Cleric Domains and the Hells

[bort]

Came across this interesting excerpt from the nwnwiki whilst researching domains for my next Cleric.

Good Domain Special Abilities

Turn Outsiders - Able to turn outsiders as if they were undead.

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An Outsider is a non-elemental creature that comes from another dimension, reality, or plane. Examples include:

* Fiendish (evil) Outsiders, such as:
o Devils (creatures from the Nine Hells), such as Pit Fiends, Hell Hounds, and Erinyes
o Demons (creatures from the Abyss), such as Succubi, Vrock, Bebiliths (a.k.a. Spider Demon) and Balors
o Rakshasas
* Imps and Mephits (also evil outsiders)
* Celestial (good) Outsiders, such as:
o Archons (essentially angels by another name)
o Devas
o Celestial Avengers
* Neutral Outsiders
o Slaadi
o Azers
o Formians

Had an idea for an alternative Cleric build - chances are it wouldn't work, but I'm curious....
If anyone is able to answer any of the following questions for me, thanks very much in advance

-Is there even a remote possibility that this ability would work effectively against the creatures in the nine hells, given a character with enough Charisma and Cleric levels?
-Would such a character actually be able to kill them with the ability?
-Would they flee with 'fear'? (obviously quite undesirable)

[dodrudon]

Don't even try it. Do you really want to scrape through 55 levels (minimum) only to find it doesn't work? After 15 LLs of being dragged due to poor DCs? Also, you need to have twice the HD of the mobs in order to insta-kill them, which means they should be rated as "Effortless" when you examine them. However, mobs have this extra ability in which they can actually be over level 40, and those aren't custom LLs either, but actually built in to the toolset. Which means you're effectively at level 40 (unless Funky rescripted the Turning system) trying to turn level who-knows. Also, I wouldn't count on them being outsiders either, in the same way you can't dominate the beetles on Fox Trail with Animal Empathy because they aren't animals....

And the level bonus to turning from your Charisma is capped.

And mobs have Turn Resistance equal to their Spell Resistance (according to NWNWiki), although apparently Planar Turning halves that.

And we're talking Hitdice here apparently, and TOTAL hitdice too, which means, for example, if you were going up against 10 skeletons with 1HD, and your turn had a total of 10HD, then you could turn all of them, where as if you were going against 10 wights with 10HD each, you could only affect one of them.

This is the impression I got doing my research, please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Ironfang]

dodrudon said:

Also, I wouldn't count on them being outsiders either, in the same way you can't dominate the beetles on Fox Trail with Animal Empathy because they aren't animals....

Vermin are 'Mind Immune' I don't think you can 'Empathy' them in PnP either.

[FunkySwerve]

Fixing turning is on the long term todo list. You can find posts about it if you search. Until it is I wouldn't recommend a turner cleric.
Funky

[bhao]

i have seen a shifter being turned by an npc cleric while he was undead, but does that also mean, that there is a chance that some npc might turn a player with outsider subraces like rakshasa or erinyes?

[dodrudon]

I doubt it, it requires PCs having Outsider levels, and the HG subbies are half-cosmetic: they change your appearance (sometimes), change stats and add feats, but don't give you outsider levels (or undead levels).

Incidentally apparently there are crossbow bolts with "Slay Rakasha" on them (not necessarily in HG, but in the campaign or something), which work on PC Shifter Raks....

[mishimayukio]

You can create slay rakshasa bolts by using a scabbard of blessing to cast bless on a stack of bolts.

[sabregirl]

If you're looking for good domains for a hells-oriented cleric I would recommend either magic and fire or magic and air (for the more offensively oriented cleric). And most of all . . . make sure you have an awesome implode DC.

-S

[Trazik]

I believe the only way in standard NWN to make rakshasa-slaying bolts is with the paladin Bless Weapon spell cast directly on the bolts. Not certain if the many customizations here on HG have made it possible to do this with the Bless spell, though.

[bort]

Thanks for the responses everyone.

sabregirl said:

If you're looking for good domains for a hells-oriented cleric I would recommend either magic and fire or magic and air (for the more offensively oriented cleric). And most of all . . . make sure you have an awesome implode DC.

-S

I went with magic and fire myself, although I really wanted to take trickery for conceal, I decided I'll rely on friendly druids for that.
And I went for Implode DC over the (very) remote possibility of turning something in the Abyss

[bhao]

mishimayukio said:

You can create slay rakshasa bolts by using a scabbard of blessing to cast bless on a stack of bolts.

yes, but do they work on characters with rakshasa subrace (and not just on shifters in rakshasa form)?

[sabregirl]

No I would say 99% positive that they don't because a character with a rakshasa subrace is considered by the engine to be whatever base race the person has chosen. Also I think the blessed bolts don't work in the case of death immunity at least when blessed bolts were shot at my shifter in Rak form, I got the big poof of death magic but no death, due to item based death magic immunity.

-S

[FunkySwerve]

It goes by appearance.
Funky