Benefit to Level 6 Priesthood?

[Cainehill]

Having just had the opportunity, I made a prophet who is a level 6 priest, as well as having good regular magic (2 astral, water, air, I think).

Now, I'm very well aware of the huge benefits of obtaining a level 3 priest or level 4 priest when your kingdom doesn't natively produce such. Sermon of Courage, Divine Blessing, great joy.

Level 5 seems more iffey - 100 accuracy in a spell doesn't mean what I thought it meant, as my arch-theurg prophets call down bolts of lightning with incredible accuracy - on empty tracts of land. Smite just doesn't seem worth it, given that I've watched battles where 5 of 5 castings didn't hit anything. (Bug? Or do I just not understand accuracy?)

So - any benefit to having a level 6 priest? Holy spells have 0 endurance cost, so one major benefit of high magic level is lost - 1/3 of 0 is, well, 0. There's no 6th level priest spells, not that this is usually an issue.

But, having Bartholomeus the Patriach show up on turn 4 with Pythium, and me not having made my ArchThug, er, Theurg, prophet yet because I wanted him in the hall of fame by attacking an undead area.... Hard to resist.

Now I'm thinking maybe I should have promoted Mohammed (the presumptive Prophet) to have two level 5 priests instead.

Any thoughts?

[archaeolept]

I believe smite has a magic resistance roll to avoid smittenness. that's likely what happened in your battles.

The only advantage of having a level 6 priest that I am aware of is that penetration in banish undead is increased; thus, since 6 is 4 levels avove the requirement of the spell, your prophet will have a 2 penetration bonus (ie. -2 MR on the part of the banishees).

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Level 5 seems more iffey - 100 accuracy in a spell doesn't mean what I thought it meant, as my arch-theurg prophets call down bolts of lightning with incredible accuracy - on empty tracts of land. Smite just doesn't seem worth it, given that I've watched battles where 5 of 5 castings didn't hit anything. (Bug? Or do I just not understand accuracy?)

Bug indeed. Clearly, your prophet fancies himself an exterminator and is misusing his powers to smite ants, which are too small to be seen in the battle screen. Rest assured that the ants are being smitten with great accuracy, though.

Originally posted by archaeolept:
I believe smite has a magic resistance roll to avoid smittenness. that's likely what happened in your battles.

It does, but that shouldn't affect the hit-or-miss vfx. I've seen spells that "hit" me, but fail to cause an effect due to MR or other factors, but still produce an effect that looks like a hit, rather than a flat out miss.

[ March 15, 2004, 03:08: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Daynarr]

Bug indeed. Clearly, your prophet fancies himself an exterminator and is misusing his powers to smite ants, which are too small to be seen in the battle screen. Rest assured that the ants are being smitten with great accuracy, though.

Maybe someone should make a mod "Revenge of the Ants".

[tinkthank]

I dont know -- maybe in Drain provinces the 0 fatigue of priest spells cause something like 10? (Anyone know?) Then being level 6 could be useful fatigue-wise. Being level 7 however is definately nice +1 pen on smite.

[Pocus]

the main advantage of having a very high level into priesthood is for the reanimate special order. For example A priest level 4 will reanimate one tomb wyrm/turn (C'tis Desert Tombs), whereas a level 6 (Ekishnugal as prophet) will rise 3/turn.