Priest options providing Honor and Prestige

[JPierreD]

Title: Priest options providing Honor and Prestige
Summary: Have preaching or other Priest options give H/P, not unlike the Courtier options.
Details: Currently you have a H/P requirement to become a Priest, but after you turn into one you lose most options to gain them. Doing civil or bureaucrat work and even looting gives honor (lol) and prestige. From a game mechanics point of view it would make sense that also preaching, building shrines and the rest of the Religion options gave them. From a RP perspective there is comparable (if not higher) honor and prestige in converting pagans/heretics/lost souls to your religion (specially nobles through private sermons, though that could be exploited) than KBRing, having your soldiers repair the infrastructure or supervising the administration of a region.
Benefits: Priest is a RP-oriented class, but becoming and staying one is severely limited by game mechanics. One has to fight in order to acquire H/P before being able to take up the robes, and if one steps down from a position, gets protested or does anything that costs H/P, well, regaining it is usually a pain. It would make the class somewhat less unattractive. The sacrifices to become a Priest seem a little bit too heavy nowadays.
Possible Exploits: It could be used as a way to raise the H/P in times of peace, but that would be easily solved by having the amount of H/P provided not be superior to the one a Courtier gets. Extra hours per day of Priests over Courtiers considered.

[Indirik]

While Tom has long been against anything like this, I do have to agree that some possibilities for gaining prestige as a priest would be nice. Noble priests should be very prestigious, even if they don't do the things that are traditionally considered "honorable" in BattleMaster.

[Draco Tanos]

It makes sense from a historical viewpoint as, well, try to find a Church position that wasn't prestigious in medieval Europe. 

[JPierreD]

It makes sense from a historical viewpoint as, well, try to find a Church position that wasn't prestigious in medieval Europe.

And BM religions emulate something closer to classic religions than medieval ones. Thus I see the Priest Class to something resembling the Roman Pontiffs or the Celtic Druids, both of which were extremely prestigious.

[Colin Ealdwine]

Also, It's stupidly hard for new players upon becoming a priest as soon as they can to get a sub class such as diplomat, realistically requiring them to wait to get diplomat, then convert main class to priest.

[Meneldur]

I agree with this completely! The restriction encourages players to keep switching back and forth from the priest class, which in my opinion is far more un-medieval than the notion that priests can gain honor and prestige (in fact some Bishops were very active and well known in medieval politics).

Plus I know from experience that it is very annoying when you've been an elder (and sometimes effective leader) of BM's largest religions, but still have less H/P than an ordinary knight and therefore can hold no rank higher than region lord, even in theocracies. and cannot even contact foreign rulers.

[Thunthorn]

I agree as well. My senior adventurer has much higher honour/prestige than my nobleborn priest today.

My suggestion would be that the number of followers of a religion would periodically generate a small amount of honour and prestige that would be handed out to the nobleborn priesthood in proportion to their rank, with certain caps on it...

[fodder]

how do you know which priest did what preaching?

[Thunthorn]

You don't. My thought was that the religion in itself would generate a certain amount of honour or prestige regardless whether the priest is out preaching or is staying at the temple chasing acolytes. It shouldn't be a lot but large religions should generate more than small cults.

[fodder]

eh.. so why does a priest who just joined and haven't done squat get same h/p as the one who started it all, or any h/p at all?

[Thunthorn]

He wouldn't. Higher ranking priests would get a larger share of the honor prestige the religion generates and there should be a cap so priests in religions with few priests doesn't get too much too quickly.

But yes, just being a priest in a large and influential religion should generate at least prestige.