Vampire PC vs Turn Undead

[Watchful Glare]

As a vampire PC you can't avoid PvP.

At the moment I've got no major award to burn to test this.

You really can't. As soon as anyone figures out you are a vampire. Even if you haven't actually done anything? Expect to be hunted and attacked by a dozen people or more at any point. RP and handling most conflict outside or PvP simply will not happen.

Trust me. Even trying to be reasonable with people, a vampire PC is a huge target on your back and people have, and do, attack you until you roll or shelve if they can.

You cannot play a vampire on the surface. Nuance doesnt exist. Its PvP and only PvP. So if you and or your build isnt a top tier PvP build. Look elsewhere. Nobody will ever be willing to reason or talk with you.

I'm going to have to press X on this one chief

Almost every single vampire PC I've seen in Andunor (and I've seen at least five) has been able to be there big chilling despite being a vampire, perhaps because everyone else is a monster anyways.

[malcolm_mountainslayer]

At the moment I've got no major award to burn to test this.

You really can't. As soon as anyone figures out you are a vampire. Even if you haven't actually done anything? Expect to be hunted and attacked by a dozen people or more at any point. RP and handling most conflict outside or PvP simply will not happen.

Trust me. Even trying to be reasonable with people, a vampire PC is a huge target on your back and people have, and do, attack you until you roll or shelve if they can.

You cannot play a vampire on the surface. Nuance doesnt exist. Its PvP and only PvP. So if you and or your build isnt a top tier PvP build. Look elsewhere. Nobody will ever be willing to reason or talk with you.

I'm going to have to press X on this one chief

Almost every single vampire PC I've seen in Andunor (and I've seen at least five) has been able to be there big chilling despite being a vampire, perhaps because everyone else is a monster anyways.

he did say surface. I think he isn't looking to jist chill but hsve nuanced rp in grey territory, not somewhere he is auto accepted.

This is just part of arelith monster rp. That's wha a vampire is, a cunning monster.

[Skibbles]

I think we're mostly talking about pvp in here because that is the context of all the recent changes and changes to possibly come.

Turning rarely happens in PVE, and when it does its probably not going to be as impactful as pvp. In pve you can just avoid the dungeon in question, or bring friends, but in pvp there are serious concerns that multiple classes can shut a vampire pc down with minimal effort.

The bless weapon change I brought up is exclusively pvp oriented too.

So I think the thread's focus on pvp is quite warranted.

[dominantdrowess]

At the moment I've got no major award to burn to test this.

You really can't. As soon as anyone figures out you are a vampire. Even if you haven't actually done anything? Expect to be hunted and attacked by a dozen people or more at any point. RP and handling most conflict outside or PvP simply will not happen.

Trust me. Even trying to be reasonable with people, a vampire PC is a huge target on your back and people have, and do, attack you until you roll or shelve if they can.

You cannot play a vampire on the surface. Nuance doesnt exist. Its PvP and only PvP. So if you and or your build isnt a top tier PvP build. Look elsewhere. Nobody will ever be willing to reason or talk with you.

I'm going to have to press X on this one chief

Almost every single vampire PC I've seen in Andunor (and I've seen at least five) has been able to be there big chilling despite being a vampire, perhaps because everyone else is a monster anyways.

Keyword: Surface. You missed a spot.

[Edens_Fall]

You really can't. As soon as anyone figures out you are a vampire. Even if

I managed to raise a surfacer blackguard devil summoner into epics without ever PvPing even once before.
Or leveled "bardlock"(pre-change warlock) in Cordor, without ever getting caught or killed for it (got bored by level 16 and rolled for another minor award). That's literally using devils at every opportunity but being careful.

So obviously I have my doubts. And as a result, I'd have to experience it.

P.S. Telling "Trust me" to people often has the opposite effect.

Oh its possible on most PC's (I've done a PM in Cordor before as an example) so long as no one figures out what you are. This is why its not really doable as a vampire race. Once you are outed by the random healing circle, Turn Undead spamming Mob, random PC pointing to yell "they sure are pale! Maybe we should make them go outside in the sunlight to see if thier a vampire!" there's no turning back. You WILL BE attacked by players regardless of your desires. So there is no avoiding PvP unless you actively HIPS, disguise, flee, etc. This is an option of course if your build allows it.

