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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Set" data-source="post: 4361865" data-attributes="member: 41584">Light Armor goes up to +4 for a chain shirt.  Medium Armor goes up to +5 for a Breastplate.  It's really a case of a whopping potential +1 AC if you allow Medium over Light.  (I'd even argue that there isn't enough gap and that Lt Armor should end at +3, but that's a different kettle of fish.) I think the 'problem' with Clerics is that they were originally envisioned as heavily armored mace-wielding 'fighting-priests' with a smaller selection of spells, less levels of spells (7 instead of 9) and weaker spells overall (flame strike at 5th compared to fireball at 3rd).  In my experience in 1st edition, people often hated to play the Cleric because it was a sucky wannabe Fighter strapped to a sucky wannabe Magic-User.  2nd edition, with Specialty Priests and Spheres, radically changed things, and we had many priest-heavy parties, with some 'fighting priests' and some 'thiefly priests' and some 'priests of the god of magic' filling roles that used to be filled by non-Priests.  (I think the most insane one I saw was an elven Cleric (of the god of thieves)/Fighter/Wizard who was basically a one-man party!) By the time 3rd edition rolled around, the 1st edition notion, of heavily-armored fighting-priest, was retained, and yet the spell levels were raised to 9, some more effective spells were added, and the Cleric turned into a caster only slightly less effective than a Wizard, with better saves, better BAB, twice the hit points, better weapons and any armor/shield they want.  Adding in Domain powers and all sorts of feats that allowed their Turn/Rebuke powers to do anything up to shooting cones of fire out of their holy symbols, and the Cleric turned into a juggernaut. Unlike in 2nd Edition, the 3E Cleric didn't give up all sorts of things for their Specialty powers (many 2E Specialty priests giving up HD, BAB, armor proficiencies, various Spheres of spells, undead turning, etc. to 'pay for' their expanded abilities). At some point, it seems that Clerics need to be broken down into a pure caster *or* a fighting-priest (and, IMO, the fighting-priest should be just called a Paladin and be done with it, the game doesn't really need two plate-mail wearing divine casters).  If going the pure caster route, there's no reason why *any* armor would be necessary, and HD could be reduced to d6 or d4. The existence of Domains and Turn/Rebuke, as well as the ability to pray for any of the spells on their enormous spell-lists, IMO, make them comparable in power to Wizards even without their armor or favorable BAB or HD or saves, even considering that their spells lack some of the damage potential of the Sorcerer/Wizard spells.</blockquote>

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