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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6315238" data-attributes="member: 42582">Those are basically the same thing, though - "special warrior with a higher calling to defend, smite evil, uphold justice" is the self-conception of the knight in shining armour a la King Arthur.Nothing. They are the same concept - paragons of religious and chivalric virtue.Putting the Hammer horror to one side - the actual discernible influence of those films on the classic D&D cleric seems limited to the ability to turn undead - you are correct about the background of the cleric. But that is not different from the background of the paladin. The Arthurian and Carolingian romances give voice to that era's conception of the ideal knight. And the Templars and Hospitallers were founded to be ideal knights.St Bernard of Clairvaux, for instance, wrote the following in his tract on <a href="http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/religion/monastic/bernard.html" target="_blank">"In Praise of the New Knighthood"</a>:When someone strongly resists a foe in the flesh, relying solely on the strength of the flesh, I would hardly remark it, since this is common enough. And when war is waged by spiritual strength against vices or demons, this, too, is nothing remarkable, praiseworthy as it is, for the world is full of monks. But when the one sees a man powerfully girding himself with both swords and nobly marking his belt, who would not consider it worthy of all wonder, the more so since it has been hitherto unknown? He is truly a fearless knight and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armour of faith just as his body is protected by armour of steel. He is thus doubly armed and need fear neither demons nor men.The idea of being "doubly armed" - ie with both sword/flesh and faith/spirit - is presented here by St Bernard as a characteristic of the members of the military orders (the inspiration for D&D clerics) but is utterly apposite for a paladin also.In other words, they aren't different archetypes. They're just different game-mechanical realisations of the same archetype. We can see a comparable mulit-mechanical-realisation of a single archetype in the case of the sorcerer, the wizard, the warlock, the bard (in at least many versions), and (arguably, in at least some versions) the druid.I agree with this. That's why I've been saying for a long time on these boards that paladins don't fit into a traditional D&D alignment system, which is - as you explain - basically relativist/nihilistic. Whereas the paladin only makes sense on the basis if s/he is convinced that the world unfolds according to divine providence.I share this confusion.</blockquote>

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