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<blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 4637605" data-attributes="member: 19675">Personally, I always thought of the Paladin as the &quot;Holy Warrior&quot; and have no problem expanding the concept to other alignments, even though the majority of holy warriors in fiction &amp; legend tend to be on the &quot;Good&quot; side of things.Where the Paladin/Cleric thing went off the rails in D&amp;D, IMHO, was when the Cleric got to be a holy warrior as well.&nbsp; Historically speaking, the &quot;fighting priests&quot; of the Western religions tended to be warriors first, and who had taken special religious vows, usually so that they could administer sacraments to each other when no &quot;true&quot; priest was present.&nbsp; In a sense, they had much in common with the &quot;Eastern&quot; monk.The real Western priest rarely ventured away from his parish or monastery, and if translated into D&amp;D should have been more like a Wizard with a different spell list, possibly still able to wear Light (maybe Medium) Armor, use simple weapons, and have a poor BAB.Even as we look further afield into other, non-Christian faiths- like the Sikh, for example- most religions that had a tradition of fighting holy men still had a dichotomy between the warrior types and the ones whose responsibilities were teaching the holy writ.&nbsp; The warriors may have had religious training, but they weren't fully priests.&nbsp; Likewise, the priests may have had some martial training, but they weren't real warriors by any stretch of the imagination.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dannyalcatraz, post: 4637605, member: 19675"] Personally, I always thought of the Paladin as the "Holy Warrior" and have no problem expanding the concept to other alignments, even though the majority of holy warriors in fiction & legend tend to be on the "Good" side of things. Where the Paladin/Cleric thing went off the rails in D&D, IMHO, was when the Cleric got to be a holy warrior as well. Historically speaking, the "fighting priests" of the Western religions tended to be warriors [B]first[/B], and who had taken special religious vows, usually so that they could administer sacraments to each other when no "true" priest was present. In a sense, they had much in common with the "Eastern" monk. The real Western priest rarely ventured away from his parish or monastery, and if translated into D&D should have been more like a Wizard with a different spell list, possibly still able to wear Light (maybe Medium) Armor, use simple weapons, and have a poor BAB. Even as we look further afield into other, non-Christian faiths- like the Sikh, for example- most religions that had a tradition of fighting holy men still had a dichotomy between the warrior types and the ones whose responsibilities were teaching the holy writ. The warriors may have had religious training, but they weren't fully priests. Likewise, the priests may have had some martial training, but they weren't real warriors by any stretch of the imagination. [/QUOTE]

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