I do think we should limit the number if damaging runes you can fit on a single enemy at one time.
It allows for more runes to be printed (the traced effect is different for each of the current damage runes) and keeps them reigned in without impacting turn creativity much (or their action compression)
Because if on release even if they just added a cold rune. It's going to add up.
Especially with smart use of diacritic or multiple rune Smiths in party.
I want their damage to be strong, competitive, if they choose to spend their actions in that way. But I don't want you feel they I'm better off striking than ever invoking. If that makes sense.
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I feel like this ignores the most problematic interaction, which is abusing etched runes for damage—and it obscures how much damage that is actually capable of relative to comparable single-target options and how safely you can get it.
Transpose etching lets you move an Atryl rune you etched onto an ally onto an enemy for 1A without being in melee and provoking.
Whetstone's targets are weapons and unarmed strikes, not creatures, which means you can ultimately put as many etched Whetstone runes onto a single melee character as they have weapons and unarmed strikes.
So, once level 9 hits... if you start combat within 30ft, you can wait for a melee with two etched whetstones to gapclose, then take your turn and transpose etched sun-atryl (1A), invoke sun-atryl+whetsone (1A), then invoke retraced atryl+whetstone (1A), for an immediate and disturbing 4x 10d6 vs fort on the first turn at level 9 without provoking or being in melee yourself. The DPR calcs don't do justice to how overpowered this is: it is roughly equivalent to two disintegrate casts in damage dice (though with an infinitely worse damage typing) two levels before disintegrate comes online, while taking no daily resources and only going through a single defense. And it doesn't require you to move and will not provoke, since you aren't in melee range!
You can also get away with additional safe, non-melee detonations if you have a prebuff round to trace sun-atryl and a third whetstone onto a party member instead of having sun-atryl pre-etched. At that point, you can have three whetstones and atryl etched instead, so you will still have an atryl and whetstone left after the initial burst.
In either of these cases, your damage slows dramatically after the initial burst... but you've done your job already, and upfront burst damage you don't even have to get into melee for is infinitely more valuable than steady DPR. You have some options after the initial burst:
-You can try to get into melee if you want at this point (not recommended, squishy class).
--->Use Engraving Strike etc. for that magus cosplay. You'd probably ignore most of your class feats and pick up an archetype that makes you better at melee/less squishy, though I suppose you could go into the shield feats with a shield boss or something.
--->If there's no AoO or you can reliably mitigate taking it, you could go for tracing trance memes and set up more multidets.
--->Theoretically, you could just try to proc Drawn in Red and move away immediately after. I don't think that's particularly good, though.
-You can stay at range with a bow or something, and maybe use archetype abilities to fill out the rest of your combat plan.
--->Remote Detonation at L1 and Runesinger at L2 (or taking both at L1 as a human) would give you a decent plan for turn 2, and you can pretty much just do a starlit span magus cosplay for the rest of the combat. You could mostly ignore class feats at this point and just pick up stuff to make you a better archer.
--->Picking psychic archetype and glimpse weakness, maybe some archetype that makes you better at bows, haven't thought much about it. Bow use seems like the most practical application of your martial proficiency.
--->If you're particularly ballsy, and this is The Encounter, you could've taken Runic Tattoo with Atryl and Words Fly Free and used WFF to push Atryl onto all the creatures in a 15ft cone to get more provoke-free Transposes. Again, runesinger also gives you a 1A ranged trace 1/combat to ease the action economy pains. This is still worse DPR than your upfront burst, of course, but that's fine. You just did 40d6 vs fort on round 1 as a level 9 character.
Anyways, the biggest problem is the upfront damage; whether it can sustain it doesn't really matter. Most classes can't hope to deal such a ridiculous amount so quickly, and they really shouldn't be able to do it in every single combat of the day as long as the enemies start close enough and the runesmith has time to re-etch runes between encounters.
The rune smith can match the 2 round single target damage of the fighter, but in most circumstances the fighter is ahead.
So much time wasted on a bad analysis.
