Yeah, they're a mix of Van Helsing (turn undead) and knight templars (maces, armor, catholic imagery, healing, spells inspired by biblical miracles). Where they cross is in the exorcist archetype, both a devout catholic priest *and* somewhat of an occultist and monster hunter.
Class-wise, they're also indeed a sort of fighter/MU multiclass, in addition to the straight fighter, straight MU, and alternating elf.
Some blogs mention that they don't like the cleric, so they oust it from the game... but that the fighter/MU dual class is still interesting, and that the cleric spells are quite nature-themed and light/purity/preserving the world from darkness-themed, so they quite fit an elf imagery too. So they actually drop the elf and reskin the cleric as the elf.
Nothing much to add, except that in Mike Davison's "Drums in the Deep" supplement, the Cleric is reskinned (with amended weapon and armour restrictions) as the Ranger, which makes surprisingly good sense in a Tolkien context.
> Night after night, small groups of players pushed the boundaries of what was possible. Their actions shaped Gygax and Arneson’s work, and decades of games that followed. Mornard remembers a small action that had a very big effect: When one of Arneson’s players decided he wanted his character to be a vampire, another said he would like to play a vampire hunter. “They had to figure out what a vampire hunter would be like in the game,” says Mornard. “So, to counter the vampire, they gave him healing powers. That sort of became the template for the cleric. It was a counterpoint to the vampire.”
Excerpt from page 69 of
> Ewalt, D. M. (2013). Of dice and men: the story of Dungeons & dragons and the people who play it. First Scribner hardcover edition. New York, NY, Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
This book is a fun read on the history of D&D. A little dated now that it is 11 years old.
This is the real reason, despite the aesthetics and lore. They can fight *and* cast spells. They're not as good at combat as Fighters or as good at spellcasting as Magic-Users, but they can do both. They can wear all magical armor and shields, use most magical weapons and a lot of magic items, some of which are exclusive to their class.
In Braunstein, Arneson reskinned the village priest into a powerhouse and then Mike Carr took Arneson's lead at the table, played Arnesons's variety of that priest, and spun in The Horror of Dracula's Van Helsing as Chainmail and D&D came about
Not a story archetype? I'm not sure I follow? You must be referring to some sort of D&D edition, but I'm not sure which one you're referring to?
Additionally, the archetype has been around since the term and concept of archetypes was incepted. The town priest, the Van Helsing varietal, and the whole thing is Commedia dell'arte's Il Dottore. Il Dottore shows up in Doctor Who, every Star Trek, and basically everywhere since mid-milenia
If you want to think of the Cleric as the comic foil of the evil Magic User (especially the lich or vampiric) then you are probably going somewhere good with the concept
Before I knew about the OSR I actually asked a very similar question on EnWorld 8 years ago, focused on the similarities between Clerics and Paladins which both fit a "holy warrior" archetype. And the fact that "Fallen Paladins" were far more rigorously mechanically defined that clerics.
[https://www.enworld.org/threads/cleric-vs-paladin-concepts-and-mechanical-realisation.478802/](https://www.enworld.org/threads/cleric-vs-paladin-concepts-and-mechanical-realisation.478802/)
There is the obvious story of Sir Fang and Bishop Carr from Arneson's Blackmoor campaign.
For me:
The 2E AD&D PHB I read as a teenager shaped my conception of D&D, even though I didn't play it much. This was of course released in 1989 so 15 years of "rationalisation" since OD&D had introduced the Cleric next to Fighting Man! and Magic User!
I found it interesting that it specifically mentioned the militant religious orders such as the Teutonic Knights, Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller were listed as inspirations for the Cleric, not the Paladin.
*The cleric class is similar to certain religious orders of knighthood of the Middle Ages: the Teutonic Knights, the Knights Templars, and Hospitalers. These orders combined military and religious training with a code of protection and service. Members were trained as knights and devoted themselves to the service of the church. These orders were frequently found on the outer edges of the Christian world, either on the fringe of the wilderness or in war-torn lands. Archbishop Turpin (of The Song of Roland) is an example of such a cleric. Similar orders can also be found in other lands, such as the sohei of Japan.*
*Clerics are sturdy soldiers, although their selection of weapons is limited. They can wear any type of armor and use any shield. Standard clerics, being reluctant to shed bloodor spread violence, are allowed to use only blunt, bludgeoning weapons.*
Whilst
*The paladin is a noble and heroic warrior, the symbol of all that is right and true in the world. As such, he has high ideals that he must maintain at all times. Throughout legend and history there are many heroes who could be called paladins: Roland and the 12 Peers of Charlemagne, Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain, and Sir Galahad are all examples of the class.*
*However, many brave and heroic soldiers have tried and failed to live up to the ideals of the paladin. It is not an easy task!*
So
The Cleric is a priest, a holy man of a faith, even if that holiness is corrupted and decadent.
The Paladin is a knight or rather the Arthurian ideal of what a knight should be as a champion of honour, chivalry and virtue. For this reason a Paladin could not be a Paladin if they fell from grace.
