Have we ever considered getting rid of runes?
Success rate and power are independent of rune consumption. It seems their only purpose is to force all casters to rather redundantly dedicate massive portions of land to rune production.
As far as conventional game design is concerned, the existence of runes seems unnecessary. We could get rid of this, and allow for more interesting and versatile builds.
Imagine that your vehicle has a gas tank, but this gas tank requires its own internal engine and separate gas tank, for it to function.
What if I told you, the internal engine could use gas from the main tank, rather than have a separate one? Crazy, right?
Runes are to utopia, what the second gas tank is, to said vehicle.