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I've wanted a satisfying truename mechanic ever since the disappointing Truenamer class from 3rd edition's Tome of Magic. As I'm about to run a new long term campaign, I saw an opportunity to put together a truename rule that would satisfy me. The following rule is usable by any arcane or divine spellcaster with the proper training. It has not yet been playtested, however, and I would welcome your thoughts on it.
- The truename mechanic and wizard archetype are based fairly heavily on Tzi José Luiz' version from his blog Tower of the Lonely GM which was almost, but not quite, what I was looking for.
- The mechanic for discovering truenames is taken, with small modification, from 3rd edition's Tome of Magic, as is the wizard archetype's capstone ability.
- The truename spells are based on those from Tome of Magic, with modifications inspired by Zaq's post regarding the old truenamer class on the Giant in the Playground messageboards.
For the rule itself, I had several requirements. First, I wanted to divorce truenaming abilities from a skill check. This, in my opinion, was the single largest source of the ToM Truenamer's problems. The only skill checks involved in this rule are for learning truenames. Second, I wanted a system that could be implemented by any spellcaster. I don't see truenaming as its own tradition, but rather as a more pure expression of spellcasting in general. I can just as easily imagine truenaming clerics as wizards. What follows, then, is a fairly light mechanic that can be used by any spellcaster with the proper training. In addition, we have a number of spells are presented with a truename component, and an archetype for the wizard that specializes in truenaming.
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Every creature in the world has a truename, whether he knows it or not. This is his name in the eyes of the cosmos, given to him at creation as the very spark of life. More than just a collection of syllables, a person’s truename is the very core of his being, akin to his very soul. A person’s truename never changes, even if he undergoes personal upheaval or magical transformations
Knowing someone’s truename grants you power over them, if you have the skill to speak it. A mages will go to great lengths to keep his truename a secret. His enemies will pay dearly to learn it.
Mortals do not automatically know any truenames, including their own. Outsiders and true dragons, however, truly know themselves and their place in the cosmos, so always know their own truename. Discovering truenames can be done in several ways.
Without research: If a mage invokes a truename while casting and you are within hearing, you can attempt a spellcraft check (DC 20 + the subject’s CR) to understand the truename. If you do not have the truename training feat you suffer a -4 penalty on this check. Similarly, someone can attempt to teach you a truename that they know, allowing you the same check. On a success, you learn the truename and, if you have the proper training, may invoke it as described below. If you fail the check, you cannot attempt to learn that truename for one week.
Through research: Alternatively, you can research someone’s truename using a combination of mundane and magical methods, but the process is expensive and time consuming. Legendary individuals and powerful beings may have their truenames recorded in ancient texts, but as a rule these texts are neither complete nor accurate. Shorter lived creatures, such as humans, probably don’t have their names recorded in any important texts, so discovering their truenames requires arduous research using geneologies and magical divinations.
Each week of research costs 500 gp for meditative incense, access to private libraries, research assistants, and so forth. For each week of research, make a knowledge check in the relevant subskill to discover someone’s truename, with a DC of 15 + (creature’s CR). The check can be modified by your knowledge of the subject, as shown in the table below. It takes a number of successful checks equal to ½ the creature’s CR (minimum 1). If the check fails, you may try again with another week of research, but the gold spent on materials is wasted. See the list below for factors that modify the knowledge check made to research a personal truename.
You may interrupt the research process at any time, resuming the process later. Simply record your progress for later reference.
Obscure Creatures: Ironically, it is often more difficult to discover the truenames of obscure creatures than powerful ones. Historians occasionally reference the actions of figures of note, while obscure creatures are rarely, if ever, noted in anything other than personal accounts, so mundane texts aren’t much help. Anything with less than 5 HD is usually considered obscure unless they have historical or political significance. Researching the truename of an obscure creature requires magical divination.
Truename Research Conditions:
- Staff of research assistants: +2
- Access to a large library or other repository of information: +2
- Commune spell*: 2
- You know who the subject’s ancestors are:
Parents: +1
Grandparents: +2
Great grandparents or beyond: +3
- Divination spell*: +2
- Contact Other Plane spell*: +2
- Legend Lore spell*: +6
- You know the subject’s birth (given) name: +1
- You have spent more than one month in the subject’s company: +2
- You are related to the subject (or you are the subject): +4
- Subject is considered obscure (see above): -8
- You have never met the subject: -2
- You know the subject by a false name: -4
*Must be cast within the week of your knowledge check.
