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View Full Version : My Experiences as a Truenamer



Zaq
2009-06-09, 06:20 PM
Heya. I'm gonna talk about my actual play experience as a by-the-book Truenamer here. This isn't really a "handbook" in the Gleemax sense, though I will be talking about what I've learned (and more importantly, am learning) works and doesn't work. The first post will be used to discuss generalities of the Truenamer, viewed through the lens of my actual experience. The second post will be used for specific discussions of what I've actually done in-game, giving real examples of what a Truenamer can and cannot do. I haven't decided what the third post will be for, but it'll come in handy some day, I'm sure.

So, let's start. The Truenamer, from Tome of Magic, is infamous for being, well, unusable. For those of you who don't know, it's a skill-based casting class, in that the success or failure of its spells (called "utterances") hinges on a skill roll. The problem is that the DC of affecting any creature with an utterance is 15 + (2xCR). See how it goes up by two per level? And remember how you can only put one more rank in a skill every level? Yeah. So it actually gets harder to use your abilities as you get stronger. Add in a few more stupid design decisions (the fact that using an utterance gets harder, adding 2 to the DC every time you use it per day, for instance, or the fact that the utterances tend to be nothing special in power) and you have a class that is almost universally regarded as a grade-A stinker. There are a few top-notch homebrew fixes for it (some, indeed, on this very forum), but the as-written class is underwhelming at best.

Generally speaking, I agree with this. I've spoken out against it quite loudly in the past, and I don't recant what I've said now. That said, recently I got a wild hair up my ass and decided I was going to try to play the class pretty much as written. The campaign is tenth level (higher than I've ever played before, in fact) and is still young and in progress, so I'll be updating my experiences as I go.

To make things easier, I'll be using and abusing spoiler tags. I hope you don't mind too much.

Vocabulary:
Utterance: Essentially, a Truenamer's "spells." There are three kinds (or "lexicons") of these, listed below.
Lexicon of the Evolving Mind (LEM): These are your "normal" utterances. They affect creatures (or rather, a creature), and they come in "normal" and "reversed" flavors. In other words, each LEM utterance is really two-in-one, and you can choose which version to use when you speak it. They have 6 levels. A level 20 Truenamer gets 20 of these.
Lexicon of the Crafted Tool (LCT): These utterances affect items, and are generally pretty much crap. They come in 5 levels, and there's only two per level (yes, two!). A level 20 Truenamer gets 5 of these. (Please feel free to add a sarcastic "Wooooooo." as necessary.)
Lexicon of the Perfected Map (LPM): These utterances, like LCT, kind of suck, and affect areas. You get a whopping 4 of these at level 20.
Truespeak: A trained-only, INT-based skill that is the basis of the Truenamer class. Every utterance requires a successful Truespeak check to work.
Chaining: This is my term; that is, you won't find it in Tome of Magic. When I say I "chain" an utterance, it just means using it again as soon as it runs out. No relation to the Chain Spell metamagic feat.
Law of Sequence (LoS): One of two major pain-in-the-ass rules that afflict Truenamers, the Law of Sequence says you can only have one copy of an utterance working at once. In other words, if you cast Lesser Word of Nurturing, you can't cast it again until it runs out. You can use other utterances while you wait, but you can't use the same utterance twice before it runs out.
Law of Resistance (LoR): The other pain-in-the-ass rule, this makes the DC of your Truespeak check for each individual utterance go up by two for every time you've used that specific utterance that day.

Basics of the Truenamer:
Over 20 levels, the Truenamer gets 20 LEM utterances, 5 LCT utterances, and 4 LPM utterances. They have other class features as well, so let's go through and look at them, shall we?

Known Personal Truename: This is about 50% fluff and 50% crunch. Knowing your own truename is useful for some specific things, but generally speaking it means you have a net +2 to affect yourself with utterances.

Knowledge Focus: You get four of these, each one giving you an unnamed +3 to a specific knowledge skill, chosen when you get it. It specifically states that it stacks with itself, which is handy. These are a nice perk, especially with Knowledge Devotion.

Truename Research: Whee! A useless bonus feat!

Recitation Feats: Whee! More useless bonus feats!

See the named: If you're willing to spend a lot of time and money researching someone's truename, you can scry on them once per day. Yay, I guess? Weird that it appears on the table as "1/day" but never gets any better.

Sending: If you're willing to spend a lot of time and money researching someone's truename, you can cast Sending to them thrice per day. Kind of thematically cool, but I really can't see this being useful.

Speak Unto the Masses: This ability is great, but comes way, way too late. At level 17, other classes are getting 9th level spells. You, on the other hand, are getting the ability to use LEM utterances on multiple creatures at once. With limitations. And a not-insignificant boost to the DC. Yeah, this comes way too freakin' late. Still, it's useful.

Say my Name and I am There: This is one of the coolest capstones ever. You get to give your friends a little magic word that lets them summon you whenever they want. They don't have to make checks, they can use it at will, and you can give the "true nickname" to as many people as you trust. I mean, at 20th level, you'd damn well better get something cool, but this really is cool.

The Truenamer and Complete Champion:
Complete Champion brought the Truenamer two major boons, and I'm not sure how playable it would be without them. The first is the Paragnostic Assembly, one of many organizations in the book which provides benefits to its members depending on how dedicated they are. One of these benefits is, at the second-highest levels of affiliation, an unnamed +10 bonus to a chosen skill from a specific list. Oddly, but thankfully, the list includes Truespeak. I say this is odd because it's the ONE place I've seen ANY new Truespeak-related material from WotC.

So, if you're a Truenamer, it helps immensely to beg your GM to include the Assembly in your world, and to bend over backwards to get as high an affiliation score as you can. Some of the affiliation boosters are purely mechanical... +2 for each Knowledge skill you have with 10 or more ranks, for example. Some, however, are more roleplaying-based... bonuses for going on dangerous missions for the Assembly, for bringing them new information, and so on. Work with your GM to see what you can do to become affiliated with the assembly. Since my character was created at tenth level, most of the work I did for the Assembly would be in the past, so I ended up giving my GM about 5 pages of backstory and sacrificing a portion of my starting wealth to the Assembly. Lower levels of affiliation can give up to a +5 bonus, so it's still worth looking into even at lower levels.

The second boon Complete Champion offers is the well-loved feat Knowledge Devotion. The Truenamer has a truly lousy skill list. They get all Knowledge skills as class skills, Truespeak, and UMD, and that's nearly it. They don't even get Spellcraft... and some thematically appropriate skills, like Listen, Speak Language, and Decipher Script, are also missing. The point is, as an INT-based character, you'll likely end up with a lot of Knowledge skills. Since the Paragnostic Assembly rewards you for having lots of Knowledge skills, this isn't really a bad thing, but Knowledge Devotion makes it even better. Between your ranks, the Truenamer "Knowledge focus" bonuses, your INT, and a few choice Utterances, it's very easy to max out the bonus you get from Knowledge Devotion, thus giving you something to do in combat when you don't want to risk or waste utterances. It's also possible to make a gish-focused truenamer. I chose to play more of a party supporter than a self-buffing gish, but Knowledge Devotion works beautifully on a Truenamer gish.

Weaknesses of the Truenamer compared to other casters:
The utterances a Truenamer gets aren't generally anything special, and a standard sorcerer pretty much outshines a Truenamer even when the utterances work. There are two or three effects a Truenamer can do that, say, a Wizard can't... for example, Spell Rebirth (which you can get at level 10, if you were smarter than me and didn't lose any caster levels) lets you "un-dispel" a spell, renewing a dispelled or dismissed spell effect. Pretty cool. Mostly, though, the utterances are pretty much on par with or weaker than what a sorcerer of equal level can do.

Also, utterances have two more big problems. First, they're all single-target except for the "Lexicon of the Perfected Map" ones (which are generally weak, and of which you only learn FOUR as a Truenamer 20). Since you can't have two of the same utterance going at once, this is a huge limitation. You can cast what amounts to Haste, or Fly, or Freedom of Movement on someone, sure, but only on one person at a time, which sucks. Second, utterances are REALLY SHORT. The LONGEST one lasts for one minute, and that's a real anomaly. Generally they work for either one, three, or five rounds. This severely limits their out-of-combat utility, and even in combat, three rounds may or may not be enough if you don't have true blitzkrieg encounters.

Strengths of the Truenamer compared to other casters:
The Truenamer's viability depends 100% on your ability to pump your Truespeak check. If your check is too low, you'll waste most of your actions in combat, and you'll be a dead weight. However, once you go book diving, it's not THAT hard to get up to fairly reasonable checks. I'll be writing this from the perspective of having a 90% or better chance to use your utterances successfully, which isn't that hard to get.

First, very few utterances allow saving throws. The few that do should probably be avoided, since the saving throw mechanic is weak (it's based on Charisma... which is the ONLY THING the Truenamer uses Charisma for. Lame.), but a surprising number of them don't even bother. Inertia Surge, for instance, immobilizes an enemy for one turn, and they don't get to do a thing about it. Greater Speed of the Zephyr can mimic the effects of Slow, but the opponent doesn't get a save to resist. If you pick your utterances carefully, you'll end up rolling all the dice, and your opponent won't get a say in the matter.

Second, while utterances that aren't based on spells are rare, they do exist, and it's nice to be able to do some things that the party wizard can't replicate. As a few examples, Inertia Surge gives Freedom of Movement at level 1 (only for one round, sure, but that's enough to get out of a grapple); Spell Rebirth can either "un-dispel" something or, just as interestingly, can dispel without having to make a caster level check; Universal Aptitude gives a +5 unnamed bonus on ALL SKILLS for five rounds; and Caster Lens can increase a friend's caster level or, more importantly, manifester level by 2.

Another thing is that the Truenamer can get past spell resistance. Utterances are spell-like abilities, but if you voluntarily increase the DC of your Truespeak check by 5, you can automatically bypass spell resistance. Every point you bump up the DC counts, of course, but this is handy nonetheless.

There's one more strength, though, but it's so important I'm going to set it aside separately.

Quickening Utterances: (If you read only one spoiler in this post, read this one.)
The Truenamer, like most other casters, has some equivalent of metamagic. Only two of them are really effective (Extend Utterance and Quicken Utterance), but oh, how effective they are. "Metautterances" (they don't actually get this name) effectively increase the DC of your Truespeak check by a certain amount and apply a metamagic effect to the utterance. Extend is an easy +5, and Quicken is a ridiculous +20. Yes, go ahead and think about that for a second. You have to have a greater than 100% chance of making your Truespeak check before you can even think about using Quicken. On its face, this seems patently absurd... and really, it is. It's an absurd limitation. However, you wouldn't be playing a Truenamer without supercharging your Truespeak rolls, would you? Once you gain the ability to use Quicken, well, it immediately becomes the strongest weapon in your arsenal, bar none.

See, here's the thing about Quicken. The Truespeak DC for any given utterance is static with regards to the utterance itself; that is, using Knight's Puissance (a first level utterance) on your Rogue buddy is exactly as hard as using Breath of Recovery (a sixth level utterance) on the same Rogue. All that matters is the target, not the utterance. Do you see where I'm going here?

Quickening your strongest utterances is exactly as difficult, or as easy, as quickening your weakest ones.

When your Wizard friend got Quicken Spell, he immediately started loading up on Quickened True Strikes, Quickened True Castings, Quickened Greases, all those fun spells. He couldn't Quicken Haste, though, or Solid Fog.

You? Can.

The Truenamer is just about the only casting class, barring insanity like the Incantatrix, that can Quicken every spell they have as soon as they get it. (The Shadowcaster can also do this, but not as frequently.) This is huge. This is huger than huge. This is what makes the Truenamer worth playing. As soon as you hit 9th level (the earliest you're allowed to take Quicken Utterance), you can quicken ANYTHING YOU WANT for the rest of your career.

Also, Quickening essentially costs you nothing but your swift action, and this is the only in-class option Truenamers get for swift actions. Even if you don't have a 100% chance of successfully casting a quickened utterance, try it anyway. You lose nothing if you fail. The DC doesn't go up (the Law of Resistance kicks in only on a successful utterance), and you still have your standard action left to cast normally. There's almost no reason NOT to try quickening something every round.


Protecting your investments:
Truenamers rely ridiculously heavily on magic items. Every Truenamer NEEDS a (Greater) Amulet of the Silver Tongue (found in Tome of Magic, +5 enhancement to Truespeak, +10 for Greater). Many GMs will also allow a simple competence-bonus item, using the rules in the DMG. A competence item isn't strictly necessary, but it helps a lot, so if your GM lets you, pounce on the opportunity. However, when so much of your usefulness comes from these items, losing them is an enormous blow. Adventurers get robbed, they fall into oozes, they get hit with shatter, whatever. Nasty things happen. At least a fallen Paladin can become a Blackguard. A Truenamer with no way of replacing his Truespeak items is little better than an Expert. So, you should do everything you can to make sure nothing happens to your items.

The first step is to make them out of riverine, from Stormwrack. Riverine is expensive, but it's essentially made out of miniature walls of force. You heard me. Walls of force. Items made from it are nearly invincible. Disintegrate and Disjunction will destroy them, but Disintegrate and Disjunction will destroy damn near any items you have no matter what you do, so that really isn't much of a strike against it. Best of all, for non-armor items, it's priced by the pound, so it's not prohibitively expensive (I won't pretend it's cheap, but it's definitely not as bad as it could be) to buy, say, an amulet and a ring made out of it.

The next step is to prevent them from being stolen while you sleep. What follows is perhaps not the only solution, but it's the one that I ended up using. If you don't have access to the books needed (Complete Arcane or Spell Compendium, Magic Item Compendium, and Dungeonscape), I guess you should try to find something else. Anyway, what I did was to buy a light shield made of darkwood (not proficient with it, but there's no ACP, so big deal) that contained a hidden space, using the oil bladder rules from Dungeonscape. Then, since UMD is on the Truenamer skill list, I purchased two Eternal Wands (from MIC)... normal wands will work just as well, but I like Eternal Wands. The first one is a wand of Greater Alarm. It's just what it sounds like... not quite on the Rope Trick or MMM level of protection, but it's cheaper and very handy. The second, however, is the really important one: a CL 8 wand of Absorb Weapon.

Absorb Weapon is an Assassin-only spell, so it's more likely that you'll get a Warlock, a Chameleon, or an Artificer to make it for you... talk to your GM. The upshot of it, though, is that it lets you absorb a light weapon into your body for one hour per CL (hence why we wanted it CL 8). It's more or less impossible to detect while absorbed, and you're the only one who can bring it back out (unless it gets dispelled or something, which is what the Greater Alarm is for).

Remember the light shield I mentioned? Well, since you can make a shield bash with it, it counts as a light weapon. So, every night, you put your amulet (and your ring, if applicable) inside your hidden compartment on your shield, and then absorb it into your body while you sleep. Not foolproof, perhaps, but pretty close to it.

If you have another way of protecting your items, feel free to post it.

What options does a Truenamer have?
This is one of the saddest parts of this post. I'm really forced to believe that to play a Truenamer well, you really don't get that many options. You more or less have to be a member of the Paragnostic Assembly (that unnamed +10 is way too good to pass up, and frankly necessary at higher levels), you really can't prestige class out (the classes that give Truespeak as a class skill don't actually give you new utterances known, and if your GM rules that classes that advance "+1 level of existing casting class" works for Truenamers the way it works for Shadowcasters, Warlocks, or Artificers, well, you have to burn additional skill points since Truespeak isn't a class skill for them, and they rarely offer anything to the Truenamer anyway), and worst of all, there just aren't that many utterances to choose from. Let's take a look at what utterances you can take. I'm going to assume that the Truenamer is a straight-classed Truenamer 20, and takes nothing but the highest-level utterances available (for instance, not learning a 2nd level LEM after level 6, when you get level 3 LEM).

LEM 1: 5 available, 2 known
LEM 2: 8 available, 3 known
LEM 3: 8 available, 4 known
LEM 4: 8 available, 4 known
LEM 5: 8 available, 4 known
LEM 6: 6 available, 3 known

The LCT and LPM are even worse. You learn 1 of each level available (so 5 LCT, and 4 LPM), and there are even fewer options (2 for each level of LCT, 3 for LPM).

So, what does this mean? Well, most Truenamers are going to look awfully similar. There simply aren't enough options to allow for any real diversity, especially when you consider that a good handful of utterances outright suck. There are NO utterances printed in ANY supplemental material, including web enhancements (a lot of alternate power sources get the same treatment, but at least there are a COUPLE additional vestiges, mysteries, and soulmelds), so what you see is what you get.

Feats are another issue. At least three feats are accounted for (Skill Focus, Extend Utterance, and Quicken Utterance), which is a sizable chunk of the few you get. There simply isn't a lot of diversity possible here.

The Truenamer skill list, as I've said, is pretty lousy. The only skills worth mentioning are Knowledge, Truespeak, and UMD. While Knowledge and UMD will get you pretty far, the point is that the skill section of most Truenamers' character sheets will look pretty similar overall.

So, Truenamers will mostly be purchasing the same magic items, taking the same class, taking more or less the same feats, taking very similar utterances, taking very similar skills, joining the same organization... even certain races are far more common than others (Illumians, with their Naen sigil giving a +2 on all INT-based skill checks, are far and away the most commonly played Truenamers).

As a self-avowed option whore (I have a hard time making a character that uses few than 3 books, NOT COUNTING the PHB/DMG), I'm forced to admit that most Truenamers will look damn near identical. The class just isn't flexible enough to allow for anything else.

Some Truenamers will take dips here and there (I've heard of Marshal and Exemplar dips being very common, for the +CHA to INT skills and +4 on any skill, respectively), but that hardly counts as diversity.

It pains me to say it, but Truenamers have more or less one viable build, with a couple small options. I hate to declare anything "THE ONE AND ONLY PATH," but frankly, if you deviate too far from what I'm talking about, you'll either be incapable of pulling your weight or stop really being a Truenamer.

This makes me sad. If anyone wishes to provide a counterpoint, please let me know. It sucks that a class should be shoehorned into such a cookie-cutter build just to be capable (not even talking about godly), but that's what we have in the Truenamer.

So, when is a Truenamer viable?
I don't think a Truenamer can be played at every level. You learn Utterances very slowly, and since you can't retrain them, it's a huge help to not have to take the utterances that become obsolete. Likewise, affording the proper magic items and getting the proper affiliations with the Paragnostic Assembly is much easier at high level than at low level. I don't think you'd be very happy playing a level 1 Truenamer, with your one utterance known and nothing else.

Ideally, you'd start at level 9 at the earliest, since that's when you get Quicken Utterance (which is, as stated above, what makes Truenamers worth using). However, I think you could be viable as low as level 5 or 6, since by then you have enough utterances to have options in battle and enough wealth to have at least a +5 item if not a +10.

I can't comment on high-level Truenamers. Like I said, the game I'm in is currently level 10, and I'm trying to base as much of this as possible on my experience, rather than just on theory. The DCs of your truespeak checks will be higher and higher, and we've already discussed more or less all of the low-hanging fruit available for increasing truespeak checks, so playing at higher levels will definitely be harder. Nevertheless, without play experience, I'm not going to be comfortable declaring anything as a cutoff point for the Truenamer's sweet spot.

Overall, though, while I'd rather be a level 1 Truenamer than a level 1 Shadowcaster, I'd really rather not be either. If you're playing a low-level game, the Truenamer might not be for you.

What books do you need to make a good Truenamer?
This is a tricky question. Besides the obvious Tome of Magic, what do you really need to play a viable Truenamer? Well, as I said above, Complete Champion offers more to the Truenamer than nearly anything else. I feel you could play a Truenamer with just Tome of Magic and Complete Champion.

Since other books don't really directly add to Truenamers, Truenamers benefit less from additional books than other classes tend to. However, remembering that UMD is a class skill for Truenamers, the Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium help a lot. You can get some wands of spells that boost skill checks (there aren't as many as you might think, but there are a few), or get access to spells that do what you can't.

There's a school of thought that says the luck rerolls from Complete Scoundrel are also worth using... I haven't tried this myself, but if you can't get your Truespeak check to quite the level you want it, being able to reroll a crucial utterance check could be really handy.

The Item Familiar Question:
The Item Familiar (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/itemFamiliars.htm), from Unearthed Arcana, is an option that gets brought up a lot whenever the Truenamer is discussed. Go ahead and read it before you come back and read this. The attractive part of it for Truenamers is that it lets you get a very large bonus on a chosen skill (in this case, obviously, Truespeak), more or less doubling the ranks you have in that skill.

Personally, I hate item familiars. Variant rules are fine and dandy, but I hate it when a character needs a variant rule in order to function. (The only exception in my book is the fractional BAB/save stacking, but that's really neither here nor there.) I've tried to play my Truenamer as close to by-the-book as possible (the only major exception is my +10 competence item, which I discuss later), and I feel that Item Familiars are a bad idea all around.

The big problem with them is that they put the GM in a real bind. See, Item Familiars can be really, really powerful. Hell, for the investment of a feat, you can choose to get free XP. Nothing else in the game lets you do that. Even though a feat is a large opportunity cost, item familiars generally give you their benefits with almost no drawbacks, except one. Do you know what that one drawback is? The drawback is that you can lose it. All of the benefits are contingent upon having continuous access to the item familiar. This is supposed to be the "balance" to the free XP, free spell slots, free skill points, and eventual intelligent item ally.

