Save the Undead or How to fix Turning, Greater Turning...

[Someone]

May I suggest that maybe is the greater turning and the prestige classes what need to be fixed? In any case (excuse me for not having read carefully your rules change) allow me to suggest to simply tie the turning success not to the undead HD, but CR. That should fix the problem with liches and vampires. Make greater turning a regular turning that also deals damage.

In any case, seems that the party is simply very strong in the anti-undead department. I would think on house ruling golems if I had a couple fighters with adamantine greatswords.

 

[Sadrik]

Undead

I too have encountered problems with this too in a campaign I ran several years ago.
couple of suggestions

1. No con bonus problem: Add the constuct hp bonus.
2. Make the turn skill: force the clercs to place skill points into a normally automattically scaling ability. Interesting consequence would be that all characters could take it and then you could expect the party to have the ability even though they dont have a cleric. Allowing for better designed encounters.
3. Make them use spell slots: treat the ability as a spontaneous cast of a cure spell level 1-9 if they are coughing up spell slots every time they want to do it they may use it more sparingly. I like this option.
4. Do the ravenloft thing and essential bump up all of their turn resistance. I assume that is what they do anyway in the 3 ed rules, I only have the 2 ed ravenloft.
5. Make them use spell slots: Again they are burning spell slots but they have to use their cure spells as touch attacks to damage them. So cure light wounds would do 1d8+5 etc.
6. Get rid of the turning ability altogether: The players will hate you. I dont suggest this one.

Sadrik

 

[DreamChaser]

I have long attempted to do something similiar.

My questions:
You say as long as a creature has damage dealt, it counts as shaken. I assume you mean that if the undead takes damage it becomes shaken from the effects of the damage. How long does this shaken condition last?

My only real concern is you end up with three seperate rolls: the turning check, turning damage (or effect) and damage.

Here is my idea:
TURNING UNDEAD
-->Clerics make normal turn checks and turn damage rolls to determine power and number of undead affected. Turn resistance works just as it does now, making a creature harder to affect.
-->Any undead affected would take an amount of Wisdom damage and Charisma damage equal to 1 + the cleric's Charisma bonus (if any).
-->Clerics can maintain the turning for additional rounds with by concentrating (base DC 15 if distracted). Each round, all undead who were affected before are again, unless they leave the area (30' radius). If the cleric wishes to affect different undead, she must make a new turn check.
-->An undead that has taken Wisdom and Charisma damage from turning is slowed (as the spell) as long as it takes damage and for 2 rounds after. If either score drops to 0 due to damage, the creature is immobilized and helpless until the ability recovers to at least 1. If both abilities drop to 0, the animating force of creature is destroyed.

I chose Wisdom and Charisma because they are the stats that relate to sense of self and awareness and are what separates creatures from objects. Most undead will run out of Charisma before Wisdom, and will be immobilized. A first level cleric can (provided she rolls high enough on her turn check) immobilize any skeletons she encounters. More powerful creatures will require more time but their abilities will suffer while being turned (many DCs are based on Charisma so the damage helps the cleric in the short term too).

REBUKING UNDEAD
-->Clerics make normal turn checks and turn damage rolls to determine power and number of undead affected. Turn resistance works just as it does now, making a creature harder to affect.
-->Any undead affected would take an amount of Intelligence and Charisma damage equal to 1 + the cleric's Charisma bonus (if any). (Mindless undead take only Charisma damage).
-->Clerics can maintain the turning for additional rounds with by concentrating (base DC 15 if distracted). Each round, all undead who were affected before are again, unless they leave the area (30' radius). If the cleric wishes to affect different undead, she must make a new turn check.
-->An undead that has taken Intelligence and/or Charisma damage from rebuking is facinated as long as it takes damage and for 2 rounds after. If either score drops to 0 due to damage is immobilized and helpless until it recovers to at least 1. If both abilities drop to 0, the will of the creature is subjugated and (when it recovers) the cleric can choose to make it a cohort or follower.


What do you think?
DC

 

[Kyamsil]

Here's an interesting approach: give the party a couple of items that emulate divine feats or have unique abilities- but that require turning attempts to activate. Encourage them to burn through some of those turning attempts that way.

