ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

After viewing bpat's thread about inscriptions, I figured why not start another thread about helping Runes or improving them. Runes in game are overly sort of weak compared to inscriptions - in many cases falling short compared to their Infusion counterparts. They generally don't help out as well in some critical departments like status ailments or general damage mitigation, and in more offensive matters they are laughably inefficient.

Outside of improving existing Runes, one way of helping them is to simply think up some more Rune types to add into the mix. Here's some ideas I thought up then:

Corrupted Surge - 15-25 Cooldown - Instant - A Blight Themed Rune, but unlike the other elemental runes it focuses it's offensive powers through the player. Activate Corrupt Strength to instantly remove a Magical Effect afflicting the character and increase Mindpower, Spellpower, or Attack power by X%.

Temporary Reprieve - 15-25 Cooldown - Instant - A Temporal Themed Rune, which focuses on just being defensive. For the next 'N' turns (minimum or 2, maximum of 5 maybe) you take no damage so long as you don't take a hostile action; during the effect your talents in cooldown do not lower. It can sort of double as a limited Movement Infusion (though enemies are still acting every turn), or perhaps as a way of tanking damage that you would rather avoid. Status Ailments would still be a problem - both being something that can still be afflicted on you, slow you down, pin you, etc.

Earth Spike - 15-25 Cooldown - Instant - An Earthen Themed Rune, purely offensive and designed to help players who want to finish off fleeing or mobile foes - or vice versa. You jab a foe from below with a spike of Earth that does X% and inflict a 'N' Turn Pinned Status.

Dark Shroud - 15-25 Cooldown - Instant - A Darkness Themed Rune, technically defensive but also good offensively. Activate this rune to shroud the the tiles adjacent with you with Darkness for 'N' turns and give you Infravision equal to your Vision Radius, inflicting the Blind Status on enemies X% of the time (no check against Physical, Mental, or Spell Save; just Blindness Immunity). All tiles hit by the Shroud are considered Unlit and moves around you as your character moves. Sun: Infusion, Illuminate, and Sun Flare will nullify the effect and Blind actors with the Rune in effect; Dark Shroud will also nullify those talents and Blind actors who have used those abilities (again, no check against Saves; just Blindness Immunity).

Providence - 15-25 Cooldown - Instant - A Light Themed Rune, shouldn't come as a surprise what it is based off of. Activate this rune to cure yourself of one random detrimental effect afflicting your character and heal your character X% for 'N' turns.

I think the concept for the Talent Providence fits really well with the Elemental Runes while providing players with an interesting way of assorting their Inscriptions. A player might opt for this rune over one that removes a specific detrimental effect in the Early Game where multiple detrimental effects don't necessarily pile on to the character.

I'm not sure if Providence would have to be updated or not with such an inclusion of a Rune after it either, since it would still be a very powerful Talent. Some ideas though if Providence was to be updated and improved:

At Talent Level 3, the Talent becomes instant use
At Talent Level 5, the Talent removes all detrimental effects

I hope to see this addon become vanilla, in one form or another. Just throwing it out there. They represent an interesting mechanic.

Are we only discussing runes here?

Anyway, I mostly bring up the above because of Corrupted Surge.
Temporary Reprieve sounds like it could either be way too overpowered, or the opposite.
Why would Earth Spike be instant?
There was something in the Taints-pack for Cloaking too.
When you say "Random Detrimental Effect", do you mean any Magic, Physical or Mental effect?

The Revanchist wrote:I hope to see this addon become vanilla, in one form or another. Just throwing it out there. They represent an interesting mechanic.

Are we only discussing runes here?

Anyway, I mostly bring up the above because of Corrupted Surge.
Temporary Reprieve sounds like it could either be way too overpowered, or the opposite.
Why would Earth Spike be instant?
There was something in the Taints-pack for Cloaking too.
When you say "Random Detrimental Effect", do you mean any Magic, Physical or Mental effect?