So, to summarize, the character takes a feat that gives him what generally amounts to a much greater benefit than most other feats can give, with the caveat that these benefits aren't really that big of a deal, because the player can lose them.

So, does the GM let the player essentially ignore this so-called drawback, leaving the item familiar in place unless the player is almost unimaginably stupid? Or does the GM invoke this drawback, in so doing really harshly punishing the player for taking this feat and possibly crippling the character? There's no middle ground. The concept is nominally balanced against this drawback, but invoking the drawback seems almost unduly harsh. But is a drawback that is never used really a drawback? These are the questions that a GM whose player takes an item familiar is forced to contemplate. Your GM has enough to worry about without throwing this little quandary at him.

I would be remiss to fail to acknowledge that the bonus to Truespeak possible with an item familiar is quite substantial and can help out a character quite a bit. That said, I still don't think it's a good idea.

Furthermore, the loss of the item familiar punishes the Truenamer, with their reliance upon the all-important Truespeak skill, more than it punishes other characters. This, of course, is a two-edged sword, and really just magnifies the existing problem. The Truenamer gains more from boosting a single skill than basically any other class, with the possible exceptions of the Artificer's UMD, the Incantatrix's Spellcraft, and any diplomancer's Diplomacy. (Note that I said diplomancer, not diplomat. There's a difference.) The already considerable bonuses granted by the familiar are even more important to the Truenamer. However, that just makes it more of a target... more in need of its "downside." Does your GM give you this huge boon almost for free, or does he use the one downside, the one you theoretically accepted when you took the feat, and leave your character nearly useless until you can recover it? Neither option really seems fair.

There's an argument that a Truenamer "needs" an item familiar, but I really hope that's not the case. We all know that the Truenamer is a flawed class, but it's more than a "flaw" to admit that the class literally needs variant rules to be viable.

Overall, the item familiar mess is just that: a mess. I recommend just forgetting the whole thing if at all possible.

I would welcome a well-reasoned counterpoint, if anyone chooses to write one.

So, what CAN a Truenamer do?
The Truenamer has a very clear intended role of buffer/debuffer/battlefield control. Once they get quicken, they can actually do this relatively well. Allow me to repeat that. Once they get quicken, they can actually do this relatively well. See, there are two things standing in the way of the Truenamer fulfilling its true potential as a buffer/debuffer/BC specialist.

First is the fact that they get next to nothing targeting more than one creature until very high levels. Solid Fog, especially Quickened like that, is a fantastic ability, but it gets old really fast, and you don't want to overuse it, lest you find it used on yourself. (Granted, you can just use Inertia Surge on yourself and get free, but you don't want to HAVE to). Other than that? Nope, you get your single-target abilities and you like 'em. Speak Unto the Masses doesn't come until the primary casters are tossing around 9th level spells, the LPM utterances are almost universally not worth it (again, with the notable exception of Solid Fog), and other than that you're stuck with one target per turn. Now, this isn't necessarily horrible. You can still buff one ally quite well, or slow down one enemy. If you want to have more than one target, though, you need to quicken. Quickening, as I've said, is one of the best things a Truenamer gets, and frankly does push them up from "unusable" to "a big challenge." Still, combine the short, short durations of utterances with the single-target-only rules, and your actions get spread pretty thin.

The second rule, of course, is the goddamn Law of Sequence. The LoS takes the "one character at a time" focus and makes it even worse. Even if you have enough time to do so, you can't buff your entire party, or befuddle all of your enemies, at least not with the same tricks... you have to pick and choose. This gets painful.

That said, I still say that the Truenamer is best suited to a support role, buffing and debuffing as necessary. This does mean that it's not a bad idea (not automatically a good idea, but not necessarily bad either) to pick up "redundant" utterances (like the two versions of Seek the Sky), so that you can apply more or less the same effect to two characters at once. The Truenamer, especially at mid levels, does indeed have some nice buffs, and the no-save nature of some (though certainly not all) of their debuffs can be fun. You just can't think like a traditional party buffer. You're more of a specialist... one problem at a time.

It occurs to me that a Truenamer could take this property and run with it, becoming a reasonably capable gish. Rather than trying to spread buffs across the entire party, you could simply apply them to yourself, then wade in swinging. You'd be very nontraditional, of course, and would be somewhat lacking in defense compared to a more traditional gish, but I do believe that a Truenamer could nicely buff himself (particularly with Knowledge Devotion for that extra, nearly free oomph) and dish out some melee pain.

Interestingly, while I don't think for a second that this would be the most productive use of a Truenamer's abilities, I've noticed while cataloging them that they have quite a few damage-over-time abilities, so people who wish to recreate some of their favorite MMO archetypes (or at least one of them) might find a friend in the Truenamer. All of the Word of Nurturing utterances, Energy Negation, and Energy Vortex all do damage over an extended period of time, as does Agitate Metal. It would be interesting (not at all effective, but interesting) to see a Truenamer use their in-class UMD to cast Sonorous Hum, then Extend some Words of Nurturing (using the Hum to concentrate on one, Swift Concentration to concentrate on another, perhaps actually concentrating on a third...) for a nice damage-over-time effect. Granted, DoT is even less effective in D&D than straight up blasting is, but if that's the archetype you want, the truenamer is technically capable of it.

Really, though, you're best off assuming the role of a buffer/debuffer or a gish. Either way, you'll be essentially buffing someone; it's just a matter of whom.

What roles should the Truenamer not try to take?
I'm going to be dealing here, of course, with roles that even look attractive to a Truenamer in the first place, not simply saying "and they shouldn't be a trapspringer, or a doorbreaker, or..."

The Truenamer does not make a good utility caster. While they are capable of sort of faking it, and do have a few utterances that will help with a utility role (Universal Aptitude on the Rogue when he's picking an especially tricky lock... Caster Lens on the cleric when she's casting the party's all-day spells in the morning... that sort of thing), they really can't substitute for a wizard or even a bard as an all-purpose utility caster. They can fire off a Seek the Sky now and again, but they'll have a hell of a time actually providing the party with useful flight for more than the briefest of obstacles, especially if you have more than just a couple people in your party. They can become invisible for a minute with an extended Vision Sharpened, but they won't be able to scout or help the party scout (because how many reconnaissance missions take a minute or less? And how many times, when you're being stealthy, can you afford to cast a noisy utterance?) effectively. Even if one of their short, short utterances comes in handy, Boccob forbid that more than one character need the same benefit simultaneously. None of their utterances last long enough to be genuinely effective out of combat.

The Truenamer should not seek to replace a proper divine caster for medical purposes. While the Word of Nurturing line provides fantastic HP healing, and indeed a truenamer can take on the role of HP refiller, their utterances which can remove negative statuses come far, far too late. A Truenamer will keep your HP in top shape, but don't come to him when you've got ability damage, or paralysis, or negative levels, or anything of the sort until he's at least 10th level, and even then only if he took the right Utterances.

Zaq
2009-06-09, 06:21 PM
This post will be used to discuss my firsthand experiences with Truenaming, and will be much more specific, as opposed to the general discussions in the previous post.

My character, the fluff (short version):
Sanden Xala, an Illumian, was raised reading and re-reading all the great tales and legends of old, and he internalized them. He believes that the stories really tell about the way things either are or should be. As such, he wants to be just like his heroes in the old tales, and he's not above contrivances to get that way, such as hiring actors or prostitutes to play the roles of "cocky rival" (every great hero has a cocky rival!) or "tear-soaked love interest" (every great hero has someone begging him not to risk his life on his latest quest!). However, as time has passed, he understands that while he still wants to be a protagonist in the great story of life, his role is more that of the narrator. He speaks, and it is so. He tends to speak in Truespeak first and Common second, narrating the changes he makes to the battle, setting the scene for the heroes and villains.

My character, the crunch:
At level 10, I have a total of +53 to Truespeak checks, from ranks (13), INT (+5), Illumian Sigils (+2), Skill Focus (+3), a Greater Amulet of the Silver Tongue (+10 enhancement), a ring of competence (+10 competence, see my comments on this below), and the bonus from membership in the Paragnostic Assembly (+10 unnamed, also see below). I broke optimization rule number 1 ("thou shalt not lose caster levels") and took three levels in Human Paragon, since my GM was kind enough to count the generic "+1 level of existing casting class" as counting towards Truenamer. I did this mainly so I could have a few utility skills, since the Truenamer skill list is kind of, well, limp. My relevant feats include Quicken Utterance and Extend Utterance, as well as Knowledge Devotion.

I started with a 16 in INT, raising it to a total of 20 via level-up bonuses and the Human Paragon boost.

On Competence Items:
My ring of +10 competence to Truespeak is the one and only bonus I have that isn't explicitly laid out in a book somewhere. The DMG tables are pretty clear about how to make a skill-bonus item, so I really don't think there's anything esoteric or broken here, but it's still, by the strictest definition, a custom item. I was going to go without it, but it was my GM's idea. Given the opportunity, I felt I would be foolish not to take it... but honestly I don't think it's necessary. The Truenamer's power level jumps sharply with it, but I don't think it's truly unplayable without one, at least not around the level I've been playing. Quickening will be harder, but not impossible.

Early Experiences:
The game is yet young, and so I expect to be adding a lot to this post later on.

So far, I've found two major limitations: the Law of Sequence and the duration of utterances. I haven't had any problems making the necessary checks, especially with Universal Aptitude up. However, the fact that I can only have one copy of any particular utterance "active" at once is really painful, especially since all of the Lexicon of the Evolving Mind (that is, "normal") utterances are two-in-one. For example, Greater Speed of the Zephyr lets me cast either Haste or Slow on one target at once. However, thanks to the Law of Sequence, I can't Haste both myself and my friend, nor can I Haste my buddy while Slowing our target. This is a much bigger limitation than I had initially anticipated.

Likewise, the duration of the utterances just isn't enough. At least in my group, the concept of the "one-round encounter" just doesn't happen, at least not yet. Even the five-round utterances have tended to need renewing now and again, and especially the three-round utterances. Extend Utterance is a lifesaver here, as the +5 really isn't difficult to do, and doubling the duration helps a lot. Even so, the fact that I HAVE to do this is unsettling.

My utterances known, and my thoughts on them:

Level one, Lexicon of the Evolving Mind

Universal Aptitude: This gives either a +5 unnamed bonus on ALL SKILLS for five rounds, or a -5 penalty to the same. This is pretty huge. It's useful both to me and to my party, and it's very open-ended. Even if it didn't increase Truespeak checks (which it does), I'd recommend it to every Truenamer, but as it is, it's vital. The Reversed version has yet to be useful (how often do you see an enemy using skill checks? How often do you know that those skill checks will happen within 5 rounds? How often do you need to mess up those skill checks so badly that you'll spend an action on them?), but I guess I could see it being useful for, say, making a guard less likely to make his Forgery check or making a spellcaster less likely to make his Concentration check.

Inertia Surge: This is a great utterance in that I can't decide if I like the normal or reversed versions better. It offers either Freedom of Movement (yes, the fourth-level spell!) for one round, or makes an enemy immobilized (able to act, but unable to move) for one round. The fact that it only lasts for one round (two when Extended) hurts, but it's still useful. Freedom of Movement is a very powerful and very useful ability to have, and the fact that the reversed version allows no save makes it passable battlefield control. I've used the reversed version to allow the party Knight to move away and set up a charge without the target following, which is handy.

Second Level LEM

Strike of Might: The normal version gives a +10 damage to the target's next successful hit (within the next round), and the reversed gives a -5 damage to the same. Since it only applies to a single hit, this isn't a fantastic buff, but there are quite a few times when I'd be better off adding damage to my melee friend than trying to dish it out myself. I have yet to use the reversed version... if it didn't have that "within the next round" limitation, I could see it, but there are better things I can do with my actions.

Hidden Truth: I hadn't planned on taking this utterance, but now I'm really glad I did. It gives a +10 bonus to an immediate Knowledge check (and lets you do so untrained!), or gives a +10 bonus to Bluff checks the target makes in the next round. I can't ever see roleplaying the Bluff version... maybe if I weren't the one doing the talking, but it's hard to justify spending an action to make an utterance and then talking to someone without raising suspicion. I think the main use is to feint, but feinting is weak anyway. However, the Knowledge bonus is awesome, especially with Knowledge Devotion. (If I quicken Universal Aptitude then use Hidden Truth before making my Knowledge Devotion check, that's a +15 before I start adding anything else! That'd be a minimum +2 bonus even if I had no ranks and no INT! If you're going to spend a round buffing, I can think of worse ways to do it.)

Lesser Word of Nurturing: Ah, the Word of Nurturing series. Normal, it gives you fast healing for 5 rounds (in this case, FH 3); reversed, it does some d6s of damage to the target (in this case, 2d6) and does it again next round if you concentrate. I had some qualms about picking up both the Lesser and Moderate versions of this, but thanks to the Law of Sequence, I'm glad I did, since it lets me hit two targets (or, with some creative Quickening, hit the same target with both) at once. The damage isn't amazing and doesn't scale well, but it's safer than using my sword if I have no better options. It's nice that it's untyped damage and thus basically impossible to resist. If you had the Swift Concentration skill trick, you could pull off some shenanigans with the Reversed version (especially if you Extended it), but I don't have that. Out of combat, an Extended use of the normal version is a guaranteed 30 HP healed... not too shabby.

Level 3 LEM

Moderate Word of Nurturing: Like Lesser WoN, but gives Fast Healing 5 or 4d6 damage. See Lesser WoN for my thoughts on it.

Seek the Sky: This is one of those utterances that will eventually become obsolete, since Greater Seek the Sky (5th level) is better in every way, but oh well. Basically, this mimics the Fly spell (60' fly speed, good maneuverability) for 5 rounds, or renders a target incapable of flight for 5 rounds (though they fall gently and take no damage). The duration is something of a kick in the nuts, especially since you absolutely cannot cast it again until the first one runs out (so no chaining them in midair to keep yourself aloft), but still, flight is a great defensive option, and the speed boost is handy. I'm looking forward to using the reversed version, but we haven't faced any flying enemies yet. I almost always Extend this, just so I have more than 3 rounds of action (figure 1 round gaining the appropriate altitude and 1 round getting near enough to the ground that I don't die when it runs out, and that leaves 3 practical rounds to work with).

Vision Sharpened: My reasons for taking this were primarily thematic, and frankly it's not an extraordinarily useful utterance. It's not dead weight, sure, but there are better 3rd level utterances. It gives the target either See Invisibility or Invisibility for 5 rounds... and yes, that's normal Invisibility, not Greater (so no attacking!). This would be a good second level utterance (though there already is a 2nd level equivalent, Perceive the Unseen, which is more or less garbage), but as a 3rd level, it's underwhelming. If I didn't have thematic reasons for taking this, I probably wouldn't have... it's important to have a way of seeing invisible things, but I'd rather have a wand of Glitterdust. The duration on the Invisibility option is too short, even Extended, to do any good out-of-combat sneaking, and since you can't exactly silence an utterance, chaining it isn't a good idea. Skip this utterance.

Greater Speed of the Zephyr: Now we're talking! Haste or Slow for three rounds. The bad news is that it's only three rounds and it's only one target at a time, but the good news is that there's no save on the Slow version, so that's helpful. Haste and Slow are almost universally lauded as top-notch 3rd level spells, and even this relatively gimped version is useful, if not quite as powerful as the real thing. Extend is a must with this, really.

1st level, Lexicon of the Crafted Tool

Fortify Armor: Very few of the LCT utterances are worth anything, really. Fortify Armor, surprisingly, lets you give armor fortification for 5 rounds. This utterance is interesting in that you can voluntarily increase the Truespeak DC and get a greater effect... if you increase the DC by 10, you get 50% fort., and a +20 gives you 100% fort. Since the DC for the LCT utterances tends to be easier than the LEM utterances (it's based off the caster level of the item, which is rarely if ever as high as the level of the character wearing it when you follow standard WBL), this is a generally attractive option. I haven't bothered to use it yet, but I guess it would be nice against sneak attacking foes. The big problem is that since all utterances have such a short duration, you really can't pre-buff (let alone do your Morning Buff Routine with hours/level spells, since those don't exist), and this is only very rarely worth the action in combat. Still, the other option was essentially Keen Weapon, so this is really the better choice.

Level 2 LCT

Identify Item: That's right, you only get one of each level of the LCT utterances. Truenamers don't get a lot of love even in their own book. This utterance is essentially Identify, only it gives a little more information and has no costly component. Useful, but given that the first level you can get it is ECL 7, it's underwhelming. However, when you consider that the other option (yeah, there's only two level 2 LCTs... and indeed only two of each level of LCT. No love even in their own book, I tell you!) is, I kid you not, friggin' Heat Metal (a first level spell that wasn't extraordinarily useful back at first level!), the choice is kind of obvious.

Level 1, Lexicon of the Perfected Map

Fog from the Void: The LPM utterances got so little attention that they literally forgot to include the DC necessary to speak them. You won't find them anywhere in Tome of Magic. They had to add them in the errata. (Interestingly, they're the only utterances whose difficulty scales with level. Casting a level 1 LEM and level 6 LEM on the same target has the same DC, but casting a level 1 LPM and level 4 LPM does not. Weird, huh?) Anyway, you get FOUR total LPM utterances, one of which is at 20th level. They tend to be underwhelming at best, though they're your only option for affecting multiple creatures simultaneously before 17th level. Thankfully, one of the two or three actually useful ones is level one, and it's this one. It essentially creates a Fog Cloud (like the spell), and it lasts for a minute! Yes, one whole minute! From an utterance! Are you as shocked as I am? Anyway, the great thing about this utterance is that if you add 10 to the DC, you make Solid Fog instead, and Solid Fog is wonderful. Add in the fact that you can Quicken this (something your average 10th level wizard can't do!), and you can see why this utterance is gold.

Some specific, direct-from-experience comments:
Well, I've played this character for a few more sessions now, so I've got a little more to add.

A truenamer is next to worthless in a non-combat dungeon scenario. They're really not that good at getting past obstacles of any stripe, and they few they CAN get past (using Seek the Sky to get past a pit, for example) fall flat because of the Law of Sequence saying that you can only help one ally at a time. So, the Truenamer can get THEMSELVES (or the party scout, perhaps) past a cliff, but getting the entire party past will take a long time and will make the Law of Resistance hurt a lot (since you have to keep casting the same utterance over and over).

The one exception I was GOING to point out I just realized I actually did incorrectly. REPEAT: THIS PARAGRAPH IS BASED ON AN INCORRECT READING OF THE RULES. I WAS going to say that Analyze Item is useful for identifying magical traps and similar mysterious items, but then I reread it, and realized that it has, for some inexplicable reason, a range of touch. (Almost all utterances have a range of 60 feet... except this one, for some reason.) Yeah, while it's useful to cast it like I was doing and see if Item X is trapped and if so, with what, that's not a very good idea when you have to TOUCH the potentially-trapped item in the first place. Bleh. If you talk to your GM and get him to ignore that little bit of stupidity, it's much more useful.

I've had a chance to use Vision Sharpened a couple times now, always Reversed (thus creating invisibility). Since you can quicken it, it's passable for darting around the battlefield without provoking AoOs, or for getting a quick bonus to hit (if your opponent can't see invisible things, they're denied their DEX). I've used it on a civilian to help them get away from some zombies, and I once used it on myself to charge at a Gray Glutton and kill it without getting smacked around by its Huge reach. Without Quicken, it'd be pretty useless, but it's better than I gave it credit for now that I can quicken.

A word of warning: While Solid Fog is great for slowing down enemies, make certain that your allies have a way of affecting things in the cloud before you go spraying it all over the place. Battlefield effects take finesse.

Interestingly, Word of nurturing seems like it gives fast healing to undead and constructs. I had a long discussion with my GM about this, and your GM may or may not agree, but it looks like you can indeed heal your construct buddies with the WoN utterances, which might be handy depending on your game. If your GM disagrees, then it would stand to reason that the non-reversed Word of Nurturing would damage undead, which can be a decent source of damage in a fire-and-forget sort of way. As the kids say, YMMV.

I also got a chance to use the reversed version of Strike of Might to decent effect. When it's combined with reversed Greater Speed of the Zephyr, the hapless target can only make a single attack, with a -5 penalty to damage. It can definitely make a big bruiser hurt less. It's very situational, to be sure, and I wouldn't use it without combining it with the Slow effect, but it did mean less HP refilling work to do.

I'm learning that it's not always best to automatically Extend every utterance you cast. That makes the Law of Sequence a little more painful. Sometimes it's best to just use the normal utterance, then either recast it on the target or cast it on a different target. Remember, you only get one at a time, and you can't dismiss them.

More to come later.

A few more notes from the front
Well, Sanden's back in business (after having been sidelined for about a month or two in real time), so I thought I'd start updating this thread again. He's now level 11, so there's that. Here are some more things I've noticed in actual play.

First, Recitation of the Sanguine State, like so many other aspects of the Truenamer chapter, was obviously not actually read. Basically, you can say your Truename as a full-round action to, well, let me quote it. "If you succeed on your Truespeak check, your body is purged of all poisons, as if a neutralize poison spell had been cast on you." The problem? Neutralize Poison isn't quite that simple. First off, it's not an instantaneous cleansing. It's got a duration. It actually protects you from future poisons if you cast it in advance. Does RotSS work the same way? If so, what's your caster level for it? Why? I swear, it's like they didn't even read it.

