[3.5] Practical ways to increase Turn Undead attempts sans items.

[fortesama]

Exactly as the title says. As our game currently has ridiculously overpriced nightsticks and items that directly buffs turn undead in any way, shape or form. I'm talking about 100,000 a pop and he screwed crafting so those in particular cost 2x to craft. There were no logical explanations on why the shops aren't going out of business unless the DM saying that they use dm_givegold to give NPC crafters the materials to craft them count as a logical explanation. I'm looking for a way to increase the quantity of Turn/Rebuke Undead attempts for the purpose of DMM: Persist. And no, DMM Persist apparently wasn't the reason he overpriced it when I asked why (no explanations on why he did that to begin with). In fact, the other players are pitching in to help me get nightsticks (who else is going to give them persistent Recitation, Righteous Wrath of the Faithful, Haste, Vigorous Cycle etc.). Dread Necromancer dips are allowed.

[Douglas]

There are a small number of alternate class features for Cleric that replace Turn/Rebuke Undead and specify they can be used in place of Turn/Rebuke Undead for Divine feats. Pick one of these, then take a dip in Sacred Exorcist or another class that grants Turn Undead, so you end up with both the ACF and Turn Undead. Add a dip in Death Delver to get Rebuke Undead. You now have 3 pools of uses per day to fuel DMM with. Add as many copies of Extra Turning as you can get, for an additional 12 total uses per feat.

[fortesama]

Could you be more specific about which features are those? And where do I find Death Delver?

Thank You Very Much

[Douglas]

Destroy Undead from Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (pages 206-207) is one. Turn Energy from Races of the Dragon page 106 might work but check with your DM - RAW it only says it counts as Turn Undead for prerequisites, not necessarily for using Divine feats. There are at least one or two more, but I don't have the time to search for them right now and any single character can only have one of them anyway.

Death Delver is from Heroes of Horror, and is unique in being the only way I know of to get Rebuke Undead without requiring a non-good alignment. As every unambiguous non-Cleric way to get Turn Undead requires good alignment, that makes it pretty much the only way to get both Turn and Rebuke along with a Cleric ACF. There's Master of Radiance from Libris Mortis for getting Turn without being Good, but that requires a generous DM to interpret it the right way.

[PlzBreakMyCmpAn]

Practical? Can't help you there. But I can help with quite a few DMMable turning pools.

[NEO|Phyte]

If you can finagle the ability to bind 4th level vestiges, Tenebrous lets you turn/rebuke undead effectively forever; once every 5 rounds.

[Mnemnosyne]

As far as I can figure, Tenebrous wouldn't help with DMM persist, because you can only spend one turn attempt every 5 rounds, while doing DMM persist would seem to require spending 7 turn attempts at once.

[Andion Isurand]

If you have a lot of cleric levels, you could take the Lust domain.

The Charm domain can also boost charisma, but with by an unamed 4 points for 1 minute.

[Darrin]

Find a druid who can cast Bone Talisman, then UMD the talisman.

[Master_Rahl22]

I call shenanigans on your DM. The only purpose of Nightsticks is to increase Turn attempts, and with a DMM Cleric in the party it's pretty obvious where he was going with that. The obvious fix for Nightsticks is not to make them ridiculously expensive but to only allow one to provide extra turn attempts and any others are redundant.

I'm AFB at the moment but I seem to remember an item from MIC that provided extra turn attempts but I think it had alignment and/or deity restrictions on it.

[Keld Denar]

The way I've always seen stacking Nightsticks explained is similar to temp Cha increases. Instead of counting turns remaining, you count turns spent. If your turns spent exceeds the number of turns you can use in a day, you can't use any more. That way, when your turns available increases because you are holding a Nightstick, you can burn off those turns to power DMM. Once you drop the Nightstick (like, to pick up another one), your turns available drops by 4, but your turns used stays where it was. Unless you can increase your turns available by an even higher number than before, you can't turn anything, or power anything.

Example.

DMM: Persist takes 7 TU attempts. Joe the cleric has a 16 Cha, giving him 6 TU attempts per day. Joe casts Eagle's Splendor, increasing his Cha and giving him 8 TU attempts remaining. He uses 7 to DMM: Persist his HOLY OWNAGE OF GOD spell. He has now used 7 TU attempts, of his available 8. Once the Eagle's Splendor wears off, he now has used 7 TU attempts from his available 6. Since 7 > 6 for all small values of 6, Joe can not turn undead any more, or use any TU related features. Later on, Joe picks up a Nightstick. His available TU attempts increases to 10. Hes still used 7 from earlier. He uses Law Devotion, costing him 3 more TU attempts that day. He's now used 10 of his 10 available TU attempts. Putting down the Nightstick, his available TU attempts drops back down to 6, and since he's used 10 of his available 6 TU attempts, he can not turn undead yet again. If he picks up another Nightstick, he's back to 10/10 used and still can't power anything else.