Knowing a truename is not enough to use it. Invoking a truename requires the Truename Training feat (see below), which represents specialized learning in this esoteric branch of arcana. As a prerequisite for the feat, you must be a spellcaster and must know your own truename, either because it was taught to you or as a result of research, as described above.
Once you have the proper training, you can invoke truenames that you know to gain powerful benefits.
- You can spontaneously substitute your own truename for a somatic, verbal or material component (costing 1 gp or less) of a spell. If used to substitute the verbal component, the spell will work even inside an area affected by silence or similar dweomers. This carries the risk of revealing your truename to other spellcasters.
- By invoking a truename as a spellcasting component, you can impose a –2 penalty to the target’s saving throw against your spells and you gain a +4 bonus on caster level checks made to overcome the target’s spell resistance (if any).
- By invoking a truename while you cast a divination spell, you can use the truename as the mystical equivalent of a “body part” for scrying purposes on the target, and you effectively have intimate knowledge of the subject.
- By weaving a weapon enchantment with a truename, you can create a powerful weapon against the target. With this special enchantment, the weapon gains the effects of a bane enchantment and ignores miss chance due to concealment (but not total concealment), but only against the target. Attacks still must target the correct square. The weapon also overcomes the target’s damage reduction and defeats its regeneration (if any). This requires the Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat and modifies the weapon’s cost as a +1 bonus.
Truename Training [General]
You comprehend the language of the cosmos and can learn and invoke truenames to bolster your magic.
Prerequisite: Ability to cast arcane or divine spells, spellcraft 1 rank, and knowledge of your own personal truename.
Benefit: You can invoke truenames and cast truename spells as described in the truenaming rules in the magic chapter.
Normal: While anyone can attempt to learn a truename, only those with proper training can invoke them.
Obscure Truename [General]
Truenames are notoriously hard to discover, but yours is more difficult than most.
Benefit: Researching your truename is difficult. Such research requires magical aid, and the knowledge checks suffer a -8 penalty, just as if you were an obscure creature.
The truenamer knows that there is but one incontrovertible truth to the universe: know a person’s truename and you know their soul. Any mage can make a study of truenames and learn their power, but the truenamer wizard devotes all of his power toward this pursuit.
Arcane Bond: The truenamer eschews a normal arcane bond in favor of superior mastery of truenames.
At 1st level, a truenamer already knows his own truename. He gains Truename Training as a bonus feat, and can therefore invoke his and other truenames as described in the truenaming rules.
At 3rd level, a truenamer learns to use his truename to bolster his magic in new ways. Once per day, he can invoke his truename to spontaneously add the effects of a metamagic feat, chosen from the list below, to a spell he casts. Doing so does not increase the spell’s casting time. While he must have access to spell slots of the appropriately increased level, using this ability does not actually require a higher level spell slot or increase the spell’s level in any way, unlike traditional metamagic. Using this ability carries the risk of revealing his truename to others, however. At 7th level, and at every four levels thereafter, the truenamer may use this ability one additional time per day, to a maximum of five times per day at 19th level.
At 3rd level, he may use Enlarge Spell, Extend Spell, Silent Spell, and Still Spell. At 7th level, he adds Empower Spell to the list. At 11th level, he adds Maximixe Spell and Widen Spell to the list. At 15th level, he adds Quicken Spell to the list. Anytime he learns a metamagic feat, he adds that feat to the list as well.
This ability replaces a wizard’s normal arcane bond options.
Say My Name and I am There: At 20th level, a truenamer may teach others a few syllables of his truename – a sort of true nickname - that he invests with cosmic power such that speaking the syllables can conjure him forth. Whenever someone says those syllables, he can appear at their location regardless of the distance, even if he is on a different plane. He knows who is summoning him and can choose not to be transported if he wishes, but he has only one round in which to decide.
Learning these syllables requires no check, nor do they require the Truename Training feat to invoke, and they are not sufficient to invoke his full truename.
