Rune Slinger (Magic Throwable Cards!)

LEGACY PROJECT!!

Rune Slinger is a system that turns runes into customizable magic projectiles.
Each rune is an item you can throw, and when it flies through the air it follows specific rules. A rune can carry one or more “effects” — for example, creating an explosion, summoning lightning, pushing or pulling enemies, teleporting you, or leaving a particle trail. Some runes can even split into copies or activate as landmines when they land.

Ender men drop runes. All runes share a common drop chance and 1 can drop at once, 10% of the time. (configurable.) Blank runes are the best type to find, since you can craft them into any type you want via very simple crafting recipes in most cases. Works out of the box for survival gameplay, but extensive configs are provided for pack developers.

What makes Rune Slinger different is its modular design. Every effect is built as a separate piece that can be combined with others. This means rune behavior can be adjusted without touching the code: pack creators can change numbers like damage, speed, or range, and choose which effects are active. Even the visuals, like particle trails and explosion size, can be scaled separately from the actual power. Check out the configs for yourself!

In short: Rune Slinger provides a structured, configurable way to design magical projectiles in Minecraft.

---> [Got requests or insights for this mod? Message me or comment, I'd love feedback & if your idea is viable and fits into the overall goals of the mod I will likely add it. Also, if you encounter a glitch especially when modifying configs to make your own runes, please don't hesitate to reach out. I'll likely be able to patch the particular issue in most cases & would like to do so!] <---

Quick note...I would recommend the following mods to players / developers for usage alongside Rune Slingers: JEI (Just Enough Items) for recipe viewing because recipes are really random for converting the blank rune into functional runes. For developers, KubeJS is recommended for altering recipes (possibly to introduce a tier system?). FTB Quests would be great for adding first time discovery rewards per rune & a reward for collecting them all. 

More Technical Breakdown:

~ Rune Slinger Overview ~

Rune Slinger is a modular projectile magic framework for Forge 1.20.1 that turns “runes” into fully data‑driven, configurable ability carriers. Each rune is an item that, when thrown, spawns a lightweight projectile entity whose behavior is composed from a selectable stack of effect modules (e.g. damage, explosion, lightning, launch, motion shaping, split cloning, knockback, pull, teleport, potion application, landmine arming, particle trails). The system is intentionally decoupled so pack authors can enable, disable, or rebalance features without code changes.

~ Design Goals ~

1. Modular Architecture: Each effect is an independent stage-aware module (throw, flight tick, entity hit, block hit, stuck tick). Adding or removing a capability never requires editing a monolithic class.
2. Tunable Everywhere: Per‑rune configs govern: damage numbers, gravity, speed multipliers, cooldowns, split counts, teleport behaviors, particle type/density, explosion visuals vs logical power, pickup buffs, landmine arming, and more.
3. Safe Extensibility: Internal helpers avoid vanilla arrow quirks (e.g., double damage, unwanted crit flags), and smoothing logic reduces flight jitter for low‑speed gliders.

~ Key Feature Examples (Not Exhaustive) ~

• Composite Effects: A rune can simultaneously explode (visual + knockback), apply configurable potion effects, spawn a particle trail, and split into damage‑forwarding clones.
• Conditional Placement: Sneak‑throw suppression of ground detonation for explosive variants (allows tactical placement / landmine synergy).
• Flight Physics: Motion shaping (initial dampening, drag, terminal horizontal speed, gravity scaling) + smoothing for visual stability.
• Visual Layer: Per‑rune particle trail definitions with interpolation-based segment filling; explosion module supports visual scaling separate from logical radius.
• Inventory & Progression: Shapeless transformation recipes (blank rune + mundane ingredients → themed rune) and block compression for large-scale storage.
• Balance & Access: Configurable pickup buffs, iframe bypass for split damage continuity, adjustable range & life timers.
• Ender men have a low chance to drop runes (configurable.)

~ Configuration & Customization Surface ~

• Per‑rune TOML (or equivalent) controls module enable flags and numeric tuning.
• Data pack JSON handles crafting evolution paths.
• Modular pipeline means new effect modules can be injected without refactoring existing ones.
• Particle + explosion visuals can scale independently of actual gameplay power (useful for “cinematic but fair” balancing).

The features above represent only a subset; various additional effect interactions and visual customization hooks are available. 

Thanks for reading! Enjoy.