In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

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Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth

Not so much. Additional Magic Item Space (Ring), Energy Resistance (Fire) x2, Epic Spell Penetration and Epic Spell Focus (Evocation).

He also didn't choose or use any metamagic or item creation feats, for all future reference, the former because "they aren't really helpful" and the latter because "nothing is worth paying XP."

You can see why I had the enemy mage drinking martinis.

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I keep looking at that and I'm awed. Energy Resistance x2?!? Seriously? 20 fire resistance that DOESN'T stack with items? What's the point?

Epic Spell Focus?!? Greater Int I could live with, Int has loads of uses other than save DC. But what's the point of Epic Spell Focus? +1 to save DCs? I'd forgotten that feat even existed and had to look it up. I was expecting something USEFUL like a +4 bonus or so, but the same as the non-epic feat only it stacks higher?

I don't see Extra Slot unless you weren't letting them stack multiple effects on the same item. Otherwise extra slot is just a way to save small amounts of money. If this bozo cared about money he'd craft, he doesn't, ergo, he shouldn't think saving money is worth an epic feat.

Epic Spell Penetration is the only feat on that list that's even understandable, epic monsters have very high SR, I wouldn't take it, not even for a deliberately stupid build, but I can see the appeal. The rest are just wasted feats, and feats are almost all a caster GETS from being epic. I'd have more sympathy if he took melee feats, that at least suggests an INTERESTING way to fail.

I think this teaches us a valuable lesson. At bizarrely low levels of optimization, the tier system disappears. In its place is the "we can't even beat CR=ECL-5 foes" system.

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Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay

I think this teaches us a valuable lesson. At bizarrely low levels of optimization, the tier system disappears. In its place is the "we can't even beat CR=ECL-5 foes" system.

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Yes. Sufficiently poor play can make even the highest of tier classes terrible in practice. If you rolled 3d6 in order, and got a terrible int score, but still wanted to play an orcish wizard....well, life will not be kind to you.

There's a certain level of op that's pretty much required for things to work as advertised on the tin.

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Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay

I think this teaches us a valuable lesson. At bizarrely low levels of optimization, the tier system disappears. In its place is the "we can't even beat CR=ECL-5 foes" system.

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Yup. Remember, the playtesters (at least the ones that were listened to) thought 3.0 and 3.5 were balanced. So, at that level of optimization...

JaronK

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Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth

I had my player start at level 27 once, in an effort to visibly demonstrate the tier system to them. They fought a 17th level (20th level experience, crafted three levels away) wizard/initiate of the sevenfold veil. It was eight on one. The wizard spent every single standard action he had for the fight drinking martinis.

He killed them all.

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By the end he was very drunk, and very very rich. He probably leveled, and is one exp from the next, that's something like a CR 32 battle. I'm also fighting the urge to sig that. How'd they take it?

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Originally Posted by Grendus

By the end he was very drunk, and very very rich. He probably leveled, and is one exp from the next, that's something like a CR 32 battle. I'm also fighting the urge to sig that. How'd they take it?

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I don't know, but I'm guessing they didn't...

Self Scrubbed for Extremely Poor Taste in Humor.

That was in very poor taste.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth

I had my player start at level 27 once, in an effort to visibly demonstrate the tier system to them. They fought a 17th level (20th level experience, crafted three levels away) wizard/initiate of the sevenfold veil. It was eight on one. The wizard spent every single standard action he had for the fight drinking martinis.

He killed them all.

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I also want to sig this.

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Originally Posted by gkathellar

That was in very poor taste.

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In hind sight, it was probably not a good idea to remind people of the dark age of gaming, so let me go scrub that post so people need not Google it and be horrified.

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Originally Posted by Zaq

Known Personal Truename: This is about half fluff and half crunch. Functionally, you'll get a net +2 (+4 bonus for it being yours, then –2 penalty for it being a personal name, net +2) to affect yourself with an utterance. What kind of bonus? Well, pg. 200 lists it as untyped, and pg. 196 says it's a competence bonus. Beats me.

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You know how you said every time you read this chapter you find another mistake or error? It happens to me too.

Page 196 call this a competence bonus, page 200 calls it an untyped bonus, page 231 calls it a competence bonus (in the Recitation section), and page 233 calls it a circumstance bonus.

Rock on, WotC.

The monster manual list's fast healing as "Natural healing except as noted here."

One cheasy trick would be to get your party healer(or cleric or druid) to cast healthful rest on the entire party. Now your various different words of nurturing will give double the normal fast healing amount.

Probably a scaling cheasy rating.

1/5 for for minor since fast healing 1 and FH 2 isnt a big diff.

