Thomas Shey
Legend
In my current D&D 3.5 campaign, my son decided to play D&D in "hard mode" and rolled up a half-orc cleric/paladin who purposefully refuses to wield a weapon, knowing he already looks fearsome enough as it is and is usually mistrusted because of his looks. However, he has no qualms against using his shield as a weapon if all else fails, and he's not against using damaging spells on enemies. So he's not a true pacifist, just a combatant who won't wield a (standard) weapon. This came up recently when he tried rescuing a bound captive and didn't have any kind of blade on him to cut through her ropes.
BTW, he's made it all the way to 15th level thus far, in a campaign that will be going to 20th. (We have 29 more game session scheduled.)
Johnathan
While a cleric who won't use weapons for the most part is unusual and possibly a little suboptimal, there was plenty of clerical magic in 3.0/3.5 with enough offensive punch its not really close to making someone a noncombatant.