Pathfinder 1E Pathfinder Turning

[JRRNeiklot]

Of all the rules in the Alpha, the turning rules have been the most universally accepted. We are looking at a name change though, just so that it is a bit more clear.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer
Paizo Publishing

I think it's way, way overpowered, and makes healing spells useless. There's absolutely no need for healing spells, when a cleric can heal the entire party with one use of turn undead. 4d6 healing to the entire party at level 7 compared to cure serious, a 4th level spell gained at level 7 for 4d8+7 to ONE person? Not to mention the effect on the game world. 600 soldiers wounded, possibly dying from a battle, just cram 'em in one room and let a cleric walk by and poof they're back on the front lines. An 8th level cleric can easily use this "healing surge" 8 times a day and eleven with the extra turning feat. 44d6 of healing per day.

 

[Rugult]

I think it's way, way overpowered, and makes healing spells useless. There's absolutely no need for healing spells, when a cleric can heal the entire party with one use of turn undead. 4d6 healing to the entire party at level 7 compared to cure serious, a 4th level spell gained at level 7 for 4d8+7 to ONE person? Not to mention the effect on the game world. 600 soldiers wounded, possibly dying from a battle, just cram 'em in one room and let a cleric walk by and poof they're back on the front lines. An 8th level cleric can easily use this "healing surge" 8 times a day and eleven with the extra turning feat. 44d6 of healing per day.

I've been running a pathfinder campaign with a cleric, and even though he has quite a few turning attempts in a day, he usually burns through them rather quickly. In essence, turning is now healing with some extra benefits against undead, which lends itself to the longevity of a cleric in a game.

Often times I find that our cleric is forced to use his turn attempts to save one player who is on the verge of death. I still need to see how it plays at higher levels, but I don't see it being that overpowered.

Besides, if it is... I can always throw an evil cleric at them =D

 

[Aus_Snow]

4d6 healing to the entire party at level 7 compared to cure serious, a 4th level spell gained at level 7 for 4d8+7 to ONE person?

Hm. Yeah, that does look pretty wacky.

I wonder if they've toned it down at this stage. Hope so.

 

[Kaisoku]

I'd really like to see the playtesting results of a Neutral Cleric with Negative Energy Channeling.

You don't win fights being healing people to death (well, except undead), so extra healing might not tip scales in overpoweredness so much.
Negative Energy now working like Inflict spells... that could get ugly.

I'd like to hear 1st level, 7th level, 14th level and 20th level playtesting of Negative Energy Channeling being used in normal combats for those levels.

Maybe it's not as bad as I'm imagining... but I really, really think playtesting this should be a priority before releasing rules and finding out later that this can be abused to horrible levels.

 

[joela]

healing

I think it's way, way overpowered, and makes healing spells useless. There's absolutely no need for healing spells, when a cleric can heal the entire party with one use of turn undead.

And that's the point. The 3.x RAW cleric was basically the medic for the adventure party. With channeling, they can now select other, more combat-oriented spells while still offering healing.

44d6 of healing per day.

That's nothing compared to a fully charged (50) wand of cure light/moderate/serious/whatever wounds. And let's not forget potions.

 

[Kaisoku]

The healing side of it doesn't feel as big a deal to me as the inflicting.

Even for undead (and elementals or outsiders), you can devise protection magic for encounters that shouldn't be trivialized by tons of Turning damage.


However, having a Negative Energy cleric walking through and doing this kind of damage against all enemies is harder to manage.

Replacing the wand of cure light wounds isn't that big of a deal. 4d6 damage at 7th level vs everything within 30' may be a touch strong, and a heckuva lot better than a wand of inflict wounds.

Remember, there's feats out there like Selective Channeling (in PF) and other things like making Turning a Swift Action. This can get serious pretty quickly when you get outside the core rules. And the point of Pathfinder is to work with our current 3.5e material, right?

Even without having non-core Turning feats in play, 4d6 selectively damaging your foes may be a bit strong.


