)
They did explore but overall they concentrated on trying to find and eliminate the threats to the crusade.
I had Jeribeth disguised as the missing mother of the Riftwarden Wizard and talk the group into going after Vang , and then trying to eliminate them afterwards and that was a dificult fight as she had saved many of her demon minions to teleport in when she struck and the party was down a lot of their normal buffs.
In the midnight city they got involved in a bunch of subplots, taking part in criminal gang politics and elimanating several gangs to make a name for themselves and also liberate all the slaves held by those gangs