Truenamer with skill items

[Biggus]

The Truenamer is universally reviled because of the way its core skill's DCs scale faster than skill ranks, making it worse the higher your level gets. But if you're playing in a world where you can buy or make skill-boosting items which improve the Truename skill, the reverse is true: your Utterances get easier at high levels. Has anyone ever played one in such a world? Is the class actually any good if its core problem is fixed?

[mabriss lethe]

Ok. So... It's been a while, but here's the basic deal with truenamers: out of the box with no help, they lag behind. There are several ways to ratchet up their skill checks to absurd levels. At that point, utterances look a lot more like at will SLAs. So compare it to a warlock. You get a significant number of tricks, better than the number a Warlock gets. However! They don't stack up compared to the power of a warlock, which is Not-a-good-place-to-be, since Warlocks are considered very underpowered for a caster. Very few utterances, even as at will abilities with no chance of failure, would be considered appropriate for the level you acquire them. So basically you spend 19 levels twiddling your thumbs so that you can spam Gate and completely break the game at level 20.

[MisterKaws]

Ok. So... It's been a while, but here's the basic deal with truenamers: out of the box with no help, they lag behind. There are several ways to ratchet up their skill checks to absurd levels. At that point, utterances look a lot more like at will SLAs. So compare it to a warlock. You get a significant number of tricks, better than the number a Warlock gets. However! They don't stack up compared to the power of a warlock, which is Not-a-good-place-to-be, since Warlocks are considered very underpowered for a caster. Very few utterances, even as at will abilities with no chance of failure, would be considered appropriate for the level you acquire them. So basically you spend 19 levels twiddling your thumbs so that you can spam Gate and completely break the game at level 20.

Yeah, basically this.

though there's a single exception: a Truenamer is a direct counter to highly optimized enemies with high number of defenses, since their utterances are usually save:no, touch:no, SR:no, element:no. Though most of the times a mailman is better for that.

Unless the DM is also throwing Scintillating Scales onto a Tarrasque and giving it ray deflection+all the other mailman-repellent cheese. In THAT case a Truenamer is the best solution.

[Zaq]

It helps. It’s not enough on its own because the weird limitations on utterances come to the fore. It’s far from unplayable, but it’s not OP at all.

For what it’s worth, the section of my guide that rates the utterances assumes that you’ll succeed on most or all of your TS checks anyway.

[Biggus]

Thanks all for replies.

So even if you can auto-succeed at your Truename skill checks, it's still about the weakest caster class out there, except at level 20, or in one very specific situation? ...ouch.

[GrayDeath]

Its not really a Caster Class, so I would be careful with that comparison.
But yes, compared to just about any Caster worth the moniker its between quite and horribly weak, and thats really too bad, as for one I lopve the concept of the Truenamer.....sigh.

[Unavenger]

The truenamer handily beats out any class which isn't a caster, initiator, manifester or similar without much trying. It has many of the tricks that define casters, albeit late in a lot of cases and weaker in a lot of cases, but with high enough truespeak bonuses you can get a lot of shots of each utterance. At low levels, you're probably gonna be stuck as healbot. At mid-levels, you can fly and do a lot of damage, albeit in damage-over-time format. At high levels you have a bucket of neat-but-situational tricks and you have enough of a knowledge bonus to take a good guess at which one is the most useful. In a world with no vancian casters or psionicists, every party probably wants a truenamer just for the healing abilities. In a world with those things, if you leave your fighter at home and take a truenamer instead you won't regret it. It's not amazing. But it's far, far better than the memes would have it.

[MisterKaws]

Thanks all for replies.

So even if you can auto-succeed at your Truename skill checks, it's still about the weakest caster class out there, except at level 20, or in one very specific situation? ...ouch.

Nah, if you can get it to succeed on, say, all standard action checks and 50% of quickened checks, it's a relatively decent t3.

