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2011-10-05, 11:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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.
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2011-10-05, 12:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2008
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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.
Originally Posted by The Giant
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2011-10-05, 12:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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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2011-10-05, 02:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2005
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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2011-10-05, 02:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2010
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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2011-10-05, 02:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2011
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- Below sea level
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
Warlock Poetry?
Or ways to use me in game?
Better grab a drink...
Currently ruining Strahd's day - Avatar by the Outstanding Smuchsmuch
First Ordained Jr. Tormlet by LoyalPaladin
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2011-10-05, 03:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2007
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- Wisconsin
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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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2011-10-05, 04:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2010
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- Beyond the Ninth Wave
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
That was in very poor taste.
Originally Posted by KKL
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2011-10-05, 05:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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2011-10-05, 06:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2007
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- Wisconsin
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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2011-10-07, 05:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2010
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
Originally Posted by Zaq
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.
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2011-10-11, 10:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2011
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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2011-10-12, 06:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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.Originally Posted by Alabenson
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2011-10-12, 10:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2008
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- NYC
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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2011-10-12, 11:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
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- Singapore
Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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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2011-10-12, 12:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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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.
Originally Posted by The Giant
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2011-10-12, 12:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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 ofmy signaturehomebrew.
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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2011-10-12, 12:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2006
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- Meridianville AL
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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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2011-10-12, 12:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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2011-10-12, 12:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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2011-10-12, 12:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2010
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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.
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2011-10-12, 12:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2011
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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2011-10-12, 12:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2010
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
...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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2011-10-12, 12:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2006
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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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2011-10-12, 12:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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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2011-10-13, 12:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
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- Singapore
Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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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2011-10-13, 01:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2006
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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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2011-10-13, 01:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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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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2011-10-13, 01:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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2011-10-13, 06:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: In the Beginning Was the Word, and the Word Was Suck: A Guide to Truenamers
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?
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.