League of Legends Rune Concept: "Pick Your Poison"

For a personal game design project, I explored a rework concept for Time Warp Tonic (TWT). I found TWT's value increasingly difficult to justify compared to the other options in its row, particularly Biscuit Delivery, as they're both competing for early game sustain.

My Design Goals & Constraints

• I want this rune to remain a potion-based rune, as it would fit sitting next to Biscuit Delivery and Triple Tonic.
• I want to keep this rune entirely early game focused, as consumables compete for limited inventory space in the mid to late game.
• This rune exists in the "Inspiration" tree, which is mostly defined by creativity and unique tools. I want to make a rune that fits this theme by warping an already established system, similar to other runes in this tree like Hextech Flashtraption, Magical Footwear or Unsealed Spellbook.
• The reason to pick this rune must differ from Biscuit Delivery's sustain or Triple Tonic's scaling rewards.

Using these goals & constraints, I designed:

Pick Your Poison

Description

"Choose between two juices at 3 minutes, then once more at 5 minutes. Each juice grants a buff at the cost of a drawback."

Functionality

> At minute 3, the player is presented with two juices. The two available juices temporarily occupy alternating inventory slots, making them the only usable item actives until the player drinks or sells one.

> The player then chooses whether they want to drink juice 1, drink juice 2, or sell the choice for 5g.

> Each juice provides a buff and a drawback, meaning the player has to adapt their choice based on their current situation to get the most value out of this rune.

> At minute 5, the player receives another choice of two juices.

> To prevent players from saving their juices too conservatively, the player has 30 seconds to drink a juice before the choice disappears.

Juice Concepts

Every choice offers both a combat juice and a tempo juice, with each option carrying a drawback that matters to the other juice's playstyle.

First Choice

(levels 3-4, min 3:00-3:30)

Apple Juice (Combat)

"Reduces your damage taken by 15% but reduces your movement speed by 10 for 60s."

Orange Juice (Tempo)

"Reduces your recall time by 5s but increases your damage taken by 10% for 60s."

Second Choice

(levels 4-6, min 5:00-5:30)

Watermelon Juice (Combat)

"Increases your damage dealt to champions by 10% but reduces your minion and monster damage by 20% for 60s."

Pineapple Juice (Tempo)

"Increases your out-of-combat movement speed by 115 but reduces your damage dealt to champions by 10% for 60s."

My Design Thinking

• I wanted Pick Your Poison to be chosen by players who want to temporarily cater their power in either combat or tempo during the early stages of laning. The value of receiving this choice becomes especially transparent if the player's playstyle varies from game to game. For the player to make the correct choice, they must assess both the benefit and the drawback simultaneously which can change depending on any given situation.
• I want my trade-off system to be something that can be played around, no matter if it's the player or their opponent that's using it. Each juice has a window of opportunity to abuse the juice's drawback or respect the juice's buff. But the player drinking the juice will of course always be able to drink it more favourably.
• Intended use of each juice:
• Apple Juice allows for much more beneficial extended trades, but won't be able to disengage or continous engaging o .
• Orange Juice lets the player reset faster for an early buy, but makes staying in lane riskier while the buff is active.
• Watermelon Juice gives the player an advantage in close fights, at the cost of weaker wave management.
• Pineapple Juice lets the player walk to lane and roam faster, at the cost of weaker damage when a fight starts.
• I gave the player 30s to make each decision so that players in base have a respectable amount of time to decide how they want to maximize its benefit or minimize its drawback. If the player takes too long, the choice disappear. I decided on this alternative, as opposed to automatically selecting the first from the pair, because I wanted to provide an option when a player finds themselves in a very specific situation where both juices would hurt their current lane state.
• I made the decision for the juices to occupy the player's inventory in alternating slots.
• This solved the gameplay problem of a player not having enough inventory slots available for the choice to be presented. Had I made the juices wait in a queue until there is enough inventory space, it would create UX problems regarding the 30s timer to drink one.
• I still ended up allowing for the choices to be sold in base. This way, if a player really wants to buy something and has absolutely no use case for drinking either juice, they can sell it to regain access to their inventory. This works similar to biscuits.
• The tab menu will remain to show the player's actual inventory.
• I made every juice represented by either red (combat) or yellow (tempo) fruit to make them slightly easier to differentiate during fights.
• I call them "juices", as that differentiates my rune from Triple Tonic's "elixirs", and Biscuit Delivery's "biscuits".

Problems Left to Solve

• It must be evaluated if this rune's complexity budget exceeds what's allowed for a normal rune. Will players understand the rune quick enough after trying it once? If not, it could be fixed in a number of ways:
  1. Simplifying the buffs and/or drawbacks.
  2. Re-using the same set of juices for both choices.
  3. Reducing the available choices from 2 to 1, and balancing around it.
  4. Removing the trade-off mechanic.
  5. Reworking this normal rune into a keystone rune.
• It must also be evaluated if this rune will remain situational as intended, or if players discover the mathematically superior/default juice for specific champions:
  1. Will Kassadin and Ryze players always drink Orange Juice to buy an early Tear of the Goddess without ever considering drinking Apple Juice?
  2. Will Elise players always drink Apple Juice to survive an extra towershot while diving?
  3. Will proxy Singed players discover a new strategy with Orange Juice's reduced recall time? Would it suck to play against?
  4. Will roam supports consistently try to cheese mid with Pineapple Juice's movement speed?

Darlings I've Killed

(Ideas I've abandoned)

I had the idea for a Juice that increases all gold gained by 20% (with a max gain of 300g) but also reduces your movement speed by 10 for 30 seconds. I think it would be a really fun challenge to optimize your gold generated in the next 30 seconds, which could cause player behaviour where they might risk getting poked or slightly unoptimize their jungle timers only for a couple coins. I threw this idea in the trash because it seemed like a juice which Watermelon Juice would find difficult to compete with.

I initially decided on 3 choices, which I suspected to not only be more fun and engaging, but it would also align with the 3 biscuits from Biscuit Delivery, and the 3 elixers from Triple Tonic. This unfortunately increases the complexity budget for a rune that already has enough complexity as is.

I had an idea for a juice that removes 3 item slots from the player for an annoyingly long duration, in return for a lump sum of gold. This seemed very difficult to balance and something that would create too many edge cases.