Non-core uses of Turn/Rebuke Undead

[Powerdork]

The Player's Handbook states, of the turn undead special attack, that sometimes you'll be able to use it to do things beyond turning undead, such as opening a magic door. Aside from the obvious answers of divine feats and prestige class features of various sorts if you're a cleric or experienced paladin with a Charisma of 6 or higher and are out of undead to turn, are there things to actually do with that power, somewhere in mainline books, setting supplements, or published adventures?

[Kelb_Panthera]

I feel like i have some vague memory of an item or two and a magical event/location thing related to Pelor. IIRC, the latter is in DMG2 but I can't remember any details on the former. Otherwise, it's all GM call territory.

[TheCount]

Mostly DMM or Divine Meta Magic.
There is also the Devotion feats.
as well as some alternate class feature that either modify it (like the destory undead one or ones that swap undead for something else) or complettely discards it in favor of something else.
those are all i know of.
oh and yeah, as was mentioned, there is sure to be some items that use it as well.

[Malphegor]

It looks like a weird one that is written in is that you can turn/rebuke other creatures. I'm having some difficulty finding what, what I've found in the srd is 'some clerics can do it to other kinds of creatures'.

Presumably from my searching if you were a cleric of a god of water, you could turn/rebuke water/fire creatures as appropriate to your god's interests? It's kinda unclear.


There's some interesting stuff one could do with that- maybe taking on a pseudo-druidish god can let you use your rebukes to command ordinary animals as you would undead?

This is especially weird since I know that you can do this with bloodline feats and kin mastery- pick a type of creature you're descended from, then with kin mastery you can rebuke/turn them as if they were undead. Which lets you take control of dragons in theory.

[DeTess]

It looks like a weird one that is written in is that you can turn/rebuke other creatures. I'm having some difficulty finding what, what I've found in the srd is 'some clerics can do it to other kinds of creatures'.

Presumably from my searching if you were a cleric of a god of water, you could turn/rebuke water/fire creatures as appropriate to your god's interests? It's kinda unclear.


There's some interesting stuff one could do with that- maybe taking on a pseudo-druidish god can let you use your rebukes to command ordinary animals as you would undead?

This is especially weird since I know that you can do this with bloodline feats and kin mastery- pick a type of creature you're descended from, then with kin mastery you can rebuke/turn them as if they were undead. Which lets you take control of dragons in theory.

Turning other creatures is included as a domain power in several domains. The Plant domain allows you to rebuke or command plant creatures, while the various elemental domains allow you to turn and destroy creatures of the opposite element, and rebuke and command creatures of your element.

[tiercel]

There are several items that have special additional attack/defense powers when a character burns a TU use to activate (MIC: Divine Wrath weapon enhancement; CC: Bastion, Blade, and Helm of Righteous War) and others that can be “recharged,” i.e. gain additional uses per day, by burning TU uses (MIC: Ring of Brief Blessing, Radiant Sphere).

I’d be surprised if there weren’t more such items, though the profusion of [Divine] and [Domain] feats means that any such items will be facing an uphill climb in terms of actually feeding them TU uses — the ability to turn a niche power source into something not only of every-adventuring-day use, but also even character-defining (DMM: Persist shenanigans, I’m looking at you), is... potentially problematic for some games’ optimization levels (personally I have a lot less problem with upgunning paladins than with clerics, who arguably really don’t need nore help).

At a quick search I wasn’t able to turn up a list of adventure/plot-specific “put a TU use into this location, get this result” uses like “open the door,” though presumably such uses have to be optional/workaround-able, unless you want plot to grind to halt if (gasp) your PCs don’t include a Cleric (or Paladin or other class/PrC of high enough level, or character with enough UMD to fake it).

[Rijan_Sai]

The Player's Handbook states, of the turn undead special attack, that sometimes you'll be able to use it to do things beyond turning undead, such as opening a magic door. Aside from the obvious answers of divine feats and prestige class features of various sorts if you're a cleric or experienced paladin with a Charisma of 6 or higher and are out of undead to turn, are there things to actually do with that power, somewhere in mainline books, setting supplements, or published adventures?

Just off the top of my head, I know the Sunless Citadel has a door that opens when "positive Divine energy" is channeled into it (or something close to that.) Specifically using a Turn Undead attempt. So there's at lease one! And conveniently, the adventure gives you a Good cleric NPC just a few rooms away!
The others have mentioned most of the other non-turning uses of TU...