Runelore as a Trade Skill

Achimrst

Not sure if it's actually happening or not but I thought I would make a discussion on it. I love runes, runes are fun and I really like them as a part of Shaman. Although they are a bit of a trade skill so I wonder what other think about it being made into a Trade skill rather than a class skill?

Let's try to keep this civil!

Marax

I mean, the only thing I have against this, is that Runelore is what keeps a Shaman in raid/group combat (unless I'm doing something wrong, which I probably am).

Also...Runelore as a tradeskill would have to be cut drastically: altered where only runes on a totem fire, and totally remove the propping skill lest everyone and their mother start totem wars...no one would move, remove all the damage dealing runes that don't go on totems. Also.........Runewardens............?

Daklore

Runelore isn't a tradeskill, first problem. It's entirely, and completely, a combat skill. Hence, it will never be made a tradeskill seperate from runewardens and shamans.

Yes, totems in cities are crucial, and yes everyone demands jera, algiz, and berkana while hunting. But that does not make them tradeskills.

Achimrst

Daklore said:

Runelore isn't a tradeskill, first problem. It's entirely, and completely, a combat skill. Hence, it will never be made a tradeskill seperate from runewardens and shamans.

Yes, totems in cities are crucial, and yes everyone demands jera, algiz, and berkana while hunting. But that does not make them tradeskills.

Totems are a trade item, you implant them for defense of cities. I can easily see half of the runes in Runelore being turned into a trade skill for buffs. Also if a group actually walks into a propping shaman/runewarden without killing them with arrows and meteors first than they aren't combatting right :P

Silas

No.

Marax

I like it when you talk like that., @Silas

Daklore

Achimrst said:

Daklore said:

Runelore isn't a tradeskill, first problem. It's entirely, and completely, a combat skill. Hence, it will never be made a tradeskill seperate from runewardens and shamans.

Yes, totems in cities are crucial, and yes everyone demands jera, algiz, and berkana while hunting. But that does not make them tradeskills.

Totems are a trade item, you implant them for defense of cities. I can easily see half of the runes in Runelore being turned into a trade skill for buffs. Also if a group actually walks into a propping shaman/runewarden without killing them with arrows and meteors first than they aren't combatting right :P

With that reasoning, we might as well make all class skills tradeskills. I mean, who doesn't want falcon delivery? Or Monk convenience while bashing? Or morphs for travel? Tradeskills are defined as an entire skill based around making goods people need on a regular basis. There is a very very very small market for implanting totems. The amount that pops up is small and can easily be handled by the numerous amount of runewardens and shamans in the game.

As for changing the runes all to be beneficial, why? The skill was made to be a combat skill with almost every ability therein aimed at combat. Runeblades for Runewardens, runic armour(admit it, these are what you really want), damage runes, afflictions. Runelore is a support skill. To convert it to a tradeskill available to everyone would be to strip away the defining feature of the Runewarden and Shaman classes--as small and minute an identity it is, it -is- what makes Shamans and Runewardens who they are.

Oh sure, lame excuse you might say, you can replace it, you say. I'd not be opposed, because, frankly, runelore is lacking... but the history of the Wardens of the Cerulean Spire is born from Runelore. You can't just retcon that.

Anedhel

Better to keep it the way it is, restricted to class, and here's why- you'd either have to rework two classes to accommodate everyone having runes (which I think is a terrible idea), or you drop them entirely and lose the funner things about runelore.

Currently, yes, everyone can get runes from a runelorist, and that's great. If you remove the limited duration (pretty sure if everyone could rune, it'd be changed back so that all runes last an hour) and the unique abilities of Runewardens, and make Runelore universally available, you'd at least have to drop runebinding, runeblades, and probably even totems from the mix and make them a denizen thing, or something. Alternatively, if everyone can implant totems, you'd have to get rid of standing totems, and make it so that everyone can implant; otherwise, you'd just have a land of ridiculousness. Which means you've turned interesting classes with very specific advantages and disadvantages into a bland version which everyone can have, but not really.

Bluef

I agree and disagree with this idea. Let me clarify: Runelore has two aspects: Runes and totems. I could see totems becoming a trade skill, but perhaps not runes themselves. I know this sounds contrary so let me explain.

Supposedly runelorists have this unique bond with the earth and are capable of implanting totems imbued with these inky glyphs in addition to sketching them upon people, objects, and the ground. For shamans, this is an extension of their sympathetic magicks. I really don't know the roleplay connection for runewardens. I'm assuming it is something similar as their Help file seems to indicate some study of the representation forms of magic but I've never played one so I won't begin to guess at how that connects to the class as a whole. 

The skillset of runelore received a nice boost a few years back when the five lost runes were re-discovered (great RP event by the way) but it seemed to take a major RP turn for the worse when it became possible for anyone who was allied to "repair" a totem. This decreased the value of sympathetic magick connection for shamans anyway. Whereas it used to be in bad form to uproot or repair a totem bearing another shaman's mark, for example, it suddenly became both possible and laudable to do so.

