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Again, folks - I’d prefer if mechanical speculation around Mythic went in any of the discussions actually *about* that.
I totally hear you Keftiu, but the issue with imagining what stories can only be told with mythical mechanics has a lot to do with what those mechanics are. A whole lot of the stories in this thread can be told by shifting the expected level of the players at the point the story begins so that some of the advanced ancestry, skill and class feats are available that are about way more than numbers. If the numbers of high level play feel off putting, then shifting the game down to not adding level to proficiency is very much a way for characters to feel like a wider range of foes can give them trouble, even as they have powers to fly, or turn invisible at will, or other more super heroic options.
Wrath of the Righteous is very much a mythical story I would like to be able to GM and tell again, with the party able to scare demons with their abilities to do things that mortals are just not able to do...but the mechanics of mythic play made that story impossible for my table to tell.
I think there are people who would love characters that could do "little" things to break the expectations of the game more often than is currently allowed and that could be possible within the context of an adventure or adventure path built to make those rules more flexible, but PF2 is designed in such a way that a whole lot of narrative power is just directly tied to your character level. A lot of Legendary Skill feats for example are pretty much just minor mythic powers from PF1.
So is it that out of line to want to talk about the mechanics in the same conversation as what kind of story those mechanics would enable? Adventures in the clouds, or inside a volcano, or in environments totally hostile to creatures from the Material Plane feel like a place where people might want to set more mundane adventures, just with characters that can survive in them without being higher level. This can even include hostile environments like the first world or the Abyss where creatures of the plane might have reality bending powers, and so I could see specific rules for those environments being useful for including ways (artifacts, boons, some other source of power for feats) for players to counter those abilities or replicate them.
Meanwhile, wrestling "mythic level creatures" like dragons and demigod giants to the ground feels much more about power level.
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Yeah, separating "what stories do you want to tell" from "what differentiates Mythic from non-Mythic" without talking about what that... mechanically means is just impossible in a game about math, numbers, and dice.
If you want to make it all about narrative stuff and storytelling... you don't need ANYTHING new at all, you simply adapt the narration and tone of the game.
If Mythic is a thing in the system it is 100% going to relate to and centrally revolve around how the heroes/enemies are of an outsized power and/or mortality and the stories that can be fostered in an environment where the characters do not have to abide by the normal power curve, full stop...
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@Unicore and The metricsystem: sure, and understood. But regardless of whether you can or not with whatever the rules might be, what stories do you want to tell that are Mythic? I guess it would help if you knew what Mythic allowed, yep, but even some pie-in-the-sky if I had my druthers wishing is allowed here.
Me? I have no interest in mythic/epic play. I get hives and my eyeballs quiver when I get near 6th level.
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Fighting a migraine, so I'm not sure how much sense I'm making here. But for me, a hypothetical mythic system would allow hyperspecialized characters, like the prototypical goblin rogue with a +30 to stealth at level 2. You can't really DO characters like that in PF2 (and for good reason). You can specialize, at high levels be able to seriously feel the difference between your untrained and master/legendary skills, but by that point you're also pretty damn good at several other skills, as well as basic combat rolls/saves.
Having someone mostly ordinary but preternaturally good at playing music, or lifting objects, or tracking, or just encyclopedically informed about medicine, is something NPCs can do but not PCs.
So that I think. Being able to hit skill challenges 5-10 levels ahead of your combat challenges would open interesting options for my taste while keeping combat mostly exactly where it is. Possibly including "Hyper Critical" tier of success for most common skill checks presented in books so far, but only possible if you beat the DC by 20 or more.
It would be better if semi mystical skills were also added. I'm imagining something like our current scalable cantrips (but make them more uniform in effect first), but the level of effect is based on a "skill" roll instead of your level, possibly adding additional effects if you hyper critical.
There's entire genres of stories involving characters with one extraordinary talent (Bastard Son and the Devil Himself being the one that comes immediately to mind), stories that as I said go pretty far against the grain for how you're encouraged to build broadly. I'm not sure that Mythic would be an appropriate appellation for what I'm proposing, given that almost every NPC in the GMG would technically be Mythic in that case, but it certainly would require a subsystem of some sort in order to put in game without breaking everything too badly.
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I think a campaign where Rovagug is trying to escape his prison would be fantastic.
I mean, I'm sure Rovagug has always been trying to escape his prison. But an adventure where he has followers that somehow are working on it happening.
Mythic followers of Sarenrae and Asmodeus would have a great time in an adventure like that.
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Fun Mythic Hook: What happens when a goodly god needs something done under the table?! Start with something simple and escalate from espionage to skirmish to taking part in a war between divine (or quasi-divine) powers.