2/5 lesser FH3 becomes FH6

3/5 moderate FH 5 becomes FH 10

5/5 potent FH10 becomes FH20

5/5 critical FH15 becomes FH30

10/5 greater FH20 becomes FH40

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Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth

I had my player start at level 27 once, in an effort to visibly demonstrate the tier system to them. They fought a 17th level (20th level experience, crafted three levels away) wizard/initiate of the sevenfold veil. It was eight on one. The wizard spent every single standard action he had for the fight drinking martinis.

He killed them all.

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I think the important question is "was it one martini per round, or 8 sips of one martini?"
I could see the COP questions now: "Assuming I drink one martini a round, how many martinis should I ready for my next fight?"
Obviously need a deity with alcohol as one of the portfolios.

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Originally Posted by BobVosh

I think the important question is "was it one martini per round, or 8 sips of one martini?"
I could see the COP questions now: "Assuming I drink one martini a round, how many martinis should I ready for my next fight?"
Obviously need a deity with alcohol as one of the portfolios.

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That could easily backfire, as "one martini" might mean either a pushover, or such a powerful enemy that one round is all you get before you have to get serious (or are already dead).

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Originally Posted by Doug Lampert

I'm not sure I CAN make a less effective level 27 character than this. But he still kills a Balor fairly reliably in two turns.

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That's not actually that suboptimal. I mean, sure, he's being stupid to focus on Magic Missile, but aside from that his feat choices are pretty good -- he at least recognizes the basic fact that "hey, I'm entirely based around spellcasting. Maybe feats that let me cast more spells quickly and stuff that lets me cast spells better would be a good idea?"

There are wizards who focus on Toughness.

It's all relative, but cmon, DL's wizard is still on the shallow end of the pool as far as optimization level is concerned. A wizard who focuses on toughness wears water wings in the shallow end and still manages to drown.

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Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay

It's all relative, but cmon, DL's wizard is still on the shallow end of the pool as far as optimization level is concerned. A wizard who focuses on toughness wears water wings in the shallow end and still manages to drown.

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I hate to say this, but this conversation, interesting though it may be, is a pretty clear derailment from a thread about Truenamers.

That said, Truenamers don't do that well in Epic games either, what with the complete lack of any Epic options outside of my signature homebrew.

Have any of you ever played a Truenamer in an Epic game without homebrew? How did it go? What did you do to "keep up"?

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Originally Posted by Aquillion

That's not actually that suboptimal. I mean, sure, he's being stupid to focus on Magic Missile, but aside from that his feat choices are pretty good -- he at least recognizes the basic fact that "hey, I'm entirely based around spellcasting. Maybe feats that let me cast more spells quickly and stuff that lets me cast spells better would be a good idea?"

There are wizards who focus on Toughness.

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For a purely bad build you can just take a wizard with less than 9 or fewer Int and low Con or take levels in commoner and not bother with Handle Animal.

IMAO a "good" bad build should have all the choices make sense from some point of view. In the case of Stupid Blaster Wizard Man! the POV is that of someone who wants to blast. To do direct HP damage in combat. To basically make an archer who shoots spells rather than arrows. That an actual archer can do it better is irrelevant to him.

If the choices don't make sense from the POV of the guy who wants to blast then that's not so much a bad build as deliberately nerfing the character.

Note that concentrating on MM wasn't a deliberate self-nerf, SBWM! concentrates on blasting, and MM is the cannonical level 1 blast spell, no save damage is actually pretty useful, and automatic quicken + level 27 means he'll NEVER waste an action in combat to cast an actual level 2 or 3 spell from an actual level 2 or 3 slot. Those spells come from level 6 or 7 slots as quickened spells or need a lesser rod of quicken. There are other level 1 spells that would be worth having automatic-quickened, maybe they're in his level 4 slots (I never did figure out what he was doing with them after all).

Similarly toughness strikes me as a perfectly tolerable level 1 wizard feat in a core only game. And core only you can't later swap it out to something useful. But I'm roleplaying someone who wants to live, whatever sort of training produces the toughness feat isn't a bad choice at level 1, and the CHARACTER doesn't know that the universe will conspire to hand him nothing but survivable encounters. But toughness at all levels doesn't sound like a "good" bad build to me, simply because I can't imagine what mind-set looks at the feat selections, and looks at a wizard, and thinks "I think I'll take toughness with every feat!"

Same thing with Lord Gareth's player with "Additional Magic Item Space (Ring), Energy Resistance (Fire) x2, Epic Spell Penetration and Epic Spell Focus (Evocation)." I just can't fit my head around a mindset that looked at the Epic feats for a wizard and thought that was a good build.

DougL

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Originally Posted by Doug Lampert

For a purely bad build you can just take a wizard with less than 9 or fewer Int and low Con or take levels in commoner and not bother with Handle Animal.

