There is one fighter that is obviously near and dear to my heart because I like anytime you can become giant and also well…giant! It’s really really fun we have the rune knight in Tasha’s as well.
So the rune knight was the child of an other subclass that we did the giant soul sorcerer and there was interest from the player base in the giant soul but looking at the feedback we realized that the concepts we were exploring would be a better fit in the fighter also known as tiefling names.
This has happened a few times before over over the last six years where we release something for one class get the feedback from the community and then realize oh it actually belongs over here and in fact that’s actually happened with a couple of things that are in Tasha’s cauldron, the archivist that began in unearthed arcana as an artificer subclass does appear in this book but as a wizard subclass called the order of scribes.
So in the case of the rune knight our instinct was right when we looked at the feedback and saw the should be in the fighter because when we then released the rune knight people were super happy with it the feedback that we got is that people really liked having the ability as a fighter to pick these different runes to create the sort of suite of powers that their fighter was going to have.
I’m also excited about this subclass being in the book because it is a very different approach to a fighter having supernatural abilities that I think will appeal to players who want that character fantasy but don’t necessarily want to go in the direction of the eldritch knight where you you go full in on actual spell casting.
This is a great middle path where it’s like yeah I do want my fighter to have some extraordinary abilities that go well beyond what a person could do in our world despite you know how much they might train with their sword but I don’t want to be a spellcaster.
So this really helps deliver that character fantasy and gives you the kind of customization that we know that fighter players really enjoyed in the battle master and so this is also this is sort of a nod at like both the battle master and the eldritch knight but going an entirely different direction in terms of the design implementation.
While also delving into some fun storytelling involving the giants of the D&D multiverse because the D&D giants for many years not just in fifth edition have often been associated with different magic runes that have different properties based on the thing that you inscribe that rune on.
So it was really fun to take that concept and use that as the narrative delivery device for these different magical powers that the fighter can you know have in their weapon or on their armor.
Then really just feel badass because of the combination of abilities they have decided to assemble and I also think this is a really interesting rich character path for a fighter because you can imagine so many different fighters walking this path.
Some might be classic bruisers who really are just they’re about the runes because of the power those runes give them but you can also imagine a fighter who might be very culturally refined and who might even be a scholar of runes and is a knight of you know great honor and kindness and is using this runic magic to do good in the world and that is again something.
We’re so often looking for in our design to make sure that we’re supporting a pretty broad range of character types even inside a subclass because you know that of course the broader archetype is the class subclass it’s getting narrower but we generally aim to make it.
so that the subclass isn’t so narrow that you can really only make one type of personality with it or you know what a type of character with only one sort of motivation and the rune knight not only because of the different types of personalities who might be drawn to the use of runes supports a lot of different types of characters, but then it goes all in on customizability because of your ability to mix and match the runes themselves.
That’s something is on the level of customization that almost feels like nightborne names because I can imagine playing this trickster fighter now who you know I don’t I don’t know if all the runes are still doing what they did in UA.
I do remember that there was some advantage to like sleight of hand and deception which immediately caught my eye so and all these like varied abilities of kind of like you’re just picking and choosing and that is such a fightery thing to do because you do get more potential feats and if you’re using those particular rules with your dungeon master and so it’s.
It is my favorite fighter for sure because you can do anything with it and then you get to be big right or you can still you still get to be big?! Just for you Todd!
I’m gonna tell you i’m gonna make that tall goblin nothing nothing’s more upsetting than taking a tiny goblin figure and making it like 12 foot tall because they’re cute small yeah they’re not cute big!
That’s very upsetting if you ever saw a legend think of a tiny goblin okay like that goblin was kind of adorable but then they met the hag… Hag was not adorable! I would argue the same exact design but once it gets 12 feet tall it’s not fun anymore it’s very upsetting I’m very excited for the rune knight.
