TOPIC: Safehold I and Mythic Token Ideas => Part Three

Here is the revised plan for the new Mythic tokens. We are close to a final version, and this round of feedback will solidify the system. Thanks for your feedback!

We make only 5 Mythic tokens available as detailed below. We don’t plan on making any more Mythic tokens available at a later date, but we may do so if a good reason arises. The Mythic token recipes won’t change. The five available Mythic tokens will include the Coin of Wealth, three Mythics that help to deal with Mythic Monster abilities, and one Mythic token that allows for a second Neck slot item to be equipped (Ring of the Ettin).

Mythic tokens will be usable on any adventure, but you don't have to equip any Mythic tokens to play on Mythic DR -- but you will most likely die a lot. YOU DO NEED A SAFEHOLD I TOKEN to play on Mythic DR, however. This is being done to avoid some players gaming the system to collect Mythic XP and Rewards.

When fighting monsters on Mythic DR, said monsters will have Mythic Power(s) that make them almost unsurmountable foes to characters without 1 or more Mythic tokens. Mythic monsters will have 1 (or possibly more) of these 3 Mythic Monster powers:

-- Special Auto Attack: The monster has a nasty attack that needs no to-hit roll nor is there a saving throw to negate or limit the effect. For example, a Mythic Troll might have a sweeping attack that automatically does 100 points of damage to all players. A Mythic Dragon might have a Sonic breath weapon that automatically does 100 points of Sonic damage with no saving throw allowed. A Mythic Charm of Fate means that a character’s AC will come into play or that a saving throw to reduce/negate damage is possible when a character is being attacked by a Mythic monster with a Mythic-level attack. Tokens like Cloak of the Shadowskin or a certain Psychic Ability can still help out characters in these situations, but since most are 1/game – the second attack will be very damaging.

-- Special Defense: The monster might be immune to Spells or other magicks – or it might not be vulnerable to any Melee or Ranged attacks. A Mythic Ioun Stone of Insight will allow the character at least a chance overcome this defense. The Mythic monster won’t be COMPLETELY invulnerable to all attacks, but it might only be harmed by Spells or Melee attacks.

-- Special Effect: The Mythic monster might have a strange automatic effect that makes it difficult to defeat in combat. For instance, maybe all damage it suffers to also suffered by the inflicting character in the form of Eldritch bolts from the sky, or maybe it has an aura that automatically causes each character to be polymorphed into rabbits if a character does a Melee attack against it. A Mythic Bead of Defiance will allow a character to saving throw against these weird Special Effects.

The secondary adventure powers of these tokens (in addition to the Mythic Monster ability negation mentioned above:

Mythic Charm of Fate - +8 to saving throws

Mythic Ioun Stone of Insight - +8 to any base damage result (adds +8 to number facing damage dot on combat board or adds +8 to the Spell damage shown on the character card) It does not effect any other damage results like Retribution damage or Scroll damage.

Mythic Bead of Defiance - + 8 to STAT of choice (noted in Coaching)
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Note that you must have a Safehold I token equipped to use any Mythic token in your adventure.

The recipes are currently being worked out in another post, and we are also taking feedback on a special XP & Reward system for Mythic DR play.

See the latest Recipe post for more details on the Coin of Wealth.

Jeff, this version looks pretty good, thanks!

Hopefully the Mythic Charm of Fate doesn't completely negate the damage with a savings throw, but I guess you're leaving all of your options open.

I feel like I should know this, but what is the "R" in Mythic DR stand for? Is it Mythic Difficulty Rating? I've always thought of them as Difficulty Levels.

Jeff Martin wrote: -- Special Auto Attack: The monster has a nasty attack that needs no to-hit roll nor is there a saving throw to negate or limit the effect. For example, a Mythic Troll might have a sweeping attack that automatically does 100 points of damage to all players. A Mythic Dragon might have a Sonic breath weapon that automatically does 100 points of Sonic damage with no saving throw allowed. A Mythic Charm of Fate means that a character’s AC will come into play or that a saving throw to reduce/negate damage is possible when a character is being attacked by a Mythic monster with a Mythic-level attack. Tokens like Cloak of the Shadowskin or a certain Psychic Ability can still help out characters in these situations, but since most are 1/game – the second attack will be very damaging.

Jeff,
The value of this is hard to judge without some insight in to what Mythic monster stats could be. Lets say I have the Mythic Charm of Fate equipped and have 40AC. The Mythic Troll now needs to make a roll against my AC, but if the Troll has +40 to hit, it's not really that much better. I now have a 1 in 20 chance of being missed instead of being auto hit.

