TwoSix
"Diegetics", by L. Ron Gygax
The amount of time I spent playing S&P does probably qualify me for a medal or something.You mean you'd jump on it like a heroic person might jump on a grenade, protecting the rest of us from the danger, or . . .?
I did play one S&P game, back in 96-97. Naturally I played a cleric! That was not an entirely balanced rules system.
But no, I do think using the cleric (the Spells and Magic version, specifically) as a chassis is actually a way to do "classless" AD&D in something close to a balanced manner. I think there's an undeniable lure to using a "build-your-own-class" system in a class-level game, it feels like you're using a cheat code after you spend so much time using the predefined classes. I think the modularity of Prestige Class leveling in 3.5 and archetypes in Pathfinder are popular for similar reasons.