Mecheon
Sacabambaspis
The runes were divine in origin in game lore, so it went into the Divine space
Previous editions runes were more an arcane thing
D&D General what on gygax's grey oerth is rune priest?
Previous editions runes were more an arcane thing
jmartkdr2
Hero
Sans context, I'd assume the person is either referring to the 4e class, a third-party homebrew class, or a reskinning of a 5e option (could be a cleric or wizard, or just a rune knight with the acolyte background.)
It's basically a valid dnd character concept with no direct way of playing using 1st-party 5e materials.
It's basically a valid dnd character concept with no direct way of playing using 1st-party 5e materials.
Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
IIRC, the "Runes" in runepriest were remnants of the creation of the multiverse, which is why they were divine.
Saying they are cleric like is misleading. Clerics and Runepriests were both Leader types, which focused on healing and buffing. So they served similar roles. But how they did it differed pretty strongly.
First, many of their powers required melee attacks to trigger, and melee was STR based to hit and damage. They manifested rune states, which affected enemies or allies adjacent to them, and many powers had different rider based on the rune state they were in.
Here's a 12th level Runepriest I played from 1st. It was a homebrew world, and I don't remember the details of the triple headed flail, other than it just being a reskin of a bastard sword for RP reasons.
Unlike a cleric, Smoke (the attached runepriest) might be the first to the front lines, trusting in his Resistance, shifter-based Regeneration, and tHP to keep him going as he threw out strong but short range buffs and debuffs, a number of them area of effect. (In paragon tier, he and all adjacent allies had Resist 4 if he had up the Rune of Protection, he gained WIS+5 tHP once per round when hit, and once bloodied as a minor action he could trigger Longtooth Shifting for +2 to all damage, and Regeneration 4 while bloodied.)
As a side note, reading this old character sheet and seeing things like "Sustain Minor" on some powers reminds me of parts of this that really did work well. I know at least once I downgraded all of my actions to minors to do something like sustain, heal, and do something else.
Saying they are cleric like is misleading. Clerics and Runepriests were both Leader types, which focused on healing and buffing. So they served similar roles. But how they did it differed pretty strongly.
First, many of their powers required melee attacks to trigger, and melee was STR based to hit and damage. They manifested rune states, which affected enemies or allies adjacent to them, and many powers had different rider based on the rune state they were in.
Here's a 12th level Runepriest I played from 1st. It was a homebrew world, and I don't remember the details of the triple headed flail, other than it just being a reskin of a bastard sword for RP reasons.
Unlike a cleric, Smoke (the attached runepriest) might be the first to the front lines, trusting in his Resistance, shifter-based Regeneration, and tHP to keep him going as he threw out strong but short range buffs and debuffs, a number of them area of effect. (In paragon tier, he and all adjacent allies had Resist 4 if he had up the Rune of Protection, he gained WIS+5 tHP once per round when hit, and once bloodied as a minor action he could trigger Longtooth Shifting for +2 to all damage, and Regeneration 4 while bloodied.)
As a side note, reading this old character sheet and seeing things like "Sustain Minor" on some powers reminds me of parts of this that really did work well. I know at least once I downgraded all of my actions to minors to do something like sustain, heal, and do something else.
Rune Priest is a 4E class based on the idea that the Gods created divine runes to bring order to the chaotic elemental energy that the Primordials put into the world.
In the Dawn War, most of this runes were lost.
A runepriest knows the weakest runes and can hammer or scribe them to use their divine power.
The main runes a mortal could cast were
Basically imagine if a priest instead of getting spells from a god, they drew divine letters on stuff.
In the Dawn War, most of this runes were lost.
A runepriest knows the weakest runes and can hammer or scribe them to use their divine power.
The main runes a mortal could cast were
- Destruction
- Eloquence
- Hope
- Mending
- Protections
- Vengeance
- Zeal
Basically imagine if a priest instead of getting spells from a god, they drew divine letters on stuff.
cbwjm
Seb-wejem
BECMI's northern reaches had runes, these were used by clerics of the Norse gods.
I know runes showed up in the 2e FR giantcraft book and I believe the North also had runes but I don't know in what context.
