I'm sure this question has been addressed at some point, but I can't find it for the life of me.
I've been playing PFRPG fpr almost a year now, mostly Play-By-Chat campaigns, and I'm about to play a cleric for the first time. Specifically, I'm rebuilding an old 3.5 Cleric. Can't convert him, the character sheet has been lost, I'm remaking him from memory. He WAS a 12th level Cleric/Radiant Servant of Pelor, with the switch to PF we've switched to the PF pantheon despite it being my friend/GM's homebrew setting. So I'm looking over the rules on clerics and channeling positive energy, and the quesiton I have is: Why bother with the Turn Undead feat when all it does is make the undead flee, whereas channeling does them pretty nasty damage -- and both uses of positive energy have the same range, both affect all undead in range, and whereas the turn is all or nothing against each undead, the channeled energy is going to do at least some damage each time it's used. Help me out here, am I missing something?
Removing enemies from the fight > dealing a slight damage to several.
In both cases the undead get Will saves. If the save succeeds, Doing nothing to your enemies < dealing a slight damage to several. If the save fails, the damage isn't so slight, especially as the cleric progresses in levels.
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To me, it depends solely on what you're fighting. If you're fighting a group made up of entirely weak undead, yeah, you're better off channeling for damage. But if you're fighting a mix of undead and other enemies, depending on the strength of the undead, you may want to turn them, simply because it lets you focus on other living enemies. Really, though, most undead (skeletons and zombies) have pretty low HP, so I've always gone the damage route when it comes to those. Seems to work pretty well. The automatic damage is nice, too (save 1/2, not negate). Yeah, it's not much, but I've always been a big fan of auto-damage.
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Removing enemies from the fight > dealing a slight damage to several.In both cases the undead get Will saves. If the save succeeds, Doing nothing to your enemies < dealing a slight damage to several. If the save fails, the damage isn't so slight, especially as the cleric progresses in levels.
Hmmm.
At level 5, a Cleric does 3d6 channeling damage. That's 10 damage if the will save fails.
If I were facing, say, Wraiths, I would prefer to gamble them having 30-50% chance of fleeing away rather than plinking them for 1/5 of their HP, but YMMV.
Removing enemies from the fight > dealing a slight damage to several.In both cases the undead get Will saves. If the save succeeds, Doing nothing to your enemies < dealing a slight damage to several. If the save fails, the damage isn't so slight, especially as the cleric progresses in levels.Hmmm.
At level 5, a Cleric does 3d6 channeling damage. That's 10 damage if the will save fails.
If I were facing, say, Wraiths, I would prefer to gamble them having 30-50% chance of fleeing away rather than plinking them for 1/5 of their HP, but YMMV.
I can see your point, Though it is mitigated by the fact that intelligent undead get a new save every turn, and if they turn around and come back at you, They're unharmed and you've burned a channel.
Turn Undead might be very useful against Undeads using manufactured weapons - if the turning mimics all the effects of panic then they will drop anything they are holding before fleeing.
From my personal experience both are useful in different circumstances. When mobbed by medium undead, it works great to turn them, even if you only get a few. When fighting level draining and ability score draining undead, the fewer the better. There's nothing worse than a touch attack for drain, especially since the party fighter is the one taking all those touch attacks. And if you're fighting incorporeal undead, they'll just focus on the cleric and drain him something fierce.
Exactly.
Use the turns for your shadows, allips, spectres, etc., early in the fight so you don't have to take them all on at once. Even getting one or two to turn away for a couple rounds is a big deal. Then blast them with the damage dealing. Saving a few touch attacks from dealing ability damage or level drain can easily be the difference between an easy fight and a hard fight/near TPK/TPK.
Against skeletons/zombies, just blast them to bits.
I'm sure this question has been addressed at some point, but I can't find it for the life of me.
