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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 5867473" data-attributes="member: 14159">I'm normally a big fan of the D&D "sacred cows".  I was one of the people to shout loudly when 4e turned a lot of cows into hamburger.  There are just certain quirky things that make D&D, well, D&D.The one thing I can't get is the Cleric.  That's the one sacred cow that I always felt awkward about.I don't mean divine magic, or even priestly characters.  I mean the classic D&D Cleric of the battle-priest swinging a mace while wearing heavy armor and is particularly good at fighting (or commanding) undead.  Why is the parish priest at the local temple trained to wear heavy armor?  Why are evil Clerics so concerned about not spilling blood?  Why would a Chaotic Evil cleric of a Chaotic Evil Gods of War and Slaughter follow the same combat ethos as a medieval Catholic priest (i.e. Lawful Good ethos). Why could a Cleric lose his spellcasting if he picked up a sword and swung it at a foe. . .but in the same fight a Paladin of the same faith wearing the same armor, praying to the same deity, casting some of the same spells he's probably expected to use big swords?Yeah, 3e muted this just a little with the Adept class for non-adventuring NPC priests and letting Clerics use heavier weapons through feats and multiclassing, but it feels like an incomplete addressing of the situation.To me, D&D should be able to emulate reasonably well any mainstream fantasy fiction.  Additions in later editions like Sorcerers went a long way to this goal.   Fantasy priesthoods outside of D&D and D&D-inspired fiction seldom depict the clergy as plate-clad, mace swingers.  A Fantasy priest clad in plate armor and a shield and swinging a mace around while repelling or commanding the undead. . .just isn't found outside D&D and D&D derived media.  The source for it was obviously Crusade-era clergy (the Knights Templar influenced both the Paladin and Cleric). . .but why should almost every fantasy priest (i.e. all except Druids) be modeled on a medieval Christian religious order?  The AD&D 2e PHB even cited Archbishop Turpin from the 11th Century work The Song of Roland as a main source for the class.  In my mind, an evil Cleric nemesis should be more like Thulsa Doom than Archbishop Turpin.Much like Sorcerers added core-rule support for arcane spellcasters that weren't bookish sages and instead worked magic by will and talent (more common in fantasy fiction), would D&D be better served to have a priestly class that was less armored and less focused on dealing with undead but had other abilities?  The Mystic from the 3.5 DLCS was a good idea in this direction, the Favored Soul in 3.5 was a step in this direction, but stayed in the "armored healbot" mold, and the whole sprouting-wings-at-high-level bit lost me.I'm curious how my fellow ENWorlders think about the cleric:  Love it or hate it, needs to go, needs to stay, or needs to be supplemented with another class?</blockquote>

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