L&L Turning & Churning

[CleverNickName]

I have always thought that Turn Undead should be a 1st level Cleric spell, not a class-specific, supernatural ability. For the last 8 years, I have houseruled it thus:

[SBLOCK="Turn Undead As A Spell"]
TURN UNDEAD
Necromancy
Level: Cleric 1, Paladin 1
Components: V, F
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 20’ burst
Target/Effect: all undead within 20 feet
Duration: 10 rounds (D); see text
Save Throw: Fort negates
Spell Resistance: Yes

This spell creates a brilliant burst of sacred energy, centered on the caster and expanding 20 feet in all directions. All undead creatures within the area of effect must make a Fortitude save or be turned. Turned undead flee from you by the best and fastest means available to them. They flee for 10 rounds (1 minute). If they cannot flee, they cower in place (giving any attack rolls against them a +2 bonus). If you approach within 10 feet of them, however, they overcome being turned and act normally. (You can stand within 10 feet without breaking the turning effect—you just can’t approach them.) You can attack them with ranged attacks (from at least 10 feet away), and others can attack them in any fashion, without breaking the turning effect.

Undead creatures that have Hit Dice equal to one-half your caster level or less (rounded down) are automatically destroyed on a failed save throw. For example, a 5th level cleric casting this spell would automatically destroy any undead of 2 HD or less.

Focus: a holy symbol[/SBLOCK]

 

[Klaus]

Or, in 4e:

[sblock]
Turn Undead - At-Will Divine Utility
Standard Action
Personal
Effect: You activate an aura 2 until the end of your next turn. Undead creatures of lower level than you can't enter the aura. Undead creatures of your level or higher that enter the aura or start their turns there take radiant damage equal to 5 + half your level.
Sustain Standard: the aura persists.
Special: You must openly brandish your holy symbol to use or sustain this power.
Special: At 11th level, the power creates an aura 3. At 21st level, the power creates an aura 5.
[/sblock]

Or something like that.

 

[Lanefan]

I have always thought that Turn Undead should be a 1st level Cleric spell, not a class-specific, supernatural ability.

The main problem with this is how sharply it limits the amount of times you can do it in a day. But if you make it a spell useable at will, my only quibble would be that the area of effect should be a cone (or a path) in front of the caster.

And for those married to the grid it's still quite easy to pull off a cone-like area: (I hope this looks OK)

......c...... <== caster
.....xxx....
.....xxx....
.....xxx....
....xxxxx...
....xxxxx...

And so on, getting one square wider on each side for every three squares of length until range is reached. A variant might be that the "row" closest to the caster is only one square wide.

If cast on a diagonal...well, that gets messy.

Lan-"sometimes a piece of string can be a really good friend"-efan

 

[froth]

i hate mearls ideas

im just going to pretend he didnt say cone

 

[CleverNickName]

The main problem with this is how sharply it limits the amount of times you can do it in a day. But if you make it a spell useable at will, my only quibble would be that the area of effect should be a cone (or a path) in front of the caster.

I can sort of see that, but it really hasn't been a problem. Our cleric keeps a wand on hand (in fact, I let her enchant her holy symbol to also function as a wand of turn undead, and it's one of her favorite items.) Scrolls are easy to find/buy/make at low levels, too.

Now that she's mid-level, she uses all of her upper-level slots for more powerful healing spells and fills her level-one slots with Turn Undead. She barely needs to use her wand at all.

We've been playing it this way for years, and it hasn't broken yet.

 

[BobTheNob]

I completely concur with the early observations. It has always annoyed me that one of the most perfect antagonistic subsets of enemies the players can face has this terrible weakness.

In 4e, one of my player specc'd himself up as an undead slaying cleric. End Result? Stopped putting undead in because it was totally pointless (aside from an occasional cameo).

I get it, I get what turn undead means, I get that its historically part of what defines a cleric, but Im sick to death (no pun intended) of the effect it has on the game. Its like someone put it in as a neat idea in 1e and we never, in all the game evolution, questioned it. We just kept keeping it in and upping its power as we evolved regardless of how detrimental it may have been to our choice to use undead as a genuine antagonist.

 

[Alphastream]

Whether Turn Undead works well is linked to the way undead monsters work in D&D Next. It wasn't such a big deal in Basic and AD&D to turn away some number of skeletons when they were all the same. It was further less of an issue if turning required actions on further rounds to sustain (as in AD&D). A cleric might focus on turning, making the battle easier. In addition, because undead were often fleeing, they could come back. And, because the system often had many foes (look at some of those encounter tables for undead!), it worked fairly well without breaking anything. Plus, a broken encounter wasn't a big deal in these editions - you might have 5-10 fights in a gaming session.

It was in 3E where I felt turning undead really broke. Fights often had a smaller number of undead per encounter (and fewer encounters in an adventuring day - often 3) and the strength of turning (especially since it could be boosted and then really broken with Radiant Servants) could mean that a fight with a cleric was a cakewalk while one without a cleric was a severe challenge. We have to add spells like Sunburst to the consideration, as these also contributed to the lack of balance around encounters with undead. The overall result was often a feeling that the game was on too much of a teeter-totter. You saw DMs try to reverse-engineer encounters, add turn resistance, and so on. Anytime DMs are competing with players it is a bad sign that the mechanic works poorly.

