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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9689033" data-attributes="member: 907">The D&D-style cleric is very specific to D&D and things based on it. Looking at the fantasy genre as a whole, you'll find plenty of examples of fighters, rogues, and various forms of magic-users, but pretty much the only places where you'll find "user of holy magic largely reminiscent of Biblical miracles, and often heavily armed and armored" as an archetype are those directly descended from D&D. Magical healing is more often, when it exists at all, considered the same as other magic. This is often a problem when adapting non-D&D settings to D&D rules – in D&D the cleric serves a vital role as the strongest healer, but the source material often doesn't have anything of the sort.Religious magic will often fall into one of two kinds. One is magic that's much more closer tied to a particular deity. A priest of an Earth god might be able to reshape stone, or walk through it, or things like that, but they likely won't be able to heal. If they want to hurt you, they'd be more likely to throw a rock at you than a beam of holy light. The other is when the religion is a social source of magic – the magic itself isn't religious, it's just that the religion/cult is where they teach that particular form of magic.Religion itself tends to serve a more social function. A priest is respected because of their place in society, and they are often highly educated and thus make good advisors, but no-one expects them to bust out a mace and deliver glowy smites on demand.In ye olden days, Harmonism was mostly about control with a bit of support IIRC. Spiritism was more along the lines of Victorian-style occultism, and sort of Necromancy-adjacent.</blockquote>

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