Fighting the Undead

[DarkLord Of DForce]

If you really want to wreak havoc on undead, play an Avenger and load up on the radiant powers. They can rip through them.

Yeah, I've got an Avenger with Radiant Hammers, multiclassed into Cleric, and with the Avengers' Radiant powers, plus things like Solar Wrath from the Cleric, they can do some really good Undead damage.

Until all the Undead your DM starts throwing at you are not vulnerable to Radiant, according to him (like ours did). It was great for awhile though.

 

[Destil]

I miss the old school style of undead fighting clerics. A number of Turn Undeads, which could outright disintergrate a monster, depending on your level. Skeletons fleeing, for a number of rounds based on a die roll, etc...

Ive been very unsatisfied with creating such a character in 4e. An extremely limited ability to turn undead... undead abilities, mostly just sliding a character (woohoo), and so on... I do have to say that the Sacred Ground spell (name?) is pretty darn good - not sure why it effects every (non undead) enemy though.

ANy ideas? Home-rules? Does Essentials take care of this?

Thanks!

As stated above, the undead you'd one shot in earlier editions would be best modeled as minions in 4E, meaning you'll still be one-shotting them.

On top of that, a cleric has almost no issue getting all radiant powers, which almost all undead are vulnerable to. There's even a feat that lets your non radiant powers take advantage of radiant vulnerability in Divine Power.

In the end, a pure cleric will be fine against undead in 4E, and the 'reduce a bunch of skeletons to dust' is still alive and well. It's just represented differently.

 

[gjnave]

Another issue we've had with our cleric, is that (especially at the lower levels), we were so in need of healing abilities, that we dropped the idea of focusing on killing undead (which is what I really wanted to do), and had to focus on getting some healing powers.

Probably just the party... in another party with another healer, i suppose you could indulge your undead fighting whim.

 

[OhGodtheRats]

Disclaimer: I'm relatively still a Newbian when it comes to D&D.
It's a little off-topic, but one of the weird clashes I've found between Old & New D&D seems to be regarding the topic of the Undead. Sort of. Check out the logic:

1. Rob Heinsoo in multiple interviews talks about when it came to designing 4th edition it was a goal to make it so not every party needed a Cleric. Twas the whole power source thing. Non-Divine leaders are all over the place now & it's not assumed there's a religious/divine/etc guy running around with the adventurers.

2. There's a tradition of Clerics (and most Divine Classes) positively owning undead. When Module/adventure folks sit down to flesh out a story/campaign, invariably you want to included horrible undead. I mean, hell....it's traditional.

1+2= A lot of designers still assume the party must have some source of Radiant damage, despite Divine classes being an increasingly smaller minority when it comes to Class choice.

Long story short: While you don't need a Cleric anymore, the Radiant doom a Divine class brings is sometimes still ASSUMED to be there.
Case in point (scarred into my brain) may be last years RPGA Special, where the 1st encounter was a trio of Insubstantial Wraiths with Regeneration & basic attacks that Weaken. Longest encounter in my life....because we didn't have a source for Radiant Damage that'd shut off the Regeneration. (Btw Weakened Attacks versus a Regenerating Insubstantial thing is abundant overkill....Doing 1/4 Damage & they heal 5 on their turn?) It's just one example but in most of my campaigns there's been a moment where someone doing a certain damage type has been pivotal. It's the same with Swarms resisting weapon attacks or theme builds vs. Demonic Variable Resistance.
My 2 Cents.

-Jared

PS: Our party ended up stocking up on swords that can do radiant damage, consumable Undead-Warding Glowstones, and a few other things. Our kingdom for a Cleric (or Divine whatever).

 

[Destil]

Another issue we've had with our cleric, is that (especially at the lower levels), we were so in need of healing abilities, that we dropped the idea of focusing on killing undead (which is what I really wanted to do), and had to focus on getting some healing powers.

Probably just the party... in another party with another healer, i suppose you could indulge your undead fighting whim.

Did you trade out for healer's mercy? Or are you just taking lots of powers that heal rather than looking for radiant damage?

