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Message: <blockquote data-quote="R_Chance" data-source="post: 7751598" data-attributes="member: 55149">In original D&D Clerics really didn't fight. At least until they were higher level. The armor and (blunt) weapons they could use had to be magical. Not mundane. Magic armor was rare and blunt magical weapons even rarer. The use of non magical armor and (blunt) weapons came with the 1E Players Handbook in 1978. So, really the idea of limiting Clerics to keep Fighting Men (as they were called) as superior in combat didn't even rear it's head until 1978. When the party first ran across a set of magic armor you can bet the Fighting Man claimed it. Unless you count house rules. We had picked up Empire of the Petal Throne in 1975 and Priests in it could use mundane armor and (still blunt) weapons. We pretty much adopted that rule for our games then. As seat of the pants as it may seem, Gygax and company had been writing (mostly historical) miniature rules for years (professionally since 1970). They knew what they wanted in a game but what they liked is probably not what would be popular now. Clerics were conceived as a cross between Fighting Men and Magic Users with some of the benefits of each and many of the drawbacks. They are described this way in Men and Magic (Book 1 of the three little brown books of original D&D).It was a rough sell getting people to play Clerics early on. The one thing they had going for them was Turning the Undead. Dungeons were over run with the undead. Clerics did not even get a spell until 2nd level. 1E gave them spells at 1st level too, as I recall. 1978 was a good year for Clerics <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />*edit* For clarity. I think I'm rambling a bit <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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