No need to fight 1v9001 to feel epic. You just have stakes and challenges that fit whatever. In this hypothetical, Paizo is writing both the mechanics AND the adventure. Tangling with gods (or, more realistically, their high up servitors)? Maybe you need something akin to godly power, whatever that form takes.
Like. We have countless non-mythic adventures that can be atomized to "enter dungeon, fight dudes, get the thing" that somehow remain distinctly remembered. Just...think of a "normal" adventure and then raise the stakes to cosmic levels.
Another thing I could see as suitably mythic: Kicking in the doors to Zon-Kuthon's mind palace of torture to rescue the fraying remains of Dou-Bral's essence (or whatever). Explore what happened to him and challenge those what did it.
One idea I could think in terms of playing with an existing cosmology perhaps involving interacting with and altering the very structure of the cosmology itself, starting with bits and pieces and then possible full blown change to the cosmology.
I wanna build a planet.
Think bigger. A whole dimension(s) of yours.
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One idea I could think in terms of playing with an existing cosmology perhaps involving interacting with and altering the very structure of the cosmology itself, starting with bits and pieces and then possible full blown change to the cosmology.
PF2 Mythic created the Gap. RIP.
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I think a campaign where Rovagug is trying to escape his prison would be fantastic.
I mean, I'm sure Rovagug has always been trying to escape his prison. But an adventure where he has followers that somehow are working on it happening.
Mythic followers of Sarenrae and Asmodeus would have a great time in an adventure like that.
Heh, I had a similar idea.
The easiest would be a Rovagug centered event, as it could happen simultaneously across the entire globe, with both local and regional effects to be contained, and a Mythic adventure path to contain the Rough Beast once again, probably centered on (or at least ending in) Casmaron and the Pit of Gormuz.
Imagine dozens of minor and major incursions, allowing plot hooks centered on a wide scattering of locations that need no other unifying theme beyond "it sounds neat".
The rough beast really does lend himself to Epic and/or Mythic stories, doesn't he? Especially with the option to punch a kaiju in the nose.
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Kinda tying into my hopes for the Shaman class, I would love to be able to do rituals that invoke or make deals with rivers and mountains and clouds and trees. But I am really hoping these things don't have to get tied to mythic play.
Lot of "Chronicles of Amber" vibes in quite a few of these suggestions, I dig it.
Yeah, but afaik that's based on a few wonky cosmological things, not exactly the assumptions of PF.
If anything, I would want to really revise and revitalize Planescape, since that was a setting written to allow crossovers from the start.
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For me, what makes a story Mythic isn't so much mechanical (though it definitely plays a role!) as it is about stakes and tone. A 1-10 AP should have the PCs be very aware that they are a small group of people in a big world. Their stories should be about nipping problems in the bud before they become too big (Outlaws of Alkenstar) or have them becoming big fish in a small pond (Quest for the Frozen Flame). 11-20 APs are quite different. They are powerful and renowned, and this is where they show the world what they're made of (Fists of the Ruby Phoenix). Or sometimes not (there's plenty of room for "the Greatest Story Never Told" APs, and I have a sneaking suspicion that Stolen Fate may be one of them). A 1-20 AP combines both. Those are all about the journey from the bottom to the top. Strength of Thousands is all about this, and Blood Lords also captures it really well (incidentally, that's a huge part of why I'm enjoying Blood Lords even though it's more evil-friendly than I normally like).
So what does any of this have to do with Mythic? The tone of a Mythic adventure should be grand in scope. Saving the world? All in a day's work. Beating up a (demi)god and making them cry? That's more like it. A Mythic story should be, oh I don't know, something like this: first, the PCs boot Treerazer out of Tanglebriar. Then, they follow him back to the Abyss and feed him his own axe. Finally, they have a strongly worded conversation with Cyth'V'sug over his lousy parenting. Maybe even two strongly worded conversations. A 20th level party could accomplish the first. They could even have a shot at the second if they were careful and lucky. They couldn't do the third. That's what separates Mythic from even high level play.
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It has to do with the fact that right now, it feels like there's a lot of foes that sound like awesome plot hooks for the very long run, but the players objectively can't fight them (barring shenanigans) because of how strong they are.
Entities like Demon Lords aren't fight-able, personally that really bothers me, because being able to take someone like Baphomet or Ragathiel in a straight fight sounds like an amazing capstone for the right campaign. I mean these descriptions are just *chef's kiss*
The General of Vengeance appears as a massive giant, standing more than 20 feet tall, clad in golden plate armor that shines with its own light and carrying a sword that burns with holy fire. Five flaming wings stretch from his back, three on his left and two on his right—the sixth was lost, torn out by his father in a fit of fury.