4E was a bit better in most cases, primarily because turn undead was an encounter power and a cleric wasn't as omnipresent. In fact, at this point a cleric is rare due to the game having many types of leaders. Turn Undead remains strong (and there are varieties such as from the Invoker) and can certainly hurt an encounter. 4E continues the 3E progression: fewer encounters per day (3 is typical, but 1 is fairly common) mean the power has a lot of strength to define a gaming session. Fewer monsters means a few turned undead define how the battle plays out. Monsters having roles means the encounter can easily lose balance - the encounter design might hinge on the melee brute holding back PCs while the artillery rains death from afar.

In looking at Turn Undead for D&D Next I want to know what monsters and encounters look like. A few super-cool monsters as in 4E? Does initiative and controlling combat matter as much as in 3E? Many simple/boring monsters of one type as in earlier editions? This will really dictate the power of Turn Undead.

Ideally, Turning is an option that is useful but not encounter-shattering. Holding foes back while costing actions, with the number of targets based on the edition, is pretty good. As Mike Mearls points out, I don't think we need to add damage, though low damage works fairly well in a 4E action economy (where most powers deal some damage so you get a strong sense of contribution). Turn Undead likely doesn't need to get complicated - I don't want to see Turn Resistance, a broken Radiant Servant option, or to have to look things up to resolve combat. Ideally a simple ability-check roll against defense and we have our situation, then perhaps a save or the cleric must continue to sustain with a standard action (or both?).

A common system of weaknesses that monsters have (and in the case of undead, would be related to cleric abilities) could work, as Dave Chalker mentioned. It could encourage really fun interactions - you spend a round cleaning the once-holy altar so the weakness comes into play or you buy holy water. But, I would want to see this be really simple. I don't want monster stat blocks to resemble the pages of information we had in AD&D. Ideally it is comparable to the Resistances and Vulnerability entry on a 4E monster.

Overall and most importantly, encounter design and a DM's amount of work to prepare an adventure should not hinge on the presence of a cleric. Turn Undead should simply not be that powerful or this aspect of the game will play poorly.

 

[Mattachine]

I think that the turn undead option was a way to counter the SoD effects so many undead have--and yes, I am including paralysis as SoD, to say nothing of no-save level drain, aging touch, and mummy rot. In other words, there was a sort of arms race between undead and turn undead.

I like the turn undead idea, though I have never been too happy with the implementation. I also don't like it being a default ability for clerics, regardless of deity--but AD&D clerics were essentially Teutonic knights (artwork even depicted their shield with crosses), fighting evil.

I could see some sort of turning ability, usable by clerics that have a sphere or alignment that it matches, chosen instead of some other ability. This could be a choice of class features, or a feat.

For the effects of a successful turning check, have a penalty to attacks and damage related to the difference in level between the cleric and the undead. If the undead is double your level, you have no effect, and if you are twice the level of the undead, it is forced to flee in terror.

Or something.

 

[Ratskinner]

Or maybe just "Zones". I know a number of RPG's that do it that way. Never going to happen in D&D, but I can dream.

I would really love that.

 

[Klaus]

I have always thought that Turn Undead should be a 1st level Cleric spell, not a class-specific, supernatural ability. For the last 8 years, I have houseruled it thus:

[SBLOCK="Turn Undead As A Spell"]
TURN UNDEAD
Necromancy
Level: Cleric 1, Paladin 1
Components: V, F
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: 20’ burst
Target/Effect: all undead within 20 feet
Duration: 10 rounds (D); see text
Save Throw: Fort negates
Spell Resistance: Yes

This spell creates a brilliant burst of sacred energy, centered on the caster and expanding 20 feet in all directions. All undead creatures within the area of effect must make a Fortitude save or be turned. Turned undead flee from you by the best and fastest means available to them. They flee for 10 rounds (1 minute). If they cannot flee, they cower in place (giving any attack rolls against them a +2 bonus). If you approach within 10 feet of them, however, they overcome being turned and act normally. (You can stand within 10 feet without breaking the turning effect—you just can’t approach them.) You can attack them with ranged attacks (from at least 10 feet away), and others can attack them in any fashion, without breaking the turning effect.

Undead creatures that have Hit Dice equal to one-half your caster level or less (rounded down) are automatically destroyed on a failed save throw. For example, a 5th level cleric casting this spell would automatically destroy any undead of 2 HD or less.

Focus: a holy symbol[/SBLOCK]

Or, in 4e:

[sblock]
Turn Undead - At-Will Divine Utility
Standard Action
Personal
Effect: You activate an aura 2 until the end of your next turn. Undead creatures of lower level than you can't enter the aura. Undead creatures of your level or higher that enter the aura or start their turns there take radiant damage equal to 5 + half your level.
Sustain Standard: the aura persists.
Special: You must openly brandish your holy symbol to use or sustain this power.
Special: At 11th level, the power creates an aura 3. At 21st level, the power creates an aura 5.
[/sblock]

Or something like that.

Whichever form Turn Undead takes, you can then add a feat or theme or whatevers like this:

True Believer [Divine, Good]
Requirement: you must worship a good or unaligned deity.
Benefit: You can use Turn Undead.
Special: Clerics and paladins get this feat/theme/whatevers as a bonus feat/theme/whatevers.