[PF] CTP's Guide to Mythic Adventures

[CockroachTeaParty]

CTP’s Guide to Pathfinder Mythic Adventures

Introduction

A new pseudo-subsystem for Pathfinder has been released in the form of Mythic Adventures. The following is a break down of the new options available to players; what’s good, what’s bad, and how things work. I will be writing this largely from a player-perspective; I may cover things like the Mythic Monsters in the future, but much of what is discussed here will apply to GM’s (perhaps even more so!)

This guide is roughly based and inspired by the various other quality guides and handbooks for 3.5 and Pathfinder out there. I give courteous nods to those of you who have contributed to the wealth of lore lurking on the Internet; you know who you are.

A Note Before Proceeding

The Mythic rules are an additional layer of frosting on the cake that is the art of designing solid characters. As long as you know how to make a good character, it is essentially impossible to hurt yourself by taking any of the Mythic options. This guide is here to point out the cream of the crop, and give you an idea of the value of various tools and toys offered by the rule set.

Generic Ratings System

Many of the options discussed below will use a color system to quickly inform you of their worth.

Blue will be used to mark Excellent options. These are excellent, powerful, versatile, or generally fun options for your character to choose. Highly recommended.

Green will be used to mark Good options. These are a step above the average, solid choices that you won’t regret. While they may not be as useful as the blue options, they will serve with distinction. Recommended.

Black will be used to mark Average options. These are functional choices that do what they say on the tin. You certainly won’t hurt yourself by taking them, except that you may be denying yourself more powerful options. These are baseline options, the standard by which others are judged.

Purple will be used to mark situationally useful or ambiguous options in need of clarification. Many of these are not very useful, but might be considered for their flavor or entertainment value. These things are typically odd.

Red will be used to mark Poor options. These choices are either useless, so inferior to other options that you would be a loony to take them, or they actively inconvenience/undermine your character. Stay away from these. Not recommended.

I also created two terms that you will see throughout this guide, often immediately following the name of a power/feat, etc.: Passive and Active.

A passive ability provides a bonus or benefit that is ‘always on.’

An active ability is one that requires the expenditure of Mythic Power (MP; see below).

Many abilities have both passive and active functions.

A note on the rating system:

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As I wrote this guide, I eventually established a system that roughly determined the worth of 1 point of Mythic Power. Since Mythic Power (MP) is the currency on which much of the Mythic rules runs, I find it useful to have a benchmark for what 1 use of Mythic Power should be ‘worth.’ You can then compare Mythic abilities, feats, and spells against this ‘standard.’

1 MP is roughly equivalent to:
+20 to a skill check/ability check
1 spontaneously cast ‘free’ spell at +2 CL
1 re-roll of a d20
1 standard action (non-spell casting)
+[1/2 your Tier/your Tier] to most other d20 rolls (variable, and usually with some other rider benefits)

If you are not receiving something of comparable power for spending 1 MP, you would probably be better served taking something else (or a passive ability instead).

A note on terminology

I will be using terms familiar to many readers of 3.5/PF optimization. If you want to know what ‘battlefield control’ means, what a buff/debuff is, what the definition of a ‘gish’ is, or other such terms, you are better off looking elsewhere. Try Googling ‘Logic Ninja’s Guide to Playing Batman’ or something similar. We’re in the deep end of strange subsystems here; if you’re looking to learn the basics, you’re in the wrong place!

What’s it mean to be Mythic?

Mythic Adventures introduces a system of options that allow for adventures on a theoretically grander scale than ‘normal’ Pathfinder. They offer astoundingly powerful abilities that will allow your characters to push the limits of their capabilities, face down danger on an epic scale, and become something more than mere mortals.

Basically, it’s power creep.

But it’s potentially fun power creep! It will add complexity to the game, but the basics of the system are relatively easy to grasp; there’s just a lot of choices. That’s why I’m here; to help you filter the various Mythic Feats, Mythic Spells, Mythic Paths, and Mythic Abilities (the word Mythic is going to be thrown around a lot).

When you set out to make a Mythic hero, you’re not just making Joe Shmoe adventurer. You’re making Beowulf. Hercules. Goku. Neo from the Matrix. Somebody whose every action alters history or fate. You’re not making ripples: you’re making waves. Tsunamis, even. And the challenges you face will be similarly over-the-top.

At the core of your character, you will still be using the same tools and skills. Your fighter will still be smashing things with a big weapon, your wizard will be casting cool spells, and your cleric is still going to channel divine power. But you’ll be turning everything up to 11, abusing the action economy, and laughing in the face of ‘normal’ danger.

Mythic is not Epic

Paizo still has not published official rules for characters beyond 20th level. Considering the mess that was the Epic Level Handbook in 3.5, perhaps this is a good thing. However, Mythic Tiers can be added to high level characters and allow them to tackle high CR challenges with greater ease.

The formula given in the Mythic Adventures book is that every two Mythic Tiers your character possesses boosts your Effective Character Level (ECL) by 1. A level 6 Tier 4 character would be able to handle CR 8 challenges in theory. A level 20 Tier 10 character functions as a pseudo-epic character, with an ECL of 25.

Think of Mythic Tiers as stackable ‘pseudo-levels’ on top of your regular character progression. They allow you to take on more dangerous encounters, yet you’ll still be leveling up at the rate of a normal character. Thus, Mythic characters are liable to progress through their experience levels much more quickly. Like a blue star, your Mythic character burns faster and brighter than normal.

While you’ll never reach the absurdity of Level 100 Epic levels in 3.5, you can still simulate characters with power ‘beyond the norm.’ Truth be told, 3.5 starts to break down much earlier than Epic, and so does Pathfinder. A level 17 full caster in Pathfinder is going to be able to do preposterous things even without Mythic rules. However, you can still play sort-of-epic games with Mythic Adventures without having to deal with the mess that is Epic Spellcasting, Epic Skill checks, and Epic items that cost millions of gold.

You can play with Mythic rules and the game will still function. Even better, you can use Mythic rules with lower levels, such as the ‘sweet spot’ around levels 5-10, and still get the flavor of Epic, destiny-altering power. Your Mythic character may never get to cast 9th level spells, but they’ll still be able to cast Mythic Fireball or spontaneously cast any spell on their class list with a +2 CL boost. Your fighter may never get beyond 10th level, but they could still potentially wield a Greater Artifact(!).

Perhaps the best part of all is that your character’s Mythic progression is essentially GM fiat. The GM decides when you gain more Mythic power, and can tailor their campaign accordingly. Indeed, it is even suggested in the book that the acquisition of Mythic power might not even be permanent depending on the game. This gives GMs a great deal of control; this is all power creep, but it’s power creep in a controlled environment. A Mythic character can’t take their powers for granted, and in the end must rely on the same skills, spells, and tactics that all characters rely on.

Mythic Lexicon

Here’s a breakdown of common words in the parlance of Mythic Adventures.

Ascension: The moment your character becomes Mythic. Purely flavor; can happen in-game, or be part of a Mythic character’s backstory.

Boon: Do something cool, and your GM might give you another use of Mythic Power. Totally GM fiat, but it encourages you to do cool things.

DR/Epic: Lots of things in Mythic give you DR/Epic or overcome DR/Epic, etc. etc. A strange relic of 3.5, since proper Epic rules don’t exist in Pathfinder (yet). A weapon overcomes DR/Epic if it has a +6 or higher enhancement bonus; Mythic Adventures goes on to say that this includes any special abilities on top of the base enhancement bonus, so a +5 Vorpal weapon can overcome Epic DR since it’s a +10 weapon in the end.

Mythic: Anything that uses Mythic power is Mythic. Mythic characters are Mythic. Mythic spells are Mythic. Mythic monsters are Mythic. This is important because certain spells, feats, and abilities effect Mythic and non-Mythic creatures or objects differently. Usually, Mythic things curb-stomp non-Mythic things, and only Mythic things threaten other Mythic things.

Mythic Path: This is your ‘Mythic Character Class.’ There are six of them, each representing a broad archetype of hero. While all Mythic characters get certain benefits as they climb the Mythic Tiers, each Mythic Path grants access to special Path-Only abilities, many of them quite potent.

Mythic Power (MP): This is the basic currency of Mythic characters and monsters. Mythic abilities, feats, and spells often require the expenditure of Mythic Power. Your character has a set amount of Mythic Power that recharges each day; certain abilities can generate more Mythic Power during an adventure. Boons give extra uses of Mythic Power.

Mythic Tier: This is your ‘Mythic Class Level.’ As you gain more Mythic Tiers, you unlock more powerful abilities. Every 2 Tiers you climb boosts your ECL by 1. The rough expectation set down in Mythic Adventures is that a Mythic character climbs 1 Tier every 2 character levels. You gain Mythic Tiers by completing Mythic Trials, but it’s ultimately GM fiat. For monsters, this is referred to as Mythic Rank.

Mythic Trial: Harrowing tests of your hero’s abilities, completing these challenges and quests allows you to climb the Mythic Tiers. As you gain more Tiers, you must complete more Trials before you can ascend higher. Basically, whenever the GM thinks you’ve accomplished something important, you might gain a new Mythic Tier; it’s up to the plot, and thus largely GM fiat.

Non-Mythic: The poor shmucks. The muggles. Anything that lacks a Mythic Tier or Rank. Some 90% of the world likely constitutes this grouping. Of course, I still wouldn’t want to screw around with a Level 20 Non-Mythic wizard...

Surge: This is a basic ability possessed by all Mythic characters and monsters that improves as you climb the Mythic Tiers. It’s similar to Action Points from 3.5; you can add a die roll to a d20 roll, but you can decide to add it after the results are revealed, which is cool. Missed your crit confirmation? Maybe an extra 1d8 will change the tide. Surges use up Mythic Power.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Basics

Regardless of Path, all Mythic characters enjoy certain benefits as they climb the Mythic Ranks.

There are 10 Mythic Ranks in all; you are expected to gain around 1 Tier per 2 actual character levels. So you’ll reach Tier 2 by around level 4, Tier 6 by level 12, etc.

The Tiers themselves have echelons of power, checkpoints that mark a certain level of power. There are baseline Mythic abilities available to all, but more ‘unlock’ upon reaching 3rd Tier, and finally the most powerful abilities ‘unlock’ after reaching 6th Tier. Thus, by around level 6 you’ll see your Mythic options expand considerably, and the most powerful abilities should come online around level 12 and afterward.

At each Mythic Tier, you gain a certain number of bonus HP based off your Path. At every odd Tier you gain a Mythic Feat (which can also just be a regular feat). At every even Tier you gain a +2 bonus to an ability score of your choice. At every Tier you gain a new special ability, selected from either the Universal Path or your selected Path. Finally, you gain a number of specific benefits as detailed below, with new perks and abilities unlocked as you climb the Tiers.

Tier 1

To start things off you get your pool of Mythic Power. You get a pool of power equal to 3 + double your Tier; thus, you start off with 5 uses of Mythic Power at Tier 1, and end with 23 uses of Mythic Power by Tier 10.

You also gain the ability to Surge by spending a use of Mythic Power. The Surge ability allows you to add an extra die roll to a d20 roll after the results have been learned. Initially, a Surge allows you to roll +1d6. So, you can roll a d20, and then if you learn you didn’t roll high enough, you could spend one use of Mythic Power to add +1d6 to the roll in an attempt to succeed. The Surge ability improves as you climb the Tiers, increasing to +1d8 at Tier 4, +1d10 at Tier 7, and finally +1d12 at Tier 10.

Lastly, as a newly minted Mythic Character, you become Hard to Kill. You automatically stabilize below 0 hp, and your death threshold increases to double your CON score (so if you had a CON of 14, you would die at -28 hp instead of -14). Ongoing damage such as bleed damage can still kill you, and any ability that allows you to keep acting when below 0 hp will cause you to lose hp for taking strenuous actions, but it’s nice security to have at the very beginning.

Tier 2

At this Tier, you gain Amazing Initiative. You gain a bonus to Initiative rolls equal to your Tier. Sweet! In addition, as a free action once per round, you can burn a use of Mythic Power to take an additional standard action, as long as it’s not casting a spell. That’s awesome! It only specifically forbids casting spells, so you can still activate magic items.

Tier 3

At this Tier you gain Recuperation. If you rest 8 hours, you’re restored to full hp. Boom. (Lots of people do this anyway, but now it’s official!) Even better, if you rest for 1 hour and expend a use of Mythic Power, you regain half your hp, and reset all class abilities. You treat 1 hour of rest as 8 hours of sleep for the purposes of regaining spells, rounds of rage/bardic music, uses of channel energy, smite evil... Basically, the 10-minute adventuring day becomes a thing of the past, as long as you have MP to burn. You can blow all of your spells, then rest for 1 hour and regain them all. Can you say Nova? This makes for much faster paced dungeon crawling. (Dungeon sprinting?)

The only thing that isn’t reset by an hour’s rest is Mythic Power and other Mythic abilities limited to a certain number of uses per day. You still need a proper rest to regain those.

Tier 5

At this Tier you gain Mythic Saving Throws. This is essentially Evasion and Mettle for all saving throws against non-Mythic abilities. Nice!

Tier 6

At this Tier you gain Force of Will. You are so powerful at this point that you can simply will reality to alter itself to better suit your whims. As an immediate action, you can spend a use of Mythic Power to re-roll a d20 roll you just made, or a d20 roll a non-Mythic creature just made. You can even do this after the results have been revealed. At this point, you’re free to cackle maniacally. There’s almost no reason at this point not to absolutely crush any non-Mythic threats you face.

**Note that the table ‘Base Mythic Abilities’ on the SRD says you gain Force of Will at 6th Tier, but the description of Force of Will says you get it at 7th Tier. I know that text usually trumps table, but I think it’s a mistake in this case, since you wouldn’t gain any special ability or increase at 6th Tier. Both text and table say you get your 1d10 Surge increase at 7th Tier, so it makes sense to gain Force of Will at Tier 6, since there’s nothing else to gain except a Path ability and the ability score increase. Ask your GM for their interpretation.

Tier 8

At this point, you are now Unstoppable. As a free action, you can burn a use of Mythic Power to end any one of a long list of negative conditions. About the only things this can’t get rid of are diseases, curses, and things like charms or mind-control. Ability damage, ability drain, and energy drain are still threats. Barbarians can now rage-cycle freely. Nobody cares about fear effects. You can even shrug off the ‘dazed’ condition. The implications of this ability are disconcerting!

Tier 9

Now we’re getting into weird territory. At this point, you are Immortal. If you are killed, you return to life 24 hours later, regardless of the condition of your body or the manner of your death. What if you’re body is completely disintegrated? Do you just pop back into existence? Where?
The only way you can actually be truly killed is by a coup-de-grace or critical hit from a Mythic Creature or a weapon capable of overcoming Epic DR. When you reach 10th Tier, you can only be killed by a coup-de-grace or critical hit from an artifact. Note that magic spells no longer threaten you with permanent death.

All sorts of questions and problems arise from this. How does this ability interact with magic such as Trap the Soul? Imprisonment? Basically, against high Mythic Tier characters, you need to start thinking outside the box to truly defeat them, unless you happen to have an artifact handy. While it’s nice to no longer fear death, now fates worse than death are the only thing that actually threaten you.

Tier 10

Compared to the insanity of Tier 9, this Tier just sees an increase in all of your powers, and the ability to regenerate 1 use of Mythic Power every hour.

So...
A character with 10 Mythic Tiers has 5 more (Mythic!) feats, a total of +10 bonuses to their ability scores more than a normal character, has more hp, a slew of special abilities, the ability to basically control most d20 rolls they (or non-Mythic creatures) make, is almost impossible to actually kill, and can shrug off negative statuses like they’re nothing.

GM’s should look at all of these abilities carefully. These are abilities that every Mythic character gains, regardless of Path or character class. If you cut off at Tier 6, for instance, your PCs will be able to control most d20 rolls, utilize constant nova tactics, and basically steamroller any non-Mythic threat, but you won’t have to worry about the craziness of Tier 8+. If you want to basically play the Pathfinder version of Highlander, Tier 9+ is clearly where it’s at. Since gaining Mythic Tiers is essentially under the GM’s control, they can pick the level of insanity they’re willing to work with.

Tier Power Levels in a Nutshell

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Tier 1
An extra safety net, with a little control of their rolls.
Tier 2
The heroes will probably always go first, and they can bend the action economy.
Tier 3-5
No more 15-minute adventuring day. Nova tactics are encouraged. Spells can be cast willy-nilly. Non-Mythic threats become much easier.
Tier 6-7
At this point, if the party hasn’t become some of the most powerful people in the world, they’re doing it wrong. Non-Mythic challenges become trivial as long as uses of Mythic Power remain. A decent cut-off point for high-powered games where the PCs want to feel really special.
Tier 8
Many types of threats become trivialized by the Unstoppable ability. Uses of Mythic Power become that much more precious. Spellcasters begin to feel a strange squeeze: buffs and debuffs are lessened in importance. Tread cautiously here, as the dynamic of the game starts to shift into strange territory.
Tier 9-10
The characters are now like unto gods. Only through careful machinations or the Plottiest of Plots can the heroes be truly destroyed. At this point, mortality does not threaten the PCs, but the fate of nations should hang in the balance. Time to go after Lois Lane, Lex.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Paths & Abilities

Mythic characters gain a path ability at each tier. You have 10 of these abilities to potentially gain, so some thought should go into their selection. There is some overlap between the various paths, and the Universal path abilities are generally useful for any character to have. Many of these abilities are powered by expending Mythic power, while some are passive abilities that are ‘always on.’

I will spend a little bit of time discussing the various Paths here as well.

Universal Path

These abilities are available to everyone. The general flavor of these abilities are simply making your character ‘better.’ If none of the actual Mythic Paths strike your fancy, you can simply pick one with good basic abilities, then select nothing but Universal Path abilities in a sort of ‘make your own path’ style. You generally won’t be hurting yourself by taking these abilities.

1st-Tier Universal Path Abilities:

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Commune with Power: The caster level is equal to your Tier, you can only use this ability once per day, and it takes an hour-long ritual to perform. This is pretty terrible.

Display of [Ability] (active): There are six of these, each tied to an ability score such as Charisma or Intelligence. In general, these give you a +20 circumstance bonus to an ability check or skill check tied to the relevant score. Certainly better than using a Surge, these are valuable to skill-monkeys, but picking more than one of these abilities quickly eats into your selection. Charisma is a pretty potent choice, though: it nearly guarantees success with powerful skills such as Bluff and Diplomacy, as well as Use Magic Device, opening up magic items to characters of any class. Constitution and Wisdom are the least useful, since the number of checks or skills tied to them are limited or few in number.
Keep these abilities in mind when you are looking at any other feat/ability that deals with skill checks. These seem to set a standard for active abilities: 1 MP = +20; you will find much worse exchanges throughout these rules.

Extra Mythic Feat: What it says on the tin. The only way to get more than 5 Mythic Feats, you essentially trade path abilities for them. Depending on the feat, this could be a solid choice, or a terrible one. If you’re trying to ‘make your own’ Path, you’ll probably take this a lot (once every two tiers, maximum of 5 times by Tier 10).

Extra Mythic Power (passive): You can only take this ability three times. Considering everything you do is fueled by MP, you certainly can’t hurt yourself taking this. You’re trading more potential Surges and other ability uses for new passive or active abilities. If you can find nothing else worthwhile to take, this is a good choice, and will give you more Mythic ‘staying power’ compared to other characters.

Legendary Item: This ability deserves its own section. It gives you a special legendary item that can eventually become an artifact if you invest more path abilities into it. While this eats into your allowance of path abilities, a legendary item gets its own suite of special abilities that can make it more attractive than a path ability on its own.

Longevity (passive): Purely flavor. If your game spans the course of decades or centuries, this might be useful to some characters, but the baseline Mythic abilities eventually make you immortal anyway.

Mythic Craft (passive): It’s a trap. Take Display of Intelligence instead.
**Note: This ability is a prerequisite to make certain Mythic magic items. If this is a thing you plan on doing, you might as well take it...

Mythic Spellcasting: This ability is nice in that it keeps giving you new options as you gain Tiers. Learning Mythic Spells gives you a new outlet for MP use, and boosts certain spells in various ways. The power of Mythic Spellcasting depends largely on the class you’re playing and the spells you choose, but you get a lot of mileage out of this single selection. It’s better to take this ability later on in your career, so you can ignore Mythic versions of lower-level, outdated spells.

Mythic Sustenance (passive): Mostly flavor. If you’re playing in an underwater/outer space campaign it’s worth consideration, but when’s the last time you saved against inhaled poison?

Pierce the Darkness (passive): Gaining darkvision is not worth one of your path abilities!

3rd-Tier Universal Path Abilities:

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Beyond Morality (passive): Alignment? What’s that? This ability is likely to cause a great many arguments at the table. Somewhere between fluff and crunch this ability spins and vibrates, casting off questions and confusion like radiation. While it’s nice to ignore spells like Blasphemy, the long-reaching implications of this ability quickly boggle the mind. Servants of Good deities can animate dead with impunity. Your paladin can take Assassin levels. Talk to your GM before taking. Good for hipsters and Nietzsche fans. “Don’t be such a square man. Setting fire to that orphanage is beyond your silly notions of good and evil. Open your mind, sheeple.”

Divine Source (passive): You are now officially a god! Or at least, people can pray to you and you grant them spells. The spells you grant are limited in level by your Tier, but that’s largely flavor; the primary benefit from this ability is that it gives you a number of SLA’s based on the domains you grant. For most characters, these will be one or two alignment domains and perhaps one other. Can give some spell-casting like options to non-casters. This ability is not worth taking more than once to gain more domains.