This ability replaces the wizard’s 20th level bonus feat.
There are several new spells, described below, that have the new [Truename] descriptor. These spells require you to invoke the truename of your target as part of the casting and therefore require the Truename Training feat to use, but they are quite powerful or have unique effects. Because you are invoking a truename as part of the spell, the target suffers a -2 penalty to resist your spell and you gain a +4 bonus to overcome its spell resistance, if applicable.
Augment Truefriend
Transmutation [Truename]
Level: Bard 2, Cleric 2, Druid 2, Sorcerer/Wizard 2, Witch 2
Components: V, S, T
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: 1 minute/level
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
The spell grants the subject a +4 enhancement bonus to Strength, Dexterity and Constitution. All the usual benefits for better ability modifiers apply: attack rolls, melee damage rolls, hit points, skill checks, and so on.
Truename Component: When you cast this spell, you must speak the truename of the creature you’re augmenting.
Bane of the Archrival
Abjuration [Truename]
[b]Level: Cleric 3, Paladin 3, Sorcerer/Wizard 3, Witch 3
Components: V, S, T
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: 20 ft. radius emanation centered on a point in space
Duration: 1 hour/level
Saving Throw: Will partial(harmless, see text)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
This spell protects those within its area against a single named foe, doing so in three ways.
First, the area is forbidden to the creature. It must make a successful Will save to enter it by any means (movement, teleportations spells, and so on). If it fails its Will save and was endeavoring to use a teleportation spell to enter the area, it is shunted to a random open space within 10 feet. If no free space is available, the spell simply fails. The creature can try to force entry once each round, gaining a new save with each attempt. Even if the named creature gets inside the barrier, the other aspects of the spell function normally,
Second, all creatures within the area gain a +4 deflection bonus to AC against attacks from the named creature, and a +4 resistance bonus on saving throws required by the named creature’s spell effects and special attacks so long as they remain within the affected area.
Third, the barrier blocks any attempt to possess or exercise mental control over those within the spell’s area by the named creature. These effects are suppressed for the duration of the spell or as long as the subject remains within the spell’s area.
Truename Component: When you cast this spell, you must speak the truename of the creature you’re warding against.
Bulwark of Reality
Conjuration (Creation) [Force] [Truename]
Level: Sorcerer/Wizard 1
Components: V, S, T
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Creature touched
Duration: 1 hour/level
A faint glowing silvery field of force surrounds the target, providing a +6 armor bonus to Armor Class.
Unlike mundane armor, the bulwark of reality entails no armor check penalty, arcane spell failure chance, or speed reduction. Because the bulwark of reality is made of force energy, incorporeal creatures can’t bypass it the way they do normal armor.
Truename Component: When you cast this spell, you must speak the target’s truename.
Resurrect the Named
Conjuration (healing) [Truename]
Level: Cleric 9
Components: V, S,M, DF, T (Diamonds worth 25,000 gp)
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: touch
Target: dead creature touched
Duration: instantaneous
Saving Throw: None, see text
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)
You restore to life a creature whose truename you invoke during the casting of the spell. This spell functions like raise dead, except that you can resurrect a creature that has been dead for any length of time. You must have some piece of the creature’s remains, though even a pinch of ash is enough.
Upon completion of the spell, the creature is immediately restored to full hit points, vigor, and health, with no negative levels, and all of the prepared spells possessed by the creature when it died.
You can revive someone killed by a death effect or someone who has been turned into an undead creature and then destroyed. This spell can also resurrect elementals or outsiders, but it can’t resurrect constructs or undead creatures. This spell can’t restore to life a creature who has died of old age.
Truename Component: When you cast this spell, you must speak the truename of the creature you wish to resurrect.
Note: This spell was written with revised death and dying rules in mind. Under these rules, this spell is the only way apart from story elements to return a creature to life. This spell has no place under the normal rules, as there are no meaningful improvements that can be made to true resurrection.