Though to be fair things have gotten a bit better for undead. I recall my own PC being outed by a player using -investigate on an NPC in Cordor square for fun and then starting a witch hunt when the food vendor proudly declared seeing a "female vampire".

[Void]

So there is no avoiding PvP unless you actively HIPS, disguise, flee, etc.

Well, you've just listed countermeasures. Also there's "cover" mechanic right now which screws up racial checks quite a lot.

I recall my own PC being outed by a player using -investigate on an NPC in Cordor square for fun and then starting a witch hunt when the food vendor proudly declared seeing a "female vampire".

Player(in cordor): "-investigate"
NPC: "Let's see... A drow, looked wirey, A balor, I said they were beefy, a dragon definitely beefy, a kobold, looked pretty smart, a pit fiend, very good looking, a vampire, I'd say very good looking"
Player: "Wait. a VAMPIRE?!?!?"

[Kaeldre]

Aight, here's what I gathered to be a good approach:
If a vampire PC is affected by Turn Undead, it can't be affected by Turn Undead for the next 5 minutes from the same turner.

This way a vampire almost most certainly will have to spend a -pray to remove Turn Undead fear and has 5 minutes to either finish the conflict, escape, or will almost certainly lose against 2 high profile turners.

A well-thought-out approach.

[Kalthariam]

I personally still disagree with the idea of weakening a clerics ability to turn an undead. I understand that it's frustrating from a PC perspective, but if we're talking about a PvP setting. The other side is also going to be frustrated if they built up a sun domain cleric specifically for the ability to hunt down undead and vampires and the like, and now they can't turn vampires anymore, because they just -pray it away and laugh as they are untouchable for 5 minutes. Which is a ridiculously long time in a fight.

I get you're a fancy 5% race and people don't like being hard countered. But if you're fighting a cleric bring friends, they should be something you actively fear and avoid if you are able to.

Finding two high charisma sun clerics together at any point in time is going to be extremely rare. I don't think I've met more than.. maybe two sun clerics ever? And I never found them in the same room together.

[Aren]

I personally still disagree with the idea of weakening a clerics ability to turn an undead. I understand that it's frustrating from a PC perspective, but if we're talking about a PvP setting. The other side is also going to be frustrated if they built up a sun domain cleric specifically for the ability to hunt down undead and vampires and the like, and now they can't turn vampires anymore, because they just -pray it away and laugh as they are untouchable for 5 minutes. Which is a ridiculously long time in a fight.

I get you're a fancy 5% race and people don't like being hard countered. But if you're fighting a cleric bring friends, they should be something you actively fear and avoid if you are able to.

Finding two high charisma sun clerics together at any point in time is going to be extremely rare. I don't think I've met more than.. maybe two sun clerics ever? And I never found them in the same room together.

You dont need high charisma to turn undead PCs. At all. You can easily do it as a CL 27 with a charisma mod of 3.

[Edens_Fall]

I agree. It's not hard to make an undead killing focused cleric.

My thought is, for example, that only PC vampires received the +4 turn resistance then ONLY focused cleric could turn them instead of most Clerics. I rather reward a focused player with the ability then have everyone able to shut down my RP with a click of a button.

If that makes sense.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

I personally still disagree with the idea of weakening a clerics ability to turn an undead. I understand that it's frustrating from a PC perspective, but if we're talking about a PvP setting. The other side is also going to be frustrated if they built up a sun domain cleric specifically for the ability to hunt down undead and vampires and the like, and now they can't turn vampires anymore, because they just -pray it away and laugh as they are untouchable for 5 minutes. Which is a ridiculously long time in a fight.

I get you're a fancy 5% race and people don't like being hard countered. But if you're fighting a cleric bring friends, they should be something you actively fear and avoid if you are able to.

Finding two high charisma sun clerics together at any point in time is going to be extremely rare. I don't think I've met more than.. maybe two sun clerics ever? And I never found them in the same room together.

You dont need high charisma to turn undead PCs. At all. You can easily do it as a CL 27 with a charisma mod of 3.

I'm very interested in your definition of easy.

As a level 30 character with 27 levels of cleric with a charisma modifier of 3, in order to turn an undead creature of level 30 (a pc vampire, for example), you would need to roll a 19 (10% chance) on the turning check. You can get this down to a 13 if you gear for an extra +6 charisma on items.

