Shattered Kingdoms

Learning second attack early is a viable tactic. Doubling your damage output for a level's worth of XP is worth it.

One could make a reasonable argument that a character in the hands of any novice, will be hard to level. I dumped 150 hours into my first character, and never got him past Master. (Although, that was when leveling was a bit easier to do solo). Sure, priests are not easy. If your looking for them to be modified, I might favor a low level attack spell. Otherwise, all one really needs to do is:

1) Get a weapon, and have it enchanted. There are a few n00b weapons that can be enchanted very well without blowing up.
2) If you can, use magical vestments. You'll find this will help you considerably.
3) Armor and bless may not be huge benefits, but they will help in the amount of damage you do, and the amount you receive.
4) Have a decent strength and dex. I know, by first hand, that this is important. When I tried to roll another priest (pure rezz b****), I had a tough time leveling with my weak strength and horrible dex.
5) Get a pet if you can. NPCs will often switch from your pet to you if your not in second row, but at the very least, you'll absorb much less damage overall.
6) Get in a group with someone else. This'll give you RP time, as well as help you avoid taking alot of damage.

The only sad thing, is that there are no easily acquirable n00b reach maces anymore. IMHO, whoever pulled those made one of the dumbest mistakes in the game....

With all that said, my true thoughts are: priests are one of the few classes who can solo up to Master without a problem (if they're done right). I've seen non-vetertan players do it before (and I did it myself ). After that, yeah, its though, but its tough for warriors as well... Casters at least have the benefit of getting XP off the spells they cast.

sleeper

HEAR! HEAR!

Well this is a bigger problem these days than it was when I started playing. There used to be a handful of places to level where a priest could use one of the spells in his amatur arsinal to deal damage. If players think about it, It is simple enough to figure out. Now that I think again there are places to train for a priest that they can deal extra damage in starting as low as novice... Damn I wish I'd had thought about that, Leveling my last priest would had been hella easy.

QFT

everything is SO much easier when flamestrike comes around

They've actually made up for that, sleeper. There are three locations from which one can easily acquire maces now. They are of good material too. Check some of the new areas. Some more wouldn't hurt though, agreed.

The bold part is what everyone seems to be missing. Could any noob coming to the game for the first time play a priest? Right now, the answer is no. The answer to that question for <insert class name here> is the same for most of the classes on SK currently except maybe for mercs unless you make some IC connections with knowledgeable players pretty quick.

The only counterargument seems to be that 'priests aren't supposed to do a lot of damage'. Granted, in general, that's true, barring your heavy armor priests. My suggestion then would be not to give them a damage spell, but give them some other early, balanced boon that isn't religion dependant (amateur/novice level).

Summon weapon - summon a level dependant weapon of a type favored by your god. Pantheist priests would get a mace. Gives slight weapon bonus over practice gear if trained at level 1, fades on timer. Downside - you could lose your weapon during combat if it wasn't coded correctly. I'm sure someone like D can handle this, and it'd be a step towards religion-specific spells.

Dweomer - grants a slight bonus to the object it is cast on, like a minor version of enchant spells. Can only be cast once per items but as you level the bonuses get progressively better and may add effects to weapons like poison, disease, elemental damage, etc. Would help priests tie in better with their knightly counterparts and add another interesting utility spell.

Just two ideas off the top of my head. They're not perfect or refined, just thrown out as quick suggestions to avoid an early damage spell.

I think that weapons other than polemace should get a buff for not being polemaces.

PS And all NPCs should have skillsets 5 levels lower than they do now.

Give priests and paladins a 'turn undead' spell that specifically just does damage against undead + fears them, and nothing else.