I've been playing PFRPG fpr almost a year now, mostly Play-By-Chat campaigns, and I'm about to play a cleric for the first time. Specifically, I'm rebuilding an old 3.5 Cleric. Can't convert him, the character sheet has been lost, I'm remaking him from memory. He WAS a 12th level Cleric/Radiant Servant of Pelor, with the switch to PF we've switched to the PF pantheon despite it being my friend/GM's homebrew setting. So I'm looking over the rules on clerics and channeling positive energy, and the quesiton I have is: Why bother with the Turn Undead feat when all it does is make the undead flee, whereas channeling does them pretty nasty damage -- and both uses of positive energy have the same range, both affect all undead in range, and whereas the turn is all or nothing against each undead, the channeled energy is going to do at least some damage each time it's used. Help me out here, am I missing something?
Thank you, I've said the same thing several months back. I think Turn Undead has become rather pointless almost. Also, the new Channel Energy rule has made converting a lot of Divine Feats from 3.5 very hard, as some of them involve using the Turning rules. I wish they had kept the turning rules as is while having Channel Energy as an option. As in, a Cleric can choose either Turning or Channeling, not both.
I prefer the change as I despised the turning rules in 3rd edition (well AD&D rules iritated me as well). I get sick each time I think about our Cleric attempting the turning as it required either me or another player to help her calculate everything.
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Not to mention that 3.5 TU was useless mostly because Undead had inflated HD to make up for the horrible "D12 but no stat bonus to HP" idea.
As a result, Divine Feats were invented in order to make Clerics feel a little more loved. Which of course was completely unnecessary, because with the being full casters they didn't really need any buffs.
But somebody at WotC had a bright idea that led to Divine Metamagic and few other cheesecakes. Ugh. Glad to have that stuff out of PF.
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Divine Metamagic was great. They honestly needed to make more feats like that, ratherthan shut it down. It actually allowed a Cleric to use Turn Attempts for something if there either where no Undead, (or very uncommon), or the character didn't care one way or the other about Undead. Not to mention the fact that, besides like three metamagic feats at high levels, there is almost no point in Clerics, (main casters) to even take metamagic. It is way, way too expensive for the little it actually helps divine (cleric spells), and they are usually wasting one of their few feats to augment one or two spells their entire career.
Divine Metamagic was great. They honestly needed to make more feats like that, ratherthan shut it down. It actually allowed a Cleric to use Turn Attempts for something if there either where no Undead, (or very uncommon), or the character didn't care one way or the other about Undead. Not to mention the fact that, besides like three metamagic feats at high levels, there is almost no point in Clerics, (main casters) to even take metamagic. It is way, way too expensive for the little it actually helps divine (cleric spells), and they are usually wasting one of their few feats to augment one or two spells their entire career.
IME, every effect which avoids metamagic spell slot increasing = terribad idea.
I see how this counts for rods - in fact, I consider metamagic rods too powerful.
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Divine Metamagic was great. They honestly needed to make more feats like that, ratherthan shut it down. It actually allowed a Cleric to use Turn Attempts for something if there either where no Undead, (or very uncommon), or the character didn't care one way or the other about Undead. Not to mention the fact that, besides like three metamagic feats at high levels, there is almost no point in Clerics, (main casters) to even take metamagic. It is way, way too expensive for the little it actually helps divine (cleric spells), and they are usually wasting one of their few feats to augment one or two spells their entire career.
Well, that's a problem of all casters, because there is just one core metamagic feat that is worth bothering with: Quicken.
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I would argue that it is less true with every other "main" caster, though. Sorcerers is a no brainer. Wizards, for one get free metamagic feats, and two are so much less limited on spells they absolutely must choose to fullfill their appointed group role. Arcane spells also tend to actualy be affected by metamagic (in meaningful ways) much more commonly than divine spells, (which more often tend to have built in limits or the minor increase is far out-weighed by the cost).
Divine Metamagic was great. They honestly needed to make more feats like that, ratherthan shut it down. It actually allowed a Cleric to use Turn Attempts for something if there either where no Undead, (or very uncommon), or the character didn't care one way or the other about Undead. Not to mention the fact that, besides like three metamagic feats at high levels, there is almost no point in Clerics, (main casters) to even take metamagic. It is way, way too expensive for the little it actually helps divine (cleric spells), and they are usually wasting one of their few feats to augment one or two spells their entire career.IME, every effect which avoids metamagic spell slot increasing = terribad idea.