True Banishement
Abjuration [Truename]
Level: Cleric 8, Sorcerer/Wizard 8
Components: V, S, T
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One extraplanar creature
Duration: instantaneous; see text
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
This spell functions like the banishement spell, except that it affects a single creature whose truename you invoke. There is no Hit Dice limit, and the spell allows no saving throw (spell resistance still applies, though). Objects that the creature hates, fears, or opposes don’t grant bonuses on the level check to overcome the creature’s spell resistance, but you do receive the +4 bonus for invoking its truename.
If true banishement is successful, the creature cannot return to the plane it was banished from for one month per caster level unless it learns and invokes the spellcaster’s truename, in which case the prohibition no longer applies.
Truename Component: When you cast this spell, you must speak the truename of the creature you’re trying to banish.
True Prayer of the Chosen
Transmutation [Truename]
Level: Cleric 4, Paladin 3
Components: V, S, DF, T
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 round/level
For the duration of this spell, you are protected by the power of your deity, giving you insight into the threats you’re about to face. You gain a +1 insight bonus to Armor Class and saving throws for every three caster levels you have (maximum +6). You also gain 2 temporary hit points per caster level.
Truename Component: When you cast this spell, you must invoke your truename.
Unname
Universal [Truename]
Level: Cleric 9, Sorcerer/Wizard 9
[b]Components: V, S, T
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Target: One creature
Duration: instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude negates
Spell Resistance: Yes
With this powerful spell, you erase the subject’s truename from existence itself. The last thing the subject ever hears is your voice uttering its truename – then nothing but oblivion. Items worn, held, or carried by him are likewise obliterated with no save allowed.
In addition, the subject’s very existence is erased from history. With the exception of the caster, anyone who knew the subject or knew of him must succeed at a Will save or lose all memory of the subject. Any mention or depiction of also him disappears from texts, images, statues, and so on.
Even if someone retains memories that the subject ever existed at all, creatures who are unnamed are difficult to restore to life. Doing so requires a miracle spell combined with resurrect the named. This is made more difficult if none remain who know the subject’s truename. Because the subject has been erased from all records, the bonuses to researching his truename outlined in Table: Researching a Truename provide only half their usual benefit.
Truename Component: When casting this spell, you must invoke the truename of the creature you wish to unname.
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And that's the rule. Feel free to use it, in part or in whole, in your own games. I'm about to begin the campaign in which this will be playtested, so needless to say it is experimental and may need some revision before its final form. If you have any criticisms, concerns or thoughts, please share them!
Of course, many of you will worry that this is a clear power boost to spellcasters. You are, of course, justified in this fear. With that in mind, I have a similar modular system in mind for warrior-types designed to increase their mobility on the battlefield that I will also be playtesting in the near future. I may post that rule in a different thread in the next few days.
This is pretty neat. I'll take a more in depth look later, but like you, this is more akin to what I wanted for true name magic that what we'd been given before.
After discussing it with my group, we've decided to use this as the default for Wizards (wizards default to bonded items in our games; only witches possess familiars). While it may be a few months before we can play test it, as we're playing SWSE at the moment, we like it enough to give it a go and see how it works out in our game.
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That is very cool, I think I will implement this info my game. I liked the idea of the true names in 3.5 but it just was not very good and was confusing to deal with. This however, seeks to work well with the normal rules and the spells are very flavorful, erasing a person forever is so much better than just killing him.
I'm glad you guys like the mechanic! Like you, Falcar, I was very frustrated at the 3.5 attempt at truenaming. It was such a good concept that got such poor treatment by its authors. This mechanic only came about after much reading into other people's attempts at fixing the 3.5 Truenamer.
I'm very interested to see how this works in your games. Like you, Da'ath, my own playtesting hasn't happened yet, but is coming in the semi-near future. I'll post up my own interactions as I come to them.
This is the perfect Truename mechanics I could have ever hoped and dreamed for. Thank you. I'm definitely adding this to my game.
I'm very glad that you like the rule, Usagi! Once you've had some time to play with it, feel free to stop back in and let us know how it works in practice.
It may be worth noting that at this point I have a playtest-ready version of the martial sister-mechanic that I promised. I've posted it in another thread.
While it's not strictly necessary to include both in your games, I think doing so is healthy for martial-caster balance.
I will check out your martial mechanic tomorrow. I can't focus on words so much right now, too tired.