Truenamer discussion: How it should have been [Archive]

Cosi

2019-05-02, 05:34 PM

The Truenamer is a Wizard. You have magic words that give you magic power. You delve into ancient ruins to learn more magic words. It's a Wizard. There's plenty of source material for wizards who learn the True Names of things to do magic to, with, or on them. If Truenamer was a Wizard PrC that eliminated non-verbal components and gave you some bonuses for power word spells, that would be totally normal.

Mechanically, that's not what the Truenamer is. The Truenamer, as it currently exists, is defined by two crippling design problems:

1. It sucks.
2. It uses skill checks to power its abilities.

While the flaws in the first point should be obvious, the second is worth examining. Skill-based magic in a level-based system is inherently bad. It cannot be made to function in a healthy way. This is because there is a binary choice available for how skill checks scale. Either there is a fixed correlation between skill bonuses and level, or there is not. If there is, your skill check is a pointless indirection layer on a level check. If there is not, your skill check breaks in some direction at some level, with absolute certainty. It's simply not a workable mechanic, particularly considering how high skill checks go.

As far as how the Truenamer should have worked, I think "Wizard PrC" is still the best answer, but if you're going to make it a base class, you need to figure out how it's different from a Wizard. The tempting strategy is to do something where you combine Nouns and Verbs to make Sentences. But dynamic power creation is incredibly hard to balance. Consider, for example, the differences between a wooden table, a block of wood, and a cage. Or the differences between solid water and solid hydrogen. And, of course, the complexity of any such system is going to make it drag in play.

I think what you should do is figure out some resource management system you think is cool, then write some Word Powers for that. Maybe channeling the power of pure creation inflicts nasty status debuffs and leaves you weakened. Maybe you learn individual words like Fire or Mind and pick up suites of individual powers. The reversability shtick the Truenamer has is pretty neat, and is probably the only part of the class design that's worth salvaging, so you could go with that.

Troacctid

2019-05-02, 05:39 PM

I would say just use fixed DCs based on the utterance's level instead of scaling DCs based on the target's level. It works totally fine for the other two lexicons.

Cosi

2019-05-02, 05:55 PM

The effect of the fixed DCs are essentially make those abilities at-will with a minimum optimization tax. That's not healthy for the game.

Troacctid

2019-05-02, 06:06 PM

The Lexicon of the Crafted Tool already has fixed DCs and it's not problematic. Even optimized truenamers can't keep the utterances up all day due to the Law of Resistance. Also, what's wrong with at-will abilities? Warlocks, binders, meldshapers, and initiators all have 'em and they play just fine.

Cosi

2019-05-02, 06:13 PM

There's nothing wrong with at-will abilities. The problem is the radical variation with respect to optimization. A +10 bonus swings your daily uses of each utterance by more than a Wizard's entire complement of top-level spell slots, and differences in optimization result in much larger swings. Skill based magic is basically looking at Diplomancers, UMD cheese builds, and Iajutsu Focus Factotums and saying "what if that cheesy nonsense was the entire point of a whole class"? It's terrible design, just like it would be terrible design to have a class with a spell list that consisted of nothing but holy word and ways to boost your CL.

Segev

2019-05-02, 06:34 PM

It likely would have to not be a skill. Instead, probably a CLASS level check. d20+class level. Maybe - MAYBE - a stat mod.

Bonuses to it would have to be very carefully controlled. It isn't a caster level - there are too many ways to boost CLs that are not designed with the notion of limiting success-rates on a level-based check in mind - so it's its own thing.

If you used Spheres of Power, you'd replace the things that cost spell points with things that take a Truespeech roll, and spell points would be expendible for a fixed bonus to the roll. Giving a limited amount of certainty, and then letting it be risky but potentially doable.

Troacctid

2019-05-02, 06:51 PM

If you used Spheres of Power, it would be a casting tradition with the Skilled Casting (Linguistics) and Verbal Casting drawbacks.

mabriss lethe

2019-05-02, 07:25 PM

One of the things that I considered implementing for a rebuilt truenamer class was to replace the current skill mechanic with something more like the way force powers function in Saga edition. The first thing we did was give the skill itself some baked in usage instead of just being a tax. It's been a while and the flash drive the revisions were on has long since wandered off, so I don't remember exactly what the skill itself did, though. Each utterance had a baseline effect that would then grow with higher skill checks. Examples: all of the word of nurturing utterances were simply rolled into a single utterance with increasing skill checks granting more powerful effects. We also modified the Crafted Tool utterances for enhancing armor and weapons with a wide open list of enhancements with higher rolls granting access to higher level special abilities.

A GM friend of mine let me test run a prototype version of the idea in his game using the existing class chassis basically unchanged. Treating recitations as functioning more like TOB stances was a minor, but interesting fix. The end result was pretty satisfying. The class packed a nice punch and stayed much more competitive in the low to mid T3 range throughout the test run.

On an earlier run, we cobbled together a simple TOB-esque recovery mechanic as a way to reset the stupid truenamer laws when they got out of hand. It was significantly less satisfying, but still worked out well enough.

Psyren

2019-05-02, 10:08 PM

It likely would have to not be a skill. Instead, probably a CLASS level check. d20+class level. Maybe - MAYBE - a stat mod.

I think it works fine as a skill check, just disallow the abusive stuff like item familiar and guidance of the avatar. But assuming your group doesn't want to do that, making it a level check should be fine as long as you include a few bonuses.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-02, 10:43 PM

I think it works fine as a skill check, just disallow the abusive stuff like item familiar and guidance of the avatar. But assuming your group doesn't want to do that, making it a level check should be fine as long as you include a few bonuses.

Combat tends to be over quickly, and Guidance of the Avatar (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a) has a one minute duration, so it's mostly only useful if you know exactly when the fight's breaking out, or when you've got it Quickened (which becomes a considerable investment very quickly), due to the one-minute duration. I'd be more concerned with Divine Insight, due to the hours/level duration letting you cast it well in advance of a fight.

As a single skill check, all the options for boosting skills make it problematic, especially when you start stacking them; skill focus basically becomes a feat tax, you're going to basically always going to want a masterwork tool at first, and so on. As a class level check, the vast majority of those vanish, and there's a more stable balance point.

Another approach might be to key it off appropriate Knowledge (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/knowledge.htm) skills. To affect a creature, you need to make a suitable creature-related Knowledge check. Want to mess up a Goblin? You'll need to roll Knowledge(Local), as it's a humanoid. A giant? They're Knowledge(Nature). Demon? Knowledge(The Planes). And so on. When you need to deal with other things, you use other checks. Maybe... Architecture and Engineering affects all manner of built terrain and manufactured objects. Geography handles fast travel and natural terrain. History handles Divination-type effects. Not sure what to do with Nobility and Royalty. Messing with other folks' magic is Knowledge(Arcana), Knowledge(religion), or Knowledge(Psionics), depending on the type. It's still skill-based casting, sure, but your skills are stretched across ten or eleven different things. Make it 2+Int skill points, and basically everyone becomes a specialist of some form.

Troacctid

2019-05-02, 10:49 PM

I think it's a good thing that you can optimize the skill check. It's not as if it's going to break anything if all it gives you is more uses per day.

Ramza00

2019-05-02, 11:02 PM

CIDE

2019-05-03, 01:45 AM

thematically there's one aspect of TN that stands out to me. They are, in a sense, reality haackers. Without getting into any discussion about being stronger or better than other classes that do X, Y, or Z I think we should be shifting to 4, 5, and 6 with entirely different systems. Conceptually, they shouldn't just be another spellcasting class with spells by another name. What I think they should be doing (and it'd be hard to design) is mess with the language to do the sort of things normal magic can't.

To phrase it differently, Magic is following the rules while Truenaming is tweaking the rules. Unique effects or twisting the effects of spells into something else. Meanwhile, what we got was just worse magic that was just called something else.

Dimers

2019-05-03, 02:56 AM

$.02: You need to pin down what it means to have a name, what CAN have a name*, whether a grouping is a "name", what would alter a name, is it possible to be nameless and still be sapient ... ?

* Objects, objects made deliberately, regions, mindless creatures, simple creatures, people, organizations, deities, forces, effects, concepts, gestalts, these might all be treated differently for purposes of true names.

Apropos of none of that, the final version should have clear interactions for Dark Speech and Words of Creation.

Are there any iconic works or characters that this sort of class ought to draw from?

I don't think anyone's mentioned Neo yet? Speaking of "reality hacker". Or for that matter, the Agents.

Serafina

2019-05-03, 03:26 AM

If you used Spheres of Power, it would be a casting tradition with the Skilled Casting (Linguistics) and Verbal Casting drawbacks.An extension upon that would be to use the mechanics of Skilled Casting, but instead of tying it to Linguistics, you tie it to Knowledge (whatever you are currently trying to affect). Of course, that'd then be worth 2 drawbacks instead of just one.

So if you target an abberation it'd be Knowledge (Dungeoneering), if you target a magic effect it'd be Knowledge (Arcana), if you target an orc barbarian it'd be Knowledge (Local) and if you target a building it'd be Knowledge (Engineering).
Granted, just like with Knowledge-checks there might be edge-cases - can you use Knowledge (Nobility) to learn the true name of a famous knight instead of Knowledge (Local), and what about Knowledge (Religion) if they're also a Paladin? But these should be resolvable without too much issue.

This might overall be a fun tradition for a Int-focussed caster who invests heavily into Knowledge-skills, and it might almost be worth creating a class archetype around that.

Albions_Angel

2019-05-03, 04:15 AM

So it seems the current truenamer is based on earthsea which I dont have a lot of experience with. But one series of books I do know well are the Inheritance Cycle (Eragon). Magic there is true naming.

A D&D class has to grow. And in some respects, the "books" the current truenamer gets indicate growth. Eragon truenaming starts out very small. It takes a lot of energy to perform magic there. So you need to do small, easy things first. Turning sand into water is very tough, but cooling the air to condense water already there is easy.

I would structure the truenaming powers as starting off with divination, enchantment and mind effecting illusion. You can use truenaming words to bend peoples will, or check up on them. An easy task.

As you grow in power, you should be able to access transmutation and BFC powers. Your mastery allows you to enchant weapons on the fly, and manipulate the world itself. Both difficult tasks.

But whats the end game of truenaming? What top tier power exists in Eragon? Well, thats easy. You just kill things (or make them kill themselves). So top tier powers should be save or suck/save or die abilities. And keep something SIMILAR to gate. Because if you can END someone, you can bind them too.

Mordante

2019-05-03, 06:04 AM

Hey everyone! A recent thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?585995-Truenamer-with-skill-items) got me thinking about Truenamers. I've been intending to homebrew up some sort of a replacement class for them for a long time now, but my biggest sticking point has been that I'm not sure what a "Truenamer" ought to be able to do. I'm not talking about the current mechanics, or fixing DCs or Truename Skill Checks. I'm thinking more like big-picture things, wiping the slate totally clean and potentially coming up with a new mechanic.

So: Imagine you had never heard of the Truenamer class before. If a character knows the "True Name" of something (however they arrive at that), what should that allow you to do? What shouldn't it allow you to do? Are there any iconic works or characters that this sort of class ought to draw from?

I have a few ideas of my own, but I'd like to hear what the rest of the Playground has to say.

I would think of a sage kind of character.

Someone who studies the world around him. The wind, fire, stone, earth, time, death, life etc. Looking for what they really are and nothing what the do. yes fire burns but why does is do that. What is the motivation and studying thus leads to insight. The insight leads to knowing the true name of events and the material that makes up the world.

I would be hesitant to apply True Name to sentient living creatures.

Use: True Name of wind to move, faster reflexes. True Name of Earth/Stone to for defense. True name of Fire for damage. True name of Shadow to hide, True Name of Light for good aligned divination etc.

Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of the actual class or current rules for True Name.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-03, 06:49 AM

Delay Potion feat (Complete Mage) combine with 2 allies one casting guidance of the avatar (Cleric 2) the other casting quick potion (Wizard 2). Use pearls of power to give your allies more castings or just use eternal wands. Now you have a potion of Guidance of the Avatar that lasts 1 hour per caster level. Drink it prior to combat and the duration is con mod hours per level and it activates via a Swift action.
OK. So you've successfully argued that things shouldn't be based on skill checks proper, because the optimization level is super-duper swingy. Congrats.

So we make possibility based on skill checks, but the actual effects based on class level.

Maybe... two skill checks whenever you use it:
1) Knowledge check specific to the thing / creature you're affecting (DC 10 + CR, same as ID'ing the creature).
2) Knowledge check specific to the effect you're creating (Geography for movement-related things, Architecture & Engineering for doing stuff to objects and terrain, History for information-related things, maybe Nobility & Royalty for ongoing control-related effects). Again, DC 10 + CR.

What specific effects are available for trying depends on class level.
Save DC vs. unwilling targets is always 10 + 1/2 Class Level + Int mod.

The skill check DC goes up by two... for each time you use an effect on that target in a day. So you might 'run out' of buffs or healing (because you're doing the same targets over & over), but your basic offense is going to be very reliable after low levels.

Albions_Angel

2019-05-03, 06:58 AM

I would think of a sage kind of character.

Someone who studies the world around him. The wind, fire, stone, earth, time, death, life etc. Looking for what they really are and nothing what the do. yes fire burns but why does is do that. What is the motivation and studying thus leads to insight. The insight leads to knowing the true name of events and the material that makes up the world.

I would be hesitant to apply True Name to sentient living creatures.

Use: True Name of wind to move, faster reflexes. True Name of Earth/Stone to for defense. True name of Fire for damage. True name of Shadow to hide, True Name of Light for good aligned divination etc.

Disclaimer: I have no knowledge of the actual class or current rules for True Name.

Sounds more like you are thinking of an Avatar.

