I love the rune knight, but the direct connection to giants might not fit every campaign.
I also really love the idea of a struggling underdog who achieves unique power.
So here is a rune knight reskin concept I'll offer: make them a failed wizard who flunked out of training/never got accepted into training, but created their runic magic through years of study and experimentation.
I like this idea because some Rune Knight abilities really reflect basic spells, but changed to work better for fighters. And none of the spell abilities reach far beyond something like 2nd or 3rd level spells, so it fits for a kind of gish spellcaster.
So maybe your rune knight flunked out of an academy but stayed to study while working as a guard.
Or took up an interest in magic during a few years career as a mercenary, spending all their gold on more books, scrolls, and lessons.
Or your rune knight is a far traveler or folk hero, finding magic practitioners to converse with and tagging along with spellcasters on missions to observe how they weave their spells.
Or maybe they are an inheritor or cloistered scholar who was recognized by a master as having savant like potential in some specific areas of magic, and was guided towards runes as a way to channel their power.
Or they could be a haunted one who stumbled some terrible demonic script and adopts its power (or on the flipside a sage driven half mad by a celestial revelation that allows them to replicate some hint of divine power).
Or maybe they are an inheritor or cloistered scholar who was recognized by a master as having savant like potential in some specific areas of magic, and was guided towards runes as a way to channel their power.
As a way to mess around with some body horror elements, I'm playing a Rune Knight right now whose power comes from the very non-human side of his parentage (which he doesn't even know about) -- the runes, taught to him by his "nanny" (a hag that was in debt to his father) as a kid, aren't the source of his powers at all but are actually dampening his powers as they emerge and allowing him to control them better rather than being overwhelmed by them
Around level 5-6 I'm going to MC into Aberrant Mind sorcerer, which is when things will start to get really fun and his Giant's Might transformations will start to become something other than just him getting bigger...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Or maybe they are an inheritor or cloistered scholar who was recognized by a master as having savant like potential in some specific areas of magic, and was guided towards runes as a way to channel their power.
As a way to mess around with some body horror elements, I'm playing a Rune Knight right now whose power comes from the very non-human side of his parentage (which he doesn't even know about) -- the runes, taught to him by his "nanny" (a hag that was in debt to his father) as a kid, aren't the source of his powers at all but are actually dampening his powers as they emerge and allowing him to control them better rather than being overwhelmed by them
Around level 5-6 I'm going to MC into Aberrant Mind sorcerer, which is when things will start to get really fun and his Giant's Might transformations will start to become something other than just him getting bigger...
Nice!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I love the rune knight, but the direct connection to giants might not fit every campaign.
I also really love the idea of a struggling underdog who achieves unique power.
So here is a rune knight reskin concept I'll offer: make them a failed wizard who flunked out of training/never got accepted into training, but created their runic magic through years of study and experimentation.
I like this idea because some Rune Knight abilities really reflect basic spells, but changed to work better for fighters. And none of the spell abilities reach far beyond something like 2nd or 3rd level spells, so it fits for a kind of gish spellcaster.
So maybe your rune knight flunked out of an academy but stayed to study while working as a guard.
Or took up an interest in magic during a few years career as a mercenary, spending all their gold on more books, scrolls, and lessons.
Or your rune knight is a far traveler or folk hero, finding magic practitioners to converse with and tagging along with spellcasters on missions to observe how they weave their spells.
Or maybe they are an inheritor or cloistered scholar who was recognized by a master as having savant like potential in some specific areas of magic, and was guided towards runes as a way to channel their power.
Or they could be a haunted one who stumbled some terrible demonic script and adopts its power (or on the flipside a sage driven half mad by a celestial revelation that allows them to replicate some hint of divine power).
Its a really flexible subclass to reskin.
As a way to mess around with some body horror elements, I'm playing a Rune Knight right now whose power comes from the very non-human side of his parentage (which he doesn't even know about) -- the runes, taught to him by his "nanny" (a hag that was in debt to his father) as a kid, aren't the source of his powers at all but are actually dampening his powers as they emerge and allowing him to control them better rather than being overwhelmed by them
Around level 5-6 I'm going to MC into Aberrant Mind sorcerer, which is when things will start to get really fun and his Giant's Might transformations will start to become something other than just him getting bigger...
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Nice!