I've given one basic optimal round for the Runesmith:
One weapon and spiked gauntlets for 2 Runes of Whetstone on you.
You go with:
1) Tracing Stance, Stride, Trace Thunder, Trace Fire, Trace Preservation on Fire.
2) Invoke, Trace Thunder, Invoke
That's 6 Runes, not a weak 4. And it clearly outdamages your Fighter (with a total of a single feat on the Runesmith, others have found ways to even go higher in damage).
Also, you indicate all the "risks" of playing a Runesmith, but at no moment the crazy asset of buffing the whole party with carved runes.
Damage is damage and single target damage is wasted if you overkill the enemy. One enemy being surrounded is not a big deal, Fighters & Maguses can really knock down single enemies what matters if how well they can do in a fight against a group since we all know single creatures aren't even a threat.
Also depending on the DM and the monster you fight, tracing 3 runes might just make you the center of their aggression and with your sub-par saves you pretty weak. The rotation only matter with Tracing Trance if you can survive long enough to pull it off potentially more then once in a group fight.
Maybe in order to save Etched Runes maybe they shouldn't be allowed to be invoked that way it stops you from etching only Whetstones on weapons your side has. Perhaps we should limit runes to only allowing 1 copy at a time in play, period.
Why is the damage curve for the fighter so big? The max I could ever get it to go with Strike -> Exacting Strike -> Certain Strike @ High AC no Off-Guard is 96.6 at Level 20.
You can do even better with this too. Runesmith doesn't need many of their own feats (tracing trance, optional engraving strike), so you can tack on beastmaster/cavalier for free movement. Gets an extra trace in round 1 to apply preservation to thunder as well as fire and lets you retrace whetstone and retreat or target switch on round 2.
Why is the damage curve for the fighter so big? The max I could ever get it to go with Strike -> Exacting Strike -> Certain Strike @ High AC no Off-Guard is 96.6 at Level 20.Are you including weapon specialization, greater weapon specialization, apex items, stat boosts at 10 and 20, legendary proficiency at 13, using a d12 weapon, considering flatfooted on a crit with swords, considering 1d10 and 2d10 persistent damage from flaming and greater flaming runes (going 2 rounds on average), 3x damage runes adding 1d6 each, the plus 5 to strike 3 on a failed strike 2, increased fighter crit range? etc. The damage is pretty typical to what I can get routinely. Maybe you're using the wrong high ac numbers or have shifted the table values one level up or down?
The community damage tool is pretty well built and removes the barrier to entry for folks to participate in generating math and analysis. You just need to be able to pick the right built in modifiers.
Even if I do 3 MAP-less strikes with crit spec, flat-footed, and the persistent damage from flaming rune crit, I cannot get the Fighter damage graph to break through 200 damage or anywhere near close to the graph you made.
I would like to see the exact settings you used for the Fighter graph.
Here is a link to my graphs:
Here is a link to my graphs:
Well these are two round curves. Round 1 the fighter will sudden charge and then certain strike. Turn 2 is strike, Exacting Strike, certain strike. So a total of 5 strikes.
Otherwise you're comparing a 2 round dpr to a 1 round dpr which is apples to oranges.
Ah, I see. I was not aware we were doing 2 rounds.
Here's a link to a new graph that uses a 2-round rotation. Runesmith is using first action of first round to Stride and using quickened action to apply preservation rune. This one is using SuperBidi's 2-round rotation in particular:
Playtest Runesmith 2-Round Rotation Damage Curve Plot
Here's an extra set of graphs with a few more curves. Alt 2-Round Runesmith is the same combo but without invoking the etched Whetstone Rune. Alt 1-Round Runesmith follows from this.
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Sounds like only allowing etching on non damage runes and limiting total of stacking runes to two at a time solves the turn one spike issue and keeps them capable of a sustained 4 rune per 2 rounds baseline.I think the easiest, most straightforward and the less strained solution would be simply to limit Invoke so that you can't invoke any number of any runes. It's only one action and you need to pronounce runes' names after all*. I don't know, what if you could Invoke only 2 runes at a time? It doesn't change your calculation, but it would prevent spike of 6 runes at a time I suppose (and restrict other combos when more damage runes would appear).
