In response to the "Special Herbs" last post, DHBoggs pointed out a wonderful bit of archeology he wrote about a month back on the cleric "turn undead" power, why it's so poorly defined in OD&D (no text description, no times-per-day, no duration, etc., etc.), crankily off with the mythology, and overpowered in later editions. Turns out (no pun intended) that if you look at Arneson's original game where it originated, it's far more restrained, balanced, in tune with the horror films, and so forth. Wish I'd written this; but when better to read it than in October?
http://boggswood.blogspot.com/2014/08/turn-undead-are-we-getting-it-wrong.html
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Thanks Dan! I'm glad you found it of interest.
ReplyDeleteVery much so!
DeleteY'know, If I'd have had this in mind for the Creepy Crawl campaign my players would have been a lot more jumpy about undead. They tended to blow off low level stuff. I kind of used this approach with higher level guys, having them stand pinned by "invisible force" at a distance but still able to use ranged stuff. (I had a particularly nasty spoiler method called "Krenshaw Powder" which caused undead minions created by Animate Dead, which our cleric heinously abused, to become malign, free willed undead needing a fresh turn roll. Had a mummy sent by a rival sorceror cough up a vial off the stuff and turn his entire retinue of skeletons against him in one round. Heh...) But I partially digress.
ReplyDeleteI'm way in favor of having the undead be really terrifying. Good work. :-)
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