Please rate Empower Turning

[smetzger]

Empower Turning [Special]
You can turn or rebuke more undead with a single turning attempt.
Prerequisites: Ability to turn or rebuke undead, Charisma 13+, Extra Turning.
Benefit: You can turn or rebuke more undead than usual, but have a harder time affecting undead with a larger number of Hit Dice. If you take a -2 penalty on your turning check roll, you can add +2d6 to your turning
damage roll.

 

[Nifft]

For the very few times when you're fighting armies of skeletons, this would be a useful Feat.

-- Nifft

 

[Archer]

Skeletons burn just fine, that's what fireball is for. The window of opportunity for this feat is very small like dirty fighting, circle kick, divine vigor and so on. Its an ok feat at levels 3 and 4. This is one of those feats that is a good candidate for a 2-4k magic item.

You are dropping your max HD turnable by 2/3 to increase your turned undead by 7 HD avg. At levels 1 and 2 you might turn 0 HD and lose your turning attempt. At higher levels 7 HD is 0-1 additional creatures turned.

 

[Celebrim]

It isn't a bad feat up through the mid-levels against hordes of otherwise dangerous but low HD undead such as Ghouls, Shadows, and Wights. You might get some use of it at higher levels, turning an extra wraith, mummy, or spectre. Combined with 'Greater Turning' (from the Sun domain) you can potentially lay waste to hordes. The problem is of course that eventually seven extra HD isn't all that useful because the HD of each creature exceeds that.

On the whole, since it is sometimes useful, which is better than many feats, I still voted for a five.

Now, if you could take the -2 penalty repeatedly for 2d6 additional HD each time, that would be a truly useful feat.

 

[Stalker0]

I think this is a great feat for someone who is a turning specialist. The -2 to turn check normally equates to -1 HD max you can turn, and often it doesn't have an effect at all. The prereqs are fine, since a person who takes this feat is often into turning anyway, and the 2d6 extra is quite nice.

As for using it multiple times, I don't see why you couldn't. The +2d6 is an unnamed bonus, so I probably would allow it.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

This sounds like a pretty reasonable analysis of it to me. It's good for characters who do a lot of turning and retains some usefulness up into higher levels.

It should be pointed out that it also is very good if you're facing undead that are bolstered by an evil cleric who is weaker than you--since he can't bolster them until they're unturnable but can cut the amount of them that you can turn dramatically.

A third level evil cleric with a dozen skeletons can fairly reliably bolster them all to effectively 3HD which means that even a 6th level cleric is only likely to get half of them in a single turning attempt. This feat would enable the sixth level cleric to turn two or three more skeletons per attempt.

As a DM, I would probably enable it to stack as well.

I concur with the "5" rating.

It isn't a bad feat up through the mid-levels against hordes of otherwise dangerous but low HD undead such as Ghouls, Shadows, and Wights. You might get some use of it at higher levels, turning an extra wraith, mummy, or spectre. Combined with 'Greater Turning' (from the Sun domain) you can potentially lay waste to hordes. The problem is of course that eventually seven extra HD isn't all that useful because the HD of each creature exceeds that.

On the whole, since it is sometimes useful, which is better than many feats, I still voted for a five.

Now, if you could take the -2 penalty repeatedly for 2d6 additional HD each time, that would be a truly useful feat.

 

[orbitalfreak]

For an average D&D campaign, you would encounter a decent number of undead, and also creatures (incl. undead) of varying CR's. This means you'll occasionally face a lone, big bad undead, and sometimes face a troupe or horde of lesser undead. In this type of campaign, I'd give it a 5 (my vote).

In my campaign, however, undead will play a bigger part than normal, with armies of the lesser types. For my campaign, I'd rate it a 7-8.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I gave it a 4.

Celebrim is spot on.

This is a useful feat at low levels, but pricey given the prereq so it gets marked down a notch.

For those characters in campaigns that Extra Turning was an obvious feat choice on its own merits, Empower Turning is a very attractive feat.

 

[smetzger]

Yeah, I forgot how bolstering undead worked. This definantly makes the feat more valuable.

So, this would be a very good feat for an evil cleric and bolstering undead.

 

[smetzger]

bump