Truenamer & Factotum question

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Ok i need some info here. One of the playera really wants to be a truenamer//factotum and has argued a lvl 5 gestalt of a tier 3 and tier 7? Is not op.

But also how do i help him buff himselfup a little bit.

We are potentially having a drow noble dread vampire in the party and he ia the only one who cannot optimize himself and i have no knowledge of truenamer.

He is gaining the advanced template from pf a +4 to all scores and a +2 natural armor

[Inevitability]

Truenamers can be really bad. (that is, unplayable)
But, with careful optimizing, they can be really good. (that is, game-breaking)

By what I'm seeing of this player, he has found a way to make the truenamer game-breaking good, so I advise against allowing this character. If you really want us to say something meaningful about it, tell more about his build.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

We are using a 32 point buy.
He is a human
This is a 3.P game allowing in both materials

We are level 5.

Exactly how game breaking? In comparison to his drow noble dread vampire party member?

[Red Fel]

First rule: If one of your players wants to use a mechanic with which you have no familiarity, I strongly recommend that you either familiarize yourself with that mechanic in detail, or disallow the mechanic until such time as you feel familiar. It is all too easy to pull the wool over the eyes of a DM, deliberately or accidentally, and employ new mechanics (e.g. psionics, maneuvers, soulmelds, truespeech) in game-breaking or otherwise incorrect ways.

You've said you know nothing about Truespeech. Don't allow it in your games until you do.

Assuming that you're going to ignore my perfectly useful advice, here's the bottom line. The Truenamer is a skill-oriented class that uses Truespeak skill checks to perform various abilities, called Utterances. It can reuse these Utterances freely, but pursuant to various rules that limit who and what they can target, and how often they can use them, subject to increasing DCs and other limitations. The DCs ramp up faster than a PC's ability to increase their Truespeak skill ranks goes up. As a result, the class is considered "broken" in that it becomes increasingly harder, not easier, to perform the class' core function as the PC levels up, and the class actively punishes classing away from Truenamer.

On the other hand, Truenamer is considered game-breakingly broken for two reasons. First, the capstone, Say My Name and I Am There, is just awesome. Seriously cool. Second, there is an Utterance that reproduces the effects of the Gate spell, without need for any components. Not even an xp cost. Yes, you get to cast Gate pretty much at will. That's the broken part.

If you don't grasp how the mechanics work - and with Truenamer, you really need to understand the Laws which govern Utterances, and it's a pain - you shouldn't be letting a player have access to a class that gives you essentially at-will Gate.

[ahenobarbi]

We are using a 32 point buy.
He is a human
This is a 3.P game allowing in both materials

We are level 5.

Exactly how game breaking? In comparison to his drow noble dread vampire party member?

Wait, what? Drow ha LA +2, Vampire has LA +8 so even with only one class level that character would be have effective level 11, not 5. Are you giving them races/templates for free? Does it work differently in 3.P? Do "Drow Noble" and "Dread Vampire" have lower LA?

I'm not very familiar with Truenamers but I red that they can be decent if they optimize they Truespeach check. And become game breaking wehn they get at-will and costless Gate at level 20.

Also Factotum is a good class on it's own =_=

[Cloud]

With the exception of Gate at level 20, a Truenamer that can use there utterances an infinite times per day would still only be tier 4. A barely optimised Warlock is more scary then a Gouda filled truenamer. Utterances are that weak. A +114 or whatever to truespeak keeps the class mediocre at best, you can't break a truenamer, or rather it's independent of the truespeak mechanic and relies on the poor wording of utterances.

If you want to make truenaming useable without doing work to change the utterances, I'd go with;
- The base DC to speak a creature’s truename is 10 + 2 x level of the utterance + CR.
- The Law of Resistance increases following DCs by 4, not 2.
- The Law of Sequence no longer exists.
- Truenamers gain speak unto the masses at level 3, but with a maximum of 2 targets. This increases to 3 targets at level 5, 4 targets at level 7, 5 targets at level 9, 6 targets at level 11, 7 targets at level 13, becoming unlimited at level 15.

