Best Uses for Rebuke Undead

[Human Paragon 3]

I have Rebuke Undead, but rebuking undead generally blows. What are some better uses for the class feature?

Difficulty: I am a half-caster with very limited access to spells, with at most two 4th-level slots. My character is a Death Delver(HoH), which has a very odd selection of abilities.

I am looking for useful and fun stuff to do in trap / combat encounters.

I also have rage and favored enemy: undead.

I already have Divine Fortune (feat) and Divine Justice (feat).

[Fouredged Sword]

Travel Devotion. Allows extra movement for turn attempts.

Not quite turn undead, but I am partial to useing the air domain to rebuke air elementals to command myself a medium air elemental to ride as a halfling. Not much use for you unless you dip cleric for devotion feats (I suggest you do).

If you have three feats to burn, DMM persist is always a crowd pleaser as well.

[Human Paragon 3]

if you have three feats to burn

I do not. I have a feat coming to me at level 12, and I don't know if we're making it to 15. I might be able to retrain a feat at some point, but I haven't checked. I actually haven't looked into the complete champion devotion feats though! Good idea.

[Fouredged Sword]

A dip in Cloisted Cleric is suggested then. You take the planing domain, Knowledge Devotion, and the travel devotion.

Planing domain grants extend metamagic. Retrain a feat into persist metamagic, and then at 12th get DMM persist to make any of those 4th level buffs hang around all day.

Persisted Haste is fun for the whole party!

[Human Paragon 3]

While this is clearly a good idea, I don't want to dip cleric. I want to finish out Death Delver to get the Nine Lives ability.

[Fouredged Sword]

Then I would simply retrain to get a nice devotion feat and then pick up another nice one later on if you feel you need something more.

Travel devotion is heralded as the best choice, but don't feel like there are no other options.

You sound like you rely on attacks to kill stuff, so move and full attack is powerful.

Mix with a belt of battle for a truely serious amount of actions in one round.

[Human Paragon 3]

Just saw animal devotion, which looks sweet. For the price of one feat, you get flight, a big speed boost, a big strength boost and a poisonous bite attack? Holy smokes!

[Gullintanni]

I have Rebuke Undead, but rebuking undead generally blows.

I don't understand this statement. By level 20, with the correct selection of equipment, it's not overly difficult to have an effective turning/rebuking level of over 40.

[DMG] Phylactery of Undead Turning +4 Rebuking Levels
[LM] Scepter of the Netherworld +3 Rebuking Levels
[LM] Lyre of the Restful Soul -4 Penalty to Turn Resistance (Effectively +8 to Rebuking level)
[LM] Rod of Defiance -4 to Turn Resistance (Another +8 to Rebuking Level, have a skeletal minion hold this so you have another free hand)
[CD] Ruby Blade of Wee Jas +4 Rebuking Levels
[PHB] Improved Turning +1 Turning/Rebuking Levels

Congratulations, you're now a Level 48 Cleric for the purposes of Rebuking and Commanding Undead. You can command any Undead that's got up to 24 HD. And because your Rebuking control pool is HD = Effective Cleric Level, you can command two of them.

Even if your DM doesn't want to toss undead at you, just animate a couple of skeletal dragons or zombie dragons, cast awaken on them and Rebuke/Command them into unlimited service without a saving throw. Now you've got big, intelligent undead minions. Party on.

...and you don't have to sacrifice much to pull this off, because you only need one or two uses of Rebuke Undead to pick up the minions. After you're happy with your undead pets, feel free to blow the rest of your attempts on DMM.

EDIT: Obviously not every build will be able to take advantage of this, and if you're not going with a class that has a full rebuking progression then Rebuking is indeed generally sub par. But on any Rebuking Class 20 build, Rebuking can be very powerful.

[Godskook]

Just saw animal devotion, which looks sweet. For the price of one feat, you get flight, a big speed boost, a big strength boost and a poisonous bite attack? Holy smokes!

1.Its -or-, not -and-, in that each time you activate it you have to pick only one. Pretty sure you can stack the effects, but see #2.

2.It costs 3 turning attempts per use after the first. While some devotion feats are quite spammable, this one isn't. You'll likely only have enough for 1 use/encounter, if that.

[Fouredged Sword]

Yes to the above. Nitch use at low level when you have no other use for your turn attempts and no way to fly easily or with nightstick cheeze, but less useful after that when flight becomes more common.

[Human Paragon 3]

A little clarification:

1) I am in the Tomb of Horrors. There is no magic item shop. This is not an ongoing campaign, it is the Tomb of Horrors. Should have said so.

2) My rebuking class is Death Delver (as I said in the OP). It's a 10-level class, so my "cleric level" won't get a lot higher than 10. I can rebuke every now and then, and it's nice when it works, but usually, I'm better off casting command undead or halt undead.

3) Regarding Animal Devotion: My character is sort of a grab bag of weird abilities. I realize it's not And/And/And, but or/or/or, yet, the feat is still great. I have 6 rebuke attempts per day, so if I need to, I can activate the feat 3 times. I rarely need flight, but if I need it, I can have it! (I do not have access to it from items or spells). Front-line fighting is something I can do, but don't always do, so occasionally getting+6 to strength is very useful. The poison is cool, but probably will not come up, but I have a snake theme going on already. And I have already been in two encounters where having a huge speed boost would have been useful. Being able to get a nice, customized bonus is a good thing. How could you think that a +6 bonus to strength which stacks with rage and bull's strength, usable 3x daily, is a bad choice for one feat?

It's cool, flavorful, and versatile, like my character. I am pretty sure I will go with it, even though travel devotion might be stronger. My character isn't especially devoted to travel.

[Godskook]

How could you think that a +6 bonus to strength which stacks with rage and bull's strength, usable 3x daily, is a bad choice for one feat?

I didn't comment as to the quality of the feat. I merely made sure you were clear on what the feat actually did.

[Fouredged Sword]

It sounds like it does what you want then. I would still look through the rest of the devotion feats and see what else may strike your fancy.'

I would attempt to find a single enemy that you can command though. Always useful and permenant. Even just geting a few skeletal horses to carry your stuff is useful, and you can get 3 light warhorses to toat your stuff around.

Also if you really like devotion feats, do consider looking up ways to get the domain powers of domains. the elemental domains grant extra turn attemps, and expand the list of posible things to turn.

[Human Paragon 3]

I had a whole bunch of low HD skeleton minions at one point, but they were slaughtered by a much stronger enemy. What a world.

[Fouredged Sword]

Don't think combat, think useful. A slaymate is a great thing if you use metamagic. A skeletal horse or rideing dog will carry your stuff easily. A wight will start a wight chain that grants you many times the HD of undead you normaly can control.

You can create a wight for free by the way. Just kill something with negative levels and wait 24 hours.

Shadows are great for melee support. Incporporial and they sap the targets strength and you just keep the base of your control chain in a bag of holding where it can't be killed. They have spot and listen to so they make good guards at night.

[Toliudar]

I've had Animal Devotion on a couple of characters, and can confirm that it provides fun and flavourful options for characters, especially martial ones. Good choice!

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

Rebuking undead is the best nonDMM function...

I prefer owning my DM's 200+HD BBEG's, perso