I'd like to take a moment and talk about how wonderful Hidden Truth is. Hidden Truth, as I mentioned above, is a second-level LEM utterance that gives the target a +10 unnamed bonus on a single Knowledge check, as well as allowing them to make the check untrained. On its surface, this seems pretty nice, but not amazing. Having used it for a while, though, I'd have to say it's my favorite utterance. See, there are a few nice things about this. First, the fact that it's an unnamed bonus is always very nice, so anyone can benefit from it. More importantly, though, is that it has an instantaneous duration. This means that the Law of Sequence doesn't apply to it. You don't have to wait for it to run out before casting it again. With Quicken, you can even give it to yourself twice if you're planning on making two Knowledge checks (for example, if you're facing a mind flayer and are planning to make a K:Dungeoneering check and a K:Psionics check). This alone would make it stand out a bit from the other utterances, but the best use, I believe, comes not from piling it on yourself but on spreading it around.

For example, let's say that you're confronted with some strange altar setup in the middle of a crumbling ruin. Naturally, you ask your resident smart guy (normally the wizard or bard, but a truenamer works as well... or, since this is K:Religion, maybe the cleric) what this thing is, and hopefully they can give you some insight as to what it's doing and why you care. Hidden Truth does, indeed, make this job even easier, and that's very nice. However, it has a second possibility. Let's say that your party smart guy is you, the truenamer. You can make your K:Religion check... but maybe you didn't roll so well, or you don't think you got the whole story, or there's another perspective you're not sure about. Ordinarily, you wouldn't get to keep going on this... but with Hidden Truth, you're not the only one who can make that check. The ability to make the check untrained, with enough of a bonus to make up for being untrained, means that everyone in your party can make a roll and see what they know about this thing. Naturally, if you give a Hidden Truth to your entire party every single time you need a Knowledge check, the Law of Resistance is going to come and bite you in the ass pretty soon... but when there's something really important, or when you don't think you rolled very well, it's totally legitimate to let someone else try their hand at it. Hidden Truth not only lets them make the attempt, but it also gives them a halfway decent shot at succeeding (especially if you give them Universal Aptitude as well).

One kind of sneaky thing (and borderline cheesy... it's definitely against RAI, but whether it's overpowered is debatable) you can do with Hidden Truth is basically pre-cast it. It has an instantaneous duration and it says that it gives the bonus to a single Knowledge check. It does not, however, say when you have to make this check. If you're expecting the party scout to come across something interesting when they go reconnoitering alone, you can prime them with Hidden Truth and possibly let them figure out what it is that they've found. If you want to really abuse RAI, you can cast it on your entire party as the last thing you do before you go to sleep. It'll patiently wait around until they make their next Knowledge checks, but the Law of Resistance will clear out overnight. Like I said, definitely an abuse of RAI, but I don't think it's really problematic or cheesy (like, for example, combining Incarnation of Angels with Dismissal would be).

I'd also like to mention once more just how damn useful Universal Aptitude is. Everyone makes skill checks, and a +5 unnamed bonus to all of them really does make a difference. It's easy to forget that you can cast your non-combat buffs on your teammates (at least, I forgot that I could do it once or twice), but it's really worthwhile to make sure that the critical Use Rope check succeeds, or that the Decipher Script check goes through, or that the Disguise check is absolutely perfect.

A lot of a Truenamer's buffs are actually great for miniature scouting missions (that is, the kind that only take a few rounds... peeking around a corner, peering in a window, that sort of thing). The horribly short duration prevents them from being used on proper scouting missions, but Universal Aptitude, Seek the Sky, Hidden Truth, and Vision Sharpened all work very nicely for poking your head around a wall and seeing what's on the other side.

Spell Rebirth
Spell Rebirth is an excellent 4th-level LEM Utterance. In the normal mode, it un-dispels (or un-dismisses) a spell, as long as it hasn't been more than one round since the spell was dispelled. As I've mentioned elsewhere, this is really cool since it's one of the only tricks that a Truenamer can pull off that a wizard cannot. (At least, I don't think a wizard can un-dispel things... can they? Friggin' wizards.) Sure, it's rather situational unless your GM is very dispel-happy, but even having it work once is worth it.

It's the reversed utterance, however, that I'd really like to talk about. I'm going to quote the entire text of it here. (I think that falls under Fair Use.)


This utterance dispels the spell with the highest caster level affecting the target.

That's it. That's the entire text of it. Prima facie, it's pretty nice. A dispel that doesn't roll a caster level check? Sign me up! Sure, it only gets one spell, but that's still pretty nice. In my experience, casters tend to be boss-encounters rather than mook-encounters, so their caster levels can be pretty high (and thus tricky to dispel). This will vary from group to group, of course, but the value of a dispel that doesn't need a caster level check should be obvious.

However, there's more to this utterance. In fact, a lot more.

The Truenamer chapter is notorious for having terribly lazy editing. Inconsistencies, omissions, and absurdities abound. This, I would say, is one of those omissions or absurdities. Let me quote that exact text again, with a key bit bolded:



This utterance dispels the spell with the highest caster level affecting the target.

Now, what does this mean, exactly? Well, there aren't a lot of limitations on it. You can Spell Rebirth away, say, an area of magical Silence affecting the target. Or an area of Reverse Gravity. (Do you want to tell me that lifting someone up and slamming them into the ceiling isn't "affecting" them?) Do you see where I'm going with this? Spell Rebirth is basically the Truenamer's Iron Heart Surge. Sure, "spell" is a lot more limited than "condition" (thankfully), so we can't Rebirth away some of the sillier examples of what IHS can theoretically be used for (such as Surging away the burning on the Plane of Fire... which I don't think actually works, but which the text is vague enough to kind of support), but we can still Rebirth away a hell of a lot. The point is that Spell Rebirth, as written, can dispel any area spell (short of AMF, since Rebirth is an SLA and thus can't get past AMF without a scroll of Invoke Magic and some dubious transparency shenanigans) that can "affect" someone. Furthermore, unlike IHS, Rebirth dispels the spell. Again, as written, it won't simply remove the effect from the target... it'll dispel the whole shebang, no questions asked. You don't even have to stretch the reading the way you do with IHS... it tells you straight up that the spell is dispelled.

This, of course, leads to some real shenanigans if you're not careful. Let's say a castle is warded with Dimensional Lock... well, if you can just get a single Truenamer spy to infiltrate the area, it doesn't matter how high the caster level is, that sucker's open to attack. It's a little bit dicier as to whether or not it can get past, say, Obscuring Mist or Cloudkill, but it seems likely. I won't bother to discuss any other specific examples, but surely you can see by now the power and the danger inherent in this utterance.

The Chips Are Down: How a Truenamer fares in a boss battle (UPDATE 2 Oct 2009)

So, last week we had our first really major boss fight. We knew that our target glowed like a Christmas tree under Detect Magic, had at least one Contingency up (yes, I know, RAW you can only have one. This was a boss battle, though, so you expect that to apply?), and was an INT-based caster. (Don't speculate too much as to what it is... there's homebrew in them thar hills.) Oh, and the GM trusted him to take on the three of us. To be fair, we'd been adventuring for some time (he was our... third or fourth encounter worth noting today), but still, this was a clear boss. His shtick, as we learned, was that he was really friggin' resilient, and had no fewer than five forms (as any good boss should).

This was, I will say, a hell of a fight. With Universal Aptitude up, I didn't have to roll to hit him with normal utterances, but I did have to roll to hit him with quickened ones that I had been using all day. (I actually failed to quicken once or twice). I didn't get to do a whole lot to his first form... the Wilder actually made the first move (he was going to let us choose to leave him alone or try to fight him) by summoning a level 8 Astral Construct (pre-combat, since it was invisible and he suppressed the displays) and hitting him with the construct and a fully augmented Crystal Shard in the first round. I think I used Slow on him to keep him from full attacking, since he had a few nasty ToB tricks, but overall his first form went down quickly.
His second form was his ghost, who blasted us with some nasty DD spell. A single lucky Reversed Moderate Word of Nurturing took him down easily enough, but that's what let us know that it was properly on.

His third form (basically just his first form again, with a contingent True Rez letting him start over) fell to similar tactics, though less easily. There was a Reversed Inertia Surge or two in there to keep him in place, which I think saved us from a PBAoE or two.

The real battle began with his fourth form, which is when things got really nasty. He was rezzed again by some kind of pact he had made, and was a lot nastier this time. The Astral Construct tripped him, and I decided that it was time for a big gun, so I hit him with Slow and Solid Fog (okay, Reversed Greater Speed of the Zephyr and Fog from the Void, whatever). That kept him in place long enough for him to eventually fail a save against the sorcerer's Stinking Cloud, which she put in the same place as my Solid Fog. This bought the Construct some time to beat on his ass. This was a tense time for me, because a Truenamer relies on line of sight, which was blocked by two different kinds of fogs. You can't buff (or debuff) what you can't see. I mostly kept putting Inertia Surge and Strike of Might on the sorcerer's summoned air elemental (chosen because it could zip around the area with its 100' move speed until it found him, spring attack him, and come back). Once he eventually crawled out of the fog, I mostly kept him Slowed and hit him with Reversed Words of Nurturing. After far, far too long, he dropped.

This, of course, was just the start of Round Five, when he was rezzed AGAIN, this time by some kind of infernal energy, which came with a corresponding boost in power. Naturally. This time, I helped the Sorcerer become invisible a few times (allowing her to cast without provoking, since we knew he couldn't see invisible foes) with Reversed Vision Sharpened, as well as trying my best to keep him in a Reversed Word of Nurturing. He was absolutely refusing to fail the saves that the sorcerer was throwing at him, and her Enervation missed on a nat 1 (it was one of those things that should not have missed... he was Slowed, prone, flat-footed, and she was making a touch attack. And she missed.) I decided against Solid Fogging again, since I didn't want to be unable to help anyone. A couple good Enervates did help take him down, I think, as did the merciless beating of the new (since the battle had gone on long enough that the first one vanished) Construct. The wilder actually used his last few points making this thing... he was running on empty. I did my best to keep him Slowed, and eventually he went down for good.

Now, what did I learn from the battle? Quite a bit, actually. First, a Truenamer really, really hurts if he or she can't see. Next time we get to a shop, I'm buying a Blindfold of True Darkness, or maybe a wand of Listening Lorecall.

Also, if you can consistently make your Truespeak checks, Utterances are actually really hard to stop. We later learned that what had seemed like way too much HP was actually stupidly high DR (the GM later apologized for not telling us that our attacks weren't working right, as he was supposed to). I was informed that my Words of Nurturing actually did a not-insignificant share of the damage in certain forms (I think against his last form?), because nothing stops Reversed Word of Nurturing. Seriously. Nothing short of regeneration will stop it. Not DR, not energy resistance, not spell resistance (+5 Truespeak DC = no SR), not high saves (saves? What saves?), nothing. This turned out to be very valuable. Similarly, the fact that he didn't get to save against Slow or Inertia Surge apparently made a big difference. He was easily making the saves that the Wilder and Sorcerer were throwing at him, but I didn't give him the chance to say no. A Truenamer, then is very valuable against an enemy with high defenses, because they're hard to stop.

In addition, after a while I stopped Extending Greater Speed of the Zephyr (that's Haste/Slow to you folks following at home). When it ran out, it was worth it to me to be able to decide if I should Haste someone or Slow him. The Law of Sequence really sucks sometimes.

Also, Strike of Might helped us get through his DR once or twice. Not amazing, but not bad.

Overall, I held my own, and I've been told that I was a major contributor to his not killing us. We actually managed to get away with no one hitting 0. Granted, this is mostly because my +12 initiative was good enough to go first and shut down his nastier strategies, but I invested in it for a reason.

The point is, though, Truenamers are nice once they get going because they're really hard to defend against. I wasn't doing anything overwhelmingly amazing (I mean really, 4d6 per turn from Moderate RWoN? We're level 11. We should do 4d6 when we SNEEZE.), but there wasn't anything that this enemy, who had been set up to be really resilient, could do about it. His high saves also didn't make much of a difference, since I was the one rolling all the dice. Sure, I set myself up for exactly that, but hey, it worked.

Oh, and never, ever underestimate Solid Fog. Especially with Inertia Surge.

Zaq
2009-06-09, 06:22 PM
This final post will be more or less a summary. I expect it to change over time, of course.

I chose to play a Truenamer basically as a challenge to myself, to prove that I could. The Truenamer is still a terrible class, a flawed concept. I've had a lot of hoops to jump through to make the character even as good as it is (not that Sanden is playing at a 100% optimized level, but that's not the point)... as Sstoopidtallkid succinctly put it,

"He has taken an odd race, 2 +10 magic items(meaning a significant chunk of his WBL), and used an association from CChamp to become effective, and he's still having issues during play. [. . .] Yeah, he's having fun with it, and it's working out well, but that is in spite of the class, not because of it."

I really couldn't have said it better. I'm playing a Truenamer more or less in spite of it. My character is pulling his weight and is a useful member of the party, and absolutely the only thing I'm using that's not 100% by-the-book is a +10 competence item, which, as I've stated, is enormously helpful but not strictly necessary.

So, does this mean that the Truenamer is a viable class?

Well, really, I would say no. I've managed to make it sort of work, but it's really not a viable class if you have to put in as much effort as I have and still get only average results. If you don't bend over backwards like I have, you basically won't even be able to contribute to the party. If you want to play a Truenamer, well, I hope you like playing more or less what I've described here, since that's pretty much what you'll have to do.

Just because a single effective build can be made does not mean that the class actually works.

Truenamer doesn't work.

But still, here I am, playing a Truenamer, probably experiencing it more than WotC did when they wrote Tome of Magic. I feel, on some level, like it's my duty to share my experience with you folks.

If there's anything else you want to know about my experience, please, go ahead and ask.

A condensed assessment of the problems facing the Truenamer, for your quick reference (Added 27 Dec 09)
-The Truespeak DCs are nearly impossible to meet without heavy optimization. If you don't book dive and bend over backwards, you simply can't use your primary class ability. God help you if you choose to play at low levels.
-The Law of Sequence blows ass. The fact that you don't have any multi-target abilities is bad enough, but the fact that you can't even re-cast your utterances (or indeed use their reversed versions, because Pun-Pun forbid you should want Haste and Slow at the same time) is nearly unforgivable.
-Utterances aren't that good. They have their perks, but even the Monk gets evasion. Most of the time, even when they work, they compare unfavorably to Invocations that you can get at the same character level, and they mostly fail to scale up as you increase in level (the level 6 LEM utterances are almost universally awful, and none are appropriate for level 18 characters).

So, you have to work your ass off to use subpar abilities that you can't even use the way you want to. That's what's wrong with the truenamer.

A final word (Added 27 Dec 09)
After about six-seven months of playing, I've retired Sanden. I had two reasons for this: First, I was getting pretty far away from by-the-book (multiple +Truespeak items that weren't listed, entry into PrCs I didn't qualify for by RAW, etc.), so my experiences weren't going to be very relevant to this thread, and second, I was getting really fed up with Truenaming, because frankly, it's frustrating to work so hard and get so little love (from the game rules, I mean, not from my fellow players or fellow posters). So, I've decided to post something of a final analysis here.

First, the Truenaming chapter of Tome of Magic is hands down the WORST-EDITED WotC product I have ever seen. It's full of omissions (the most infamous of which is the missing DC for the LPM utterances. I mean, when you forget to tell your players how to use their class abilities... how lazy do you get?), poor wording (I still don't know what Shield of the Landscape actually does), references to earlier spells that clearly didn't actually read the earlier spells (Recitation of the Sanguine State, anyone?), contradictions (is the +4 bonus from speaking your personal truename competence or untyped? It's listed as both.), and absurdities (what the hell is Ether Reforged doing as an instantaneous duration effect?!), not to mention the horrific game design. As a result, I hypothesize that the chapter was written in an almost unimaginable hurry, and almost certainly not playtested. (The monster section, with its huge racial bonuses to Truespeak for monsters who otherwise couldn't use their defining abilities, makes it seem like the person or people who wrote the monster section knew something about what was wrong, but that didn't spill over into the main section.) I don't think I'll ever know for sure what kind of process went into making the Truenaming section, but there's enough evidence there to make me believe that it was written by someone (or some people) who didn't talk to anyone else, who didn't have time to edit properly, and who just didn't bother to test what they had written. (I'm not even talking about pushing the limits of the system, since we know that WotC never does that. I'm talking about testing it at all.) This is the first challenge facing an aspiring Truenamer.

If you can get past the poor writing and nearly complete lack of support, you still have to live with the crazy skill DCs, the weirdass Law of Sequence, the fact that your GM has to have the CR of every monster you meet at his fingertips (god help you if you homebrew!), and the fact that your primary class feature just isn't that spectacular even when it works.

Honestly, I'm a little surprised that I stuck with it for so long. I think it's because I really liked my character's personality, even as his mechanical abilities gave me headaches. In the end, though, it wasn't worth it. I don't regret what I've done, but let me tell you, I am glad to be done with it.

So, what have I learned? I've learned that even when you can make your Truespeak checks, you still have to be really creative to do what you need to do. I've learned that the broken Truespeak DC is only one of many problems the class faces. I've learned that the Truespeak chapter is even more poorly written than I think anyone had suspected (I do believe I'm the first to notice that Spell Rebirth is nearly as open-ended as Iron Heart Surge, or at least the first to discuss it).

And you know what? I've also learned that it's possible to be a valued and functioning member of a party even as a Truenamer. My experiences here were not all bad. I had a few tricks that worked (INT focus + Limited skill list + Universal Aptitude + Hidden Truth = Yeah, I can make that Knowledge check. DC 45? Yeah, I've got one rank in that, I can handle it.), I had one or two things that no one else could do (though damn if I didn't have to work for 'em), and I was occasionally able to make the other party members really shine. Assuming that I had help meeting the DCs, I'd sooner play a Truenamer than a Swashbuckler, or a Divine Mind, or yes, even a Monk. However, this doesn't mean that you SHOULD play a Truenamer. I would have been able to play the same archetype (clueless guy who thinks that the world works the way it does in stories) just as well with any number of other classes, plenty of which actually don't suck. I didn't have a party niche other than Smart Guy (a role easily filled by a wizard, archivist, bard, factotum, psion, DFA, or even incarnate), but I managed to carve out a space for myself.

There's no easy fix for the Truenamer. Contrary to what some people believe, fixing the Truespeak DC mechanic wouldn't make the class good (better, perhaps, but not good). All else being equal, even giving them their Utterances at-will wouldn't really make them very powerful (the no-save effects are nice, but not gamebreaking by any stretch). The Law of Sequence needs to be shot repeatedly in the face, and the Utterances need to be heavily rebalanced to actually be level-appropriate. By the time you'd be done, the class wouldn't be recognizable anymore. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the point is, this isn't just a bad implementation of a good core. It's a bad idea through and through. Truly shameful that they wasted such brilliant fluff on such a terrible class.

I'm starting to repeat myself, so I'll stop here. I learned a lot, I had some fun, I had some headaches, and I've sort of become the resident expert on Truenamers. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'm happy to share the information with whomever is willing to listen (which would be you, dear reader, if you've made it this far).

Two really final things to say:

First, my word is not absolute. I know a lot about Truenamers, but I am not infallible. I welcome well-reasoned disagreements with open arms.

Second, if anyone wants to know anything else, has any questions, or wants to know my opinion on anything related to this, please do not hesitate to ask. The whole reason I've typed up this enormous topic is to share what I've learned, so if I can share more, I'd like to know.

Thanks for reading.

Lert, A.
2009-06-09, 06:30 PM
And another post for me. I doubt I'll need more than three, so go ahead and post after this.

OK. The class is overpowered!!!

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-06-09, 06:38 PM
Photoshopped. Totally photoshopped. I can see the pixels.

ZeroNumerous
2009-06-09, 06:43 PM
My only question for the OP: Why not just write out your experiences before hand in, say, Word then copy/paste into your posts?

CockroachTeaParty
2009-06-09, 07:10 PM
I once played a Blue (psychic goblin) Truenamer once. Really, I think the negative reaction they typically receive is a bit over the top. They really aren't that bad.

With an 18 INT, an amulet of the Silver Tongue +5, Skill Focus (truespeak), and Focused Skill User (2 other skills, plus truespeak; from Complete Psionic, a feat that gives a +2 to three specific skills as long as one is psionically focused), my truenamer was pretty much automatically succeeded on his checks for the first four or five uses of a single utterance.

He was level 5, granted, but he did a good job of healing, buffing, debuffing, and even doing decent damage with reversed words of nurturing. Overall, I was actually rather impressed. He had no spell slots or power points to worry about. I just put down a little check every time he used the same utterance, to remind myself of the +2 increase to the skill check DC.

Also, since they have UMD as a class skill, you can grab some wands and other toys to help keep yourself useful when the utterance DC's get a little dicey.

No, they are not as powerful as a standard core caster, or even a psion, but I'd put them on about the same power level as a warlock, or perhaps an Incarnate, assuming the adventure doesn't really tax endurance to the extreme.

The Glyphstone
2009-06-09, 07:19 PM
At level 5, maybe. The reason the Truenamer is so reviled is that fact that unlock core casters, warlocks, fighters, rogues, CW Samurai, or any other class, they actually get worse as they level, not better. 5th level is a very good time to be a truenamer...the DCs aren't intolerable yet, and you've just acquired an incantation from the second of your three lexicons.

quick_comment
2009-06-09, 07:49 PM
I really like the fluff of the truenamer, but I really would rather just see it replace the current magic fluff. Wizard of Earthsea had a system like that.

