Okay, so, today I wanted to mess around with something that’s been on my mind for a while – runes in D&D 5e. I’ve always been a huge fan of adding a bit of extra flavor to my games, and runes seemed like a cool way to do it. So, I started by grabbing my Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide, plus a few other books I had lying around that I thought might have some info on runes.
I figured I’d start simple. I spent a good chunk of the morning just reading up on what the official books had to say about runes. It wasn’t a whole lot, to be honest. They’re mentioned here and there, mostly as part of magic items or certain class features, but there wasn’t a whole system or anything. So, that meant I had to get creative.

I grabbed a notebook and started jotting down some ideas. What if runes could be used to enhance weapons or armor? Maybe they could even be used to cast spells? Or maybe there could be some runes that were more like permanent enchantments on locations? I was basically brainstorming, writing down anything that popped into my head. I ended up with a whole page of just random ideas, some were probably really silly, but I figured it was a good start. I tried to draw each rune next to my notes but I am not great at drawing so some looked pretty bad.
Then, I decided to try and categorize these ideas. I made a few lists:
- Combat Runes
- Utility Runes
- Cursed Runes
I figured these were broad enough to cover most of what I wanted to do. The Combat Runes were obviously for weapons and armor, the Utility Runes were for more general things like opening locks or enhancing skills, and the Cursed Runes… well, those were for when I was feeling a bit mean.
After lunch, I started fleshing out some of these ideas. I decided to make it so that you had to actually “craft” the runes. I thought it would be cool if you needed certain materials, like maybe some rare gems or monster parts. And maybe there could be different levels of runes, so you’d need better materials and a higher skill level to make the really powerful ones. I thought about making it use a roll on the table for the crafting check so that it was not always a sure thing to craft. This added some risk to the process.
I spent the rest of the afternoon working on this. I came up with a bunch of different runes, each with its own effect and crafting requirements. I even made a little table for it, so I could keep track of everything. By the time evening rolled around, I had a pretty solid system worked out. I was pretty tired, but I was also super excited to try it out in my next game.

Testing it out!
I called up a few of my friends and we decided to have a quick playtest. I gave each of them a few basic runes to start with and explained the rules I had come up with. We played for a few hours, and it was a blast! The runes added a whole new level of strategy to the game. One of my friends used a rune to enhance his sword, making it deal extra fire damage. Another friend used a rune to unlock a door that we would have otherwise had to break down. I decided to play the villain and give some runes to the bad guys to make it harder. They almost killed one of my friends but he used a potion in the nick of time. This made the fight feel very difficult but fair.
Of course, there were a few things that needed tweaking. Some runes were a bit too powerful, while others were kind of useless. But overall, it was a success. It felt like I was really onto something. I spent the rest of the evening making adjustments based on the playtest. I can’t wait to see how these runes will change the game in the long run.
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