This works significantly better than counting down, as you can switch out Nightsticks to no increased effect. With counting down, you'd equip a Nightstick, drain it of its 4 TU uses plus 3 of your own to DMM: Persist a spell, swap it out for another and drain it of its 4 TU uses plus 3 of your own to DMM: Persist another spell, repeating for as many uses as you have TU attempts.

Oh, and the item from the MIC that gives more is the Relequary Holy Symbol. It gives you +1 TU attempt for each of 3 conditions you meet. Having a Divine feat is easy (DMM is a Divine feat), having 5 ranks in Know: Religion is easy, but having Improved Turning is one that most people won't have. If you plan to take Improved Turning JUST to get the extra TU attempt, take Extra Turning instead and get 4. So yea, most people only get +2 TU attempts from a Relequary Holy Symbol. PS, it also takes your neck slot, and even with the MIC's body slot afinity rules, there are some other better necks to use.

[aeauseth]

MIC has Reliquary Holy Symbol for +2 turns/day.

My interpertation of nightstick and similar items is that you can only benefit from one. They are named bonuses, which don't stack. IE 1 nightstick bonus, 1 Reliquary Holy Symbol bonus, 1 charisma bonus, etc.

The FAQ states "As long as you remember that the important number to track is not uses remaining, but uses expended, everything else should fall into place."

If your DM is liberal on crafting rules (doens't sound like it) you could craft an item to grant you the Extra Turning feat for 5-10k (per Arms and Armor rules). REF: Empower Turning 5040 gp (Defenders of the Faith)

This is my Divine Metamagic reference page.

[Douglas]

The way I've always seen stacking Nightsticks explained is similar to temp Cha increases. Instead of counting turns remaining, you count turns spent. If your turns spent exceeds the number of turns you can use in a day, you can't use any more. That way, when your turns available increases because you are holding a Nightstick, you can burn off those turns to power DMM. Once you drop the Nightstick (like, to pick up another one), your turns available drops by 4, but your turns used stays where it was. Unless you can increase your turns available by an even higher number than before, you can't turn anything, or power anything.

Slight problem: You don't have to hold a Nightstick to benefit from it. Nightsticks grant their benefit to anyone who "possesses" them and has Turn or Rebuke. You could have all your Nightsticks buried in a solid steel vault a mile underground in your own private demiplane while you're adventuring half the multiverse away, and you'd still get the extra uses of Turn or Rebuke Undead. This, incidentally, means that there is no need whatsoever to stop benefiting from one Nightstick in order to be able to benefit from another. The only question is stacking, and, well, see below.

My interpertation of nightstick and similar items is that you can only benefit from one. They are named bonuses, which don't stack. IE 1 nightstick bonus, 1 Reliquary Holy Symbol bonus, 1 charisma bonus, etc.

A) No, it's not named. Coming from a particular item or feat or ability does not automatically make it a named bonus. It takes text saying "a +X <type> bonus" to make it named.
B) It's not technically a bonus at all. The exact wording is "gains four more uses of the ability per day".

[aeauseth]

No, it's not named. Coming from a particular item or feat or ability does not automatically make it a named bonus. It takes text saying "a +X <type> bonus" to make it named.

I was mistaken by calling it a named bonus. You are correct it is technically an unnamed bonus, however please review the following exceprts:

SRD: Stacking
In most cases, modifiers to a given check or roll stack (combine for a cumulative effect) if they come from different sources and have different types (or no type at all), but do not stack if they have the same type or come from the same source (such as the same spell cast twice in succession). If the modifiers to a particular roll do not stack, only the best bonus and worst penalty applies. Dodge bonuses and circumstance bonuses however, do stack with one another unless otherwise specified.

Does it Stack?
A bonus that doesn't have a name stacks with anything except itself. This is always true, but it's sometimes hard to remember. For example, many feats provide unnamed bonuses, so don't panic when you read a feat description and it provides a bonus without a name. An unnamed bonus from a feat stacks with any other bonus; however you can't stack that unnamed bonus if you take the feat twice

While not explicit (WoTC rarely is), I think it's pretty clear that the unnamed bonus to turns from a nightstick would not stack with a second nightstick bonus.

