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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7567835" data-attributes="member: 42582">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.</blockquote>

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