willpell
2012-09-03, 12:45 AM
We all know how terrible the Truenamer is, but I've been thinking about the way that the concept could have worked. It seems to me as though the Wotco folks started out with something immensely powerful (at-will SLAs) and then gimped it into oblivion (Law of Sequence, Law of Resistance, absurdly high Truespeak DCs, and weak utterance effects).
Let's consider what the Truenamer could have been. Take a level 1 Truenamer with 18 Intelligence and the Minor Word of Nurturing utterance. Reversed, this deals 1d6 damage for 2 rounds; that's a fairly good chance of dropping your average Goblin. As-written, the goblin has a truespeak DC of 17, so even with your +4 Int, +4 ranks and a Skill Focus, you'll still fail a fourth of the time. But if the DC started at 10 instead of 15, you'd never fail with this build. Now drop the two Laws, and suddenly you're probably killing a goblin every 2-4 turns, with no save, from 60 feet away.
The question becomes, then, exactly how much of that power should the Truenamer have been permitted to retain? Is just dropping the Laws enough? What if the Law of Resistance added only +1? What if the truespeak DC only went up +1 per CR? It also seems pretty obvious to change some of the utterances; Defensive Edge giving only +1 while Knight's Puissance gives +2 is pretty unforgivable. The Recitation feats are meaningless, and Truename Research is a tiny advantage requiring immense effort; some changes are definitely called for here as well.
The objective here is to create something that is as close as possible to the RAW truenamer (so no dreaming up unique utterances that do something completely new to the class), but functional, coming in at a Tier 3 or 4 level of utility - it doesn't have to be terribly strong, just good enough that you can play a Truenamer without having to suffer for the privilege. Tinker away.
Let's consider what the Truenamer could have been. Take a level 1 Truenamer with 18 Intelligence and the Minor Word of Nurturing utterance. Reversed, this deals 1d6 damage for 2 rounds; that's a fairly good chance of dropping your average Goblin. As-written, the goblin has a truespeak DC of 17, so even with your +4 Int, +4 ranks and a Skill Focus, you'll still fail a fourth of the time. But if the DC started at 10 instead of 15, you'd never fail with this build. Now drop the two Laws, and suddenly you're probably killing a goblin every 2-4 turns, with no save, from 60 feet away.
The question becomes, then, exactly how much of that power should the Truenamer have been permitted to retain? Is just dropping the Laws enough? What if the Law of Resistance added only +1? What if the truespeak DC only went up +1 per CR? It also seems pretty obvious to change some of the utterances; Defensive Edge giving only +1 while Knight's Puissance gives +2 is pretty unforgivable. The Recitation feats are meaningless, and Truename Research is a tiny advantage requiring immense effort; some changes are definitely called for here as well.
The objective here is to create something that is as close as possible to the RAW truenamer (so no dreaming up unique utterances that do something completely new to the class), but functional, coming in at a Tier 3 or 4 level of utility - it doesn't have to be terribly strong, just good enough that you can play a Truenamer without having to suffer for the privilege. Tinker away.