The Jester: Interesting idea, but all of them have now Divine Feats (and during a time the paladin had an armour that needed turning to get special abilities working but has lost it). As I have said, the number of turning attempts they get is too high to be severely affected by spending them on divine feats/activating items: All of them have Extra Turning, and all of them have high charisma:18 the first cleric of Lathander, 16 the second cleric and 22 (with enhancement) the paladin (who of course loves her Divine Might divine feat). Also, the first cleric has a Greater Turning each day and the second one has 2 attempts at Greater Turning each day.

At a total of 11+1Greater, 10+2Greater and 13 turnings each day they usually have enough to last the whole adventure, even after divine feats and all.

May I suggest that maybe is the greater turning and the prestige classes what need to be fixed? In any case (excuse me for not having read carefully your rules change) allow me to suggest to simply tie the turning success not to the undead HD, but CR. That should fix the problem with liches and vampires. Make greater turning a regular turning that also deals damage.

In any case, seems that the party is simply very strong in the anti-undead department. I would think on house ruling golems if I had a couple fighters with adamantine greatswords.

Someone: the Greater Turning as is written is the bane of any undead you can think of. I have already fixed the prestige classes by removing the 3+Cha Greater Turnings each day that the Radiant Servant had!!one extra at first level with another more each 4 days a lot more reasonable. I am trying now to fix Greater Turning (and Turning) by providing an alternate way to handle it. Instead of making it an encounter deciding ability I think that with the damage turning (and greater turning) will help in the same way that a fireball or other area spell helps against multiple opponents, but without making the encounter a sure-win situation.

1. No con bonus problem: Add the constuct hp bonus.
2. Make the turn skill: force the clercs to place skill points into a normally automattically scaling ability. Interesting consequence would be that all characters could take it and then you could expect the party to have the ability even though they dont have a cleric. Allowing for better designed encounters.
3. Make them use spell slots: treat the ability as a spontaneous cast of a cure spell level 1-9 if they are coughing up spell slots every time they want to do it they may use it more sparingly. I like this option.
4. Do the ravenloft thing and essential bump up all of their turn resistance. I assume that is what they do anyway in the 3 ed rules, I only have the 2 ed ravenloft.
5. Make them use spell slots: Again they are burning spell slots but they have to use their cure spells as touch attacks to damage them. So cure light wounds would do 1d8+5 etc.
6. Get rid of the turning ability altogether: The players will hate you. I dont suggest this one.

Sadrik:
1:Already considering that approach myself. Construct bonus hp would help.
2:Interesting idea. When I was trying to get at a system that I liked I toyed with the idea of making it dependant of Knowledge(Religion) checks and work with a table similar to the one for the Iajutsu-Focus from OA.
3:This is also interesting. Will think about it.
4: Making Turn Resistance go up is another thing I was toying with. Also, I thought on simply making Turn Resistance charisma dependant so each undead had an extra turn resistance equal to its Cha bonus. Will think about it too.
5: This is making the ability almost useless as they already can do so by spontaneously casting cure spells.
6: I don't want to die young Remember, the first of the clerics has been working hard on improving that class ability... It would be too harsh to make it go away.

I have long attempted to do something similiar.

My questions:
You say as long as a creature has damage dealt, it counts as shaken. I assume you mean that if the undead takes damage it becomes shaken from the effects of the damage. How long does this shaken condition last?

My only real concern is you end up with three seperate rolls: the turning check, turning damage (or effect) and damage.

DreamChaser: Yes, the shaken result lasts as long as it continues to have damage that was inflicted by the turning. So that screws non-intelligent undead but not so the intelligent ones that will heal given time. They all will benefit greatly from having evil clerics around to heal them with negative energy (rebuking or inflict spells)

Having 3 separate rolls: can be an issue as it would slow things down a bit, but I don't care too much about that so it's not a problem to me. See it that way: in the end you are saving yourself a lot of dice rolling when the clerics blast the 30 zombies that are cannon fodder in the encounter with the BBEG.

Your system seems interesting, but I don't like too much it being based on ability damage. That needs a lot more book keeping than just damaging undead. I prefer Turning becoming an undead only fireball-type than having to record which undead has its scores diminished and when it will recover and so on. But interesting anyways


Thanks you all for all the feedback, keep them coming please!

 

[Elephant]

The problem with undead minions: unless the players are really high level, those extra turn-fodder are actually extra XP for the party because they affect the EL of the encounter. If they were somehow summoned undead or if animated/controlled undead or spawn created by vampires and such didn't affect XP the way summoned creatures do it could do the trick.