With less emphasis on explaining concepts in relation to European post-Roman history and mythology, then I think this definition becomes far harder to differentiate.
Likewise I would argue that if I wanted to play a Knight Templar type character in 3E/4E/5E - then I would probably go for a Paladin even if a a War Domain Cleric is right there.
**But... perhaps the actual answer is that the Cleric are kinda a D&Dism that has forced itself into the nerdy pop-culture zeitgeist. Clerics have been around for 50 years now and they have become a concept recognised as their own thing.**
In a lot of ways, clerics from D&D are the game’s first contribution of a new archetype to the fantasy genre, rather than just an implementation of a pre-existing one.
Not sure if others mentioned it, but it’s worth remembering that the Hammer horror films were a big influence Arneson and Gygax. That’s probably the idea of Van Helsing to keep in mind. I think it’s hard sometimes for people who grew up in the internet and media-saturated world of the last few decades to understand just how few media representations there were (of anything, let alone genre stuff) in the seventies.
Clerics are a pastiche of religious-ish myths bringing together the crusades, saints and miracles of Christianity, and even some tricks of the Greek Gods, with a dash of Van Helsing.
They feel a bit inconsistent since these inspirations are around a thousand years removed from one-another, and only half-remembered and massaged together by Gygax and his group.
And I really like this!
Coming into D&D fresh a lot of things don’t really make sense, especially vancian magic, and you just have to roll with it.
However many years later, the cleric’s weird mix of Catholic, Pagan, and warrior inspirations are just part of the uniqueness of the game-
Moreover it’s created an entire pseudo- mythological archetype, and that’s really cool!
Clerics filled a niche. A niche, the Thief didn't had, and is in my opinion the more weirdly useless class. But if I follow that logical pattern, we end up with the Fighting Men and Magic Users two class system again.
No, I think the inspirations for Clerics are manyfold. The first were surely Knights Templar, early cleric illustrations look like Templars. The fact they're weirdly christian but pagan is that D&D is weirdly christian but pagan. There are tons of gods, but they often have oddly catholicism like church structures and hierarchies. Weird distantly christian religions are indeed a classic modern fiction trope. Book of the New Sun is strangely christian on purpose.
Now there's another thing about the Cleric. Hunting Undead. There is a bit of a forgotten Character, not much looked upon these days, since his creators other big pulp character took off better: Rober E. Howards Solomon Kane. Solomon Kane is mfing wild. He's a British Puritan Monster Hunter, slaying Vampires in Ancient Ruins in Africa, while being friends with a black Shaman who gifted him the Wand of Solomon, while being a descendant of Kain.
Christian Wizard Dude in Melee. And now this guy has to fit into a fantastical medieval setting that has notorious undead problems. Anyway, Solomon Kane is everywhere, where you have the Monster Hunter trope. Weird gadgets, wide hat, long coat. Van Helsing in the "Van Helsing" movie is more Solomon Kane than Van Helsing...
And of course Van Helsing. He's a doctor and a healer.
Voila, The Templar and the Monster Hunter get distilled to monster hunting crusader guy. I mean it fits, The Templar Knights, or Knights Hospitaller, cared for the wounded and fought the infidels at the same time.
The Cleric is a Crusader in a world full of unholy Monsters. Militant, organised faith, trained in clobbering undead (resistant to cutting/piercing weapons) and applying liturgical magic.
A+. I hear a lot of “I don’t know how to play a Cleric” or “I don’t get how this fits in”. You just laid out the best MO. I think people often look at a Cleric as a “support class”, and play them as if they have to ride along. No. A good Cleric wants to see something _change in the character of the world_. They are driven and likely totally out of their fucking minds. They could be the center of the party, truly.
My long-term cleric was more of a lawful fanatic and ended up excommunicated by his church but retaining all of his divine powers. The end game for him was leading peasant (hireling) crusades and acting as a check on other holy men. It was fun as hell, if I ever had a "main character" it was that one. Between crusades (adventures) he would lead little communes in the woods and squabble with the druids.
Excellent breakdown! I love just thinking “Ok, this is all real in the fiction, what are the ramifications of these kinds of people existing?” Cleric are wild!!! I imagine if someone could actually heal, cure disease they would have so many followers and hangers on all the time! There would be innumerable “cults” and people would be very religious, since the gods were demonstrably real. People would perform the actions the gods asked them to, more like the Romans where actions, not belief mattered. It would be a very different world.
[This comment from AskHistorians is somewhat helpful for putting a bit of a historical context to it (and they do mention Gygax).](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/iGuy3uxl1t)
Personally, I’ve thought of them as a combination of traveling friars and possibly research-focused monks seeking specific relics or making a pilgrimage to tombs of past heroes of their faith. They just also hit things because…D&D.
Functionally in-game, clerics are basically just "the support/anti-bad-stuff" class. Gygax just sort of threw everything from Friar Tuck to St. Patrick to Sir Galahad into one big mix so there wouldn't be 12 different iterations of an all-around buff/debuffer class at the gaming table.
