Making Truenamer the best? help?

[D&DPrinceTandem]

as the title says i want to figure out how to make Truenamer good. is it possible to do so. i know theirs a lot of people that say Truenamer is mechanically broken so how can we fix it.
thanks in advance.:smallsmile:
-no limit
-all books open
-all opinons exepted

[Venger]

as the title says i want to figure out how to make Truenamer good. is it possible to do so. i know theirs a lot of people that say Truenamer is mechanically broken so how can we fix it.
thanks in advance.:smallsmile:
-no limit
-all books open
-all opinons exepted

Well, you spake forth his name, so I'm sure Zaq will be along shortly to help you, but until then, here's a link to his handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?214115-In-the-Beginning-Was-the-Word-and-the-Word-Was-Suck-A-Guide-to-Truenamers) on how to play a truenamer.

[D&DPrinceTandem]

thanks!
wow after reading a part of this i think i know my aligment (LE)

Pop open the Book of Vile Darkness and read the rules for sacrifices. Then remember just how good Truenamers are at getting their Knowledge checks up to stupidly high levels. Between the INT focus, the fact that you're likely to take little other than Knowledge skills, the Knowledge Focus class feature, Universal Aptitude, and Hidden Truth, you can get a terrifyingly high K: Religion check (that's the one used in sacrifices, of course) as early as level 3 or so. Consider a perfectly reasonable illumian Truenamer with 16 INT and the Naen sigil . . . for almost no investment, you get 6 (ranks) + 3 (INT) + 3 (Knowledge Focus) + 2 (Naen) + 5 (Universal Aptitude) + 10 (Hidden Truth) = +29 before you even roll. By the time you add all the little trappings listed on pg. 27 of the BoVD, you'll be almost guaranteed to hit the highest level of rewards. And that's at level 3, with the only real investment being maxed ranks in K: Religion (doesn't hurt) and putting your Knowledge Focus class feature into Religion (which, again, is not much of a loss). Even if you don't add all the trappings, just leave one critter you kill every day alive (but probably unconscious) long enough to whip out your dagger and chant the name of your vile master a few times, and you'll be guaranteed to roll high enough to get a free Planar Ally. How sweet is that? Sure, you have to be unrepentantly evil, and your GM has to go along with it, but all the rules are right there.

Cheese Rating: Unratable. There's just way too much variation here to even start. If your GM plays it totally by the book and just hands out whatever rewards you want once per day, that's clearly absurd (awesome, but absurd). If your GM says that your god gets bored with you and won't respond to sacrifices more than once a level or something, that's a lot less compelling, though it's still a great card to have up your sleeve. That said, assuming that you take an interest in Knowledge checks, ANY Truenamer in the deep end of the alignment pool can just decide to start doing this. Chances are very good that you were going to take Universal Aptitude and Hidden Truth anyway (let's face it, being the know-it-all is pretty much the only thing you can do with that level of competence, and those two boosts are among the only things you can sling around that are hard for other classes to match), so you really don't have to prep for this one or do much you weren't already going to do.
or

This is one of the big ones. Let the record show that I don't approve of this trick, but by god, it's there. Check out pg. 234 of Tome of Magic. There's a sentence there (under the “Law of Sequence” paragraph, started on the previous page) that says “It's also okay to use a higher-level version of an utterance while a lower-level version is still active, or vice versa, because these constitute different utterances.” Flip back a page and look at the “Effective Spell Level” paragraph, which says that you can increase the “effective spell level” of an utterance by adding 4 (per increase) to the Truespeak DC.

So yeah, you can see where this is going. There is an argument that changing the spell level triggers the “higher-level/lower-level version of the same utterance” clause from the LoS paragraph. So you can just twiddle your check DCs up and down and spit in the Law of Sequence's eye.

Cheese Rating: 5/5. I am no friend to the Law of Sequence. I believe that it needs to go away and die in a fire. However, I don't think that this is the way to deal with it. I believe that the intent of the “higher/lower” clause was to illustrate that Speed of the Zephyr and Greater Speed of the Zephyr are not, in fact, the same thing . . . but because no one bothered to look up “level” in the dictionary, you can make the argument that this works. Honestly, I'd rather just ask the GM to ignore the Law of Sequence altogether than try to sneak this in.
Truenamer seems fun:smallsmile::smallsmile:

[digiman619]

Honestly, the Truenamer, as shown in Tome of Magic, isn't really worth it outside of bragging rights. If you want something that works like that I'd suggest Radiance Houses version of the Truenamer, which can be found here (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/strange-magic). Of course, it's both Pathfinder and 3rd Party, so there's no guarantee that your DM will allow it.

[Einselar]

The other option is to say screw it and not bother with making sure it's "optimized" or that it "works" You can have a lot of fun with an underpowered class and can frequently do something the DM never planned for because nobody plays that class.

