Slightly opposed to this, however with caveats. Any extra modular equipment will be less useful and valuable than a new non modular item, simply because its only going to be used a fraction of the time. Why make extra banners for the dragons wings when the hearthguard are asking for a banner please and they'll use it full time. It feels like its against Snorri's approach of maximum usefulness.
I'm already concerned that this Gronti's panoply is a vainglorious waste of resources. I don't care about the material reagent costs but Snorri isn't fully equipped but we're already planning to. As long as any modular equipment is part of a multi piece request so that we aren't doubling or trippling Snorri's action investment, then I won't vote against it as I seem to have already lost that argument. However it feels like a silly thing to do when Snorri isn't capped on equipment slots. The Hearthguard doesn't have any equipment. Literally the only thing that would have run out of space is the dragon so creating modular equipment feels like we're attempting to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
Yeah I understand the concern of the dragon's modular stuff, making multiple copies of the claws or wings or god forbid the heart over other things. Point blank, I don't want to do that: Much like you I do actually want to do Hearthguard and Snorri equipment stuff to.
My point is essentially, that by making them "modular" (which might be a word with incorrect connotations for what I mean), what I want is objects that we can 1) bury inside of its Pure Gromril flesh, to try and protect them against Equipment Breaking effects, or to put protective plating over for similar reasons if we can't bury them inside its body and 2) to have them be removable in the event that they need to be pulled out for decade maintenance on the runes, which is a thing Snorri does need to be able to do. It's a design feature that
allows new pieces to be swapped in, but that's not actually the focus in my mind, which is protecting these pieces and making them accessible for maintenance.
(To be clear to others reading, when I say maintenance, I mean the sort of semi-regular maintenance work and metaphysical 'cleaning' that all runes go through. I do not mean repairing these items if they are damage, I don't really expect them to be damaged.)
I'm not really sure how much more there is to talk about this. However if we do continue I think we should stop talking about it with the term 'modularity' because thats not really what Bungie proposed. I'm concerned that hearing about a 'Modular Gronti' is going to make people think of a Gronti that can actually change its arms around or something, however that is possibly a violation of the rule of Form. What Bungie was really talking about was that the Gronti's arsenal should be designed in a such a way that they can be swapped out without compromising the Gronti's actual structure.
Yeah you got it. Arsenal is a much better word.
The modularity thing is less to have optimal loadouts and more to swap out certain bits when we fuck up the combo. Like the heart for example is meant to be a supplemental power source based on siphoning but if it doesn't combo right we can take it out and try again when we get the rune of sorcery/deep magic/MThungni or w/e. Realistically nothing is getting swapped once it's made except the heart if it doesn't combo right on the first try.
No not exactly, though yes we could do this. I'm pretty confident on the combos so far percolated, but you're right that contingency planning is useful.
soul cake has said in the past that runes are generally disinclined to create mystical projectiles or the like, and that overcoming this disinclination requires "a lot of finagling" (
RHUNRIKKI STROLLAR (Warhammer Fantasy Golden Age Dwarf Runelord Quest) Fantasy). I bring this up not to dismiss the idea of a dragonbreath runeword as impracticable, but rather to suggest that if we try for one, we should put a lot of effort into explaining why, in our interpretation, a particular set of runes will project energy at a distance. With that in mind, I think your proposal requires a more involved explanation for why the rune of force should be sufficient to turn two striking runes into a breath weapon. The comparison with conduction is helpful: that runeword includes both a vector rune and a rune that involves imparting a property to an outside object, and yet it only transmits energy through physical contact. Why should a runeword without the transference rune do better at projection over large distances? And I don't think the answer can be found in just saying your proposal has more power due to including a master rune, either; Snorri's old hammer had plenty of power, and it doubled up on conduction/fire in a way that corresponds to how you double up on everfrost/cold, but that clearly wasn't enough to let him shoot energy beams. Absent a fuller argument for why force should work better in this context than it does in fire/force/transference, it seems overly optimistic to expect it to function as a general-purpose distance rune. If a dragonbreath effect of some kind is critical, I would prefer something like:
Master rune of thunderbolts, rune of chain lightning, rune of cleaving
Thunderbolt forms the base of the runeword and describes the general effect: a destructive lightning strike. The rune of chain lightning adds to that base but also puts special emphasis on the capacity of lightning to arc between objects; it doesn't concentrate into single point but rather disperses, following the path of least resistance, until the energy of the lightning strike is expended. Cleaving is included because it includes the meaning of punching through something and continuing on the other side, but also because when a cleaving weapon swings, the path it takes forms the sector of a circle. It strikes within a defined area in front of the wielder. Cleaving works synergistically with the rune of chain lightning to further accent the idea that the lightning emitted by the runeword strikes not just a pinpoint but multiple targets that are separated by distance from one another. Altogether, the intended meaning for the whole runeword would be: a bolt of forked lightning that expands into a volume, striking everything therein.