On the first two points, you can increase the base DC to 15 instead of 10 if the increase is only 2. You can keep the base DC 10 and the increase only 2 if failing also increases the DC. Speak unto the masses can have the levels moved around or whatever, but the point is they need it much sooner. ...Plenty more changes you could do, but I won't hijack the thread with that. XD

Anyway the Factotum is super solid on it's own, just allow the Font of Inspiration feat.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

I am borrowing his tome of magic now to learn more and i mean to say no experience in optimizing a truenamer i have heard of them before.

How would a gestalt of factotum and truenamer fair?

[eggynack]

Truenamer isn't very powerful at all without gate, so if you're not hitting level 20, then you really shouldn't worry about that part. The big synergy between factotum and truenamer will probably be that you can get out a lot of utterances in a turn, between quicken utterance and cunning surge. It's a combination that's unlikely to be OP, though that always depends on the party makeup. If we're talking about a caster party, I wouldn't worry about it at all. If we're talking a bunch of melee guys, then a factotum alone is more than powerful enough without gestalt. Truenamer isn't tier 7, incidentally. They're either untiered or tier four depending on how you look at it, with a truenamer who's able to consistently make their checks falling into the latter category.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'd allow the gestalt, but drop the magic parts of the Factotum (Arcane Dilettante and Opportunistic Piety) to compensate. Given the weakness of Truenaming, it seems a fair enough trade. And given the strength of Factotum, you shouldn't worry too much about having an excessively weak character. Just make sure that the Paragnostic Assembly (Complete Champion) exists in your campaign world-- it's good for a +10 to Truenaming checks.

All about Truenaming.

[XmonkTad]

Gate is not the only broken thing a truenamer can do. "Rebuild Item" (lexicon of the crafted tool 3, available at level 11) can turn certain one use magic items into multi-use magic items. You can get a skull talisman (Frost) of gate or wish or whatever and just keep reusing it. In a gestalt game, this synergies extremely well with a warlock, who can then craft skull talismans (or whatever) of any spell.

Other than that, truenamer is broken in the "doesn't work" sense and he should play something else. Factotum is a great class.

[bekeleven]

I'd allow the gestalt, but drop the magic parts of the Factotum (Arcane Dilettante and Opportunistic Piety) to compensate. Given the weakness of Truenaming, it seems a fair enough trade.

...I'd just take the base factotum.

That said: Factotum has an incredibly high optimization ceiling, because all of its powers have very high applicability or are only sketchily mechanically defined. It's easy to argue that factotums are tier 2 (limited game-breaking) although I've never seen it argued that they are tier 1. Whatever you do, don't ask Tippy what he can do with a level 8 factotum holding a scroll of Shapechange.

[mabriss lethe]

As long as you familiarize yourself with the rules for Truename magic, I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's not a terribly useful form of magic unless the game gets into high enough levels (20) for Conjunctive Gate shenanigans.

I can only envision a few tricks that this gestalt could bring to the table, and none of them are incredibly impressive.
-Cunning surge + Utterance (+quicken utterance at higher levels) You could let loose several utterances at once, but a factotum's native spellcasting would trump pretty much anything this could throw out.

-Cunning Knowledge + Truespeech skill: Give yourself a bonus 1/day on truespeech checks. Useful if you really really want an utterance to succeed.

And that's about it. Factotum will help cover some holes in the truenamer class, but truenamer itself doesn't bring a whole lot to the table in a gestalt build.

[eggynack]

A factotum's native spellcasting would trump pretty much anything this could throw out.

Yes, but only as long as you still have access to it. At 8th level, if you cunning surge out two spells in a single turn, that's two thirds of your magical arsenal for the day, gone in 6 seconds. Having access to lower quality magical effects, along with the ability to toss them out fast, can be quite a useful thing on occasion.

