So. About those attack runes.

[Sradac]

go ahead and make the rune / infusion master class. thats all. focus and enhance them suckers. Combine some for awesome effects. Combine a shield with ray of fire? hmmm interesting. When struck shoots a firebeam at the enemy. Awesome against archers!

[Sradac]

after all...why not? I think it would make perfect sense lore wise. We can all tell infusinos and runes can be QUITE powerful. So why wouldnt some school / tribe / group form up around that idea. You're telling me no one in maj'eyal realized how great infusions and runes were and never though "These are great, but there HAS to be a way to make them better!"

Give some advanced trees as well that are exclusive. You will have general abilities that affect all inscriptions, then you can either unlock rune or infusion focused ones and the other ones lock out. After all, runes and infusions are quite different at the core, it would take too much energy to possibly unlock all the secrets of both.

make it so! I cant code.

[Aquillion]

You will have general abilities that affect all inscriptions, then you can either unlock rune or infusion focused ones and the other ones lock out. After all, runes and infusions are quite different at the core, it would take too much energy to possibly unlock all the secrets of both.

NO.

Don't pointlessly make certain builds impossible. Why would you want to do that? All you accomplish is making it so playing your new class is more repetitive by limiting the number of potential builds they can follow. The way category, class, and generic talent points work already forces you to choose an area of focus. But players should be allowed to use that to customize their character how they please within there, without being crudely forced into one of two builds.

Whenever possible, it's always better to leave more options rather than cutting them off. This is the same silliness that leads to things like classes specifically focused on axes and stuff -- it looks good on paper, but doesn't actually add to the game vs. giving players a wider range of options.

Compare how frequently archmages are played to most other classes. Archmages give you a ton of options; other classes generally don't. Other classes should be more like that so they have more replay value.

(Instead, think of other directions the class could go in as well, so they have to choose between that and focusing on one of or both of runes and inscriptions.)

[bricks]

Runes and infusions are very different thematically and practically, however. I think there is room for both a Runemaster and "Infusion master" class (Herbalist? Witch Doctor?). The former would be a mage subclass, the latter a wilder.

[Sradac]

I dont see anything wrong with specializing though. It dosent totally gimp a class like only using axes does which has been changed, its just 2 different advanced trees locked out. You can still USE runes and infusions together, just cant specialize in both.

And plenty of other things have you make these kinds of choices.
The player dosent HAVE to use either tree, they can generalize all they want.

Want to be an undead? no infusions for you.
Want to do antimagic? No runes OR items powered by arcane forces.
Want to be a lich? no more infusions for you.

People dont play archmage because of the variety, they play because its easy mode. I mean in the end, theres really only 2 practical AM approaches, fire or ice.

[Talonj]

No. Locking out the tree is a bad idea. Forcing them to use two category points to unlock both trees would be penalty enough. However, back to the topic:

I like the idea of adding more crowd control to the offensive runes, and I know why they're underused, because defensive options are generally more important (Who cares how long it takes to kill someone when you can't be killed yourself?). I just think that making them more extreme in some respect would make them a viable alternative. Egoed runes are an interesting idea, but one that I think probably wouldn't work out. Some of those would be nice as runes in their own right though (Destabilization rune for the teleport at random, could also provide resistance to temporal damage)

I think that replacing attack runes with outright buff runes (+% damage, +% resistances, temporary immunity to certain status effects, etc) would be the best method though, and maybe even the easiest method to balance. I mean, the only buff inscriptions that I know of are wild infusions and movement infusions. Shielding runes and regeneration infusions could be considered buffs as well, but... eh. Maybe even some dispellable sustained runes.

[edge2054]

Ah ha...

Sustained Runes could be awesome! I'm surprised the idea hasn't come up before.

Rune of Blurred Mortality (would give players a way of getting their missing hit points back from losing the health talent)
Rune of Power (improves spellpower)
Rune of Celerity (improved move speed and free weapon swap with x)
Rune of Fortitude (improves saves and possibly armor)
Rune of Moonlight (like hymn of moonlight but only hits between 1 and 3 times per turn)
Rune of the Shalore (gives a small global speed boost that's always active)

Maybe not the best ideas but I think the overall concept has a lot of potential.

Also has me thinking about Horror Marks. A corrupted form of infusion if you will similar to how taints will be for magic. Let the player goof around with some horror talents and effects as they get added.

[Talonj]

Eh, I think that sustainable runes should be more about adding new options, rather than emulating other class' talents.

Things like:

Elemental Surge: +x% acid/fire/elec/cold damage
Movement Shield: +50% immunity to stun/freeze, knockback, pinning.

Enhanced sustained runes could pick a few themed egos and emulate them, like an artifact, except be blue/purple magical runes. Does sacrificing an inscription slot for an extra, free artifact slot sound neat? Though that might need to be a new type of inscription. Words, or something. I can't really think of other sustained runes that would be both worth the slot and not extremely imbalancing.

Would you use a rune slot for + armor and physical saves? +spellpower? Only if it was something like 50, right? Then that'd end up being a bit TOO powerful...

Initially I thought the balancing factor might be that they're dispellable and have something like a 90 turn cooldown. Would that be enough for powerful sustainable runes, that you could just lose in a fight? Do enough enemies cast corrupted negation/disperse magic for this to matter?

This idea might actually work best with the slot expansion idea, and have powerful sustained effects have a high slot cost.