[Biggus]

Its not really a Caster Class, so I would be careful with that comparison.
But yes, compared to just about any Caster worth the moniker its between quite and horribly weak, and thats really too bad, as for one I lopve the concept of the Truenamer.....sigh.

I've never played one, just had a glance over it in the book, so I may be misrepresenting it slightly. Tbh a large part of the reason I started this thread is that like you, I like the concept, but everyone says it sucks horribly so I wanted to know whether it was worth the effort of learning how it works properly.


Nah, if you can get it to succeed on, say, all standard action checks and 50% of quickened checks, it's a relatively decent t3.

Oh? You seemed to be agreeing with mabriss lethe, who said that even with a very high skill check it's still weaker than the Warlock, which is tier 4. Do you think it's better than the Warlock, or do you think the Warlock should be tier 3 too?

[MisterKaws]

I've never played one, just had a glance over it in the book, so I may be misrepresenting it slightly. Tbh a large part of the reason I started this thread is that like you, I like the concept, but everyone says it sucks horribly so I wanted to know whether it was worth the effort of learning how it works properly.



Oh? You seemed to be agreeing with mabriss lethe, who said that even with a very high skill check it's still weaker than the Warlock, which is tier 4. Do you think it's better than the Warlock, or do you think the Warlock should be tier 3 too?

The Warlock has very few spells, less than half that of a Truenamer, and the Truenamer has more all-purpose spells which can also affect party members.

The usual criterion for deciding between T3 and T4 is versatility, and being able to reinforce party mates to a reasonable degree is a very important part of it, and Truenamers are very good buffers... if they can get their checks up. The only problem is the duration and target limitation of most spells, but If Truenamers had Persist-level durations and less target limitations, I could see them being on the higher end of t3, but since it doesn't, it's closer to the lowest T3s. Which is a pretty high rating for a broken class.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Truenamer, more than any other class, scales to the proficiency of the player. It has a ton of downsides that can be flagrantly ignored and all sorts of weird hedge case interactions. As a class it is just insanely poor edited and suffered the most design wise. If you know all the little tricks you can ignore the Law of Sequence and be throwing around quickened actions while permakilling enemies with ever changing sword materials.

If you are not in the know then the class quickly turns literally unusable. It is a bit binary.

[GrayDeath]

I've never played one, just had a glance over it in the book, so I may be misrepresenting it slightly. Tbh a large part of the reason I started this thread is that like you, I like the concept, but everyone says it sucks horribly so I wanted to know whether it was worth the effort of learning how it works properly.



Oh? You seemed to be agreeing with mabriss lethe, who said that even with a very high skill check it's still weaker than the Warlock, which is tier 4. Do you think it's better than the Warlock, or do you think the Warlock should be tier 3 too?

As a true Warlock Fan and avid Player:

The Warlock has (aside from Gate SPam) quite a bit more Power than the Truenamer, and almost everything he does has a much longer duration, so I would rate him much higher on the power scale. However unless you spend all your feats for extra Invocations (or use one of the many Warlock Fixes) the Truenamer handily beats him in the Versatility area. The one thing many to most people critizize the Warlock for is his lack of Invocations after all.

As for T4 or T 3......well, I myself would rate a well built Warlock as low T3, and a Clawlock or other one Invocation Lock as absolutely highest T4 ...so a well working Truenamer is either lowest T 3 or highest T 4....sadly to make it well working it NEEDS the exact right items and to be built in the one right way. Sigh.....memo to self, do a Truenamer Hoembrew some time.

[Telonius]

That sort of project has been in the back of my mind for a while now. My biggest problem getting it started is that I'm not sure what I think a Truenamer ought to be able to do. Yeah, figuring out the True Name of a monster or thing ought to let you do some cool stuff for it, but the source material I'd be drawing from (mainly Middle Earth and Earthsea) would interact kind of weirdly with the typical D&D world.

[MisterKaws]

That sort of project has been in the back of my mind for a while now. My biggest problem getting it started is that I'm not sure what I think a Truenamer ought to be able to do. Yeah, figuring out the True Name of a monster or thing ought to let you do some cool stuff for it, but the source material I'd be drawing from (mainly Middle Earth and Earthsea) would interact kind of weirdly with the typical D&D world.

