Mythic Spell Feat and Archmage / Heirophant ability

[James Walley]

Archmage:
Mythic Spells: At 2nd tier, you can select one mythic spell (see Chapter 3) and can expend your mythic power to cast that spell with enhanced results. You must have the normal arcane version of the spell in your spellbook or on your list of spells known. At 4th tier and every 2 tiers thereafter, you can select another mythic spell.

Heirophant:
Mythic Spells: At 2nd tier, you can select one mythic spell (see Chapter 3) and can expend your mythic power to cast that spell with enhanced results. You must be able to cast the normal divine version of the spell or have it on your list of spells known. At 4th tier and every two tiers thereafter, you can select another mythic spell.

Both essentially grant only 5 potential Mythic spells as a base ability for their path.

Mythic Spells (Mythic)
You have learned how to unlock the power of your spells, combining them with your mythic power.
Prerequisite: Ability to cast spells, 1st mythic tier.
Benefit: Select a number of spells equal to your mythic tier. They must have mythic enhancements and be on your list of spells known or in your spellbook. You can now use your mythic power when casting these spells. Whenever you gain a mythic tier, select a new spell to add to this list.
Special: You can select this feat multiple times. Each time you select this feat, you must select different spells.

At just one selection, the feat potentially gives you 10 Mythic spells. You can take it at any Mythic Tier, if the prereq is the minimum as it is in most feats. it doesn't say 1st tier only, plainly alludes to using another number other than one as the number of spells you get to choose from the Mythic spell effects list.
If you take it again, at gaining any odd Mythic tier later, you have the potential of acquiring 10 more.

Even for the playtest adventure, taking Mythic Spells Feat at MT1 grants the first spell. Only one at this time, boohoo. The wizard goes Archmage. Then you gain MT2... Archmage path ability kicks in and you now get a second spell. But wait...! The feat gives you a third Mythic spell because it gives you one at each Mythic Tier gained. Looking hawt.
Here comes MT3: you get one from your first for a total of four Mythic spells, and then pick Mythic Spells again as your 3rd tier feat, giving you... get this... 3 more spells... for a total of 7 Mythic spells.

Awesome sauce on this awesome cake... nowhere yet does it say you absolutely have to have the spell selected as one of your daily allocation as a prepared caster or a spell slot available as a spontaneous caster. The Archmage ability Wild Arcana lets you burn a Mythic Power Point to cast any spell you know and apply any metamagic feat that you know to it. The unlocked Mythic version is a metamagic effect is it not? Metamagic feats are those designed to alter the function of spells in some way, in this case Mythically and without a level adjustement. So...

If the wizard, Elfrond, with his Int at 20 at 1st level puts his 4th level ability bonus into Int (like a good little wizard that he better be), and gets Int-21. That's a +5 Int Modifier, no real change.. Some short time later, he ascends and gets his first Mythic tier and takes Mythic Spells as his MT1 feat, Archmage as his path, Wild Arcana as his chosen schtick, and (of course) chooses Intelligence as his Mythic Power feed-stat. This makes his Mythic Power point total to 6. Life continues on with its trials and, Lo!, we get to MT2 just after making level 5 ( just for giggles). Now we get the Mythic path ability for Mythic spellls. The MT2 ability score increase boosts him to Int 23 and now his modifier is +6 and his power pool is now 8. Hitting level 8 will up his Int to 24 (Int mod-+7) and his pool to 9.

He prepares his spells as normal. Its a real hard day and he realizes that a couple of his spells just aren't going to be useful for taking out the overly muscled, smells like Mythic sweat brigand leader. He burns a Mythic point to access Magic Missile, a spell he has on his Mythic Spells list and applies the Mythic feats to it. Now we got ourselves something worthy of burning brigand backside. Scorching Ray is also on his list, so He spam casts them at the BBEG until he falls over, especially since he's got his Guardian and Champion friends doing that bang up job of keeping his squishiness form getting squished.

Elfrond, at level 5ish, with just 2 teirs into Archmage, can cast all of his spells and then get up to 8 more castings of kick-ass spells in a single day. Recuperation at MT3 just makes this even better when he gets to rest an hour and replenishes all is used Spells per day slots to be filled with more universe twisting goodness.

That, my friends, is a Mythic spellcaster in the making.

I think any Archmage or Heirophant would be a fool not to take the feat at MT1. If he loves the choices of spells (which are decidedly few right now), he might take it again at MT3, because we do have few really good Mythic feats to choose from.

The only possible downside is running out of spells that currently have Mythic enhancements that you can cast as a normal spell due to spells known or learned deficiencies. As with a huge percentage of the Mythic rules, that all depends on the Path Master being fair minded and having the doors open for advancement.

