Is Turning Undead too powerful

[Crothian]

Actually Geoff has a point.

And actually I was agreeing with him.

 

[LrdApoc]

I think the issue here is more about encounter design. GMs who want to build undead encounters where a cleric can't just dust the baddies have to understand the way turning works.

A personal example: I ran an encounter two weeks ago that concisted of an upgraded Bugbear Zombie and 4 kobold zombie minions. I expected that the party cleric (2nd level) would dust the Zombies with her turn attempts but it was unlikely she could dust the Bugbear. Had they been higher I would have customized the Bugbear with a resist turning or something similar to keep the peril of the encounter.

Like any other class ability the GM has to anticipate this as best they can and go from there. Don;t like the way the basic undead foe works.. change it! Guess what.. we can do those things.. we have the tools. Its more a matter of time.

 

[Victim]

That's only becasue clerics can turn. So, since that made encounters to easy they had to higher the HD of undead verse CR to make it an actual challenge

No. Undead have tons of HD because they don't have Con bonuses. Monsters need HP; and Undead get less than other types of enemies. Sure, that d12 looks pretty big, but that's only an average 6.5 HP/HD - the standard HD size seems to be d8. So a 14 Con allows a normal giant/undead/abberation/etc to at least match undead HP on a per HD basic. But many of those monsters, especially at higher CRs, will have a lot more than 14. So undead need more HD to have the same number of HP - and really, it's not like giants and such lack HD to begin with.

 

[Uller]

And actually I was agreeing with him.

Oops! I meant to quote him, not you ( I meant he had a point that this is going to be one of the few encounters where turning is useful).

 

[silyolpooh]

quick, easy, and predictable

I do play a cleric, would argue that he is certainly not the most powerful character I've ever played (that would be either my Rogue/Sorc or my Chaos Wiz back in 2nd ed). That aside, I never like the TU rules in 3.x because of the involvement of charts and plotting et al, which really slows the pace of a should-be-good encounter.

As such, we started using the Unearthed Arcana option, in which a cleric does (level)d6 damage to all undead in a 20ft radius. No more powerful than fireball, it still allows the cleric to actively participate in the encounter without the all-or-nothing effect of turning. I know that's a wild departure from the PHB rules, but I'm telling you, it's fast, easy, and more predictable (for the player AND the DM). Your fighters will like it, too, when they can mop up the wounded undead rather than have to hack from max hp's.

As to the house rule suggested earlier, I could certainly see intellignt undead of a HD/Level higher than the cleric's receiving a Will save for half damage. If you want to make it more complicated, add a +1 bonus to the save for every HD/level higher the undead is than the Cleric's level.