The Truenamer runs on the idea that whichever overdeity/physical happanstance set the universe in motion did so by speaking a "true name"/assigning a unique quantum barcode to each and every thing, living, dead, undead, or object. While we might say "rock", which doesnt tell us what its made of or where it is, a things "true name" is a perfect, instantaneous and past description. Its not just "rock". Its "rock, 65% silicone, chip on north side, currently at the bottom of a lake, was once stepped on by Fred..." and so on. In a single word. And if you know that word, you can "edit" it but smushing on another word. So " rock, 65% silicone, chip on north side, currently at the bottom of a lake, was once stepped on by Fred..." becomes "" rock, 65% silicone, chip on north side, currently at the bottom of a lake, was once stepped on by Fred... that is now entangling George."

The truenamer class tries to do that. And in essence, it sort of does. It gets a number of utterances, think "true verbs" that they can speak. These do things, like heal someone. And you can speak them backwards to do the opposite. Like harm someone. And you can target creatures, items, and the world itself, with ever more powerful utterances.

The problem is, the book its from, Tome of Magic, is horribly edited. It has 3 classes. The Binder, the Shadowmage, and the Truenamer.

I dont know if they spent all their time on Binder, or just got lucky first time, but the Binder is a solid class.

The Shadowmage seems to have started off well, but at some point either someone thought it too overpowered and nerfed it, or someone didnt catch how underpowered it was and didnt buff it.

The Truenamer though... wow. I like to think something like this happened.

Board meeting about ToM and Paul, having just read Earthsea, brings up Truenamer. Everyone LOVES the idea, but as they dont know the source material, Paul is left to make the class. He starts off well. Its a skill based caster. Its essentially at will, but some of the abilities are super powerful, so give it a skill check. And it works in AMF and silence, because its speaking to the universe, which doesnt have ears. Hes like, 80% of the way there when some other deadline gets in the way, and Paul is pulled to work with Eve on some feat chain in another book. Truenamer sits in a drawer for a while.

Well, ToM is getting there. So Truenamer needs finishing. But Paul is still working with Eve. He asks Aaron and Cathie to take a look at it, and, knowing how good they are at fixing things, to finish it up. Well, normally Aaron and Cathie work really closely together, but scheduling conflicts mean they both look at the truenamer and...

Aaron spots that the Truenamer is super powerful and can apply loads of things to an enemy, even the same thing over and over. Cant be having with that. Fix? Yeah, the order of casting matters, and it gets harder to cast the same thing on the same creature twice. Good. A nice nerf. Still a solid, if a little underpowered, class.

Cathie also spots that the Truenamer is super powerful. Shes been working with AMFs for a while and damn if this thing isnt a beholder killer. How do you stop a level 1 truenamer killing a beholder solo? Why, vastly limit its powers at each level, and slap a massive, rapidly scaling DC on it. Probably an overreaction, Cathie, but I get your point.

Now Aaron and Cathie think they know each other. So a quick message later, they agree on the main problems and assume they each have the same fixes. Send it over to print. Well done. Except they dont have the same fixes and now BOTH get applied to the class...

Its 3 days to final print. Everyone is asked to run back over their classes. Paul is still super busy, but he gives the revised truenamer a look. Oh. My. God. Its totally unplayable. He doesnt have time to rewrite it. Uh, quick. It needs a capstone that really pulls people. What could a Truenamer do that is so awesome people will play a broken class for it? Oh! Yes! It splits reality and calls forth beings of unlimited power. Now thats cool. Done. Send off.

But Paul, thats just Gate. Wizards can do that already. Too late. The book is published, and even at low op tables, the truenamer never gets picked...

Telonius

2019-05-03, 07:54 AM

Thanks for all of the suggestions so far! As for my own (previous) thoughts -

~~~
For source material, the class's fluff seems like it's heavily leaning on Earthsea, with a bit of demonbinding and a few dashes of Tolkien's origin myth for Middle Earth (Music of the Ainur).

For what it ought to be able to do, I have a couple of different threads going on, and sometimes they're butting up against one another. If you know a creature's True Name, you ought to be able to put some sort of status on that creature. Especially for things like binding a demon, calling a spirit, forcing something into your service, banishing it. Thematically, it ought to work on Outsiders of many varieties, Fey (thinking Rumpelstiltskin or Mxyzptlk-types), Elementals, and potentially some ghosts or undead (like how Sparrowhawk tried to summon the spirit of Elfarran but set loose the shadow creature). Buffing or debuffing is something that the class ought to be able to do.

I don't want to make this a complete lift of Earthsea, so making versions of the Nine Masters of Roke isn't really what I'm going for. But some of them (Changing, Summoning) ought to have some place in the class. Transmutation magic in general should have a big place in the class. A Truenamer ought to be able to say to a rock: "You are now a warhammer," and have it happen.

You can give a creature a new Truename, but this is is a major thing, and ought to be risky in some way; possibly setting loose an Aleax (Sparrowhawk's shadow) if it's serious enough. Changing truenames is screwing around with the natural order somehow. It could be some kind of a "reset button," where you heal somebody who's on the verge of death, or remove some sort of curse or serious madness. But used offensively or against an unwilling participant, it's bad news.

Knowing a Truename is kind of an on/off switch, with not much in-between. It either works (if you know it) or you're useless (if you don't). This is particularly true for any kind of summoning or banishing stuff. If I'm making the class from scratch, I'm thinking that each ability, however they're implemented, ought to have some sort of a baseline effect, with more and better effects if you (roll well, are high enough level above the target, or something else).

I don't want the class to step on too many toes. Hexblade in particular contains a lot of debuffing shtick, Binder's already got the "summoning helper spirits" thing, and things like Dracolexi have a bit of the flavor I'm going for already. Not sure if I should just ignore them altogether. I'm not looking to make this a Wizard-Lite, either. It's got to have something in it that you don't look at it and say, "Why not just play a Malconvoker?"

The concept does have some dueling ideas, to an extent. Should this be reflected in different schools of Truenamer, different class features selected, or say heck with it and let all Truenamers have access to the same sorts of powers? Is this a "select spells as a Sorcerer" class, or "select spells as a Cleric" class?
~~~

Mordante

2019-05-03, 08:26 AM

Sounds more like you are thinking of an Avatar.

Maybe you are correct I know next to nothing of D&D. I just recently started playing. But the OP asked for what the class True Namer in their opinion can and cant do. Just based in the name of the class.

XionUnborn01

2019-05-03, 08:49 AM

I always envisioned something kind of like the shouts from Skyrim. You say a word and some magic happens right ? Then as you grow in power you can string together more words to get bigger effects. Maybe the length of effect you can have is based off of your CHA mod, with a table showing how many words you can use. So at 20th level with +8 cha, maybe got can make a 6 work m word phrase, each word enhancing the other words with it.

Some words do simple things like increase duration of effect or increase damage others change damage type or element, etc. So you can say like "hit fire hold burn stay stay" for a random example that starts as a basic damage effect, then adds fire damage, tries to entangle them or grapple them, burns them if its holding them and then the two stays are to lengthen it from 1d4 rounds, the first 'stay'makes it 1d4+1, the second makes it 1d6+1.
I love the idea of an effect being built fork the ground up though that might be disruptive in play.

Segev

2019-05-03, 09:57 AM

I think it works fine as a skill check, just disallow the abusive stuff like item familiar and guidance of the avatar. But assuming your group doesn't want to do that, making it a level check should be fine as long as you include a few bonuses.The trouble with centering an entire casting mechanic around a skill is that it becomes THE SKILL. For most characters, skills have a relatively narrow focus, and while they may have only one or two they really care strongly about, which skill that is depends more on character concept than character class. And it rarely is something around which their entire class is balanced.

Because of this, the vast array of ways to boost skill checks for particular skills is fine. But the ability to boost a skill with a competence bonus that costs only 100*(skill bonus)^2 gp is too good not to do if you're playing a character with THE SKILL around which the whole class revolves, and thus becomes a significant part of calculating how high to make DCs to balance the class. Jack_Simth has the right idea, here:

As a single skill check, all the options for boosting skills make it problematic, especially when you start stacking them; skill focus basically becomes a feat tax, you're going to basically always going to want a masterwork tool at first, and so on. As a class level check, the vast majority of those vanish, and there's a more stable balance point.All the things which boost skills are relatively cheap, so they become mandatory when you're trying to build a character who revolves around a single skill.

And the designer has to plan around the skill being optimized at least to some degree. If he sets that optimization level too low, the highly-focused (without even all that much cheese) build will blow the DCs out of the water, and you've effectively created an at-will "caster;" do you balance the powers like a Warlock's invocations, then? Set it too high, and it's a weak class that only the high-op players can make viable. We kind-of have that already with the existing Truenamer, though I suspect they didn't intend all the flaws it has.

I think it's a good thing that you can optimize the skill check. It's not as if it's going to break anything if all it gives you is more uses per day.
My proposal would be not to make the skill check scale with uses, and instead make it high and hard to achieve, but to give a resource pool that gives bonuses to the check. And not make it a skill check, but a class level check.

Though if we wanted to stick to skills, what we could do is have every Utterance-equivalent - every "word" or "phrase" - open up a number of options that each have their own skill requirements and DCs. Some just do things like give Hide in Plain Sight, because you turn hazy or invisible the better your Stealth check is when you speak it. Heck, make each one do multiple things related to different skills.

The Seven Words of Clarity
These seven synonyms have scores of meanings, depending on context and implied connotation, but all refer to understanding, being understood, or seeing past the obvious (sometimes to the detriment of noticing the obvious). Speaking the right words in the right context enables the following:
Hide in Plain Sight (Su): The words enable others to see right through you - literally. Add your Truenamer level to your Stealth check to hide; you need nothing behind which to do so. Creatures with senses not fooled by Invisibility automatically beat your Stealth if you aren't Hiding without benefit of these words.
Clear Vision (Su): This connotation of the words lets you see through literal obscuration. Add your Truenamer level to your Perception checks by speaking these words. Anything with Concealment can be spotted with only a +5 to the DC; Total Concealment can likewise be pierced with a +10 to the normal Perception DC. If multiple sources of (Total) Concealment exist, each adds to the DC separately, but this can literally let you see through walls (with each foot of stone or inch of metal counting as an additional source of (Total) Concealment).
Transparent Meaning (Ex): As long as you speak the plain truth, lacing these words into it enables you to use whatever metaphor, florid prose, or figures of speech you want and ensure that all hearing you know exactly what you mean. Add your Truenamer level to your Diplomacy check if you roll less than 10 on the check and you are not concealing any half-truths or misdirections, as you sound educated and can speak politely without losing any meaning. On the down side, no hidden meanings can be transmitted secretly; all who hear you understand exactly what you mean.
Clear Understanding (Ex): Muttering or repeating out loud back to yourself what you've just heard with various well-chosen conjugations of these words helps you pick out hidden meanings. Add your Truenamer level to any check to pick up hidden messages or inuendo.

Something like this for a number of words, phrases, etc., where they become clusters of special abilities that enhance various skills by adding new tools to them.

Kalkra

2019-05-03, 12:46 PM

Personally, I'm okay with extremely high DCs, because I think of truenamers as wizards with extra hoops and more power. To be specific, I think truenamers should be more like reality warpers, and therefore not be subject to SR or saves, and possibly even able to overcome AMFs, because they're not using magic so much as convincing the universe to change. As such it doesn't make the most sense for DCs to scale with the targets, but I kinda like the idea of being able to increase durations or even make things permanent by exceeding the DC by a certain amount. I know that there are metautterance feats, but I like the idea that all utterances have built-in scaling, kinda like CR for spells. Sadly, from a thematic standpoint, I understand why a lot of utterances would be single-target, but they should also be able to have some BFC effects. I personally like the thought of a truenamer saying the truename for gravity and just flattening everyone. Given all of that, I would argue that truespeaking should actually require more than just a skill check difficult , because otherwise garblers would rule the world.

Serafina

2019-05-03, 12:51 PM

Some Pathfinder 3rd party systems, such as Spheres of Might, base effects on skill ranks instead of skill checks. This has both the benefit of requiring less rolls, and preventing bonus scaling - it might be easy to get various bonuses that give +20 to a skill, but that doesn't give you a single extra rank.

Skill rank scaling could be used to determine things such as area of effect, damage, duration, range, or other things typically determined by caster level. It could also be used to grant extra resources or daily uses against a single target.

Of course you can have both skill checks, and static skill rank scaling.
Skill checks could be used for things like attack rolls, in place of caster level to overcome SR, in place of concentration checks, or in other places where you already typically roll.

To make all that more than over-investment into a single skill, I still think it'd be most interesting if you required multiple skills for Truenaming.
I already suggested using different Knowledge-skills, based on what you target. But it'd also be possible to craft other categories, such as Sense Motive to target other creatures (you're reading their True Name after all), Appraise to target an item or area, and Perform (Oratory) for other uses. Yes, that's intentionally MAD to prevent over-optimizing on a single skill. Or possibly also Survival to target areas (you're influencing the natural world based on intuitive knowledge), Disguise to target yourself (you're manipulating your own true name), and Linguistics for default uses.
Of course you could also split that up by effect, and not by target, though I'd consider that less elegant.

Harrow

2019-05-03, 02:25 PM

I know you wanted “clean slate” opinions and this isn't quite that, but ToM describes truenamery in a way that makes me wish it actually worked like that. It says that the Power Word spells are a form of “lesser” truename magic. When I first read that, I thought I was in for an improvement on the PW spells, and, if they already don't allow a save, then truenaming must be the “get stuff done” kind of casting. There's already variability in the skill check, so no need to mess around with saves or spell resistance or elemental resistances. You just say “let it be done” and it's done. The Word of Nurturing line does that, I guess, allowing no save and dealing non-typed damage, and you can raise the DC to cast to ignore spell resistance, but it does so little damage that it doesn't really matter.

What I'd like to see is a sort of modular system based on the PW line. You start with something not entirely unlike a Warlock's Eldritch Blast that you gain modifications for as you level up. However, the amount of modifications you can use is limited by way of the target's hit points. You're given a hit point limit, probably based on your class level, and if your target has more hit points than your limit, your ability has no effect. Modifications make your attack more powerful, adding damage dice or debuffs, but at the same time lower the amount of hit points an opponent needs before your ability does nothing.