A dozen weak zombies or skeletons by themselves are only CR 1 or 2. Adding them to higher level encounters would have a very minor bookkeeping impact.

 

[Grazzt]

There's a discussion on fixing turning/rebuking going on on SKR's boards here:

http://p082.ezboard.com/fseankreynoldsboardsfrm7.showMessage?topicID=488.topic

James Heard had an interesting concept by making it a damage-based system (and at the same time blending it with the current rules since turning uses a "clunky" mechanic as is).

 

[Kyamsil]

After reading some of the posts of the discussion on the Sean K. Reynolds boards I have created another version of turning.

Turning Undead v1.2
Make a Turning Check as in the standard rules to know your turning attempt result that can go from effective turning level -4 to effective turning level +4.

Then roll for the number of turned HD as standard too. This will give you the number of HD of undead that will be damaged by the attempt.
(this is the standard turning procedure so most feats related to turning are unaffected)

The affected HD of undead (starting with the undead with fewer HD and when of equal HD from the turning character outward) suffer an amount of sacred "nonlethal" damage equal to 1d6 for each two effective turning levels. This nonlethal damage is special and affects undead. This damage is healed at a rate of 1hp/HD each hour.

A Will save is allowed for half damage (DC=10 + half effective turning level + Cha bonus). Each point of Turn Resistance removes a dice of damage that can result in no damage dice for powerful undead when turned by not too powerful clerics.

An undead that has any sacred nonlethal damage done to it by turning counts as Shaken. If at any moment the amount of nonlethal damage (cumulative with various turning attempts) gets higher than the hp total (not remaining hp) of the undead creature it becomes cowering and turning will start dealing sacred lethal damage. If an undead creature that is cowering is damaged in any way that isn't turning it gets to act as Shaken for the remaining of the encounter and can't be Cowering again by further turning. If the sacred lethal damage total exceeds the remaining hp of the undead creature it is destroyed.

Greater turning works differently in that it deals sacred lethal damage directly (making the undead Shaken but never Cowering) without need of the sacred non-lethal damage = total hp before dealing lethal damage. As usual, if the amount of sacred lethal damage is enough to drop the undead to 0 or lower hp it is destroyed.

(The only feats that would need changing that I know off are Exalted Turning: that would change to +3d6 on damage with a Greater Turning attempt or +2d6 (lethal) on a standard turning attempt and Disciple of the Sun that will simply give "spend two turning attempts for your turning to count as Greater Turning")


Evil clerics and rebuking undead:

Same mechanic, but instead of dealing sacred non-lethal damage they deal profane non-lethal damage. Sacred and profane damage heal each other, so an undead can only have a running total of either profane or sacred damage going on. As long as an undead has profane non-lethal damage it counts as Shaken if unfriendly to the rebuking cleric.

If the amount of profane non-lethal damage exceed the total hp (not remaining hp) of the undead it counts as Fascinated (and the effect is broken if it is dealt damage that is not turning). If the rebuking cleric continues to deal profane non-lethal damage with more rebuking attempts until it reachs double the hp total of the undead then it has gained Control over it.

If an undead creature has any amount of sacred lethal damage (because of Greater Turning for example) and receives profane non-lethal damage it heals an equal amount of that sacred lethal damage (up to the amount of sacred lethal damage, can't heal that way other types of damage).

Bolstering Undead:

Follow the same mechanic as for rebuking undead, but the affected HD of undead gain a Turn Resistance bonus equal to the amount of damage rolled divided by 5. This effect lasts for 10 minutes.


As sacred and profane non-lethal damage for turning/rebuking heal each other then dispelling turning is not a special turning attempt anymore.

 

[DreamChaser]

Interesting concept. My concerns are as follows:

(1) Creating two specials kinds of "nonlethal" damage that causes a shift in the rule that undead are immune to nonlethal damage: I had considered nonlethal damage but felt that a way of dealing with undead that does not require redefining them (or creating a special exception) would integrate better into the existing mechanic.

(2) Book keeping in terms of the p nonlethal v s nonlethal: Sure it might not come up too often, but then by the same token, it might quite a bit. An evil cleric could rebuke undead to undo the good cleric's turning and this would lead to a cycle of nonlethal damage healing nonlethal damage (which is just silly when you think of it).

(3) Too many die rolls: A cleric with only a basic die set would be rolling her d6 countless times (leading to countless delays) in a fight with undead.


