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  1. - Top - End - #181
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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth View Post
    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.
    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.

  2. - Top - End - #182
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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    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.
    Last edited by GoodbyeSoberDay; 2011-10-05 at 12:12 PM.
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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay View Post
    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.
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay View Post
    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.
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth View Post
    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.
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by Grendus View Post
    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?
    I don't know, but I'm guessing they didn't...
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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Self Scrubbed for Extremely Poor Taste in Humor.
    Last edited by Cieyrin; 2011-10-05 at 06:20 PM.
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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    That was in very poor taste.
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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth View Post
    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.
    I also want to sig this.
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    ...though Talla does her best to sound objective and impartial, it doesn't cover stuff like "ask a 9-year-old to tank for the party."
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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by gkathellar View Post
    That was in very poor taste.
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote 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.
    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.

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

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth View Post
    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.
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by BobVosh View Post
    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.
    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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    I'm going to be honest, "the Welsh became a Great Power and conquered Germany" is almost exactly the opposite of the explanation I was expecting

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Doug Lampert View Post
    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.
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

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

    Quote Originally Posted by GoodbyeSoberDay View Post
    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.
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by Aquillion View Post
    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.
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by Doug Lampert View Post
    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
    ...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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by RaggedAngel View Post
    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"?
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by Tyndmyr View Post
    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.
    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.
    Last edited by RaggedAngel; 2011-10-12 at 12:45 PM.
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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

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

    Quote Originally Posted by RedWarrior0 View Post
    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.
    ...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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by RaggedAngel View Post
    ...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.
    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.
    Last edited by Doug Lampert; 2011-10-12 at 12:53 PM.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by RedWarrior0 View Post
    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.
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by RaggedAngel View Post
    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"?
    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.
    Last edited by Aquillion; 2011-10-13 at 12:11 PM.

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Aquillion View Post
    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.
    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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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Lord_Gareth View Post
    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."
    That is a disturbingly common pair of sentiments I've run into.
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    Default Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers

    Quote Originally Posted by Doug Lampert View Post
    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.
    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?

    Quote Originally Posted by Coidzor View Post
    That is a disturbingly common pair of sentiments I've run into.
    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.
    Last edited by Aquillion; 2011-10-13 at 07:12 PM.

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