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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7568133" data-attributes="member: 42582">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 &quot;ribbon&quot;.As far as alignment is concerned, in D&amp;D - as I quoted - clerics had to become either Lawful or Chaotic (anti-clerics/evil high priests). Although AD&amp;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 &amp; Magic, reersing is not even an option: &quot;underlined Clerical spels are reversed by evil Clerics - &quot;evil&quot; 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 &amp; Magic, evil Clerics do not have the turning effect at all; in AD&amp;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 (&quot;sub-classes&quot;) bolted onto the same basic chassis but having different spell lists and different &quot;channel divinity&quot; powers. And they themselves reflect different archteypes (holy warrior vs demonic/cultist warrior).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7568133, member: 42582"] 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). [/QUOTE]

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