[FMArthur]

I was mistaken by calling it a named bonus. You are correct it is technically an unnamed bonus, however please review the following exceprts:

SRD: Stacking
In most cases, modifiers to a given check or roll stack (combine for a cumulative effect) if they come from different sources and have different types (or no type at all), but do not stack if they have the same type or come from the same source (such as the same spell cast twice in succession). If the modifiers to a particular roll do not stack, only the best bonus and worst penalty applies. Dodge bonuses and circumstance bonuses however, do stack with one another unless otherwise specified.

Does it Stack?
A bonus that doesn't have a name stacks with anything except itself. This is always true, but it's sometimes hard to remember. For example, many feats provide unnamed bonuses, so don't panic when you read a feat description and it provides a bonus without a name. An unnamed bonus from a feat stacks with any other bonus; however you can't stack that unnamed bonus if you take the feat twice

While not explicit (WoTC rarely is), I think it's pretty clear that the unnamed bonus to turns from a nightstick would not stack with a second nightstick bonus.

No, it's not, and isn't a 'bonus', which is a game mechanic keyword, as far as the game is concerned. I don't see why you have to insist that the rules are not flawed to fix Nightstick abuse. It most certainly works and is certainly overpowering - houserule it not to work. Problem solved.

[fortesama]

Our group has ruled so far that nightsticks stack and has been true in all campaigns. It was actually quite necessary as magical equipment tend to be rarer and underpowered in our campaigns i.e.: back at level 10 in a previous game, our best magical stuff among the entire group would include a wand or two of cure MINOR wounds, a few potions of cure light wounds, a scroll of haste and a +1 dagger. It got to a point that our warlock took to scroll crafting so that our wizard could at least have more spells known than the sorcerer. That's right, the wizard knew even LESS spells than the SORCERER. It didn't help that our stuff wasn't accounted for when calculating CR-appropriate monsters. That and our DM, for some reason, didn't find anything broken about persisting divine power, righteous might and similar. He even tweaked persist to work with anything with a duration.

[tyckspoon]

That's right, the wizard knew even LESS spells than the SORCERER.

That should be impossible. The free 2/level will keep you ahead of the Sorcerer, nevermind the much more generous starting known spells the Wizard gets.

[fortesama]

Maybe I got that impression since his prepped spells seems to be the same each time. But then, nearly every spell he got is from Evoc, with some orbs from conj.

[JaronK]

Cleric/Binder/Dread Necromancer gets you a huge number if you're Neutral. Get 3+Cha Turn Attempts from Cleric, 3+Cha Rebuke attempts from DN, and 1 Turn attempt per five turns from Binder. Note there's a divine adaptation of Anima Mage, so consider Cloistered Cleric 3/Binder 1/Dread Necromancer 1/Anima Mage 10/Tenebrous Apostate 5 as a build. With a Charisma of 22 you've got 18 Turn Attempts, with a free one every five rounds (effectively lowering the persist cost by 1), so that's enough to persist 3 spells per day. Now invest in a Metamagic Rod of Extend Spell, so your persisted spells last 48 hours. Thus, you cast three a day and have 6 up at any given time. That ought to be plenty. Remember you can cast Eagle's Splendor if you need before doing this each day, so a base Charisma of 18 is sufficient for this. Also, as an Anima Mage you get three free metamagics per day... so that's 6 more spells. Now you're up to 12 Persistant spells per day, no items needed.

JaronK

[Jack_Simth]

That should be impossible. The free 2/level will keep you ahead of the Sorcerer, nevermind the much more generous starting known spells the Wizard gets.

There are ways to do it ... mostly by increasing the Sorcerer's spells known.

Mother Cyst (Libris Mortis) grants a fixed list of spells (at levels 1-9 - one each level, except for 2nd, which gets two). Likewise, the Bloodline feats from Dragon Magazine / Dragon Compendium grant extra spells known (again, at levels 1-9). Combine them and the Sorc-18's spells known go from 9/5/5/4/4/4/3/3/2/1 to 9/7/8/6/6/6/5/5/4/3. Compare to the Wiz-18, who (just from base) would have: All/5+Int Mod/4/4/4/4/4/4/4/4. Sorcerer has one less 9th level spell, is tied on 8th, and has a higher number of them all the way down until 1st level spells.

[fortesama]

How about stacking a Sandshaper PrC from Sandstorm on top of that? Looks like he went that way at least. Sure it costs a caster level (which is painful in itself), but as we're in a desert campaign where kobolds, anthropormorphic animals and monstrous humanoids are the major races...