Runemasters have Spellcaster stats. Amazing TEC, extremely good TP, reasonable LUC, okay AGI, and abysmal physical stats (HP, STR, VIT). A consequence of their specific TEC and LUC spread is that their DS is surprisingly good—even higher than nightseekers, who have attacks dedicated entirely to inflicting ailments!

Don't let their okay AGI fool you, though. Most of their attacks come with a very rough -9 speed penalty, and one particular skill even goes to -15. Runemasters, on most turns, are slow.

The runemaster class skill is nowhere near as powerful as some other class skills, but it still gives very good value for how few skill points it asks of you. One thing to consider with it is that, unless you're stacking multiple characters of the same class, runemasters will often be the only characters in the back row dealing significant elemental damage. In contrast, landsknechts and imperials, the other two classes primarily focused on elemental damage, pretty much need to be in the front row to function properly. With sufficient defensive support—either through a fortress or through disables—you can put a runemaster up in the front row, and enjoy a pretty decent passive damage boost being applied to your other elemental attacker(s).

Somewhat confusingly, Atlus decided to give the spellcaster class in EO4 the ability to use Fantasia skills. To clarify, Fantasias are skills that troubadours could use in EO1 and 2, which later returned in the remakes. They increased all party members' resistance to an element, and increased all enemies' vulnerability to the same element. Note that these are direct modifications to vulnerabilities, not defense modifiers that only affect one particular element. In EO1/2, the Fantasias weren't anywhere near as powerful as they would be in later games. In EO1, they were more useful for the party resistance increase, due to elemental damage being lackluster in that game. In EO2, there's better things to burn enemy debuff slots on (Dampen).

Going into EO4, the Fantasias came back, though tweaked a bit. For one thing, they're on runemasters, a damage-dealing class, rather than a support class. For another thing, the skill's effects have basically been swapped; at max rank in EO2, the Fantasias increased all party members' resistance by 35%, and increased all enemies' vulnerability by 50%. In EO4, the opposite is true, buffing the defensive component while nerfing the offensive component.

On the one hand, a damage-dealer having to use these can be seen as a downgrade from a support being able to use them while the damage-dealer sets up a personal buff, or something similar. On the other hand, it does mean that runemasters have access to a pretty powerful method of increasing other party members' damage, and can create artificial weaknesses entirely on their own. For the record, I use the term "artificial weakness" to refer to when a vulnerability modifier causes an enemy's vulnerability to a damage type to go above 100%, thereby creating what the game considers a weakness. For runemasters, that means that they can use the element Runes to activate Runic Guidance on enemies that would not have normally been vulnerable to that. In that way, for runemaster themselves, the damage increase they get from using an element Rune can be a lot more than the element Rune's effect in itself. Not accounting for diminishing returns, a runemaster using a maxed-out element Rune on an enemy with a 100% vulnerability to that element, and then following up with an attack that activates Runic Guidance, would deal 89% more damage than if they'd not used the element Rune.

I'm talking a lot about the offensive capabilities of the element Runes, but they have their uses defensively, too. If you're up against an FOE or boss that deals exclusively in one elemental damage type (not accounting for physical damage), it may be worth it to prioritize using the corresponding element Rune over whichever one would let you deal more damage to the enemy, especially if that enemy already has a weakness you can exploit.

As for which element Rune you should invest in, that's something of a tough question. Significantly investing into any of them early on is just wasting skill points, especially prior to getting Runic Guidance. In the lategame, Volt Rune's probably the best choice, since Galvanic Rune provides the highest DPT of the Master Rune skills. After that, maxing out all of them isn't a bad idea, especially because of a certain trio of postgame bosses.

Enough about skills that act as accessory to murder, let's move onto skills that do murder.

Fireball Rune occupies an awkward space in the first tier of runemaster skills—it deals less damage than Lightning Rune, and has an (arguably) inferior targeting type compared to Ice Lance Rune. In the end, it doesn't really please anyone, and its element isn't even that great early on. The most I can say about fire as an element in the 1st Land (where Novice skills are most relevant) is that, uh, fanged vines are weak to it.

Fire-element Rune skills, in general, kind of get a raw deal in EO4, but at least there are a handful of FOEs and bosses later on that are weak to it...after Fireball Rune is irrelevant. What a sad existence. I wouldn't put any more points into it than are necessary to unlock Flame Rune.

