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

[speeddemon]

Well I thought I should mention that I am now playing a truenamer in my campaign (red hand of doom in case you were wondering). You might remember (or more likely not but go back a page and look that post up) that I mentioned before here that I was excited to try out the truenamer I built. Then I built some other characters and laughed and laughed and laughed at how I thought I would want to play a trunamer over my shadow hand pixie swordsage or my wolf totem whirling frenzy mongrelfolk dragonborn lolthtouched mineral warrior barbarian. Even my saner builds made it look like a joke. Then comes the game day and since we had decided on it at the begining, everyone but me (being the most experienced player of the group and another was too new to try it) had been given the name of another person in the group and told to make a character for them. I had already made a character for someone but still had plenty of characters made, so I waited to see what everyone else had to decide what was the best fit for the group. In retrospect I really shouldn't have shown them my truenamer beforehand and pointed out just how much of a joke the mechanics around them were.

We find out the party consits of a duskblade/fighter with a bunch of feats and an odd combo where he runs around the battlefield provoking opprotunity attacks and when the enemies miss him due to his high ac, he gets to make trip attempt against them with improved trip and a flail, a half-orc druid whos antisocialness boarders on a mental disorder who took the shapeshift varient to be slightly balanced, a lurk with a speed focus the ability to run up walls and a bunch of utility powers, a swordsage with a focus in desert wind who will eventually (like two levels or so) prestige class into master of the nine, and a totemist/swordsage who has insane trade offs to lower his speed but uses the blink dog meld bound to his totem to get around that (and we pray each session that the DM doesn't get the chance to target him with a dispel magic). So with that large group what role are they looking to fill? A healer. Who do they remeber can heal? My truenamer (I foolishly mentioned that out of combat healing was one of the few things he could do well). Do i have ANY other builds that can heal? Nope, looks like I forgot to take that into account with my other builds. And thus I am now playing a truenamer. Thus begin the golorious adventures of Vanier, the Illumian Truenamer, Huzzah . Overall though I'm having fun and the group isin't too optimized so my truenamer isin't getting pushed to the sidelines, and his healing did come in handy, especially with my truespeak check being high enough that I can heal people plenty of times per day (If anyones interested he has a +35 to his truespeak checks and WoN lesser and WoN moderate). Combat wise he actually isin't too bad (though I have no magic weapons or armor due to spending like 90% of my starting gear on an amulet of silvertounge +5 and a custom competence item ring of truespeak +10) using a composite bow a knowledge devotion to deal damage whenever he finds something he wants to hurt, but not so badly as to blow a reversed WoN moderate w/ mortalbane. Haven't really got the chance to use any of my other powers that much, though I do find that Hidden Knowledge gets used up fast as I make a lot of knowledge checks (what with wanting to know about the campaign world and storyline and combat-wise for knowledge devotion).

Anyways to make a long story short and to get back to the main reason why I posted here, I remembered that Zaq said that anyone who got their DM to accept a masterwork item that was this handbook would get mentioned here. I managed to convince my DM to allow my character to use a masterwork tool which was a book titled; In the Begining Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers. Also if there's any interest in a journal about my adventures as a Truenamer I could make a journal for you folks to read, with any thoughts or ideas I get on truenaming (like currently I wish to try out when we have the chance, arguing to my DM that since I can use Utterances when unable to speak or make a sound I should be able to do so silently and thus make the reversed half of Hidden Truth useful, albiet with a 20% chance of failure) or how well each utterance is working for me, where it's best and where it's worst. Also there will probably a bit of stuff on the others too (like the "Old Man" who was mysteriously worked his way into all our characters backstorys, much to our DM chagrin), but it would mostly focus on my truenamer. Though anything I come across may be highly subjective as the DM will change monster stats and the like through play so this isin't going to be quite an exact, every detail kept runthrough of the Red Hand of Doom, though she mentioned she's going to cut back on that a bit (stupid Strength boosted to 26 mooks nearly annihilated us). Also thanks to everyone hear on all the useful tips you've given me (like that ring of silence thing that I'll definetly have to look into). It's really helped me show the true shining mediocrity of this class .