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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7567756" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION]Poul Anderson didn't invent the notion of a holy warrior who can heal with a touch and whom no evil being can approach. He drew on well-known literary/legendary sources and wrote them into his novel.Hammer studios didn't invent the notion of calling on holy power to repel evil. They likewise drew on well-known tropes.Nor did Gygax invent the notion of a holy leader who can throw a staff to the ground and have it transform into a serpent.(And an imaginary story for good measure: person X might design the ranger inspired by Aragorn/Strider, while person Y designs the woods hero inspired by Robin Hood and Jack the Giant Killer. It may well be that X and Y's classes, while perhaps mechnically different in certain respects, express the same archetype.)Clerics are serious combatants who use heavy arms and armour. They turn the undead. They call upon magic which heals with a touch, which buffs allies, which detects and wards off evil, and which emulates the odd Biblical miracle. Paladins are serious combatants who use heavy arms and armour. They turn the undead. They call upon magic which heals with a touch and which detects and wards off evil.What differentiates them in the D&D context is (1) mechanical minutiae like memorising and casting a Cure Light Wounds spell vs using a class ability to Lay on Hands, and (2) the slightly different way they interact with the alignment rules, although in AD&D if one follows Gygax's rules for clerics changing alignment and deity then even that difference between them narrows somewhat.In my own experience, what has driven this point home has been the attempt to build PCs in non-D&D systems, and in 4e D&D, that emulate or evoke AD&D characters I have played. 4e, DW and Rolemaster all have clerics and paladins as class options, but which will best realise a particular AD&D character depends on mood and detail - there is no archetypal difference that is captured by the class labels. (In my 4e game, there are two characters whom I routinely describe as paladins when trying to convey the idea that they are holy warriors, but one of them is, in mechanical terms, a fighter/cleric). In Burning Wheel, it is possible to build a military character who is also Faithful and thus able to perform miracles, but nothing distinguishes a cleric from a paladin in this respect.Yet another way in: someone tells you about their PC in non-mecanical terms: I wear heavy armour and fitht with a mace, detecting and smiting evil calling upon the powers of the divinity to aid me. Is that character a cleric or a paladin? Or a cleric/fighter? The only hint one way rather than the other is the use of a mace, which suggests cleric because of purely mechancial features of the D&D classes.</blockquote>

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