How Did I Become a Grognard?

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION], what is the thematic difference between a classic D&D cleric (not an anti-cleric) and a classic D&D paladin?

Telling me that one is derived most directly from Hammer and Sir Fang and that one is derived most directly from Poul Anderson (which I know, as probably does everyone posting in this particular thread) doesn't answer that question.

 

[Zardnaar]

Paladins a LG holy champion and Knight.

Now that no longer matters the difference is a lot less. Ranger has similar problems.

 

[GreyLord]

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION], what is the thematic difference between a classic D&D cleric (not an anti-cleric) and a classic D&D paladin?

Telling me that one is derived most directly from Hammer and Sir Fang and that one is derived most directly from Poul Anderson (which I know, as probably does everyone posting in this particular thread) doesn't answer that question.

Not Lowkey and not even certain what the debate really is about...BUT...

From what I gather...

The Cleric originally was supposed to give another spin. By that, I mean that they had the Fighting Man and they had a Magic-User. However, they wanted something that was both, but not as powerful. Thus, they made the Cleric. It had better fighting ability than a Magic-User but not quite as great as the Fighting Man. It could cast spells, but they were not as much attack spells and were useful in other manners.

Later, as other classes were added, the Cleric still remained, but became more of the Holy Man/Priest type idea, but the type that went to Battle.

You could say the backgrounds were similar between the Cleric and the Paladin. The Cleric would be more like the Bishops in history that went to battle. Clergy men that were related to nobility actually did, at times kit up in full armor and horseback and went to battle. They could be seen as those Clergy that went to battle alongside the Crusaders, providing holy ordinances to them, but at the same time also readily kitted to fight.

Another way to look at it would be the legends of Charlemagne. While Charlemagne had 12 Paladins, I think the Cleric would have been based more on the idea of the Bishop that fought alongside Charlemagne while the Paladin would be more akin to the generic Charlemagne Paladin. This means that Paladins were a Knight and a Noble in every accounting for the idea, however they were also ordained or blessed by the Church to be defenders of the Faith and thus in legend supposedly also had the hand of the Divine to protect them and lead their arms in battle.

Thus the Battle Clergy were direct conduits and could do all the holy ordinances or items for worship in the field, but also were doughty warriors. On the otherhand, the Paladins were more like protectors of the church (even as they were also landed gentry in the case of Charlemagne) with Charlemagne being the prime example of a Paladin (who was blessed [some would say by force] as the Holy Roman Emperor and Defender of the Faith).

Others built on these ideas, but I think it was this understanding of myth and legend as taught in schools back in the day of Gygax and Arneson (and others) that probably inspired the backgrounds. Of course, there were also the novels and books, but they also had a common denominator that the rest of those of that generation also understood in relation to where these ideas were coming from.

 

[pemerton]

Paladins a LG holy champion and Knight.

And clerics, originally, are holy champions (cf anti-clerics) and are heavily armed and armoured (much like knights). So much so that, in his PHB, Gygax describes them as emulating the mediaeval orders of religious knighthood.

The Cleric originally was supposed to give another spin. By that, I mean that they had the Fighting Man and they had a Magic-User. However, they wanted something that was both, but not as powerful. Thus, they made the Cleric. It had better fighting ability than a Magic-User but not quite as great as the Fighting Man. It could cast spells, but they were not as much attack spells and were useful in other manners.

This is all true, but is all about mechanical design. It doesn't tell us what the theme/archetype of the cleric is.

Later, as other classes were added, the Cleric still remained, but became more of the Holy Man/Priest type idea, but the type that went to Battle.

This I'm less sure about. In my copy of Men & Magic, clerics are said to "gain some of the advantages from both of the other two classes" but they are clearly holy warriors: their level titles are religious (eg Priest, Patriarch); they can build castles and rule territory and collect "tithes"; but when they build castles they "receive help from 'above'" and attract a group of "faithful" and "fanatically loyal" men.

Also, "Clerics of 7th level and greater are either 'Law' or 'Chaos', and . . . f a Patriarch receiving the above benefits changes sides, all the benefits will immediately be removed!"

