runes / infusions of skill/mastery

[martinuzz]

I really like the rune / infusion thing as an improvement over scrolls/potions.

I got an idea for two more types of runes/infusions:
Runes and infusions of skill, and of mastery.

Runes/infusions of skill temporarily raise a skill value when activated.
duration, amount of skill boosted, cooldown etc. can vary, ofcourse.

examples:
"Rune of Illuminate"
Use mode: Activated
Range: melee/personal
Cooldown: 35
Travel speed: Instantaneous
Usage: 1 turn
Description: Activate the rune to boost your effectiveness of the Illuminate spell by 2 points for 10 turns

"Infusion of Health" (personally, I wouldn't let this one take up a slot, it would be a waste of space)
Use mode: Activated
Range: melee/personal
Cooldown: 40
Travel speed: Instantaneous
Usage: Instant
Description: Activate the rune to boost the effectiveness of the Health skill by 1 point for 15 turns

However, if I could find 2 of those variants of aforementioned infusion of Health, I might just equip them for permanent health gain
"Infusion of Health"
Use mode: Activated
Range: melee/personal
Cooldown: 30 turns
Travel speed: instantaneous
Usage: Instant
Description: Activate the rune to boost the effectiveness of the Health skill by 4 points for 20 turns

Runes would be used for the 'magic' skills, infusions would be used for the non-magic skills, to not mess with antimagic quests and stuff.

In the lower level dungeons, you will only be able to find infusions/runes for skills at the beginning of talent trees.
Runes/infusions boosting skills further down the talent trees can be found in higher-level dungeons.

Runes of mastery are of a whole different level. These should be extremely rare, and finding them will be a real prize.
Here's what they do:

Once applied on the body, these runes/infusions have a passive effect:
They raise the mastery level of a talent tree.

Again, runes of mastery for magically-inclined skills
Infusions of mastery for non-magically inclined skills.

Examples:
"Rune of Cunning mastery: Shadow Magic"
Use mode: Passive
Range: Melee/personal
Description:
When applied to the body, this rune grants the wearer a bonus of +0.20 to his mastery of Cunning: Shadow Magic

"Infusion of Cunning mastery: Survival"
Use mode: Passive
Range: Melee/personal
Description: When applied to the body, this infusion grants the wearer a bonus of +0.10 to his mastery of Cunning: Survival

EDIT: Forgot to mention that none of these runes/infusions grant the user control over a new skill(set). Only skill(s) already posessed by a character are affected.

[Grey]

With only 3 rune slots these seem quite worthless to me. They'd need to give some really mega effects to be more important than regneration and phasing runes.

[Zonk]

Not liking runes/infusions of skill(too specific)...but I'd REALLY like the mastery ones.
Just make the mastery bonuses reasonable.
Maybe some improved mastery runes/infusions could give bonuses to more than one tree rather than just increasing the +mastery bonus, although that's not really necessary.

[martinuzz]

Artefact runes

[Grey]

Rune of Full Mastery
Gives +0.1 to *all* talent trees.

To be honest though, it's still not that big of an effect. I never particularly highly rate any plus value to a mastery, since the difference is generally weak and it's not as important as getting *new* abilities.

[teachu2die]

ditto what grey said.
there's already mastery amulets, and they're rarely useful. these would have to provide a really huge boost to be interesting.

[Sirrocco]

Note that runes of mastery would mean that burning a category point to get a rune slot was Just Plain Better than burning it to improve mastery in a tree. That seems poor to me.

[Grey]

It already is Just Plain Better. Why would anyone waste a category point slightly increasing an existing tree when they could get a whole rune slot instead?

[Sirrocco]

Depends on how heavily you're into the existing tree. Personally, I have a Cursed character who's going to be sinking 20 points into the gloom tree (if I manage to get him to survive that long). Every category point that goes into that tree, then, is worth effectively 2 class points, on skills that I've decided are important enough to master completely. Now, the value of that as compared to a fifth rune slot?

...and I'm thinking that if rune slots are as far about category points as you're saying (they may be - I've not made it far enough to see the really high level runes) then perhaps that's something that should be fixed. I don't think that creating runes that turn the "category-point-to-increase-tree" technique *completely* into a newbie trap is the appropriate answer, though.