Flickerdart
2009-06-09, 07:54 PM
I really like the fluff of the truenamer, but I really would rather just see it replace the current magic fluff. Wizard of Earthsea had a system like that.
And they spent most of the books either following people who could barely use it or when it all died and nobody had magic anyways.

Anyways, Truenamers with their 3/4 BAB make decent gishes...if you have a stat left over after that INT, toss it into STR and take up the sword.

There was a chart on CharOp that showed Truenamer success chances...you're going to start rapidly getting worse, but after a few levels your chances start going up. Get an Item Familiar, you'll need its bonuses. Refluff your Amulet of the Silver Tongue as actually talking that way, it'll be hilarious.

Zaq
2009-06-09, 08:46 PM
Righto, so I've got the initial posts up. ZeroNumerous, that might have been a more elegant way of doing it, but I guess I just didn't think of it. Oh well.

Anyway, thoughts, anyone?

Flickerdart
2009-06-09, 09:15 PM
Looking good so far. I've always loved Truenamers, and your flavour is great for using one. How'd you take Human Paragon as an Illumian, though? Do they count?

At +53, that's 63 on an average roll, against DC 45 for an enemy of your CR. Even quickened, your first Utterance of the kind for the day has a 40% chance, and regular is 100% for several tries. This'll be nice to see, indeed.

For thematic convenience, get some scrolls of Moment of Prescience. It's DC45 UMD for the max bonus, so it'll be a while yet before you're hitting that (if you took UMD to begin with) but it's a great "I must succeed!" trick even if it isn't very practical.

Zaq
2009-06-09, 09:25 PM
Thanks Flickerdart. I figured that since Illumians are Humanoid with the Human subtype, they qualified for Human paragon, and my DM agreed. I'm probably losing more than I'm gaining from the class (which is one reason I'm not actually recommending it for aspiring Truenamers), but I wanted to have some more skills, you know? Balance, Sense Motive, Listen, that kind of thing.

Your math is a bit off. Against a CR 10 foe, the DC is 35 (15 + 10x2). Even against a CR 15 foe (DC 45) I have a decent chance of quickening.

One thing I'm really noticing, though, is that since utterances have such damn short durations, you have to keep refreshing them if you want them active, which makes the Law of Resistance really add up. After another session or two I'll post some thoughts about when to utter and when to refrain from doing so.

Flickerdart
2009-06-09, 09:35 PM
Your math is a bit off. Against a CR 10 foe, the DC is 35 (15 + 10x2). Even against a CR 15 foe (DC 45) I have a decent chance of quickening.

One thing I'm really noticing, though, is that since utterances have such damn short durations, you have to keep refreshing them if you want them active, which makes the Law of Resistance really add up. After another session or two I'll post some thoughts about when to utter and when to refrain from doing so.
Ah, right, my bad. I was counting for 15, not 10...well, if your DM springs some crazy boss monsters on you, you'll do fine too.

Since talking normally is a free action, you could throw your enemies off guard by muttering gibberish on turns you're not uttering, to confuse them. After all, how do they know you didn't just do something?

Oslecamo
2009-06-09, 09:38 PM
I once played a Blue (psychic goblin) Truenamer once. Really, I think the negative reaction they typically receive is a bit over the top. They really aren't that bad.


It was mostly the opinion of the powergamers/munchkins. To them, if a build isn't able to theoritically slaughter singlehandely every monster of their own CR as a swift action, then it's clearly a worthless piece of poop and no player could ever have fun playing it.

And then there are the players to wich power isn't everything, and are willing to play a class even if it isn't "Pwn everything roflz is the wayz to goz!".

I'm glad to meet some of these players. Keep enjoying your sessions!

(I'm always impressed that people are willing to optimize dozens of spells, feats and prc for their wizards, but they don't seem to be able to optimize half a dozen items wich all do the same thing)

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-06-09, 09:53 PM
It was mostly the opinion of the powergamers/munchkins. To them, if a build isn't able to theoritically slaughter singlehandely every monster of their own CR as a swift action, then it's clearly a worthless piece of poop and no player could ever have fun playing it.

And then there are the players to wich power isn't everything, and are willing to play a class even if it isn't "Pwn everything roflz is the wayz to goz!".He has taken an odd race, 2 +10 magic items(meaning a significant chunk of his WBL), and used an association from CChamp to become effective, and he's still having issues during play. The class should be able to function on it's own, with minimal needed input. Most classes become good with a bit of work, and especially with a few sources. This one is using one of the most broken sources in 3.x and it's barely decent. Yeah, he's having fun with it, and it's working out well, but that is in spite of the class, not because of it, which is an issue with the class. There's a reason it doesn't even get a tier.

Eldariel
2009-06-09, 09:53 PM
It was mostly the opinion of the powergamers/munchkins. To them, if a build isn't able to theoritically slaughter singlehandely every monster of their own CR as a swift action, then it's clearly a worthless piece of poop and no player could ever have fun playing it.

Eh, you aren't being serious on your powergamer-comment, are you? The problem with Truenamer in particular is that it's a helluva lot of work to hit the DCs. Out of the box, at level 1, the average DC is 17. Assuming 18 Int and Skill Focus, that's 45% chance to do nothing each turn. And that's burning a bunch of resources already.

Basically, the problem people have with the class is that you need to go through a lot of trouble to make the DCs, and when you do, you don't get anything amazing.


(I'm always impressed that people are willing to optimize dozens of spells, feats and prc for their wizards, but they don't seem to be able to optimize half a dozen items wich all do the same thing)

It's not a matter of not being able to, it's just that that's an awful lot of trouble to get...nothing you couldn't already do with any of the Core classes. And the fact that having to devote a ton of your resources just to be able to do what you're supposed to do kinda sucks. I mean, sure, if that floats your boat, go ahead, but I'd rather have my classes do what they're supposed to do without any feats or skills, and focus my feats and skills on customizing my character.


That said, if you enjoyed your run with the Truenamer, the more power to you. I'll be reading this with great interest.

The Glyphstone
2009-06-09, 09:55 PM
Indeed - I like seeing people being able to salvage/redeem otherwise horrid ideas, so this could be quite interesting watching it play out.

Demons_eye
2009-06-09, 11:28 PM
In my current game I foresee a possible death for my PC. Looking into this I would like to try a True Namer. Any tips for a level 4 Gestalt player?

Zaq
2009-06-09, 11:28 PM
I've added some thoughts on the Truenamer's class features, options a Truenamer has, a brief discussion on Item Familiars, and cleaned up a few small details in some other sections.

What else should I be adding, any thoughts?

I'd also, as I mention in the relevant sections, appreciate some counterpoints on certain aspects of my discussion, if anyone disagrees with me strongly enough to write them. (No need to disagree for the sake of disagreeing, of course... if you think what I've said is spot-on, great. I just don't want to set myself up as the ONE AND ONLY MASTER OF ALL THINGS TRUENAMER, since that's patently false and ridiculous. Discussion is good.)

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-06-09, 11:40 PM
In my current game I foresee a possible death for my PC. Looking into this I would like to try a True Namer. Any tips for a level 4 Gestalt player?What else is in your party? Truenamer is an even worse idea in Gestalt than in normal play, but maybe if the rest of your party is weak combos we can make it playable.

Demons_eye
2009-06-09, 11:43 PM
What else is in your party? Truenamer is an even worse idea in Gestalt than in normal play, but maybe if the rest of your party is weak combos we can make it playable.

Wow that was unbelievably unhelpful

Zaq
2009-06-09, 11:50 PM
In my current game I foresee a possible death for my PC. Looking into this I would like to try a True Namer. Any tips for a level 4 Gestalt player?

That really depends on whether you want your Truenamer side to be your dominant side (using your other class mostly to support it), or if you want it to play more of a support role.

If you want to prop up your Truenamer side, Artificer might be a decent choice, since the infusions that add bonuses to skills are invaluable. Archivist might be a decent choice, since the knowledge-heavy nature of both classes synergizes very well, and there are a few good divine spells to boost skill checks. You would also be able to use the Truename Spells tucked away in a corner of the Truename Magic chapter, many of which are pretty decent. Whatever class you choose, though, make sure you have INT synergy.

The best choice might be a Factotum, though. Both classes use INT, and the Factotum has tricks to boost your skill checks when you need them. Some of the more generic boosts that Truenamers get, such as Universal Aptitude, will fit perfectly with the Factotum's strengths, as well. Hell, even the normally terrible Recitation of the Mindful State isn't QUITE as bad when you have the relevant skills as class skills.

If you want your Truenamer side to be the secondary focus, that's a bit trickier, since you have to invest so much into Truenaming to make it worthwhile. I can see the Truenamer being a capable self-buffing gish, especially once you hit level 9 and can Quicken your utterances (that's five levels away, to be sure, but worth considering I suppose). The danger with playing a Truenamer in gestalt is that the Truenamer makes a lot of demands upon your standard actions, and offers no long-lasting or passive benefits. It takes a lot of attention, in other words.

Does that help?

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-06-09, 11:54 PM
Wow that was unbelievably unhelpfulIf he's in a party with a Wizard/Factotum, Warblade/Artificer, Rogue/Barbarian, and Warlock/Swift Hunter, we can't help him. If he's in a party with a significant party role missing, we can help him fill that role with his other side and keep decent Truespeach at the same time.

The problem is that Gestalt rewards builds with one side that requires actions to accomplish something, and one side with passive abilities that synergize well with the first side. Until 9th, Truenamer fits neither of those. Meaning we need to get one side of his build good enough to remain competitive with his party, while also keeping him able to hit DCs of 23 at level 4, enabling him to buff/debuff to aid his primary side, while we can't invest the usual 3 feats and massive amounts of cash needed for a Truenamer.

Edit:Hadn't considered Factotum. Yes. That could work. Pump Int, get everything you can to boost the skill, snag the various other good skills(Autohypnosis etc), and pick the right SLAs. If nothing else, you'll always have something to do even when you don't want to waste an utterance.

Demons_eye
2009-06-09, 11:54 PM
Greatly I was all ready thinking Artificer but Archivist is looking nice now I have looked into it.

RTGoodman
2009-06-10, 12:53 AM
Your little article here is a very good write-up, I think. I've always LOVED the idea of the Truenamer class, but every time I look at the book I just shake my head and go on to something else. I'm still with Sstoopidtallkid when he says you've "taken an odd race, 2 +10 magic items(meaning a significant chunk of his WBL), and used an association from CChamp to become effective, and he's still having issues during play," but I think you've at least shown that you can do okay without resorting to an Item Familiar and all that.

I will say that this...


Protecting your investments:
Truenamers rely ridiculously heavily on magic items. Every Truenamer NEEDS a (Greater) Amulet of the Silver Tongue (found in Tome of Magic, +5 enhancement to Truespeak, +10 for Greater). Many GMs will also allow a simple competence-bonus item, using the rules in the DMG. A competence item isn't strictly necessary, but it helps a lot, so if your GM lets you, pounce on the opportunity. However, when so much of your usefulness comes from these items, losing them is an enormous blow. Adventurers get robbed, they fall into oozes, they get hit with shatter, whatever. Nasty things happen. At least a fallen Paladin can become a Blackguard. A Truenamer with no way of replacing his Truespeak items is little better than an Expert. So, you should do everything you can to make sure nothing happens to your items.

The first step is to make them out of riverine, from Stormwrack. Riverine is expensive, but it's essentially made out of miniature walls of force. You heard me. Walls of force. Items made from it are nearly invincible. Disintegrate and Disjunction will destroy them, but Disintegrate and Disjunction will destroy damn near any items you have no matter what you do, so that really isn't much of a strike against it. Best of all, for non-armor items, it's priced by the pound, so it's not prohibitively expensive (I won't pretend it's cheap, but it's definitely not as bad as it could be) to buy, say, an amulet and a ring made out of it.

The next step is to prevent them from being stolen while you sleep. What follows is perhaps not the only solution, but it's the one that I ended up using. If you don't have access to the books needed (Complete Arcane or Spell Compendium, Magic Item Compendium, and Dungeonscape), I guess you should try to find something else. Anyway, what I did was to buy a light shield made of darkwood (not proficient with it, but there's no ACP, so big deal) that contained a hidden space, using the oil bladder rules from Dungeonscape. Then, since UMD is on the Truenamer skill list, I purchased two Eternal Wands (from MIC)... normal wands will work just as well, but I like Eternal Wands. The first one is a wand of Greater Alarm. It's just what it sounds like... not quite on the Rope Trick or MMM level of protection, but it's cheaper and very handy. The second, however, is the really important one: a CL 8 wand of Absorb Weapon.

Absorb Weapon is an Assassin-only spell, so it's more likely that you'll get a Warlock, a Chameleon, or an Artificer to make it for you... talk to your GM. The upshot of it, though, is that it lets you absorb a light weapon into your body for one hour per CL (hence why we wanted it CL 8). It's more or less impossible to detect while absorbed, and you're the only one who can bring it back out (unless it gets dispelled or something, which is what the Greater Alarm is for).

Remember the light shield I mentioned? Well, since you can make a shield bash with it, it counts as a light weapon. So, every night, you put your amulet (and your ring, if applicable) inside your hidden compartment on your shield, and then absorb it into your body while you sleep. Not foolproof, perhaps, but pretty close to it.

If you have another way of protecting your items, feel free to post it.

... is the most delightfully devious strategy I've ever seen. :smallbiggrin:

Draz74
2009-06-10, 01:35 AM
On the subject of protecting a super-important item: Clasp of Safeguarding from Dungeonscape should be a staple for almost any high-level character.

Kyeudo
2009-06-10, 01:54 AM
I suggest something even stranger. Create your items as a Graft. This takes more work (people with the Create Graft feat are rare), but makes it part of your character. You can't lose it, and it only doubles the price.

Then there's the flavor. Why have an Amulet of the Silver Tongue when you can just have a Silver Tongue?

MisterSaturnine
2009-06-10, 02:03 AM
I suggest something even stranger. Create your items as a Graft. This takes more work (people with the Create Graft feat are rare), but makes it part of your character. You can't lose it, and it only doubles the price.

Then there's the flavor. Why have an Amulet of the Silver Tongue when you can just have a Silver Tongue?

This sounds like an interesting idea, but how do you do it? I looked at the graft flesh feat and info about grafts, but it just lists a bunch of them without giving information on how to go about designing custom grafts or adapting items into grafts.

Kyeudo
2009-06-10, 02:10 AM
This sounds like an interesting idea, but how do you do it? I looked at the graft flesh feat and info about grafts, but it just lists a bunch of them without giving information on how to go about designing custom grafts or adapting items into grafts.

You do it the same way you make any other non-standard item: Homebrew. See, we have the origional item itself, which is decidedly non-broken. Then we have the general guideline for grafts (it's not given, but reverse engineering has shown that they stay pretty close to twice the cost of a normal magic item that could do the same thing). Putting the two together gives us the double costed, but unlosable Silver Tongue.

Depending on which Graft Flesh feats you have access to, I recomend putting it in the Silithar, Warforged, or that other type of construct graft availible (I forget their name), but making a graft from the tongue of a Logokron Devil would work for a Fiendish graft.

MisterSaturnine
2009-06-10, 02:55 AM
You do it the same way you make any other non-standard item: Homebrew. See, we have the origional item itself, which is decidedly non-broken. Then we have the general guideline for grafts (it's not given, but reverse engineering has shown that they stay pretty close to twice the cost of a normal magic item that could do the same thing). Putting the two together gives us the double costed, but unlosable Silver Tongue.

Depending on which Graft Flesh feats you have access to, I recomend putting it in the Silithar, Warforged, or that other type of construct graft availible (I forget their name), but making a graft from the tongue of a Logokron Devil would work for a Fiendish graft.

That sounds about right to me. And excellent call on the Logokron Devil thing...fantastic flavor. You graft his tongue, and viola!* +10 enhancement bonus to truespeak checks. Genius.

*http://hamletgreenstage08.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/instrument-viola.jpg

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-06-10, 04:01 AM
It was mostly the opinion of the powergamers/munchkins.

And mathamaticians.

Kaiyanwang
2009-06-10, 04:40 AM
And mathamaticians.

I see you point, but consider that an encounter of your level could be even one with more smaller creatures, so more vulnerables to your truespeak.

Actually, I always see people assume that PCs only face monsters with a CR of their level (and maybe, always 4/day), but this is plain wrong!

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-06-10, 04:41 AM
But what if you face monsters of your CR, as the game is wont to do with you?

JellyPooga
2009-06-10, 04:43 AM
I've yet to bother actually looking at the Truenamer yet (I'm still trawling my way through Binder and some of Shadowcaster), so I've yet to form my own opinions on it (though I have heard the bad rep it has). Having said that and having read your low-down on some of the Utterances, it struck me that Strike of Might used in combination with the Keen LCT you mentioned as the alternative to the Fortification one could become a relatively powerful combo, at least at lower levels. Assuming Strike of Might gives a flat bonus to damage, it should multiply with a crit and +10 damage when multiplied even by 2 is enough to drop most creatures with 2HD alone. Add weapon and strength damage and you're looking at a one-hit kill on a 3HD critter (4 or even 5 if you're using a x3 or x4 Crit weapon and/or Power Attack).

Not, perhaps, an amazing redeeming quality for the Truenamer (as I say, I can't judge, not having looked at it myself), but it just leaped out at me.

Kaiyanwang
2009-06-10, 04:44 AM
But what if you face monsters of your CR, as the game is wont to do with you?

Of course, you are right - the class should be prepare to face diffrent kind of encounters. But just to say, you could even have mixed ones - say, a big one and other smaller.

Not to justify bad class design, anyway. :smallsmile:

JellyPooga
2009-06-10, 05:40 AM
I've just had a brief look at the Truenamer (and for me that constitutes a fairly thorough read for anyone else) and I have to say; I am completely underwhelmed. The Binder I was neither here nor there on; flavour was quite good, but the limited number of Pacts available turned me off. The Shadowcaster I really like the flavour of, but have yet to decide whether I like the mechanics of it yet. Truenamer though? It's just pap. I like the idea of skill based casting, but making it so incrementally hard to cast is just bizarre and the actual Utterances themselves are just so lucklustre; I see no reason to play one at all. I'd rather play a Sorcerer fluffed as a truenamer; lots of Power Word spells, Still Spell and Eschew Materials (not Silent Spell though). The combo I suggested above doesn't even work because it pretty much specifically says it doesn't in the Strike of Might descriptive text!

About the only thing I thought there was going for the whole Truename schtick was when I was taking a look at the Prestige Classes; Acolyte of the Ego and Diciple of the Word struck me as possibly being good PrCs (thematically) for a member of the Trancendant Order (Ciphers) from the Planescape setting. That was about it.

Kaiyanwang
2009-06-10, 06:04 AM
The Shadowcaster I really like the flavour of, but have yet to decide whether I like the mechanics of it yet.

I see that my gamestyle is different from the usual, but at least in my current campaing, a friend of mine it's playing a Shugenja // Shadowcaster (flavour: "scorpion clan secrets" shugenja" and I found the way shadowcaster casts spells, and the way S applies metashadow quite useful.

Consider that it's gestalt*, but the campaing (paradox, maybe) it's not so power-level. Anyway, I would give him a chance even in standard campaing.

Just a note: to make him more interesting, I stated that mysteries are Shadow Wave, so work in some kind of dead magic zone.


* I mean, with another caster class aside, a Shadowcaster is more durable

Eldariel
2009-06-10, 11:40 AM
Of course, you are right - the class should be prepare to face diffrent kind of encounters. But just to say, you could even have mixed ones - say, a big one and other smaller.

Not to justify bad class design, anyway. :smallsmile:

The big issue is that using buffs on your party is DC of a CR-equivalent opponent. That means whenever you wanna heal or buff or so, you'll need to make those checks. So when facing weaker opponents, you can use offensive powers rather well.

However, when facing equivalent opponents, you'll have trouble affecting the opponent and trouble buffing your team. And when facing a boss monster, you won't be affecting the boss and you'll still have trouble affecting your team. And should you manage the checks, the utterances are still lackluster (as OP states).

Kaiyanwang
2009-06-10, 11:48 AM
The big issue is that using buffs on your party is DC of a CR-equivalent opponent. That means whenever you wanna heal or buff or so, you'll need to make those checks. So when facing weaker opponents, you can use offensive powers rather well.

However, when facing equivalent opponents, you'll have trouble affecting the opponent and trouble buffing your team. And when facing a boss monster, you won't be affecting the boss and you'll still have trouble affecting your team. And should you manage the checks, the utterances are still lackluster (as OP states).

OK ok guys, I tried, but you won. TN must be tweaked a lot to work, it's math. :smalltongue:

Kyeudo
2009-06-11, 12:38 AM
So, Zaq, any thoughts on some of the other Utterances in the book? Which ones suck and which ones just need dropped a level and what-not?

Adumbration
2009-06-11, 04:07 AM
Thanks for posting this thread. Due to it, the next time I have the chance, I'll play a high level Truenamer. I think the utterances can be very powerful indeed: there are some extremely useful effects, that can't be replicated by, well, nothing. One example of this is Confounding resistance, which gives Evasion and Mettle for 5 rounds, or takes them away from an enemy for no save. Caster lens either improves caster level by 2, or decreases by same, no save. Reversed Breath of Recovery paralyzes for 1 round. Coup de grace, anyone?