Jeff Martin wrote: -- Special Auto Attack: The monster has a nasty attack that needs no to-hit roll nor is there a saving throw to negate or limit the effect. For example, a Mythic Troll might have a sweeping attack that automatically does 100 points of damage to all players. A Mythic Dragon might have a Sonic breath weapon that automatically does 100 points of Sonic damage with no saving throw allowed. A Mythic Charm of Fate means that a character’s AC will come into play or that a saving throw to reduce/negate damage is possible when a character is being attacked by a Mythic monster with a Mythic-level attack. Tokens like Cloak of the Shadowskin or a certain Psychic Ability can still help out characters in these situations, but since most are 1/game – the second attack will be very damaging.

I think it would be cool of the Evasion and Improved Evasion abilities sometimes did something beneficial for some of these types of attacks - that would give a little bit of life to Khing's Ring and the relic version. Or even if they just had their full function against effects that cause a reflex save and for which Charm of Fate has allowed a saving throw.

Hello Jeff, thank you for taking feedback so far and being open with this process.

Your direction of 5 base mythic tokens is a fine direction, and I am happy to see TD leave itself room to adapt to the future.

Below are problems I still percieve in the current design system and possible solutions to them if you happen to agree to the problem statement:

---

-- Players coming to a mythic event with complicated tokens overloading coaches

Solution: To play on Mythic you must use the TD Phone App, or tdcharactercreator.com

---

-- Some insane person with 10 Safehold I's could come to a PUG and try to get them to play Mythic
Will this happen? I don't know, but I've heard enough horror stories

Solution 1:
Players must be 6th level to play Mythic (Must present Signet of Nobility)

Solution 2:
Someone must buy all 10 tickets and group must unanimously vote on playing Mythic (No idea how to verify this though)

---

-- Token Balance is hard to craft without understanding the likely range of difficulty of the encounter
Solution:
Add a dungeon threat assessment page for us to reference that could be updated as needed and the game evolves
Example:
Dungeon Threat Assessment by Difficulty (Ideally we could just take averages of VTD party cards for this guidance and have
Disclaimer: These ranges are likley averages of creatures you will find on your adventure. Monsters can exist outside of these ranges and boss monsters often will have one or more forms of exception of these values. That exception can be quite statistically considerable.
Disclaimer2: This is not an official doc of TDHQ and is subject to change at any time


Normal
HP: 100-300
Damage: 3-6
Hit Bonus: 5-10
AC: 10-15
DR: 0-5* (Most DR is creature specific. Creatures can be immune to damage types at any difficulty, you will never hurt a fire elemental with a fireball.)
Save Target: 10-16
Will rarely have an ability that will disables the player

Hardcore
HP: 300-600
Damage: 4-10
Hit Bonus: 8-14
AC: 13-20
DR: 0-7*
Save Target: 13-20
Will scarcely have an ability that will disables the player

Nightmare
HP: 500-900
Damage: 6-16
Hit Bonus: 14-25
AC: 16-25
DR: 0-10*
Save Target: 18-28
Will often have an ability that will disables the player

Epic
HP: 700-1500
Damage: 10-25
Hit Bonus: 20-35+
AC: 20-30+
DR: 0-15*
Save Target: 20-35
Will almost always have an ability that will disables the player

Mythic
HP: 1500-3000
Damage: 30-60+Mythic
Hit Bonus: 40-60+
AC: 30-45+
DR: 0-20*
Save Target: 35-50
Can have an Mythic abilities that effect combat at fundamental levels

If TD doesn't want to release this guidelines because they believe it may be held against them having some form of way for the community to get data and make our own would be nice

---

-- Mythic is gated by Safehold I, but then gated again by 3 other tokens possibly allowing players to enter a unwinnable dungeon.
The additional gating of the mythic system without advanced knowledge of what effects are in effect for the dungeon would likely lead to high player frustration.
Ideally, at least in my opinion, a dungeon should be completeable (in theory) without any one specific token. This is not to say it should be easy or likely, simply possible.
By using a multiplier or divisor we can make it possible but extremely unlikely that someone could overcome these challenges in mythic if they focused hard enough on it in their builds.

Solution 1:
Change to softgate by dividing player stats and having tokens restore them to normal.
Example:
Mythic Dungeons have an aura of evil so strong it saps the strength from your body dividing all party card stats by 2.

