What does turn dead affect for your games

[kiralon]

Before looking it up, list what creatures are affected by turn dead.
After looking it up what do you think should be affected

Spoiler:

To me it looks like its just animated dead and zombies

I go by the more you make your roll by the better it is but the list that I have affected is

Skeletons/Human sized animated dead
New Zullanders
Giant size skeletons and animated dead.
Zombies
Ghouls
Mummies
Vampires
Greater Vampires - vamp intelligence, wots that
Greater Mummies
Ghosts
Spectres
CaveWights

[pblackcrow]

Animated dead.

[Glistam]

Without looking it up I'm pretty sure I remember that Turn Dead only affects the things created via the Animate Dead spell. I'll look at the spell later to see how I did and answer the second part.

[Lukterran]

Exactly what the book says it affects.

[kiralon]

Exactly what the book says it affects.

How often is palladium books that straight forward

Quoted from ze book in blue
"It affects only animated skeletons
and corpses, mummies and ghouls"
but then goes on to say
"This ability enables the priest to turn/repel the dead by commanding
them to leave in the name of his deity(s).
The dead will stop what they were doing and go away. Vampires,
ghosts, wraiths, and specters may be temporarily kept at bay, hesitating
for one or two melee rounds, but will not be otherwise affected"
and then
"Demons, deevils, gods and most other supernatural beings are not affected
at all!"


The first bit contradicts the second bit and the third bit as ghouls are demons
and vampires are alien intelligence finger puppets.

how about zombies, they are animated corpses
or mummies. Turn dead says it affects them, the mummy spell says it doesn't.

And there seems to be some sort of strange confused effort at making distinctions between dead (animated dead) and undead (everything else I think)

does turn dead work on skeletons moved around by telekinesis?

[pblackcrow]

Oh, you're taking about the priest ability. That's totally different from the spell. But yeah, you're right. Palladium writing is rather wacked at times.

[eliakon]

Welcome to the wonders of Cut and Paste. And the fact that Palladium Fantasy was originally a heavily house ruled D&D game. Which thus means that once upon a time ghouls may have been undead, and the spell just never got revised when the ghouls got changed. Or maybe it just means that Ghouls have a unique special racial weakness to the spell that overcomes the normal limit. Sort of like how "SDC weapons never harm MDC creatures"... Unless the creature is vulnerable to it of course, that doesn't change the SDC/MDC rule or make the SD weapon an MD weapon, it just means that that one creature has the one exception to the rule.

Way back in the day of PF1e though Vampires were just regular undead. It wasn't until Rifts WB 1 that Vampire Intelligences were Retconned into existence. And the 'essence fragment' bit was only pseudo-canon until the recent VKr/VS books. But the spell has not been revised to keep up with the change (Assuming of course, that the VI Vampires are the only vampires out there, which is highly debated in and of itself)

[kiralon]

I was mostly talking about the priest ability, I forgot about the spell.
I ignore the vampire fragment bit because it makes a whole lot less sense for palladium vampires, which are still in the list as being demons.

and most other supernatural creatures aren't effected. that implies that some more are. I was mostly curious to what people let turn dead effect, as only animated dead are the ones affected and really, if you are high enough level to get turn dead off in a fight without dying (takes 30 seconds to do) the animated dead aren't really going to hurt you anyway.

So I changed turn dead to affect the things you would expect it to but basically it lowers their maximum hp when they are in the area of effect and only take one action to do, but you have to have the holy symbol of the god you worship.

Im guessing priest isn't a popular character choice

[ShadowHawk]

Welcome to the wonders of Cut and Paste. And the fact that Palladium Fantasy was originally a heavily house ruled D&D game.

WAS????? NO. it's still a heavily house ruled game!

[kiralon]

Exactly what the book says it affects.

Which is what exactly ?

[Razorwing]

The spell is quite explicit in what it will and won't affect. It will only affect animated dead... those who's only animating force is magic controlled by another (mage or necromancer). True undead and corpses possessed by entities are not affected by this sort of magic... and at best might be paused for a single action, but no more than that.

I would treat the ability of priests to turn dead in the same way... it only affects animated dead, while true undead and possessed corpses are only held at bay for a single action/attack before they resume their attack (in this case, it is the power of a God channeled through the priest that gives them pause, but that is more fluff than mechanics).

Undead may not be living, but they are not dead either... and are generally unaffected by magic intended to affect the dead.

[kiralon]

The spell is quite explicit in what it will and won't affect. It will only affect animated dead... those who's only animating force is magic controlled by another (mage or necromancer). True undead and corpses possessed by entities are not affected by this sort of magic... and at best might be paused for a single action, but no more than that.

I would treat the ability of priests to turn dead in the same way... it only affects animated dead, while true undead and possessed corpses are only held at bay for a single action/attack before they resume their attack (in this case, it is the power of a God channeled through the priest that gives them pause, but that is more fluff than mechanics).

Undead may not be living, but they are not dead either... and are generally unaffected by magic intended to affect the dead.

Except that they are affected briefly, why affect them at if its not supposed to
and there's a big difference between the spell and the ability. The ability takes 2 full rounds to do, whereas the spell takes 1 action.
If a priest starts a turn dead it usually means he's not in the fight.

[Razorwing]

The spell is quite explicit in what it will and won't affect. It will only affect animated dead... those who's only animating force is magic controlled by another (mage or necromancer). True undead and corpses possessed by entities are not affected by this sort of magic... and at best might be paused for a single action, but no more than that.

I would treat the ability of priests to turn dead in the same way... it only affects animated dead, while true undead and possessed corpses are only held at bay for a single action/attack before they resume their attack (in this case, it is the power of a God channeled through the priest that gives them pause, but that is more fluff than mechanics).

Undead may not be living, but they are not dead either... and are generally unaffected by magic intended to affect the dead.

Except that they are affected briefly, why affect them at if its not supposed to
and there's a big difference between the spell and the ability. The ability takes 2 full rounds to do, whereas the spell takes 1 action.
If a priest starts a turn dead it usually means he's not in the fight.

It momentarily gives them pause because the magic being used does have an effect on the necromantic energies that give undead "life", but since it is specifically targeting animated dead, it barely affects true undead. It is like how a strong light might give a vampire a momentary pause as they are instinctively afraid of sunlight (due to the damage it causes), but the vampire quickly recovers and realizes that the light isn't true sunlight regardless of how bright it may be. The same is true with Turn Dead spells... undead react to them more out of instinct due to the magic feeling close to their nature, but soon realize that it has no real affect on them.