Essense of Lifespark can restore level drain. Magic contraction Empowers all spellcasters spells for 5 rounds, no cost - or alternatively gives SR. Don't get me started on Spell Rebirth. That ability rocks my socks.

If you can hit the Truespeak DCs, Truenamer is very much worth it, in my opinion. (At least in high levels. 1st level truenamer sucks.)

EDIT: Has anyone checked the utterance called Ether Reforged? I have no idea what they were smoking when they did that, but it must've been something good. Duration: Instantaneous. Saving Throw: No. From now on, all your allies and you can act without any penalties whatsoever against ethereal creatures. Combine this with the fact that you can jaunt your enemy to the ethereal without a save, you can pretty much insta-win any encounter.

EDIT 2: Ward of Peace. Seriously, no save?

Dagren
2009-06-11, 05:26 AM
I see you point, but consider that an encounter of your level could be even one with more smaller creatures, so more vulnerables to your truespeak.Yeah, but if you're fighting low level mooks, there will probably be a lot of them, and the OP said that you can only affect one at once. Basically this means that you'd be outdone by a blaster wizard with a fireball spell, and pretty much everyone agrees that blasting is a poor option. Yet, (at least if I'm reading this right), you are still beaten by them.

Kaiyanwang
2009-06-11, 05:38 AM
Yeah, but if you're fighting low level mooks, there will probably be a lot of them, and the OP said that you can only affect one at once. Basically this means that you'd be outdone by a blaster wizard with a fireball spell, and pretty much everyone agrees that blasting is a poor option. Yet, (at least if I'm reading this right), you are still beaten by them.

You are right. Anyway, I already gave up :smalltongue:

Dagren
2009-06-11, 05:53 AM
You are right. Anyway, I already gave up :smalltongue:Yay! I'm right! :smallbiggrin:

Adumbration
2009-06-11, 05:54 AM
Yeah, but if you're fighting low level mooks, there will probably be a lot of them, and the OP said that you can only affect one at once. Basically this means that you'd be outdone by a blaster wizard with a fireball spell, and pretty much everyone agrees that blasting is a poor option. Yet, (at least if I'm reading this right), you are still beaten by them.

Only at low levels. At higher levels you can use Earthquake, or just Gate in something to kill them.

Kaiyanwang
2009-06-11, 05:54 AM
Yay! I'm right! :smallbiggrin:

Sometimes happens.

EDIT: and you feel like you just critted with a mercurial greatsword.

The_Snark
2009-06-11, 06:14 AM
EDIT: Has anyone checked the utterance called Ether Reforged? I have no idea what they were smoking when they did that, but it must've been something good. Duration: Instantaneous. Saving Throw: No. From now on, all your allies and you can act without any penalties whatsoever against ethereal creatures. Combine this with the fact that you can jaunt your enemy to the ethereal without a save, you can pretty much insta-win any encounter.

I'm pretty sure the Instantaneous Duration bit is an error. Allowing everyone you like to see/interact with ethereal creatures forever, with no way to remove it, is not in line at all with other truenaming effects, and an Ethereal Jaunt effect with a duration of instantaneous doesn't even work.

I've never had the chance to try them, but the Lexicon of the Perfected Map has always looked pretty good to me, especially since they have set Truespeak DCs rather than depending on CR. At level 1, Fog from the Void is (as the OP notes) excellent. Transform the Landscape (level 2) is interesting, although unless it lets you select which areas to make into difficult terrain (the text is unclear) it's probably not as good as Fog. Level 3 gives you a choice between Dimension Lock (albeit with a smaller radius) and Control Winds.

The level 4 utterances are all quite good—you only get one, at level 20, so they serve as a sort of capstone. They're actually pretty good capstones: Anger the Sleeping Earth emulates Earthquake, which can completely lock down non-spellcasting enemies—and it actually works better in a small radius, since it means you're less likely to hit allies. Deny Passage creates a 20-foot area that people can't move in or out of, no save—although you can let people you like through in either direction. Conjuctive Gate is Gate. One of the best spells in the game even without being abused, without the usual XP cost.

Really too bad you don't get those until so late.

Zaq
2009-06-11, 05:25 PM
So, Zaq, any thoughts on some of the other Utterances in the book? Which ones suck and which ones just need dropped a level and what-not?

Well, I hadn't planned on talking too in-depth about the ones I haven't used in actual play experience (my character actually has all of the ones I went into detail about), but since you asked, I'll give 'em a few comments.

Just in case it wasn't PERFECTLY CLEAR, all of the following comments are speculation and are not based upon actual play experience, unlike the ones in the second post.

For first level LEM, Knight's Puissance and Defensive Edge suffer from the same problem: namely, the damned Law of Sequence. If the LoS didn't exist, I could actually see a low-level Truenamer being a valued party buffer/debuffer with these two utterances, especially Knight's Puissance. However, the fact that you can only affect one target at a time... well, it just kills the usefulness.

Moving right along to second level LEM. Remember that you get your first level 2 LEM at 3rd level. Archer's Eye does not strike me as useful simply because the normal version is too limited (remember, there's no real pre-buffing with Truespeak, one of its many flaws) and the reversed version becomes sharply less useful with level (since Protection from Arrows gives DR/magic). The fact that it ignores ALL concealment is its only saving grace, even though I suspect that this is a result of typical lazy editing (the Truenamer chapter is the worst edited WotC product I have ever seen, aside from arguably the ToB errata. But at least they didn't charge for that.) rather than an intended benefit. Still, this lets you hit invisible things, which is okay. Still situational.

Perceive the Unseen, as I've mentioned, is underpowered and, like its big brother Vision Sharpened, deserves to be bumped down a level. Concealment is a passable defense comparable to Blur, but I just don't think it's worth the precious utterance slot. The fact that it doesn't mention whether or not it allows hiding is typical poor editing.

Speed of the Zephyr is actually pretty nice, and I can see a strong argument for taking it. The fact that the speed boost is untyped is very nice, and the penalty from the reversed version does not seem to have a cap, so you could combine it with another speed-reducing effect (perhaps Greater Speed of the Zephyr) and reduce a foe to immobility, or close to it.

I don't really see the benefit to Silent Caster. I suppose I could see one situation in which it might be useful, namely, since you can (with a 20% failure chance) use Truespeak in an area of Silence, you can let your poor wizard buddy cast in the same area... but if that's not "ridiculously situational" I don't know what is. It's no good for stealth, since you can't silence the initial utterance, so you might as well just cast the spell normally. The reversed utterance is crap, since it lasts for only one round and allows a save anyway.

Temporal Twist is passable, giving sort of a poor man's Haste, but really, all you're doing is trading one standard action for one attack action, and by the time that would do more than just buffing your melee buddy with Strike of Might, you have Haste. I can see it used on a self-buffing Truenamer gish once you can quicken it, but still, underwhelming. The reverse sucks for the same reason as Silent Caster.

Third level LEM, available at level 6, has some interesting stuff. Energy Negation is pretty decent for a DoT effect, and energy resistance is never really a bad idea. It's a pity that you can't choose sonic, but it's unlikely that you won't find at least one energy type that will work (and your Knowledge check is high enough that you should know which one to use).

I frankly don't really see the benefit of Incarnation of Angels... it's cool, but not very useful. (One dirty, dirty trick you can do with it is to abuse the fact that it does NOT specify that the target must be an ally, and it doesn't allow a saving throw. The celestial and fiendish templates grant the extraplanar subtype, so you can hit a foe with this and then use Dismissal on him. Still, that's a dirty trick, and shouldn't really be considered an argument in favor of this utterance.)

Accelerated Attack is... weird. I really can't decide if it's any good, so I'll refrain from commenting.

Temporal Spiral is a really great utterance. Giving an ally an extra move action is amazingly useful (if nothing else for setting up charges, but really, the uses are endless). What's more, the reversed version is a great effect IF you can get them to fail their save. Truenamer saving throws tend to be lackluster, but dazed is a nasty condition, and the duration is pretty decent (especially Extended).

Fourth level LEM, gained at level 10, is where things start getting really nice. Breath of Cleansing doesn't strike me as particularly amazing, and the reversed version is kind of lackluster (nauseated is a nasty condition, yes, but they get a save, and if I'm giving my enemy a save, well, I'd rather take them out of the fight for three rounds with Temporal Spiral than for one round with Breath of Cleansing).

Caster Lens's usefulness hinges primarily on whether being at a lower caster level prevents an enemy from casting his highest level spells. (For example, a wizard can normally only cast fifth-level spells if he's ninth level, right? If you hit a level 9 wizard with this, does he lose the ability to cast 5th level spells because his caster level is too low?), but the normal version is still nice for boosting really critical Dispel checks, enhancing your cleric or wizard's Morning Buff Routine, or making a psionic character really deadly. (This makes me think that a truenamer would make a good supporter for a psion or other heavy manifester. Since ML is way more important to manifesters than CL is to casters, Caster Lens benefits them greatly, and the ability to grant additional move actions, which a psionic character with Psionic Meditation can use to regain psionic focus, helps them immensely as well...)

Confounding Resistance seems situational (remember, no pre-buffing!) but really handy.

Word of Bolstering is situationally useful in normal mode, but underwhelming in reversed mode (yes, no-save ability penalties are nice, but it's still just a PENALTY, thus non-stacking, and it's only 1d6. Ray of Enfeeblement does more damage and has been around from level 1, just for comparison.), and again, the Law of Sequence prevents you from hitting more than one target or even more than one ability.

Magic Contraction is actually good. Free metamagic is always good stuff. The fact that you're cheerleading for a party member who's already better than you can be a little grating, but still, free Empowers are sexy. The SR option is a double-edged sword, but not totally worthless (just mostly).

Spell Rebirth is one of the few tricks a Truenamer gets that a wizard absolutely does not, so it's awesome.

Morale Boost is underwhelming. Frightened is a nasty debuff, but it allows a save and it's mind-affecting. By level 10, this is starting to be a problem.

Level five LEM, not available before level 14, has a lot that looks cool, but may or may not be as good as advertised. Eldritch Attraction is really cool, and I wish it didn't allow a save. On a Truenamer who focuses on boosting CHA and otherwise pumping save DCs, I can see it being worthwhile, since it's a fairly uncommon trick, but it definitely requires some focus.

Greater Energy Negation is useful in normal mode (it doesn't specify what kinds of energy you can gain immunity to! You can even gain immunity to force!) but lackluster in reversed mode (20 damage isn't TERRIBLE, but at level 14 I expect a little better, especially since energy resistance will be really common by now. For reference, that's pretty close to the average on 6d6, or rather, a little less).

Preternatural Clarity is... weird. A floating insight bonus is pretty nice, but again, by level 14, I expect better than a +5. (Moment of Prescience is available next level, for comparison, and kind of blows Preternatural Clarity out of the water, doesn't it?) The confusion effect is lame. Preternatural Clarity belongs around level 3, not level 5.

Sensory Focus is killed by its short duration (one friggin' round?!)... I mean, it's awesome (True Seeing AND blindsight!), but seriously, ONE ROUND. You basically need to use both Quicken and Extend on this to make it worthwhile, and even then... yeah. Also note that it doesn't actually state how far out the blindsight goes. Typical bad Truenamer editing? Or does it actually go out as far as you can see? Ask your GM. The reversed is your vanilla save-or-suck, nothing special.

Greater Seek the Sky is very nice, and might actually be worth getting even if you already have Seek the Sky, since you can then chain the two and fly for more than a minute at a time (that's Extended, by the way). Ironically, I'd rather use the reversed Seek the Sky than the reversed Greater version, since the lesser version prevents the target from flying again in any way for 5 rounds, while the greater version just makes them fall.

Ward of Peace... well, it's pretty nice for a buffer or indirect battlefield controller, actually. The reversed utterance is very situational, since it not only allows a save but also requires concentration (so you're just trading actions, more or less). If you have Swift Concentration, this could be worth it. Even without Swift Conc, I can see it just for the normal version. It's a nice buff. You're by no means invincible, but... it helps.

Essence of Lifespark is incredibly situational and doesn't seem all that good. Remember, this is level 14. A no-save negative level is nice, but Enervation gives a minimum of one no-save negative level (it requires a touch attack, Lifespark requires a Truespeak roll, so it's a wash there) and has been around for seven levels now, to say nothing of crazy metamagicked versions. The fact that it can restore a lost level, even a drained one, is nice, but so can Restoration, which has been around for as long as Enervation has. Yes, it has a 100gp cost, but it's also not taking up one of the Cleric's precious known slots (quite the opposite, since a Cleric, you know, knows all spells ever). This would be a weak but acceptable level 4, or a slightly powerful level 3. It's an awful level 5.

Sixth level LEM should theoretically be the cream of the crop, right? You don't get them until 18th level, after all. Pure-class sorcerers have level 9 spells by now. Pure-class martial adepts should have multiple level 9 maneuvers. Pure-class Incarnates have had their Heart binds for a while and are getting their Soul binds soon. I'll be judging these against level 9 spells, powers, maneuvers, whatever.

Breath of Recovery. Clerics are slinging around Mass Heal by now. In contrast, this spell does basically the same thing as the Cleric spell Panacea. Panacea is level 4. Lame. The reversed version is just another save-or-be-screwed, and we all know that Truenamers aren't good at pumping save DCs. Also, Hold Person can paralyze someone as a level 2 spell, 3 for wizards. Add in a one-round duration and you have a real flop of an utterance.

Ether Reforged is, well, insane. Can that really be an instantaneous duration? If so, awesome. I don't think it's overpowered (does it really, honestly, truly stand up to Shapechange? Time Stop? Summon Elemental Monolith? GATE?) if so, but it's definitely weird. (If you have a really huge, you-can-find-anything-here-for-the-right-price type city in your campaign, you know, something on the order of Sigil, see if you can buy some scrolls of this! You only need it once per party member, after all!) The reversed version is nice.

I don't know what they were thinking with Greater Knight's Puissance. +5 on attack and damage? At level 18?! This is a third, MAYBE a weak fourth level utterance. The reversed version is terrible.

Mystic Rampart, while not nearly as good as it should be, is one of the better level 6 utterances. The DR is negligible by level 18, but a +5 unnamed bonus or penalty on saves is statistically significant. Of course, Superior Resistance lasts 24 hours, gives a +6 on saves (a resistance bonus, granted, but still), and is level 6 (thus around since 11th level), but after Greater Knight's Puissance anything looks good.

Singular Mind is pretty decent, at least with the normal version. Notice that you do not roll a caster level check; you simply compare the two. This might be good or bad... it's probably bad, in fact, since it's REALLY HARD to boost Truenamer levels, but at least you don't have that chance of rolling a 1. If you can't see why the reversed utterance is completely horrible, I can't help you.

Moving on to the LCT utterances, Keen Weapon is, well, Keen Edge. It's not horrible, but it's rarely worth the combat action. If you could pre-buff, it'd be useful.

You can choose Agitate Metal, a level 2, at character level 7. Heat Metal (and Chill Metal, too) is a first level spell. Kind of shameful, really.

You get your first (oops, I mean your only) third level LCT at character level 11. Rebuild Item is a really, really nice utterance, once again because it's something that a wizard can't do. It's not disappointing. You have to more or less actively go out of your way to use it, but hey, we'll take any unique trick we can get, right?

Suppress Weapon, on the other hand, is awful. Suppressing the energy-based enhancement of a weapon? That's it? At level 11, that's the best you can do? Oh, and it doesn't even work on energy burst weapon unless you increase the DC? Pfffffft.

Your fourth level LCT shows up at level 15. Suppress Item would be passable (weak, but passable) if it didn't have that "concentration" duration. As it is, well, it's worse than Dispel Magic. Yes, you have to make a dispel check, but at least you're not trading actions with a goddamn item.

Transmute Weapon is a little better. Wonky DR comes up more and more frequently at higher levels, so it's not entirely forgettable. Interestingly, you could theoretically turn an enemy's weapon to, oh, say, glass, or maybe common ice, or even arguably paper with this (and then fix it with Rebuild Item if desired).

You get your fifth level LCT at level 19. Yeah. Ninth level spells have been flying around for two levels by now. What do you get? Well, you can choose to take Seize Item, doing less than what Telekinesis could do. I might take this as a level 2. Maybe.

Or, you can choose Metamagic Catalyst. Now, normally, anything that gives free metamagic is a win, right? Weeeeeell, stick with the artificer for this one. It only works on potions or scrolls, has a one-round window in which it works, and has a (very small) set list of allowed metamagics. I repeat, you're at level 19.

I'm almost afraid to delve into the LPM utterances, but I've come this far. You get your first LPM at level 8. Competing with Fog from the Void (read: SOLID FOG!) is... well, there's the confusingly worded Shield of the Landscape, which is... um, vague about what it can actually do for you. (Do your allies AUTOMATICALLY get cover, even if they're standing on a perfectly flat and featureless plain? Do they have to have cover already? Does it move with you? With them? How much cover is it? Can they use it to hide?) I suppose that's about all you can expect from a section they literally forgot to tell you how to do (Remember, the DC for the LPM utterances isn't actually printed in Tome of Magic).

There's also the first-level psionic power Stomp. Er, I mean, the utterance Shockwave. Which does the exact same thing. At least it targets Fort instead of Reflex... wait, that's not actually a good thing. Yeah, I'm sticking with Solid Fog on this one.

Second level LPM, which shows up in your arsenal at level 12, has, as usual, three options to choose from. Energy Vortex is a lackluster DoT spell that hurts your allies as much as your enemies... 2d6 per round just doesn't cut it at level 12. It's saveless, but it's not worth your action in combat.

Speak Rock to Mud is... probably your best bet for your 2nd level LPM, really. At least it's duplicating a spell that's been around for only three levels now. It's unclear if your enemies get a saving throw... if they don't, this is actually pretty decent. If they do, meh.

Transform the Landscape is hardly worth mentioning. I'd take it before I'd take Energy Vortex, but... seriously, by 12th level, shouldn't you be flying anyway? I guess it can clear a path for your barbarian buddy to charge.

Third level LPM doesn't come into play until 16th level, one level before 9th level spells hit the table. For those of you inexplicably just joining us, it's a pretty safe bet that they won't measure up to what everyone else has been doing. Lore of the World is, um, lacking. Yeah. I don't have a lot to say about it.

Master of the Four Winds seems great (not 16th level great, but still) until you remember the fiddly little rule that LPM utterances, unless stated otherwise, have a 20' radius AoE. Which is kind of tiny for Control Winds. You could argue that the whole "like Control Winds" clause gives it the same radius, but the wonderfully clear editing of the Truenamer chapter won't really help you.

Thwart the Traveler is probably the least bad of them. Dimensional Lock is still handy, even if it's really late.

Finally, we come to the 4th level LPM. You get this at level 20. This is your capstone. You've slogged through 20 levels of truenamer, no dips, no prestige classes, nothing, and this is your reward. You get to choose one of the following utterances! And, for a change, one of them actually does hold up in power to what you'd expect at 20th level... Conjunctive Gate. Yeah. That's right. Gate without an XP component. This is damned powerful. Still subject to the Law of Sequence, of course, but hey, it's still Gate. I'd expect nothing less at 20th level.

Well, if you DO want less, you can take Anger the Sleeping Earth. Earthquake, only smaller. Woohoo? I guess? Maybe? Nah.

Deny Passage is pretty cool, actually. Underpowered for 20th level (Can we get this shifted down to 2nd level? Maybe 3rd?), but a no-save, you-stay-here ability is cool. Can't compare to Gate, but what can?

Anyway, those are the utterances. I've left aside the Word of Nurturing ones, since I've basically already covered them and they're all pretty much the same. I think Moderate hits the sweet spot in terms of usefulness, but I haven't used any of them other than Lesser and Moderate, so I'm not really sure.

Does that answer your question?

Flickerdart
2009-06-11, 06:00 PM
So...the reason to play this at any level at all is the free Gate? Wow, it's like they weren't even trying, except instead of not trying they reverse tried.

Maybe this and Shadow Magic is what Tome of Battle is to fighters, for casters...but balancing the other way.

quick_comment
2009-06-11, 06:12 PM
So...the reason to play this at any level at all is the free Gate? Wow, it's like they weren't even trying, except instead of not trying they reverse tried.

Maybe this and Shadow Magic is what Tome of Battle is to fighters, for casters...but balancing the other way.

Thats actually....very true.

If you replace melee types with ToB, then the martial classes can hold their own against casters for a good range of levels.

If you replace casters with only ToM types, then the same thing happens.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-11, 09:55 PM
Ok, now you have inspired me to go build a Truenamer. Its actually really funny, because of my groups rampant houseruling (Lets do that instead...why? No reason), Truenamers and CW Samarui are actually slightly overpowered :smallbiggrin:

Truenamer Houserules: 1. Law of Resistance is removed.
2. You get access to LEM at the same rate as casters do, LCT starting two levels later, and LPM two levels after that. You end up getting the final ability at level 11. This isnt really a problem because only two of my campaigns that started at low levels ever got to this point.

It actually makes them very similar to Warlocks.

Zaq
2009-06-11, 10:41 PM
So...the reason to play this at any level at all is the free Gate? Wow, it's like they weren't even trying, except instead of not trying they reverse tried.