This was a necessary change, perhaps, to help cities decrease the cost and time associated with totem repairs but overall it shoved a giant rod up the ass of the skillset's roleplay basis. It's not very often you see someone asking for a totemer anymore. When I first started playing they were in as big of a demand as tattooists (Vinci robbed us there too!). 

I guess the gist of my post is that I would love to see totems and the runes associated with them separated out and made a trade skill while something more akin to inscription with the other runes used for the classes. The latter idea could maybe include some new things like rune stones for shamans and advanced rune blade options for runewardens, as well as some other glyphs so that while the classes shared a common skillset there were noticeable RP differences in some abilities. 

This would obviously alter combat runewarden and shaman combat drastically. Totems probably wouldn't be proppable, for instance. But considering the facts that by in large nobody walks into a room when someone is propping a totem and everyone keeps mass up to ensure they're not beckoned, boomeranged and the like into one, maybe not. It would change the strategy of combat but not a totem's overall usefulness in it because they could still potentially be implanted by anyone who had the trade skill. 

Then again the number of Achaean who have the balls to implant a totem randomly and stand and defend its ground are probably too many. I don't want to exist in that world anymore than you do. But still, I would love to see some changes again that tie in to both classes in an RP way for this (currently) lackluster skillset.

Achimrst

Daklore said:

Achimrst said:

Daklore said:

Runelore isn't a tradeskill, first problem. It's entirely, and completely, a combat skill. Hence, it will never be made a tradeskill seperate from runewardens and shamans.

Yes, totems in cities are crucial, and yes everyone demands jera, algiz, and berkana while hunting. But that does not make them tradeskills.

Totems are a trade item, you implant them for defense of cities. I can easily see half of the runes in Runelore being turned into a trade skill for buffs. Also if a group actually walks into a propping shaman/runewarden without killing them with arrows and meteors first than they aren't combatting right :P

With that reasoning, we might as well make all class skills tradeskills. I mean, who doesn't want falcon delivery? Or Monk convenience while bashing? Or morphs for travel? Tradeskills are defined as an entire skill based around making goods people need on a regular basis. There is a very very very small market for implanting totems. The amount that pops up is small and can easily be handled by the numerous amount of runewardens and shamans in the game.

As for changing the runes all to be beneficial, why? The skill was made to be a combat skill with almost every ability therein aimed at combat. Runeblades for Runewardens, runic armour(admit it, these are what you really want), damage runes, afflictions. Runelore is a support skill. To convert it to a tradeskill available to everyone would be to strip away the defining feature of the Runewarden and Shaman classes--as small and minute an identity it is, it -is- what makes Shamans and Runewardens who they are.

Oh sure, lame excuse you might say, you can replace it, you say. I'd not be opposed, because, frankly, runelore is lacking... but the history of the Wardens of the Cerulean Spire is born from Runelore. You can't just retcon that.

I agree with the third part, taking runelore away completely would be a mistake in my view. I'm mostly talking about the parts that are more a tradeskill than anything else.

On that note, you cannot create a warhawk, or a morph, or a monk bashing to sell. You can, just like with Enchantment create a service to be offered to others for sale. "I will give you runes and totems, you give me gold for it" That in my view makes them a trade skill.

Runes are already half beneficial and half supposed to be useful for combat. You can't vodun summon a person into a rune and have it afflict them, the rune will only afflict if they walk into the room. At least on tests I have done I haven't seen them afflict them. So a lot of runes are extremely situational in combat and mostly just a distraction. Unless you use one of the three runes that actually damage someone, which are the the ones I love, the situational runes are all useful for Shaman, not sure about runewarden as they use runes very differently, and they can take a balance or something like that from a person.

The beneficial ones that your talking about all exist, Lagul, Lagula, Gebo, Gebu blah blah blah I'm not talking about creating anything just moving them away from being mostly unused and into something useable to sell as a trade skill. Along with totems :P

Tecton

Runelore isn't something we're going to be splitting off into a tradeskill, I'm afraid. It confers far too much combat benefit to the wielder.

Antonius

There are plenty of skills that have abilities you can use on other people to give them defences or other benefits, and they may or may not pay for them, but that doesn't inherently mean they should have those parts split out into separate tradeskills. It seems like more work than it's worth to move the sellable aspects of Runelore (body/weapon runes and totems) to another skill, then potentially have to patch the issues caused by it.

Achimrst

Antonius said:

There are plenty of skills that have abilities you can use on other people to give them defences or other benefits, and they may or may not pay for them, but that doesn't inherently mean they should have those parts split out into separate tradeskills. It seems like more work than it's worth to move the sellable aspects of Runelore (body/weapon runes and totems) to another skill, then potentially have to patch the issues caused by it.

Although I disagree with the totems part.

Marax

Honesty- there is -no- totem market. So that point is moot.

Achimrst

Marax said:

Honesty- there is -no- totem market. So that point is moot.

I am implanting totems a lot, not to mention re-runing them. Although I can see your point as to how it would be a limited market. Yet people still need them for their houses and such.

