Rune Knight Fighter Build Guide – Giant’s Might – 2024 Update

For all D&D guides on Nat1gaming, they only use the main sourcebooks (Player’s Handbook, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything) as well as Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos (mostly for Silvery Barbs) as those tend to be the most commonly used books at tables. Always be sure that if you’re following a guide that you’re adhering to your tables rules about what sourcebooks you are allowed to follow.

Any spell, class, feature, or other game item that is linkable on this website is covered by the 5th edition Open Games License and will be in the Player’s Handbook, but not everything in the Player’s Handbook will be linked to. All other materials that aren’t linked to are from other sourcebooks or aren’t allowed to be linked to per the 5th Edition Open Games License, so please refer to the appropriate sourcebooks for that information.

For the purposes of this guide, it will be assumed that you would not be multiclassing. While multiclassing can be excellent for many of these, this is for those who want to play the build all the way through in the same class. Guides that use multiclassing will be separate from these.

For spellcasters, you may notice substantial overlap between the spell lists of builds with the same base class. This is due to each guide utilizing a generically good spell list and not considering extenuating factors that will influence how you particularly sculpt your spell list. When creating your own spell list, you should take into account the campaign setting, what spells any other party members are capable of casting, potential overlap (ritual spells tend to overlap so it’s rare you need multiple people capable of casting them), or potential shortcomings in the parties total spell list. While this guide can definitely help point you in the right direction for crafting a spell list, you should use your judgement and preferences to figure out what spells make the most sense for your character.

To that end, please refer to the Spell List and Spell Tier list for any substitutions you’d want to make to the build.

While there isn’t much diversity in how Rune Knights can be built or played, it offers a cool play experience where you get a lot of diverse passive abilities and activated abilities with the runes. While you still lack the general diversity of a spellcaster, Rune Knights get a lot more versatility than the average Fighter and you’re going to be much stronger to boot, second only to Echo Knights.

Rune Carver (Level 3) – A Tier – Runes are really strong as their passive abilities can be solid and their activated abilities can be really strong.

Giant’s Might (Level 3) – D+ Tier – For the old grappling rules, this ability was pretty good. Now it’s just a fine ability that gives you a small damage boost.

Runic Shield (Level 7) – C Tier – A Silvery Barbs just for one attack can be useful if an ally is getting hit by a critical hit or they’ll go down very soon, but potentially stopping one attack of a multiattacking enemy is never too exciting.

Additional Rune (Level 7) – A+ Tier – You can now access the best runes so it’s no surprise that this ability is really strong. Hill Giant’s Rune, in particular, is very good.

Great Stature (Level 10) – D- Tier – This ability tests my patience as I can’t give it an F because it does do something.

Master of Runes (Level 15) – S- Tier – Runes are good, and getting double charges of all of them is excellent.

Runic Juggernaut (Level 18) – D+ Tier – More damage from Giant’s Might is ok even if it’s a small boost and additional reach can be ok, but it likely won’t be that impactful.

The Ultimate 2024 One D&D Subclass Tier List

DnD 2024 Class and Subclass Tier List Breakdown

Level	Class Features/Feat	Notes
1	Fighting Style (Defense), Second Wind, Weapon Mastery	Second Wind Charges: 2 Weapon Masteries: 3
2	Action Surge (x1), Tactical Mind	Second Wind Charges: 2 Weapon Masteries: 3
3	Rune Knight Bonus Proficiencies Rune Carver (Fire Rune, Stone Rune) Giant’s Might	Second Wind Charges: 2 Weapon Masteries: 3
4	Feat: Great Weapon Master (STR)	Second Wind Charges: 3 Weapon Masteries: 4
5	Extra Attack, Tactical Shift	Second Wind Charges: 3 Weapon Masteries: 4
6	Feat: Heavy Armor Master (STR)	Second Wind Charges: 3 Weapon Masteries: 4
7	Runic Shield Additional Rune (Hill Rune)	Second Wind Charges: 3 Weapon Masteries: 4
8	Feat: Mage Slayer (STR)	Second Wind Charges: 3 Weapon Masteries: 4
9	Indomitable (x1), Tactical Master	Second Wind Charges: 3 Weapon Masteries: 4
10	Great Stature Additional Rune (Storm Rune)	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 5
11	Extra Attack (x2)	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 5
12	Feat: Constitution to 18	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 5
13	Indomitable (x2), Studied Attacks	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 5
14	Feat: Constitution to 20	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 5
15	Master of Runes Additional Rune (Cloud Rune)	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 5
16	Feat: Resilient (WIS)	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 6
17	Action Surge (x2), Indomitable (x3)	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 6
18	Runic Juggernaut	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 6
19	Feat: Boon of Combat Prowess	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 6
20	Extra Attack (x3)	Second Wind Charges: 4 Weapon Masteries: 6