Or maybe in practice the 30' range and other aspects of the Cleric make this work okay, and we just need to limit things like Swift Turning from other sources.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

And that's the point. The 3.x RAW cleric was basically the medic for the adventure party. With channeling, they can now select other, more combat-oriented spells while still offering healing.


That's nothing compared to a fully charged (50) wand of cure light/moderate/serious/whatever wounds. And let's not forget potions.

Clerics are the last class that needs a powerup. I never saw a walking medical kit. I saw clerics with Divine power and divine favor making fighter's look pathetic. I saw clerics being the best archers in the game.

And potions and wands at least cost gold, plus a dm can regulate the magic item availability. He can't a class ability.

Instead of one level of ranger for twf, you're going to see every pc with a 10 charisma or higher taking a level of cleric and the extra turning feat for 6d6 healing every day. Hell, one level of cleric is already nice, a few spells, 2 domain powers for -1 to bab? Sign me up. An extra 6d6 healing on top of it? Yeah, I'll take one. And paladins will be downright nasty, since they'll pump charisma to the stratosphere. May as well have healing surges too.

 

[joela]

selective

Even without having non-core Turning feats in play, 4d6 selectively damaging your foes may be a bit strong.

With the right feats, a 7th or 8th level wizard could do that with fireball and the like. And I believe the dragon shaman from WotC PHII(?) has a similar ability and damage range.

 

[Roman]

I have been using the Channel Positive/Negative energy rules for quite a long time now. For the most part, they worked well, but they turned out to be overpowered when the party is dealing with undead. Here is my brief playtest report of an undead side-adventure:

I was one of those who really liked the change of Turning Undead rules into Channel (Positive/Negative) Energy in the Pathfinder RPG. Having used the rules in my game for a while now, I still prefer the new rules to the old rules, but I do have some new reservations - chiefly that the mechanic is very overpowered when the party is fighting Undead.

The party in the campaign in question, currently consists of the following classes, all of which are at level 9:

1 x Wizard
1 x Fighter/Barbarian
1 x Cleric
1 x Paladin
1 x Rogue

The Cleric has taken feats that improve turning undead, notably: Quicken Turning, Improved Turning and Extra Turning

It is a mostly 3.5E game, but I am gradually introducing more and more Pathfinder RPG elements with an eye towards a full conversion after Alpha 3 is released. The campaign world is my own as are the adventures.

I will not bore you with the details of the story, but suffice it to say that the party, although dealing with other pressing issues, had decided to take on a sidequest and embark on an expedition to investigate an ancient tomb dating back to the Karminian civilization in the desert they were visiting.

Having made their treck and dealt with the traps they, needless to say began encountering numerous undead. The undead threats were varied, ranging from numerous weak undead (even as lowly as zombies or improved skeletons) to ghasts, ghost, wights and mummies. None of these encounters posed any problems to the party - it was not even close.

Eventually, they found out that undeath was the Karminian version of the afterlife and found some undead with their souls sundered from their bodies and so on and so on jumping over the story... basically they became unsure whether slaughtering them is a good idea and left the tomb. They eventually returned, however, their numbers further augmented by 3 8th level paladins.

Again jumping over the story to the combats:

- a fight against numerous heavily upgraded skeletons teamed up with 2 mummies: not a problem for the party at all
- a fight against 4 bodaks: not a problem for the party at all
- a fight against 4 wights and 4 ghosts (2 ghosts and 2 wights had 7 class levels each - a wizard and a rogue among both)
- a fight against a Mummy Lord (CR15): not a problem for the party at all

The finnal battle was preceded by an encounter with two rust monsters, after which the party did not have any time to rest.

The setup was that the party then entered the burial chamber of King Ochran where it fought him, as well as his 4 advisors. The room was made of metal and was very cold - the floor was made of ice. Beneath the ice was a natural cavern and some way down in that cavern was a pool of lava with a path winding through it. The lava was melting the ice, but it was refreezing almost immediately, due to the magic of a Black Sun that adorned the ceiling and exuded dark energy (providing +2 to resistance against Channel Positive Energy) and cold. Nevertheless there were cracks in the ice that were moving along the floor (ice was cracking and then always refreezing a round later) that a character could fall through.