That would work for attacks and debuffs, at least, but I'm not sure how such a system would handle buffs. You could just ignore them entirely, but that's just giving up. You could work it the same way as attacks work, so the buffs you can apply become stronger the weaker the targets get. I actually kind of like that idea, because it does something to mitigate the “win more” nature of doing more damage to heavily damaged opponents. It has two problems I can spot without even looking too deeply. For one, it encourages your allies to harm themselves to get better buffs, which is weird and not something I want to give incentive for. The other is it generally benefits casters more than mundanes. I shouldn't have to point out why that's a problem. Still, it's a concept I find fun and something I might try and wrangle into a playable state at some point.

Psyren

2019-05-03, 02:59 PM

Combat tends to be over quickly, and Guidance of the Avatar (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a) has a one minute duration, so it's mostly only useful if you know exactly when the fight's breaking out, or when you've got it Quickened (which becomes a considerable investment very quickly), due to the one-minute duration. I'd be more concerned with Divine Insight, due to the hours/level duration letting you cast it well in advance of a fight.

To be blunt, I don't particularly care if it's "balanced" by costing a round at the beginning of combat; I think any spell that gives +20 to something for multiple rounds is excessive. A lot of fights involve using the first round to buff and move anyway, so it's not much of a drawback for something that is going to last 10 rounds after that. And that's before we quicken it.

As a single skill check, all the options for boosting skills make it problematic, especially when you start stacking them; skill focus basically becomes a feat tax, you're going to basically always going to want a masterwork tool at first, and so on. As a class level check, the vast majority of those vanish, and there's a more stable balance point.

Skill Focus being a feat tax isn't necessarily an issue - just lean into that by giving it to the class for free early on (1-3) and then make sure that doesn't break anything. Having used Kyeudo's fix above which does exactly that, I can confirm that making the "tax" free of charge was fine.

Another approach might be to key it off appropriate Knowledge (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/knowledge.htm) skills. To affect a creature, you need to make a suitable creature-related Knowledge check. Want to mess up a Goblin? You'll need to roll Knowledge(Local), as it's a humanoid. A giant? They're Knowledge(Nature). Demon? Knowledge(The Planes). And so on. When you need to deal with other things, you use other checks. Maybe... Architecture and Engineering affects all manner of built terrain and manufactured objects. Geography handles fast travel and natural terrain. History handles Divination-type effects. Not sure what to do with Nobility and Royalty. Messing with other folks' magic is Knowledge(Arcana), Knowledge(religion), or Knowledge(Psionics), depending on the type. It's still skill-based casting, sure, but your skills are stretched across ten or eleven different things. Make it 2+Int skill points, and basically everyone becomes a specialist of some form.

I'd rather reserve that sort of thing for learning a specific creature's personal truename. The Utterances themselves already abstract the fact that you're learning how to apply, say, Inertia Surge to a gnoll charging you or a fleeing nixie or a diving roc.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-03, 09:33 PM

To be blunt, I don't particularly care if it's "balanced" by costing a round at the beginning of combat; I think any spell that gives +20 to something for multiple rounds is excessive. A lot of fights involve using the first round to buff and move anyway, so it's not much of a drawback for something that is going to last 10 rounds after that. And that's before we quicken it.

Either there's a version of the spell I'm unaware of that supersedes the web article, or you're missing a detail of The Spell In Question (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a):

Guidance of the Avatar
Divination
Level: Clr 2
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: 1 minute or until discharged
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes

Your deity's chosen avatar imbues the subject with divine power. The creature gets a +20 competence bonus on a single skill check and must choose to use the bonus before making the roll to which it applies.(Emphasis added)

From what I can tell, the spell is one and done, much like True Strike. You don't get the bonus for ten rounds, you get the bonus once during the course of ten rounds.

Am I looking at an outdated version? If so, would you please point me to the updated one?

Skill Focus being a feat tax isn't necessarily an issue - just lean into that by giving it to the class for free early on (1-3) and then make sure that doesn't break anything. Having used Kyeudo's fix above which does exactly that, I can confirm that making the "tax" free of charge was fine.

I'd rather reserve that sort of thing for learning a specific creature's personal truename. The Utterances themselves already abstract the fact that you're learning how to apply, say, Inertia Surge to a gnoll charging you or a fleeing nixie or a diving roc.
Keep in mind, this thread is intended to be about a ground-up rebuild, not a tweak. I'm looking at it from the perspective of "OK, so let's make a whole bunch of class features that anyone in the class can use... if they've got the skill ranks for it, but without making up a skill that's only useful for the class itself. My idea is that the magic is at-will, but "Things you can affect" is based on the knowledge checks used to ID the target you're affecting (whether or creature or an object), and "things you can do to the target" is based on (usually different) skill specific to to what you want to make happen. Needs a lot of fleshing out, I'm looking at "can you affect this creature" DCs of ballpark 10 + 1.5 * CR + 2* the number of times you've affected that target in the last 24 hours, give effects the same DC (but a usually different skill), make the save against the effect gated (something like 10 + 1/2 class level + Charisma modifier; when a save DC is the skill check result for the attacker, it's bonkers good for the attacker, as they scale differently), make sixty or so different base effects, probably five or ten 'meta' effects (multiple targets, longer duration, longer range, swift action 'casting', etcetera), and grant access to those effects based on entirely on class level. And NOT give the class enough skill points to do everything on the list.

So if you want to go through and heal all the peasants all day long, you can (you only need to target each once, and a commoner-3 is only CR 1 or 2). Ditto for if you want to burn them to cinders. You can focus on one or two creature types and almost always affect them... but the target still gets as save, and if you run across a different creature type, things are less reliable. The idea being that it would be in the neighborhood of a tier-2 or a tier-3 class, playing like a warlock with stronger invocations but a also a failure rate when things matter.

Cosi

2019-05-03, 09:42 PM

There's already variability in the skill check, so no need to mess around with saves or spell resistance or elemental resistances.

Except there's not variability in the skill check if you optimized. Skill bonuses vary more than almost anything else in the entire game. Whatever number you set will either be too high and the class will suck, or will be too low and the class will be broken. Not to mention that having the only constraint be internal will make the class very boring. Skill check based magic does not work. You are not going to make it work, because it cannot work.

And not make it a skill check, but a class level check.

Yes. The workable version of skill-check based magic uses a class level check. But honestly, I'm not sure class level check is all that interesting. A class level check, by definition, varies by 1 point per level. That means it's going to be a long time for your abilities to go from working inconsistently to always working. There are ways around that (most obviously, roll a smaller die), but I'm not sure they're that compelling, and they don't particularly seem word-magic-y. The skill check doesn't either, really. I don't understand why people are so caught up on it. It's a bad mechanic and it doesn't fit the class well. Why try to salvage it?

Personally, I'm okay with extremely high DCs, because I think of truenamers as wizards with extra hoops and more power.

Why? Why would you make a class that is intentionally designed to be better than one of the strongest classes in the game, but only in the hands of optimizers. How is that possibly supposed to be a good idea?

MaxiDuRaritry

2019-05-03, 10:34 PM

The central word when it comes to "truename magic" is control. You learn the truenames of creatures and things, you gain at least some level of control over them. A small part of something's truename allows you to make slight changes to it, whether it be causing a particular creature a muscle spasm to make it trip as it moves or disarming it by making it drop its weapon. Learning the truename of an inhabiting spirit of a place (a genius loci) or of a tree, rock, stream, or other facet of the landscape, would give you power over it. You could shunt the earth in a direction of your choice, flood the land around the stream, or force the tree to entangle creatures around it.

And, of course, the more of a thing's truename you know and can speak, the larger amount of control you have, up to and including altering its physical form and dominating it completely.

That's what truenaming should be. Control.

Psyren

2019-05-03, 10:54 PM

From what I can tell, the spell is one and done, much like True Strike. You don't get the bonus for ten rounds, you get the bonus once during the course of ten rounds.

I was going off your own statement about the one-minute duration. If it truly gets discharged, then said duration is irrelevant.

Keep in mind, this thread is intended to be about a ground-up rebuild, not a tweak. I'm looking at it from the perspective of "OK, so let's make a whole bunch of class features that anyone in the class can use... if they've got the skill ranks for it, but without making up a skill that's only useful for the class itself.

Why is a unique skill for the class/subsystem unpalatable though? To me, the benefits are considerable; for example, it future-proofs the design such that later buffs to an existing skill won't ruin whatever balance you've crafted around the new one.

That's what truenaming should be. Control.

Agreed to an extent, but should a Truenamer who knows the true names of a bunch of things be essentially a god of those things? I like the idea that (a) the Truenamer's skill at pronouncing those names (not just knowledge of them) plays a role, and (b) that the Universe Itself has some degree of inertia that resists this kind of direct manipulation, at least to a degree.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-03, 11:32 PM

I was going off your own statement about the one-minute duration. If it truly gets discharged, then said duration is irrelevant.
An hours/level discharge spell you can cast in the morning (whether directly or via item), and have available in combat where you didn't have time to prepare. You can cast it at close to any time and have it available when needed. You have no need to be aware of exactly when you'll need it, just know that you'll need it at some point. Divine Insight (Spell Compendium) is this way. 5+CL Insight (max +15 total) as a 2nd level spell. Personal.

A one minute discharge spell? Not so much. You can cast it immediately before a fight you've planned, or you can cast it in the middle of a fight. Getting it set up well in advance to be used on short notice with little-to-no action cost takes a fair amount of additional preparation and investment - Contingency (a 6th level spell, and by default you can only have one running at a time), Craft Contingent Spell (costs a feat, GP, and XP), Delay Potion (a feat, and you need to buy or craft the potions), et cetera. It's a much larger resource investment to have it available instantly. Guidance of the Avatar (WotC web article) is this way. +20 Insight as a 2nd level spell. Touch.

The duration, the bonus, range, and source are the only meaningful differences between the two (both are 2nd level standard action Cleric spells). How many resources you have to put into actually using a thing is very relevant towards the balance of the thing. In that sense, it's much more 'costly' to use Guidance of the Avatar than it is Divine Insight. I was comparing the two spells based on ... someone's mention of it being an abusive spell. Looking back, that was:

I think it works fine as a skill check, just disallow the abusive stuff like item familiar and guidance of the avatar. But assuming your group doesn't want to do that, making it a level check should be fine as long as you include a few bonuses. (Emphasis added)

Err... now I'm really confused. If you're not familiar with the mechanics of the spell, why did you specifically name it as an "abusive" thing? Is it unreasonable for me to expect you to know the details of a thing before you call it "abusive"?

Why is a unique skill for the class/subsystem unpalatable though? To me, the benefits are considerable; for example, it future-proofs the design such that later buffs to an existing skill won't ruin whatever balance you've crafted around the new one.

It adds bookkeeping (a skill tax - you suggested incorporating it directly into the class when I mentioned that it makes Skill Focus a feat tax). You may as well simply make it a class level check with an ability modifier, reduce the number of skill ranks the class grants by one, reduce the DC's by 3 (and by whatever you might have otherwise added via incorporating skill focus to get rid of that feat tax) to line up with the difference between match (Pathfinder did this with Concentration, apparently for the same reason).

I'm wanting to split up the skills to make it entirely knowledge-based; what you know controls what you can do, not other class choices.
Making each use require two skill checks means that while things like Guidance of the Avatar are helpful... they're not sure things.

Doctor Awkward

2019-05-03, 11:33 PM

So: Imagine you had never heard of the Truenamer class before. If a character knows the "True Name" of something (however they arrive at that), what should that allow you to do? What shouldn't it allow you to do? Are there any iconic works or characters that this sort of class ought to draw from?

I have a few ideas of my own, but I'd like to hear what the rest of the Playground has to say.

Welp, considering that D&D has always been directly inspired by real-world mythology, when designing a Truenamer I would probably start there.

So in philosophy, the "true name" of a thing is a term of identification that somehow perfectly expresses that thing's the true nature-- or rather the essential properities and characteristics that make up that thing. Thus for all intents and purposes, the true name of something is equivalent to that thing. The notion that a single word of a language can somehow perfectly reflect the true nature of something has been central to various traditions of magic and mysticism since antiquity.

Some notable examples include:

-In Egyptian mythology, Isis created a serpent that poisoned the Sun god, Ra, and refused to give him the antidote until he revealed his true name to her. This gave her complete power over Ra, allowing her to put her son Horus on the throne.

-The true name of God plays a central role in Kabbalism. The ancient Jews considered God's true name so potent that its invocation conferred upon the speaker tremendous power over His creations.

-In the Odyssey, when Odysseus was captured by the cyclops Polyphemus, he is very careful not to reveal his real name, instead calling himself "Nobody". After blinding Polyphemus, he reveals his name in a bout of hubris, which later comes back to haunt him when Polyphemus is able to call upon Poseidon to take revenge.

-This is essentially identical to the Grimm fairytale, Rumplestilskin, in which he is defeated when one learns his name.

-In Scandanavian folklore, many magical beasts can be defeated by calling their name. Significant objects were considered to have their own personality and were alos given names for the same reason.

In short, knowing a name is to know a thing. And to know a thing is to have power over that thing.

The truenamer as presented in Tome of Magic actually reflects this idea quite well. Mechanically, the concept is balanced rather nicely with the idea of partial knowledge of a true name. Instead of knowing everything about a thing, you can learn part of it, granting you a degree of control rather than absolute authority.

So the theory is sound. The problem is the execution.

The first main problem is the way the skill check scales, essentially making it less likely that you will succeed the higher you get in level. The second problem, of course, is that the upper limit of the effects that the truenamer is capable of are hilariously underpowered.