Not seeing the exact build you want in this guide? Check out this guide instead!

The Ultimate One D&D Fighter Guide – Mastering Fighters

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Species: Goliath (Hill Giant)

Attributes:

	POINT BUY
STRENGTH	15 (+2 background) = 17
DEXTERITY	10
CONSTITUTION	15 (+1 background) = 16
INTELLIGENCE	8
WISDOM	14
CHARISMA	8

Class: Fighter

Class Features: Fighting Style, Second Wind, Weapon Mastery

Skill Proficiencies: Insight and Perception

Background: Farmer (Tough)

Starting Equipment: Greataxe, 10 Javelins, Chain Mail, Dungeoneer’s Pack, and 33 gp + 50 gp from background

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Species: Goliath (Hill Giant)

For any martial character, it’s hard to justify not going for Goliath as the Hill Giant topple is so incredibly good to get advantage on attacks. There are other solid options for species as well like Human for an additional origin feat or Aasimar as they are just generally strong, but Goliath is generally going to be my choice.

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Attributes

	POINT BUY
STRENGTH	15 (+2 background) = 17
DEXTERITY	10
CONSTITUTION	15 (+1 background) = 16
INTELLIGENCE	8
WISDOM	14
CHARISMA	8

This is the standard stat distribution for Strength based Fighters as you have maxed out Strength and Constitution, good Wisdom for saving throws, and 10 Dexterity for no AC penalties.

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Proficiencies: Insight and Perception

Just excellent skill proficiencies for any character.

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Background: Farmer

The best attributes with the best feat for martial characters that care about Strength.

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Starting Equipment – Greataxe, 10 Javelins, Chain Mail, Dungeoneer’s Pack, and 33 gp + 50 gp from background

For two hander Fighters, this is the standard equipment. You could pick any two hander you want as both the Greatsword and Maul deal slightly more damage on average when their Mastery properties aren’t considered, but if you consider the Cleave property from Greataxe, this technically does the most. If you want a different weapon, I’d probably pick the Maul as the mastery property is better and gives you the option to take the Crusher feat.

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Class – Fighter

Fighters get three abilities to start off with in Fighting Style, Second Wind, and Weapon Mastery.

You get to pick your Fighting Style, and since this build wants to use a two hander, you should just pick up Defense as it’s a generically good Fighting Style.

Second Wind is a cool feature where, for a bonus action, you can heal yourself a bit. This is obviously great for tough fights when you are running low on health and this not only scales with level, but also gets additional features later on.

Weapon Mastery gives you the Mastery property of three weapons, and you should obviously pick the Greataxe, Javelin, and any weapon of your choice. While you will get more and more weapon masteries as you level up, you will realistically only ever need a few to make your build work.

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Level 2

Class Features: Action Surge, Tactical Mind

Level 2 brings two new features with Action Surge and Tactical Mind.

The Fighter is one of the most popular multiclass options in D&D, and Action Surge is a huge reason why. While you can only use this once every short or long rest (twice at 17), getting an additional action almost always means a whole new slew of attacks. Even at level 2, this is a powerful ability, but once you get multiple Extra Attacks, this becomes an extremely powerful feature that can dole out an obscene amount of damage. In a pinch, this can be used for other actions such as Dash as well which adds to the power and utility of this ability.

Tactical Mind is a neat new feature that allows you to use a Second Wind charge to reroll a failed ability check with a bit of a bonus. While this won’t come up too often, this is a nice feature to have for particularly important ability checks.