Maybe this and Shadow Magic is what Tome of Battle is to fighters, for casters...but balancing the other way.

It's not all that bad. The utterances in that big post were, for the most part, the utterances I DIDN'T already take. There are some good ones in the second post. While the Truenamer is not powerful at any level, they are at least capable as long as you're not trying to compare them to, you know, real casters.

Olo, I like those houserules... though to be honest, the Law of Sequence has proven to be a bigger pain in the butt than the Law of Resistance. I wouldn't complain if either were removed, but if I had the choice, I'd much sooner ditch the LoS than the LoR. Becoming less capable throughout the day is a pain, but it doesn't bother me nearly as much as the Law of Sequence does.

I've added a good bit to the first post; I recommend everyone go check it out.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-11, 11:50 PM
I'll bring that up to my DM, he'll probably agree :smallsmile:

Philistine
2009-06-11, 11:54 PM
I've added a good bit to the first post; I recommend everyone go check it out.

Would it have killed you to mark which bits were the new stuff? :smalltongue:

More seriously, how long (as in, to what level) do you intend to continue playing the character? And if it's going to be a while, like "all the way to 20 or even beyond," do you have any plans for further buffing your Truenaming skill? Because while I admire your ingenuity in finding multiple sources to boost your checks, they all appear to be flat buffs - the 2X level scaling on your DCs will leave them behind eventually.

tyckspoon
2009-06-12, 12:33 AM
even beyond," do you have any plans for further buffing your Truenaming skill? Because while I admire your ingenuity in finding multiple sources to boost your checks, they all appear to be flat buffs - the 2X level scaling on your DCs will leave them behind eventually.

He's actually far enough ahead of the curve already that he can reliably make a Truespeak check against a level 20 target. Just advancing his Truespeak ranks normally will let him use standard Utterances and probably Extend them; the difficulty is maintaining enough of an edge to Quicken reliably, which is what he's said is the keystone of the power he hopes to extract from being a Truespeaker. For that, I notice he hasn't yet tapped a few reasonably common bonus types- it's pretty easy to acquire generic morale, insight, and luck bonuses to skills, although large ones are fairly rare. This is a case where you might find yourself spending quite a bit of cash for a small bonus, like 20,000 gp for a Luckstone (on the plus side, Luckstones apply to a variety of useful checks.) Or paying out for a couple wands of Heroism for the +2 morale and/or buying some Pearls of Power/Rods of Extend so your party Wizard or Bard can keep it up on you.

'course, there's always the simple (and reasonably cheap and efficient) way, which is just to advance the Competence item. It can get up to a +30 bonus before it trips the Epic rules, which nicely matches the ground he can expect to lose on the way to CR 20 enemies.

Or he can find a way to Take 10 on his Truespeak checks, which is effectively the same as finding another +9 unnamed bonus.

Kyeudo
2009-06-12, 02:34 AM
Does that answer your question?

Well much so. Thank you. That will help alot with my homebrewing attempts to badger the Truenamer into line with a Rogue or Psiwarrior in power level.

Adumbration
2009-06-12, 02:49 AM
Or he can find a way to Take 10 on his Truespeak checks, which is effectively the same as finding another +9 unnamed bonus.

1 level dip in Exemplar would suffice. +4 to Truespeak checks, and choose it as your Skill Mastery, and you can now take 10 on it.

Eldariel
2009-06-12, 02:51 AM
1 level dip in Exemplar would suffice. +4 to Truespeak checks, and choose it as your Skill Mastery, and you can now take 10 on it.

I don't think you can take 10 in Truespeak without a special ability like Deceive Item for UMD; it's got the clause "you can't Take 10 in Truespeak ever ever". As such doesn't exist, I don't think there is a way to take 10 in Truespeak without homebrew.

Fizban
2009-06-12, 03:49 AM
Ah, but the Exemplar says you can take 10, and is more specific than the general skill rule. Though if it says "take 10 in stressful situations" instead of "take 10 whenever you want", then we're boinked.

Eldariel
2009-06-12, 03:59 AM
Ah, but the Exemplar says you can take 10, and is more specific than the general skill rule. Though if it says "take 10 in stressful situations" instead of "take 10 whenever you want", then we're boinked.

Exemplar gives you Skill Mastery identical to the Rogue-ability, which does not work ("When making a check with one of these skills, she can take 10 even if stress or distraction would normally prevent her from doing so"). It only removes some restrictions from taking 10, doesn't give the ability where it didn't exist before. That's the very reason I said what I said.

Zaq
2009-06-12, 08:34 AM
Regardless of whether you can or not, my GM already ruled that Exemplar officially Does Not Work That Way. I disagree, but it's not worth arguing.

Arkaim
2009-06-12, 05:15 PM
Sir, you have inspired me to create a Truenamer. He shall be unstoppable!

Zaq
2009-06-21, 04:05 PM
Let's just dust this thread off a bit, shall we?

I've added a good bit to the second post (mostly in a new spoiler at the bottom). Tell me what you think.

I repeat, I'd like to hear what you folks would like me to talk about. I know that there aren't a lot of sources of information about what it's like to be a truenamer out there, and I feel it's my duty to share what I know with the community. (Interestingly, my character would feel that way too, but that's not the point.)


Well much so. Thank you. That will help alot with my homebrewing attempts to badger the Truenamer into line with a Rogue or Psiwarrior in power level.

Cool, I'm glad I could help. I'd love to know what you come up with!

Kyeudo
2009-06-22, 01:30 PM
Well, so far I'm working on finding a workable formula so that you don't need tons of items just to stand a chance of making your DCs at higher levels. I think I've got one, but I'm still debating eactly how low it should really be.

See, I'm of the opinion that the Amulet of the Silver Tongue should be a Ring of Wizardry for Truenamers, not a booster to allow for continued functioning of the class. The Law of Resistance will eventually make it so you you can't get off another use of a particular Utterance, but when should that be?

The other idea I've got kicking around is making personal truenames worth something. As is, it's a +2 DC to get a +2 bonus on getting through spell resistance (which you can just ignore by taking a +5 DC on your Truespeak check) and then you can also see and talk to that person using two class features. Not much for a couple thousand gp.

But I thought: What if an Utterance spoken using a personal truename has a much greater effect? Like instead of getting the Celestial template temporarily when someone used the Incarnation of Angels Utterance on you, you instead gain bonuses more akin to being Half-Celestial? So far, though, it isn't coming as well as I'd like. Some Utterances just don't suggest good boosting effects.

Keld Denar
2009-06-22, 01:48 PM
One minor nit-pick I found on the first page. You are making Solid Fog a bit too powerful. It reduces a trapped foes movement speed to 5' (as in, 1 move action gets you 5'). It doesn't take a full round action to go 5'. So, a typical trapped character can take a double move action to go 10'. A Fogged creature that is also Slowed can only take 1 standard or move action to go 5', which sucks. In no way would a Solid Fog ever completely immobilize someone though, since the PHB does have rules for starting and finishing full round actions on seperate turns in the event that you are denied taking a full round action.

So, if you were Slowed (1/2 action per turn), Entangled (1/2 movement), and Solid Fogged (movement 5'), then to move 5' would take 2 turns, and to move 10' (as a creatuer who was just Fogged) would take 4 turns.

Multiple sources of 1/2 movement (such as difficult terrain, entangled, blinded, etc) shouldn't stack, IIRC, but the above would all stack.

Zaq
2009-06-22, 03:11 PM
Good to know, Keld. I'll fix that straightaway.

Kyeudo, one thing to remember about boosting utterances for personal truenames is that you always know your own personal truename. Any boosted effects that you give to this will automatically affect the Truenamer himself (/herself). If that's what you want, go for it, but it's something to keep in mind.

only1doug
2009-06-22, 03:15 PM
Seek the Sky: This is one of those utterances that will eventually become obsolete, since Greater Seek the Sky (5th level) is better in every way, but oh well. Basically, this mimics the Fly spell (60' fly speed, good maneuverability) for 5 rounds, or renders a target incapable of flight for 5 rounds (though they fall gently and take no damage). The duration is something of a kick in the nuts, especially since you absolutely cannot cast it again until the first one runs out (so no chaining them in midair to keep yourself aloft), but still, flight is a great defensive option, and the speed boost is handy. I'm looking forward to using the reversed version, but we haven't faced any flying enemies yet. I almost always Extend this, just so I have more than 3 rounds of action (figure 1 round gaining the appropriate altitude and 1 round getting near enough to the ground that I don't die when it runs out, and that leaves 3 practical rounds to work with).

Don't regret the obsolesence of this Utterance, when you get the greater version you finally have chained flight when you need it (Greater seek the sky down to 1 round left? time for normal seek the sky)

also: get a featherfall item ASAP so as to not have to worry about it expiring while you are in flight.

Kyeudo
2009-06-22, 04:29 PM
Good to know, Keld. I'll fix that straightaway.

Kyeudo, one thing to remember about boosting utterances for personal truenames is that you always know your own personal truename. Any boosted effects that you give to this will automatically affect the Truenamer himself (/herself). If that's what you want, go for it, but it's something to keep in mind.

I wasn't talking about anything major, just enough that you'll want to research all your allies' Truenames and the Truenames of all your major enemies. It should be useful to know a person's Truename, not game breaking.

Olo Demonsbane
2009-06-22, 10:21 PM
Kyeudo: Seconded.

I got my DM to destroy the Law of Sequence. In fact, he had no idea that it existed in the first place :smallbiggrin:

I made my third level Archivist//Truenamer. He is the divine caster and focuses on healing, buffing, and debuffing.

Truespeak +25: +6 Ranks, +6 unnamed (Item familiar), +5 enchancement (Lesser Silver Tounge amulet), +3 unnamed (Skill Focus), +5 Intellegence

Kyeudo
2009-06-22, 10:53 PM
Personally, I don't understand exactly why the Law of Sequence exists. It isn't to ensure proper stacking of effects and Utterances have rather weak effects so it can't be to limit the power of Utterances.


Question: About how many times per day do you usually use your main Utterances, Zaq?

Chronos
2009-06-22, 11:01 PM
1 level dip in Exemplar would suffice. +4 to Truespeak checks, and choose it as your Skill Mastery, and you can now take 10 on it.The Skill Mastery point has already been covered, but the Skill Artistry bonus also won't work. It's a competence bonus, and hence won't stack with the OP's custom ring. Nor, for that matter, with the +4 a Truenamer gets for speaking his own personal name.

My biggest beef with the class is that a class really should be viable with the basic resources available to it. You ought to be able to make a decent Truenamer with human as your race, the elite array of ability scores, and no books other than PHB and ToM. Within those constraints, at level 1, you'll have a Truespeak check of +10 or +12 (+3 Int, +3 Skill Focus, +4 ranks; another +2 for targeting yourself) versus a DC of 17, and at level 20, you'll have a check of +48 or +50 (+11 Int, +3 Skill Focus, +10 amulet, +23 ranks, +1 Luckstone; another +2 for yourself) versus a DC of 55.

I'm a teacher. When I'm grading a test, if a student bombs absolutely everything else, I'll still give him a point or two for getting his name right. An out-of-the-box Truenamer can't even manage that, 20% of the time. That's pathetic.

Zaq
2009-06-22, 11:12 PM
Personally, I don't understand exactly why the Law of Sequence exists. It isn't to ensure proper stacking of effects and Utterances have rather weak effects so it can't be to limit the power of Utterances.


Question: About how many times per day do you usually use your main Utterances, Zaq?

It's pretty random, actually. This reflects more on my GM than on the utterances or the class, though. Three is a safe minimum, but sometimes it can go much higher. Sometimes it's much lower, even in combat. Like I said, this is more of a GM thing than anything else.

As to the LoS... I really don't know. Even fluffwise it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I'd really like to have a chat with whoever was the primary brains behind the Truenamer... or at least read an interview.

I'd also really like to see just what went down when WotC playtested the Truenamer. Frankly I'm not 100% certain that they did. I mean, we throw comments like this around all the time, but I really mean it for the Truenamer. I can't think of any other class that gets so little respect even in its own book, and so many of the mechanics make no sense at all that I truly wonder why they exist.

Kyeudo
2009-06-24, 01:07 AM
Another question: Would changing the saving throw of Utterances to 10 + Utterance Level + Int modifier make Utterances with saves better or worse than the current 10 + 1/2 Truenamer level + Cha modifier?

Zaq
2009-06-24, 01:48 AM
Another question: Would changing the saving throw of Utterances to 10 + Utterance Level + Int modifier make Utterances with saves better or worse than the current 10 + 1/2 Truenamer level + Cha modifier?

Basically, that helps by making them more SAD, but gives the save a weaker mechanic overall. Since you get Utterances more slowly than traditional casters (who do indeed increase at a rate of roughly 1/2 level), and since you have a lower maximum level (6 vs. 9), you'll lose out overall unless you're seriously pumping your INT. Even then, your low-level utterances will fade in usefulness much more so than they do as it stands. This goes even more so for LCT and LPM (I don't think that there are any LCT that allow saves, but LPM is hurt by this).

Now, if you combine this with the easily-missed rule that states that you can raise the effective spell level of an utterance by increasing the DC by 4 per desired level increase, that could be interesting, but possibly abused.

Roland St. Jude
2009-08-26, 03:57 PM
Sheriff of Moddingham: Zaq has a bit more to add on this, so I've approved reviving this thread.

Starbuck_II
2009-08-26, 04:30 PM
Now, if you combine this with the easily-missed rule that states that you can raise the effective spell level of an utterance by increasing the DC by 4 per desired level increase, that could be interesting, but possibly abused.

Wait, which page is that?

Kylarra
2009-08-26, 04:37 PM
Wait, which page is that?
p233 under "Effective Spell Level"

Kallisti
2009-08-26, 05:32 PM
Wow. I've always loved the idea behind the truenamer and hated Wizards of the Coast for doing such a crappy job, but I never played one, so I never really realized how much it's...non-viable. It's like Belkar said to the monk in On the Origin of PC's (Warning: Paraphrasing Ahead): "So, basically, your class lets you, with years and years of intensive training, make up for the fact that you fight unarmed. Why not just fight armed? Years and years of monastic study, just to keep up with some schmuck with an axe and chain mail..."

"So, basically, your entire class lets you, for significant expenditure of feats and, above all, money, makes up for the fact that you're like a watered-down warlock. Why not just be a warlock? Years and years of memorizing obscure truenames, just to keep up with some schmuck who bought Magic Steroids (TM) from a shady demon dealer..."

I'm currently reading through both Kyeudo's and Kellus' Truenamer fixes. Still not sure which I prefer. Kyeudo's is simpler and roughly backwards-compatible, but kellus' is so thorough it makes up for not being backwards compatible and provides a lot more new options...but at least they both include PrC's that advance the truenaming ability. When I realized that Wizards of the Coast had made exactly 0 of those, I realized in that moment, "They really don't care, at all, whether or not the Truenaming mechanics work, do they?"

Godskook
2009-08-26, 06:10 PM
Have you looked at Able Learner for a way to ease the multi-class issues?

Kyeudo
2009-08-26, 10:46 PM
I'm glad I subscribed this thread if Zaq has more to add.

Shameless Plug: If anyone cares to see my fix of the Truenaming system that was inspired by this thread, the link is in my sig.

Gan The Grey
2009-08-27, 04:09 AM
I recently played a Truenamer from level 8 to level 13, where I retired the character into my GM's very capable hands.

Why? Not because I didn't enjoy playing the class. On the contrary, my truenamer "Gan the Grey" is probably one of my favorite characters ever.

Our games are very roleplay heavy, with the occasional fight being a serious deal, not your walk-in-the-park random encounter. Our campaign is centered around one specific town, and I decided, with the help of my DM, to be that guy that knows everything about everything, always randomly having an answer to nearly any question, and a solution to nearly every problem.

For the Truenamer, this style of play works perfectly. And in a game where the other players don't munchkinize their characters, a Truenamer is actually kinda fun to play. I retired him because everyone in the party wanted to follow him, and with his abilities, he could easily turn into the man-behind-the-party, directing their actions to further his and the party's goals.

Right now, the DM has him heading down the ascension to Godhood line, and the rest of us are working on building him a nice temple. Unbeknownst to them, he is actually a unwitting minion of Tharizdun, and wants to destroy the gods in order to recollect the universe's divine energy into what he believes is the primal god, a being whose essence was shattered into myriad pieces that now make up the cosmos in entirety. Yeah. Something like that.

Oh, and there is a cool feat in the Ebberon setting that lets you make someone whose Truename you know do ANYTHING you ask, once in their lifetime. I used it on an armorer to get like, 20K GP worth of mithral for 1 gold. His wife murdered him when she found out.

EDIT Modifying feats

If you look at every metamagic feat that shares a meta...truespeak feat, they each have something in common. Extend metamagic increases spell level by 1, extend meta...truespeak increase check by 5. Quicken spell increases level by 4, quicken truespeak increases check by 20. You could go on then to create a metatruespeak Maximize, increasing a check by 15 since the Maximaze Spell Metamagic feat increase spell level by 3. There might be alot of metamagic feats that this would work on, some that might help to *slightly* nullify the effects of Law of Sequence i.e. Split Ray, Twin Spell...

Oh, and Book of Exalted Deeds has extra stuff you can to do someone if you know their truename. Look under the 'Words of Creation' feat section.

Gan The Grey
2009-08-27, 04:47 AM
OH GODS. Sorry for double post here, but this thread straight up UNLEASHED my floodgates on the subject.

1. Hitting your truespeak DCs are not hard past about 5th level. Even upwards to the 20th level mark, hitting those DCs for the first of the day should be almost 100%, if not above.

Just as an example. Using point buy, get yourself a 16 intelligence. Up that 18 by level 8. If you are playing a race that gets a +2 to intelligence (I would), that puts it at a 20. Get at LEAST a +2 to intelligence item. That puts you at a 22 intelligence.

Assume now you are level 10. This would put you at 13 ranks in Truespeak. Get a Greater Amulet of the Silver Tongue for a +10 bonus. Take skill focus for a +3. Add in your +6 from intelligence and you have a +32. The DC to cast anything on a level equivalent party member is 35. That's a 3 or better. On yourself, a 1 is still a success. Granted, it gets harder the more times you cast it during one day, but you have so many to choose from, it's doubtful you'll run that Law of Resistance up high enough to be annoying.

Even at level 20, the DC for an equivalent character is only 55. At that point, you could theoretically have an intelligence of 34 with stat increases, +6 headband, and books/wishes, giving you a bonus of +12, Truespeak rank 23, Amulet +10, Skill focus +3 for a bonus of +48. And that's just off the top of my head. I saw even higher bonuses than that a few posts ago, and this doesn't take into account item familiar, DM fiat allowing you to increase the Silver Tongue amulet... Getting another 7 or more +'s shouldn't be that hard.

2. The only utterances that get harder as you level up are the first tier utterances that you cast on people. The second tier get harder in that you should be encountering more magic items, but the third tier pretty much stay at DC 25 the whole time. Quicken one of those every round, cast a normal utterance as your standard.

EDIT I just read the part about the errata here, though I don't know the specific rules. We always just treated an area as a nonmagical item i.e. DC 25 to cast. True...it gets a little cheesy at the more powerful area utterances (how many Earthquakes can one cast in a day??!?!?!), but hey, I'm the player. Easy DC's don't hurt my feelings. :smalltongue:

3. Those last tier utterance become pretty cool if you metatruespeak homebrew the other metamagic feats in. I personally like an empowered and maximazed energy vortex with a solid fog plopped on top for good measure. That's a decent amount of pain to a few people before they can escape. Especially if you allow the 'Acid Fog' houserule I made. DC 25 is a fog cloud, DC 35 is solid fog, DC 45 is Acid Fog.

4. Also, a Truenamer will be able to cast more spells in one day than a wizard and a sorcerer combined. They aren't the most powerful spells in the world, but used properly, they can really throw your DM off balance and turn a battle greatly in your favor. Can't hit that high CR monster with a Truespeak check? Throw a Strike of Might on your heavy hitter, give him a random extra attack in the middle of your turn, haste him, or hell, just Fast Healing the crap outta your party. You're like a bard, but less spoony.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-08-27, 10:55 PM
I've got to wonder if Gestalting with Artificer would work well. You use Artificer for providing gear and such to the party, snag yourself a couple +10 items, and use the infusion to change their bonus type. Now you can hit DCs far better than you would most of the time, and never have to use an expendable magic item.

Zaq
2009-08-28, 01:00 AM
Hey folks, I finally got around to updating this a bit (my character got sidelined for a while, but he's back in the game now, so I'm taking in new information and new experiences). The update so far has come in the second post (I labeled it), but I expect there to be more over the next week or two as I have more gaming sessions.

Now, to answer a few questions...

Sstoopidtallkid: I wouldn't gestalt a Truenamer (since they're so high maintenance), but Artificer would be one of the best choices for it mostly for the reasons you mentioned. (The other natural choices would be Factotum or Archivist. A Trunamer//Totemist with really gishy utterances would be... interesting, if not exactly good. The big problem is a lack of swift actions to reallocate essentia, but I'm disgressing.) You can also use Universal Aptitude to great effect with your all-important UMD checks, and I can't help but think that there's something fun you can do with Rebuild Item.