I have players that love the whole 'JRPG that ends with us killing god' type thing, and who love really high tier power scaling in general (like you see in late shonen anime) so for me, it helps accomplish that-- its nice that there's an overlevel to normal power where current top flight entities can be worfed by the players if I want to.
I'm very in favor of a solution where Mythic includes 'get to level 25' with stat-blocks up to like 29 reflecting demigod tier-- other creative stuff is great, but I do want that core of 'pass level 20 and fight the things stronger than Treerazor!' and I like the idea of Archetypes to tell different stories of abilities approaching the godlike, and avoid having it be by class.
Edit: OH and there's a lot of things in mythology where really epic heroes against gods and godlike entities, just get to do things that the story glosses over the how because they're just that good-- like how Heracles holds up the world for Atlas, and I think those kinds of abilities are 'mythic' because when you translate them into a setting with harder magic and such, they just have to be on this whole other level.
It has to do with the fact that right now, it feels like there's a lot of foes that sound like awesome plot hooks for the very long run, but the players objectively can't fight them (barring shenanigans) because of how strong they are.
Entities like Demon Lords aren't fight-able, personally that really bothers me, because being able to take someone like Baphomet or Ragathiel in a straight fight sounds like an amazing capstone for the right campaign. I mean these descriptions are just *chef's kiss*
The General of Vengeance appears as a massive giant, standing more than 20 feet tall, clad in golden plate armor that shines with its own light and carrying a sword that burns with holy fire. Five flaming wings stretch from his back, three on his left and two on his right—the sixth was lost, torn out by his father in a fit of fury.I have players that love the whole 'JRPG that ends with us killing god' type thing, and who love really high tier power scaling in general (like you see in late shonen anime) so for me, it helps accomplish that-- its nice that there's an overlevel to normal power where current top flight entities can be worfed by the players if I want to.
I'm very in favor of a solution where Mythic includes 'get to level 25' with stat-blocks up to like 29 reflecting demigod tier-- other creative stuff is great, but I do want that core of 'pass level 20 and fight the things stronger than Treerazor!' and I like the idea of Archetypes to tell different stories of abilities approaching the godlike, and avoid having it be by class.
Edit: OH and there's a lot of things in mythology where really epic heroes against gods and godlike entities, just get to do things that the story glosses over the how because they're just that good-- like how Heracles holds up the world for Atlas, and I think those kinds of abilities are 'mythic' because when you translate them into a setting with harder magic and such, they just have to be on this whole other level.
The irony here is that, through the course of WotR, the PCs were ALREADY doing all that (in fact this is the source of a tremendous amounts of complaints about that AP, one poster branding it a "mythic fail".)
I suppose however, there's still the dichotomy of what mythic actually is, and what its tone and themes are. For me at least, "mythic" is separate from "high level or super high level" as commonly assumed, and shouldn't get exactly the same treatment.
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For me at least, "mythic" is separate from "high level or super high level" as commonly assumed, and shouldn't get exactly the same treatment.
One of my major problems with mythic is that I have never understood nor ever seen an even vaguely convincing example of what a low powered mythic character was. To use the PF1 rule set, what the heck is a Mythic Tier 2 Level 5 character and in what way is he noticeably different from a level 7 character?
Lets take what SHOULD be a canonical example of a low powered mythic character. Hercules as a baby strangles some serpents. How is that any different from what a (PF1) level 2 or 3 brawler would do?
The closest approximation to an answer I ever saw (Again, taking the PF1 ruleset) was to restrict characters to ONLY the flavour mythic abilities and not let them take any of the Power up abilities. So, your mythic character might be immortal or not need to eat and drink. Basically, restrict the powers to the ones that nobody ever takes :-) :-).
Because just about everything else IS just a power up. And the easiest way to power up is to just level up. Its kinda what the entire system is built around.
Hercules as an adult just does story related stuff that seem to be a very poor fit for a mechanically detailed system like Pathfinder. Divert the course of a river. Hold up the heavens. There ARE game systems that can handle that but Pathfinder pretty much isn't one of them, not without some kludge like "Hercules can cast miracle twice a day to do things that the GM agrees is in his really, really strong schtick".
Forgetting mechanics for a second, I think the absolutely key questions are
1) In what way is a low level mythic character different from a mid level non mythic character?
2) In what way is a mid level mythic character different from a high level non mythic character?
3) In what was is a high level mythic character more than just a high level non mythic character with bigger numbers?
I'm quite willing to be convinced that I'm wrong but right now I'm pretty strongly convinced that Pathfinder is just NOT the right game system to do mythic play where mythic is something qualitatively different than "Bigger numbers. More power"
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I mean yeah, Pathfinder as is isn't great at doing mythic stuff which is why some people here want to see mythic rules to enable it.
