Well, I was planning on saying something on the other thread, but it must have been closed while I was sleeping or at class. I'll try not to let it happen again.
I recall someone commenting that fighting multiple creatures weakens Harm. In my experience, that's not the case. In a battle against multiple opponents Harm truly shines. Most people should be familar with the idea that it's better to do all the damage to one target, to quickly remove him from the battle and prevent any damage he'd deal, as opposed to spreading damage out and not killing anyone. Naturally, if you can kill lots of guys at once, that's good too. However, if you're dishing out 90 damage total, and the enemies are 4 80 HP fighters, then it's usually better to drop one enemy than bother all of them.
With Harm, you can have coordinated attacks on one enemy, then can essentially have double focused fire, as the Harming cleric drops another. For example, in concluding battle of my game last year, our group of 7 people of about 11th level faced Nighwalker, a Nightmare with some kind of template, and a Purple Worm. It's been awhile, but I think the battle opened with my cleric dropping a Flamestrike on the 2 night-thingies and the wizard throwing mass Haste. We had no skilled ranged attacked, so the fighter rogue, paladin, ranger, and barbarian didn't do much. The sorceress might have cast Fly on some people. Round 2, the Nightwalker charged me, freaks out a number of characters with its despair aura, and breaks some cheap potions. The Purple Worm emerges from the ground near my cleric and misses. Partial charges+full attacks from the fighters tear into the Nightwalker, and the wizard wastes a Disentegrate, and our sorceress throws some evocation spell at the Nightmare. My cleric has been eaten my a T-rex, and was almost devoured by a Remohaz a few sessions ago - creatures that attempt to eat him face the full fury of Lathandar. A Harm and Searing Light quickly remove the Purple Worm from the equation. With that threat removed, there isn't really a secondary threat to distract the fighters. With a Foehunter-undead in the group, the Nightshade doesn't last long. Harming one foe essentially makes the battle more like 2 seperate encounters, so it's much easier.
Oh yeah, I join SHINY too.
