New Class: Priest

Suggestions
1

What does a priest do?

A priest is a jobclass that is there to help to comfort your citizens, which grants them better health regeneration, more walkspeed and they need less sleep. So his job is to make your hearthlings be more effective. He walks around during the day and speaks little prayers and talks to hearthlings from time to time, which makes them happy and grants the above mentioned benefits. At night, he walks to the fire where your hearthlings gather and holds a speech to everyone.

How to get a priest?

I’m not sure about this one. One option would be, that you can promote a herbalist to either a cleric or a priest. Another option would be, that you can promote a cleric to priest. Both options are kinda viable, but I’m not sure if it makes sense to be able to promote from a herbalist to a priest. Maybe it could also be a class directly from the start. This means, you can promote a worker to a priest if you have the item for it.

How high are the bonuses granted by the priest?

My suggestion would be, that the bonus is higher the higher the spirit stat from the hearthling is. Lets make an example:

A lvl 0 priest that talks to a hearthling with 1 spirit grants the following benefits:

  • 1% health regeneration per second
  • 20% walkspeed
  • 10% less sleep required

A lvl 0 priest that talks to a hearthling with 6 spirit grants the following benefits:

  • 2% health regeneration per second (+0.2% per extra spirit point)
  • 30% walkspeed (+2% per extra spirit point)
  • 20% less sleep required (+2% per extra spirit point)

So while all hearthling benefit from a priest, a community that has citizens with high spirit benefit even more from him, giving the spirit stat even more meaning.

What kind of skills will the priest develop?

lvl 0: Priest
Talks to hearthlings one by one to grant buffs

lvl 1: Enhanced Spirit (rank 1)
Buffs are stronger (+12.5% effectiveness)

lvl 2: Calm Mind (rank 1)
Buffs have longer duration (+25% buff duration)

lvl 3: Spiritual Guidance (rank 1)
Can speak to multiple hearthlings at once (area of effect), granting all of them the buffs

lvl 4: Enhanced Spirit (rank 2)
Buffs are even stronger (+25% effectiveness)

lvl 5: Calm Mind (rank 2)
Buffs have longer duration (+50% buff duration)

lvl 6: Spiritual Guidance (rank 2)
Holds a speech during nighttime at the campfire which lets all hearthlings gather around him to listen. Buffs received at the campfire a greatly enhanced (total of +50% effectiveness and +100% buff duration)

So if a lvl 6 priest buffs a hearthling with 6 spirit at the campfire, the bonuses are:

  • 3% health regeneration per second
  • 45% walkspeed
  • 30% less sleep required

This is a really heavy buff, but I think it would fit into the game. Also the benefits and numbers are just examples. It could be any thinkable benefit and also any %-number you can think of. In my opinion, the priest is the friendly counterpart of the combat oriented cleric. The cleric is there to support your military units, while the priest is there to support your little hearthlings in the city. And I think it’s kinda cute when he stand at the campfire, all hearthlings gather around him, sit down and listen to his little speeches and prayers. :slight_smile:

8 Likes
2

I like this siggestion. But I don’t agree with promoting a cleric to a priest. Because you are promoting someone who has had combat experience to a non-combat unit, which feels weird for me.

Perhaps an option would be to make priest a class promotion from worker and let the Cleric get promoted from priest.

3 Likes
3

I really like this suggestion. Maybe instead of promoting from the herbalist or cleric promote from the weaver. The weaver makes clothes to improve the workers and could have a desire to improve all hearthings’ lives. Weaving is a peaceful and soothing skill. So the weaver would have some insight to make soothing speeches and prayers.

4

I kinda agree with @Quryx about going from a combat unit to a non-combat unit is weird. However, at the same time I feel that a herbalist to Priest also feels weird. Thus, maybe a whole new class set would work best. Where the Priest is the base unit and then the promotions are either into a Cleric or Bishop, and the Bishop is what the New Class: Priest is, and the base class Priest does some other function. Such as helping with moral and crafting religious items.

As for what happens with the Herbalist, I made another post about adding in Research and a new Class Tier, (See Here), which could plan in nicely with the suggested Inquisitor Class.

1 Like
5

The priest idea kinda vaguely taps into something I was thinking about the other day. Hear me out, this will get full circle:

Knights as a class are just a direct upgrade from a footman, with the ability to taunt, but all that is required for that upgrade is some combat experience and a shield. I’m not sold on that fitting properly into the lore, as knights typically had be appointed by someone to that position, you didn’t just beat X number of people in battle and ding your way to level knight. However, stonehearth lacks any kind of authority position, there’s no one to appoint knights in respect of great deeds, so the blacksmith just throws a shield to someone who looks competent and now it’s there job to get the stuffing beat out of them. Initially, I thought someone from a religious institution would be a good fill in for a hearthling in a position of power, so the priest idea might gel there, but I think we can do better. Plus, I’m not a fan of my hearthlings being in a theocracy.

