I'm genuinely curious and would like to hear any first hand reports if they exist, especially from DMs/GMs.
Has literally anyone ever run a long term mythic campaign that wasn't just the last part of Wrath of the Righteous? Has anyone ever run a mythic homebrew campaign that lasted like at least 6 months of regular sessions, or even took characters from MR 1-10, and up to level 20? I'd be especially interested to hear if anyone has ever done a long term campaign with mythic spheres and other third party material -- mythic psionics, gestalt etc.
If there are any genuine reports 'from the wild' of such a game -- how did that work? Did you just add 10, 20, 30, etc. to every item on pre-generated stat blocks, did you spend months creating stat blocks for monsters, or did you use some kind of generator like hero lab? What kinds of rules did you use, if you did, to try to keep things manageable?
I'm just genuinely curious if a lot of this high level material in both 3.5 and PF is purely a theoretical object of art which allows readers to imagine a hypothetical metagame construction of an epic level game, and maybe even have fun imagining or stating up characters for it, but it's, in practice, never been an actual game that anyone plays on a regular basis.
We have a wildly off beat war for the crown.
Highlights:
--Balors soundly relegated to mildly dangerous trashmob status
--We found a wand of suggestion, which we handed to our Pally, who suggests our Bloodrager to do "whatever you want", extra safety level in case of Bloodrager getting possessed.
--The Gap between casters and full babs imho closes a bit, as both get compeltely bonkers, rather then just casters
--Still, the contingency b&!$&~$$ a caster can do makes them essentially much tougher
--Anti magic fields are super annoying. Yeah, I need to check every single one of my buffs to see if its SU or EX, blegh, thats like half an hour per session
--If you are GMing, liberally have BBEGs take dips in fractured mind, or some specialiszed mind control caster is going to take a Kaiju, or a Demon Lord, or a horseman for a joyride.
--Only thing that stops such a party as written is Nocticula, is she lands her Dominates. If she doesnt, mythic b*+$~++# hide, try again next turn.
I don't use 3rd party materials, so I can't help you with Spheres content, but I am currently running a homebrew campaign where the characters are level 14 gestalt and mythic tier 6, with plans on easily reaching level 20 and mythic tier 10 (we've been playing at least a year). This is the fourth iteration of the campaign I've run with a different group of players, and the majority of them have reached this level (the first round went to level 26 and I used modified 3e D&D rules for epic levels to handle that).
Reaching high level play is, I'll admit, a rarity for MOST people. Not for me, as I'll keep elevating those players as long as they hold interest in the game.
The rules I use are mostly 1st party Pathfinder content, fractional BAB/Saves, background skills, unchained action economy (kept swift actions), and tweaks to the way cantrips works to keep them relevant. I pulled Magic of the Incarnum from 3.e D&D into the game, but the players rarely use it so it is more of a GM tool.
Stating up Monsters is fairly easy for myself, as slapping the Advanced Template on the critters twice and maxing out their HP (players get the same maxed HP as well, so fair is fair) is more than enough to turn a monster into a challenge, once you've given them at least one mythic rank as well.
I've also got a separate subsystem of quasi-mythic powers that I make use of that the players chose not to engage with this time around (the choice of this or mythic, not both). I put a lot of thought and lore behind that particular subsystem and it is present in the world regardless of whether the players want to make use of it or not, as they serve an integral plot points.
We went with Mythic for a while in my GM's homebrew. We only got to tier 2. I think the only thing particularly OP was the bard with Display of Charisma, who was already very optimized before Mythic, so he could roll 60+ on a Bluff check.
The plan was to remove the Mythic bits after we completed the story, but we ended up wrapping the campaign and starting a new one instead.
This is the opposite of what was asked for, but I had a Mythic Trickster with a path ability to never take fall damage.
Whenever you fall, you don't take any damage and you land on your feet. When using this ability, you fall at a rate of 150 feet per round, and can move up to 5 feet horizontally for every 10 feet you fall.
We were on a literal collapsing bridge (from one tower to another over a river), and I kept taking huge risks to help everyone get to the other side. Part of me was hoping that I would fail at one of the skill checks so that I could surprise my fellow PCs by surviving the fall (because they didn't know about my ability), but it turns out that the GM also never knew (or had forgotten), and fudged his DCs or something so that I wouldn't fall.
But I will say that Nimble Glide plus Wall Run negates a lot of dangers in a dungeon.
When you move, you can travel across vertical surfaces as if they were floors. If your movement doesn't end on a horizontal surface, you fall at the end of your move unless you are able to remain in place using another ability (such as using the Climb skill to cling to a handhold). The vertical surface must be capable of supporting your weight—for example, you couldn't move across a windowpane or curtain.
I ran a homebrew mythic campaign. I slowed down the mythic tiers slightly so the characters gained about 1 mythic tier per 3 levels. The characters were 16th level, tier 5 when the campaign ended due to real world issue. The campaign was focused on undead as the major advisory, and the party was pretty well optimized to fight them.
I was able to keep the party challenged by using hordes of undead. The party on more than one occasion fought literal armies of undead. It did not bog down too much because I wrote a couple programs to speed up combat. I let the players roll the dice for their characters but used the programs mainly to handle the enemies
Since the players were tougher than normal, I did not have to use kids gloves as much as normal. I tend to write up pretty optimized characters so in normal campaigns I usually have to avoid creating opponents who are too tough. With mythic character that is often not the case.