IMAO a "good" bad build should have all the choices make sense from some point of view. In the case of Stupid Blaster Wizard Man! the POV is that of someone who wants to blast. To do direct HP damage in combat. To basically make an archer who shoots spells rather than arrows. That an actual archer can do it better is irrelevant to him.

If the choices don't make sense from the POV of the guy who wants to blast then that's not so much a bad build as deliberately nerfing the character.

Note that concentrating on MM wasn't a deliberate self-nerf, SBWM! concentrates on blasting, and MM is the cannonical level 1 blast spell, no save damage is actually pretty useful, and automatic quicken + level 27 means he'll NEVER waste an action in combat to cast an actual level 2 or 3 spell from an actual level 2 or 3 slot. Those spells come from level 6 or 7 slots as quickened spells or need a lesser rod of quicken. There are other level 1 spells that would be worth having automatic-quickened, maybe they're in his level 4 slots (I never did figure out what he was doing with them after all).

Similarly toughness strikes me as a perfectly tolerable level 1 wizard feat in a core only game. And core only you can't later swap it out to something useful. But I'm roleplaying someone who wants to live, whatever sort of training produces the toughness feat isn't a bad choice at level 1, and the CHARACTER doesn't know that the universe will conspire to hand him nothing but survivable encounters. But toughness at all levels doesn't sound like a "good" bad build to me, simply because I can't imagine what mind-set looks at the feat selections, and looks at a wizard, and thinks "I think I'll take toughness with every feat!"

Same thing with Lord Gareth's player with "Additional Magic Item Space (Ring), Energy Resistance (Fire) x2, Epic Spell Penetration and Epic Spell Focus (Evocation)." I just can't fit my head around a mindset that looked at the Epic feats for a wizard and thought that was a good build.

DougL

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...This still has nothing to do with Truenamers. Seriously, threads can get locked for derailment, and that would suck. I am as amused by SBWM as you guys are, but let's show Zaq some respect by keeping his thread on topic.

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Originally Posted by RaggedAngel

I hate to say this, but this conversation, interesting though it may be, is a pretty clear derailment from a thread about Truenamers.

That said, Truenamers don't do that well in Epic games either, what with the complete lack of any Epic options outside of my signature homebrew.

Have any of you ever played a Truenamer in an Epic game without homebrew? How did it go? What did you do to "keep up"?

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I have not, but I would theorize that you'd probably spam gate, PrC out into something that actually helps you, since you can't reasonably get a great deal out of Epic Truenamer, and abuse the hell out of UMD.

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Originally Posted by Tyndmyr

I have not, but I would theorize that you'd probably spam gate, PrC out into something that actually helps you, since you can't reasonably get a great deal out of Epic Truenamer, and abuse the hell out of UMD.

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Assuming that you have a +30 (or higher, if you have a hell of a lot of money) competence item, Epic Skill Focus, and other boosts, you're pretty much casting and Quickening your utterances at-will. You can also "Heighten" them pretty high, meaning that your DC's will be fairly competitive as long as you keep your Cha high. I think the real problem is that you just don't have many utterances that matter to Epic opponents. Your party may be better off hiring the Balor you always Gate in instead of keeping you around. :smallwink:

Oh, incidentally, there is one perk about being a Truenamer: That damn crab you're facing? Guess what. While your Fighter, CW Samurai and CA Ninja struggle against its real CR, and your Healer struggles to keep up with its real CR's damage output, you get to talk about its written CR.

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Originally Posted by RedWarrior0

Oh, incidentally, there is one perk about being a Truenamer: That damn crab you're facing? Guess what. While your Fighter, CW Samurai and CA Ninja struggle against its real CR, and your Healer struggles to keep up with its real CR's damage output, you get to talk about its written CR.

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...Dear god man, you're a genius. That is the true power of the Truenamer: being sort of decent against horribly under-CR'd monsters!

That said, it also means that over-CR'd creatures are harder for you to hurt than any of your party members, meaning that you get to such against weak things, which is kind of terrible.

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Originally Posted by RaggedAngel

...This still has nothing to do with Truenamers. Seriously, threads can get locked for derailment, and that would suck. I am as amused by SBWM as you guys are, but let's show Zaq some respect by keeping his thread on topic.

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Sorry, I was posting while you were posting. But you are correct. That should go in another thread.

I think your Epic Truenamer clearly takes Epic Skill Focus (you get one guess which skill). The extra (stacking) +10 bonus to truenaming is just too good to pass up. Great Intelligence might be worth considering, I'd probably take it everytime I had an odd Int score and got an epic feat.

An epic item of +truenaming simply breaks the system. There's no upper limit on the size of such bonuses for epic items other than money so you suddenly CAN make a +35 to truenaming item even if you were previously limited to +10.

You have to figure that at level 21 your truenamer bonus goes up by 35 or so points over what it was at level 20.

