Mythic Feats: Advanced Feats
This installment of the Mythic plugins provided by Legendary Games clocks in at 30 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of introduction, 2 pages of SRD (though one of these contains an artwork and Wounded Paw Gambit), 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 20 pages of content, though, as always for these books, it should be noted that there is quite a lot of text crammed into this supplement.
This review was moved up in my reviewing queue at the request of my patreons.
Now, as always, we get a metric ton of feats in this supplement – this time around, we cover all the feats that are included in the Advanced Class Guide. Organization-wise, we first get an alphabetical list, and then one that groups them by type. This is per se cool, but unlike some installments in the series, the first list is not internally hyperlinked.
All right, as always, I can’t go through all the 100+ feats in this supplement feat-by-feat without wrecking the utility of this review utterly; as such, my focus here will instead be to provide an overview of the material contained within. The mythic iteration of Aberrant Tumor allows you to choose any familiar allowed to wizards as tumor familiar, and said tumor familiar gets one alchemist discovery chosen from a list, with your level substituted for prerequisites. You gain the benefits of the discovery while the familiar is attached. Amateur Investigator nets you an investigator talent, Amateur Swashbuckler a limited array of panache points and a 3rd-level deed. Both have trade-in option available and the former does mention the caveats that take into account when a talent would require a base ability to modify – it’s not gained. Animal Soul optionally allows you to be affected by animal-targeting spells, and mythic power expenditure lets you affect your companion. Minor nitpick: Unlike in the big book, this one does miss an italicization here. This is not the only such minor formatting snafu herein: Believer’s Hands, for example, does not properly bold “Prerequisites” and “Benefit” – this one, just fyi, makes your character level act as paladin level, and nets you a mercy for every three tiers.
Anticipate Dodge provides knowledge of the target’s dodge bonus, as well as numerical escalation, adding ½ mythic tier to the base feat’s bonuses. Battle Cry is another example for such an escalation in numbers, doubling the bonuses granted, and allowing for the expenditure of mythic power to increase duration. Another such twist would be e.g. Befuddling Strike – here, we have a DC-increase as well as the option to use more than one per round. Finally, this one allows you to substitute mythic power expenditure for daily uses. Winter’s Strike also allows for the use of mythic power in that manner. Confounding Tumble Deed would be another example of such an option, as would Distracting Charge. Killing Flourish presents a neat example here: +1/2 tier to Intimidate, +full tier for one mythic power use.
Blasting Charge is a straight up damage increase, with double the increase available for mythic power expenditure, and there are quite a few of those: Canny Tumble or Coordinated Shot, to name two, provide a static bonus increase. The Jabbing Style feat tree provides a similar increase, save that here it pertains the size of bonus damage die employed – the Jabbing Dancer feat, however, allows for pretty free maneuverability within the reach of targets hit, which can be a godsend. Dual Enhancement is nice for TWFing characters, as it allows you to spend a use of mythic power to apply the special ability to the second weapon as well.
There are plenty of tactically more interesting options within as well: Channeled Blessing, for example, adds channel energy to the delivery of channeled blessings, and allows for the use of mythic power to extend the blessing’s effects – and, here’s the kicker, domains and revelations allow for the use in conjunction with this ability as well. The latter may just be a line, but it’s a big one. The mythic iteration of Barroom Brawler makes you count as both monk and fighter, with 8th and 10th level providing an additional combat feat at a given time. Blessed Striker makes your attacks also be treated as magic and epic. Disarming Threat Deed allows you in its mythic iteration to have the target remain indifferent for mythic power expenditure. Gruesome Slaughter provides a DC-increase, and similarly, Improved Awesome Blow provides an escalation of numbers. Surprise Maneuver nets you +1/2 tier to the maneuver check, Twist Away to Reflex saves – you get the idea.
Interesting and testament that the LG-crew is very much cognizant of the evolution of the game: Extra Arcanist Exploit, for example, allows you to poach psychic phrenic amplifications, alchemist discoveries, magus arcana or witch hexes, and Extra Inspiration lets you spend mythic power to replenish your inspiration pool if it’s empty – no, it can’t be cheesed. Extra Martial Flexibility nets you access to the mythic feat’s iteration as well and slayers get to choose material from the vigilante’s arsenal with Extra Slayer Talent. Kudos for not staying just within the design-paradigm of the books released up to and including the ACG! Indeed, such flexibility is a theme in more than one instance: Flexible Hex may be shifted an additional time per day; Flexible Wizardry allows for an additional spell to be prepared. Unfettered Familiar also gets an additional daily use.
Want to play a fanatic? With the mythic versions of Extreme Prejudice and Seething Hatred, you get d10 sneak attack dice and can spend mythic power for triple damage versus the targets of your hatred! Ouch! There are delimiters, like Improved Studied Combatant (bonus equals character level, no limits on how often per day a target may be affected), which act as means to provide a soft form of gestalting, which, considering the vast power of mythic gameplay, seems feasible.
Tactically really cool: Intercept Charge nets you a bonus to AC, which you may, per mythic power expenditure, apply versus all of that opponents attacks, making pounce etc. less of a painful proposal for the knights saving their squishy buddies. Lunging Spell Touch’s mythic iteration gets rid of the -2 penalty to AC versus the creature on a hit; for mythic power expenditure, the hit-clause drops away. Manifest Blood is intriguing, as it penalizes attacking creatures with negative conditions on a failed Fortitude save. Nice: Raging Absorption has an anti-abuse caveat for its bloodrage-replenishing effects.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are good, bordering on very good on a formal and rules-language level. There isn’t much to complain about herein. The pdf adheres to a two-column full-color standard, and the book features nice full-color artworks, most of which should be familiar to fans of Legendary Games. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.
Margherita Tramontano, Jason Nelson and Julian Neale have my utmost respect for this one. Making mythic feat upgrades can be rather hard work, and personally, there are few books where I’d consider that statement to be as true as the ACG. It’s no secret that I am not a fan of the Advanced Class Guide at the best of days; the book represents, to me a design dead-end, and one that thankfully was abandoned when Occult Adventures, Ultimate Intrigue etc. were released. That being said, there are plenty of components in the ACG that I *do* like and consider to be worth salvaging, and having the mythic upgrades done for me? Heck yeah, that’s a level of convenience I very much applaud. That being said, plenty of the base feats simply didn’t have that much to work with – where the options in the later books provided breadth that the Legendary Games-crew used to broaden the options further, the ACG is all about the escalation of numbers.
Bearing this in mind, and consulting the source material feats the designers had to work with, this book must be lauded as a success. While there isn’t as much in the ways of novel options or far-out new gambits, what this one has wrought from the often rather thin premises of the base feats certainly deserved to be applauded. This may not be my favorite in the series, sure – but a) that was to be expected, courtesy of the source materials, and b) it certainly is the one that I’m most happy about not having to do it on my own. 😉
All in all, I consider this to be a collection of upgrades worth owning, and thus, my final verdict will clock in at 4 stars.
You can get this neat collection of mythic feat-upgrades here on OBS!
You can get the massive Mythic Character Codex that contains these feats and infinitely more here on OBS!
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Endzeitgeist out.
