Cleric build focused on turn checks

[ayvango]

I'm curious how fine the subj works comparing with other cleric builds from power building perspective.

Having Ur priest I can't help but compare it with cleric. Ur priest gives me 9th level spell as well as cleric. But Ur priest give less spells at each level. Instead it gives me additional 10 character levels to dip into classes. On the other hand, cleric gives me two domain powers that are rough equivalent for two feats (sometimes they are precisely feats) and Ur priest consumes two feats for advancing. But I could take 5 one-level dips on first levels and get approximately 5 bonus feats. Most of classes gives me a feat on first level, some gives more (like cleric). So it provide a good compensation, and embrace/shun the dark chaos allows to reallocate it as I wish. And I have 5 more classes to spend for prestige classes without full progression. e.g. R.K. Vindicator, Ordained Champion and so on.

The single thing that cleric do undoubtedly better then Ur priest is turning undeads. Cleric has level 20 and Ur priest stops progression at 10 level. So, what if I focus cleric build on turning checks? Rulebooks give plenty of opportunities: with different domain powers you could turn different creatures. Fire/Cold subtypes, serpents, spiders and other. With the Turn Anathema spell you could turn Evil/Good/Chaotic/Lawful creatures. There are plenty of magic items that enhances turning checks. Cleric could collect items that gives him +10 to level for purpose of turning checks.

The good thing in turning that it is unbelievable effective against strong enemies. Cleric could of course turn minions, but he has very limited day allotment of turning attempts so it is wiser to save them for real threat. The turn confer no saves. There is means to get resistance against turning, but they are employed but some rare undeads and other creatures do not bother about it.

The bad thing in turning is its occasional nature. Party with clerics is always eager to clean some tombs haunted by undead. But balanced party could take other quests too. So the issue is versatility: how to build a cleric that could turn as many monster types and subtypes as possible. Cleric can handle undead as core, two more types as domains powers. There are prestige classes that gives additional domains. The Catalogues of Enlightenment give you access to a domain power that could be switched.

I'd like to know how many types could cleric have specialization against simultaneously. And what creature types are impossible to turn. Normal humans obliviously, what else? Is there any trick that allows you turn aberrations and golems? What to do with mere humans? Prepare some mind-affecting spells?

May be not a single cleric but entire party could be build from monster specialization perspective? Where clerics are powerless another class could take shift?

Have anyone considered turn-oriented cleric before? What feats, prestige classes are useful? The Dracolyte prestige class found in draconomicon could be of use. It continues casting progression and grant glory domain. But if wastes one level of turning progression. You need pretty high charisma to get enough turning attempts and to make them work. And what other usages may be found for that stat? Maybe some prestige multiclassing? The Substitute Domain spell may gives caster a domain for number of days. But that domain is limited to its deity. May be there is a way to be cleric for more then single deity?

For start I list all turning domain powers that are listed in the spell compendium.


Fire creatures (cold domain)
Lycanthropes (moon domain)
Reptilian creatures and snakes (scalykind domain)
Oozes (slime domain)
Spiders (spider domain)



Does that idea worth furthest investigation?

[Rangô]

Oh dude! Cool idea!
I've played a Cleric/Radiant Servant of Pelor (PrC from CD) once, and our DM wanted a tough campaing so he rewarded us with extra feats, I tried to maximize turn undeath but I found better use for the turn attempts, devotion feats or Divine Spell Power (which allows you a special turn undeath check increising your cast level) were my choice and it worked pretty well. However, when 'clean the dungeon up' time came I felt gleeful destroying undeath snapping my fingers, so I'll invest time getting deeper in this matter.
Hoping read more!

[daremetoidareyo]

I like your idea. Let's parse it out a little bit.

Cleric 1 can get two domains:
Choose any 2 from those below:

Utility (turn and rebuke)
Air: turn earth critters (including blue dragons) Command air critters (green dragons)
Cold (SC): turn fire critters (including red dragons) Command cold critters (white dragons)
Water: turn fire critters (including pyrohydras) Command water critters (black dragons)
Fire: Turn water critters (including bronze dragons) Command Fire critters (gold dragons)
Earth: Turn air critters (including will o wisps) Command earth critters (xorns)

Turn
Moon (SC): Turn lycanthropes

Rebuke
Spider (SC): Command spiders, (check out the vermin handbook in sig!) Subterranean sword spider is the best!
Ooze (FC1): Command oozes
Deathless (ECS): Command deathless using turn undead attempts
Blightbringer (UE): Command blightspawned creatures and evil-aligned animals or plants (summoned animals?)
Plant: Command plants
Scalykind(SC): animals (reptilian creatures and snakes only) Is a skarn or rilkan a reptilian creature?
Slime (SC): command more oozes
Thirst (SS): Command even more oozes
Warforged (FoE): Command Constructs


Other
Glory?
Sun?
Undead (dragon 312)?
Undeath (SC)!