3e Forgotten realms had the inscribe rune feat which was, again, limited to divine magic. I feel like they had a prestige class but I'm not 100% on that.
4e had the rune priest as noted.
5e had the rune crafter prestige class that they tried out all those years ago, think that was any spellcasting class though. There's also the Rune Knight which draws upon the giant connection.
looking back at what I can remember, I'm honestly not certain that runes have had anything to do with arcane magic, it all seems to be divine magic or giants.
I know runes showed up in the 2e FR giantcraft book and I believe the North also had runes but I don't know in what context.
3e Forgotten realms had the inscribe rune feat which was, again, limited to divine magic. I feel like they had a prestige class but I'm not 100% on that.
4e had the rune priest as noted.
5e had the rune crafter prestige class that they tried out all those years ago, think that was any spellcasting class though. There's also the Rune Knight which draws upon the giant connection.
looking back at what I can remember, I'm honestly not certain that runes have had anything to do with arcane magic, it all seems to be divine magic or giants.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
Originally, it was going to be the healer for the "Ki" power source, until WotC realized that that's kind of a racist power source and probably shouldn't be presented as a fundamental thing the way Primal, Arcane, Divine, and Martial were.
As a result, the former "Ki" power source classes got divvied up amongst the other power sources. Monk went to Psionic, the rather half-baked (not terrible in concept, but poorly-executed) "Seeker" went to Primal, and "Runepriest" went to Divine. Not sure if there was ever a "Ki" defender class, I've never heard anything referred to as such, but perhaps it just never came up.
Mechanically, what distinguished Runepriests was that they had (essentially) two "stances" that flavored many of their other actions: the Rune of Protection and the Rune of Destruction. Any time they used a power with the "runic" keyword, it would have some sort of extra benefit which would change depending on whether the character had Rune of Protection or Rune of Destruction active. As an example, the core healing power provided by the Runepriest class is Rune of Mending; if you used it while in the Rune of Destruction state, you'd grant a bonus until the end of your next turn to damage rolls to all nearby allies, while if you used it in the Rune of Protection state, it would grant +1 to all defense (in 5e terms, "+1 to AC and all saving throws") until the end of your next turn. Runepriest had (in 5e terms) three subclasses, which differed based on their weapon selection (focusing on hammers, swords, or attacks through what 5e would call magical foci).
Ultimately, it really should have just been a specialist variation of Cleric the same way that 4e had other specialist variants of core classes, like how Witch was just a particular variety of Wizard or Blackguard was a particular variety of Paladin.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
3e had a purely arcane Runesmith PrC, and a purely divine Runecaster PrC based on the Inscribe Rune feat. There were also some only partly-magic-focused PrCs that used runes, e.g. the warforged-only Spellcarved Soldier, which required arcane casting, not divine.
Often, arcane-related stuff would refer to "geometry," "sigils," "glyphs" (e.g. glyph of warding) etc. rather than "runes" per se, but the effect is essentially the same. E.g. the Geometer PrC mentions runes, but requires arcane casting, not divine.
So there was sort of this soft association between runes and divine magic in 3e, via Inscribe Rune and the Runecaster, but a pile of loose other things that pointed solely toward arcane magic.
Yeah. Even if it was necessary to jettison all the rest, it still baffles me that they went with the confusing and circumlocutive ways actions are separated out in 5e rather than keeping 4e's way of doing it. It was simple, straightforward, and useful. The one and only flaw was that people felt they "needed" to be using their minor action all the time, which could be addressed in multiple ways. (Personally, I liked what one of my DMs did, where they said all characters could use the minor action "Take Aim" power, which gave you a +1 untyped bonus to...damage, I think, on all of your attacks that round. Easy, simple, obviously useful, completely solves the problem for folks who just want to play a very basic character that works consistently each round, and clearly only a minor benefit for anyone wanting to heavily optimize.)
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The Seeker seemed like it was supposed to be the Archer Miko trope who uses ki arrows.
The Runepriest looked like it was supposed to be a Caligraphy ki class.
Samurais would be the ki defender.
Monk the ki striker.
But they didn't want to make "Eastern" and "Western" power sources according to a Dragon article.
