Do the Fire/Earth/Air/Water Domains give additional Turn attempts?

[yaluckyboy09]

So I'm running this campaign with my friends and our Cleric has Divine Metamagic and is taking a Prestige Class that gives him Bonus Domains. He was wondering if the Fire/Earth/Air/Water Domains grant him additional Turn attempts that he can use for Divine Metamagic or if they allow him to use the Turn Undead attempts he already has on the corresponding Elementals?

[Derjuin]

Relevant text:



When you take this feat, choose a metamagic feat that you have. This feat applies only to that metamagic feat. As a free action, you can take the energy from turning or rebuking undead and use it to apply a metamagic feat to divine spells that you know.


It seems you can only use Turn or Rebuke Undead to fuel Divine Metamagic - since the domains don't grant those abilities, they don't count.

[Cog]

As a free action, you can take the energy from turning or rebuking undead...
The answer is there in the feat itself.

Edit: Pff. In the time I took to preview to make sure there weren't any ninjas around...

[yaluckyboy09]

The answer is there in the feat itself.

Edit: Pff. In the time I took to preview to make sure there weren't any ninjas around...

that's odd, I don't remember "undead" being there...

oh well, at least I got my answer. thanks

[Darrin]

The Sun domain has a little more wiggle room, as it doesn't mention "turn undead" explicitly, just "regular turning", which would include "turn fire/earth/air/water/plants/hippos". So you could convert one of those to a Greater Turn Undead, and use that to fuel DMM. 1/day, at least.

[Pluto!]

It gets a little messy because the domains do give additional turn attempts (just not turn undead attempts), but divine feats aren't consistent in whether or not those turn attempts are usable.

Some divine feats and similar abilities do specify that elemental turning abilities work (eg. Dragonfire Channeling, Elemental Smiting), some specify that only turn undead (eg. Divine Might, Divine Shield, Divine Metamagic) and some don't specify at all (eg. Divine Spell Power, Sacred Vitality).

[Chronos]

On the other hand, the azurin cleric substitution levels from Magic of Incarnum replace your Turn Undead with an ability called Channel Incarnum, which explicitly says that it can be used in place of Turn Undead for purposes of divine feats. Take that, and then get normal Turn Undead from some other sort, and you've now got twice as many charges to use on your feats.

[Kuulvheysoon]

On the other hand, the azurin cleric substitution levels from Magic of Incarnum replace your Turn Undead with an ability called Channel Incarnum, which explicitly says that it can be used in place of Turn Undead for purposes of divine feats. Take that, and then get normal Turn Undead from some other sort, and you've now got twice as many charges to use on your feats.

Toss in some Death Delver (HoH) for an explicit rebuke undead pool for even more!

[Aliek]

On the other hand, the azurin cleric substitution levels from Magic of Incarnum replace your Turn Undead with an ability called Channel Incarnum, which explicitly says that it can be used in place of Turn Undead for purposes of divine feats. Take that, and then get normal Turn Undead from some other sort, and you've now got twice as many charges to use on your feats.

The Rebuke Dragons ACF from Dragon Magic also has that clause, and doesn't require you to be an Azurin. Dip Sacred Exorcist and Dread Necromancer(Could go with Death Delver, but dread necro has no prerequisites), and there you go - 3 turning pools for your DMM needs. If Greater Turning is up for fuel too, and works with extra turn attempts if you're a Radiant Servant, get that dip too.(IIRC that's RAW, but I'm not sure right now.) You do need to start out neutral(for DN) and become good later on tough.

Then it's just a matter of Undeath domain, Nightstick and a Reliquary Holy Symbol. There's 49 turn attempts before charisma.
DMM to your heart's content.

Edit: Reviewing it, the 49 turn attempts were a small mistake somewhere :smallredface: Breakdown below

[Chronos]

I'm unclear on how you get 49-- Break down that number, please?

[Aliek]

That assumes Greater Turning works as a separate pool, which for a Radiant Servant it does, and what adds turn attempts also adds to this pool.

Basically, you have 4 pools. Rebuke Dragons(Cleric), Rebuke Undead(Dread Necromancer), Turn Undead(Sacred Exorcist), and Greater Turning(Radiant Servant of Pelor).

Now, each one of them has 3+CHA mod base, thus, without including CHA, we have 3(Base)+4(Nightstick)+4(Extra Turning from Undeath domain)+2(Reliquary Holy Symbol from MIC), or 14 per pool.

For 4 pools, we have 56 then. Looking back at it, I have no clue where I got the 49 number anymore, but still, 56 before CHA is even better.

[Chronos]

OK, yeah, that makes sense. I wasn't disputing that it was a whole heck of a lot; I just couldn't see how you got a number that wasn't a multiple of 3 or 4.

I also wanted to double-check that you were only counting 2 from the reliquary holy symbol, not 3: I've seen a number of people mis-read the Improved Turning prereq as Extra Turning.

And actually, double-checking it now, the RHS only says it boosts Turn and Rebuke Undead, and so presumably wouldn't work with Rebuke Dragons, unless the specific text in Rebuke Dragons covers that, too.

[Firechanter]

The Rebuke Dragons ACF from Dragon Magic also has that clause, and doesn't require you to be an Azurin. Dip Sacred Exorcist and Dread Necromancer(Could go with Death Delver, but dread necro has no prerequisites), and there you go - 3 turning pools for your DMM needs. If Greater Turning is up for fuel too, and works with extra turn attempts if you're a Radiant Servant, get that dip too.(IIRC that's RAW, but I'm not sure right now.) You do need to start out neutral(for DN) and become good later on tough.

I find a couple of flaws with your analysis.
1. Sacred Exorcist _explicitly_ says its level for Turn Undead stacks with an existing TU class feature, so you do not get a separate pool.
2. If you start out neutral, you can be a Dread Necro and get Rebuke Undead alright, but if you become Good (for example to be a Radiant Servant), you should lose the ability to channel negative energy.
3. I'm not sure about Greater Turning; technically it's a separate pool but also a different thing. (BTW, when I last played a RS, Greater Turnings were interpreted to come out of the _same_ pool as regular TU, so it wouldn't have worked either way.)

The Dragon Magic and Incarnum ACFs would work, if it's explicitly spelled out in their rules. My players would still be out of luck since these are two of the very, very few books I don't allow at my table. Dragon Magic because there's just too much downright broken stuff in it, Incarnum because I can't be arsed to read up on yet another different magic mechanism. :smalltongue:

[Chronos]

1. Sacred Exorcist _explicitly_ says its level for Turn Undead stacks with an existing TU class feature, so you do not get a separate pool.But you don't have any other turn undead class feature. You get rebuke undead, and turning of other things, but the whole reason Sacred Exorcist is included in the build is that it's the one and only source of Turn Undead in there.

And what's downright broken in Dragon Magic? To my eye, it's one of the more balanced books out there. There's more broken material from the spellcasting Completes.

[Aliek]

The "Losing pre-reqs = losing class features" thing usually quoted has two quirks:

1. It is sometimes said that, because it's on Complete Warrior, it should apply only to this books' PrCs, and
2. Even if it did apply, Dread Necromancer is a base class, with no clause for losing anything if it ever becomes good(Except the ability to take more levels). See Barbarian, Paladin and Monk, both have explicit effects as to what happen if you change your alignment.

I concede that Greater Turning is arguable, tough I believe RAW is okay, since it's still (Greater) Turn Undead. YMMV.