Regarding Kyuedo's homebrew, I have to say that I like a lot of what he's done so far and I do recommend you check it out if homebrew interests you. (In the interest of full disclosure, he did ask for my assistance on a lot of it, so I'm not entirely unbiased.) It's at least had more thought put into it than the WotC version. (Yes, I know that saying that the class wasn't checked or edited is a grave remark to make. Game design is serious business, and a lot of work goes into it. However, I really do feel alright saying that a lot of work did NOT go into the Truenamer. There are just too many absurdities, inconsistencies, and omissions.)

One thing I noticed a little while ago while flipping through the monster section of the Truespeak chapter is that all of the monsters (except the Gibberer, who doesn't need to roll) have huge racial bonuses to Truespeak. So, evidently, someone at WotC playtested these monsters, noticed that they couldn't affect the PCs with their Truespeak abilities, and added the bonuses in to give the monsters a fighting chance... but didn't think "hey, maybe the fact that even monsters can't use these abilities effectively is indicative of a flaw in the system." (Well, to be fair, maybe they did think that, but if so they didn't communicate this to whoever was in charge of the rest of the chapter.)

Now, does anyone have any questions, suggestions for topics you'd like me to consider, or anything of that sort? I'll keep posting my experiences and my observations, but I'd be happy to talk about other things as well. Bear in mind once again that I'm most comfortable discussing what I've actually played in-game, but I think I've got enough firsthand experience to engage in a little theory-talk as well.

Kyeudo
2009-08-31, 05:17 PM
Have you found any unusual gems amoung the newest utterances you've gained access to, or are they playing pretty much as expected?

Zaq
2009-09-09, 12:32 PM
Well, unfortunately my Truenamer didn't get to do a whole lot at last week's session, but rather than simply let another week go by without commenting, I thought I'd turn my thoughts to a little theorycraft. Specifically, Truespeak-based prestige classes. I repeat, this is not based on empirical experience.

(Here's a question for the masses: Should the material presented here be in the main three posts?)

Truenamer prestige classes are... weird, to say the least. As I've mentioned, none of them actually advance Utterances, which is kind of lame and stupid. Still, I know that it's fairly easy to run out of good Utterances to take, so let's take a look at the other options your high-level 'Namer can have.

Acolyte of the Ego
Entry: Easy. You'll probably speak four languages just from your starting INT, if you're a Truenamer.

The Acolyte of the Ego is a good example of WotC just not having any idea what they wanted to do. The skeleton is weird (full BAB and good Fort why, exactly?) and you lose UMD, but it has a few interesting things. The meat and potatoes here are the Morphic Cadences, which are basically Utterances that you get every other level. (Yeah, already a step down.) Sadly, they're not called Utterances, so you can't Quicken them. Still, they do have a few options that normal Truenamers don't get. I think it's pretty clear that the Acolyte was intended to be a gish, with all of the self-buffing Cadences and the full BAB, but the self-buffing Cadences tend to be pretty lackluster, or easily replicated with low-level Utterances. (The one that grants Fast Healing is empirically inferior to your vanilla Word of Nurturing, for example). The interesting Cadences are the one that mimics Dimension Door (self only, but hey, the Truenamer could use a little mobility) and the one that grants a luck bonus on saves (just because that's relatively rare). You do eventually get the ability to use multiple Cadences at once, but there just aren't enough good Cadences to make it worthwhile. I say, if you want this class, dip two levels for Dim Door and move on.

Bereft
Entry: Medium. You don't have to go out of your way for the skills, but it still takes a whopping 13 ranks. Finding someone willing and able to cast the Ritual of Renaming might be hard, since what arcanist uses the Truespeak spells? Most people don't even realize they exist.

The Bereft has the closest thing to Utterances that you get in a prestige class. It's a short class, five levels, but at least you get something new at every level. You lose UMD, but you get Listen, Sense Motive, and Intimidate. You learn a new "Syllable of Unmaking" at every level, which is just a pre-chosen Utterance that can't be quickened. Most of them are pretty decent. The first one, which gives penalties to most checks, is my favorite, because it's just pretty generally useful. The second one, which removes a sense, is cool, but useless because it involves a save at a terrible DC (10 + class level + CHA. Remember that this is a 5 level class). The third one, a gimped Maze spell, is pretty lame, since they a) are only Mazed for one round and b) can try to get out as a swift action, rather than a full-round. The fourth one does straight up damage. Given that you're a minimum of 14th level by now, 8d6 isn't that impressive, but it could be worse I guess. The final one, which gives two negative levels, is very nice. Enervation is still better (and has been around for eight levels at this point), but I don't think anyone's going to say that negative levels are a waste of time. The capstone is cool fluff-wise, but I can hardly ever see it coming up.

Brimstone Speaker
Entry: Hard. You have to be able to cast a 4th level Cleric (or 3rd level Paladin) spell to get in. You pretty much can't be a normal 'Namer to qualify... which means that you had to be a Cleric and burn a feat (Truename Training) and ten skill points to get in here, as well as having a small deity restriction.

This class kind of sucks. As I said, it's pretty clearly a Cleric class, but you lose four caster levels in it. What do you get in return? Well, you get a lame breath weapon that requires a Truespeak check and has a mediocre save. You also get the ability to make Truespeak checks to summon a bralani eladrin, a word archon, or an astral deva a certain number of times per day. And... well, that's about it. Word archons are pretty sweet, but really, rather than losing four caster levels, wouldn't you rather just cast Planar Ally?

Disciple of the Word
Entry: Easy, I guess? Just take some Truespeak ranks as a Monk and you're in... but it's not like monks can really afford to lose too many skills.

Oh boy, a Monk class based off of Truespeak! I see absolutely no downside to making the Monk need YET ANOTHER ability score (in this case, INT, one of their two semi-dump stats) to function normally! Anyway, the Disciple gets a lot of abilities that key off of "spend a use of Stunning Fist as a swift action and make a Truespeak check to do X." They can replace certain rolls with Truespeak rolls (replacing another skill? Meh to lame. Replacing a STR check to avoid a bull rush? Situational but useful. Replacing a Reflex save? Not a bad choice. Replace your AC? Pretty decent, except that it doesn't stop spells making touch attacks.) Some of the abilities are passable (I do like that they can ignore DR/epic with a DC 45 skill check, and the capstone is awesome), but it seems like you'll run out of Stunning Fist uses really quickly, particularly if you actually want to, you know, stun people. The ability to dispel a target you hit is nice, but since you have to hit them first, it won't exactly stop a Contingency or even a Mirror Image. Still, you're way better off as this class than you are as a straight Monk, and they do get a couple unique abilities. I'd just recommend investing in Extra Stunning if you plan on heavily using these abilities. Oh, and I hope you have really, really generous point-buy.

Fiendbinder
Entry: Hard, for the same reasons as the Brimstone Speaker. You have to have at least seven levels in a real casting class, as well as ten ranks in Truespeak (which means the Truespeak Training feat at least).

The most interesting Truespeak class, of course, doesn't involve being a Truenamer. (Of course, very few of the Truespeak-based prestige classes are best entered as a Truenamer, but that's hardly the point.) Three lost caster levels is really hard to swallow... that means no ninth level spells, after all. What do you get in exchange, though? Well, you get fiends. A lot of fiends. If you save your gold, you can get a small army of hellspawn (okay, okay, and abyssspawn) at your beck and call. A Wizard is probably the best entry class for this PrC due to the INT synergy... though it would be really interesting (both fluffwise and crunchwise) to see an Archivist enter this class. Until you get Double Command at level 9, you're best off giving all of your fiends the "Defend Me" command, because that gives you the best action economy (assuming you have multiple fiends).

As for the fiends themselves, I really don't have the desire to go through one by one and point out their strengths and weaknesses (after all, this is theorycraft, and the farther away I get from empirical experience, the less comfortable I am presenting my thoughts to you), but none of them seem particularly underpowered. Having minions is always a powerful strategy in D&D just for the action economy, even if you can't really command them as smoothly as a Druid or a Malconvoker.

The third level ability Call Forth Fiend seems particularly useful, because (by my reading) you don't have to order the fiend around as a standard action. Yes, it's once per day, but it's interesting at least. Bind Tormented Soul doesn't seem extraordinarily useful, but at the same time, it's basically free. Gift of the Archfiend is thematically interesting, but lackluster at the level you get it. Double Command gives you better action economy, which is good. Archfiend's Favor would be good if it could make Planar Binding checks easier, but the way it's worded, it's more or less useless. Summon Fiends is interesting, and may even be worth investing in Maximize Spell-Like Ability for if you plan on using it heavily. I find it odd that this ability doesn't require a Truespeak check, but go figure.

Draz74
2009-09-09, 12:40 PM
I actually don't think any of the Truespeak PrCs (except maybe Bereft) were intended to be entered by anyone with Truenamer levels.

Re-read Acolyte of the Ego, for example, thinking of it as a Fighter PrC. Fighters have lots of feats to spare; it's not that hard for them to spend one on Truespeak Training. And the class features are much more tempting for a Fighter than for a Truenamer. (Ultimately, it still comes off rather weak, along with everything in the Truespeak section of the book.)

Zaq
2009-09-09, 08:59 PM
I actually don't think any of the Truespeak PrCs (except maybe Bereft) were intended to be entered by anyone with Truenamer levels.

Re-read Acolyte of the Ego, for example, thinking of it as a Fighter PrC. Fighters have lots of feats to spare; it's not that hard for them to spend one on Truespeak Training. And the class features are much more tempting for a Fighter than for a Truenamer. (Ultimately, it still comes off rather weak, along with everything in the Truespeak section of the book.)

Ironically, the Bereft sample character has ten levels of Fighter. No joke. Why, I have no idea.

Zeta Kai
2009-09-09, 10:39 PM
Yet more evidence that the Truespeech section of ToM was written by drug-addled monkeys who thought that class balance was a poo-flinging technique. :smallamused:

Draz74
2009-09-10, 12:48 AM
Ironically, the Bereft sample character has ten levels of Fighter. No joke. Why, I have no idea.

Honestly, I added the aside about the Bereft in my post because I really don't remember which classes Bereft is best for, and didn't feel like looking it up before I hit "submit." :smallwink:

taltamir
2009-09-14, 02:40 AM
Item familiar is a terrible terrible idea, and one of the many ways in which people have been trying to recapture sauron's relationship with his ring (Which is apperantly his phalancy AND an item familiar AND an enchanted item AND a sentient item with an ego score AND maybe more i am forgetting).

Anyways, item familiar lets you get an XP bonus, skillpoint bonus, and casting slot bonus. but you lose them all if the item is lost or destroyed...
Thing is, YOU lost them, the item DOES NOT. they are imbued into the item...

Item familiar explicitly allows you to attune someone else's item familiar.

what does that mean? lets say someone made his amulet of greater silver tongue into an item familier, he invests it with all his skillpoints in truespeak and with XP (that might be detrimental to you though)... he gains many levels... it is then stolen and he dies because he becomes pathetically useless without it.

EDIT: Revised for corrections to how item familiar works.
Another person inherits it, gaining a ton of free skills and a ton of free XP all at once. He now levels a bunch and does NOT invest anything (you cannot gain skill ranks unless you were high enough level to have those skill ranks anyways, so you cannot just pile on skill ranks from user to user).
Basically he gets a +lots skillpoint item at no risk to self.

that amulet of truespeak makes you a target for other truespeakers who covet the invested skillpoints, and a single disjunction or disintegrate destroys the knowledge of generations of truespeakers.

If the item familiar is destroyed, no problem, you didn't actually invest in it, just find and kill another truespeaker who did... or train one yourself! In fact that can be an interesting plot hook (the old truespeak teacher who trains youngins, gets them item familiar, and slays them for a spare).

Also, EGO CONTEST! The item familiar can BE the character... when its old master dies it dominates the next person (assuming it is powerful enough), and forces him to get item familiar, attune it, and become a truespeaker under its control.

Zaq
2009-09-20, 01:56 PM
I've added a section on the utterance Spell Rebirth to the second big post. It's not an extraordinarily lengthy section, but there's a lot to chew on.

Kyeudo
2009-09-20, 05:33 PM
Interesting implications. Have you actually made use of reversed Spell Rebirth in-game to do something unusual?

Zaq
2009-09-20, 09:05 PM
I have, as a matter of fact. Our party recently came across a tunnel with what seemed to be a strange gravity effect (as you got closer to the door, gravity started affecting you more and more strongly, until you couldn't hold up under your own weight). Our sorcerer identified it as a spell effect, rather than just a supernatural environmental thing, so I used Reversed Spell Rebirth to make it not affect us. (My GM ruled that it only got rid of the effects on the target, rather than the whole shebang, but that's not actually RAW.) I doubt that a normal Dispel Magic would have gotten rid of it (we didn't try, but given that we're exploring basically a gauntlet made by an obnoxiously powerful wizard, our odds aren't good.), but Reversed Spell Rebirth doesn't care if Boccob himself set up the spell effect.

Thelas
2009-09-24, 06:25 PM
Okay, first off, thank you for the thread.
Now, I have a question. I'm DMing a very low-power (3d6 organic, 3-player) game at the moment, and want to make a truenamer recurring villain. I'm probably going to allow the truenamer to respec utterances very often because as a solo enemy one first-level utterance won't even pose a challenge if I take anything other than WoN (level 1, I forget the name). Ergo... how can I fix truenamer to make a challenge? I'm allowing the NPC to respec one utterance per two levels, but I'm pretty sure I'll need more.

Kyeudo
2009-09-24, 11:58 PM
Ergo... how can I fix truenamer to make a challenge? I'm allowing the NPC to respec one utterance per two levels, but I'm pretty sure I'll need more.

Well, if you want something comprehensive, check my signature for a backwards compatible fix.

Aharon
2009-09-25, 08:47 AM
One major boost for Truenamers, that went unseen by many:

On page 233, under the heading "Effective Caster Level", it is stated that you can heighten the level of an utterance by adding 4 to the DC.

On page 233/234, in the section where it is stated that you can't have the same utterance active twice at the same time, it is stated that higher level versions of the same utterance do not count as the same utterance. The example makes clear that this is meant to refer to the Minor, Potent, etc. versions of the Word of Nurturing, but RAW, it doesn't.

What does it do?
Heightened Utterances are not the same as their base utterances. That means
1) The law of Sequence doesn't apply. If you use a heightened utterance, the DC for the normal utterance doesn't go up.
2) You can have an utterance and its heightened version up at the same time. You could nova and get +100 to a skill check using extended and quickened extended universal aptitudes. Or, at higher levels, give all opponents within 120 feet of you -10 to saves and AC using the 6th level heightened debuff and its quickened form and Speak to the masses.
3) The Words of Nurturing combine ridiculously good with Mortalbane from BoVD: it adds 2d6 to a damage dealing spell-like ability up to 5 times per day, is stackable, and you can use it on all damage dealing spell-like abilities you have. And your Heightened Minor Words of Utterances are separate spell-like abilities from your normal Minor Word of Utterance.
So you have the options of either going nova at the expense of having to heighten early on (+10d6 to the first, heighten for +4 DC and get +10d6 for the second, heighten for +8 DC and get +10d6 on the third),
or use lower damage ones very often (only add +2d6 each, DC progression +2, +4, +4, +6, +6, +8, +8, +8, +10, +10, +10, +12, +12, +12, +12....
instead of
+2, +4, +6, +8, +10, 12, +14, +16, +18, +20, +22, +24, +26, +28, +30....)

Zaq
2009-10-02, 06:34 PM
New update in the second post. I got to see how a Truenamer fares against a boss-type: (Answer: Surprisingly well, actually.) Next week I'm leveling up, so we'll see what a Truenamer can do at level 12. (Anyone got any suggestions for a 12th level feat? All of the Truespeak-based ones suck, and anything I could take to get a minor truespeak bonus is just not worth a feat anymore. Enhanced Power Sigils would give me an additional +1 on INT and DEX-based checks, but do I really want to burn a feat on that? I'm deciding.)

Aharon, I too have considered that line, but I really don't think it's supposed to work that way. Would it be overpowered if it did? Unlikely. Still, I'm trying for as few shenanigans as I can for this character, and I know my GM would frown on me trying that. I just don't think it works that way. It's clearly against RAI, at least.

Kyeudo
2009-10-02, 07:23 PM
Interesting points. I never considered that LoS was so important to Truenamers.

technophile
2009-10-03, 01:49 PM
Apologies if this has been mentioned, or if there's another reason it doesn't work, but as far as I can tell from reading your original post, Seek the Sky isn't obsolete once you get Greater Seek the Sky, because they're different utterances.

So you can chain them to fly indefinitely. Utter Greater Seek the Sky, then one round before it runs out, utter Seek the Sky. Alternate them for indefinite flight (or indefinite prevention of flight against enemies).

Edit: Ah, I see it was mentioned on page 2 and again on 3. Might want to add this to the bit about it in the OP for people who read it later.

Oslecamo
2009-10-03, 01:58 PM
He, that's quite an interesting combo! Sure it's a cheesy interpretation of the rules, but hey, 99.9% of the casters do it anyway!

Zaq
2009-10-23, 06:03 PM
Hey folks. Sorry it's been so long since the last update... I just have hardly had ten minutes to think, let alone to deal with Truenaming.

Anyway, today I want to talk about Truespeak spells. You know, that section of the Truespeak chapter that no one noticed because it was dumb? Yeah, let's take a look at them.

Basically, normal casters (clerics, wizards, etc.) have the option of learning spells with a Truespeak component. They have to make a successful Truespeak check as part of the spell. If it fails, the spell fails.

So, in other words, let's look at the resources expended here. A player who wants to use these needs to take Truespeak Training to get Truespeak as a class skill, make a not-insignificant investment of skill points and possibly skill boosters, and voluntarily accept another failure rate to their spells in order to use these. Noted.

Oh, and a lot of them deal with the target's personal truename, each of which takes multiple weeks of research to discover. Basically, spells that require the target's personal truename will be cast only on one person, take tons of in-game prep time (weeks of downtime), and have an even harder Truespeak check than normal. Noted.

So, let's start going through them, shall we? Let's go in order.

Augment Truefriend
So basically, this is Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, and Cat's Grace rolled into one. You need to speak their personal truename. So, if you spend many weeks painstakingly researching each and every one of your partymates' truenames, you can give them subpar buffs a little bit faster. Right. Oh, and of course this is an enhancement bonus, so it doesn't stack with anything else.

Bane of the Archrival
Okay, so you create a "**** you" zone for one specific creature. They have to make a save to enter it, everyone gets bonuses to AC against them, and they can't mind-control anyone within it. It lasts only minutes per level, so that's not terribly impressive (it'd be hard to ward the throne room against a known assassin with it, after all)... oh, and of course it requires the PERSONAL truename of your foe. Which means that you have to spend weeks to have this spell work against ONE OPPONENT. Boy, that sure sounds like a great deal, doesn't it?

Beckon Person/Beckon Monster
This is actually pretty cool! A reasonably easy Truespeak check, easily augmented if you want to pour resources into buffing Truespeak, and an effect that's difficult to get elsewhere. Sure, it allows a save, but it'd be kind of overpowered if it didn't. Naturally, it's way better than the Truenamer's version of this (Eldritch Attraction) since it comes into play earlier, is easier to use, and forces your opponent to blow their full-round action (they HAVE to use a move action, so they only get a standard). Combine with Slow for extra fun! I can actually see this being used if you have a way to boost your Truespeak check.

Bulwark of Reality
So... it's the spell Shield with a +2 bonus. Oh, and it requires your personal truename. And it's an armor bonus, so unlike Shield, it doesn't stack with Mage Armor! Yay! Man, they didn't read this at all, did they?

Expunge the Supernatural
I wonder if anyone has ever used this spell, ever. The fact that it permanently erases a target's supernatural ability is cool (if a little scary)... but why ever use it? Why go to the trouble of finding out your foe's truename, buffing your checks sky-high (this is a level 8 spell, so you're fighting creatures with non-trivial CRs, which means that you need a high Truespeak check), giving them a save and allowing SR, and not just kill them? I guess if you were finding out a foe's truename anyway for OTHER reasons, this could be a good opener to the Final Battle with the eeeeeeevil BBEG, but even then, why not just kill them? It's even got an XP cost. I guess it could be used for plot reasons, but that's kinda situational. Also, if your DM ever tries to use this on YOU, you have my permission to smack him. Or her.

Hidden Truename
You're kidding, right? A +2 on saving throws against Utterances?! For a 6th level spell that requires a personal truename?! Ridiculous. The secondary effect, giving a -8 penalty on checks to find out the target's truename, seems odd, especially because checks to research these things take weeks, not days (this is a 24 hour spell). I guess if you're paranoid enough to fear Truenamers or users of Truespeak spells, you could burn a 6th level slot every day and keep this up, but MAN is this weird.

Horror of the Spoken Name
So it's Cause Fear, the first level spell, with a higher HD cap? That's it? I guess that's not a total waste, but it's still highly underwhelming. (It's a 2nd level spell... why not just cast Scare? Though the HD wording on Scare is a little weird, but that's totally not the point. At least it doesn't require the personal truename of the target. Still underwhelming.

Ritual of Renaming
This is the antidote to several nasty Truespeak effects (none that will ever come up, but still) and necessary for entry into the Bereft prestige class. It's pretty much just a plot spell, giving the target a new personal truename. It's always really bothered me that this is an 8th-level cleric, druid, or wizard spell. This basically means that a proper Truenamer will never be able to, you know, manipulate a Truename. I guess it sort of makes some twisted sense ('namers work within the system; wizards work outside of it), but it bugs me. I suppose they could get a scroll.

