What's a good penalty to turn attempts?

[Asmor]

I've got a couple environments in my campaign which are naturally tainted... For example, the Bleak Swamp not only creates undead out of those who die there, it recycles destroyed undead into... more undead.

What would be appropriate penalties for turning attempts in areas that are just overwhelmingly "undead-aligned" for lack of a better word... I'm thinking -5 for a light penalty and -10 for a heavy penalty, depending on the specific area. How would these turn out in actual play, though? I've never really had turning come up much, as a player or a DM, so I don't have any basis to judge things.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I've got a couple environments in my campaign which are naturally tainted... For example, the Bleak Swamp not only creates undead out of those who die there, it recycles destroyed undead into... more undead.

What would be appropriate penalties for turning attempts in areas that are just overwhelmingly "undead-aligned" for lack of a better word... I'm thinking -5 for a light penalty and -10 for a heavy penalty, depending on the specific area. How would these turn out in actual play, though? I've never really had turning come up much, as a player or a DM, so I don't have any basis to judge things.

Every -3 means you can affect one lower HD of undead, so the -10 means that if you roll high enough, for example, to affect a 6 HD undead, you will affect either a 3 HD undead or a 2 HD undead (depending on where that final -1 falls).

 

[Pyrex]

That depends. What are you trying to accomplish? Unhallow is the steepest published penalty at -6; which is effectively a penalty of -2 Cleric Levels.

An option which might be interesting is to give a moderate general penalty (-3 to -6 is probably plenty), then give intelligent undead the ability to Bolster themselves with the ambient negative energy.

 

[Gerion of Mercadia]

Unhallow, in conjunction with desecrate -

Don't those penalties stack?


You might just treat the terrain as permanently under the infleuence of these spells. I think it would be the simplest way to represent the "natural taint".

 

[Asmor]

Thanks, that will work perfectly, I think (treating the terrain as under the effects of an unhallow spell).