Rune limits

[Martialmasters]

I think this deserves it's own thread. It's obvious at this point, that with creative use of etchings and feats, that this class can reach high burst potential.

My fear is that to nip this, devs will decimate this classes action economy and limit it to a bog standard routine.

So my thought was, what is there was a limit on the number of runes you can have on a target. But that limitation was based on the legal application of the rune, not a hard number.

Currently runes can be put on weapons, armor z shields and creatures/objects.

So what if we could only apply one creature rune on a creature at a time?

What if only one weapon rune on a weapon. One shield rune on a shield. Etc.

You don't touch the classes action compression, you still have a ton of room for creativity. But you'll only be detonating 2 runes for direct damage typically. A weapon and a rune on a creature like fire or thunder.

[ElementalofCuteness]

The answer I am thinking here is people don't seem to enjoy the action compressing of Runesmith as the optimal play style is shaping up to seem like it is rather as many say "broke" but like it's because you spend 2 actions to invoke a rune or 3 actions to invoke 3 runes and if you play off of Etched runes, you can spend 3 actions to invoke 3 runes.

You can stop this silly combo by doing the above limiting it to 1 single rune of each type but currently we don't have enough runes to fully support this but this is playtest. Having one weapon rune support would stop multiple tunrs of 3 action = 3 runes.

You could go with the idea that Runes have 3 effects instead of 2, 1 passive, 1 invocation and 1 etched effect which the third only triggers if the rune is etched making it more difficult to want to blow up your etched runes or perhaps make them so they can't be invoked.

[Red Griffyn]

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

The answer I am thinking here is people don't seem to enjoy the action compressing of Runesmith as the optimal play style is shaping up to seem like it is rather as many say "broke" but like it's because you spend 2 actions to invoke a rune or 3 actions to invoke 3 runes and if you play off of Etched runes, you can spend 3 actions to invoke 3 runes.

You can stop this silly combo by doing the above limiting it to 1 single rune of each type but currently we don't have enough runes to fully support this but this is playtest. Having one weapon rune support would stop multiple tunrs of 3 action = 3 runes.

You could go with the idea that Runes have 3 effects instead of 2, 1 passive, 1 invocation and 1 etched effect which the third only triggers if the rune is etched making it more difficult to want to blow up your etched runes or perhaps make them so they can't be invoked.

Hard disagree on rune action compression being not enjoyed. That is explicitly what lots of people are saying they like. It is also fundamentally required to make the class even functional in play. You have a 2 action class feature (trace + invoke). You need at least two action compressions per round or you'll be playing with less actions then every other passive class like fighters/barbarians/monks who not only have 3 actions to do whatever but also have built in action compression feats like sudden charge, flurry of blows, etc.

The burst damage issue is because of two things:
1.) There are too many damage runes that can stack.
2.) You can spend actions outside of combat on damage runes (i.e., etches) that net you improved action economy in combat.

The damage on the runes, when limited to 4 runes per 2 rounds is not actually out of line. Its all about cutting off the ability to get 6 runes in round 1 & 2 from those pre combat etches. But 4 runes per 2 rounds is lower than a fighter in most cases and sometimes on par with a fighter (but worse for many reasons because fighters have a lot more going for them in their turn rotations).

To address #1 you should just have 2 stacking runes (one for physical damage B/P/S and one for elemental damage (Fire/Cold/Electricity/Acid/Sonic).

To address #2 you just make sure that etches can't be damage runes. IMO this is just healthier anyways as it pushes PCs to need to to pick utility/non-damage combat rune options.

[RobinHart]

I'm going to say that the general idea of restricting runes to one per 'slot' (one weapon rune per weapon, one body/creature rune per creature, one object rune per object) really does sound like a good idea. Not just to reduce issues of stacking multiples of the same rune to then detonate multiple times in a round, or stacking lightning and fire runes on one person to detonate both... but as future proofing.

One of the big things I'm wanting to see later is more runes that have good solid buff and debuff options, as well as some more out of combat and less direct options. But if you have 5 different weapon runes that all add small passive boosts to attacking, and all have a different effect that's useful "when in melee with enemies," things could spiral out of control just as badly there as with stacking multiple etched whetstone runes or fire runes and lightning runes for damage bursts turn one.

Making sure each weapon only can have one rune means that the devs an feel more free to make the passive and active effects of those runes stronger, since there's no worry about them stacking together to make something game breaking. Same with further defensive shield and armor runes, same with offensive creature/object runes...

Plus, even if there end up being 6-8 elemental damage / physical damage runes to target creatures with instead of 2, if you can only apply one at a time per creature/object, there's less pressure to take all of your rune selections on more damage runes. Then you could make that class feat for changing out the element of weapon runes that already exists also apply to "runes you create are able to pick any of the above energy types when you initially trace or etch them," and you don't even have to worry about making a generic "elemental damage rune" - you could keep flavor for each one, let the player pick their favorite passive effect(s), take the class feat that lets them change the damage type of it, and have one or two of their limited rune choices cover enemy resistances and vulnerabilities fairly well with room for other types of runes.

[Martialmasters]

Glad you see my light on this Robin. Future proofing and controlling burst while not interfering overly with action economy is important to me.

[C_bastion]

That does seem like it would fix things, and might even make it easier to grok in the process.
Having limited slots that you can fill out on enemies and allies makes the combos clearer, instead of feeling like you could add anything to anything.
Some limits can make mechanics feel better, if applied appropriately.