Truthwatcher Path Optimisation Guide for the Cosmere RPG

Seek truth with this charismatic and illusion-wielding healer path.

About truthwatchers

While truthwatchers can vary wildly in personality and characteristics, there are certain attributes that they share in common:

Truthwatcher talents

Knowing which talents are best and will work well for your character is more important in the Cosmere RPG than in D&D. This is because you have a lot more choice over which talents you take rather than the more rigid progression found in D&D classes.

To help you pick the right talents for your character, I’ve split them into the various bond and surge talent trees and I’ve also divided them by level. This shows the fewest number of levels you need to gain this talent when following the most direct path down the talent tree (ignoring any talents taken at level 1 through a heroic path). This is just to help you know how quickly you can get each talent.

I’ve also rated each talent to give you an idea of how good I think it is. This is a rough rating. Some builds may find different talents more important or integral to their build so don’t be put off by a low score if you think it’s going to help your character or work for them.

Bond and surge talent trees

To take any radiant path, you must first take the key talent and its associated surges.

Level 1 talents

First ideal (5/5)

So the 3 actions you get to use immediately when you take this talent are breathe Stormlight, enhance and regenerate. Breathe Stormlight is more a practical element for regaining expended stormlight. As long as you have a decent number of marks, it should be hard for you to completely run out of investiture. I’d just make sure you breathe stormlight ahead of combat where possible. You can also do this while unconscious so you can breathe stormlight and heal yourself if knocked down to 0HP allowing for easy recovery if you need it (though it won’t be a lot of HP).

Enhance is going to be quite nice, basically adding 1 to attack tests and other physical tests. Be aware that your movement speed might increase with this too. At this stage, you can only use enhance and regenerate so I’d suggest switching this on early in tricky encounters and keep it switched on for better attacks and defense.

Having said this, your progression surge will quickly grant you enhanced healing, making this a better option than for most radiant paths.

This talent will grant you the surges of illumination and progression once you speak the first ideal, but you’ll have to wait a bit for those.

Illumination surge (5/5)

This is a really flexible surge capable of maintaining a disguise on yourself without expending investiture. On its own, this is a really strong power making you an excellent scout or spy. But you can also create other illusions too that can move and even speak. This does require investiture, and you’ll want ranks in illumination to allow for bigger illusions and illusions that are less easy to spot.

You’ll also want to make sure your presence is high. Partly for those improved illumination tests, partly for the extra investiture it will provide and partly because it’ll be easier to deceive people with a higher presence.

Keep in mind that rounds vary in length depending on what kind of encounter is being run. A round in combat is only 10 seconds, but a round of conversation or an endeavour is much longer allowing you to do more.

I’d also talk to your GM about how you might plan to use your illusions and how they might react to these approaches. For example, you may want to use an illusion as a distraction in combat (maybe creating the illusion of a chasmfiend). You’ll want to make sure those efforts aren’t wasted if your GM chooses to interpret these quite fluid situations without the desired effect.

Progression surge (5/5)

You can make a plant grow or regenerate health for a character. The more ranks in progression you have, the more they’re healed and the larger the plant can grow.

Regeneration is a really strong option, helping yourself and allies stay in the battle longer. You’ll want to invest in awareness as well as progression to enhance this as much as possible. Just be aware that adding investiture to regrowth will still require multiple turns to perform the full healing.

Mistspren bond

Level 2 talents

Second ideal (5/5)

Enhance as a free action and without spending investiture is really good! That’s extra speed and damage which means better attacks, faster movement, more carrying capacity and better physical skills. All without spending resources. I’d grab this pretty quickly if you can.

Spiritual healing (5/5)

As an alternative to healing, you can instead cause someone to restore half as much focus as the health you would have restored. Considering that you can easily restore quite a lot of health, you should be able to restore plenty of focus. This is probably one of the best ways available to maintain focus levels in the party.

Level 3 talents

Third ideal (5/5)

Shardblades are great and will really enhance your melee capabilities with bigger damage and more injuries. This is obviously best on melee-focused characters, especially those that can manage multiple attacks in a round. That may not be the case for a truthwatcher, but your attacks will still get better regardless.

Invested (4/5)

More investiture means using more powerful talents and less time taken breathing in Stormlight mid-encounter.

Level 4 talents

Fourth ideal (5/5)

Shardplate is an excellent form of protection and can seriously enhance your durability and attacks. You’ve got 5 deflect plus charges that can increase that deflect value further. You get +2 speed and strength (so even better attacks, speed and physical skills) and it can be easily summoned and recharged.

Just be aware, being enhanced by Shardplate won’t increase your HP or physical defense. Shardplate, especially radiant shardplate, is really good!

Wound regeneration (3/5)

Technically situational, but very useful when it comes up. There are other ways to recover from injuries, but it’s harder and takes more time. How much you get injured will likely depend on your GM, but this is definitely a good option to have available.

Deepened bond (3/5)

The extra bond range with your spren is more useful for creating and maintaining illusions than it is for most radiant paths so you can stay a little further from potential danger and discovery. The reduced focus cost is decent if this is going to be used a fair bit too.

