Quote Originally Posted by willpell View Post
Can you summarize the differences between the two fixes? Also I have at least one of them on my subscription list already, but it still wouldn't suck if you could provide links to both for easy comparison.
Let's see...

Kellus' 'fix' is less of an actual fix, and more of a rewrite from the ground up - he basically made something completely new and simply called it Truenaming. He makes very significant alterations; you can follow the link to read the whole thing but I've summarized some below.

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- Making all utterances Ex (and move actions.) They aren't subject to saves, SR, AoO, nothing. They also affect any creature within line of sight regardless of actual range. He did create a stat called "name resistance" that lets some creatures resist truespeak, and "namelessness" to make some immune.

- Abolishing the Laws completely.

- Introducing a concept called "Absolute Limit" based on your levels of Truenamer and Cha modifier that sets a hard limit on what you can affect with Utterances. This limit is compared to a target's current HP rather than their HD/CR (it was modeled on the Power Word spells), so you end up with weaker monsters being more susceptible to Truespeak than healthy/stronger ones. Against monsters with more HP than your absolute limit, Utterances are impossible no matter your check. You can augment this limit by boosting your Truespeak DC, but similar to psionic augmentation, you can't boost by more than your truenamer level. (Willing creatures ignore this limit; great for buffing allies but invites some familiar abuse regarding willing targets that we have seen before.)

- Creating a broader category for truespeaking called vocalizations, of which utterances are now one subcategory. The other two are recitations, and a brand new one called incantations. As in ToM, Recitations are self-only utterances; only now, they function more like ToB stances, giving you a certain buff for as long as you want, but disabling your ability to Truespeak while active (and also requiring your swift action to maintain each round.) Incantations are abilities you can use to affect objects or the terrain (akin to the Crafted Tool and Perfected Map lexicons from the first system) and are a way for you to do something when facing a foe outside your absolute limit.

- making Truespeak DCs specific to the utterance vocalization being spoken rather than based on the target (similar to epic spells each having a unique Spellcraft DC.) Two vocalizations of the same level may have different base DCs based on the power of what each is doing. Individual vocalizations may also have their own augments, which let you raise the Truespeak DC to add or strengthen effects - this is still subject to the augmentation cap mentioned above.


I don't know if there were other Truenamer fixes before Kellus' but his was among the first to gain popularity. Thus it has been suggested most often simply by being around longer.

Though I freely acknowledge that it works far better in practice than WotC's Truenamer did, I'm not a big fan of a lot of his changes - either from a fluff or crunch standpoint. For instance, "Namelessness" makes no sense to me - in the language of the universe, everything that exists must have a Name of some kind, even one that may be unusable by or unknown to mortals. Absolute Limit was based around the assumption that players would optimize the heck out of their truespeak check; it prevents that, but it leaves players at higher levels unable to affect monsters with utterances at all until they're severely wounded, then when they are, bypassing every single defense they have. It's far too swingy for my tastes. And without the Laws, it doesn't feel or play the same - for instance, if you can make the check, you can spam the same utterance ad infinitum, which forced Kellus to make some changes like abolishing healing Utterances, robbing the game of yet another non-divine healing class.


Kyeudo's fix, meanwhile, kept all the original flavor and mechanics of the class intact; it has pretty much everything that was in ToM, just with the math actually working now. With the Laws in place to control spammability, effects like healing and restoration are easier to balance. And he invented better items and feats, such as Inflections (metamagic) and truenaming consumables (e.g. bottled echos) that other classes could use or that could gradually introduce Truenaming to an ongoing campaign.

So while I respect the efforts of both posters, there's a reason I tout Kyeudo's a little more than Kellus'.