I think a rehashed truenamer should be a bit more focused on the languages themselves. Maybe add Darkspeech and Words of Creation to it, and focus on the "commanding the world" aspect more.

[mabriss lethe]

One of the ideas I've been toying with is to basically port over some variation of the force powers rules from SW saga edition. Mostly: you have a baseline power that can be improved with higher skill rolls.

[Luccan]

This got me thinking: What would be the minimum bonus to Truespeak you would need to be effective each day at levels 1-20? Assuming level appropriate encounters and not using it anymore than, let's say, the baseline wizard number of spells per day.

[Efrate]

iirc its 15 plus double creatures cr plus 2, plus 2 per use, so dc 19 at level 1 for cr 1 opponents? So reliably hit dc 23 at level 1 going by 3 spells for a wizard. Assuming average rolls thats plus 13, or plus 22 to always succeed. That would scale to 8ish spells at 20 for the few highest level, so that's plus 16, plus 20 x2 plus 2, so dc 57 thru 73? Average rolls is plus 47 through plus 63, plus 56 through 72 for always success?

I am doing numbers from memory so correct me if I am wrong. But Around plus 70 at level 20 seems correct for always on.

Or pao into those monsters who ignore the laws and you can get by much lower.

[noob]

truenamers got strong tricks such as repairing consumables or solid fog but those are not in early levels.

[Malphegor]

Weird thing I just found out that may be relevant- there’s a feat in Book of Exalted Deeds, Words of Creation that unlocks an alternative version of True Name mechanics before Tome of Magic existed- boosts some bard abilities, but lets you use legend lore to automagically research a truename, plus gives you stuff to do with that that honestly makes actual later on Truenaming kind of not as fun.

That said it giving an alt option on how to get enemy Truenames and stuff to do with them is pretty sweet I think?

[Chronos]

Personally, I think that the warlock should be considered Tier 3, though what puts them in that tier varies with level. The swarm invocation makes them one of only 3 or 4 classes that doesn't suck at first level (not a complaint; first-level characters are supposed to suck), and about the time that starts getting old, they get their 4th level ability to basically auto-succeed at using wands, and that carries you through to level 12 when you can make your own items.

With the Truenamer, the real problem is that they're so optimization-dependent. If you build a poorly-optimized fighter, you can still swing a sword, you just don't get as much out of sword-swings as you might. If you build a poorly-optimized wizard, then you can still cast spells, just maybe not the best spells. If you build an only moderately-optimized truenamer, then you spend a third of the time doing nothing (even before looking at saves, which a lot of the abilities still have), and it gets worse as you level up. Yes, you can optimize a truenamer enough to make the checks easy, but you shouldn't have to put that much work into a class just to make it usable at all.

[Zaq]

Weird thing I just found out that may be relevant- there’s a feat in Book of Exalted Deeds, Words of Creation that unlocks an alternative version of True Name mechanics before Tome of Magic existed- boosts some bard abilities, but lets you use legend lore to automagically research a truename, plus gives you stuff to do with that that honestly makes actual later on Truenaming kind of not as fun.

That said it giving an alt option on how to get enemy Truenames and stuff to do with them is pretty sweet I think?

Eh. I'm really not fond of the "true name" option in Words of Creation. The researching option has enough overlap with the ToM truename research rules (1,000 gp per week, total number of weeks equal to the target's HD/2, which spells help in research, etc.) that I'm willing to believe that the ToM option was based off of the BoED option.

Even so, I don't think the BoED option is necessarily much easier: the ToM option only requires magical divination for something "obscure" (usually 10 HD or less) but has a harder Knowledge check, while the BoED option always requires magical divination (and somewhat higher-level ones, too; it always needs legend lore and either commune or contact other plane, while the ToM option never technically requires anything stronger than divination and never requires more than a single spell, though more can help) even if it does have a lower-DC Knowledge check at the end. Same number of weeks either way (though the Truename Research feat, which you should never take as a feat but which truenamers do get for free at level 6, cuts down the ToM option), and the BoED option is likely to cost you more.