* And btw Invoke must get Auditory trait on invoking part.
This doesn't quite solve the issue; it's not runes per invoke but invoked runes per turn that's the problem. The optimized options involve preloading runes and doing multiple invokes in a turn. Invoking two at a time is still enough to cheese your way to that 40d6 at level 9 I mentioned earlier.
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It's key that whatever they do they maintain these elements
Striking isn't simply better than using runes
Don't change the action economy
Basically if you nerf invoke damage too much you only ever strike, not enough then the play will simply be to use every available resource and action to burst.
So the issue isn't the runes damage necessarily, at least not completely, it's how they stack.
There are multiple ways of doing this.
You could make it so a single creature can't have more than one of each type of rune on them. Creature, weapon, shield, armor. This will limit a creature to taking two instances of damaging invoked runes currently in the play test. Things like impact/whetstone and fire/thunder wouldn't stack.
Next you make it so you can only invoke once per round, this would hard lock a single target to not being hit by more than two damaging runes a round (which is still his savage btw).
Thirdly, you probably need to make engraving strike baseline , as it is right now I can play a rune Smith that simply never attacks, and TBH it feels better than attacking. Throwing out buffs and debuffs to invoke later.
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Striking isn't simply better than using runes
Striking must be better than using Runes. If you Strike, you need both maxxed out Dex/Str and Intelligence when if you just Trace you only need Intelligence. Also, if you Strike, you need a fully runed weapon to be effective. And finally, you need a weapon at hand, which is problematic on a class that needs a free hand. If Striking is not better than Tracing then it's a worse choice than going full on Tracing.
Striking isn't simply better than using runesStriking must be better than using Runes. If you Strike, you need both maxxed out Dex/Str and Intelligence when if you just Trace you only need Intelligence. Also, if you Strike, you need a fully runed weapon to be effective. And finally, you need a weapon at hand, which is problematic on a class that needs a free hand. If Striking is not better than Tracing then it's a worse choice than going full on Tracing.
And if striking is better you never have a reason to trace, catch 22
Sounds like engraving strike needs to be baseline.
Striking isn't simply better than using runesStriking must be better than using Runes. If you Strike, you need both maxxed out Dex/Str and Intelligence when if you just Trace you only need Intelligence. Also, if you Strike, you need a fully runed weapon to be effective. And finally, you need a weapon at hand, which is problematic on a class that needs a free hand. If Striking is not better than Tracing then it's a worse choice than going full on Tracing.And if striking is better you never have a reason to trace, catch 22
Sounds like engraving strike needs to be baseline.
But striking inherently has the MAP limit. Thus, vanilla striking for martials has a natural limit on its repeatable effectiveness, which martial classes always have to build around. This is the problem with damage runes currently. The more you can get out in play before invoking, the more powerful that invoke action will be, and it is a mechanic that inherently gives itself over to cheese.
Striking has to be better than rune damage so that getting at least 1 strike in a round is your optimal goal, which engraving strike does help accomplish, but just like (the newly errata'd) spellstriking with saving throw spells, its value add is minimized by offering nothing except that one free action for the cost of potentially accomplishing nothing. I think it is even worse for the Runesmith though because their accuracy with weapon attacks is worse and nothing happens on a miss.
If there were a flat limit to the number of runes that could be invoked, but engraving strike let you trace one more that had to be invoked the same round as the strike, I think that might tip the hat in the right direction and make the "strike with a non-key attribute" still worth risking as it would be a trace that couldn't happen without it, and you will still need to have the extra action to invoke that round.
Just making engraving strike a baseline feature solves it
The new Errata for magus is a big nothing because of you have the up front actions, your actually better served to strike+cast a spell and you don't have to force fang next round.