That's a 40% chance of success. Again, assuming you geared for charisma, which very much runs counter to your claim of not needing a high charisma in the first place, and still isn't 'easy'.

https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Turn_undead

I very much feel that people are underplaying how difficult it actually is to turn a high level undead creature unless you full dive pure class into cleric all the way to 30 while stacking charisma, and would ask anyone insisting it's easy to back it up with math, because mathematically the statement comes across as false.

You can throw sun domain into the equation, but then, again, I feel you're admitting that at that point the player is choosing to specialize in turning undead. The occasion we seem to, on a surface level, be agreeing should scare the crap out of undead.

[Void]

I'm very interested in your definition of easy.

As a level 30 character with 27 levels of cleric with a charisma modifier of 3, in order to turn an undead creature of level 30 (a pc vampire, for example), you would need to roll a 19 (10% chance) on the turning check. You can get this down to a 13 if you gear for an extra +6 charisma on items.

That's actually a good point, as charisma mod is added to turn roll and not to resulting level.
So, 8 charisma cleric 27 might be unable to ever turn a level 30 vampire without gear.

[Kalthariam]

From what I've been told if I wanted to make a PC that had a good solid chance of scaring away a vampire, I'd need to be a pure 30 Cleric (Sun domain) and have 22+ Charisma after magic items IIRC (I could be off on the math a little, I'm not a power builder at all, I just go off what my friends give me)

With Clerics you also need to keep in mind your Constitution and Wisdom scores as well. So to do this you have to effectively tri-stat yourself out, and there really isn't a ton of good items that give these stats, most of it you'll have to likely dwemor and rune yourself which can be expensive.

Most clerics do not go this route, because they decide to multi-class into something like monk for zen archery or play battle clerics which don't focus on turning.

I'm not really sure how often PCs are realistically running into clerics that have builds that can effectively and consistently turn a high level vampire PC.

Maybe the surface is different from the UD of course, but I really just do not see many people trying to do high charisma sun domain clerics for turning undead. Most Clerics I see seem to like spamming harm spells to kill stuff more than anything. (But again, that might just be an UD culture thing).

How many high level sun clerics geared for turning vampire PCs are there on the surface realistically? (Aka, pure 30 clerics with at least something like 20+ Charisma)

[Skibbles]

Isn't a spammable 40% chance to win pretty damn good for a 27 cleric with no cha investment, much less any character/build in the game?

Turn can't be interrupted, dispelled, or saved against. If any other spell in the game had such a high chance to, savelessly, with an uninteruptable cast, no spell slot required, no aoo, no itemization beyond a few thousand gold to cha +1 on stuff, we'd lose our damn minds.

Throw on some cheap Cha gear, slap on an eagles splendor, and hit turn 2 or 3 times. Boom, victory, right?

Did I read the posts wrong? I don't understand how that is not easy.

[Kalthariam]

No.. that's not a 40% with no charisma investment.

It's 10% with a 27 cleric with 16 charisma is what they said (+3 bonus to Charisma) and If I understand it correctly it's +5% per bonus in Charisma. 40% would require 22+ Charisma, which is not a light investment. (At base 10 Cha, that's a full +12 Magic bonus to achieve)

Without that 16 Charisma, your chances of turning a PC vampire is basically null.

Turn undead cannot fish for 1's like some other save-based spells, since you physically can simply be "Not strong enough" to turn a powerful undead and it just fails (And you'll get a notification that the undead is too powerful to turn).

Also according to the wiki, the maximum number of rounds PC players would be turned is 5 + 1 / 7 rounds per levels the character has, so a 27 cleric in this scenario has a maximum turn of 8 rounds. Which is dangerous sure, but people act like it's 15 minutes. A full cleric gets one extra round for a grand total of 9 rounds. (Assuming the wiki information is correct)

Which sure in a situation where you're alone that's pretty much death, but if you not alone it's something that could be managed. (Especially if you -pray it away or get it dispelled)

AFAIK it's also a full turn action to cast turn undead. I've never been able to get it off more than once even with haste.

Again, I could be wrong or reading the wiki wrong, I'm open to being corrected if I am wrong, but from what I understand this is how it currently is, which really.. yeah it sucks for vampires if you're alone, and get ganked by a sun priest.. but again.. you should be afraid of a epic level sun priest.. that's kinda the whole point isn't it?

