Hi all,

I own only the three core rulebooks. However, it is my understanding that some feats from other books allow a cleric to change his turn undead ability for another ability, up to a daily use equal to his daily turn undead capacity.  Would anyone be kind enough to tell me what are these feats, their prerequisites (or close enough) and what they do?

Thanks for any help,

Sky

Guys: thanks for three different takes on this subject, all interesting. I might buy the complete divine if there's enough stuff in there to interest me.

Sky

Guys: thanks for three different takes on this subject, all interesting. I might buy the complete divine if there's enough stuff in there to interest me.[/QUOTE]

If it matters to you, as I know these books can get expensive, I use that book a lot for Prestige Classes, and not much else.  If you are looking for feats I mix it up a lot so I don't have one good book suggestion. However, if you are interested in extra spells, you have to get the Spell Compendium.  It's really well done for the most part and it's a great collection of all the spells from a lot of sources.

I've been boycotting the other rulebooks up to now, wanting to get along on the core books alone. Costs enough in minis as it is :)

Thanks for the suggestion on books. I only wanted a few feats to use as alternatives to turning undead, because in my present campaign i have little undead and that ability is pretty much lost to the cleric. Of course, i didn't want to buy a $30 book just for that, thus my post.

For the time being, i'm pretty content with the core spells, although i'm sure that i'd make good use of the others if i had them. But again, i have to draw the line somewhere.  I buy some adventures, but i decided not to go down the complete XYZ books and other rulebooks.

Sky

Would i be stretching the limits of civility (and copyrights ) if i asked how the positive energy damage system works? Please simply don't answer if you feel that this series of questions is in appropriate - i can understand why.

Sky

Thanks for the information and your opinions, guys.

I think wildmage's suggestion to give the turn resistance as both a Will save bonus and DR vs turning damage only, appears like a good idea. This way, the stronger undead such as vampires and liches have to be very unlucky to miss their save, and thus the DR will have a more intersting effect.

I'm still not convinced about the alternate ability for evil clerics however. I feel that they get the worst tradeoff of D&D history here . With the old system, they were able to turn potential enemies into submissive allies willing to aid them against their other opponents; now, all they can do is heal their undead enemies... not so groovy from my standpoint. If you have any ideas on how to handle this, i'd be glad to hear them. One thing i might consider, is that the negative energy burst damages the undead, but if the energy burst is enough to kill the undead in a single burst, then the undead is instead dominated and controlled by the evil cleric. I have a hard time finding a good "logical" explanation as to why or how the negative energy burst would act this way however.

I might play it this way for a while and see what happens. For the time being, the two cleric PCs in my campaign are good, so the question on evil clerics doesn't really apply.

Sky

 One thing i might consider, is that the negative energy burst damages the undead, but if the energy burst is enough to kill the undead in a single burst, then the undead is instead dominated and controlled by the evil cleric. I have a hard time finding a good "logical" explanation as to why or how the negative energy burst would act this way however.

Hmmm. I'm not sure i like this option as much.

I feel that calculating normal damage and subdual damage during the course of combat would become very cumbersome. The best solution would be one that is very simple, such as the one proposed for good clercis: 1d6 per level, save for half, there you go. Your proposition for evil clerics has the advantage of being along the lines of the one used for the good clerics, but i feel it is more complex than the (already cumbersome) present turning rules for evil clerics, to obtain about the same result (healing aside), so is the change really desirable?

Also, the evil cleric would be able to try turning over and over - up to his daily limit of course - until one or more particular undead are rebuked. I admit the 30' would probably put him at risk, but still, if he's hard enough to hit and/or protected by allies, that gives him a lot of cumulative turning attempts, which the clercis didn't have before (they had several tries, but they weren't cumulative). Although now that i think about this, the good clerics also have a cumulative damaging ability under the new system. Any thoughts on limiting the number of turning damaging bursts to one per undead? (I.e. once an undead is damaged by a good cleric, he can't be damanged again).

Sky

Cumulative damage is a very good point to bring up. With the positive energy burst the cleric will continually damage undead within the radius, and that may seem fairly powerful, but don't forget that with the current standard rules a cleric with double the undead's HD in levels will out and out destroy any undead that he successfully turns. This becomes a gamebreaker in some situations where the party is supposed to be "worn down" a bit by lower level undead (which are fairly sturdy in their own right) before they face....say....a necromancer. With the current system a 10th level cleric can pretty reliably destroy any undead minions that the necromancer may have. The undead probably won't even get an action. Just poof. With the alternate rules the lower level undead may surviv the first turning attempt ( they are pretty sturdy after all), and will at least get a chance to deal some damage before being destroyed. That's one of the biggest reasons why ( I think) the new rule was created. Too many ghouls, ghasts, wights, shadows and vampire spawn just going poof. As always, this is just my opinion though.