Should Holy Water do more damage, or turn undead?

One of my first level PCs was recently caught sneaking around by the skeleton of an owlbear. Fortunately, he'd spent 16% of his starting gold on two 25 gp bottles of holy water. Unfortunately, an owlbear skeleton has 32 hp and holy water does 2d4 damage. WTF? Shouldn't a weapon that costs 25 gp per shot and is only useful against one type of creature, actually be useful against that type of creature?

But I have no idea what to compare it to, as far as damage per gold piece for other types of consumables. I was also thinking it might be interesting to let other classes have limited access to the turning mechanic by letting holy water do a few HD worth of turning damage instead.

First, Holy Water is about as effective against undead as alchemist fire is against people. I.e. crappy because D&D doesn't want characters dying from only those attacks. The larger immediate damage is balanced by no chance of ongoing damage.
Should both of those be more useful? I think so, and you probably do to. How do you figure out what to make them do? Decide just how lethal you want bottles of napalm (alchemist fire) to be, and make holy water similarly nasty (again accounting for the limitations of viable targets and lack of damage-over-time capability).

Second, turning doesn't do any hp damage (excluding in Pathfinder). It a) has no effect, b) makes the creature flee and cower, c) destroys the creature outright. Only b) is worthwhile in potion form; c) is too good, and a) is as worthless at it sounds. So, unless you're using Pathfinder, the turning thing is a poor idea (and mechanic) to make holy water useful.

Good luck.

ValhallaGH said:

Second, turning doesn't do any hp damage (excluding in Pathfinder).

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"Turning damage" is the technical term the SRD uses for "how many HD of undead you can turn." I figured if a bottle of holy water had, say, a 1d6 turning check and did 1d6 HD of turning damage, it could

• turn an owlbear skeleton 10% of the time
• always turn a human skeleton if it hit, possibly up to 6 with a good roll and a tight group
• bending the rules a little, maybe destroy an undead outright if you rolled 2x or 3x its HD in turning damage and it was the only target.

Noumenon said:

Shouldn't a weapon that costs 25 gp per shot and is only useful against one type of creature, actually be useful against that type of creature?

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Not at that cost. Expendable items are costly in D20 and scale horrifically. Healing 1d8+1 HP cost 50gp, 2d8+3 HP cost 300 GP.

Holy water's usefulness is that it gets around energy resist on a foe class that often have anemic HP, has a chance to work on incorporeal foes and is splash weapon that won't harm an ally. It is not meant as a replacement for a character's attacks, more for when the character's attacks don't work on the critter. 2d4 damage is better than the blow from a sword by someone of average strength. It is not the holy water's fault few things die from one sword blow. If you think Acid is a better value, carry acid. If you do not worry about property damage, go with alchemist fire. If you were hoping holy water was going to burn through an undead like it was from an 80's horror movie, that's going to cost a lot more GP.

ValhallaGH said:

Holy Water is about as effective against undead as alchemist fire is against people.

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Holy Alchemists' Fire, on the other hand....

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