Since noone seemed to get back to the Runelord, I'll give my rant.
RunelordThe Runelord is a classic example of the failures of doing exception based design rather than outcome based design. As such, it is difficult to evaluate but not actually all that good. The Runelord has a
lot of abilities and thus has a great many "exceptions" to the normal rules built in. This makes discussing things involving a Runelord very difficult.
On the flip side, the Runelord's abilties are generally
defensive in nature, which means that most of the time they don't matter. They are supposed to fight what is in fact the most powerful and versatile offense in the game (primary spellcasters) through a baroque series of limited exceptions. This leads them into an arm's race where eventually the wizard drops them in a
freezing for followed by an
Evard's black tentacles and then they lose at life. For simplicity, we're going to go level by level on encounter outcomes so we don't get dazzled by the bewildering array of abilities.
Forest, not trees.
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Level 1: Level 1 is a good time to be a Runelord. You get decent hit points, a Base Attack Bonus of +1, and Simple Weapons. You have a morningstar and a light crossbow. This means that you have as good an attack as anyone else and you can drop foes rather easily. Four times per day you can spend a swift action you can cast sanctuary on an ally and get the Dodge feat for free (except it doesn't count for prereqs and has limited uses per day). Even with the AC bonus from your free Dodge, you have a shitty AC as your AC is 10 + Dex + Cha (+1 sometimes). This compares crapily to even the Rogue who gets Studded Leather instead of Charisma and will upgrade to a Chain Shirt before he gets to level 2. Compared to anyone with a shield, he's a joke. You get a save bonus (of +1), but it stacks on top of having the worst saves in the game (one good, two bad), so it actually works out the same on average as if you'd been a Cleric, Druid, or Ranger and just had two good saves to begin with.
Verdict: You can fight goblins almost as well as a Ranger! A worse AC is partially made up for with 2 extra hit points. The fact that you're using a crossbow and a morningstar is not a massive downgrade over a longbow and a warhammer. By the time you get nearly to 2nd level the fact that people will start showing up with high grade chain shirts and mighty bows will make your position worse.
Second Level: On first reading it appears that your position is in all ways worse than it was at 1st level. People start showing up with their first pieces of magic armor and you don't, your weapons are starting to show their inferiority, and you didn't get anything special to do with your primary Charisma. But wait! You get Steal Spell. This is an inordinately complex ability and needs its own writeup:
- Steal Spell
This is way too complicated. There, I've said it. There's no indication as to how one is supposed to determine which "spell slot" you steal off a spell-like ability that is usable twice a day vs. usable at-will. Randomly determining a spell slot on even a 1st level Wizard is intractable as they have all those cantrips in addition to things you care about. No indication exists as to whether you randomly generate based on spell's known or spell slots for spontaneous casters. Also it doesn't say what happens if you use this ability on a creature with some spells in your level range and some spells out. Do you randomly generate chances to attempt to steal spells that you can't steal giving the ability a failure chance? In short, this ability is extremely complex and it doesn't say how it works.
But we get the general idea. You can use it on the party Cleric as an imbue with spell ability to heal other party members (including the cleric if he gets knocked out). At high levels you'll even be able to circumvent the daily casting limits by stealing spells from the Wizard before he goes to bed last night and then casting them in the morning while the Wizard is preparing his new day's spells. What you can't do is meaningfully affect combat with it. If you hit an opponent on the first round of combat (or to be fair: while they are balancing and lack 5 ranks in balance), they may lose a single spell slot.
Unfortunately, noone gives a damn if they lose a single spell slot at the beginning of combat. Especially not NPC spellcasters, who usually come loaded with substantially more spell slots than they will ever use in this fight against the PCs. It only really affects next combat and even then the effect is pretty minimal except at very low level. As NPCs don't have a "next combat" today, the ability's effect on any combat is pathetic.
And while you can nominally use the spell you acquired later in this battle or even the next one - you just got a random spell slot off an NPC. Considering all the cantrips and crap on those lists, it will probably do you little good. Worse, it technically doesn't even say that you get to use Charisma to determine the maximum spell level you can cast, so you almost certainly won't be able to cast any medium or high level spells you ever get with it.
Verdict: You're essentially in the same boat, only now it's worse because all your fighter friends are using better stuff so the equipment difference is more noteworthy. Also, your spell stealing is crap and doesn't really work. You don't even have any built-in ability to strike opponents flat footed and you're still low enough level that a blow with a real weapon (you know, the kind you aren't using) would probably drop a spellcaster anyway.
