Turn undead

The turn undead feature comes in two forms: as a spell, from a spellbook of turn undead or wand of undead turning, and as an extended command #turn.

The name comes from Dungeons and Dragons, where it is a specific supernatural ability for causing undead beings to turn and flee. There are some unfortunate linguistic ambiguities associated with it in NetHack; for instance, the #turn command has the description "Turn undead", which might make a beginning player assume that it causes their character to become an undead creature!

Turn undead spell

Turn undead is a level 6 clerical spell, and the special spell of the Knight. It causes undead monsters in a single direction to take damage and possibly flee, and will resurrect corpses.

A wand of undead turning has the same effects as the spell.

Turn undead command

Knights and Priests have the innate ability to turn undead. This can be invoked with the #turn extended command.

This command is quite different from the spell or the wand. In fact, it's a prayer to your god, not a spell, although it doesn't affect your prayer timeout.

Using the #turn command has the following effects:

• Exercises wisdom.
• Turns all hostile undead monsters that you can see with a base range of 5 squares. Range increases by 1 square every 5 levels. If your level is higher than 15, hostile demons are turned as well. Affected monsters have a chance to resist.
• These monsters are woken if they are sleeping.
• If you are lawful or neutral, certain classes of undead monsters may be killed instantly. If you are chaotic, they may become peaceful. These monsters are, in increasing order of difficulty: zombie, mummy, wraith, vampire, ghost, lich.
• Demons and those undead who are not killed will flee. If you are confused, the command removes fleeing and paralysis effects from those monsters instead.
• You become helpless for 5 turns while you are praying. (Ouch!)
• Breaks atheist conduct

Turning will not work correctly in the following circumstances:

• If you are polymorphed into an undead or a demon, and your god is not chaotic, you abuse wisdom and aggravate monsters.
• If your god is extremely angry with you, you abuse wisdom and aggravate monsters.
• If you are in Gehennom, your god is inaccessible. Instead, you aggravate monsters.
• If you are confused, you will waken and unparalyze all monsters you would otherwise have turned. (You will still be helpless for 5 turns.)

Destruction/Pacification

If you are high enough level, turned undead monsters must make a second resistance check or be destroyed instantly (turned peaceful if you are chaotic).

Monster Class	Minimum Level
zombies	6
mummies	8
wraiths	10
vampires	12
ghosts	14
liches	16

(It is thus theoretically possible to instantaneously destroy an arch-lich by #turning, if you are at least level 16 and beat its MR of 90 in two sequential rolls.)

Strategy

The turn undead spell can be used to resurrect a dead pet, though you might need to tame it again.

The #turn command's helplessness side-effect limits this ability's usefulness, especially since it's only likely to kill undead less powerful than yourself. Use with caution. It would probably clear a graveyard pretty fast if you're high enough level, though.

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.4.3. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-343}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"#turn undead and the wand/spell are sufficiently different to require disentangling. Put the command here and direct to the spell/wand using Template:Otheruses"