Sacred Purification Question

[tenshiakodo]

Just started a new 3.5 game, and I got stuck playing a healer. I tripped over this Feat in the PHB II, and it's been working like a charm.

Relevant Text: As a swift action, you can expend a turn undead attempt to create a pulse of divine energy. All living creatures within 60 feet of you heal an amount of damage equal to 1d8 points + your Charisma bonus (if any). All undead creatures in this area take damage equal to 1d8 points + your Charisma bonus.

Everything was fine until we got into a fight with an enemy who would run around a corner to hide during combat. "Ok, great", I said, "since he has total cover, I can heal the party without healing that guy".

DM: "Wait a sec. Is that a burst or a spread?"

Me: "Well it's a bur...uh...the Feat doesn't say."

We're at an impasse now- I don't care which one it is, if it's a spread then undead can't take cover from the Feat's effect, and it's easier to heal my allies. If it's a burst, then there are times I can prevent healing enemies in combat. But the DM isn't sure which way he wants to rule it, and the Feat was given no errata in the PHB II.

There's probably no actual answer, but I'm curious how others would rule it.

The DM is also irritated that I roll twice for healing and damage, and he feels that it should just be one roll- and he's right, but we agreed to play as close to RAW as possible (to, ironically, avoid arguments, lol) and that's not how the Feat reads. He's especially annoyed that there's no saving throw for undead to avoid damage and Turn Resistance has no effect...or what the effect even is (conjuration [healing]? Necromancy?) for the purposes of special defenses- I think the balance for that is that the damage and healing don't scale very much, but I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on this as well.

The Feat is very powerful at level 1, but does anyone think it's TOO good?

Thanks in advance for replies!

[Alent]

Flip over to Pathfinder cleric and you'll see that a version of that feat basically replaced Turn Undead. They defined it as a Burst.

As to concerns about it being too good... Honestly, I wouldn't waste two feat slots on it, the healing is pathetic and stops being useful by level 4 or so. As anti-undead, Turn Undead is legitimately better since it actually scales.

[Faily]

I'm just gonna say that other feats on low-levels are more OP than this one.

Sure, it provides good action economy, and it's a useful use of your Turn Undead uses because turning in 3.5 is... complicated(?) most of the time. 1d8+CHA is a decent amount on level 1, but the healing will be quickly outpaced as Alent mentions.


I'd say Burst. No save, no resistances (unless they're protected from divine energy which the text defines it as, so same as the other half of a Flame Strike). It's only 1d8+CHA, after all.

[KillianHawkeye]

Perhaps you and your DM have fallen into a false dichotomy? Who's to say it must either be a burst or a spread? Maybe it literally affects "all creatures within 60 feet" as it says it does.

[Telonius]

This is definitely a gray area in the rules. Ultimately your DM is probably going to have to make the ruling on it.

PHB2 explicitly calls out the Divine Feats listed in it as being Supernatural Abilities, so using the Spell Area rules might not be the way to go. The fact that it's (Su) also means it's not subject to Spell Resistance (very interesting since Cure spells are SR: Yes, and the feat wording doesn't mention a saving throw), and doesn't provoke an Attack of Opportunity to use it.

Personally I'd rule that it works exactly as the feat's wording says it does: if a living being is within 60 feat, it gets the healing, regardless of cover or barriers. If an undead is in the area, it takes the damage, regardless of cover or barriers.

[noob]

Perhaps you and your DM have fallen into a false dichotomy? Who's to say it must either be a burst or a spread? Maybe it literally affects "all creatures within 60 feet" as it says it does.

It is definitively neither a burst nor a spread but a "all living creature within range"
Burst or spread are rules for spells area of effect.
That thing is not a spell: it is a supernatural power that does not even mimic a spell.
So it works through walls with no problem and even on people entirely encased by 50 foot of steel provided you get within 60 feet of that person

[tenshiakodo]

Thanks for the replies. Honestly, the idea that the ability could ignore solid walls "just because" it's a supernatural ability seems...dubious, but I admit that it is a valid interpretation that the feat does exactly what it says it does. I'll bring that up to my DM, though I don't think he'll go for it either.

I hope he'll decide it's a burst, like Pathfinder's Channel Energy.

As for the poor scaling*, I feel that is a good balancing factor for this Feat, and likely the fact that it's really awesome at level 1 is simply that the designer didn't consider it being available to level 1 Clerics (so it's balanced more around level 3+) OR they thought most Clerics wouldn't have a lot of Turn attempts to fuel it if they did take it that early. But 60' range, swift action healing for a resource that most of the time remains unused and still leaves me with spells open? Yes please.

*My DM is unconvinced about the scaling being all that poor, he keeps comparing it to CLW, Mass. I don't agree, I think CLW, Mass is a terrible spell, but...

[Cruiser1]

Relevant Text: As a swift action, you can expend a turn undead attempt to create a pulse of divine energy. All living creatures within 60 feet of you heal an amount of damage equal to 1d8 points + your Charisma bonus (if any). All undead creatures in this area take damage equal to 1d8 points + your Charisma bonus.

The DM is also irritated that I roll twice for healing and damage, and he feels that it should just be one rollI don't see why this would ever be only one roll, because it's two separate effects. Suppose the feat's effects were 1d10 healing and 1d6 damage? Then it would definitely require rolling twice. If the feat was intended to have you only roll once, then it would have been worded as, "All undead creatures in this area take the same amount of damage."

[tenshiakodo]

His argument was that it wastes time, and it really should have been written as "living creatures within 60' of the character are healed of 1d8+CHA mod damage, and undead creatures within 60' take an equal amount of damage". I don't disagree, but again, that's not how the Feat reads.

I think what he was really annoyed by was that when I used the Feat in an encounter with undead, I first rolled a 3 (for 6 healing) then rolled an 8 (for 11 damage) and his first comment was something like "wait, why did you roll twice?" (the 11 damage nuked the skeletons outright).

[Fizban]

DM: "Wait a sec. Is that a burst or a spread?
I'd go burst. The rest of the game seems to default to burst- if it weren't for Fireball being a spread as a feature, there'd hardly be any. There's more of a problem with people assuming things are spreads when they actually aren't, than there is with assuming things are bursts. And bursts are just more interesting because cover matters.

The DM is also irritated that I roll twice for healing and damage, and he feels that it should just be one roll- and he's right, but we agreed to play as close to RAW as possible
Then you should be rolling separately for every single creature every time an AoE goes off. Each creature has their own hit dice to roll for max hp, each attack is rolled separately, crits roll twice, etc. All specific examples I know of default to rolling everything, and while it's probably addressed in a houserule sidebar somewhere, I don't think there's a direct rule that actually says you roll damage for AoEs once and apply the same result to every creature. If anyone's got a source I'm fine being wrong though.

The Feat is very powerful at level 1, but does anyone think it's TOO good?
Nah. It's only too good if you allow it to be retrained away later when it stops being as useful.