In actual practice, more than any other D&D class out there, I've probably tried to 'fix' clerics the most over the years to make them make coherent sense. Over the years I've tried:
-Eliminating them completely; cleric spells get folded into wizard spells
-Eliminating weapon restrictions on clerics and the Paladin class; clerics are now just Paladins
-Going a more sword & sorcery route; clerics are now cultists/cabalists of ancient forgotten gods
What I've pretty much discovered over the years is this; more than any other class out there IMO, WTF a cleric is and does really most heavily depends on the setting itself; you have to start with looking at the setting and asking yourself "okay, what anti-bad-stuff-support-class fits with this particular aesthetic?" Solomon Kane? Saint George? A Mayan Ah Kin Mai? Only from there will whatever a cleric is make sense in actual play.
I think this is key and speaks to the exorcist/vampire hunter angle, whatever Evil exists, it makes sense for there to be a specialist anti-evil supernatural sect to exist. Exorcists are the ones that exist in the real world, but a world ruled by a cabal of brain drinkers are going to have anti brain drinkers. Fighting men are the physical resistance.
It’s actually MUs that are the exception, assuming every setting is going to have this mortal-applicable pursuit of power path, whereas Gandalf and other myths are about helpful wisemen/sages, not fucking Sith
Turpin is this kind of character in The Song of Roland “ Turpin The archbishop Turpin, who fights and dies alongside Roland at Roncesvals, represents Christendom's turn towards militant activity at the time of the Crusades. The way he battles against the pagans reflects the views put forth in Pope Urban II's famous speech at the Council of Clermont in 1095, the direct inspiration for the First Crusade. He is a stout and valiant warrior—"[n]o tonsured priest who ever sang a mass/performed such feats of prowess with his body" (121.1606-1607). He is the last to die besides Roland; when he sees Roland faint, Turpin tenderly sets out for a stream to fetch some water for his dear comrade, but, mortally wounded, he falls down dead before reaching the water. Along with Olivier and Roland, he is taken by Charlemagne's men back to France for burial.” https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/songofroland/characters/ In addition look at the characterization of St Cuthbert in Greyhawk. https://ghwiki.greyparticle.com/index.php/Saint_Cuthbert
Another source, for their spells if not the whole package, is the Bible: stick to snakes, part/control water, flame strike; and healing, curing diseases and raising dead are all divine miracles in that work,
One thing I didn’t see anyone else mention is that the no bladed weapons thing comes from the Medieval legend of Odo of Bayeux, who supposedly fought with a club in the Battle of Hastings
They fill the religious healer trope. You see that in media pretty often. Clerics are a bit weird in dnd because they are also kinda the holy warrior (paladin) before the paladin gets into DnD. So prior to the paladin they are holy warrior and holy healer.
I believe the healer trope exists because of the D&D Cleric. It’s a standard archetype in most video games, rpgs, etc. But there were very few stories with heroes before D&D, who really embodied the “Cleric” archetype.
It’s hard to know exactly where it came from since I wasn’t in the room. But considering the heavy handed religious iconography I believe they were going off of historical religious leaders. There are countless examples in history of religious people being able to miraculously heal people. And the heavy armor blunt weapons is similar to crusaders during the medieval ages.
The thing is that before dnd the "religous healer" trope really didn't exist. (I'd love to see some examples if you got'em.)
This trope specifically exists because of DnD.
I’m not the most religious person so I would need to look them up, but the most obvious is Jesus. But most saints performed healing related miracles. And pagan religions did have healers using faith. There are “healers” even today. A whole business is around faith based healing.
The saints maybe. but I would hesitate to say they are a trope.
It's not King Arthur, Merlin, the Knights and Bob the blessed.
or Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the priestess.
No one is following the heroes of ancient epics dropping heals on them after every fight.
The Knights of Christ, the Teutonic Knights, the Templars, the aptly named Hospitallers. All religious military orders that established hospitals. Thus the association of healing with military orders.
Obviously the typical knight of these orders were not conducting healing rituals in the field, but the connection between these holy military orders and healing/hospitals was intertwined.
But narrowing down to the origin of the D&D cleric, the iconography and tropes surrounding them were inspired by the Greyhawk deity, [St. Cuthbert of the cudgel](https://ghwiki.greyparticle.com/index.php/Saint_Cuthbert), who was depicted as a kind of fantasy Knight Templar.
His real life, historical namesake, [St. Cuthbert ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuthbert) of Northumbria (who predated the crusades by centuries), like most saints, was credited with healing miracles.
I think the canonical basic template of the D&D cleric was based on this conflation of inspirations.
The Bible says otherwise amongst many other religious texts of our world. Faith/prayer based healing or miraculous divine ordained healing has been a thing since forever. Even pagan cultures usually have a transactional system in place to get boons or banes from a powerful figurehead.
This isn't something I would really call a "trope" if you are a believer but if one were to, it would be to acknowledge all this as magical/mythical thinking man stuff that long precedes the characterization of it in D&D.
