Turn Undead Variants: Damage (includes PF version). Any bad experiences?

[johnbragg]

Complete Divine contains this alternate rule for Turning Undead. Instead of the standard d20 Turn Check and 2d6 Turning Damage, you roll a straight d6 damage per cleric level, against all undead within a 20' radius. Will save for half damage, vs DC 10 + cleric level + CHA modifier.

(Turn Resistance +2 becomes "take 2 less damage")

Complete Divine doesn't specify how to handle evil clerics REbuking (or Commanding) Undead, but I'd suppose you use the standard method, or just a Will save vs 10 + cleric's level + CHA mod.

Will save is most undead's best save, but on the other hand they're saving against Cleric Level, not Spell LEvel.

PROS: It makes Turn Undead less of an encounter-ender at one end, or a wasted effort at the other end.

CONS: That's what I'd like to know. (Besides having to tweak some feats or abilities that rely on increasing the Turn Damage roll.)

[Doomeye56]

This sounds like the Pathfinder's Cleric's Channel Energy.
It works fine for them though they don't get a d6 per level.

[johnbragg]

This sounds like the Pathfinder's Cleric's Channel Energy.
It works fine for them though they don't get a d6 per level.

You're right, the Pathfinder Cleric ability is very close, it's basically d6 per 2 levels, and save at 10 + 1/2 CL + CHA mod. Plus Pathfinder Clerics can use it to heal allies.

OK, so expanding the topic: Any complaints about the Pathfinder Cleric "Channel Energy" ability?

[Ashtagon]

One thing that struck me as immediately obvious was that the turn resistance gets nerfed hard by this.

I'd multiply turn resistance by five (Complete Divine version) or three (Pathfinder version) and call it good.

[Kol Korran]

My group started playing with PF rules, and our player rose from 1st to 10th level. Although the Specific doesn't feature many infrastructure, here are some observations:
- the channel energy ability makes some affect, albeit a limited one, on all undead, vs the 3.5 way, where it 's a save or suck, so the undead are either utterly unaffected or utterly screwed. Welles that.
- that said, the damage is not a lot. At 9th level only 5d6. Though undead rarely pass the saved of a well built cleric.
- in PF it is important to note that the cleric can either damage undead OR heal allies, not both with the same charge healing can be decently effective here, (especially at lower levels) since you can affect multiple allies from admittance at once, so our cleric at least chose to save most of his channel energy attempt for healing rather than damaging.
- PF has various feats which enable using the channel enregular charges for other things. Our cleric made some use of channeling to hurt outsiders (more prevalent in our AP )

Just from the top of my head...

[BWR]

No complaints I can think of and lots of good experiences with PF channel.
There are only two complaints I can think of that, while I don't agree with them I can understand that people might have them: Powerful turnings and divine feats. 3.5 had feats and abilities to allow you to almost auto-destroy powerful undead if you built your character correctly, and if you want to do that, PF doesn't cut it. At least it cannot to my knowledge. Divine feats were a very nice idea and really helped use an otherwise situational or even useless ability (let's face it: 3.5 paladins never used turn attempts for anything else)
The ability to damage undead regardless of how powerful they are is very nice if you need that little extra edge against them. Most importantly, you aren't stuck with a useless (barring feats) ability when facing non-undead.

[PsyBomb]

Turn resistance does not give damage reduction in this variation. It gives a bonus to Will saves against it, instead.

I rather like the PF version of it, as it is much more versatile and potentially useful. If you don't face the living dead that day, it can heal allies. There are tons of expansion feats for it, just nothing as broken as the 3.5 Divine feats (especially DMM)

[atemu1234]

Turn resistance does not give damage reduction in this variation. It gives a bonus to Will saves against it, instead.

I rather like the PF version of it, as it is much more versatile and potentially useful. If you don't face the living dead that day, it can heal allies. There are tons of expansion feats for it, just nothing as broken as the 3.5 Divine feats (especially DMM)

Undead have good will saves already though.

[Psyren]

In PF, there are lots more uses for it than simply damaging undead - see the Variant Channeling (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/cleric/variant-channeling) options introduced in UM. The cool thing about these is you can access them without needing a special feat or trait - they're just something you can choose to do on your divine class. There are some nice abilities here.