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A couple of months ago on reddit, James Jacobs asked for playtest feedback on level 12-20 Mythic play and seeing as I was also very curious how these rules worked in practice, I decided to organize some playtest sessions! So far I've run 3, one each at levels 12, 16, and 20, with more upcoming over the next couple months. So far aside from myself there's been about 10 people involved in the playtesting, and we've playtested nearly every path at least once.
Methodology: In each test, the players assembled mythic parties of 4 characters with mythic as the only variant rule or house rule in play. I normally have plenty of house rules, but for this I wanted to keep close to RAW in order to test how mythic interacts with the game as written. They were built using the standard treasure for new characters table with one additional item of player level (since that table puts you one behind on fundamental runes compared to what the game expects, skewing results down). At level 20, the characters also received the new mythic fundamental runes, with spellcasters given other high level items to compensate for not being able to use mythic weapon potency or mythic striking. Each party was also composed of either 2 melee martials and 2 casters, or 2 melee martials, 1 ranged martial, and a caster, in order to ensure an imbalanced party comp didn't skew results.
Each test pitted the party against multiple encounters, both mythic and non-mythic, with full rests between each. (the idea for this was to test them at peak capacity rather than make it an attrition challenge) The mythic monsters followed the guidelines from War of Immortals, both for encounter building and monster building. Encounters were all balanced as either severe or extreme, as the mythic encounter rules suggested that mythic chars would significantly outperform standard chars and these were 1 encounter in-game days.
Session 1 - Level 12
The party consisted of a Godling Wizard, an Archfiend Animist, a Mortal Herald Exemplar, and an Apocalypse Rider cleric (Battle Harbinger class archetype).
I first tested to see if mythic significantly outperformed regular PF2E chars at this level via 2 non-mythic 160 xp extreme encounters, 1 vs a horde of lower level dragons and 1 vs a solo lesser death. Despite these being winnable fights for a normal party (albeit very tough ones), the mythic party got trounced both times. Mythic didn't seem to be a massive power difference at 12 contrary to my expectations.
The 3rd fight was a severe mythic encounter with +2 solo mythic brute and 2 level -2 monsters. The -2s got deleted very quickly thanks to aoe mythic casting spells, but the mythic monster stuck around for a while and was mostly just hurt by the martials. Mythic resilience came up a little bit, but the casters were able to mostly avoid it once they realized this monster was mythic by healing or targeting other defenses. It just felt almost exactly like any severe with a level +2 with two level -2 lackeys, and the party beat it quite easily.
Takeaways: (these include observations by both me and my players that we discussed following the sessions)
1. By far the most used mythic stuff was mythic casting/strike plus godspeed, and mythic points disappeared extremely quickly despite being refreshed between encounters. Usually by the end of round 3 almost everyone was out of points, at which point the game largely becomes identical to standard PF2E
2. Casters felt stronger vs non mythic enemies, while martials felt stronger vs mythic enemies. Mythic casting really lets casters boost their odds in a way the system doesn't usually allow, but it's quite limited.
3. Basically no one used Destiny specific mythic abilities. The Archfiend opened their realm once and it accomplished absolutely nothing since monsters at this level usually have high movement.
4. Building a mythic monster was more confusing than it really should be since there's a lack of guidance on how to assign abilities that cost a mythic point. It's not based on level because there's very high level mythic monsters in this book with only 2 abilities that take mythic points and at least one lower level creature with 3 such abilities. You just get the list and that's it. (notably the template abilities are not on this list except for the ability in the caster template). There's also some discrepancies between the text and the table, with the table saying that mythic reroll and mythic defenses are mutually exclusive features while in text the former is just one of many abilities and the latter is given to all mythic creatures of level 20 or higher. It felt very slapdash, to say nothing of the whole "resistance and resilience are equivalent features even though the former gets completely bypassed" thing.
5. Overall this mostly just felt like a normal PF2E session. The 2 abilities and 2 resiliences I gave the level 14 mythic brute didn't make it feel epic or legendary, just slightly more of a damage sponge than normal. Mythic Striking and Casting were both a notable numbers bump but they didn't make as big a difference as you'd expect. It definitely felt more notable for casters as it's generally harder to raise DCs and lower saves than it is to buff attacks and lower AC, but even that was really limited to just helping them get rid of low level lackeys a bit faster. It really didn't "feel" mythic, especially after the points quickly ran out.
Session 2 - Level 16
Party was a Broken chain Barb, Celestial Gunslinger, Eternal Legend champ, and a Mortal Herald Sorc
The 1st fight was a 160xp horde encounter against a bunch of aeons (2 kolaruts, 4 Akhanas, a bythos, and a marut), but it was easily stomped via mythic aoe spells and the champ's shield of spirit.