I see how this counts for rods - in fact, I consider metamagic rods too powerful.
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A Cleric with Divine Metamagic and access to a few expansions (notably Complete Arcane, Libris Mortis, and the Spell Compendium) could easily make the party nigh invulnerable against enemies that should pose a very credible threat.
Giving 3.5 Clerics an outlet to gain a beneficial effects from otherwise unusable Turn Undead attempts per day ups the power of the class significantly by turning a circumstantial power into a a reliable one. It isn't just Divine Metamagic that caused trouble though, the whole set of Divine Feats (upping CL, Saving Throws, et cetera) caused a noticable gap in balance.
Clerics can benefit well enough from core metamagics to more than justify taking them and using them regularly (Quicken Spell and Extend Spell come to mind, as does Silent Spell considering Silence is an amazing low level spell).
I don't like metamagic rods; not enough that I bother to remove them from my game however. Wizards and Sorcerers, who are already light on neccessary gear compared to martial classes, can spend a small fraction of their wealth on rods which apply metamagics to their magic with no increase in spell slot; not only allowing them to cast spells with metamagics before they normally would be able to, but also by extension lessening the value of the metamagic feats themselves as well as the value of smart allocation of metamagic on preprepared spells. As it is, more often than not Wizards are better served with Item Creation (especially with the removal of XP cost in PF) than with Metamagic.
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IME, every effect which avoids metamagic spell slot increasing = terribad idea.
I'm the opposite, I think that forcing all metamagic spells to have a cost outside the feat, and particularly to increase the level of the spell was a terrible idea. Maybe allow a metamagic to be used a certain number of times per day based on casting character level, (with a hard limit on the use of all metamagic feats equal to your total level or something), increasing per metamagic feat would have been good, but the general feeling since 3.0 is that metamagic is not worth it, with a few exceptions, until you get those rods to make it actually work.
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A Cleric with Divine Metamagic and access to a few expansions (notably Complete Arcane, Libris Mortis, and the Spell Compendium) could easily make the party nigh invulnerable against enemies that should pose a very credible threat.
Giving 3.5 Clerics an outlet to gain a beneficial effects from otherwise unusable Turn Undead attempts per day ups the power of the class significantly by turning a circumstantial power into a a reliable one. It isn't just Divine Metamagic that caused trouble though, the whole set of Divine Feats (upping CL, Saving Throws, et cetera) caused a noticable gap in balance.
Clerics can benefit well enough from core metamagics to more than justify taking them and using them regularly (Quicken Spell and Extend Spell come to mind, as does Silent Spell considering Silence is an amazing low level spell).
I don't like metamagic rods; not enough that I bother to remove them from my game however. Wizards and Sorcerers, who are already light on neccessary gear compared to martial classes, can spend a small fraction of their wealth on rods which apply metamagics to their magic with no increase in spell slot; not only allowing them to cast spells...
Again, I very much disagree. Up until that point, (and honestly then and long afterwards as well), every class except the Cleric got large bounds in it's effectiveness. Nearly every other book in existance offered two or more times the amount of options for all classes than it did the Cleric. And many of them could be taken together, while most Cleric abilities where very limited. Look at spells, and nearly every class, including non-main casters got more spells, and spells that stepped heavily on the Cleric's spell limits, while Cleric tended to get very watered down, ineffective, and not focused feats, spells, or other class options.
Even Druids, arguably more powerful than Clerics got 2-3 times more options, and huge amounts of variation in those options, more spells, more powerful spells, better feat options, and more gear choices and options. Many of the options that where opened to Clerics where not at all unique, either, accessible to anyone that could Turn/Rebuke Undead, for example, and often even better used in their hands.
IMHO, the fact that there is room for options does not automatically makes "good" options actually able to break a game in pieces.
Again, I very much disagree. Up until that point, (and honestly then and long afterwards as well), every class except the Cleric got large bounds in it's effectiveness. Nearly every other book in existance offered two or more times the amount of options for all classes than it did the Cleric. And many of them could be taken together, while most Cleric abilities where very limited. Look at spells, and nearly every class, including non-main casters got more spells, and spells that stepped heavily on the Cleric's spell limits, while Cleric tended to get very watered down, ineffective, and not focused feats, spells, or other class options.
