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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Empirate" data-source="post: 6112797" data-attributes="member: 78958">I think the major problem with Truename magic is threefold:1) Basing it on a skill is hugely problematic on its own. Truenamers will always max the skill as much as possible, by any means you provide them with. This is always just a tax. It's simply mandatory to put all your resources into a maxed out Truespeak check, there's no way around it. So why not just make Truespeak into a class feature that scales automatically in the first place?2) Utterances are, for the most part, pretty underwhelming, to the point of being bland and boring, both mechanically and flavor-wise. Some don't even scale well. Lexicon of the Perfected Map comes far too late and is far too limited, and it doesn't mesh well with the whole flavor of Truenaming.3) The actual true name of stuff mostly doesn't enter into the picture. So you're not actually researching new true names all the time when you play a Truenamer. Instead, you're a Sorcerer with a different casting mechanic and different spell selection. The mechanic itself is not far enough removed from other casting mechanics to make the Truenamer class stand out as unique, or even live up to its own flavor.Instead of just fixing the math on the skill bit, this is where I'd start: every creature and item in the game needs true names (maybe even tiers of "different, but all true" names, like my first name has a different connotation from my last name, any nicknames that I pick up in my life, any titles I might earn such as Ph.D., Mr. President etc.), and a Truenamer needs a way to find out about these and use them to his advantage. Given the flavor, this should always just work (no save, no SR, no attack rolls etc.), since knowing a true name is supposed to give you non-negotiable power over the named creature or thing.I can see how this will be hard to balance. But I'd have no problem giving the Truenamer some more generic arcane magic (maybe as a half-caster like the Bard), and tacking on a completely new mechanic to find out how many and which true names the Truenamer knows or can research. These true names should then be convertible into really unstoppable power over the named.</blockquote>

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