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Introduction:
The purpose of this page is to set forth the modifications to the Truenamer class.
Motivation:
After a lot of research, I feel compelled to fix this class. I am attempting to not tinker with the 3.5 system too much, as a matter of completeness and allowing the rules to remain settled, but having read hours of articles on the class on the web and in my own analyses, I consider the class broken enough to merit fixing. I also really really like the idea of the class and am therefore not amenable to just letting it lie fallow.
The essence of the class is skill-based magic. You cast an utterance, that is usually a personal spell or a 1 target spell (there are exceptions and the like to increase this and higher level utterances have area effects) and have to make a skill check based on your Truespeak skill. The DC is invariably based on the CR of the target (whether friendly or not). CR seems like a strange thing to base an in-game mechanic on, until you really read the rules and understand why it fits much better than HD (HD are used for PCs...since they don't have CRs and level adjustments are usually way higher than CR adjustments for races).
If the skill check works the utterance works, and then takes effect. Many utterances that do bad things to targets allow the normal types of saves.
This inherently puts utterances at a disadvantage, in that the caster has to first overcome a skill check based on the CR of the victim, and then the victim gets a save. That's sort of a double whammy.
That said, there are advantages to utterances, the most obvious of which is that you can cast them over and over again. There is no hard limit on the number of utterances you can cast in a day. Seems neat until you realize that each time you SUCCESSFULLY cast an utterance in a day after the first, the DC of the skill check increases by 2. This means, eventually, you will run out of that utterance for the day.
The big problem with truenaming is that the DC to cast an utterance is 15 + (2 x CR). The problem with this formula is the 2 x CR part. Given that once you are maxed out in your skills you can only increase your ranks by 1 per level, yet the DC goes up by 2 per level...well you can see what happens at higher levels.
A 1st level truenamer with a 16 Int and Skill Focus (treuspeak) will have a bonus of +10. A CR 1 creature would then be affected on a 15+ 2 x 1 = 17. So a 7 or higher makes the utterance work. That's a 70% chance of success. Not wonderful compared to a normal spellcaster, but then again a 1st level wizard will be able to cast 2 1st level spells per day while a truenamer will cast on average 2.8 utterances per day given a limited number of attempts. If the truenamer has many chances, he can cast as many as 7 utterances in a day. So that is advantage truenamer, though in any given round one cannot RELY on the utterance being successful.
Only focusing on the skill DC, the same truenamer at 10th level with an 18 Int will have a skill bonus of +20. Against a CR 10 opponent his DC is 35. This would mean he would need a 15 to get off an utterance! Of course, by 10th level we can assume an Int-enhancing device like a headband of intellect +2. That still means he needs a 14 just to get off an utterance.
This is mitigated by providing truenamers with two magic items...a lesser amulet of the silver tongue and a greater amulet of the silver tongue. Lesser gives a +5 bonus to Truespeak and Greater gives a +10 bonus. Even in the books it is admitted that these magic items are an absolute must for truenamers.
If our 10th level dude can get a greater amulet, he now has a 4 or more to cast an utterance. That's pretty nice.
If our guy reaches 20th level with a 22 Int, he will have a Truespeak of +32. With his greater amulet and a +6 headband of intellect his bonus will be +45. To affect a CR 20 creature is a DC 55. That means even full up and fully gunned he only casts an utterance on a 10+.
This is a problem and makes truenamers virtually unplayable at high levels. Are you going to play a dude in a 20th level party who fails to do anything in a round almost half the time? Obviously not!
My goal is not to make truenamers a great class. My goal is to at least make them playable...to the point that I can have them as NPCs and foes at the very least.
Truenamer Fix:
One way to do this is to make sure access to the amulets of the silver tongue is easy...very easy. As such, I am making it a class feature. In addition to the normal amulets of the silver tongue, all truenamers can fashion a personal amulet of the silver tongue by means of a ritual. This amulet only works for the truenamer in question. The market price is the skill bonus squared x 100 gp (the standard price for such magic items). The cost to create will be half that. The time to create will be EQUAL TO NORMAL RULES TIME...meaning 1 day per 1,000 gp of value. This means making a new personal amulet or replacing a lost one or upgrading one will be a fairly simple matter. The requirement to make the amulet is that the device can have no more ranks added than the creator has levels in the truenamer class +3.
So a +1 truenamer's amulet would give a +1 bonus to Truespeak, cost 50 gp, and take 1 day.
A +10 truenamer's amulet would give a +10 bonus to Truespeak, cost 5,000 gp to make, and take 10 days.
A +20 truenamer's amulet would give a +20 bonus to Truespeak, cost 20,000 gp to make, and take 40 days.
What this amulet will do is essentially make up the formulaic difference between the fact that DC goes up by 2 per level while skill goes up by 1 per level.
Revisiting the truenamers with this enhancement:
Level 1 truenamer = Truespeak +14 vs DC 17
Level 10 truenamer = Truespeak +34 vs DC 35
Level 20 truenamer = Truespeak +58 vs DC 55
You will notice a few things:
1. At higher levels now, the chance for success is better. This is fine because metautterances increase the DC, and so we want our higher level Truenamers to be more able to wield metautterance feats.
2. You can actually make an amulet giving you a bonus higher than your level by 3, since you can put ranks in Truespeak equal to level +3.
3. This amulet progression can stretch into infinity (i.e. epic levels). This means truenamers can now at least function at epic levels. Without this, by about 25th to 30th level it becomes impossible for them to even affect a creature of their own CR.
4. There are a decent number of skill check bonus spells on the cleric spell list. Truenamers have high Int by definition and Use Magic Device is a class skill. Getting wands of wieldskill and the other skill enhancing spells can make them even more powerful.
5. The Epic skill focus feat gives a +10 boost to a skill. That means an epic truenamer is going to get a real nice boost.
Our 21st level truenamer with Epic Skill Boost and a full blown ritual amulet will have a bonus of +70 vs CR of 57. That's enough spare skill bonus to apply some nice metautterances and still have auto successes as well as really utilize the speak unto the masses special ability to affect multiple targets. I think a 21st level truenamer under this system is not someone a party of 21st level PCs would want to take lightly.
Clarification/Errata:
There is no DC given in Tome of Magic for a truenamer to utter from the Lexicon of the Perfected Map.
However, the errata for that book from WOTC reads as follows:
I am using this official errata for the compaign. This means our level 20 truenamer with a truespeak maxed out at +58 will automatically succeed on a 4th level Perfected Map utterance and can, for example, use his earthquake utterance 8 times before he even has to begin to roll a Truespeak roll. This seems like a lot, but let's look at a sorcerer. A 20th level sorcerer can cast 12 spells of 8th or 9th level in a day. A 20th level truenamers is going to know a single 4th level Perfected Map uitterance and can utter it 8 times a day without rolling. On the average, he can get another 4 more utterances until his chance becomes 50% to successfully utter the utterance. That compares directly with the sorcerer. Now, of course, with enough time he can get off another 3-4 uses if he is persistant, but the price this truenamer pays is having one and only one such powerful utterance in his known list for the rest of his career. Even a 20th level sorcerer will know 6 different spells of 8th or 9th level.
Furthermore, the range and area of effect of these utterances is far less than normal. The earthquake utterance has a range of 100 ft and a 20 ft spread as compared to Long range and an 80 ft spread for the spell.
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