Illumians and Glyphic Resonance: Wot?

[Saintheart]

Sort of what it says on the can. Illumians have a racial (Ex) feature called Glyphic Resonance. In essence (p. 53 of RoD) when your hapless Illumian encounters a symbol-based spell like Explosive Runes or the like, one of two things happens: either the spell is overpowered by the Illumian's presence, or the foreign magic corrupts the Illumian's form. The entry helpfully adds that Illumians have a -4 to saving throws against this effect and that if the Illumian's level exceeds the spell's caster level they're immune to the effect, but it doesn't say much else about how this works in actuality.

How is this feature generally interpreted by the Playground? I know the query's coming in maybe five years too late or so, but given the lack of further mechanics on the subject I'm having trouble working out what this thing means. The main reason I'm looking is because of my Runecaster handbook - runes are "spells cast as runes" which theoretically at least could be caught by the RAW of this ability, so while it's a stretch I'd love to know whether this means the Illumian Runecaster is an Illumian Failcaster, constantly blowing himself up whenever he tries to carve a magical rune...?

[Kelb_Panthera]

It shouldn't be a problem.

The -4 on saves -is- the manifestation of the illumian being disrupted by the glyphic spells nearby. As long as he doesn't have to save against his own runes, he should be okay.

[Saintheart]

Welll ... I'm not certain.

The wording after identifying the categories of magic affected by the (Ex) is--

"When an illumian encounters such magic, one of two things happens: Either the illumian's resonance overpowers the spell, or the foreign magic corrupts the mystical language that defines the illumian. Illumians have a -4 racial penalty on saving throws against these effects if their level is less than the caster level of the spell. If an illumian's level equals or exceeds the spell's caster level, she is immune to the effect."

So I'm partially reassured, since on one hand the illumian is immune to anything bad happening to him at the hand of his own spells -- since his character level will always be close to his caster level -- but this doesn't seem to make the rune or the spell any safer from destruction. The illumian's resonance can still overpower the spell (whatever "overpower the spell" means).

?

P.S. My fault for not accurately paraphrasing the text.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Immunity to the effect of the glyphic magic is the entirety of the effect of glyphic resonance overpowering the glyph. The rune won't trigger or be expended unless it would do so for any non-illumian in the same situation.

In most cases it won't matter because the rune wouldn't be targetted at the illumian anyway. Since caster level is usually higher than character level, unless you multiclass heavily, the ones you do target at yourself will either not offer a save or you'd forgo the save anyway. Characters can voluntarily allow effects to bypass any immunities they have so even if you somehow have a caster level below your character level it's a non-issue.

[Saintheart]

Ahhhhh, I see what you mean now. Thanks for that!