Ok. Looking through all of the options, the warforged domain stands out as a wonderful class of critters to turn. That is the only "must" in the group, the spell list kinda blows, unless you have construct minions...

The elemental domains are nice too because all of the dragons have an elemental subtype, and most DMs are likely to forget that.

You get turn/rebuke undead for free.

Let's see what we can do with feats.
Turn
Plant defiance (DD): turn plants! (Needs access to detect animals or plants spell...)
Animal Defiance (MW): Turn animals (Needs access to detect animals or plants spell...druid dip?)
planar turning (DMG) epic: Turn outsiders!

Rebuke
Initiate of ghaunuldur (COR): rebuke oozes...Jeesh
Plant Control (DD): Rebuke plants
Animal Control: Rebuke animals!
Vow of the Spider Queen: Rebuke all vermin! (feat intensive...and a wisdom drain...)
Blessed by Tem-Et-Nu (SS): Rebuke animals...actually just hippopotomi...HA! take that, world!

Other
Via negativa(COR) (free action craven for inflict spells...actually an inflict spell thief build would be fun)
Elemental healing (CD): burst of healing for all elemental creatures that you can rebuke...
Elemental smiting (CD): ehh... add damage to melee attacks based on your ability to turn elemental types
Zone of animation (epic, CD): raise the dead with turn attempts!
Quicken turning (CD): Free action rebuke...
lolths boon (DotU): boost them spiders yo!
Divine energy focus (GW): +2 to turning level...
Empower and heighten turning: specifies turn undead...so kinda bad
Divine countermagic or alacrity (FoE): quite good with multiple turning pools
Divine defiance (FC2): good with multiple turning pools
Faith in the frost (FB): lame. Deals cold damage to stuff you turn
Profane life leach (LB): 2 turn attempts for 1d6 damage to all living creatures in 30'. You gain those HP
Divine feats from PHB2: all pretty ok
Improved turning: good. +1 level to turn checks

So let's make a hypothetical N cleric of a concept with access to the warforged and air domains. The concept is a belief in an invisible airborn drone god of the material plane is secretly controlling all peoples actions to produce a higher order of intelligence for the planet.

So you can rebuke undead, constructs, and air creatures and you can turn earth creatures.

Let's make them human for now.
And then let's add some feats into the mix.
1: Druid 1 Plant defiance, animal defiance
2: Cleric of invisible sky robot 1 (warforged and air domains)
3: Cleric of invisible sky robot 2: Plant control
4: Human paragon 1 (no spells this level either) Begin worshipping Guandalanalandar or handwave away the initiate patron deity requirements
5: Human paragon 2: animal control (bonus feat)
6: Cleric of invisible sky robot 3: Initiate of Ghuandalansdtuar

So, at level 6:
You can turn and rebuke both animals and plants
You can turn earth creatures
You can command air critters, constructs, oozes, and undead


Extra turning @ level 9 will net you like 28 extra turn/rebuke attempts
Choose your favorite divine feat at level 12 to blow all of those turn attempts on.

But let's look at some prestige classes:

Contemplative 1 level dip for an extra domain. You should probably choose water cold or fire. Depending on if you want to command ice, fire or water critters while turning either fire or water beasts.
A six level marathon will net you another domain, moon seems like it would be good.
Arachnomancer 1 spider domain. You need verminfriend feat, which is basically turn vermin anyway...
dracolyte: Glory domain...
divine disciple (PGTF) 4th level grants access to another domain offered by a deity.
divine agent (MOP) extra deity portfolio domain

So a human druid 1/human paragon 3/cleric of invisible sky robot 6/contemplative 6/divine agent 1/contemplative 3.