In the same way that at one point PF2 was pretty bad at doing battlemages and then we got the Magus class (and similarly, some people said that PF2 should never get a Magus).
As others have pointed out, there's a qualitative aspect to mythic that goes beyond simply 'bigger numbers' (of which multiple examples have already been outlined in this thread), which is part of the appeal of having an independent progression system, since you don't have to inextricably tie all of those qualitative elements to levels (and when you do you can include capabilities beyond the scope of traditional PF2 as well).
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I mean yeah, Pathfinder as is isn't great at doing mythic stuff which is why some people here want to see mythic rules to enable it.
In the same way that at one point PF2 was pretty bad at doing battlemages and then we got the Magus class (and similarly, some people said that PF2 should never get a Magus).
As others have pointed out, there's a qualitative aspect to mythic that goes beyond simply 'bigger numbers' (of which multiple examples have already been outlined in this thread), which is part of the appeal of having an independent progression system, since you don't have to inextricably tie all of those qualitative elements to levels (and when you do you can include capabilities beyond the scope of traditional PF2 as well).
Frankly. I believe most "universal" systems (like MnM, for one, although frankly D&D and PF's chassis tend towards that too) aren't good at simulating "mythic." "High level/super high level"? Sure. But not necessarily the tone and flavor of "mythic."
It is EXACTLY the qualitative aspect of "mythic" that differentiates things.
However, I would argue it involves the aspects of the world as well. Remember-- for the people who made up the original actual myths in the first place, the world was The World, not a world. And as such worked on a different, mythic logic. Like, Hercules and Atlas both operate on the idea that the "sky" can be held up by standing in a particular place and just being really strong, and that the sun actually was a chariot that moved across the sky.
Now obviously the clash happens when we try to reconcile this with real life, which usually means "the simulationist system." IMHO, the best ay might simply be to employ either a handwave, or somehow integrate "mythic" elements into the cosmology somehow.
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Thats part of why narratively, super high level works so well, its a lot easier to 'feel' mythical whilst going toe to toe with demigods whose abilities (and yours) have truly over the top hyperbolic flavor (and maybe break the rules in some fun ways) than to do super abstract things, you can blend them to some extent though.
But whats cool is, you can personify or objectify abstract things-- you can have a chamber where atlas holds up the world, and have the world represented by a ball he's holding up, and you're interacting with the symbols-- you have the POWER to hold up the world, but physically its being exerted indirectly through some divine process, while you stand there holding up that ball.
If no one was holding up the world, there would be a commiserate effect on our world (maybe it would fall and break... and so there would be continent shattering earthquakes as the planet itself cracks.) To mix my divine metaphors, maybe you could let molten drops fall from a sword onto that ball, and create japan ala shinto's foundational text, and physically, the islands would burn into molten existence.
Your super high level characters can be operating on a representational level as a fantastical visualization of how their divine power is really being exerted. So the TTRPG action becomes representational.
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Considering how few PCs ever reach high-level, I feel Mythic accessible from level 1 has more potential than if it is restricted to level 20+.
This feels like less of an issue with Paizo doing 10-20 APs and a number of high-level adventures. They'd just put out "Mythic AP" or "Mythic Standalone".
That said: My preference remains a parallel advancement or a more-broad subsystem.
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My thing with the "Mythic as a parallel advancement system" is that I can't really imagine what a "Mythic" level 6 person gets up to.
While mythic heroes do run the gamut from like Beowulf to Achilles to Gilgamesh to Rama, I can't think of any very low level people who could be considered mythic.
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If anything, the discussion here has shifted me even more toward my original position that Mythic in PF2 is almost certainly best tackled from a 100% narrative perspective rather than one that actually changes anything mechanical about your character.
Perhaps this kind of thing would benefit from a handful of new optional rules that grant typically high-level gated abilities (flight, teleportation, survival of mortal wounds, completely unparalleled acts of power/strength that are just absurd such as lifting an entire building or shaping the world with your mind) in conjunction with the use of the existing options like FA and DC but that is just... guidance and at best it will still vary from story/table to story/table. Something like a GMG for Mythic games might make sense but in terms of a normal "player-facing" hardcover it doesn't really make much logical sense IMO.
My thing with the "Mythic as a parallel advancement system" is that I can't really imagine what a "Mythic" level 6 person gets up to.
While mythic heroes do run the gamut from like Beowulf to Achilles to Gilgamesh to Rama, I can't think of any very low level people who could be considered mythic.
I dunno. Punch weirdo cultists in Leng on behalf of some other Dark Power (tm)?
