Turning Variant

[Sadrik]

Why: Turn undead makes undead worthless in d&d. Have an encounter with 50 zombies? One 6th level cleric completely negates the encounter. Higher level undead are still worthless imo...

How about this:
The turning cleric rolls turning damage like he normally would (2d6 + cha mod + cleric level) and affects the appropriate number of HD.

The undead affected by the damage then get a will save with the following DC (10 + 1/2 cleric level + cha mod).

The undead get a bonus to their will save equal to their turn resistance.

So the effect would be that undead would get a will save to resist the turn effect. The cleric's player never has to look at that chart in the PHB because it always affects all undead (its just a matter of rolling enough damage).

Questions:
Is the will save too high?
Is the turning damage too much for this system?
Should it be a will save?

 

[Grazzt]

Turning definitely needs to be "fixed" if for no other reason than it doesnt follow the standard d20 method of doing just about everything (1d20 + some mods vs DC xx). I use a damage-dealing variant in my campaign (that me and a few guys on the NG boards came up with). Works better than the "save or die" method of turning as it currently stands. (Ok, its not really save or die, but still...)

Hell, even the guy that wrote the PHB (Jonathan Tweet) doesnt (or didnt) use the PHB method of turning undead.

From his site: "Cleric turning, for example, doesn't respect hit points, and it's such a problem that I don't use the standard system any more. For one thing, the turning system is so swingy that it's impossible to balance undead encounters. For an undead encounter to be relevant to a party with a cleric, it has to be so powerful that it's devastating to a party without a cleric. But even if turning were scaled back, it would still have the problem that it keys off Hit Dice instead of hit points."

http://www.jonathantweet.com/jotgamehitpoints.html

 

[Sadrik]

Turning definitely needs to be "fixed" if for no other reason than it doesnt follow the standard d20 method of doing just about everything (1d20 + some mods vs DC xx). I use a damage-dealing variant in my campaign (that me and a few guys on the NG boards came up with). Works better than the "save or die" method of turning as it currently stands. (Ok, its not really save or die, but still...)

So you roll like 1d6/level and then you divide that damage against the undead encounter. If you roll more HP than they have they flee as normal if not then nothing happens? Or do you have the cleric actually doing damage to them (sun domain style)?

 

[Grazzt]

So you roll like 1d6/level and then you divide that damage against the undead encounter. If you roll more HP than they have they flee as normal if not then nothing happens? Or do you have the cleric actually doing damage to them (sun domain style)?

Cleric actually does hp damage to the undead. I'll see if I can dig up the post on the NG boards where we were discussing this (it mightve been lost in the EZBoard crash at the beginning of June...not sure).