How about combining the talisman idea, the charms and the runewords.
Everyone gets a new special inventory area. You put runes in there. These runes can form runewords.
So in one sense, it would be like runes in D2.. except they wouldn't be slotted into items, they'd be slotted into your character. And like the talisman idea, it would be a separate inventory area thus avoiding the extremely un-fun "charms or inventory space?" decisions from D2.
Suddenly runeword length becomes relevant. Less runes is more runewords per talisman, and their power could be adjusted accordingly, so players have to make some choices how to combine them. Very cool.
Suddenly runeword length becomes relevant. Less runes is more runewords per talisman, and their power could be adjusted accordingly, so players have to make some choices how to combine them. Very cool.
It's kind of a sad comment on D3 that this thought would occur. More levels with random structure like a proper Diablo game, and it wouldn't.