Blood Throne: the Priest Class in Dpeth

Written By Reece Robbins

We’ve previously covered the following classes:

Martial Characters:

Skill Classes:

  • To read the Inquisitor in depth article, click here.

  • To read the Warlord in depth article, click here.

  • To read the Bard in depth article, click here.

  • To read the Alchemist in depth article, click here.

Arcane Classes:

The Priest

The Priest is the premiere healing Class in Blood Throne, and has some truly awesome prayers to keep your other heroes in the fight. But they’re not one trick ponies, they also provide strong buffing abilities, and unlike any other Arcane classes may equip up to Medium Armor and may carry a Light Shield which offers unparalleled defense for a magic user. Additionally they have the option to take their bespoke class weapon, the Incense Maul. This flavorful weapon is a combination of arcane focus, increasing their ability to get their prayers off reliably, and a strong melee weapon to boot!

Prayers, Buffs and Bashing

At its core, the Priest Class is designed to keep other Heroes in the fight and increase their defenses with their powerful prayers (for game mechanics purposes, prayers act like any other type of Casting Action). They have incredibly potent healing abilities and their buffs are second to only the Shaman in regards to variety. Additionally, if you wish to, they can be specced to act as an off-tank or melee DPS Hero due to their wide variety of equipment options compared to most Arcane Classes which are heavily restricted in that category.

Equipment Restrictions

The Priest class is designed to be played multiple ways. You can create a Final Fantasy White Mage style Priest that eschews heavy equipment and simply focuses on filling a support role, or you can go full on DnD Cleric mode with an armored warrior priest. 

With the option to equip up to Medium Armor and a Light Shield then can be built to be quite tanky. Or, as is the case with the Priest in the Core Box, Brother Boldstand, you can equip them to knock skulls, opting for Medium Armor and the Incense Maul which not only deals respectable damage but also has the Reach keyword which is particularly useful for hitting monsters beyond their range to strike you back, or to swing through an allied Hero. The weapon also provides a +1 bonus to Metaphysics, helping to get Prayers off more reliably, and has the Armor Piercing keyword to increase your ability to punch through armor.

The Priest provides a multitude of options for you to create and play this iconic fantasy class in a manner which best suits you!

Class Ability: Healing Touch

The Priest’s Class Ability is Healing Touch, an absolute gem. As a reminder, Class Abilities are always included in a Hero’s deck, it is the defining ability of the class and as such you always have it, 1 General Skill, and your Heritage Skill (think racial ability) which you add to with other Class Skill selections, Item Cards, etc.



Healing Touch is a Short Range Prayer that heals a friendly Hero for 4RD+Power HP. That is a very strong ability just as is. RD, or Raw Dice, range from 1-3 whereas DD, or Damage Dice, range from 0-2, so Raw Dice have a higher potential and average amount of healing or damage dealt. As with many healing abilities, you add the Priest's Power stat in DD (the white dice) to the total. What’s fun with the Priest is that Power also increases weapon damage, so the same stat that makes him heal more effectively also makes him knock heretic skulls harder!

For lore purposes, the Power stat in Blood Throne is not meant to strictly represent physical strength, but a combination of physical strength, skill and spiritual might. It is more of an abstract concept than in other games.

As if the base ability were not good enough as is, you can upgrade this Prayer in multiple ways via Feats. For one, you can get a flat increase of +1 RD with Master of Mending, but even more exciting you can take Reaching Touch and Greater Touch which allows the effect to jump from the first target to another friendly hero within Short Range of the original target, or jump again from that target to third with both! The healing dice pool halves (rounding up) with each jump but this is still an amazing healing ability and the bread and butter of the Priest's suite of abilities. If you want an absolute heal-bot, take all three and massively increase the amount of healing you can do every activation.

Primary Skill Tree

The main focus of the Priest is, obviously, healing. And oh boy, do they have a lot of options in that regard!

Healing burst

At level 1 the Priest gains access to Healing Burst. A very straightforward Prayer which is a Short Range AoE heal centered on the Priest’s square. All friendly models in range (including the Priest) heal 2RD+Power HP. Not as strong as Healing Touch but the ability to affect multiple models more than makes up for this.

Healing Ward

Another very straight forward but undeniably useful Prayer that is available to select at level 4. Healing Ward not only grants the recipient the Rejuvenate HoT (heal over time) but additionally clears all Afflictions from the Hero. As a quick reminder, Afflictions are negative, short duration status effects. Give some light healing over time to a Hero as well as removing debuffs, what's not to love? A great tip to remember with this ability is that the generic healing upgrade Feat for the priest, Master of Mending, impacts the HoT as well, meaning that you get an extra RD of healing per turn it is in effect!

Heal

At level 6 you get one of the big daddy Prayers for the priest: Heal. This doozy is a Once Per Game ability but it fully heals a Hero! This is an absolutely amazing Class Skill. By the time you hit level 6 some of your tanky Martial Heroes will have a boat load of HP. You use this once they drop down to single digit HP and get them right back up to full. It can completely swing the tempo of a game. Particularly in PvP games this can just drain the life from your opponent as they see all the work they put into taking down your tank goes to waste! Of course, a savvy opponent will look to try and stop this ability so be careful with your positioning before you use it.

