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Lilith's Runesmith Guide(I'm Lilith)
I became obsessed with runesmith immediately when I got my hands on the book, and had to write this out to categorize my thoughts. It's mostly done now before the class even released, all I really need is some sample builds but I can do those later.
Suggestions welcome for additions or changing the ratings of things
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Transpose Etching, which you rated ??? is one of the ranged "trace" efficiency paths for rune plus diacritic, in addition to the familiar and an extending rune combined with Drawn in Vital Ink that you referenced.
If you have two base runes with diacritics preetched (for four total etched slots), you can use two actions to Transpose both of them, then invoke. This is equivalent to four ranged traces (eight actions) plus an invocation, or 9a actions for 3a.
For etching combinations, if you don't have fire or physical resistances then En-Atryl (fire 15' emanation) or En-Thullax (acid 15' emanation) can be used for this to pop one or two elemental AOEs in turn 1, but if you have four etched rune slots you have 9th level runes, so moving a Ur-Cruonign to an enemy (or different ally) weapon to detonate for a unique cone aim is also a possibility.
As an alternative to Transposing your etched runes, you can trace base rune, trace diacritic, transpose to a distant target. You got 4a worth of ranged tracing for three actions, next turn 2a trace a base rune, invoke.
Of course you need to have diacritics worth using for this to pay off, and it only looks "good" in action terms because ranged tracing is such an abysmal action sink. It's not as good as the other workarounds, but that's why it doesn't require set up (Vital Ink, familiar positioning) or have a frequency limitation (Rune Singer, Diacritic Fluency), or the risk of AOE/melee from doing it adjacent yourself or with a familiar.
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I just saw the rune section got added.
Astillu, Rune of Submersion, combos very well with Pillar of Water spell (3rd rank, creates up to 15' radius pillar) in any campaign, not just an aquatic one. Put it on 1-2 melee guys with reactive strikes and you can ruthlessly bully casters, fire users, or creatures without piercing melee attacks once your primal or arcane caster surrounds everyone with water, preferably blocking them in a corner they have to Shove themselves out of (perhaps more than once) to escape - no Tumble Through without a swim speed.
One use for Jurroz is to make enemies engaging your melee front liners off guard to ranged PCs.
Regarding Eck- "each of your enemies adjacent to the rune-bearer takes 1d8 persistent spirit damage." What did Paizo mean by this? They didn't say it triggers at the beggining or end of a turn, so as written this starts ticking if they're ever next to you - Stride next to the entire encounter to get it going, I guess.
One use of Auien is that it will let you follow an enemy who uses Translocate 5th rank to escape if they have a traced rune on them and you have or can trace Auien on enough of your party to safely pursue. Sorry, high level fiend, you are actually going to die today.
And as a goofy way to handwave certain exploration challenges, should they not be trivially solveable by flight at this level, carry at a minimum a sling, or perhaps a 100-200 increment ranged weapon and start throwing/shooting nonmagical ammo with sigils 250-1000' over/past obstacles that you can then teleport to.
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So, one note about the Auien rune... the demon doesn't have to have a rune traced on them. you can do that with the Sigil cantrip too... and sigils can be invisible, and don't require a saving throw... so he might not know you can still come after him. and if he doesn't know about it, it lasts for a YEAR
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Regarding Eck- "each of your enemies adjacent to the rune-bearer takes 1d8 persistent spirit damage." What did Paizo mean by this? They didn't say it triggers at the beggining or end of a turn, so as written this starts ticking if they're ever next to you - Stride next to the entire encounter to get it going, I guess.
Presumably whenever the rune deals damage, so on any passive damage dealing runes such as Ranshu or Oraloq it can inflict it passively too. RAI more likely to be supposed to happen when the rune is invoked.
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Also Pillar of Water being from Extinction Curse is really funny, two times this class benefits specifically from things from that AP
Regarding Eck- "each of your enemies adjacent to the rune-bearer takes 1d8 persistent spirit damage." What did Paizo mean by this? They didn't say it triggers at the beggining or end of a turn, so as written this starts ticking if they're ever next to you - Stride next to the entire encounter to get it going, I guess.Presumably whenever the rune deals damage, so on any passive damage dealing runes such as Ranshu or Oraloq it can inflict it passively too. RAI more likely to be supposed to happen when the rune is invoked.
I don't see any reason to presume that at all. We have Ochygholl as an example of a passive adjacent debuff/penalty, but there it specifies it happens if they begin their turn adjacent to the runebearer. I'd assume that's what they intend here, but it could be one of a few things. They need to say.
Also Pillar of Water being from Extinction Curse is really funny, two times this class benefits specifically from things from that AP
It was reprinted in Rage of Elements, I didn't know it was an EC original.
Undertow from High Seas might also work with the water breathing rune, but that's a kind of poorly written spell that has friendly fire concerns on cast.
Edited some descriptions using the comments here, and also described how the Alpha Strike build works
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Now that the class is out I updated with some more information about builds and adjusted some rankings based on comments ive received on Reddit