As in the topic, what stats would you recommend for a Sigmar initate? A fighting priest (shield + weapon)

I picked up 3-3-3 for physical, since this gives 3 basic defence actions and 2-4-4 for mental. But perhaps willpower should be 5, since it powers spells? I guess I could lower agility and scrounge 2 points somewhere else…

The only thing I would keep in mind is that increasing stats above 4 at a later stage is quite frustrating, as you have to save your advances for such a long time, and (for in-career advances) this eats up a lot of the valuable open advances, that you could otherwise use for actions, skills etc. That would speak for raising your main stats high enough already in the beginning.

BUT any stat with a value of 2 is a serious problem, and, for example, artificially dumbing down a priest character’s intelligence for min-maxing purposes could be really unconvincing role-play wise (at least as long as you imagined your character as being somewhat clever and observant).

The main rule of early survival (and basic resistance against the influences of terror and chaos), is to have at least 3 for Toughness and Willpower!

Hi,

Agree with Ozean.

Primarily this comes down to what kind of warrior priest you really want to play? This for me is more important than "what is the best build?"

I finished a long term campaign last year with a Sigmarite priest involved from start to finish. The player pretty much picked 3s across the board with 4 in strength. He then kitted out with skills and action cards, and pretty much bought more skills and action cards as he progressed. The character was devastating in melee, and very capable in social encounters. If you have OoW a Sigmarite Priest will be awesome in combat anyway so my advice would be to spread a decent line in stats and enjoy the diversity on skill options and "whack him with a hammer" action cards.

To add, the player in question was a roleplayer not a munchkin. At times he was so disinterested in spending exp I forcably told him to spend the six he had accrued to catch up with the rest of the group.

Above all have fun!

Unknown said:

Well, if you want a warrior priest of Sigmat go for that

St: 3 To: 3 Ag: 3 Int: 3 WP: 4 Fel: 4 (20 creation points)

3 creation points in Skills for 4 + 2 specialization: WS (take a specialization), acquiere and train Invocation (take a specialization), acquiere Piety.

0 creation points into talents

1 or 2 creation points into wealth. If your GM is a bit tight rewarding players with gold and items, take 2 creation points in wealth and pick up a chain mail and hand weapon and shield, or a great weapon depending the style you prefer. If your GM is easy on rewards, go for 1 creation points in wealth, but I have found that starting the game with a chain mail is crucial if your GM does not handle gold or armours easely.

0 or 1 creation points in action cards.

-During the Initiate career rise first To and then St up to 4 as non-career advances (that is a total of 10 xp). Tougness is a super important characteristic in this game, it will give you a lot of survivability. Bear in mind, that rank 1 invocations are not that hard to cast, and they do not need that much favour. You should be more than ok for a while. So, if you want to be a Warrior Priest, priorize St and To, go for it soon.

Before changing to Disciple career try to train a second rank in Invocation  (1 xp) and one or two ranks in Piety. As Initiate you have 2 advances in actions, which together with the fixed action advance that every career have, makes a total of 3. Spend them ALL, and pick up your action cards wisely, they are the key to have an capable character in combat. This of course means that you will stay quite a long time in the Initiate career, but this is not a bad thing at all, there is no need to rush through careers. Remeber that spell goes by character rank and not by career.

Finally, my advice is that once you are a Disciple, train Resilience to rank 1 as an out of career advance ASAP, it is vital to survive in the Old World. I would also go as soon as possible to WS to rank 2, but it is not as urgent as Resilience.

Enjoy the game

Cheers,

Yepes

I'd recommend the stat set from Liber Fanatica #7  :)

jh

Thank you all for the advice. I'm far from min-maxing, was just wondering if 4 WP is enough for casting. But your answers provoke more questions:

From the book I understand that to take a skill at character creation I need this skill on the class sheet. And ininitate doesn't have WS, so this would cost extra! The same for training an advanced skill. I decided to take 3 skills: piety, invocation and education (since we need one person in the group to read and write!) - and I understand that my specialisation is lost since none of the skills is trained, just acquired.

And why you don't recommend taking actions(spells?) on char creation?

I may be in the minority here, but I think you can do fine with a 3 Willpower. Personally, I would bump that 4 over the the physical side (Strength seems like the obvious choice). Otherwise, there ability-wise that differentiates him/her from any other non-warrior priest. 

A lot of this depends on what kind of character you want. Is this a WARRIOR-priest or a warrior-PRIEST (really warrior-CASTER, since not all priests cast blessings). 

Skie said:

Every religion gives two extra career skills, in the case of Sigmar priest this are WS and Discipline. You can find this in Signs of Faith.

Is not that I do not recommend taking action cards, it is just that with zero creation points you already get 1 action card, and during game action cards are easy to get, 1 action card = 1 xp, while things like gold, weapons and armour may be way more difficult. It all depends on your GM.

By the way, which is the party composition?

Cheers,

Yepes

This is the build I went for. You can see the character creation under the "career" link on the left.

https://sites.google.com/site/sigmarpriest/

The party consists of a halfling ratcatcher (might be a chef), human thief, bright wizard tobe, dwarf mercenary and a wardancer. All this thinking is giving me headache already (it's so much easier to be a GM!), but I'll probably stick with wp 4, get 4 skills and save on talents and action cards.

One more question: armour wise is soak value better than defence? Chainmail has 3 soak and no def, but costs 1g.

Skie said:

Then, let me advice you to forget your training and adquisition of Education. The Wizard will have yes or yes a higer Inteligence score than you will ever have, since for him Int is his most important characteristic. Save the point for something else like WS training.

I think that sticking to WP 4 is good idea.

Skie said:

Soak is very important, far more important than Def. That is also one of the reasons why Toughness is one (if not the most) important characteristic of the game. If you can choose between Chainmail Soak:3 Def:0 or Chain shirt Soak:2 Def:1 Definitively go for the chainmail. Nevertheless, the chain shirt is a rather good alternative.

Have fun!

Yepes

Yepesnopes said:

Oh no!  NEVER let a wizard be the only interpreter of written stuff in your party. They are always scheming, following their blasphemous little plans, succumbing to the ruinous powers etc. The written word needs to be interpreted by a wise and benevolent follower of Sigmar, so that he may reign in confusion among the sheep! :D

ozean said:

A priest who can't read! I can't disappoint Sigmar like that! 

I'll pick piety, invocation, education and first aid.

Anyway, I'll try to forget about number crunching and have fun dying for Sigmar. Thank you all for advice!

I believe you actually need to Train, not just Aquire Education to be able to read.

Also pretty sure you need to have Trained the skill before you specilize.

Note that priests don't start with Piety and Invocation acquired. If you don't spring for those then you aren't using any blessings.