Enhanced Ability (passive): A +2 boost to an ability score. Nothing terribly fancy; don’t forget you get some significant ability boosts just for climbing the Tiers. It would be better if you could take it more than once per ability score.

Fearless, Pure Body, Pure Destiny, Pure Senses, Sleepless, Unchanging (passive): All of these abilities provide passive immunities to a number of negative statuses, but only from non-Mythic sources. Considering the control over your rolls that baseline Mythic abilities and Surges give you, and the eventual power of the Unstoppable ability, at best these abilities save you some MP against non-Mythic challenges. Many of these abilities become redundant with prudent magic item selection, buffs, and similar magic. These abilities might be more useful for a low-level game, but they’re minimum Tier 3 abilities, so you’re probably going to be level 6 or so; you should have the cash and spells to spare on basic defenses.

Ultimate Versatility: The once per day limitation makes this option much less attractive to me. That said, once per day you can throw a serious curveball. The limitations and potency of this ability are tied to your class; thus, it is difficult to effectively rate. You can change your sorcerer bloodline, magus arcana, rage powers... Prepared casters probably get the least use out of this ability, since it doesn’t allow you to cast any more spells.
In the end, you should probably just build your character with good options, rather than use up a Path ability to gain the power to swap out for different options once a day for a few minutes. If you pick the best abilities, why would you need different ones?

6th-Tier Universal Path Abilities

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Farwalker: Twice per day, you can plane shift. Obviously much worse on a spellcaster with access to said spell, it nevertheless is an interesting option for non-casters. A decent panic button. If you’re party relies on casters to get around, though, there’s little reason for you to grab this. It’s a waste to take this ability twice; 2/day will serve just fine.

Mythic Presence (active): A decent option for Fear-stackers. Sadly, by the time this comes online (at least 12th level most likely), Fear-based tactics have a short shelf life. Pretty fun flavor though. Try using it in the middle of a crowded marketplace.

Mythic Sight (passive): Gaining blindsense is pretty nifty; makes it much harder to sneak up on you. Don’t take it twice; that pesky non-Mythic clause will be a pain, unless you’ve pissed off a cabal of high-level non-Mythic illusionists or something.

Tongues (passive): Speak any language. Meh, mostly flavor. If this is your bag, you’ve probably got spells or ranks in Linguistics at this point.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Path: Archmage

You’ve known all along that magic is the key to ultimate power. You’re comfortable with breaking the laws of physics, so why rock the boat? If you’re an arcane caster, this is the Path you’re taking.

Archmage Features

You only get 3 bonus hp per rank, worst of all the Paths. Boo hoo, that’s the price you pay for ULTIMATE COSMIC POWER.

At Tier 1, you get to pick one of three Archmage Arcana (or rather, you just pick Wild Arcana and never look back):

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Arcane Surge (active): This burns a swift action and 1 MP, but the spell you cast rolls twice to beat SR and forces non-Mythic targets to roll twice for their save, taking the worse result. Plus, it doesn’t burn a spell slot. Not bad! The main reason to take this over Wild Arcana is that it’s essentially a free Quicken spell.

Mage Strike (active): Gain a swift action mega-strike with elemental damage, etc. etc. Burns MP and spell slots! Designed for Magi, this is still a raw deal compared to...

Wild Arcana (active): You are now 1 standard action and 1 MP away from casting any arcane spell on your class list at +2 CL, without expending a spell slot. Spontaneous casters can now cast any spell they damn well please, limited spells known be damned. Prepared casters never have to utter the phrase, “I wish I prepared that spell this morning...” You also never have to waste time and money scribing scrolls of obscure utility spells, or even bother penning them into your spell books (unless it has a long casting time). There’s almost no other reason to use MP; yes, I’ll take 23(+) more 9th level spells at level 20/Tier 10, thank you.
**Note that this ability, and its sister ability Inspired Spell, have been errata’d. Originally a swift action to use, it is now a standard action, and you can’t use it to cast a spell with a casting time longer than 1 standard action.

At Tier 10, you gain this ability:
True Archmage (passive): All non-Mythic creatures now must save twice against your spells, making Arcane Surge even more unattractive than it already is. Lastly, you get SR versus arcane spells that can generate MP. This can actually be kind of a pain if you have friendly casters trying to buff you, but at this point, who cares? Have fun doing whatever you want, you win Pathfinder, have a banana sticker.

Archmage Path Abilities

Really, after Wild Arcana, the rest of this stuff is just gravy.

1st-Tier Archmage Path Abilities:

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Abundant Casting (passive/active): This boosts your ability to effect multiple targets with your spells. This is usually not an issue for buffs considering typical party sizes, but it’s a nice boost to certain debuffs. If you spend MP, you can get a two-for-one deal on any spell that targets one creature. Dominate two people instead of one! Could be useful. However, this ability does not help against solo creature encounters. A nice increase to your flexibility.

Arcane Endurance (passive): +4 CL for purposes of spell duration. Pretty nice! Combine with Extend spell for some cray-long buffs. This ability lessens in potency as you gain levels; by the time you’re level 10, a 10/20 hour long spell isn’t much less useful than a 14/28 hour long spell, and most combats don’t last long enough for this to benefit short duration buffs/debuffs anyway.

Bloodline Intensity: You get a bonus bloodline feat, and a number of free spells per day. The primary draw is the bonus feat; who cares about free spells when you have Wild Arcana? You’re a sorcerer regardless, you’ve got spell slots to spare. Some bloodline feats are good, and possibly worth early access to, but depending on the bloodline this could be total crap.

Competent Caster (passive): You auto-succeed at Concentration checks, except when using your highest-level spells. Magi will like this! A helpful defense against annoying crap like getting grappled or entangled, this ability gets better with age.

Coupled Arcana: This is an action economy lubricant. Combine Wild Arcana with your other class features for fun and profit. Witches will love this one in particular; combine nasty Hexes with powerful spells. Summoners are not welcome to this party, sadly.

Crafting Mastery (passive): It’s every item creation feat rolled up into one. If you’ve got the time and money, any magic item is now potentially at your fingertips. There’s more perks if you actually have the requisite feats, but why waste feat slots?

Deep Understanding (passive): This is a useful ability, but it’s limited to the highest level spells you can cast; thus, it makes a good choice when you’re capable of casting 9th level spells. Excellent for spell duels. While it gets better with age, the range limitations and other restrictions mean you’ll probably pass this one by.

Elemental Bond (passive): Good for blasters focused on one energy type.

Eldritch Breach (passive): Let’s stomp up and down on Arcane Surge some more, shall we? Who needs Spell Penetration or Piercing spell? This is excellent in a game heavily featuring outsiders or other enemies with SR. Eventually becomes somewhat obsolete in the wake of Channel Power.

Enduring Armor (passive): Makes Mage Armor unnecessary. While it gets better with age (+13 AC at Tier 10), as a primary caster, you’re probably less concerned about your AC than other characters.

Energy Conversion (active): Pointless in the wake of Wild Arcana. Not worth the MP.

Enhance Magic Items (passive/active): You can save a bit of money on items you craft yourself, and items you find will function better. Indeed, casting spells from staves will always function at a higher CL than your own! You can also spend MP instead of charges on wands or staves, but there’s probably better uses of your MP out there. A good late-game selection if you get your hands on a bitchin’ staff.

Flash of Omniscience (passive/active): Can be sort of useful. Compare to Display of Intelligence, or actual divination spells when you gain the ability to cast them. The ‘never cryptic’ clause is nice, but still at the mercy of the GM.

Flexible Counterspell (active): If you’re into counterspelling, this makes you even better at it. Eats through MP, actions, and spell slots pretty quickly, though. I’ve never really seen counterspelling used to its potential, so I can’t really rate this with any confidence, other than it seems functional.

Flexible School (passive): If this gave you flexible bonus spell slots, it might be worth consideration. However, it only gives you arcane school powers, which are generally not terribly useful. Who cares if you have the minor abilities of a 5th level illusionist at Tier 10?

Greater Familiar Link (passive): Functions over any distance, apparently, or even across planar boundaries. More useful for keeping your familiar alive than vice versa. If you’re doing your job correctly, your familiar shouldn’t be in danger in the first place, though.

Harmonious Mage (passive): The final nail in the coffin for poor Universalist wizards (I guess they don’t have to waste a Path ability on this?). This is an attractive option for specialist wizards. Wild Arcana makes it somewhat pointless, but this way you don’t have to burn MP.

Mythic Bloodline (passive): The usefulness of this ability depends on your bloodline. Some bloodlines have crap powers, but others have better abilities that could benefit from this boost. The bump to per-day abilities seems more useful than the effective level boost.

Mythic Hexes (passive): The non-Mythic clause on this ability makes it less attractive to me. You need to take it twice for it to effect Major Hexes, which seems a bit wasteful. By Tier 6 you should be controlling non-Mythic saving throws with impunity anyway, but it could save you some MP.

Mythic School (passive): This is the wizard version of Mythic Bloodline, but it strikes me as even less useful. Most wizard school abilities are kind of ‘meh.’

Perfect Preparation (passive): You can ditch your spellbook or familiar. This ability needs some clarification: do you just know all of your spells by memory from now on? How do you add more to your list? How much does it cost? Does your brain have any limitations? Really, even if someone kills your familiar or steals your spellbook, you’ve still got Wild Arcana to fall back on, right?

Rapid Preparation (passive/active): Starting to notice a pattern? Wild Arcana makes this largely pointless. When you have any arcane spell you’re capable of casting at your fingertips, who cares if you can spend MP to prepare spells as a swift action? Most GMs hand wave spell preparation time anyway; this would only be useful if you’re stuck with a real stickler.

Remixer (active; MO): There’s little reason to spend an entire Path ability on something so focused on potions, and alchemists are not served very well by the Archmage Path in general. This might be worth picking up by a Trickster alchemist, but even then it’s limited to what extracts you already have prepared.

Resilient Arcana (passive): Could be useful for a late-game defensive boost. Only useful against other casters, though.

Sensory Link (passive/active): A useful ability for scouting. Combined with Greater Familiar Link, you can even do some ‘remote adventuring’ with relative safety, although casting spells through your familiar eats up MP fast.

Shapeshifting Mastery (passive; MO): If you’re into polymorphing into stuff and fighting, this is an amazing ability. Buffs your caster level, and more importantly, substitutes your BAB for your CL when making natural attacks. The various polymorph spells go from ‘meh’ to pretty damn sweet. Can you say Power Attack?

Shifting Mastery (passive/active): Now all of your polymorph spells become a poor-man’s Shapechange. While this ability becomes obsolete once you gain the ability to cast Shapechange, you can still bestow its power on other people. Plus, you can make disguises!

Spellbane Counterstrike: If you’re making some kind of counterspelling Magus, this could be an interesting ability. I somehow doubt I’ll ever see this ability used in actual play...

Telekinetic Master (passive): Why are you wasting Path abilities on cantrips? Pass.

Throw Spell (active): Give your melee touch spells some range! Necromancers and witches will like this ability.

Transformative Familiar (passive; MO): This allows your familiar to turn into an item. ...Cool? If you don’t want to risk getting screwed by losing your bonded item, but still want a bonded item, you can turn your familiar into a bonded item, sort of! This is a weird one. Not sure I would bother, but intelligent magic items have their uses. Grab an intelligent Legendary item, and then you can have your equipment argue with each other.

3rd-Tier Archmage Path Abilities

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Arcane Metamastery (active): Combine this with Extend Spell before casting your daily buffs, or right before a big fight. It’s a buffer’s dream! Possibly made redundant with Arcane Endurance, but they combine beautifully. It’s best to use this ability with your highest-level spells. This might be worth taking multiple times, although it eats into your Path abilities known and feat selection. The fact that it works on magic items is just gravy.

Arcane Potency (passive): This ability gives you 4 more spell slots, increasing in spell level the more times you take it. By the time this comes online, 1st level spells are starting to drop in usefulness. Wild Arcana combined with Recuperation should more than serve for purposes of adventuring stamina. Still, if you take it from Tier 3 through 9, you’ll wind up with 28 more spells per day of up to 7th level. There’s more attractive options though.

Bloodline Immunity (passive/active): The usefulness of this defense depends entirely on your bloodline. If your bloodline spells are mostly buffs, this is useless. Situational, to the point of being largely useless.

Component Freedom (passive): Useful if you like spells with expensive components. Also nice for stealth or social situations. Probably not worth taking more than once, unless you want to mimic being a psion.

Eldritch Flight (active/passive): Don’t take this until 6th Tier; by then, an at-will supernatural fly speed is pretty cool, and allows you to spend spells on other things. Before then, just rely on magic. Hardly necessary, especially considering Arcane Metamastery and Arcane Endurance.

Infectious Spell (active; MO): Great for debuffers. I can see a lot of witches and necromancers taking this.

Many Forms (passive/active): At-will Alter Self and an MP-fueled supernatural polymorph ability. Mostly just cool, it lacks the teeth of your actual polymorph spells, especially if you take proper metamagic and Path abilities focusing on this area. The 6th Tier duration boost is nice, but Wild Arcana is better if you’re not in it for the flavor. Would be a cool infiltration tool.

Mirror Dodge (active): Although it eats up your immediate (and thus future swift) actions, this ability prevents you from ever getting hit as long as you have MP. An excellent panic button.

Mythic Spellpower (passive): Twice per day, you can cast a Mythic spell without spending MP; you can take this multiple times, increasing the number of 'free' Mythic spells you can cast per day. This is better as a late game choice when you have access to the more costly augmentations, but it will certainly save you MP for the Big Spells.

Reverse Scrying (active): Unless you’re routinely up against enemy spell casters, I don’t see this having a lot of use. It’s cool if you get it to work, but most spell casters have good Will saves. I guess if a non-Mythic caster was foolish enough to try and scry on you post Tier 6, he would get what’s coming to him... I dunno. Consider taking if you’re playing in a Tippyverse.

Speedy Summons (passive/active): Summoning is great, and this makes it even better. Standard action to summon, or burn MP to effectively quicken any summoning spell. What’s not to love? Summoners can also summon their eidolon faster with this ability.

Spell Sieve (passive): What’s with all this counterspelling support? I have no idea. Is this good? Is counterspelling good? Can somebody make some kind of Mythic spell duelist with all this crap? Sure. Sure.

Tangible Illusion (active): Your illusionist just became God. Okay, maybe it’s not that powerful, but damn. This ability is extremely open-ended, and rewards creativity. Go nuts.

Teleportation Master (active; MO): On the surface, this ability seems pretty useful, but how many times have you used teleportation magic only to find yourself in a sticky situation? I guess it depends on the GM. Usually you know where you’re going, and don’t need to take a peek beforehand.

6th-Tier Archmage Path Abilities

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Channel Power (active): It’s not flashy, but it’s effective. Rolls a number of metamagic feats and other boons into one package. The equivalent of a magic sledgehammer. Arcane Surge is now officially weeping in the corner.

Divine Knowledge (passive): So you’ve reached the upper Tiers, and you’re wasting Path abilities to pick up low-level divine spells on your list of spells known? You could have taken Display of Charisma at Tier 1 and started rocking UMD with wands and scrolls. You’ve got better things to do.

Dominion over Outsiders (passive/active; MO): If you want a bonus on Charisma checks, again, just take Display of Charisma and be done with it. Binding outsiders to perform a service for a year and a day sounds cool, but you don’t get any MP you spend doing this back until they’re dismissed, making it laughably bad. You should have enough options at your fingertips at this point to get any outsider to do whatever you want, with little fear of the repercussions. In the wake of the new universal path abilities Binding Ritual and Interplanar Prestige, this ability is even less worthwhile.

Eldritch Reciprocation (passive): If this didn’t require an immediate action and replenished more than 1 use of Mythic Power at a time, it would still be terrible. You don’t want to be hurt; no amount of MP is worth that, especially when you can just be a badass and go fishing for Boons.

Sanctum (passive): It’s an at-will Magnificent Mansion. Pretty pimpin’, but mostly just fluff. You can always just Wild Arcana yourself a Mansion when you need one. Hell, you could use those crazy plane-building spells from Ultimate Magic and construct your own personal safe zone. It’s got style, but there are better mechanical choices.

Star Walker (active; MO): In the wake of Greater Teleport, I’ve never understood things like Interplanetary Teleport, or even this power. Can’t you just teleport to other planets? Use some divination, scrying or whatever. Astral Project. This is just a strange way to get around. If you’re creative, I’m sure you can find faster ways to get to the next galaxy than this.

Archmage Path Breakdown:

Tier 1: Wild Arcana! If you’re into polymorph, you’ve got to grab Shifting Mastery and Shapeshifting Mastery. Otherwise, you can’t go wrong with Arcane Abundance and Arcane Endurance. If you’re planning on crafting, definitely grab Enhance Magic Items.

Tier 3: Arcane Metamastery and Mirror Dodge are must-haves. Tangible Illusion is amazing for the creative types, and Speedy Summons is great for a wide variety of characters.

Tier 6: Grab Channel Power; the rest is gravy. Pick up any abilities you delayed grabbing beforehand, and feel free to go for flavor at this point. Eldritch Flight and Sanctum are definitely classy. Competent Caster and Component Freedom are cool options as well.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Path: Champion

If you want to play Beowulf, this is your Path. You won’t get the raw reality-shattering power of the Archmage or even the Hierophant, but you’ll be hitting things with pointed sticks in unparalleled style.

Champion Features

You get 5 bonus hp per Tier. You’ll have 50 hp over normal warriors of equivalent level by Tier 10, and your CON could potentially be much higher as well.

At Tier 1, you get to pick one Champion’s Strike:

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Distant Barrage (active): This is a swift action uber ranged strike. If you’re making an archer or similar build, this is probably your best choice.

Fleet Charge (active): Excellent action economy and tactical utility. Great on skirmishers, even better as a ‘pseudo pounce’ for setting up full attacks. Eventually made somewhat obsolete by Fleet Warrior at Tier 3.

Sudden Attack (active): If you plan on grabbing Fleet Warrior, this is a solid, accurate swift action attack, but I prefer the flexibility of Fleet Charge above.

Lastly, at Tier 10 you become a Legendary Champion. Natural 20’s generate MP for you, and it becomes almost impossible to miss non-mythic foes.

Champion Path Abilities

1st-Tier Champion Path Abilities

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Aerial Assault (active): Unless you’re making a crazy tetori build, this ability is too situational. It’s an awesome visual though, and might be worth taking just for the lulz.

Always a Chance (passive): Avoid this at low levels. At higher levels, this could guarantee you hits, particularly if you fight lots of minions. That said, I think a 5% miss chance is worth risking rather than wasting one of your path abilities.

Always Armed (passive): If you’re using improvised weapons, you’re probably in it for the flavor. Still inferior to actual manufactured weapons, even with this ability.

Armor Master (passive): If you’re focusing on DEX to the exclusion of all else, this might be worth taking; that said, a lot of skirmishy, DEX-based prestige classes and abilities only function if you’re wearing light armor, so the benefits of taking this multiple times are unlikely to be worth it.

Backlash (passive/active): As a PC, you’ll be subject to more critical hits than any other character in the game, but still, it’s rare enough that it’s not worth one of your path abilities. Over the course of your entire career, this might net you a handful of AoO’s; pass.

Blowback (active): Screw Bullrush; if you’ve got MP, just smack’em around. Good battlefield control when you need it.

Burst Through (passive): An excellent ability for any melee character, particular those that favor charges; you’ll only have to worry about difficult terrain from now on.

Clean Blade (passive): Gross. If you’re into crit-fishing, this is kind of cool.

Climbing Master (passive): Gain a climb speed. Boom.

Crusader (passive): This ability gives you followers like the Leadership feat, and doubles them if you already have said feat. Assuming Leadership isn’t banned, you can probably think of something to do with a bunch of Surge-capable mooks.

Devastating Smash (passive/active): Unless you’re fighting a lot of constructs, wait until 3rd Tier for the Destroyer ability.

Endless Hatred (active): Rangers will like this.

Ever Ready (passive): This is great, and keeps getting better with age. Essential for tanks, defenders, and pole-arm trippers.

Flash of Rage (passive): Any character can benefit from this, not just barbarians. Situational, hard to rely on, but cool when it works.

Impossible Speed (passive/active): Get fast. Get there. Get got. Combines amazingly with Fleet Charge/Fleet Warrior.

Imprinting Hand (passive): Unarmed fighters and monks can ID weaknesses and hunt down foes with ease. This is a pretty cool ability.

Juggernaut (passive/active; MO): Considering you can’t charge an opponent unless you know where they are and have an unobstructed path to them, by the RAW this ability is unusable. If you can see through walls somehow, maybe this might work. Tremorsense?

Lesson Learned (passive): Functional. More useful in large fights with multiple foes with similar abilities. I’d probably skip this.

Limitless Range (passive): Extremes of range increments rarely are an issue unless you’re playing a thrown weapon-focused build. In this case, this is probably worth taking.

Meat Shield: Eats an immediate action, and if you fail the target breaks free, which sucks. Tetori monks might take this, though.

Mounted Maniac (passive/active): Amazing for mounted builds, particularly cavaliers and paladins.

Mule’s Strength (passive; MO): Your STR should be high enough that you don’t care about carrying capacity. Just buy a bag of holding if it’s an issue for you.

Mythic Ki (active): Post Tier-3, an hour’s rest will refill your ki pool completely. If you’re hard-pressed for more ki, though, this is an option.

Mythic Rage (active): This is more useful before Tier 3, but afterwards you shouldn’t have to worry too much about running out of rage.

