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I'm helping a friend to build a character. He wanted to play a Morninglord of Lathander and I'll let him. I tried pushing him to play something different before he finally explained that it was  a Faerun game that would be very heavy in undead.

Build stub so far
Illumian
Cloistered Cleric 5/Morninglord of Lathander 2/Sacred Exorcist 5/Morninglord of Lathander 5 more
Feats: Quicken Turning, Knowledge Devotion, Improved Turning, Empower Turning, Extroaridinary Spell Aim, Stength Devotion, Zen Archery
Sigils: Vaul, Hoon 


 Important Gear:
Belt of Magnificence +6 All abilities
Rod of defiance -4 Turn resist to undead within 30'
Sacred +1 Mithril Fullplate, +2 Turning Level
Circlet of Persuasion +3 to Cha checks
Phylactory of  Undead Turning +4 Turning level
Ephod of Authority +1 Turning Level
Lyre of the Restful Soul -4 HD to undead for turning purposes, lasts 1 minute
Haversack
Consumed Tome of Wis +5 

If he has access to Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, Knight of the Raven would definately be helpful.  It does seem to be as anti-undead as it gets.

The disciple of the sun feat (Complete Divine) would give him extra greater turning uses, if he wants more than the two he's getting now.

A flametouched iron holy symbol (Eberron Campaign Setting) gives +1 effective level for 750 gp.

He could hold a scepter of the netherworld (Libris Mortis) in the hand that isn't holding his rod of defiance.

Ahh, sweet thanks Maat.

And I'm not sure if the guy can use the Ravenloft stuff or not, since the DM apparantly said anything was legit. One of the reasons I actually set out to abuse the **** out of his game lol. I'm a sadist. I'm not playing, and the guy I'm builing this for LOVES an OP character.


Originally I'd told him to play the Beguiler+Domains but he was like "DM says I need to be good at Turning" so I was like "OK, gotcha".

So now this level 17 character's Turning level is 29, and he imposes a -4 Turn Resist penalty, and -4 HD penalty for turning purposes on nearby undead. This results in the destruction of undead who's HD are 17 or less, and fiends who's HD are 13 or less (because of Turn Anethema). Turning creatures of up to 41 effective HD, if they have 4+ turn resistance,  routinely with a casual roll of 7 or more on the turn check. A roll of 1-3 results in a max of 39 effective HD, and a roll of 4-6 results in 40 being the cap.

Turn damage is averaging about 63 HD total right now.

I realize this isn't quite what you're looking for, but what about cleric/prestige paladin (UA)/Bone Knight?

One thing to consider related to this-- if it is a full on, almost completely undead focused campaign a character like this is frankly going to make the campaign pretty dull and uninspiring or it is going to need to shift gears.  If everything the DM throws at you is just destroyed outright with a single action, there isn't much point to using the undead anymore.

I don't think it's every encounter, and I don't disagree. I think the expectation is that at least one encounter per day will include Undead. The ability to explode fiends as a side effect will be amusing I'm sure.

Get a Spirit Shaman in the party and see if you can't find a way to explode Fey and Elementals too.

And an Eberron Druid that can repel aberrations. And the PrC in PGtE that can make your AC even nastier against them (I forget the name of it).

This party makeup would basically force the DM to but the Dragons in Dungeons and Dragons LOL.

DRAGONS AND OOZES ALL DAY SUCKAH.

Oct 5, 2012 -- 6:30AM, RadicalTaoist wrote:

DRAGONS AND OOZES ALL DAY SUCKAH.

AFB, right now, but... aren't oozes aberrations?

No, they are not. Technically also there's a lot of other types like Monstrous Humanoid, Magical Beast, Animal, Humanoid, and Giant. They're all safe too, but it seemed like an amusing idea.

Oct 5, 2012 -- 6:30AM, RadicalTaoist wrote:

DRAGONS AND OOZES ALL DAY SUCKAH.

I'm pretty sure there are domains for rebuking or turning Oozes as well.  And most dragons have elemental subtypes that make them vulnerable to turning and rebuking.