2nd was a solo 160xp vs a Bastion Archon, this one was much harder, party narrowly won thanks to a lucky crit fail on normally cast eclipse burst and while it was subtle mythic definitely made a difference (eg it made a slow into a fail instead of success, helped a couple Gunslinger attacks hit, and helped one person stay conscious via a mythic ability)
Lastly, the 3rd fight was vs a Mythic level 18 Star Archon Mythic Striker plus a Weak Giylea and aTrumpet Archon, for a low extreme 130 exp encounter. The party won fairly easily, and I'm not sure mythic made a difference. It once again felt like a pretty normal fight. The mythic enemy didn't feel very mythic, just had mythic resilience and a reroll that it used (had some other stuff but didn't get a chance to use it before it died).
Takeaways:
1. We expected it would feel notably more mythic than the level 12 test, but it still just felt like normal PF2E for the most part. Even in the fight vs the Bastion Archon, where mythic helped eke out a narrow victory, might have gone exactly the same way had the players had a different variant rule buffing them instead like the ever common Free Archetype.
2. So long as it's kept to 2 saves only, mythic resilience isn't quite as bad as I'd feared it would be.
3. Players used some destiny specific abilities more, but mainly abilities that didn't cost a point like Broken Chain's Cry of Rebellion or Celestial's Armaments.
4. Mythic points still run out very quickly, and it's becoming increasingly clear that having a large number of decent things you can potentially do with mythic points matters much less than 1-3 very good things you can do with them. And again, in a normal campaign environment players are working with much less points per fight than in these stress tests.
Session 3 - Level 20
Party was an Eternal Legend Barb, Archfiend Animist, Druid Beastlord, and Celestial Monk.
Only 2 fights this time as playing at level 20 with new chars meant that fights took longer. The 1st was a 4v4 vs 4 level 20 planar scions (a Nessari, a Balor, a Veranallia, and a Yamaraj). The party cleaned this up easily and it was definitely the most mythic-feeling of any of the encounters so far, albeit not equally between the players.
The second fight was vs. the new published monster Verex-That-Was, and frankly, it was kind of awful. From the GM side, Verex is just a really boring monster to run, with barely anything to do other than move, attack, and use swallow whole. From the player side, mythic resilience on all 3 saves felt awful (especially for the druid), mythic immunity made the Beastlord's companion largely worthless since none of its features ever make it a mythic creature, and mythic defenses (where all crits against it get rerolled) was just the absolute opposite of fun. At least resilience feels a bit diegetic (this monster just has really high saves), defenses feels like whenever you roll a crit a Paizo dev personally comes into your play session and says "akshually you didn't, try again lol." There's just no causal relationship or narrative weight to it and it feels dreadful. This fight eventually devolved into the 2 casters stuck in the monsters stomach while the 2 martials slowly chipped away at Verex's health (boosted significantly by undying myth ressurecting him when he first reaches 0) until he finally went down because his damage output is actually pretty low.
Takeaways:
1. This session the players absolutely felt mythic, but it varied greatly between the paths. For example Celestial and Eternal legend were basically power fantasies of the sort you could find in something like the Owlcat WOTR CRPG while Beastlord just felt like a normal level 20 Druid who'd taken the animal companion feats. You could REALLY feel how wildly imbalanced the paths were compared to each other. Some of them would be underwhelming as a normal archetype and others make you into a god killing superweapon, the gulf is utterly massive.
2. Mythic Defenses as a mechanic is just really unfun and immersion breaking. It doesn't make the monster feel mythic, it just makes it feel annoying.
3. In a similar vein, Mythic Resilience in all 3 saves feels substantially worse than having it in just 2 as the other mythic monsters I'd used did.
4. Verex in general, despite being a level 24 mythic monster with multiple mythic abilities, did not feel mythic in the slightest. He just felt like a giant bullet sponge who did nothing but survive for a long time and swallow people without access to freedom of movement/Unfettered Movement. It was worse than unbalanced, it was just plain boring.
5. At this level, Mythic Casting becomes a lot less powerful now that it's only a +2. Mythic Strike is a little better since for most classes it's still a +4, but in general they're both pretty undramatic. If you don't have strong ways to use mythic points from your destiny (and many of the destinies frankly don't give you many effective ways of using them) it's possible to feel less mythic than you did at level 10 or 12.
6. It's tough to say how much of it was due to them having stronger mythic destinies, but the two martials severely overperformed the 2 casters here, though the Animist definitely still pulled their weight.
That's all for now, got another level 20 test in a week's time and there'll be more after that! (I won’t be able to update this post by then, so it’ll by a comment below) I'll also follow up with a separate comment about mine and my player's thoughts on the individual destinies, which vary wildly in both power and subjective fun factor. For those of you who have also had the chance to run or play mythic in this level range, how do these results match up with your own?
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Individual Mythic Destiny Thoughts from my players and I:
Apocalypse Rider: Tested at level 12 so not too much data on destiny-specific abilities, though the mount wasn’t any more tanky or useful than a normal horse so it mostly just kept getting knocked unconscious.
