30+ years ago I used to play AD&D and Turn Undead had a table where a low level cleric had a chance of turning low level undead but no chance against high level undead, eventually rising to a high level cleric having a chance against high-level undead. It seems now that Turn Undead is a simple wisdom save vs the cleric's spell save DC.
So, even at level one, a PC has a real chance of turning super-high level monsters such as a Lich? I just want to check please; an I missing something here or is this how it works now?
Turn undead becomes available at 2nd level. When it does, there is theoretically a chance you could turn something powerful like a Lich, but you have to bear in mind that more powerful monsters have strong saving throws.
A Lich for example has a +9 to its wisdom saving throw. A second level cleric would have a spell DC of 8 + 2proficiency + Wisdom mod, so typically 13ish?
Chances simply aren’t good and if you make the attempt you forfeit your chance to use your action to spellcast etc
Ah yes I see. Most high level undead have those saves pretty well covered. I did stumble upon Nightwalker, a CR20 undead with Wis -1 and no rerolls but I don't suppose I'll be throwing a Nightwalker at my lvl2 players quite yet...
Some undead are also immune to "turn undead" based effects and some others have advantage on the save. More still, there are undead that will grant advantage to other undead against such saves if the other undead are within a certain range of the first.
Yep, looks like the Nightwalker is particularly vulnurable to Turn Undead, given it only has proficiency in CON saves.
That said, Turning allows things to return later or another night- it has to run away for 10 rounds (at a rate of movement plus Dash as an action) but it doesn't do damage.
At CR20 the Nightwalker is immune to the more powerful Destroy undead, which caps out at CR4 at level 17.
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30+ years ago I used to play AD&D and Turn Undead had a table where a low level cleric had a chance of turning low level undead but no chance against high level undead, eventually rising to a high level cleric having a chance against high-level undead. It seems now that Turn Undead is a simple wisdom save vs the cleric's spell save DC.
So, even at level one, a PC has a real chance of turning super-high level monsters such as a Lich? I just want to check please; an I missing something here or is this how it works now?
Turn undead becomes available at 2nd level. When it does, there is theoretically a chance you could turn something powerful like a Lich, but you have to bear in mind that more powerful monsters have strong saving throws.
A Lich for example has a +9 to its wisdom saving throw. A second level cleric would have a spell DC of 8 + 2proficiency + Wisdom mod, so typically 13ish?
Chances simply aren’t good and if you make the attempt you forfeit your chance to use your action to spellcast etc
Ah yes I see. Most high level undead have those saves pretty well covered. I did stumble upon Nightwalker, a CR20 undead with Wis -1 and no rerolls but I don't suppose I'll be throwing a Nightwalker at my lvl2 players quite yet...
Some undead are also immune to "turn undead" based effects and some others have advantage on the save. More still, there are undead that will grant advantage to other undead against such saves if the other undead are within a certain range of the first.
Yep, looks like the Nightwalker is particularly vulnurable to Turn Undead, given it only has proficiency in CON saves.
That said, Turning allows things to return later or another night- it has to run away for 10 rounds (at a rate of movement plus Dash as an action) but it doesn't do damage.
At CR20 the Nightwalker is immune to the more powerful Destroy undead, which caps out at CR4 at level 17.