Priest/EvilHack
In EvilHack, the Priest, or Priestess is one of the roles from NetHack that is available to the hero.
Priests can be humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, giants, hobbits, centaurs, illithids, tortles, or drow, and can start as any appropriate alignment.
Starting equipment
Each Priest starts with the following equipment:
- a blessed +1 mace (wielded)
- a +0 robe
- a +0 pair of high boots if the hero is a giant
- a +0 toque if the hero is a tortle
- a +0 small shield
- a +0 pair of dark elven bracers if the hero is a drow
- 4 potions of holy water
- 1-2 cloves of garlic
- 1-2 sprigs of wolfsbane
- 2 random spellbooks for clerical, divination, evocation, or healing spells
- spellbooks for evocation spells are always level 1, while spellbooks for other spells are level 3 or lower
- an uncursed oil lamp unless the hero is a drow (1⁄4 chance or 25%)
The following racial conditions also apply:
- Drow Priests will have a mace made of adamantine, and are additionally given a random non-magical instrument. They will also never start with a spellbook of light.
- Dwarf Priests have a 1⁄4 chance of starting with a +0 pick-axe.
- Elven Priests will have a mace made of copper, and are additionally given a random non-magical instrument.
- Giant Priests may start with some valuable gems.
- Hobbit Priests will start with a tinning kit and two additional stacks of 1-2 random comestibles.
- Orcish Priests are not given extra food like orcish heroes in most other roles.
- Tortle Priests have a 1⁄4 chance of starting with an oilskin sack.
Priests start with knowledge of the potion of water and any applicable racial equipment.
The Priest's default starting pet is a little dog or kitten with equal probability.
Intrinsics
Priests gain the following intrinsic properties upon reaching the given experience levels:
- XL 15: warning
- XL 20: fire resistance
Attributes
The Priest's starting attributes are distributed as follows:
| Attributes | Strength | Dexterity | Constitution | Intelligence | Wisdom | Charisma | Remaining |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum attributes | 7 | 7 | 7 | 7 | 10 | 7 | 30 |
| Distribution percentages | 15% | 15% | 20% | 10% | 30% | 10% | |
| Mean w/ standard deviation (human) | 12.21±2.07 | 11.89±2.01 | 13.47±2.16 | 10.28±1.74 | 17.44±1.08 | 9.95±1.67 |
The means and standard deviations were calculated via simulation, whose source code can be found on the role article's talk page, and assumes that all given roles are played as humans—non-human races will have different attribute means as a result of different attribute maximums.
Skills
Priests have the following skills available to them:
| Barbarian skills | |
|---|---|
| Max | Skills |
| Basic | |
| Skilled |
|
| Expert |
|
Priests start with Basic skill in maces and clerical spells. They use the wisdom stat to cast spells, and their special spell is remove curse.
Special rules
Priests are forbidden from using edged weapons, preventing them from using any weapon type that deals piercing and/or slashing damage: a -40 to-hit penalty is applied for attacking with such weapons; throwing, firing or using them in melee will abuse wisdom and has a 1⁄10 chance to incur a -1 penalty to alignment record for melee with non-artifact weapons (or 1⁄4 for non-melee); and using them in melee also has a 1⁄7 chance of causing them to slip from the hero's grasp. This also means that tortle Priests are restricted in tridents unlike tortle heroes in other roles. Priests also cannot receive edged weapons as sacrifice gifts from altars or unrestrict weapon skills for piercing or slashing weapons. While Priests can train skill in polearms, the lucern hammer is the only one that they can use without incurring penalties (as noted in the skill table above).
The above restrictions on edged weapons also apply to crowning: the Priest's crowning gift is changed to Mjollnir, which is a heavy war hammer in EvilHack, and they will not unrestrict the weapon skills for their alignment's standard crowning gifts. A lawful Priest must be wielding a heavy war hammer when being crowned to transform it into Mjollnir, while Priests of other alignments will have it placed at their feet. Mjollnir will always be blessed, rustproof and +1 when gifted by crowning—if a Priest being crowned is already wielding the artifact, it will become blessed, rustproofed and have its enchantment set to +1 if it is currently lower.
Priests do not receive multishot bonuses unless they are at Expert level in the appropriate weapon skill: in practice, they cannot reach Expert in any relevant skills, so they can never throw or fire more than one missile per action.
Priests have inherent knowledge of an item's beatitude, whether or not they can see or even touch it. (The implicit_uncursed option is set by default, so an item with no shown beatitude is uncursed—setting !implicit_uncursed in your options will display uncursed beatitude for items.)
As primary casters, Priests wearing any form of body armor are only penalized when casting spells of level 4 or higher. They may also receive spellbooks as sacrifice gifts from their deity.
Priests only take 1⁄5 damage from explosions caused by destroyed wands.
Priests have a +2 bonus to casting emergency spells.
Priests can utilize the #turn extended command to turn away undead, with a chance of pacifying them for chaotic Priests, and a chance of destroying them otherwise. As obtusely alluded to by the guidebook, the command will immobilize the Priest for a few turns afterward.
Rank titles
The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:
- XL 1-2: Aspirant
- XL 3-5: Acolyte
- XL 6-9: Adept
- XL 10-13: Priest/Priestess
- XL 14-17: Curate
- XL 18-21: Canon/Canoness
- XL 22-25: Lama
- XL 26-29: Patriarch/Matriarch
- XL 30: High Priest/High Priestess
Gods
The Priest as a role does not have their own pantheon of gods, with the game instead randomly choosing a pantheon from the other roles. Their first gift is Demonbane, and their crowning gift is Mjollnir.
Quest
The Priest's quest sees them fighting Nalzok for The Mitre of Holiness, an artifact helm of brilliance. The Mitre of Holiness grants fire resistance while carried, and while worn it provides extrinsic protection (akin to a ring of protection) in addition to the normal effects of a helm of brilliance—Priests wearing the artifact also take half physical damage from undead monsters and demons. Wearing The Mitre of Holiness allows prayer in Gehennom, including the ability to turn undead. Tortle Priests wearing The Mitre of Holiness are not slowed down while retreating into their shell, though a cursed Mitre will block this ability.
Invoking The Mitre of Holiness restores energy up to half the difference between the hero's current power and maximum power, with a minimum of 12 and a maximum of 120.
Strategy
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