Please rate Heighten Turning

[smetzger]

Heighten Turning [Special]
You can affect more powerful undead with your turning or rebuking attempts.
Prerequisites: Cha 13+, Extra Turning.
Benefit: When you turn or rebuke undead, you may choose a number no higher than your cleric level. Add that number to your turning check, while subtracting it from your turning damage roll. If you're not a cleric, you may choose a number no higher than your effective cleric level (for instance, a paladin could choose a number up to two less than his
paladin level). If a prestige class increases your effective turning level, use your effective turning level.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

It looks good at first but is actually pretty weak. It's supposed to be useful for turning undead with more HD than you have levels.

Unfortunately by reducing your turning damage, it makes this unlikely to work.

Assuming you subtract enough to get a good turning roll, you can turn cleric level +4 HD undead.

Your damage enables you to effect: Cleric level +2d6+cha bonus HD of undead.

So, on average, you can only subtract 3+cha bonus from your turning damage roll before you're likely to end up enabling yourself to turn something with more HD than your turning damage can effect. Which means, with a good charisma, this will usually not allow you to turn more than 2 HD higher creatures than you otherwise would have been able to turn.

Now, this might be able to be combined with Empower Turning to good effect--especially if that feat can stack with itself (each -4 to turn check would grant an average of +7 to turning damage by stacking empower; the character could then use heighten turning to an infinite amount to negate the penalties and still potentially come out ahead in both turning check bonusses and damage--too bad it's limited by your cleric level or that could enable automatic turning of an infinite number of HD of undead).

 

[smetzger]

It looks good at first but is actually pretty weak. It's supposed to be useful for turning undead with more HD than you have levels.

When bolstering undead the SRD says:

An evil cleric may also bolster undead combatants against turning in advance. He makes a turning check as if attempting to rebuke the undead, but the Hit Dice result becomes the undead combatants' effective Hit Dice as far as turning is concerned (provided the result is higher than the undeads' actual Hit Dice). The bolstering lasts 10 rounds.

Does this effective HD work against the turning check or also against the 'damage'.

I couldn't find how Turn Resistance worked in the SRD. Is it for the Turn check only or for the 'damage' also?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I think that a strict reading of the text would make both bolstering and turn resistance apply to damage as well. They count as if their HD were higher for turning. HD make it harder to turn things in the first place and difficult to turn numbers of things. So effectively having more HD should have the same results. I don't think you can even legitimately say that the effective HD change shouldn't effect whether or not the undead are destroyed.

Bolstering undead is far more effective than turning them. Evil clerics can dispel a good cleric's turning by rolling a higher turning check but nothing in the rules says that good clerics can dispel an evil cleric's bolster effect by rolling higher than the evil cleric. Life in D&D land is pretty tough on good clerics but there you go.

 

[smetzger]

Lets look at some examples:
Lvl 10 Cleric, with No Cha modifier
Avg Turn check is 10, thus Max Hd is 10
Avg amount of HD Turned is 17
If this guy put 7 into his turn check
Avg turn check is 17, thus Max HD is 12
Avg amount of HD Turned is 10

Lvl 10 Cleric, with +5 Cha Modifier
Avg Turn check is 15, thus Max Hd is 11
Avg amount of HD Turned is 22
If this guy put 7 into his turn check
Avg turn check is 22, thus Max HD is 14
Avg amount of HD Turned is 15

So, it looks like it would work fairly well against the BBEG. But you would only be able to Turn him and you usually want to kill them. BBEGs probably have an escape plan of some sort, so this probably means your buddies won't be able to beat on him while he cowers.

So, 2 maybe 3.

 

[Celebrim]

The real problem here is I think you are going to encounter a horde of lesser undead fairly often any any campaign. But, this feat is only going to be useful when you have encountered an undead in the role of BBEG monster and that is going to be much less often and perhaps no more useful given the general nastiness of undead touch attacks. If you have a high CHA modifier, and particularly if you also have the Sun domain, you might get some use out of it.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I gave it a '3'.

You can't get a big benefit out of this feat unless you have Empower Turning feat as well (which creates rules headaches).

This feat can be foiled by a few extra weak undead standing in the way and skimming off turning damage.

Extra Turning is a stupid requirement, this feat can't justify a prereq. Heck, it is minor enough to give to Clerics and Paladins for free with no noticeable effect on game balance.

Too many downsides to get excited about. I would only give this feat a look if I were building a Cha based cleric. Even then there are sexier Cha feats to choose from.

 

[Archer]

You could wrap extra turning, heighten turning and empower turning all into a single magic item and price it at about 6k and not be giving anything away. Heighten turning ought to add 2 levels to your effective turning level and empower turning should just add 3d6 turning damage.

 

[Sollir Furryfoot]

I put 'good', since, quite simply, Evil clerics don't have turning damage when attempting to command undead, they basically add their level for free to all their turn checks. I chose good since this is only available to evil and negative-channeling neutral characters.

 

[Archer]

Evil clerics only command undead up the turning damage that they rolled so how is the damage not relevant? They also only bolster undead equal to the damage they rolled so fewer undead are bolstered to a higher amount. This could result in unturnable skeletons but the zombies melt away like butter. Its just as much of a wash for evil cleric as good clerics or even more so because bolstering a high HD undead is almost useless while turning is quite effective (if successful)