Out of Character discussion:

Sounds like a lot of us have already started our busy summers.

I'd like to confirm that OSE has no limit on the number of times per day a cleric can use her turning... I couldn't find a limit in either book.

Yup, no limit.

I love that Eltrezar's initiative suggests that he's just a slow moving guy. Far too chill for this dungeon. Reminds me of an NPC in my live Cyberpunk Red game, where his movement of 3 (which is the minimum out of 8) is due to him just having no ambition to ever move fast.

Sounds like me irl lol

My daughter is just wrapping up a wrestling camp today, and I'll have an updated post this afternoon.

Don't forget that Mal will be hiking in the mountains of her ancestors for a few days.

Oh yeah, that's right! I did forget.

Quick discussion for you guys to gauge an idea, and unfortunately the player most impacted by our decision isn't here to chime in:

At the moment we're using the R.A.W., which says Clerics can Turn Undead as many times as they want. I don't mind this at all, personally. There's an option in the Advanced OSE books that says Clerics can only Turn Undead once per Encounter, probably so they're not so overpowered in an fight. We can vote on if we want to incorporate it, but personally, I have no problem with multiple turning attempts per encounter.

That said, I think we have a situation here where Maloria cast Turn Undead once and was successful. She tried again when more zombies became apparent and failed her 2nd attempt. I think if you're a Cleric with unlimited Turn Undead powers, and you cast Turn Undead and succeed once, but then fail later, all undead that were previously turned are no longer turned. Almost like the Cleric's faith has been shaken or has faltered a moment. I think that's a fair way to play out a Cleric's unlimited Turn Undead attempts: You have unlimited Turn privileges, but failed attempts are a faltering of faith and affect ALL turned creatures, not just the ones you're trying to turn in the immediate moment.
Otherwise, in theory, a 1st Level Cleric could just stand on a tall column out of reach of enemies, and then proceed to turn a hundred thousand low HD undead creatures one at a time. Thirty skeletons could be turned one skeleton at a time, and a hundred rounds later they're all turned regardless of the fact that seventy Turn Undead rolls failed in a hundred rounds of combat, but previously turned undead stayed turned.
It just doesn't make any sense from a storytelling aspect that a Cleric, let alone a 1st Level one, could turn an entire army of low HD undead creatures if given hours and hours to whittle them down one at a time.

I think it should be a situation where Mal cast turn undead, rolled really well, and managed to turn 9HD worth of undead in the Encounter. Later, having unlimited chances to cast Turn Undead, she has to decide if she wants to risk a failed roll, or succeeding her Turn roll but rolling fewer HD worth of monsters to turn than she originally had under her "spell".

If this was the case, as I think it should be, Mal has now lost her turning influence on those previously turned. And probably Mal wouldn't have even tried another attempt this last round, knowing she might risk losing control of the ones already under her diety's influence.

Thoughts?

I propose that we leave the rule as is, and just bring the wizard up to balance it out. Unlimited Magic Missiles should about do it.

In all seriousness, I don't have much skin in this. I'm not playing the cleric, and I'm not the one who has to keep track of all the undead. To me, it makes more sense to stick with some form of RAW (even if that is an optional rule in an OSE book) than to start making up stuff as we go along. Also, I've never been a fan of abilities that say something like "your faith falters", especially when the character is someone of such devout and unshakable faith that she gains spellcasting abilities from her deity. It just seems odd to me.

Just my two copper pieces.

I think it could be argued that if you turn three or four zombies successfully, and then all of a sudden twenty more come spilling out of the shadows, your faith might be shaken. Not your devotion to your deity necessarily, but your faith in your own abilities to keep holding them off gets shaken.

Oh, touché! I wasn't thinking of losing faith in one's self, just in their deity. That makes more sense now.

I guess the real question we should answer first is what happens to any undead turned when a Cleric is killed or falls unconscious. Are the undead still turned or not?

Here's what I'm thinking happens, because the number of HD worth of undead a cleric can turn is limited by a 2d6 roll.

1st Round: Mal is confronted by a dozen 1HD Skeletons. She casts Turn Undead (hereby called "TU") and succeeds, rolling for 4HD of undead turned. Four skellies are turned.

2nd Round: Mal thinks she can do better than 4 skellies, so she casts TU again, succeeds and rolls 7HD worth turned. So she maintains control of the original 4 skellies, plus 3 more are turned, for a total of 7 1-HD undead turned.

3rd Round: Mal gets greedy and tries to do better than 7 skellies and casts TU again. She succeeds but this time she only rolls 5HD of undead turned. So she loses control of 2 she already had turned, but still has control of 5 of them.

4th Round: Mal really wants more than 5 (or even 7 turned), so she casts TU again but fails her roll this time. All currently turned are released from the TU effects.

5th Round: Mal casts TU again and succeeds and rolls for 6HD turned. She gets 6 skellies onder control and decides maybe six skellies turned is good enough and doesn't press her luck any more. Taking out the rest with her hammer and the aid of her companions.

This way, Clerics can still cast TU an unlimited number of times in an encounter, as dictated by R.A.W., but also the number of undead the Cleric can have turned or destroyed at any given time is still limited by the 2d6 HD roll.

Also, not to detract from this discussion, but I wanted to give you a heads up and/or reminder:

I will be traveling out-of-state from early this Sunday (6/13) until late next Sunday evening (6/20). My daughter has five days' worth of big wrestling tournaments in Provo, Utah.

On both Sundays, I'll definitely be on the road all day driving 12-hour stretches un the family minivan, and out of communication entirely. On Wednesday we have a break in wrestling between two different tournaments, but the family wants to go to an amusement park. It's mostly roller coasters, and I despise heights, so I may be able to get in a couple posts while I sit around below, holding the purses, and just generally being a giant pussy my kids will laugh at all afternoon.

On the days between, most of my time will be at the tournaments. I may be assisting with coaching girls, or I might just get to watch from the stands, but either way, my attention will likely be hijacked by wrestling. I might be able to post in the evenings from the hotel, though no guarantees.

I will say that of the small handful of games here I run/play, this one is my baby, and I make it my priority. I run one other game here, but the players in that one prefer a slower pace, so it shouldn't be an issue, but this one will definitely be the one I stay on top of as much as possible.

We now return to our regularly scheduled debate about Cleric abilities...

I have always understood TU as basically causing the frightened condition onto undead. They recoil and flee from a holy symbol presented by the cleric. If an undead is turned they are fleeing and not really thinking about any subsequent TU undead attempts. It would be weird in the fiction for undead to somehow realize a cleric failed a subsequent roll, especially if they were in another room or out of line of sight. I'm not sure about OSE rules much, but usually there is a duration cfor TU anyway. Clerics also spend their action to TU instead of attacking, so the trade off is potentially killing an undead permanently in exchange for just delaying their attacks for a bit.

I do want to point out that it was Nezzy who discussed Turning being a fear effect instead of a control effect, not me. Credit where credit is due.

I'm thinking we'll leave it alone for the time being and just keep it what it was. Unlimited turn attempts, pass/fail and HD dice rolled determine undead turned. It's not necessarily the way I would go, ideally, but that would be homebrew, and I think we've established we run this R.A.W.

I'm going for a run in a bit, then I'll check in with the in-game thread after I get back.