Rebuke or channel

[Zakerst]

So for an up comming session due to forward and back porting between PF and 3.5 a player has to make the choice between using rebuking undead as per 3.5 or using channel negative energy as per PF.

The question I bring you is what would you choose and why?

And perhaps what I might suggest to the detractors of the opposed choice.

For the sake of this discussion assume I am the DM.

[Malimar]

On the one hand, rebuking is a lot more interesting than a boring ol' burst of HP damage and healing. Especially because you need to take Selective Channeling if you don't want to hurt your mortal allies when you use it for damage.

On the other hand, rebuking is very binary -- either it works and you win the encounter, or it fails and it's a waste of a turn. (Rebuke is much better than turn, because once turn runs out you still gotta fight the thing whereas you can beat on a rebuked undead and kill it while it's rebuked. Control is also better than destroy, because the former takes an enemy out of the fight and gets you a minion where the latter just takes an enemy out.)

Ultimately, I'd take Rebuke/Command over Channel Negative, no contest. (I'd also take Turn/Destroy over Channel Positive, but that's a bit less one-sided because Turn/Destroy is worse than Rebuke/Command and Channel Positive is better than Channel Negative.)

[Zakerst]

Thanks that was how I was leaning as well. Incidentally the class in question is a dread necromancer, if that changes anything.

That said the very binary nature of rebuke is a bit troubling at times to craft encounters around... though at the end of the day I think it would be more interesting to have that as an option rather than bursts of negative energy that eats a feat to be safe for friends.