I would probably have designed a mechanic similar to the various spell seeds found in the Epic Spell system. Each seed is representative of a syllable or letter of a thing's true name, and produces certain specific effects. The truenamer would combine these effects together to get their desired result. Bigger combinations of seeds increasing the difficulty of the Truespeak check.

Essentially a truenamer be limited only by the player's imagination, and do absolutely anything they wanted, provided they could make a high enough check.

Psyren

2019-05-04, 12:18 AM

An hours/level discharge spell you can cast in the morning (whether directly or via item), and have available in combat where you didn't have time to prepare.

It's a difference of one round between the two so it doesn't really matter which you go with. It's less abusive than I thought but I'd still rather have neither.

It adds bookkeeping (a skill tax - you suggested incorporating it directly into the class when I mentioned that it makes Skill Focus a feat tax).

For an int-based class with more than 2+Int, a so-called "skill tax" is hardly a burden. And as I showed, the "feat tax" is easily dealt with by making it free.

You may as well simply make it a class level check with an ability modifier, reduce the number of skill ranks the class grants by one, reduce the DC's by 3 (and by whatever you might have otherwise added via incorporating skill focus to get rid of that feat tax) to line up with the difference between match (Pathfinder did this with Concentration, apparently for the same reason).

For the record, I'm not dead-set against it being a level check. I just think a skill check is fine if you disallow things like item familiar and the spells you listed, as stated. Some skill-based optimization is okay, as it makes the Law of Resistance less of a hard ceiling.

Vaern

2019-05-04, 12:33 AM

I'm sure Eragon has already been mentioned, but that's generally how I imagine true name magic working. If you know the true name of something, you can command the essence of that thing, whether that be by creating the object or force in question or manipulating it to your desires.
In that case, the extent of your command over that object or force is determined not just by being able to say the word, which is quite easy, but by your own personal reserves of power which are taxed as you cast the spell and by your personal understanding of what that word means. It is mentioned in the first book that a skilled magician might be able to speak a word, such as that for "Water," and be able to create something that seemed completely unrelated such as a gemstone, so long as the one casting the spell understood what the correlation between the two was.

If I was to forget that the Truenamer was a thing and imagine a new class using the same name, I would want it to be something like that. Instead of spells, a Truenamer would have a list of words that they know. Some words may be more difficult than others, resulting in a tiered list of abilities that they might have access to much like a warlock's invocations. They can mix and match these spells as they see fit, creating a sort of freeform casting system so long as they have all of the parts necessary. Perhaps they could run on a spell point system with each word having a spellpoint cost tied to it, with the most powerful spell they can create being limited by their caster level?

Blue Jay

2019-05-04, 01:16 AM

Yes. The workable version of skill-check based magic uses a class level check. But honestly, I'm not sure class level check is all that interesting. A class level check, by definition, varies by 1 point per level. That means it's going to be a long time for your abilities to go from working inconsistently to always working.

Any chance you'd consider a mechanic like Knowledge Devotion as an addition to this level-check idea? By that, I mean something that doesn't use your raw skill check result, but translates your skill check result into a small bonus that you can then apply to a level check. That way, it's still a skill check with room for optimization, but the range of variation due to that optimization is much lower, and you've got a much smaller window against which to balance any other scaling effects.

-----

Also, in direct response to the OP, I've always felt like the Truenamer concept is absolutely screaming for a Favored Enemy mechanic. The whole concept of true name magic is that you're able to influence things because you know their "true names," and yet there's really precious little in the class's mechanics that actually works on that principle of knowing the true names of things. They effectively sunk that foundational principle beneath a shell of generic, single-skill magic.

There is the whole "Truename Research" concept, and there's that one feat (Focused Lexicon, I think?) that gives a bonus against certain creature types, but it really feels like there ought to be more to it than that, like it ought to be built into the fundamentals of the mechanics somehow.

I like the Knowledge check idea that's been floating around the thread specifically because it brings that conceptual flavor into the class: you have to demonstrate some level of knowledge about something in order to influence it with your magic.

But I also kind of feel like the Truenamer should maintain a list of true names that he knows. Maybe each level he gets to learn the true name of a creature type from the Favored Enemy list, or an environment from the Favored Environment list, or maybe a specific city or something, and he gets an additional +1 on his level check against things whose true names he knows. It's kind of boring to just turn it into a +1, but I feel like something like this would go a long way toward selling the conceptual flavor of the magic.

Cosi

2019-05-04, 07:25 AM

Any chance you'd consider a mechanic like Knowledge Devotion as an addition to this level-check idea? By that, I mean something that doesn't use your raw skill check result, but translates your skill check result into a small bonus that you can then apply to a level check. That way, it's still a skill check with room for optimization, but the range of variation due to that optimization is much lower, and you've got a much smaller window against which to balance any other scaling effects.

I don't think that works particularly well. Knowledge Devotion is balanced because it's a part of Knowledge optimization, and because the bonus it gives is simple and small. I doubt that you could scale those things up into a class, particularly in a way that satisfyingly felt skill-check based. And, fundamentally, I still don't see any really reason for the Truenamer to work that way. "I know the magic of names" doesn't particularly sound more like "I make skill checks" than "I know the magic of souls" or "I know the magic of shadows". You could as easily argue that the class should have HP caps on its abilities because of the power word spells.

Pex

2019-05-04, 08:05 AM

The ultimate buffer/debuffer with a bit of summoning and divination. If it's transmutation Truenamer has it. A few charm/domination effects can also exist to reflect knowing the Truename allows control. Summoning is there because of the trope of calling outer planar beings whose Truename you know. However you can only summon specific individual creatures. That is DM/campaign dependent, so to give the player some freedom he gets a number of Truenames as he levels by fiat, getting to choose from a list of creatures of appropriate levels with more to be discovered as the campaign progresses. Divination is there to reflect the character understanding the underpinnings of the universe.

The Truenamer does not do damage and has no affect on life force. Because he understands the underpinnings of the universe he has bonuses of sorts against illusions but does not do any illusions himself. He does not create things, that's part of life force. There would be another class that's all about life force which heals, kills, does damage, create things, and affects the mind. A theurge prestige class combines both.

Zaq

2019-05-05, 02:28 AM

Okay. Haven't read much of the chatter so far, which means I'm likely to repeat something that's already been said. Sorry. But here's kind of where I'm going with this one.

The big problem with the 'namer is that the skill mechanic doesn't make any damn sense. As I'm sure others have stated, we pretty much need to decide what to do with it.

If you make the skill check easy to boost, then the optimization is non-intuitive: it's basically at-will, but you have to put somewhat weird resources into it. (This is pretty much what you've got right now; it's not trivial to boost, but it can be done, and the idea that you're doing it is the basic assumption I'm making in my guide.) Though I suppose it's not unfair to compare it to, like, a ranged rogue: you've got to invest some slightly non-intuitive resources into making your main trick work, it's far from infallible even when the skill check goes your way, and it's just overall kind of more effort than a typical character needs to expend on their primary deal, but it's not unplayable.

If you make it hard to boost, then it's not really a skill anymore. It's just a d20 roll that determines if you get to have fun on your turn. Not really skill-based casting so much as RNG-based casting. I'm not sure I like that. We already have mechanics for seeing if spells work, namely saving throws (and attack rolls). If there's a failure chance above and beyond that, there'd better be a darn good reason for it. I'm not convinced we'd get one.

I had the idea of taking a page from the bard's notes and basically making utterances and other TS-related abilities dependent upon ranks in TS rather than checks with TS, but I ran smack dab into what I view to be kind of a fundamental problem: The Truespeak skill doesn't do anything and doesn't really represent anything. I mean, sure, Perform doesn't actually accomplish a hell of a lot, but there's a conceivable reason why it might come up in game outside the context of bardic music. It's clear what the character is doing when they roll a Perform check. You can figure out when you might call for such a check. TS? Not so much. Sure, it represents the difficult task of saying a truename correctly, but that isn't a thing you'd ever be called upon to do outside of the context of utterances. So if the skill doesn't do anything, why do we have it? It makes no sense to just require ranks as a cost, since then it would be better to just give the truenamer fewer skill points and assume that they can just use their stupid abilities like every other freaking class in the game.

If one could concoct some hypothetical reason why a character would ever be called upon to roll a Truespeak check outside of the context of specifically using truenamer-related abilities, then we could maybe justify it on a must-have-this-many-ranks basis like bardic music. Problem is, when I tried brainstorming uses, it either ended up making wizards better or just being kind of pointless. It doesn't make a lot of intuitive sense to me, and I'm speaking as someone who loves truenamers.

So what should the role of the skill be? Should it be a pass/fail mechanic that requires success, basically meaning that you've got weird hidden costs and then your abilities are all but at-will? Should it be an expanded use of an esoteric but meaningful skill? Or something else entirely? I'm not convinced that any of these options are meaningfully better than just making utterances into (effectively) invocations.

(Side note: as written, the truenamer both benefits and suffers from just stripping away the TS skill entirely and saying that utterances are at-will SLAs like invocations. The benefit is pretty obvious: you don't have to spend half your build resources bootstrapping up a weird skill anymore. The downside is subtle but meaningful: Quicken Utterance becomes unusable unbalanced. Utterances are super limited in duration and a wee bit undertuned compared to a lot of similar magical effects, including utterances, so truenamers really rely on the action economy provided by Quicken to work around their baked-in limitations. Most of the time, what you really care about keeping your TS mod high for is Quicken, since it's not hard to autosucceed on a standard-action utterance past the very earliest levels. It seems balanced to me that the benefit you're purchasing with your investment is Quickening, but again, that really seems like an unintended consequence rather than an intentional design goal. Simply making utterances at-will means that Quicken no longer has a meaningful cost, so it either needs to be simply accepted—which I think is just a hair more powerful than intended—or it needs to be nerfed, which in my opinion ruins all the coolest parts of the truenamer's mechanical options.)

I did see a homebrew version a few years ago (I think it was Fax Celestis's version?) that basically built on the concept started with beckon person: I may be getting some of the details wrong, but as I recall, the roll was basically a level check (not a skill) that was intentionally very hard to boost. You couldn't fail it entirely, but the better your roll, the more bells and whistles (increased duration, increased potency, extra effects similar to psionic augmentation, etc.) you could tack onto that particular casting. I have mixed feelings about that. It's a good concept, but I worry that making the effects semi-random adds complexity at the table (making your turn take longer), and I'm not 100% convinced that it adds enough fun to the table to be worth the cost of extra table time. It might. I admit that I didn't have a chance to actually playtest it in a live game.

Honestly, the 4e model is the one that makes the most sense to me for the truenamer. (Yes, yes, the 4e truenamer is called the runepriest, we all know this, but that doesn't really diminish my point.) Every class in 4e makes attack rolls to do its thing. Doesn't represent necessarily the same thing that a 3.5 attack roll does, since a 4e attack roll can also be the equivalent of a 3.5 saving throw. But that means that there's a unified mechanic to determine if you're succeeding or failing, and optimization doesn't turn into "how many weird-ass bonuses from potentially unintentional sources can I scrape together." It's just a matter of picking interesting abilities and making standard good choices to keep your to-hit numbers within the same range as the rest of the party. The interpretation of the attack roll is up to the player: the ranger's attack is presumably whether the arrow actually hit or not, the wizard's attack might be whether the target saw through the illusion or not, and the (hypothetical) truenamer's attack would be whether the 'namer said the name correctly or not.

Building on that, if folks wouldn't scream bloody murder about whether a touch attack actually has to represent a ray-like semi-projectile-ish effect or not, I'd potentially be okay with INT-based RTAs being used as a proxy for TS checks. Yeah, sure, it means that it's harder to say the name of a dodgy guy than a beefy guy who relies on natural armor, but the whole point is not that we're actually reaching out and touching someone but rather than RTAs are a convenient preexisting way to let a caster make a binary pass/fail check to harm/affect someone without inventing a whole new skill that doesn't do anything else. (This paragraph assumes that the decision has been made that truenamers need a baked-in pass/fail mechanic on their actions and that we've somehow addressed the Quicken conundrum.) It's not intended to actually represent shooting someone—it's intended to just piggyback off an existing mechanic in a way that at least makes optimization predictable.

I'd be remiss if I didn't throw in a mention of high-level utterances not being particularly well-scaled, of course, and everything that goes along with that. But since we're trying to make something ideal rather than just patch the existing system with the smallest band-aid that's reasonable to use, we might as well start at the fundamental level of asking whether skill-based casting is able to ever make sense in the 3.5 paradigm. As you can tell, I've spent some time thinking about this, and I'm not fully convinced that it'll ever be balanced.

Malphegor

2019-05-05, 07:54 AM

Fiendbinder is probably the most that fits how I see Truenaming, a sort of Bartimaeus Trilogy style ‘know a thing, command that thing’ power.

So, first off I’d have some truenaming check based on the HD of the Outsider relative to the class level rather than a level by level table, and have a little optional rule note that X-Binders of other things exist, so then you’d end up with Geniebinder and Faeriebinder variants using the same rules.

Beyond that maybe a stat boost to the summons because the XBinder doesn’t have much else going on. Maybe make the speed things can be summoned faster somehow?.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-05, 08:40 AM

It's a difference of one round between the two so it doesn't really matter which you go with. It's less abusive than I thought but I'd still rather have neither.
It's a difference of a combat round. Of which you'll generally have between one and four where you can act.
For an int-based class with more than 2+Int, a so-called "skill tax" is hardly a burden. And as I showed, the "feat tax" is easily dealt with by making it free.You missed my intended point with that one. You're against feat taxes, but you're for skill taxes?
For the record, I'm not dead-set against it being a level check. I just think a skill check is fine if you disallow things like item familiar and the spells you listed, as stated. Some skill-based optimization is okay, as it makes the Law of Resistance less of a hard ceiling.Why do you keep referencing things from the WotC Truenamer class as if they apply? The entire point of the thread is ideas for a ground-up rebuild.

