|
Prepping this for a con in a couple of weeks.
I don't see this explicitly addressed in the scenario, but I get the impression that the Mythic system replaces the Hero Point system. In other words, we do not hand out Hero Points during play. Is that correct?
It seems that adding Hero Points on top of Mythic Points would skew things too much.
|
|
Prepping this for a con in a couple of weeks.
I don't see this explicitly addressed in the scenario, but I get the impression that the Mythic system replaces the Hero Point system. In other words, we do not hand out Hero Points during play. Is that correct?
It seems that adding Hero Points on top of Mythic Points would skew things too much.
Right, mythic points replace hero points. You don't get both. And mythic points are not handed out the same way either.
Venture-Captain, Tennessee—East Tennessee
|
Ran this this past weekend, and it seems that high-tier is a little off....
Is the DC of Penumbra's spells correct? Playing up, it's a DC 38, which is the same DC as a level 18 task. Both my level 11 and level 12 characters have to Nat 20 just to succeed against almost all of her spells, which seems....not great. Her spell attack rolls crit on a 13 on my level 12 and on an 11 on my level 11, which also seems a little off.
|
Venture-Captain, Tennessee—East Tennessee
|
Can you really TPK? Don't you get back up at full dying with doom per mythic dying rules?
So youd have to die 3x?
There's a handout as part of the scenario that lists what abilities you get. That is not on the list.
"Any mythic abilities or properties noted in the full ruleset and not listed below do not apply to this temporary state."
Venture-Agent, Ohio—Columbus
|
When I played our GM didn't use Slither. Honestly, with a DC 38, Slither by itself is a possible TPK, before getting into Dominate (our fighter had to roll a 20 to save, thankfully a caster got off a lucky dispel magic against it), Chain Lightning, Sure Strike/Disintegrate, and all the rest.
I would allow prebuffing before entering area E at least. Hopefully the party has picked up on the hints that she's a VERY powerful caster by this time.
Editing to add that the replacement of Hero Points by Mythic Points is a 2 edged sword. Yes Mythic Points can do very powerful things, but not being able to prevent dying is a big loss, and as Andrew also mentions not being able to reroll flat checks. Only being able to reroll skill checks and saving throws is pretty limiting.
Also, the Godspeed mythic ability isn't very good. Being limited to Stride, Step or Leap is pretty weak at high level. And at this level, many PCs are flying (either permanently or buffed for a fight) and Godspeed is utterly useless to any flying PC.
|
|
My players played really well, using mythic points to boost their initiative scores and immediately caging the boss in a wall of stone which bought them a whole turn. Despite this the last fight can turn into an absolute slog.
The adjustments I had meant that there were 4 vampire guards on top of the BBEG herself. This meant 4 additional (low DC) dominates on top of the boss's + the mythic points she can spend to cast them again. Each vampire also has 3rd level dispel magics which can hit key buff spells like haste, fly, and heroism. They also all have drain bonded item to try again if they fail.
The final fight isnt impossible by any means, my players won in the end, but the amount of stuff going on really slowed things down, especially if the party's main DPS gets dominated.
Another weird quirk about the scenario's callings is that a lot of checks specified to recharge mythic points on a crit don't come up much or bait the players into trying to game the system (long jump until you crit ect...) I would suggest being more flexible in which checks can regen so the players feel like they can spend the mythic points a bit more freely.
|
Venture-Agent, Ohio—Columbus
|
My players played really well, using mythic points to boost their initiative scores and immediately caging the boss in a wall of stone which bought them a whole turn. Despite this the last fight can turn into an absolute slog.
I was already writing the AcP check for a res after we realized our fighter needed a 20 to get rid of the dominate. You really had us on the ropes for a bit there. :)
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Our local group also had lots of trouble with the final encounter, playing at level range 11-12.
Important note that the encounter math looks very wrong at level range 11-12, too. I think the statues should say (0) instead of (2), because as-written the final encounter is 200xp when a Severe encounter is normally 120xp (and even an Extreme encounter is 160xp).
(Removing the two statues brings things down to 120xp, suggesting this was an error that GMs can, under the current OPF guidelines, correct on their own in order to make this encounter Severe and not Extreme++)
To-note, the encounter math looks correct at level range 9-10 for the final encounter, for what it's worth.
|
Venture-Agent, Ohio—Columbus
|
Our local group also had lots of trouble with the final encounter, playing at level range 11-12.
Important note that the encounter math looks very wrong at level range 11-12, too. I think the statues should say (0) instead of (2), because as-written the final encounter is 200xp when a Severe encounter is normally 120xp (and even an Extreme encounter is 160xp).
(Removing the two statues brings things down to 120xp, suggesting this was an error that GMs can, under the current OPF guidelines, correct on their own in order to make this encounter Severe and not Extreme++)
To-note, the encounter math looks correct at level range 9-10 for the final encounter, for what it's worth.