[Jormengand]

The Zaq guide posted allows you to become decently optimised relatively trivially - you'll be capable of dealing with almost any class played out-of-the-box by a relatively normal player. With sacrifice nonsense you can potentially beat out a wizard played by someone with an idea what they're doing, but then, so can anyone.

If you're playing a truenamer, you're probably actually better off trying to play a skill-based character (with the ability to add 5 to everything, and the recitation which adds bonuses to rogue skills) and just take a few of the combat utterances - piling mortalbane and meta-utterance feats on the damage over time ones like reversed energy negation or energy vortex is basically guaranteed to kill the target, eventually. Note that inertia surge blocks teleportation because of the wording. Ask your DM if reversed spell rebirth can be used with a readied action to end instantaneous spells before their effects get a chance to resolve.

In general, you're going to spend a lot less time being good at stuff and a lot more time making other people more awesome, usually. Access to basic utility effects such as flight and energy resistance, as well as decent out-of-combat healing, allows you to replace a cleric in a standard party, especially since you can usually end effects you don't like with reversed spell rebirth. You can also possibly replace a rogue, but obviously take ranks in all the trained-only skills if you want to do that. Replacing wizard is a lot more difficult, because you don't have as much of the utility that wizard puts on the table. Replacing fighter is relatively trivial, and while truenamer gish isn't impossible you can just as easily put out damage with your abilities.

Incidentally, I personally believe that the "My level or yours" trick works perfectly fine, and is exceptionally useful and perhaps even important.

[Cerefel]

The other option is to say screw it and not bother with making sure it's "optimized" or that it "works" You can have a lot of fun with an underpowered class and can frequently do something the DM never planned for because nobody plays that class.

Are you being sarcastic? People don't say stuff like "truenamer doesn't work" just because it's kinda weak or not as good as a wizard. People call truenamer broken because you have to use every trick in the book to pump up your truespeak checks or else you literally can't use your class features. An unoptimized truenamer isn't just bad, it's literally nonfunctional.

[Jormengand]

Are you being sarcastic? People don't say stuff like "truenamer doesn't work" just because it's kinda weak or not as good as a wizard. People call truenamer broken because if you have to use every trick in the book to pump up your truespeak checks or else you literally can't use your class features. An unoptimized truenamer isn't just had, it's literally nonfunctional.

I'm not so sure. Using just options from the same book plus the PHB, at 20th level you can easily get +23 from skills, +12 from intelligence, +3 skill focus, +2 from a masterwork tool, and +10 from a greater amulet of the silver tongue, which is a total of +50 just from the top of my head, meaning that the DC 55 check to throw a solar angel (which is an epic-level cleric, incidentally) at someone is possible with just the stuff I came up with without really thinking about it; it's even easier to set a small room on fire or create a localised tornado. Taking a single feat from UA that gives you another 23 to that roll should be relatively obvious to most players with access to it.

At first level, you're limited to just +4 from intelligence, +4 from skill ranks, +3 from skill focus and +2 from a masterwork tool, meaning that you can only pass the DC 17 check on - gasp - a 4, or a 2 if you're using things on yourself.

Once you have that check, it's relatively trivial to contribute, having practically every skill in the book on tap with a single utterance, a boatload of healing, and when you finally run out of utterances, you make like a cleric out of spells and whack stuff in the face with a morningstar and medium base attack.

[Cerefel]

I never said it was a difficult class to optimize, just that it NEEDS optimization. I just felt it needed to be stated because the person I was responding to literally said not to bother making sure that it works, even though that's a pretty notable concern for a truenamer build.

[Troacctid]

Are you being sarcastic? People don't say stuff like "truenamer doesn't work" just because it's kinda weak or not as good as a wizard. People call truenamer broken because you have to use every trick in the book to pump up your truespeak checks or else you literally can't use your class features. An unoptimized truenamer isn't just had, it's literally nonfunctional.
If you run the numbers, you'll find that you are mistaken. This line of floccinaucinihilipilification gets thrown around a lot, probably because JaronK put it in his tier listing, but it's not true. I guess if for some reason you start with a 13 in Intelligence, never buy any magic items over your entire adventuring career, and choose not to put max ranks in Truespeak, then sure, you might be literally unable to use your class features. But I think most people would consider that not so much "unoptimized" as "deliberately self-sabotaged."

[Einselar]

Are you being sarcastic? People don't say stuff like "truenamer doesn't work" just because it's kinda weak or not as good as a wizard. People call truenamer broken because you have to use every trick in the book to pump up your truespeak checks or else you literally can't use your class features. An unoptimized truenamer isn't just had, it's literally nonfunctional.

