If I were a cleric, I'd never turn undead. If I am a dutiful good cleric and wish to scour these abominations from the face of the earth, I'd just smash them to bits. Here's why:
1. Unless I have twice as many levels as the undead I'm turning (haha, yeah right!), I can't actually destroy them. Oh wait, if I'm the Sun domain I can destroy them 1/day (great! now what about all those other undead?).
2. So other than these two situations, I can only a) make the undead cower while my companions take cheap shots (real fun for me, and real dramatic for them...not) or b) I can watch them run away. But wait, I can't let them run away; that's like saying "Oh I don't feel like dealing with this problem right now, I'll leave it for someone else." Seeing as how very few of my fellow humanoids can stand up to an undead, this situation only provides said undead with weaker victims elsewhere. Or maybe I'll just end up running into said undead again later...gee I'm such a pious and wise soldier of the Light.
Discuss. (I'm not looking for alternatives, I know and love the turning variant from Complete Divine.)
I disagree with you. Forcing the undead to cower or flee is a sound tactic. If you're an adventurer, knowing that you or your companions could die in any one of your battles is a fact of the profession. Undead can be a great menace; most will not parley, many spread disease or inflict negative levels. It makes sense to immobilize or thin them as much as possible before they can deal a lot of damage to the party. If one is playing an undead hunting cleric, yes, they would have to chase them down and kill the creatures as they fled. However, a clever party takes steps to control their environment to limit where a defeated foe can flee to. Having that specialized ability available can save on valuable resources such as healing, spells, and HP for later fights.
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I disagree with you. Forcing the undead to cower or flee is a sound tactic. If you're an adventurer, knowing that you or your companions could die in any one of your battles is a fact of the profession. Undead can be a great menace; most will not parley, many spread disease or inflict negative levels. It makes sense to immobilize or thin them as much as possible before they can deal a lot of damage to the party. If one is playing an undead hunting cleric, yes, they would have to chase them down and kill the creatures as they fled. However, a clever party takes steps to control their environment to limit where a defeated foe can flee to. Having that specialized ability available can save on valuable resources such as healing, spells, and HP for later fights.
Agreed and I also see the Turning act as "Wow guys, we are low on supplies and spells, everyone is hurt. We need a way to get by these _________s before they overwhelm us. I will us my God's holy righteousness to drive these foul beasts away so we can escape,to return after we have recharged our life energies."
That is how I see turning, not as standard method to use in every undead encounter. Just like a Paladin doesn't smite everyone he meets. You save it as an Ace in the hole.BBEG is surrounded by a rank of undead cannon fodder.....don't waste a spell, turn the lil' bastards and watch the room clear so you can but the whoop on ol' Big F'in' Evil Dude! Deal with the fodder later when they don't have BBEG backing them.
That's how I sees it.
FH
Sending undead fleeing is indeed not a sound tactic if you are capable of sending them all away, then it is better to rely on good solid hipbone-kicking.
However, when undead are numerous in one encounter it is a valid tactic to scatter their forces and deal with part of them now and part of them later. Large group of organized creatures is exponentially more deadly than small group of less organized creatures...
And of course if they are just cowering somewhere, that makes the job easier. If you are being serious about destroying undead you should concentrate on efficiency instead of big dramatic effects so boring solution can be the best one.
That said, I am not that big fan of undead-turning either. My clerics belong to two groups, those who are serious about fighting undead and take feats accordingly and those who don't care about undead and trade the ability away. There is no middle ground.
In my game, we use the Turn Undead in (usually) dire situations. Like when the group is being overwhelmed by a large amount of undead, or to keep those pesky level-draining ones at bay.
We (the clerics in our parties) rarely use up a Turn Undead on low, non-threatning undead like skeletons or zombies... Keeping them for when we really need them.
Ultradan
In my game, we use the Turn Undead in (usually) dire situations.
We use it for cannon-fodder undead only. The turn check is just too hard to make for anything with a respectable number of HD (or turn resistance or both), most especially at higher levels, when the ability is all but worthless (I'll never forget the idiot cleric trying to turn the earthcancer centipedes in the Wormcrawl Fissure...).
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It's primarily a method of battlefield control (unless the undead are weak enough to destroy, or you have greater turning). It shouldn't be used in all situations, but when it would give you an advantage to disperse the undead to deal with a greater threat, or to divide them into more manageable quantities.
For my most recent AP I started using the alternate rules for Turn Undead where it does damage. I like the feel of it a lot better. The cleric is more inclined to use it now and it weakens the undead so that the party can deal with them easier.
For my most recent AP I started using the alternate rules for Turn Undead where it does damage. I like the feel of it a lot better. The cleric is more inclined to use it now and it weakens the undead so that the party can deal with them easier.
Interesting... How much damage? (i.e.: How does it work?)
Ultradan
I think they are referring to the alternate rules from complete divine, which I really like, but we had some objections to in our game. basically you get a d6 of positive energy damage per cleric level to all undead within 30ft. they get a will save to resist or for half damage, and turn resistance becomes sort of a damage reduction against the turning damage.
The uber gamer in my group didn't like the amount of damage output, equating it to a free jumped up fireball (or better than any spell of an equal level) for a class that is somewhat debatable, as being overpowered already. This is possibly due to it affecting a character not his own, although I do sort of agree that it is alittle overpowered. We are playing Age of Worms, so you would think they would enjoy the help. I have told them repeatedly, this is undead heavy, but they won't really listen on that count. I guess it is really more their problem than mine, but still.
We discussed it and house ruled it down to a d6 of positive energy damage per cleric level, that can be spread out in any amount to those undead within 30ft. therefore, he can chose to target one undead, for all of the damage, or disperse it amongst several undead.
Honestly, the regular 3.5 rules for turning are so difficult and useless, I personally loved how simple the alternate is.