Oh yeah, that definitely needs to be mentioned! It's come up on the discord I frequent but I forgot to mention here. Seems pretty clear that the SHADOWPACT STONE BULWARKS (2) statblock was directly copy pasted from encounter D1 and the (2) was not removed.
|
Venture-Agent, Ohio—Columbus
|
Responding to a post on the product thread
Question about Stat Blocks:
stat block:
Tier 9-10 encounter C has gargantuan tarantulas, and Tier 11-12 also has gargantuan. Should Tier 9-10 be Huge (or Large), instead of Gargantuan?
Yeah, that's weird. Giant Tarantulas are normally large. For what it's worth, the Foundry implementation has them as large. End of the day though I don't think it makes much difference. There's plenty of room to move around and the size doesn't change much at all about the fight.
It's not as big a deal as 4 huge statues in a 30'x30' room for encounter D1.
|
|
Can you really TPK? Don't you get back up at full dying with doom per mythic dying rules?
So youd have to die 3x?
There's a handout as part of the scenario that lists what abilities you get. That is not on the list.
"Any mythic abilities or properties noted in the full ruleset and not listed below do not apply to this temporary state."
It didn't mention hero points either. The dying rules are inherently part of the mythic trait/tag. That's strange that they wouldn't apply.
|
|
It didn't mention hero points either. The dying rules are inherently part of the mythic trait/tag. That's strange that they wouldn't apply.Can you really TPK? Don't you get back up at full dying with doom per mythic dying rules?
So youd have to die 3x?
There's a handout as part of the scenario that lists what abilities you get. That is not on the list.
"Any mythic abilities or properties noted in the full ruleset and not listed below do not apply to this temporary state."
I ran it with no mythic dying rules. I was convinced lol.
Venture-Agent, Pennsylvania—Philadelphia
|
It would not be fun for the player that it happened to on, but is there any reason why penumbra would not want to use her soul cage to drop a 6th level banishment spell on a player to thin out the PC's Ranks. It might to anti-fun to do first round and basically make someone miss out on a whole fight if they fail but if she where being threatnend by a big scary melee combatanbt I dont see any reason she would want that person to stick around.
|
Venture-Agent, Ohio—Columbus
|
We talked about this at our game Saturday. There's certainly an argument for and against Heropoints. HP are a base assumption for every PFS2 game, and while the normal "Don't forget to hand out hero points" part is missing, it also doesn't say not to hand them out as normal.
|
Venture-Agent, Pennsylvania—Philadelphia
|
There's a handout as part of the scenario that lists what abilities you get. That is not on the list.
"Any mythic abilities or properties noted in the full ruleset and not listed below do not apply to this temporary state."
Doesn't that also mean that players will have Hero Points AND Mythic Points in this specific case? The handout doesn't say they lose their hero points, so the "replace hero points" property of Mythic points does not apply?
That would make a pretty significant difference for the difficulty of the adventure!
It seems to me that if you take the reading that the PC's Do not get hero Points because they are mythic characters for the scenario even though them losing hero points is not explicitly written in, it would also be fair by the same logic to have mythic dying rules apply to them, as they are mythic characters even though it is not explicitly stated in the scenario.
Or by the more literal approach they would get hero points and no mythic dying rules as those are not explicitly written into the hand out.
It seems that they wording in the hand out of "Any mythic abilities or properties noted in the full ruleset and not listed below do not apply to this temporary state." Could be taken either way but it might have just been meant to indicate that they players can not chose from callings or mythic feats not listed in the hand out. However the word "properties" feels like a potential sticking point for the other view and the players should get hero points and no mythic dying rules.
|
|
There's a handout as part of the scenario that lists what abilities you get. That is not on the list.
"Any mythic abilities or properties noted in the full ruleset and not listed below do not apply to this temporary state."
Doesn't that also mean that players will have Hero Points AND Mythic Points in this specific case? The handout doesn't say they lose their hero points, so the "replace hero points" property of Mythic points does not apply?
That would make a pretty significant difference for the difficulty of the adventure!
It seems to me that if you take the reading that the PC's Do not get hero Points because they are mythic characters for the scenario even though them losing hero points is not explicitly written in, it would also be fair by the same logic to have mythic dying rules apply to them, as they are mythic characters even though it is not explicitly stated in the scenario.
Or by the more literal approach they would get hero points and no mythic dying rules as those are not explicitly written into the hand out.
It seems that they wording in the hand out of "Any mythic abilities or properties noted in the full ruleset and not listed below do not apply to this temporary state." Could be taken either way but it might have just been meant to indicate that they players can not chose from callings or mythic feats not listed in the hand out. However the word "properties" feels like a potential sticking point for the other view and the players should get hero points and no mythic dying rules.
I agree with what you said. Luckily the scenario was so easy for my players it didnt matter. I am running it again tonight but I suspect the same given the makeup of the party.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Most scenarios don't give instructions to award hero points at regular intervals these days - that's in the guide. With no specific instructions to not award hero points at regular intervals, there is no reason to not distribute them. For a scenario with 5 combats (yea, good luck getting this done in 4-5 hours, btw - both of my runs at this were pushing 6 hours), giving the party ways to have an easier time is never a bad thing.