[Void]

Isn't a spammable 40% chance to win pretty damn good for a 27 cleric with no cha investment, much less any character/build in the game?

It is not 40%. Level adjustment (which level of undead you can turn relative to yours) to turn is decided by turn roll. With 27 levels, you need to roll at least 19.
Charisma mod is added to the turn roll and not to the resulting level adjustment. So with 27 levels and 10 charisma. You'd need to roll 19-20, which is 10 percent chance.
https://nwn.fandom.com/wiki/Turn_undead
With 8 cha you'll have 5% chance, and to make it 50%, you'd need 26 charisma. As a cleric.
If you're sun domain cleric with 10 charisma, then you have 22.5% (d20 + d4 turn roll) chance to turn level 30 undead.

[chris a gogo]

Yes your reading it wrong.

Turn as everyone that has been saying this isn't needed knows it works off cleric level vs undead character level/HD.

So as has been stated 27 levels of cleric with the 3 level dip and 10 charisma means you can turn the level 30 pc 10% of the time.

So to be clear the level 27 cleric gets 3 turning attempts with a 10% chance of it working, unless they invest stat points into charisma gaining more turns and higher chance or have the extra turning feat giving more turns.

This is why no vampire player has been turned and killed by a PC because it takes huge investment to do so and a gimped build that is pretty subpar at everything else.

[Edens_Fall]

I believe the main focus of the issue is less what is required to Turn a player and more the effects.

Turn Undead can't be interrupted, dispelled, or saved against. It completely removes a player's agency to interact with the world at all for a rather impressive amount of time. I can't think of any other effect IG that players can do to each other that is equal to it. It's the very reason vanilla Fear was removed from PvP.

I am worried less about IF or HOW a cleric can turn an Undead. Let them. What concerns me is the effect. Why is it OK for this to be a thing for vampire players who already have large hurdles to their RP and plenty of explorable weaknesses (rogue spam grenades)? If this was done to any other class or race people would be up in arms.

I'd be happy with them removing the fear and replacing it with Stat effects or some other thing. Let Clerics have their cake, I just don't want it forced down my throat when a player makes the "rare build" for the sole purpose of auto winning against any vampire they hunt IG. Which, let's be honest, some will do.

[Void]

(rogue spam grenades)?

All hail the god of grenades for he hast bestowed upon us the gift of tanglefoot!

when a player makes the "rare build" for the sole purpose of auto winning against any vampire they hunt IG. Which, let's be honest, some will do.

To be honest, after reading the details on turn undead and understanding them better, it feels like those other players should be allowed to do so. Partly because your character's race is an antagonistic one.

There are few ways this could be softened up, however.
* Fear replaced with a daze of same duration.
* Being turned makes you immune to further turning for some short period of time.

That would allows you to pray and escape. I'm not even sure about turn resistance at this point, although I suppose that wouldn't be too overpowered.

[Skibbles]

I don't think I'm reading it wrong. I'm just assuming a cleric with the intention to turn a PC vampire spent some pocketchange to itemize for it beforehand. Clerics can +5 their armor and shield, so it's fairly easy to gear up and retain full AC values especially if your enemy is unable to hurt you.

I tested this just now, with an 8 cha cleric sitting a 20 total in bronze gear, and succeeded in 6 out of 14 turns which seems to hover around the 40% mark mentioned. It cost next to nothing to do this and I could have my full AC and offensive power due to magic vestment and bless/darkfire/GMW/weaponofchoice.

As a level 30 character with 27 levels of cleric with a charisma modifier of 3, in order to turn an undead creature of level 30 (a pc vampire, for example), you would need to roll a 19 (10% chance) on the turning check. You can get this down to a 13 if you gear for an extra +6 charisma on items.

That's a 40% chance of success. Again, assuming you geared for charisma, which very much runs counter to your claim of not needing a high charisma in the first place, and still isn't 'easy'.

This is what I was responding to, but there's a great deal of confusion on this it seems.

Remember we're talking about a class that can +5 their armor and shield, so if vampire hunting is on the menu any cleric can hit their max soft cha bonus with a few thousand gold and an eagle's splendor and still retain their full AC and discipline with ease, and even keep Improved Expertise active while turning.

