A Land Far Away

Hi,

I've got a TN cleric, never any alignment bumps up or down in terms of G, E, L, C.

Oddly have gone all the way to 6th without ever trying to turn undead before... in fact, my first experiences with the power were me testing out the "Scalykind" benefit of being able to turn animals, and getting big laughs out of things like a diseased rat and a feral pig in statics getting utterly destroyed due to low HD.

Anyhow, last night I tried my first TU on actual undead... some skeletons. Some line of sight issues (I blame a watery cave floor) meant I only "caught" one of 3 targets, that's not the issue though. I got some feedback messages and monster behavior which made me think "hold on, this single guy didn't run away, he just stood there, was I actually only rebuking?"

The feedback in the server window was like so (can't cut and paste from CE window, but can transcribe):

Highest Level of Creature Affected: 4
Maximum Hit Dice of Creatures Turned: 14
Bamshogbo attempts to turn: Successful (Rebuked) (4 hit dice expended)

I am thinking the "Rebuked" in the tomato colored text in the server window is the hint that for whatever reason, my guy may be a Rebuke-r rather than a Turn-er? I do not know if we have Command powers for super weak undead, never played an evil cleric or one who could do anything other than make undead run away or explode. Sure he's neutral, but for what it's worth when he does spontaneous conversion of spells, healing is the output, not inflicting (possibly unrelated, but I'd have thought the "either/or" choices for neutrals were set by the game once and for all somehow).

Does it seem from the feedback like this kind of character is a "rebuke only" kind of guy? Thanks for any feedback.

There are no alignment checks of any sort inside of our turn undead stuff. The original OE/Obsidian authors use the word "rebuke" to refer to a target that loses its dexterity bonus, not in the way that 3.5 D&D uses it to refer to a creature awed by your unholy power.

Thanks.

Had always wondered about that- would it be very hard to change things in a way that gave evil clerics control over the undead where appropriate to SRD?

Regas wrote:Had always wondered about that- would it be very hard to change things in a way that gave evil clerics control over the undead where appropriate to SRD?

It's easy to just add undead (or, indeed, any hostile NPC) to a party; it's the everything else (namely, making the commanded undead behave and making the rest of the world react) that's difficult.

Our game and our build is designed with the expectation that PCs will not be a brazen flaming-skulls atop a black horse vomiting swarms of tiny furious bees kind of evil if they are evil at all (is it the horse or the horseman vomiting bees, you ask? Yes, yes it is). A lot of that comes from assumptions OE made and their focus on getting their campaigns off out the door, and a lot of that is just server build.

What happens if you add NPCs/creatures to a party? Does their faction change automatically? Or do you change the faction manually, and then join them to party? I'm curious what you are referring to here.