For my most recent AP I started using the alternate rules for Turn Undead where it does damage. I like the feel of it a lot better. The cleric is more inclined to use it now and it weakens the undead so that the party can deal with them easier.Interesting... How much damage? (i.e.: How does it work?)
Ultradan
There is a thread I started a while back that the rules for it were gone over in detail. I can't remember the title of the thread though. As far as overpowered, it hasn't felt that way to me so far but I have only been using the rule for a few months. Yeah it is kinda like an undead fireball but it is centered on the cleric who rarely kills them with it so you have to be willing to put yourself in a lot of harms way to get maximum affect from it.
I actually liked it as written. it gave a character that is almost uniformly relegated to sitting back and worrying over other peoples' hit points something viable to do. aside from searing light and flamestrike, the player doesn't usually get to do much except check up on everyone else. Besides, it only works against undead and they have somewhat strong will saves already. for us, so far, the save has been made 50% of the time.
if you are facing hordes of low level undead, the old rules would have outright destroyed all of them anyway. I think I will point the group at this thread and open the discussion back up.
any more opinions? positive or negative, from anyone using the alternate rules?
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I think they are referring to the alternate rules from complete divine, which I really like, but we had some objections to in our game. basically you get a d6 of positive energy damage per cleric level to all undead within 30ft. they get a will save to resist or for half damage, and turn resistance becomes sort of a damage reduction against the turning damage.
Yeah, that's it. I knew it was an optional rule, but I couldn't remember which book, and I don't own Complete Divine. Like I said before, I haven't had the opportunity to use it a lot yet, but I think it will come in handy down the line.
As a few people have already pointed out its all about controlling the battlefield. We have a player in my group that is always turning undead at the wrong time. His character is not powerful enough to destroy most of the undead he's turning, so you have undead running all over the place to the chagrin of the other players. The same thing happened when he cast a fear spell at a dragonne that was just about to be killed by the other players and it fled (I had described its wounds so they knew it was pretty close to dying). The monster was defending its lair so it was all set to die in battle, but ended up escaping and killing a couple of players later on.
I think that's why he likes the variant turning option. It's all about damage and not about strategically using turn undead to make the undead run away when needed.
Agree. It only makes encounters that are already too long even longer.
Next time I run a new campaign, I am going to implement the alternative rules where turning deals damage.
I tend to consider a "turned" undead as effectively eliminated from the encounter (i.e. "killed"). A cowering, non-combative undead is easily taken out - I don't usually even bother playing it out.
Example: 8 skeletons attack the 1st level party. Cleric turns 4 of them. Fighter types battle and kill the rest. Then I say something like, "after the last one falls, you go finish off those you turned earlier." - and play continues...
All good points. Without a doubt, turning has it's tactical uses. I'm just saying that from an in-game perspective, it's a very dissapointing power.
"Every morning, Pelor, I pray to thee,
to grant me my pious right
to turn undead away from me,
but only those I could take out with hardly a fight."
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All good points. Without a doubt, turning has it's tactical uses. I'm just saying that from an in-game perspective, it's a very dissapointing power.
I have to disagree.
From my own experience, turning undead is an opportunity for the Cleric to take center stage for a moment and truly shine. It is also an opportunity to really describe the scene to reinvest the players' imaginations in what it is they are doing and the true horror of the monsters they are fighting.
I mean literally SHINE... as he/she fills with divine power and in a blinding flash the undead are either immediately vaporized or sent running in terror. And when the turning attempt fails, it serves to illustrate either the power of the players' foe ("The lich lowers his hand from in front of his eyes and sneers contemptuously") or force the cleric to reexamine the strength of his/her vows and how well they are being kept ("You reach out for the Pelor's aid and, while you feel him there, no aid comes. 'You must prove yourself to me this time' are the words you hear in your mind.").
Tactically, turning undead serves the purposes mentioned above. Either to break up a mob for easy dispatch, or to brush aside the annoyances to strike at the true cause of the evil, the BBEG. But besides this, the character should look upon turning undead as more of a redemptive act than a tactical one. The cleric is seeking to redeem an abomination.
However... despite all of this, Tequila wins the thread by busting out an awesome poem.
"Every morning, Pelor, I pray to thee,
to grant me my pious right
to turn undead away from me,
but only those I could take out with hardly a fight."
Poetry FTW
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We don't run into a lot of opportunities to turn undead in our game so the ability mostly gets used to fuel various Divine feats.
Once, however, there was a Cleric of Lathander (FR version of Pelor) in one of our games and the PrC 'Radiant Servant' from the Complete Divine allowed him to use the Sun Domain granted power several times per day. This character routinely ANNHILATED the undead. Thanks to a cloak of charisma +4 and a few turn-enhancing feats, this character would engage swarms of undead (often with more HD than himself and usually with Turn Resistance) and use his abilities to single-handedly cleanse the battlefield. Things that were not either immune to being turned or vastly overpowered for the party got obliterated in a flash.
While an un-buffed turn attempt might not seem very useful, an over-buffed one can quickly become the equivalent of a tactical nuke against undead.
I'm aware of the Improved Turning feat, but what other feats exist to make turning more effective? (rather than just more versatile like divine metamagic)
I can't think of any feats off-hand that give boosts to your turn checks, though there are a few that let you have alternate uses for turn undead. Any Charisma boosting items or spells should be in your must-have list for a turn cleric.
There's a couple of items worth noting in Libris Mortis. I believe one increases the cleric's effective level for turning purposes by 4; the other is a rod which produces an aura, reducing all turn resistances by 4. Combined, that's an effective gain of 8 levels for turning purposes. However, it's not cheap, if I remember correctly (I played along a radiant servant who pursued this option; try telling him turning is no good! ((I realize that it's an atypical example))).