All the sub-classes released from Tasha's are great. Each has a great theme, and I could totally see how each of them could be used cleverly during sessions, role-play and encounter-wise. But one of them caught my eye, and I couldn't take my pupils off it. The Rune Knight Fighter (originally Giant Soul Sorcerer) seemed like a good concept during it's Unearthed Arcana, but it came out of nowhere. Invoking runes as "spell-like abilities" rather than spells worked well with previous martial sub-classes, and growing large to fight bigger monsters was cool, but I couldn't exactly tell what inspired it. That is, until I realized something. During the D&D Beyond review video, they said it was "Artificer Lite", and that the CON Rune modifier was nice, since it wasn't a mental stat.
To summarize, your character holds out an object with a symbol of their choice, transforms for a limited time to get powers, a massive suit of armor, complete with a damage buff from a giant head, to take up a job of beating up whatever threatens the campaign setting with your friends?
Grab Unarmed Fighting and go be a Power Ranger, idiot.
Wizard: "Let me see if I understand this correctly. You are going to use your rune to transform and then you want me to cast Fireball behind you after you finish? For dramatic effect?"
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Four-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Fun fact, runes in 5e originally appeared in a UA for prestige classes and rune magic, centered around the Rune Scribe prestige class, the article for which can be found here:
All the sub-classes released from Tasha's are great. Each has a great theme, and I could totally see how each of them could be used cleverly during sessions, role-play and encounter-wise. But one of them caught my eye, and I couldn't take my pupils off it. The Rune Knight Fighter (originally Giant Soul Sorcerer) seemed like a good concept during it's Unearthed Arcana, but it came out of nowhere. Invoking runes as "spell-like abilities" rather than spells worked well with previous martial sub-classes, and growing large to fight bigger monsters was cool, but I couldn't exactly tell what inspired it. That is, until I realized something. During the D&D Beyond review video, they said it was "Artificer Lite", and that the CON Rune modifier was nice, since it wasn't a mental stat.
To summarize, your character holds out an object with a symbol of their choice, transforms for a limited time to get powers, a massive suit of armor, complete with a damage buff from a giant head, to take up a job of beating up whatever threatens the campaign setting with your friends?
Grab Unarmed Fighting and go be a Power Ranger, idiot.
I actually did, lol, it's surprisingly fun
The NPC enemies in combat: Alright, let's make this quick- what in Avernus is that?!
Rune Knight PC: barreling into the fray like a brightly colored torpedo who WILL throw hands
Wizard: "Let me see if I understand this correctly. You are going to use your rune to transform and then you want me to cast Fireball behind you after you finish? For dramatic effect?"
Four-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Fun fact, runes in 5e originally appeared in a UA for prestige classes and rune magic, centered around the Rune Scribe prestige class, the article for which can be found here:
https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/prestige-classes-and-rune-magic
Fighter: ...Yep. But I'll Runic Shield you so you won't be hurt.