The Effects of the Cleric on the Bestiary

08 May, 2026

I've been preparing a bestiary for use in my next campaign. I built out 50 monsters, and then wanted to slim it down to 30. It was in this process I noticed how strong of an effect the Cleric exerts on the setting, of which the bestiary is a central pillar. The Turn Undead table needs 8 entries to function as usual; for a game with 30 monsters, that's almost a third of the available beasties. Even if you expand this out to Supernatural creatures (Demons, Werewolves, etc), this bends the setting strongly toward a Fantasy-Gothic vibe.

Of course, the Cleric arose in the first place because those monsters were already present in the setting (And, of course, it was not arbitrarily limited to 30 monsters). It makes me wonder what would develop with a ground up approach, if we could free ourselves of our conceptions of D&D, what sort of unique classes would emerge; the bizarre Fly Catcher of Realms of Yolmi fame comes to mind.

Other than expanding the range of monsters that the Cleric can turn (Turn Supernatural instead of Undead), another solution is to just tighten it from 8 monsters to 5, and progress the Turn Undead table every other level. Because I am using Supernatural HD for these creatures, the ability to Turn them becomes even more useful. With 5 monsters, and a Cleric that improves their ability to Turn Undead on odd levels, you get a pleasing curve where the toughest supernatural monster becomes automatically Turned only at the very last level. I also changed the 'D' result to make it show up slightly faster.

Thanks for reading ;)