Rune knight discussion

[Waazraath]

I mean... I look at the rune knight and I think... I better off just go barb after 6 levels(or 5) of rune knight. The hill runeword is just once a short rest, and is a fraction of the rage ability, which gives extra damage and can be used more than once(and even more if you take more barb levels). Heck, the other bonus action go large and deal some extra damage works with rage.

I may be wrong of course, but tell me what you think.

I think it is great, and you're underselling it. Lets start with the barb. Yeah, rage does much more. I don't think it gets to be used more often though, at most points during a campaign. Recharge after a short rest is, in my experience but ymmv, at least 3 times per adventuring day (and I think 2 short rests is a fair assumption). When the Rune Knight gets the hill rune, it can use it as many times as the barbarian can rage. Only 2 levels later the single barb pulls ahead slightly, being able to use it 1 time/day more often, and at level 13 2 times/day. But at lvl 15, the rune knight can use the runes twice/short rest, catching up and taking over. At 17, they are equal once more, and at 20 barb gets unlimited rages.

BUT: this is comparing a single class bbn with rune knight fighther. If you do as you suggest, multiclassing bbn after 6 levels of rune knight, you're far behind in uses/day when comparing rage with hill rune. And much more important, as Mr. Stabby pointed out, Hill Rune is a relative minor subclass ability, while Rage is a bbn's bread and butter.

And lets dive in what we can do with the rune knight. Lets start with with the mentioned hill rune. What you can do with rk (and not with bbn) is combining your resistance with heavy armor mastery. This makes you very tanky in fights against opponents who do non-magical s/p/b damage. Add a source of temporary hp (racial, feats or by a party member) and you can be very, very tanky in several fights/day. Both proficiency with heavy armor (and the barb's ability to combine that with rage) and the extra feats the fighter chasis has are golden.

Another take: the Storm Rune. Grant advantage/disadvantage for an entire minute with a reaction... this is sick. A sorcerer pays 3 sorcery points (a long rest resource) to giva a creature disadvantage on a save against a spell, once. You can do this every turn. Assist your caster ally by giving enemies disadvantage against banishment, blindness, hold person/monster, or polymorph. Every. Turn. Use it 3 times in a day and you already used more virtual sorcerer points than the sorcerer has a the level you get it (lvl 7!). And if you don't have an ally around that casts spell, hell with it, just give yourself advantage on an attack, or an enemy disadvantage. And this is only 1 of the 3 runes you have!

Another take, the pretty obvious one: grapple king. Get advantage on str checks. Be a max str character. Give your enemies disadvantage if needed (storm rune). Grapple huge and guargantean creatures. Grab expertise if you want, with one of your fighter bonus feats. Single class this can be one of the best grapplers in the game.

And all of the stuff above doesn't even touches the other runes, the advantage you can get on skills for out of combat use, the extra damage, the Runic Shield feature.... all of this makes it a great subclass, that can be used for a great number of concepts I think.

[Houster]

Yeah you're right...
I think barb/rk is more fighty, and rune knight is more well rounded.
Actually it's a really fun build (barb/rk) cause you get to be a fighter barb plus all the rk early goodies. You can look at it as rounding the barb, which is normally just very very fighty.

[Dork_Forge]

I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I like that most of the runes are more than damage boosts. They are on some ways superior to spells but more limited in scope. Stone no longer breaks on damage and fire acts like a smite so you can't waste the initial damage.

To clarify, I don't want all or even most runes to be like, I just want a single simplified but reliable damage Rune. Fire is great but has the follow up riders and tbh 'fiery shackles' doesn't do it for me in the least.If they'd made a single Rune that just added like a d4 of damage, but did it all of the time (scaling die size later in the game) then that'd be perfect imo. A simple, rune enhanced weapon, with all of the other options for customisation and complexity.

This also fits with another part of my mental image for runes being passive/reliable in comparison to other magics, I know that there's a passive on each rune but still *shrug*

[stoutstien]

To clarify, I don't want all or even most runes to be like, I just want a single simplified but reliable damage Rune. Fire is great but has the follow up riders and tbh 'fiery shackles' doesn't do it for me in the least.If they'd made a single Rune that just added like a d4 of damage, but did it all of the time (scaling die size later in the game) then that'd be perfect imo. A simple, rune enhanced weapon, with all of the other options for customisation and complexity.

This also fits with another part of my mental image for runes being passive/reliable in comparison to other magics, I know that there's a passive on each rune but still *shrug*

I can see that. If I had to pick a rune to turn into a static damage booster it would be hill. I don't get the resistance connection.