Mr Adventurer

2019-05-05, 09:16 AM

Safest way would be to rework the Bard, changing Bardic Music for Truespeaking and changing the focus of that ability and the class's spellcasting away from sonic effects, trickery, and illusion and towards conjuring and physical transmutation.

Starbuck_II

2019-05-05, 10:57 AM

Radical idea.
Make truename like Kineticist.
Using the raw power of the cosmos "Truename" causes burn.
So, you can freely cast some Truename affects, but some cause burn (or to get greater effect causes burn).

Granted, the current Truename is the Bard of Truename, mine sounds more like the caster version.
This variant will be known as Kozmos truenamer

Hit Die: d6

BAB: 3/4

Saving Throws: Good Will, Poor Fort & Reflex

Skill Ranks per Level: 4 + Int modifier

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: You are proficient with simple weapons and with light armor, but not with shields

The Kozmo Truenamer has accesses to the raw power of the Kozmos. She can shoot a ranged touch blast that deals untyped damage knowns as her True Utterance that deals 1d6 damage plus 1/2 her Int. This increases by 1d6 every 2 levels. Range 50 ft.

Gather Power (Su): * If she has both hands free (or all of her prehensile appendages free, for unusual Truenamers), a Trueamer can gather energy as a move action. Gathering power creates an extremely loud, visible display in a 20-foot radius centered on the truenamer, as the energy or matter swirls around her. Gathering power in this way allows the Truenamer to reduce the total burn cost of a utterance she uses in the same round by 1 point. The Truenamer can instead gather power for 1 full round in order to reduce the total burn cost of a utterance used on her next turn by 2 points (to a minimum of 0 points). If she does so, she can also gather power as a move action during her next turn to reduce the burn cost by a total of 3 points.
This ability can never reduce the burn cost of a wild talent below 0 points.

Burn (Ex)

At 1st level, a truenamer can overexert herself to channel more power than normal, pushing past the limit of what is safe for her body by accepting burn. Some of her utterances allow her to accept burn in exchange for a greater effect, while others require her to accept a certain amount of burn to use that talent at all. For each point of burn she accepts, a truenamer takes 1 point of nonlethal damage per character level. This damage can’t be healed by any means other than getting a full night’s rest, which removes all burn and associated nonlethal damage.
Nonlethal damage from burn can’t be reduced or redirected, and a truenamer incapable of taking nonlethal damage can’t accept burn. A truenamer can accept only 1 point of burn per round. This limit rises to 2 points of burn at 6th level, and rises by 1 additional point every 3 levels thereafter. A truenamer can’t choose to accept burn if it would put her total number of points of burn higher than 3 + her Constitution modifier (though she can be forced to accept more burn from a source outside her control). A truenamer who has accepted burn never benefits from abilities that allow her to ignore or alter the effects she receives from nonlethal damage.

Utterances (Sp): You have the ability to speak utterances, powerful combinations of truenames that can alter the world around you in fundamental ways. Utterances exist in three lexicons: The Lexicon of the Evolving Mind, the Lexicon of the Crafted Tool, and the Lexicon of the Perfected Map. You begin play knowing one utterance from the 1st level of the Lexicon of the Evolving Mind, and you gain one utterance from this lexicon at each truenamer level you attain. You gain access to higher levels of utterances at the levels indicated on the table below. When you gain access to higher-level utterances, you can choose an utterance from that level or from a lower level, if you wish.

Each utterance represents hundreds of truenames in your repertoire. When you gain the word of bolstering, for example, you say thanthan'ku'ul-hrasechni when you're delivering it on your elf ranger ally and yanu-shankrini'qalaasha when you're delivering it on your gnome rogue friend.

The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against your utterances is 10 + 1/2 your truenamer level + your Cha modifier.

Beginning at 4th level, you also gain access to the 1st-level utterances of the Lexicon of the Crafted Tool, allowing you to alter objects with your truenames. You gain access to higher-level utterances from this lexicon at 7th, 11th, 15th, and 19th levels, as indicated on Table 3—3.

Beginning at 8th level, you gain access to the 1st-level utterances of the Lexicon of the Perfected Map, allowing you to alter places with your truenames. You gain access to higher-level utterances from this lexicon at 12th, 16th, and 20th levels, as indicated on the table above.

A Kozmo Truenamer uses the Kozmos to protect herself from the dangers of burn. She can’t choose to accept burn if doing so would raise her total number of points of burn above 3. However, a number of times per day equal to her Intelligence modifier, as a full-round action she can gather up the soul of a sentient creature with a CR equal to or higher than her character level, as long as that creature died in the past minute. When she does, some of her existing burn is unloaded into the departing soul, soaking it with unspeakable pleasure, but reducing her current burn total by 1 point. However, a soul used in this way cannot be brought back to life easily as it is treated as if it died of a death effect. Using a soul like this doesn’t heal the nonlethal damage from that point of burn immediately, but does enable the dark elementalist to heal the nonlethal damage from that point of burn normally.

A Kozmo Truenamer gains attack and damage bonuses from based on how many times that day she has used Kozmo power to soak a soul, rather than based on her current burn total. She receives a bonus on her attack rolls with utterances (including her True Utterance) equal to the total number of points of burn she currently has, to a maximum bonus of +1 for every 3 Truenamer levels she possesses.
For instance, a 9th-level Kozmo Truenamer who used soul power to soak three or more souls during the course of the day would add a +3 bonus on attack rolls and a +6 bonus on damage rolls.

Examples Truename Utterances

Level: Truenamer 1 Casting time: 1 swift action, varies Range: 60 ft Duration : 5 rds; See text
Saving Throw: None or Fort half; see text Spell Resistance: Yes
Burn: 1, varies.

Defensive Edge: You speak words of power allowing a creature to behave as if they had the toughness of armor. The target is given glimpses of future danger giving +1 untyped AC bonus.

Reverse: You soften the defenses of the target, leaving them vulnerable to attacks. They take a -2 penalty to AC for the duration. A successful Fortitude save reduces the penalty to -1.

Augmentation for both: For every burn you accept, you can target another creature within range.

In addition, you increase the bonus (or penalty) by 1 for every burn you accept.

You can augment by accepting burn which can be reduced by Gathering power. Also, even if get burn you can a few times a day remove it.

Requires a rewrite of every utterance, however.

Psyren

2019-05-05, 02:24 PM

It's a difference of a combat round. Of which you'll generally have between one and four where you can act.

I covered that; lots of fights have an initial "buffing round" where the player simply casts something on themselves and moves.

You missed my intended point with that one. You're against feat taxes, but you're for skill taxes?

The issue I have is that by tying the check to class levels, you punish multiclassing and dabblers. Making it a skill that other classes can pick up does neither. They're already limited by not having utterance progression after all.

Why do you keep referencing things from the WotC Truenamer class as if they apply? The entire point of the thread is ideas for a ground-up rebuild.

So we can't talk about concepts from the original that we feel have merit? :smallconfused:
There's a baby in that bathwater, you know.

Blue Jay

2019-05-05, 04:28 PM

I don't think that works particularly well. Knowledge Devotion is balanced because it's a part of Knowledge optimization, and because the bonus it gives is simple and small. I doubt that you could scale those things up into a class, particularly in a way that satisfyingly felt skill-check based.

It doesn't have to be scaled up to a whole class, though. I'm specifically suggesting that a mechanic like Knowledge Devotion --- which translates skill investments into small bonuses --- could at least partially alleviate the specific problem you identified, which is that a level check system suffers from stagnation and slow advancement.

And, fundamentally, I still don't see any really reason for the Truenamer to work that way. "I know the magic of names" doesn't particularly sound more like "I make skill checks" than "I know the magic of souls" or "I know the magic of shadows". You could as easily argue that the class should have HP caps on its abilities because of the power word spells.

Well, the concept of names it something that's inherently linked with identifying things, and the game system already handles the concept of identifying things with Knowledge skills, so it's an almost painfully obvious connection to draw between name-based magic and Knowledge skills.

Plus, in my mind, "souls" and "shadows" are the kinds of concepts you invoke in a work of fiction to emphasize the mysterious and esoteric qualities of magic. So, if the main character's magic comes from the power of souls, that's the kind of thing you're likely to see her unlock in a moment of emotional self-discovery right at the climax of the story.

On the other hand, "names" is the kind of thing you invoke in a work of fiction to emphasize the structural and mechanical qualities of magic. So, if the main character's magic comes from the power of names, that's the kind of thing you're likely to see her unlock with a "eureka!" moment at the end of a long library montage.

It just seems like truenaming lends itself well to a mechanic based on training, practice and rote memorization, which ostensibly ties in well with the skill system. And I think its lends itself to that sort of mechanic much more readily than most other "theories" of magic.

I'm not saying it has to be skills-based, or that other types of magic couldn't be skills-based; I'm just saying that it's a pretty intuitive connection to draw.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-05, 08:43 PM

I covered that; lots of fights have an initial "buffing round" where the player simply casts something on themselves and moves.Some do. Others not so much. This varies a lot by table, and opponent tactics. Even then, though, you're getting a very low level effect that'll work once. Also: If the balance of the class requires banning other materials, it's probably got some kinks that need working out.
The issue I have is that by tying the check to class levels, you punish multiclassing and dabblers. You mean like every published base casting class?
Making it a skill that other classes can pick up does neither. They're already limited by not having utterance progression after all.No. Instead, it means to be able to build a balance point for the class, you need to either ban most forms of skill optimization (as they'll break the class), or you need to expect strong optimization (which means the class is close to useless for those without much system mastery). Something level-based avoids both of those problems.
So we can't talk about concepts from the original that we feel have merit? :smallconfused:
There's a baby in that bathwater, you know.... you actually like the implementation of the law of resistance :smallconfused:? That law encourages the standard Truenamer to ALWAYS open with their best stuff, even against things known to be mooks. With that implementation of it in play, there's never any reason to use a lower-level effect if an available higher-level one can do the same job. At a minimum, it needs to be drastically watered-down.

Psyren

2019-05-06, 12:59 AM

If the balance of the class requires banning other materials, it's probably got some kinks that need working out.

Sure, we agree on that much.

You mean like every published base casting class?

Not always to the same degree as spellcasting. Incarnum for example cares more about what chakras you have open than your Meldshaper level, and many of those can be opened with feats. Sure it's less effective than being a 1-20 meldshaper class, but it still allows for meaningful multiclass builds.

Another example is psionics - as long as your ML doesn't fall too far behind, there's a number of low level powers that stay useful through augmentation. Invocation users also multiclass decently well.

No. Instead, it means to be able to build a balance point for the class, you need to either ban most forms of skill optimization (as they'll break the class), or you need to expect strong optimization (which means the class is close to useless for those without much system mastery).

I wouldn't classify things like item familiar and custom competence and masterwork items as "most forms of skill optimization." 'Most' would be things like Bardic Music and Skill Focus, both of which I'm fine with.

... you actually like the implementation of the law of resistance :smallconfused:? That law encourages the standard Truenamer to ALWAYS open with their best stuff, even against things known to be mooks. With that implementation of it in play, there's never any reason to use a lower-level effect if an available higher-level one can do the same job. At a minimum, it needs to be drastically watered-down.

You're again thinking of utterances like they're spells when a better balance point might be closer to invocations. Opening with your best invocations isn't an issue, right? I would aim to have utterances be better than those (since they're limited by the Laws and their durations) but weaker than spells.

Mordaedil

2019-05-06, 01:51 AM

I always envisioned something kind of like the shouts from Skyrim. You say a word and some magic happens right ? Then as you grow in power you can string together more words to get bigger effects. Maybe the length of effect you can have is based off of your CHA mod, with a table showing how many words you can use. So at 20th level with +8 cha, maybe got can make a 6 work m word phrase, each word enhancing the other words with it.
If you made Truename into shouts like Skyrim, it'd almost be more appropriate for them to be more like magic items, except they were discovered, learned and once uttered, affected reality around oneself. Almost like learning spells, except so simple even a dumb fighter could learn and use a word or two. Maybe a limit to the number of words one can learn equal to ones intelligence score, but it can be expanded with feats and the like. And the words one learns are wielded almost like a cudgel compared to someone who knows the language and learning a beings true name is very different indeed.

And it can't be learned by listening and imitating, it must be taught with intent to teach or in written form.

Unavenger

2019-05-06, 04:43 AM

A vague idea I have is one of learning words that can be combined into utterances - to take an overly simplistic example, if you have heal, harm and protect as three words, a life-draining utterance could require heal+harm, an entangling utterance could require harm+protect, and a temporary hit point spell could require heal+protect.

Or, we can go one better: we start with some targeting words, like - if we wanted to have a callback to the original truenamer - mind, tool, map and masses, and then some words that do things to go with them - heal, harm, protect, move, and so forth. We then assign each of these words a complexity score, with better words having higher complexity. Rather than truespeak, we can use d20+int+level to try to hit the total complexity of the utterance we've crafted. What's the limit on how many words you can string together? There isn't one, but good luck hitting the DC if you stack too many together.

So, for example, if mind has a complexity of 5 and lets you target one creature within short range, enlarge has a complexity of 2 and ups the range category by one, and harm deals 1d6 points of damage with a complexity of 2, then MindEnlargeEnlargeHarmHarmHarm deals 3d6 points of damage to a creature within long range - if you can make the DC 15 check to utter it. You might as well spend your swift action trying to hit a nearby enemy with MindQuickenHarm while you're at it, natch.

This answers a lot of questions, like "What do words have to do with anything?", "What's the point in having truespeak checks?" and "How are we gonna make meta-utterance feats work without breaking anything?" Even at low levels, you should be pretty safe dropping EgoProtect utterances on yourself, assuming that those both have low complexities (Ego here being target: self, it should have a lower complexity than Mind). Truespeak checks now exist not to make your bread-and-butter utterances unreliable, but to make it risky to overreach the kind of performance that you should be throwing out as standard.

(Of course, since we're probably removing the Law of Resistance, we might have to nix healing, or make it heal only damage taken in the last round or something. That's easy enough to work out, though.)

