Gabe the Bard
2014-06-12, 03:06 AM
Recently, my group's long running mythic campaign came to an end. Though I wasn’t able to participate consistently, I had quite a bit of fun with a tank that started out as a barbarian and ended up multiclassing into paladin. He started out as a fairly basic tank with very high damage reduction, but after seeing the possibilities of certain mythic feats and abilities including Beyond Morality and Sacrificial Shield (more below), and the importance of saving throws at higher levels, I decided to try mixing in some paladin levels for flavor and additional damage absorbing capability. Our DM has a tendency to hand out lots of interesting houseruled abilities and items, but I felt that this build stood pretty well on its own using just the existing pathfinder rules and tricks. I posted a similar build a while ago, but since there seems to be rather few builds for mythic campaigns, here is the mythic tank for your perusal.
Race: Human
Classes: Unbreakable Fighter 1/Invulnerable Rager Barbarian 12/Sacred Shield Paladin 7
Feats & Rage Powers*
1 Power Attack
1 Combat Reflexes
1 Endurance
1 Diehard
3 Racial Heritage (Orc)
3 Reckless Abandon*
5 Stalwart
5 Animal Fury*
7 Deathless Initiate
7 Intimidating Glare*
9 Combat Expertise
9 Dragon Totem*
11 Improved Stalwart
11 Dragon Totem Resilience*
13 Raging Brutality
13 Dragon Totem Wings*
15 Shield Focus
17 Missile Shield
19 Tenacious Survivor
Guardian Tier 7
Guardian’s Call: Absorb Blow
Path Abilities and Mythic Feats
1 Adamantine Mind, Mythic Paragon
2 Sacrificial Shield
3 Legendary Item, Parry Spell
4 Guardian's Shout
5 Beyond Morality, Mythic Shield Focus
6 Mythic Resolve
7 Legendary Item, Mythic Missile Shield
Legendary Item Abilities (Shield)
1 Unyielding
2 Upgradable
3 Legendary Fortification
4 Eternal Bond
5 Returning
6 Rejuvenating
By level 20, he had DR 25/- while raging from the non-mythic side of the build, which is slightly lower than a pure barbarian, but he had much higher saving throws and various immunities. He didn’t have Superstition because we had a mythic bard in our group who gave us really high morale bonuses already, but in the absence of a bard I would probably swap out one of the shield feats for extra rage power. I started to move more towards using a shield towards the end when I noticed the synergy between Sacrificial Shield and Legendary Item.
Sacrificial shield allows you to avoid damage from a successful hit up to the hardness and hit points of your shield. Normally, your shield breaks, but if you use mythic power you can save it from breaking. One of the Legendary Item abilities is Unyielding, which increases the hardness and hit points of the item. The Upgradable ability makes it cheaper and easier to get various upgrades that increase hit points and hardness, like adamantine and impervious qualities as well as a high enhancement bonus. So, if you have a +5 legendary unyielding impervious adamantine heavy shield, you can block up to 240 points of damage on a single attack (that's a conservative estimate, using the normal calculation for multipliers shown below). Plus, it doesn’t take an immediate action like Absorb Blow, although I believe you can only use it once per round, so it would be saved for a lucky critical hit or a foe using vital strike.
Hardness
Hit Points
Heavy Steel Shield
10
20
Adamantine
20
26
Unyielding
40 (2x)
~80 (3x)
Enhancement +5
+10
+50
Impervious
+10
+50
Total
60
180
Basically, this guy doesn’t avoid damage with a high AC so much as absorb it, literally, with high DR, Absorb Blow, and Sacrificial Shield. With high saving throws from Divine Grace and the ability to reroll almost indefinitely with Mythic Resolve, he ended up being virtually indestructible. He can even heal himself in a pinch with lay on hands and rejuvenating shield. However, I found that things like Parry Spell which require an immediate action ended up being used seldom if ever in actual play, because so many abilities require a swift or immediate action (it was usually better to just reroll the save with Mythic Resolve than to spend an immediate action). Mythic Resolve and Guardian Shout which don’t use up an action ended up being much more useful, although you have to watch your mythic power usage.
Race: Human
Classes: Unbreakable Fighter 1/Invulnerable Rager Barbarian 12/Sacred Shield Paladin 7
Feats & Rage Powers*
1 Power Attack
1 Combat Reflexes
1 Endurance
1 Diehard
3 Racial Heritage (Orc)
3 Reckless Abandon*
5 Stalwart
5 Animal Fury*
7 Deathless Initiate
7 Intimidating Glare*
9 Combat Expertise
9 Dragon Totem*
11 Improved Stalwart
11 Dragon Totem Resilience*
13 Raging Brutality
13 Dragon Totem Wings*
15 Shield Focus
17 Missile Shield
19 Tenacious Survivor
Guardian Tier 7
Guardian’s Call: Absorb Blow
Path Abilities and Mythic Feats
1 Adamantine Mind, Mythic Paragon
2 Sacrificial Shield
3 Legendary Item, Parry Spell
4 Guardian's Shout
5 Beyond Morality, Mythic Shield Focus
6 Mythic Resolve
7 Legendary Item, Mythic Missile Shield
Legendary Item Abilities (Shield)
1 Unyielding
2 Upgradable
3 Legendary Fortification
4 Eternal Bond
5 Returning
6 Rejuvenating
By level 20, he had DR 25/- while raging from the non-mythic side of the build, which is slightly lower than a pure barbarian, but he had much higher saving throws and various immunities. He didn’t have Superstition because we had a mythic bard in our group who gave us really high morale bonuses already, but in the absence of a bard I would probably swap out one of the shield feats for extra rage power. I started to move more towards using a shield towards the end when I noticed the synergy between Sacrificial Shield and Legendary Item.
Sacrificial shield allows you to avoid damage from a successful hit up to the hardness and hit points of your shield. Normally, your shield breaks, but if you use mythic power you can save it from breaking. One of the Legendary Item abilities is Unyielding, which increases the hardness and hit points of the item. The Upgradable ability makes it cheaper and easier to get various upgrades that increase hit points and hardness, like adamantine and impervious qualities as well as a high enhancement bonus. So, if you have a +5 legendary unyielding impervious adamantine heavy shield, you can block up to 240 points of damage on a single attack (that's a conservative estimate, using the normal calculation for multipliers shown below). Plus, it doesn’t take an immediate action like Absorb Blow, although I believe you can only use it once per round, so it would be saved for a lucky critical hit or a foe using vital strike.
Hardness
Hit Points
Heavy Steel Shield
10
20
Adamantine
20
26
Unyielding
40 (2x)
~80 (3x)
Enhancement +5
+10
+50
Impervious
+10
+50
Total
60
180
Basically, this guy doesn’t avoid damage with a high AC so much as absorb it, literally, with high DR, Absorb Blow, and Sacrificial Shield. With high saving throws from Divine Grace and the ability to reroll almost indefinitely with Mythic Resolve, he ended up being virtually indestructible. He can even heal himself in a pinch with lay on hands and rejuvenating shield. However, I found that things like Parry Spell which require an immediate action ended up being used seldom if ever in actual play, because so many abilities require a swift or immediate action (it was usually better to just reroll the save with Mythic Resolve than to spend an immediate action). Mythic Resolve and Guardian Shout which don’t use up an action ended up being much more useful, although you have to watch your mythic power usage.