Just making engraving strike a baseline feature solves it
The new Errata for magus is a big nothing because of you have the up front actions, your actually better served to strike+cast a spell and you don't have to force fang next round.
engraving strike currently is exactly as valuable to the runesmith built for tracing damaging runes as the expansive spell strike with saving throw spells is for the magus. The risk of wasting an action because you missed with your attack when you could have traced an additional rune instead greatly reduces the value of invoking that round and not waiting to invoke until you can get another rune in there, unless the rune you trace with engraving strike is somehow a bonus rune that couldn't be there if you just traced a rune to begin with.
And if striking is better you never have a reason to trace, catch 22
It depends on what you want to achieve. If you only want to play a pure Runesmith with nothing from outside the class then, yeah, you should end up Striking and not Tracing as the class is a martial. But if you want to build something else then ignoring Strikes is a nice thing because it gives you more resources to focus on whatever else you want to achieve, be it skill monkeyness, spellcasting or whatever.
So one might limit:
Runes per creature per type (so no multiples of same type)
Runes per creature, all (so one max per creature)
Runes per round, encouraging Strikes
Runes per Invocation, which I prefer as in one might trigger all the fire Runes, but not all the types at once. This helps disperse the impact, w/o hindering multi-target Invocations (which IMO kinda need to remain strong to support the action input).
Or one might alter Runes so they can't go directly on a creature, but rather the ground under them or on their target as a booby trap or applied via a weapon/paper/Runestone/fist Strike (et al).
Or another one I like is changing Runes to damage over time, as in the Rune remains on the enemy burning, zapping, etc. as persistent damage. This avoids too much stacking, and while those Runes persist it gives opportunities for other tactics like making support Runes/Striking. And IMO it fits the flavor of tagging someone better than a simple boom.
Similarly, Runes might be lower damage, but reusable with every Invocation (likely w/ a limit of one Invocation/round or a Sustain cost too).
And I'm on Unicore's side re: Strikes as in if I were to make a Runesmith I'd preference only have enough Str to support my armor. It's simply too costly to maintain Str & Int at max (and in a class with low saves!) given the lack of support for Strikes (which are so easily swapped for making another Rune). And finesse Strikes would do so little w/o some boost.
Just making engraving strike a baseline feature solves it
The new Errata for magus is a big nothing because of you have the up front actions, your actually better served to strike+cast a spell and you don't have to force fang next round.
I have no idea why you think this would solve anything.
The design goal/requirement for rune balance is for RS to look at the value of a MAP 0 Strike and think that is better proposition than a raw Trace.
It is rather unavoidable that rune damage needs some reduction, which is the core problem here. Rune damage is so absurdly high, that even the chance of missing a free Trace via miss makes the act less favorable than a raw Trace.
Making Engraving S baseline (even a version that is edited to work with all Strikes) does nothing to fix the balance problem of Trace vs Strike.
Via a damage # reduction and other changes, Tracing damage runes must be less appealing than at present. I get that nerfs are not fun, but it is completely unavoidable and obvious here.
No, using the damage of a 2d6 per R focus spell on a 1A, 0 cost ability is not valid design because of a 1A detonation action.
Blowing all your ethched whetstone runes to dump round 1 damage across different enemies is no different than using a fireball. You don't have targeting/friendly fire problems, but you do have movement/melee requirements, and instead of using a spell slot you forego all the opportunity cost of what that whetstone could have been instead (get out jail teleportation, "don't touch/grab/swallow me," difficult terrain on approach, off guard/chase down if you hit me, etc.).
Etched whetstones spread across the party don't strike me as a problem. The only relevant conversation is when stacked on top of a fire and lightning rune to triple invoke on a target.
A spellcaster getting to enter into every combat with a max R, 0A Fireball would be a big hecking balance problem, yes. (or multiple Fireballs per combat)
This is why the spell-storing rune / trap stuff is so tightly restrained from a balance PoV.
It's why you can spend a whole class feat for a 1 p day Quickened Casting that outright prevents high R spells.
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Thank you for finding a metaphor that can hopefully convey how touchy/problematic a lot of Runesmith's core design is, and how yikes it is to balance.
The damage runes may be Invoked after a 2A Trace, a 1A Trace, or a 0A Etch. How tf is even a skilled and veteran dev supposed to balance that?
