Runes?

[Twilight]

What are they? lol Ive never played Suikoden...so what are the runes and what do they do?

[Leknaat]

oh god...I'm going to try and keep this brief...meaning someone else can clarify on what I leave out...>_>

well they're like your source of magic in the Suikoden world. There are also runes taht give you other benefits like increasing money and experiences or doubling your attack and such.

The 27 True Runes grant immortality and are more powerful than the regular runes. Meaning they, rpg battles aside, attack on a much larger scale. Only some of them have been revealed to date. The Rune of Punishment being the latest. The way they explained it in the third one is that destroying one of the true runes is like destryoing god. Or something like that>_> Other people can elaborate and tell you more lol

[Twilight]

oh ok....thanks lol I wanna know about this game since Im thinking of buying it or some of them

[Zelphiel]

Ok... maybe this'll help you more. Even though there's much much more to them than this... for the magic and gameplay part think of runes as being the same thing as Materia in FF7 or Mana Eggs in the Grandia games.

[Twilight]

now that helps a lot too lol

So can you master these runes magic? or what...

[Lancet Jades]

now that helps a lot too lol

So can you master these runes magic? or what...
No, the runes are as-is. No leveling them up or anything. But I agree, materia is a good parallel.

Some of the runes are (note: not all are in every suikoden game):

Fire/Water/Wind/Lightning/Earth rune (cast elemental spells)
Rage/Flowing/Cyclone/Thunder/Mother Earth (upgraded elemental runes)
Fury rune (grants Berserk, which means 2x physical damage)
Sunbeam rune (Recover about 5% of your HP every turn of battle)
Darkness rune (grants dark magic)
Shield rune (grants protection magic)
Fortune rune (2x exp)
Prosperity Rune (2x money)

Thats only a few, of course. A lot of the True runes are just upgraded versions of those.

[Twilight]

oh ok.....I thought like...maybe you could master those runes...so even if you dont have th equipped you could use the spells...like materia lol

[Zelphiel]

Nah... but in the later games especially most characters are better with certain types of runes... and characters that are bad with magic are fine with support runes. (not that there's any kind of aptitude for them... it just makes sense to not waste good runes on fighters with low magic.)

some other kinds of runes I can think of are...

Holy/True Holy: (suikoden 1 allows dashing in areas and world map/suikoden 2 allows dashing on world map)
Champions Rune: Weak enemies don't attack
Boar/Falcon Runes: Special attacks granted
Hazy Rune: Lowers enemy accuracy
Skunk Rune: Can't be targeted by enemies