Ice Lance Rune, like Fireball Rune, struggles with having lower damage compared to Lightning Rune, plus a lack of compelling uses for ice as an element in the 1st Land, but at least it has a better targeting type. My take on splash damage vs. line-piercing is that the splash part of splash damage is rarely anything more than chip damage that likely will not prove decisive in killing an enemy in fewer actions than usual, while line-piercing attacks at least deal full damage to two different targets, assuming there is an enemy back row.

Still, I have the same take on Ice Lance Rune as I do on Fireball Rune: only put as many points into it as you need to get Glacier Rune.

Lightning Rune would win the tier 1 Rune skills competition by default as-is, but it's actually got points that make it attractive besides that! Being row-target is very useful, especially in the earlygame, even if a back-row runemaster can only hit the enemy front row with it. Additionally, it deals the most damage of the Novice attack skills, and when you're dealing with a collection of FOEs and a boss that are not innately weak to any of the three elemental damage types, that's a pretty big plus. Probably worth bumping up to rank 5 sometime before you get to Veteran.

My take on Runic Gleam is that it's okay in the earlygame, where the element Runes don't do a whole lot and you don't have access to Runic Guidance, but after that point, in general, it's better to use the element Runes as a way of buffing up a runemaster's damage if an enemy is not already weak to the element you're going to use, or just immediately go to town if they are. Runic Gleam having a short duration means that any damage gained from its effect is lost to the turns you have to burn on applying it to the runemaster. The only situation where it's not DPT-negative is if your runemaster can use it on a turn where an enemy is completely unable to be damaged, or where damaging it would have negative consequences.

The issue there is that those situations are...very rare, and the only one I can think of on a major boss is on the final boss. Unfortunately for Runic Gleam, it's impossible to predict when the final boss can't be damaged.

Flame Rune is, in essence, the successor to all of the tier 1 attack skills, in that it's for dealing damage to multiple enemies at once. It's pretty good at that, though the fact that it is purely fire damage means that certain enemies will take less damage from it due to being resistant to fire. Which...well, that's actually a fairly big issue in the 3rd Land. When it's not an issue, it is worth considering that Flame Rune deals less damage than Lightning Rune at all ranks after 1. If all of the targets in a battle are in the enemy front row, it's generally better to use Lightning Rune over Flame Rune. It costs less TP and deals more damage, in that case.

You have two options for single-target damage in Veteran: Glacier Rune, and Storm Rune. The dynamic between these two skills will apply to Inferno Rune and Galvanic Rune for Master, so the following is worth keeping in mind for later.

Glacier Rune is a skill that, on average and at max rank, deals roughly the same amount as Storm Rune, but comes with the potential to both deal either less or more damage than Storm Rune. With Glacier Rune specifically, the math on whether or not you'll outrun Storm Rune is rank-dependent. At ranks 1-3, Storm Rune deals more damage in every scenario. At ranks 4-7, Glacier Rune needs to roll for 4 hits in order to outdamage Storm Rune, a 33.3% chance. At rank 8, Glacier Rune still needs to roll for 4 hits to outdamage Storm Rune, but due to the minimum hits increasing to 3, it becomes a 50% chance. None of this accounts for accuracy, which is not in Glacier Rune's favor. It's not a major difference, but Glacier Rune having a, at base, 10% chance for any individual hit to miss drags down its average damage further. None of that sounds great.

Glacier Rune does have something notable going for it over Storm Rune, however: the boss of the 3rd Maze is weak to ice damage. Severely weak, in fact, as it has a 150% vulnerability to ice damage. With that in mind, I think it's worth putting a few points in, just so you're prepared for that fight. It'll deal more damage than Storm Rune and won't require that you have an investment in Volt Rune to create a weakness for Storm Rune to activate Runic Guidance on. Aside from that, though, Storm Rune is the more preferable, consistent option for single-target damage in Veteran.

HOWEVER! If you're running a Link-using landsknecht alongside a runemaster, then Glacier Rune is the better skill for single-target damage over Storm Rune, no contest. The extra hits from Link skills will more than make up for Glacier Rune potentially dealing less damage than Storm Rune.

