Hartstone currently has two Runists, myself and Nessa. Nessa is not active enough to be one of our main fighters and well I'm still learning.

Personally, my experience with Runes is that it has the potential to be good.. it's just not there yet. Some Runes are just expensive to make, gold tint to make them. Since taking up Runes, I found regardless of throwing them you cannot throw them outside the room until you get Staffsling which is Virt. and Fuse is right before it. Even with Staffsling, they only go adjacent room/elevation.

I've seen Runes used very well by Pentu, so it does show it has the potential and supposedly I think it was Geb? Was good with them when he used them (I'm tired, so I may be mixing up names).

Xavius used them quite well in a Blacktalon meld. It can get very nasty with sap.

What, how far do you want to throw them, areawide?

Not at all, that'd make Runes just plain silly. Line of sight, if others agree, as cudgel does (someone clarify for staff).

I don't know about cudgel, but staff is only adjacent rooms. I've never tried it for adjacent elevations, but I'm pretty sure you can't use staff to hit people in the trees from the ground or anything like that.

Staff is line of sight too.

So.. Derian says no, and Acrune says yes. Someone else speak up.

Cudgel is line of sight and hits people in trees too, if you point it up. I would guess staff's the same.

Also, runes may only hit in adjacent rooms, but they don't require you to specify the direction, which is a much greater advantage. I'm not sure there's a big point in paralysing people from 10 rooms away in line of sight, but there is indeed a point in being able to hit someone with runes immediately after they've moved while cloaked, and from this be able to tell which direction they've gone, too. (To do this with a fetish or cudgel, you need to spam directional aliases...)

And, while I'm at it, Runes are awesome for Druids. (Sure you only use ger, gyfu, cen and rad - but that's 'cause they're very nice. Ansuz is annoying in a BT demesne, too. The faeriefire one's very nice also, let's not forget recklessness...) Would be lovely if they had some flavour and utility, though, as they're currently dull, dull, dull and combat-only.

Runes are, without qualification, the best offensive fit for a druid, mainly because we were given thornlash as our alternate kill method, people griped, and writhing got changed, so we're right back to only being able to kill with sap (which was also nerfed, but rightly so). There are a lot more than four useful runes, but yeah, that's the crux of it all. Ecology is a righteous joke offensively and dreamweaving's saplock is too random for my tastes (and I have no idea how a Hartstone dreamweaver would do it without blacklung.)

Runes are, without qualification, the worse offensive fit for a mage, mainly because you kill primarily through damage or instakill and runes won't do a thing to help slow curing or movement.

Not if you know how to set up a sleeplock demesne with ecology or frozen sleeplock (without demesne, which is better since its more flexible). Munsia does it very well and I think she'll hunt me if I tell people how to.
But its true that impatience/cen fused active demesne is an easier alternative and it usually gets the job done.


True. They can heal the afflictions with herb balance/focus skills' balance.

So, we agree that runes are great for druids, and terrible for magi. Estarra has told me that she's not open to the idea of splitting runes up by class (druid runes, magi runes). So far though, the only progress I've seen on this board is that we all agree heh. One idea in the envoy wiki pages, compliments of Shorlen, is that runists can cast three random runes from the runebag, if I understand it correctly, and if they match the right pattern, a special effect follows. This is what Shorlen wrote:

1. New very low level skill: Casting - Throws three runes from your runebag onto the ground. If the three runes match the ones needed for a CastingEffect, such as Vision, the runes are expended and the effect triggers. If the runes don't match an effect, or if the effect fails, the runes are left on the ground. You must be sitting (sprawled) to throw a Casting. For RP purposes, any three runes can be cast, and you can include RANDOM to cast a random rune from your bag. Syntax: RUNECAST

2. New skill (learned sometime after Wynn): Vision (CastingEffect) - Casting a Rad, Beorc, and Wynn rune at someone will allow the caster to see their target's location as if they were there (sends the QL of the room).

3. New skill (learned sometime after Ger): SpiritGrasp (CastingEffect) - Casting a Haegl, Isa, and Ger rune will aeon the movements of all phased people (dreamweavers and ghosts) in the room for ten seconds and show which way they move if they leave the room before it ends.

4. New skill (learned sometime after Eohl): StillWind (CastingEffect) - Casting a Gyfu, Isa, and Eohl rune will cause the wind die down in the room, resulting in it not drowning people's voices, not knocking people from the trees, and not moving people who are flying above the room. The effect lasts 5 minutes.

5. New skill (learned sometime after Daeg): ShadowBanish (CastingEffect) - Casting a Eohl, Ing, and Daeg rune will prevent shrounding from working in the room for 2 minutes (same duration as faeriefire).

I don't really understand the point of those skills. How would they make runes a better skillset for mages?

They're a base for what could make them more interesting, and potentially better overall, without overpowering druids. Just throwing it out there, as that's the only suggestion I've seen thus far, besides adding runes to staffs.

Basically they were an alternative way of looking at runes and how they might work. Could help to prompt other alternative views and what not.

It's a way of prompting others to give suggestions that may, or may not, run along the same idea and just add some overall flavour to the skillset rather than it just being afflictions with meanings few fully understand.

I have to oppose this one. They've finally worked out all of the bugs with aqua demenses that were totally raping dreamweavers and shouldn't have been hitting them at all to begin with. We really do not need, and should not have, more abilities like this applied.

What we need is something that is useful to mages, but is useless or has limited use for druids.

If the casting thing is used, how about a casting called Pain that causes +25% damage to everyone in the room, including the caster, for 5 minutes?

Eh?

What a wholly ridiculous argument.

Wesmin, could you clarify that please? All it does is give the chance to see whether a Dreamweaver enters or exits. It's not hitting them.. Demesnes don't hit Dreamweavers in Dreamform.

Ok

2. I don't think it should be given unless it costs power too (I am saying it cuz I bought an artie just for that sole purpose.)

3. The skill itself would be useless now, not many dreamweavers/mages and the only other people would be ghosts and necromancy become a crap skillset with like maybe 3 skills outta 15-20 if that now that they have beaten ghost skill with the biggest nerf bat in town. Basically no reason to slow a ghost in an aqua demense, since they aren't going anywhere, and with so few mage dreamweavers, I think the skill may not be really good for mages. Maybe druids though.