What Exactly Is the Issue With the Shadowcaster and the Truenamer Classes?

[Oversquid]

I've skimmed through the Tome of Magic recently to check out the base classes in them, as I have heard that the Shadowcaster has a few too many weaknesses, but that the Truenamer was "Broken".

But giving the tomes a skim through, I still have no idea where to start tweaking/rebuilding the two classes.

Could you guys give me some pointers on that?

 

[Loonook]

Well, there have been plenty of discussions on both, but probably the best info on fixing Shadowcasters comes from GITP's handbook found here.

Truenamer requires quite a lot to fix it due to the ridiculously high DCs to use/low DCs to defeat the powers.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Oversquid]

Though I think that the Shadowcaster question has been answered for the most part, I'm going to need more information on the Truenamer.

Though if you still have input on the Shadowcaster, I'm all ears.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Here's a rundown of the Truenamer: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214115

I hate to say it, but to learn why the Truenamer is mechanically broken you kinda have to be guided through the rules. The first post in that link should give enough of an overview to see how truly bad WotC screwed up.

 

[Hussar]

I think the basic answer would be - they tried to tie the skill system to casting and it failed rather spectacularly. Particularly when there are so many ways to jack up a skill score. I know that the NPC Truenamer I used some time back could drop several Words in a row without even needing to roll.

 

[Dandu]

I think the basic answer would be - they tried to tie the skill system to casting and it failed rather spectacularly. Particularly when there are so many ways to jack up a skill score. I know that the NPC Truenamer I used some time back could drop several Words in a row without even needing to roll.

Really? That's quite impressive considering most people who play a Truenamer complain that the Truenaming check DCs rise far too quickly for them to keep up unless they use extreme cheese, at which point they wind up less powerful than a Sorcerer.

 

[JustinAlexander]

Truenamer requires quite a lot to fix it due to the ridiculously high DCs to use/low DCs to defeat the powers.

The Truenamer is actually so weak that I briefly playtested the idea of breaking the class up into a small number of feats and letting any class gain access to its abilities that way. Worked well on at least a short-term basis at low-to-mid-levels. No idea how it would hold up at higher levels.

(It was pretty much 1 feat = get an utterance and after X feats you could pick the feat that would let you take more powerful utterances.)

 

[Dozen]

I think the basic answer would be - they tried to tie the skill system to casting and it failed rather spectacularly. Particularly when there are so many ways to jack up a skill score. I know that the NPC Truenamer I used some time back could drop several Words in a row without even needing to roll.

Really? That's quite impressive considering most people who play a Truenamer complain that the Truenaming check DCs rise far too quickly for them to keep up unless they use extreme cheese, at which point they wind up less powerful than a Sorcerer.

Each is one side of the story, and both is a valid complaint. That makes the Truenamer unmeasurable in the Tier system. If you have the guts, go read their section in Tome of Magic right now and count how many unclear/stupid/abusable rules you can find per page. Then cry.
Optimizers who can squeeze out Truename checks large enough to not give a damn about the DC increase and the Law of Resistance are also the people who will take advantage of the poor wording of the class features, and honestly, you have to, but if you do, you are on par with the average Wizard(Reading the links posted here, Quickened Utterances scare me), but still feel left out since, well, optimizers play with other optimizers, and their peers probably optimized a decent build getting nowhere near stinky stuff from ToM. On the other end of the spectrum you have people who don't abuse the inconsistencies and don't have a Truespeak modifier in double digits at 1st level, and would have been better off playing a Commoner. There's no middle ground, really. Nobody has the drive to properly argue enough about it. The class cannot be rated because it jumps around the tiers based on how much cheese the DM is letting the Truenamer get away with, and that's either all or none most of the time, and it's risky to mess with it, since Truename magic ignores AC, SR, Saves, everything - a single step in the wrong direction tears a campaign to pieces.

 

[Hussar]

Dozen pretty much nails it.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Fixing the truenamer -- at least in terms of 'Let's make this work the way the writers probably imagined it would work' -- is very easy. Set the base utterance DC at 10 + level/CR, halve all utterance modifiers, and make it a truenamer class level check rather than a skill check. (If you want to preserve multiclassing potential, allow truenamers to add half their non-truenamer levels to their checks.)

Done.

Now, where the resulting class is in the tier system, and whether that's where you want it to be...that's a different story.