Mythic Smite (active): Like the above abilities, post Tier-3 you can just rest an hour to regain your smites. That said, paladin’s have fewer smites than rage rounds, etc., so this can be useful, particularly if you want to smite in every combat.

Mythic Weapon Training (passive): Potentially a whole bunch of sub-par feats balled into one. Cool for expanding your weapon selection, but most classes will be happy with what they can already use.

Punishing Blow (passive): You never have to worry about regeneration or fast healing again. Nice!

Sniper’s Riposte (passive/active; MO): Any archer will benefit from this, although hopefully you’re staying out of melee anyway. Stealthy types can become amazing snipers with this ability.

Sunder Storm (active): Sure looks cool! Very very situational; I highly doubt I’d ever see this used.

Swimming Master (passive): In an ocean-based game this would be blue. Saves you some skill points and opens up new maneuverability options.

Tear Apart: This is interesting in that it can be used against natural armor. Good if you have multiple buddies fighting alongside you, this is effectively a melee debuff option.

Titan’s Bane (passive): You’ll eventually be fighting big things, and this makes you better at it. Rogues in particular will love this, especially small ones.

Uncanny Grapple (passive): This opens up new options for grapplers, including a pseudo-constrict ability and the hilarious swing ability. Tetoris should nab this one.

Wall Smasher (passive/active): Reminiscent of Dungeon Crasher, this ability seems to be targeting monks and other unarmed fighters. Very specific builds might find a use for this. If anyone actually succeeds in throwing someone through a wall with this, I’ll give them a cookie.

3rd-Tier Champion Path Abilities

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Destroyer (passive): Tunnel through dungeon walls, sink boats, go nuts. This suggests you can even punch through walls of force and similar effects, which might need some clarification.

Disabling Strike (active; MO): This is an attractive option for crit fishermen, particularly against non-Mythic enemies.

Elemental Fury (active): Better at higher Tiers for the duration increase, the primary draw of this ability is the defensive benefits.

Fleet Warrior (passive): This ability makes Fleet Charge largely obsolete. This is a phenomenal ability, but if you're going the Mythic Vital Strike route you can pass on it. Also, if a caster ally is regularly casting Mythic Haste this isn't quite as valuable.

Groundshaker (active; MO): Awesome visual, but too situational and for too little benefit to be really worth it.

Incredible Parry (passive/active): I’d rather be attacking than parrying, but it’s here if you want it.

Maneuver Expert (passive/active): This is pretty sweet, potentially saving you tons of feats, and opening up tons of options.

Master Grappler (passive; MO): This requires and expands upon the options offered by Uncanny Grapple. It’s mostly just a numerical increase; if you’re into grappling, this will make you better at what you’re doing, but Uncanny Grapple alone will probably serve you just as well.

Maximized Critical (passive): Not flashy, but functional. Better if you can increase your damage multiplier somehow; combos well with Mythic Improved Critical.

Mighty Hurler (passive; MO): Again, a cool visual, but you want to be throwing magic weapons with special abilities, not rocks.

Penetrating Damage (passive): So many Mythic abilities allow you to ignore DR that this is kind of pointless.

Precision (passive): This is amazing. Make your iterative attacks matter! You took Fleet Warrior, right? You can take this multiple times, too, and it might just be worth it to write +20/+20/+20/+20 on your sheet...

Titan’s Rage (active): Best on a barbarian, this is still pretty awesome. Bigger is better in melee.

To the Death (passive): Who needs Diehard? I’d probably skip this.

Unstoppable Shot (active): This can do some pretty ridiculous things in a big fight with lots of foes, but typically you’re better off just using a full attack.

6th-Tier Champion Path Abilities

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Critical Master (passive): You have to take it twice for it to work against Mythic creatures, which is lame. You shouldn’t fear non-Mythic threats by this point anyway, so this is probably not worth it.

Fistful of Daggers (passive): This... is terrible.

Perfect Strike (active): Eh... it’s just a standard action. By this point, you should be devastating things with full attacks as much as possible. Still, it’s certainly functional, essentially an auto-crit with the potential for even more damage.

Seven-League Leap (passive/active; MO): It’s pretty awesome just for the visual. Inaccurate, slow to set up, and ultimately pretty silly, but potentially worth taking just for the sheer lunacy of jumping from town to town.

Shatter Spells (active): Punch magic in the face! Become an honest-to-gods mage-killer.

Sweeping Strike (passive): You’re wasting one of your upper Tier path abilities on what amounts to Great Cleave?

Champion Path Breakdown:

You’re really good at hittin’ stuff! Before Tier 3, there’s not a lot to get excited about; take Impossible Speed in preparation for the future, though; by the time you reach Tier 3 (around level 6), your iterative attacks come online, and you can grab Fleet Warrior and Precision.

As a low-Tier Champion, you’ll be burning MP to full attack as much as possible. Post Tier-3, you can full-attack practically every round. By the end of your career, you’ll very likely be full-attacking at your full BAB every round, dealing horrific damage with things like Power Attack and fancy weapons. Kill things. Kill them dead. You can reserve your MP for defensive abilities like Unstoppable or Surges.

Archers will have more freedom, and can take whatever path abilities suit their fancy. There’s some fun toys for grappling characters, and just about anybody should take Shatter Spells when it becomes available for the extra edge against magic.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Path: Guardian

Typically in Pathfinder, the best defense is an overwhelming offense. Unlike the Champion, who just focuses on being the best warrior possible, the Guardian focuses on defensive abilities and absorbing punishment. If you’re a PC, you’re going to take damage eventually; the Guardian just makes that less of an issue.

Many consider the Guardian to be the least powerful Path. Considering that every Mythic character eventually becomes immortal and Unstoppable, this is partially true. This Path is largely reactive, rather than proactive. That said, you can do some interesting things with a Guardian, and if you like the idea of not just being immortal, but also near impossible to kill period, this might have some attractive options for you.

Guardians are best in the thick of a fight, so they favor melee characters. That said, they have abilities that benefit companions, so druids and summoners might consider it if they’re looking for a ‘challenge.’

Guardian Path Features

Guardians get 5 bonus hp per tier. I’d consider throwing them a bone and upping this to 6 or 7 hp, just to officially make them the ‘toughest’ Path, but that’s in the realm of house rules.

At 1st Tier, you get to pick a Guardian’s Call

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Absorb Blow (active): This ability gets better with age. You weather a nasty attack, then become that much tougher afterwards. The DR and energy resistance explicitly stack, which is pretty cool.

Beast’s Fury (active): This is an immediate action, which is awesome. Have your buddy interrupt a spell caster, set up a flank, or do something else cool. It’s like giving your companion a free turn with extra benefits.

Sudden Block (active): Unless you’re glued to one of your friends, the primary draw of this ability is the immediate action counter-attack you get for free. More limited than Absorb Blow in that it only works against melee attacks, rather than hp damage in general.

At 10th Tier, you become a True Defender. Non-mythic threats become even more trivial, and you regenerate MP whenever someone crits you. This might be the worst capstone ability of any Path.

Guardian Path Abilities

1st-Tier Guardian Path Abilities:

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Adamantine Mind (passive): Mind-affecting things suck, and the added discouragement effect is kind of neat.

Additional Call: Learn another Guardian’s Call. Too bad other Path’s don’t get an opportunity like this. Probably only worth it for characters with animal companions/eidolons etc.

Affliction Resistance (passive): This is nice if you’re in a dungeon filled with poisonous or disease-ridden creatures. I prefer magical buffs to defend against such afflictions, but it’s here if you want it.

Armor Master (passive): See the Champion ability listed above.

Armored Might (passive): By Tier 10, this nets you +5 AC, and is even worse before then. Probably not worth a Path ability. Perhaps you could take it as a Tier-10 capstone for some kind of turtle build.

Avenging Maneuver (passive): Many Guardians are masochistic enough to practically be looking forward to having their ass critted, so why not throw in a combat maneuver when you do? Eats up one of your AoO’s, in case this already didn’t suck enough for you.

Borrow Elements (passive/active): This is pretty awful. Most enemies that use a particular energy type are resistant or immune to it anyway, so this probably goes to waste most of the time.

Burst Through (passive): More Champion overlap! But a decent one this time.

Draw Fire (passive/active): If this also worked on ray spells, this might be worth taking. Otherwise, you’re saving a friend from an arrow. Pass.

Empathic Healing (active): How noble of you. I see this mostly having out of combat use to save on healing spells. Meh.

Ever Ready (passive): This was good for Champions, and it might be even better on you if you’re trying to tank in the classical sense.

Fast Healing (active): Burn MP for healing. Considering how precious your Mythic Power uses are, you should probably stick to wands and spells out of combat, but in a nasty fight this might make a difference.

Guardian’s Shout (active): Your fellow Mythic party members already have effective evasion against non-Mythic threats, and everybody’s got Surges and re-rolls; this might save them some MP? Better for escort missions with non-Mythic allies, and only if you expect to fight dragons or casters.

Immovable (passive/active): Immunity to certain combat maneuvers if you’re worried about them. If this worked against grapples it would be much better.

Imprinting Hand (passive): Stop trying to copy the Champion so much! *sigh* It’s still better than most Guardian-only abilities of this Tier...

Indefatigable Traveler (passive/active): The inability to run or charge while fatigued or exhausted is not the biggest reason why being fatigued or exhausted sucks. You’re still suffering ability penalties, still can’t rage, etc. etc. The ability to be better at forced marching means the rest of your team is that much more screwed if you do decide to get some good old forced marching done.

Irrepressible Soul (active): This gives you better defenses against effects that Unstoppable does not cover. It sucks to get dominated, baleful polymorphed, or charmed/compelled in general. Excellent if Will is not a great save for you.

Knowledgeable Guardian (passive/active): This ability would be pretty decent, but most characters taking the Guardian path are unlikely to have a lot of skill points, or points invested in Knowledge skills for that matter. If you could make the checks untrained, this would be a pretty solid choice. Requires a bit of investment, and the return is of debatable value.

Lesson Learned (passive): Same as the Champion ability above. Perhaps more thematically appropriate for a Guardian.

Mule’s Strength (passive): Yay crappy Champion copypasta!

Mythic Companion: Surges are useful, and this just gets better with age. Definitely worth taking if you’ve got a buddy.

Mythic Mercy (passive/active): This is great against non-Mythic enemies and obstacles, and the addition of Break Enchantment to your mercy list is pretty cool.

Pack Wild Shape (active): It’s best to wait until you’ve reached a Tier equal to the number of members in your party. This is a pretty cool ability, enhancing everyone’s mobility, infiltration potential, and general sweetness. The duration will never be terribly long, but you can get creative with this.

Partial Transformation (active): This is a weird one. Lots of potential for body horror. The primary benefit to this is the ability to keep useful appendages in animal form, such as arms and hands as a snake. You probably already have Natural Spell, so the benefits for spellcasting are minimal.

Quick Recovery (passive): Covers a limited list, and will ultimately be made obsolete by Unstoppable. Even then, half the duration on a minutes/level negative status is not really worth much in a fight that only lasts a few rounds.

Raise Animal (active): Raise animals from the dead for free! Most useful as animal companion or familiar insurance. Considering animal companions are pretty replaceable, this ability has limited potential, but it’s sort of cool.

Ranged Disarm (passive): I’m surprised the Champion does not get this ability. Also odd that the normally melee-focused Guardian gets a ranged ability like this. It’s functional. Get some ranged disarm action on. Best used against bonded objects, holy symbols, or the MacGuffin.

Relentless Healing (active): If you’ve got some healing ability, this is a great choice. Similar to the Breath of Life spell, it will save you money, time, and annoyance in the long run.

Retributive Reach (passive/active): If you’re playing a lockdown build, this ability is gold. The baseline benefit is the main draw, the rest is gravy.

Sacrificial Shield (passive/active): This seems like a great way to break your equipment. Unless you’ve got a massive pile of disposable adamantine shields lying around, you don’t want to risk destroying your valuable equipment.

Supreme Tracker (active): This ability is awesome! Note that there’s no duration, nor is there any limit to the number of targets you can track. Use it on your allies to track their position and status. Use it on enemies and hunt them down. Use it on everything, as long as you have the MP. Your nose will know all.

3rd-Tier Guardian Path Abilities:

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Cage Enemy (active): Lockdown builds will absolutely love this, but any melee character can benefit from it on a charge. Charge’em, then full-attack them next round when they’re unable to escape.

Dimensional Grappler (passive): If you’re making a grappler, this is a great ability, but you can potentially get yourself into trouble, separated from the rest of the party, by riding along. It’s almost always safer to prevent the escape, but you could get creative, perhaps...

Drive Back (passive): Normally as a melee character you want to keep enemies within reach, but this ability allows you to create ‘breathing room’ if you need it for whatever reason. If for some strange reason you have the Whirlwind Attack feat this ability is even better, although still odd. Could be cool to smash a bunch of mooks off a cliff or something.

Earth Protection (active): It’s got a short duration, but it’s a pretty decent defensive buff; it might save the local caster money on Stoneskin at the very least. The terrain restriction keeps it from going green.

Impervious Body (passive): Gain DR/epic. Can be taken multiple times, but that strikes me as a bit excessive. Against other Mythic foes, your DR is not liable to be of much help.

Impervious Companion (passive): You need to take Impervious Body in order to take this, which allows your buddy to share your epic DR. This becomes quite the Path ability sink...

Incredible Parry (passive/active): As the Champion ability. Might be more appropriate for the defensive-minded Guardian.

Mighty Hurler (passive): More detritus from the Champion path.

Parry Spell (active): It’s best to take this ability later, since the spell level you can deflect is based off your Tier. This is a pretty cool ability, and an excellent Tier 9 or 10 capstone.

Possess Companion (active): I’m having trouble thinking up good uses for this ability. Normally your buddy is at his best fighting alongside you, not going off alone with your soul riding inside...

Shrug It Off (active): Benefits you or your companion. Always works as long as you have MP, against Mythic and non-Mythic foes.

To the Death (passive): Probably better on a Guardian than a Champion, but still not that great.

Turn the Tables (active): If you are routinely subject to combat maneuvers, this can be fun. Sadly, the most common combat maneuver you’re likely to suffer are Grapples from enormous beasts, which you are unlikely to grapple in turn...

Uncanny Adaptability (active): This is an interesting ability, especially if you go plane-hopping or adventuring in hostile environments. Less useful if you’ve got casters in the party who know what they’re doing.

6th-Tier Guardian Path Abilities:

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Cling to Life (passive): You’re really really difficult to kill now. Combined with Immortality at 9th Tier, you have very little to fear indeed. As a high-level Guardian, you’re expected to take some serious hits, so this is decent insurance, saving you a bit of money and headache. If you never wind up dying, though, this is a wasted ability...

Companion Power: Teach your companion Beast’s Fury via Additional Call. Now he can use Beast’s Fury 3 times/day on his own! If you use it yourself, your friend can go three times in a single round! The nova potential for this is amazing. This ability isn’t really worth it for picking up other 1st-Tier Guardain abilities.

Impassable (passive): For those lockdown types who already took Cage Enemy, this adds some great new options. The free trip in particular is very attractive. Become a sticky mire from which your enemies can never escape.

Indomitable (passive): Gain immunity to a single negative status from a select list. This could potentially save you MP on Unstoppable. Dazed is a good choice, as is Confused.

Invincible Stand (active): The movement limitations on this ability make it pretty worthless in a large number of tactical situations.

Mythic Resolve (active): This is an MP-sink version of Force of Will. I guess if you have enough MP to burn you can guarantee a successful save, but it just seems wasteful, especially in the wake of Unstoppable.

Shield of the Martyr (active): Meh. You’ve probably got better uses for your immediate actions.

Stasis (active): To be fair, this ability is pretty metal. You can sort-of time travel with it, or survive some sort of terrible cataclysm, or drift from planet to planet. Realistically, opportunities to actually use this ability in a game are probably few and far between, likely once-a-campaign events. Plus, using this ability leaves you vulnerable.

Take the Hit: You know the 2nd level spell Shield Other? That does what this does, but better in most ways. If this didn’t take an immediate action, this might be cool. You’ve got better things to do, though.

Unbreakable Resilience (passive/active): If you’ve got friendly casters worth their salt, or the expected wealth of a character of your power level, you shouldn’t need to worry too much about ability damage and drain. Still, in an undead-heavy game this ability could save you some headache and cash.

Guardian Path Breakdown:

If you’re going for a melee lockdown build, or you want to enhance your ability to fight alongside an animal companion or eidolon, the Guardian Path offers some interesting options.

Most of Guardian’s good stuff doesn’t become available until Tier 3 onwards. Be sure to pick up Supreme Tracker before then. Otherwise, pick what defensive abilities you think will be most useful to you.

As a largely reactive class, most active Guardian abilities use up your immediate action. Be careful not to load up too heavily on such abilities; you’ve only got one immediate action per round.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Path: Hierophant

The divine answer to the Archmage, the Hierophant will not disappoint. My main criticism of the Hierophant Path is that a large percentage of its abilities center around channeling and healing. Not every divine spellcaster is going to have access to channeling, or want to focus heavily on healing. However, much like the Archmage, Inspired Spell is all you really want or need; the rest is pure, savory gravy.

Hierophant Path Features

You get 4 bonus hp per Tier. Woot!

At 1st Tier, you get to pick a Divine Surge:

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Beast’s Fury (active) The same as the Guardian ability above. While still a fantastic option for druids or anyone with an animal companion, it’s still a hard sell compared to Inspired Spell.

Inspired Spell (active) The divine version of Wild Arcana, pound for pound. Congratulations, you just got the best ability you’re likely to get out of Mythic Adventures. Enjoy.

Recalled Blessing (active): This is similar to Arcane Surge, but crappier. The built-in Quicken effect is nice, but the flexibility of Inspired Spell is just too good to pass up.

At 10th Tier you become a Divine Vessel. Non-Mythic creatures cower before you, any amount of healing upon you is auto-maximized, and you get some free DR for giggles. If you ever take 20 or more damage in a round after DR, you regain a use of Mythic Power (no more than once per round). Poor Guardian up there has to get critted in order to generate MP, and waste two path abilities to get equivalent DR...

Hierophant Path Abilities

1st-Tier Hierophant Path Abilities

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Alter Channel (active): It’s a cute trick, but what percentage of your enemies channel negative energy (assuming you’re channeling positive)? A very small percentage. Unless they’re specifically built to optimize it, channeling energy in combat is a sucker’s game anyway.

Bleed Holy Power: At least this ability doesn’t use up MP. In an undead-heavy game, this could be potentially decent, but it’s probably not worth your time.

Channel Shockwave: Targets are limited by alignment, which opens up a larger potential list of candidates. Only works on crits, though, so it’s hardly reliable. Could be useful on a channel-happy battle cleric.

Contingent Channel Energy (active): This is a nice insurance option to keep you in a fight.

Divine Countenance (passive): Limited targets, and most creatures close to your alignment probably won’t take much convincing to get on your good side anyway. Compare to Display of Charisma.

Divine Guardian (active): This is essentially Inspired Spell for summons, but it gets really expensive really fast, especially if you want to summon anything halfway decent.

Eldritch Breach (passive): Your first really decent option is shared with the Archmage path. Coincidence?

Empathic Healing (active): This ability probably makes more sense on a Hierophant than a Guardian, but it’s even worse. Why not spend an MP on a high level healing spell with Inspired Spell if you’re really in a bind?

Endless Bounty (passive): Infinite buffet! You are the bottomless shrimp bowl. Aside from flavor (hurr hurr), you should already be able to feast your entire party with spells like Heroes’ Feast when they become available.

Enhance Magic Items (passive/active): This was good for the Archmage and it’s good for you, especially if you’re crafty.

Faith’s Reach (passive): Boom, baby. Casting just got a whole lot safer for you. Buffer or debuffer, you’ll love this.

Flexible Counterspell (active): Counterspelling Archmage copypasta.

Heathen Slayer (passive): If you’re in a campaign that heavily features followers of a specific deity/demon lord/etc., this is pretty decent on a melee-focused divine caster.

Impeccable Intuition (passive): This seems designed for inquisitors or paladins. Only works on non-Mythic enemies. Probably just going to make you more paranoid than you already likely are. Doesn’t reveal enough information to be worth it, in my opinion.

Insightful Interaction (passive/active): More inquisitor fodder. Unless you’re expecting a lot of courtly intrigue, I’d pass this one by without a second glance.

Instrument of Faith (passive/active): So limited that it’s probably useless even in the best of circumstances. Blowing up an entire platoon of archers’ bows is pretty cool, but this is entirely dependent on your deity’s favored weapon. Stuff like longbows or longswords, or even daggers, and you might get to enjoy the benefits of this a handful of times in a campaign. If you’re deity favors the whip or gladius or tonfa... *sigh*

Inverted Spontaneous Casting (passive): This is really only useful for evil clerics who have living allies, and it’s pretty costly. Buy a wand.

Mighty Summons (passive/active): Come to papa! Summoners of any stripe might want to finagle a way to get this through Dual Path shenanigans, it’s that good.

Mythic Companion: We haven’t forgotten about you, druids.

Mythic Domain (passive/active): The usefulness of this depends largely on your domains/mystery. The 1/day refresh is made less useful by Recuperation at Tier 3, but at least it doesn’t require an hour’s rest beforehand.

Mythic Wild Shape (passive): This ability is useful either for utility or just staying power. Take it early for a functional form, such as a flying animal, and fly all day! Take it later in your career for a beastly fighting form, and never worry about ‘unleashing the fury.’

Overflowing Grace (passive): The bonus is a rare type, which is kind of cool. Burn a channel energy before a fight when everyone’s in top condition for a nice little bonus that will stack with spells like Bless or Prayer.