If we take the CRPG system somewhat literally, "Mythic" in the context of PF2 comes to mean "imbued with power outside of the normal class bounds". So, you can be a wizard AND an angel (or whatever). Could you represent that with Free Archetype and Blessed One with an Aasimar Heritage? Sure. But that's just one mechanical representation of it (see the aforementioned magus <=> fighter w/ wizard archetype). I trust the people who make games rules and write stories for a living to think of a neat way to do that in a bespoke way.
Story Idea: Ascendant beings respond to the failing of Rovagug's prison and ultimately become the powers that forge it anew.
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More complicated to me is the party element. A single mythic hero receiving cosmic power from a narratively driven source works very well in storytelling and in protagonist driven games.
But a party of characters that all probably want different powers, some of which are very unlikely to come from the same source, starts to require incredibly specific stories to fit and not feel contrived. I think an over the top 11-20 AP with some optional rules built in and unique archetype options that get towards gonzo narrative powers in a plane where that is not going to rewrite the whole rest of Golarion’s metaphysical make up and I think it could work and be pretty fun.
I absolutely loved the writing and story development of the Wrath of righteous AP, and had I been way more on top of restricting mythic player options, it might have held together as an AP into books 4, 5, and 6. But a free-for-all rule book of mythic player options that GMs really cannot anticipate how the options will fit together until their players have already started using them was a recipe for disaster.
Narratively, there was nothing that made sense about how the different characters were getting such radically different powers and mythic really just became about being ridiculously powerful beings that could break all the rules and expectations of the game, with a rocket tag element to mythic opposition that really required 4 mythic creatures at once to have any kind of challenge to it at all.
So I guess I would want PF2 mythic stories to be very careful about how they break the games narrative constraints and resist making a tantalizing grab bag of powers that players can’t really have access to generally and still have functional games. Mythic rules and what they allowed was the death knell of first edition for my table and several other groups I have talked to. Stepping back from such wild power options exposed all of the cracks in the system and made attempts at starting new campaigns feel very flat.
Kinda like how some players now can’t really imagine playing characters that don’t use free archetype rules, only about 100 times worse.
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My thing with the "Mythic as a parallel advancement system" is that I can't really imagine what a "Mythic" level 6 person gets up to.
While mythic heroes do run the gamut from like Beowulf to Achilles to Gilgamesh to Rama, I can't think of any very low level people who could be considered mythic.
Lots of Greek myth starts with heroes who are essentially just very cool mortals in terms of what they can do. I would argue that most of what Hercules got up to in his famous Labors could be done by a Mythic character under level 10 - fitting considering the Iblydan hero-gods we know who were Mythic, but relatively low level.
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Lots of Greek myth starts with heroes who are essentially just very cool mortals in terms of what they can do. I would argue that most of what Hercules got up to in his famous Labors could be done by a Mythic character under level 10 - fitting considering the Iblydan hero-gods we know who were Mythic, but relatively low level.My thing with the "Mythic as a parallel advancement system" is that I can't really imagine what a "Mythic" level 6 person gets up to.
While mythic heroes do run the gamut from like Beowulf to Achilles to Gilgamesh to Rama, I can't think of any very low level people who could be considered mythic.
Wouldn't you be able to do the same basic thing by having a normal career until level 10ish, at which point you become mythic? Make it a parallel advancement track that doesn't start until the back 9 of your adventuring career?
Like it seems that an important part of "being Mythic" is "you do the sort of things that people tell stories about for a long time" which is a weird thing to ascribe to a 6th level character since anything a 6th level character *could* do is trivial for an 18th level character.
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Lots of Greek myth starts with heroes who are essentially just very cool mortals in terms of what they can do. I would argue that most of what Hercules got up to in his famous Labors could be done by a Mythic character under level 10 - fitting considering the Iblydan hero-gods we know who were Mythic, but relatively low level.My thing with the "Mythic as a parallel advancement system" is that I can't really imagine what a "Mythic" level 6 person gets up to.
While mythic heroes do run the gamut from like Beowulf to Achilles to Gilgamesh to Rama, I can't think of any very low level people who could be considered mythic.
Wouldn't you be able to do the same basic thing by having a normal career until level 10ish, at which point you become mythic? Make it a parallel advancement track that doesn't start until the back 9 of your adventuring career?
Like it seems that an important part of "being Mythic" is "you do the sort of things that people tell stories about for a long time" which is a weird thing to ascribe to a 6th level character since anything a 6th level character *could* do is trivial for an 18th level character.
I guess that is the answer to what Mythic should be then : something the Mythic 6th-level character can do and that is impossible for even an 18th level character.