Archfiend: The central ability, Manifest Realm, is just way too weak and action intensive to be worth using. You lose so much momentum activating it, and every time the Animist player used it failed to accomplish a single thing. Your actions at higher level play have a premium opportunity cost, and you need to spend multiple turns, multiple feats, and multiple mythic points to unleash such powerful effects as… 4d8 damage to a single enemy (with a save of course). Or to teleport within your realm… but only to places which you have an unobstructed view to, so the Archfiend’s plan to be able to teleport out of Verex’s stomach was foiled despite the realm existing beyond the monster. Pretty much the only thing worth a damn is the level 18 feat Imprison Foe, which is admittedly an incredibly powerful ability that should not be underestimated, but it’s a shame everything else is just so laughably weak and not worth using.
Ascended Celestial: One of if not the most powerful destinies, it gets handed multiple abilities as constant passives that other destinies would need to spend multiple actions plus mythic points to achieve equivalent effects. And when they do use actions? The comparison gets absurd. While spending only a single action and no mythic point, Celestials can have a 120 ft radius buff aura, quicken themselves, gain temp hp, and get additional free actions to trip or shove whenever they damage a creature. Wildspell needs to spend 2 actions and a mythic point to get a 10 foot radius aura with much more limited effects. Their damage is off the charts, they get many powerful passive buffs, and many strong abilities that don’t cost mythic points. Watching this in action at both level 16 and especially at level 20 was awe-inspring. Frankly, it’d probably too strong even if most of the other destinies got significant buffs over their current state.
Beast Lord: This felt completely indistinguishable from a normal level 20 Druid who’d taken the animal companion feats. None of the abilities achieved anything, the companion failed to hit an enemy even once the entire session despite being buffed up and most of its attacks being vs on level creatures, and the fact that it’s still subject to mythic immunity RAW just felt mean. I wouldn’t recommend anyone take this as it stands. Like, it’s not great when the whole group just felt overwhelming pity for a char who is supposed to be “mythic.”
Broken Chain: A really strong destiny that nonetheless felt pretty well balanced as well. Some very strong support and debuff abilities, some of which don’t require mythic points, made it feel great to play and have in a party. If every destiny was about this powerful, I think they’d be in great shape overall.
Eternal Legend: Like Broken Chain, this is a very strong class that has some very powerful abilities and isn’t overly hungry for the highly limited mythic points. If it weren’t for one feat, this would probably be the best balanced of all of them from a “feels powerful and ‘mythic’ but not gamebreaking” standpoint, but sadly Fight Through Oblivion exists. With that level 20 feat, you become nearly invincible and enemies can only knock you out of the fight by either hard disable spells like dominate or just spending 4 rounds running away from you. If those aren’t options, you can trade blows basically forever with any enemy and win without even trying. Even at level 20 on a mythic destiny, that feat should not exist in its current form IMO.
Godling: Only tested at level 12 so far so most of its unique destiny benefits haven’t really been showcased yet. It’s very dependent on another player for its abilities, which can be a challenge when the other players want to use their own mythic abilities instead.
Prophesied Monarch: Not tested yet, but will on the 17th.
Wildspell: Not tested yet, but will on the 17th. At least on paper it seems incredibly dependent on spamming mythic points for its abilities to function, so it took me begging a little to convince my playtesters to try it out haha.
Great stuff!
2. So long as it's kept to 2 saves only, mythic resilience isn't quite as bad as I'd feared it would be.
This kind of surprises me, though I guess in a test like this folks will have their full set of spells pretty frequently. It's going to feel a lot worse after some attrition where you might not have any of "the right save target spell" left, since everything else isn't going to be effective.
4. Mythic points still run out very quickly, and it's becoming increasingly clear that having a large number of decent things you can potentially do with mythic points matters much less than 1-3 very good things you can do with them. And again, in a normal campaign environment players are working with much less points per fight than in these stress tests.
Interesting.
6. It's tough to say how much of it was due to them having stronger mythic destinies, but the two martials severely overperformed the 2 casters here, though the Animist definitely still pulled their weight.
Mythic Resilience on all 3 saves is effectively a "play support or go home" situation for casters, so I don't think this is on the destinies specifically. No mythic destiny lets you overcome just how hard a counter to spellcasting 3 Mythic Resilience is, and there's no equivalent for martials. Especially when creatures like this already tend to have high saves that are relatively hard to get failures on: compounding that is just going to shut people down.
2. Mythic Defenses as a mechanic is just really unfun and immersion breaking. It doesn't make the monster feel mythic, it just makes it feel annoying.
Well it certainly LOOKS unfun on paper, so its nice to have some confirmation of that. Crits are fun. Taking them away randomly is far less so.
I'm pretty disappointed in how uneven the destinies are, but not surprised.
Thank you for conducting the stress test, Peacelock.
