Hey, everyone! Last month, I talked about some of the playtest process behind my upcoming homebrew project. Now, I’m excited to announce that “Additional Master Runes” and “Secrets of Rune Magic” are complete!

As explained earlier, this is all inspired from the Unearthed Arcana article about rune magic and the rune scribe prestige class. But, what is rune magic, and how do you bring it into your campaign?

Storm King’s Thunder has a few magical items that are marked by the power of runes, but they work a little differently from the UA’s master runes, and they aren’t connected to the prestige class.

To paraphrase and expand on the original article, rune magic harnesses the power of sigils. These sigils are ancient symbols that stand for elements that make up reality—for example, the opal of the ild rune has the rune for “fire” within it. These sigils empower the objects they are written on. These master runes carry a part of the magic of creation within them.

By attuning to a master rune, a character can use that power. For example, the opal of the ild rune grants even normal characters resistance to cold damage and the ability to control small fires.  Then, a rune scribe can access even more of a master rune’s power. A rune scribe attuned to the opal of the ild rune not only gains access to its simple properties mentioned above, but also can wield fire in combat, empower their fire attacks, and augment their weapons with fire’s power.

Along with the opal of the ild rune, the original UA gives us the earth, wind, and ice runes. A rune scribe at 5th level can attune to four runes maximum, so this works pretty well. I wrote “Additional Master Runes” to introduce four more runes to add some variety to what a rune scribe can do (or some additional runes for characters to discover). “Secrets of Rune Magic” is an alternative 5th level class feature for rune scribes—a secret ritual to destroy one master rune and gain access to even more of its power.

You could compare master runes to the Infinity Stones from the Marvel Cinematic Universe; they’re not as powerful, but they’re difficult to find, they stand for the forces of the universe/multiverse, and they’re physical objects the user must attune themselves to.

Rune magic is an obscure and hidden practice. Rune scribes are typically secretive and not altogether forthcoming with their knowledge. But, a character could come across a previously-undiscovered master rune during their adventuring career. Presenting a new rune to a rune scribe is fairly persuasive; that seems to be the typical route towards progressing into the prestige class.

Even if none of your characters are pursuing the rune scribe class, master runes can be fun items for characters to discover. Elementally-aligned characters are especially neat matches to these runes (say, that evocation wizard who’s always casting fireball, or your water genasi character, or your sorcerer descended from a bronze dragon).

It’s up to you how rune magic fits into your campaign, but in general, rune magic fills that niche of an ancient, secret discipline of magic.

A wizard/rune scribe antagonist might target the player characters in their search for this hidden lore, because one of the characters discovered one of these master runes.

The adventurers might be hired to deliver a mage’s findings (along with a master rune) to their correspondent. This research might attract more enemies than the adventurers expect.

The hoard of a vanquished dragon might yield one of these runes—for example, finding a shard of the kalt rune in the possession of a white dragon.

After an adventure in a giant city’s ruin, the adventurers are waylaid by mercenaries hired by an organization seeking the power of these runes.

You can even run these runes as having a sort of magnetism to them. A rune might reach out to someone approaching it in hopes that they will use its power. They might not be sentient, but they are fragments of ancient power—and that energy has to go somewhere.

If any of this is interesting, please consider checking out Additional Master Runes and Secrets of Rune Magic on the Dungeon Masters Guild! (Those are affiliate links; if you follow them and buy something, I receive a small portion of the sales. Thanks for your support!)