FrankTrollman said:
How many skeletons did the PCs have?
260.
That kind of outlay could have been a couple of Hell Hounds or Celestial Hippogriffs on the inside - and that would have toasted a pretty large number of Skeletons.
A hell hound isn't even as good as one turning attempt.
Hell hound (BAB +4 vs AC 15; hits 50% of the time; 1 attack is 1 dead skeleton; kills 1 skeleton every other round) (breath weapon can hit ~5 skeletons, on average every 5 rounds; 1 in 4 or 5 will survive due to low damage + save)
Skeletons (BAB +1 vs AC 16; hits 25% of the time; damage averages to 1.125 per attack).
It will take the skeletons 19.5 attacks to kill the hell hound. That's 5 rounds with only 4 skeletons per round attacking. The hell hound will manage to kill 6 skeletons in that time. If more skeletons focus on the hell hound, it will kill fewer of them before it goes down.
The orc clerics could not have summoned a celestial hippogriff due to alignment issues, but it has worse stats anyway.
If people can recieve Fly they are about 5th level and can probably destroy Skeletons every time - every single turning attempt being like 12-14 destroyed skeletons (depending upon Charisma).
It was somewhere around 100+ skeletons. I had given the clerics 14 Charisma, so that sounds about right (10-12 per turning, 5 turnings each). Like I said, a sizable chunk.
Meanwhile this new version actually allows the Skeletons a save - and they only die if they fail by 10 or more. They are only going to do that about one time in four. So with one attempt they could kill 1/4 of them, and turn half of them. In this one extremely specialized circumstance where the new Turning is perfectly suited the Cleric would destroy more Skeletons if there were more than fifty of them to begin with.
Hm, I didn't apply math earlier, and I mistated something, so here we go:
DC 10 + 2 (1/2 lvl) + 2 (Charisma) = 14.
Skeleton will save = +2.
Skeletons fail on an 11. Are destroyed on a 1.
Old turning: as you say, 12-14 destroyed skeletons in one Turning.
New turning, 60 ft burst: 13 destroyed skeletons and 140 turned skeletons in one Turning.
In situations of fewer skeletons (you need less than 24 before the numbers start evening out), a smaller area will suffice.
Again I ask: how many skeletons did these guys have? I'm unaware of any easy method to get more than fifty skeletons.
Are you familiar with
animate dead? It is a lovely spell.
I think what you meant was that you are unaware of any way to get those skeletons in a very, very short time span. Which is true - the skeletons were built up over a long period of time, as part of the local defenses. Which is irrelevant to how each turning stacks up.
And seventh level spells sure don't count, because at that point we could simply fly up to the point where we could drop a Cone straight down and cover the battlefield anyway.
Oh, absolutely. The highest level spells in this fight were 3rd level, and there was only one wizard involved (and he had to conserve spells).
I thought a '1'=autofail only applies to attack rolls?