4. Mythic points still run out very quickly, and it's becoming increasingly clear that having a large number of decent things you can potentially do with mythic points matters much less than 1-3 very good things you can do with them. And again, in a normal campaign environment players are working with much less points per fight than in these stress tests.
The only comment I have is that the sections on Mythic Points (War of Immortals, pg. 76-77) and Designing Mythic Encounters (War of Immortals, pg. 84-85) recommend that 1) non-mythic challenges and encounters be used more often than mythic ones and 2) a "boss fight" against one or more mythic opponents should be preceded by a mythic deed or multiple opportunities to replenish mythic points. During a "normal" mythic campaign (if that's not an oxymoron), the PCs apparently shouldn't be spending mythic points in every situation; maybe once (or at most twice) in an encounter against a "non-boss" mythic opponent, or in a challenge or encounter that align to "following their Calling" or possibly "a legendary accomplishment or epic sacrifice."
Individual Mythic Destiny Thoughts from my players and I
The comments about how uneven the mythic destinies are in the stress test encounters is useful information. From my read-through, several of the mythic destiny feats definitely look more useful outside of combat than in combat.
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Out of combat vs In combat is some of it... but only some of it.
Ascended Celestial for instance, provides good in combat benefits, but also has some out of combat options, like permanent truespeech and access to a celestial advisor that can give you extra knowledge or information about a situation.
Beastlord on the other hand is primarily combat based and a lot of those combat options don't work well... though a lot of that stems from the fact that they just forgot to improve your companion in any meaningful way to make it mythic.
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Thank you so much for the feedback! Would love to hear from other folks' actual in-play experience, particularly over the course of an entire campaign or several sessions of play. Particularly encoutners that focus on Moderate (80 XP) or Severe (120 XP) encounters. The way the math works, more than Severe encounters are still gonna be really tough on mythic characters, and I also suspect/hope that having those actual confrontations with mythic monsters and challenges NOT be every single encounter, but instead be interspersed with non-mythic challenges will help to keep the mythic ones more memorable while simultaneously helping with the restoration of mythic points between encounters (since longer sessions with fewer mythic challenges = you're auto-filling more often by starting a new session, and also since having more non-mythic encounters doesn't in theory lower the rate at which you're gaining mythic points by falling your calling or doing legendary accomplishments).
Like hero points, a GM really should be keeping an eye on these PC resources and if a PC is struggling to keep up, consider being more generous on those opportunities to reward Mythic Points for following callings or accomplishing things. Those two elements are difficult to hard-code into published adventures.
Is there a mythic AP to play with the new rules?
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I realized I never left feedback on Mortal Herald since I was going down the list in the WoI table of contents lol.
Mortal Herald: Similar to Broken Chain and Eternal Legend in that it's in the "generally fun, balanced, and powerful" category with the caveat that a few of its abilities should really cost mythic points but don't. (I also have some concerns about the ability to inflict weakness 10 to all damage for a full round being too strong but I haven't seen it in play so maybe I'm overrating that feat)
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Great stuff!
2. So long as it's kept to 2 saves only, mythic resilience isn't quite as bad as I'd feared it would be.This kind of surprises me, though I guess in a test like this folks will have their full set of spells pretty frequently. It's going to feel a lot worse after some attrition where you might not have any of "the right save target spell" left, since everything else isn't going to be effective.
Honestly I was surprised too, and going into this test I was pretty sure I'd despise Resilience as a mechanic. But at least with the ones with only 2 saves it felt surprisingly fine. The casters were able to get around it by either spamming force barrage, healing/buffing, or finding the non-resilient save and targeting that. I think it helps that these were mostly very proficient players. In any sort of mythic campaign I think if casters go into it knowing resilience will be a thing and prepare accordingly with a variety of spell options they'll be okay.
That all being said I could definitely see "using mythic casting lets you bypass resilience" being a potential house rule at my own tables.
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Thanks for your playtests, this is good info to read. I wonder if games feel more mythic at lower levels, where Mythic Points have more of an impact on checks.
I always had the impression that Mythic Points were meant to be spent on skill checks and similar at lower levels, and then move to your destiny-specific actions as your level increased. It sounds like either my assumption was wrong, or the philosophy doesn't quite fire, given how much it sounds like the party spent their points on mythic Strikes and casting spells, instead.The comments about how uneven the mythic destinies are in the stress test encounters is useful information. From my read-through, several of the mythic destiny feats definitely look more useful outside of combat than in combat.That's also been my takeaway. It makes sense, since mythic play is arguably more focused on giving players control over the narrative as opposed to making them super-effective in combat, but it does make doing playtests like this somewhat difficult, and, unfortunately, those more narrative-focused feats are still going to compete with the combat feats in your mythic feat slots.
