Wednesday, April 22, 2009

House Rules for Turning Undead

As written, the SW Core rules state that, if a Cleric rolls the requisite number on the Turning Undead Table, he or she turns "all undead of the targetted type." Isn't this a bit powerful?

All? In what context? By this logic a first level cleric could turn 100 skeletons if she rolled a 10 or better (50% chance). I'm thinking of allowing the cleric to turn 1d6 per level of undead of the targetted type.

The next question is how many times should the cleric be allowed to do so? Maybe I'm just missing it, but I can find no answer to this question in the rules.

My inclination is to allow 1 turning attempt per hour.

Any thoughts?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my game clerics can attempt to turn as many times they want - to get that 'back, damn you, foul creatures' effect, but each time a +2 is added to the number to acheive, so if there are still skeletons left after 4 attempts then any more attempts need 18+ to succeed.

The bit about the targetted type has also made me teamup different undead.

Grim said...

In our games a cleric can try every round to turn each group of undead. Unlimited failures are possible but once a success is made the DM rolls for the amount of time that group is turned for, after that duration elapses an attempt can be made again. Since failures usually result in an impending melee or successes result in slaughter of the undead or the group fleeing them there has not been a lot of undead who have been turned more than once.

Ironbeard said...

Sean - I like that idea about the +2increase on each successive try. I like it alot.

Grim - I see your point. Allowing unlimited attempts to turn probably isn't a big deal, but I'm still troubled that a single turning success can theoretically turn an almost unlimited number of undead. I posted this question over at the SW forums (I believe you commented there as well - thanks) and a couple people pointed out that in ODD and Holmes versions, clerics turned 2d6 worth of undead with each success.

Thanks very much to both of you for helping me sort this out.