Just making engraving strike a baseline feature solves it
The new Errata for magus is a big nothing because of you have the up front actions, your actually better served to strike+cast a spell and you don't have to force fang next round.
I have no idea why you think this would solve anything.
The design goal/requirement for rune balance is for RS to look at the value of a MAP 0 Strike and think that is better proposition than a raw Trace.
It is rather unavoidable that rune damage needs some reduction, which is the core problem here. Rune damage is so absurdly high, that even the chance of missing a free Trace via miss makes the act less favorable than a raw Trace.
Making Engraving S baseline (even a version that is edited to work with all Strikes) does nothing to fix the balance problem of Trace vs Strike.
Via a damage # reduction and other changes, Tracing damage runes must be less appealing than at present. I get that nerfs are not fun, but it is completely unavoidable and obvious here.
No, using the damage of a 2d6 per R focus spell on a 1A, 0 cost ability is not valid design because of a 1A detonation action.
I don't recall seeing a paizo design goal anywhere.
And I'd prefer something like engraving strike baseline because then one trying to be better than the other is moot.
If tracing runes is less appealing I really don't see their purpose outside of you for some reason being unable to get into melee range.
It's also not 1 action, it's 2-3, 4 if you throw in diacritic.
It's just 1 to set up
If RS is a martial, we can presume Paizo wish for it to find a 0A MAP attack more appealing than some other class actions.
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If Engraving Strike is baseline, that puts the power budget of that specific feat into every RS PC.
Even if a player wants to play RS with a bow at range, they are "wasting" serious power budget because they are leaving that Engrav Str feature unused.
This is a huge problem for the Alchemist, and why there is such a dramatic gulf between Bombers and everyone else post-Remaster.
Core features like Double Brew punish everyone who does *not* use them, it says: "screw all yall Alchs who want to hold something in a hand, play Alch empty-handed or you'll play with double the core action tax."
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Engraving Strike itself is an insane / broken design concept.
Afaik, nothing else in the system is conceptually matches Engr Str's design of: "win bigger, for free, no strings attached".
Engraving Strike translated/generalized: ~"With no penalty nor cost, make a Strike. If you hit, do a full action's worth of stuff in addition to the hit. If you miss, there is no difference from normal."
That is just insane, and would be considered OP as hell for any existing class. The closest thing are the small passive upgrade feats like Alchemist's Calculated Splash adding 2-3 damage per bomb (which is now a Legacy thing). Nothing remotely close to a full 2nd Action's worth of benefit.
I find it really, really hard to believe that you are genuinely thinking through your suggestion of adding this feat as a baseline feature. It looks like one of the most blatant "naked power grab" type suggestions I have seen.
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Or another one I like is changing Runes to damage over time, as in the Rune remains on the enemy burning, zapping, etc. as persistent damage. This avoids too much stacking, and while those Runes persist it gives opportunities for other tactics like making support Runes/Striking. And IMO it fits the flavor of tagging someone better than a simple boom.
Similarly, Runes might be lower damage, but reusable with every Invocation (likely w/ a limit of one Invocation/round or a Sustain cost too).
I really like this idea.
No idea what its power level looks like, but conceptually it is very nice.
If implemented, I'd want to give it some resistance to ending the persistent damage, but persistent damage is already so difficult to end that I don't think I could justify it.
A spellcaster getting to enter into every combat with a max R, 0A Fireball would be a big hecking balance problem, yes. (or multiple Fireballs per combat)
This is why the spell-storing rune / trap stuff is so tightly restrained from a balance PoV.
It's why you can spend a whole class feat for a 1 p day Quickened Casting that outright prevents high R spells.
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Thank you for finding a metaphor that can hopefully convey how touchy/problematic a lot of Runesmith's core design is, and how yikes it is to balance.
The damage runes may be Invoked after a 2A Trace, a 1A Trace, or a 0A Etch. How tf is even a skilled and veteran dev supposed to balance that?