No, I'd say your initial impression there was correct with the caveat that it might take significantly longer than you'd expect before that changeover happens (for example all the way up to level 19 mythic casting is hard to top for many destinies), and that for some destinies they just don't really get mythic point abilities good enough to compete with Strike/Casting/Godspeed. For destinies with strong abilities that used mythic points, they definitely got used in the levels 16 and 20 test. (moreso the latter)
Re: narrative, I get where you're coming from but a lot of the strongest combat destinies in these tests also get some of the most powerful narrative and utility abilities, while some of the weakest destinies in these tests (like Beastlord) don't get much in the way of narrative power options. They're two totally different power measurements that don't seem to have any sort of inverse relationship (eg where one destiny is weaker in combat because they have stronger narrative feats or vice versa).
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Is there a mythic AP to play with the new rules?
Not yet.
Apparently there are a couple planned: one set in Iblydos for 1st-10th level for the mythic Callings and another (not sure where) for 11th-20th for mythic destinies.
Thank you so much for the feedback! Would love to hear from other folks' actual in-play experience, particularly over the course of an entire campaign or several sessions of play. Particularly encoutners that focus on Moderate (80 XP) or Severe (120 XP) encounters. The way the math works, more than Severe encounters are still gonna be really tough on mythic characters, and I also suspect/hope that having those actual confrontations with mythic monsters and challenges NOT be every single encounter, but instead be interspersed with non-mythic challenges will help to keep the mythic ones more memorable while simultaneously helping with the restoration of mythic points between encounters (since longer sessions with fewer mythic challenges = you're auto-filling more often by starting a new session, and also since having more non-mythic encounters doesn't in theory lower the rate at which you're gaining mythic points by falling your calling or doing legendary accomplishments).
Like hero points, a GM really should be keeping an eye on these PC resources and if a PC is struggling to keep up, consider being more generous on those opportunities to reward Mythic Points for following callings or accomplishing things. Those two elements are difficult to hard-code into published adventures.
You're very welcome! (and I echo the request to hear play experiences from other GMs or players here to see how their experiences matched up or contrasted to my group's)
FWIW, at least in these tests, I'm not sure I'd completely agree about the really tough bit for more than extreme encounters at least once they're level 16+. During the levels 16 and 20 tests, all 4 (technically 5 even since 130 xp is less but still extreme) extremes were won by the players, and 3/4 of those were absolutely smashed with little difficulty.
That said, those were mostly skilled players with 1 encounter days and some of the stronger destinies in their party, so if it was a boss fight at the end of a dungeon crawl and the destinies of the party were on the weaker side then it could certainly look a lot different. As always, attrition is an X factor that's hard to account for.
Great stuff!
2. So long as it's kept to 2 saves only, mythic resilience isn't quite as bad as I'd feared it would be.This kind of surprises me, though I guess in a test like this folks will have their full set of spells pretty frequently. It's going to feel a lot worse after some attrition where you might not have any of "the right save target spell" left, since everything else isn't going to be effective.
Honestly I was surprised too, and going into this test I was pretty sure I'd despise Resilience as a mechanic. But at least with the ones with only 2 saves it felt surprisingly fine. The casters were able to get around it by either spamming force barrage, healing/buffing, or finding the non-resilient save and targeting that. I think it helps that these were mostly very proficient players. In any sort of mythic campaign I think if casters go into it knowing resilience will be a thing and prepare accordingly with a variety of spell options they'll be okay.
That all being said I could definitely see "using mythic casting lets you bypass resilience" being a potential house rule at my own tables.
Ah. Well, support spells are how I'd expect to get around it, so that is predictable. As is Force Barrage since it bypasses all this stuff. But for a type of character like a spellcaster where the entire point is 'you have a huge toolbox of options', limiting their ability to use them that severely is disappointing but also expected.
Mythic Resilience really doesn't do anything against the narrative that PF2 doesn't want casters attacking big enemies directly, since that's the thing it hits hardest.
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Is there a mythic AP to play with the new rules?Not yet.
Apparently there are a couple planned: one set in Iblydos for 1st-10th level for the mythic Callings and another (not sure where) for 11th-20th for mythic destinies.
I mentioned this on Paizo Live on Friday, but there's assumptions here.
All I said is that we've got one called Myth Speaker in the works to come out after Shades of Blood. Myth Speaker is set in Iblydos for low level mythic play, focused on mythic callings. We have not revealed the level range for this Adventure Path yet, or for any potential higher level one focusing on mythic destinies.
Apparently there are a couple planned: one set in Iblydos for 1st-10th level for the mythic Callings and another (not sure where) for 11th-20th for mythic destinies.I mentioned this on Paizo Live on Friday, but there's assumptions here.
All I said is that we've got one called Myth Speaker in the works to come out after Shades of Blood. Myth Speaker is set in Iblydos for low level mythic play, focused on mythic callings. We have not revealed the level range for this Adventure Path yet, or for any potential higher level one focusing on mythic destinies.
Thank you for the clarification.
I was getting the information second-hand and some of it seems to have been garbled in the process. Just like the old childhood game of "telephone."