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There’s plenty of room to be low-level and Mythic at the same time, with the best example in published canon being a number of Iblydan hero-gods: Iapholi, my favorite of the bunch, is only a level 4 Oracle, while Drokalion is literally just a wild lion. Most seem to be in the level 10-15 range.
Many of the hero-gods are protectors of individual cities, which seems like a good niche for Mythic PCs who aren’t quite at the tier of arm-wrestling Asmodeus or crafting new planets.
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I guess when I think of Mythic I think of Epic. Which is to say I can't think of any non-Epic stories that we'd need Mythic rules for.
As others have noted above, PF2 could tell Mythic tales simply by altering the narrative rather than the mechanics. And with how much grounding there is in Earth myth for PF2, it's a small step, more of an approach to the lore and flavor. It might involve altering the meta, the cleanliness of rigorous mechanics, restoring the air of the unknown and wondrous. That sounds more like helpful GM/player advice than a tagged on system.
PF1 Mythic low-level creatures were unlocking higher-level abilities, some that altered the meta. It was more an alternative/experimental PF1 than a necessarily more mythical version. And it broke many games. When it comes to that, I don't want it. PF2 has a good balance that's easy to tune to one's desired difficulty levels from superhero to grimdark.
Mechanically, I think having Dual-Class, perhaps piled on with Free Archetypes and other alternative rules would emulate PF1's Mythic attempt best. PCs would certainly stand out, especially at the highest levels, yet IMO would only bend the system, not break it. Not sure how one would match that on the villains' side, but if it's just a matter of mutual escalation...it's all moot anyway, right? The only reason I could see to bother is because the target villains of the story have already been built at CRs that require such amping.
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I want a version of Mythic where your party could be young, level 1 heroes chosen by the gods or fate for great things - scrappy and inexperienced, but still remarkable in some way. One of my favorite 2e developments is the shorter Adventure Paths, and I think a 1-10 Mythic AP that felt like the Odyssey or the journeys of the Argonauts would be a joy, rather than demanding that all Mythic PCs be slaying deities and overturning nations.
Since the ship seems to have sailed on mechanical speculation in this thread, my preference would be for something like an additional Mythic Archetype track, increasing in tandem alongside your class levels and any regular Archetype you take, that makes you exceptional in your niche (inhumanly gifted at sneaking or lies, for instance) and maaaybe gives some extra survivability. Most Pathfinder games will never see level 20 at the table, and a Mythic that only starts after that vanishingly-rare point would doom it to obscurity.
I think there’s a middle road to be found between 1e and Owlcat’s versions, for flavoring these Mythic Archetypes; both a truly exceptional commanding Marshal and a planar Law-touched Aeon should be options here, so that the people who want to be awesome mortals and those who want to become cosmic beings can both get what they want.
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I think an Argonauts style campaign would be very cool. I think a lot of the flavor would come from unique items and enemies, as well as encounter design to encourage more mythical outcomes than “furiously fight for 3 to 4 rounds and kill all the enemies.”
Skeletal raiders that jump onto the boat from narrow cliffs over head and swarm the ship, but always bounce back up the round after being destroyed, So they have to be pushed/thrown overboard…hydras that regenerate in a totally unexpected way unless you have the special water/lava/spear made from the X tree, etc, feel like the kinda low level mythical stories that fit in this kind of adventure, but the key isn’t power, it is being uniquely challenging without the right tools and enabling environments that feel unique and mythical.
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I want a version of Mythic where your party could be young, level 1 heroes chosen by the gods or fate for great things - scrappy and inexperienced, but still remarkable in some way. One of my favorite 2e developments is the shorter Adventure Paths, and I think a 1-10 Mythic AP that felt like the Odyssey or the journeys of the Argonauts would be a joy, rather than demanding that all Mythic PCs be slaying deities and overturning nations.
This is exactly what I would want out of a mythic AP. To be fair, PCs are already quite exceptional by way of being the PCs, but I've always wanted to run a game where the heroes are chosen by gods and for that to make them even more exceptional than typical PCs somehow.
I don't like the idea of Mythic being tied to "you are the chosen of the gods" (that's archetype territory, IMO). What Mythic should be is that you possess and/or are empowered by the very nature of stories a thing that is more fundamental and more powerful than the Gods.
Like "You evoke, and are empowered by, the nature of all great tricksters through all stories ever told by anything capable of telling a story" feels a lot more special to me. It should be a fundamental "you can break existing rules/write new ones" sort of thing.
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I hate to double post, but to try to drag the topic away from mechanics the "meta" nature of Mythic Heroes is something I'd like to see represented in a Mythic Story. A good Mythic story should involve repeating or breaking patterns established in stories that are the foundation of the world. Pick a significant story like "how Rovagug was caged" or "how Shelun defeated Zon-Kuthon" or "how Acavna and Amazen sacrificed themselves to save the world" and use that as the framework for a story for the PCs- hit the same beats, but maybe on a different scale.