Pack Wild Shape (active): More Guardian overlap, but it’s a good one.

Plantbringer (passive): Only useful for plant-happy druids. It’s got flavor, though. Stay the night at the duke’s house, and suddenly his carefully landscaped lawn is ruined.

Relentless Healing (active): This probably makes more sense on a Hierophant than a Guardian.

Sustained by Faith (passive/active): Almost the same thing as Mythic Sustenance, save that you need to burn MP post Tier-3 in order to not need to breathe, and you can save 1 MP a day on Recuperation.

Symbol of the Holy (passive): You’ll never have to worry about not having a holy symbol, and this might save you a bit of money on spells like Bless Water, Desecrate, or maybe even Animate Dead depending on the corpse.

Tongue of the Land (passive): Permanent Speak with Animals with a few extra perks. Animals are common, and can now be interrogated with impunity. You can get creative with this.

Water of Life (passive): Alchemists are better at potions than you are, but this gives you some decent options. Pass out buffs to your friends, and save actions in combat, potentially. Does not age well.

3rd-Tier Hierophant Path Abilities

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Abundant Healing (passive): You’ve got to be all bunched together to get maximum use out of this, so it’s probably best used out of combat, and if that’s the case, why aren’t you just using wands?

Alignment Insight (passive): It’s a shame this doesn’t work on disguised outsiders or cautious divine casters. Still, the flexibility granted to your own casting is nice, and redeems what would otherwise have been a sub-par ability.

Animal Friend (passive): If this is your bag, you probably don’t need this unless you’re really rushed. For the rest of us, there’s magic.

Blessed Companion (passive): It’s DR, take it or leave it. Probably not worth taking more than once.

Divine Metamastery (active): The divine answer to the Archmage’s arcane version, and just as awesome.

Divine Potency (passive): See the entry on Arcane Potency.

Domain Immunity (passive): Similar to Bloodline Immunity. Entirely dependent on your domains/mystery.

Enduring Blessing (passive): This ability is great when you first gain access to it (all-day Freedom of Movement!), and is worth taking a second time at Tier 6 (all-day Death Ward or True Seeing!).

Flowers in Your Footsteps (active): For Princess Mononoke fans. Could be useful for battlefield control, but is otherwise mostly flavor.

Hand of Mercy: Get some extra mileage out of your channel energy uses! An excellent choice.

Hear the Word (active): Kind of an odd ability, but it’s pretty classy. Its in-combat use is mostly a novelty.

Hurling Vengeance (passive/active): If you’re a DEX-based melee battle cleric, this ability is pretty decent, but most clerics probably rely on their spells for fighting at range.

Life Current (passive): Blech. Why take this even once?

Pilgrim of the Waves (passive): If you’re in an aquatic or sea-based campaign, this ability is pretty sweet, but you’ll probably still need to use your spells to bring your buddies along.

Shape Channel (active): The shaping effect isn’t as interesting as the push-back effect. For negative energy channelers, this gives you some interesting battlefield control.

6th-Tier Hierophant Path Abilities

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Arcane Knowledge (passive): Just as crappy as Divine Knowledge for the same reasons. Note that paladins, rangers, oracles, and inquisitors are not allowed! Oh no!

Conduit of Divine Will (active): In the wake of Recuperation, I really question the utility of this ability. You get some free buffs thrown in, which is cool, and this might be a bit better if you’ve got a baller domain spell list, but still...

Overcome Curse (passive): Immunity to curses is pretty sweet. This ability is almost required for Oracles, though.

Puppet Master (active): Under very specific circumstances, this ability could be pretty amazing. But the cost in MP is just too high to use with any reliability or regularity.

Pilgrim of the Sky (passive/active): You’ve got spells for this kind of thing.

Servant of Balance (passive): Basically immunity to critical hits. Not too shabby.

Undying Healer (passive): If this worked on your useless unconscious ass, this would be much better. As it stands... it gives you something to do while you’re down for the count? Meh. Looks cool, though.

Hierophant Path Breakdown:

Unless you channel energy, there’s not a lot to really pick from. Grab the same things you would if you were an Archmage, basically. Divine Metamastery, Enduring Blessing, and Mighty Summons are the real standouts, and druids will love Mythic Wild Shape.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Path: Marshal

Reminiscent of the Leader classes from 4th Edition, the Marshal is all about making your friends better. They are leaders, bestowing inspiration and tactical acumen to any fighting force. You’re less likely to take the spotlight yourself, but you’ll make the rest of your team really shine, particularly melee types.

The path has a definite martial bent. Most of its abilities require your allies to be relatively close by, so this path will mostly benefit melee characters. Casters and archers that prefer to keep their distance will not care as much about having a Marshal in the team, but if you toss some friendly summons into the mix you’ll be giving the Marshal some useful toys.

Marshal Path Features

You get 4 bonus hp per Tier. Wee!

At 1st Tier, you get to pick one Marshal’s Order:

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Advance (active): There’s a lot you can do with a bonus move action. Help set up full attacks, flanks, or get squishies out of dodge.

Decisive Strike (active): A decent ability if you’ve got a friend in the perfect spot and the enemy is on the ropes.

Rally (active): Give everyone a free re-roll for the round. Excellent for clutch moments, and you’ll save your friends a bit of MP in all likelihood.

At 10th Tier you become a Visionary Commander. Your team becomes the best at initiative, and your GM will never give you a surprise round again if they know what’s good for them. In addition, once per round, crits you score against Mythic enemies generate MP for you.

Marshal Path Abilities

1st-Tier Marshal Path Abilities

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Additional Order: There’s no reason not to have Advance and Rally. I prefer Advance the most, though.

Assured Skill (active): Compare to Display of (ability), or Force of Will at 6th tier. It’s very open-ended, which is nice. Most melee classes aren’t known for skill mastery, in the end.

Clarion Call (active): This is better to take once you’ve got some Tiers under your belt. A decent ability for paladins or cavaliers.

Commanding Entrance (active): You’ve got showmanship. This is pretty good on Intimidate fear-stacking specialists.

Deadly Guidance (active): You’ve got to put some serious investment into this to make it worthwhile, and it just doesn’t last long enough to warrant the cost. I’d pass.

Directed Assault (active): Good for crit fishermen, the real draw of this ability is the benefit to your allies. You can start a chain-reaction of critical hits! It’s costly in MP, though.

Distracting Assailant (active): If you’ve got a team full of rogues, this ability is pretty damn useful. Otherwise, it’s a decent option.

Focus (passive): Finally, a decent passive ability for Marshals. Let your friends Surge with confidence.

Granted Stride (passive/active): An ability for the rare Marshal ranger. Natural difficult terrain is common enough that this might prove handy, but it doesn’t age well by the time everyone’s flying or buffed with Freedom of Movement.

Greater Surge (passive): Nothing to complain about here. Get your Surge on.

Helpful Rebuke (active): Become a Mythic drill-sergeant. This seems wasteful in MP, and too dependent on your skill selection. Compare to Rally.

Heroic Block (active): The main draw here is the immediate action trigger and the fact that it lets you cover some serious ground. A cool tactical option.

Inspire Minions (passive): Best on a bard. Pretty sweet if you’ve got a summoner worth his salt on the squad, or if you’re the kind of weirdo who brings a bunch of followers equipped with crossbows on an adventure.

Inspired Defense (passive/active): This is phenomenal for bards. By the time you’re Tier 10 this sucker is blue.

Inspiring Surge (active): Too costly an investment for too pointless a benefit.

Lend Power (active): Hopefully if your friends properly ration their MP, you won’t need to use this.

Lightning Performance (passive/active): Bards are getting some serious love. The passive ability alone should suit most of your needs.

Loyalty: Assuming your GM isn’t banning Leadership, here you go. The main attraction is the potential early access, and the cohort benefit. The wording is slightly unclear here (you can take Leadership twice? At level 7?). If you want to wait until level 7, you can save yourself a path ability and just take the feat normally.

Menacing Presence (passive/active): For the Intimidate fear stackers out there.

Mounted Marshal (passive/active): Lots of goodies for mounted characters.

Mythic Fascination (passive/active): The penalty to saves is too small, and the requirement to affect Mythic targets a bit costly. Fascinate is too fragile a condition to rely on strategically.

Painful Gambit (active): If this triggered free attacks rather than AoO’s, it might be decent. As it stands, it’s too unreliable for the MP cost.

Perfect Aid (passive): I’ve rarely seen the aid another action used, in combat or otherwise, but this ability can stack up pretty significant bonuses and ages well. I see this mainly being used out of combat.

Persuasive Countenance (passive): If they’re already at least indifferent to you, it shouldn’t be much of a challenge to befriend them in the first place. Compare to Display of Charisma.

Potent Message (active): An odd ability. Probably takes too long to rely on for anything urgent, and you should already be wrapping non-Mythic folks around your finger before long regardless. It might be possible to get creative with this one, though.

Press the Advantage (passive): Requires extremely specific circumstances to pull off. If you’ve got a good crit fisherman in your party, this could be decent.

Redirect Attention (active): This ability is partly stupid, partly hilarious. “Look over there! A distraction!”

Resurging Words (active): Only once per 24 hours? Meh. Nobody cares about fear post Tier 8 anyway.

Rise Up (active): The 1/day clause kills this ability. Pick something you can use more often!

Shout of Defiance (active): Aside from the range, this really isn’t much better than standard channel energy.

Smiting Aura (active): The damage is too small to make an appreciable difference.

Stand Tall (active): Nice for those moments when you roll a natural 20. A decent defensive ability.

Tactical Genius (passive): A bonus floating teamwork feat, with some other bells and whistles. From what I’ve gathered, most of them are garbage. The poor developers really want you to like teamwork feats. They’re trying so hard!

Unwavering Skill (passive): If you’re playing a Bard, Rogue, or another skill-heavy class, this could be okay. It specifically doesn’t work with UMD, though, which makes me sad.

3rd-Tier Marshal Path Abilities

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Aura of Perseverance (passive/active): A nice defensive ability for your fellow melee buds.

Caster’s Friend (passive/active): This is a nice ability, but most squishy casters probably don’t want to be anywhere near you. Good for covering a cleric or magus.

Commanding Presence (passive): Probably best on a bard. Functional, if a bit crude.

Concentrated Barrage (active): A standard action? Limited targets? Costs MP? No thanks.

Confidence: Gives you a separate pool for Surges. The trade-off is better than Extra Mythic Power, but more limited in its use. I’d rather have extra generic MP.

Demagogue (active): This is the kind of thing that you should just be able to RP, settlement size be damned.

Dispel Fear (active): Saves your bros some MP against fear effects. Not bad.

Don’t Cross Me (active): Again, just RP this out. If some shmuck doesn’t remember who you are, remind them.

Flexible Confidence (passive): So you’ve just burned two path abilities for 3 (restricted!) MP, when you could have just taken Extra Mythic Power twice and have 4 MP...

Glorious Charge (active): You wish you were a master of the White Raven school... You could do some potentially cool things with this, but it quickly gets very costly.

Inspire Martyrdom (passive/active): This requires Persuasive Countenance, which sucks, but this ability is pretty open to interpretation. You can Intimidate people into killing themselves, essentially. I recommend banning this as a GM, before your player starts convincing the king to jump into an active volcano.

Master of Mercy (active): Mercies are cool, but post Tier 8 you’re just saving your friends some MP in all likelihood.

Master of Shadows (passive/active): Unless you’re team is built for stealth, this is probably just a recipe for disaster.

Mob Ruler (active): Now this is a bit more like it. No rolls, no saves, just create some chaos. Unless you’re just out to cause trouble, this ability has pretty limited application. Have fun murdering entire villages.

Mythic Bond (passive): A nice perk for a ranger, especially those without an animal companion.

Shared Alertness (passive/active): The trap sense ability is kind of lame, post Tier 5 nobody cares about evasion except against Mythic threats, and you should probably give your trap finder more than 30 ft. of working space regardless.

Words of Hope (active): This is like a longer duration, more limited Rally. Good for climactic encounters.

6th-Tier Marshal Path Abilities

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Beacon of Hope (passive/active): Assuming your main allies are Mythic, they auto-stabilize, none of them give a crap about fear at this point, and the healing ability is mostly laughable. Pass.

Castigate (active): By the time you get this, fear tactics are probably in their twilight phase. Still, a good set up for fear stacking.

Fast Friends (active): Like most of the stuff from Mythic Origins, this is just fluffy garbage.

Fight On (active): This gets really costly really fast, but could be useful in a desperate situation.

Inspiring Assault (active): You’ve got to keep attacking to keep this going, and it doesn’t stack with Haste; otherwise, it would be an amazing ability. Still pretty useful.

Stones Will Weep (passive/active): Man this is expensive to use, but you can do some crazy stuff with it. Interrogate the breeze! Train a horse to fight by telling it jokes! What the hell is your caster level with these abilities? Who knows? Animate your cutlery set with the power of song!

Surge of Inspiration (active): At this point, you should have a slew of very similar tricks up your sleeve. I wouldn’t worry so much about your fellow Mythic peeps at this stage, if I were you.

Unswerving Loyalty (passive/active): Say goodbye to hostile mind-affecting effects.

Words of Valor (active): Bards don’t care about this, nor do casters worth their salt. The Surge benefit is nice, but this is probably too little too late.

Marshal Path Breakdown:

Bards get a few must-have abilities, namely Lightning Performance and Inspired Defense. For everyone else, pick what strikes your fancy. There’s a lot of goofy, fluffy stuff from Mythic Origins, most of which I would avoid.

As a Marshal, in many ways you’re an MP battery for your allies. Be mindful of your Mythic Power spending; you don’t want to be out of MP when it’s your ass on the line. You need to have a real sense of tactical awareness and battlefield placement to excel as a Marshal, but it’s potentially rewarding to the chess-masters amongst us.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Path: Trickster

The Trickster is the skirmishing, striking, skill-monkey path. Deception, stealth, and manipulation are the name of the game here, and a wide variety of classes can benefit from this path.

You'll notice a lot of overlap from other Paths here, and the presence of the Path Dabbling ability pegs Trickster as the Mythic 'jack of all trades.'

Trickster Path Features

You gain 4 bonus hp per Tier. Hooray!

At Tier 1, you pick one Trickster Attack:

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Deadly Throw (active): Unlike nearly any other 1st-Tier path ability, this one doesn’t even let you ignore DR. It’s basically made for alchemists, in which case it’s decent.

Fleet Charge (active): As the Champion’s Strike of the same name. Great flexibility, mobility, and action economy. For melee types, this is blue, assuming you don’t cherry-pick Fleet Warrior from the Champion path (which is highly recommended).

Surprise Strike (active): This is pretty standard fare for most classes, targeting flat-footed AC, which is nice. For rogues, this ability is pretty sweet.

At Tier 10, you become a Supreme Trickster. Non-Mythic foes become even more trivial (particularly for rogues!), and you gain an extremely circumstantial method of MP regeneration.

Trickster Path Abilities

1st-Tier Trickster Path Abilities

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Additional Trick: You can grab any tricks you didn't pick at 1st level. All you really need is Fleet Charge; Rogues will probably want Surprise Strike, and Alchemists might go for Deadly Throw, so this is more worthwhile for them. For most other classes, you can skip this.

Aim for the Eye (passive/active): For ranged rogues, this is a godsend. For other characters, it has a decent array of passive and active effects. Best if you have a caster or other friend who can keep targets flat-footed for you.

Assured Drinker (passive/active): Most classes don't rely very heavily on potions and elixirs, although this is still a nice perk. Alchemists will love this ability, however.

Assured Skill (active): As the Marshal ability. Probably more useful on a skill-monkey than a paladin.

Astounding Disable (passive): I've never seen someone use Disable Device in combat. If your GM throws you complicated encounters where you routinely disable things in the heat of battle, this would be a no-brainer, but I've never seen the time requirements of Disable Device ever be an issue.

Clown (active): How this ability works is unclear. What's your effective caster level? The save DC doesn't scale terribly well, and it's somewhat limited, but it could be a potentially useful ability for a non-magical character. Good for Joker fans.

Combat Trickery (passive): This ability offers a great deal of flexibility, and flavor-wise is reminiscent of a Three Stooges' routine. If you've really pimped your Bluff score and are in to combat maneuvers, this is a solid choice; otherwise I'd skip it.

Compelling Feint (passive/active): Feinting is usually not the best tactic for getting sneak attack in, but if you've got multiple rogues on the team this could be worthwhile. Probably not worth the MP cost.

Control the Mindless (passive/active): Constructs and undead are difficult opponents for tricksy characters, and this gives you an interesting weapon against them. You need to invest in Knowledge skills, but for those so inclined this can be pretty sweet. Eventually, mindless undead will be much less common, and higher CR mindless constructs often have good CMD, so this ability does not age particularly well.

Crime Spree (passive/active): I've not seen Sleight of Hand or the Steal maneuver used terribly often. If this is your bag, have at it, I guess.

Deadly Dodge (active): An interesting ability. Difficult to really take advantage of, but if you've got Combat Reflexes or a particularly dense battlefield this could be useful. This ability depends on provoking AoO's on your part, though, which is risky.

Defensive Move (passive): I'd prefer this over Deadly Dodge. Great for boss encounters; I wouldn't take it more than once.

Down Like Dominoes (passive): At least this doesn't cost MP, but I honestly don't see it being very useful. You could probably trip an extra foe once in a while, but you've got to have at least 4 Tiers under your belt before you're tripping more than two people, and at that point the penalties really start to add up.

Enhance Magic Items (passive/active): An Archmage ability, so you know it's good. This is solid for anybody with UMD, although alchemists in particular will benefit from it.

Faster than the Eye (passive): Again, I don't think I've ever seen Sleight of Hand actually used. I'd rather just take Display of Dexterity to benefit all of my DEX-based skills.

Ghostly Performance (passive): For trickster Bards. It's performance security, but the real attraction is the duration increase, which gets better with age.

Impeccable Balance (passive): If you can wait until Tier 3, skip this and take Feather Step. The CMD bonus vs. tripping makes it still relevant if you simply can’t wait to get all Crouching Tiger on those tree branches.

Improbable Prestidigitation (passive/active): Now here's an interesting use of the Sleight of Hand skill. Good for paranoid folks or kleptos. If a wizard can weasel a way into getting this, it's great for spellbook storage, or an arcane bonded item when you're asleep.

Inspire Minions (passive): See the Marshal ability above.

Knot Expert (passive): I could see a whole build centered around this. This might be worth getting on a full BAB class or a Tetori monk; you've got to have a CMB worth a damn in order to make the most of this.

Master Dilettante (passive): Meh. By the time you're Tier 10, you probably don't care much about untrained skill checks. Maybe worth taking on skill monkey Bards...

Master of Escape (passive): If you can pump your Escape Artist check higher than you're saving throws, this is a poor man's Freedom of Movement. If you've got casters on your team doing their job/sufficient WBL to afford a ring, I'd skip this. Better at lower to mid levels.

Nimble Glide (passive): Flat-out immunity to fall damage. You are now Alex Mercer/Dante. Pretty damn classy. Try asking your wizard friend to drop you from orbit. You now always have an escape option if you're somewhere high up!

No One of Consequence (passive): Good for paranoid folks. Unless you’re in some kind of Tippy-verse, you probably don’t have to worry too much about enemies scrying on you, so this probably won’t see much use. Good for NPC’s, though.

Path Dabbling: There are a lot of good path abilities out there: you get access to one of them through this ability, so choose wisely! I recommend Fleet Warrior from the Champion path if you're a melee type.

Persuasive Countenance (passive): Recycled Marshal silage.

Ranged Disable (passive/active): If you’ve found a trap and are really paranoid about being nearby when it goes off, this gives you some extra safety, although you’re more likely to fail without burning MP. I can’t really see an in-combat use for this. Meh.

Redirect Attention (active): This is probably better on a Trickster than a Marshal, it being a trick and all.

Ricochet (passive): Decent for ranged attackers. Thematically appropriate for gunslingers in particular. Stylish, but not terribly impressive.

Shadow Stealth (passive/active): If your GM rules that an area of darkness as described by this ability is any shadow, this ability is awesome. If they rule that it’s specifically an area of total darkness, this ability is much less useful, unless you’re playing in a Darklands game with a group of dwarves/drow or something. For most surface-world games, this ability sucks in such a case. Talk to your GM. There’s lots of potential here, particularly for non-casters.

Sniper’s Riposte (passive/active): A solid ability from the Champion path.

Subtle Magic (passive): For trickster mages, this ability is great, and it only gets better with age when enemies start relying on things like Arcane Sight. Generally useful in social situations, this ability is less useful if you’re not fighting other magic users in the long run.

Supreme Stealth (passive): Reminiscent of the 3.5 Darkstalker feat, this ability is less all-encompassing, but still useful for scouts. Tremorsense is rare, and thus probably not worth taking three times (and even twice is pushing it). If dragons are a regular enemy you face, pick blindsight, otherwise go with the much more common scent.

This Might Just Work (passive): A ‘hail Mary’ option that rewards creativity, I like the flexibility here. It has interesting combination potential with Display of X abilities. Try subbing Bluff for UMD, or a Knowledge skill for another Knowledge skill.

Thwart Detection (passive/active): If you regularly find yourself in Gygaxian dungeon crawls, this could have potential.

Titan’s Bane (passive): More Champion clone goodness. Kind of pointless in the wake of Path Dabbling, but then so is any non-unique Trickster ability on this list…

Transfer Magic (active): The ghost of the 3.5 Spellthief makes a lovely cameo here. This is an excellent ability that only gets better with age.