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We had another level 20 test a few days ago, where they beat a mythic Thanatotic Titan + friends with some difficulty and then absolutely clowned on a level +5 Treerazer. (Treerazer Nat failed the save for Decree of execution, got Weakness 20 to all damage, and was quickly melted) The Party was a Wildspell Wizard, Prophesied Monarch Champion, Eternal Legend Exemplar, and Apocalypse Rider Cleric.
Prophesied Monarch seemed very good but not broken, in a similar vein to Broken Chain and Eternal Legend (sans Fight Through Oblivion from the latter).
For Wildspell, I'll just quote what my player shared with me:
"All the Wildspell features that don't interact with Spellsurge are okay - Mana Explosion - to strong - Mythic Heightening and Imbue Spell. Imbue Spell deserves a special mention as it is one of the strongest caster feats in the game if you use it as intended to cheat out actions every combat. One action 7th level haste? I love it. One action tempest of shades? Crazy good, and you can Imbue a spell before every single fight so it is consistently strong. The broken part stems from the fact that it doesn't have any limitations on spells with longer cast times so you could do something silly like Imbue a Plane Shift and if you're losing a fight use it to teleport away instantly.
Spellsurge is awful and and desperately needs buffs. The default range sucks, the action cost is insane considering what it gives, it costs a mythic point for no reason, and enemies can use it against you, bafflingly. Spellsurge holds Wildspell back so much and desperately needs buffs and even with buffs to keep pace with what other paths are capable of."
Not much to say about Eternal Legend: it once again showed it's very good.
Apocalypse Rider at level 20 felt fairly underwhelming, the Horse just got knocked out almost immediately without even soaking any damage for the party because what killed it was AOEs.
The Titan once again didn't feel mythic despite multiple mythic abilities.
In general the two takeaways I'm getting most from these sessions are that the player facing mythic rules aren't bad but the destinies are severely imbalanced compared to what you'd expect in this system, and that the rules for mythic monsters just aren't very exciting. The monster abilities are mostly just various barely-diegetic ways of prolonging fights without actually making them more interesting. Also Mythic Defenses (the auto reroll on crits against mythic enemies level 20+) continued to just be the absolute opposite of fun.
Based on these 4 sessions, I'd highly encourage GMs to homebrew custom powerful mythic actions/abilities for monsters rather than use the ones from the book. I'd also encourage heavy homebrew rebalancing of the destinies (some nerfs to Celestial and Mortal Herald, probably just ban Fight Through Oblivion for EL, and generous buffs to Wildspell, Apocalypse Rider, and especially Archfiend and Beastlord. Keep in mind, the imbalances here are not like typical PF2E "imbalances" that are small and not a big deal, these are genuinely massive. Depending on your choice of Destiny, mythic PF2E can feel like a normal game of PF2E or it can feel like Godbound or Exalted 3rd edition. And when the characters with the power of the latter are in the same party as those with the power of the former, it can just feel really bad.
If anyone else has been playing or running mythic games, please let us know how your experience has compared to mine and my players' games!
I'm surprised Prophesized Monarch performed as well as it did. It seemed very weak to me when I read through it. Did you apply the weakness from Decree of Execution to every damage type the party did on an attack? If so, I can see how your party melted Treerazer. Thats an insane amount of damage, though weakness isn't supposed to work like that.
Were there any other abilities from it that were noteworthy?
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I'm surprised Prophesized Monarch performed as well as it did. It seemed very weak to me when I read through it. Did you apply the weakness from Decree of Execution to every damage type the party did on an attack? If so, I can see how your party melted Treerazer. Thats an insane amount of damage, though weakness isn't supposed to work like that.
Were there any other abilities from it that were noteworthy?
I know that it’s a more than a bit unclear in the books what exactly an instance of damage is, but my understanding is that weakness to all does in fact work like that and that’s how it’s automated on the PF2E Foundry system with behind the scenes guidance from the Paizo devs.
In it, an instance of damage is effectively defined as each damage type within a single source of damage (whether that be attack/spell/hazard/whatever). So if a monster with weaknesses to both fire and slashing gets attacked by a flaming longsword, both weaknesses are triggered. However, as the book describes, a monster weak to slashing and cold iron only takes extra damage once since both those weaknesses would key off the slashing damage in a cold iron longsword.
It’s the same reason champion reaction resistance applies to each damage type in an attack or spell rather than to the collective damage like hardness would. It sounds like you may not be running Resist all/weakness all RAW. (though like I said with how unclear the books are about what constitutes an instance of damage that’s totally understandable)
Re: Monarch, while DoE is certainly the highlight, the other decrees, Bloom of Health, Kneel before the rightful heir, etc are all very solid and many don’t cost mythic points.
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I'm surprised Prophesized Monarch performed as well as it did. It seemed very weak to me when I read through it. Did you apply the weakness from Decree of Execution to every damage type the party did on an attack? If so, I can see how your party melted Treerazer. Thats an insane amount of damage, though weakness isn't supposed to work like that.