Truenamer isn't the class without a tier because it's weak, that's tier 6. Truenamer is the class without a tier because skill checks against 15+2*CR doesn't do what it's supposed to, it doesn't scale the class's abilities appropriately. At epic levels this problem goes on steroids. Truenamers may well be broken overpowered at epic levels, even without any epic utterances.

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Originally Posted by RedWarrior0

Oh, incidentally, there is one perk about being a Truenamer: That damn crab you're facing? Guess what. While your Fighter, CW Samurai and CA Ninja struggle against its real CR, and your Healer struggles to keep up with its real CR's damage output, you get to talk about its written CR.

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Thats true. Also, from experience, it means that the dude in your party who took a high LA race? Yeah, he's EASY to heal.

Getting to suck vs weak things, and be awesome vs strong things is actually pretty badass. Good for the party.

Honestly, I'd probably dive into Factotum quickly. Epic skill focus is a good choce, and more int never hurts...but Factotum is already int based, and I can now be good at everything, and additional actions for more truenaming beatdown? Yes.

The biggest problem I predict is that your damage doesn't scale. So, get far enough into epic, and you'll have scaling issues.

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Originally Posted by RaggedAngel

I hate to say this, but this conversation, interesting though it may be, is a pretty clear derailment from a thread about Truenamers.

That said, Truenamers don't do that well in Epic games either, what with the complete lack of any Epic options outside of my signature homebrew.

Have any of you ever played a Truenamer in an Epic game without homebrew? How did it go? What did you do to "keep up"?

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Remember, an Epic Truenamer has nearly unlimited free Gates per day. Even with just that and absolutely nothing else, they're still going to utterly overshadow every class below Tier 2, and honestly, they're going to beat less optimized Tier 2s who don't dip into epic spellcasting. Casting Gate in every single encounter is fairly insane -- I mean, basically, you're "playing" as any outsider with twice your HD, selected per-encounter for whatever fits that encounter best. You can probably abuse it in insane ways people would never use regular Gate due to the XP cost, too -- for instance, your routine at the beginning of every day could be to Gate in a really really high-level natural casting outsider and have them buff you while you raise their caster level even higher with Caster Lens.

(Some DMs might allow a Truenamer to qualify for epic spellcasting, too, since Gate is a 9th level spell and they can cast it -- though obviously you'd want to find a way to add Spellcraft to your list.)

I mean, let's be fair, you're not a Truenamer at that point, you're that-guy-who-has-Gate-as-an-SLA. But whatever.

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Originally Posted by Aquillion

Remember, an Epic Truenamer has nearly unlimited free Gates per day. Even with just that and absolutely nothing else, they're still going to utterly overshadow every class below Tier 2, and honestly, they're going to beat less optimized Tier 2s who don't dip into epic spellcasting. Casting Gate in every single encounter is fairly insane -- I mean, basically, you're "playing" as any outsider with twice your HD, selected per-encounter for whatever fits that encounter best. You can probably abuse it in insane ways people would never use regular Gate due to the XP cost, too -- for instance, your routine at the beginning of every day could be to Gate in a really really high-level natural casting outsider and have them buff you while you raise their caster level even higher with Caster Lens.

(Some DMs might allow a Truenamer to qualify for epic spellcasting, too, since Gate is a 9th level spell and they can cast it -- though obviously you'd want to find a way to add Spellcraft to your list.)

I mean, let's be fair, you're not a Truenamer at that point, you're that-guy-who-has-Gate-as-an-SLA. But whatever.

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I would not allow Epic Spellcasting, Conjuctive Gate is not Gate.

You're not JUST "that-guy-who-has-Gate-as-an-SLA", you're "that-guy-who-has-Gate-as-an-SLA who can also do anything a truenamer can do". All the spellcaster assistance tricks and various words still work, and you can do them in the background with your suddenly totally absurd Truenamer Check while your solar or balor or whatever friend beats the crap out of people.

Well, it doesn't matter if it is gate or not...it matters if it counts as arcane or divine. RAW, I don't believe truenaming is either(no ACF, no real basis for divine), and offhand, Im not sure how to make it one. If it doesn't meet that, then you're SOL regardless.

That said, once you have no real reason to go futher in the truenamer class, you can work on say, an accelerated casting PrC. Nine levels of Ur-Priest is a fairly straightforward way to qualify, and with the ability to gate in the solutions to all your problems, you shouldn't be exactly weak in the meantime.

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Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth

He also didn't choose or use any metamagic or item creation feats, for all future reference, the former because "they aren't really helpful" and the latter because "nothing is worth paying XP."

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That is a disturbingly common pair of sentiments I've run into. :smallconfused:

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Originally Posted by Doug Lampert

I would not allow Epic Spellcasting, Conjuctive Gate is not Gate.

