Golandrinel said:
It's just the potential that a 2nd level cleric could destroy 14 + 2 + Cha Modifier undead enemies in one foul swoop. A lot more than any other individual 2nd level character could manage.
Well, yeah. Not all the classes are created equal, especially when confronting masses of weak creatures. This is built into the structure of the game, and it only gets worse as you increase in level.
One 1st-level wizard could potentially take out 16 kobolds with a single
sleep spell. At 5th level, he can chuck a
fireball into a dense formation and kill 40 creatures at once. Cone spells can do even better than that, after about caster level 8. The nonmagical classes can never quite keep up.
Clerics don't have quite the same artillery power, but they're the single best class against undead. A prepared cleric will nearly always kick the ass of undead below his own CR. IMO it makes sense; undead multiply easily, don't die of old age, and are more numerous than clerics. If they weren't easy to destroy, they'd quickly fill up the planet.
(And in case you happen to care, the expression is "one fell swoop.")
