Clerical Turning - Undead vs. Domain

[TheEvil]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that a Cleric's turn attempts per day vs undead provided by the class were seperate from the turn attempt per day provided by domain, such as against elementals. By way of example, Joe Cleric gets 5 turn attempts. He also has the Fire domain, which gives him a seperate pool of 5 turn attemps to be used against creatures with the fire and water subtypes. Is this correct?

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

Yeah, if memory serves, by the RAW, these clerics get two (or more) seperate pools of turning attempts; one for undead, one for domain-specific foes.

A cooler house rule, though, might be to just add three daily attempts to the count and let one pool count for both kinds of turning.

I suppose it depends on your sense of verasimility. I've got no problem, personally, with a fire cleric turning water elementals and undead interchangably, and I've rarely seen an adventure where the party encountered lots of two different "turnables," so it could become a minor balance issue, but only in the most peculiar scenarios - I think that the decision to go one way or another on this is a trivial one unless you have a campaign (or character build) which depends on the difference of three daily turn attempts to work.

 

[Nim]

Yes, by the RAW, these are separate pools of turning attempts.

And that makes sense. To turn undead, the cleric channels positive energy. To turn a fire elemental, a priest with the Water domain presumably channels Water energy. Other than sharing a mechanic, the two abilities have very little in common.

 

[TheEvil]

Thanks for the replies so far. Does anyone have a page number for this interpretation? Also, what happens when you take the Extra Turning feat?

 

[Nim]

The description of Extra Turning specifically states that it adds to undead turning and elemental turning (for example) equally and separately.

Which, by the way, is further support for the number of uses per day for those two things being separate counts, if you needed it.

 

[Nytewolf]

A cooler house rule, though, might be to just add three daily attempts to the count and let one pool count for both kinds of turning.

I suppose it depends on your sense of verasimility. I've got no problem, personally, with a fire cleric turning water elementals and undead interchangably, and I've rarely seen an adventure where the party encountered lots of two different "turnables," so it could become a minor balance issue, but only in the most peculiar scenarios - I think that the decision to go one way or another on this is a trivial one unless you have a campaign (or character build) which depends on the difference of three daily turn attempts to work.

Actually, I am not sure this would be a good idea. though the fact that perhaps being able to turn undead and Water creatures in the same adventure might not be a big factor. The problem might arise in the fact that now there are many (actually alot) of Feats that can be used with turn or Rebuke undead attempts and by pooling the turnings together you would effectively double how often these could be used. Plus there are also a smattering of Feats for those that have Elemental based turning as well.

 

[TheEvil]

Thanks everyone!