You're not JUST "that-guy-who-has-Gate-as-an-SLA", you're "that-guy-who-has-Gate-as-an-SLA who can also do anything a truenamer can do". All the spellcaster assistance tricks and various words still work, and you can do them in the background with your suddenly totally absurd Truenamer Check while your solar or balor or whatever friend beats the crap out of people.

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You can do them, yeah, but they're going to completely pale compared to whatever you Gated in. A handful of of mostly level 3-4 spells which you can't spam thanks to the Law of Sequence, vs. Gate?

Plus, outside of combat, Gate as a utility spell absolutely blows the wheels off of everything else you can do (and, honestly, everything anyone else in your party can do short of Epic Spellcasting, more likely than not.) If there's a spell for it, chances are you can Gate something in that can cast that spell... and dozens more besides. Hell, is there a reason you can't just Gate in an epic spellcasting outsider to use epic spellcasting for you?

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Originally Posted by Coidzor

That is a disturbingly common pair of sentiments I've run into. :smallconfused:

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It's easy to see why. Most of the core Metamagic feats, if you use them stupidly on the most obvious spells, are not that great. Empowered Fireball? Eh. And at first glance, Quicken doesn't look that great -- spend two spell slots, one higher-level than it would otherwise be? Why not just cast a probably-more-powerful higher level spell?

It's only at higher levels, when you realize you probably won't be able to get through all your spell slots anyway, that things like Quicken and Extend begin to show their worth. This isn't obvious, though, to a new player who hasn't seen how things actually play out.

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Originally Posted by Aquillion

You can do them, yeah, but they're going to completely pale compared to whatever you Gated in. A handful of of mostly level 3-4 spells which you can't spam thanks to the Law of Sequence, vs. Gate?

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one thing gated in at a time, mind, so the buffing still can help. not much, to be sure, but.

Enjoyed reading the entire guide itself (assuming you didn't extend it beyond page 1 of the thread), and am now subscribing just so I can see the hilarious name show up in my feed when it's bumped. As a fan of Mummy: the Resurrection, where the Nomenclature Hekau has the same theory as this with a much better execution, I find the concept of the Truenamer fascinating (espeically with the "sourcecode of the universe" flavor), and its poor execution terrible, so seeing it gone over with a fine-tooth comb was fun.

I wonder about Xtomjames's posts on page 1; it sounds as though he maybe guessed that Truenaming worked the same way its authors thought it worked but forgot to specify in the (we've established, incredibly poorly written) rules, and then got in such a huff when people panned the class that Wotco wouldn't let them publish clarifications lest they insult the audience, its mother, and its dog enough to affect profits. Certainly if you could cast spells just by researching their truenames that would justify how hard it is, and it's a cool enough idea that I could see someone actually allowing it in the right kind of campaign.

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Originally Posted by willpell

I wonder about Xtomjames's posts on page 1; it sounds as though he maybe guessed that Truenaming worked the same way its authors thought it worked but forgot to specify in the (we've established, incredibly poorly written) rules, and then got in such a huff when people panned the class that Wotco wouldn't let them publish clarifications lest they insult the audience, its mother, and its dog enough to affect profits. Certainly if you could cast spells just by researching their truenames that would justify how hard it is, and it's a cool enough idea that I could see someone actually allowing it in the right kind of campaign.

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Honestly, even if you can get past the fact that the class is terribly-written (leaving out vital information, powers written in ways that sometimes make it impossible to figure out what they're really intended to do, etc) the Truenamer's basic mechanics are bad.

The fundamental impossible-to-fix problem with the class, underneath all its other issues, is that making skill checks to activate every single power you want to use is a terrible idea, since it's not a very valid way to give your enemies a chance to defend -- which, in turn, means that any offensive power requires at least two succeed-or-your-turn-is-wasted rolls, while powers that should be trivial still require one roll. Even aside from the balance of the numbers, that's just annoying on a physical level -- constantly rolling so many dice even to take very simple actions gets old fast, and it's frustrating when you have to constantly make sequences of rolls where any one of them will cause your action to fail.

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Originally Posted by Aquillion

Honestly, even if you can get past the fact that the class is terribly-written (leaving out vital information, powers written in ways that sometimes make it impossible to figure out what they're really intended to do, etc) the Truenamer's basic mechanics are bad.

The fundamental impossible-to-fix problem with the class, underneath all its other issues, is that making skill checks to activate every single power you want to use is a terrible idea, since it's not a very valid way to give your enemies a chance to defend -- which, in turn, means that any offensive power requires at least two succeed-or-your-turn-is-wasted rolls, while powers that should be trivial still require one roll. Even aside from the balance of the numbers, that's just annoying on a physical level -- constantly rolling so many dice even to take very simple actions gets old fast, and it's frustrating when you have to constantly make sequences of rolls where any one of them will cause your action to fail.