[Zaq]

The good thing in turning that it is unbelievable effective against strong enemies. Cleric could of course turn minions, but he has very limited day allotment of turning attempts so it is wiser to save them for real threat. The turn confer no saves. There is means to get resistance against turning, but they are employed but some rare undeads and other creatures do not bother about it.

The bad thing in turning is its occasional nature. Party with clerics is always eager to clean some tombs haunted by undead. But balanced party could take other quests too. So the issue is versatility: how to build a cleric that could turn as many monster types and subtypes as possible. Cleric can handle undead as core, two more types as domains powers. There are prestige classes that gives additional domains. The Catalogues of Enlightenment give you access to a domain power that could be switched.

The good thing you mentioned is both good and bad. If a character can reliably use the Turning mechanic to trivialize an encounter (and as you said, there's no save), then that encounter isn't going to be fun for very long. If you've specialized to the point where hyper-Turning is all that you can really do, then you're either a god or a weakling, and neither is fun in the long term.

I mean, it's a poor GM who sees that a Cleric is really good at Turning something (let's say undead, but it doesn't have to be undead) and then never gives that Cleric any undead to Turn. That's downright spiteful—a player who invests a significant amount of character resources in something should be able to get to have fun with that now and again. But it's also a poor GM who runs an entirely undead-based campaign and lets the Turning-focused Cleric just wipe out everything with no save; that's fun for the first few encounters, but it's not fun for long, especially if the rest of the party doesn't get to do anything while the Cleric just wipes the map. It's an unenviable balancing act (do you keep some undead around but lessen the focus on them, even if that messes up the plot you had in mind? Do you include some sacrificial undead in each encounter who exist for the sole purpose of being blown up by the Cleric while the real encounter is whatever else was with them? Do you do something else?), but that's kind of how it works.

If you end up Commanding instead of Turning, that's better in some ways and worse in others. A Commanding-focused Cleric can use their Commanded minions to solve problems that can't be solved by Commanding everything, and since Commanded minions stick around, the Commanding Cleric gets to feel the effects of their Command focus even in encounters where there's nothing to Command. The tricky part is that every encounter where a Commanding Cleric gets to Command something is an encounter that increases their power for at least a little while to come, as opposed to a Turning Cleric who ends up expending resources in ways that don't residually increase their power.

I mean, a Turning-focused Cleric is still a Cleric, so they still have access to Cleric spells (even if they spend a lot of those spells to increase their Turning power and even if they spend a lot of their feats and gold making them better at Turning instead of at anything else), so it's perhaps overstating things to say that a Turning-focused Cleric can't contribute to encounters where there's nothing to Turn. But it's still frustrating to never get to use your character's big trick, and it's still frustrating to be allied with a character whose big trick trivializes encounters.

Basically, I'm against abilities that turn encounters into one-and-done binary wins or losses. I don't like save-or-die effects. I don't like uberchargers who can one-shot anything they can hit. And I don't like Clerics who boil things down to "if you fit in my Turning box, you lose." It's still binary conflict resolution (either you can be Turned or you can't be Turned), only instead of rolling a d20 like a save-or-die, you're just comparing HD to Turning level.

Now, if you're theorycrafting, that's a totally different matter. I'm all in favor of that. It's a neat niche to explore to figure out what you can get away with Turning or Commanding and exactly which disparate bonuses will apply. It's neat to figure out how many different kinds of things one Cleric can deal with in that way. It's fun to think of how that character would go through life and approach challenges. Go nuts. That's awesome. I just feel like optimized Turning is basically a win-or-lose mechanic that makes encounter design sufficiently difficult for the GM that I wouldn't really like to see a character like that in actual play.

I repeat: in no way am I saying you shouldn't have fun dreaming up this character and optimizing them on paper. I'm all in favor of that. That's fun. I just feel like it wouldn't be a whole lot of fun to see them at the table.

[ayvango]

Basically, I'm against abilities that turn encounters into one-and-done binary wins or losses. I don't like save-or-die effects. I don't like uberchargers who can one-shot anything they can hit. And I don't like Clerics who boil things down to "if you fit in my Turning box, you lose." It's still binary conflict resolution (either you can be Turned or you can't be Turned), only instead of rolling a d20 like a save-or-die, you're just comparing HD to Turning level.