MultitudeMan

2019-05-06, 01:12 PM

Radical idea.
Make truename like Kineticist.
Using the raw power of the cosmos "Truename" causes burn.
So, you can freely cast some Truename affects, but some cause burn (or to get greater effect causes burn).
{snip}

Interesting. While reading this thread, I've been thinking about Enuncia, the fundamental language of the universe that Dan Abnett describes in some of his WH40K novels, which functions rather like this, in that you can say a word that has a magic-like effect (though is not psionic, so not shut down by psi-limiting effects), but you take physical damage if your pronunciation is off. It also reminds me of drain from Shadowrun, an immediate physical cost to every use of magic, and something similar happens in Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. It's very different to the normal D&D model, but is clearly a common enough trope.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-06, 10:54 PM

Not always to the same degree as spellcasting. Incarnum for example cares more about what chakras you have open than your Meldshaper level, and many of those can be opened with feats. Sure it's less effective than being a 1-20 meldshaper class, but it still allows for meaningful multiclass builds.

Another example is psionics - as long as your ML doesn't fall too far behind, there's a number of low level powers that stay useful through augmentation. Invocation users also multiclass decently well.

If you keep your caster level up, there's plenty of low-level utility spells that stay handy (and some even if you don't). Barkskin, Invisibility, Spider Climb, and many others.

So you're saying it needs the equivalent of Practiced Manifester / Practiced Spellcaster, but possibly self-stacking?

I wouldn't classify things like item familiar and custom competence and masterwork items as "most forms of skill optimization." 'Most' would be things like Bardic Music and Skill Focus, both of which I'm fine with.

Where do we draw the line?
Skill Focus (untyped)? (+3)
+ a masterwork item (Circumstance)? (net +5)
+ Inspire Competence (Competence)? (net +7)
+ Words of Creation (increases prior Competence)? (net +9)
+ a Stone of Good Luck (Luck bonus)? (net +10)
+ Heroism (Morale)? (net +12)
+ Greater Heroism (larger Morale)? (net +14)

... oh, hey: We're one point shy of a maxed-out Divine Insight (which would be +15), and only one item on the above list isn't Core (Words of Creation).

Focusing on single big items misses the point. The reason skill based DCs are bad (Pathfinder removed them from the Bardic Fascinate ability) is because it's easy to push skill checks up compared to pushing up saving throws. Removing single paths to optimizing the check is largely ineffective. Skill optimization is well-known.

You're again thinking of utterances like they're spells when a better balance point might be closer to invocations. Opening with your best invocations isn't an issue, right? I would aim to have utterances be better than those (since they're limited by the Laws and their durations) but weaker than spells.
A Warlock's invocations are (by and large) rather weak compared to similar leveled spells. Being able to do them constantly requires them to be so. Making them strong enough that per-day limits make sense puts them into the realm of spells as the balance point. How many people, do you think would play a Warlock if the Warlock could only use invocations once per day class level?

A fifth level wizard, when faced with many scattered small bands of kobolds on the way to the wyrmling dragon in charge will forgo casting 3rd level spells to save them for the dragon, instead using 1st and 2nd's. With the Law of Resistance in play as-is, a Truenamer doesn't have that middle option. The Law of Resistance (as-is) means you may as well always open up with your best stuff: The weakest of utterances "costs" the same as the strongest. It's "play a bad archer by plinking with a crossbow" or "Use your best utterances". There's no middle ground. The Law of Resistance needs to be watered down, at a minimum. Whether that's by targeting Warlock level utterances and getting rid of it entirely or by doing some form of level-related negation of the Law of Resistance (so that stuff you picked up ten levels ago is basically free while the stuff you just learned suffers the full effect of The Law of Resistance), the law as it stands is one of the bigger components of why the as-written class is bad.

If you make it a level-based check, on the other hand, you can set it up so that the easier stuff (things you picked up 5-10 levels ago) is at-will (or nearly enough) and highly reliable with little-to-no costs. But the higher-level stuff has a failure chance and/or meaningful backlash; good for the boss fight. Add in one of the ability modifiers too (Charisma as your "force", or Intelligence as your "skill", perhaps), and you allow for equipment to help (like a Wizard or Sorcerer gets), without allowing nearly as much of the extreme swing that happens with skill optimization.

Psyren

2019-05-06, 11:56 PM

If you keep your caster level up, there's plenty of low-level utility spells that stay handy (and some even if you don't). Barkskin, Invisibility, Spider Climb, and many others.

Those examples are designed to be useful to folks with no casting at all, e.g. through potions. They're not really an argument for multiclassing or dipping when you can get them for a pittance of gp without impacting your build.

Where do we draw the line?
*snip*

I'm actually fine with all those except Words of Creation, which should ideally be a subset of this system along with Dark Speech.

In particular, Heroism and especially Greater Heroism require enough of a tradeoff (if you're trying to get a character that can do both) that they're not an issue for me.

Focusing on single big items misses the point.
*snip*

You're missing the point - the goal is to keep people from layering the single big items alongside the small ones, not to eliminate the small ones entirely.

A Warlock's invocations are (by and large) rather weak compared to similar leveled spells. Being able to do them constantly requires them to be so. Making them strong enough that per-day limits make sense puts them into the realm of spells as the balance point. How many people, do you think would play a Warlock if the Warlock could only use invocations once per day class level?
*snip*

You can use Utterances, especially your highest level ones, far more often than spells. Or you could if the CR scaling worked properly anyway.

Landing your first few of a given utterance in a day should be almost automatic, unless you're fighting a boss right off the bat or trying to work in a personal truename. This is where the Laws and the short durations come into play.

You can remove those of course and redesign the system from the roots, but I'd rather refine the chassis we started with. The enduring attention that Truenamer threads get indicates to me that there is an audience for fixing the existing mechanics, rather than burning them to the ground and building something new with the same name.

Zaq

2019-05-07, 12:17 AM

Jack, please forgive me if I’m not reading your posts closely enough, but you do get that the LoR applies individually to each utterance, right? Pain in the rear to keep track of, but there is an incentive to use lower-grade utterances against smaller threats.

Now, the “same difficulty using lowest and highest” thing comes into play when discussing the actual TS DCs (and, by extension, Quicken et al.), but you don’t just have one overall LoR count. You have one for each utterance.

Again, forgive me if I’m just not getting that you’re referring to something else. I have other issues with the LoR (and mixed feelings about it in general), but “using greater speed of the zephyr impairs ability to use hidden truth” isn’t one of them (because it ain’t true).

Jack_Simth

2019-05-07, 06:59 AM

Those examples are designed to be useful to folks with no casting at all, e.g. through potions. They're not really an argument for multiclassing or dipping when you can get them for a pittance of gp without impacting your build.

I could say the same about tattoos and Psionic powers.

You give WotC too much credit. They defined potions in the core books for nearly all the core spells that qualified (they skipped a few that qualified on some lists, but not others).

I'm actually fine with all those except Words of Creation, which should ideally be a subset of this system along with Dark Speech.

In particular, Heroism and especially Greater Heroism require enough of a tradeoff (if you're trying to get a character that can do both) that they're not an issue for me.

You're missing the point - the goal is to keep people from layering the single big items alongside the small ones, not to eliminate the small ones entirely.

So what do you do with the dichotomy of
Players who don't meet your skill optimization expectations have severe problems with playing the class; players who exceed your skill optimization expectations instead break the class
- the latter of which appears to be the basic reason you're wanting to ban the "abusive" things that boost skill checks?

I suspect that dichotomy is one of the biggest reasons for the common wisdom of:

Skill-based magic in a level-based system is inherently bad. It cannot be made to function in a healthy way.

It doesn't even necessarily just apply to specific player skill - you'll run across the same thing in simple random treasure rolls. If you end up with several skill-boosting items earlier or later than 'expected', then the same problem applies.

You can use Utterances, especially your highest level ones, far more often than spells. Or you could if the CR scaling worked properly anyway.

What's "proper" depends on the amount of skill optimization. That's one of the things that will vary wildly. For more than a single table, you really can't balance around it (you can absolutely balance it for a specific table, if you're familiar with that table, but you can't for the general case).

You can remove those of course and redesign the system from the roots, but I'd rather refine the chassis we started with.I'd rather not.

OK, so we have two completely conflicting fundamental opinions on the matter. I suppose there's no point in discussing it further, then.

Jack, please forgive me if I’m not reading your posts closely enough, but you do get that the LoR applies individually to each utterance, right? Pain in the rear to keep track of, but there is an incentive to use lower-grade utterances against smaller threats.

Now, the “same difficulty using lowest and highest” thing comes into play when discussing the actual TS DCs (and, by extension, Quicken et al.), but you don’t just have one overall LoR count. You have one for each utterance.

Again, forgive me if I’m just not getting that you’re referring to something else. I have other issues with the LoR (and mixed feelings about it in general), but “using greater speed of the zephyr impairs ability to use hidden truth” isn’t one of them (because it ain’t true).

I did miss that. Thanks for pointing it out. OK, so the scaling isn't quite as bad as I thought.

Psyren

2019-05-07, 09:54 AM

I did miss that. Thanks for pointing it out. OK, so the scaling isn't quite as bad as I thought.

As a wise man once said to me, "is it unreasonable for me to expect you to know the details of a thing..." :smalltongue:
Okay okay, I kid, but couldn't resist :smallwink:

So what do you do with the dichotomy of
Players who don't meet your skill optimization expectations have severe problems with playing the class; players who exceed your skill optimization expectations instead break the class
- the latter of which appears to be the basic reason you're wanting to ban the "abusive" things that boost skill checks?

I don't see "severe problems" though. Failing to optimize the skill wouldn't mean the class doesn't function, it would mean that their uses per day of any given utterance are more limited due to the Law, and that "meta-utterances" ('Inflections' under Kyeudo's revamp which I linked earlier) would be harder to pull off. It'd be like optimizing your bonus spells and buying pearls of power and whatnot, rather than enabling basic power/functionality. A generalist wizard with few bonus spells or longevity might need to be more frugal for example, but they're still T1.

OK, so we have two completely conflicting fundamental opinions on the matter. I suppose there's no point in discussing it further, then.

As mentioned, I'm fine with discussing a level-check-based system too. But I don't think the skill-based system needs to be abandoned just yet either, so I'll continue talking about that also.

Segev

2019-05-07, 01:11 PM

Falontani

2019-05-07, 05:17 PM

There has been A LOT posted in this thread. I skimmed the first page, so if this has already been said, I'm sorry.

The magic that the main character uses from the Unsounded web comic is where I would look. Perhaps some from Ursula's Earthsea. And you can't forget the binding of spirits using their name.

This isn't common use magic. This type of magic should take enough time that wizards could be casting third tier magic by the time you've finished learning the principles.

How to translate it into mechanics ... That's the challenge.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-07, 10:43 PM

If you're going to balance a key factor around a skill, there are a few things to keep in mind:

the optimization floor one expects
the "expected" amount of optimization (usually maxing out the skill ranks and going for good stats related to the skill)
the optimization soft ceiling (how high can you get without going off-the-wall and/or throwing so much at it that you can't do anything else)
the hard optimization ceiling (how high can you get if you bend every rule you can towards maxing out this skill)
and how many skills are needed

Multiple skills greatly diminishes the optimization ceiling and tends to push it down towards the "expected" level.

The gap between the floor and the hard ceiling is important to guage, but more important is the gap between the "expected" level and the hard ceiling. In there lies what you need to consider as possible. You need to design it so that the high-end stuff is usable at appropriate levels with the "expected" amount of optimization, and increasing optimization mostly just results in more regular or reliable use. You don't want it to open doors too soon, and you want a cap in mind on how regularly you want the higher-end stuff used which needs to not be able to be exceded by the hard ceiling.

This is a non-trivial design problem. Again, multiple skills helps, because it splits focus, but it also means you need to be more aggressive about avoiding making optimizing all of them too demanding of resources while keeping them from being too easy to max out (same problem as with one skill). Class features can include a pool of bonuses or points that give bonuses; this would enable reaching higher than normal a few times, while it would basically not be all that useful to the super-optimized guys who don't need the boost to hit their numbers. It still doesn't fully solve it, and may risk breaching to another tier of possibilities if the bonsues push super-optimized numbers too high and you made that the only barrier to advancement.

Of the things proposed, the one I like best (unsurprisingly) is the one I put out where your "words" and "phrases" in truespeech gave new abilities and bonuses to mundane skill uses. The skill involvement is there, but optimizing skill use is still scattered across multiple skills, and doesn't make the truespeech better directly.

Suppose we made it a build-your-spell system that always rolls three d20's:
1) A check to affect the target.
2) A check specific to the seed.
3) A Truespeak check

The check to affect the target is the Knoweldge DC to identify the target, or the Truespeak DC, whichever is higher.
The check for the associated seed uses the same DC.
The Truespeak check gets complicated, depending on how much you're doing with that seed. Base DC is 5, and you roll Class level + Intelligence modifier.
All DC's for the three rolls are the highest of are plus the target's Turbulence score (more on that later).

On an unwilling target, the gets a save (type based on the seed), DC 10 + 1/2 Truenamer level + Intelligence modifier.
SR applies.
Truespeaking is treated as a spell-like ability for purposes of Concentration checks and disruption.

So you'll have modifiers that can affect essentially any seed:
Default is "1 round". You can however, modify it with "Long":
Applied once, means it had a duration of Concentration, maximum 1 round/level (and +2 DC)
Applied twice, and it has a duration of rounds/level (and +4 DC)
Applied thrice, and it has a duration of minutes/level (and +6 DC)
Applied four times, and it has a duration of 10 minutes/level (and +8 DC)
Applied five times, and it has a duration of hours/level (and +10 DC)
Applied six times, and it has a duration of 24 hours (and +12 DC)
Applied seven times, and it has a duration of 24 hours/level (and +14 DC)
Applied eight times, and it has a duration of Permanent (and +16 DC)
Default is Personal. You can, however, apply "reach" for +2 DC for each step beyond personal.
Applied once and it has a range of Touch (and +2 DC)
Applied twice and it has a range of short (and +4 DC)
Applied three times and it has a range of medium (and +6 DC)
Applied four times and it has a range of long (and +8 DC)
Default is one. +2 DC for each target beyond the first (and all must be of the same type).

