Free Truenamer Gestalt

[AvatarVecna]

game has gestalt, but second side can only take NPC classes or Truenamer. What do you pair wirh Truenamer? :p

[Nifft]

game has gestalt, but second side can only take NPC classes or Truenamer. What do you pair wirh Truenamer? :p

Commoner, duh.

Chickens ahoy.

[Silvercrys]

Wizard, Psion, or Archivist

Probably Archivist, being honest

Honorable mention to Monk//Warrior and Ranger//Adept

[NotASpiderSwarm]

Factotum//Truenamer, since Factotums can break the skill check so well.

Alternatives:
Warrior//Wizard or Sorcerer. Warrior gets good fort saves, full BAB, d8 HD, and free access to Gish PRCs.
Adept//anything with a + Wis modifier. Adept doesn't help the chassis at all, but the spell list isn't actually bad, and can provide some useful utility in certain situations.
Warrior//Rogue. Full BAB, ability to take Weapon Finesse at lvl 1, martial weapon proficiency, d8 BAB. Not bad at all.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Having barely even looked at the Truenamer class, I just perused the handbook (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?214115-In-the-Beginning-Was-the-Word-and-the-Word-Was-Suck-A-Guide-to-Truenamers) without going into too much depth. You need Intelligence and to boost a skill check into the stratosphere.

What it brings to a gestalt character, apart from class features, is a d6 hd, medium BAB, a good Will save, and four base skill points/level. So you're looking at a Wizard or Psion or similar with everything but saves slightly improved, Beguiler with just BAB improved, an Archivist (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20051007a&page=3) with better BAB and skill points, etc. I'm partial to Psion (or Erudite) due to access to Psionic Moment of Prescience (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/momentofPresciencePsionic.htm) available two levels earlier and without being limited by your number of 8th level spell slots when compared to Wizard or Archivist. However, the Knowledge Focus class feature can be a pretty good boon for an Archivist, so it has a bit of synergy there.

I'd go with a Warforged, Dragonborn of Bahamut (wings aspect), Psion (Shaper) into full-manifesting prestige classes with Adamantine Body. Use the Quick trait (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/characterTraits.htm#quick) to fix your base land speed. You'll retain the construct type and living construct subtype, and everything that automatically comes with those. You'll only lose your default composite plating, fortification, and slam attack for becoming a Dragonborn. You'll still be immune to fatigue and exhaustion, so get Improved Flight at 6th level and never land again.

Get a psicrystal (hero or nimble, or sage if it can apply to truespeak!) and keep it in a compartment on your person so opponents never have line of sight or line of effect to it, they can't target it directly or hit it with area effects. Always keep Share Pain active on it, its Hardness 8 reduces every instance of damage it takes from Share Pain by as much. Share your Vigor and Psionic Repair Damage powers with it whenever you use those on yourself. Psionic Minor Creation can be used to make Black Lotus Extract (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#poison) by the cubic foot (more doses than you can use up by delivering ten per round for the entire hours duration), which you'll be completely immune to. Astral Construct is still good despite the Complete Psionic nerf.

[JNAProductions]

What about Guidance of the Avatar? That's going to be better than Moment of Prescience until level 21.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

What about Guidance of the Avatar? That's going to be better than Moment of Prescience until level 21.

Good point! While Psion is fun, an Archivist with Guidance of the Avatar (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a) is a superb choice. However, being a 2nd level spell and Trunamer gets UMD, you don't necessarily need to be able to cast it yourself.

[Rebel7284]

Truenamer, eh? Quite a challenge.

Here are some things that came to mind:

1. Give up on Truenamer and just take Warrior and Wizard for a d8 wizard with full BAB.

2. Oh? You still want a Truenamer, Factotum has a wide berth of interesting things that work well with a high int, some spells, and extra actions, all of which works great with Truenamer. Factotum is somewhat poorly written and you have to make some houserules (how many standard actions and points of sneak attack can you get at once?), but Truenamer is written even worse, so it's probably all good. :smallcool:

3. Some of the utterances do pretty unique things. The most abusable one is probably Rebuild Item. So what can we do with that?
- Shalantha's Delicate Disk is a Sorcerer/Wizard 6 spell that creates an item that needs to be broken to activate a spell.
See other interesting use cases in the Broken? Naw, I Rebuilt It section of the Truenamer guide.