Paladins are basically knights + holy awesome, who are also members of a faith community. Priests are the other members of that faith community. So why not have priests be a non-combat upgrade from worker, which allows for the introduction of faith or some other mechanic into stonehearth, who then also have the ability to be pushed into a combat role, in the position of paladin, Knights of the Holy Order of the Hearth or something. This way we don’t have to see priest come out of anything, they just can be, but they get no combat bonus. Plus then we can add a new combat bonus in, in the shape of a paladin.

1 Like
6

Correct me if I’m getting this wrong.

so a Priest’s job will roam and talk to hearthlings 1 by 1 by day to benefit the buff, and by night, he will stand beside the fire pit to preach. Correct?

If that is the case then,
he will not haul since he will always be roaming around finding hearthling with no buffs (assuming you have a big population) and by night he will just stand beside the fire pits. (promote another priest to share the load, but logic wise, will you need another priest for a population of only 50 people?)
He will not build since he is a priest and surely will not mine.

Which means you will have a hearthling with only 1 activity.

For the benefit of the ff: (best case scenario)

but, why walkspeed? why less sleep? what is the backstory of these benefits? because if you think about it, more work means more stress which means more sleep, not unless by magic since priest is all about buffs. but then again, logic-wise, the hearthlings will worn-out their body rapidly with all the work without realizing stress. I know it is just a game, real logic never applies to games but if you think about it, these buffs are contradicting and imbalance.

but if you’re gonna stick to lore-wise then why not curing diseases? raising morale? or the most imbalance of all, resurrecting the dead.

This is just my opinions so correct me if I’m wrong. I’m so sorry to be “the guy who disagree”.

This is where I agree. This is a nice scene to witness. :blush:

7

The priest will not walk around when all people have the buff. Since the buff will probably have a long duration and with a high level he can talk/preach to many/all hearthlings at once, there will be plenty of time for the priest to haul stuff. Especially since the duration is greatly increased at lvl 6, when he preaches to all hearthlings at the campfire (the buff could hold 18 hours then for example). And dont forget that your hearthlings move faster and sleep less, which makes them extremely more efficient. If you have 20+ hearthlings and a priest buffs all of them, the benefits will easily outweight the disadvantage of having one hearthling less. And also lets not forget that your hearthlings have it easier to walk away from enemies when they have health regeneration + more walkspeed, which increases their survivability greatly. It happens quite often to me that a stray hearthling dies because he is slower then the enemy archers for example.

That’s quite easy:
Like in real life many things are easier and less stressful for you if you are happy. Never underestimate the influence of a healthy psyche. Just take a look at people who do fitness. They go to work 8 hours a day and still find enough energy to do the fitness. Why can they do that? Because fitness can’t be called work or stresful. It’s a burden on the body, but it really depends on your state of mind. For many, fitness helps them to relax, even if it’s stressful for the body. But it’s positive stress.

In sport-psychology there are results that show that the performance of athletes is significant influenced by his/her psyche. If an athlete broke up with his/her partner some days before the tournament, they show worse results compared to an athlete who has currently no problems in real life or are very happy.

The same goes for sleep. It will be much easier to wake up in the morning when you have fun at work, while it is very hard to get up if you need to worry about getting to work (because you don’t like your boss or associates, you did a mistake at the job and will probably get scolded for that etc.). Many people have trouble getting up at 7:00 AM in the morning when they have to work, but easily can get up at 7:00 AM at weekends. That’s because your mind is more releaxed during weekends because you dont have to go to the disliked workplace. So if you like your work, getting up and working is much easier, even if you have slept less.

And since the priest is there to comfort your hearthlings and makes them happy, which results in a healthy psyche, they receive alot of benefits. It’s really close to scientific results. Instead of priest you also could call this job psychologist, but I doubt that this would fit into the game - at least lore-wise. :stuck_out_tongue:

Buffs like morale increase are not very useful I think. Hearthlings should run away from enemies, so having a low morale is good for them and since there are no diseases, it isn’t needed and the herbalist/cleric would be better anyway for such a job. And hey, if you want to talk about logic, ressurecting the death is by far more unrealistic then giving your hearthlings the benefits I suggested. :smiley:

I think it would really look amazing if hearthlings interact more with another like I suggsted. It’s already quite cool that hearthlings talk to each other and make gestures, but there should be more such features that connects the whole community. A speech at the campfire could help to give this kind of feeling :slight_smile:

2 Likes