Opinions needed - turning undead feat

[welby]

Somewhere, in some source book, I found a feat that allowed undead to be turned/rebuked as a cleric half your character level. Has anyone used this feat? Was it balanced, too weak, to powerful? What about at low levels? High levels? You get the idea here

My spec. wizard (necromancy) would like to have a way to maintain control over his minions, or deal with the undead we come across. I wasn't interested in mixing spellcasting classes to go true necromancer or mystic theurge and thought that feat might work, but balance is an important factor to me. Another need for this feat or something similar, is I took the skeleton familiar from unearthed arcana, and it's pretty funny watching him run away everytime the cleric rebukes undead.

So, any experience with this feat or general suggestions to help my necromancer be the best necromancer he can be?

 

[humble minion]

Not sure if this is the right forum, but will answer anyway...

I don't like the idea of that feat. It's be stealing the cleric's thunder at low levels, and pretty much useless at high levels, but that isn't really the issue. Feats should not scale with your level, and getting a whole new dimension to your character simply by expending one feat seems a bit cheap.

If you want alternatives, perhaps you could spend the feats to make command undead (or is it 'control' - the 2nd level spell, you know the one I mean!) a spell-like ability, or craft an item that would allow you to use it at will.

With regard to your familiar, have you thought about getting him some turn resistance? An item could work, but a better option might be Spellstitching him...

 

[ph34r]

I haven't seen the feat before but it sounds like a bad idea. It's hard enough for a straight cleric to turn undead at higher levels much less someone else doing it only half as effective. Looks like a waste of a feat IMO. I think you should do like Humble Minion suggested and just get an item that allows you to use the Command Undead spell X times per day.

 

[welby]

With regard to your familiar, have you thought about getting him some turn resistance? An item could work, but a better option might be Spellstitching him...

Whats spellstiching? Never heard of it.

And I've already put in a request for an item that would allow me to bolster the undead I control against turning or something similar.

 

[humble minion]

'Spellstitched' is a template from Monster Manual II. It can be applied to undead creatures - it represents a wizard carving runes over the creature to give it new abilities. One of the abilities is Turn Resistance (+2, I think), there's also some spell-like abilities based on the base undead's Cha score, and possibly other minor bits and pieces.

 

[welby]

thank you H.M.

would love to hear other opinions or suggestions as well.