How does Mythras scale up in Power?

[Merrik]

Hi All

I'm a big fan of BRP in general and especially of Mythras.

I'm curious how well it scales up in power - I know that Mythras can do gritty, "Sword and Sorcery" style games and historical stuff really well, but it seems (to me at least) that it seems firmly rooted in a more "Human" level of power.
Can it scale up to a more epic level of power? Where do the break points kick in? For example - I was a big fan of the old Unisystem Witchcraft/Armageddon Games and ran a very successful campaign using that, but it featured Powerful Mages and Demigods fighting against Cthulhoid minions. Could Mythras emulate that level of play? What about Exalted? How could it handle that sort of power level?

 

Thanks in advance 

[Raleel]

I’ve not done extremely high play with it, but I can talk a bit about it. 

If you have a sorcerer with a 130% skill level in his invocation and his shaping skill, and he has an 18 in POW (all of these are pretty high but not completely unobtainable), he could, for example, transmute 9 people to gold at 1800km in a couple of seconds. 

If you had a mystic (with mysticism) at that same skill level, he’d be able to maintain a couple of skills at 2 steps easier (essentially, it would double his skill) and maintain 2 extra actions as well. He would be going into combat with presumably equivalent of more than 200% in skill and would be dropping his opponent’s skill level by the difference between his skill and 100%.

Classic Fantasy models some of this very well, where rank 4 and 5 characters (equivalent to high level d&d characters) are summoning demons and able to fight multiple giants at the same time. I had  a rank 2 (equivalent to a level 5 character) one shot an ogre in one game.

Luther Arkwright psionics would be looking at inflicting half a dozen or so points of damage to all locations bypassing armor for a single magic point. Enough to kill most humans pretty much at will. Could also be tossing around humans with telekinesis. Luther Arkwright also brings forth a lot of Traits - special abilities- that are the equivalent to Gifts in the main book. Things like adding your Str to your Con and Siz for determining hit points  

with the skill increases, the important thing here is that once you get over 100, everyone drops by the same amount, so it stays comparable. With damage, the damage scales pretty slow, so one point can mean a lot.

Classic Fantasy adds in a few things to emulate the genre - martial characters all get extra actions to attack or defend, some get extra benefits form armor, etc. I can say that the characters in my game felt a lot more powerful than standard Mythras characters. 

[Merrik]

Thanks for that Raleel

Looks like I may be investing in both those books for the future then 

 

[Jigawatts]

Regarding this, the one thing I would like to see added to Mythras is talents or special abilities that can be used to customize a character a bit. Nothing overboard in the vein of 3.X D&D feats or anything of that level, they went super overboard with feats in the d20 era. But just some heroic abilities to differentiate your character. Is this similar to how its handled in Luther Arkwright, and would that translate over properly to a fantasy campaign?

[Raleel]

18 minutes ago, Jigawatts said:

Regarding this, the one thing I would like to see added to Mythras is talents or special abilities that can be used to customize a character a bit. Nothing overboard in the vein of 3.X D&D feats or anything of that level, they went super overboard with feats in the d20 era. But just some heroic abilities to differentiate your character. Is this similar to how its handled in Luther Arkwright, and would that translate over properly to a fantasy campaign?

It has been suggested that one can import Legend's Heroic Abilities with no issue at all, actually.

[Jigawatts]

On 10/18/2017 at 10:38 PM, Raleel said:

It has been suggested that one can import Legend's Heroic Abilities with no issue at all, actually.

I am unaware of what this is referring to, could you enlighten me good sir, and perhaps provide an example?

[Raleel]

Sure thing. P218 of the Legend book is the start of the heroic abilities section. You pay for them with experience, and spend a magic point to do them. Here are a couple, as an example. 

Defiant Leap

Requirements: STR 15 or higher, Athletics 90% or higher Hero Points: 10 Duration: One extraordinary jump

You are able to defy gravity when performing a single vertical or horizontal jump. You may roll your Damage Bonus and add this value in metres to the distance achieved.

Deflecting Parry

Requirements: DEX 15 or higher, any Close Combat Weapon Style at 90% or higher Hero Points: 10 Duration: One parry

You may increase the size of your parrying weapon or shield by two steps for a single parry. This might allow an unarmed defender to ward off a halberd, or the user of a buckler to deflect a mounted lance attack.

lookspretty close to what you want. You have to pick and choose through s few of them, because some got encorporated into the core rules.

[soltakss]

On 10/19/2017 at 3:19 AM, Jigawatts said:

Regarding this, the one thing I would like to see added to Mythras is talents or special abilities that can be used to customize a character a bit. Nothing overboard in the vein of 3.X D&D feats or anything of that level, they went super overboard with feats in the d20 era. But just some heroic abilities to differentiate your character. Is this similar to how its handled in Luther Arkwright, and would that translate over properly to a fantasy campaign?

MRQII had Heroic Abilities that were inherited by Legend but dropped for Mythras, due to the personal preferences of the authors.

As Raleel says, it should be easy enough to import Legend's Heroic Abilities without any real issues.

[Jigawatts]

On 10/22/2017 at 9:41 AM, Raleel said:

Sure thing. P218 of the Legend book is the start of the heroic abilities section. You pay for them with experience, and spend a magic point to do them. Here are a couple, as an example. 

