Turn Undead - what do you do?

[lukelightning]

If you think a plain Will save is too difficult for undead to pass, then perhaps something like:


If the undead fails by up to 5 it is shaken (or rather, effected as if it was shaken but since shaken is a fear condition this is something special), more than 5 it is turned/frightened, and by more than 10 it is destroyed.

 

[Kerrick]

Are you likely to face CR 6 creatures at character level 16 very often?

See, that was their (WotC's) first mistake - basing it on HD and not CR. HD vary widely with a single CR, let alone a range of CRs (such as those a cleric would encounter with his party). The CR-based system works, even at epic levels (assuming, of course, that the CRs are accurate ).

(Incidentally, the second one they made was 2d6 HD of undead affected, instead of 2d6 undead affected.)

No, I didn’t think so. You’re more likely to face four Colossal Zombies (A CR 16 encounter). A single Colossal Zombie has forty-eight hit dice.

Huh? The only colossal creatures I could find in the MM are very old dragons, and they have a bit more than 48 HD when zombified - red and silver dragons have 80 (~CR 26), and golds have 81 (~CR 27). Four of them would be an EL 15 - he was right on that point - but when is a party ever going to face four colossal undead dragons?

Therefore, I’d consider Turn Undead to be a 30-foot spread (it is currently a burst) that forces all undead in its area to make a Fortitude saving throw against a DC of 10 + ½ the cleric’s level + the cleric’s Charisma modifier.

Since undead have a low Fort save, that might actually work. It doesn't really make any sense, though, unless it's inlficting damage. You're channeling holy power to scare them with the might of your deity (i.e., turning) or cow them into submission (i.e, rebuking). That's a Will save.

I'm curious to see if he's actually tested this "Fort save" system, and whether or not it works. Personally, a far easier fix might be to keep the Will save vs. turning and give undead a high Fort save to offset their lack of a Con score. Undead are notoriously hard to kill anyway, whereas there's no real justification for their high Will save (barring mindless undead, which are immune to mind-affecting effects anyway).

It just gets worse when we go to Epic Levels. Let’s look at the Atropal, which has 66 hit dice (at CR 30). Yeah, that’s right, you can’t turn this thing until level 58 at least. Demiliches are immune to turning outright. Hunefer are a 50-hit dice undead with a CR of 25 (so that’s level 42 before you can even try to turn it). The Lavawight is a bit more acceptable – it’s only got 32 hit dice compared to its CR of 23.

If you mean the broken mechanics, then yes. An atropal should be CR 71; hunefer CR 49; and lavawight CR 39. But I got those from UK, so you can't fault the guy for not knowing

You realize that actually took up more time and space than the actual turn undead rules right?

*snort* I ramble, but even I get to the point faster than that.

Seems about right to me. . .what's the problem? You want characters to be able to turn colossal and gargantuan creatures easily?

No, but these are zombies we're talking about - they're not very bright, nor very strong (force of will-wise).

As far as I'm concerned, the cleric in a 16th level party should have to be lucky to turn a CR 16 undead creature meant to take on the party by itself.

He meant EL 16, not CR - there are four of them. A cleric should have a 50% chance of turning an undead of equal level.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

This probably should be a poll, but I really don't know what all the options should be.

Turn Undead is one of the more problematical rules in 3E. It triggers on the monster's hit dice, but that is a poor measure of gauging how tough a monster is. Thus, a big CR 5 zombie can be harder to turn than a dangerous CR 14 Vampire.

I like having the daily uses of Turn Undead there (as I love the Divine Feats), and in recent months I've been using the variant turning of Complete Divine - Turn Undead deals 1d6 damage per cleric level to all undead within 60 feet (save for half).

Are there other variants out there? What do you think of Turn Undead?

Cheers!

We use a similar house rule. It's 1d6 damage per turn undead level in a 30 foot burst at medium range. The save DC is Charisma-based.

I proposed it to my DM because I didn't like being unable to turn a lot of creatures. He implemented it when the cleric and grey knight turned all the undead in a room due to slightly lucky rolls. He thinks the house rule is a bit overpowered, though, so maybe we need to reduce the radius. (We round blasting all undead within 60 feet, an older version of the house rule, to be way too powerful.)

 

[Kerrick]

Okay, so I swapped Fort and Will saves, and kept the basic formula the same - a Will save
vs. DC 10+1/2 cleric's level+Cha mod. I gave the cleric a +2 Cha bonus, across the board - I didn't want to try figuring out when he would gain bonuses.


Edit: I screwed up. I used the Fort save modified by Wis, instead of the straight Fort save, cause I wasn't paying attention. Everything from here below is working off the revised sheets.

The sheet now has 6 pages - High Fort (official and UK CRs), Low Fort (same), and for S&G, I did Low Will.

Using high Fort save won't work - the numbers are all over the place. The official CRs are just too low across the board. Strangely enough, with UK's CRs, they form an inverse bell curve - low-level unintelligent undead have a save of 12, then it drops to 6-8 until you hit CR 10, when they go back to 9-11.

Low Fort could work if you use the official CRs - all of them, except for a few odd templates,
are in the 9-11 range. UK's CRs do the bell curve thing again - up to CR 2 is 10, then it drops to 6-8, then it goes back up to 9-11, with the odd exception here and there.

Low Will surprised me. With the official CRs, the numbers are consistent - 8-11, then they drop to 4-6 over CR 12. UK's are slightly higher for the low-end undead (12), then even out and remain 9-11 the rest of the way except for a couple odd templates (lich, vampire elite).

Of them all, then, I'd go with Low Will, simply because the average is closest to 10 (the ideal number).

This would, of couse, necessitate swapping Fort and Will saves, which is the only problem here. It would require a major rewrite of the system - there are a huge amount of undead out there, and swapping Fort and Will saves for all of them would be an equally huge task. Maybe it'll happen for 4E, but I won't hold my breath.