How do you get Level 5 Priests?

[Psitticine]

Communion Master/Slave is a set of Astral spells while Sabboth Master/Slave are the Blood magic equivalents. They work the same way, aside from using different power sources, and can even interlink together.

When mages cast Communion/Sabboth Slave, they become "eligible" to support a mage who casts Communion/Sabboth Master. Any spells cast by the Master have their fatigue costs (before skill level reduction) shared out among the Communion/Sabboth. This leads to a tremendous increase in the amount of battlefield magic the Master can cast.

In addition, every two Communion/Sabboth Slaves also grants the Master a +1 to all his magic levels. This allows the Master to cast more powerful magic and suffer even less fatigue damage.

The drawback is that the Master can continue to "share" his fatigue costs even unto the death of the Slaves. The Slaves can be driven past unconsiousness and begin to take injury instead of additional fatigue, especially since they don't get the same reduction to fatigue that the Master will get from his increased power levels from the Commmunion. The spell-casting AI is good about not going to such lengths unless the situation is dire, however.

Note that there are also items that allow the equivalent of a Communion between item-holders.

I'm not 100% sure if this works with priest levels or not. Unless somebody beats me to it, I'll try to play a test game tomorrow especially to test that out. I don't believe it does boost priest power, but I've not specicially looked before.

[Yojinbo]

I believe the Sword of Justice adds one to priest levels.

Yo

[Joonie73]

LOL, but it's a unique artifact!

I was thinking of easier ways.

Can someone please explain what communion/sabbath is and how it works?

Originally posted by Yojinbo:
I believe the Sword of Justice adds one to priest levels.

Yo

[HJ]

Originally posted by Psitticine:
In addition, every two Communion/Sabboth Slaves also grants the Master a +1 to all his magic levels. This allows the Master to cast more powerful magic and suffer even less fatigue damage.

The drawback is that the Master can continue to "share" his fatigue costs even unto the death of the Slaves. The Slaves can be driven past unconsiousness and begin to take injury instead of additional fatigue, especially since they don't get the same reduction to fatigue that the Master will get from his increased power levels from the Commmunion. The spell-casting AI is good about not going to such lengths unless the situation is dire, however.

I never understood how communion works exactly. So, 1 master and 2 slaves get all 1/3 of the listed fatigue if master is casting at his max level, right? And if he has e.g. 3 in astral and casting 2 astral spell, he will get 1/2 of the 1/3 of the regular fatigue, while the slaves will still get 1/3? And what if he uses gems to increase his casting? He gets even more reduced fatigue, while the slaves get the same as if he wasn't using any? And what happens if the slaves are casting their own spells after casting the slave spells? They don't affect the master at all in terms of fatigue, and/or shared benefits, like they would if master casts e.g. personal luck? And you can increase by 1 only the paths you already know, and it doesn't make those you don't know available, right? And what happens when there is more than one master, how is that calculated?

[ November 14, 2003, 01:26: Message edited by: HJ ]

[Taqwus]

Not sure of the Communion math specifics.

If you have multiple communion masters, they all use the entire pool of slaves. Try not to make your poor communicant slaves explode, as all that fatigue can pile up.

The spell power boosts don't show when you right-click, but I'm pretty sure they only affect the paths the mages already have, and it's pretty clear something's up when they toss WAY more orb lightning than they otherwise would.

When the communion masters cast personal-benefit spells, these seem to affect the communion slaves as well. At the very least, things like Body Ethereal, Fire Shield (!), Elemental Fortitude, Summon Earthpower (now your communicants get reinvigoration!), Phoenix Pyre, Astral Shield et al seem to. Oh, and Pythium Communicants are sacred, in case you want to abuse them even more with Earth 4 (yet more reinvigoration!).

Communion + Relief is a powerful combination because of the fatigue redistribution.

[Joonie73]

So I take it that communion cannot raise a priest's level?

In that case, isn't it unfair that only some nations can get level 5 smiting priests?

[Yojinbo]

LOL, did you say "unfair"?

Every nation has strengths and when they employ strategies to maximize them, this process creates weaknesses in other areas. If you want Smite, you might have to try a different nation to get it. Or you could “steal” enemy commanders with a wind ride/charm ambush.

The nations with weak priests were an endless discussion point in DomI.

There are sites that allow you to recruit High Priests (although I think you may need a high level priest to find them!). You could always let an enemy uncover such a site and take it from them.

You may have more fun in your quest for smite then you would playing the “regular” game.

Yo

[ November 14, 2003, 11:44: Message edited by: Yojinbo ]