Runesmith 'tradition'?

[Gaulin]

I know that magical traditions are a pretty major talking point for some people, and I am far from an expert. But I was thinking about the traditions today when it dawned on me that the arcane tradition kind of gets the short end of the stick. The least amount of unique spells (while having the most spells in general, I know), dragon got taken away from being a more arcane thing, and just mostly kind of bland, imo.

What if runesmith was only arcane? Runes just scream arcane to me, all about the study, the language of magic. It's like magic science in my brain. Am I blaspheming of do others feel the same?

[Perpdepog]

I'd definitely not complain if they did become arcane-exclusive, arcane is probably my favorite tradition and I'd love to see it get some more love and identity, but I do also like the idea that written expressions of magical power transcend one, single tradition, and a runesmith knows how to leverage those abilities.

That being said, if we did need to pin the runesmith down to one particular tradition, it'd be arcane for me, 100%. If nothing else, it rhymes with the "Seven Runes of Sin," the symbols the Runelords used. For that matter, they're called Runelords, and are powerful wizards.

[Gaulin]

I didn't even think about runelords, that's another really good point.

[pH unbalanced]

The Runescarred archetype, which gives you innate spellcasting from Runic Tattoos, is also Arcane only.

[n8_fi]

I do think it’s best that they remain tradition-agnostic, since in-setting runes appear using/as manifestations of all traditions and essences. But I do agree that if a choice is made to lock them into a tradition, arcane is the obvious choice.

[Gaulin]

I definitely understand (and like) the class as it is now, with different traditions mixed with runes. But yeah I can't help but feel like arcane needs it, needs more niches. And as others have noted, previous rune stuff has arcanes fingerprints all over it.

[Sibelius Eos Owm]

To be fair, I feel like the only reason why Arcane has its fingerprints all over rune stuff is because that's the only thematic angle it has going for it right now. Every tradition of magic does runes, but for Arcane, runes are the only thing it does, and the only claim it has above any other is that wizards are more likely to write their magic down.

Back in the day, when being an archwizard meant being a god who could use cunning and magic to solve any kind of problem except heal so that clerics could have something, the most powerful wizards in the setting discovered certain runes they believed to encompass all of magic and called themselves Runelords. Wizards nor Arcane magic have really quite recovered from the narrative backlash of being "capable of anything" when it comes to figure out what is unique to them.

Wizards at least have academia, but the Arcane tradition... it doesn't even have dragons anymore. It's got "my ancestors were archmages," "my patron is an archmage (or one of their tools)," and it's got "possibly the first free-willed creations of the cosmos were genies," (which is actually pretty cool) and it's got whatever is still going on with Summoner (construct thoughtforms from the astral plane, I love it).

We're in a place where every trapping the arcane tradition has is either just wizardry, or something stolen from other traditions. Lore-wise, the rediscovery of wizardry by Old Mage Jatembe was a pretty big deal because it put knowledge of magic into the hands of mortals and allowed mortals access to magic on their own terms again. I would love to see more about what the place of arcane magic is in the cosmos outside of the things wizards do that makes it interesting.

All that said, I feel like making runes a fundamentally Arcane concept would be a very comfortable fit. Especially, it would suit well with the idea that runes are things that have meaning and grammar that can shift over time--after all, runes are a symbolic expression of deeper magical meaning. Arcane magic is speculated to have been made up of the tools that the gods used to shape the Universe.

(of course, then you get some serious overlap between what is wizardry vs. what is runesmithing--don't wizards also study the runes that make up the underpinnings of magic? Why are runesmith runes different?)

[Errenor]

Runesmiths almost explicitly and by design are all-traditions. So much that they can apply any tradition they trained in to every generic rune and several feats make tradition of applied runes important mechanically to make combos, always from different traditions.

[Justnobodyfqwl]

Errenor wrote:

Runesmiths almost explicitly and by design are all-traditions. So much that they can apply any tradition they trained in to every generic rune and several feats make tradition of applied runes important mechanically to make combos, always from different traditions.

Yeah, I feel like the Cross-Tradition Rune Combos is a pretty major part of the class. It's MULTIPLE feats for several possible combinations.

I don't really feel the need to get rid of that just to make Arcane feel like the prettiest princess at the ball.