Rune Carver 5e
You’ve dedicated your life to studying runecraft. Whether you were taught by a master rune carver or learned by poring over ancient engravings, you can tap into the supernatural power held within runes.
The art of runecraft was initially created by giants, but over time, the practice has been adopted by many peoples. As such, though Giant runes are the most commonly used, many rune carvers incorporate symbols from their native languages into the craft.
Source: Bigby Presents - Glory of the Giants
Skill Proficiencies: History, Perception
Tool Proficiencies: One set of artisan's tools
Languages: Giant
Equipment: A set of artisan’s tools (one of your choice), a small knife, a whetstone, a set of common clothes, and a pouch containing 10 gp.
Rune Styles
Each rune carver has a unique style and preferred medium. To determine how you make your runes, you can roll on the Rune Style table.
Rune Style
| d6 | Style |
|---|---|
| 1 | You inscribe runes in wax or clay with a fine metal needle. |
| 2 | You whittle pieces of wood into small figurines you mark with runes. |
| 3 | You engrave runes onto glass beads and thread them onto necklaces and bracelets. |
| 4 | You stitch your runes into the hems of clothing. |
| 5 | You carve runes on a set of animal bones you can throw in different formations. |
| 6 | You draw your runes into candles, melting the wax to smooth over the engravings. |
Feature: Rune Shaper
You gain the Rune Shaper feat.
Building a Rune Carver Character
Scholarly pursuits, ancient mysteries, or a fateful encounter might inspire a character to pursue the secrets of a rune carver.
Suggested Characteristics. The Rune Carver Personality Traits table suggests a variety of traits you might adopt for your character.
Rune Carver Personality Traits
| d6 | Personality Trait |
|---|---|
| 1 | Is it practical to learn an ancient language that is rarely spoken? No. But is it fun? Very. |
| 2 | I learned one of my ancestors was a lauded rune carver whose story was lost to time. I seek to rekindle that legacy. |
| 3 | The old, traditional markings of runecraft look so boring. Why not give my runes some flair? |
| 4 | In my studies of runes, I strive to understand how great civilizations of the past fell, so that I may prevent it from happening to societies of the pres |
| 5 | Life may be a whirlwind of chaos around me, but whenever I create my runes, I feel at peace. |
| 6 | My brain struggles to process ink words written on paper, but the tactile feeling of carved runes makes my mind sing. |
Creating Rune Carver Characters
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Rune Carver is a background that’s specific. Not everyone is going to be able to be a rune carver, nor are there going to be that wide of a spectrum of stories that can really go with this archetype. It feels like a magical archeologist to me, which can be a great time if you resonate with that archetype.
Skills
It starts you off with history and perception; history is the kind of skill you’ll use meaningfully ones of times per game, where perception is something you’re constantly going to want. This paring makes a lot of sense to me thematically while also doing a great job balancing weak and strong skills based on average use. Any character can benefit from a higher perception on their sheet; every class, even those who have access to it anyway, can find getting perception for free a major boon.
Other Proficiencies
Not only do you speak giant, but you’re given proficiency with any artisan’s tools of your choice. This could have been narrowed to calligraphers, cartographers, and mason’s tools, but why look a gift horse in the mouth? Want brewer’s supplies using ancient techniques you’ve uncovered in your research? Go for it! Giant is gravy- it usually won’t matter, but you’re already feeling great with your choice of artisan’s tools and perception proficiency.
Equipment
A free set of your artisan’s tools is great. Beyond that, you’re getting a bit of gold, a knife, a whetstone, and some clothes. The whetstone doesn’t have a ton of utility unfortunately, but you don’t need it to offer much when you can start with the tools you want and immediately start cashing in on the Xanathar’s Guide to Everything expanded tools rules.
Feature
Rune Shaper provides a bit of bonus early-game utility. Casters want this for the free bonus expansion to magic with and known spells you can spend slots on. Non-casters want it as a way to get out-of-combat utility they can lean on throughout the game.
Barbarian, fighter, rogue, sorcerer, bard, and warlock all stand out to me as classes that would love this expansion, as they’re tight on spells or have none to speak of and can make great use of the limited utility spells like Disguise Self and Speak with Animals can offer you.
It technically scales with the game, but you’re not going to notice, as it rounds down and improves at 9th and 17th level. One extra 1st level spell by that point isn’t going to be a particularly exciting upgrade, but hey, its better than not scaling at all!
As a background feature, this thing is great. Comprehend Languages is a flavorful, low-impact bonus feature, and the 1st level options all offer a bit of extra utility you’ll be happy to get from a background.
Bonus Tables
Rune carver comes with not just one, but two bonus personality tables, Rune Styles and Personality Traits! These two together paint a clear picture of who you are and what you’re about, and it all comes down to the study of ancient magic. These kinds of tables help bring your characters to life- unique tables, namely the Rune Styles kinds, I think need to make more appearances across the archetypes, feats, and backgrounds this system offers to help people engage with their background and develop it as the game progresses.
Pairing these two together opens up a massive quantity of archetypes. You can take “You stitch your runes into the hems of clothing” with “The old, traditional markings of runecraft look so boring…” to immediately get the vibes of a gaudy artist who doesn’t necessarily respect the old runes. Taking the same style and pairing it with “My brain struggles to process ink words on written paper…” presents an entirely different trope with an “art kid” who isn’t a studied academic, but somebody who’s identity and inner magic resonates with these ancient runes.
Top tier stuff; I love bonus tables, and these two specifically together basically provide you with thirty-six identities to start from.
All Together
Narrow backgrounds are far more preferable to me than generic ones- I’ll take Rune Carver over options like Criminal every day of the week. You still have a decent amount of space to be creative and play in, but you’re going to be related to a niche which helps define you’re characters motivations. Rune Shaper, and artisan’s tool of your choice, and perception all add a lot of power to your sheet as well. If its available, I think a myriad of characters can find benefits starting with Rune Shaper.
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