Level 3

Class: Rune Knight

Class Features: Bonus Proficiencies, Rune Carver (Fire, Stone), Giant Might

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Stone Rune

Level 3 brings your subclass, and for this guide, it’s Rune Knight! Rune Knight brings you three new abilities immediately with Bonus Proficiencies, Rune Carver, and Giant Might.

Bonus Proficiencies are mostly flavor here as you get proficiency with smith’s tools (not bad with the new crafting system) and you’re fluent in Giant.

Rune Carver is the real reason anyone picks this class. You are able to imbue runes onto your equipment that grant passive effects on top of having a strong activated abilities that you get every short or long rest. While nearly all the runes are really strong, you do only get two to start with and you should pick the best ones in Fire and Stone.

The Fire Rune’s passive effect isn’t that great (double your PB when doing checks with a tool), but the activated is really strong. When you hit an enemy, you can invoke the rune to get bonus damage, potentially restrain them, and they take additional damage each round if they are restrained. This is a really powerful effect for any enemy you need to lock down, whether it’s to prevent them from escaping, keeping them in a CC area, or otherwise.

The Stone Rune has a much stronger passive ability with you having permanent advantage on Insight checks and 120 feet of Darkvision. The activated ability is even stronger than the Fire Rune as you can use your reaction to put an enemy within 30 feet of you into a stupor. While they get a lot of checks to escape it, this is functionally a free chance for strong CC making this excellent for tougher fights where you need to split enemies up.

Your final ability is Giant Might, which as a Bonus Action, gives you a few abilities: you grow to the Large size, you have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws, and one attack each turn deals an additional 1d6. In 2014, this meant that grappling was a more appealing option, but since it’s been changed to a flat DC for your target, this ability is substantially worse and is really only useful for the excess damage.

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Level 4

Feat: Great Weapon Master (STR)

Class Features: None

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Stone Rune

You get your first feat and you can’t go wrong with Great Weapon Master! Extra damage on your weapon attacks and potentially getting a bonus action attack? Incredible! This is a truly excellent feat and great reason to use a two handed weapon.

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Level 5

Class Features: Extra Attack, Tactical Shift

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Stone Rune

Easily the most exciting feature for martial characters, level 5 brings your Extra Attack! Being able to double your damage output is obviously really strong, but since you’re a Fighter, you’ll eventually get even more attacks on top of this!

Level 5 also brings a new feature with Tactical Shift. Now when you use Second Wind, you can move up to half your speed without provoking an opportunity attack. A heal, disengage, and extra movement? Sign me up!

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Level 6

Feat: Heavy Armor Master (STR)

Class Features: None

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Stone Rune

Level 6 brings another feat and this is a good opportunity to pick up Heavy Armor Master. Reducing damage is always nice, and considering how many hits you’re likely to take, the health gain from this is going to stack up a lot over time!

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Level 7

Class Features: Runic Shield, Additional Known Rune (Hill Rune)

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Runic Shield is an interesting ability that can force enemies to reroll their attack roll, but it comes with a lot of downsides. First, this only works as a way to potentially make an enemy miss as you can’t use it to reroll friendly attacks (it only works on hit) nor any other types of rolls. Second, this uses your reaction which you may want to save for your Stone Rune instead. Third and the most problematic, a lot enemies are going to have multiattacks at this point making it difficult for you to even help protect an ally.

While this ability definitely isn’t great, being able to potentially prevent an ally going down, or better yet, making an enemy reroll a critical hit does make this ability somewhat useful still.

For your known Rune, you can pick up the excellent Hill Rune. The Hill Rune gives you natural resistance to poison which is definitely neat, and the activation is really strong too giving you resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage for one minute, functionally the same as a Barbarian‘s Rage. This is simply a strong passive and active ability that you should be happy to have.

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Level 8

Feat: Mage Slayer (STR)

Class Features: None

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

You get yet another feat this level, and you can finally get 20 STR with Mage Slayer. Being able to really mess with casters is nice as a martial character, and getting a functional charge of Legendary Resistance? Incredible! A really strong feat that I have most of my martial characters taking.