A good Mythic Story should be less about "let's go beat up Treerazer" and more about "Let's find out what's left of Dou-Bral in all that pain and darkness, and maybe see if we can separate DB and ZK." Remember, the last time we had Mythic heroes we closed the Worldwound. Things that register on the map of the planes should be in bounds.
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I don't like the idea of Mythic being tied to "you are the chosen of the gods" (that's archetype territory, IMO). What Mythic should be is that you possess and/or are empowered by the very nature of stories a thing that is more fundamental and more powerful than the Gods.
Like "You evoke, and are empowered by, the nature of all great tricksters through all stories ever told by anything capable of telling a story" feels a lot more special to me. It should be a fundamental "you can break existing rules/write new ones" sort of thing.
I’m not arguing that all Mythic characters have to have godly backing, but there’s too much precedent for it not to be one possible path to Mythic power.
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Well, I want to do Wrath of the Righteous if the Mythic system is usable this time around.
If that proves to work, then maybe an adventure all set in another plane would be fun where you get to fight various mythic entities across the plane.
Or a battle against a God King or the some super lich trying to convert the entire world to undead.
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For actual stories I think could be fun to tell with a Mythic or Mythic-like system:
I am fully in love with the Scion 2e books. Not because I ever think I'll have a chance to play the systems, but because the various global pantheons are so well researched they're basically my new all-in-one, summary reference books for these pantheons. A side effect of that is also getting my brain turning on stories that involve PCs being, well, scions of various potential deities or other entities.
These don't have to be straight half-mortal children of gods. They could also be chosen to be new avatars, or being groomed to be raised to godhood themselves. Maybe they weren't chosen for this, and they're going on a bit of God of War path with sprinkling some Mythender into things.
Or another route:
With superheroes you also often hear about their power-scaling, and how that relates to the scope of threats they deal with. From street-level to galactic or even universal threats. I think you could take the *idea* of this, and adapt it for our purposes. Where perhaps a mythic party becomes a party who deals with threats that affect an entire plane. Probably not the material plane, but perhaps one of the elemental planes, or something that threatens the connections between a couple of them.
Another option could be to do what Paizo has already done multiple times, but less contained. A number of APs end with a scenario where either the party succeeds, or there are dire consequences (eventually) for all of Golarion, or at least a very noticeable chunk of it. However, within the scope of what a normal level 20 party is set up to do, at least in my experience it really just comes down to ending the big bad directly in front of us. We still understand that we've saved the world, but there's not a grander, superhero-movie "epicness" to it necessarily.
I think I'm having a hard time communicating this bit, or it could just be my table. Either way, the point I'm trying to get at is to really ratchet up the cinematic "epicness" of such a scenario. To use the movie, Man of Steel, as an example: You're not just fighting General Zod, you're also dealing with two city-sized space lasers on either side of the planet actively operating to forever change the entire planet as we know it, and they're not just going to turn off and resolve themselves after dealing with Zod, or otherwise deactivate without some Superman-level destruction to them. Really go up and out from just the big bad fight to a grander scale, and while some of that can be done without a Mythic system, I think that type of story can really lend itself to one.
No matter what type of story is told, I agree with earlier posters that I would model a new Mythic system much more after what the Wrath of the Righteous game did. Very deep, thematic, flavorful paths. Not just being a super-fighter or super-wizard. That has the potential to add so much coolness to it.
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If I was imagining out Mythic APs...
1-10: As hinted at above, this is Iblydos's time to shine - you're a mix of shepherd's daughters, proud sailors, fearless warriors, and heroic "monsters" caught up in fate and blessed with a taste of god-like power, clashing with faux-Hellenistic threats and journeying to varied islands. By the time you slay the terrible kraken/hydra/whatever, your legends are established in the land, and your home polis has temples built in each of your names.
11-20: Pathfinder doesn't do nearly enough with the planes, and nowhere hits that philosophical, Alignment-fascinated space that Planescape so well charted... so the obvious fix is setting something in Basrakal, the single coolest place off the Material Plane! This is your excuse to go absolutely wild with your character concepts; likely you're fighting to protect this refuge for misfits from greater peril - maybe the Maelstrom is trying to eat it, or some deity is trying to wipe it out?
1-20: I mean, it's gotta be killing Tar-Baphon to close out the edition, right?
True Mythic would be saving Tar Baphon from the dread fate so many players and authors have in store for him.
Imagine trying to save an almost deity from all the 20th-level PCs hellbent on ending him.