On top of that a cleric (whether good, evil, sun, or shadow) still has a ton of spell slots that are almost always filled with multiple heal and mass heal; with a mere touch attack (or even the superior ranged touch with mass heal, which also heals the cleric while blasting the undead at the same time) for 285 basically unhealable damage since a vampire has no options for quick recovery.

There are no 'positive energy protection' potions, after all, so 9 rounds of a flat-footed and defenseless vampire is more than enough to tap them a few times with hundreds of saveless damage at the cleric's leisure.

There's plenty of reasons to fear a cleric as it is - sun domain or otherwise. Let's not pretend clerics aren't already in the top tier at destroying undead regardless of turning (besides rogue, the true top-tier ATM imo, though I'm terrified of both because I've fought both on the live server and know first hand their absolute vampire-wrecking power, as well as any PC with access to healing potions).

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

I believe the main focus of the issue is less what is required to Turn a player and more the effects.

Turn Undead can't be interrupted, dispelled, or saved against.

Sorry, I'm highlighting this because people are repeating it and it's wrong.

You can dispel the turn effect.

It's even mentioned in the notes of the turning wiki entry that's been linked several times.

[Skibbles]

I believe the main focus of the issue is less what is required to Turn a player and more the effects.

Turn Undead can't be interrupted, dispelled, or saved against.

Sorry, I'm highlighting this because people are repeating it and it's wrong.

You can dispel the turn effect.

It's even mentioned in the notes of the turning wiki entry that's been linked several times.

I'm interested in testing this since I completely forgot to during my tests. According to the entry it says, "However, the effect may be dispelled, with the turner's hit dice as the effective caster level of the turn effect."

If it's the turner's actual hit dice we could be looking at a caster level of 30 vs dispel, which is 10% at best (assuming G.Dispel+) unless the vampire happens to have an epic abjurer with them in which case, funnily enough, the vampire will probably lose a lot of their own magic too as it would take an average of four greater dispels to strip the turn.

If remove fear only had a 10% chance to succeed I don't think many people would be highlighting its value.

I also wonder if it is prioritized in an area of effect dispel?

[Kalthariam]

So just to clarify what exactly did you test on the testing server?

You said you tested it, but didn't say what your cleric level was, what the domain was, and what you were turning against. We just got the total charisma of 20.

I'm also curious exactly how cheap it was for you to buy all the items for a cleric build and dwemor everything properly? Because I mean, sure you can just dwemor a set of crappy +1 charisma armor for nothing, but that would really only help you against a vampire. Again in a 1v1 setting a Cleric should be a massive threat to a vampire.. but in a group setting? I don't think you'll be generally able to do much more than turn the vampire. Group combat always gets far more murky, and it's extremely rare that anything goes exactly as planned and simulated in a live PVP setting.

If you're talking about a level 30 pure cleric with a high 22+ Charisma being able to turn consistently, then I don't see why that'd be a problem, that person fully invested into the single class gave up any multi-classing opportunities, and specialized in doing one specific thing, if they couldn't at least somewhat reliably do that one specific thing then the whole set up is pointless is it not?

Also while clerics can +5 their armor weapons and shields, the same can be said for anyone who just has a cleric with them of a good enough level. Fighters can +7 their armor weapon and shields by existing (no spellcasting required), but that alone doesn't make them broken OP.

Their spellcasting is a bonus but that's just part of the class, the vampires also have a class and their own tool kits too.

Clerics should be the apex predator of Vampires, paladins should be quite dangerous too. I really do not understand why it's a problem that a undead race should be afraid of the things that have the ability to destroy them, because that's what they specialize to do?

If you're worried about the 8-9 turn fear effect, don't face your mortal enemy that has a clear advantage against you? Bring some help. Every character should have places they are weak at, and the idea is you can't really do everything alone, which is generally why you get a team for important things no?

[Skibbles]

So just to clarify what exactly did you test on the testing server?

You said you tested it, but didn't say what your cleric level was, what the domain was, and what you were turning against, and what your total charisma was.

I tested what I quoted earlier. It was just a standard 27/3 I slapped together with 8 CHA base against a 30 vampire, and itemized/spelled up to 20 CHA (the soft cap) to best imitate what Aelryn mentioned earlier (the 40% approximation).

