Howdy, everybody! First things first, this is my first thread at BG, and I want to take a moment to thank all of the incredible optimizers working on the game that I love so very well. You guys are amazing, each and every one of you, and I can't express how much your efforts have helped me enjoy DnD.
Anyways, I've been thinking about the Runecaster prestige class from Player's Guide to Faerun (not to be confused with the more frequently used Runesmith from Races of Stone), and it seems like a class with
extraordinary potential. And yet my Google-fu turns up
nothing on how best to take advantage of its abilities.
Class features of note are the ability to create permanent runes, objects that, when touched, cast a single spell on the object or creature that touched it. Its a bit more complicated and flexible than that, but that's the basic function. Note again, that (at least after level 8, these runes can cast the spell
ad infinitum. As an item creation type ability, it is expensive, but totally worth it as far as I can tell. An additional feature is the ability to maximize the effects of spells in the runes you make, without increasing the cost of creating the rune. You can place a rune on any object you like, but can only put a single rune on a given object if it has less than 50 feet of surface area.
Of further note is that you can only do this with divine spells. As such, archivist seems the obvious choice for entry, as it opens up a world of possibilities and (in some cases) lowers the cost of rune creation significantly.
I'll point out just a couple of exploits I've thought of.
As an archivist, make a rune of Arrowsplit (Champions of Ruin), and place the rune on the arrow rest of a bow, so that every arrow the bow fires touches the rune. Because the rune is maximized, every arrow you shoot will split into five, count them
five, arrows. This is 2.5x as effective as the Splitting bow enhancement, and (if my hasty calculation is correct) only costs you 15k in gold and ~1k in exp. All of this without driving up the total enhancement bonus of the bow.
Another great one would be Shadow Arrow (also Champions of Ruin). Put it in the same place, and suddenly every arrow you fire is a
touch attack that deals
six points of strength damage!
Assuming that these spells would stack, you could instead put the Shadow Arrow rune on the glove that draws your arrows, and suddenly you are an
incredible ranged power house. Oh, and you're still a full caster
So my question is this: how on earth has no one taken extreme advantage of this class before? It seems the type of thing that would take quite a bit of thought to take full advantage of, but that has absolutely extraordinary potential.