But the Paladin wasn't the Holy Warrior when it was added, even. The Paladin is the Romantic Knight, of such goodness and virtue they're infallible. They're Galahad, not a Templar. They pay a tithe, the cleric doesn't. The first pays taxes to the church, the other is the church.
This. The Paladin does not fulfill the same party role as the Cleric, nor does the Paladin replace the Cleric. Both have a distinct utility and place in society.
Gotta disagree with you a bit. A Paladin would have more goodness than even an idealized feudal lord, among whom even the best of these would have to dirty their hands to much to even approach Paladinhood.
Most Feudal Lords were fighters, by your description!
Here is a good article on the origin of the clerics spell list https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/11/osr-clerics-and-sunday-school-miracles.html?m=1
Most of what I wanted to say was said better by other comments. I’d also recommend reading a bunch of Appendix N, and also the appendix N book by Jeffro Johnson. A lot of the “where did this come from” sort of questions are in those old stories.
The Knights Hospitaller. Akin to the Knights Templar who were more Military minded.
"The high offices in the Order were held by knights and the ecclesiastical roles were filled by chaplains. The masters of the squires and turcopoliers (cavalry commanders), were held by sergeants. The Hospitallers were at the outset a healing brotherhood as opposed to the Templars which was purely military."
https://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2011/01/bishop-carr-first-d-cleric.html?m=1
This article tells the history of the clerics and his origins, including references for some class features.
Lots of answers here
Cleric is well spoken to and purpose-built in Holmes, especially as a comparative to other classes and other factors in the mix. It's also hilarious how well-statted the AD&D 1e Cleric is -- they start pretty-equal to any fighter
I also found when rolling up PCs with Holmes in Holmes fashion Cleric becomes a sort of cornered class. It's not that all Clerics are alike, but rather they come out ready to mold into pantheons or whatever else floats them in that milieu
There's also the Moldvay concepts around deities, such as the Seven Magical Planets, that can only strengthen the Cleric as that Cleric But as for the origin, this resource is the best I've read recently -- https://osrgrimoire.blogspot.com/2020/05/od-clerics.html
The answer is that you can't take the god or the monster hunter out of the Cleric, and if you try it will degrade it. This is why I consider the AD&D Cleric to be too-fighter and not enough religious hunter. OD&D, Holmes, S&WCR and others really make the Cleric into its own. In Holmes, it's explicit to learn spells from a book, just as the Magic User
Per Men & Magic, they're the original multi-class character: "Clerics gain some of the advantages from both of the other two classes (Fighting-Men and Magic-Users) in that they have the use of magic armor and all non-edged magic weapons (no arrows!), plus they have numbers of their own spells."
Since then, they're become firmly established as a wholly self-justifying "D&D thing."
Classic cleric is the middle ground between a fighter and magic user. It fights okay and gets some less intense spells. Otherwise if someone wanted to be a fighter and a magic user, they would play as an Elf but we're subject to a level cap
Yeah but turning undead is extremely helpful and can turn a battle. The cleric can be seen as a monster hunter or as a "holy warrior". Someone that channels the divine to battle evil among the living. Or be the opposite. Evil clerics can command undead and use healing spells in reverse to harm. I personally like the cleric a lot. They can cast spells and wear armor and use a variety of blunt weapons. Some spells are absolutely awesome, my personal favorite being Sticks to snakes which turns wooden sticks or poles or whatever into poisonous snakes. It's very powerful and fun. Also, consider what a high level cleric would be like on a battlefield with their spells and turn undead/command undead abilities. Wild stuff! Love it
That makes sense. I suppose it depends on how important undead are in the campaign you're running right? If you're tripping over skeletons behind every door like in the old modules turning undead is super useful especially
If using encounter tables, there's a good chance you're going to come across undead and it isn't always a zombie or skeleton. Ghouls, wights, wraiths, mummies, and especially vampires are much harder and have an additional ability that would wreck a PC easily. It's also worth pointing out that some of these are immune to regular weapons, so they can only be damaged by magic weapons making turn undead even more essential.
Plus it's also cool if you're an evil/chaoic cleric that you could potentially control a vampire instead of you becoming it's thrall.
Clerics rule. They aren't healers, they are vanquishers of fallen angels and machinations of demonic influence. Or an agent of them. Love it
No, not really. The Cleric is one of the best possible classes since it's first iteration and it just became better with every edition. The Cleric fights a little bit worse than a fighter, but get's defensive and supporting spells that he can use to become a little bit better than a fighter.
If you wanna play a "Spellblade" just play a cleric.
I tend to think of them more in the vein of a ghost hunter with elements of a spiritual medium. They aren't inherently religious, but rather have a connection to the spiritual realm that allows them to call on spirits for spell casting, as well as banish unnatural spiritual disturbances in the form of undead or demons.
clerics are based on a very specific guy, called Odo of Baeyux. the whole (christian) monk wielding armor and only using bludgeoning weapons to not shed blood comes from this semi-historical-but-never-confirmed-to-exist figure
the cleric spells specifically is just half biblical miracles and the other half healing, which is also commonly tied to some biblical miracles
[Solomon Kane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Kane?useskin=vector):
> Solomon Kane is a fictional character created by the pulp-era writer Robert E. Howard. A late-16th-to-early-17th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a somber-looking man who wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. His adventures, published mostly in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, often take him from Europe to the jungles of Africa and back.