With the above in mind, some variant of:
Wizard/Paragnostic Apostle/Incantatrix with Craft Skull Talisman would work great.

4. In general, Truenamer is very item dependent, whether you need to create Skull Talismans or just your general + Truespeak items
Artificer is the best class for making items, is very much INT and skill checks focused, and can pull off many of the Rebuild Item tricks even sooner than a caster. By far the BEST option if you expect to have downtime between adventures.

[Nifft]

Honorable mention to Monk//Warrior and Ranger//Adept

In that vein, Expert is surprisingly nice conjoined to some real classes.

6+Int skill points from a list of "pick any 10" has good synergy with any of the Int-based casters who usually get only 2+Int skill points. Expert also bumps the HD up to 1d6 (relevant for Psions, Sorcerers, and Wizards) and grants 3/4 BAB (also relevant to those specific classes), and you get light armor proficiency.


Wizard//Magewright would have one solid perk -- free prerequisite to Uncanny Forethought, and more keep rolling in. Beyond that, it's a Wizard with some extra slots, which isn't too awful.

[Eldan]

I mean, we need something that's going to survive until that free gate at high level. The rest is basically meaningless. So... any reasonably strong class, and I pretty much only play casters anyway, so...

[Gnaeus]

I spend a lot of time thinking about low tier gestalt possibilities in general, and truenamer in particular. It’s unique among tier 5s for the amount of utility it puts on the table. It’s a lot more than Gate at 20.

It’s:
A decent HP healer. Especially out of combat where those DCs don’t matter much. Even ok at status healing, if a bit late and utterance intensive.
A better than wizard knowledge monkey. With some good skill support
A decent battlefield controller with a few unique tricks (like slow which is single target but no save)
A good support class for high tier casters
And it has hard counters to muggle problems (flight/anti flight, see invisible etc) although usually short duration)


It’s weaknesses:
It’s poorly written
It doesn’t have enough to do in combat before it starts risking losing actions to failed checks
It eats a lot of your resources in feats and money getting to where it can make those checks:

So:
If we can do anything, archivist. Truenamer helps archivist make knowledge checks and archivist helps the truenaming. Cheap crafting for your potions of wieldskill. As mentioned, artificer and Psion also strong.

But anything’s good with a Tier 1.

Truenamer/Warblade Int synergy. In combat you use strikes unless you just happen to need see invisible or fly. Truenaming is for out of combat healing or a buff before you kick in a door.

Truenamer/Marshall Now we get Int and Cha to our truenaming checks. That’s going to make our lives a lot easier. And if we take knowledge devotion with our knowledges on a Marshall chassis we can even fight ok. Especially strong in a party with other gestalt Truenamer, because unlike most other check boosts, your Cha adds to everyone’s Truenaming and Knowledge Devotion checks.

Truenamer/any skillmonkey Universal aptitude makes us better on any skill check that is difficult and important. See invisible is nice on a scout. Get some synergy from those items/spells that give skill bonuses. In combat, you just angle for that skirmish/sneak/sudden strike like anyone else. Special mention to Factotum, which gives another boost to truenaming and also opens the door for us to take multiple actions on round 1 of combat to get some of our short duration buffs/debuffs in play.

Stuck at truenamer/tier 5? Well, our save DCs are based on Cha. So Truenamer//Hexblade or Truenamer//divine mind are ok. I mean the Truenamer handbook suggests gishing to extend utterances, and better weapons/bab/defenses will help with that. Again, knowledge devotion will be our friend.

Truenamer/anything with a pet (Ranger, paladin, druid). Your pet is likely low CR. Makes it an easy target for utterances. Also, some Cha synergy, gishing, knowledge devotion as above. Ranger is skillmonkeyish.


In that vein, Expert is surprisingly nice conjoined to some real classes.

