cure on undead

[BURNhollywoodBURN]

I have played D&D before, but never with undead. This is my question: Can a cleric (although it's smarter to turn, just play along) actually damage an undead by casting cure? Also, can a good cleric inflict wounds, and vice versa? I would really like to know the answer to these questions, thanks.

[Bag_of_Holding]

Yes, a good-aligned cleric, or a neutral cleric of good deity or a neutral cleric who just chose to spontaneously cast cure spells rather than inflict spells or an evil-aligned cleric who chose healing domain and spontaneous domain casting for some reason can damage undead creatures by casting cure spell on them.

Also, Inflict spells are, while belongs to necromancy school, not evil spells (well, not with evil descriptor anyway). So, a good cleric who prepares inflict spells or choses destruction domain and spontaneous domain casting can cast inflict spells with no problem.

[Rad]

any cleric can cast Inflict spells, although evil clerics can cast them spontaneously while good clerics have to prepare them in their spell slots. Inflict spells are not inherently evil and as such are no worse for a good cleric to cast than, say, blade barrier or Flame Strike.

Undeads are indeed harmed by cure spells and healed by inflict spells.

At higher level turning undead becomes more and more useless because of the way in which effective undead HD scale with level, not to mention the limit to destroy undead (half) which becomes useless even earlier. Divine feats and domain devotions are a much better use of turning attempts later on and pretty much the only use of the ability for a paladin.

[Thrawn183]

Just wait till you cast heal on an undead...

[Felius]

any cleric can cast Inflict spells, although evil clerics can cast them spontaneously while good clerics have to prepare them in their spell slots. Inflict spells are not inherently evil and as such are no worse for a good cleric to cast than, say, blade barrier or Flame Strike.

Undeads are indeed harmed by cure spells and healed by inflict spells.

At higher level turning undead becomes more and more useless because of the way in which effective undead HD scale with level, not to mention the limit to destroy undead (half) which becomes useless even earlier. Divine feats and domain devotions are a much better use of turning attempts later on and pretty much the only use of the ability for a paladin.

Isn't it possible to build a cleric optimized for turning undead? Pick up the Sun and Glory domain, and focus on turn. You will probably be sub-par against everything else, but damn if you aren't a undead's grinder.

[averagejoe]

Not only can it be done, the party bard once saved everyone's bacon in one game I was DMing using this method during a particularly nasty zombie encounter. Which was great for him, because he had been useless pretty much the rest of the time.

Note that you have to suceed on a touch attack, however.

[Voyager_I]

Just remember that using Cure spells offensively against Undead requires a touch attack, just like using Inflict spells against living targets. Also, Heal acts like Harm.

[Craig1f]

I don't have the rules in front of me ... I know that if you cast Harm on a subject, you can't bring the subject to less than 1hp. Does the same hold for inflict spells, or for cure spells on undead?

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

I don't have the rules in front of me ... I know that if you cast Harm on a subject, you can't bring the subject to less than 1hp. Does the same hold for inflict spells, or for cure spells on undead?

That restriction only applies to Harm and Heal (if used against Undead).

[Xuincherguixe]

My impression has been that cure spells use positive energy, and inflict negative.

Because undead are powered by negative energy, it kind of makes sense that cure spells would hurt them.

So even if the Cleric himself is evil, he's still channeling positive energy with the spells.

[SpiderMew]

You can pick up the ranged touch feet, which makes the spell cast at one level higher to turn that touch cure, into a 30ft ray.
That way you wont be touching wights

[Voyager_I]

Simply touching a Wight won't trigger it's level drain, it has to make an actual touch attack. You could literally crowd-surf unharmed over a swarm of them, so long as none tried to attack you.

[SpiderMew]

Simply touching a Wight won't trigger it's level drain, it has to make an actual touch attack. You could literally crowd-surf unharmed over a swarm of them, so long as none tried to attack you.

True, but from a roleplaying stand point, thats just nasty.

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

True, but from a roleplaying stand point, thats just nasty.

Certain feats in the BoVD would disagree with you. :smallamused:

[Rad]

Isn't it possible to build a cleric optimized for turning undead? Pick up the Sun and Glory domain, and focus on turn. You will probably be sub-par against everything else, but damn if you aren't a undead's grinder.

The Sun special power bypasses the limit on half of your cleric level on the HD of the undeads you can destroy, which is the main problem. You still have to go around the fact that you might face undead that have more HD than you and that turn resistance makes it all much worse.

The bad thing of turn undead is that it is an all-or-nothing thing. Hence the designers took steps to protect their undead big guys from being routinely one-shot by the party cleric and made a good job of it. As is, Turn undead is only usable on mooks that would not deserve uses of a per-day ability to be dealt with anyway.

I like the flavor of Turn undead very much (even if I'm not sure that the fact that clerics, and all clerics, have it is the better thing, but I'm digressing here) on the mechanics side, however, I think it could use some fixes.