Truenamers and the Paragnostic assembly?

[Goaty14]

Ok, so I'm making a Truenamer (don't worry -- it's gestalted with wizard) and I can't ignore that, when looking at the Paragnostic Assembly, that you only get the bonus to truespeak when researching, and it scales for every hour that you do research.

So my question is how (if at all) truenamers still get the benefit of the Paragnostic Assembly in combat?

[Psyren]

I think the "research" in the entry refers to the activity you perform using the Assembly's resources/books to boost your skills while adventuring, rather than the boost applying to the research itself. It's not written very clearly though. Zaq's truenamer handbook definitely considers it to be the former. (i.e. you do some research and get a permanent bonus to X skill.)

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The exact verbiage is thus:


You can gain a bonus equal to +1 per hour spent in research (maximum +5) on your choice of one of the following skill checks: Appraise, Decipher Script, any Knowledge skill, Psicraft, Spellcraft, or Truespeak. Each time you perform research, you can choose a different skill to which to add the bonus.


Because you now have access to restricted works, the maximum bonus on skill checks that you can obtain on research using skills from the Paragnostic Scholar list increases to +10. You can also use these works to reduce the time and cost involved in researching new spells by 10%.

On the one hand, it's pretty obvious that this ability is intended to apply to downtime research checks only, as opposed to the mention of research being flavor text, given the tracking of individual hours and the bonus applying to one of the following "skill check" and not "skills."

On the other hand, there are no printed rules anywhere regarding researching with Appraise, Decipher Script, Psicraft, Spellcraft, or Truespeak (and there are no multiple-hour-long tasks involving those skills that could plausibly fall under "research" despite not being called that), and the only rules for using Knowledge to research things are the Research feat and the truename research rules.

So while the intention points to the bonus only being usable with lots of hours of downtime, that interpretation means that two tiers of the Paragnostic Assembly benefits do literally nothing if you aren't using truenaming or don't have the Research feat (and someone with CChamp having and using either ToM or ECS isn't guaranteed)...and even if you interpret "research" as "spend N hours in research and then make a skill check as normal," pretty much all of those skills except Appraise are ones that you have to make in situ in e.g. a vault where the puzzle to be Decipher Script-ed is found, a hidden shrine where the unholy idol needs to be Knowledge (Religion)-ed, and so forth, so for 14 out of 15 skills it still does literally nothing and for Appraise you still have to decide whether to take it out to be appraised in a library before you know whether it's worth taking out.

So on balance, it makes sense to houserule it as "spend 10 hours of research per skill at an Assembly-associated temple or library to permanently get a +10 to skill checks with that skill" after a character makes a considerable backstory and/or sidequest investment in his or relationship with the Assembly, and I bet most people interpret/houserule it that way for the above reasons even if they don't explicitly walk through the exact thought process like that.

[Troacctid]

TL;DR expect table variation.