Trap Taker (passive/active): Potentially useful if you’re infiltrating a wizard’s tower or a trap-heavy dungeon. Any character with good UMD could potentially become a part-time trap monkey with this. You might get to use this a handful of times in a campaign…

Treacherous Critical (passive): Meh. If combat maneuvers are your bag, you shouldn’t be relying on crits to use them.

Unintentional Feint (active): This ability is too conditional for my tastes, and unless you regularly fight mixed groups of enemies with largely different AC values, this will probably just translate into another miss. Best case scenario, you’re blowing an MP to hit a minion or mook.

Unwavering Skill (passive): More Marshal copypasta. Probably more appropriate for a Trickster in this case.

Wall Run (passive): For Matrix fans out there. Best if you pump up your speed through buffs or other Mythic abilities.

3rd-Tier Trickster Path Abilities

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Combat Saboteur (passive): I almost get the feeling this should be an active ability, and a crappy one at that. It’s a pseudo-sunder in any case, that can be undone with a 0 level spell. You probably shouldn’t be picking a 3rd-Tier Mythic Ability that can be countered by a cantrip.

Critical Skill (passive): While the time-saving aspect is kind of meh, the real draw here is the area describing GM fiat rewards. If you have a particularly benevolent GM, this could be a fun ability. Check to see if they aren’t using house rules to the same effect in any case.

Ethereal Trapsmith (active): This gives you access to a potentially quite varied array of effects and abilities, such that the truly creative and resourceful could get some serious mileage out of it. However, ultimately you’re only getting CR 10 non-magical traps out of it, and that at Tier 10. I would need to see this ability in actual use before passing final judgement on it.

Feather Step (passive/active): The evolution of Impeccable Balance, this has even more benefits and perks. If you plan on just relying on flight later on in your career, you can skip this, but this ability oozes style.

Fickle Attack (passive): The wording on this ability is slightly unclear. If it just applies to base weapon damage dice and alchemical weapons, then skip it. If your GM interprets it as applying to things such as sneak attack or an alchemist’s bombs, then this ability becomes much more attractive, although I’d still never take it more than once.

Menacing Whisper (passive/active): If you’re just trying to be sneaky, why risk letting anyone know you’re there? That said, it’s a pretty cute ability, and you can get creative with the Suggestion effect in particular. I guess this one’s for Splinter Cell fans?

Mirror Dodge (active): Archmage copypasta, so you know it’s good.

Perfect Lie (active): This is the stuff of GM nightmares, the sort of thing that can wreck campaigns. While you could compare it to Display of Charisma, the fact that it foils magic and just flat-out works in the absence of proof makes Bluff one of the deadliest skills in the game.

Perfect Mimic (passive/active): This is a frightening ability in the hands of a spy or assassin, and good for infiltration in general. Remember: True Seeing does not foil mundane disguises, Queen Dopplepopolis.

Sardonic Wit (active): This is a cool ability to help out your friends. Great for those moments when the BBEG dominates your barbarian buddy.

Vanishing Move (passive/active): Pretty much the ultimate scouting tool. As long as you do nothing but move, you can be invisible all day. The in-battle applications are just gravy. Delicious, delicious gravy. (I hear archer rogues weeping tears of joy)

6th-Tier Trickster Path Abilities

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Bloody Streak (active): Situational, but potentially fun. You get the most out of this in a longer-lasting fight where you can consistently get off sneak attacks. If you’re optimizing sneak attack output, you’re probably focusing on getting as many attacks in one round as possible, which is probably killing things too fast for this ability to really make an appreciable difference.

Class Mimic (active): This ability opens up a huge array of possibilities, although this needs a bit of clarification. You specifically can’t copy abilities with limited uses per day, so spell casting is out of the question, as are a bunch of useful and iconic abilities. Can you copy bonus feats? In the case of a fighter, can you choose a bonus combat feat on the fly? The usefulness of this ability depends largely on the makeup of your party; clerics and wizards are likely to be less useful than monks, for instance. If you reach high enough levels, this seems like a great way to double up on 20th level capstones.

Enduring Elixir (passive): A late-game bone thrown at the Alchemist. Hierophants had this ability at 3rd tier with fewer restrictions… If you don’t already have discoveries that do the same thing, this could be useful for a self-buffing Alchemist. Potentially worth taking twice if you can’t think of anything better to take.

Precision Critical (passive): A nice perk for any crit-fishing sneak attacker.

Slayer’s Cyclone (passive): A situational late-game offering. The maneuverability is decent, but you’re probably capable of much more devastating things at this point. Good for anybody who misses the Paimon vestige from Tome of Magic…

Steal Power: Only once per day per target? I’d rather just rely on Boons as a method of MP generation. I highly doubt stealing 1 MP from a Mythic enemy is going to do much other than annoy them. It’s not even guaranteed, so you very well might just waste an action.

Unending Performance (passive): This is a pretty cool ability for bards or buffers. All-day Inspire Greatness or Greater Heroism is pretty sweet.

Trickster Path Breakdown:

Perhaps more than any other path, the Trickster path is loaded with a lot of situationally useful or ‘meh’ abilities. The biggest diamond in the rough is Vanishing Move at Tier 3, which makes you the ultimate scout. The rest largely favors rogues, with a smattering of bardic support here and there (the alchemist gets a half-assed nod, since they apparently didn’t know where else to put it).

If you want to just make an archetypical, thematic scoundrel, you could do worse than to take this path. That said, Path Dabbling is the best ability the Trickster has, primarily because it allows you to pick things from better paths. You’ll notice that there are a lot of overlap abilities from Champion, Marshal, and even Archmage for Tricksters, space that could have been taken up with more unique abilities. In many ways, Tricksters wind up with the smallest list of unique abilities; Path Dabbling helps them expand a bit, but again, it's poaching from largely superior paths..

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Feats

Your Mythic character will get access to Mythic Feats over the course of their career, up to 5 of them if you reach Tier 9. You can learn potentially even more of them by taking the Extra Mythic Feat path ability, theoretically possessing up to 15 of them.

With this in mind, you should approach Mythic Feats almost as if they were Path abilities. Some of them are passive, others are active, relying on expenditure of precious Mythic Power. Most Mythic Feats enhance normal feats, requiring them as prerequisites, thus preventing them from seeing use until you have some levels under your belt. Others are unique entities, and will be separated as such. Much like how a Trickster can ‘build’ their own Mythic Path, so too can you customize your character into something unique, potentially beyond the broad archetypal strokes of the established Paths. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Non-Mythic Mythic Feats

These feats are for non-Mythic characters that end up interacting with Mythic characters in some way.

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Marked For Glory: As a regular feat, this is terrible. As a Mythic character, it’s an extra use of Surge per day; I’d rather just take Extra Mythic Power. Pass.

Mythic Companion (passive): This is a feat primarily for NPCs, such as cohorts, eidolons, and animal companions. Such characters are going to feel eclipsed pretty quickly by their Mythic compatriots, but this feat lets them feel like they’re ‘special,’ even if they ultimately aren’t.

Mythic Feats

These feats either have no prerequisites (other than being Mythic), have Mythic-specific prerequisites, or have non-Mythic feat prerequisites but don’t actually improve on them, instead conferring unique abilities.

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Ascendant Spell (metamagic): Technically, a non-Mythic spell caster can take this. While it’s nice in that it opens up a larger potential of Mythic spells you might not have otherwise taken through Mythic Spellcasting, the +5 level adjustment is too steep. Is Mythic Enervation worth a 9th level spell slot? Energy Drain’s sitting right there… To make matters worse, there’s a lot of restrictions and red-tape here, particularly for non-Mythic characters.

Drink Is Life (passive/active): If you have the CON for it, this feat opens up an interesting array of options. The main benefit is that you can drink away negative statuses that can’t be dealt with by Unstoppable, and you can potentially be ridding yourselves of a few others five tiers earlier. Booze is cheaper than potions and scrolls, so it’ll save you money on recovery. It’s got great flavor for any Mythic alcoholics out there, and couples particularly well with the Dependency Mythic Flaw if your GM saddles you with one.

Dual Path: You can only take it at 1st Tier, so it’s something of a ‘Mythic Feat Tax,’ but it can really be worth it. For certain multi class builds, it's practically mandatory.

Extra Mythic Power: Basically the exact same thing as the Universal Path ability of the same name, in many ways it’s even more attractive as a Mythic feat tacked on to your character for more Mythic staying power.

Extra Path Ability: This Mythic feat creates a feedback loop. Take the feat to gain the ‘Extra Mythic Feat’ Universal path ability to then take the Extra Path Ability feat, repeat until your brain implodes.
This aside, it's a solid option; many path abilities are better than a Mythic Feat.

Fabulous Figments (passive): Mostly useful against enemy magic users. Thematically appropriate for any serious illusionist.

Legendary Teamwork (passive): This requires you to have two of the generally-horrible Teamwork feats as a prerequisite. The reward for such dedication? A +1 bonus.

Lucky Surge (passive): For Surge-fans. Surges already let you play the odds, this just makes you better at it. Requires the crappy Potent Surge feat as a prereq, though, which docks it points.

Maximize Surge (active): Only once per day, and it costs an extra MP to boot.

Mythic Paragon (passive): This is a good general feat for any Mythic character looking to boost their effectiveness. In particular, this will increase durations of certain Mythic powers, and boost the save DCs of others.

Mythic Spell Lore: This is the same thing as the Mythic Spellcasting Universal Path ability, but there is no restriction on the number of times you can take it. If you’re into Mythic Spells, go nuts.

Potent Surge (passive): +1 to Surge rolls is kind of lame, but who knows? Maybe it’ll make the difference. It’s the prereq for the Lucky Surge feat, which is decent.

Titan Strike (passive): This ability is excellent for monks or anybody who lets their fists do the talking.

Two-Fisted Drinker (passive): For most characters, this ability is pretty crappy. However, the wording is such that an Alchemist can use it to down two extracts in a round, making it pretty damn sweet for them.

Valiant Vault (passive/active): This is a pretty wacky ability. If you routinely fight smaller foes, this can be useful, but you’ll have a hell of a time jumping ogres, giants, and dragons.

Mythic Enhancement Feats

These feats all share a name with their normal feat prerequisite, save that you tack the word ‘Mythic’ to the front of them. These represent the bulk of Mythic Feats. Brace yourself.

Note: I’ve rated most of the ‘bonus to two skills’ Mythic feats as red, largely because the passive bonuses they provide are not worth a Mythic feat, and their active usage is like a more-limited version of the Display of [Ability] Universal path abilities. Would you rather treat a roll like a natural 20, or add a +20 circumstance bonus to the roll (that you could potentially roll a 20 on)? That said, these Mythic feats stack with their sister Display abilities, so for 2 MP you could treat a skill check as if you rolled a 40 before other modifiers. This is probably overkill in the end; I prefer the relative flexibility of the Display abilities over the limitations of these Mythic feats, but I just wanted to make you aware of these options.

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Accursed Hex (passive): Makes a solid feat even better, plain and simple.

Acrobatic (passive/active): This is inferior to Display of Dexterity in pretty much every way.

Alertness (passive/active): Inferior to Display of Wisdom.

Alignment Channel (passive/active): Unless you’re really focusing on channel energy, this ability isn’t that great; the MP cost is too high.

Animal Affinity (passive/active): Similar to the Tongue of the Land Hierophant ability, except that it requires MP to use. If you happen to already have Animal Affinity, this unlocks a wide range of potential information for you.

Arcane Armor Training (passive): Arcane Armor Training is a pretty crappy feat, but the Mythic version redeems it pretty respectably.

Arcane Blast (passive/active): Arcane Blast is a pretty ‘meh’ feat, and the Mythic version just adds a few options and enhancements. The biggest draw here is that Arcane Blast is a supernatural ability, so at least it bypasses SR.

Arcane Shield (passive/active): The duration increase is the primary draw here, and you can rack up some pretty impressive deflection modifiers. Decent if you’re paranoid about rays.

Arcane Strike (passive/active): This is awesome. It saves you swift actions, and you can get some nice weapon abilities on the fly, such as ghost touch or bane.

Aspect of the Beast (passive/potentially active): Mostly just numeric increases of the normal feat.

Athletic (passive/active): Take Display of Strength instead.

Augment Summoning (passive): Considering the disposable nature of summons, whether or not they’re considered Mythic is unlikely to be a major issue.

Bleeding Critical (passive/active): Holy smokes! Talk about a nova tactic. You can make an enemy hemorrhage CON with this. Nasty nasty.

Blind Fight (active): Rogues will love this, but it’s good on anybody.

Catch Off-Guard (passive): Don’t use improvised weapons, unless you’re going for flavor. In that case, this certainly doesn’t hurt.

Channel Smite (passive/active): Channel Smite isn’t that great unless you’re really building for it. In that case, the Mythic version is largely insurance that your channel energy won’t be wasted.

Charge Through (passive/active): This is inferior to the Burst Through Champion path ability. Do yourself a favor, skip all the prerequisites, and just take Dual Path (Trickster) if you’re not playing a Champion already.

Cleave (passive/active): If you’re into cleavin’, this gives you a bit more flexibility, but I wouldn’t bother burning MP on it. Quickly becomes obsolete in the wake of iterative attacks and all of the ‘pseudo pounce’ options available.

Combat Expertise (passive/active): A nice general boost here.

Combat Reflexes (passive/active): Now we’re talking. You can now safely build AoO-based builds without having to worry too much about your DEX score. Lock’em down.

Command Undead (passive): It’s always risky trying to control intelligent undead… until now. A necromancer’s delight.

Critical Focus (passive): This is likely redundant in the wake of certain path abilities, but still decent. Mythic Critical Focus is a prerequisite for Mythic Critical Mastery.

Critical Mastery (passive): This is some late-game nonsense right here, and probably only Fighters will have the feats to spare, but you can potentially get 5 (!) rider effects on a crit with this puppy. In all honesty, I have trouble picturing anyone taking that many critical feats…

Dastardly Finish (passive): Just more reasons to turn Non-Mythic foes into red mist. Best if you’re working together with a diligent spell caster, I don’t foresee this aging well.

Dazzling Display (passive/active): If you’re into fear-stacking or Intimidation tactics, this gives you some fun toys.

Deadly Aim (passive): A nice damage boost for any archers out there.

Deadly Stroke (active): I’d rather take Mythic Dastardly Finish; it gives you a wider range of vulnerable conditions. The save DC here is respectable, as is the rider conditions if they make the save. Still, we’re talking about non-Mythic opponents here, so your mileage may vary.

Death from Above (passive): If you’re making some kind of flying skirmisher, this is pretty nice, particularly for crit fishermen. I see more monsters taking this than PCs…

Deceitful (passive/active): Nope. Display of Charisma.

Deepsight (passive): How far do you honestly need your Darkvision to be?

Defensive Combat Training (passive): +5 to CMD at Tier 10. It’s… okay, I guess.

Deflect Arrows (passive/active): Now you can deflect rays! Sweet!

Deft Hands (passive/active): BLUH BLUH DISPLAY OF DEXTERITY.

Detect Expertise (passive): A handy enhancement to information gathering for those so inclined.

Disruptive (passive): I’d rather take Mythic Combat Reflexes, but it’s certainly functional.

Distance Thrower (passive): If you’re into throwing weapons, you probably care more about ranged penalties than most.

Divine Interference (passive/active): Mostly just a way to make your lower level spell slots relevant; I wouldn’t bother using MP on it in most cases.

Dodge (passive/active): Certainly useful, particularly against rays and touch attacks.

Dreadful Carnage (passive/active): A general increase in power for Intimidate-specialists out there.

Eagle Eyes (passive/active): Finally! You can see the sun! Truth be told, most GMs probably forget to even factor in distance penalties to Perception checks, so you might be wasting your time here.

Eldritch Heritage (passive): A general increase in the potency of your heritage feats; if you’ve already made such an investment, this doesn’t hurt.

Elemental Channel (passive/active): Elemental Channel is already kind of lame, this just expands your options. It’s highly unlikely you’ll ever need to use MP with it; how often do you fight more than one type of elemental?

Elemental Fist (passive/active): The main draw here is to save on uses of Elemental Fist during a full-attack by spending MP.

Elemental Focus (passive/active): If you’re into blasting with a particular energy type, you certainly can’t go wrong here.

Elven Accuracy (passive): This is as close to Blind-Fight as you’ll ever get with ranged attacks.

Endurance (passive): The main perk here is the ability to sleep in heavy armor, but it’s probably not worth taking regular Endurance for the privilege. If you’re got caster’s doing their job, you shouldn’t have to worry about thirst, starvation, and frostbite. Display of Constitution is oddly enough better for this than this feat.

Eschew Materials (passive/active): This is nice for necromancers in particular; before long you’ll have free Desecrate spells, and might be able to pay for undead animation by burning MP. It’s largely a matter of less book keeping and convenience; by the time you reach Tier 5, you can probably afford the components to Stoneskin without too much strain on your wallet.

Far Shot (active): This is better than Mythic Distance Thrower if you feel like burning MP in a clutch moment. You could make some sweet long-distance assassination attempts with a proper bow, as long as you can make out your target from that far (perhaps a reason to take Mythic Eagle Eyes?).

Fast Empathy (passive): I don’t really see much benefit to this over regular Fast Empathy, unless you’re trying to calm multiple animals at once…?

Fire Music (passive): Bards don’t make very good blasters or summoners, so I don’t really see this having much use.

Fleet (passive): Just take the Impossible Speed Champion path ability, through Path Dabbling if need be.

Furious Focus (passive/active): It quickly gets costly in MP to use this with any regularity, but for clutch moments it can get you a nice boost in accuracy.

Gnome Trickster (passive): While the new SLA’s are nice, this isn’t really the kind of thing I’d spend a Mythic Feat on. Would you rather have a Vanish SLA, or the Trickster Path’s Vanishing Move?

Gorgon’s Fist (passive/active): While dazed is a nasty condition, this requires quite a bit of setup to pull off.

Great Fortitude (passive): Non-Mythic only, but it’s decent; it could potentially save you MP.

Guided Hand (passive): Makes a battle-cleric that much more SAD.

Heroic Defiance: A list of crappy prerequisites, all for the privilege of a 1/day defensive ability. Blech.

Heroic Recovery (active): This is slightly better than the feat above, but there are more attractive defensive options out there.

Improved Bull Rush (passive): This is pretty boring, just some numerical bonuses. If you're into bull rushing, this is here.

Improved Channel (passive): This is only good against non-Mythic foes, and using channel energy to damage is usually not that great barring extreme specialization.

Improved Counterspell (passive): If you're into counterspelling, this will save you higher level spell slots.

Improved Critical (passive): For crit fishermen, this is a really good ability. 15-20/x3 on a scimitar is pretty sweet.

Improved Disarm, Improved Dirty Trick, Improved Drag (passive): Mostly boring numerical bonuses here. Move along.

Improved Familiar (passive): Some pretty nice bonuses for your familiar. If you plan on using your familiar in a fight, you can pump up its ability scores and defenses with this; otherwise, I'd probably skip it.

Improved Grapple (passive): If you're focused on grappling, you might as well take this, since you'll need every bonus you can.

Improved Initiative (passive/active): You're already getting a sweet bonus to initiative just by being Mythic, but this pushes it into the stratosphere. When you absolutely, positively have to go first, you can burn an MP; if your enemy still beats you, then good luck.

Improved Overrun, Improved Reposition, Improved Steal (passive): These are a thing.

Improved Stonecunning: 1/day Stone Tell is not worth a Mythic feat.

Improved Sunder, Improved Trip: Yawn. At least these are pretty decent combat maneuvers. Remember: this is ultimately a +5 bonus with a few minor perks.

Improved Unarmed Strike (passive/active): If you're doing unarmed fighting, you'll need every bonus to damage you can. The hardness-overcoming abilities are rather limited; I'd look to the Champion path for better guarantees against overcoming hardness.

Intimidating Prowess (passive/active): Non-Mythic only. There are plenty of other powers and abilities out there that make you better at Intimidating. Just take Display of Charisma.

Iron Will (passive): Non-Mythic only, but it could save you some MP.

Knockout Artist (passive): If this is your thing, go for it.

Lightning Reflexes (passive): See Mythic Iron Will above. Reflex is probably the 'least important' save in the end.

Lucky Halfling (passive/active): 1/day = avoid.

Lunge (passive/active): Lunge is a good feat, but this doesn't really add much to it. The active effect in particular is pretty lackluster, but it's decent on lock-down builds.

Magical Aptitude (passive/active): I'm still inclined to suggest Display of Intelligence/Charisma, but this feat covers two important skills keyed to different ability scores, so you could potentially save on feats/abilities if you're primarily into casting and don't care about knowledge skills.

Manyshot (passive): Archers will love this damage boost.

Medusa's Wrath (passive/active): This requires a bit of setup, just like normal Medusa's Wrath does, but if you can make this stick, you can set up further uses of the normal version.

Missile Shield (passive/active): The ability to deflect ray attacks is the main draw here.

Mobility (passive): Nothing terribly exciting here.

Monastic Legacy (passive/active): For multiclass monks out there, this isn't very impressive, and the MP cost is particularly lackluster.

Mounted Archery (passive/active): The penalties this helps negate shouldn't be a big issue if you know what you're doing.

Mounted Combat (passive/active): This will go a long way towards keeping your mount alive, particularly if you're not a druid/cavalier/paladin.

Natural Spell (passive): Finally, a noteworthy Mythic feat! This is a must-have for any druid, negating many of the negative aspects of wild shape.

Nimble Moves (passive): By the time your'e getting any real benefit from this, your spellcasting buddies should be hitting you up with Freedom of Movement.

Penetrating Strike (passive): Most Mythic Paths come with a built-in method of overcoming DR of any type, although it costs MP. You can probably rely on equipment, spells, and other Mythic powers to overcome DR, and skip this.