Third Level: I can only think that Glyphward Aura does not do what you think it does. What it does is give the party Wizard a +1 Save and AC bonus if he stands within 10 feet of you. In addition to this being too small of a bonus for people to bother remembering, it's done to other people's characters. You're still stuck being the guy with a crappy set of equipment and no meaningful offensive abilities. You also just didn't get 2nd level spells or anything, so the +1 Attack bonus and 4 hit points you have over a Cleric are now officially insufficient to make you a better tank or damage dealer in melee. So um... the Cleric (not the CoDzilla, just the regular kind) just eclipsed you in
combat.
Verdict: You suck. A lot. The character is now essentially an NPC class. You may be better off with an Aristocrat, as they will gain bigger benefits from equipment.
Fourth Level: You get +1 to AC! Also you can theoretically steal 2nd level spells if that ability actually worked or mattered! But your
real ability is that you can stop incoming archery attacks (but not outgoing archery) 40-50% of the time. That's... better than
windwall or
obscuring mist. And it's very comparable to
invisibility or
reduce person. You even get to do it as a Swift Action. So when it comes to archery duels between your team and a group of enemies, you will marginally outperform a
bard. Of course, your offense is at this point frankly laughable. You're using a magical morningstar, but your complete lack of class features or armor means that you had best stay out of Melee.
Verdict: A 4th level Runelord would be a decent 4th or 5th lieutenant in a mass-battle centered game. They would vie strongly for that position with a Dragon Shaman.
Fifth Level: To celebrate the fact that your saves are really bad, you just got +1 to them against magic. You don't
care, because at this point your save bonuses start not-stacking with buff effects that Clerics and Bards will be casting on a regular basis. More importantly, you just got a reactive healing ability which in some cases can react to non-damaging actions which can be repeated infinitely. Congratulations, you just got unlimited healing as soon as you get the aid of the right kind of sprite. Not that you have any intrinsic ability to
find such an ally, but who are we fooling? But this healing is too small to matter in combat, so really yo're just a naked man in a 5th level world.
Verdict: You per-encounter contribution is virtually unchanged from 4th level, but now you're fighting trolls instead of minotaurs. So your
relative position got worse.
Sixth Level You got +1 to every save because you just took your sixth level in a class and got the same +1 to every save that every class gets. Also you got an iterative attack so the fact that you are using a crossbow has just finally come home to kick you in the nuts. Also, if you were using that Sanctuary/Dodge maneuver, you get a
second +1 to AC. Um... yeah. Also your Steal Spell continues to stay not-quite level appropriate which would probably be important if that ability made any difference at all.
Verdict: You may actually be outfought by an NPC Warrior of your level at this point. He has like
armor and crap. Also his mastery of
martial weapons gives him a longbow which can fire twice as opposed to your crossbow which can't. The limited duration archery miss chance you can lay down on that warrior may not be enough to pull you through.
Level Seven: Finally a decent classs feature! If someone targets you specifically with a single target spell of 3rd level or less and you make your save, you can cast it back on people. Also, you can now play complex word games where you can steal all of the party wizard's spells from him during downtime until you get the one you want (of 3rd level or less) and then keep it in inanely title "cold storage" until you want to cast it yourself. Essentially this means that you get one 3rd level spell of your choice once per adventure in addition to on very rare occassions being gifted with a single target spell.
Verdict: You now contribute to the party almost as much as a Wizard Cohort, who I remind you would also be able to cast a 3rd level spell of his choice every adventure (eery day even) as he'd be 5th level.
And that's the best you
ever get. At higher levels, your offensive total becomes more and more laughable. Heck, even at this level the Cleric can totally outfight you if he
wants because there's
divine power. The next level's Spellbinder really isn't that exciting save that it
may cause people to throw Save-or-Dies at you and you
may make your save (although I wouldn't hold my breath because your saves actually suck), and if that happens you can cast them right back! Pathetic.
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Exception based design is lame. You can't fight wizards by accumulating +1s and +2s, because Wizards don't even fight that way. You're 8th level, you roll initiave, and if you lose they throw some terrain on you like an
Evard's Black Tentacles and then they just
ignore you. If you win then you... what? Shoot them with a light crossbow and make them lose a random spell? Throw up a spell binding and try to make the Wizard cast spells on you? Seriously, who cares? The wizard is just going to take a move back and dump the tentacles on you. Your only hope is that the crossbow bolt managed to take that option away from him, in which case he'll panic and leave.
If you want to fight Wizards you have to hit them where it actually hurts: their bad perception skills, their low hit points, and their half-assed tenuous existence when they don't win initiative.
Seriously, you could be a better mage-slayer by writing "Rogue" on your character sheet.
-Username17