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I understand where you're coming from, but I still love the thought of a skill-based casting system. The Truenamer has a lot of flaws, but it's still a vaguely workable system that allows pure skill to create magical and powerful effects. I love that flavor, and the idea that casting a spell isn't a sure thing. Heck, I think that adding a skill check to normal spellcasting, while a bit cumbersome and time-consuming, is a way to balance it out a bit.

Honestly, I think WotC came close to hitting the mark when they made Beckon Person. The spell works when you hit a flat DC 15 Truespeak check, but the higher your check is, the longer it lasts. You'd have to rebuild the system from the ground up, but I think that has more potential than the binary nonsense we've got now.

Actually make me want to play a Truenamer for kicks.

Maybe fixing it/making a similar but better class will be my first attempt at making a base class.

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Originally Posted by Zaq

Honestly, I think WotC came close to hitting the mark when they made Beckon Person. The spell works when you hit a flat DC 15 Truespeak check, but the higher your check is, the longer it lasts. You'd have to rebuild the system from the ground up, but I think that has more potential than the binary nonsense we've got now.

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I've been messing around with a preparation/check/recharge system: you prepare a couple spells that you can use basically at will. When casting them, you make a check. Your check determines any possible augments the spell might have and determines how long you have to wait before you can use the spell again (generally measured in rounds). I've not put it to paper, but I'm thinking about it.

Oh hey Zaq I see you still haven't posted sample builds for the Truenamer in Post 10. Well in my post 111 I presented a gestalt Truenamer that could pull off a high high check without nightstick-ish type abuse. You could use it if you want.

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Originally Posted by Snowbluff

Actually make me want to play a Truenamer for kicks.

Maybe fixing it/making a similar but better class will be my first attempt at making a base class.

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There are two very good fixes for it brewed right here in the playground -Kyeudo's and Kellus' older one (which I can't seem to find.) I prefer the former personally but they both get good reviews.

Not to stop you from doing your own thing of course, but if you want to see what the Truenamer should have looked like, those are great places to start.

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Originally Posted by Snowbluff

Actually make me want to play a Truenamer for kicks.

Maybe fixing it/making a similar but better class will be my first attempt at making a base class.

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Well, can't say I didn't warn you about what you've got ahead of you, but if you're really into it, let me know how it goes!

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Originally Posted by TurtleKing

Oh hey Zaq I see you still haven't posted sample builds for the Truenamer in Post 10. Well in my post 111 I presented a gestalt Truenamer that could pull off a high high check without nightstick-ish type abuse. You could use it if you want.

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I've been meaning to add builds (and a few other tweaks), but I haven't had the mental strength to put the effort into it that it deserves. If I half-ass it, I'm no better than WotC, right? Who knows, though. I'll see what I can do.

As a side note for optimizing your truespeak check at low levels I seem to have found a perfectly legit option you've overlooked. Fiendish Codex II offers the Pact Certain (pg24), a faustian contract in which a character sells his soul to a devil for any of a couple different possible rewards. Mechanically this exchange can get you up to a permanent +7 untyped bonus to any class skill (truespeak obviously) and doesn't actually cost you anything but the ability to be brought back by resurrection magics. It doesn't even impact your alignment by RAW (though I could see some DMs disagreeing depending on your presumed motivation for such blatant power grubbing). Of course, anyone planning to take the vile feats and use sacrifice rules may just consider this icing on the cake. For themantic fun you can always try to avoid your eternal destination via a friendly (or pissed off) Bereft and his word of unmaking. :smallwink:

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Originally Posted by journeyman

It doesn't even impact your alignment by RAW

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Blatant lies. FCII, page 23, under The Pact Certain, second paragraph:

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Mortals signing such pacts immediately switch alignment to lawful evil

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Originally Posted by RedWarrior0

Blatant lies. FCII, page 23, under The Pact Certain, second paragraph:

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Well, if you're already Lawful Evil, or don't care about alignment, or are Good enough that you can work it off, it's still fine.

Good catch, though.

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Originally Posted by Qwertystop

Well, if you're already Lawful Evil, or don't care about alignment, or are Good enough that you can work it off, it's still fine.

Good catch, though.

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You've made a bit of an alignment fallacy there. Taking the Pact doesn't set some cosmic scale to "Evil", which your character could then do good deeds to change back to "Good". It makes you malicious. It makes you hateful. It changes the very core of your personality to be selfish and cruel and dark.

Being changed to Evil isn't like staining your shirt. It's like changing clothes.

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Originally Posted by RaggedAngel

Being changed to Evil isn't like staining your shirt. It's like changing clothes.

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It's more like getting a tattoo. Hard to get rid of and fairly obvious to those who know you.

