War of Immortals | Mythic Resilience

[lats1e]

I have a concern with regards to the mythic resilience ability that is available to mythic NPCs. My concern is that it could make casters almost useless as debuffers and battlefield controllers at high levels due to Mythic Resilience on all three saves effectively shutting down casters as if all their spells had the incapacitate trait.

Imagine this. You're a party of level 11 PCs and you're a caster. You're going up against a mythic creature that is PL+2 with all three mythic resilient saves. A level 13 creature's low save is a +20, and as a level 11 caster you likely have a spell DC of 30 at this point. This pretty much means that the only way that the creature can fail a saving throw with their weakest save is for them to roll a 1. A caster should not be struggling this hard to hit the weakest save of a PL+2 creature.

Suppose though that we should instead be judging mythic casters by their mythic spell DC. In the case of a mythic 11 caster, they would have a mythic spell DC of 36 if they spend one of their mythic points. In that situation, the chance that that same creature gets a failure on their save would be 30%. It is as if you're targeting the low save of a creature that is PL+4. Even with mythic points and mythic DCs in play, casters seem to struggle way too much to target even low saves of PL+2 mythic creatures.

If we go up to level 20 mythic PCs, a mythic 20 caster would have a spell DC of 45. With mythic DCs in play, that would be 47. A PL+2 mythic creature with all three mythic resiliences has a low save of +33. Without mythic DCs, the only way the creature can roll a failure in their weakest save is to roll a 2 or less for a 10% chance of failing. With mythic DCs in play, the creature would have to roll a 4 or less for a 20% chance of failing with their weakest save. In this case, it'd be like targeting the moderate save of a creature that is PL+5.

This seems incredibly unfair to any class that relies on DCs to do their main thing, particularly casters, kineticists, and toxicologists. It shuts down an entire playstyle for casters and restricts them to being buff-bots. Classes like kineticist cannot utilize feats that use their Class DC and pretty much are restricted only to making elemental blasts. Toxicologists cannot use their poisons at all.

Is this the intended design? If so, is PL+2 meant to be the new PL+4 in mythic games? Or is there something I'm missing here? Because so far, mythic resilience seems to make high level mythic games feel horrible to play in for anyone that isn't a martial. Some party members would just not be able to contribute effectively in fights at a certain level.

[Xenocrat]

Resentment witches stay winning.

[lats1e]

Forgot to clarify what Mythic Resilience is, so people probably don't know what I'm talking about, so I'm just gonna copy-paste what it does here.

Mythic Resilience (1st): The creature treats its saving throws with the associated save as one degree of success better than it rolled. This is not cumulative with other effects that change their degree of success, like the incapacitation trait (except for rolling a natural 1 or 20). Each time the monster gains mythic resilience, choose one save. The ability should apply to the creature’s highest saves first.

This can be taken again at levels 7 and 13, so a Level 13 Mythic Creature has Mythic Resilience in all 3 of their saves.

[Squiggit]

Worth noting that several of the mythic templates specifically forbid you from taking resilience in a specific save, so creatures of that type will have one save that doesn't get juiced up.

Though it's also worth noting a number of the boss monsters have resilience in every save by default, and if you're building a mythic creature normally this is true by mid levels.

It seems kind of out of whack with the other mythic defense systems: mythic resistance is bypassed by simply being mythic, so is mythic immunity, even mythic defense can still allow normal attacks to go through (and it's a level 20 ability whereas resilience comes online at 1 and caps out at 13).

I know the kneejerk reaction will be "well mythic monsters are supposed to be scary" but it's significantly out of step with every other mythic defensive ability and significantly impacts certain classes much more than others.

It genuinely feels like an editing mistake to me, because it's so disproportionate compared to every other ability in the chapter.

[Deriven Firelion]

That does pretty much ruin casters with nothing for them to do about it. That is not great. It is really going to slant mythic towards martials by quite a margin.

[Claxon]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

That does pretty much ruin casters with nothing for them to do about it. That is not great. It is really going to slant mythic towards martials by quite a margin.

If this was PF1 I would cheer, but PF2 casters aren't the god kings they used to be.

When I initially started reading this thread I was thinking, a mythic creature 2 levels above a mythic party should be scary, but as I continued reading, and realizing that most mythic defenses are bypassed by also being mythic/having mythic power it does disproportionately affect casters.

In my mind, "by the numbers" if you are mythic and fighting a mythic creature, it should (almost) be the same as if neither of you were mythic. I say almost because I'm thinking mostly in numbers and "extra abilities" that are basically just numbers, like mythic resistance. Not accounting for things that are special actions or expansions beyond simple numbers.

An enemy that can only fail any save on a nat 1....isn't fun for casters to fight. I guess if you know it's coming you can mentally prepare to just buff and not directly attack, but not every caster class has that luxury, nor does every caster player want to become relegated to the cheer squad.

