The problem with Turn Undead

Turn Undead is the ability in D&D 3.5e that I believe has the most problems with it. At 1st level, everything is fine. You can turn Skeletons and the occasional Zombie, and everything is fine.

However, by the time you reach 10th level, the range of Hit Dice on undead threats is much greater. What makes it worse is a challenging vampire may have 8 HD, but a challenging zombie may have 20 HD. Same Challenge Rating, but the vampire is probably toast - its limited turn resistance doesn't do that much.

For those undead that do have good turn resistance, they very quickly move out of turning range.

For a PC, you can take several feats to make Turn Undead something that destroys all undead. Or you don't, and it's useless. There isn't much of a middle ground with the ability. That's what I mean by broken. It's either Bah-roken or useless. Not good.

In my campaigns, we use the variant rule from Complete Divine that has Turn Undead doing damage to undead. (1d6 per level, Will save for half). It makes the ability much more relevant in the game.

One of the more amusing NPC clerics I created had two-weapon fighting, a favoured weapon of a quarterstaff, and the Divine Might feat (spend a Turn attempt as a free action to add your Charisma modifier to all damage rolls). That was fun.

I like Turn Undead and the divine feats being in the game. I think the fact they keep Charisma relevant to clerics is also a good thing. However, the actual mechanics of Turn Undead need to be overhauled. Interestingly, some prestige classes are now appearing that grant the damage version of Turn Undead - there's one like that in Five Nations, IIRC.

Turn Undead, along with metamagic, is one of the mechanics that I think will be overhauled in 4e, whenever that is. However, for the time being, the designers will have to struggle with the existing mechanic. Meanwhile, the house ruled Turn Undead may be gaining in popularity.