Gods And Heroes: Blog for 06.30.06 - When Priests Go Wild

First things first, the Priest is exactly what you should expect: They heal, they resurrect, they bless, and they buff. A slight change has been made and now the Priests throw down the curses from the gods (I know we talked about Mystics cursing, but trust me, next week you will be surprised). The Priest also has the power to dispel magic, heal over time, reduce hate, and cast fear. Now our version of fear is slightly different than some games. Instead of the opponent becoming scared and running around (thus attracting more mobs), when feared, your opponent will basically remain in place in a "dazed" sort of state. This is more closely related to mesmerizing than traditional fear.

Moving on, one of the key things to keep in mind with the Priest is that they are more in tune with the gods than any other player class. This is important because it is this link that gives the priest a lot of their powers. The Priest has a feat that allows them to bestow blessings upon other players to increase their favor with the gods, thereby allowing them to regenerate depleted favor faster. Tie this in with the fact that the Priest has more favor than non-priest classes, and you're looking at the ability to use god powers more often and more effectively than ever before. To top all of this off, the Priest also has a special feat that allows them to mark an opponent during battle. If that opponent is killed in battle before the mark wears off, the Priest immediately regains a significant amount of favor from their god, and as we all know, more favor equals more god powers!

Before I go into the coolest feature about the Priest class, I also want to mention that the Priest will have the option to select a feat that allows them to repair items in the field, as well. Yes, you read that right: Priests have the ability to repair your broken sword, shield, breastplate, or whatever else you've got on you, in the field. This is a significant feature because I can't tell you how many times I've been in a group running a quest far away from any transportation or cities and my equipment has broken due to a death or two. Nobody likes coming close to the end of a quest only to find out that their sword has fully decayed on their last death. Then you have to hoof it back to some distant town just to get it repaired, while the entire dungeon respawns and your group disbands in your absence.

Finally, Priests will have an extremely unique power that will prove to be a key point in strategies for players and groups of all types. The Priest is granted a feat that allows them to spiritually link players or units to spell-casting minions. Allow me to explain. A Priest joins your party with 8 minions, all of them spell-casters. During a battle the Priest can link these spell-casters telepathically to other minions (including mythological minions) or to other players. By doing this, the spell-caster minions become immobile and unable to defend themselves; however, the unit on the receiving end of the link gains a significant boost to power, damage, resistances, and stats. The more spell-casters you have linked to an individual unit, the more powerful that unit becomes, thus treating the immobile spell-casters like a battery. In turn you can break the spell-casters into various groups to provide more units with bonuses. So with 8 spell-caster minions you could have two spell-casters per unit for more spread-out damage, or you could link all 8 to, say, your Minotaur, or to a player Gladiator, and have them rip through your opponents.

The concept sketches for the Female and Male Priest

No matter how you decide to play the Priest, the options here are enormous. There's so much more to talk about, but we'll reveal those when we go into a more in-depth look at the Priest's feat tree at a later time.

Until that time, rock on Jupiter-style!

Deodatus out.