So, It felt so strange when I've read the rules for priest spellcasting that I'm wondering if I got it right.

So, you decide which blessing you cast first, then make your check, then the spell draws all available power until it has enought to be casted. But what happens if you don't have enought power? You can curry favor or if you're under equilibrium, you can just wait for enought power to be drew to the spell. Ok fine, but what bugs me is that you actually have to make your check before the spell is cast. So if you got a sucessfull result but very bad side effects(few chaos stars and banes), what keeps you from just cancelling the spell ? Also, logistically, it also means you have to remember the dices results since the spell will be casted in later rounds; wait, I should right the result down?! That seems like unnecessary bookkeeping, no?

Mechanically that's how it works. Story wise, because you can't just tell your god "Umm you know what, that favor I was just bugging you about, ummm never mind." or perhaps "dear god - psyche!", perhaps you'd prefer a simple "-not!". As for keeping track of things you decide the effects at the time of the casting based on the die roll. So you don't need to track what dice you rolled just that you are doing the 2nd success line and the sigmar's comet result for example.

As a house rule we put any boon/bane/comet/star effects that don't modify the spell effect into action right away, so it's less to keep track of.

you can cancel a spell you are holding onto while waiting for enough favour to complete it, but it costs you stress and possibly fatigue..see aborting a blessing ToB p32

Kryyst said:

Like I said, It's unnecessary bookeeping to me. Wouldn't be easier to decide what spell to cast, accumulate power, then make the check ?

Yep it would make it easier, but then it wouldn't make it really any different then casting arcane spells either. Which is one thing I dig about the differences in casting between arcane and divine. Wizards storm up power and release it in a spell, priests pray to their god and until they've curried enough favor their god doesn't release it. Thematically it makes sense. But I don't think anything would really break if you wanted to change the rules in your game.

I think provided the Priest stated which blessing is to be cast before he starts currying favour, then i think that's fine, and probably mechanically are the same as the current rules ,except the book keeping.

Because the blessing needs to be stated, it is still different to Wizard spell casting (which to be fair, you state in you original post Silverwave, but because you didn't emphasise that point, i think Kryyst may not have spotted it..)

Thanks for your toughts. I think I'll try making the casting check when the spell have accumulated enough power (is ready to be casted). Will it be fair if I allow the priest to retry the casting check on the next round on a fail? Priest's spell can't fail? (since as RAW you make the check first so if you fail, the spell isn't casted yet so nothing happens?).

Besides, I don't think priests and wizards spells need to differentiate mechanically (but that could be a plus), as long as they're different thematically. But then, are they? I'm new to WH world (since few months) but wizards and priests spells don't seems to differentiate very much (I'm sure I'm totally wrong here, correct me please ). Seems to me like some theme criss-cross each others. There's much similarity with Priests or Morr and Wizards of the Amethyst order, and with priests of Taal and Amber Order wizards. What about priests of Shallya and Light Order (or even Jade Order, which theme is Life)? Or Grey Wizards and Priests of Ranald? Even between orders, Jade Order and Amber Order seems a lot alike (I know the difference between them, but thematically, it's all about "nature").
I remember an interesting letter from Gavius of the Grey Order that you can find at page 7 of Tome of Blessings which talks about the similarity of priests and wizards's magic, that could possibly derivates all from the same source : the Aethyr; as if priests were in fact pretty much like wizards. An interesting view on the subject!

Still, mechanically, the game uses different action cards, so they ARE different.

All in all, I think what the designers tried to tell us is that casting wizards' spells is more dangerous but more versatile (you draw your power then decide what spell you cast with it) while priests' spells are more predictable (as in more safe since you can't overchannel power as much, but while you accumulate power to cast a spell, the situation may change but you can't change what spell your casting).

Now, I certainly contradicted myself few times in this post, which speaks a lot about how confused I may be about all that stuff !

If a priest fails to invoke a blessing they lose 1 favour, ToB p32

You could then let them try again until they get a success roll and then they burn the favour accumulated, which is still a slightly better deal than wizards, but if the priest doesn't try again but takes some other action you'd then need to work out what they do with their accumulated favour.

As in the RAW they would never have accumulated it, i think this is where you will step away most for the RAW with what-ever house rule you end up with.

As it is, Priests get it pretty easy and the chance for the to "waste" actions is limited, whereas a wizard could spend a few rounds accumulating power only for the spell to fail and those previous rounds to effectively have been "wasted".

pumpkin said:

Priest can accumulate favour. Well, the only way is to decide to cast a spell then accumulate favour and while using Curry favour action, you can generate more favour than what the spell needs (let's say you cast a 4 favor spell and you have 3, you use Curry Favour action and generates 3 favour, you get 2 extra favour). In that case, I guess you keep the extra favour, no? (don't have my books now, can't confirm).

But I understand what you mean : In the case you miss your casting check after the spell have accumulated enough favour, you can thereafter curry favour and gain extra favour and you can do so as long as you miss your casting check. Still, let's say you get 3 extra favour. You lose 1 from missing your casting check, you still have enough to cast the spell, so you won't try to Curry Favour; you'll try to cast that spell (but you may do both, still costing you 1 extra purple dice)! Then again, you'll be wasting your actions doing nothing but accumulating extra favour and loosing precious rounds failing your spell. I don't think it's in any way broken.