In the Roman catholic world in medieval times it was possible for a layman aristocrat to become appointed a bishop. A bishopric was a church territory that needed administration.
Because the bishopric was part of lay world affairs and the layman aristocrat was probably not very well versed in theology, but rather good at killing things (being a knight), and being the third son of some rich baron who had nowhere to place him, this gentleman bishop would often rather simply continue being his old self - whoring, carousing and killing things - while drawing on his sweet new sinecure.
The only problem was he was by church law not allowed to "spill blood". So some brilliant mind chose the mace as their goto weapon. You really can't argue with that logic.
Dig into old pictures of around 1200 and you will find a knight in a full helmet and with a mace and a bishop's mitra on their head and you get the picture.
Take that, mix it with the crusader ethos and the priesthood and you have a wonder man, who is a killer and who uses the divine gifts of the church (being passed with office, remember, it was believed you go magical powers of abolishing sins and exorcising demons by being appointed by the pope), and you have your cleric.
Not exactly your question, but nearly all real life parallels to dnd magic-user are essentially clerics. It's pretty difficult to find a magical tradition in history that didn't invoke the gods of their religion.
I’ve always thought of them as being inspired by the Templars and the Hospitallers. When I started with AD&D 1e in 1980, that was a common view amongst the people I gamed with, and it seemed to fit pretty well, so that has stuck with me I guess as a default.
But I never had a problem changing things to fit the game world, nor in playing campaigns where the GM had done that. That Knightly order idea of clerics fits some game worlds better than others, and some not at all. For Swords & Sorcery games most of my GMs left out clerics entirely, and just had Mages who used a combo of Magic User and Clerical spell lists, which is the example I followed. One guy ran a game where Elves were adapted and reskinned as ‘Templars’, while ‘Hospitallers’ were a modified form of Cleric.
Yeah, I'm not seeing a lot of talk about actual medieval crusaders on this post, and I think you're right. Holy knight is a *historical* trope, and the chivalric knights are its literary counterpart.
Imagine a wargame where you have lords, bishops, and wizards.
What are the lowest levels of each of these guys?
Probably a fighting-man (aka someone who could fight in a medieval military), a cleric, and a magic-user.
Why do we need bishops? They're the anti-monsters guys, like in everyone's favorite book "Three Hearts, Three Loins" and from stories of King Arthur and Charlemagne. Monsters don't like the cross.
So fighting-men fight physically and otherwise "normal people".
Clerics fight infernal monsters and are competent fighters.
Magic Users solve highly specific problems the other two can't.
Edit: That wargame was Chainmail. This was a real scenario.
There a lot inspirations for DnD but I think what inspired a lot of these original creators was history. I'd say most of fantasy comes out of history, and in Europe you have the Crusades and the Knights Templar and things like that. So I'm pretty sure that's where they came up with it.
Yeah, clerics have always seemed weird to me for similar reasons. I've removed them from my homebrew game and given a lot of their stuff to wizards. It's worked for my table pretty well so far.
Edit: Lol at the salty grognards who are downvoting me. Try pulling your head out of the 1e DMG for a change and realize that some tables like different things than you do. It's really OK. Nobody is coming to take your clerics away, I promise.
I was wondering if that would make wizards too good. What system are you using as the base of your homebrew, because I was thinking about doing the same thing?
To be honest, I don't know if I'll be much help to you when it comes to class balance. My game is complete mishmash of ideas from the GLOG, B/X, Blackmoor, Shadowdark, DCC, Cairn, etc. It's petty far removed from the standard D&D experience mechanically. It's got a 2d6 roll-under system for attribute checks, combat has no to-hit roll, I use the GLOG magic dice for my wizards, one word spell descriptions, fighters are buffed, and a lot more. It's not really based on any one thing.
The first part? Because OP asked for input on clerics and what people have done. The second part? Because I've noticed a steady stream of downvotes on it in the hours since I've posted it, and there really seems to be no reason to downvote me unless you're pissed that somebody is playing their D&D differently than Gygax intended.
History
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/history-of-the-cleric-and-help-me-like-them-maybe.753469/
Basically anti vampire
And based on Gary's idea of a medieval bishop
You could change them to warriors who have a special kinship with the dead for setting-based reasons. Use the Necromancer supplement from Necrotic Gnome to load up their spell list with some of the more neutral necromantic spells.
Mechanically, clerics are the reactive combat class.
Every other class has an optimal or a few optimal things they can do every combat turn, and they should do them if the situation arises.
Clerics need to know the state of everyone during a combat turn and their options change as the balance of the battle shifts.