I'm not. I frequently play characters that are, for all combat puposes, useless except in very particular situations. As long as it is not a major detriment to the party, it's quite fun to play a tibbet artificer at 2nd level who keeps exploding herself when she tries to make a freeze ray from a flintlock pistol and a bit of cold moss. If for whatever reason your class doesn't work in combat, it is always possible to be relevant outside of combat. RP is amazing and if you have a good DM, anything is possible if you can explain it.

[Cerefel]

If you run the numbers, you'll find that you are mistaken. This line of floccinaucinihilipilification gets thrown around a lot, probably because JaronK put it in his tier listing, but it's not true. I guess if for some reason you start with a 13 in Intelligence, never buy any magic items over your entire adventuring career, and choose not to put max ranks in Truespeak, then sure, you might be literally unable to use your class features. But I think most people would consider that not so much "unoptimized" as "deliberately self-sabotaged."

More like just one of those things. Without items, a 15th level truenamer with 21 int, full ranks, and skill focus has a check modifier of +26. To buff an ally that is also level 15, the truenamer needs to hit a DC of 45 on the first utterance. See the problem? It's really easy for a player without the optimization chops of most playgrounders to fall behind if they're not extremely careful. It's not a crippling problem for most people, but the class requires some assembly.

[Troacctid]

More like just one of those things. Without items, a 15th level truenamer with 21 int, full ranks, and skill focus has a check modifier of +26. To buff an ally that is also level 15, the truenamer needs to hit a DC of 45 on the first utterance. See the problem? It's really easy for a player without the optimization chops of most playgrounders to fall behind if they're not extremely careful. It's not a crippling problem for most people, but the class requires some assembly.
A greater silver tongue amulet is an 11th level item. You should have had one four levels ago. The extra +10 gives you a better-than-even chance of success.

[Cerefel]

45% chance of failure is still significant, especially considering that it gets worse throughout the day.

My point is that the class takes a bit of work to make it functional, and that should be noted. That's all I was trying to add to this discussion in the first place

[Zaydos]

More like just one of those things. Without items, a 15th level truenamer with 21 int, full ranks, and skill focus has a check modifier of +26. To buff an ally that is also level 15, the truenamer needs to hit a DC of 45 on the first utterance. See the problem? It's really easy for a player without the optimization chops of most playgrounders to fall behind if they're not extremely careful. It's not a crippling problem for most people, but the class requires some assembly.

And a 15th level fighter with 21 Str, Weapon Focus, and a non-magical non-masterwork longsword needs an 11 to hit a half-elf monk/shadowdancer vampire (CR 15, MM) and literally cannot hurt them (13 damage max, DR 15/magic and silver). It's like saying 'if at 15th level your fighter has a magic weapon they're optimized'. By 15th level you can assume a fighter will get a magic weapon, and a truenamer will get their equivalent. Just like by 15th level the fighter will have a Belt of Strength and the Truenamer a headband of intellect. Notably even if you give the fighter a +2 weapon (the rough equivalent of the said amulet) they still can't hurt the vampire... did I mention this holds true for your default CR 7 vampire if the fighter didn't take power attack?

That said, yes the class needs a bit of work to be functional in the same sense that any Core class except maybe cleric/druid does.

[Cerefel]

I generally agree, but I'd place it a little closer to Warrior or CW Samurai, as Truenamer doesn't get a stacking truespeak bonus at every even level.

[Jormengand]

Truenamer is way, way better than warrior or samurai. Even unoptimised, it can still hit things, and also heal things, buff things, debuff things, make skill checks at things, and fly. All that, even with a chance of failure, puts it way beyond warrior or samurai or even fighter or paladin league.

As for your rapidly reducing chance of success, go cry to the real spellcasters who at sixth level have a zero chance to manage to fly a sixth time per day.

[Psyren]

The irony I see here is that many of the same folks who don't see a problem with a 35% (increasing) failure chance on utterances would bend over backwards to avoid even a 15% ASF on their wizards. Wasted actions are one of the worst things that can happen to a PC. They're not just mechanically suboptimal, they are plain unfun and even detrimental to the group as a whole by granting action advantage to the enemy.

And remember, all that op-fu is just to beat one of the Laws. The Law of Sequence is far more pernicious and there's far less that can be done about it.

[Jormengand]

The irony I see here is that many of the same folks who don't see a problem with a 35% (increasing) failure chance on utterances would bend over backwards to avoid even a 15% ASF on their wizards. Wasted actions are one of the worst things that can happen to a PC. They're not just mechanically suboptimal, they are plain unfun and even detrimental to the group as a whole by granting action advantage to the enemy.