Then you have a big old listing of seeds, which again, you can apply a given seed more than once for greater effect. As a concept example, I'll go with "Conceal":

DC +2*applications (associated check: Hide).
Applied once (DC +2), it gives a +1/2 Truespeak level bonus to Hide checks.
Applied twice (DC +4), it gives 20% concealment.
Applied three times (DC +6), it gives 50% concealment.
Applied four times (DC +8) it gives Invisibility (as the spell)
Applied five times (DC +10) it gives Greater Invisibility (as the spell)
Applied six times (DC +12) it also applies against unusual senses (blindsight, Scent, Mindsight, et cetera)

"In play":
You're a level 10 Truenamer with a +5 Intelligence modifier, and you want to be invisible for a time. You currently have a turbulence score of 0.

You want to be invisible for the next few minutes, so you need four applications of Conceal. We're already at DC 13 for the Truespeak check. But that's just one round. We want a few minutes, so we need three applications of long. DC 19. You yourself are DC 20 for the Knowledge check. That's the harder number, so you roll Knowledge(Local) for yourself at DC 20, Hide at DC 20, and Truespeak at DC 19.

You make other such "seeds" with associated skills - so Vigor (Heal, grants fast healing), Know (Gather Information, answers questions), Suggest (Bluff, grants control of a subject), Construct (Craft, makes stuff), See (Spot, lets you perceive things from a distance), Move (Tumble, speeds things up and does long distance travel), Call (Jump, brings things to you), and so on. The first effect should be a bonus to a skill, and each step beyond that should be a slowly-increasing magical effect, and should be at +2 DC per step.

Creatures and things naturally tend towards their default state. The further away it is, the more Turbulent it becomes, and the harder it is to affect with more Truespeech.

When you apply a magical or Truespeech effect to a target, it's Turbulence score increases by 2, for as long as that magical or Truespeech effect is in place. Ending the magical or Truespeech effect does NOT automatically remove the Turbulence, but does permit it to fade. Any target with more current Turbulence than twice the number of active magical or Truespeech effects on the target has the Turbulence reduced by one per hour until it equals twice the number of currently-active magical or Truespeech effects (magic items and personal supernatural abilities do not count towards Turbulence, but spells, potions, and so on do).

So if Paul the Paladin has Mage Armor up, he's got a Turbulence score of 2. If he's a tenth level human, this means he's DC 22 to affect. If you apply three Truespeech effects to Paul, his Turbulence score becomes 8 (2 for Mage armor, 2 for each Truespeech effect). If Paul is Disjoined, the Mage Armor spell and all three Truespeech effects go away, but Paul still has a Turbulence score of 8 right now... which becomes 7 in an hour, 6 in two hours, 5 in three hours, and so on.

If you fail either of the skill checks, you simply fail to affect the target at all.
If you fail the Truespeaking check, you also take unavoidable nonlethal damage equal to the Truespeak DC, which only goes away by normal healing (magic doesn't help, nor does regeneration or fast healing). Yes, a Truespeaker Lich can render himself unconscious this way.

The idea being that every Truespeaker will need to specialize in a creature type and a thing. You can dabble in more, but the DCs start piling up the more buffs you put on your allies, so you're only going to have a few things you can do easily.

Thoughts?

Segev

2019-05-08, 09:55 AM

It's an interesting system, but I fear it would be very clunky in play. Balance-wise, it's still hard to hit, but the number of different skills does mean that any sort of breadth will be a mitigating factor. You'd have to be careful with the seeds, though, so that none could be used too broadly. "I specialize in animals! This lets me make minions, turn into creatures for every occasion, and simulate various other spell effects by picking the right minion for the job."

Psyren

2019-05-08, 11:10 AM

Segev

2019-05-08, 01:22 PM

Mr Adventurer

2019-05-08, 01:47 PM

A middle ground could work like 5e spells: a clear effect that you can level up (in 5e by casting the spell out of a higher level slot, in this system with higher DC checks??).

Jack_Simth

2019-05-08, 09:10 PM

Building spell effects from "seeds" always sounds like a cool idea, but in practice you end up with all kinds of thorny balance issues as a result. This is why I prefer specific effects (like Utterances) with grokkable levels that eliminate the guesswork/ambiguity that comes from "building-block magic."
Stranger, you could just say "drinkable" rather than using mixing in Martian... although I will admit this is a very strange land.

On a slightly more serious note:
You just need a few things:
1) The blocks to be better-defined.
2) The blocks to be individually weak.
3) Tinkering to find suitable balance points.
4) A stop on mixing effect blocks. So no merging Summon with Conceal to get Invisible Summons immediately.
(Also summoning needs a note that it's Turbulence also applies to the controller of the summon, usually the Truespeaker, not just the summon)

Or to put this another way: Can you really break Conceal as listed, compared to what, say, a Wizard of a similar level could do with Invisibility, Invisibility Sphere, Greater Invisibility, Superior Invisibility, etcetera?

Yes, there's a complexity problem, but that already exists with Polymorph builds and Summoning builds (consider a Druid with Greenbound Summoning, Augment Summoning, Beckon the Frozen, Rashemi Elemental Summoning, and Augment Elemental - HOW MANY?!?! options, and all of them will need re-statting from what's printed due to the feat enhancements), and has a well-known solution:
You just write up several pre-calculated index cards for common forms / summons, and use those when the time comes. Then you've just got a slightly-variable DC to add based on the Turbulence score.

Madsamurai

2019-05-09, 12:07 PM

Stranger, you could just say "drinkable" rather than using mixing in Martian... although I will admit this is a very strange land.

On a slightly more serious note:
You just need a few things:
1) The blocks to be better-defined.
2) The blocks to be individually weak.
3) Tinkering to find suitable balance points.
4) A stop on mixing effect blocks. So no merging Summon with Conceal to get Invisible Summons immediately.
(Also summoning needs a note that it's Turbulence also applies to the controller of the summon, usually the Truespeaker, not just the summon)

Or to put this another way: Can you really break Conceal as listed, compared to what, say, a Wizard of a similar level could do with Invisibility, Invisibility Sphere, Greater Invisibility, Superior Invisibility, etcetera?

Yes, there's a complexity problem, but that already exists with Polymorph builds and Summoning builds (consider a Druid with Greenbound Summoning, Augment Summoning, Beckon the Frozen, Rashemi Elemental Summoning, and Augment Elemental - HOW MANY?!?! options, and all of them will need re-statting from what's printed due to the feat enhancements), and has a well-known solution:
You just write up several pre-calculated index cards for common forms / summons, and use those when the time comes. Then you've just got a slightly-variable DC to add based on the Turbulence score.

I think its a question of complexity at the table vs build complexity. The druid that does summoning needs to know how his feats interact and needs combat stats ready for all the options he cares about, yes. However, when he is actually at the table, he just says "I summon 13 fire elementals" and pulls out his stat card. That take only a bit of overhead. He can even hand the elementals out to the rest of the table so as not to hog the spotlight.

Conversely, every time the truenamer in your proposal wants to cast an utterance, he needs to choose a duration that matches how long he thinks the fight will be, then sum up all of his options. Next, he needs to get the DM to keep track of turbulence for every monster they encounter and he also needs to get every player to track their own turbulence. Finally, to actually resolve the ability the truenamer needs to roll 3(!) d20s that each have different modifiers.

After you've done all that though, you get an effect that is less powerful then a spell because your balance point is at-will usage. That just feels like too much work.

My proposal for a truenamer flavor would just be a Wizard ACF or a prestige class. It would let you get bonus effects when casting spells on people or things who's true-names you knew. For example: increased caster level, save DC or spontaneous metamagic.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-09, 01:50 PM

You don't pick them each time. You just make index cards every level or two based on what you expect to use. All you need to track is target's turbulence, and that is just simple addition, no worse than a party with a Cleric that casts Prayer.

You're also still rolling fewer dice than the rogue who full attacks with a bow. It's the same solution: three d20's of different colors, all rolled at once.

Psyren

2019-05-09, 01:54 PM

Stranger, you could just say "drinkable" rather than using mixing in Martian... although I will admit this is a very strange land.

Uh... wut? :smalltongue:

I think its a question of complexity at the table vs build complexity. The druid that does summoning needs to know how his feats interact and needs combat stats ready for all the options he cares about, yes. However, when he is actually at the table, he just says "I summon 13 fire elementals" and pulls out his stat card. That take only a bit of overhead. He can even hand the elementals out to the rest of the table so as not to hog the spotlight.

Conversely, every time the truenamer in your proposal wants to cast an utterance, he needs to choose a duration that matches how long he thinks the fight will be, then sum up all of his options. Next, he needs to get the DM to keep track of turbulence for every monster they encounter and he also needs to get every player to track their own turbulence. Finally, to actually resolve the ability the truenamer needs to roll 3(!) d20s that each have different modifiers.

After you've done all that though, you get an effect that is less powerful then a spell because your balance point is at-will usage. That just feels like too much work.

Yeah, that.

The advantage of discrete utterances is that you can easily peg them to spell balance ("This works like Suggestion, except...") or even internally ("This works like Seek The Sky, except...")

My proposal for a truenamer flavor would just be a Wizard ACF or a prestige class. It would let you get bonus effects when casting spells on people or things who's true-names you knew. For example: increased caster level, save DC or spontaneous metamagic.

That's definitely functional, albeit a bit bland.

Hmm... Maybe an archetype that's forced to use the Words of Power variant from PF, and gets to ignore somatic components. Then layer on the "personal truename" aspect and let them research for both enemies and allies.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-09, 08:45 PM

Uh... wut? :smalltongue:

It's the origin of Grok. Robert Heinlein. Stranger in a Strange Land. It's mostly about a kid who grew up in the hands of a bunch of martians and picks up a bunch of strange powers because of it (including turning the alcohol in his blood back into sugar, and thus, never getting drunk). Comes back to Earth, ends up starting something of a religion. In the book, Grok is martian for "to drink", but it's also "to take into ones' self" and "understand".

I read it when I was young. My family has a lot of old books. My dad would have audited them a little better, but I had a bit more time for reading than he did.

Yeah, that.

The advantage of discrete utterances is that you can easily peg them to spell balance ("This works like Suggestion, except...") or even internally ("This works like Seek The Sky, except...")
The problem being it gets boring, having to do the same things over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & over & ...

But if you can write out ten or so before a session, use those, and write out ten or so before the next session, and use those, et infinium, well... no so boring.

Psyren

2019-05-09, 11:05 PM

It's the origin of Grok.

Cool, had that book in my house but never actually got around to reading it.

The problem being it gets boring, having to do the same things over & over.
*large snip*

But if you can write out ten or so before a session, use those, and write out ten or so before the next session, and use those, et infinium, well... no so boring.

Not sure I understand your point; is spellcasting boring because it has defined effects?

And it's easy to give Truenaming unique effects, especially when their whole thing is being able to do certain things without saving throws/SR that other casters would have to contend with.

Frozen_Feet

2019-05-10, 02:16 AM

If I only knew d20 SRD and someone came to me with the idea of adding "truenamer" as a new base class, I'd look at them as if they'd acquired brain damage, then take them aside and explain very slowly:

"The practice of using true names to manipulate reality, is called s-p-e-l-l-c-a-s-t-i-n-g . A "truenamer" is hence synonymous with a s-p-e-l-l-c-a-s-t-e-r. Notice how ranger, paladin, bard, wizard, druid, cleric and sorcerer are already s-p-e-l-l-c-a-s-t-e-r-s. Why don't you go play one of those? "

Seriously. "Truenamer" doesn't make a lick of sense as a base class and "truespeech" doesn't make a lick of sense as a single skill. True Names as an important magical concept does make sense and is quite classic... but it's not particular to any type of magic. Rather, in a setting where true names are a thing, you'd expect every type of magic to revolve around those.

If you wanted to delve into concept of True Names in context of D&D, you'd make it into a setting book. And if you wanted to make a skill-based magic system to go with it, you'd start with a disclaimer: "this is meant to be a holistic, slighly more freeform system to replace default Vancian system. Like generic classes and other such rules variants, it's not meant to be used alongside the default Vancian system, as that would lead to pointless redundancy and be too easy to exploit."

A serious skill-based system would have multiple magical uses spread across multiple skills: bartering true names from magical creatures via intimidate and diplomacy. Bluffing to create pseudonyms to obscure your true name from others. Sense motive seeing if someone's using a pseudonym. Forgery for creating and detecting fraudulent magical contracts. Decipher script for getting true names from scrolls and activating them. Using Gather Information for learning names from rumours. Appraise for checking how much HD a creature has to tell how hard it would be to affect it. Knowledge skills for a priori knowledge of their associated creature types. So on and so forth.

Eldan

2019-05-10, 06:32 AM

Okay. I haven't read the rest of the thread yet, I'll do that later, for now, I'll just give my opinion: they should be masters of knowing stuff, basically. The Archivist in orverdrive. Knowing a creature's name should give them information about the creature's nature, too. Its strengths, its weaknesses, what it is thinking about, its past, its futures, its loves and hates and so on. And that's what I would build the class abilities around. A combination of, in wizard terms, really good divination and some mind reading. Maybe the ability to restore the "true nature" of someone cursed or mind controlled.
Secondarily, control. You call, banish, ward off, etc. things when you know their name.

Edit: actually ,unlike others in this thread, I'd go easy on the control nature effects. That's what wizards are for. Truenamers know the name and nature of things, but they don't change them, as such. You know that wind likes to blow and rocks like to fall. That doesn't mean knowing their names means you can make the wind blow when there is no wind, or rocks fall when there are no rocks. People who control natural forces are mages.

