| Tridus |
Calling doesn't matter much mechanically IMO. Just pick something that doesn't have an anathema that causes you problems and a method of regaining mythic points that you can do. Most of their abilities aren't really relevant since Rewrite Fate is what you'll actually use.
Maybe get Sage's Calling if you want Mythic Counterspell but you'll have to invest in the requirements to get Quick Recognition as well. Otherwise? Pick something that works for you narratively and doesn't have a problematic anathema.
For Destinies... Archfiend isn't great either IMO. The realm isn't that useful and the actions spent on it could be doing something that is probably more useful (like casting spells). It's better than Beast Lord, but that is a VERY low bar.
Wildspell is supposed to be "the caster one", but its main ability benefits your enemies and the whole thing is pretty lame in general.
Prophesized Monarch has some cool stuff. Godling does as well. Some stuff in Broken Chain should also work.
Can you tell I'm not a big fan of PF2 mythic? lol. Sorry, there just isn't a ton to work with here for casters that is really impactful the way martials get.
| gesalt |
Omg, I had no idea, what is mythic resilience??
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.
At level 13, mythic creatures will have at least one instance of this ability and can have it on two or potentially all three saves.
| Lia Wynn |
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You're focusing on casting debuffs in a mythic campaign. This is a grievous mistake. Mythic resilience will eat you alive.
I don't think it's a mistake for two reasons.
First, most encounters in a Mythic game will still be non-Mythic encounters, and so Mythic Resiliance will not apply to them at all.
Second, many of the best debuffs target Will (though not all of them), and 48.7 percent of the monsters in the game have Fortitude as a high save, and only 18 percent of creatures have Will as the high save. Mythic Reslience states to put it on the *high* save first, so 80 percent of the time, MR will do nothing against will-based debuffs.
Is it something to be aware of? Absolutely! Is it a "grievous" mistake? No, I don't think so. If it stacked with Incapacitation, I would feel differently, but it does not.
| gesalt |
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I don't think it's a mistake for two reasons.
First, most encounters in a Mythic game will still be non-Mythic encounters, and so Mythic Resiliance will not apply to them at all.
Second, many of the best debuffs target Will (though not all of them), and 48.7 percent of the monsters in the game have Fortitude as a high save, and only 18 percent of creatures have Will as the high save. Mythic Reslience states to put it on the *high* save first, so 80 percent of the time, MR will do nothing against will-based debuffs.
The only encounters that matter are the difficult ones. Unless their table is throwing non mythic severe and extreme encounters at them regularly it doesn't matter if most encounters are non mythic.
Will is often the second best save. At level 13+ mythic creatures will have a minimum 1 instance of resilience (typically fort) and likely have a second instance (typically will). The last thing you want to do is go into a fight that matters and learn that suddenly all your important spells had the incapacitation trait added to them.
So instead of playing a debuffer, the smart play is to keep an AoE incap spell or two for mass non-mythic mooks and focus your remaining spells on things that don't interact with saves. Buffs, illusions, walls, etc. Maybe reflex spells since it is the least common high save as you level and therefore the least likely to be covered by mythic resilience.
| Tridus |
Or you bring some min-rank incapacitation spells and use those on the mythic resilience enemies, since they're exactly as likely to work as literally any other spell hitting that save. That's completely opposite to how the rest of the game works, but mythic resilience warps the game in some really awful ways for caster PCs.
ie: Slow inflicts Slowed 1 on a success for 1 round. Paralyze and Dominate both inflict Stunned 1 on a success and FAR more devastating outcomes on a failure. Normally Slow would be MUCH more likely to land... but against mythic resilience its actually exactly as likely as Paralyze and Dominate. So you might as well cast those because if they fail it, the outcome is far better for you. Paralyze is even the same rank as base Slow and they're both single target anyway.
Any Incapacitation spell with a good success effect (and a fight ending fail effect, which is probably why its Incapcitation in the first place) becomes a lot better under mythic resilience because it's rank doesn't matter anymore and other spells get nerfed so hard that you might as well try the Hail Mary.
