D&D 5E The Turn Undead conundrum

[Celtavian]

I find turn undead fairly useful in 5E. The ability to destroy dangerous undead happens at a fairly low level. Skeletons and zombies are dangerous in large groups. You can annihilate large numbers of them at fairly low level. If you make higher CR undead flee for a while, it helps you take out undead while they do no damage to you with their dangerous attacks. It is useful against all undead with no HD limit. Seems like a very useful ability. Even one turn of fleeing could make a powerful undead lose their round of attacks. That might be useful in a tight battle. Turn undead is the most useful it's been in this edition due to the lack of a CR/HD limit for its effect.

 

[Nebulous]

Years ago I was a big proponent of "make sure none get away!" Now I've realized that when an enemy "leaves," it's 99% the same as killing them. Unless you / your DM wants to make a point about enemies coming back to attack again (or they're some kind of named / reoccurring villain or whatever), there is really no good dramatic reason for them to do so. All you're really doing is wasting player time with something that isn't surprising or interesting. Same line of reasoning that many enemies will flee when they're suddenly outnumbered and many of their comrades are dead - because in reality, the last few rounds of mopping up aren't really dramatic or interesting from a story-telling point of view. And when your game time is precious, skipping anything that isn't the meat is paramount.

So another way to look at this is: turn undead is awesome, because you just defeated all those monsters. And you are winning much faster than killing them with damage. Just because something doesn't fall down with your sword in its head doesn't mean it isn't defeated. From this perspective, the limits on turn undead make sense. And while it's a cool power, it's still pretty reasonable and restricted (so limited in application).

But if it still bothers you, you can always do what I used to do because it bothered me: houserule that anything turned is destroyed completely. It's virtually the same; you're just changing the flavor to speed up the game in a reasonable way. (And now you can pick up the worthless bow that skeleton was carrying, yay!)

Right, usually in 5e, in my experience, when the undead are "turned for 1 minute" they don't come back unless for some useful reason to the story they are encountered later. So effectively you just beat that entire encounter with a action from one player. Effectively, i've seen a cleric do the equivalent of a hundred points of damage with a turn undead.

 

[Blackthom]

I see the issue about running enemies but also consider that if they are attacked then the running is over based on the wording of the power IMO. So fleeing ghouls would try to flee the chamber (as they did in my game) but when the ranger and the rogue shot three of them, those three stopped fleeing and rejoined the fighting.

Would you use your Channel Divinity for turning over other powers, ultimately I think that really depends on the circumstances.

 

[Li Shenron]

Right, usually in 5e, in my experience, when the undead are "turned for 1 minute" they don't come back unless for some useful reason to the story they are encountered later. So effectively you just beat that entire encounter with a action from one player. Effectively, i've seen a cleric do the equivalent of a hundred points of damage with a turn undead.

Well, you can never be sure tho... for instance, this thread just came back 3 years later