Yes, but the thing is that there is always a chance that your barbarian, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger or rogue will miss with their attack, always a chance that your sorcerer or wizard will miss with their touch spell, always a chance that your battle cleric or wildshaped druid will miss, always a chance that, barring irresistible spell or the exceptionally rare no-save spells, your opponent will pass their save against your spell (you'll notice that utterances which actually do allow saves are an oddity). Unless your wizard is ungodly good, there's a non-negligible chance that the opponent will pass their save, and while the truenamer's abilities are getting harder to use each time he succeeds, you are burning through spell slots each time you attempt. The reason we avoid ASF on our wizards is that it's another chance of failure, and we already often have one, two or even three of those tacked onto our spells.

The law of sequence, on the other hand, is usually little more than an irritation, and I anyway maintain that the heighten utterance trick works on it.

[Troacctid]

Wizards will also bend over backwards to avoid losing even a single caster level, but I've never heard anyone say that bards literally cannot function as intended because they get their spells a couple levels behind full casters.

[Pex]

Get rid of the x2 multiplier in the DC formula.

[Troacctid]

Get rid of the x2 multiplier in the DC formula.

At that point you might as well eliminate the check altogether, since you're going to make it 100% of the time. I'm guessing you didn't do the math on this quick-fix. :smalltongue:

[Jormengand]

At that point you might as well eliminate the check altogether, since you're going to make it 100% of the time. I'm guessing you didn't do the math on this quick-fix. :smalltongue:

To be fair, quicken utterance is useless unless you were going to make the initial check 100% of the time anyway. And given that Item Familiar is basically equivalent to this fix (plus an extra three) and results in a pretty good character, maybe they did do the maths.

[digiman619]

I am not going to say that using a Truenamer is badwrongfun, but there are more interesting ways to use the concept flavorfully (my personal favorite is via Spheres of Power (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/) with the Skilled Casting(Perform:Oratory) and Verbal Casting drawbacks), and the class has a lot of problems mechanically. Even if we ignore the amount of time and money you need to invest into your Truespeak check, the utterances are, by and large, crap. Until you hit 20 and get free gate, it's weak and generally unfun to play. I'd advise you against it, you do you.

[Jormengand]

The utterances don't tend to be crap at all - compare universal aptitude with magecraft, inertia surge with freedom of movement, and reversed spell rebirth with greater dispel magic, for example, as well as the fact that it's even better if you compare it to something that isn't as powerful as a wizard.

The OP asked about the truenamer, so pointing at classes that have similar vague concept but are entirely not the same class isn't massively helpful anyway.

[Cerefel]

If the OP wants to play a truenamer they should definitely go for it. They should just know what they're getting into.

If they decide not to take the leap though, I'd recommend Warlock. It feels fairly similar to play, the fluff is an easy change, and it requires much less in the way of jumping through hoops.

[digiman619]

The utterances don't tend to be crap at all - compare universal aptitude with magecraft, inertia surge with freedom of movement, and reversed spell rebirth with greater dispel magic, for example, as well as the fact that it's even better if you compare it to something that isn't as powerful as a wizard.

The OP asked about the truenamer, so pointing at classes that have similar vague concept but are entirely not the same class isn't massively helpful anyway.

The early utterances are actually not bad, but by the time you get 3th level utterances you really start falling behind even behind other 6th casting classes. Though you have a point, the OP asked for advice on the Truenamer class, so that's what we should focus on.

[Jormengand]

The early utterances are actually not bad, but by the time you get 3th level utterances you really start falling behind even behind other 6th casting classes. Though you have a point, the OP asked for advice on the Truenamer class, so that's what we should focus on.

Are you kidding? If you can get mortalbane (which has no prerequisites) and can extend your utterances, your third-level utterances include the most broken direct damage ability in the game except for possibly Power Word: Pain. Mortalbane extended reversed energy negation can take out an adult red dragon in one shot, and this comes online at level 7. This is also the level where you can get access to seek the sky, whose reversed version is exceptionally powerful. You've also had reversed inertia surge from level 1, so use that to stick the dragon in place and head for the hills while your freezing utterance of death kills the damn thing. CR 15 dragon, which are notoriously under-CRed. Greater Speed of the Zephyr is a slow spell that doesn't allow a save, or it's a haste. Reversed temporal spiral is a SoL; while temporal spiral itself is useful if you can quicken it. Hells, the word of nurturing you're picking up is able to equal CCW if you're going down that path, and you can extend it at no cost to yourself as long as you can pass the check.

As your fourth-level utterances are coming online at level 10, the bard is also getting 4th-level spells. Zero of them. Break enchantment is usually obviated by reversed spell rebirth. You've had freedom of movement from level one. Compared to a relatively normal bard, you practically own the place. It's only at the highest utterance levels where you even begin to curve off, and even then no-one's really going to argue that being able to deal damage over time to a building is useful when a truenamer just told you to go off to the ethereal plane, forever.