[edge2054]

As I said maybe not the best indivudal ideas. On the other hand I've heard people ask for a celerity type talent on other classes before and being able to freely swap between weapons could let you carry an activatable item in your offhends and swap it out without losing a turn. That might be worth a rune slot to some people.

[Talonj]

How about going a step further? The most likely item you're going to have in your offhand slot is a staff of ruination. So how about a rune that dispels effects?

You could even have it act like an inverse wild infusion and be able to dispel a single, random-type effect from a target, including non-magical effects that are normally outright impossible to dispel.

This thread is kind of turning into a rune suggestion thread... But oh well.

Last ditch attempt to be on topic:
It seems like it is nearly impossible to create an attack rune that is both worth a slot over defensive runes and not just too powerful. So I guess they should either remain as they are or just be removed, in favor of other runes. There isn't really a compelling reason to actually get rid of them, though.

[edge2054]

A dispelling rune is viable but swapping weapons quickly has a lot more applications then that. Teleport staves, breaking 100% resists, other activates, wanting to play a bow+melee hybrid without playing a warden, etc. etc.

[Aquillion]

I dont see anything wrong with specializing though. It dosent totally gimp a class like only using axes does which has been changed, its just 2 different advanced trees locked out. You can still USE runes and infusions together, just cant specialize in both.

Sure, I've got nothing against saying to players "you can specialize." That's what Category and class / generic points are for, plus talents that enhance other talents and work together well. If you're an archmage, you can specialize in ice, or you can specialize in fire, or you can specialize in earth.

Or you can choose to combine them in odd ways. I don't see any advantage to deliberately making "combine them in odd ways" impossible unless it would mechanically break the class to mix them.

In other words: It's very easy to fall into the trap of saying "Archmages MUST choose Fire or Ice, obviously you can't choose both" or "Inscriptionists MUST choose runes or infusions, and obviously you can't choose both."

Why is it obvious? Why do you want to forbid people from making characters that combine two different strategies? Why do you want to, basically, rigidly define the class into one of two builds?

People dont play archmage because of the variety, they play because its easy mode. I mean in the end, theres really only 2 practical AM approaches, fire or ice.

Those two things contradict each other. If Archmage is 'easy mode' (and I agree, yeah, an archmage built to take full advantage of their talents is clearly easier than any other class, though I don't see that as a bug since I don't feel classes have to be balanced against each other), then logically, allowing 'impractical' Archmage is a good thing, right? Building an impractical archmage makes it less easymode.

(I'm not sure I agree that 'pure fire' or 'pure ice' are the only practical archmages, mind. The best ones, maybe, and you'll probably want to put points in one tree or the other, but you don't need to rigidly be an ice archmage or a fire archmage. Honestly, as long as your archmage does the Aegis and Conveyance trees a bit and has 5/5 in a few attack options -- either with penetration in one damage type, or across many different damage types -- they're going to be at least viable, and probably stronger than most other classes. Despite their wide range of options, it's probably pretty hard to build a totally useless archmage.)

But anyway, my point is: The game should allow players to make weird builds as much as possible, unless there's a specific reason to forbid them.


...eep, maybe that was a bit too much of a tangent and a bit too harsh for a hypothetical class that, probably, nobody will ever make. But I think it's an important thing to keep in mind. Classes should be designed to allow players to experiment with weird builds if they want to -- you should design them as "toolkits" that players can experiment with, not as a rigid list of mandatory talents that they have to go down like a checklist. That means allowing them to sometimes synergize different capabilities in odd ways.

[edge2054]

Two generic trees each costing a category point presumably as well as generic points. One for infusions and one for runes.

I see no reason the player couldn't learn both from a balance perspective but doing so would probably be stupid. You're looking at a big investment and an investment that naturally would pay off more the more of the inscription type you're using.

Thematically though I can understand them being mutually exclusive. The talent trees could even be called blah atunement and might even cripple the other one. So while from a game balance perspective I see no reason it should be disallowed from a thematic reason it could make sense and theme is very important too.

[Aquillion]

Thematically though I can understand them being mutually exclusive. The talent trees could even be called blah atunement and might even cripple the other one. So while from a game balance perspective I see no reason it should be disallowed from a thematic reason it could make sense and theme is very important too.

I just dislike the idea of sacrificing gameplay for theme. Theme can be written however you want it. Personally, I see absolutely no reason why mastering the arts of runes would prevent you from mastering the arts of inscriptions -- I don't see the thematic argument you are making at all. Nothing in the game has ever remotely hinted that runes and infusions are naturally 'opposed'. (Remember, there are also plans to add other kinds of inscriptions -- they're not in some sort of mystical duality. If / when psychic or whatever inscriptions are added, would you make them mutually exclusive with other two? Why? Nothing in the game until now has enforced this idea that various power sources are actively antithetical to each other like that.)

Various people in the setting treat nature and magic as opposing options, sure, but nothing in the game supports the idea that this is a metaphysical truth -- summoners can learn mana talents from quests, and archmages can learn nature talents from quests, and both can use both runes and infusions. Both are also affected equally by many things (like the rod of dispelling, highborn's bloom, etc), implying that they're really much more similar than Zigur's fanatics claim. The only things that affect your capability to use one or the other right now are not being alive and taking antimagic, which are logical but unrelated to this discussion.

(You could also enforce a degree of separation by making infusion talents based on willpower and rune talents based on magic, of course.)

[Elkan]

Does the class get to be called tatoo artist *grins*