I mean... Sorcerer has been threatening that since forever. Dragon Breath is 1d6 under fireball at all ranks, which quickly becomes negligible. There's some other focus spells with similar scaling out there (and Necromancer's packing Necrotic Bomb at level 2, which at 1d12/rank is barely behind Fireball)
Edit: Wait, zero action? For Whetstone... eh... sort of. It's not AoE, so Fireball's probably a bad analogy. And it's melee range, versus the anywhere on the map range of Fireball.
Yes, he's not very good with tradeoffs and comparisons, I mostly try not to engage anymore. Too much of a conceptual gap to have a productive conversation when you have to try to point stuff like this out and know it's probably not going to be understood.
Or another one I like is changing Runes to damage over time, as in the Rune remains on the enemy burning, zapping, etc. as persistent damage. This avoids too much stacking, and while those Runes persist it gives opportunities for other tactics like making support Runes/Striking. And IMO it fits the flavor of tagging someone better than a simple boom.
Similarly, Runes might be lower damage, but reusable with every Invocation (likely w/ a limit of one Invocation/round or a Sustain cost too).I really like this idea.
No idea what its power level looks like, but conceptually it is very nice.
If implemented, I'd want to give it some resistance to ending the persistent damage, but persistent damage is already so difficult to end that I don't think I could justify it.
Thank you. I think the imagery came from the anime I've been watching, i.e. Inuyasha which features many ongoing energy-rune effects.
The power level would be whatever the instant damage translates to when persistent. I figure Paizo has some sort of formula for that, like +1d6 Bleed equals +Xd6 instant damage for when they're making such abilities. And then factor in other context game designers would be savvy about. Personally I'd enjoy having several enemies burning (etc), like I was continuously contributing.
As for removing, yeah, persistent is persistent enough, though I think a skill check for the magic type (or any of the four for a generic rune) would be a nice out, as losing an action is pretty costly too. (And on the PC-receiving side, less costly, but IMO more necessary.) And with monsters it's easy to reapply anyway, so there's no real escaping it (only mitigation via saves). Add a Diacritic to penetrate Resistance, maybe alter those "multi-rune gives an extra effect" feats to trigger with an ongoing effect too, which would makes those worthwhile (rather than overkill and/or too situational). I think it leaves more room for debuffs too, like Dazzled when on fire (though that'd eat a chunk out of the damage for sure, it's more interesting than pure damage, and gives that extra nonnumerical layer that PF2 favors.)
Yeah, I'm preferring this, as it can solve the OP's OP issue as well as the "is this really a martial?" question by giving them bashing time once their Runes are ongoing, as well as potential feat options for better bashing against foes w/ an ongoing Rune.
I mean... Sorcerer has been threatening that since forever. Dragon Breath is 1d6 under fireball at all ranks, which quickly becomes negligible. There's some other focus spells with similar scaling out there (and Necromancer's packing Necrotic Bomb at level 2, which at 1d12/rank is barely behind Fireball)
Edit: Wait, zero action? For Whetstone... eh... sort of. It's not AoE, so Fireball's probably a bad analogy. And it's melee range, versus the anywhere on the map range of Fireball.
Yeah, because the base Invoke allows you to choose which runes freely, simply etching Whetstone onto all melee PCs is the easy method for many 0A pops of full focus spell damage.
There's also things with the Sun- rune that auto-reapplies itself, which can further combos with things like the "relocate a rune" option, or Words, Fly Free for more absurd "prep" damage.
Ah, s%#!, just thought of another combo; because you can choose to leave runes non-exploded instead of them being wasted via redundant effects, W,FF is completely and unfixably busted.
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Not because of the Sun-repeat this time, but with the "is now an AoE" mod rune.
Because you can leave some of flying runes non-popped, any damage rune + W,FF can be an absurd combo.
For every foe in the 15 W,FF cone, you have created a scaling 1A fireball that'll fade in 2 turns. You have that much time to squeeze in a few more Traces, and then Invoke spam those AoE nukes.
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This combo is also a super nasty boss-killer thanks to Whetstone. Instead of the something like the fire rune, you do the Sun- reTrace mod with W,FF.