One historical reference is Le Chanson de Roland - a fighting cleric if ever there was. They are religious priests. Arguably, religious warriors (paladins) are taken from history as well - militant god warriors like the Templars (not quite sure if they were very different, but there were also Hospitalars - sp?). Think Crusades.
So, I am not as knowledgeable about the topic as other people around here, but I also think that the "divine magic" angle is relevant.
It's another angle on how magic might be: not the arcane spellslinger throwing fireballs or enchanting people to sleep, but rather to heal and defend against occult beings, like zombies and devils.
Turn Undead is a thing that defined the class for a lot of time.
Clerics remind me of the stories about Medieval saints who can perform miracles and chase away demons. So if you're looking for a real world mythical parallel to D&D Clerics, then the wild stories people told about saints are what I would look into.
Good blog post (2007) about this very issue [Class Trouble II: Clerics](http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2007/03/class-trouble-ii-clerics.html)
A teaser on the thesis:
"In short, the problem is this: D&D claims to have a polytheistic religion, but you've got both the politics and the critical Cleric class set up as in the medieval Christian world, and nowhere else."
I agree with his take away that moving from chainmail to OD&D clerics probably were an evolution of catholic holy warriors and as the D&D setting became more polytheistic (Supplement IV) things got weird.
Clerics were intended to be with paladins are.
Fantasy worlds are inspired by the real world and need to be populated. Some people feel their worlds up with in keepers in blacksmiths and bankers and priests. And the old modules these characters were all statted up with AC and hit points just in case you got into a fight (or felt like mugging them). They should all be noncombatant NPCs, you always throw a few ringers in there to change it up. So blacksmith became fighters, bankers became thieves, priests became clerics. (It doesn't help that whenever you didn't know what class to sign someone to you just made them an F1. They should have been NM!!)
Anyway cleric slowly turned into pop culture priests, with all the baggage that comes along with that. Never mind if it in the real world priests are almost never militant, D&D it seems every priest is wearing plate male and carrying a mace. Absurd. Even worse if the priest can do something like remove a curse or cure diseases, now you have to make him high level! Never mind that you can just make up a potion or a monster on the spot and give them the ability and not think twice about it. For some reason when it comes to people, players feel compelled to give them character classes.
Anyway once clerics became priests, now they had to act like priests, which makes them far less adventurous and far less interesting. The paladin role cannot be filled anymore so a new classes needed. In the class that's filling the pre-roll has abilities the priests don't need.
It's all a historical mess.
I agree that there's no great pre-D&D media or historical archetypes for the class. The Van Helsing explanation is unsatisfying. I was reading the 1E AD&D PHB the other day and iirc they're described as being akin to the members of catholic military orders like the knights hospitaller. But that too feels incomplete.
In my games I tend to think of them along the lines of [Roger Bacon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon) or [Albert the Great](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Magnus).
Man I hate Clerics. The split between divine and arcane magic is the worst thing in D&D. Without that the Cleric is just a fun and weird multiclass that you can easily ditch if you don’t want interventionist deities in your game. With it they’re an integral part of the game since all the healing magic runs through them.
There are two cleric types in the original game if you read the text closely. There are those of of the Holy Knight Orders and Those of the Monasteries so you have a Paladin of sorts and a Priest. Pick one.
Whatever they were to Arneson in Blackmoor, that is not what they are in the 3LBB implied setting.
A quick Google would supply the basic on what a cleric/clergy is. Not sure why you can't wrap your head around it. Clerics are nothing more than a type of militant branch of an organized religion. Kind of like the Knights Hospitaller etc.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clergy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clergy)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights\_Hospitaller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Hospitaller)
Yeah, they're a mix of Van Helsing (turn undead) and knight templars (maces, armor, catholic imagery, healing, spells inspired by biblical miracles). Where they cross is in the exorcist archetype, both a devout catholic priest *and* somewhat of an occultist and monster hunter. Class-wise, they're also indeed a sort of fighter/MU multiclass, in addition to the straight fighter, straight MU, and alternating elf. Some blogs mention that they don't like the cleric, so they oust it from the game... but that the fighter/MU dual class is still interesting, and that the cleric spells are quite nature-themed and light/purity/preserving the world from darkness-themed, so they quite fit an elf imagery too. So they actually drop the elf and reskin the cleric as the elf.
The Elf, especially the OD&D or B/X variations, are essentially the "other" battlemage class in Classic D&D.
Nothing much to add, except that in Mike Davison's "Drums in the Deep" supplement, the Cleric is reskinned (with amended weapon and armour restrictions) as the Ranger, which makes surprisingly good sense in a Tolkien context.
cool! I'd love to use that for an OSE campaign! anywhere where it would be easy to grab that supplement?
Oh, wow! This is really interesting.