The chamber contained the sarcofagi of king's 4 advisors (4 mummies). On top of that, however, the party also had to simultaneously face King Ochran, whose body was represented by a mummy with upgraded stats and 10 levels of sorceror and whose soul (sundered from the body) was represented by a spectre with upgraded stats and also 10 levels of sorcerer. Both the body of Ochran and the soul of Ochran also received bonus hit points and additional +2 to their turn resistance.

Suffice it to say, that the party still slaughtered this entourage wholesale and I did not pull my punches (Cloudkills... Fireballs to hurt them and melt the ice temporarily to make them fall through and so on - though I deliberately did not give the sorcerers Dominate as I did think that would have been an overkill - perhaps I was wrong), yet at the end of the day, the party was not terribly ruined and did not pull through by just the nick of their teeth. OK, the party was not in the best of shapes after it was all over, but it was still disturbingly combat capable.


As such, I do think that the current incarnation of Channel Positive Energy is overpowered when the party is dealing with undead, though I still prefer it to the old 3.5 Turning Undead mechanic.

Reposted from this thread: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=225589

 

[Roman]

A possible solution I proposed to balance Channel Positive/Negative Energy (from the same playtest thread):

Perhaps the way to balance the Channel Energy ability would be to look at spells for inspiration.

Suppose that instead of the current healing/damage mechanic, we would instead take cue from cure ... wounds and cause ... wounds spells, which after all, are supposed to rely on positive and negative energy respectively.

Channel energy would be a touch effect to begin with. In its positive energy version, it would cure hit points to the tune of 1d8, plus an additional 1d8 hit points every two levels thereafter (hence 2d8 at third level, 3d8 at fourth level, etcetera). Of course, the ability would also do equivalent damage to the undead upon a succesful touch attack. The Channel Negative Energy ability would, naturaly, work in the opposite manner.

The actual turning and commanding mechanics would remain the same as they are in the current Channel Energy desciptions, with the will save determining whether the undead in question flee/are commanded.

It is possible to have this work only on the undead creature targeted by the damaging effect of this ability, but to better evoke the origin of this ability in the turn undead mechanic, it is also feasible to say that all undead within 30 feet of the cleric have to make the saving throw, as the proximity of the negative/positive energy is enough to turn/command them even when they are not damaged/healed. This would also retain the probable design aim of enabling the cleric to heal while doing other actions - he is healing (or damaging) only one individual (or undead creature), but still turning/commanding surrounding undead.

At 9th level, clerics gain 5th level spells and Cure Light Wounds, Mass (or Cause Light Wounds, Mass) is among them. At this stage, it is therefore feasible and balanced to give the cleric the option to also use an area of effect (30' burst centered around the cleric) use of the Channel Energy ability, but using the area of effect ability would only cure/cause damage per creature that uses 4 less d8 dice than the targeted single-creature ability. Hence, it would cure 1d8 hit points at level 9, 2d8 hit points at level 11 and so on. The turning/commanding effects would remain the same for both the targeted and the area of effect versions of Channel Energy.

Note 1: This mechanic is based on the cure/cause ... wounds spells. Because it combines healing/wounding with the turning/comanding mechanic, I thought it prudent to eliminate the +1hp per level cured/caused, which if kept would have made the ability even more overpowered at higher levels than it was before. It may also be desirable to tone down the dice to d6s, but the latter may not be necessary at all given the area of effect nerf it receives compared to the previous Channel Energy mechanic. I have not playtested this version, so that is as of yet unclear.

Note 2: Given this kind of transparency between cure/cause spells and the Channel Energy ability, it could be an interesting experiment to permit Clerics to drop their spells of the appropriate level to fuel additional Channel Energy uses instead of spontaneously casting cure/cause spells.

Reposted from: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=225589