PF Mythic Rules. Balanced and playable? Or to be avoided

[Katana1515]

Hey!

I consider myself a fairly experienced DM for both 3.5 and pathfinder but I am really not familiar with these rules. Have been seeing them pop up on the SRD for a while now and am just giving them a once over now. I am starting a new game sometime in the next couple of months. Is it worth including these Mythic rules? What are peoples impressions? How do they alter the game and is it for the better?

Thanks for your input :)

[Alleran]

What I've noticed so far is that there seem to be three general "tiers" of mythic power.

There's ranks 1-3, which are good and a definite jump over non-mythic. Third tier is when the interesting abilities start appearing (e.g. Divine Source).

There's ranks 4-6, which seem to be the "sweet spot" for mythic use. You can go a bit higher, but those three tiers are pretty nice, all in all.

Then there's ranks 9-10, which mean that the GM more or less has to kill you by fiat. A maxed out mythic tier 10 character always comes back 24 hours after death unless they're CDG'd by an artifact before then. The ways of creating an artifact are either GM fiat, the Trueforge (an artifact, ergo more fiat) or 2+ uses of a Legendary Item path ability... which means the foe has to be built to have an artifact item anyway.

There are certain abilities that are really, really good. Such as Mythic Vital Strike, which when stacked with all the right stuff can allow a melee-er to put down 1200+ damage (which can and will OHKO any enemy right up to and including CR 30, as far as I'm aware). There are also abilities that are really, really bad. Divine Guardian (a Hierophant path ability) allows you to summon a monster off the SNA or SM list, with the level of the spell equal to half your tier. So a 10th tier character can summon monsters off the list for SMV. And that costs a use of mythic power (which would be better-spent on, say, Inspired Spell usage). You can summon one with level equal to your tier... but that takes two mythic power uses. And, again, Inspired Spell.

In fact, Inspired Spell and Wild Arcana in general. Even after they were nerfed (now they take a standard action and can only duplicate spells that are a standard action or less, as opposed to a swift action to cast any spell at all), they're still easily two of the most powerful options in the book. Melee did get some nice things, but. Critical Master, I like. And Seven-League-Leap is hilariously cool.

[Psyren]

The most common suggestion I have seen is that, if you're going to use them at all, give them to mundanes; this would typically mean granting abilities from the Champion, Guardian, Marshal and Trickster paths.

This gives them abilities such as:

pounce, the ability to chop/punch spells off people and sunder spell effects, the ability to charge through the air and land without taking falling damage, remove the max Dex bonus of all armor, the ability to sense an enemy's weaknesses by touching it, the ability to make any foe you're grappling be the target of an incoming attack instead of you, use a grappled creature as a weapon to hit another creature, get the Improved and Greater forms of any maneuver for free, act in negatives, throw in a cone, shoot in a line, shoot around corners/cover, the ability to retributively stun creatures that attempt to attack their minds, gain fast healing 15, anchor yourself, increase your reach or size, stop creatures from teleporting out of a grapple, travel with creatures who try to teleport out of a grapple, parry spells, be healed even while dead, become immune to various conditions, make items you UMD more powerful, and many others.

Mythic also brings back some popular feats/abilities from 3.5, like Stand Still (Cage Enemy) and Darkstalker (Supreme Stealth.)

[Katana1515]

Thanks for the replies! I do like the idea of PC's being that bit more hardy than normal that Mythic seems to supply (I tend to run pretty tough encounters where PC's having near death experiences/fatalities is quite common).

I do like the idea of giving out Mythic tiers to the Mundanes in an attempt to bring balance to the tier system, though I would be concerned how some players would react. (in my 3.5 group at home we regulary handicap higher tiers in one way or another usually with smaller point buys, or in the case of our Gestalt game only tiers 3 and below can gestalt, tier 1 plays normally and tier 2 get a bonus template of LA 1 or 2. but my pathfinder group is less experienced and some players would probably see themselves as being unfairly treated).

Are there any other problems with the system a DM should be aware of? just glancing through I can see some pretty cool stuff. as mentioned powers like Wild Arcana are pretty impressive but is their any obvious traps I might be missing?

[Psyren]

If your high-tier classes are playing in a balanced way normally then there's no need to fix what isn't broken. The mythics to mundanes route is for when you want to play a high-power game and you want the mundanes to rely on something besides their wealth to shine.

Other than the tier abilities and feats I haven't delved much into the system myself (e.g. mythic spells.) Again, I was mostly interested in the book as a "nice things for melee" grab-bag, so I glossed over the caster sections.

[Katana1515]

was just going through some of the mythic spells and saw this augmented use for baleful polymorph

If you expend four uses of mythic power, the spell affects all other creatures with 8 Hit Dice or fewer in a 1-mile radius.

Affected creatures transform into Small or smaller animals appropriate to the local environment. You can select a number of creatures up to your tier to not be affected.