Persuasive (passive/active): Normally I would file this away as crap with its similar cousins, but Diplomacy is a pretty important skill with potentially very high DCs, and this feat stacks with Display of Charisma. You can build something close to a Mythic Diplomancer with this Mythic feat paired with the aforementioned ability. This can also be nice for those looking to optimize Intimidate. Possibly worth consideration, although Display of Charisma alone will probably suffice for most purposes.

Pinpoint Targeting (passive/active): I’d rather be making full attacks, but if you’re going for some kind of sniper build…

Point-Blank Shot (passive/active): This feat was nothing but a speed bump for better archery feats, and there’s nothing to write home about with the Mythic version.

Power Attack (passive/active): Long live the King of all melee feats. This can do some scary damage, particularly for a crit fisher. You’ll be fine with just the passive benefits.

Powerful Shape (passive/active): This is a mild improvement on a lackluster feat, but you’re probably better off relying on your own magic rather than blowing a Mythic feat for some piddling bonuses.

Prophetic Visionary (passive): Can you think of a use for Augury that warrants wasting everyone’s time for 10 minutes? This is better than the non-Mythic version, but this is still too much of a logistical pain in the ass to warrant taking.

Quick Draw (passive/active): Certainly functional, but I personally would just consider folding the benefits of this into normal Quick Draw as a house rule. Do you really need to blow two feats (one Mythic!) on this?

Racial Heritage (passive): The usefulness of this depends on what racial trait you select. I’d shoot for things that are harder to acquire, like boosts to certain spell save DCs. In the end, this will be a pretty minor boon.

Rapid Reload (passive/active): Functional. Here if you need it. Probably best on a gunslinger.

Rapid Shot (passive): This one’s a win-win, essentially Improved Two-Weapon Fighting for archers.

Rhetorical Flourish (passive/active): Display of Charisma. Next.

Ride-By Attack (passive): It’s fun, and opens up some interesting options, but I don’t see it having much use unless you’re fighting lots of weak enemies.

Run (passive): Nope.

Saving Shield (passive): You’ve got more important things to do with immediate/swift actions. Pass.

Scorpion Style (passive/active): This opens up an interesting debuff option for monks. A good set-up for Medusa’s Wrath if you’re going for it.

Selective Channeling (passive/active): How many people do you honestly need to not-affect, here? I can’t see a good use for this, and the bonuses are too piddling to matter.

Self-Sufficient (passive/active): Yes, I’d recommend Display of Wisdom over this. If you’re trying to make the ULTIMATE TRACKER you could combine the two, I guess…

Shatter Defenses (passive): If you’ve got rogue buddies, this is especially good. Share the love.

Shield Focus (passive/active): I always like boosts to touch AC. The active usage can boost your Fort. save, which I find somewhat odd.

Shield Slam (passive/active): Too narrow and situational.

Shot on the Run (passive): Why aren’t you full-attacking?

Skill Focus (passive): This is nice to pair up with UMD, accomplishing what the Marshal and Trickster alone could not. Otherwise, I’d probably pass on this.

Snatch Arrows (passive/active): Far too situational to be anything but garbage. Cool visual, though.

Sociable (passive): Kill this with fire.

Spell Focus (passive/active): Not particularly subtle, but it works. You ought to have other Mythic abilities to screw with opponents’ saving throw rolls, but it’s here in a pinch if you need it.

Spell Mastery (passive/active): Unless you’re playing with the world’s greatest rules stickler, you can ignore this with ease. Why bother with Spell Mastery in the first place? You can just get rid of your spell book via Archmage path abilities.

Spell Penetration (passive): You can amass some pretty impressive numbers here, but I’d rather just have Eldritch Breach. Still, if you’ve ever wanted to pretend that all of your spells are Spell Resistance: No, have at it.

Spellbreaker (passive/active): This primarily targets non-Mythic foes, which is lame, but of all non-Mythic enemies you’re likely to face, spell casters are probably the biggest actual threat. This is otherwise a costly and situational feat.

Spirited Charge (passive/active): This is one of the rare Mythic feats that might be worth spending MP on. Dazing an opponent for multiple rounds is absolutely brutal.

Spontaneous Metafocus (passive): This is nice flexibility, but there are likely better options here, such as metamagic rods, etc.

Spring Attack (passive/active): The passive ability is a joke. If this is really you’re thing, the active usage will probably save you some pain.

Stealthy (passive/active): Zzzzz Display of Dexterity *snore*

Strike Back (passive/active): Huh, I didn’t know you needed a feat to do what normal Strike Back allows you to do. Kind of makes me sad. This is a garbage Mythic feat, by the way.

Strong Comeback (passive): This is actually really useful in the hands of a Mythic character of any stripe, as re-rolls are not that uncommon, particularly after you get a few Tiers under your belt.

Stunning Fist (passive/active): The passive benefits in particular are great for any monk.

Throw Anything (passive): If this feat works with Alchemist’s bombs, then it’s pretty decent for a bomber. Otherwise skip it.

Toughness (passive): Double your pleasure, double the fun.

Trample (passive/active): This is pretty awful.

Tripping Staff (passive): This is pretty boring!

Turn Undead (passive/active): That HD cap is the real killer here. Laaame.

Two-Weapon Defense (passive): At best, this is probably a +5 to AC, and that’s only when you’re high level and rich. I’d probably skip this one.

Two-Weapon Fighting (active): You can’t just suck up that -2 to attack? Even if this was a passive ability, it would be pretty lackluster. I suppose you could use this to dual-wield bastard swords or something, but you’d quickly bankrupt your MP reserves.

Two-Weapon Rend (passive/active): This is still just once per round, mind you. Nothing fancy.

Undead Master (passive): For those of you not in the know, this feat and its Mythic version are traps. Sure, they add a bit of convenience, but this only delays your upkeep routine, and maybe saves you a bit of gold on Desecrate spell components. Man up and pick something more useful.

Unseat (passive): Who are you, the Knight of Flowers?

Vital Strike (passive): You can get some pretty obscene numbers going here. The RAI might be different from the RAW in this case, though; talk to your GM. Either way, it's a nice extra damage option; it combos particularly well with Amazing Initiative; burn 1 MP for a standard action mega-hit.

Voice of the Sibyl (passive): This is largely a joke of a Mythic feat, but it could potentially be a potent boost to your language-dependent spells in the late game if that’s your bag. It stacks with (Mythic/Greater) Spell Focus at any rate.

Warrior Priest (passive): There are better abilities that improve either of these things elsewhere, but this combines them into one package, I suppose.

Weapon Finesse (passive): Just what you’ve always wanted, for you fencers out there. Rogues, magi, even monks will love this.

Weapon Focus (passive/active): Nothing fancy. It’s a shame the active use is a swift action. You can probably skip this.

Weapon Specialization (passive): Nothing too exciting here, but it will serve.

Witch Knife (passive): This is a nice little treat for witches out there. Practically a +2 to INT for save DC purposes.

*dies*

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Magic

You can learn Mythic spells via the Mythic Spellcasting Universal Path ability or the Mythic Spell Lore Mythic Feat.

How do they work?

There are two different kinds of Mythic magical spells: augmented normal spells, and unique Mythic spells.

If you know the Mythic version of a normal spell, you can spend one use of Mythic Power when casting it to cast the Mythic version instead. Several Mythic spells also have a section called ‘Augment,’ which usually specifies a minimum Tier needed to use the upgrade, and often requires additional expenditure of MP. The nice thing is that you don’t have to decide to make a spell Mythic until the moment you cast it; no need to prepare Mythic spells, for instance. Just prepare Fireball, and if you want to make it Mythic when you cast it, you can do so as long as you have the MP to spend.

You can spend MP to boost any Mythic spell in additional ways, increasing the saving throw DC, boosting CL checks vs. SR, or making them harder to dispel.

Unique Mythic spells are spells available to anyone that relate to Mythic rules in some way, and often can be enhanced by spending Mythic Power.

So, are Mythic spells worth it? Well, it depends on the spell. Most Mythic versions of spells increase damage dice, increase the area of effect, and in some cases perform some pretty unique abilities. Often times, they will be extra horrible to non-Mythic targets.

Remember at the very beginning when I described what the ‘cost’ of one MP should roughly equal? Well, you’ll need to seriously think about the MP cost of Mythic spells, many of which can be quite the MP sink. If you’re only in this for ‘wow factor,’ many Mythic spells can do some pretty ridiculous, cinematic things. Have you ever wanted to put an entire city to sleep? Blot out the sun with a massive fog bank that stretches for miles? You can do that with Mythic spells. Sure, many of them are probably wastes of power, but they’ve got style.

You’ll note that the vast majority of spells do not have Mythic counterparts. This does not mean that you should avoid learning said spells! Many non-Mythic spells will still be extremely useful to you, perhaps even more so if used creatively. Most Mythic spells seem to favor direct damage, battlefield control, or buffing. If you’re going to focus more on illusions, debuffs, summoning, or enchantments, you can probably safely skip Mythic spell casting; look to Mythic feats and path abilities.

Rating augmented Mythic spells is difficult, since by definition they are better than their normal counterparts. It should come as no surprise that the best spells often make the best Mythic spells. Therefore, most Mythic spells we will assume are rated black, simply increasing the damage, protection, duration, or similar factors. I will only take the time to point out spells with unique or unusual Mythic properties, potentially confusing spells, as well as ones that might be too good to pass by.

Update: Based off observing an actual mythic party in play, the spell casters eventually settled on several mythic spells as their bread-and-butter. These included the following: Haste, Heroism, Fireball, Shield of Faith, and Plane Shift (which was eventually phased out by Gate). Everything else was rarely used, suggesting that you should really only take Mythic Spellcasting or Mythic Spell Lore once. The cleric seemed to get less use out of his mythic spells in general, suggesting the arcane spell list is favored.

Augmented Spells:

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Animate Dead: This is a late-game augmentation that you shouldn’t pick up until Tier 6 or later. The MP-intensive cost is such that you should save it for downtime. Applying Mythic templates to your minions can be a nice boost in their power.

Antimagic Field: Tread carefully here. Allowing even one school of magic to work in your AMF is a weakness your enemies can exploit. As usual, this is definitely a double-edged sword.

Baleful Polymorph: The 9th Tier augment is pretty funny. Transform an entire village into squirrels.

Contagion: You can really spread some plague with the 7th Tier augment. Just a massive jerk move.

Contingency: Multiple contingencies! You can have up to 6 active by Tier 10. Paranoid wizards rejoice!

Deep Slumber: The HD cap makes this relevant for much longer, and the augmentations give you some interesting options for neutralizing threats without killing them.

Detect Scrying: For the paranoid amongst us, this gives you some interesting abilities, particularly against any foolish non-Mythic casters attempting to spy on you. Just be careful; canny enemies could use this to lure you into a trap.

Dimensional Lock: This is awesome even without the augment. With the augment, you can do some really nasty things. Pick a horrible place, get really familiar with it, then redirect your enemies there. Good choices include the void of outer space, inside a lake of lava, or a custom-trapped holding cell that creates an AMF…

Enlarge Person: Increasing the target to Huge size is definitely noteworthy. Reach is still only 10 ft., though.

Feather Fall: The 4th Tier augment can make for some really stylish entrances. Orbital drop troops ready, sir!

Finger of Death: The bonus CON damage is nice, and they take CON damage even on a successful save; pretty nasty.

Fireball: The gold-standard for room-clearing damage, mythic Fireball is noteworthy both for reasonably early access and decent metamagic flexibility. Considering status effects become less of a threat at higher tiers of play, the 2nd augment will always remain valuable. Even if you can't permanently kill a 9th tier or higher mythic character, you can at least little them down with large amounts of unavoidable damage.
Based off real in-game experience, this was tied with Haste as the most-cast mythic spell from the observed party's main arcane caster. He took Spell Perfection in the end, and was routinely slinging out maximized augmented mythic fireballs, especially against non-mythic enemies. There's not a lot that can withstand 200+ damage, especially if encountered en masse.

Flesh to Stone: All of the extra abilities here are cool, but the 9th Tier augment is simply classic. Bonus points if you have the statue do something really humiliating.

Fog Cloud: The same applies to Mythic Obscuring Mist and Mythic Solid Fog, but the highest augment of this spell creates a truly massive bank of fog. I… have trouble imagining a good use for this. Perhaps you could cover a city or castle with fog in preparation for sneaking in? Provide cover for an entire army’s approach? Maybe you’re a vampire? I don’t know, but it’s here if you need ALL THE FOG.

Giant Vermin: The additional templates and everything are cool, but the 9th Tier augment is worth particular note. You can now begin your project of populating the world with giant spiders.

Globe of Invulnerability: By 10th Tier, you are now immune to non-Mythic spells.

Haste: If there’s one reason to take Mythic spell casting, it’s this. You get a bonus move action. Wordcasters are snickering a bit, but just ignore them.

Heroism: While you don't get temporary hp or fear immunity, Mythic Heroism is otherwise better than Greater Heroism in every way. Double the bonus, and it applies to practically all rolls, including weapon damage rolls! With incredible duration and early access (3rd spell level for most classes, 2nd for bards), this gives you the power of essentially an improved 6th level buff as early as level 4-5. The only downside is it potentially renders the main schtick of the bard obsolete, but damn it this isn't worth slapping on as many party members as possible.

Invisibility: That’s a hell of a 3rd Tier augment. You’re basically undetectable now. We don’t need no stinking Darkstalker!

Levitate: By 8th Tier, you can build your own floating castles! It will take a long time, but if you’ve got nothing else to do, have fun making giant floating monuments to your own magical glory.

Mage Armor: Note the moderate fortification ability built in to this old staple spell. Nice! Even if you’ve got better armor than the bonus this supplies, you can still likely benefit from some crit negation.

Magic Vestment, (Greater) Magic Fang, Greater Magic Weapon: This can save you some cash on decent weapon augmentations. Pretty nifty.

Meteor Swarm: Just wanted to point out that the 10th Tier augment is pretty impressive, perhaps enough to make this spell more worthy of hanging out with the rest of the 9th level crew. 40d10 non-resistible fire damage is nothing to sneeze at.

Modify Memory: The 8th Tier augment is getting into scary territory. Campaign-changing territory. You are now the Ministry of Truth.

Plane Shift: This is really nice, at least until you get Gate.

Power Word Kill: All of the power words get similar upgrades, but the higher level ‘lingering’ augments are noteworthy in that you can ‘set up’ their effects with your pals. The risk of casting them is much less: cast Power Word Kill, for instance, and if your Champion friend can knock the target into the kill threshold on his turn, they die.

Sands of Time: The 8th Tier augmentation is just… evil. Try combining it with Mythic Modify Memory for extra horribleness. “Sorry, but you are now an old man that nobody remembers, including your family and loved ones. Have fun with what few years you have remaining!” *teleports away*

*teleports back*

“Oh, and your home town is now populated entirely by capybaras.” *bamf*

Sending: The 3rd Tier augmentation is noteworthy in that you can use it to troll the BBEG, even if you haven’t met them yet. Constantly hound him with pointless questions and stupid messages. Ask him what his favorite color is. Keep asking him to surrender, over and over again, every day. When you think he’s asleep, try screaming 25 words of the foulest profanity you can think of.

Shatter: You can now target magical objects! It’s not guaranteed, but it can sure be annoying.

Shield of Faith: This bread-and-butter cleric spell is a good example of a low-level mythic spell worth learning. At the higher levels and tiers, especially if combined with the Mythic Paragon feat, this provides a significant deflection bonus. It's a great candidate for the improved version of the Hierophant's Enduring Blessing. A +10/+11 to AC/touch AC/CMD for 24 hours is really nice, and frees up a ring slot.

Silence: You can get up to some shenanigans with this, particularly against enemy spell casters.

Sleep: Those wacky 8th Tier augments keep on delivering! Put an entire town to sleep!

Time Stop: Now your whole party can get in on the fun. I don’t even know what you could do with the 10th Tier augment; it’s one hell of a scouting or infiltration tool at the very least.

Unique Mythic Spells:

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Ascension: This 9th level spell sure is costly! Aside from story-related events, I can’t imagine many reasons to cast this spell. It’s more of a plot device or GM tool for an NPC to cast, if anything. For a villain, it’s a good ‘quick and dirty’ method to augment some minions with a modicum of Mythic power.

Bleed Glory: Again, this is largely NPC fodder. Assuming they can overcome a Mythic hero’s defenses, this will make any Mythic expenditures that much more costly. This would make a pretty cool magical trap; painful without being lethal.

Borrowed Time: This spell bestows upon the caster an extra swift action each turn, which is huge. However, the cost is pretty steep, as it saps away at your CON score. If you’re somehow immune to CON damage, you can probably stomach the hp damage instead, in which case this spell just might be awesome depending on how many swift actions you’re capable of tacking advantage of in a given round. In an extreme clutch moment requiring ultimate nova tactics, this spell can be worth some consideration; just be careful!

Deathless: This spell would be better if targets remained conscious. As it stands, it’s just another form of insurance, assuming you’ve got timely healing on hand. The 8th Tier augmentation strikes me as particularly strange; sure, you could prevent the population of a town from being destroyed by a meteor impact or something, but then how are you going to heal them all before the duration expires?

Elemental Bombardment: Take a page out of Redcloak’s book, and lob some hurt. This is basically an extremely long-range, limited selection shorter-duration summon spell with an added ‘delivery punch.’ Good for siege warfare or for simple lulz.

Lend Path: I’m leery of an ability that makes you weaker. There’s probably uses for this, but you should use caution and proper judgement.

Mythic Severance: Another NPC spell, this can either be a real pain or a minor speed bump for a Mythic character. As a PC spell, this probably has better potential than Bleed Glory, as most Mythic opponents are likely to nova anyway.

Restore Mythic Power: As a PC spell this is awful, but if you’ve got a particularly kind Mythic NPC willing to cast this on you, there’s no reason to say no.

Share Glory: The benefits of this spell are hard to quantify or rate accurately. If you’re fighting other Mythic foes and want to give some non-Mythic allies a bit of extra potential defense, this is here if you need it, but the duration’s not that great.

Soulreaver: While certainly stylish and cinematic, any serious necromancer would be shooting themselves in the foot by casting this spell. Although this is free, you’re likely going to waste HD of undead control, and accidentally relinquish control of your current minions. Creating and managing your undead minions is a task best done out of combat. If all you’re looking to do is start a wightpocalypse, the 8th Tier augment is decent.

Steal Power: Although the combat applications of this spell are questionable (why not just kill them?), the out-of-combat uses are intriguing. If you can somehow capture or incapacitate a Mythic foe, you can use this spell to ‘top off,’ perhaps during an interrogation.

Sustaining Legend: This is a pretty nice in-combat buff for a harrowing fight.

Terraform: Definitely an out-of-combat spell, I’m not sure what exactly you’re trying to do here… you could just make your own demiplane at this point, right?

[CockroachTeaParty]

Legendary Items

Mythic Adventures introduces a new type of magic item: Legendary Items. They are similar to Weapons of Legacy in some regards, items that grow with a character, or else possess multiple powers that you can ‘unlock’ over time as you gain Mythic Tiers. As they grow in power, they can even become artifacts! You can either make one yourself by taking the Legendary Item Universal Path ability, or else acquire one by other means, forge a bond with it, and unlock its powers (or add powers to it through the above path ability if it’s not yet an artifact).

Legendary items provide a source of various passive and active abilities, many of which are powered by Mythic Power and potentially by the item’s own pool of mythic energy. You can get a lot of abilities out of one Path ability selection in this case, although Legendary Items can dominate your path choices somewhat (taking up to three path abilities/Mythic Feats in the process). If instead you forge a bond with an already extant Legendary Item, you can save on your own path abilities, but at the cost of control and customization, beholden to the whims of your GM.

Legendary Item Basics

First, a Legendary Item is supposed to be a magic weapon, set of armor, or ‘slotted’ permanent magic item. You can’t have a Legendary staff, wand, or other expendable item (but you could probably talk your GM into it if you want, kind of like how wizards can have bonded staffs or wands).

Once your Legendary item becomes an artifact, it becomes difficult to destroy, which is good!

A Legendary item has a Mythic Bond with a single Mythic Character; what this basically means is that most of its special abilities will only work with said Mythic Character. Other people could theoretically try to use it, but they wouldn’t be able to use their own Mythic Power to activate the item’s special abilities.

A Mythic character can only have one Legendary item bonded to them at a time. If a Legendary item is already bound to a Mythic character, another character can not bond to it until the previous owner’s bond is broken.

A Mythic character can acquire a Mythic Bond with a Legendary item in one of two ways: either by making the item ‘ascend,’ typically by taking the Legendary Item path ability, or by going through a ‘trial’ while using the item, subject to your GM’s sadistic whims.

If a Legendary item has multiple special abilities, a Mythic character can only access as many of them as they have Tiers. If your Legendary item has three special abilities and you’re only Tier 2, you wouldn’t be able to use one of said abilities. You get to pick which abilities you gain access to in this case, but you must choose persistent abilities first.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that the bond between a Legendary item and a Mythic character can be broken in a number of ways. This is bad! As long as your bond is broken, all of those path abilities you spent on acquiring a Legendary item are effectively dead weight. So be careful concerning the following:

A.) Death. If you die, your bond is broken, even if you come back to life later.

B.) Damage to the item. If the item gains the broken condition, your link is also broken. Even minor artifacts can gain the broken condition, so beware! Once it becomes a major artifact, you should theoretically be safe, unless someone manages to perma-destroy your item; then you’ve probably got bigger problems.

