Turn Undead should be removed!

[Wulfram]

It shouldn't be a problem if it's simply turned into a per encounter Power which scares or weakens the undead. Would be nice if clerics who didn't care about the undead all that much could choose something else, though.

 

[Darrius Adler]

Van Richten was an herbalist from Darkon. When they gave him class levels in 2e he was a rogue for lack of a better fit. He won his battles by clever planning and knowing the weakness of what he was fighting. The recent D&D mini for him made him Generic Cleric #2435, which is very annoying. Ravenloft had rules which allowed for a true believer to hold a vampire (but no other undead) at bay by faith and presenting thier holy symbol.

 

[Pbartender]

Remind me what the new turn undead is like again...?

Our singular clue from Design & Development: Zombies...

[bq]"If you’re a player, take a moment right now to thank the merciful designers that turn undead is still in the game. That power doesn’t send the zombies running off to gods knows where, but if it doesn’t turn them to putrid dust, it does hold them at bay."[/bq]

 

[Crashy75]

I'm really not a fan of narrow, specific bonuses/abilities like turn undead and favored enemy. I think one of the best things about divine feats in 3.5 was the fact that you could use turn undead attempts when there were no undead to be found. I think it would be really annoying as a player to select my "turn undead" power and not encounter any undead. I think it would be annoying as a DM to have to add undead into my game because one of my players selected turn undead.(especially if it's not thematically appropriate- I run a lot of evil games where clerics of Pelor are the 'bad' guys.)

 

[Doug McCrae]

In the movies, turn undead vampire is the only thing keeping the protagonists alive in what would otherwise be an overwhelming encounter. Translate that into D&D and it means encounter levels in an adventure become wildly different depending on whether there's a cleric in the party or not. But 4e is trying to move away from dependence on a particular class. Roles are somewhat important, but not classes. So if turn undead is still in it must be available to all leaders, not just clerics, which doesn't make much sense from a flavour PoV. And really even roles shouldn't be that important so I submit that turn undead should not exist in 4e.

 

[amethal]

It depends on your source, I guess. Just as two pop culture references, Kitty Pryde (from The X-Men) can't hold off Dracula with a cross ... she tried. (Although she could with a Star of David. She's Jewish.) In Stephen King's Salem's Lot, Father Callahan failed to hold off Barlow with a cross, because his faith was too weak.

There was an episode of Dr Who (5th doctor? 6th doctor?) set in WW2 where the village priest couldn't hold off the undead because he'd lost his faith due to the horrors of war.

Later in that episode a Russian soldier actually succeeded in turning undead using a hammer and sickle emblem, because of his faith in the Communist Party.

Some of the posters on this forum might be able to achieve the same result by brandishing the 4th edition players handbook

 

[Protagonist]

Some of the posters on this forum might be able to achieve the same result by brandishing the 4th edition players handbook

and others use ther 1E DMG ^^



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still... Turn Grognard has a nice ring to it...

 

[Irda Ranger]

I like Turn Undead thematically, but my problem with it (as Doug mentioned) is that encounters vs. Undead with and without a Cleric are wildly different. Such that if a Zombie Swarm were normally a Level 2 encounter, they're probably Level 3 or 4 if you don't have a Cleric. It makes balancing those encounters really hard. It also means that the Cleric needs to have undead opponents to feel fully effective (similar to how Rangers were with their favored enemy).

I want to keep Turn Undead in 4E (which seems like it's a guarantee), but I would like to see it useful in non-Undead encounters. I'd also like it to be written / balanced in such a way that the designers can say categorically that Undead are X Levels higher if you don't have a Cleric. That way if I have a group with no Cleric (or Paladin, if they have Turn Undead too) I know exactly how to treat them.

 

[jaer]

Our singular clue from Design & Development: Zombies...

[bq]"If you’re a player, take a moment right now to thank the merciful designers that turn undead is still in the game. That power doesn’t send the zombies running off to gods knows where, but if it doesn’t turn them to putrid dust, it does hold them at bay."[/bq]

I like the sound of this better than the previous edition's "turning makes them run." For zombies and skeletons, it wasn't so bad, you could track them down and kill them as they fled. But for ghosts, shadows, and other incorporeal undead, it was the worse thing you could do! They double move through the floor and once the turning wears off, come back at the worst possible time. Unearthed Arcana had a good varient turning rule, which I am using in my current game; I like it much better than the PH rule for it.

Even worse than the DM who has to put undead in because a cleric is a priest (really, how hard is it to create the occasional undead adventure to satisfy one player's character?), I had a DM who actively kept undead of an Eberron campaign. My cleric had the sun domain and was an undead killer - a couple imp turn undead feats, picked up some items to help my turning, and made sure he had a good charisma too.

My DM ended up purposely avoiding putting undead in because my character was too good at killing them. If he put us against undeadm had to super load the encounter to counter-act my abilities, and if randomness went against me somehow (bad turn check, spell missed, last in initiative order, failed a will save and got removed from combat for a little while), the encounter ended up being too hard. With me in combat, he had no way to balance undead fights, so he stopped having us fight undead, and I ended up having a bunch of feats and items that were useless.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you really look at the source material, Turning is a much broader power than is usually depicted in the base state of D&D. A wide variety of priests and faithful types hold off or control not only Undead, but malevolent spirits and supernatural beings of all kinds that intend them harm. And that goes for all alignments- evil priests are noted for holding off good spirits as well.

Thus, I think Turn should come in a variety of flavors, chosen when the PC in question is created/takes levels in a class with the Turning power (or even a Feat granting non-clergy faithful a lesser version of the power), instead of having Turn Undead being the base default to which others are added.

For example, a priest who can turn/control elementals shouldn't have much if any power over undead, so his turn power would be limited to elementals right out of the gate, as opposed to the 3.X version of having Turn Undead and adding on Turn Elementals depending on his Domains.

Others would Turn Spirits (like the OA or CompDiv Shaman), or whatever.

The game should then allow feats or inherent level-based mechanics to improve or expand the priest's/faithful's Turning ability.