I have a question regarding the mythic rules from War of Immortals. When a character becomes mythic, they gain the ability Rewrite Fate (extract):
REWRITE FATE [free-action]
Trigger You roll a skill check or saving throw and don’t like the result.
You expend a Mythic Point and reroll the check or save with mythic proficiency, taking the new result.
Now, the various callings all have wordings like these:
ACROBAT’S CALLING
When you Balance, Maneuver in Flight, Tumble Through, or attempt a Long Jump, you can spend a Mythic Point to attempt the check at mythic proficiency.
DEMAGOGUE’S CALLING
When you attempt a check to Coerce or Make an Impression, you can spend a Mythic Point to attempt the check at mythic
proficiency.
Also, several mythic feats have a silimar kind of wording:
ARMS THAT CUT THE WAVES FEAT 2
When you attempt an Athletics check to Swim, you can spend a Mythic Point to attempt the check at mythic proficiency.
UNBELIEVABLY BELIEVABLE [one-action] FEAT 4
When you attempt a check to Gather Information, Make an Impression, make a Request, or Lie, you can spend a Mythic Point to attempt the check at mythic proficiency.
My question now is, why should you even use the option of these callings or the feats, and why even take the feats? Isn't Rewrite Fate just simply better in any case? What am I missing?
(And as an aside, why is Unbelievably Believable an action? Is that a misprint?)
Pleas help me understand these rules.
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My question now is, why should you even use the option of these callings or the feats, and why even take the feats? Isn't Rewrite Fate just simply better in any case? What am I missing?
I don't think you're missing anything. You're almost always better off rolling normally and using Rewrite Fate if you need to. Technically its going to be better odds to roll with the mythic proficiency upfront and Rewrite Fate if you fail since that's two rolls at Mythic Proficiency, but that's also two mythic points (vs zero if you succeed upfront or one if you nee rewrite fate) so it's really, really not worth it unless you are desperately fishing for a Critical Success.
The mythic rules have a lot of issues and this is one of them. Abilities that let you roll at mythic proficiency make no sense to use when Rewrite Fate lets you do it only when you need to, and they certainly aren't worth spending a feat on.
(And as an aside, why is Unbelievably Believable an action? Is that a misprint?)
Yes, that is a mistake. It was corrected in the errata: it's not an action.
I think that Tridus' answer is 100 percent correct from a mechanical perspective.
However, what seems to be missed a lot when talking about the Mythic Rules is that, much like Daggerheart, there is an increased focus on the narrative side of the game.
In the story of your adventurers using the feat and embracing their mythic powers would be, IMO, much better than using Reroll Fate. If you use Acrobats Calling, for instance, to roll through a partly collapsing building and save someone's life, I'm much more likely to refund the Mythic Point as a GM than if you roll normally and say something like.
"Oh, I rolled a 2. I guess I'll just Reroll Fate."
I would want to reward you for using your actual Mythic feats and embracing the story, rather than just effectively popping a Hero point.
I do think that the mythic rules should have both had a playtest and something like a Developer's Diary video, linked through a Paizo Blog to explain the design intent, to be more in-depth about how the developers viewed the system.
Yep, it's for that near-guarantee of a mythic roll and reroll, generally in thematic areas.
It's worth noting that mythic points are cheaper than hero points. You start every session with three instead of usually one or two, you don't need them to stave off death, and they can't be used to reroll attack rolls.
If that's not for you, then don't worry about it, and you can just think of Mythic as giving you different hero points and gentler death rules until level 6.
It's worth noting that mythic points are cheaper than hero points. You start every session with three instead of usually one or two, you don't need them to stave off death, and they can't be used to reroll attack rolls.
Heh. That is something that I hadn't noticed before. And it is a bit amusing to me that Mythic Points are nerfed a bit compared to Hero Points in this specific lack of ability.
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I think that Tridus' answer is 100 percent correct from a mechanical perspective.
However, what seems to be missed a lot when talking about the Mythic Rules is that, much like Daggerheart, there is an increased focus on the narrative side of the game.
In the story of your adventurers using the feat and embracing their mythic powers would be, IMO, much better than using Reroll Fate. If you use Acrobats Calling, for instance, to roll through a partly collapsing building and save someone's life, I'm much more likely to refund the Mythic Point as a GM than if you roll normally and say something like.
"Oh, I rolled a 2. I guess I'll just Reroll Fate."
I would want to reward you for using your actual Mythic feats and embracing the story, rather than just effectively popping a Hero point.
That would be a great system. Unfortunately that's not what they gave us. The mythic rules are very proscriptive. For example you can't use Acrobats Calling to roll through a party collapsing building to save someone's life. You can only use it to " Balance, Maneuver in Flight, Tumble Through, or attempt a Long Jump". None of those apply to this kind of skill challenge. Likewise, other ones like the "you can spend a mythic point while swimming" one are gated behind feats.
What actions you can roll at mythic proficiency is pretty restricted... until you use Rewrite Fate, which can be used on every skill check and every saving throw without restriction. So I need a calling (aka an archetype) or a feat to be allowed to roll with mythic proficiency in a specific action... or I can reroll with mythic proficiency without any of that for some reason.
The rules are like that all over the place. They talk something up but the mechanics don't deliver it. Like, the Beast Lord destiny talks about some really exciting concepts, then forgot to have your companion count as mythic so it can bypass mythic resistance, and it gets absolutely clobbered in effectiveness because of it.
So we're firmly in house rule territory with what you're describing. Now to be clear: what you're describing is way better than the actual system, and if I ever run a mythic game that's absolutely what I will be doing. A "mythic acrobat" should be able to choose to be a mythic acrobat on anything they're doing that's relevant, not a proscribed list of actions that somehow doesn't even include a chase (where you'd think they would excel).
But it's not really accurate to judge the system we got based on how it's house ruled. And just IMO, but I think if they wanted to create a narrative focused system, they would have. The rules are so proscribed and specific that it doesn't feel like that's what they actually wanted to do, though.
(Narrative systems are great, and some of their ideas do apply to PF2. Like Book 2 chapter 3 of Fists of the Ruby Phoenix is at such a scale that I don't try to run most of it in encounter mode: I drop out to theatre of the mind and a more narrative approach. Given how the whole chapter feels very cinematic and over the top anime like, I think it's a great moment to scale back the mechanics and just let players do awesome things in a crazy scene with that as the focus. Skill challenges with mythic characters should absolutely be more like that I think.)
I do think that the mythic rules should have both had a playtest and something like a Developer's Diary video, linked through a Paizo Blog to explain the design intent, to be more in-depth about how the developers viewed the system.
100% agree. There's some stuff in here that would have been caught really fast during a playtest because it just doesn't make sense when you look at it.