I can see a rewording in the future to make it so that only the spells on you prepared for the day list or to be used in the available spell slot can be used as Mythic Spells, and so that Wild Arcana could not trigger the Mythic spells without at least costing 2 points first ( one for the Wild Arcana activation and then another for the Mythic Spell enhancement), but right now, they don't have any such wording.

[prototype00]

Quote:

The unlocked Mythic version is a metamagic effect is it not? Metamagic feats are those designed to alter the function of spells in some way, in this case Mythically and without a level adjustement. So...

I think you are perhaps stretching the definition of metamagic a bit far. Metamagic effects are very well defined under the rules, and nowhere does it say that using a mythic version of the spell is considered a metamagic effect.

prototype00

[James Walley]

Not really much of a stretch.

Metamagic feats are described as feats that allow you to "subtly alter" the effects of spells that you cast. Why wouldn't a Mythic version alter those spells Mythically?

Granted, 'normal' metamagic feats are well defined for each one's effect and cost,usable on virtually any spell you are capable of casting with its cost adjustment, while the Mythic Spells feat allows you to only affect a small number of spells out of what could potentially be virtually every spell.

I have not seen an actual Glossary style definition of what Metamagic means, only using it as the name of a grouip of feats that all "alter the effects of magic". If the Mythic Spells Mythic Feat isn't the grand-daddy of all Metamagic feats, from out of Myth, no less, then it is certainly an odd duck.

[James Walley]

Upon further thinking though, I am incorrect in how our friend Elfrond would be slinging spells about all willie-nillie.
He would have to be MT3 to get the Recuperate ability before he could reload his spell list for the day.
If the Path Master is worth any salt at all, he most certainly has gained a level or two in the process, so his number of spells should have gone up as well during the completion of the trials getting to Tier 3.
The frightening idea here is that he might take Mythic Spells as his MT3 feat and add even more potential destruction.
Or he may take Dual Focus, which doesn't seem to ne restricted to only being available at MT1, and then add what ever other ability modifier he wants to to his pool. For an additional 3 or more points of power each day.

Dual Focus (Mythic)
You draw your Mythic power from two ability scores.
Prerequisite: 1st Mythic Tier.
Benefit: Select one ability score other than the score you selected at your moment of ascension (see page 3). You can use you mythic power an additional number of times per day equal to your bonus from that ability score.

[xevious573]

I don't think it's a Metamagic... but I think a Mythic Spell can be modified by a Metamagic feat... seems sick.

[James Walley]

This is one of those spots where the nomenclature is sticky.
"Mythic Spells" is used as a mythic feat name, the second tier ability for the Archmage and the Heirophant, and as a Universal Mythic Ability.
While they do all relate to the enhanced spells, the path abilities are similar to each other, but the feat differs rather wildly.

There needs to be a more clear definition between the feat and the paths' abilities as well as a better defining of the feat itself.
Is it a Metamagic feat (since it does follow the paradigm of alter the effects of spells, even if it is way beyond what we have known previously)? If it is not, what the heck is it, because it is very powerful for what it currently says it does, which is essentially hand any caster the a huge benefit, regardless of what Mythic Path they have chosen.

[JoelF847]

I agree that the nomenclature is confusing. During our first playtest session for mythic, I and another player had a 15 minute discussion on how mythic spells worked, and couldn't figure out what the other one was talking about until we realized that the path ability under archmage/heirophant, the universal path ability, and the feat all had the same name.

Another thing that we realized was that for a mythic spellcaster, the only way to actually cast mythic spells at MT1 is to take the feat. That seemed like a bit let down with our MT1 characters who wanted to play with the mythic spells. I'd recommend that at the very least, add 1 to the number of mythic spells archmage/heirophant grants at each MT, to not only ensure that a mythic spellcaster can have at least one without using a scarce mythic feat, and also to give a bit more options for which spells they know the mythic version of. The playtest alone has lots of good ones to pick, and I imagine the final product will have many, many more. Being limited to at most 15 at MT10 seems pretty lame.

Since mythic spells already require a use of mythic power to actually use, having more options wouldn't increase the number that could be cast in a day.

[Artanthos]

I don't think mythic is a metamagic feat. Mythic spells can be altered by mythic feats though.

[Lou Diamond]

How I read and understand Myhic Spells, is that by expending a protion of your Mythic power you can unlock a Mythic spell that is a spel of greater power than normaly availble in a standard non-mythic spell.

As far as Meta-magic feats go they allow for the amping up of a Spell normal or Mythic spell as lng as you expend a higher level spell slot to cast. The reason I say this is that one of the Path Powers for Archmage is Meta Mastery wich for each time you select Meta mastery you can elimitae 1 extra spell slot that you must expend to cast a spell [Normal or Mythic] that is modified my a meta magic feat.