I picked random domains that weren't sun.

It cost a few thousand gold but I was being lazy and just equipped an entire inventory. In reality you only need 7 items + eagle's, so it'll be a little bit cheaper and fit easily in the inventory as spare rings/amulets/gloves/etc. If I had to napkin math it I'd say maybe like around 12k if you assume a failure or two at the basin.

Clerics are probably one of, if not the, easiest classes in the game to itemize.

My findings were predicated on the idea that it is highly unlikely a random and 'spontaneous' pvp will break out with a rare 5% chassis, and there is most likely going to be some preparation or foreknowledge of intentions beforehand.

If a cleric is caught off guard then it doesn't really matter because:

Again in a 1v1 setting a Cleric should be a massive threat to a vampire.. but in a group setting?

In 1v1 a cleric is already an incredible threat even without turning. The last cleric I fought didn't even try to turn, and they didn't need to, because being able to cast 8+ 'Harm'-type spells without any counter or recovery options, on top of the full suite of other cleric powers, is indisputably powerful.

Clerics (and rogues) are still the best vampire killers without having a saveless instant win stun on top of their powerful kit.

In a group fight it's probably going to be ten times harder to spot the random vampire running, but if you do: just see above, cast mass heal a few times; heal yourself and your allies for hundreds and kill the vampire at the same time all with one cast of a single spell. Seems like a better action economy in that case anyway.

If you're talking about a level 30 pure cleric with a high 22+ Charisma being able to turn consistently, then I don't see why that'd be a problem, that person fully invested into the single class gave up any multi-classing opportunities, and specilized in doing one specific thing

Just a 27/3 with base 8 CHA is enough to hit 40% per cast while sitting at full AC with IE, it seems, but besides - making a very specific build just to literally, and likely repeatedly, erase one type of character with the click of a button does not intrinsically make it right, engaging, or fun.

If you're worried about the 8-9 turn fear effect, don't face your mortal enemy that has a clear advantage against you? Bring some help. Every character should have places they are weak at, and the idea is you can't really do everything alone, which is generally why you get a team for important things no?

This is basically saying to just roll around with a gank squad at all times. No thanks.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

If you're talking about a level 30 pure cleric with a high 22+ Charisma being able to turn consistently, then I don't see why that'd be a problem, that person fully invested into the single class gave up any multi-classing opportunities, and specilized in doing one specific thing

Just a 27/3 with base 8 CHA is enough to hit 40% per cast while sitting at full AC with IE, it seems, but besides - making a very specific build just to literally, and likely repeatedly, erase one type of character with the click of a button does not intrinsically make it right, engaging, or fun.

I wanted to focus on this particular point- I can see where you're coming from about it not costing much to achieve a 35% chance (with a +5 cha mod you need a 14 or higher to turn 3 levels higher than you). Still, statistically that's just a fraction more frequently than one in three turns, in which you are standing still while a vampire's fight or flight is screaming at them to end you or GTFO. If we equated this to a mage attempting to cast a single win spell over and over with heavy armor and 65% ASF, no one would call that a 'good plan,' IMO, but I'm digressing and like I said, I see where you're coming from, we're just not in agreement.

I don't think the underlined part is a fair angle to take here. The module is full of undead enemies, from newbie levels to epic, and while you don't get a ton of them popping up all the time, there have been plenty of undead-hunting divine archetype characters (and a few undead hunting ranger specialists) coming and going from Arelith since before I first started playing, and even the occasional stand-out Praise The Sun types. All this before PC undead types outside of Shifter undead shape and polymorphs were even a thing, as far as I'm aware.

I don't think anyone that's in it to win a PvP extravaganza is going to go out of their way to take the sun domain. I certainly don't think anyone going 30 sun cleric/27inquisitor/3cleric is doing it to be good at PvP. I think they're almost exclusively looking to play out a hunter archetype against a PvE foe that saturates the module fairly heavily, and I think the seven vampires this affects just happen to be playing to their archetypal weaknesses.

And I can't really say I think it's right to take that away from any of those clerics, who could make blatantly stronger choices elsewhere in their builds if they hadn't run their build that way.

I'm down with seeing how the current changes work, even a non-vanilla fear would be okay. But anything more than that feels about as good to me as asking to play a vampire that ignores the sun.