Well, I sort of already described most of Storm Rune's good points in the Glacier Rune description! Long story short: if you're running a Link-using landsknecht, you'll probably want your runemaster to focus on Glacier Rune. Otherwise, Storm Rune's your best bet for single-target damage in Veteran.

Runic Shield is a nice-to-have passive that doesn't take many skill points to max out. Even just the minimum investment needed for Runic Guidance results in a 10% chance to nullify elemental attacks.

One thing Runic Shield is that it can encourage the same party layout setup that the class skill does: putting a runemaster up in the front row, with a landsknecht and imperial. Alternatively, if you put a fortress in the same row as your runemaster, they can also just cancel elemental attacks for free sometimes, as if Guard Mastery wasn't already enough.

It's that passive I've been talking about a bunch! The value of Runic Guidance is hard to undersell: it's a big damage increase for attacks that hit weaknesses, which definitionally already deal more damage than normal. Not accounting for any additional buffs (and by extension, diminishing returns), Runic Guidance would turn attacks that hit a 125% vulnerability from having a 1.25x multiplier applied to them, to a 1.75x multiplier. This skill just provides utterly ridiculous value for how few skill points it takes to max out.

With that said, I'd recommend getting Runic Guidance to rank 3, and then leaving the final three skill points for later, until you've gotten your runemaster's attack skills to higher levels. The latter half of skill levels providing diminishing returns hits Runic Guidance fairly hard, and the final three skill points you would've put into it will provide better value on other skills.

Another very nice-to-have passive, though definitely a few steps above Runic Shield. Runemasters have a very good pool of TP innately, but Free Energy can make it go even further. Its value really starts to become apparent with the Master skills, where the elemental attacks each cost 35 TP at max rank, and Origin Rune costs a whopping 65 TP at max rank. Getting a Free Energy proc on using Origin Rune is a very, very nice feeling.

Like Runic Guidance, it's probably best to put three skill points into Free Energy, then leave the final three ranks for after you've gotten attack skills to where you want them.

A pretty standard passive attack boost. Save it for, again, once you've gotten your attack skills to satisfactory levels.

The Master version of Storm Rune. Unlike Storm Rune, however, it compares unfavorably to its multi-hit random-target counterpart, Galvanic Rune. Due to Galvanic Rune having a higher number of hits compared to Glacier Rune, it has a 66.6% chance at max rank to out-damage Inferno Rune, compared to Glacier Rune's 50%. That difference takes Inferno Rune from being the consistent option over its counterpart to being the safe option, which is a key distinction. Consistency is not the same thing as playing it safe, when the "risky" option is more likely than not to work out in your favor.

With that said, you will most likely want to invest at least some points into Inferno Rune in the postgame, in order to hit one particular boss's weakness.

Blizzard Rune is, at least, an upgrade over Lightning Rune, in terms of being the most useful multi-target skill. Unfortunately, it is only the most useful multi-target skill for the lategame. Once you get into the postgame, Origin Rune beats Blizzard Rune in any situation where you'd want multi-target coverage. Even if you're up against a group of enemies that all have a 50% weakness to ice damage, Blizzard Rune at max rank would deal 127% damage. Origin Rune, at max rank, deals 140% damage. Runic Guidance would tip that in Blizzard Rune's favor, but...let's face it, this hypothetical of "multiple enemies with 50% vulnerability to ice damage" is not very likely.

I...think I may have already exhausted anything I could reasonably say about Galvanic Rune! In battles against one target, it is the pretty clear winner when it comes to dealing the most damage possible. Absolutely worth grabbing and maxing out.

It's Runic Flare, but it only works on runemaster skills. My comments about Runic Flare apply to Rune Mastery as well.

Talked about it a bit above, but just on its own merits, Origin Rune is a fucking monster. It's very sub-optimal for single-target situations, but basically nothing beats it in multi-target scenarios. Its TP cost is extremely high for damn good reason: this thing will mulch any random encounter group you point at it, and in boss fights with multiple targets, it can go a long way in leveling the playing field in your favor.

My only real note here is that maxing out Free Energy before putting any points into Origin Rune is probably a good idea. Every few extra percentage points on Free Energy's chance to activate goes a long way when you're dealing with TP costs this high.