Anedhel

It's a minute need that the playerbase can handle. The amount of time a runelorist spends, proportionally, in doing runelore-related work compared to other things is miniscule, even if you get called on to do that stuff a lot.

Trevize

Tecton said:

Runelore isn't something we're going to be splitting off into a tradeskill, I'm afraid. It confers far too much combat benefit to the wielder.

Good to have an answer on this!

Xith

I forget, was venoms going to be separated?

Cause effectively the only combat abilities in Venoms are:

Secrete             The ancient ability of producing venom.

Purge               Cleansing your venom sacs of poison.

Bite                Sinking your fangs into an unfortunate victim.

Shrugging           Resist the detrimental effects of venoms.

Transcretion        The ability to instantly secrete a venom.

I could see a second serpent skillset being created and pouring a bunch of Subterfuge skills into it. I just remember hearing mention that it might be getting split.

Tecton

Still pondering that. Ideally, I'd like to redo venoms to work kind of like concoctions do, since milking is a) very tied to the serpent class, and b) very tedious.

Would allow us to open up a lot more options for some cool stuff with the serpent class, allowing us to move beyond the reliance on illusions as a core aspect of the class's offence (bringing more skill into play, rather than being able to break people's triggers). This also opens things up us to make a lot more game-wide changes to help accessibility, without hobbling the class.

One thing that -will- happen in the tradeskill split will be removing all of the major combat benefits that tradeskills currently offer (such as the sip bonus in concoctions, shrugging in venoms, etc. etc.). They currently exist to balance the fact that the class with the skill only really has "two" skills in their skillset, so when they're gone, the need for these to provide the combat benefit is also gone.

Trevize

Tecton said:

Would allow us to open up a lot more options for some cool stuff with the serpent class, allowing us to move beyond the reliance on illusions as a core aspect of the class's offence (bringing more skill into play, rather than being able to break people's triggers). This also opens things up us to make a lot more game-wide changes to help accessibility, without hobbling the class.

I'd love to see that.

Riley

Tecton said:

Still pondering that. Ideally, I'd like to redo venoms to work kind of like concoctions do, since milking is a) very tied to the serpent class, and b) very tedious.

Would allow us to open up a lot more options for some cool stuff with the serpent class, allowing us to move beyond the reliance on illusions as a core aspect of the class's offence (bringing more skill into play, rather than being able to break people's triggers). This also opens things up us to make a lot more game-wide changes to help accessibility, without hobbling the class.

One thing that -will- happen in the tradeskill split will be removing all of the major combat benefits that tradeskills currently offer (such as the sip bonus in concoctions, shrugging in venoms, etc. etc.). They currently exist to balance the fact that the class with the skill only really has "two" skills in their skillset, so when they're gone, the need for these to provide the combat benefit is also gone.

I remember Imperian their "serpent" class was more of a poisons mixer

Xith

Tecton said:

Still pondering that. Ideally, I'd like to redo venoms to work kind of like concoctions do, since milking is a) very tied to the serpent class, and b) very tedious.

Would allow us to open up a lot more options for some cool stuff with the serpent class, allowing us to move beyond the reliance on illusions as a core aspect of the class's offence (bringing more skill into play, rather than being able to break people's triggers). This also opens things up us to make a lot more game-wide changes to help accessibility, without hobbling the class.

One thing that -will- happen in the tradeskill split will be removing all of the major combat benefits that tradeskills currently offer (such as the sip bonus in concoctions, shrugging in venoms, etc. etc.). They currently exist to balance the fact that the class with the skill only really has "two" skills in their skillset, so when they're gone, the need for these to provide the combat benefit is also gone.

And deciding whether Purity necklace gets reskinned, moved to a different skill, or made part of the new magi skill?

Achimrst

Xith said:

Tecton said:

Still pondering that. Ideally, I'd like to redo venoms to work kind of like concoctions do, since milking is a) very tied to the serpent class, and b) very tedious.

Would allow us to open up a lot more options for some cool stuff with the serpent class, allowing us to move beyond the reliance on illusions as a core aspect of the class's offence (bringing more skill into play, rather than being able to break people's triggers). This also opens things up us to make a lot more game-wide changes to help accessibility, without hobbling the class.

One thing that -will- happen in the tradeskill split will be removing all of the major combat benefits that tradeskills currently offer (such as the sip bonus in concoctions, shrugging in venoms, etc. etc.). They currently exist to balance the fact that the class with the skill only really has "two" skills in their skillset, so when they're gone, the need for these to provide the combat benefit is also gone.

And deciding whether Purity necklace gets reskinned, moved to a different skill, or made part of the new magi skill?

I vote it goes the way of the Yeti, and totems. Kill them damn totems!!!

Kyrra

Don't touch my totems. X(

Achimrst

Kyrra said:

Don't touch my totems. X(

I already do.......

Xith

Achimrst said:

Kyrra said:

Don't touch my totems. X(

I already do.......

He doesn't just touch them. He touches them tra la la ding ding dong.