In other words, clerics were holy warriors (and anti-clerics were evil cultist types) from the start.

You could say the backgrounds were similar between the Cleric and the Paladin.

That's exactly what I'm saying. They're both heavily armed and armoured; they both turn the undead; they both heal with a touch; they both detect and ward off evil. The mechanical implementation isn't identical (eg a 7th level cleric can turn sticks to snakes, whereas a paladin has to be 15th - I'm using the AD&D charts here) but that doesn't go to theme/archetype.

The Cleric would be more like the Bishops in history that went to battle. Clergy men that were related to nobility actually did, at times kit up in full armor and horseback and went to battle. They could be seen as those Clergy that went to battle alongside the Crusaders, providing holy ordinances to them, but at the same time also readily kitted to fight.

Another way to look at it would be the legends of Charlemagne. While Charlemagne had 12 Paladins, I think the Cleric would have been based more on the idea of the Bishop that fought alongside Charlemagne while the Paladin would be more akin to the generic Charlemagne Paladin. This means that Paladins were a Knight and a Noble in every accounting for the idea, however they were also ordained or blessed by the Church to be defenders of the Faith and thus in legend supposedly also had the hand of the Divine to protect them and lead their arms in battle.

Thus the Battle Clergy were direct conduits and could do all the holy ordinances or items for worship in the field, but also were doughty warriors. On the otherhand, the Paladins were more like protectors of the church (even as they were also landed gentry in the case of Charlemagne) with Charlemagne being the prime example of a Paladin (who was blessed [some would say by force] as the Holy Roman Emperor and Defender of the Faith).

Mediaeval bishops are the equivalent of nobles in rank and influence (hence the investiture controversy). And in AD&D clerics can be nobles - the paladin class description says that "paladins will take service or form an alliance with lawful good characters, whether players or not, who are clerics or fighters (of noble status)" (PHB p 24).

But more generally, nothing about the cleric as a class tells us that the character has a differenet relationship either to the divine, or to temporal aspects of life, than does the paladin. A particular table could of course play it that way if they wanted to, but it's not implicit in the classes. And while in play a thief is obviously different from a fighter (different armour, different skill set) and a MU is obviously even more different from both of them, in play a cleric and a paladin do the same sorts of things, make the same sorts of contributions: they fight, they provide healing, they detect and ward off evil. Of course a player who chooses one rather than the other is making a mechanical choice to emphasise one or another of those things (better turning and healing as a cleric, better fighting as a paladin), but again that's about implementation, not theme/archetype.

Others built on these ideas, but I think it was this understanding of myth and legend as taught in schools back in the day of Gygax and Arneson (and others) that probably inspired the backgrounds. Of course, there were also the novels and books, but they also had a common denominator that the rest of those of that generation also understood in relation to where these ideas were coming from.

Unless I've misunderstood you, this is very much the same as what I am saying.

 

[Zardnaar]

And clerics, originally, are holy champions (cf anti-clerics) and are heavily armed and armoured (much like knights). So much so that, in his PHB, Gygax describes them as emulating the mediaeval orders of religious knighthood.

This is all true, but is all about mechanical design. It doesn't tell us what the theme/archetype of the cleric is.

This I'm less sure about. In my copy of Men & Magic, clerics are said to "gain some of the advantages from both of the other two classes" but they are clearly holy warriors: their level titles are religious (eg Priest, Patriarch); they can build castles and rule territory and collect "tithes"; but when they build castles they "receive help from 'above'" and attract a group of "faithful" and "fanatically loyal" men.

Also, "Clerics of 7th level and greater are either 'Law' or 'Chaos', and . . . f a Patriarch receiving the above benefits changes sides, all the benefits will immediately be removed!"

In other words, clerics were holy warriors (and anti-clerics were evil cultist types) from the start.

That's exactly what I'm saying. They're both heavily armed and armoured; they both turn the undead; they both heal with a touch; they both detect and ward off evil. The mechanical implementation isn't identical (eg a 7th level cleric can turn sticks to snakes, whereas a paladin has to be 15th - I'm using the AD&D charts here) but that doesn't go to theme/archetype.