Were there any other abilities from it that were noteworthy?
I know that it’s a more than a bit unclear in the books what exactly an instance of damage is, but my understanding is that weakness to all does in fact work like that and that’s how it’s automated on the PF2E Foundry system with behind the scenes guidance from the Paizo devs.
In it, an instance of damage is effectively defined as each damage type within a single source of damage (whether that be attack/spell/hazard/whatever). So if a monster with weaknesses to both fire and slashing gets attacked by a flaming longsword, both weaknesses are triggered. However, as the book describes, a monster weak to slashing and cold iron only takes extra damage once since both those weaknesses would key off the slashing damage in a cold iron longsword.
It’s the same reason champion reaction resistance applies to each damage type in an attack or spell rather than to the collective damage like hardness would. It sounds like you may not be running Resist all/weakness all RAW. (though like I said with how unclear the books are about what constitutes an instance of damage that’s totally understandable)
Re: Monarch, while DoE is certainly the highlight, the other decrees, Bloom of Health, Kneel before the rightful heir, etc are all very solid and many don’t cost mythic points.
Agreed, this is how this works RAW, and its also how Resist All works. That applies to Champions, but also Incoporeal Resistence: if you do multiple damage types, all of them get hit by it, and it's pretty rough if you can't get through it.
I'm not sure I've ever seen an instance of "Weakness All" outside of this ability, though. Weaknesses are almost always specific so you just don't see something like this happening in practice in a normal game. So I'm not sure "it takes Weakness 20 three times because it's a Slashing/Fire/Sonic Ranseur" is the outcome they had in mind.
It's something where a Paizo clarification/example on what's intended would help a ton.
I know that it’s a more than a bit unclear in the books what exactly an instance of damage is, but my understanding is that weakness to all does in fact work like that and that’s how it’s automated on the PF2E Foundry system with behind the scenes guidance from the Paizo devs.
In it, an instance of damage is effectively defined as each damage type within a single source of damage (whether that be attack/spell/hazard/whatever). So if a monster with weaknesses to both fire and slashing gets attacked by a flaming longsword, both weaknesses are triggered. However, as the book describes, a monster weak to slashing and cold iron only takes extra damage once since both those weaknesses would key off the slashing damage in a cold iron longsword.
It’s the same reason champion reaction resistance applies to each damage type in an attack or spell rather than to the collective damage like hardness would. It sounds like you may not be running Resist all/weakness all RAW. (though like I said with how unclear the books are about what constitutes an instance of damage that’s totally understandable)
Re: Monarch, while DoE is certainly the highlight, the other decrees, Bloom of Health, Kneel before the rightful heir, etc are all very solid and many don’t cost mythic points.
Agreed, this is how this works RAW, and its also how Resist All works. That applies to Champions, but also Incoporeal Resistence: if you do multiple damage types, all of them get hit by it, and it's pretty rough if you can't get through it.
I'm not sure I've ever seen an instance of "Weakness All" outside of this ability, though. Weaknesses are almost always specific so you just don't see something like this happening in practice in a normal game. So I'm not sure "it takes Weakness 20 three times because it's a Slashing/Fire/Sonic Ranseur" is the outcome they had in mind.
It's something where a Paizo clarification/example on what's intended would help a ton.
It's strange because according to RAW the resistance rules also state that multiple resistances don't apply to the same instance of damage except in the case of resistance to all damage but weakness doesn't have that specific allowance.
As far as my experience goes, Foundry doesn't follow that first rule and applies multiple resistances even if a creature doesn't have resistance to all so I'm uncertain if they can be counted as a perfect rules source here.
I suppose if an attack that deals multiple types of damage are all counted as separate instances of that damage, then weakness to all damage would work like that, but then it seems weird that they would specifically need to give an example to allow resistance to all damage to function as it does.
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It's strange because according to RAW the resistance rules also state that multiple resistances don't apply to the same instance of damage except in the case of resistance to all damage but weakness doesn't have that specific allowance.
As far as my experience goes, Foundry doesn't follow that first rule and applies multiple resistances even if a creature doesn't have resistance to all so I'm uncertain if they can be counted as a perfect rules source here.
The Foundry devs are ultimately making decisions on how this works just like the rest of us are and aren't infallable in that regard, though they generally do a good job and the trust they get is well earned, just like all the folks making tools. They also need whatever they do to work in code without being a nightmare of exceptions. So, "all resistances work this way and resist all isn't a special exception" makes a lot of sense in that context.
I tend to think that makes sense in general because it doesn't make sense to me that resist all can resist slashing and fire damage from a flaming sword, but "resist slashing and resist fire" can't despite covering the exact same damage types in this context (the ones that are happening).