Instead, I'd go all in on the knowledge effects. More so than most diviners:

Truenamer looks at the Paladin for a few seconds. "I know you. Your true name is **** ******** *****. You define yourself by your duty, and dread that you may be defined by your bloodline. Even as a child..."

You look at someone, and you see their name, and their most important life events that shaped their nature. That's truenaming. And nicely mechanically different from magic, too.

Jack_Simth

2019-05-10, 07:09 AM

Cool, had that book in my house but never actually got around to reading it.You made the reference. I just doubled-down.
Not sure I understand your point; is spellcasting boring because it has defined effects? No. That the Warlock-style casting is due to the sharply limited options. A Cleric or Druid, even at 1st, has scores of spells to pick from and shuffle around. Even a Sorcerer-1 will have four cantrips and two 1st level spells to choose from, taken from a much larger list. A Warlock-1 has ... Eldritch blast and one invocation. And that one invocation? There's 13 main options, plus four that modify the first. It's a short list. I find that rather "meh7"
And it's easy to give Truenaming unique effects, especially when their whole thing is being able to do certain things without saving throws/SR that other casters would have to contend with....

You keep going back to that. Revising the Truenamer, rather than building from the ground up, and assuming that most of the stuff that's there will stay. We're taking completely opposite approaches, and that makes discussing it rather chancy.

Psyren

2019-05-10, 10:01 AM

You made the reference. I just doubled-down.

I actually got "grok" from this forum if you'll believe that :smallbiggrin:

No. That the Warlock-style casting is due to the sharply limited options. A Cleric or Druid, even at 1st, has scores of spells to pick from and shuffle around. Even a Sorcerer-1 will have four cantrips and two 1st level spells to choose from, taken from a much larger list. A Warlock-1 has ... Eldritch blast and one invocation. And that one invocation? There's 13 main options, plus four that modify the first. It's a short list. I find that rather "meh7"...

This might be another difference in philosophy; I think spellcasting should have the widest variety of options out of all magic systems. (In fact, this will end up being the case naturally, because spells and other options for the core spellcasters are present in every splat book.) Other systems like hacking reality directly (truenaming), working with proto-magic (incarnum) or drawing upon a specific pact (binding/invoking) will necessarily be more limited.

You keep going back to that. Revising the Truenamer, rather than building from the ground up, and assuming that most of the stuff that's there will stay. We're taking completely opposite approaches, and that makes discussing it rather chancy.

Agreed, and I'm fine with that - but in my defense, you did reply to me :smalltongue:

Telonius

2019-05-10, 11:02 AM

Starbuck_II

2019-05-10, 12:24 PM

Still working on my Kozmo Truenamer, thinking of reworking Utterances so not just burn but ranks in Truespeak have extra effects.

That way it is still skill based (but ranks).

Got the class basically done, now working on reworking and adding new utterances.

Zaq

2019-05-10, 02:32 PM

I've been (mostly) lurking since the original post, just to see how the thread would go (and not really trying to steer it). I'd originally envisioned a ground-up rebuild, not really just fiddling with the existing stuff. Zaq's original (... good lord, is it really almost a decade old?) review (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?114269-My-Experiences-as-a-Truenamer) of the Truenamer made a point that (wonky skill mechanic aside) the Utterances aren't all that terrific even if you can get them to connect. So if I'm going to try overhauling the class, I need to figure out if the existing Utterances are the sorts of things a Truenamer ought to be doing to begin with; if they need tweaking/buffing; or if I ought to just toss them out the window and figure out new features. Basically, I'm trying to figure out the "What" before I figure out the "How."

I’m doing a lot of work on an update to the guide, and I’m realizing more and more that there are surprisingly few game elements that it makes sense to compare utterances to.

They tend to suck compared to spells, but spells are also about the most powerful thing in the game, so that’s an awkward comparison.

They’re slightly related to invocations in that you’re very unlikely to “run out,” but surprisingly few utterances feel like they do things that are sufficiently similar to appropriately-leveled invocations that the comparison ends up feeling strained. There’s a few kinda similar buffs, but while invocation buffs are almost all self-only and super long duration, utterances work on anyone but are very short duration. Good that they’re not just copies of each other, but again, gets strained comparing the two—and invocations that aren’t self-buffs have very little common ground with utterances, so there’s a lot of subjectivity when it comes to assessing if they’re of comparable power/usefulness.

Assuming that one is allowed to invest enough in one’s abilities that we can reliably hit TS DCs, after the very lowest levels I think a truenamer is a more reliable party contributor (or at least one that is useful in a wider variety of situations) than a fighter or a similar low-tier martial-type, but figuring out what they ARE on par with isn’t obvious.

I do maintain that it’s pretty much not broken at all to just let utterances function at-will (whether Quicken would then justify a separate cost is another question). It’s not disgustingly misleading to compare utterances to invocations, but the LoS and the short duration on utterances means that I’m not automatically convinced that a truenamer with at-will utterances is on par with a warlock. Closer than a fighter, I guess.

Some utterances really do suck and a lot of them are genuinely overleveled. It’s hard to hold up an ideal balance point at the second half of the game, though (i.e., what “should” a 4th level LEM utterance look like? What “should” a 2nd level LPM utterance look like? Etc.). Still working on that, to be honest.

Zecrin

2019-05-10, 06:42 PM

I decided to overhaul the class for a recent campaign. I made the skill check formula a little easier but redesigned all the utterances so that even if an optimizer achieved an infinite number of successful skill checks, they would just be on par with other optimized characters. More specifically, I replaced all utterances with cadences. A cadence was essentially a way of saying a truename. So in combat, a truenamer would first discern the name of the creature, area, or object that he wanted to affect (with a gather information check), and then successfully speak that things truename with a particular cadence (with a truespeak check). There were four levels of cadences: Disciple, Savant, Adept, and Perfection. All of the cadences of perfection were heavily improved versions of the cadences of the disciple. Here are some examples:

Cadence of Elemental Energy
Lexicon: Disciple
Potential Targets: Area, Creature, Object
Duration: Until dismissed
Area: Choose an element when you speak this cadence. Any creature or unattended object in the named area takes 1d4 points of elemental damage per speaker level (maximum 5d4) at the end of each of your turns.
Creature: Choose an element when you speak this cadence. The named creature gains resistance to the chosen element depending on you speaker level.
5 at 1st-5th level
10 at 6th-10th level
15 at 11th-15th level
20 at 16th-20th level
Object: If the named object is a weapon, it gains one of the following weapon enhancements (chosen at the time of speaking): Corrosive, Flaming, Frost, Shocking, Sonic. If the named object is not a weapon, it gains immunity to an energy type of your choice.

Cadence of Decay
Lexicon: Adept
Potential Targets: Area, Creature, or Object
Duration: Until dismissed or instantaneous.
Area: All normal plants in the named area die immediately. Magical plants and plant creatures take 1d8 damage per speaker level.
Creature: The named creature takes a -4 penalty to its strength and dexterity. It also takes damage equal to twice its Hit Dice when this cadence is spoken. Undead creatures cannot be targeted by this cadence.
Object: If the named object is non magical and weighs less than 20 lb per speaker level, it is destroyed.

Cadence of the Master Smith
Lexicon: Savant
Potential Targets: Area, Creature, Object
Duration: Until dismissed.
Area: One block of iron per speaker level emerges from the ground of the area, occupying five foot squares of your choice. Each block is 5 ft long, 5 ft wide, and 10 ft. tall. Each block has 1,800 hp and hardness 10. No block can be conjured so that it occupies the same space as a creature or another object.
Creature: The named creature gains one crafting feat for which it meets the prerequisites. When determining the gold piece cost in raw materials the named creature need to craft an item with that feat, reduce the base price by 10%.
Object: The weapon armor or shield you name becomes magically enhanced. You can choose any special ability whose market price is equivalent to a +5 bonus or up to 200,000 gp, such as vorpal. Alternatively, you may choose multiple special abilities who's total bonuses do not exceed +5. The weapon, armor, or shield does not have to have an existing enhancement bonus, nor does it gain one when you speak this cadence.

Cadence of Primal Power
Lexicon: Perfection
Potential Targets: Area, Creature, Object
Duration: Until dismissed
Area: Choose an element when you speak this cadence. Any creature or unattended object in the named area takes 1d4 points of elemental damage per speaker level (maximum 20d4) at the end of each of your turns. Creatures damaged by this cadence suffer an additional penalty based on the chosen element.
Acid: The creature takes 5d4 acid damage each round after they leave the named area, until they take a full-round action to wipe away the acid.
Cold: The creature is slowed
Electric: Each time the creature takes damage from this cadence, there is a 25% chance that they are paralyzed for one round.
Fire: The damage die are d6 and the creature is dazzled
Sonic: The creature is deafened
Creature: The named creature gains immunity to energy damage.
Object: The named object gains immunity to energy damage. If the named object is a weapon, it also gains two of the following enhancements (chosen at the time of speaking):
Acidic Blact
Fiery Blast
Icy Blast
Lightning Blast
Sonic Blast

GreatWyrmGold

2019-05-19, 01:04 AM

The fantasy world with truename magic I'm most familiar with is the world of Eragon, for better or for worse. In that book, the main way the protagonist got better at using magic (aside from getting more sources of energy to draw upon) was learning new words. (Come to think of it, much the same is true of the world of the Kingkiller Most-of-a-trilogy, which is the truename world I'm second-most familiar with.) If I were designing a ground-up Truenamer, I'd start with a mechanic where you don't learn spells, but words.

Each Word could be associated with a specific, weak spell effect. Fire creates fire, Move is weak telekinesis, Bull makes you stronger, etc. As you grow in level, you not only learn new Words but also gain the ability to link more and more of them together into Phrases, which have more potent spell effects. Live Fire creates a fireelemental, Move Air creates wind, Find Bull locates the nearest bull, etc. Or you could use fewer words and increase their power (dealing more damage, moving bigger stuff, making you strongerer, etc).
The problem is, of course, combinatorial explosion. (Which is also the most distinctive feature of this proposed system.) You'd probably need to create a fixed, short list of verbs and a limited variety of phrases, with a list of specific effects listed under each noun...but this would obviously impose a very low ceiling on the length of phrases (like, two or three).

Another possibility would be to have a set variety of "action" Words, with more powerful Words having weaker Words as prerequisites (the stronger Words would of course be compounds of the weaker ones). Each Word would affect an object/creature with a Name. You could learn something's Name with...probably a skill/level check or something? Once you learned its Name, you could affect it with any of your Words until the thing changed enough for its Name to shift and/or you ran out of some relevant resource. This is easier to scale, but less distinctive.

Speaking of which, there are a few ways to handle that. You could just let it be used at will, for instance, which would make the Truenamer distinct from basically any caster that isn't a warlock. Or you could give them a pool of some kind, like with psionics. Or you could borrow an idea from the Pathfinder kineticist and have truenaming provide "burn," a type of nonlethal damage that can't be healed except by resting.

As to the effects Truenaming should have...it'd depend on the words you added. I'd suggest focusing on transmutation and enchantment, with a bit of necromancy and abjuration for odd effects and some rare evocation/conjuration effects to fill in word-combination gaps. Divination and illusion probably shouldn't be part of truenaming.
Oh, the types of effects? The buff/debuff focus of the Tome truenamer was well-chosen; it both feels "truenamerey" and is distinct from most other classes' focus. But like I said, it depends on the words; it's hard to imagine "throw fire" being a debuff.

I know you wanted “clean slate” opinions and this isn't quite that, but ToM describes truenamery in a way that makes me wish it actually worked like that. It says that the Power Word spells are a form of “lesser” truename magic. When I first read that, I thought I was in for an improvement on the PW spells...
What I'd like to see is a sort of modular system based on the PW line. You start with something not entirely unlike a Warlock's Eldritch Blast that you gain modifications for as you level up. However, the amount of modifications you can use is limited by way of the target's hit points. You're given a hit point limit, probably based on your class level, and if your target has more hit points than your limit, your ability has no effect...
I'd probably drop the Eldritch Blast and just give them Power Words. Probably ones that had lessened effects if the target was over the hit point limit, but separated from a knockoff of another class's defining feature.

A vague idea I have is one of learning words that can be combined into utterances...So, for example, if mind has a complexity of 5 and lets you target one creature within short range, enlarge has a complexity of 2 and ups the range category by one, and harm deals 1d6 points of damage with a complexity of 2, then MindEnlargeEnlargeHarmHarmHarm deals 3d6 points of damage to a creature within long range - if you can make the DC 15 check to utter it. You might as well spend your swift action trying to hit a nearby enemy with MindQuickenHarm while you're at it, natch.
A decent idea (I'm not just saying that because it's so similar to mine), but there are some problems with it. The biggest is the same combinatorial explosion I mentioned above; HealHarm does something special, so why don't other combinations? Of course, you could just not allow combinations, but that makes the words seem less...wordy, while also making it difficult to hand out specific complex effects.

Stranger, you could just say "drinkable" rather than using mixing in Martian... although I will admit this is a very strange land.
It should be pretty clear that he's using the "know/understand" translation. I'll agree that the subtle difference between Martian "grok" and English "understand" isn't one suited to his particular usage of the term. There's no depth to reading a number.

If I only knew d20 SRD and someone came to me with the idea of adding "truenamer" as a new base class, I'd look at them as if they'd acquired brain damage, then take them aside and explain very slowly:

"The practice of using true names to manipulate reality, is called s-p-e-l-l-c-a-s-t-i-n-g . A "truenamer" is hence synonymous with a s-p-e-l-l-c-a-s-t-e-r. Notice how ranger, paladin, bard, wizard, druid, cleric and sorcerer are already s-p-e-l-l-c-a-s-t-e-r-s. Why don't you go play one of those? "
I get it, you don't think a truenamer class is a good idea. You don't need to be say so in such a damn condescending/insulting tone. In fact, since you're opposed to the core concept of this thread, I'm not sure why you needed to say it at all.