Scaling of Turning

Turning undead has been a long standing part of D&D, but does it really make sense in 3rd edition D&D? Does it scale well so that it is useful at all levels? How is it actually used?

Let's consider 3 situations: a 1st cleric with a 12 charisma turns a zombie (CR 1/2) and 2 skeletons (1/3); a 10th level cleric with a 14 charisma turns 2 bodaks (CR 8) and a devourer (CR 11); and a 20th level cleric with an 18 charisma turns 4 nightwalkers (CR 16) and 1 nightcrawler (CR 18).

1st level: a roll of 9 is required to affect the skeleton and a roll of 12 is required to affect the zombie. The turn effect roll is 2d6+1 so the cleric is guaranteed to be able to turn all the undead!

10th level: a roll of 5 is required to affect the bodak and a roll of 14 is needed on the devourer. This greater range is because of the hit dice. But if the hit dice of the undead is roughly even with it's challenge rating this seems to scale. So the turn effect is 2d6+12. Worst luck is 1 bodak. Best luck is 2 bodaks and not the devourer. This seems less effective than at first level, but it still seems very good.

20th level: a roll of 9 is required to affect the walkers, the nightcrawler can not be turned. The effect is 2d6+24. Worst luck turns 1 nightwalker, best luck turns 2 nightwalkers.

So turning does seem to get less effective, but it is not useless at high levels. The two primary factors that affect scaling is the 2d6 part of the turning effect that makes turning better at low levels. The other factor is the ratio between hit dice and challenge rating. For high levels the hit dice creep ahead of the CR, but not so much that turning becomes ineffective.

But I rarely see turning during the game. I've mainly seen it used against low level undead the are a nuisance. I think there are two reasons for this. One is that players want to kill things rather than have them flee away. Having undead flee away prolongs combat, and does not necessarily defeat the undead. The other reason is that many splatbooks have introduced feats that allow you to do much better things with your turning attempts.

So after taking a look at this I do think turning is still useful at 20th level although it is definitely not as good as it was at first level. But also at 20th level a cleric has many more options and so using turning goes down on the list of things to do. Also a feat might make them lean towards using turning for other things.