Also, GM glyph hero points and campaign coin hero points are rewards for volunteers donating their time and service to the organized play campaign and other people, so unless a scenario specifically says to deny those players these rewards, I'm never doing that.
Edit/Addendum: Mythic points, as presented in this scenario, do not allow PCs to reroll attacks or avoid death, no matter what the full mythic rules normally say. That alone is enough of a reason to consider including hero points when running #6-09.
|
Venture-Lieutenant, Minnesota—Minneapolis
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It would not be fun for the player that it happened to on, but is there any reason why penumbra would not want to use her soul cage to drop a 6th level banishment spell on a player to thin out the PC's Ranks. It might to anti-fun to do first round and basically make someone miss out on a whole fight if they fail but if she where being threatnend by a big scary melee combatanbt I dont see any reason she would want that person to stick around.
Penumbra's tactics in general are pretty anti-fun for the player who, say, gets slammed as a 10th level champion with a dominate from a 13th level boss monster that her character has to roll a natural 22 to clear...
|
Venture-Captain, Washington—Seattle
|
A player pointed out that the chronicle sheet gives a "dawnsilver full plate", but not with any of the fundamental runes found on the armor in the scenario. Checking the math, the price is correct for a non-magical dawnsilver full plate, but I feel like this is still a mistake?
You could add those runes yourself (or other runes that you prefer) anyway, so it doesn't seem like a big deal that they are left off, as they aren't the Uncommon part. (The main issue on the chronicle is that the price is wrong for the sword as specified with runes.)
|
Venture-Captain, Kentucky—Lexington
|
Question about the wording of mythic ferocity on the statues.
"The shadowpact statue avoids being knocked out and remains at half its maximum HP, but its wounded value increases by 1."
Does that mean they regen back to 50 HP? What effect does making them Wounded 1 have? Aren't they dead when they hit 0 HP for realsies?
|
|
Question about the wording of mythic ferocity on the statues.
"The shadowpact statue avoids being knocked out and remains at half its maximum HP, but its wounded value increases by 1."
Does that mean they regen back to 50 HP? What effect does making them Wounded 1 have? Aren't they dead when they hit 0 HP for realsies?
That's how I read it: When they reach 0, they fill back to 50 HP without the damage instance overflowing into the "new" hit points. They basically have 150+ additional HP. When the statue regenerates, I would describe how the statue repairs itself, but with a lot of the chipped off stone remaining on the ground. That should illustrate what is going on without giving everything away.
Normally, GMs are free to apply the Dying rules to significant NPCs and opponents: This is an example of a creature where this has to happen, otherwise the encounter doesn't make sense.
As to Hero Points: There's no mention in neither the scenario nor the handout not to hand them out, so I'm going to hand them out as normal.
|
|
Mythic points replace hero points.
If they have both the party will steamroll this scenario.
I've run it 3x all 3x times it's run extremely long. Id make the ship encounter 1 round and narrate the rest. Id make sure the giants are a social encounter as well.
2 out of 3 times the party has destroyed the final encounter as well.
I'm not going to run it for a while because it's too long lol.
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Mythic points replace hero points.
If they have both the party will steamroll this scenario.
I've run it 3x all 3x times it's run extremely long. Id make the ship encounter 1 round and narrate the rest. Id make sure the giants are a social encounter as well.
2 out of 3 times the party has destroyed the final encounter as well.
I'm not going to run it for a while because it's too long lol.
I first ran this at a con in the last slot of the night so that we could go overtime. Even with some overtuned PCs it took nearly 6 hours. I did not give out hero points, but afterwards realized that was a mistake.
The mythic rules in the set say to change ONLY these rules. They do not mention the hero points. Therefore, you should still give out the hero points as if there was no mythic.
I've since had this game at my local store. Since our store had a strict closing time, I directed the GMs to skip the spiders AND the statue fight. One table (23cp) finished right on time, the other (16 cp) about a half hour early.
|
|
With regards to the Hero points, having now run the scenario, a next time that I run it, I'd only give out the hero points related to Glyphs (so max 1 per player if there are enough Glyphs at the table).
My reasoning behind it is as follows:
- The Mythic Points are really strong and cover nearly everything Hero Points do and then some. I think the only thing not covered by Mythic Points, is that you can't stabilize while dying.
- Players can regain Mythic Points via the Mythic Calling they chose.
- I now agree that having full Hero Points on top of Mythic Points is indeed OP, and is clearly not intended.
- Since Hero Points tied to GM Glyphs are specific to the PFS campaign, I don't think it's the intention of the campaign team to deprive players from their campaign rewards unless there is an alternative solution. An additional Mythic Point does not seem possible as the max pool is 3.
--
Regardless, running this was a blast! The challenges are spicy and the combats unforgiving but fair. Sure Strike + Disintegrate is mean, though fortunately Penumbra can only use that combination once due to the 10min cooldown on Sure Strike.