Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
He's saying that he's reducing the number of HD undead have. They have similar amounts of HP, but lower HD. So, turn just got a whole lot stronger.
Yes, thanks, exactly. Although I might also try dropping the HD size, but that's a little different (and doesn't necessarily solve much), so I'll put that alongside the simpler conversion. Oh yeah, one further idea: modifying the templates in question to give extra Con as needed.

Without looking at some of the numbers you'd end up with, it's difficult to say how much you should lower it. Perhaps give us the HD numbers of some standard zombies?
OK, let's try zombies first. Maybe later devourers, nightwalkers, and dread wraiths.

Since I don't like the idea of having 2d6 turning damage with no change as you level until 4th, I'm adjusting my suggestion to 1d6+1d6/2 levels over 1 direct damage, or 1d6/level HP check* vs turn.

Troglodyte zombie, 4 HD, 29 HP; CR 1, Clr 1 with 14 Cha has 20% chance of turning, while Clr 3 with 14 Cha has a 50% chance of turning (but a very good chance of turning 2 or more, if any). Trogs have 14 Con, which would probably not be changed.
Conversion A, keeping d12: 3d12+9, or 28 HP; unmodified turning gives 35% and 65% chances respectively, while preliminary suggestion gives 1d6/2d6 damage, a 0%/0% chance of turning at full health, or a 0%/16.2% at half health.
Conversion B, dropping to d8: 4d8+11, or 29 HP; unmodified turning remains the same as before conversion, while suggestion chance at half health is now 0%/16.2%.
Conversion C, keeping base creature's HD count, changing HD size to undead d12, and adding +6 Con: 2d12+13, or 26 HP; unmodified turning goes up to 50%/80%, and suggestion to 0%/25.9%.
A 20% chance of level=CR Cleric being able to turn at all (with moderate Cha) seems considerably too low to be useful (even though the result on success is fairly impressive). But 0% is worse, although guaranteed 1d6 damage isn't so bad. Even the half-health turn figures for over-level clerics are kind of dismal.

Ogre zombie, 8 HD, 55 HP; CR 3, Clr 3 with 14 Cha has 0% chance of turning, while Clr 5 with 16 Cha has 25% chance (and a ~40% chance of turning two if the initial check succeeds). Ogres have 15 Con.
Conversion A: 6d12+15, or 54 HP; unmodified gives 20% and 55% respectively, and suggestion gives 2d6/3d6 straight damage, 0%/0% chance to turn at full health, or 0%/1.6% at half.
Conversion B, dropping to d8: 8d8+19, or 55 HP; unmodified turning remains the same, and suggestion at half health is 0%/1.6% similarly.
Conversion C, keeping base creature's HD count, changing HD size to undead d12, and adding +6 Con: 4d12+23, or 49 HP; unmodified turning goes up to 50%/80%, while suggestion hits 0%/5.9%.
Here's where regular turning starts to become useless; a higher-level cleric has a small chance at even turning one, and an even smaller chance to turn two (and no chance at all of turning three or more). The turning half of the suggestion is getting less useful too, though.

Gray render zombie, 20 HD, 133 HP; CR 6, Clr 6 with 16 Cha has -infinity%** chance of turning, while Clr 8 with 18 Cha has 0% chance. Gray renders have 24 (!) Con.
Conversion A: 10d12+73, or 138 HP; unmodified gives 10% and 45% respectively, and suggestion gives 3d6/4d6 straight damage, 0%/0% chance to turn at full health, or 0%/0% even at half health.
Conversion B, dropping to d8: 11d8+80, or 129 HP; unmodified goes to 0% and 30%, while suggestion still is at 0%/0%.
Conversion C, keeping base creature's HD count, changing HD size to undead d12, and adding +6 Con: 10d12+73, or 138 HP, same as A.
At this point, regular turning is stupidly useless beyond belief; you have to be level 15 with a feat to even have a chance to turn even one of these CR 6 critters (25% chance to turn one with 22 Cha, 0% chance to turn more than one). And, of course, the suggested turning check didn't scale nearly fast enough and is thoroughly behind now.

Looks like my suggestion might need some tweaking already, which is not entirely unexpected. It is more flexible, and it does work better with cooperation (since beating them down makes turning more likely to work), but a 0% chance of turning even lower-level undead upon encountering them is kind of lame. In fact, so far turning has required beating them down to half health or less to get even a chance at the pseudo-fear effect, never mind the dusting.


*An HP check is basically the mechanic used by the Death domain's granted power; if the target has less HP than the amount rolled, it fails the check and is killed/turned/whatever. In this case, if it has less than half the HP, it's destroyed.
** OK not really, but pretty close. Seriously, don't try this one at home, kids.