Mythic Charm of Fate: +8 to Saving Throws, saving throws immune to Mythic Aura
Mythic Ioun Stone of Insight: +8 Base Damage, damage and hit immune to Mythic Aura
Mythic Bead of Defiance: +8 to STAT of choice, HP and AC immune to Mythic Aura

Benefits:
Number squashing, can keep difficulty closer to Epic this reducing some mental overhead
Encourages consumable use by making them more valuable (as they are not divided)
Encourages buff spells (see above reason)

Solution 2:
Change the token hard gates to soft gates via multipliers.
By using a softgate we can in theory allow someone with a build tailored to the encounter to go up against mythic, thus increasing the potential player base of this difficulty

Mythic Charm of Fate: Final saving throws modifiers multiplied by 1.5x
Mythic Ioun Stone of Insight: Final hit modifiers multiplied by 1.5x. +8 base damage
Mythic Bead of Defiance: Final AC and HP modifiers multiplied by 1.5x

Benefits:
People usually like it when their numbers go up over down

Solutiion 3:
Simply up the bonuses from +8 to say, +10-12 to create a harder to surmont gap

If a epic character reasonably has a +35-+40 a save target of 55 has them fail 25% of the time. A mythic character would pass 75% of the time which is fine IMO

---

-- Combat speed is likely to drop considerably due to amount of extra rolling from additional saves required for in person mythic runs

Previously combat in TD is generally:
Party Slides -> Monster Roll (attack) AND/OR Party Save
Repeat

Currently outlined a possible encounter could be
Party Slides -> Mythic Invuln Save Roll -> On hit Mythic Save roll to Avoid becoming a Rabbit -> Monster Mythic Attack Save -> Monster Attack AND/OR Party Save

Which this can bring the amount the GM must check and add party saves from 1-2 times a round (and read off pass/fails of those saves) to 3-5 times a round.
The GM reading and checking saves is the 2nd longest portion of combat, only behind the slide hit checks. Monster invulnerability also requires the GM to take notes who saved on that to check if the person who hit actually really hit. Thus making that task take 25-50% longer as well (I made the percentage up)

This is genuinely a huge increase of book-keeping for the GM and would likely reduce applicable combat rounds from 3-4 rounds/room to 1-2 rounds/room.

Solution 1: See soft gate solutions

Solution 2: Mythic is VTD only

Solution 3: Pie-in-the-sky auto token calculator that can read a party card and do all GM math for them. (This isn't useful I know, but I can't think of other solutions. But I would love to see this in the fantasy world where TD had infinite money, resources and time)

Impy wrote: Hello Jeff, thank you for taking feedback so far and being open with this process.

Your direction of 5 base mythic tokens is a fine direction, and I am happy to see TD leave itself room to adapt to the future.

Below are problems I still percieve in the current design system and possible solutions to them if you happen to agree to the problem statement:

---

-- Players coming to a mythic event with complicated tokens overloading coaches

Solution: To play on Mythic you must use the TD Phone App, or tdcharactercreator.com

---

-- Some insane person with 10 Safehold I's could come to a PUG and try to get them to play Mythic
Will this happen? I don't know, but I've heard enough horror stories

Solution 1:
Players must be 6th level to play Mythic (Must present Signet of Nobility)

Solution 2:
Someone must buy all 10 tickets and group must unanimously vote on playing Mythic (No idea how to verify this though)

---

-- Token Balance is hard to craft without understanding the likely range of difficulty of the encounter
Solution:
Add a dungeon threat assessment page for us to reference that could be updated as needed and the game evolves
Example:
Dungeon Threat Assessment by Difficulty (Ideally we could just take averages of VTD party cards for this guidance and have
Disclaimer: These ranges are likley averages of creatures you will find on your adventure. Monsters can exist outside of these ranges and boss monsters often will have one or more forms of exception of these values. That exception can be quite statistically considerable.
Disclaimer2: This is not an official doc of TDHQ and is subject to change at any time


Normal
HP: 100-300
Damage: 3-6
Hit Bonus: 5-10
AC: 10-15
DR: 0-5* (Most DR is creature specific. Creatures can be immune to damage types at any difficulty, you will never hurt a fire elemental with a fireball.)
Save Target: 10-16
Will rarely have an ability that will disables the player

