As a DM, I’ve created custom (homebrew) magic items and spell-like effects. I’ve also worked with my husband to tinker with the psionic class last year. But right now, I’m working on a slightly larger homebrew project on my own!

A few years ago, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) released an Unearthed Arcana article that introduced the idea of prestige classes to 5th edition D&D. The example in the article is the rune scribe, a magic-user who accesses the power of master runes. I thought this was a really neat idea, so when we started the SBotLL campaign, I told our DM that I wanted to pursue this prestige class with my bard.

The rune scribe article never received a sequel, and the prestige class never reappeared in any other official WotC D&D product. Storm King’s Thunder has a few runes in it, but only as magic items and nothing more. I was inspired by Mike Mearls’ Happy Fun Hour on D&D’s Twitch channel to try designing an expansion for the rune scribe prestige class.

I mean, if I want to see more rune scribe content, I might as well try to make it myself!

I’ve never tried to homebrew something meant for more than just an adventure I was running. If I made something that was unbalanced, I could just adjust within my own campaign. I want to make my first project as good as it can be, even if my design experience is small. So, I needed a way to test out what I’d written.

When my husband and I modified the mystic class, I ran two parties of adventurers through the “Death House” adventure from Curse of Strahd. We chose to run that adventure because it was short, already written, and official WotC content. Our group of testers was the group from SBotLL. After the playtest, we wrote a survey and had everyone fill it out with their feedback.

I think that process worked pretty well. As long as enough people were interested, we had a group to test out stuff. From survey feedback, we could learn everyone’s perspective alongside our own impressions during play.

But, I wanted to test the progression of the rune scribe prestige class across multiple character levels and in various situations. This would require multiple sessions. I also wanted more in-depth feedback from our playtesters.

The first half of this project introduces additional runes for rune scribes to use. We playtested it over the summer in three sessions. I wrote three different adventures for characters of 6th, 9th, and 12th level. These three one-shots represented what WotC refers to as the three pillars: combat, exploration, and social.

In the group, we had one rune scribe and two non-rune scribe characters. After the end of the playtest run, I spoke with each player and collected feedback from them individually. I could ask follow-up questions easily this way. Their feedback went into the completed “Additional Master Runes” document, which is pretty much complete now.

In conversation about the rune scribe’s class features, I decided that the 5th level (final) ability could stand to be a bit more… well, a bit more fun. I think the final ability of a prestige class should be well worth investing five levels, especially because multiclassing in this way keeps a character from reaching their main class’s capstone ability. Thus, the second half of this project is creating a suitable replacement!

This Saturday, we’re starting the playtest of “Secrets of Rune Magic,” that second half. The process will be the same. But, for this test, two of the characters will be using the rune scribe prestige class and my version of its capstone. The third character is using purely official class options. The sessions will cover 10th, 13th, and 16th level.

It might be overkill, but at least it’s fun!

I’m excited to see the results, and I’m looking forward to completing and sharing this project.