He's a cockroach! For all the losses he's taken - killed by Aroden, bound by crusaders, temporarily bested by the Tyrant's Grasp heroes, failed to break Absalom - nothing seems to put him down for good, in no small part because Urgathoa plays favorites. Finally pulling it off would be quite the feat, though I imagine Paizo wants to play that plotline pretty slowly. It's too rich to use up, because it enables so many other plots: the Knights of Lastwall's whole schtick, the shaky alliances playing out across most of Avistan, the redemption of Belkzen, the chance for Cheliax to lower the heat on them somewhat...
I see our Tyrannical friend as being the Worldwound of 2e.
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I mean, personally I think the big dichotomy here is still that between the differing expectations of "epic level" and "mythic." But from that you can see a problem that begins even in "lower levels."
As much as I hate to defend 4e, at least 4e made it clear that certain "tiers" had different expectations. Meanwhile, PF and I would argue current D&D is locked in this bizarre situation where the game can't make up its mind whether its supposed to be a gritty medieval game or a high sci-fantasy game, and the expectations and system as a whole suffer for it.
Thats part of why narratively, super high level works so well, its a lot easier to 'feel' mythical whilst going toe to toe with demigods whose abilities (and yours) have truly over the top hyperbolic flavor (and maybe break the rules in some fun ways) than to do super abstract things, you can blend them to some extent though.
But whats cool is, you can personify or objectify abstract things-- you can have a chamber where atlas holds up the world, and have the world represented by a ball he's holding up, and you're interacting with the symbols-- you have the POWER to hold up the world, but physically its being exerted indirectly through some divine process, while you stand there holding up that ball.
If no one was holding up the world, there would be a commiserate effect on our world (maybe it would fall and break... and so there would be continent shattering earthquakes as the planet itself cracks.) To mix my divine metaphors, maybe you could let molten drops fall from a sword onto that ball, and create japan ala shinto's foundational text, and physically, the islands would burn into molten existence.
Your super high level characters can be operating on a representational level as a fantastical visualization of how their divine power is really being exerted. So the TTRPG action becomes representational.
This is actually not a bad idea in terms of representation. And as already mentioned, mythic =/= always super-high-powered (ie Iblydos). In fact, it should involve more "abstract" things.
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I have been clamoring for a Casmaron AP for a long time. A mythic campaign involving Rovagug is about the only campaign I could think of that would justify a lot of evil and good gods being willing to potentially empower the same group of heroes to do something cosmic in scope. I think Killing Rovagug would be a little too much, but him escaping and bing chased through the planes chasing some new form of power beyond the scope of the gods and creating Mythic monstrosities along the way could be a pretty fun AP that starts off around the Pit of Gormuz.
Retrapping Rovagug as mortals whom the gods are only tangentially willing to assist would be interesting and if the mythic power source were beyond the scope of the gods themselves, that would be pretty cool too.
Again, the key would be not to offer mythic powers that just make these characters better than other characters of the same level, but capable of doing things differently enough that the game feels shifted without feeling broken.
I don’t think a low level character with a stealth of +20 would be good for the game, but a low level character that can turn invisible for a brief time, and cannot be detected while invisible by any character that doesn’t have “mythic” vision would be much more interesting.
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Ill be honest variant rules for low level mythic seems like a pain in the butt without much payoff, our characters can already shoot fire out of their fingers and beat the snot out of dragons and wield magical swords and step between shadows, the game already just works to depict mythic figures at the lower end, it just doesn't do the "deities and demigods" style high end.
Like, you can glitch through time, you can be a deities chosen one, you can be a living vessel for a powerful entity, you can have the blood of a dragon flowing through your veins, you can sacrifice others in a ritual to keep yourself endlessly young, you can slash through dimensions and summon a legion of dragons to fight for you, you can have legenday relics from the past, and a sword of flames, you can kill angels or the father of all Linnorms.
You can largely commit the feats of mythical hero, you just can't go toe to toe with demigods. Thats the only story thats really missing mechanically-- that isn't something along the lines of a 'strongman' archetype that has supernatural strength we just don't happen to have.
Heck, if the lore hadnt been written to set the demis apart, Tar Baphon and co would have already been stattable, just special variants on existing high level creatures. Im more than fine with a few extra levels to have more ranks of power represented, but its a consideration-- what really seperates a Demon Lord from "The Father of All Linnorm" in an objective sense?
I really think Mythic should kick in as a system of epic levels. That would interfere less with the already excellent low level game, without any of the mathematical gore of 1e, level is already power level after all. The kind of things you can't do, are things that are a whole different level of impact on the world around you, the kind of power godlings throw around. Thats what sets the 'mythic tier' apart imnsho.