November 20, 2011

Cleric Turning d30 Table

I was thinking the other day about Jeff's games. He likes to put clerics in the role of "undead turner" rather than "party healer".  Being expected to play as a living band-aid isn't much fun.  Saving the entire party from level draining doom by just staring the beasts down until they back away... that's where the fun is.

But the fun is also with Jeff's d30 rule.  Then I thought to myself "d30 Turn Undead!". So, then I made this.  It's the same old turning chart everyone knows and loves, except that it accounts for results of 2-36 in case you decide to roll the 30 rather than one of those 6's.  Here's the chart. 

Click the chart to see a bigger version.

The trouble though (I suspect), is that using the d30 to turn undead isn't quite as awesome as the d30 usually is.  Turning undead in OD&D requires 2 rolls of 2d6.  One roll to see if the attempt is successful and the second roll determines how many HD of undead are turned.  As the d30 rule stands, you can only use the d30 once per session.  So, even though it is all one action, you only get the d30 for the success/fail roll, or the HD roll, but not both.

It could be argued that this is fine because to-hit and damage rolls do the same thing, split one action into two rolls of the dice.  That's apples and oranges though, turning does no damage and it acts a lot like a spell.  Personally, I'd rather just roll the 2d6 once.  Use the total as both the success roll and the HD roll and be done with it.  I don't think anything too noticeable would be lost, and single-roll Turn Undead with the d30 would be super awesome.

No comments:

Post a Comment