Even Druids, arguably more powerful than Clerics got 2-3 times more options, and huge amounts of variation in those options, more spells, more powerful spells, better feat...
I must respectfully disagree, though I can see your reasoning clearly enough. In many supplements Clerics got new domain options. These domains opened up a smattering of new spells and spells normally limited to other classes (and in many cases at a different spell level) as well as a handful of unique abilities which could be used in conjunction with other feats and spells to very powerful ends which many other classes could not achieve. Considering that on a purely mechanical level you can cherry-pick any couple of domains you wanted and churn out something unique and sound every time I don't think they had a lack of strong options in later books. Many options for other classes could be used just as readily by the Cleric (just as many of the Divine Feats were just as good or more so with Paladins). There was a wealth of spells both strong and flavorful printed (and reprinted in the Spell Compendium) just like Wizards. The only shortcoming I've found regarding Clerics in 3.5 was the lack of relevent prestige classes in highly optimized play. As it was Clerics using options available in the core rulebooks remained as powerful or more so than many of the other classes. Druids would be a discussion for another time. Overall I was against most of the options presented for any class in supplemental books as I felt they were unbalanced between one another and caused a rift in effectiveness between classes that could be difficult to run for.
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DM attitue can also play a large part in this too. I've know a lot of DMs that simply will not allow their big cool monster to be taken down (fairly) with a good plan or lucky roll, so a lot of spells that don't have an affect on a successful save are basically poinless. I'm of the opinion that if you (uncommonly) one shot a boss with a lucky spell, you should be rewarded (in game, RP and congradulated), but that's just me.
I'd rather damage them outright rather they make them flee.
It depends from the dungeon (or whatelse) environment too, I guess. What monsters could be alerted by the fleeing undeads.. things like these.
Or if they are attacking someone that is very weak and cannot stand even 1 round of attacks. In this situation, better make them flee.
Luckily, the gameworld can make the concept of "optimal" very different, or even ever-changing ;)
I'm of the opinion that if you (uncommonly) one shot a boss with a lucky spell, you should be rewarded (in game, RP and congradulated), but that's just me.
I agree. Barring the fact that the Big Bad is more likely to have several immunities and high save and greater access to resources, so drop him ins this way can be more that easy. And he already attempted to do the same on you and/or your teammates. So..
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It wasn't that Paizo had the option to use it... that was all closed content.Not to mention that 3.5 TU was useless mostly because Undead had inflated HD to make up for the horrible "D12 but no stat bonus to HP" idea.
As a result, Divine Feats were invented in order to make Clerics feel a little more loved. Which of course was completely unnecessary, because with the being full casters they didn't really need any buffs.
But somebody at WotC had a bright idea that led to Divine Metamagic and few other cheesecakes. Ugh. Glad to have that stuff out of PF.
Well, Paizo could have Divine feats that replace channeling uses - you can't copyright mechanics, else you wouldn't have Robilar's Gambit back as one of Barbarian rage powers :)
But they didn't need to, because channeling is actually useful, unlike turning :)
Divine Metamagic was great. They honestly needed to make more feats like that, ratherthan shut it down. It actually allowed a Cleric to use Turn Attempts for something if there either where no Undead, (or very uncommon), or the character didn't care one way or the other about Undead.
I agree that having feats/options that spent turning uses was one of the better ideas from the Complete books, but Divine Metamagic was far too overpowered. Being able to use Quicken Spell on your highest level spells at no cost other than a few turning attempts is simply too good. As was the ability to use the same with Persistent Spell (the 24-hour duration version).
Clerics in my campaigns tended to take Extra Turning and every other option that increased their number of turning attempts per day, solely for the purpose of using Divine Metamagic. No other options were anywhere close in terms of power, so even if you had to spend several feats to use them, they were still virtually "must-have".
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I agree, but not in the sense you mean. They did become must have, because there was so little other options for them. A lot of times, people like to make it seem like they can persistant a zillion spells a day, or quicken every other spell, which kust wasnt the case. Whats worse, im PF it is even harder to do that, because extra channeling does not stack (for Clerics).