I'm going to lay out my own theoretical basis here first. The reason I choose Force is because of my own approach to Rune Theory, which I describe as function first. What does a given Rune *do* as described in the narrative of the quest and its effect listed on the spreadsheet, is the keystone. I came to this theory of function first after talking to people in the thread, and on discord, reading what Soul has said and interpreting his finagling commentary differently to you.
Lets take Conduction. What does it do? Builds up heat and kinetic energy, then transfers it on contact. * Master Rune of Conduction/Kragg The Grim (Heats weapon up, releases energy) this is what it says on the sheet. And what it does also gives a great indication as to what its made of: Fire + Force + Transference, which Soul has confirmed. We also know from the Grimnir campaign, when Snorri was describing Trollslayer to Kraggi that Trollsayer apparently creates actual like full on explosions that involve kinetic energy that it creates as it impacts. (There's rune technobabble there about Snorri modifying some strikes to make it a shaped charge, which implies that you can change the exact form the Conduction explodes with, but that's way not relevant)
So under my theory, I looked at Force and Force is described as creating waves of pushing force. That's simple and straight forward. Obviously if you stacked more of them on an item, it'd make a more powerful blast. In the narrative, its blast of force ends up creating a gust of wind as it interacts with the atmosphere. I then drew on other evidential things we've seen in that kinetic forces have been touched and charged with elemental powers. Conduction is again a great example, adding Fiery heat to kinetic Force, charging the explosion of Force with Heat.
Thus in the case of Wyrnorazi, I went and looked at what the runes do. Cold just freezes things that are hit. Everfrost is derived from Cold and creates a chill aura around the user and freezes things that are struck. Cold and Everfrost obviously have functional synergy; the Cold rune makes Everfrost's own cold more intense, that's the train of effect we see when we stack normal Cold runes. Logically making Everfrost's cold more intense will make it freeze deeper when it hits, and make the chill aura harsher in some way, like making colder or bigger or something similar. I then looked at our means of projecting stuff, and we don't have much to work with. Force or the Master Rune of Grungni basically, and lasers. Lasers don't work with cold though.
I went with Force then, because its a regular rune and its about projecting wave shapes,
and Everfrost is already projecting some of its energy out into the world in its Chill AoE. Force then in this case, simply changes the AoE from a circular burst or aura, into a conic burst kind of manifestation when you cast/activate the Runes. By changing the shape of the AoE, giving a vector for projection of elemental energy, and adding more elemental juice from the Cold Rune, we can thus create a extremely cold gust of wind/kinetic force. That's the theory I'm going for to choose Force.
In terms of your suggestion, I feel that Cleaving is very far out for combo potential. Your logic of choosing cleaving is based on the idea of cleaving weapon swings, but the Rune of Cleaving's effect/what it does to what it is inscribed on has nothing to do with the action of scribing the sector of a circle or swinging a cleaving weapon. What it is used for is to make picks or weapon blades better at piercing hard materials. On the sheet we can see that its effect involves piercing through armor/piercing the hardest stone. What it does is it seems to make a bladed object sharper and more durable. As an example, we can look at Snorri's old axe: Cleaving makes it cut better.
I'm certain it requires a physical blade or other object, and can only combo with other runes that act on the physical object they are inscribed upon or buff the user in some fashion: Striking, Currents, Speed, Might, Impact, that kind of thing. It doesn't seem to me to be very inclined to work well with non-physical elemental effects. If you were manifesting and throwing like, spikes of rock, I could see it working to enhance the piercing ability of those manifested chunks, but otherwise the rune'll fizzle on the combo.
If I had to suggest an alternate for you to replace Cleaving with, I would suggest Fury. This rune boosts the speed and damage of attacks the user makes. We already know that Fury and Lightning play well together from Skarren, so Fury should play well with Thunderbolts and Chain Lightning, which are both variants of the basal Lightning Rune. Fury would thus take the diffused blasts of lightning from Chain Lightning, and enhance the
intensity of the blast you're going for, possibly allowing it to spread further or improve its effects on a given set of targets.
