Something like that but specifically for turn undead would be awesome for flavor, story, and make the cleric feel boss, right? Well it turns out there might be some problems with that idea. After talking it over with people, some of which think differently than me (seriously, why do people have to keep doing that), others of which have actual game design or development experience a couple important points came up:
- Why do clerics get a specific monster entry?
- This could add unnecessary bloat to stat blocks (what about parties that have no clerics?)
- Why is turn undead the only power that warrants an entry in the stat block?
- If it's not the only power, then the design space for monster stats could really be bloated with entries for different abilities for all the different classes.
Well crap. Those are good points, but I don't want to give up the cool flavor or flavor-inspired rules that Mike talks about. And I don't want turn undead to be a spell - I like iconic class abilities and turn undead is one of them. So isn't there a way I can keep the cool flavor-inspired mechanics and we can make this work?
Weaknesses
The answer to a question like that is almost always yes, and there was no shortage of ideas today. My favorite is the idea of weaknesses. On the monster end, each block/description gets a weakness entry. Sure, some of them will have "None" or maybe "determined by the DM" but others will have cool stuff. Here are some more obvious examples:
Ghost
Weakness: Turn undead, holy water, sanctified ground, or similar divine effects.
Effect: Creature loses insubstantial.
Zombie
Weakness: Turn undead, holy water, sanctified ground, or similar divine effects.
Effect: Creature cowers.
Troll
Weakness: Fire, acid.
Effect: Creature loses regenerate
Werewolf
Weakness: Silver, wolfsbane
Effect: Creature loses regenerate and deals less damage on a hit.
You could even have different effects for a weakness based on the creature you were fighting. For example, all (I'm sure someone will always design exceptions) flesh golems could be weak to lightning, but they react to it differently.
Flesh Golem Brute
Weakness: Lightning or electricity based effects
Effect: The creature can move or attack next turn, but not both.
Flesh Golem Skinny
Weakness: Lightning or electricity based effects
Effect: Electricity arcs out from the creature, striking each other creature within 20 feet for 5 damage.
With this, all or many monsters can have a weakness entry and the cleric can still get cool undead related stuff with his turn undead. From the examples above, obviously spell casters would be able to do cool stuff too, but what about the rest of the classes? That's a pretty easy step to take too. Different classes have different ways to exploit a creature's weakness. Here are a couple examples of how that could look:
Cleric: Turn Undead - Brandish your holy symbol and evoke weakness in all undead within 20 feet. (You could change undead to other things based on the clerics faith or domain to reflect simlar mechanics in other editions)
Ranger: Favored Enemy - Pick a creature (Orc, goblin, bugbear, kobold, etc) to be your favored enemy. With a successful attack/skill check, you can exploit the weakness of a favored enemy.
Rogue: Dirty Trick - If you would successfully backstab a creature, instead deal no damage and exploit its weakness for a turn.
Taunt (feat, ability, trick etc. available to any class) - As a standard action make a charisma check to taunt your opponent. If you succeed, you exploit their weakness for a turn.
Faith (ability for any class) - brandish a holy symbol and make a charisma/wisdom/appriopriate check against one undead creature within 20 feet. If you succeed you exploit their weakness for a turn.
And the fun doesn't stop with class abilities - we still have items we can play with. As you saw in the examples above, we have some classics like silver weapons and holy water. But you can get more specific. What if the Ancient Blue Dragon Lich Pledidjinarius has a weakness for the Oak of the Bassarac Hills, but those were destroyed on the night he became a lich? Now the PCs might be incentivized to go find a way to get a weapon forged from that wood. Awesome story there I'm sure.
Speaking of the PCs finding out about that weakness, weakness is another cool thing that PCs could uncover with research, RP, or ability checks. This is one of those things that easily combines with other elements of the game, reflects mechanics from previous editions, and really shows off the flavor of a creature.
All in all, I think this was an awesome idea and defintely a cool design space to explore, but I'll leave that to the experts. For now it's just a fun conversation. And I can't take credit for this amalgum idea. In my conversation, Dave Chalker, Brian James, Quinn Murphy and a hanful of other awesome peeps really fleshed this one out for me. But I'm sure there are plenty of similar ideas out there, or people who can poke holes in this one. What do you think of monster weakness and player character abilities to exploit them? What cool ideas does this spin off in your brain? What problems do you see with it?