I understand you, but that is how 3.5 works. You forget wizard. If wizard prepares direct damage spells that allows no save (basically conjuration blasts) with cheap metamagic from incantatrix instead of battlefield control spell which he memorizes usual, he can single-handed end encounter. Shapechange to NagaHydra, cast 5 spells on standard action, 5 spells on swift action (under effect of Arcane Spellsurge spell). If something is still alive the wizard casts the Celerity spell and perform 5 more casts. He would end with empty high-level spell slots, but he wins and is still alive so he could teleport to his own plane to take rest before next encounter.

Comparing to that turning checks on cleric has pretty moderate power. And turning is useless against the most numerous opponents - mere humans. And more: as blast wizard from above is limited with number of encounters he could win, cleric is limited with HD that he could turn daily. So numerous weak opponents could beat him. Therefore warriors and warlocks is still actual with respect to their strength in perpetual slaughter.

Undead has plenty of nasty features, if not turning they would be the most inconvenient opponent. And no player character would refuse to attain necropolitan template. As well as in case of absence of fire/water/cold domain powers every player character would get profit from both Mantle of Icy Soul and Mantle of the Fiery Spirit spells. In this regards d&d is much like our real life: whoever first pull the trigger wins. So high level encounters all about planning, reconnaissance and preparations.

[Quertus]

Don't forget, ur-priest has caster level issues.

Also, rebuking clerics have control limits.

[daremetoidareyo]

A commanded undead creature is under the mental control of the evil cleric. The cleric must take a standard action to give mental orders to a commanded undead. At any one time, the cleric may command any number of undead whose total Hit Dice do not exceed his level. He may voluntarily relinquish command on any commanded undead creature or creatures in order to command new ones.



"Some clerics have the ability to turn creatures other than undead.
The turning check result is determined as normal."



So, if you can command oozes via the slime domain:


Rebuke or command oozes as an evil Cleric rebukes or commands undead. You can use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier

And you can rebuke undead as an evil cleric;


A cleric may attempt to turn undead a number of times per day equal to 3 + his Charisma modifier. A cleric with 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (religion) gets a +2 bonus on turning checks against undead.

And you have the warforged domain;


Rebuke, command, or bolster construct creatures as an evil Cleric rebukes undead. Use these abilities a total number of times per day equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier. This granted power is a supernatural ability.

Each of those allows a command limit of up to your level. You can control your cleric class levels worth of undead, in addition to your cleric class level's worth of constructs and oozes. I feel secure in this RAW reading because, each ability has a distinguished number of uses, each of which activate the SRD's "turning other creatures" clause: "Some clerics have the ability to turn creatures other than undead. The turning check result is determined as normal." The turning check SRD text lists the turning check info first, followed by a section on evil clerics, and how many commanded undead can be handled as part of the differences to the "turning check" that an evil cleric has. If the turning check is "determined as normal", then the total number of commanded oozes, constructs, and undead all have different HD pools to command from.

And so, I rescind my snotty attitude about getting the ability to rebuke oozes from four different sources. You could command a whole army of the dagnabbed things.

[Keld Denar]

Don't forget that with the spell Turn Anathema in Complete Champion, you can turn outsiders with an alignment component opposite of you. If you have a Lawful Good cleric and a Chaotic Evil cleric (or LE + CG) you can turn (almost) all outsiders. Unfortunately, you can't dust them with TA, but given that outsider HD scale 1:1 with CR for the most part, turning outsiders is not hard at all.

[Crake]

I feel like you gave ur-priest an undue bad name in the turning circuit. A Binder 5/Ur-Priest 2/Tenebrous Apostate 5/Ur-Priest 4/Binder 4 gets you level 20 turning progression, 9th level spells 1 level earlier than a cleric (assuming you can get your wis modifier to +9 by level 16) as well as a whole host of other goodies from being a 14th level binder with improved binding (unfortunately putting you just out of reach of 8th level vestiges, but most of them aren't that great). With the exception of having to find some way to get spellcraft to your class skills, binder was practically made to slide perfectly into Ur-Priest, and the two fit together so well fluff wise as well.

[ATHATH]

I'm going to just drop in to say that Paragnostic Apostle is really easy to get into, and gives full domain power advancement and double Turn/Rebuke Undead advancement (with the See Through the Veil ability). Also, Sovereign Speaker gives a lot of domains.

[ATHATH]

Also, useless (for your purposes) domains can be swapped out with the Substitute Domain spell.