[Envyus]

Truenamers seem better fit for NPC's in my mind.

[Eldaran]

Exactly how game breaking? In comparison to his drow noble dread vampire party member?

I think you need to explain how this works. Dread Vampire is an extremely strong template, and Drow Noble is a pretty strong race too. Are you letting them have this for free? If so, the gestalt with a Truenamer pales in comparison to what the other player is gaining.

[Xerlith]

Just so you know, the Drow Noble race is not meant to be played as a player character - it is meant mostly as an encounter.

Not because it's too strong. Because at 5th level the guy will have only one class level (Drow Noble is a +1 LA in Pathfinder, Dread Vampire is +3 CR, so+3 LA as well, making the character 4 levels behind the rest) and most probably be a bit on the weaker side. That said, let's get back to the Factotum.

Let the guy play it as it is. The Factotum should carry all the Truenamer's dead weight anyway. Why does he gain the Advanced Template?

[Chronos]

One other point to look out for: This guy is going to be really, really good at Knowledge checks. You'll essentially be giving up the ability to throw obscure monsters at the party that they don't know about, because he'll know about them. And if he has Knowledge Devotion (which he probably will), then he's going to get +5 to attack and damage pretty much all the time. This may or may not be a problem for you, but be prepared for it.

[Inuzuka]

Not because it's too strong. Because at 5th level the guy will have only one class level (Drow Noble is a +1 LA in Pathfinder, Dread Vampire is +3 CR, so+3 LA as well, making the character 4 levels behind the rest) and most probably be a bit on the weaker side. That said, let's get back to the Factotum.

Pretty sure there's no LA in Pathfinder, so I don't know why you think Drow Nobles are +1 LA, and converting from CR would make them +3 LA, same as Dread Vampire. Also worth noting that in 3.5 regular Drow have an LA of +2.

[bekeleven]

I'd allow the gestalt, but drop the magic parts of the Factotum (Arcane Dilettante and Opportunistic Piety) to compensate. Given the weakness of Truenaming, it seems a fair enough trade. And given the strength of Factotum, you shouldn't worry too much about having an excessively weak character. Just make sure that the Paragnostic Assembly (Complete Champion) exists in your campaign world-- it's good for a +10 to Truenaming checks.

All about Truenaming.

Pretty sure there's no LA in Pathfinder, so I don't know why you think Drow Nobles are +1 LA, and converting from CR would make them +3 LA, same as Dread Vampire. Also worth noting that in 3.5 regular Drow have an LA of +2.

You have it reversed. There's a Drow Nobles As Characters section that states: "Lead Pathfinder designer Jason Bulmahn states that Drow Noble characters should be one level less than characters of standard races but this information was rolled into the CR of the creature, rather than being separate as it should have been." So they are balanced by LA, but NOT by CR.

Or you can balance them by CR but not by LA. Guess what that leads to? It leads to a third-level character (CR3) being a 3rd-level drow noble cleric. So, +0 LA.

[Xerlith]

Pretty sure there's no LA in Pathfinder, so I don't know why you think Drow Nobles are +1 LA, and converting from CR would make them +3 LA, same as Dread Vampire. Also worth noting that in 3.5 regular Drow have an LA of +2.

Depends how you interpret this:

There are a number of monsters in this book that do not possess racial Hit Dice. Such creatures are the best options for player characters, but a few of them are so powerful that they count as having 1 class level, even without a racial Hit Die. Such characters should only be allowed in a group that is 2nd-level or higher.

It is worth noting that a normal Drow NPC (warrior) has a CR of 1/2 (Guess it is also by the virtue of an NPC class) - but to make things funnier, the Catfolk Ranger has a CR of 1/2 as well. And a Drow is a player race. Drow Noble? Not quite. (+10/-2 from ability adjustments alone).

I'd say eyeball it - slap a +3 or +4 LA on the Drovampire player.