Priest/dNetHack

In dNetHack, notdNetHack and notnotdNetHack, the Priest (or Priestess for women) is one of the roles from NetHack that is available to the hero.

Priests can be humans, incantifiers, elves, clockwork automatons, chiropterans, or half-dragons, and can be of any appropriate alignment.

Drow Priests are treated as radically different from their counterparts, with their own article in the provided link.

Starting equipment

Each Priest starts with the following equipment:

• a blessed +1 mace
• a +0 robe
• a +0 buckler
• 4 potions of holy water
• 1-2 cloves of garlic
• 1-2 sprigs of wolfsbane
• 2 random spellbooks for clerical, divination or healing spells of level 3 or lower

Elven priests are additionally given a random non-magical instrument.

Priests start with knowledge of the potion of water and any applicable racial equipment.

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

Skills

Priests have the following skills available to them before racial adjustments:

Priest skills
Max	Skills
Basic	Weapons: lance, bow, sling, crossbow, dart, shuriken, boomerang Combat: bare-handed combat, shields Spells: musicalize
Skilled	Weapons: polearms, spear, trident, unicorn horn
Expert	Weapons: club, mace, morning star, flail, hammer, quarterstaff Spells: healing, divination, clerical

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 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.)

Priests only take ¹⁄₅ damage from breaking wands by applying them.

Priests have several rules regarding artifacts:

• A Priest invoking an artifact has ⁴⁄₅ of the normal cooldown for the invoke timer versus other roles.
• A Priest wielding an artifact weapon always applies the maximum to-hit bonus against all monsters, even if it would not normally apply otherwise.
• A Priest dealing damage with an artifact gains an experience level-based bonus of +1dXL to that damage once per hit.
• Artifact wishes made by Priests do not affect their chances of receiving artifacts as sacrifice gifts, and likewise do not increase the favor required for a major boon from a cult.

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. The command will immobilize the Priest for a few turns afterward, and they can spend 30 power to reduce the duration to one turn.

Priests can use the khakkhara, any type of bell, or an effigy as a spellcasting focus.

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 an appropriate pantheon for them from the others available. Their crowning gift depends on the pantheon they serve, as with any hero in dNetHack.

Quest

The Priest's quest sees them fighting Legion for The Mitre of Holiness, an artifact helm of brilliance. The Mitre of Holiness grants fire resistance while carried and can be enchanted to +7 - while worn it grants drain resistance, warning of undead, allows prayer in Gehennom (including the ability to turn undead), and grants +1d5 to-hit and double damage against holy-hating monsters if worn while performing a headbutt attack. For Priests, wearing The Mitre of Holiness also grants an additional reduction of spellcasting failure rates, the same as a robe. Invoking The Mitre of Holiness restores the hero's energy by an amount equal to half of the difference between their maximum power and current power: if this amount is less than ¹⁄₁₀ of their maximum, then it will restore up to 400 energy.

Strategy

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