Case in point (scarred into my brain) may be last years RPGA Special, where the 1st encounter was a trio of Insubstantial Wraiths with Regeneration & basic attacks that Weaken. Longest encounter in my life....because we didn't have a source for Radiant Damage that'd shut off the Regeneration. (Btw Weakened Attacks versus a Regenerating Insubstantial thing is abundant overkill....Doing 1/4 Damage & they heal 5 on their turn?) It's just one example but in most of my campaigns there's been a moment where someone doing a certain damage type has been pivotal.

Those things are a well known abomination of 4E design, easily among if not the worst designed creatures in the MM1. It's a problem with that specific monster, more than anything.

 

[OhGodtheRats]

Those things are a well known abomination of 4E design, easily among if not the worst designed creatures in the MM1. It's a problem with that specific monster, more than anything.

Oh totally agree....though I had no idea it was a "Well known abomination". I would have sworn it was some terrible rejiggering of a Ghost done by the author of that RPGA Special. Not having a Divine character in the party, we also failed the Monster Knowledge checks to name the damn thing. 2 hours later when the fight mercifully finished we just didn't care & wanted to pretend the whole encounter never happened.
-Jared

 

[gjnave]

Did you trade out for healer's mercy? Or are you just taking lots of powers that heal rather than looking for radiant damage?

we traded out "Turn Undead" for "Healers Mercy" and tried to take as many healing powers as we could. Sacred Flame, Healing Strike, Beacon of Hope, Cure Light Wounds, Consecrated Ground, Bastion of Health

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Oh totally agree....though I had no idea it was a "Well known abomination". I would have sworn it was some terrible rejiggering of a Ghost done by the author of that RPGA Special. Not having a Divine character in the party, we also failed the Monster Knowledge checks to name the damn thing. 2 hours later when the fight mercifully finished we just didn't care & wanted to pretend the whole encounter never happened.
-Jared

Yeah, its well-known. Cheer up, I tossed 3 wraiths at my party WAY back when we first started playing. Even with a pretty good cleric and a starlock IIRC they still had problems. Wasn't quite as bad as a 2 hour encounter, but I haven't used that monster since then.

In general though it is possible to have decent radiant damage without a cleric. You could have an Avenger or an Invoker (or I guess a Runepriest though I don't think Radiant is really a forte of that class). Starlocks have some options too, and Paladins as well. Other classes have a smattering. It does go easier with a cleric around but even if you have to just hack through the undead without the damage bonuses it isn't too bad. They are often annoying monsters, but not way worse than others.

So yeah, a party can easily get by without a cleric. They may want to pick up some consumables or whatnot to give them a boost if they hit undead now and then, but in general they will do OK.

Even if your cleric is pretty healing focused you will still probably have some radiant damage output. It is possible to pretty much avoid it totally, but IME you don't NEED a full super-healic. In some ways it is better to have a cleric with some offensive power, at least some decent buffs. Overall those work as well as healing. The two HWs will get you by during combat, and maybe pick up Healing Strike or CLW. If you can get through the encounter healing is on its way.

 

[Destil]

we traded out "Turn Undead" for "Healers Mercy" and tried to take as many healing powers as we could. Sacred Flame, Healing Strike, Beacon of Hope, Cure Light Wounds, Consecrated Ground, Bastion of Health

Str/Wis melee/ranged build? Just having sacred flame means that he'll be really useful against undead, since it deals radiant damage and they tend to put out nasty save ends effects. Though their Cha may be a bit lacking as they raise in level. Sacred Ground is pretty much a 'we win' button, doubly so against undead.

I'm not a huge fan of mercy, unless you have a really large party, myself.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Never been that much of a healic fan in general. Honestly, if the cleric has say Healer's Mercy, a Healing Brooch, HW, and say CLW + Healing Strike and say Bastion of Health by the top of heroic tier they should be able to pump out PLENTY of healing and still have plenty of offense. Super healers just end up turning the party turtle, you lack offensive punch quite often and it ends up with the PCs grinding through the encounter trying to make up for it with surgeless healing. It WORKS but encounters take a lot longer and if you run into a really tough spot you get worn down a lot.