any Turn Undead House Rules?

[Pierson_Lowgal]

I find the turn undead rule in the PHB very unsatisfying and I don't love the Complete Divine alternate rule, which is d6 damage per cleric level to affected undead. Does anyone have a house rule that weakens undead rather than dealing damage or forcing them to flee?

 

[Vrecknidj]

By "weakens," what do you have in mind?

Lowering their ability scores (Str and Dex particularly)?
Reducing their speed?
Reducing their attack bonus?
Reducing the save DC of their abilities?

Dave

 

[3d6]

Here's a quick idea:

When a cleric turns undead, all undead creatures within 60 feet must make a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 cleric level + cleric's Charisma modifier) or suffer a -4 penalty to attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks for 1 minute.

 

[dangerous jack]

At one time I was tinkering with the system to provide an energy-drain based Turn Undead rule, but I lost my notes and interest in the project. But here's what I remember...

1) The DC
Turn DC = 10 + Undead HD + Undead CHA adjustment [+Turn Resistance bonus if appropriate]
e.g.
6 Human Warrior Skeleton (10 + 1 - 5)
7 Human Commoner Zombie (10 + 2 - 5)
15 Ghoul (10 + 2 + 1 + 2)
16 Wight (10 + 4 + 2)
21 Spectre (10 + 7 + 2 + 2)
31 Mummy Lord / Cleric 10 (10 + 18 + 3)

2) The Check
Check = d20 + Cleric's Level + Cleric's CHA Bonus
Other clerics could Aid Another for a +2 bonus

3) The Result
The stages were based off Fear and Energy Drain effects:
Shaken
Shaken + Energy Drained 1 level
Shaken + Energy Drained 2 levels
...

Problems with it:
1) I never came up with a good rule for dealing with multiple undead / area of effect.
2) A level 1 cleric could destroy a wight with a lucky roll. Which maybe isn't such a bad thing...
3) There's a big gap between Zombie & Ghoul

 

[trav_laney]

I find the turn undead rule in the PHB very unsatisfying and I don't love the Complete Divine alternate rule, which is d6 damage per cleric level to affected undead. Does anyone have a house rule that weakens undead rather than dealing damage or forcing them to flee?

Um...off the top of my head, how about this (in order of least to most powerful):

- All undead within 20 feet of the cleric become shaken, as per the doom spell. Caster level = cleric level, save DC = 10 + 1/2 cleric level + charisma modifier.

- All undead within 20 feet of the cleric are slowed, as per the slow spell.

- All undead within 20 feet of the cleric are immobilized, as per the halt undead spell.

Some of these might be too powerful for a level 1 cleric to have access to, though. You would have to find a way to balance it...possibly by using ranks in Knowledge (religion), similar to the way the Perform skill is used to control the bardic music power level. For example, you could require 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (religion) to allow the cleric to use the "doom" effect, 8 or more ranks for the "slowed" effect, and 12 or more ranks for the "halt undead" one.

Anyway, just a thought.

 

[Pierson_Lowgal]

By "weakens," what do you have in mind?

Lowering their ability scores (Str and Dex particularly)?
Reducing their speed?
Reducing their attack bonus?
Reducing the save DC of their abilities?

Any of those is exactly what I had in mind.

Thanks for the other posts. Those are most excellent ideas, but I see that no one has actually used any of them in a campaign.

 

[airwalkrr]

I would guess the reason is that it is easier to track a creature that is running away than having to apply a penalty to several different abilities of the undead on the fly. While it sounds like an interesting idea, it would probably slow gameplay down more than turn undead does already, especially if you had different levels of penalties.

 

[ChimericDream]

Here is a link to the variant rules I'm using for Turning/Rebuking. I'm working on quite a few rule changes for my homebrew, and I think this makes things a bit simpler and more straightfoward. Of course, a large amount of the stuff on my site is still new and undergoing revision, but it's at least a start.

 

[GreatLemur]

Here is a link to the variant rules I'm using for Turning/Rebuking. I'm working on quite a few rule changes for my homebrew, and I think this makes things a bit simpler and more straightfoward. Of course, a large amount of the stuff on my site is still new and undergoing revision, but it's at least a start.

Aw, man. Just so you know, Internet Explorer 6.0 seems to be . . . responding poorly to your site. Crappy browser, but I'm stuck using it at work....

 

[ChimericDream]

It's most likely because I'm using a wiki called TiddlyWiki. The whole thing is a single HTML file (~900k). It makes it phenomenally more simple to edit locally, but increases the load time remotely. The author is working on ways to allow larger files to be loaded on demand, but for now the file size is somewhat restrictive. Sorry about that... should've mentioned it.