Hardcore
HP: 300-600
Damage: 4-10
Hit Bonus: 8-14
AC: 13-20
DR: 0-7*
Save Target: 13-20
Will scarcely have an ability that will disables the player

Nightmare
HP: 500-900
Damage: 6-16
Hit Bonus: 14-25
AC: 16-25
DR: 0-10*
Save Target: 18-28
Will often have an ability that will disables the player

Epic
HP: 700-1500
Damage: 10-25
Hit Bonus: 20-35+
AC: 20-30+
DR: 0-15*
Save Target: 20-35
Will almost always have an ability that will disables the player

Mythic
HP: 1500-3000
Damage: 30-60+Mythic
Hit Bonus: 40-60+
AC: 30-45+
DR: 0-20*
Save Target: 35-50
Can have an Mythic abilities that effect combat at fundamental levels

If TD doesn't want to release this guidelines because they believe it may be held against them having some form of way for the community to get data and make our own would be nice

---

-- Mythic is gated by Safehold I, but then gated again by 3 other tokens possibly allowing players to enter a unwinnable dungeon.
The additional gating of the mythic system without advanced knowledge of what effects are in effect for the dungeon would likely lead to high player frustration.
Ideally, at least in my opinion, a dungeon should be completeable (in theory) without any one specific token. This is not to say it should be easy or likely, simply possible.
By using a multiplier or divisor we can make it possible but extremely unlikely that someone could overcome these challenges in mythic if they focused hard enough on it in their builds.

Solution 1:
Change to softgate by dividing player stats and having tokens restore them to normal.
Example:
Mythic Dungeons have an aura of evil so strong it saps the strength from your body dividing all party card stats by 2.

Mythic Charm of Fate: +8 to Saving Throws, saving throws immune to Mythic Aura
Mythic Ioun Stone of Insight: +8 Base Damage, damage and hit immune to Mythic Aura
Mythic Bead of Defiance: +8 to STAT of choice, HP and AC immune to Mythic Aura

Benefits:
Number squashing, can keep difficulty closer to Epic this reducing some mental overhead
Encourages consumable use by making them more valuable (as they are not divided)
Encourages buff spells (see above reason)

Solution 2:
Change the token hard gates to soft gates via multipliers.
By using a softgate we can in theory allow someone with a build tailored to the encounter to go up against mythic, thus increasing the potential player base of this difficulty

Mythic Charm of Fate: Final saving throws modifiers multiplied by 1.5x
Mythic Ioun Stone of Insight: Final hit modifiers multiplied by 1.5x. +8 base damage
Mythic Bead of Defiance: Final AC and HP modifiers multiplied by 1.5x

Benefits:
People usually like it when their numbers go up over down

Solutiion 3:
Simply up the bonuses from +8 to say, +10-12 to create a harder to surmont gap

If a epic character reasonably has a +35-+40 a save target of 55 has them fail 25% of the time. A mythic character would pass 75% of the time which is fine IMO

---

-- Combat speed is likely to drop considerably due to amount of extra rolling from additional saves required for in person mythic runs

Previously combat in TD is generally:
Party Slides -> Monster Roll (attack) AND/OR Party Save
Repeat

Currently outlined a possible encounter could be
Party Slides -> Mythic Invuln Save Roll -> On hit Mythic Save roll to Avoid becoming a Rabbit -> Monster Mythic Attack Save -> Monster Attack AND/OR Party Save

Which this can bring the amount the GM must check and add party saves from 1-2 times a round (and read off pass/fails of those saves) to 3-5 times a round.
The GM reading and checking saves is the 2nd longest portion of combat, only behind the slide hit checks. Monster invulnerability also requires the GM to take notes who saved on that to check if the person who hit actually really hit. Thus making that task take 25-50% longer as well (I made the percentage up)

This is genuinely a huge increase of book-keeping for the GM and would likely reduce applicable combat rounds from 3-4 rounds/room to 1-2 rounds/room.

Solution 1: See soft gate solutions

Solution 2: Mythic is VTD only

Solution 3: Pie-in-the-sky auto token calculator that can read a party card and do all GM math for them. (This isn't useful I know, but I can't think of other solutions. But I would love to see this in the fantasy world where TD had infinite money, resources and time)

Thanks Impy for this amazingly detailed post. It is much appreciated. Right now my weird brain is focused on token design, but these notes are great for when we reach the post-token time before Gen Con. I have a note in my calendar to revisit this post later in the year. At that time I will start a new thread for comment and feedback. I will use your post as a good starting point.