Having weakness work the same way similarly allows the one implementation to cover every scenario, rather than having it work differently than resistance and having weakness all work differently than resist all. That's going to be dramatically more complicated to code, and for players to understand what is going on.
I suppose if an attack that deals multiple types of damage are all counted as separate instances of that damage, then weakness to all damage would work like that, but then it seems weird that they would specifically need to give an example to allow resistance to all damage to function as it does.
Agreed. I really miss the FAQ that PF1 had at times like this, because this is a perfect case where a couple of examples would clarify what the intention is far more effectively than more rules text could (especially since it seems clear no errata is coming on this).
Like, take a scenario where a weapon doing 14 slashing, 6 fire, and 1 acid damage hits a creature that has weakness 10 slashing, 5 fire, how much damage does it take? If Paizo answered that question officially (and a similar resistance one) as an example, then its crystal clear how they intend the rule to work and we're on the same page.
Alas, that just isn't the kind of communication the community has with them anymore.
The Foundry devs are ultimately making decisions on how this works just like the rest of us are and aren't infallable in that regard, though they generally do a good job and the trust they get is well earned, just like all the folks making tools. They also need whatever they do to work in code without being a nightmare of exceptions. So, "all resistances work this way and resist all isn't a special exception" makes a lot of sense in that context.
I tend to think that makes sense in general because it doesn't make sense to me that resist all can resist slashing and fire damage from a flaming sword, but "resist slashing and resist fire" can't despite covering the exact same damage types in this context (the ones that are happening).
Having weakness work the same way similarly allows the one implementation to cover every scenario, rather than having it work differently than resistance and having weakness all work differently than resist all. That's going to be dramatically more complicated to code, and for players to understand what is going on.
Indeed. In all the groups I've been in, the resistance to all clause has always tripped us up because it's written as if it's an exception, and in either reading of resistance/weakness rules it seems to contradict what the rest of the rules are telling us.
If an instance of damage is per strike or effect, then as you said, resistance to all and individual resistances function differently even if they are being struck by the same several damage types.
And if an instance of damage is per type per attack/effect, then the resistance to all clause is redundant and stands strangely with the rest of the rules because it seems to be written as a special case.
Ultimately, either ruling works for me. Though the groups I've been in have usually seen any given attack/effect as an instance of damage, rather than all the individual damage types inside it. It makes playing outside of automated systems so much easier especially when martials start getting their rainbow elemental weapons at high level.
That does bring us back to the Prophesized Monarch. If weakness to all damage truly does affect all damage types then martials can easily see upwards of 80 extra damage per attack, which seems like an extreme amount. Maybe that's what the destiny needs since I'd pegged it as really weak beforehand, but that number seems excessive, especially when compared to every other option in the game, mythics abilities included. I don't think having a single ability with an effect this outsized is a particularly healthy option when nothing else compares to the damage boost it provides.
Agreed. I really miss the FAQ that PF1 had at times like this, because this is a perfect case where a couple of examples would clarify what the intention is far more effectively than more rules text could (especially since it seems clear no errata is coming on this).
Like, take a scenario where a weapon doing 14 slashing, 6 fire, and 1 acid damage hits a creature that has weakness 10 slashing, 5 fire, how much damage does it take? If Paizo answered that question officially (and a similar resistance one) as an example, then its crystal clear how they intend the rule to work and we're on the same page.
Alas, that just isn't the kind of communication the community has with them anymore.
It's a shame. I can think of multiple rules that could use a round of clarification, but I doubt any of them are happening anytime soon.
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Weaknesses are too strong. I dislike them a great deal. You get a weakness to unholy damage with a whole party exploiting it, completely destroys even monsters like balors very quickly. They set the weaknesses too high. Weakness all is going to turn a lot of fights into cakewalks.
It's strange because according to RAW the resistance rules also state that multiple resistances don't apply to the same instance of damage except in the case of resistance to all damage but weakness doesn't have that specific allowance.
As far as my experience goes, Foundry doesn't follow that first rule and applies multiple resistances even if a creature doesn't have resistance to all so I'm uncertain if they can be counted as a perfect rules source here.
I understand and agree with Foundry's ruling of RAW on resistance,
because the part about multiple resistance to one damage instance references the weakness section("as described in weakness") that talks about cold iron slashing damage or holy fire damage and the like. it dont talk about an attack that deal slashing and fire damage.
the example and clarification it this section even say
"This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a cold iron axe cutting a monster that has weakness to cold iron and slashing."
the "usually only" part makes it clear to me that its something rare and not something that almost every rune or alot of monster in the system would trigger
and i believe that paiso would have used a better example otherwise
aka its reserved to material and holy/unholy infused attack and when those resistances and weaknesses are in play.
but lets can the resistance discussion since there are several thread on this forum on this topic already.
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It was nice to read someone playtesting the mythic rules even if they confirmed my fears about casters in mythic play.
I’m looking forward to returning to this thread after I finish reading the WoI. To use or not to use?