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The Turn Undead conundrum
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<blockquote data-quote="evilbob" data-source="post: 6556859" data-attributes="member: 9789"><p>Ah. Well I have <em>lots</em> of experience with that adventure, actually, and my advice is: <em>definitely</em> don't worry about it. That may not sit well with you, but here's why I suggest it: first, the undead aren't the things that are going to kill you in that campaign. The traps are. There are also a few seriously crazy monsters here and there which are not undead and will get you. (Demons. Hags. A crazy guy with a scroll that is stupidly overpowered.) When I ran that game in a 3.5 setting we had a Knight of the Raven paly and a Lightbringer cleric (both from the back of the book) that specifically damaged undead instead of turning them and it worked <em>just fine</em>. We even used the magic items from the book that made turning undead better: not a problem. The traps are far, far more deadly (even with a rogue).</p><p></p><p>Now, there were some undead - like the thing in the basement of the church, or the thing that guards the hill in the daytime - that couldn't be turned no matter what you did, and in 5.0 there's a chance they can be. You may want to give both of those creatures Turning Defiance - see the Ghast in the MM - to preserve the fact that they were impossibly hard to turn before. The only other time turning becomes an issue is with the main villain, as a lucky turn roll can make those battles go wonky. But here's the thing: those battles are always super (disappointingly) binary anyway. He has tons of "save or die" abilities and so does the party, so it really comes down to who hits who first. I would suggest stepping away from the letter of the rules with him just to make things more dramatic (he did a lot of retreating when I ran it). Although, looking at the 5.0 vampires, they are no where NEAR as bad as the 3.5 ones. (The lack of at-will near-permanent dominate, for example. The lack of negative-level inducing slams, for example.) Also, legendary resistance means he will never lose a turning check. So it looks like those battles will be much more interesting instead of just decided in one round.</p><p></p><p>Second, you would pretty much be insane to NOT bring a cleric to that campaign (or a rogue, holy crap), so don't punish people for doing it. Turning should be amazing, because you are going to NEED to feel good about a few of those battles, since you are going to get your butts handed to you on so many others. And like I said, the undead battles honestly aren't the ones you should worry about.</p><p></p><p>In the end, if you're dead-set on houseruling, my suggestion would be to follow the Lightbringer example and just make turning do straight damage. It's easy, straightforward, and I can promise you it still won't even come close to derailing that campaign - in fact I am fairly sure they counted on you bringing a cleric to turn just to make some of the areas less horribly deadly than they already are. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> In fact, given that 3.5 clerics could turn 8+ times a day and 5.0 ones can only turn 2/short rest, turning may not even be strong enough given the sheer number of undead you'll face. Anyway, sorry to go on and on but I can talk shop about a Ravenloft campaign for as long as anyone wants to. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="evilbob, post: 6556859, member: 9789"] Ah. Well I have [i]lots[/i] of experience with that adventure, actually, and my advice is: [i]definitely[/i] don't worry about it. That may not sit well with you, but here's why I suggest it: first, the undead aren't the things that are going to kill you in that campaign. The traps are. There are also a few seriously crazy monsters here and there which are not undead and will get you. (Demons. Hags. A crazy guy with a scroll that is stupidly overpowered.) When I ran that game in a 3.5 setting we had a Knight of the Raven paly and a Lightbringer cleric (both from the back of the book) that specifically damaged undead instead of turning them and it worked [i]just fine[/i]. We even used the magic items from the book that made turning undead better: not a problem. The traps are far, far more deadly (even with a rogue). Now, there were some undead - like the thing in the basement of the church, or the thing that guards the hill in the daytime - that couldn't be turned no matter what you did, and in 5.0 there's a chance they can be. You may want to give both of those creatures Turning Defiance - see the Ghast in the MM - to preserve the fact that they were impossibly hard to turn before. The only other time turning becomes an issue is with the main villain, as a lucky turn roll can make those battles go wonky. But here's the thing: those battles are always super (disappointingly) binary anyway. He has tons of "save or die" abilities and so does the party, so it really comes down to who hits who first. I would suggest stepping away from the letter of the rules with him just to make things more dramatic (he did a lot of retreating when I ran it). Although, looking at the 5.0 vampires, they are no where NEAR as bad as the 3.5 ones. (The lack of at-will near-permanent dominate, for example. The lack of negative-level inducing slams, for example.) Also, legendary resistance means he will never lose a turning check. So it looks like those battles will be much more interesting instead of just decided in one round. Second, you would pretty much be insane to NOT bring a cleric to that campaign (or a rogue, holy crap), so don't punish people for doing it. Turning should be amazing, because you are going to NEED to feel good about a few of those battles, since you are going to get your butts handed to you on so many others. And like I said, the undead battles honestly aren't the ones you should worry about. In the end, if you're dead-set on houseruling, my suggestion would be to follow the Lightbringer example and just make turning do straight damage. It's easy, straightforward, and I can promise you it still won't even come close to derailing that campaign - in fact I am fairly sure they counted on you bringing a cleric to turn just to make some of the areas less horribly deadly than they already are. :) In fact, given that 3.5 clerics could turn 8+ times a day and 5.0 ones can only turn 2/short rest, turning may not even be strong enough given the sheer number of undead you'll face. Anyway, sorry to go on and on but I can talk shop about a Ravenloft campaign for as long as anyone wants to. :) [/QUOTE]
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