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I have some Rune Weapons Questions

Tell Me What do you think are the Best Souls to make Rune weapons for Lesser,Greater and Greatest?

Any ideas for New Rune weapons,s powers?

Do you Want to see Living Rune Swords Rifter 52 become canon?

I like to leave the identity of the souls vague. It allows for better plot purposes and lets me make cool items with special souls at need.
And frankly... the idea that you need the souls of gods and the like?
There simply aren't enough gods out there.
Just in the Three Galaxies there are around a billion greatest rune weapons.
Scope and scale people. Scope and Scale.
I simply assume that the "souls required" bit in WB2 is sales patter by the Splugorth and that you can make do with lesser things like Greater Demons, Greater Elementals, demigods, Nymphs, Mindlor, Master Vampires, Night Princes, Adult Dragons and the like.



I dislike the "mass produced weapons" idea myself though I get why it exists.
I love the unique powers that the scores of Rune Weapons (so much for rare) in PF have. I try to avoid using them as new "mass powers" since that devalues the original... though sometimes a really neat power I might copy in a lesser form.
If I was going to lock in specific new powers I would say that experiments with Trees of Knowledge have allowed them to make a new category of spell magic (Biomancy) available... but sadly for the Splugorth only to good aligned weapons
This is the low hanging fruit... bundle up some of the dozens of new forms of magic that have come out and make new spell packages.

One set of powers that we had in a game was that a necromantic Rune weapon had the powers of the spells Bone Scepter and Bone Staff, plus could cast a few necromantic spells.

Another icky necromantic rune item I had in a game could use the 10th level necromancers "union with the dead" powers on the bearer (as per the 'use on others' part of the ability) allowing the host to merge with the dead

I made a weapon that could become intangible and in that state only dealt damage to 'things possessing other living things'

I made a pair of rune rings. The silver ring cast "Transformation" and "Ensorcel" on the wearer who was compeled to obey the bearer of the gold ring.

I made another series of pairs of rings, iron this time. they could only be used by married couples and one of their powers was that they allowed the user to opt to take any damage or effect that would affect the other.

Some of the various poisons in the game would be an interesting power for a greatest rune weapon to have as an option. I would limit it to just greatest ones because it is pretty potent, but 'eternally poisoned blade' is a fantasy trope and a good rune weapon.

I had a power that I gave some rune items that allowed the bearer to 'refuel' the weapons PPE to allow additional castings... via an always on Life Fuel effect.


Absolutely not.
They are a nice optional thing, and I have used one or two as strange and enigmatic NPCs (I had a Dwarven Rune smith turn himself into an Invoked that was the focus of a quest to find out how to permanently deal with Necrom and the other Demon Swords)

But they are not something I would want to see made canon. Rune magic is supposed to be rare, but it is turning into almost as common as TW.
We do not need to have PC rune weapons joining the list of "things that should be rare but every group has two"
They also can disrupt the flavor of games really easily, and frankly... they are rather jarring. They are interesting as a thought exercise but as a change to the canon? They don't fit at all.
If a Rune Weapon wants a body it should take it like Necrom or the Rune Throne.
Not to mention the powers provided are, frankly, amazing and every single one of them is a Legendary Tier rune weapon.

God Souls aren't the only source: "Thus, supernatural beings of all kinds are the typical being used to breathe life into rune weapons. Dragons, and mortal practitioners of magic who have attained great master over magic [...] are also suitable for lesser rune weapons. Greater supernatural beings, including gods, godlings, ancient dragons, spirits of light, greater elementals, greater demons and demon lords are needed to create the most powerful rune weapon."-WB2 pg127

So to explain the high volume, sources for power sources could come from:
-use of Greater Elementals
-Greater demons.
-Demon Lords.
-Sploroth (as main distributors) could train up Mages to 10th Level and use them
-WB8 (pg44) establishes that ordinary humans can be used to create Rune Weapons (specifically Lesser Rune Swords for the Samurai Katana and wakizashi, might also be the source in greater/greatest examples on pg39-40), and this IS how they are classified
-Nuhr Dwarves also point toward the possibility of creating minor Rune items w/o an intelligence or magic powers (DB30 pg150), placed more on par with TW/Mystic Kuznya level though.

EDIT: then again this might also explain why there aren't as many specific unique gods in the 3Gs, they've been imprisoned. I mean if you consider there are over 200 BILLION stars in the Milky Way (and assume 1 habitable planet per), and if we use Earth as an example (how many gods have their been in history) and assume worlds don't always share gods. That means the Milky Way would contain over 200billion gods without even trying, considering the 3 Galaxies are 3 separate galaxies (and assume each is comparable to the Milky Way on average) and it doesn't appear to hard to get the required number of gods to power the rune weapons.

Reminds me of a random plot hook I thought of a while back...

The leader of the local magic guild would always carry a large staff as his symbol of authority, and it would pass down to the next leader when the time came. The guild's council would all place a hand on it to collectively meditate on important decisions. Etc, etc, you get the idea. In truth, the staff would be a rune weapon and it's intelligence would be the actual guild leader. The mages would just be puppets. The staff would only reveal itself to the council, and would otherwise hide in plain sight, content to influence events from its position.

Depending on the campaign's need, the staff might be good or evil. The players might have to uncover the staff's role, or retrieve it after being stolen, stop (or help) one of its plots... etc.

- Elementals
- Demons
- Deevils
- Spirits of Licht
- Godlings
- Demigods
- Goss
- The Old Ones

So you can pick one for each kind of Rune weapon.