[rdonj]

The thing prospectors do that normal PD raiders don't though, is flee rather than dying when they fail. They're also pretty cheap. You're expending a lot of effort to make large enough groups of them to take out significant PD, should your opponent choose to field it. But chances are you'll never lose a single prospector to anything but routing. Except possibly battlefield-wide AoE spells.

As for journeyman runesmiths, well, honestly so far mostly I've used them to run around and build forts/temples... but they are still quite useful in battle. They can cast plenty of decent spells with just summon earthpower. I'm not quite sure why it's a "waste" of a turn to cast, either... summon earthpower is a quite handy buff. The only thing I really miss from them is the rune of grungni (which is only marginally better than legions of steel anyway). But a journeyman runesmith can cast just about every other buff you'd want. Just bring a runesmith around for weapons of sharpness and you're good.