Take squire (4/5)

Granting others your surges can be useful. However, this will typically be NPCs (most PCs will likely bond a spren of their own).

How good this is will depend on the quality of your squires. I can imagine having multiple squires a challenge to manage, but that doesn’t stop this being good.

Illumination

Level 2 talents

Distracting illusion (5/5)

Disadvantage against you or an ally is really good. Unlike taking the dodge action for example, this applies to all incoming attacks and only requires one action to activate for potentially, multiple turns. A great way to help your party tank survive a fair bit longer.

Lingering lightweaving (4/5)

Now you can extend the duration of illusions by having them expend less investiture. I’d expect you to be making a lot of illusions if you’re playing a truthwatcher so this will make your investiture go much further. I’d say it’s worth using this for most illusions you create just to reduce their cost.

Level 3 talents

Disorienting flash (3/5)

Potentially disorient a few characters. The main benefit here is to prevent reactions and to stop these enemies making attacks outside of their senses range. This will be best against ranged enemies. You could also use it as a distraction during stealth segments to reduce chances of being seen, but it will also likely alert guards that someone is up to something so be cautious here.

Stormlight reclamation (2/5)

You can now reclaim over-infused investiture on things you’ve infused. This means you can be a bit more cavalier with how you infuse certain things, knowing you can reclaim that investiture with a free action. How often this is going to be useful is the bigger question. I’m not sure it’s going to be loads.

Level 4 talents

Spiritual illumination (2/5)

Make an ally determined and focused for a turn. This means an opportunity on failed tests and reduced focus cost of 1 for each ability used. The focused aspect is probably the more useful thing here so can be great with allies who may want to use a lot of focus abilities in one turn. At a cost of 2 investiture and your own action though, the cost to provide this is relatively high. I think for that reason, this will likely only be situationally useful.

Multiplicative lightweaving (4/5)

Create multiple lightweavings simultaneously. More ranks in illumination means more illusions. There’s no extra investiture required for these illusions allowing for much more complex illusions.

Level 5 talents

Painful truth (3/5)

2 investiture to slow a creature and make them move away next turn can be easily used to give reactive strikes to allies or to get a melee combatant away from the places they’re most harmful (for a turn anyway). It’s a bit situational, but not overly so.

Endless illusions (4/5)

Illusions within your spren bond range don’t require investiture meaning plenty of illusions that won’t run out.

Progression

Level 2 talents

Injury regrowth (3/5)

Easily heal allies from injuries with just 2 actions. How often this is useful is difficult to gauge, but when someone is injured, you’ll really want someone that can fix them up.

Explosive growth (5/5)

You can grow plants in an area so aggressively that they damage creatures in that area (there’s even a chance with opportunity that they’ll be immobilised).

While the damage, size of area and chances of hitting are lower with little investment in progression and awareness, they increase quite a bit as these increase (especially your ranks in progression). This has the potential to be really potent, but you will need to touch the area you affect. I don’t think you need to be in the middle of that area though, just at the edge, making it easy to slip away from danger again.

Level 3 talents

Swift regeneration (4/5)

Regenerating is more worthwhile now with often higher dice rolls and a higher bonus to healing. As with other progression healing, more ranks in progression and a higher awareness will increase this further.

You can also survive injuries better, as can those you’ve invested in progression.

Overgrowth (2/5)

You can make plants grow even bigger and make them tougher. I think the use case here is creating a blockade or difficult terrain for enemies. It’s a tad situational to me but I guess it can have its uses.

Level 4 talents

Extended regrowth (5/5)

Regrowth with much less investiture expended is great and if you have 3-5 ranks in progression, you can be healing someone for most of a combat with very little cost. You might as well set your regrowth to the maximum number of rounds allowed to still just cost 1 investiture.

Reliable progression (4/5)

Your regrowth die roll will never be lower than your ranks in progression now with bigger dice getting a bigger benefit here.

This also affects things like explosive growth meaning better damage too.

Level 5 talents

From the brink (4/5)

Revive someone from death. They won’t have any hit points, but you can easily remedy that (or they can regenerate themselves if they’ve taken a radiant path). A great option for desperate moments. Death is harder to come by in the Cosmere RPG than D&D, but it’s also harder to recover from too.

Font of life (4/5)

It costs 1 less action to use progression and its talents. This means you can heal with a single action, use an area of effect damage dealer in explosive growth with one action and revive from death and still have an action to spare. This is brilliant on your action economy, especially as healing is likely to be a common activity for an edgedancer.

---

Building an optimised truthwatcher

In this section, I’ll give some advice on which options to consider when building an optimised truthwatcher.

Ancestry

Both the Human and Singer ancestries work for an optimised truthwatcher.

Human: Humans will get you heroic talents quicker as you’ll be able to choose extra talents from heroic paths as you progress levels. You won’t get truthwatcher talents quicker though, but plenty of heroic talents can enhance your radiant capabilities. You’ll get an extra talent at levels 1, 6, 11, 16 and 21.

