Want to know if Priests are right for you? Priests have some initial overhead at the start of an adventure to work out the party's alignments to their god and thus how their abilities will best be applied, but afterwards they generally follow the same patterns in how they play.

Priests are generally about forming a Congregation with party members to provide buffs to them. As this can be difficult to explain in words, let's walk through how that plays out:

1. Your abilities as a priest depend on the alignments of your allies to the leading element of the your god. At the start of an adventure you should check what these are, which may come from how they answer the little quiz at character generation or from their own views of their character. As you go along and you get to know them, you can revise your view on what their alignment should be treated as, just go with whatever seems appropriate.

For the sake of example, consider this Priest of the God of Not Stabbing a Guy (leading element Peace). Lesser and opposing elements make no difference here, and are mainly for flavour. In the party there's a Spirit Guide who's loosely aligned, an indifferent Doctor and an anti-aligned Warrior.

2. Once you form a congregation you'll be able to spend 8 effort on it. This has to start with yourself, so its in your best interersts to keep yourself aligned to your own god. Here we see the Priest starting a Congregation, which costs 1 maximum Spirit hit. This immediately grants him access to the set of buffs he has per Congregation, for the sake of example call this 1 call of REPEL and 1 RESIST to physical, which he can use any time during the Congregation (ie. between now and the end of the encounter, or when he next forms a Congregation). Off the bat that's 2 effort down, 6 to go.

3. Without any special skills saying otherwise, the Warrior, being anti-aligned, can't be brought into the Congregation at all. Whoops, sucks to be her. Let's try buffing the Spirit Guide. For 3 effort they can be added to the Congregation by buffing them - let's give them a call of REPEL. Being a standard duration GAIN call, this needs to be called within 10 seconds of being issued. They're now part of the congregation! And with one other person in it, the Priest has one of each buff to throw out. Having used the REPEL, he still has a GAIN RESIST PHYSICAL he can give to someone besides himself. Which at the moment, is just the Spirit Guide. But let's hold off that for now.

Say we want to add someone else to the Congregation… the Doctor might be a good choice, but there's only 3 effort left to assign and he's indifferent, which means he can't be added! Disaster indeed! At this point, with nobody left to add to the Congregation, we've reached its limits for this use. After throwing out all of the buffs our Priest will have to spend another Spirit hit to make another one.

4. For the sake of this little tutorial though, let's pretend that the Doctor was actually loosely aligned, and as such only takes 3 effort to add. Then our Priest can bring him into the Congregation! By applying another buff (GAIN RESIST PHYSICAL), the Doctor is now also in the Congregation. With 2 other people, he may now throw out a maximum of 2 of each buff. As he's already used one REPEL on the Spirit Guide and one RESIST on the Doctor, he has one of each left to give out.

5. Since the buffs can go to any member of the Congregation besides the Priest, he doesn't need to have given each of the Spirit Guide and Doctor one REPEL and one RESIST each (although is welcome to do so if it's easier that way), and can choose to give the remaining unassigned buffs entirely to the Spirit Guide. At this point, the full potential of this Congregation is used up, and the Priest will need to spend a Spirit hit again to make another one.

The recommended approach with Congregation forming is to work out at the start of the adventure what your standard Congregation is going to be. Work out what combinations (eg. “you and these three strongly aligned people”, “you and any two of these four loosely aligned people”, etc.) you are capable of based on the party you have, and generally stick to the one which is most useful to you and just worry about how many buffs you'll get for doing that. You may wish to consider having a backup plan (ie. “if I urgently need to help that Creator, I can just buff me and her instead of my usual Congregation”), but you'll usually tend towards only worrying about a single set of people in a Congregation and not have to worry about all of this alignment and effort stuff.

And remember: for skills that affect people in your Congregation (which don't bring people into the Congregation) - you need to have buffed someone once in the current Congregation before you can use them! This is especially important for the Priest's ability to HEAL others, where you may need to form a new Congregation and buff a downed target to then be able to HEAL them.

At low level, a Priest will only have a couple of buffs to throw out per Congregation, and more limits to whom they can add to it. So long as you're following the recommended approach above, playing a Priest generally involves having to remember which set of people one is typically buffing, and a set of GAIN calls that can be used on them. And is otherwise about preaching at people a lot.

At high level, a Priest will have a lot more buffs to grant, so there is a larger set of GAIN calls which may be used. Preaching at people can now have a mechanical benefit too, although this along with several other skills around making it easier to form Congregations just means that the default Congregation one settles on is more encompassing. So as long as you're using the recommended approach above, being a high level Priest just involves having a few more calls to remember to give out in terms of relative complexity, again sticking to one standard Congregation.

A possible basic build for a Priest is:

• Combat Proficiency (Free)
• Leading: Offensive Element 1
• Lesser: Offensive Element 1
• Indulgence 1
• Absolution 1
• Portentous Visions

This starting build uses only a basic weapon, but makes the most of a Priest's ability to buff - with a couple of buffs which may be granted and the ability to heal a downed Congregation member for additional support. Visions are thematic to the character's god and in addition to some vague guidance on adventures provide an extra Spirit hit, allowing for an extra Congregation between refreshes.