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Level 9

Class Features: Indomitable (x1), Tactical Master

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Level 9 brings a base Fighter feature – Indomitable! You can reroll a saving throw that you fail and add your Fighter level on top of it which is extremely powerful. As you climb in levels, this will almost be like a player’s version of Legendary Resistance which is super cool.

Tactical Master is a new ability lets you replace a weapon mastery property when you attack with Push, Sap, or Slow. This is yet another great feature as you may not always want the mastery property on the weapon you happen to be using, so having options is always welcome.

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Level 10

Class Features: Great Stature, Additional Known Rune (Storm Rune)

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

Level 10 brings you an additional known rune and the unfortunate Great Stature.

You can now pick up the Storm Rune which gives you advantage on Arcana checks (boo) and you can’t be surprised anymore (maybe ok) as a passive. The activated ability is definitely more interesting as you can enter a state for 1 minute that, using your reaction, can impose advantage or disadvantage on attacks, saving throws, or ability checks. Obviously being able to help allies or hinder enemy rolls is going to be pretty strong overall!

Great Stature, on the other hand, is mostly flavor as you grow taller and your additional damage from Giant Stature moves up to 1d8 from 1d6. Definitely disappointing.

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Level 11

Class Features: Extra Attack (x2)

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

Level 11 brings yet another Extra Attack, which like at level 5, is incredibly good.

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Level 12

Feat: Constitution to 18

Class Feature: None

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

Now that your Strength is maxed out, you can start pumping your Constitution for more health and better saving throws!

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Level 13

Class Features: Indomitable (x2), Studied Attack

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

Level 13 brings another charge of Indomitable and a powerful new feature, Studied Attack!

Studied Attack is a super cool feature that, if you miss with one of your attacks against one enemy, you have advantage on your next attack against that same target! Anything that helps you connect with your enemy is always exciting!

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Level 14

Feat: Constitution to 20

Class Features: None

KNOWN RUNES

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

Level 14 brings another feat and you should be maximizing your Constitution score to get the best possible health, saving throws, and runes is awesome!

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Level 15

Class Features: Master of Runes, Additional Known Rune (Cloud Rune)

KNOWN RUNES

Cloud Rune

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

Master of Runes is an extremely powerful ability that doubles the strength of your runes as you can activate them twice now! Doubling your best ability is, unsurprisingly, extremely strong.

You also get your final Known Rune, and while you already picked the best four, you can pick up Cloud Rune. The passive ability is pretty whatever for you as advantage on Sleight of Hand and Deception checks aren’t impactful for you. The active ability is neat where you can use your reaction to redirect an enemies attack to another enemy within 30 feet (the attack gets magically transferred so range is otherwise not an issue). This is a neat feature when you really need to prevent an attack and potentially nab other enemies with enemy critical hits, but like with Runic Shield, this is not going to be used too often as multiattacks make this rather unappealing.

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Level 16

Feat: Resilient (WIS)

Class Feature: None

KNOWN RUNES

Cloud Rune

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

Once again, I really like buffing your Wisdom to make it harder for you to fail saving throws, but once again, you could totally consider a feat if you’d like.

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Level 17

Class Features: Action Surge (x2), Indomitable (x3)

KNOWN RUNES

Cloud Rune

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

More charges for your best base Fighter abilities is obviously excellent.

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Level 18

Class Features: Runic Juggernaut

KNOWN RUNES

Cloud Rune

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

While you would hope your Capstone ability would care about your Runes, it’s another buff to Giant Might where you now grow to Huge, you get additional reach, and the damage die increases to 1d10. Unfortunately, this is pretty disappointing for a capstone, but what are you going to do?

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Level 19

Epic Boon: Boon of Combat Prowess

Class Features: None

KNOWN RUNES

Cloud Rune

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

Your Epic Boon choice, as I will pick for every martial character, is the Boon of Combat Prowess. Converting a miss into a hit is functionally getting an Extra Attack, but better, and I will take an additional attack every day of the week.

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Level 20

Class Feature: Extra Attack (x3)

KNOWN RUNES

Cloud Rune

Fire Rune

Hill Rune

Stone Rune

Storm Rune

Level 20 brings your capstone ability – Extra Attack (x3). No frills, no fuss, just a bunch of attacks which is perfect for a Fighter.