Revive the Fallen

At level 8, you get the Prayer we all knew the Priest had to have at some point: the ability to bring a Hero back from death’s doorstep! It is a quintessential Priest ability and it would be silly not to have it. Mechanically the way it works in Blood Throne is almost identical to a summon ability. It is a Ritual Action, meaning it is a full round action and you have to have at least 2 Standard Actions to attempt it. The Priest then places a Hero that has been Knocked out back on the table within Short Range, and that Hero has half of their HP and is Stunned, meaning they have 1 Standard Action when they Activate. This is truly a banger of a Class Skill and like Heal, can totally swing the course of a game. It is Once Per Game so be mindful of using it in a position where it won’t get stopped, then enjoy using your hero again!

Secondary Skill Tree

The Priest’s Secondary Skill Tree revolves around Buffing abilities. They have several very strong options available which you will find yourself coming to rely on in your games.

Protection of Faith

At level 1 the Priest may select Protection of Faith, a powerful Blessing which gives the recipient +2 Evasion. As Blessings last all game until removed, this is a very strong ability. You can use it on a Hero with low Evasion to bolster them, or put it on a Hero with high Evasion to make them truly hard to hit! To take this Prayer to an 11, you upgrade it with Greater Protection of Faith which increases the total Evasion boost to an eyewatering +4! That puts some Heroes in the realm of nigh-impossible to hit.

Celestial Blessing

At level 2 the Priest gains access to Celestial Blessing, which functions identically to Protection of Faith but instead boosts Fortitude and Will by +2. As a quick reminder, Evasion is used as the defense against most attacks, where Fortitude and Will are typically targeted by special actions. So where Protection of Faith makes you more resistant to mundane attacks making it great for frontline Heroes, Celestial Blessing makes you more resistant to things like spells making it great for supporting Heroes. It also has a potential upgrade to +4 to both defenses via the Greater Celestial Blessing Feat.

A meta-game way to use either of these spells in the campaign is to alter a Hero's stats to influence the AI of the monsters! They often target the Hero with the lowest relevant stat, so if you need a hero to not get targeted as often, use these spells to manipulate who the monsters focus on!

Divine Protection

The Ultimate Priest ability! As with all ultimates, Divine Protection is added to the hero’s deck automatically at level 10. And, as with all ultimates, this one is wildly strong! It is a Blessing (meaning it lasts all game BUT, means you cannot have another Blessing active on the same Hero). If that Hero is reduced to 0 HP, instead of being removed from the table they are moved to any unoccupied square on the board with 1 HP remaining and the Blessing then has no further effect. This is obviously extremely strong and lets you do all kinds of fun stuff. You can intentionally run a Hero into an impossible fight simply to teleport them to another square where they can pick up an Objective! Less sneaky, it can either bolster a weaker Hero or make a melee Hero truly unstoppable! Just bear in mind, as with all Blessings, it can be dispelled with certain abilities so keep that in mind before you assume one of your Heroes is unkillable only to be very disappointed!

Tertiary Skill Tree

The Priest’s Tertiary Skill tree is ranged striking and only consists of a single Prayer, but what a Prayer it is! 

Winds of Judgement

When playtesting the Priest we found that despite it being an indispensable class, it could be a bit boring without any offense outside of bonking things in melee so we added in a unique Prayer called Winds of Judgement, available to select at level 1. This Prayer is a Medium Ranged Line ability, meaning you take the measuring widget and run it and choose one of the 8 squares around the model to run directly away from. Any square touched is affected. Friendly models are healed and opposing models are hurt, plus, any smoke effects touched by the line are removed! 

This is an absolute banger of an ability and you will find yourself using it all the time. It takes the priest from a somewhat limited class, although as stated absolutely invaluable, to a really fun class to play. As you can Move Cast, meaning you can move and then make a Casting Action as a single action, it lets you bounce around to line up a shot that both heals your Party members as well as deals decent damage to Monsters. This will be a staple Prayer in your arsenal!

Feats

Priests, like all classes, gain a Feat option at every level. All classes have access to universal Feats at odd levels, and class specific Feats at even levels (outside of level 10 at which all classes gain their Ultimate Skill). All Feat choices are permanent and you may only select one of the options available.

At level 2 the Priest may take either Pious Priest or Reaching Spells. Pious Priest increases Metaphysics by +1 and Reaching Spells increases the range of Prayers by +1. Both are very straightforward, you either have better odds of getting a Prayer off or increase the range. As most healing or defensive Skills are Short Range, the extra square helps a lot, particularly for Prayers like Healing Burst which is an AoE, or Winds of Judgement which gives you that extra bit of reach!

At level 4 the Priest may select either Greater Celestial Blessings or Master of Mending. This is a tough choice, Master of Mending increases ALL of your healing Prayers where Greater Celestial Blessings doubles the protection offered by that buff. At first blush the increased healing may seem the obvious choice but as the Priest already has such strong healing magic it may not be worth it depending on how you build your Priest. Having a big jump in protection against Special Actions may be the better play if you have a Hero, like Ajax for example, who has very low Will and is susceptible to abilities that target that defense. 