Mediaeval bishops are the equivalent of nobles in rank and influence (hence the investiture controversy). And in AD&D clerics can be nobles - the paladin class description says that "paladins will take service or form an alliance with lawful good characters, whether players or not, who are clerics or fighters (of noble status)" (PHB p 24).

But more generally, nothing about the cleric as a class tells us that the character has a differenet relationship either to the divine, or to temporal aspects of life, than does the paladin. A particular table could of course play it that way if they wanted to, but it's not implicit in the classes. And while in play a thief is obviously different from a fighter (different armour, different skill set) and a MU is obviously even more different from both of them, in play a cleric and a paladin do the same sorts of things, make the same sorts of contributions: they fight, they provide healing, they detect and ward off evil. Of course a player who chooses one rather than the other is making a mechanical choice to emphasise one or another of those things (better turning and healing as a cleric, better fighting as a paladin), but again that's about implementation, not theme/archetype.

Unless I've misunderstood you, this is very much the same as what I am saying.

Clerics can be of any alignment, Paladins had better THAC0, aura+ horse etc.

 

[pemerton]

Clerics can be of any alignment, Paladins had better THAC0, aura+ horse etc.

The better THACO is mechanics, not them. The aura is someting a cleric can replicate with a spell - again, that's mechanical, not theme.

The horse is a difference, but because of other strong conventions of play (particularly around dungeon-crawling rather than errantry as the focus of the game) tends strongly towards what the modern designers call a "ribbon".

As far as alignment is concerned, in D&D - as I quoted - clerics had to become either Lawful or Chaotic (anti-clerics/evil high priests). Although AD&D has more alignments it still precludes Neutral clerics (and now from 1st level, not 7th). More generally, the fact that the cleric abilities are all oriented towards a holy rather than unholy champion is only reinforced by two things: (1) the reversal of spells (in Men & Magic, reersing is not even an option: "underlined Clerical spels are reversed by evil Clerics - "evil" here presumably overlaps with Chaotic, the editing in the original rules notoriously being not that tight)) and (2) the need to change the Turn Undead mechanic for evil clerics (in Men & Magic, evil Clerics do not have the turning effect at all; in AD&D there are extensive and complicated rules to tell us how evil clerics are able to command rather than turn the undead).

In modern terms, clerics and evil/chaotic/anti-clerics are really two different classes ("sub-classes") bolted onto the same basic chassis but having different spell lists and different "channel divinity" powers. And they themselves reflect different archteypes (holy warrior vs demonic/cultist warrior).

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The cleric and paladin are essentially the same archetype, especially pre-2nd ed AD&D: heavily armed and armoured warriors who perform miracles, turn away the undead, and heal with a touch. The differences between them are purely mechanical, not thematic. (And no matter how much a fighter is RPed as a paladin, s/he won't heal with a touch.)

So if clerics are played as paladins, then I think they fit right in. Played as priests, and divorced from their cultural/archetypical context, then they make no sense.

Along the same lines of thought, druids really are a MU/wizard variant, not a cleric/paladin variant.

Well, I have argued in various places that the cleric should have been 'split' into a wonder-working spiritualist class and the paladin-like holy warrior (I believe that 4e PHB1 should have presented a cleric which was purely the wonder-worker and left much of what the STR cleric got to being part of the paladin, which should also have had one build). So two A-shaped classes, one the healer and divine wonder worker (might have obviated the Invoker thematically, but maybe not) and one the holy warrior. OD&D could have done this as well, its cleric is basically pretty similar to the 4e one in its own terms, a split between Miracle Max and Sir Galahad (but sadly without a sword).

Anyway, that is my HoML approach, priests are purely a type of wonder working miracle caster and as such you could call them a form of the 'wonder worker' archetype which is usually thought of as 'wizard'.