Probably needs to be an explicit rule that no NPC can have 3 mythic resilient saves.

[Old_Man_Robot]

I pointed this out in the product thread, but this ability seems out of line.

If we take the 11th level caster scenario from the above, the entire outcome structure is inverted. A 25% chance of success becomes a 75% chance of success.

They would have a 95% to succeed on any non-mythic spells.

Either Mythic Resilience needs a mythic point to power it, or it needs a bypass method. Otherwise this is just bad.

[Errenor]

Claxon wrote:

Probably needs to be an explicit rule that no NPC can have 3 mythic resilient saves.

Reading all this, I'd say offhand that no more than 1 mythic resilient ever (casters also need a bit of choice, and 'targeting all 3 saves' is a lie). Or better axe this completely and forget about it.

[Nelzy]

They realy need a way to spend Mythic points to ignore this defence like the other have ways to ignore it.

[lats1e]

Claxon wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

That does pretty much ruin casters with nothing for them to do about it. That is not great. It is really going to slant mythic towards martials by quite a margin.

If this was PF1 I would cheer, but PF2 casters aren't the god kings they used to be.

When I initially started reading this thread I was thinking, a mythic creature 2 levels above a mythic party should be scary, but as I continued reading, and realizing that most mythic defenses are bypassed by also being mythic/having mythic power it does disproportionately affect casters.

In my mind, "by the numbers" if you are mythic and fighting a mythic creature, it should (almost) be the same as if neither of you were mythic. I say almost because I'm thinking mostly in numbers and "extra abilities" that are basically just numbers, like mythic resistance. Not accounting for things that are special actions or expansions beyond simple numbers.

An enemy that can only fail any save on a nat 1....isn't fun for casters to fight. I guess if you know it's coming you can mentally prepare to just buff and not directly attack, but not every caster class has that luxury, nor does every caster player want to become relegated to the cheer squad.

Probably needs to be an explicit rule that no NPC can have 3 mythic resilient saves.

I do wish to add something interesting I've heard while discussing this on reddit and discord.

One alternative interpretation people have told me regarding Mythic Resistance (which is different from Mythic Resilience) is that it's meant to give the creature resistance to attacks made using non-mythic weapons/strikes. This makes alot of sense, and makes the Mythic Strike's clause (Level 10 Mythic Feat) of bypassing Mythic Resistances actually make sense now.

If we go by this interpretation, enemy creatures would want to have a combination of both Mythic Resistance and Resilience. A creature that took all 3 abilities in Resilience would be hard for casters to kill, but vulnerable to martials due to not having resistance. A creature that took all 3 abilities in Resistance would be hard for martials to kill, but very vulnerable to spell DCs.

My only problem with this interpretation though is that:

1. If Mythic Resistance worked this way, then it's pretty much mandatory to take Mythic Strike at level 10, and martials would be shooting theirselves in the foot by not taking this.

2. Mythic Weapons bypass Mythic Resistance, and the mythic ogre example statblock in the book seems to imply that Mythic Martial PCs can get access to Mythic Weapons by as early as Level 7 or even earlier, which makes Mythic Resistance worthless if this is true.

3. Mythic Immunity at Level 23 exists, which gives Immunity to all strikes made using non-mythic weapons. This pretty much makes Mythic Resistance redundant for Mythic 23+ creatures and allows them to just take all three Mythic Resiliences anyway.

4. Mythic Martials still get access to at-will options to counteract the Anti-Martial mythic ability (assuming we pretend it works that way instead of RAW). Mythic Casters however still have no way to counteract Mythic Resilience.

And all this assumes that Mythic Resistance worked by that alternative interpretation instead of what we have in the book as of now. Right now, RAW, Mythic Resistance only grants resistance to strikes made by non-mythic creatures, which in a Mythic Campaign with Mythic PCs, is pretty much worthless outside of flavor.

Here's what Mythic Resistance does:
Mythic Resistance (1st): The creature gains resistance to all Strikes made by non-mythic creatures equal to half its level. If it gains mythic resistance a second time, increase the resistance to its full level. Mythic weapons bypass this resistance even if the creature wielding them is not mythic.

[Unicore]

Is there nothing in any of the caster focused Mythic paths or destinies that address Resilience?

I could see it being something gated to characters representing the most mythic spell casters in the world, and not any random mythic character.

[lats1e]

Unicore wrote:

Is there nothing in any of the caster focused Mythic paths or destinies that address Resilience?

I could see it being something gated to characters representing the most mythic spell casters in the world, and not any random mythic character.

The most that Mythic Casters could do is cast a spell at Mythic Spell DC, which as I have stated in the beginning of the thread, does not help enough. I've given the mythic feats and destinies a read and I have not seen anything of the sort that lets a caster ignore Mythic Resilience.

[Xenocrat]

GMs should simply not put mythic resilience on everything.