And that's the added wrinkle of playing mythic casters: some enemies will just screw you over and if you don't have something good hitting a save that doesn't have mythic resilience, you're massively reduced in effectiveness in a way mythic martials almost never have to deal with (because mythic resistance is a joke). If they happen to be immune to your spells hitting a working save (due to their creature type or a special ability unrelated to mythic), you can be just flat out screwed and your options are "use things that the creature doesn't make saves on at all", "be a buffbot", or "sit this out and let the martials handle it."
The thing in War of Immortals with mythic resilience in all 3 saves feels like someone at Paizo going "people saying the game designers favor martials over casters in core material are wrong and we're going to prove it by showing you what it looks like when we actually do that."
| Lia Wynn |
Lia Wynn wrote:I don't think it's a mistake for two reasons.
First, most encounters in a Mythic game will still be non-Mythic encounters, and so Mythic Resiliance will not apply to them at all.
Second, many of the best debuffs target Will (though not all of them), and 48.7 percent of the monsters in the game have Fortitude as a high save, and only 18 percent of creatures have Will as the high save. Mythic Reslience states to put it on the *high* save first, so 80 percent of the time, MR will do nothing against will-based debuffs.
The only encounters that matter are the difficult ones. Unless their table is throwing non mythic severe and extreme encounters at them regularly it doesn't matter if most encounters are non mythic.
Will is often the second best save. At level 13+ mythic creatures will have a minimum 1 instance of resilience (typically fort) and likely have a second instance (typically will). The last thing you want to do is go into a fight that matters and learn that suddenly all your important spells had the incapacitation trait added to them.
So instead of playing a debuffer, the smart play is to keep an AoE incap spell or two for mass non-mythic mooks and focus your remaining spells on things that don't interact with saves. Buffs, illusions, walls, etc. Maybe reflex spells since it is the least common high save as you level and therefore the least likely to be covered by mythic resilience.
When it comes to saves, you are factually wrong. I've recently done a study of all 897 monsters in Remastered PF2, and one of the things I looked at was high saves.
Fort is by far the highest with 48.7 percent of monsters having it high, then Reflex at 38.3 percent, and then Will at 18 percent. It adds up to more than 100 percent because some monsters have two high saves, and the rarest combo (it was 2 or 3 monsters of 897) is Fort/Will.
Will is *by far* the least used save in the game, and is not often the highest or the second highest. It's also the one that people *think* is highest because when the enemy makes a save, even when it's the low save, it's the most impactful.
There is just no factual basis to argue otherwise.
Now, when it comes to encounters, sure, the most dangerous ones in a Mythic game will be the Mythic encounters, and MR comes into play there. But, to say that none of the Non-mythic encounters will be dangerous, is, IMO, a stretch. Maybe that's the case at your table, but I think having tools to deal with those encounters is also valuable.
I am not saying that debuffing only is a good idea for a caster in any game, especially a Mythic one, as every caster should have a toolbag for different style encounters. I am saying that I feel that debuff will work, especially Will-based debuffing, even when you're in a Mythic encounter, given the way that Paizo has designed nearly 900 monsters, and I will be keeping my study up to date as more are released.
| gesalt |
Never mind, did it myself. Quick copy/paste from nethys into a spreadsheet since they don't have an export option anymore. Tied highest saves were counted for both/all saves. Second highest checks that the high save wasn't tied (but could, itself, be tied).
Here's what I found:
Level 10, non unique
132 entries
Fort highest, 2nd highest: 66, 39
Ref highest, 2nd highest: 45, 43
Will highest, 2nd highest: 28, 52
Level 11
104
53, 32
38, 33
19, 42
Level 12
101
54, 25
29, 36
23, 46
Level 13
105
51, 38
36, 29
20, 48
Level 14
81
35, 24
23, 32
27, 28
Level 15
83
39, 26
24, 27
26, 33
Level 16
69
33, 15
21, 23
18, 34
Level 17
60
31, 14
16, 18
17, 27
Level 18
67
39, 13
09, 25
19, 33
Level 19
34
15, 8
10, 11
12, 15
Level 20
34
17, 13
03, 10
14, 14
Going by these numbers, no, I do not feel like will is a reliable save to target against a mythic enemy.