6+Int skill points from a list of "pick any 10" has good synergy with any of the Int-based casters who usually get only 2+Int skill points. Expert also bumps the HD up to 1d6 (relevant for Psions, Sorcerers, and Wizards) and grants 3/4 BAB (also relevant to those specific classes), and you get light armor proficiency.

While true, truenamer also gives all those things, except only 4 skill points instead of 6. But if all you got for those 2 skill points/level was knowledge focus, universal aptitude, and Hidden Truth int caster//truenamer would already be better than int caster//expert. For a 20 int wizard it’s 9 skills versus 11, and you can hit much higher DCs on the 9, especially if you like knowledges.

[daremetoidareyo]

Kung fu genius monk?

[Unavenger]

I'm in that game, and the plan is a level in marshal so you don't need to care as much about INT, followed by as many CHA-to-blah things as I can fit on one character.

...Yeah, I could have been a full caster, but that's easy mode.

[Gnaeus]

I'm in that game, and the plan is a level in marshal so you don't need to care as much about INT, followed by as many CHA-to-blah things as I can fit on one character.

...Yeah, I could have been a full caster, but that's easy mode.

Nice. That’s a big boost for Truenamer/Knowledge Devotion out of the box. And some candy for archivist too if the other players like easy mode. So figure any martial should be supercharged with knowledge devotion, any skillmonkey will benefit on Search as well as more reliable universal aptitude, and casters will still be casters with extra toys. Other than making sure someone has CWI to craft Unavenger’s Cha items at the earliest opportunity, there’s no bad answer.

[Ruethgar]

Psychic Adept from Dark Sun since it can technically pick anything an StP Erudite could steal, sure only 6th level max and pitiful powers known, but quite easy to find a use for the powers which can be at will with a little work. Other side would probably be some Cha synergy, probably Sorcerer, maybe Stalwart Battle if allowed for a little better chassis.

[Lord Foul]

This sounds fun honestly
If this were a pathfinder game I would use wordcasting sorcerer/dragon disciple on one side, truenamer on the other, go full on ancient language of creation flavor.
Alternatively do similar stuff in 3.5 with warlock or dragonfire invoker and baleful utterance and similar invocations

For the gestalt side, none of the options really compare favorably to true namer except *maybe* adept, but adept is comparably boring.

The only way I would personally consider it is maybe on a frontline caster ala swiftblade, something like wizard 5-6/swiftblade 9-10/abjurant champion 5//warrior 5-6/truenamer 14-15
Full bab, 8-9thth level spells at full caster level, out of combat utility and buffs from truenaming, decent skill selection, all while moving around at the speed of sound

Other than that, I'd probably go wizard, archivist, factorum, or one of the initiating classes already mentioned above, which, now that I think of it would make for a good four man squad

[Gnaeus]

For the gestalt side, none of the options really compare favorably to true namer except *maybe* adept, but adept is comparably boring.

Agreed. Adept has similar power. But it mostly comes down to Wisdom rather than int synergy. The big optimization points are Familiar at 2, animate Dead at 8, cast your own Polymorph at 12, and the Domain Adept variant would open the door to a lot of PRC access for primary class. The bonus for adept versus Truenamer is not having to spend feats and cash to keep adept viable as a caster, as long as you were already wisdom focused.

[Eldan]

For full on language of creation flavour, I'd probably pair it with bard. And then... was it Seeker of the Song or Sublime Chord who used the music of creation?

[Sutr]

I'm in that game, and the plan is a level in marshal so you don't need to care as much about INT, followed by as many CHA-to-blah things as I can fit on one character.

...Yeah, I could have been a full caster, but that's easy mode.

Marshal 1/Binder 9/Legacy Champion 10// Truenamer 20

Bind Narberious(sp), worship an elder evil, and go full on dark, sacrifice your stats for profit and succeeding at truenaming checks? The legacy items guarantees the plus to truespeak enhancement item.

[Lord Foul]

Don't forget item familiar to boost your true name checks even more if you're going legacy champion

[Karl Aegis]

I would go with Ninja, personally. Sudden Strike and a good reflex save patches up a few holes in Truenamer's repetoire.