Singer: Singers get a unique path that gives them different forms they can transform into. Artform, meditationform, envoyform and nightform are all good options for a truthwatcher.

Heroic paths

Matching up capabilities between your radiant and heroic paths can be important as it allows you to focus more on a few different attributes and skills rather than spreading yourself too thin across many areas.

For a truthwatcher, I’d recommend the following heroic paths and specialties:

• Agent: Truthwatchers work well as investigators and spies due to their natural presence and ability to disguise and distract.
• Leader: Truthwatchers make good officers and politicos due to their naturally great persuasion, leadership and deception.
• Scholar (surgeon): While truthwatchers don’t normally make great scholars, a surgeon gets enhanced healing which is perfect for a truthwatcher. Grab swift healer and applied medicine and your healing from progression healing will increase too, especially if you invest in ranks in lore and medicine.

Attributes

Recommended attributes

Speed: You’ll want an attribute for attacks and physical defence, and as a disguise specialist, you’ll likely want to specialise in the one that lets you sneak, so speed is going to be better than strength.

Awareness: The strength of your progression surge talents is reliant in part on your awareness. This can make you a decent scout too, especially if you’ve opted for a speed build.

Presence: Illumination relies on a strong presence. On top of that, you’ll likely want some strong face skills for talking your way into (or out of) trouble, especially as you sneak around in disguises.

Attributes to avoid

If you opt to go down the surgeon route, you might want some intellect, otherwise, this isn’t important for an truthwatcher.

Strength can be useful for a bit more physical defense and HP, but I’d focus on healing and hit and run or ranged attacks. Hit and run tactics are a tad easier with your illumination surges.

You may want some willpower for the focus boost, but otherwise, this isn’t overly important for a truthwatcher.

Skills

You’ll want to focus on skills that lean into your strengths as a truthwatcher. It’s generally better to have specialists in different areas in a party than lots of generalists.

Primarily, this means you’ll want skills related to presence and awareness (and potentially speed) which means those associated with scouting, talking and possibly stealth. If you’ve gone down the surgeon route, you could also enhance your lore and medicine for a bigger boost to healing. Of course, much will come down to your chosen heroic path as well, but the best heroic paths for a truthwatcher will share many of these aspects in common.

I’d recommend investing skill ranks in the following skills:

• Stealth: If you’ve invested in speed and intend on plenty of subterfuge (which you probably should as a truthwatcher), then stealth can mix nicely with disguises.
• Light weaponry: If you’ve invested in speed over strength (which is recommend for a sneaky path), then ranks in light weaponry are the way to go.
• Agility: Will help you avoid the danger around you. I’d go with this over athletics as you’ll work better as a speed build.
• Lore: Most truthwatchers likely won’t want to invest in lore, but those that take the surgeon specialty can use it to enhance their healing.
• Medicine: The same goes for medicine, it’s only good for truthwatchers with the surgeon specialty, but it’ll also grant you enhanced healing.
• Perception: As a natural scout, you may want to invest in perception to stay aware of your surroundings.
• Persuasion: You’ll likely want some decent persuasion when you try and explain why you’re skulking around the places you’re not supposed to be.
• Deception: The same goes for deception.
• Leadership: Also makes a good option for a high presence path.
• Illumination: Ranks in illumination will help you pass off your illusions as real as well as allowing you to maintain more illusions simultaneously.
• Progression: Progression really benefits from gaining ranks in it, especially if you have quite a few levels in truthwatcher. Your damage and healing both get more potent with increasing ranks in progression.

Expertises

Expertises can grant some special knowledge or benefits when using certain items. Largely, you can take whatever expertises fit your character, but there are a couple of things to consider:

• You’ll want decent armor until you can grab shardplate: You’ll likely want some decent armor, even if you don’t intend to be in melee combat too much. As a speed leaning path, the best you can manage is by taking expertise in chain so you can avoid the cumbersome trait. If you have invested in strength (3 to be precise), then you can grab a breastplate or take expertise in half plate to avoid the cumbersome trait.
• Weapon expertises are going to be your most important: Truthwatchers should usually be investing ranks in light weaponry which means using light weapons. I’d consider using hit and run tactics or making ranged attacks. Shortbows can be a good choice or javelins. A short spear is your top damage melee option too, allowing you to wield it one handed.
• Use utility expertises to fill expertise gaps in the party: It’s not overly important what expertise you take, though if it might relate to speed or awareness, that will likely be best. You can however, use this to fill knowledge gaps in the party so there are a wide range of expertises in the group.
• Take whatever cultural expertise you like: You can take whatever cultural expertise fit your character best. You may want to consider taking cultural expertises that fill knowledge gaps in the group, but it’s not overly important.

---

Truthwatchers work best as healers, but like the clerics of D&D, they can do some damage too. Unlike clerics though, they are very stealthy and charismatic making them a sort of equivalent to a rogue too.

Do you have a strong truthwatcher build? How have you built them? Let me know in the comments below.

Spotlight on the Cosmere RPG