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Originally Posted by RaggedAngel

You've made a bit of an alignment fallacy there. Taking the Pact doesn't set some cosmic scale to "Evil", which your character could then do good deeds to change back to "Good". It makes you malicious. It makes you hateful. It changes the very core of your personality to be selfish and cruel and dark.

Being changed to Evil isn't like staining your shirt. It's like changing clothes.

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Yeah, later on in the thing it says how, if you want to change back, you've got to forfeit any benefits from the pact. Plus, you'll probably peeve the devils a leetle bit.

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Originally Posted by RaggedAngel

You've made a bit of an alignment fallacy there. Taking the Pact doesn't set some cosmic scale to "Evil", which your character could then do good deeds to change back to "Good". It makes you malicious. It makes you hateful. It changes the very core of your personality to be selfish and cruel and dark.

Being changed to Evil isn't like staining your shirt. It's like changing clothes.

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Ah. That wasn't specified, so I misunderstood. There are things that are one alignment morally but detect as another (Demons, Devils, and Archons can "convert"), so I thought this could be kind of like that: The alignment is set to that, and you will forever detect as Lawful Evil.

I'm amused by the fact that a Chaotic Evil character will become Lawful Evil if they sell their soul.

"RAaaah! I, Grognar Fleshrender the Barbarian, will do anything to get more power so that I rend more flesh! Now I sell soul for more vicious fleshrending power! There, I sign stupid contract and... suddenly, Grognar Fleshrender feel need to wear suit. Maybe switch to rending flesh only within acceptable legal framework."

Also, if Grognar should become chaotic again, the deal is off. Hmm.

Well Zaq that is fine. Note thet since the the Tome and Wish have the same bonus not stacking the mod on mine goes down by about 2 or 3 sitting at 77 or 78. A static mod so rolla 1d20+78 with using a feat, utterance, class feature, and a spell could a +34-39 to the result 1/day. After that you only have the spell and utterance to boost it by 25 for as many times as can be done. Just the base modifer will allow you to get a utterance off on a Dream Larva with CR 31 before you have to start rolling. Yes I just said you can get a "free" utterance off on a CR 31 yet you are gestalt level 20. Still overall potent that also possesses 8 levels of Factotum fun as well as all of Chameleon. The Marshal dip even adds a little extra with the Skill Focus Diplomacy so can be party face even better. The gestalt build is in my post 111.

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Originally Posted by Zaq

The spell works when you hit a flat DC 15 Truespeak check, but the higher your check is, the longer it lasts. You'd have to rebuild the system from the ground up, but I think that has more potential than the binary nonsense we've got now.

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This.

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Originally Posted by RaggedAngel

You've made a bit of an alignment fallacy there. Taking the Pact doesn't set some cosmic scale to "Evil", which your character could then do good deeds to change back to "Good". It makes you malicious. It makes you hateful. It changes the very core of your personality to be selfish and cruel and dark.

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And? If you fail to roleplay your new alignment by continuing to do Good (or Chaotic) deeds, your DM may rule that you no longer fulfill your alignment. Which, as long as you're not using any alignment-dependent items or classes, is completely without effect. (Granted the pact we're discussing is such an "item", but it still means you could lean on the pact for a while until your truespeak skill improves enough that you can live without the bonus, and then break the pact - maybe leave a sealed letter to yourself with instructions to break it when you kill a monster of a certain threshold of nastiness without aid, as an in-universe level-meter. The letter then tells you that you no longer need the pact and that you should resume your original personality.) Alignment only matters if you buy into the team spirit; it doesn't actually force you to behave in any particular way.

It's quite fluffy, too: a hero realizing that he doesn't need a particular crutch to fight is a classic plot, more so if that crutch is an infernal contract. The devil won't be happy though...which means sequels!

Love this thread.:smallbiggrin:
But i think of truenamer as more of a test.
As in: You now you can min-max when you play truenamer and are still the most high damaging person in your party and can outclass even the wizard at level 10.
Maybe its because im the most experienced person in the group.:smallredface:

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Originally Posted by Kymme123

Love this thread.:smallbiggrin:
But i think of truenamer as more of a test.
As in: You now you can min-max when you play truenamer and are still the most high damaging person in your party and can outclass even the wizard at level 10.
Maybe its because im the most experienced person in the group.:smallredface:

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Yeah, some people forget, but poorly-played Wizards really are squishy, and they really do burn through their useful spells quite quickly. A Wizard pulling straight from Core with no Prc's and little thought put into spell preparation can be taken down by most classes if they're manned by someone who knows what they're doing. The Truenamer can certainly contribute more than a Wizard if they suck.