Once you succeed, though, then what? Let's assume for a moment that using either process results in the same personal truename. None of the BoED options for what you can actually do with a personal truename are useful to a truenamer: they don't have any effects with the explicit [Compulsion] keyword (though I suppose you could make an argument for reversed singular mind, which isn't available until ECL 18+), they can already ignore SR by just increasing the Truespeak DC by 5, they don't get teleport or greater teleport, and they don't get planar binding (even truename binding is different, not that actual truenamers get access there).

What about for the truenamer, though? Eh, using a personal truename also kinda sucks. You take a penalty to your Truespeak check (which isn't that bad if you're optimized; the bad part is getting the damn name in the first place) and get a bonus to SR penetration checks (lame: just use the ignore SR option) and a +2 to the save DC (eh, every +2 helps, but that's in no way proportionate to the amount of effort you had to spend to get the name).

Technically, you can also use your see the named feature and your sending feature on the target as well, which I guess could come up in a small percentage of games, but again, you spent multiple in-game weeks (and a nontrivial amount of gold) doing this. Still not impressive, yanno?

I guess the BoED method can be used on a non-truenamer who wants to use truename magic (since a lot of truename spells require personal truenames, which is why they suck), but again, I'm not convinced that it's actually easier or faster to use the BoED method.

Arguably the character who gets the most use out of personal truenames is the fiendbinder, but the alignment prereq interferes with even taking Words of Creation, so we can't even start discussing if the BoED research method is better for them!

Long story short, the Words of Creation rules are more or less fine in and of themselves when contained to BoED, but they truly do not benefit a truenamer at all. Could we homebrew cooler stuff for them to do? Obviously we could. We could homebrew all sorts of cool things. But by RAW, a truenamer gets so little benefit out of using the Words of Creation rules that I'm willing to round down and say they get no benefit at all.

(...If you can't tell, I've spent a bit of time thinking about this. Apparently I have opinions. But that's my job as The Truenamer Guy, I guess.)

[Troacctid]

Oh, are we talking about warlocks? They're definitely T3, and I don't think it's hard to get them there.

Truenamers, honestly, I think they're a bit underrated, but still worse than warlocks. Their utterances just aren't all that good, is the main problem...but they're still definitely good enough to hit T4, even with all their problems.

[Luccan]

Oh, are we talking about warlocks? They're definitely T3, and I don't think it's hard to get them there.

Truenamers, honestly, I think they're a bit underrated, but still worse than warlocks. Their utterances just aren't all that good, is the main problem...but they're still definitely good enough to hit T4, even with all their problems.

I think their abilities are good enough to hit T4 if you can always ignore the skill roll. The problem is if you can't. It's two separate problems, the actual power of utterances and the checks you have to make to use them, but both are important. You can't use your abilities at-will at low levels, even with a good build. You simply lack the build resources to continuously make Truespeak checks with anything close to certainty. Which is why I think they're hard to rate.

[Troacctid]

The thing is, in many cases you don't need certainty. Universal aptitude, word of nurturing, and hidden truth are often used out of combat, for example, where you can just retry until you succeed. And when you need to, you can still fall back on the Lexicon of the Crafted Tool with its lower DCs.

I did the math (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17MCVFx-p0qT3fUvRseEes0873CJqnxbbVeQAYS4uYaM/edit#gid=0) a while back and found that even at a fairly low level of optimization (Skill Focus, amulet of the silver tongue, headband of intellect, and nothing else), you can still function...kind of okay. You'll only have a few uses per day for most of your stuff, but if that bothers you, you can go cry to the shadowcaster, who, incidentally, still manages to land in T4.