Lastly, you can willingly relinquish your bond, but it requires a 24 hour long ritual and possible strings attached by the GM.

All Legendary items have a pool of Legendary Power (LP) which can be used to activate its special abilities. This functions in a very similar manner to Mythic Power; indeed, the bonded character can use their own MP in place of LP for this purpose. A non-bonded character has access to a Legendary items LP, but can only use it for…

The Legendary Surge ability. This is basically the same thing as a normal Surge, but it can only be used under certain circumstances (attack rolls for a weapon, saving throws for armor, etc.). Mythic characters can use their own Surge dice type, and the bonded character can count their dice as one type higher! Thus, if you’re using a Surge on a roll linked to your Legendary item’s nature, it behooves you to use Legendary Surge.

Legendary Item Abilities

Every time you take the Legendary Item Universal Path ability, your bonded item gains a number of special abilities. Each time you take it raises the cap of maximum abilities (up to 3 the first time, 6 the second time, and 10 the third and final time), but it can only gain abilities up to your Tier at the time you take the ability. Also, you need to possess a minimum number of Tiers yourself before you can take the ability for the second and third times (Tier 3 and Tier 6 respectively).

For example, you could take it at Tier 1, and have only 1 Legendary ability. You could then take the ability again at Tier 5; the cap is increased to 6, but you would still only have 5 special abilities. If you took it a third time at Tier 9, your cap would be 10, but it would only gain four more abilities, equal to your Tier at the time of taking it.

As another example, let’s say you don’t take the Legendary Item ability until Tier 7. It would start with 3 special abilities (cap 3). If you took it again at Tier 8, you would gain 3 more (cap 6). Taking it a final time at Tier 10 would net you four more abilities (cap 10).

Thus, the optimum time to gain a Legendary item of your own is at Tier 3, upgrading to a minor artifact at Tier 6, then finally upgrading to a major artifact at Tier 10 if you were looking to get the maximum number of special abilities.

You could theoretically find an existing Legendary item and forge a bond with it, but your access to its special abilities would be limited by your Tier, and you wouldn’t have any say as to what it’s special abilities are. That said, if it hasn’t reached its ability cap yet, you could take the Legendary Item path ability and add new abilities to it (again, subject to the cap and the limitations of your own Tier).

Now, theoretically, you could find a Legendary Item that already has 10 special abilities, forge a bond with it somehow (by taking the Legendary Item path ability), then gain access to its special abilities as you gain Tiers. You wouldn’t have control over ability selection in this case, but you wouldn’t have to waste more path abilities/Mythic feats. This approach is similar to Weapons of Legacy; talk to your GM.

The following is a list of item special abilities. Remember that if you’re making your own, these abilities cannot be changed. Choose wisely.

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Adroit (active, non-persistent): If your Legendary item applies its Legendary Surge on a skill checks, this ability allows you to spend 1 LP/MP to gain a +20 insight bonus, but this only applies to one chosen skill. It’s basically a much more limited Display of X ability. I wouldn’t pick this on a custom item, but it’s certainly functional.

Dedicated Bond (persistent, artifact only): This is for paranoid people. The sequestering ability is kind of cool, but why not just have your item on your person at all times? If you’ve got some kind of sadistic ******* GM, this ability might be necessary, although you’re probably fighting a losing battle; if your GM wants to take your toys away, there’s not much you can do in the long run.

Eternal Bond (persistent, artifact only): This ability will save you a lot of hassle. It’s basically insurance.

Everlasting (persistent, major artifact only): Largely fluff, your item now makes you immortal. Considering you gain immortality just by climbing the Tiers, this seems a bit excessive, but if you’re never getting past Tier 8, this is a potential solution if you’re concerned about dying from old age. You’re immune to inhaled poisons/vacuum/the ocean depths, which is a nice perk.

Flexible Bond (non-persistent): I see this mostly as a GM tool. I suppose if you’re a generous, sharing kind of person, this is here, but that entire time someone else is playing with your toy, you’re potentially sitting on wasted path abilities.

Foe-Biting (active, non-persistent, artifact only, weapon only): This ability brings the pain. Gets costly quickly, but it’s a good nova tactic.

Intelligent (persistent): You’re opening up a whole can of worms here. You can take it more than once to give your intelligent item special abilities and increase its stats, but most of said abilities are just ‘okay.’ The best one, Spellcasting, is highly dependent on your own Tier, and is probably only worth the investment if you’re playing at a high Tier already. The baseline abilities are pretty lack-luster, so it behooves you to take this ability more than once… but since it already costs one of potentially 10 special ability slots already, you’re already ‘in the hole,’ as the baseline abilities are something of a ‘tax.’
Personally, I don’t want my tools making wisecracks or putting in their two cents, but if you really want an item sidekick, here you go…

Intelligent Item Special Abilities:

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Animate: Creepy, and borderline useless. Prerequisite for Flying, which is what you probably want.

Blindsense: Probably the best ability behind spell casting. Too bad it requires Darkvision as a prereq. Remember: you’ve effectively dumped 3 Legendary special abilities by the time you get this (Intelligent, Upgrade 1 (Darkvision), Upgrade 2 (Blindsense). Still, this can be a very useful warning beacon and make you much harder to sneak up on.

Darkvision: A prereq for the much better Blindsense. If you yourself do not have Darkvision, I fail to see how this helps you very much. Maybe your lucern hammer can help keep the watch now? Shrug.

Expanded Senses: You can take this twice, to a maximum of 120 ft. sensory range. While having 120 ft. blind sense is a potent security system, you’ll have used half of your Legendary item’s maximum special abilities for the privilege. You should be fine with the standard 30 ft. range.

Fly: This is the best option if you want your item to do some scouting, although keep in mind its sensory range is very limited. I suppose if someone stole your item for you it could try to fly back to you, but how is it going to find you? If that’s your main concern, skip this and take Teleporting after Spellcasting.

Read Languages: Yawn.

Read Magic: This is a CANTRIP! Why is this on the list?

Shape Change: This is an option that could potentially reward the creative. Useful for stealth, among other things. Too bad it’s only one different form…

Skill Ranks: This can only be used for mental skills. 10 ranks is nice, but do you really want your guisarme negotiating for you? I’d rely on your teammates for skills, not your talking spatula.

Spellcasting: This is really the only special ability worth your time, aside from Blindsense (maybe). If you wait until the late game once you’ve got some Tiers under your belt, this can be a nice source of access to some nice spell-like abilities. Particularly useful if you’re not a spell caster yourself, the wording on this ability is such that you, the item-bearer, get to use the spells, so you don’t have to worry about your item’s limited sensory range. That said, you’ll probably be best served by buff or utility spells. You can take this ability more than once, and if you’re going down the whole Intelligent item road in the first place, I’d recommend you do so.

Telepathy: This is only useful if you’re trying to be subtle or stealthy. For most Big Damn Mythic Heroes, you can probably skip this.

Teleport: This is a nice panic button should your item get separated from you. Note that Spellcasting counts as a prereq, so you can just skip over Animate and Flying entirely if that’s all you’re worried about.

Legendary Fortification (active, non-persistent, armor, shield, or worn item only): This ability can save your life, and it doesn’t even take an action. Rock-solid.

Metamagician (active, non-persistent, head, headband, staff, ring, or rod only): Everybody loves metamagic! This ability can quickly get costly, but it’s a solid late-game option once you’ve got more MP to throw around. Note that you yourself must know the metamagic feat to be applied. The great thing about this ability is that you don’t have to take it multiple times to use a costly metamagic feat, unlike the Archmage’s Arcane Metamastery.

Perfect Surge (active, non-persistent, major artifact only): Now you can use Legendary Surge on any d20 roll. Remember how your Surge dice counts as one higher if you’re the bonded wielder? This is effectively a die pool increase for any and all future Surges, as long as you have your Legendary Item handy, and you get a nifty +2 bonus on Surges your item was originally designed to Legendary Surge for in the first place.

Powerful (persistent): This is basically the same thing as Extra Mythic Power, just limited to your item. Since you can take this alongside extra special abilities for one path ability, this is actually a pretty decent trade-off. You can take it up to three times, but must wait until you hit minor and major artifact levels in order to do so, for up to 6 additional uses of Legendary Power a day (8 total). Sure, LP is more limited in use than MP, but it can still be put to excellent use.

Rejuvenating (active, non-persistent, artifact only): This is a very open-ended defensive ability. The healing is nice, but the main draw here is the ability to remove any harmful condition. IRON HEART SURRRRRGE!

Returning (active, non-persistent): Why bother with an Intelligent item if this is all you want? It’s a decent paranoid insurance ability. Note that it requires MP to use, not LP. You can take it twice to cross planar boundaries, but only if it’s a major artifact. (I’d probably only take this once)

Undetectable (non-persistent, passive): This is a dream come true for scouts and sneaky types. Combine this with Vanishing Move from the Trickster Path, and you’ll be next to impossible to track down. Simply awesome, full stop.

Unstoppable Strike (active, non-persistent, artifact only): Another amazing ability. It can get costly, but it’s great in clutch situations, particularly if you’re fighting a dragon or something.

Unyielding (persistent): This ability is basically useless by the time your item becomes a major artifact. However, if you’re never going to reach such high Tiers, this ability is pretty decent as insurance, particularly against non-Mythic foes.

Upgradable (non-persistent): While this ability could save you some cash, once your item has reached the maximum bonus it’s effectively a dead ability. I’d rather have a cool special ability and burn the extra cheddar, ya dig?

Final Thoughts on Legendary Items

Whether you’re making your own by spending path abilities, or trying to unlock the powers of one your GM gave to you, Legendary Items are a potent resource. Yes, there’s some risk involved: getting your item stolen or destroyed can be a major pain, potentially wasting Mythic abilities until you can get your bond back up and running. However, if you’re careful, you can gain a potent tool indeed.

While unlocking the powers of an item your GM provides you can be fun, the control afforded making your own shouldn’t be discarded lightly. Yes, you’ll be using up potentially three of your limited path abilities (or Mythic Feats post Tier-3), but in return, you can get up to 10 cool abilities on your item. If you keep that in mind, each time you take the Legendary Item path ability, you’re basically getting 3 mini-abilities in its place, many of them better than Mythic Feats (I’d take Metamagician or Foe Biter over most Mythic Feats or path abilities any day).

That said, you can make a perfectly serviceable Mythic character and never touch a Legendary Item. I’d say they are more valuable for non-spellcasting characters, as they are generally more reliant on their equipment, but there’s definitely fun stuff for casters here too.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Magic Items

Alongside Legendary Items and a few new artifacts, there are also a number of Mythic magic items for you to consider. Most of these items effect Mythic characters in some way, or provide another source to spend Mythic Power on. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Mythic Armor & Shield Special Abilities

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Deflecting (+3 bonus, steel-shield only): This is a cool visual! You can spend MP to pump up the deflection bonus. Too bad it’s a deflection bonus, though; most of your friends will probably have them from their own items or spells. Still, this can be a nice defensive boost, although I probably wouldn’t burn the MP unless you’re fighting a bunch of wraiths or something.

Denying (+4 bonus, heavy armor only): I’d rather have Heavy Fortification; this gets too costly too quickly, and it’s pricey for the limitations imposed.

Resonating (+1 bonus, armor only): This is a nifty passive ability that’s not too expensive to add.

Specific Mythic Armor and Shields

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Bastion of the Inheritor: This shield is designed for paladins. It mostly seems like fiddly bonuses and minor defenses to me.

Spiritwalk Armor: Stylish, stealthy, and functional, the quickened Vanish ability is great in the heat of combat, but the Mythic ability to go incorporeal for a round is the real draw here.

Stalwart Breastplate: Again, I’d probably just as soon settle for a Heavy Fortification armor, but the potential ability to ignore ability damage and drain is interesting. Probably gets costly quickly in a fight where it’s relevant.

Mythic Weapon Special Abilities

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Disjoining (+1, melee weapon only): If you’re a Mythic creature yourself, there’s no way in the Nine Hells you should ever touch one of these, even if you plan on fighting other Mythic foes. If you’re non-Mythic and plan on fighting Mythic foes (good luck, pal), then this ability is very helpful if you’re a crit-fisherman.

Harvesting (+2, melee weapon only): Now this is more like it. Best if you’re a crit-fisherman, this can be a nice way to top off your MP/LP while draining it from your foes.

Mythic Bane (+1): Just like a normal Bane weapon, but targets Mythic creatures. Stacks with regular Bane weapons, too. In some ways, this is even better than normal Bane for a Mythic character, as you’ll probably face a variety of Mythic foes from a number of creature-types.

Potent (+2, active, non-ammunition): This is an odd ability. At Tier 10, this ability is wasted on anything better than a +1 enhancement bonus, since it caps out at +6 (adding half your Tier). You probably have other ways to ignore DR; I’d rather just have someone hit me with Greater Magic Weapon and call it a day.

Sacrosanct (+5000 gp, deity’s favored weapon only): +10 ft. to your channel energy range? Whoop de doo.

Specific Mythic Weapons

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Bow of the Hunter: It’s a pretty interesting visual, and would be really cool if you were in a massive battle, but this strikes me as being very niche and unlikely to be relevant more than once a campaign. Meh.

Brutal Axe: If you’re into sundering, this thing is damn useful.

Chaos Hammer: You’ll probably just wind up hurting your friends, unless the whole party’s chaotic. The save DC and CL are pretty low and don’t scale. Pass.

Dagger of a Thousand Bites: Meh. Cool visual, but you’ll wrack up range penalties really quickly. Maybe this would be useful for a surprise round to sneak attack multiple people, but that’s really circumstantial.

Dragonbreath Bow: A serious archer is going to want a composite bow. The ranged touch attack is nice, but it’s costly in MP for what it does, and fire resistance is pretty common.

Fire Goddess’s Blade: It’s pretty, and sort of cool, but this is no dedicated melee character’s weapon.

Gun with No Name: It’s cute. I wish it reloaded as a free action; swift actions compete with other Mythic powers.

Pick of Stonecleaving: I’d rather just have the Destroyer 3rd Tier Champion ability if this is your thing.

Sacred Avenger: This is the Mythic Mary Sue paladin item of choice, basically a Holy Avenger on crack.

Shadow Spike: This item is pretty cool. If you’re into spells with the darkness or shadow descriptors, you’ll find this pretty useful. I could picture a spooky Mythic illusionist rocking one of these.

Shadow’s Touch: Basically the Subtle Knife from His Dark Materials. Particularly useful for anyone hunting spell casters.

Skirmishing Spear: This is pretty nifty, but considering all of the pseudo-pounce abilities available to Mythic characters, it’s hardly necessary.

Spellbreaker: A portable AMF; use with caution. I could see a mage-hunting staff magus rock one of these.

Stormcaller: Storm pron at its finest. If this is your thing, go for it.

Sword of Inner Fire: This is kind of a weird one. Good for pyromaniac melee characters who are sick of fire resistance. That’s right, elder fire elemental: burn.

Other Mythic Magic Items

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Ambrosia: All I can say is: clutch. This crap is expensive, but damn if it isn’t useful. Save this for the Big Fight. Note: it requires a minute to eat, so make time for your pre-Ragnarok snack.

Anchoring Belt: The main problem with this item is that it’s competing for your physical enhancement belt slot. A portable dimensional lock is damn useful, particularly if you’re fighting fiends, but I’d still rather have my +6 to STR or what-have-you.

Blind Helm: If you’ve got some 3.5 backwards compatibility going, just grab a Blindfold of True Darkness instead. This thing is costly in MP, and you shouldn’t touch it if you’re outdoors. Meh.

Book of Banishing: If you can’t cast Banishment or similar spells yourself, this could maybe be useful, but you’d still need a friggin’ potion of Comprehend Languages before you could read it. 50,000 gp for a 1/day ability? You’re insulting me. I’d rather have 5 slabs of tasty, tasty Ambrosia…

Book of Perfect Jokes: This book is a joke. The save DCs are far too low to warrant the cost or effort. However, the passive +5 to Diplomacy is nice for Diplomancers.

Boots of Earth and Wind: Meh. If you’re flying, you probably don’t care about combat maneuvers, and if you’re on the ground, will you even remember you have this bonus to your CMD?

Bountiful Bottle: This is pretty cool, and relatively affordable. Alchemists will love this. Grab a high CL potion of Heroism or Greater Magic Fang or whatever and go to town.

Bracers of Might: If you find these, they’re serviceable, but I wouldn’t ever buy them or craft them.

Bracers of the Shield Mates: Bracers of the Shield Bros, maybe. These seem kind of silly, but what else are you using your bracer slot for?

Canopic Jar: Expensive, creepy, but provides a potentially wide range of utility. Roll up them sleeves; hope you can make a DC 15 Heal check!

Cape of Free Will: It’s an upgraded cloak of resistance. Not sure if it’s worth 1.5 times the cost, but I wouldn’t turn one down if I found it.

Tankard of Might: It’s got some drawbacks, but for a once per day buff with a decent duration, it’s not bad. Good for any Mythic alcoholic.

Censer of Sanctuary: This is a decent item for pacifists and other mystic-types, although regular use will get expensive if you’re using incense of meditation.

Chime of Disillusionment: This is a useful tool against Mythic enemies at the start of a fight. Use it on barbarians to prevent them from raging. Also good if you’re fighting an enemy bard.

Cloak of Quick Reflexes: The Reflex version of the Cape of Free Will.

Cloak of the Hunt: This is a pretty useful tool, and has good defensive and offensive potential.

Cornucopia of Plenty: Heroes’ Feast is a great buff on its own, but the real draw here is the recuperation effect. This will save the party MP, and its value only increases the larger the party size. So far Mythic food items are kicking ass!

Death Warden’s Bandoleer: This item has a number of useful functions, but the stand out is the 24 hour Death Ward, certainly worth 1 MP.

Dolorous Rod: This thing is dangerous to wield and hurts your allies as much as your enemies.

Everburning Lantern: This thing is pretty handy and not too expensive. Great for delves into Places Dark and Places Strange.

Eye Orb: This thing is really expensive, and requires a bit of prep-time to make much use out of it. A permanently blind character would certainly benefit from its use, although you lose a hand holding it the entire time.

Figurine of Wondrous Power: Basalt Dragon: This thing is pretty expensive, but at Tier 9, summoning an ancient red dragon for 2 hours that obeys your commands can be pretty useful. Mostly a curiosity.

Gallows Rope: This thing can eat MP, but is certainly useful death insurance. It’s a little morbid, though.

Gloves of Distant Action: These would be pretty sick in the hands of a monk or brawler. Best used when your target has some weird defenses up, or for punching oozes.

Gloves of Spell Snaring: Not outrageously priced, these can potentially save your bacon.

Golden Holy Symbol: A nice trinket for a divine caster, the active use is a bit underwhelming for the cost, but it doesn’t require any further actions, which is nice.

Headband of Sealed Thoughts: This thing is quite pricey, but comes built in with some pretty potent defenses. By the time you’re powerful enough to rock one of these, your enemies probably have similar defenses, so it’s unlikely to land you a free minion; I wouldn’t bank on the rebounding, but it would certainly be a nice surprise when it works.

Helm of the Serpent King: I guess if you like snakes this is okay, but it seems a bit limited and costly for what it does.

Herbs of the Primal Beast: These are… odd. Better for barbarians, I guess?

Immolation Cloak: This thing is pretty metal, but expensive for what it does. A nice addition to a pyromaniac’s collection.

Inescapable Gloves: Now anybody can be a tetori! They’re not too expensive, either, so grapple builds rejoice!

Laurel Wreath: A thematically appropriate item, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword for the price.

Lyre of Storms: This is an expensive but versatile item, nice for a Mythic bard, that only gets better with age.

Mantle of the Faithful Vessel: A bit pricey for what it does, but functional. Good if you’re into channeling.

Mirroring Belt: This is a pretty cool defensive item for any character that doesn’t care much about their belt slot, such as most casters. Obviously loses value once you start fighting enemies with access to True Seeing or unusual sensory abilities, but until then it’s better than actual armor in a lot of ways.

Mithral Rose: A bit expensive for what it does… I guess werewolf-fighting monks would like one of these?

Monocle of Unveiled Auras: Classy. Expensive. Certainly useful in a variety of situations, particularly against casters. Good for investigator-types.

Moonstone Cat: Cute. A nifty way to keep an enemy out of the picture for a while, especially if you want them alive rather than dead.

Necklace of Spectral Strikes: This is a pricey item, but it can do some pretty awesome things. Sadly, as an unarmed character it’s competing with the Necklace of Mighty Fists. If you know you’re going into a fight with incorporeal undead, it might be worth switching out. The ability to go incorporeal yourself is cool, but be careful about running out of Mythic Power!

Nectar of the Gods: This is half the price of Ambrosia, but only refills 1d4+1 MP. This is still useful because it has the advantage of being consumable in a fight, requiring only a standard action. I would just as soon save my cash for Ambrosia, but there’s no reason to turn this down if you find some.

Pauldrons of Unflinching Fortitude: The Fort. version of the Cape of Free Will. Pauldrons instead of a cloak, but takes up the same slot.

Penitent’s Robes: If you’re going for an uber-good pseudo-exalted character, these can provide substantial bonuses in a single package. It’s expensive, though, and you can’t get the full benefits until at least Tier 5. Perhaps the worst aspect is that it ‘locks in’ uses of Mythic Power; whether it’s worth it is up to you. I would avoid the ‘refrain from speaking’ and ‘avoid touching others’ vows, but the rest seem reasonably doable. You’ll need to tread carefully, though, or else this thing becomes deadweight fast.

Pheonix Cloak: Similar to the Gallow’s Rope, but more expensive and not quite as guaranteed to save your life. Still, it’s less costly on the MP side of things, and has some additional bells and whistles attached.