Scramble True Position
This spell actually looks like a hell of a lot of fun. I'm not sure just how useful it would be, but anything that teleports your opponent and doesn't give him a say in the matter is OK in my book. (Look carefully; the reflex save is only to avoid falling prone, not to avoid teleporting). It's a basic Truespeak check, not a personal one, so that's cool. And it's a first-level spell, too! How come Truenamers don't get anything this cool? Oh right, because Truenamers get no love. Also, Sculpt Spell. Think about it. Seriously. This spell gets a thumbs-up. I'd be tempted to learn Truespeak just for this spell. I wouldn't, but I'd be tempted. (Note to self: See if you can get a wand of this spell for your Truenamer...)

Spurn the Supernatural
Basically has the same problems as Expunge the Supernatural, plus it's got a duration of Concentration. If you pump your check sky-high, though, you can remove multiple abilities. Once again, I can see this as a plot spell to negate the BBEG's super-shield long enough to take him down, but I can't ever see actually using it on my own terms.

True Banishment
So it's exactly like Banishment, only it doesn't have a HD cap and uses a Truespeak check instead of a saving throw? Not a bad deal. Granted, it's still completely useless because it involves a personal truename, but oh well.

True Prayer of the Chosen
I'm just imagining a god suggesting this spell to his cleric and the cleric responding. "So let me get this straight. I spend weeks learning my personal Truename, invest precious feats and skill points into learning how to use Truespeak, and cast a 4th level spell that has a Truespeak check (and thus a failure rate), and in exchange I get +3 to AC and saves? Seriously? At least it's 24 hours, right... no? It's rounds per level? Not even an hour? No? One round per level? But I can share it with my friends, right? Ah, no, can't do that either, huh? Yyyyyyeah, I'm gonna stick with, you know, Divine Power or something. Thanks though."

True Prayer of the Faithful
So... it's Prayer. Without hurting your enemies. Or helping all your allies. Or being guaranteed to succeed. But it comes one level early! Yeah, pass. (Also, the flavor text associated with increasing the Truespeak DC is hilarious.)

Truename Binding/Lesser/Greater
Huh. So it's basically Planar Binding, but you're not limited to elementals and outsiders. Instead, you have to know the target's personal truename. So there's those extra weeks of research and an additional failure rate... though your opposed checks are much easier. Truespeak checks are way easier than Charisma checks. They still get a save and SR, so there's even more failure chance, but hey, it's not TOTAL crap. If I were going to spend weeks researching something's Truename, I'd probably use it for this. I guess you could then hit it with all the OTHER personal truename spells, like Expunge the Supernatural, but... yeah.

Interestingly enough, there's nothing preventing you from using this on a humanoid... such as the king, or the general of the opposing army, or the old wizard who went into hermitage and hasn't been seen for years. This is probably a bad idea, but it's totally legit.

Also, you can get access to some creatures you really weren't supposed to have access to with this spell, but let's not go there. Just get creative.

Truename Dispel
Blah blah blah, 8th level spell, Truespeak check instead of opposed dispel check, can choose which spells to keep and which to save, needs a personal truename, blah blah. Falls once more into the "why not just kill them?" trap. I guess the fact that you're the one rolling all the dice makes this better than normal dispel, but again, weeks of research, 8th level spell, chance of failure. Blah.

Unname
This is what kinds of effects you SHOULD get for pouring these kinds of resources into something. You have to research a personal truename, correctly say it, cast a 9th level spell, succeed against SR, and make them fail a Fort save... but then they're not coming back. Seriously. Very cool. Not very useful, but very cool.

Warp Truename
Why is this a Druid spell? I thought Druids as a whole were AGAINST bringing unnatural aberrations into the world? Anyway, this is basically just Baleful Polymorph, except that you have to know their personal truename. And they still have HD and BAB and stuff. And it's not permanent. And they have a chance to keep all their spells and stuff. But it comes one level early! Useless, useless, useless. I guess you could use some shenanigans to make your allied target into an aberration with this, so that they have access to a greater variety of Alter Self or Polymorph forms, but... not worth it. Not even a little bit.

Word of Genesis
Huh. This is pretty cool. I mean, Psions and Wizards can do it too, but it's at least interesting. It's at least nice to see they threw the Truenamer a bone... oh wait, silly me, this is still for Wizards. It's just like Genesis. There's nothing special about this.

So, um, yeah. They're about as good as everything else in the Truenamer chapter. If you're surprised... well, you clearly haven't read the rest of the thread. I do like that Scramble True Position spell, but that's about it.

I'd welcome some counterpoints.

Kelb_Panthera
2009-10-24, 01:53 AM
Would the dc's for affecting creatures be more tolerable if it was 15 + 2x HD instead of 2x CR?

Godskook
2009-10-24, 02:08 AM
Would the dc's for affecting creatures be more tolerable if it was 15 + 2x HD instead of 2x CR?

No, because only rarely does a creature have higher CR than HD, and typically, a creature has more HD than CR unless it has mostly PC levels.

taltamir
2009-10-24, 02:38 AM
I'd welcome some counterpoints.

Rather then a wizard investing his precious feats, skills, and time getting a truenaming score... it makes more sense for one to just research those spells that don't utterly suck, and make scrolls for the truenamer.

Hand those to the truenamer (or sell them...). Give the truenamer UMD (you got a plus 10 to truenaming item, right? make a +10 to umd item)...

You can now cast those spells. The two or three spells that don't utterly suck are now added to a truenamer's.

Doc Roc
2009-10-24, 03:40 AM
precious..... skills.


10 skill points a level with a mere int mod of +8.
Very few class skills.








Yes, precious skills.

The Glyphstone
2009-10-24, 10:48 AM
precious..... skills.


10 skill points a level with a mere int mod of +8.
Very few class skills.








Yes, precious skills.


Extremely precious skills! Can you imagine being forced to pick between losing Knowledge (Decorative Cake Frosting) and Knowledge (Suspension Bridge Engineering) just to pick up Truespeak?

Zeta Kai
2009-10-24, 11:18 AM
Skewering Truespeech Spells

Wow, almost all of those suck. I have even less respect for the authors/"editors" of the Truespeech chapter. It seems that the main problem with Truespeech spells is the inordinate amount of time needed to learn a creature's truename. If you could learn a truename as a standard action, or even a minute, or even an hour, then half those spells wouldn't look half as ridiculous. But no, you have to sit around, looking through books for weeks in order to discover the truename of a creature that you could have stabbed to death in a tiny fraction of the time. Ugh.

I think the best thing about the Truespeech chapter is how inspiring it is. I look at the good stuff, & I think "Hey, there should be more of that!" I look at the bad stuff, & I think "Hey, those flaws could be easily fixed with just some numerical tweaks!" And I look at the awful stuff, & I think "Hey, I can do much better than that with one brain lobe tied behind my back!" It encourages me to hope that I can be a game designer too, because I literally can't do worse than that. :smallamused:

Starbuck_II
2009-10-24, 11:27 AM
You know, if it was easier to use a Personal truename that might be a good fix.
But no, a PT has a higher DC to make.

Flickerdart
2009-10-24, 12:10 PM
No, because only rarely does a creature have higher CR than HD, and typically, a creature has more HD than CR unless it has mostly PC levels.
What about just 15+HD? On everything but traditional Outsiders and such that come loaded with SLAs, HD are usually somewhat higher than CR, but not double (usually). Or 20+HD, if that fixes the math.

Xenogears
2009-10-24, 12:23 PM
Expunge the Supernatural sounds so AWESOME for plot/BBEG stuff. Imagine that in order to get his revenge against some creature that wronged him (or even better a whole species) he kidnaps them and removes all of their supernatural abilities and cast them back into the world as broken shells. Then since it has an XP penalty they are forced to start making sacrifices and using souls as XP. Cool BBEG.

Besides there are some AWESOME Su abilities to rip out of monsters. Like a Dryads Tree Dependancy. Thats a mean punishment.

So maybe not a good or useful spell but certainly a fun one for a villain.

tyckspoon
2009-10-24, 12:25 PM
What about just 15+HD? On everything but traditional Outsiders and such that come loaded with SLAs, HD are usually somewhat higher than CR, but not double (usually). Or 20+HD, if that fixes the math.

Don't forget it needs to be somewhat achievable for low-level Truenamers too. A starting DC of 20+ is going to make them even more thoroughly boned.

Starbuck_II
2009-10-24, 12:30 PM
Expunge the Supernatural sounds so AWESOME for plot/BBEG stuff. Imagine that in order to get his revenge against some creature that wronged him (or even better a whole species) he kidnaps them and removes all of their supernatural abilities and cast them back into the world as broken shells. Then since it has an XP penalty they are forced to start making sacrifices and using souls as XP. Cool BBEG.

Besides there are some AWESOME Su abilities to rip out of monsters. Like a Dryads Tree Dependancy. Thats a mean punishment.

So maybe not a good or useful spell but certainly a fun one for a villain.

Taking away Tree Dependency is sorta beneficial.

On Truename:
You could make it 15+HD + 2x level of Utterance.

Zaq
2009-10-24, 01:56 PM
precious..... skills.


10 skill points a level with a mere int mod of +8.
Very few class skills.








Yes, precious skills.

It's not just the skills. It's the FEAT. You quite simply are not going to make these checks with only half ranks in Truespeak, so you need Truespeak Training to get it as a class skill. That's a feat that you could spend on metamagic, or Improved Initiative, or Extraordinary Concentration, or Arcane Disciple, or whatever you need for your PrC, or, um, Skill Focus: Basketweaving. Yeah, okay, metamagic. But still!

In general, I do agree that the biggest problem facing the Truespeak spells is that they almost all require a personal truename, which is, to be honest, a total dealbreaker. If you don't have long segments of either item-crafting downtime or travel time, most campaigns don't last as long as it would take to research someone's personal truename. (It requires, remember, one-half as many checks as they have HD, at a rate of one check per week of research. With corresponding research costs. And access to moderately high-level divinations. It's just not feasible... and it ends up being a waste of space.

I've seen firsthand that it's possible for a really creative Truenamer who's willing to do a lot of book-diving to be at least passable in a party, even a party who doesn't go out of their way to aid them. I don't think it's possible to do that with these spells. Well, except for Scramble True Position. That one looks like a lot of fun.

taltamir
2009-10-24, 02:10 PM
id say the requirement of having skillpoints in truespeak is worse than knowing a person's true name...

wasting a feat AND a bunch of skillpoints to cast the 2 nice spells in the entire list is bull...
Spending a month to research the BBEG to cast those spells and NOT having to make any truespeak checks? acceptable.

Draxar
2009-10-25, 11:51 AM
Looking at the maths of it, my reaction was that while the DC goes up, this is somewhat paid back by the number of different Utterances you know, and the fact their laws of repitition are tracked seperately.

Or to put it another way, lets get mathmatical. This is using just PHB, DMG, and ToM. It's assumes you get stuff fairly shortly after you can afford it, but this is using just amulet of Silver Tounge + Headband of intellect, nothing more complicated.

At 1st level, you've got one utterance, which you can use a maximum of 8 times, assuming a CR 1 creature. At 8th level you've got 8 utterances of the Evolving Mind, which you can use 10 times each, plus some more of the item based ones. At 20th, you're down to 6 uses, but you have 20 different things you can do, plus the other two lexicons. Some of the lower level stuff becomes unneeded, but a fair amount still has some level of use.

Yes, it's unreliable, but the advantage is that if you fail, then the difficulty doesn't increase.

Looking at it, with my current build, it's not worth taking Quicken unless I also take the Competance Bonus item, if I do it becomes rather useful.

I'm also rather so-so on the Paragnostic Assembly – the whole 'research to gain bonuses' seems rather poorly written, as it doesn't say how long it lasts, how many checks, or whatever. Researching and then getting a +10 bonus on a skill check to work out who built that, or what the capabilities of that monster are, fine. Researching then having a constant bonus to your truespeaking seems less fine.

I may end up building some version of them into my background anyway.

I'm currently looking at a character that mixes hitty (with some truenamer selfbuffs), with standing back and doing utterance damage.

The hitty comes primarily from Knowledge Devotion - I'm looking at taking a quarterstaff and doing two weapon fighting, with +1/+1 on the quarterstaff to beat DR, then reasonably chunky Knowledge Devotion bonuses that apply to both attacks.

For anyone who's interested this is the current set up for it (http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ah9PWZc0JSsKdDZGMFRVZGtCWlVpTVhhbG1wMmgxT EE&hl=en). I'm playing in a relatively low twinked group - a Brass Dragon Wyrmling with a single level of incarnate, a Binder played by someone new to tabletopping, and a Kobold Artificer/Trapsmith.

Any suggestions are welcome, but I'm not wanting to twink it out too heavily, as the rest of the party ain't.

Zaq
2009-11-10, 12:52 AM
I really hope it's not too late to revive this twitching thing once more.

In a nutshell, my 'namer is level 12, diverting a little too far from by-the-book to go into too much detail in this by-the-book guide (for example, my DM let me into the Loremaster class just because my character practically is one already)... but that doesn't mean I haven't learned some useful things.

I can't decide where in the main posts this should go, so I'll just pop it in here for now.

I'm learning that a high-level Truenamer (like I said, 12ish... hey, in my book, anything above 8th is high) is pretty good at supporting casters. In particular, most of the 4th level Utterances will help out your casting partymates.

-Confounding Resistance means that, if you actually have a blaster in your party (suboptimal, but you're already playing a Truenamer, so don't start judging them), they can actually hit dodgy things with their area spells.
-Caster Lens is very nice, often eking out another unicorn arrow or mirror image, and it's amazing on a psionic character.
-Magic Contraction only looked decent on paper, but having actually used it, I can say with confidence that it is solid gold. Any time you get to add free metamagic, well... things get powerful.

Also, some of the lower level utterances work nicely to help out casters as well. Inertia Surge can keep your foe in the patch-of-nasty that your caster friend created (a field of black tentacles, a stinking cloud, whatever). Temporal Spiral can give your psion buddy an extra move action, which is enough to regain psionic focus (assuming they took Psionic Meditation). Silent Caster is pretty useless, but it's still technically free metamagic. Not very GOOD, but hey, if you want to embrace helping out casters, embrace it.

Overall, I think that one of the Truenamer's best niches to fill is that of a caster augmenter. They have quite a bit that just really helps casters be even better than they already are.

Here's the thing, though... doing that isn't really that much fun. You're really just helping yourself be overshadowed. It's a very different feeling from, say, a bard turning the party beatstick into a fighting machine. In that situation, you're really doing something to increase the party's capabilities as a whole. You feel like you're doing a lot, and in reality, you are. Both the bard and the beatstick shine in that case. But helping out a caster, as a weak caster, is really solidly shoving you into the squire's role. Your full-casting friend still probably could have taken out the encounter without you; you're just cheerleading, really.

That said, if you're happy in that role, the Truenamer isn't as bad there as they are in some other places, once you get to a nice high level. However, speaking as someone who likes support roles anyway, I still feel like this is less satisfying than other support roles.

Any thoughts?

Bonzai
2009-12-11, 01:10 AM
Hello Zaq!

Glad to see that you are enjoying the class. I have been playing a True Namer as well, and have been keeping a diary on the WotC forums. Here (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872942/CO_Diary_Truenamer?num=10&pg=1)

I started at lvl 3, and am about to hit level 9. Thus far it has also been a by the book build with one exception. We modified the Item Familiar feat. All it does is allow me to invest 3 skill points for 1 extra skill rank, without being tied to an item. This lets me keep pace with the DC increases, without the over powered aspects of the item familiar.

I would say that the Key utterances for me are Greater Speed of the Zephyr, and Temporal twist. These are two of my favorites as they scale well. Reversed Greater Speed of the Zephyr has saved the party from all kinds of nasty. Unlike the spell version, there is no save, so it remains useful at all levels. Temporal Twist is my usual source of damage.... through a surrogate party member. At this point my party can deal single hit damage in the 40's pre crits, so it deals quite a bit more than the 4d6 I could otherwise. Yeah it misses now and again, but is usually worth it. The reverse has also saved the party twice. Before I got Greater Speed of we encountered a Hydra. I managed to daze it (it was about a 50-50 chance), and allowed the party to close in without taking AoO's which would have killed them). The second time, I was able to daze a flying opponent, and thus bring him to the ground where the party could deal with him.

I also make good use of the Words of Nurturing line. At 5th lvl I realized that I could do about 1440 points of down time healing, lol. I still can't cover the burst healing emergency situations, but I can heal out of battle far more efficiently than the parties healer. In the early levels I was the primary ranged damage dealer for the party, and against incorporeal foes I tend to shine, as there is no attack roll.

One last thing... While Inertia Surge is awesome, I don't think it's quite as powerful as you are saying, as the text says that it acts as a freedom of movement spell for MAGICAL impediments. So fog cloud, web, hold person, etc... yeah. A regular grapple or difficult terrain? Not so much. Still a great one to grab though.

Asbestos
2009-12-11, 05:55 PM
I actually played with a group that allowed EVERY 3.x product (3rd party included!) but disallowed the Truenamer because it, and I quote "Broke the game" not because it was broken in the unplayable sense, but because it "literally broke the campaign". Suffice to say, I did not play with those folks for very long.

Vauron
2009-12-11, 10:25 PM
I actually played with a group that allowed EVERY 3.x product (3rd party included!) but disallowed the Truenamer because it, and I quote "Broke the game" not because it was broken in the unplayable sense, but because it "literally broke the campaign". Suffice to say, I did not play with those folks for very long.

....How did they come to that conclusion? The only thing I've seen that was comparable was one guy who thought that truenaming was overpowered. Near as I could tell, he had assumed that since it has fluff that indicated you controlled someone whose personal truename you spoke, they would actually have the ability to do that. After calling him on that and him looking back through, he wasn't even sure where he had gotten that idea in the first place.

Bonzai
2009-12-15, 02:22 PM
The trend I see with True Namers, is that they have to wait longer to get their abilities, but when they do get them, they are slightly more powerful than usual.

Take the reversed Words of Nurturing line. Normal damage scales with a D6 per caster level, up to around a 10d6. Our damage lags behind that for a while, and eventually catches up. However, our damage is untyped, so there is no resistance, there is no attack roll or miss chance. SR can be automatically over come. So while we are behind on our ability to deal damage, ours is a little more reliable and powerful. All we have to do is see our target.

Another example is our slow line. Our Slow has no saving throw, making it useful for our entire career.

Our Dispel Magic is similar. Sure it can only effect one spell at a time, but that spell could be cast by a 100th level caster, could be an epic spell, etc..., it doesn't matter. It's gone.

We can heal ability damage/drain as a standard action, which is handy in combat, as opposed to a 3 round casting of restoration.

This isn't always the case, but for the most part, that is the pattern.

Zeta Kai
2009-12-24, 06:39 PM
Hey Zaq, I heard that you're done with your TN experiment. Any final words on the subject? You seem to have tested this class about 1000% more than the nameless abomination that wrote it, so I was hoping to read your definitive thoughts on the subject. Something to quote if any asks about the TN again (because you know they will).

taltamir
2009-12-24, 06:41 PM
Hey Zaq, I heard that you're done with your TN experiment. Any final words on the subject? You seem to have tested this class about 1000% more than the nameless abomination that wrote it, so I was hoping to read your definitive thoughts on the subject. Something to quote if any asks about the TN again (because you know they will).

what a mean thing to say about a child...
obviously the class was written by a 10 year old whose dad is an exec in WOTC... :P

and 1000% of 0 is still 0... :P

but yea... joking aside, you are very right. This is an impressive playtest.

Zaq
2009-12-27, 01:58 AM
Hey Zaq, I heard that you're done with your TN experiment. Any final words on the subject? You seem to have tested this class about 1000% more than the nameless abomination that wrote it, so I was hoping to read your definitive thoughts on the subject. Something to quote if any asks about the TN again (because you know they will).

Heh, since you asked so nicely, I've added a long bit to the third post. It's probably very rambling (it's rather late here), but hey, it's something.

I'm going to repeat what I said there and once again welcome any Truenamer-related questions anyone has. My character has retired, but my experiences are still relevant... and that includes the experience of spending a cumulative total of I-don't-want-to-know-how-many hours reading, re-reading, cross-referencing, checking, pondering, and swearing at the Truenamer chapter of Tome of Magic. If my mastery of this dubious subject can be of use or of interest, well, I'd like that.

Scorpions__
2010-01-26, 09:45 PM
Man... I've always been a stubborn supporter of the Truenamer class, saying that it's hard but WotC had it right... I guess the reason is that I was always able to argue against what people said cause no one had ever really played it before... Your 'journal' or sorts really made me accept that the class is somewhat... underwhelming during play to anyone who doesn't just love it for its fluff.

I would never want to make the class unrecognizable however, that would be too much revamping anyways.

How about these few, quick changes?

-No law of sequence
-Speak Unto The Masses at Level 9 (When a lot of mass spells kick in)
-LEM Utterance DC = 10 + (2 x CR)

This all of course along with the new utterances I've already shared with you.





DM[F]R

Kyeudo
2010-01-26, 11:17 PM
Check my sig for a fix to the Truenamer. It stays recognizable and backwards compatible, but has much more flexibility and power. Not Tier 1, but maybe Tier 3.