Spell Runes

[AIAndy]

I always thought that for the damage those runes do they have a too long cooldown. If the cooldown on damage runes was actually low enough (6 turns or so) with some short side effect they might be worth it on some classes.

[Strongpoint]

Not all runes\infusions are for players, some are monsters only. I always viewed attack ones like that. As well as blinding and poison infusions

[donkatsu]

If they are not for players then they shouldn't drop for players.

[overgoat]

Many people have made the valid point that making runes do more damage may not be the best approach, but what about making more defensive runes? Maybe runes that provide passive elemental resistances or status resistances?

[Frumple]

That... almost makes me wonder if there's not room for a sort of generic "capture" rune. Basically, you activate it (likely instant) and it "catches" the next spell that hits you -- basically a single-shot omni-ward effect tuned to Is Spell = True sources. Then you can activate it a second time (again, likely an instant action even if what hit you wasn't) to fire whatever it is that hit you off.

Higher power ones might catch more spells, or expand to swallowing everything that hits it for a turn (or two) or something. A sort of reactive defense.

Alternately, have something similar with damage types instead of power sources, with higher power ones covering more types and/or more hits. I could see sinking an inscription slot into a ward that let me bounce stuff back at the enemy.

Might even be room in that sort of thing to bounce your own attacks off you... redirect damage smearing, store a spell for later double-up, stuff like that.

[HousePet]

I've fleshed out some suggestions for minor buffs to existing underwhelming inscriptions.
How do these additions sound?

Insidious Poison: Target self to add temporary poison to weapons.

Wild Growth: Armour/hardiness bonus.

Invisibility: Increased Crit multiplier.

Vision: Cures blindness.

Heat Beam: Cures freeze.

Frozen Spear: Full Freeze damage (instead of Ice damage).

Acid Wave: Add corrosion.

Lightning: Cures stun and daze.

Devourer: Give the Weirdling Beast a 25% chance to drop one.

Telepathy: +5 to Telepathy range. Extend duration to 10 turns. Decrease Mindsave penalty to -10. Add +10 Mindpower.

[bricks]

Everything but invisibility sounds good. A damage penalty with increased crit is just confusing and too much of a math problem. A minor global speed bonus might work well. Not sure what you mean for Frozen Spear, I'm guessing it's a subtlety involving special damage types.

Also, I think that Phase Door (runes) really, really should be instant. Right now it's too random.

Frumple's idea is interesting - maybe a taint that steals a random talent?

[SageAcrin]

Invis Runes just need the healing negation removed.

Heck, they're pretty good as it is, even, but if Invisibility ever gets tweaked a bit(and it needs it...it doesn't trivialize the game, but there are definitely portions it can), they'll be useless. I'd rather remove the healing penalty first, they're not as good at trivializing portions of the game as higher duration Invis is anyways. That negative feels terribly forced, too, no other forms of Invisibility negate healing, so it's just weird that it's there.

Frozen Spear is an instant hitting projectile that can status, and is already one of the better ones. I don't think I want to get frozen into an iceblock by even more enemies, either. Maybe it could produce a DoT storm around you instead?

Heat/Vision are too narrow-people wouldn't field them over the other options, there. You could salvage that by having them give heavy resistances to the status, or you could make them do something else. I admit I'm having trouble thinking of something a Heat Rune could do extra(Randomized Flameshock? Produce a radial fire DoT at the end of the ray?), but Vision could grant ESP for the one turn it was used-that way you'd see the current location of enemies when you used it.

For that matter, the Vision spell could probably use something like that as an L5 bonus.

I like the other ones, though. Solid ideas.

As to Phase Door, I'd like to see the range of possible Phase Door cooldowns lowered(6-12), and possibly their teleport radius range upped a bit(feels like they should cap out around 15 potentially). I feel like an exceptionally low cooldown Phase Door would be an interesting option for constant kiting and secondary escaping, then. As it is, they're rarely useful.

Instant wouldn't hurt, though.

[HousePet]

Okay, just remove healing penalty from Invisibility then.

Frozen Spear: I'm more interested in the ability to freeze a creature in an emergency, than doing cold damage. But 25% base chance is too low to be reliable. I guess 100% is an issue as there is no save. Could make it do a spell save vs highest power?