Ring of Energy Dampening: I like the blanket immunity to a wide range of energy types here. Watch those MP, but energy attacks are rare enough that this could be a life saver before you have time to erect proper defenses through buffs, etc.

Ring of Transcendent Spells: The baseline abilities of this ring are really nice for clutch moments. The ability to cast Mythic spells is a nice perk, but quickly gets expensive on the MP front. Decent for downtime or out-of-combat applications, this could save you Mythic feats/path abilities if you’re only interested in dabbling with Mythic spells.

Root of the World Tree: One time use, but affordable enough to warrant usage for fights you know are going to be intense. Don’t bother with the MP option; nobody cares about DR on summons.

Seven-League Boots: The baseline combo package is nice, although quite pricey. The ‘teleportation’ ability is interesting but somewhat gimmicky. It’s only a move action, so you could potentially pull off some cool stunts with these.

Stonefist Gloves: Expensive, but then when have unarmed strike users ever had it easy on the wallet? The passive benefits here are a solid damage boost for any monk or brawler.

Torc of Truespeech: This thing is hella expensive for what it does. I would just as soon invest in a few potions or scribe a few scrolls; you don’t have to wait until Tier 3 or 6 to talk to some squirrels or shrubbery.

Final Thoughts on Mythic Magic Items:

None of these are necessarily easy on the wallet, even with item creation feats. That said, there are certainly some fun toys to be had. My favorites include the various Mythic food items (the Cornucopia of Plenty in particular is really nice). In general, your uses of Mythic Power will often be better spent on your own path abilities, feats, or Legendary item abilities; there’s a lot of competition for Mythic Power usage, and most of these items are too niche or pricey for what they do.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Flaws

Your GM has the option of imposing Mythic Flaws upon your character. These are supposed to be 'story enhancing elements,' and provide no mechanical benefits. You do not get any bonus feats or anything for having a Mythic Flaw; you just have to deal with them. Thus, it's tough to rate them: they're all bad for you. Still, some of them are less potentially damning than others.

It's likely your GM will impose one upon you, rather than letting you choose one for yourself; if you're in a position to pick your flaw, or if you're a GM considering the effects of Mythic flaws, you can take the following information under consideration:

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Dependency: This might be the least painful Mythic Flaw. You must consume a specific type of food or drink every day, or else your Mythic powers begin to fade, eventually losing them completely after three days of 'starvation.' If you get to pick your dependent food or beverage (which can't be water), you can go for something easily attainable. I suggest either alcohol (wine or beer, perhaps), which goes well thematically with a few different Mythic abilities, or else blood (you're killing stuff regularly, so it's rare that you won't be able to find it; if your pals are nice, you can vampirize them in an emergency). Of course, if the GM picks something really obscure, like diamond dust-laced absinthe, or roc eggs, this flaw quickly becomes horrible. It's worth noting that the GM can use this as a method of controlling access to Mythic powers. Perhaps you're normally a non-Mythic dude with a few extra hp, but every once in a while you find your Super Food and can power up with your full suite of Mythic abilities for a day.

Elemental Vulnerability: Pick an energy type, and forever be vulnerable to it. No amount of defensive buffs or magic items will defend you! This is a pretty standard Achilles Heel, although by Tier 9 and above it still won't actually kill you in all likelihood, just take you out of the fight for 24 hours until you reincarnate. Before then, though, you'll need to be extra wary of your nemesis energy. If you get to pick, you should probably go for something a bit more rare, like Acid or perhaps Electricity. Fire and Cold are more common, with Fire probably being the worst of the four.

Furious Rage: If you are a martial character, this flaw isn't too bad. The trigger mechanism is relatively rare, and the only consequence is a penalty to AC and a limitation on certain actions you can take, most of which probably won't be that big a deal in a fight. If you're a spell caster, this flaw is much worse, but still pretty rare; if you keep out of the fight, hopefully it won't come up too often. If you can get immunity to critical hits and fear, you'll be able to ignore this flaw entirely.

Hubris: Based off of my play experience even with non-Mythic players, this flaw should probably be mandatory. If you can get immunity to fear effects (which isn't too difficult), you can ignore this flaw safely. It's less crippling to spell casters in general, who can usually do more while staggered than more martial types.

Material Weakness: If you can keep knowledge of this flaw secret, hopefully it won't come up too often. If you get to pick the material, I would actually suggest wood. Most serious threats will probably be attacking you with metal weapons of some kind, and wooden weapons in general are inferior in most cases, which minimizes the threat they present to you slightly.

Mercurial Mind: The consequences of this flaw are more crippling than some of the others.

School Aversion: This one can be pretty nasty, particularly if your GM doesn't let you benefit from the school at all. If you get to pick your nemesis school, I'd recommend either Abjuration or Illusion; neither school contains that many spells that require saving throws, or if they do, there's hard counters for them (True Seeing, in the case of Illusion).

Weapon Weakness: This is sort of like a worse version of Material Weakness, particularly if the 'word gets out.' If you get to pick your poison, I'd recommend a group of mostly garbage weapons, such as double weapons, or really rare weapons, like monk weapons or siege engines.

Reports from the Field: Tips and Strategy

It's been three years since I originally posted this nonsense, and I finally have some substantial experience with the mythic rules: I ran the Wrath of the Righteous campaign, mostly as-written.

Disclaimer: I don't think the authors of said campaign were fully aware of the implications of high level mythic play. The game was very easy. I can only still speculate on how to up the challenge for GMs wishing to implement these rules in a custom game.

1. On Swift and Immediate Actions

By the time our group got about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through the campaign, it became increasingly clear that Mythic Power wasn't the most valuable currency: it was swift actions.

Many, many mythic abilities depend on swift or immediate actions. If you're playing a class that doesn't really have a use for swift actions, such as a fighter, then you don't have much to worry about. However, for many classes swift actions are very precious indeed, such as inquisitors, paladins, and higher level casters.

These characters can still benefit from mythic abilities, certainly. But they should focus on passive abilities as much as possible, or else abilities that don't require an action.

Regardless of this, important defensive abilities such as Surges and Force of Will use up immediate actions, such as modifying attack rolls or re-rolling saving throws. This often wound up hurting both player characters and NPCs. The 'meta' of these common mythic abilities became symptomatic of one of the common problems in regular play: the sheer action advantage of a party of adventurers versus a single creature. Any given mythic monster or enemy might be able to shrug off an attack with a surge or a re-roll, but you only get one immediate action in a round. Also of note, using an immediate action eats up the swift action of your next turn, which can often be a massive disadvantage.

I often saw my players allow a saving throw to fail or an attack to miss just so they could keep their next swift action. Tanking a bad roll was often a better call, rather than give up the ability to smite or quicken a spell.

This also makes the 8th tier ability Unstoppable that much more valuable, in that it is a free action.

So, in my experience, the value of things relating to Surges, and many active mythic abilities, become increasingly less valuable over time. I'm not going to go over my entire guide and re-evaluate everything, but it's worth keeping in mind that most things relating to surges should be considered black at best, and that many early abilities such as Fleet Charge have a limited lifespan of quality usefulness.

2. Initiative Warfare

It is frighteningly easy for a mythic character to accumulate a preposterous initiative modifier. By the end of the campaign, my players never went on anything less than the mid 30's in the initiative order, and getting into the 50's was very common.

For published campaigns, very few enemies can do anything about that. Most weren't designed for initiative optimization, which means that it is extremely rare for even published mythic enemies to survive long enough to take an action. Remember that Surges and Force of Will require an immediate action, which you can't take if you're flat-footed. Only a very specific collection of class features and creatures can work around this limitation.

The key ingredients here are Mythic Improved Initiative and Mythic Paragon. Doubling your tier as an initiative bonus, and the ability to blow 1 MP to just take 20 on initiative rolls is absolutely lethal, and something non-mythic enemies can't really do much to counter.

Solo enemies are doomed. The only combats that lasted multiple rounds were ones involving large numbers of spread out enemies. It's far too easy to nuke clusters of non-mythic creatures with mythic area spells. Ambushes were also successful in this regard. Incorporeal enemies hiding in walls, or burrowing enemies submerged in the ground are hard to detect even for high level PCs, and can be an excellent way to provide a modicum of challenge.

What not to worry about:

Interestingly, some things I thought might prove unbalancing weren't really an issue. Recuperation isn't a big deal. The ability to rest an hour and recover all spells and class features doesn't really alter the dynamic of an adventure or dungeon.

A strange side effect of recuperation is that reliance on expendable magic items drops significantly. The value of a healing wand becomes obsolete when you can just rest for half your hp and a new allotment of healing spells. Gold is finite and permanent, but MP refreshes every 24 hours.

If you really want to test a mythic party's resources, it's a good idea to set a ticking clock. A more hectic pace will actually introduce some strategic thought into MP expenditure. This means that anything related to item creation will ultimately prove less valuable if your GM is really trying to test a mythic party.

Oddly, the Leadership feat isn't nearly as big a concern in a mythic game. Unless cohorts can find a way to turn mythic, their abilities will be so vastly inferior that they become little more than a liability. The gap only increases as mythic tiers are gained, turning Leadership into little more than a vanity feat. My players actually wound up re-training Leadership by about level 9, as their cohorts increasingly seemed like slow-motion sheep made of porcelain.

Similarly, summoning magic and things like animal companions became increasingly less useful as the campaign went on. The paladin opted for a mount, but increasingly left it behind as they climbed the tiers.

**more in progress**

[CockroachTeaParty]

So... anybody want to help me with some MYTHIC artwork to spruce things up a bit?

[Bhaakon]

Good work. Mythic rules are a real beast, so I know a lot of people are going to get use out of this (myself included).

One thing I do notice, though. As great as Path Dabbling is, it can only be taken once. I get the impression from the guide that you think it can be taken multiple times (but maybe I'm mistaken).

[Crustypeanut]

Haven't read it all the way through yet, but woo! Bout time we got one of these :D

[Corlindale]

Very nice guide, looks like you took a very detailed look at everything. I look forward to reading it in detail.


I do agree with Bhaakon that Path Dabbling doesn't seem to have any clause that allows it to be taken more than once. Which sadly makes Trickster a somewhat lackluster path in general.

[Alleran]

I'd like to make a couple of notes on things. First, Divine Source:

Divine Source (passive): You are now officially a god! Or at least, people can pray to you and you grant them spells. The spells you grant are limited in level by your Tier, but that’s largely flavor; the primary benefit from this ability is that it gives you a number of SLA’s based on the domains you grant. For most characters, these will be one or two alignment domains and perhaps one other. Can give some spell-casting like options to non-casters. This ability is not worth taking more than once to gain more domains.

Technically, under the rules text of antimagic field, it states that artifacts and deities are not affected by the spell. While the ability does only say you grant spells as a deity (and, by association, may not actually be a deity), I think it largely semantics. Of course, since technicality is the soul of the law, it may be pertinent to raise the issue with the GM. If he allows it, this ability does have the nice little side effect of ignoring antimagic field and antimagic field-related spells.

Secondly, there's also the benefit from coupling this to Mythic Paragon. While the feat doesn't actually let you gain access to mythic (i.e. augmented) spells or the like, by my reading of the feat it should permit you to count as two tiers higher than you are for the purposes of what SLAs the Divine Source ability is granting. So at 3rd Tier, with Mythic Paragon you count as 5th tier for purposes of what SLAs are available, for example (9th level SLAs at 7th tier). It could be useful to pick up some higher-level spells before you'd otherwise have them. It also might make the GM cry, depending on the spell.

EDIT: Additionally, if you take this after taking Beyond Morality, you may be exempt from the "must pick alignment domains first" issue (since you have no alignment to require domains for), so you can pick and choose as you like.

Also, on Mythic Spellpower:

Mythic Spellpower (passive): This gives you a separate pool of MP for the purposes of casting Mythic Spells. I’d rather just have the extra actual MP from Extra Mythic Power; you can take that starting at Tier 1. You’re not hurting yourself by taking this, and if you’re really into Mythic spells, I guess it’s okay... meh.

Reading the text carefully, it states that, twice per day as a spell-like ability, you are casting mythic spells without expending any uses of mythic power (emphasis mine). For an example of this, I'll use Terraform (it chews through a lot of mythic power, hence it serves as an example). First, since you're using it as a SLA, that 10000gp component goes bye-bye. Second, it requires 10 uses of mythic power, 20 if you're 8th tier and want to take it to the next level. That's where Mythic Spellpower comes in. It states, quite clearly, that you cast mythic spells twice per day as SLAs without expending mythic power. So you just go ahead and cast that Terraform. You don't spend the material component (SLA covers that), and even if the SLA doesn't cover the material component? Well, you're very clearly not using up mythic power, by the rules of the ability.

Now, it's still not fantastically amazing, so it may not move up a grade, but if your mythic character would like to throw down a potent + augmented + <whatever> mythic <whatever> that normally chews through half a dozen mythic power uses, with Mythic Spellpower it costs them nothing. For people who burn through their mythic power like there's no tomorrow, it's worth grabbing.

Lastly, do you intend to add in any of the mythic abilities in Divine Origins that aren't specifically linked to a path? The ones for godlings of a particular deity, the mortal herald ability, and so on. Same question for Mythic Realms (which has specific mythic founts of power that grant access to a specialised set of mythic path abilities based on your path and/or manner of ascension to mythic status).

[Chambers]

Excellent guide. Thanks for your hard work.

[CockroachTeaParty]

I see that a few things are already in need of re-examination. Consider this a 'living document.' I'll look into these issues and update the guide accordingly.

Looks like the Trickster is at serious risk of becoming much less useful... Probably explains all of the copy pasta in its path abilities.

[Giarc]

I think the Dual Path feat requires Mythic Tier 1st instead of needing to be taken at Mythic Tier 1st.

[The Random NPC]

I would like to point out that the Mythic Vital Strike is a lot better if you have a GM that refuses to play in any way but RAW.

[CockroachTeaParty]

Mythic Vital strike is certainly solid. I'd be interested to see someone crunch the math; Mythic Vital strike in conjunction with Greater Vital Strike vs. a full attack sequence with things like Mythic Power Attack thrown in there.

Keep in mind that there's a lot of awesome Mythic abilities that require critical hits to trigger; your chances of getting a crit on any given round are much higher if you're making full attacks, rather than throwing all of your eggs into the Vital Strike basket.

Based off of my experience with high level 3.5, single, powerful strikes are almost always eclipsed by full attacks in the end. It was the same with Tome of Battle, and I imagine it's likely the same thing here.

[rollforeigninit]

Wonderful to see a guide for this. Still gotta buy the book. Makes me want it more though.

[The Random NPC]

Mythic Vital strike is certainly solid. I'd be interested to see someone crunch the math; Mythic Vital strike in conjunction with Greater Vital Strike vs. a full attack sequence with things like Mythic Power Attack thrown in there.

Keep in mind that there's a lot of awesome Mythic abilities that require critical hits to trigger; your chances of getting a crit on any given round are much higher if you're making full attacks, rather than throwing all of your eggs into the Vital Strike basket.

Based off of my experience with high level 3.5, single, powerful strikes are almost always eclipsed by full attacks in the end. It was the same with Tome of Battle, and I imagine it's likely the same thing here.

My point with Mythic Vital Strike is that, due to poor wording, you multiply the damage due to Str by the number of weapon damage dice you roll. If you use a great sword with Greater Vital Strike, you multiply your Str damage by 8, not 4.

[CockroachTeaParty]

My point with Mythic Vital Strike is that, due to poor wording, you multiply the damage due to Str by the number of weapon damage dice you roll. If you use a great sword with Greater Vital Strike, you multiply your Str damage by 8, not 4.

Yes, I'm well aware. I just crunched a bunch of numbers, and the results are promising!

Spoiler

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Mythic Champion Fighter 20

+20 (BAB) +17 (STR) +5 (enhancement) +4 (weapon training) -6 (Power Attack) +4 (Weapon Focus, Greater Weapon Focus, Mythic Weapon Focus)

Full Attack: +50/+44/+44/+44/+44 (auto confirm crits) (burn 1 MP for +50/+50/+50/+50/+50 for 1 minute, Mythic Power Attack)

Damage: 2d4 + 25 (STR) +5 (enhancement) +4 (weapon training) +27 (Mythic Power Attack) +9 (Weapon Specialization, Greater Weapon Specialization, Mythic Weapon Specialization) / critical: 15-20/x4 (x3 from level 20 capstone, x4 from Mythic Improved Critical)

regular hit: 2d4+70 (average 75 damage)
crit: 420 damage

Statistically, at least one of those attacks will be an auto-confirmed critical. Let’s be conservative and say that only one of them crits.

(75 x 4) + 420 = 720 damage in a round, assuming all attacks hit (even on a natural 1, you’re hitting AC 51)

If none crit, you’re averaging about 375 damage a round.

If you get lucky and all five attacks crit, you could deal 2,100 damage in a single round.

Greater Mythic Vital Strike (with the multiply per dice interpretation):
+50 attack, 8d4 + 560 (average damage 580) / 15-20 x4 critical (auto confirms)

On a crit: 3,184 damage

STR 44
+5 speed falchion
weapon training +4
weapon mastery (auto confirm, x3 multiplier)

Power Attack
Weapon Specialization (falchion), Greater Weapon Specialization (falchion)
Weapon Focus (falchion), Greater Weapon Focus (falchion)
Critical Focus
Improved Critical (falchion)
Bleeding Critical, Staggering Critical, Stunning Critical
Critical Mastery
Furious Focus
Hammer the Gap
(9 feats left over)

Vital Strike
Improved Vital Strike
Greater Vital Strike


CHAMPION stuff
1 Sudden Attack
1 Impossible Speed
F1 Mythic Power Attack
2 Legendary Item (Powerful, Returning)
F3 Mythic Weapon Focus
3 Fleet Warrior
4 Precision
F5 Mythic Weapon Specialization
5 Legendary Item (Foe-Biting, Rejuvenating, Unstoppable Strike)
6 Precision
F7 Mythic Vital Strike
7 Always a Chance
8 Precision
F9 Mythic Improved Critical
9 Perfect Strike
10 Maximized Critical

Pardon all of that mess. If you can make sense of it, let's take a look at our Mythic fighter guy's options.

Each round he has a move action; he probably has buffs or magic items to allow him to close the gap with his foe. He then has a choice: make a full attack using Fleet Warrior, or take a standard action Mythic Greater Vital Strike.

He has 4 more chances to crit if he takes the full attack. Assuming he crits at least once (he has a 30% chance on each attack), he averages about 720 damage per round.

If he goes for the vital strike and doesn't crit, he deals an average of 580 damage for the round; not too far behind the full attack. However, if he gets lucky and rolls a 15 or higher (and likely hitting AC 65+), he deals a cool 3,184 damage (I think). This blows the maximum damage potential of the full attack out of the water (dealing 2,100 if all five attacks crit).

The fun thing is, our fighter can certainly afford investing in both attack styles. He could full attack, then add a swift action Sudden Strike and a free action Vital Strike using Amazing Initiative, expending 2 MP in the process. This attack routine averages about 1,375 damage in a round, assuming only 1 non-Vital strike critical hit. However, at 7 attacks in a round, statistically you'll get at least 2 crits in there. That's 1,720 damage if 2 non-vital strike attacks crit, and 3,979 average damage if one of the crits is the vital strike. If by some miracle all seven attacks crit, you'd deal 5,704 damage.



So... how does Perfect Strike stack up to Mythic Vital Strike? On a non-crit, it averages at 150 damage, not even in the same league. On a crit, it does 517 damage (x5 multiplier), again, still nowhere close.

...

It would seem Mythic Vital Strike is really good! However, the RAI might only be a x4 multiplication of damage modifiers, assuming Greater Vital Strike. I'd run it by your GM at any rate. Of course, the numbers you're throwing around here (at ECL 25) are so preposterous that it's unlikely to matter.

This champion murders the CR 25 Mythic Wyrm Red Dragon in 1 round using either method. However, if your GM dials it back, Mythic Vital strike falls behind full attacking pretty quickly (not counting lucky crits).

Spoiler

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Note that this assumes our Champion friend beats the dragon's initiative. The dragon could Mythic Greater Vital Strike the Champion with a bite for a cool 456 damage or so. *winces*

Edit: I forgot to calculate the bonus from Hammer the Gap in there. It's another point for full attacking, but it's a pretty minor bonus that's difficult to calculate (since the bonus on crits depends on when in the sequence the critical hit occurs).

Edit 2: Also, I forgot about Foe-Biter! Burning more MP will double the above numbers; it's more economical using Vital Strike, rather than multiple attacks in a full attack.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

You listed Divine Source as not being worth taking more than once to get new domains. I disagree; the first time you will likely be bogged down by alignment domains, while impressive, are not actually as flashy as others. Plus, subdomains can be really awesome. If you take the Travel domain, you get Astral Projection as an SLA. The Trade subdomain gives you Gate. Some domains can even get you Miracle (Community, Divine Magic, I think a few more)

Also: You can take Extra Path Ability and Extra Mythic Power only ONCE each, as they lack the text saying they can be taken multiple times. Also, becoming 'immortal' at 9th tier does not stop you from aging, so it's not really a wasted ability to take something granted immortality. Circumstantial, yes, but not overshadowed.

And Intelligent Items make good insurance, too. They ALWAYS stay loyal to you, regardless of mythic-ness.

[Novawurmson]

Unless you have any objections, I'd like to add this to my "Guide to the Guides."

[Squirrel_Dude]

Very glad to see that this is up, as it is something I've been interested in for a while. Putting it in a seperate tab so I can read it in chunks.