Turning undead - do I have this right?

[AxeMental]

How is that anybody's reading? It's the only clearly worded part of the quoted text. Multiple turning attempts can be made only in a situation where multiple undead types are present.
It's definitely poorly worded. I believe the intent is, 'a cleric can make multiple attempts to turn a mixed group of undead until one of his attempts is unsuccessful'.

Scotty, your suggesting if you had a ghost, a wight, a vampire, and a zombie you'd need to role 4 times to turn these? If so I'm assuming by your read you'd need to role one type per round correct?

I read it this way: You role 1 time in a round. Apply that one role (lets say its a 18) to each undead type present to determine which can be turned. So your 18 might not be good enough to turn the vampire but can turn the zombies. As mentioned above it would be to the vampires advantage to have as many zombies around as possible to eat up points.

Now lets say the cleric has athe undead cornered in the room after turning (or are under the control of the cleric if evil) and the players are collecting treasure. The turn effect starts to expire, at this point the cleric (pulling on colar and begining to sweat) can try to turn again (and can infact do this indefinitely until he fails at which time he can't attempt again unless he leaves and comes back later).

[ScottyG]

No Axe, you assume incorrectly, I don't think one type per round is correct.

[ScottyG]

Am I remembering correctly? That in certain mixed undead situations, it specifies that if the turn roll isn't high enough to turn the toughest undead, the weaker undead aren't affected? This isn't always the case, only in situations where there would be a tough single leader type of undead, like a vampire.

[Mudguard]

Am I remembering correctly? That in certain mixed undead situations, it specifies that if the turn roll isn't high enough to turn the toughest undead, the weaker undead aren't affected? This isn't always the case, only in situations where there would be a tough single leader type of undead, like a vampire.

That's an optional rule for a mixed group of intelligent undead, stated in the paragraph below the OP's quoted text (DMG. p.65)

Back to the original question, I think I'd still perhaps assume one turning attempt per type of undead per encounter. If there are two types of undead present in a mixed group, then you get two turning attempts provided the first is successful. However, when you roll dice to see how many undead are affected, it is still a matter of lower HD undead affected before higher HD undead e.g. if there are ghouls and zombies, and you've made one successful turning attempt already and a number of zombies have fled but some still remain, then your second successful turning attempt will affect the remaining zombies first and then the ghouls.

He rolls his turning check and gets ... a 20! Alright, so he starts from the bottom; skeletons are D* so he rolls for 7-12. Let's say he gets a 12. That's all 7 skeletons, the ghost, the lich, and just enough room for all 3 barbed devils. But wait! If the skeletons weren't there, he would have started with the ghost, which would have been a 1-12 roll; much less chance of a high number rolled. Furthermore, specials such as barbed devils are only turned 1-2 in number. So the presence of the skeletons made it more likely that more creatures would be turned.

Verdict: you can't just use the turning amount of the least creature in attendance and have it "spill over" to upper ones.

Not sure how to fix the rule though.

For this example, I'd say pips 1-6 on a 1d12 are equivalent to 7-12 skeletons. Apart from that, what T. Foster said sounds good.

[ken-do-nim]

In a situation like that you've just got to apply common sense -- I'd say roll 1d12, count it as having a minimum of 7 with respect to the skeletons (so all 7 of them are automatically destroyed regardless of what's rolled), count it as rolled with respect to the ghost and lich (i.e. the ghost will only be affected if the d12 roll was 8+, the lich only if the roll was 9+), and divide the remaining pips by 6 with respect to the barbed devils (so in the case you described the first turn attempt would never affect more than 1 of the devils, but the cleric would get another crack at them on the following round).

Yup sounds good, except I'm going with you must have 6 pips left to affect even one barbed devil.

[ken-do-nim]

I thought about this some more, and I just don't like the rule at all.

If a cleric faces off with 24 skeletons, at maximum he could only turn 12 of them. However, if he faces off with 12 skeletons and 12 zombies, he has a chance to turn them all. Ridiculous. Even worse, a cleric faces off with 3 skeletons and a spectre. His initial turn check is good enough to get the skeletons, but not the spectre. He rolls a 4 on the 1-12 affected roll, and the 3 skeletons are gone. But the next round he gets to try again against the spectre!

I'm going to go instead with the following approach:

Turn check succeeds to creature type beyond affected (so if facing skeletons, the check result was high enough to get zombies): cleric may turn again
Turn check succeeds up to creature type affected: cleric cannot turn again
Turn check fails: cleric cannot turn again.

In the case of multiple types of undead, the same rule applies, but only the creatures which each of the turn checks has exceeded are eligible in subsequent rounds (so this requires a little book-keeping).

[Matthew]

I have to admit, I am not happy with the way the rules work for turning in AD&D either, and if you have not seen it I wrote a short article comparing how it works over editions here: Turning Ability. I do like the idea of it being an "encounter power", but the problem really lies in defining an encounter, as we discovered in PapersAndPaychecks on-line game a few years back. Nowadays, the way I do it is to allow additional rolls, even against the same type, until a failure occurs.

[Ska]

I believe works this way:

If roll high enough to turn different types of undead in a group of mixed undead, then roll to see how many (no particular type of undead ) affected first and then randomly roll to see which ones are affected. If the roll was successful and there are more left, then the cleric rolls again and 1d12 is rolled again.

If the initial roll only affects the weaker in the mixed group, then roll only as to the weaker. The un-affected can no longer be turned.

[wolfpack]

This is the way I have always played it.

example
3rd level cleric encounters 15 skeletons, 10 zombies, and a wight.


he declares he is turning and roles a 10

he would then roll 1d12 to determine how mnay skeltons are turned and say he roles a 12.
he then rolls 1d12 to determine how many zombies are turned and say he rolls a 5.
he failed to roll high enough to turn the wight.

the next round he can attempt to turn the remianing skeletons. ONLY because he was successful turning the round before, and turned the maximum amount allowed.

He could not attempt to turn the zombies again because he did not max out his oll the first round, showing that his power was limited to only turning 5 of them. He also cannot attempt to turn the wight again since he failed.

So we have always played turning is a 1 round attempt unless you are successful against a type of undead and turned the maximum allowed the first time and that would allow you to atempt to turn the rest of that type the following round.