Character Builds in RuneScape
RuneScape doesn’t have races, feats, classes, or backgrounds, but it would be wrong to say it doesn’t have “character builds.” Instead, the “building blocks,” (pardon the pun) are the 23 skills that all players have access to, with levels from 1-99. Builds arise both from mathematical min-maxing in the form of “pures” and from self-imposed challenges in the example of “iron men.”
The RuneScape holiday login screen, glitched in Audacity.
“Pures” are a product of the three combat styles and seven combat skills. A character’s “combat level” is calculated from them and adjudicates PvP combat. By choosing one combat skill to maximize and leaving the others as low as possible, a player can build a deceptively strong character, like a boxer dehydrating to make weight. Advancing in the game is difficult as a pure. There is no way to “turn off” experience accumulation for skills you do not wish to raise, so you instead must avoid those activities altogether. A resolution to never raise your magic level means never casting any spells, even the ones you might be able to. A resolution to never raise your defense means never having access to better armor.
Similarly, many players impose their own restrictions for only the benefits of prestige or additional challenge. The most common and best-supported build of this type is “Iron Man mode,” in which the player is disallowed from any trading with other players. Other variants include permadeath, region-locking, and non-combat “skill pures.”
All of these builds are self-imposed, and largely unofficial,1 but an RPG aiming to capture the feel of RuneScape could build-in the opportunity for similar self-limitation.
Here we could again, as with random events use the defined skill system in 5e as a starting point. Suppose Jim is going to be a “Strength Pure,” so they give up Dexterity. In exchange for never testing Acrobatics, Sleight of Hand, or Stealth, perhaps Jim applies his Dexterity bonus to all his saving throws instead. He can take this vow at any time, but only once, and it ends as soon as he breaks it.
But this scheme is unsatisfying because it’s a “top down” emulation of a “bottom up” feature. A better plan might be to own the fact that any “build” system will feel artificial and instead work it into the world by a system of taboo or geasa. The paladin’s oath looks like it could provide a template for this type of mechanic, but on closer inspection I think it allows too much wiggle room. Classical examples are more absolute and stranger, like “never refuse a challenge” or “give a job to anyone who asks.” We can pick a few, tie them to specific benefits, and assign them to specific supernatural entities in the world.
- Offer a vow of silence to a certain great tree-spirit. In exchange, you will never lose your footing and you cannot run.
- Offer a vow of truthfulness to the king of the birds (a wren, of course). In exchange, you will always know North.
- Swear to the queen of the underworld that you will never accept a gift, but in exchange for another gift. She will let you, add your proficiency bonus to your death saving throws.
- Never strike at an enemy, and the eyeless watcher will grant you insight into your foes’ movements and motivations.
- Carry no coins and spend no money and the vagrant god will let you sense the running waters beneath the earth.
- Never rest in the same room twice and the sleeper upon the waves will bless you with unknowability. Your actions become less predictable to beast and god and man alike.
Options like these would be available at character creation, or discovered during play. Again, you could break them at any time, but you would immediately lose the benefits. Although I think builds are an interesting and characteristic feature of RuneScape, they’re not necessarily common to encounter in play, so it feels acceptable to make this subsystem very niche and put a little less focus on it. In effect, this is really a narrower application of foreground growth (although available at character creation) and perhaps it’s best left as that broader concept.
A screenshot of RuneScape from tutorial island, glitched in Audacity
The images in this post were glitched with Audacity, an audio editor. You can import a bitmap as “raw data” (U-Law or A-Law encoded), and just apply whatever effects you want (reverb, wah-wah, invert, etc.). If you modify the first seconds of the file though, you may break it. The “roll” effect is caused by the reinsertion of the “clean” copy of the first few seconds at the beginning, offsetting the rest of the image.
At time of writing this was true, but now it seems that more builds might be getting official support.↩︎