Defiant Leap

Requirements: STR 15 or higher, Athletics 90% or higher Hero Points: 10 Duration: One extraordinary jump

You are able to defy gravity when performing a single vertical or horizontal jump. You may roll your Damage Bonus and add this value in metres to the distance achieved.

Deflecting Parry

Requirements: DEX 15 or higher, any Close Combat Weapon Style at 90% or higher Hero Points: 10 Duration: One parry

You may increase the size of your parrying weapon or shield by two steps for a single parry. This might allow an unarmed defender to ward off a halberd, or the user of a buckler to deflect a mounted lance attack.

lookspretty close to what you want. You have to pick and choose through s few of them, because some got encorporated into the core rules.

I quite like those, a shame they weren't included in the Mythras core book.

[Raleel]

Fortunately, Legend is one of the cheapest unofficial Mythras supplements  all of a dollar in pdf on drivethrurpg. 

[pachristian]

The sample gifts on page 202 provide an excellent set of examples of "superpowers" for player characters. A character who has more than one or two of them is pretty amazing. 

I set a standard for my game that a "hero" could fight four 'normal' experts and have a better than 50% chance of winning, or fight a generic dragon and have a better-than-average chance of winning. My number crunching led me to the idea that a character with ~150% in all of their key skills, appropriate magic, and 1 to 3 'edges' (such as the gifts), qualified nicely as a hero. Key skills in this case are your combat skills, and supporting magic.

For a demigod (or to use the old parlance from White Bear, Red Moon, "Superhero"), a character needs to be able to defeat 4 ordinary 'heroes' in combat. This takes key skills around 200% (that 50% edge is enough to make parries almost certain, and evade well enough to not get overwhelmed by numbers). The character needs his 'edges' to be ramped up to be as much greater in proportion to the heroes as the hero has to normal people. An 'Edge' might well be a weapon of godly proportions. 

Lately, I've used the character Maui, from the movie Moana (Disney, 2016), as a role-model for demigods. Maui is superhumanly strong and tough, and his magic fishhook can deal out, or block, an enormous amount of damage. His hook also allows him to shape shift as a single action. Against giant monsters, Maui uses speed, distraction, and his shapeshifting to avoid direct attacks, while he sets himself up for precision attacks. As for his more mythic feats - like slowing the sun, or raising islands from the sea - those are something that would be handled by game storytelling, not by specific rules.

[TheGrayFox71]

Blood Tide for BRP has a number of "stunts" included which may interest you, as well. 

[Bilharzia]

The core system by itself can do quite a lot, how it's used depends on the campaign setup. I spent a fair bit of time customising "stunts" from Blood Tide but in the end realised I was just re-inventing Mysticism under a different name. It was useful for a bit of flavour but not really that much. I did end up keeping a few of the weird stunts but charge XP instead of MP, for example:

"Friends in High Places and Low" - Find someone in a crowd who is a friend (1xp)

"Indy!"  - Find someone in a crowd who will follow your madcap plan - gain NPC ally (3XP)

Looking at sorcery, even an out-of-chargen basic sorcerer PC can boost their action points from 3 to 5 in 2 casting actions for the cost of 2 mp, as long as the spells are allowed in the setting and are ok with the GM. This might not seem much but for a starting Mythras character is practically super-human. I think the reason the heroic feat-like abilities from Legend were not included is that they're out of step with the rest of the system where Mythras/RQ6 is trying to reduce the number of exceptions and special cases these abilities add clauses and oddities which duplicate or nearly duplicate other abilities.

[Merrik]

Thanks for all the responses folks - There is plenty of good stuff here.

I also hear that there is a Mythras version of "After the Vampire Wars" coming out at some point which also looks like it could be right for me also.

[Raleel]

On 10/28/2017 at 4:45 AM, Merrik said:

Thanks for all the responses folks - There is plenty of good stuff here.

I also hear that there is a Mythras version of "After the Vampire Wars" coming out at some point which also looks like it could be right for me also.

Since this thread has come up, it is out, and is quite high level play. World changing sorcerers and elder vampires and what not. I highly recommend it. 

[Runeblogger]

I was intrigued by the scalation of power in After the Vampire Wars so I bought it. I still have to try it, but it looks promising.
You can read this review, if you're interested.

[Opiyel]

On 6/20/2018 at 3:34 PM, Runeblogger said:

I was intrigued by the scalation of power in After the Vampire Wars so I bought it. I still have to try it, but it looks promising.
You can read this review, if you're interested.

I may have to get this and combine it with M-Space for some d100 Shadowrun goodness

Edited June 22, 2018 by Opiyel

[Raleel]

15 minutes ago, Opiyel said:

I may have to get this and combine it with M-Space for some d100 Shadowrun goodness

 might help you  feel free to hit me up, as I've been tinkering with this a bit.

[Opiyel]

6 minutes ago, Raleel said:

 might help you  feel free to hit me up, as I've been tinkering with this a bit.

Looks good so far. I have my own cribbed from 2300 AD, but I definitely will be adding these.

[clarence]

1 hour ago, Opiyel said:

I may have to get this and combine it with M-Space for some d100 Shadowrun goodness

Let me know how it works out!