Commenting to give you health insurance 🙏

Having played the Runesmith during the playtest before Rune's damage got nerfed and their value was even higher than they currently are; I absolutely agree that Zohk is among the strongest possible Runes you can take.

There were several battles when I was able to reposition party members who were flanked, had positioned themselves poorly at the beginning of combat, or would've been KOed due to low HP that turned battles heavily back into the party's favor.

But most importantly, I completely derailed my poor DM's entire plan for the direction of the campaign by teleporting an important NPC out of an effect that would've killed them because Runes wouldn't have triggered the countermeasures they prepared and prevented a massive war from breaking out in-game. Yes, you heard that right, Zohk was strong enough to overcome even DM railroading lol

I’ve been eagerly awaiting something like this. The Runesmith seemed really interesting to me but I haven’t had the time to dig deep into it. This will give me a good place to start.

Truly amazing video, great guide as usual!

Wow, there's a lot of cool stuff I didn't even think about!

Thank you for being always clear. You give good advice

I know exactly the "oMg RuNeSmItH dAmAgE!1!!1!1!1!!" posts you're talking about on reddit. I also was one of the few that tried to point out how unrealistic all of these white room theory crafting were. On top of all the failed steps an enemy has to go through for it to actually work, hitting your attack, failing multiple saves, etc. All of that just for me to be mass downvoted and told I'm "not seeing the vision" lol. I'm really glad for this video and happy to see other people actually thought the same.

I'd been tossing around ideas for a PFS Runesmith, and your gushing about Zhok reminded me I've been looking for something to use my SF2 Playtest rewards towards... Zohk gets even better if you can fly!

Great video! thanks for the ideas. I'm planning on playing a runesmith and this actually gave me some idea on how i want to play it.

So, I am preeetty new to PF2e (sub 20 played sessions) and I am so hyped for the runesmith, because I really like building utility characters with many options. So far I have mostly looked at the alchemist for that but was a little too intimidated of jumping head first into all the alchemical items. So I think that the runesmith might be another good option for that sort of playstyle. I just enjoy it way more to have a party member go "I only hit that because of you / I only dealt that much damage because of you / I only got out of there because of you" than actually dealing a lot of damage myself. And now I have a good idea of some runes I wanna take and what feats to use. So yeah "I understand the runesmith better now because of you"
Thanks a lot. Keep up the amazing work!

I think that the Runesmith has a lot of potential involving Readied actions. It’s a bit action heavy, but sometimes you need to invoke a rune, but your ally is in a bad position. So being able to invoke on a trigger sounds especially useful

Another thing to consider with level 1 damage runes is that if you're picking 2 and want to spend the rest on defense/support, it's not just about covering 2 different saves. The elemental runes (all of which use fort saves) in particular seem to be divided into damage foremost (fire and thunder) and damage+utility (frost and acid). So unless I intend to take a feat which specifically requires weapon rune like Dance of Bloody Ink, I'd be more keen on taking either thunder + frost as they both have interesting control synergy, or fire + acid, which can both work to lower resistances. If I were to choose just one and spend the rest on support, I'd probably go with Thullax, Rune of Corrosion. 1d6 is still nice damage, and the utility of lowering physical resistances isn't going to come up often, but when fighting constructs is going to be huge.

loved seeing you in the Impossible Magic collab too

This has been very insightful!

Health insurance contribution!

Bastion is such an awesome free archetype for this class if you go the shield route, you can do some crazy stuff like loading offensive runes onto your shield, then baiting out AoOs by tracing.

Great guide! Love the mutiple defense advice

I've played a short session which is a prequel to the longer upcoming campagin, with my group as a Runesmith. lvl 1-2
I went with the familiar feats to apply runes at range which may be not the strongest but I like the narrative.
And for runes Lyskel and Ranshu. Both are fort saves, but it is damned if you do damned if you dont kind of situation. If they move, they are clumsy1. if the dont they take unavaoidable electric damage.

And yeah I'e picked esvadir for other 2 martials in the party. (Magus and Thaum)
4th Rune I'm still undecided. I had Bariuel which came up only once. (Somehow our party passed all relevant checks for fear)

Runesmith and a Necromancer. you can trace Runes on the thralls. Esvadir deals bleed damage per weapon die, and thralls have more damage die than martials, especially wen you get to the upgraded thralls and thrall charge. Can blow them up with En- and a damage rune to avoid hurting allies by placing them optimally.

Runesmith may be my #3 class pick in PF. Still love Swashbuckler and I like the look of Daredevil.

I really need to play more SF to get some more thematic class picks for those games.