Think I might shelve the idea of including the rules until I have the time to have a proper look through the whole thing :) otherwise im inevitably gonna have entire cities populated by small animals.

anyway thanks for the advice! Ill see if I think an mythic tier or 3 will fit in to my next campaign. they seem like quite awesome rewards for fulfilling suitably titanic goals rather than just throwing xp and gold at my beloved murderhobo's.

[Psyren]

Which is why I said don't bother with the spells
:smalltongue: It's not like casters need mythic to break the game if they really try, so there's no reason to give them even more power.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Speaking as a player in an upcoming second half of a campaign where we ascended to Mythic status, if you give a PC a mythic tier, they will shoot for the top, and will search out challenges to ascend higher. Also, the limiting factor with Mythic spells is not just using Mythic Power, it's that you can learn only up to your tier times the number of times you took a Mythic Spell Knowledge type thing. So, for an Archmage MT 3 with one MSK feat, they have 3 mythic spells they can cast. And while Mythic Baleful Polymorph is fun, there are more powerful options for a caster. Like the Archmage's Crafting Mastery. Every single crafting feat is given to you, and if you already had the feat, you roll twice and take the higher result.

[Alleran]

Also, the limiting factor with Mythic spells is not just using Mythic Power, it's that you can learn only up to your tier times the number of times you took a Mythic Spell Knowledge type thing. So, for an Archmage MT 3 with one MSK feat, they have 3 mythic spells they can cast.
With Mythic Spell Lore as well they can get plenty more mythic spells - one of the statted NPCs (Baba Yaga) does just that, with both Mythic Spellcasting and Mythic Spell Lore for twenty total mythic spells (Mythic Spell Lore can be taken multiple times, too). And the Ascendant Spell metamagic, curiously enough, isn't a mythic feat in itself (although it's a +5 increase and you don't get the specially-augmented spell options, just the regular mythic spell options).

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Well, yeah. But that is at tier 10.

[Lochar]

What I've noticed so far is that there seem to be three general "tiers" of mythic power.

There's ranks 1-3, which are good and a definite jump over non-mythic. Third tier is when the interesting abilities start appearing (e.g. Divine Source).

There's ranks 4-6, which seem to be the "sweet spot" for mythic use. You can go a bit higher, but those three tiers are pretty nice, all in all.

Then there's ranks 9-10, which mean that the GM more or less has to kill you by fiat. A maxed out mythic tier 10 character always comes back 24 hours after death unless they're CDG'd by an artifact before then. The ways of creating an artifact are either GM fiat, the Trueforge (an artifact, ergo more fiat) or 2+ uses of a Legendary Item path ability... which means the foe has to be built to have an artifact item anyway.
Actually, you can CdG them with anything that can bypass DR/Epic, which is just a total of +6 enhancement on a weapon.


There are certain abilities that are really, really good. Such as Mythic Vital Strike, which when stacked with all the right stuff can allow a melee-er to put down 1200+ damage (which can and will OHKO any enemy right up to and including CR 30, as far as I'm aware). There are also abilities that are really, really bad. Divine Guardian (a Hierophant path ability) allows you to summon a monster off the SNA or SM list, with the level of the spell equal to half your tier. So a 10th tier character can summon monsters off the list for SMV. And that costs a use of mythic power (which would be better-spent on, say, Inspired Spell usage). You can summon one with level equal to your tier... but that takes two mythic power uses. And, again, Inspired Spell.

In fact, Inspired Spell and Wild Arcana in general. Even after they were nerfed (now they take a standard action and can only duplicate spells that are a standard action or less, as opposed to a swift action to cast any spell at all), they're still easily two of the most powerful options in the book. Melee did get some nice things, but. Critical Master, I like. And Seven-League-Leap is hilariously cool.

Yeah, some of them are hilariously unbalanced for are there for fluff purposes.


Speaking as a player in an upcoming second half of a campaign where we ascended to Mythic status, if you give a PC a mythic tier, they will shoot for the top, and will search out challenges to ascend higher. Also, the limiting factor with Mythic spells is not just using Mythic Power, it's that you can learn only up to your tier times the number of times you took a Mythic Spell Knowledge type thing. So, for an Archmage MT 3 with one MSK feat, they have 3 mythic spells they can cast. And while Mythic Baleful Polymorph is fun, there are more powerful options for a caster. Like the Archmage's Crafting Mastery. Every single crafting feat is given to you, and if you already had the feat, you roll twice and take the higher result.

Mythic Spell knowledge does grow with you though. Every time you get a new tier, you get a new mythic version of a spell you have.

I just started running Wrath of the Righteous (Mythic adventure path) and while the PCs aren't mythic yet I've been reading into the further books. Generally, the CR of a creature goes up by somewhere between half and it's full mythic rank. By book 3 (at level 10-12), the PCs are expected to handle a couple of CR 14 and 15 monsters as their Mythic Trials to get to Tier 4.