Mythic Resilience and Mythic Resistance, a pair of monster abilities from War of Immortals, bug me a bit. Mythic Resilience feels too punishing, particularly for casters, while Mythic Resistance is the opposite, and is very easy to bypass, to the point it may as well not exist in a mythic game. Here is my stab at trying to balance these two abilities so they are both noticeable in play without being overly punitive.
Mythic Resilience
Spoiler:
Mythic Resilience (1st):
Select one of the creature's saves. The creature treats its saving throws against non-mythic spells and effects 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). The creature may spend a mythic point as a reaction to treat one mythic spell or effect as if it were non-mythic for the purposes of Mythic Resilience. Each time the creature gains mythic resilience, choose a different save, or select an already-selected save for Greater Mythic Resilience if the creature is at least 7th level. The ability should apply to the creature’s highest saves first.
Greater Mythic Resilience (7th):
Select one save that has already been selected with Mythic Resilience. The creature can now spend a mythic point as a free action, rather than a reaction, to treat a mythic spell or effect as non-mythic. Major Mythic Resilience may be applied to this save if the creature is at least 13th level.
Major Mythic Resilience (13th):
Select one save that has already been selected with Greater Mythic Resilience. The creature no longer needs to spend a mythic point to gain the benefits of Mythic Resilience with that save, regardless of whether a spell or effect is mythic.
The rationale here was to retain the spirit of the ability, but spread its effects out, and not make it as punishing for a character who relies on monsters failing saves to contribute. The Mythic Ambusher archetype, for example, winds up with Mythic Resilience in all three saves, meaning it has no weaknesses to exploit; the sub-game that casters are supposed to be able to exploit.
I still wanted the ability to be achievable, however. Now it just eats up more of a proposed monster's budget, and monsters can't have all their saves be mythic.
*That being said, this might necessitate granting a monster more chances to gain ranks of Mythic Resilience for higher levels, I'm not sure; I'd recommend continuing the pattern of one rank every six levels.
Mythic Resistance
Spoiler:
Mythic Resistance (1st):
The creature gains resistance to all Strikes made by non-mythic creatures equal to half its level. Mythic weapons bypass this resistance even if the creature wielding them is not mythic. The creature may spend a mythic point as a free action to gain this resistance against mythic Strikes until the beginning of its next turn.
Greater Mythic Resistance (7th):
Increase the resistance to non-mythic Strikes to the creature's full level, and to half the creature's level against mythic Strikes. Mythic weapons bypass the greater resistance even if the creature wielding them is not mythic. The creature may spend a mythic point as a free action to gain its full resistance, even against mythic sources, until the start of its next turn. A creature must have Mythic Resistance in order to select this ability.
Major Mythic Resistance (13th):
The creature gains the benefits of Greater Mythic Resistance. When the creature spends a mythic point for the purposes of Mythic Resistance, the creature becomes immune to the next Strike made against it, and then gains resistance to all Strikes equal to its level until the beginning of its next turn. The creature must have Greater Mythic Resistance in order to select this ability.
The rationale here was almost the opposite; Mythic Resistance is trivially easy to bypass for most mythic parties, meaning it may as well not exist at all for most intents and purposes. This alteration both allows a monster to demonstrate how mythically durable it is by resisting Strike damage, while also not being able to do so indefinitely and turn an otherwise exciting fight into a slog.
*I'm especially interested in suggestions or feedback around Major Mythic Resistance; does it do enough, or too much? Likewise I considered making Mythic Resistance apply to all damage, not just Strike damage, but that also felt like it might be going a bit too far.
I does seems more interesting, but I have to ask, do you envision the mythic resistance "reaction" as something the mythic monster can do after they roll their save, or as something to announce before the roll?
As for the major resistance, it seemed too strong at first, but after thinking about it some more, it seems fine. Reaching that level eat more of a monster "budget", making them more vulnerable to spells, require the use of a very limited ressource, and the monster completely shrugging off one hit do bring have a certain "badass" factor to it, which is lacking to most monster mythic ability (they are good, very usefull and mechanically powerfull, but recharging a spell or rerolling a dice don't have that "oomph" factor in my eyes).
I does seems more interesting, but I have to ask, do you envision the mythic resistance "reaction" as something the mythic monster can do after they roll their save, or as something to announce before the roll?
I imagined Mythic Resistance's trigger being a free action, maybe I should have made that more explicit. I did consider making it something the monster needs to declare on its turn, but I prefer it being something the monster can just do in response to Strike damage; lots of things that aren't Strikes do damage, even if they're the most common form of inflicting it, so I was more looking at the idea that invoking Mythic Resistance would be a way a monster could reactively disrupt a party's turn, making them rely on non-Strike methods of attack.
Scarablob wrote:
As for the major resistance, it seemed too strong at first, but after thinking about it some more, it seems fine. Reaching that level eat more of a monster "budget", making them more vulnerable to spells, require the use of a very limited ressource, and the monster completely shrugging off one hit do bring have a certain "badass" factor to it, which is lacking to most monster mythic ability (they are good, very usefull and mechanically powerfull, but recharging a spell or rerolling a dice don't have that "oomph" factor in my eyes).
I'm glad you think so; that's exactly what I was going for! I wanted an ability that could give the party that "oh damn" moment of seeing a dangerous enemy, but I didn't want it to happen all the time. Tying it to mythic points helps, I think, because Resistance/Resilience are other spends, rather than constant abilities.
Also, getting to that level of power means that a monster has to pick Mythic Resistance three times, and, at least according to the chart inWar of Immortals, they only have three opportunities to do that, at levels 1, 7, and 13. (Honestly, given the way I broke up the abilities, I might recommend another pick another six levels later, at 19.)
My same reasoning is behind Mythic Resilience. A monster can either spread out their picks, or focus all three to have one thematic super-save, but they can't have all their saves auto-increase their results, like in the book.