At level 6 the priest may select Reaching Touch or Greater Protection of Faith. Again, a very tough choice. Reaching Touch means for one Prayer you can affect two Heroes, and Greater protection of Faith granting a whopping +4 bonus to Evasion are both very appealing. It comes down to if you want more healing or to simply not be hit in the first place!

Finally at level 8 the Priest may select either Greater Touch or Favored by the Gods. Greater Touch grants a bounce to Healing Touch which if you took Reaching Touch means it could be jumping to two additional Heroes! Favored by the Gods on the other hand, is an insurance plan for your Priest. The first time they would get Knocked out, place a marker in the square they had occupied and on their next Activation they are placed in an Open Square within Short Range of the Token with 1 HP and the Stunned affliction. You can’t keep a good Priest down! Obviously both are very strong and it comes down to preference. More healing is always amazing but a get out of death free card on your healer is also great. In PvP particularly, healers often get targeted first so this Feat can help you recover from a mistake that would have taken your Priest out of play.

Playing Brother Boldstand

Brother Boldstand is a very fun Hero to play, and one you will find yourself adding to your Party very frequently. As anyone who plays MMOs knows, never leave home without a healer! In Blood Throne, if you do not have access to the Priest it isn’t the end of the world as you have several other secondary healing options, and of course offense is the best defense as if you just KO all the Monsters right away you don’t have to worry about healing. 

That said, Brother Boldstand will be a fixture in many Parties. He is durable with 15 HP to start, and medium Armor. His Evasion is a lowish 3 though, so you don’t want him stuck in with a bunch of Monsters if you can avoid it. Thankfully, as he is equipped with an Incense Maul, he has Reach, meaning his range is greater than most. This helps overcome his relatively low Movement of 4 and to stay near the Martial Heroes he typically will want to advance up the board with. 

On the first turn you will typically be throwing up buffs on allies, then cautiously advancing behind the tank Heroes, keeping them healed up and either bashing stray Monsters with his Maul or zapping them with Winds of Judgement. As he has a very respectable Accuracy of 3 and power of 2, he can pack a wallop in combat, you just want to avoid situations where he will be hit back full force. Comically, in play testing we have had more than a few games where Brother Boldstand ended up taking out the most opposing models! If you have the right board position and he can charge in to finish models off with a good smack from his Maul or a snipe with Winds of Judgement he can be surprisingly good at dealing damage.

As he has both the Combat Casting and Mule level 1 General Feats he has a great deal of utility. Combat Casting lets you make Casting Actions while engaged by opposing models without triggering Attacks of Opportunity, so he can get into combat without fear of having his Prayers shut down. Mule lets him ignore the movement penalty of his Medium Armor and also allows him to carry an additional Objective. This means you can have your Martial heroes focus on fighting without using up actions to secure objectives, and Brother Boldstand can scoop them up as he follows behind.

Best of all though, as a Hearth Gnome, Brother Boldstand has an incredible Heritage Ability: Obsessive. As with all Heritage Abilities, this is a once per game skill that lets the Gnome use the same Special Action twice in an Activation. It is hard to express how strong this is. Being able to double heal, or use Winds of Judgement twice is just incredibly strong. There are limitations though, you cannot use it for a Reactive Action or use a Once Per Game ability twice, and Simple Actions count as a Standard Action when used a second time, but this is without a doubt one of the best Heritage Skills in the game. When building custom Heroes, Hearth Gnomes can make absolutely brutal offensive spellcasters as being able to double down on a strong spell can be game winning.

Playing Against Brother Boldstand

While very well rounded and reasonably durable, Brother Boldstand is not the fastest Hero and is vulnerable to anything that slows his Movement. He is also vulnerable to strong, focused attacks. A dedicated melee Hero or Monster can take him out quickly if he gets caught. 

Heroes like Grey Wolf are not as effective against Brother Boldstand as it is extremely unlikely to take him out in a single shot, allowing him to simply heal on his turn. Likewise with Dalnon the Dashing--who normally obliterates support Heroes--Brother Boldstand due to having Medium Armor will take far less damage from the Rogue (or any dual wielding opponent). You want to hit him with a Hero like Kijo who if she can swing twice on him, with her Two-Handed weapon which specializes in overcoming armor, can just KO him in one Activation. 


Likewise, Inquisitor Kalth is amazing against any magic user, being able to stop them from using their Special Actions leaving the little Gnome to simply smack you with his Maul.

However you plan to go about it, you want to try and eliminate the healer early in the game to deny your opponent all the extra HP they would otherwise be able to count on.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed learning more about the Priest Class in Blood Throne. When making a custom Priest you have a lot of options for how you want to go about it. A speedy but relatively fragile Elf Priest perhaps, that runs around keeping others in the fight, or perhaps a slow and tanky Dwarf Priest that wades right into the thick of battle? The choice is yours! Next week we will finish up the Core Classes with the Druid, the DPS specialist of the Arcane Classes.

Reece Robbins
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