Non-Core Class Survivor: Round 2

[airwalkrr]

It doesnt work, and its poorly designed. This is from testing, and common sense.

While you have some theoretical opinions posted below to explain what you mean, you haven't provided any examples. I am genuinely curious how long your group played with this class and what specific situations made you think it didn't work. Did you have a truenamer who could simply never make the DCs after level 10 or so?

I dont like that skill focus: true speak is the "100% you are an idiot if you dont take it" 1st level feat, with item familiar following suit and breaking the class in two.

Certainly not a strong point of the system, but not unlike some others. Take the bard for example. I have rarely met the bard without Skill Focus (Perform). And it isn't like the D&D system doesn't already have an ingrained expectation that some classes simply must have max ranks in a certain skill. Look at Concentration and spellcasters. There are also feats that one simply does not survive without, like Power Attack for melee characters. And yet we rarely complain about these. So the Skill Focus necessity complaint does not seem particularly cogent in light of this.

I dont like that you require more and more magic items to use the same class feature available at level 1 on yourself,

You require one magic item, an amulet of the silver tongue. The "required item to make your class work" concept is not new to D&D. Have you ever seen a 15th level wizard WITHOUT a headband of Intelligence? A 15th level paladin WITHOUT a cloak of Charisma? The truenamer turns the ability score dependence of D&D on its head and focuses instead on skill dependence. So instead of your wizard requiring a headband on intellect, the truenamer requires an amulet of the silver tongue. Sure, a cloak of Charisma helps, but it isn't as vital to him as to the sorcerer.

...when the intelligent design decision (A static DC, +Zxnumber of times you used an utterance, where Z is based on the utterances level) was pretty obvious and makes sense. A high level namer is better at using low level utterances on people than high level ones (as opposed to the current broken system, where all utterances are of equal difficulty, so low level ones have no meaningful use).

As I pointed out though, this is the typical D&D rules fashion, and they were trying to do something completely different with truename magic. Another sorcerer/wizard variant with a different spell list is not what this book promised, and for that matter I don't think it is what many gamers wanted either. It promised three entirely new systems of magic and it did that, and quite well imho.

Its just a bad class that gets more problematic as you level, and borders on overpowered at low levels where the DC's are super easy to crank out. It uses a broken metagame mechanic (challenge rating), which gets more and more screwed up as you apply class levels (particularly non associated levels) to monsters, to represent fluff that doesnt jive with the stupid mechanics in the first place.

Because of the Law of Resistance, at low levels the truespeak DCs NEED to be easier because you will not be able to continually use a small number of utterances for long before the DCs start becoming unobtainable. A 1st level truenamer has 1 utterance, which means only one utterance per day at the base DC. At 5th level truenamer has 6 utterances, which means only six utterances per day at the base DC. A 10th level truenamer has 13 utterances, which means only thirteen utterances per day at the base DC, and so on. Sure, it might be more difficult for a 20th level truenamer to complete his utterances, but he has MUCH more powerful utterances at his disposal, and 29 utterances to complete before he has to start upping his DCs. Once a 1st level truenamer has succeeded on 29 utterances, his DCs are 58 points higher, which means he probably LONG ago stopped being able to succeed on those utterances.

Dismissing the complaints as "theoretical" is like dismissing the disruptive qualities of the frenzied berserker class.

There is no need to be rude. I never dismissed anything. I was simply delving deeper into the discussion by asking for more details. I have heard very few specific examples from those complaining about the truenamer and wanted to know if the lack of specific examples was because very few people have actually played with the class or if it was because people just didn't want to go to the effort of describing their personal experiences with playing the class.

 

[Pielorinho]

OK, I'm declaring this round closed (if a Mod drops by, could they close the poll?)

Roll credits!