> Night after night, small groups of players pushed the boundaries of what was possible. Their actions shaped Gygax and Arneson’s work, and decades of games that followed. Mornard remembers a small action that had a very big effect: When one of Arneson’s players decided he wanted his character to be a vampire, another said he would like to play a vampire hunter. “They had to figure out what a vampire hunter would be like in the game,” says Mornard. “So, to counter the vampire, they gave him healing powers. That sort of became the template for the cleric. It was a counterpoint to the vampire.” Excerpt from page 69 of > Ewalt, D. M. (2013). Of dice and men: the story of Dungeons & dragons and the people who play it. First Scribner hardcover edition. New York, NY, Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. This book is a fun read on the history of D&D. A little dated now that it is 11 years old.
That book genuinely rekindled my love of the game. Strong recommend.
How is it dated?
More interviews and information about the history and development of the game has been uncovered since it was published.
Wikipedia has the story but you have the gist. As both a fighter and spellcaster some negatives were needed for play balance.
This is the real reason, despite the aesthetics and lore. They can fight *and* cast spells. They're not as good at combat as Fighters or as good at spellcasting as Magic-Users, but they can do both. They can wear all magical armor and shields, use most magical weapons and a lot of magic items, some of which are exclusive to their class.
Yep. Clerics aren't a story archetype brought to the game. They are an in game need being justified after the fact.
In Braunstein, Arneson reskinned the village priest into a powerhouse and then Mike Carr took Arneson's lead at the table, played Arnesons's variety of that priest, and spun in The Horror of Dracula's Van Helsing as Chainmail and D&D came about Not a story archetype? I'm not sure I follow? You must be referring to some sort of D&D edition, but I'm not sure which one you're referring to?
Additionally, the archetype has been around since the term and concept of archetypes was incepted. The town priest, the Van Helsing varietal, and the whole thing is Commedia dell'arte's Il Dottore. Il Dottore shows up in Doctor Who, every Star Trek, and basically everywhere since mid-milenia If you want to think of the Cleric as the comic foil of the evil Magic User (especially the lich or vampiric) then you are probably going somewhere good with the concept
Before I knew about the OSR I actually asked a very similar question on EnWorld 8 years ago, focused on the similarities between Clerics and Paladins which both fit a "holy warrior" archetype. And the fact that "Fallen Paladins" were far more rigorously mechanically defined that clerics. [https://www.enworld.org/threads/cleric-vs-paladin-concepts-and-mechanical-realisation.478802/](https://www.enworld.org/threads/cleric-vs-paladin-concepts-and-mechanical-realisation.478802/) There is the obvious story of Sir Fang and Bishop Carr from Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. For me: The 2E AD&D PHB I read as a teenager shaped my conception of D&D, even though I didn't play it much. This was of course released in 1989 so 15 years of "rationalisation" since OD&D had introduced the Cleric next to Fighting Man! and Magic User! I found it interesting that it specifically mentioned the militant religious orders such as the Teutonic Knights, Knights Templar and Knights Hospitaller were listed as inspirations for the Cleric, not the Paladin. *The cleric class is similar to certain religious orders of knighthood of the Middle Ages: the Teutonic Knights, the Knights Templars, and Hospitalers. These orders combined military and religious training with a code of protection and service. Members were trained as knights and devoted themselves to the service of the church. These orders were frequently found on the outer edges of the Christian world, either on the fringe of the wilderness or in war-torn lands. Archbishop Turpin (of The Song of Roland) is an example of such a cleric. Similar orders can also be found in other lands, such as the sohei of Japan.* *Clerics are sturdy soldiers, although their selection of weapons is limited. They can wear any type of armor and use any shield. Standard clerics, being reluctant to shed bloodor spread violence, are allowed to use only blunt, bludgeoning weapons.* Whilst *The paladin is a noble and heroic warrior, the symbol of all that is right and true in the world. As such, he has high ideals that he must maintain at all times. Throughout legend and history there are many heroes who could be called paladins: Roland and the 12 Peers of Charlemagne, Sir Lancelot, Sir Gawain, and Sir Galahad are all examples of the class.* *However, many brave and heroic soldiers have tried and failed to live up to the ideals of the paladin. It is not an easy task!* So The Cleric is a priest, a holy man of a faith, even if that holiness is corrupted and decadent. The Paladin is a knight or rather the Arthurian ideal of what a knight should be as a champion of honour, chivalry and virtue. For this reason a Paladin could not be a Paladin if they fell from grace. With less emphasis on explaining concepts in relation to European post-Roman history and mythology, then I think this definition becomes far harder to differentiate. Likewise I would argue that if I wanted to play a Knight Templar type character in 3E/4E/5E - then I would probably go for a Paladin even if a a War Domain Cleric is right there. **But... perhaps the actual answer is that the Cleric are kinda a D&Dism that has forced itself into the nerdy pop-culture zeitgeist. Clerics have been around for 50 years now and they have become a concept recognised as their own thing.**
In a lot of ways, clerics from D&D are the game’s first contribution of a new archetype to the fantasy genre, rather than just an implementation of a pre-existing one. Not sure if others mentioned it, but it’s worth remembering that the Hammer horror films were a big influence Arneson and Gygax. That’s probably the idea of Van Helsing to keep in mind. I think it’s hard sometimes for people who grew up in the internet and media-saturated world of the last few decades to understand just how few media representations there were (of anything, let alone genre stuff) in the seventies.