With 1 ally weapon adjacent the boss, you W,FF for 1A to add 2 pops of full focus spell damage on top of your normal rotation. If there's 2 weapons, that's 4 pops, which is approaching the "can't Invoke all this damage" numbers of runes.
Oh, I'm sorry, that's actually not even close to max.
Because W,FF allows the runes to stick to all viable candidates, objects included, that can easily be more explosions than you could Invoke spam to proc. As-is, GM adjudication is 100% required to stop W,FF from being just stupid with the number of runes it can Trace in 1A.
There's no requirement for wielding Whetstone's weapon. Save your rune mod or use the bonus damage mod and W,FF onto those 5 daggers your buddy is carrying, and spend every other action Invoking them 1 at a time. That boss had better be able to outrun your buddy, because once the words have landed, the fuse is lit.
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Edit: Even more boom.
A prep turn where you relocate a Fire-reTrace rune, and apply a slashing weakness via an Inflammation Flask or something.
That'll make turns 2 & 3 of WFF + detonator spam gain 4 0A max R Fireballs, plus Weakness x 5 slashing. On top of the 5x Fireballs+INT damage from the dagger-bearer.
Totaling to 9 saves for Fireball damage, +5x INT & 5x Weakness in 3 turns. Oh, and none of this was melee. At level 6.
Hard to imagine any fight not being "won" after that. Note that this isn't even boss-only. Because of this method being Invoke spam, it means that you can pick which foe to slash w/ each specific Invoke.
If RS is a martial, we can presume Paizo wish for it to find a 0A MAP attack more appealing than some other class actions.
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If Engraving Strike is baseline, that puts the power budget of that specific feat into every RS PC.
Even if a player wants to play RS with a bow at range, they are "wasting" serious power budget because they are leaving that Engrav Str feature unused.
This is a huge problem for the Alchemist, and why there is such a dramatic gulf between Bombers and everyone else post-Remaster.
Core features like Double Brew punish everyone who does *not* use them, it says: "screw all yall Alchs who want to hold something in a hand, play Alch empty-handed or you'll play with double the core action tax."
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Engraving Strike itself is an insane / broken design concept.
Afaik, nothing else in the system is conceptually matches Engr Str's design of: "win bigger, for free, no strings attached".
Engraving Strike translated/generalized: ~"With no penalty nor cost, make a Strike. If you hit, do a full action's worth of stuff in addition to the hit. If you miss, there is no difference from normal."
That is just insane, and would be considered OP as hell for any existing class. The closest thing are the small passive upgrade feats like Alchemist's Calculated Splash adding 2-3 damage per bomb (which is now a Legacy thing). Nothing remotely close to a full 2nd Action's worth of benefit.
I find it really, really hard to believe that you are genuinely thinking through your suggestion of adding this feat as a baseline feature. It looks like one of the most blatant "naked power grab" type suggestions I have seen.
If rs is a martial it's saves wouldn't be so poor
What's defining a martial it's becoming less and less clear as this game continues.
But hey, maybe they will address the saves issue
Make es work with ranged weapons, and they are already wasting potentially due to shield block depending on their ranged options.
Es has a failure effect and as you said in interacts with map. So it isn't free.
You can feel how you want, it's no skin off my back.
It's also that and away not my most sought after change
My sought after changes are invoke only able to be used once a round and invoke dice being d4s.
You'd have to nerf invokes into the absolute dirt to make them worse than a d8 off kas strike. 1d8+3? 2d6 is already better. 1d6? Yeah I'll just not pick damage runes. Plus it ignores the fact that while it's 1 action to invoke, it's also 1-2 to set up
If the class gets boiled down to spending all us time and actions into what amounts to a second strike, I'll just make you second strike.
Jeeze, it's almost like runes whose primary function is dealing damage is fundamentally in conflict with the concept of a weapon-swinging martial, hunh.
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Jeeze, it's almost like runes whose primary function is dealing damage is fundamentally in conflict with the concept of a weapon-swinging martial, hunh.
I'd gladly drop the martial proficiency personally for the runes.
