So I was looking through poxbase again for runes ideas when I thought of messing around with a triple swarm Bg using zombie / skeezick / locust or zombie/ moga/ bats (I settled on my pet project of zombie/sand) when I had a look at Locust and cringed. Mostly because of the ability herbivore. Herbivore much like abilities Hunter X or carnivore are thematically satisfying but mechanically repugnant. The issues arises because you can't control when you benefit from the ability and some are so niche they are just sandbags. Instead of absolutely destroying these flavor abilities for reduced costs or replacing them with more stock abilities a neutral rune pool could be made. By neutral rune pool I mean a section of non faction runes that all factions can pull from that enable themes and synergies. A lot of CCGs incorporate this type of system already to pad out potential power gaps or balance metas. When implemented correctly factions have go to theme enabling cards that aren't available to their factions while still keeping things balanced because it is available to everyone. When incorporated wrong your factions can lose meaning as neutral cards outperform faction cards. A good example of doing things the right way would be Infinity Wars. Their neutral rune pool supplies generic enabling tools that help factions expand certain types of gameplay without getting in the way of original factions. If your faction doesn't have enough direct damage for a burn deck you can sub in some neutral cards to fill in the holes. If you want to drop nothing but big summons but need more resources gen you can sub in some neutral resource gen etc. An example of doing things wrong is like how Hearthstone has approached Warlocks. The main warlock cards, demons, are outclasses by every neutral faction deck built. Warlocks are far better neutral card deck builders than possibly any other class and have been outside of one early build with Pit Lord demons. My suggestions would be to take all of these unused spells, equipment, and relics that no one uses per factions, pool them together and get some basic theme enabling abilities together. How they would be limited to decks could be left up to discussion but the general idea would be large nora cost effects with dramatic changes. Such as an idea discussed in the disease damage thread which has reflesh remade as an aoe effect that refleshes all disease immune runes and makes them vulnerable to disease for X turns. A rune that turns target runes into plants for X turns. A rune that morphs target runes into type beast for X turns. An aoe that marks runes as hunted activating the Hunter abilities. Now you have damage type enablers, control over abilities like hunter and old runes being used again. These are broad effects ideas right now but the concept helps to make thematic abilities/synergy relevant without keeping them niche. It also doesn't have to stop there. Classes can mean more than niche counters like Hunter: Righteous. All those unused relics and equipment could be gear towards that. Bringing a shaman to battle could mean more than the runes face value abilities. Neutral equipment could allow shamans to gain heal mass for 3 uses before the equipment destroys itself dynamically changing what a class brings to the battle field for increased cost.
I cannot yay or nay this. However i think the factions and runes should be smoothed our before anything like this happens.