Personally I think this discussion should center on Runes, but overall the blanket discussion is about balancing inscriptions due to Infusions on a whole being much more useful then Runes. Adding in a whole set of Taints along with Runes and Infusions also adds in a whole new core element to the Inscription scene, and I'm not against leaving space for them. Having Taints that could be said to take on the Darkness or Blight aspects would eliminate for themed Runes for those elements if we sort of follow the train of though I'm going with here.

Anyhow then, for the few Runes that wouldn't be affected here:

Temporary Reprieve would be very situational in its usefulness. Generally in comparison to a Movement Infusion which boasts insane mobility, the Temporary Reprieve would boast tactical significance. Some testing would have to go through though to see how powerful it generally would be.

I made Earth Spike instant duration because many of the other elemental runes are instant duration. Technically though it doesn't have to be. I suppose a main concern here would be Blood Snare from that proposed list of taints being really similar to this.

In regards to Providence, A Random Detrimental Effect would simply be the removal of a Single Negative Effect - much like how the current Providence Talent works. If you know how Providence works in game then you'll know how this Rune based off that talent is going to work.

Edit: I edited up this post a bit.

Due to Earth Spike being really similar to Blood Snare, a Blight Themed or Darkness Themed Rune perhaps not being needed or desired due to room for Taints, and Temporal Reprieve being a bit of an unknown - time to think up a couple new ideas for consideration. I'll ignore the Providence Rune idea since unlike the others I think it's a really good idea for a Light Themed Rune. I also just noticed that there was a Temporal Spell really close to the name I picked for the Temporal Rune.

Sand Pit Trap (Someone might want to think up a better name - It's a reference to Antilions or what killed Boba Fett) - 15-25 Cooldown - Instant - Not as offensive as Earthspike, but still an offensive action. When activated, the user will create a Sand Pit Trap with them in the middle. Anything within 'N' Range will fall down towards the player taking X% Damage and ending up in Melee Range of the player. Essentially, this is Battle Call in a Rune form with (or perhaps without) a little damage thrown in. Maybe it could also Daze or Stun stuff as well.

Temporal Surge - 15-25 Cooldown - Instant - To replace the Blight Themed Rune that would remove the Magical effect, I'd make the Temporal Themed Rune perhaps do it. However, the main fruit of this Rune is that when activated it converts X% damage you would inflict to Temporal Damage for 'N' turns.

For Sand Pit (maybe call it Quicksand Rune), rather than damage have it inflict a unique 'off-balance' effect. For X turns, foes are more likely to be critically hit, have a chance for skill failure like Slippery Moss, deal reduced damage, something like that. So it drags foes towards you and then disables them to make them easier to kill.
Not sure about Temporal Surge. How about 'Quickening Rune'? For X turns, negative effects fade X faster and abilities cooldown X faster. So for every 1 turn that passes, 2-3 turns pass for the purpose of cooldowns and debuffs. Maybe have it multiply resource regeneration and base health regen too by the same amount. Gives it an interesting niche for classes that have numerous short cooldown skills, and a debuff remover that's less effective against single effects but good against multiple ones.

I'm not sure if Quicksand really works well with the Runes Described Action. Quicksand implies getting bogged down in sinking sand and this is moreso about falling towards the caster. Anyhow, I think the idea of a Pull + Debuff is the route that the Earth Themed Rune should pursue. I'm not sure if the Slippery Moss effect specifically should be part of that debuff though since I was aiming to make it moreso 'hold' enemies so that they can't escape rather then disable them so that they are easier to kill. You might have accidentally stumbled upon the perfect debuff though in your last sentence:

Ground Shift (Sounds better then Sand Pit Trap) - 15-25 Cooldown - Instant - The Ground Shifts beneath the feet of all enemies within 'N' range and sends them tumbling towards the Rune User and inflicts the Disable effect on them, reducing their Movement Speed and Physical Power by X%.

I figure since Disable isn't used then this would be a good effect to throw in for being Unique, while also reducing Movement Speed and making them less likely to hurt you with Physical attacks.

In regards to the Quickening Rune idea, I think reducing all Cooldown and Debuff durations would make it absurdly powerful. It would also make the 'Eye of the Tiger' Prodigy or 'Relentless Pursuit' a lot less useful.