So, OD&D COULD have been given a fighter, a paladin, and the magic user (gifted with some of the cleric's healing abilities). The rogue was then of course a perfectly good addition, though implementation-wise I am not impressed. 4e at least got that one right!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Etc. etc. etc. it's almost like you didn't read a thing I said. So allow me to re-quote the part at the end, and then you should read the part that I bolded from what you wrote-

"And so the differences are both mechanical (obviously) AND thematic AND in terms of design; because the class design of OD&D which led into 1e was based on a strict class system, and began to be based on the idea of major classes (F/M/C/T) and associated subclasses that varied the major archetype.

Anyway, I don't really understand this point, because it doesn't match at all with the history or how I recall the classes being played or used, or any extant information I can recall in other contemporaneous sources."

Dude, you can retcon whatever you want from observations from other game systems, and from later editions. Good for you. That has nothing to do with a) the price of tea in china, b) the original cleric/paladin conceptions as put forth in OD&D/1e, or c) my point.

You seem to have a really important point for you that isn't matched by the historical record or what people dealt with the time. That said, you can recreate what you want in other editions.

Carry on.

I don't really understand what of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s statements you are actually disagreeing with. You talk about mechanical differences, and Pemerton calls them 'mechanical minutia'. You can assign more or less significance to those, but his point about not being able to tell from the external non-mechanical description of a character which it is still stands!

As for the thematic differences, what exactly are they again? Both classes are holy warriors. They wear heavy armor and engage in melee combat on a regular basis. They can each bolster and heal themselves and their allies.

Admittedly, there ARE mechanical differences, clerics are MUCH better as casters, to the degree that in effect you would be foolish to actually play your D&D cleric as a melee combatant except at low levels where his casting is non-existent or largely used outside combat. Any cleric who hits 5th level becomes, in effect, a sort of armored 'wizard-like' guy with divine overtones. He'll surely continue to wear heavy armor because why not, but he's only likely to engage in melee if he's shot all his spells and gets desperate.

I think the problem with 'the original cleric/paladin conceptions as put forth in OD&D' is that the cleric didn't HAVE a strong conception that was distinct from the paladin's! You can claim it did forever, but there's not much between them, and that largely arguably rests more on a quirk of how half the cleric class becomes useless later on simply because casting is so overwhelmingly effective in D&D!

As I've posted before, IMHO the cleric should have been a branch of 'wizard' effectively, and the paladin been the basic archetype of holy warrior, if you're going to have both. 4e amusingly simply repeated OD&D's mistakes on this point, and both classes suffered accordingly.

 

[pemerton]

IMHO the cleric should have been a branch of 'wizard' effectively, and the paladin been the basic archetype of holy warrior, if you're going to have both. 4e amusingly simply repeated OD&D's mistakes on this point, and both classes suffered accordingly.

I believe that 4e PHB1 should have presented a cleric which was purely the wonder-worker and left much of what the STR cleric got to being part of the paladin, which should also have had one build

I agree that the 4e STR cleric overlaps pretty heavily with the STR paladin; and the WIS cleric overlaps quite a bit with the invoker.

I don't have much experience with the 3E cleric/paladin divide - but comparing 4e to AD&D, it seems to suffer from wanting to preserve a class difference that in AD&D depended quite a bit on minutiae of the alignment rules and similar (eg related paladin class distinctions) rather than honing in clearly on actual thematic differences.

Maybe they were also driven a bit too hard by their conception of distinct combat roles.

 

[GreyLord]

Mediaeval bishops are the equivalent of nobles in rank and influence (hence the investiture controversy). And in AD&D clerics can be nobles - the paladin class description says that "paladins will take service or form an alliance with lawful good characters, whether players or not, who are clerics or fighters (of noble status)" (PHB p 24).

But more generally, nothing about the cleric as a class tells us that the character has a differenet relationship either to the divine, or to temporal aspects of life, than does the paladin. A particular table could of course play it that way if they wanted to, but it's not implicit in the classes. And while in play a thief is obviously different from a fighter (different armour, different skill set) and a MU is obviously even more different from both of them, in play a cleric and a paladin do the same sorts of things, make the same sorts of contributions: they fight, they provide healing, they detect and ward off evil. Of course a player who chooses one rather than the other is making a mechanical choice to emphasise one or another of those things (better turning and healing as a cleric, better fighting as a paladin), but again that's about implementation, not theme/archetype.