I'm going to politely ignore the hunh as I recognize I've had a bad day that went far longer than it should.
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Blowing all your ethched whetstone runes to dump round 1 damage across different enemies is no different than using a fireball. You don't have targeting/friendly fire problems, but you do have movement/melee requirements, and instead of using a spell slot you forego all the opportunity cost of what that whetstone could have been instead (get out jail teleportation, "don't touch/grab/swallow me," difficult terrain on approach, off guard/chase down if you hit me, etc.).
Etched whetstones spread across the party don't strike me as a problem. The only relevant conversation is when stacked on top of a fire and lightning rune to triple invoke on a target.
This is all such a significant misunderstanding of the issue at stake.
-Fireball uses a daily resource, while 4x runes invoked on round 1 is an encounter resource.
-Each rune scales the same as fireball, so it's very different than using one fireball. At level 20, when it's 80d6, it's close to double the effective damage dice of casting 10th rank Boil Blood and quickened 8th rank Boil Blood or 10th rank Thunderstrike into 8th rank Thunderstrike. Those turns require using 3 daily resources (2 slots and your quicken) and can only be done once a day. Runesmith is doing more than this every single encounter they have etched runes.
-You don't bother spreading etched runes across the party. You just shove them all on one melee, because you only need one rune delivery system. One person can carry every whetstone rune you will need, and persistent bleed doesn't stack.
-The opportunity cost is not at all balanced on these. No etched rune's passive benefits are stronger than being a 2d6/rank boom in an 8d6/rank burst. The main opportunity cost (at high levels) is vs applying Rovan with Runesinger to debuff or trying the instant teleport meme with Aiuen (again with runesinger). Nothing you put on your party is more beneficial than that absurd amount of upfront damage.
Any opportunity cost would need to come in at the slot level, probably via runes with significantly better passive benefits that cannot be invoked at all. But those would need to be broken, too, to compete with something as broken as invoking 4 2d6/rank runes in one turn.
To note, you can't set off four separate whetstone runes to harm the same creature in one turn. That would take four actions still. You can, however, get three off, which is still the 60d6 (3 basic fort saves) at level 20 to one or two enemies in one turn. You can also reach that 80d6 on a single target with two whetstone runes and then a Sun-Atryl (repeating fire) that you transpose onto the target your melee friend rushes (for one action.) Then two action detonations hits the 80d6.
...Yeah, this doesn't make it much of any less bad, when you're looking at single target burst being able to take out an important NPC or boss round 1 of a fight.
And those all also can bypass any "one rune per slot" limits that someone might implement since Sun-runes will give you two invokes on their own, and whetstones on different knives can still be carried by one person.
Was discussing some on how to fix that on the Runic Spam thread, and currently we have a couple of ideas I and MartialMasters are debating. Either limit invoking to once per turn (MartialMaster's preferred fix), or cause invoking to be a bit less precise based on an alternate reading of the invoke action's description - (Effectively, if you invoke a single whetstone rune, you'll invoke all of them in range, so any non-Sun- rune won't be able to be invoked back to back on a single target.)
One invoke per turn leaves maximum damage to 2 runes on a turn base if you use the slot limitations (so fire and thunder can't both go on the same target) or 3 runes if you leave the rune stacking as is. No difference between first turn and second here other than that a first turn 3-rune damage burst is only possible either with runes being allowed to stack (fire and thunder both transposed onto the target from ally) or with an ally taking an En-damage rune and eating the hit while carrying the whetstone rune, and using a traced or transposed rune to add onto the target before invoking.
The "all runes of the same name are set off at once" limits max damage on the first round of combat to a 3 runes of damage burst that will only work with using up the sun-rune etch and using transpose (or W,FF) on an enemy who you can be within range of at the start of your turn, or through the same methods as above with an En-rune on an ally or with double transposing etched runes if stacking is being allowed. Further turns will average lower, similar to above, but this option does allow a 3 rune burst turn one without an ally accepting self-damage, even if runes aren't allowed to have more than one in a single slot on a target.