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Mythic Rules / Running a Mythic Game

Designing Encounters

Source Mythic Adventures pg. 128
Designing a mythic encounter is a lot like designing an encounter in any other adventure. During play, the PCs will face a variety of challenges: monsters, NPCs, traps, and more. The difference is that during a mythic adventure, the challenges are far deadlier. It’s important to stress to the players, through the encounters that they face, that these are dangers beyond what they might normally expect in the game. Much of this comes through the design of the encounters, which can vary greatly depending on the PCs and how you want to challenge them. In the most basic terms, the mythic rules can be used in one of two ways: to challenge normal PCs and to challenge mythic PCs.

Encounters for Normal PCs: If the PCs aren’t mythic, then these rules can be used to present challenges of an unexpected nature. Mythic creatures and villains are more powerful than their normal counterparts, making encounters significantly more dangerous. See Adjusting CR and Level below.

Normal PCs should be rewarded with experience points and treasure based on this adjusted CR. This means the PCs will face creatures that would normally be below them in terms of their original CRs, but whose strange abilities make them true threats. Such encounters should generally be at least challenging in relation to the PCs’ Average Party Level (APL; see Table 12–1).

For example, a group of four 6th-level PCs is exploring an ancient crypt filled with undead. As they face a variety of normal undead foes, they also begin to discover a far greater evil dwelling within, sealed away centuries ago by a holy brotherhood. Upon breaching the final chamber, they face a pair of mythic mummies crackling with dark magic. The pair of mythic mummies has an adjusted CR of 8, making it a deadly threat to the 6th-level PCs.

Encounters for Mythic PCs: Mythic adventurers are ready for challenges beyond those normally expected for characters of their level. (See Adjusting CR and Level below.) When designing encounters to challenge these characters, roughly one-third of the encounters should use their adjusted APL, one-third should use the characters’ original APL, and the remaining should fall somewhere between those two values.

Of course, individual encounters can vary from these numbers as normal (such as a challenging encounter versus an easy encounter, as noted on Table 12–1). When facing a mythic foe, add half its mythic rank to its original CR to determine the foe’s adjusted CR (as above).

For example, when designing challenges for a group of four 12th-level, 6th-tier mythic PCs, approximately onethird of the encounters they face should be CR 12, one-third should be CR 15, and the remaining encounters should be CR 13 or 14. That means some of their encounters are rather easy (allowing them to dominate foes using their mythic power), some are of average difficulty, and some truly push them to their limits. The challenging encounters should be against other mythic foes, forcing the PCs to confront enemies with similar power.

Adjusting CR and Level

Having mythic tiers changes the effective level of the character for the purposes of determining what threats they can face and what treasures they should earn. Likewise, having mythic tiers or ranks changes the effective CR of the foes heroes must contend with.

To adjust a character’s level, add half his tier (minimum 1) to his total character level. So a 10th-level/5th-tier character is effectively a 12th-level character for challenge and reward purposes, and a 20th-level/10th-tier character is effectively a 25th-level character for those purposes.

To adjust a foe’s CR, add half its tier or rank (minimum 1) to its CR. So a 2nd-rank minotaur is effectively a CR 6 monster, while a 6th-tier champion pit fiend would be CR 23. For the monsters presented in Chapter 6, this calculation has already been made

Rewarding Mythic Characters

Source Mythic Adventures pg. 129
Mythic characters should be rewarded with experience points and treasure based on the higher overall CR of the encounters they face. In general, this means mythic characters will earn experience points and treasure at a faster rate than their normal counterparts. As a result, the GM is encouraged to use the medium or even slow experience point and treasure value progressions for such characters (see Table 3–1Table 12–5