Heat Ray: Add a lingering freeze resist buff? Or should we go all out and add a heat haze for +defense and hit damage on hit as well?

Vision: Lingering blindess resist and 1 turn of ESP sounds good.

Phase Door/Teleport: How about a few turns out of phase(+defense, resist all and debuff duration reduction) after porting?

[SageAcrin]

Well, the major enemies I think of when I think of spell runes are Vampires and Armored Skeleton Warriors(as for most other enemies, a spell rune mostly only marginally raises their threat level, or they don't have them.).

I think they come out around 40 for primary power and notably over 40, respectively, so that hands out Freeze as a status to reasonably competent enemies, entirely at random and with no visible clue-in, pretty much.

Phase Door granting you inherent on-teleport buffs when you have one(or just granting some whenever you use it, either way) would be an interesting way to make it a more useful basic Rune, yeah. That's a good idea. The heat haze idea isn't bad either, and I think we fundamentally agree about Vision.

[HousePet]

Frozen Spear runes already give random creatures the ability to freeze you at random though.

[Frumple]

I vaguely remember my (E2: my/the... I don't recall how many people contributed, and I may be accidentally stealing credit, here) old suggestion for uncontrolled PD runes is to A: Make them instant and/or B:Let them be reused in quick succession once or twice (amount probably scaling with item strength) so if the RNG decides to bugger you on the first jump, you've got an extra emergency jump or two in the tank. My more recent thought is to simply prevent the damned things from landing you within a square or two of hostile critters, or possibly allow you to give directional input (just not as fine or directed as controlled PD. Probably a cone effect.) of some sort. E: Or any and/or all of the above, really.

Because, frankly, until you give me a somewhat better guarantee that the PD jump isn't going to land me right beside what I was trying to get away from (consuming a turn and giving them a free swing, to boot!), it doesn't really matter what bonuses short of flat out (temporary) invincibility you add to the rune -- I'm not going to use the damned thing because it's going to kill me if I keep trying to rely on it. It's an escape talent that has fair odds of turning into a gap-closer (or the functional equivalent to just hitting the wait button!) when you really, really don't need it to. Uncontrolled PD runes are the kiss of death.

E: Though I now have this hilarious thought in my head that it's actually Zigur making and distributing uncontrolled phase door runes. They know what's going to happen because of those things.

... we should totally have an artifact sabotaged PD rune. When activated, it would teleport you beside the nearest enemy (and possibly attempt to stun or something).

[SageAcrin]

Frozen Spear runes already give random creatures the ability to freeze you at random though.

25% is not 100%.

There's always a fair deal of difference between randomized 25% chances-which still have to pass a save check, I believe, to boot-and full on status attacks.

One is a very rare threat that justifies a Wild infusion use and an escape to recharge, so that you can deal with more normal status threats(Vampires use Curse of Death and Armored Skellies use Stun/Disarm.).

The other means you have another consistent powerful status, randomly assigned and with no previous visible sign besides digging through their skillset-and Armored Skeleton Warriors are one of the strongest enemies at points in the game, anyhow. It requires a different mindset-now you have to randomly deal with strong status from any enemy that gets assigned a rune at random.

To be honest, the burst damage potential of damage runes is bad enough, on the enemy side, for surprise kills of players. Frozen Spear, when you consider it is Instant, is not a weak thing on the enemy end, even as it stands.

I sorta feel like "25% is not 100%" is enough, though, as an explanation. If random chance of freeze was worth a ton, it wouldn't be suggested as an upgrade for the player, now would it?

Edit:

... we should totally have an artifact sabotaged PD rune. When activated, it would teleport you beside the nearest enemy (and possibly attempt to stun or something).

Mass Phase Door Rune. 10 CD, attempts to Phase Door both you and all enemies within Radius 10 to a random spot within 10 squares of where they were.

[HousePet]

My suggestion is 100% - a saving throw vs 25% no saving throw.
So its not a full +75% chance increase.

[supermini]

My suggestion is 100% - a saving throw vs 25% no saving throw.
So its not a full +75% chance increase.

I'm not too keen on either. Frozen spear is instant, and it's already one of the better runes.