I've seen plenty of discussion about the lower level problems, from the outrageous damage spike potential the class has in the right situations, to the issues with using the class for options that seem intended but then rules might not allow without three hands or very specific and limiting gear choices...
But I haven't seen a few of the higher level options that I feel are problematic brought up yet, so I'll make a thread for those.
The biggest ones I've noticed are the level 14 Henge Gate, the level 17 Rune for Aiuen (Elf gate key teleport rune), and the level 20 Forge New Word.
Now, the level 20 one is a level 20 feature, so... I don't really care as much about how broken something has the potential to be at level 20. But level 14 abilities are a lot more likely to come up for a long stretch of higher level campaigns, and level 17 has the potential to be present for what should be the climax of the most epic campaigns and adventure paths you'll play. Having powerful abilities that feel good are important, but having a single option that overshadows everything can definitely be a problem, turning every problem into a nail.
So, Henge gate first: You create a pair of pillars with a rune engraved that any ranged physical attacks sent through have the rune engraved to the ammo. Then auto-transferred on hit. This is not just for the runesmith, but for all allies as well. Meaning, at the most simple when you get it, the party can set up to rain arrows down on a group of enemies, stacking multiple copies of the same rune on targets, and you can spend your turn detonating three times... every round potentially. Especially if any difficult terrain or other control abilities are used to stop enemies from charging through. Good, but not too powerful... until you realize you can apply diacritic runes to the rune on the gate. Now three hits on enemies between two allies shooting three allows for three AOE bursts of 2d6/rank damage on your turn. Or persistent unholy fire damage on top of the direct damage. Or since you only made one Sun- diacritic Rune, but it's being copied by the gate...
This has some potential to get really powerful, I feel, and overshadows the other two level 14 options. But it gets worse at level 17.
So the Aiuen rune can let you teleport anyone who gets within 30 feet of you. 2 actions to apply, 1 to force a will save. Every round, no cost other than actions and thus opportunity cost. It can also be used on the party to let you pull the entire party out of a bad situation to base camp as a single action with etched runes, but the main problem is this is a save-or-lose that you can use every round from the start. You can teleport a target to ANY RUNE you have, including sigils from the cantrip you can take at level 1. By level 17, the duration of Sigil is permanent, and you are not limited to how many you can have. So you can have one on the other side of the planet on holy ground with sunlight all around. Another right above a volcano's bubbling heart. Another on an anchor dropped to the bottom of the ocean. Another launched into space by a party wizard, or sent to the moon. Anywhere you can get a small object to, on the same plane of existence, you can now send enemies to if they fail a single will save.
Vampire? To holy ground in the sun light in a running stream of water with paladins nearby on the other side of the planet. Fire dragon? Bottom of the ocean. Ice dragon? Into the magma of a volcano. Anything that needs to breathe? Outer space. Make a hollowed out prison a mile underground and you can leave a sigil in it to teleport enemies into a timeout box.
So that's awful, since save-or-lose is generally a terrible option, especially without any resource cost. But now combine them.
That's right, one action to force a will save to every enemy struck with arrows last turn vs being teleported to the moon, or to the bottom of the ocean under 15,750 psi of pressure. Then a second action to do it again to ones that made their first save but got hit twice. Have a single boss? The whole party gets at least three hits on him? Three will saves vs your boss being gone. Unless every major enemy puts some way of blocking teleports up, they will face a bunch of save-or-dies. And at the same time, most people able to block teleports could use it and might want an emergency escape spell ready. Such a shame that leaving teleportation open leaves them vulnerable to being sent into a volcano.
If it was limited to teleporting on the battle field, or evacuating allies out of battle to a base camp, or letting the party instantly move between cities to cut down travel, sure. That would be great. But being able to target enemies at all with this feels dangerously likely to become one of those "that one trick that DMs hate" while also leaving the party bored after the first or second time you use it to trivialize a fight.
Maybe have it so that teleporting outside of line of sight only works on willing targets? Unwilling targets can be teleported if they fail a will save, but only to locations you can still see and have a rune or sigil near? You can still set up a trap, drop a sigil in it, and then throw enemies into a kill box, but it's not the save-or-lose that teleporting them all to the bottom of the ocean or something is.
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Making the "teleport to anywhere on the plane" rune into "will save or suffer the effect of quandry" with a 10m CD on the invoke would probably be more acceptable, though maybe still too strong with the other action compression.
I don't think henge gate works with diacritics; that'd be two runes, not one, and diacritics can never be applied by themselves. It's the same logic that makes a diacritic eat an etch slot.
I don't think henge gate works with diacritics; that'd be two runes, not one, and diacritics can never be applied by themselves. It's the same logic that makes a diacritic eat an etch slot.
From the playtest: "A diacritic is a special type of rune that is not applied directly to a creature or object, but rather to another rune itself, modifying or empowering that base rune." The Henge gate has the rune of your choice carved on their surfaces however, and I was referring to applying a diacritic to the gate's rune with your last action after the 2 to make the gate.
I could see arguments either way, from the player that they're modifying the rune on the gate, from the DM that there are technically two standing pillars that form the gate, so they'd have to at least cast it twice, once for each pillar. But I see no reason they couldn't be applied onto the gate at all. It would be applied to the rune that you put on the gate initially.
If the DM rules that you have to apply it to both pillars, Sun- can't be applied onto whatever you're putting there, but En- still could for instance. Even so, the gate is STRONG without the Diacritics, probably insane if Sun- is allowed to work on it, and if Aiuen isn't fixed, then it's a save or lose machine gun.
As for giving Aiune a cooldown for its invoke, that could interfere with its base use of teleporting allies around, and if you tie it only to the "on enemies" effect, I can't really make that make much sense lore wise for why it has a cooldown. I'd rather just make it so that unwilling creatures need to crit fail their save to be sent out of line of sight and have a minor "on save" effect of something like clumsy 1, and on fail can teleport them adjacent to any rune in line of sight while leaving them clumsy 2. Makes it useful still while making the save or lose a crit fail effect at least. That or just make the crit fail still line of sight next to another rune, but leave them stunned or clumsy for a longer duration... something like that.