Quick Links
Turn Undead is one of the Cleric's iconic abilities in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dungeons & Dragons. Hunters have favoured enemies, Paladins smite people and Wizards have spells named after Gygax-era characters. The Cleric's is frustratingly given a bit less love than many of the iconic powers carried forth from olde D&D.

Dungeons &am𒆙p; Dragons: 8 Creative Uses Of Thaumaturgy
A touch of the divine can go a long way.
Many class features have been generalised in ways that encourage players not to feel disempowered against enemies that historically countered them. Rogues can now Sneak Attack against gelatinous cubes, while paladins can smite non-evil enemies. The exception, Turn Undead continues to work only against the undead. Here's how to make this underloved feature shine.
Best Ways To Use Turn Undead
Turn Undead operates under the same logic as fear and charm-based spells: It takes enemies out of the fight until the duration expires or they take damage. This functionally breaks an encounter into two smaller encounters, divi🍃ded between those who passed and failed their saving throws.
The best time to use Turn Undead is at the start of a fight. Against a group of several undead, you're liable to have one or more fail their saves and leave you to deal with a smaller initial group. You have a one-minute maximum duration, which gives you ten rounds of combat before they rejoin the fight.
If you finish the first group quickly, attack the remainder one at a time: the turning effect is tracked per enemy, so attacking one will not break the fear ꦐof others. You can also use this time to heal, set up buffs or manipulate the arena with wall spells.
The🦂re are also several factors to consider before activating your Turn Undead.
- Other party members cannot use area spells which would end the effect, prematurely.
- Position yourself to either block escape or scatter them in multiple directions and further disrupt their formation.
- Strong enemies like vampires likely have legendary resistance and will always succeed their saving throw. Don't get too close!
While stronger enemies are liable to pass their save, Turn Undead is still useful. You can split powerful undead off from their zombie minions or vampire thralls, allowing your en🍎tire team to focus attacks a🐻gainst a single enemy.
Best Ways To Use Destroy Undead
At fifth level, Turn Undead gains an additional power to instantly defeat enemies who fail their save. It requires them to be about one-tenth of your level most of the time but eventually grows to about a quarter. The tragic result is that you'll never be able to defeat Strahd in a single action, but the feature still carries weight.
Where the feature shines is against large numbers of weak enemies. The power scaling of Dungeons & Dragons makes it easy to neglect weaker enemies, but certain foes can pose an issue at any level due to their uniqu🔯e abilities. This is wheꦐn abilities which specifically target low CR enemies outperform.
Priority Enemy |
CR |
Special Effect |
Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Shadows |
1/2 |
Can inflict ability damage, reducing strength |
Their ability to inflict ability-drain means that even a high-level party will be intimidated to face these creatureꦬs. Strength characters 🥂risk getting much weaker when hit, while casters can be killed instantly if their strength is reduced to zero. Shadows rarely appear alone and are good at hiding. A cleric does not need to see their targets to Turn Undead, meaning any hidden shadows 💟who hear will also be turned or destroyed. |
Undead Cockatrice / Petrifying Death's Head |
1/2 |
Can petrify a target fo🎀r either ten๊ minutes or an entire day |
Greater restoration, which cures petrification, requires a level nine cleric and can be done once per day for 100 gp. Destroying them first is easier. |
Lacedon |
1 |
Has paralysing claws |
Paralysis is easier to cure than petrify but causes all other attacks to deal critical damage. If your necrom𒆙ancer bossfight has a couple of Lacedon minions consider killing them first. |
Poltergeist |
2 |
Permanently invisible |
A poltergeist's ranged attack does not reveal its location but has a 30ft range. Destroy Undead has a 30ft range. |
Ghost |
4 |
Can possess people, taking control of them and becomi✤ng immune to damage |
Possession requires a charisma save, which som♋ebody in the party is going to be weak at. Turning them either before or after they possess somebod✱y stops them from causing too much harm. |
Other Uses For Channel Divinity
Turn Undead uses🌳 charges of the same ability that domains need to activate their unique features. This means the value of Turn Undead needs to be weighed against the alternatives, depending on your subclass.
The tempest cleric can use destructive wrath to functionally double the damage of most spells. Applying that to an area spell like destructive wrath can destroy large numbers of living or undead enemies, at a higher challenge rating than the equival꧂ent undead they can deౠstroy. Most such spells also deal half-damage on a successful save, still killing weak enemies outright.
Harness Divine Power is an optional rule that gives a general purpose use for Channel Divinity charges, independent of subclass. It can convert one use of channel divinity into a spell slot equal to half your proficiency bonus (no more than a third-level slot, even at maximum level). Clerics rarely need an extra spell slot this badly, ♒but it means you always have at least one use for Channel Divinity even if not fighting undead and not meeting the conditions for their domain-specific💎 uses.
Turn And Destroy Undead For DMs
Turn undead is easy to see as an underwhelming ability in the majority of campaigns. All the nastiest undead like Allips have been heavily defanged compared to previous editions𒁃 where undead could drain levels, inflict dea꧑dly diseases, and cause permanent stat reductions. A DM can create opportunities for Cleric players to feel especially powerful by designing an encounter around their ability to turn undead.
Technique |
Method |
Notes |
---|---|---|
Skeleton Army |
Fill a small room with an arbitrarily large number of CR 1/4 skeletons. Stay short of triple digits but be generous. For an added challenge, use Shadows. |
Have the skeletons follow swarm rules so the initiative doesn't grind to a halt: They act as a single unit, having modifiers, HP and damage of a larger creature. Treat their resistance to Turn Undead as if they were still the lower CR creatures and give them a vulnerability to other area spells. Allow for a not-quite-combat solution: Perhaps the players can use their Turn Undead to pass through the swarm without fighting. |
Unintelligent Enemies |
Enemies use exploitable strategies that allow the players to show off. Undead dash into 30ft range but don't have enough speed remaining to attack. |
Each table has its ruling on whether the monsters are allowed to use strategy. Undead shouldn't be an exception, but remember that most undead are simple-minded. |
Enemies Can Retreat |
Turned enemies can flee from combat entirely, removing themselves from the fight. |
For fairness, apply the same rule to other fear effects. |
Going too far in enabling Turn Undead causes other issues: In a campaign where your players are already fighting plenty of undead, there are ways to weaken the ability as wel🔴l:
Technique |
Method |
Notes |
---|---|---|
The Other Shadows |
Use the Detached Shadow (a fey creature with the same abilities and stats) instead 🎃𒁃of the Shadow. |
It would be very mean to alternate between undead and fey shadows without giving a way to tell them apart. |
Intelligent Enemies |
Undead use countermeasures against commonly🉐 used strategies and spells. Skeletal a♑rchers are too far away to be Turned. Melee undead can attack in waves rather than all at once. |
Have an intelligent undead or necromancer visibly giving commands. This gives your players something to target. |
Turn Resistance/Immunity |
Some enemies have advantage oꦦn their saving throws (the CR 21 lich) while oth🏅ers are immune (the CR 0 crawling claw). |
Check your worldbuilding notes for whether the undead follow Darwinian or Lamarckian evolution: Both cases mean that turn resistance will become more common the more Turn Undead is used. |
Use Non-Undead |
Use a greater var𝔉iety of enemies without the undead trait. |
Even in an undead-centered campaign, there is room for mercenaries, beasts and mystical creatures to appear regularly. |

Dunge💃ons & Dragons: How To Get Feedback From Your P༒layers
Get ready for a campaign uꩲpgrade — because even wizards need reviews.