No just the original version from gog is all you need.

Runemaster decreases Casting cost of ARCANE spells by 25%. It also gives a 25% bonus to your Research when researching them as well. Basically every 4 normal research = 5 when researching Arcane spells.

It lists the Runemaster bonus's in the game by right clicking it. It also doubles chances of your Dispel spells which can be very good and useful as well.

Ok, thanks!

There is one mod I'd suggest, but you don't need it right away. It's called "Plight." All it does is update and expand the in-game help texts so they're far more informative and accurate. You can read about it here:

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=3642

I like going with just Artificer + Runemaster and then 2 Life, 2 Nature, and 5 Sorcery. This allows me to make items that give a hero

+ attack and + to hit, which makes them powerful ranged attackers.
Guardian Wind and Magic Immunity, which makes them immune to ranged attacks.
Flight and Endurance, which gets them anywhere fast.

I equip three heroes in this manner - Malleus, another caster with Arcane Power, and either Shuri or Alorra so there is a missile attacker in the binch. With these three I can defeat enemies that have Magic Immunity with the bow and arrow ranged attacks, and anything that has Missile Immunity with the magic attackers. The problem is invisible enemies like Shin Bo, nightblades, or air elementals. These heroes suck at melee so I try and avoid that type of foe. Or if possible I try to have a good melee unit standing by.

Wouldn't True Sight work? As I recall, it makes the unit immune to illusions, so they can see (and attack) invisible units just fine. And you should be able to add it to a ring, if you don't wish to cast it.
It does of course rely on you getting True Sight, and with 2 life books it's not guaranteed.

Sadly to be a added item power True Sight needs 6 Life Books! Which is totally dumb as thats the same number of books needed for Lion Heart and even Invulnerable and Plane Shifting only take 5 Books.

So as a unit enchantment then, with all the penalties associated with that :/

Right. I can live with that being the team's only weakness. Well in the interest of full disclosure, giant spiders can be a nuisance if they are in the same lair as something like basilisks. In cases like that the spiders can immobilize and ground my team, and the basilisks or whatever can be on them fast. But still it's a small weakness that I can avoid pretty easily.
Oh, also worth mention is an enemy city with a wall of darkness. Since my heroes use ranged attack and nothing can shoot thru a wall of darkness, it's nice when Malleus' companion caster can dispel the wall and Malleus and Shuri can toast everything after that. I love this build.

Actually Wall of Darkness can NOT be dispelled during battle. Only on the world map can it be dispelled.

Keep in mind though that units with Illusion Immunity are not effected by the Wall of Darkness and can freely make ranged attacks like normal.

Actually I have cast Disenchant Area in combat and dispelled walls of darkness many times.

I found the downfall of this build. It usually works great, and this time I did away with three of the four enemy wizards, but the fourth (Jafar) kept casting Mass Invisibility on all his forces. That prevented my ranged attacks from working. So I was unable to beat him. Ran out of time to play before I could think of something, I suppose next time I might try and have some elite paladins on standby, preferably with magic weapons and either Holy Armor or some such. *shrug*
Any ideas, anyone? Thx

Disenchant Area, or better yet, Disenchant True.

Thanks! I will have to reload a save and try it.