[Zaq]

I'm comfortable calling a competent truenamer T4. They get more ability to affect the world than a fighter or the average (non-wild shape) ranger. There are problems they can solve that pure martial classes can't.

The weird part is that you do have to assume a certain baseline level of optimization. A mid-level rogue with garbage feats and no magic items is a hell of a lot more competent than a mid-level truenamer with garbage feats and no magic items. The floor is much, much lower for the truenamer than for many classes that end up in a similar power bracket when played reasonably well. Sure, a mid-level rogue with garbage feats and no magic items is going to be much, much sadder than one with appropriately invested build resources, but they can still occasionally hit with a sneak attack, they can still probably succeed on a few of their primary skills now and again, and so on. The truenamer will reach a point where they cannot affect an appropriately-CR'd foe, which is the weird break condition.

And yes, the resources that you invest in hitting your baseline Truespeak numbers are resources you don't get to invest elsewhere, which makes grading "equivalent optimization" somewhat more challenging when the truenamer is involved than when most other typical classes are involved (and is an argument, though not necessarily the primary or the strongest argument, for why T4 is a better match than T3). The fact that it costs the truenamer noticeably more to hit baseline competence with its own native class features than it costs the majority of other classes to do the same is certainly not irrelevant, and I don't think anyone would make a serious argument to the contrary. But even if it makes things messy, that's not the same as saying that things are unworkable.

And no, it's not accurate to say that the truenamer breaks at both the extreme low end and extreme high end of optimization, which is an argument I've seen now and again. They break at the extreme low end. They don't get any in-class abilities that are riotously broken at high-op, though. (Something something conjunctive gate. Doesn't matter. Conjunctive gate is broken—or at least OP—strictly on its own merits, and getting a crazy high TS mod won't make it worse. It's also entirely irrelevant to the vast majority of games because it's level 20.) Remember that utterances never use Truespeak as an opposed roll (okay, unless you're counterspeaking, which I don't think anyone has ever done ever), so doesn't matter if you just barely hit the DC or if you smashed it by 40 points: that's the same utterance you're firing off. And again, I basically assume in my handbook that you've got the utterances close to at-will for the majority of your career (because, realistically, you do, if you know how to optimize); none of them break when played that way.

I'm not saying anything new or controversial, of course. This is all pretty much accepted by this point. The truenamer takes more investment than it's usually worth, it does require very careful reading and very intentional choices, and it's relatively limited in its ability to stray from its ideal path without making some really noticeable sacrifices. It does require knowing what you're doing and an environment where you do have the resources available to make a certain degree of investment. And yes, it does have some weird scaling issues where its high-level abilities really would have been more appropriate quite a while before they actually come online. However, it's not unplayable garbage if you know what you're doing, it's not "the worst class in the game" (though it is a hot mess from a design perspective), and it's not completely unratable as far as power scale goes.

[mabriss lethe]

@Zaq: I was just rereading your truenamer guide and I ran across a tangential tidbit of interest. Kalashtar and hidden talent. Fun fact. while hidden talent doesn't grant a real ML, it does bind to any existing ML, which the Kalashtar get from their racial PLA, so any hidden talent they get will gain ML at one half HD or full HD if they take Kalashtar Mindlink.

Whether that's worth updating or not is debatable, but there it is.

[Zaq]

Hmm. Interesting. I’ll have to perhaps dig into that. Thanks for the heads-up!

I’m planning a semi-major update to the guide, hopefully in the summer, but I’ve gotta get through two more weeks of school first. (Definitely not procrastinating doing finance homework right now. Of course not.)

Edit: I'm not 100% convinced that a kalashtar's racial ML will count for Hidden Talent. "If you have no psionic class levels, you are considered a 1st-level manifester when manifesting this power. If you have psionic class levels, you can manifest the power at the highest manifester level you have attained." Having a manifester level from mindlink isn't the same thing as having psionic class levels. Pity. That would be a pretty good trick.

Now, if you have even one level in a psionic class but you happen to have a higher ML from being a kalashtar, that should work...