We're playing a game set in the Silver Marches for one of my campaigns and our cleric is an elemental focused rebuking cleric-- walking a red dragon he had rebuked through Silverymoon to get to a portal that took us to Obould's fortress was amusing.  When they asked why it was puking and practically writhing in agony, we just told them it ate a bad goat. 

A campaign full of rebuking focused clerics, druids, etc... would be horrific for a DM honestly.  It would be amusing to see in play though.  I'm kind of tempted to do a quick one shot over on the Real Adventure boards with that-- have the players work as a party to see how many types of creatures they can control in total.

So that leaves constructs, vermins, and plants?

Oct 5, 2012 -- 10:11AM, RadicalTaoist wrote:

So that leaves constructs, vermins, and plants?

Not so much plants, no. Sure, they're not going boom, but it lets you play the unusual side of Plants Vs. Zombies, and it needs only the same equipment the rest of the party's looking for as well.

There's an alternative class feature in Dragon Magic for rebuking dragons. There are actually three domains that give the ability to rebuke oozes, ooze, slime, and thirst. The warforged domain gives the ability to rebuke constructs.

The Spell Compendium version of mantle of the icy soul is a 6th-level cleric spell that gives a creature the cold subtype for 1 hour/level and has a 10 gp material component. The cold domain lets you rebuke creatures with the cold subtype. Could be handy if you ever need to exercise control over something immune to mind-affecting effects.

Oct 5, 2012 -- 12:21PM, Tempest_Stormwind wrote:

Oct 5, 2012 -- 10:11AM, RadicalTaoist wrote:

So that leaves constructs, vermins, and plants?

Not so much plants, no. Sure, they're not going boom, but it lets you play the unusual side of Plants Vs. Zombies, and it needs only the same equipment the rest of the party's looking for as well.

If you use Initiate of Nature you're even better off-- you can play Plants + Zombies instead if you're an evil cleric with that feat.   (Technically you can do it with Plant Domain as well since you could also be evil there, but Initiate of Nature is strictly better, since it also adds animals.)

I think humanoid and monstrous humanoid are the safest from turning/rebuking unless you're a drow-- I know there is at least one way for clerics of Lolth to get the ability to rebuke fellow drow.  Probably giant as well.

I think that there are domains that allow you to rebuke vermin and plants, they might be SpC.  Don't about anything for constructs, but maybe Eberron has something.


Edit: dang, I got Ninja'd.  Oh Well.  

If you can rebuke/turn all the monster types with high SR and immunities, that's more than enough. Animals, Giants, Magical Beasts, Humanoids, and Monstrous Humanoids are all vulnerable to precision damage and mind-affecting effects.

So how would you begin building a Divine character that can rebuke everything that can be rebuked?  What particular Prestige classes give the Plant, Ooze, Slime, Thirst, and/or Warforged Domains?  Maybe Contimplative from Complete Divine?  Anybody got any ideas?  I think we could concentrate on starting with the Undead, Construct, Plant, and Ooze creature types (in that order) in terms of rebuking priority.  As for vermin, there might be a PrC in one of the Drow themed books, but I think it's Drow only.

The usual way to get multiple domains is Contemplative, but there's another one we shouldn't forget - Sovereign Speaker. Faiths of Eberron is only considered less cheesy than Complete Champion because it's less generalized (i.e. it's aimed at making the uber classes even more uber, not at giving uber abilities to everyone), and we largely remember the Planar Shepherd from there, but Sovereign Speaker might just be the way to go here. It's only 7/9 spellcasting (yes, 9 levels - nine gods in the Sovereign Host), but we're not optimizing for spellcasting, are we? At each of the 9 levels, you get a bonus domain from any of the Host gods (no more than two from any one god, though). The requirements are pretty straightforward, too - a single feat (which is basically "Eschew Divine Focus") and some skill points you were probably spending anyway for the synergy bonus on turning undead.

The biggest drawback to both of these classes is that neither of them actually advances turning ability, and although they grant domains, it's unclear if they advance your effective level for the purposes of domains.