Any ideas for Replacement for Abjurations

[Garthanos]

My game world already has a bit of history to it and early on I took a dislike for undead (didnt feel "realistic" - I liked fantasy with science fictional overlap ). The D&D game really seems to emphasize them now more than ever. Even the prevalence of creatures with vulnerability to radient is lower on my world. I dont want the cleric/avenger et al to be non-viable classes they have some real coolness but without some sort of change.... am I debuffing them in to the null zone?

The world has plenty of monsters but most of them are vat grown war machines turned monstrosities, broken up with occasional demons (dimensonal/other worldly travelers) and semi spontaneous rebirths of mystical creatures from deep in the age innocence (unicorns and satyrs)... but a comparable dirth of undead.

I am wondering whether I should swap out the abjure undead with something else... but what ?

 

[keterys]

Divine Power has one example already - cleric can swap turn undead for a close burst that heals self and all allies.

You could tone down the Avenger and Invoker abilities, then make them work on everything.

 

[Flipguarder]

Aberrant creatures make good substitutes for undead in most situations. Most Gods are pretty clearly anti-aberration.

 

[Garthanos]

I like both the healing allies and self in a burst idea and the aberrations one..

fantastic awesome guy - wow - um thanks!?

 

[Starfox]

You just need to re-target the undead turning powers against other critters. Divine Power has a feat that lets you use turn undead vs. elementals. In the core mythology, elementals were the primordial enemies of the gods, and demons are elementals too these days. Aberrations have been mentioned, other keywords are definitely possible, perhaps even a different one for each god.

But in a world working this way, would you even HAVE gods?

 

[Garthanos]

You just need to re-target the undead turning powers against other critters. Divine Power has a feat that lets you use turn undead vs. elementals. In the core mythology, elementals were the primordial enemies of the gods, and demons are elementals too these days. Aberrations have been mentioned, other keywords are definitely possible, perhaps even a different one for each god.

But in a world working this way, would you even HAVE gods?

Yes and no... its not as cut and dried.

1. The storyline definitely has transcendent heros... humans, reincarnating their way towards becoming divine themselves, almost the same/opposite of devas, a personal journey towards perfection.(and there are those who follow them sometimes treating them as teachers and bodhishatvas and sometimes blindly thinking them gods.) Lords of light who battle the dragons of darkness.
2. Humanities mix of magic and technology made them so very powerful en-mass at one point that they felt like gods who lost control and cast themselves out of Eden, and some are now reaching back to recover that power and others are cringing.
3. And there are many who believe the source of their magic (in some cases all magic) or their body of teaching and morality is a divine gift
4. And there are people who have faith in unprovable and unseen forces and personify/anthropomorphizing them just as there always is.

The divine is less a proven phenomena and faith is.... well more like real world faith.

 

[Garthanos]

In a particular case I want to reskin the Avengers Abjure Undead to Binding of Dragons... change the damage to psychic hmmm how many would it take to capture a Dragon I wonder ;-), I figure it will be less useful than the undead power is but gives me something campaign appropro.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

No reason why ever Avenger needs to be focused on the same type of enemies either. Like old 2e rangers had their designated enemy, you can do pretty much the same thing with divine characters in 4e. Just make the effects scaled to how important the type of enemy is, etc.

 

[Garthanos]

You have me picturing Thor the Avenger with big hammer and giants as his enemy of choice