So. About those attack runes.

[Nagyhal]

1. Spending a category point on both the Rune Mastery and Infusion Mastery trees could turn out to be extremely profitable indeed, if each of these trees grants even only one free slot. It'd make for a tasty-looking option even with WIL vs. MAG involved.

2. Yeah, there's no need to be restrictive about it. The game already gives enough ways, when it comes to magic vs. nature, to completely disallow either build type! The merged Archer (Archer/Slinger) is the gold standard here. Two classes that were once a kind of opposite are preserved perfectly well in combination.

3. Edge's solution of adding CC-based utility to each of the attack runes is elegant and reassuringly conservative, while Aquillion's suggestion reveals a truism of game design in that a slot system is just a simplification of a point system (c.f. D&D's "feats" which would be immensely better balanced given a point cost.) These solutions are both, in any case, immediately appealling.

Making a point system out of inscriptions invokes worries that the new design will be sprawling, clumsy, and overly catering to the competitive, micromanaging master-nerds among us. ToME should not become a rail simulator with dragons. That said, once you dwell on the idea and draw it to its logical limits, the beauty of what could be possible with this is overwhelming.

Imagine the potential for artefact inscriptions such as Rune of the Rift. If such an item takes up 2 slots--double what it currently does, and 2/3 of what a character starts with and may end up finishing the game with--then it becomes a fully-fledged build option that demands commitment and attention to synergies within that build, but it could also become doubly awesome. Example:

A Rune of the Rift that now gives you a Paradox bar and grants you access to the Chronomancy tree so long as you retain the rune, respeccing talent points on removal. For Chronomancers, this rune improves the mastery of this and a couple of other trees, and maybe increases temporal damage to a limited extent or performs some other utility.

At the other end of the scale, we glimpse a swathe of potential new cantrip runes and mini-infusions.

So again, we see how objections to this design would be aesthetic only. Slots before points is a design choice. No one will ever say it's a bad idea, but if you wanna sell a scheme for a rune system that's markedly more complex compared to the current one, well... those workings need to kept beneath a sleek outer bonnet as best as is possible. How could you present this design, while making the complete experience more compelling in the same stroke? We're waiting for that killer pitch.

4. Sustain 'scriptions with continual buffs! We have indeed had the inverse of this idea, quite curiously, in the earlier Taints thread. Taints were suggested that would provide a persistent debuff in exchange for more-powerful-than-usual rewards:

Taint: Ghoulish Rot

With each melee attack action, you have a X% chance to bite your opponent with your fetid maw, doing X physical damage and either inflicting a random disease upon your target or spreading any existing diseases. The diseases do X damage per turn for X turns. However, your movement speed is also reduced by 20%. You may activate this Taint to use Ghoulish Leap with a range of X.

The other ideas in that thread are great. Really, they're startlingly good. Have a look at those Taint ideas and try to imagine their positive mirror images.

5. I don't feel that even with any amount of slotting discount that purely damaging attack runes will either remain as broken enough (imagining that you can pop out 100s of damage in a turn at very low levels as Dervis points out, bad for NPCs as well) or ever be buffed enough (resulting in more brokenness at the wrong levels) to become a serious temptation unless their damage can be brought closer inline with player development and expected damage-per-turn.

6. By this reasoning, given the fragility of damage output as a balancing factor, edge's CC attack runes are still perhaps far and away the best way to balance damaging inscriptions against the incredible survival options offered by others.

7. The other way to make damaging runes useful through balance is to incorporate them within talents (and, say, slot-bearing staff egos) that control their power at a place appropriate to talent / item level.

8. Low-cooldown attacks are a great idea too. They should be of the sort of power level that (while being appropriate to game progress) can alter builds: an Archmage specced in Fire enjoying tighter spell-cycling with a Firebeam rune that essentially manages to replace Lightning for this character, as an example. If you think about it, why shouldn't a fiery Archmage be reduced to drooling ecstasy after coming across a high-powered Firebeam rune? It's just the kind of thing that they're all about.

9. Inscription egos are awesome. Do we agree?