Alternates to Turn/Rebuke Undead: A Discourse on the Arbitrary

[KnejaTurch]

So I'm retrofitting my existing Campaign Setting with the steamworks from Steam & Steel (http://dobby.machinespirit.net/dnd/ENP-3008-Steam_and_steel.pdf), (also this is my first GITP thread), and I'm making a priest of the God of Science and have realized that Turn/Rebuke Undead is an absurdly arbitrary ability. I realize that as far a WotC was concerned, every cleric was either going to be a PC who went Pelor and specialized in healing and face-macing, or an evil NPC necromancer bent on undead-ifying the world, and thats fine i guess; except in my campaign, there is no anti-undead god, undead are normal and accepted members of society, and giving every cleric power over them seems very arbitrary, anyone have any alternate or more useful abilities to replace turn/rebuke undead with completely?

EDIT: Preferably something that can do away with the entire turn/rebuke mechanism entirely but..
Keeps it a per day ability to not require extensive adaption for divine feats and such

Be usable by other classes that turn/rebuke undead

Is usable by all clerics


My campaign also focuses heavily on the use of Pantheons, that is, lists of deities that are only available to certain regions/species

[sreservoir]

So I'm retrofitting my existing Campaign Setting with the steamworks from Steam & Steel (http://dobby.machinespirit.net/dnd/ENP-3008-Steam_and_steel.pdf), (also this is my first GITP thread), and I'm making a priest of the God of Science and have realized that Turn/Rebuke Undead is an absurdly arbitrary ability. I realize that as far a WotC was concerned, every cleric was either going to be a PC who went Pelor and specialized in healing and face-macing, or an evil NPC necromancer bent on undead-ifying the world, and thats fine i guess; except in my campaign, there is no anti-undead god, undead are normal and accepted members of society, and giving every cleric power over them seems very arbitrary, anyone have any alternate or more useful abilities to replace turn/rebuke undead with completely?

there's always rebuke dragons from either dragon magic, draconomicon, or races of the dragon, not sure which.

azurin clerics get something that isn't quite TU, too.

ed: the sub level, not just the combination.

[Saintheart]

If you're evil, Blasphemous Incantation from Exemplars of Evil is a nice ACF for low level Rebuke Undead.

[KnejaTurch]

If you're evil, Blasphemous Incantation from Exemplars of Evil is a nice ACF for low level Rebuke Undead.

Im not familiar with that, how does that work?

[Saintheart]

Im not familiar with that, how does that work?

p. 20 of the book. Basically, replace the "rebuke undead" ability with an 30 foot effect that hits anything good with a sickened effect. Save DC is Fortitude, keyed to the character's CHA score and half their caster level, so it gets better as you go up.

[DarkestKnight]

seeing as you are a man of science, it may be possible to switch it to turn/rebuke constructs, which would make more sense. i know some of the cleric domains allow you to turn/rebuke elementals, so in terms of the refluffing this seems in par.

[Flickerdart]

There's a flaw called Living Faith which takes away the ability to Turn Undead from a Cleric.