Warrior Bard with a Guisarme

[Atalius]

Level 15 here, wielding a Guisarme. What runes should I have on my weapon at this point and how much damage should I expect to be doing? I have 20 Str currently. Looking for good damage without dipping into a diff class.

[MEATSHED]

so baseline you should have +2 greater striking, so 3d10+7. If you want more damage picking up 2 energy damage runes (such as flaming or frost) would boost you to 3d10+7+2d6.

[Atalius]

Every one including neighbors seems to have resistance to fire. Would a Wounding rune be advised? Or is Frost and Shock better?

[MEATSHED]

Flaming doesn't have to be one of them, it's just kind of the default example of a "deal 1d6 energy damage" rune. Wounding has the issue that a lot of stuff is also immune to bleed.

[Arachnofiend]

If you want to minimize resistances shock is your best bet.

[shroudb]

or, if your finaces allow, get the Greater versions of the elemental runes that straight up ignore resistances. But those are level 15.

[aobst128]

I'm partial to sonic and force for energy damage since almost nothing will resist these 2 in combination. It doesn't have very good crit effects though

[nicholas storm]

I use frost, sonic and force for my 3 runes on my LVL17 fighter. Like aobst says, sonic and frost are very rarely resisted.

[SuperBidi]

Atalius wrote:

Every one including neighbors seems to have resistance to fire. Would a Wounding rune be advised? Or is Frost and Shock better?

But Fire is also a rather common weakness. Considering that a weakness will increase your damage by 15 when a resistance reduces it by 3.5, it's a good choice to get Fire and Frost runes.

[Ascalaphus]

Depending on your AP, a holy rune can be a really solid choice too. Some APs are absolutely swimming in fiends with weakness to good/holy.

[Atalius]

Ascalaphus wrote:

Depending on your AP, a holy rune can be a really solid choice too. Some APs are absolutely swimming in fiends with weakness to good/holy.

Age of Ashes my friend

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Atalius wrote:

Ascalaphus wrote:

Depending on your AP, a holy rune can be a really solid choice too. Some APs are absolutely swimming in fiends with weakness to good/holy.

Age of Ashes my friend

Plenty of Evil to affect with that Holy rune, so I totally suggest grabbing it; the critical is also helpful to heal you in a pinch if needed, and if you don't have Attacks of Opportunity, it's a decent way to utilize your Reaction.

I would also recommend a Brilliant weapon, since it gives added versatility to Fiends and Undead (which are very common enemy types) while also being a mere D4 fire rune, as well as the Impactful rune for D6 Force Damage with forced movement on a critical. You can substitute Thundering in place of either of these two if you make visual performances instead of auditory ones, but that is ultimately up to you.

These runes are all significantly lower level, so they should be relatively easy/cheap to acquire.

[Faemeister]

Thirding the Holy rune; the elemental damage runes are a tad overrated in my opinion, but the way I see it Holy is the de-facto choice for mid to high levels due to how much evil s#&+ there is in the bestiary.