If at least two of these things could be dealt with (all three ideally), I would be pretty pumped about the system.
Possible solutions:
(1) Mental ability damage (as I suggested) or real damage (although this might be too powerful: As I have said, creating a system that violates one of the core parts of the Undead type is iffy, IMHO. Undead are susceptible to real damage and mental ability damage.

(2) ??? I'm not sure what to do with this one. I just know that the damage healing damage thing is too counterintuitive to me.

(3) Get rid of the turning damage or make the "damage" a set amount instead of a roll.

Just my thoughts.

DC

 

[Whitemage Bishieboy]

i understand your problem with turning,its a clunky swingy mechanic but i want to note some stuff,then ill add ideas.

many undead have hitdice well above there CRs.with mage BAB and no con scores its obvious why.thus turning in my experience never did anything till my clerics got divine feats.(whoooo divine feats)yours may vary but anywho just rambleing now onto the suggestion.

why include the turn roll anymore with damege,i liked the orginal d6 per 2 levels.heres an idea.

turning does 1d6 damege per 2 levels.+2x your charisma modifier.with a DC10+onehalf level+chamod will save for half(or none).hits everything in a(insert base area here.i suggest 40-60ft. cone) and include feats that let you change it to bolts and bursts and stuff.greater turning is easy.greater turning=empowered turning or maximized turning.

rebukeing undead does profane damege,its like non-leathel but once it hits there maxium hp there controlled.(i dont like the idea of needing 3-4 turn attempts to control undead of your hitdice)

 

[Kyamsil]

After reading the feedback I recognize that perhaps you are right in that it becomes too complicated.

I would like to keep both the Turning Check and Turning Damage as they are in the Player's Handbook because that saves a lot of work in modifying the way some feats and domains are used. For example, one of the clerics has the Glory Domain (+2 on Turning Checks, +1d6 Turning Damage). If I remove those two rolls I have to come up with alternatives for that domain granted power and have to modify a lot of turning related feats.

About the area affected by turning undead I prefer to keep it as in the standard turning rules (within 60' and line of effect). I keep the Turning Damage to control the number of HD affected, so I don't need to make a smaller area or make it cone-shaped.

About the bookkeeping of profane and sacred nonlethal damage... it could get really complicated so I will just thrash that idea altogether. I will go back with dealing damage, lethal damage for turning and non-lethal for rebuking. I will try to get the system as simple as possible (while keeping the two standard rolls as they are in the PHb)


Turning Undead 1.3

Follow the procedure on the PHB: Turning Check to see how powerful your turning is (from effective turning level -4 to effective turning level +4) and the Turning Damage roll to see how many HD of undead will be affected (Turn Resistance is added to the HD of undead with that special quality to calculate the number of undead turned).

Each undead affected receives 1d6 points of damage for each two levels of the Turning Check result. A Will save with a DC of 10+half effective turning level+Cha Bonus is allowed for half damage.

Turn Resistance can lessen the amount of damage received, working like Resistance to Energy of 5xTurn Resistance against damage dealt by Turning Undead.

An undead that has any amount of damage dealt to it by turning is Shaken as long as it doesn't heal that damage.

A Greater Turning attempt follows the same procedure, except that the damage dealt is 1d6 for each level of the Turning Check result. A Will save with the same DC also halves the damage.


Rebuking Undead:

Works in the same way as Turning, but deals a special profane (non-lethal) damage. It has the same effects as turning (save for half damage, Shaken if an undead has any profane damage and so on). An undead that has an amount of profane damage equal to its hp is controlled by the rebuking character and the profane damage total is healed instantly.


Dispelling Turning:

An undead that has any damage dealt to it from turning (and is thus Shaken) can be healed with a Rebuking attempt. The amount of damage healed is the same as with a rebuking attempt. The Turn Resistance applies to the Turning Damage roll to see how many HD of undead are affected, but doesn't prevent any damage as usual. Also, an undead can select to fail the Will save for half damage. This only heals the undead of any damage dealt to it by turning, not other sources of damage, and excess points are wasted (they don't count as rebuking profane damage).


Bolstering Undead:

Make a Rebuke Undead attempt following the same procedure as for Dispelling Turning (Turn Resistance adds to HD but doesn't prevent damage). The undead affected gain Turn Resistance equal to the damage dealt divided by 5. This Turn Resistance doesn't stack with existing Turn Resistance, so it only applies if higher than their Turn Resistance.