In Medieval times there were simple Nobility (Fighters), Knights or those Holy Knights that were either anointed or ordained by the Church (Paladins), and the Priests. Among Priests there were the normal every day priest and then there were the Landowners (Clerics). These Landowners were NOT knights, though they may be nobility by birth. In many instances a second son would be sent to the Church for "safekeeping" but if the eldest died...they then would be called for. They had combat training and were typically very able warriors.

They had NO HEREDITARY LANDS. The lands that they watched or governed were owned and regulated by the Church. The church (in this instance, in Europe it was normally the Catholic Church, but in Britain this changed later on) controlled a GREAT DEAL of land, much like nobility did, but they were owned in the name of the church. Thus, a Bishop could very well be acting in the same role as a Knight, but in this instance they would be as a representative as the Church. They would be the church's governance over the lands. However, the lands were NOT theirs or their families, it was the church's land.

This was different than the landed Nobility. This land was THEIRS as given to them to control by the ruler of the Kingdom/Empire/etc. Their lands were hereditary and thus control of the land went from Father to Son. AS long as they were anointed and condoned by the Church, they were considered Holy under that idea.

Thus...the Bishop of Paris and it's adjoining areas would go out to the varous fields that the Church controlled to ensure that the Clergy were drawing the taxes and other such items from those lands. If the Bishop was excommunicated, they would no longer have that power. The control of taxes and tithes would be given to another. Their control and power was tied up to their loyalty to the church.

On the otherhand, a Knight, who separated from the Church or was excommunicated did NOT necessarily lose their lands. They may be attacked because they were then heretics/apostates or otherwise seen as their lands were attempted to be taken, but they did not necessarily lose their rights to the land and power due to excommunication.

Hence, the Bishop in Charlemagne's story would be the typical D&D Cleric. He went out in full armor. He battled. He swung his mace. He fought alongside the soldiers and was obviously of high rank in consideration to that.

On the otherhand, Charlemagne would be the archtypical Paladin. He owed no land allegiance to a Church and even if not appointed he would still be King. However, he was (some would say he forced this from Rome) appointed and anointed as the Holy Roman Emperor, Defender of the Faith, Defender of the church, etc...etc...etc.

Frederick would be a prime example of a King who was a Fallen Paladin (excommunicated from the Church, then went on Crusade and probably had the most success one could hope for) who then atoned in AD&D terms...fell again...atoned again....etc...etc...etc.

There is a clear delineation which those from Gygax's generation could understand each and how they were different. It's based on the mythology and legends one learned in school (not sure if they teach this stuff in school anymore, TBH).

They may seem similar, but there is a WORLD of difference.

Basically, a Paladin is a Knight. If one really is looking for the difference between a Knight and a Paladin there is very little difference, except one is anointed or approved of by the Church, and the other may or may not be. They are the Kings, the Dukes, the Lords, the Nobles.

On the otherhand, a Cleric is specifically a Warrior FOR the Church. They are part of the Church hierarchy, but even moreso, are trained and ready to battle and defend the Church and it's lands. They are the Cardinals, the Arch-Bishops and the Bishops (Priests and local clergy on the otherhand may or may not be...they may not have any martial training or expectations to go to battle or control lands and areas). Traditionally before modern times, these guys often WERE Warriors, just as much as any of the nobility, but they were under the CHURCH in doing so, not a King (though even that could get murky in history).

Think a Chess board. You have the Bishops which are very different than the Knights and the King. They are different pieces and are able to do different things.

Granted, I think this came into a clearer and stronger focus in AD&D than OD&D (in OD&D, I think it was expected that one could understand the difference, but it is not necessarily spelled out and so could be muddled), but I think that it is pretty clear on what the difference was in regards to middle 20th century education.