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Turn Undead - An Alternative?

In the words of Mr. Burns "Excellent!!!"

Bravo Planesdragon and Gothmog!

These are fantastic ideas which I will be implementing very soon as a great option for my players.
 
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Hey, those are cool!

Gothmog;

Can I have your permission to adapt some of your abilites to my Manifestation Effect system?

I can include any sort of credit reference that you would like. E-mail me off-list if you would rather discuss it in private.
 
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Thats fine with me Planesdragon, as long as some credit is given for them. Do you have enough to go on there, or are more domains needed? Also, I tried to download your pdf, but it said the file was corrupted.
 

Gothmog said:
Thats fine with me Planesdragon, as long as some credit is given for them. Do you have enough to go on there, or are more domains needed? Also, I tried to download your pdf, but it said the file was corrupted.

Credit: Just let me know what form you want it. How does: "Special thanks to Gothmog for assistance on Manifestation Effects" sound?

Domains: the more the merrier. I'll probably condense the abilities to a few powers that work best in As Above, So Below , and have some others for the seperate Manifest Effects system.

Corrupt File: You probably lost a packet somewhere. I just downloaed the file from here (work), and it unzipped fine.

It's a PDF file compressed with WinZip. No password, but Macs or Linxues or some zip readers might throw an error.
 

Gothmog, I really liked your Domain specific channeling. I've only got one question: Why are the abilities tied to Wisdom instead of Charisma?
 

Planesdragon, what you stated would be fine, but also add in my name (Phil Stepp) as well as Gothmog.

Originally posted by iwatt:
Gothmog, I really liked your Domain specific channeling. I've only got one question: Why are the abilities tied to Wisdom instead of Charisma?

Well, the number of channels per day is based on Cha mod, but a few of the abilities have a Wis mod incuded for magnitide of effects. I thought about Cha for a while, but decided on Wis for the power-dependent effects since Wis more closely reflects the cleric's piety toward his deity. Cha is force of personality, which would come into play in initially calling the effect, but in the end the cleric's deity is still fueling the channeling attempt. However, if you prefer to use Cha mod, it wouldn't be hard to logically explain it either.
 

Planesdragon and Gothmog, very nice work. I have the sneaking suspicion that I’ll be using something very similar to these rules in my campaign shortly.

Gothmog said:
These are just a few of the channeling abilities I came up with. There are around 60 domains in my game, each with its own channel.

I think that I speak for everyone here when I say that I’d love to see the rest of them. It’d be a long post, but would you care to share them all with us?
 

I might actually just use the divine feats option from DotF, remove the Extra Turning requirement, and grant a bonus divine feat at 1st level. IOW, instead of turning, you could use the Divine Vengeance, Divine Cleansing, etc. feats 3 + Cha mod times per day. You could buy an "Extra Divine Feat" feat that would up this by 4 times per day, and a "Quicken Divine Feat" feat that would allow you to use a divine feat as a free action.
 

Originally posted by Dr.Dan:
I think that I speak for everyone here when I say that I’d love to see the rest of them. It’d be a long post, but would you care to share them all with us?

I'll try to post them a little later today if you guys want to see them. I'll have to revise the word document they are in, since I also completely reworked the entire domain system and spells in each domain. Any feedback would be apprecaited though!
 

I really like the channeling options presented, but in order to keep thing very simple and easy we are going to try the following over the next few game sessions:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

At first level, the cleric must choose either the normal Turn Undead ability (Turn or Rebuke) or to Smite Undead instead. (The paladin faces a similar choice at 3rd level.) Characters of any alignment may choose the Smite Undead ability without affect to their channeling capabilites.

Smite Undead
A character may attempt to smite undead with one normal melee attack. She adds her Wisdom modifier (if positive) to her attack roll and deals 1 extra point of damager per level. The character may attempt to smite undead a number of times per day equal to one plus her Wisdom modifier.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

One of the main reasons behind this change is that I feel the actual use of the Turn Undead ability goes quite a bit contrary to dramatic effects we'd like to see in our game. As an example, the scenarios we encounter usually have a more powerful Undead with some lackeys hanging around. The cleric(s) in our adventuring parties will usually use the Turn Undead ability against all of the lackeys and then the rest of the party will tackle the big-bad Undead. (Obviously, you may have different experiences, but this is just an example.)

With the adoption of the Smite Undead ability, we're hoping to flip that example experience around and put the "spotlight" on the cleric. While the rest of the party deals with the lackeys, the cleric is going to step up and try to set the divine smackdown upon the big-bad Undead. Of course, we have some clerics that are not as combat-oriented, and they'll do just fine with the normal Turn Undead ability...

Thanks for the ideas.
 

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