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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vicaring" data-source="post: 6829140" data-attributes="member: 6803850">In the early game, the reason why Clerics were limited to blunt weapons was because of the very specific Christian forbiddance of clergy to shed blood. In the crusades, most notably the Teutonic Crusades against the Lithuanians, there are documented instances of clergy actually fighting on the battlefield, and guess what, they used blunt weapons.See above. And no, while "holy orders of knighthood", such as the Knights Templar or Knights Hospitaller or Holy Equestrian Order of whatever weren't forbidden from using bladed weapons, Clergy most certainly were.While you raise a valid point here, in that this is indeed what the game shows, I would argue against that interpretation. Cleric does not equal Priest. It never has, and it never will, for one reason: the character classes are heroic, and are not suitable representations of the everyman. I'm sorry, but Father John down at Saint Matthew's isn't a Cleric, as represented in this game. But he most certainly is a Priest.And that's the point that I think people are trying to raise here: the Cleric, as portrayed in this game, is already a Holy Warrior, and once you go with one of the warrior-esque domains, he becomes even moreso. What then is the point of the Paladin?It was a lot simpler back in Red Box D&D days, when there weren't any Paladins. Clerics were the Paladins. Everybody knew that. The problem was in the blunt weapons. People asked why their "holy warriors" should be limited in weapon selection.So when 1e came around, TSR decided, instead of just getting rid of the blunt weapons business, they'd introduce the Paladin, who would really truly be a knight-class. There's your Knight Templars right there. But the problem then became, what then were the Clerics? Easy: the Clerics were Priestly heal-bots. You need one in your party, but only really to heal everybody else. You needed to visit temples, but only because one of your party members kicked the proverbial can. It wasn't elegant, but it worked.Then 2e came around, and they started introducing things like "Domains" and the such, where Clerics were entirely different animals, and one Cleric only vaguely resembled another Cleric, and it was all based on which gods they rather arbitrarily worshipped. Some of them worshipped war gods like Ares, and could then use spears, and got kickass war spells. And this was good, because Clerics were back to being something other than just heal-bots or mobile self-refreshing heal-potions. But, like always, by "fixing" one thing, something else breaks.You can see where I'm going. As soon as they did this, when they got rid of the ridiculous "blunt weapons only" rule, that's when this existential crisis occurred for the Paladin, because seriously, what is the difference between a Cleric (holy warrior) with a sword and a Paladin (holy warrior) with a sword? Quite frankly, it's high time to be done with this entire business, which has been argued now for 4 consecutive editions of D&D. The "blunt weapons only" rule was the only reason for the Paladin to exist as a class, lore-wise. Give Clerics access to those sweet smite spells, and kill the Paladin concept. If you must have a "Knightly" class in your game, because Holy Equestrian Orders of Purple Dragonfly Knights of the Round Table Templars wicked cool yeah then strip the class of its clerical magic and make a Cavalier.Correct. And was a Holy Warrior, as evidenced by the fact that he could wear heavy armor, which has been a feature of the Cleric class since day one.The Cleric has never been a Priest, even if they are sometimes rather lazily portrayed that way (or rather, the revese, that entire priesthoods are portrayed as being Clerics).</blockquote>

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