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Originally Posted by Kymme123

Love this thread.:smallbiggrin:
But i think of truenamer as more of a test.
As in: You now you can min-max when you play truenamer and are still the most high damaging person in your party and can outclass even the wizard at level 10.
Maybe its because im the most experienced person in the group.:smallredface:

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That could just as easily mean that your wizard sucks.
This is why objective measures of power (e.g. tier lists) use external benchmarks rather than stacking PC up against PC.

Decent guide but a few points.

1) In the cheese category you should add using Archers Eye to gain Spring Attack and trade it away using Chaos Shuffle for unlimited feats. It's debatable rules wise thanks to gaining the "use" of the feat but no more so than the rest of Truenamers funky wording.

2) Expunge the Supernatural and Spurn the Supernatural can be hideously nice when you use them to strip an enemy of favored supernatural abilities. Use it to strip a Druid of Wildshape for example. Spurn is better most of the time, and it's always situational but they aren't exactly bad.

3) Unname is a standard Save-or-Die that get's past most of the defenses against such spells, is one of the only ways to destroy artifacts (grab a no name orc, learn it's true name, give it an artifact, Unname it, and the artifact is irrevocably gone), and is perhaps the most effective way to keep an enemy permanently dead. And arguably a creature who has been Unnamed can't have their Truename researched as it has been erased from creation. If you want someone really dead, learn their true name, Rename them something else, and then Unname them. Only you will ever be able to provide their true name to resurrect them.

4) Truename Dispel is the best spell in 3.5 for removing hostile magic from an individual. Learn your own True Name (and those of your party) and you can remove anything you want from yourself or your allies at the cost of 1 spell. And if you know your targets True Name you can rip off (without save or SR) all of their magical defenses. It's honestly one of the few ways to get past a high end prepared casters defenses.

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Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy

...is one of the only ways to destroy artifacts (grab a no name orc, learn it's true name, give it an artifact, Unname it, and the artifact is irrevocably gone), and is perhaps the most effective way to keep an enemy permanently dead. And arguably a creature who has been Unnamed can't have their Truename researched as it has been erased from creation. If you want someone really dead, learn their true name, Rename them something else, and then Unname them. Only you will ever be able to provide their true name to resurrect them.

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...brilliant. Bet Gandalf wished he'd thought of that one to wipe the Ring.

For your second point though, it's not foolproof - you can explicitly RoR an nonexistent target if they've been Unnamed (see the sidebar on 261) so you can't keep someone dead with this even if you Renamed them previously.

But they don't come back with any equipment either, so the artifact stays gone :smallamused:

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Originally Posted by Psyren

...brilliant. Bet Gandalf wished he'd thought of that one to wipe the Ring.

For your second point though, it's not foolproof - you can explicitly RoR an nonexistent target if they've been Unnamed (see the sidebar on 261) so you can't keep someone dead with this even if you Renamed them previously.

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Yes but RoR requires, as it's true name component, that you speak the creatures current true name. All the Unnamed sidebar states is that the target is changed for RoR, not the true name component.

So if the person doesn't know the old Truename, arguably RoR wouldn't work.

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Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy

Yes but RoR requires, as it's true name component, that you speak the creatures current true name. All the Unnamed sidebar states is that the target is changed for RoR, not the true name component.

So if the person doesn't know the old Truename, arguably RoR wouldn't work.

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No, reread the sidebar - it explicitly states that this use of RoR is intended for beings that had their truename removed. So rather than speak their existing truename (which nobody knows except the person who Unnamed them to begin with) you create a brand new one for them. It goes on to say that this is an explicit exception to the RoR, thereby nullifying the paradox that would result in needing to know the name of something that has no name.

In other words, the truename component for this version of RoR is the new name you plan to give that person, not the existing name.


You can also duplicate RoR with Wish (it is 8th level) and bypass the Truename component that way.

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Originally Posted by Psyren

No, reread the sidebar - it explicitly states that this use of RoR is intended for beings that had their truename removed. So rather than speak their existing truename (which nobody knows except the person who Unnamed them to begin with) you create a brand new one for them. It goes on to say that this is an explicit exception to the RoR, thereby nullifying the paradox that would result in needing to know the name of something that has no name.

In other words, the truename component for this version of RoR is the new name you plan to give that person, not the existing name.

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Incorrect. Probably RAI but by RAW all the sidebar alters is the target clause on RoR. It doesn't touch the true name component.

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Originally Posted by Sidebar

this is an intentional exception to the target described in the ritual of renaming spell

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You can also duplicate RoR with Wish (it is 8th level) and bypass the Truename component that way.

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True, hadn't thought about that one. Nice catch. It's still one of the most permanent ways to deal with an enemy.

one workaround to the Laws of Suck and Regurgitate is to allow truenamers to research utterances, or learn them off of scrolls, much like a wizard. give them enough variety to work with, and it doesn't really matter all that much if if they can only use a particular utterance once at a time.