D&D 5E True Names - Are they ever "defined" in 5e?

[NotAYakk]

Right, there's a reason you found it in one-occupant prison buried under a volcano guarded by celestial war automata.

"Oh no, you managed to beat my tests and find the thing that lets me corrupt you for the next 100 years, woe is me".

 

[Reynard]

"Oh no, you managed to beat my tests and find the thing that lets me corrupt you for the next 100 years, woe is me".

I will have to use that at some point: Beelz or whoever actually plants their true name on the Prime so fools seeking power will summon them and let the archdevil take over.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I just threw a test at my PCs this week. I have a group of evil defiler blighter druids that summoned and bound a bunch of demons... but that was long ago and the demons are free now. They passed the old grove and found demon names carved in the trees.

5 players. Druid, 2 Warlocks, Bard, Cleric, not 1 wrote down or even paid attention to the names. It ended up just being fluff. (Btw 1 of the warlocks is an infernal pact) I guess people just don't see true names as mattering

 

[Reynard]

I just threw a test at my PCs this week. I have a group of evil defiler blighter druids that summoned and bound a bunch of demons... but that was long ago and the demons are free now. They passed the old grove and found demon names carved in the trees.

5 players. Druid, 2 Warlocks, Bard, Cleric, not 1 wrote down or even paid attention to the names. It ended up just being fluff. (Btw 1 of the warlocks is an infernal pact) I guess people just don't see true names as mattering

Did you say "These are the true names of demons carved into the trees" or did you expect them to get it from context?

 

[TwoSix]

How do you rule on true names when it comes to arch fiends. I mean, if a high-level wizard or cleric can just cast legend lore or wish to learn a demon lord's or arch devil's true name, then other powerful would have used this. It just breaks the lore. Fraz-Urb’luu has "undetectable" but I assume that there must be protections other powerful fiends have if even the gods can't just bind them.

True names exist to be a hook for a quest that will let your level 12 PCs be able to fight and win against an enemy that's superior by lore.

They aren't meant to be a PC facing power.

 

[Reynard]

True names exist to be a hook for a quest that will let your level 12 PCs be able to fight and win against an enemy that's superior by lore.

They aren't meant to be a PC facing power.

There's no "meant to be". It is a fantasy RPG with "Chaotic Evil" listed among the potential PC alignments. True Names exist and do the thing it says. Whether a PC decides they want a piece of that action is up to the player, not the game or the GM.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

If I recall correctly, Chris Perkins said that one of the earlier versions of the 5e bard class when it was still in development was more explicitly Name Of The Wind-influenced, with them having specific abilities relating to true names.

 

[TwoSix]

There's no "meant to be". It is a fantasy RPG with "Chaotic Evil" listed among the potential PC alignments. True Names exist and do the thing it says. Whether a PC decides they want a piece of that action is up to the player, not the game or the GM.

Sure, but it's literally true that they aren't a PC facing power. The only description of what a true name does in in the Monster Manual. As a player, you can choose to use that information to push the game's narrative in that direction, but that will only work if the DM chooses to move the game in that direction. The DM could easily be obliged by social contract to move the game in that direction (I'd certainly jump over that hook as a DM if a player introduced it), but the player has no explicit authority to get that narrative introduced.

Contrast with 3.5, in which "true names" were an introduced branch of magic with a whole class (and multiple PrCs) devoted to it. Granted, a terrible class, but the thought was there.

 

[Reynard]

Sure, but it's literally true that they aren't a PC facing power. The only description of what a true name does in in the Monster Manual. As a player, you can choose to use that information to push the game's narrative in that direction, but that will only work if the DM chooses to move the game in that direction. The DM could easily be obliged by social contract to move the game in that direction (I'd certainly jump over that hook as a DM if a player introduced it), but the player has no explicit authority to get that narrative introduced.

Contrast with 3.5, in which "true names" were an introduced branch of magic with a whole class (and multiple PrCs) devoted to it. Granted, a terrible class, but the thought was there.

"Authority" is a weird way to describe this, but sure, you're right that a player can say, "I make it my mission to get the true name of a demon lord!" and the Gm can say "No." And that "no" can be perfectly acceptable under certain circumstances, such as a table agreement to play a certain adventure or whatever. But in a game that has the pretty well understood "open world" aspect that D&D provides, a had "No" is probably a signal that the player should find a different GM.

On the subject of whether a thing needs to be an explicitly player facing ability: that's also a table agreement. I am just saying that if they exist in the campaign the way they are described in the MM, they are fair game.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Did you say "These are the true names of demons carved into the trees" or did you expect them to get it from context?

I said it looks like names written in abyssal... but the bark has started to grow over them with time... the warlock who can read every language translated them as 'just names' and they figured they must have bound imps or something to trees making evil dryads...but they are gone now.