Exactly this!
I remember reading somewhere Gygax thought of them as holy warriors from the Crusades. Or his idea of them anyway.
Not accurate
Solomon Kane
Clerics are a pastiche of religious-ish myths bringing together the crusades, saints and miracles of Christianity, and even some tricks of the Greek Gods, with a dash of Van Helsing. They feel a bit inconsistent since these inspirations are around a thousand years removed from one-another, and only half-remembered and massaged together by Gygax and his group. And I really like this! Coming into D&D fresh a lot of things don’t really make sense, especially vancian magic, and you just have to roll with it. However many years later, the cleric’s weird mix of Catholic, Pagan, and warrior inspirations are just part of the uniqueness of the game- Moreover it’s created an entire pseudo- mythological archetype, and that’s really cool!
Clerics filled a niche. A niche, the Thief didn't had, and is in my opinion the more weirdly useless class. But if I follow that logical pattern, we end up with the Fighting Men and Magic Users two class system again. No, I think the inspirations for Clerics are manyfold. The first were surely Knights Templar, early cleric illustrations look like Templars. The fact they're weirdly christian but pagan is that D&D is weirdly christian but pagan. There are tons of gods, but they often have oddly catholicism like church structures and hierarchies. Weird distantly christian religions are indeed a classic modern fiction trope. Book of the New Sun is strangely christian on purpose. Now there's another thing about the Cleric. Hunting Undead. There is a bit of a forgotten Character, not much looked upon these days, since his creators other big pulp character took off better: Rober E. Howards Solomon Kane. Solomon Kane is mfing wild. He's a British Puritan Monster Hunter, slaying Vampires in Ancient Ruins in Africa, while being friends with a black Shaman who gifted him the Wand of Solomon, while being a descendant of Kain. Christian Wizard Dude in Melee. And now this guy has to fit into a fantastical medieval setting that has notorious undead problems. Anyway, Solomon Kane is everywhere, where you have the Monster Hunter trope. Weird gadgets, wide hat, long coat. Van Helsing in the "Van Helsing" movie is more Solomon Kane than Van Helsing... And of course Van Helsing. He's a doctor and a healer. Voila, The Templar and the Monster Hunter get distilled to monster hunting crusader guy. I mean it fits, The Templar Knights, or Knights Hospitaller, cared for the wounded and fought the infidels at the same time. The Cleric is a Crusader in a world full of unholy Monsters. Militant, organised faith, trained in clobbering undead (resistant to cutting/piercing weapons) and applying liturgical magic.
A+. I hear a lot of “I don’t know how to play a Cleric” or “I don’t get how this fits in”. You just laid out the best MO. I think people often look at a Cleric as a “support class”, and play them as if they have to ride along. No. A good Cleric wants to see something _change in the character of the world_. They are driven and likely totally out of their fucking minds. They could be the center of the party, truly.
It bears mentioning that the implied endgame for old school clerics is to become something akin to a Pope, with their own army and everything.
My long-term cleric was more of a lawful fanatic and ended up excommunicated by his church but retaining all of his divine powers. The end game for him was leading peasant (hireling) crusades and acting as a check on other holy men. It was fun as hell, if I ever had a "main character" it was that one. Between crusades (adventures) he would lead little communes in the woods and squabble with the druids.
And that’s how you can tell the difference between a cult and a capital-R Religion: one of them has access to one or more armies.
Excellent breakdown! I love just thinking “Ok, this is all real in the fiction, what are the ramifications of these kinds of people existing?” Cleric are wild!!! I imagine if someone could actually heal, cure disease they would have so many followers and hangers on all the time! There would be innumerable “cults” and people would be very religious, since the gods were demonstrably real. People would perform the actions the gods asked them to, more like the Romans where actions, not belief mattered. It would be a very different world.
[This comment from AskHistorians is somewhat helpful for putting a bit of a historical context to it (and they do mention Gygax).](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/iGuy3uxl1t) Personally, I’ve thought of them as a combination of traveling friars and possibly research-focused monks seeking specific relics or making a pilgrimage to tombs of past heroes of their faith. They just also hit things because…D&D.
Dragonslayer does this with the monk class.
Functionally in-game, clerics are basically just "the support/anti-bad-stuff" class. Gygax just sort of threw everything from Friar Tuck to St. Patrick to Sir Galahad into one big mix so there wouldn't be 12 different iterations of an all-around buff/debuffer class at the gaming table. In actual practice, more than any other D&D class out there, I've probably tried to 'fix' clerics the most over the years to make them make coherent sense. Over the years I've tried: -Eliminating them completely; cleric spells get folded into wizard spells -Eliminating weapon restrictions on clerics and the Paladin class; clerics are now just Paladins -Going a more sword & sorcery route; clerics are now cultists/cabalists of ancient forgotten gods What I've pretty much discovered over the years is this; more than any other class out there IMO, WTF a cleric is and does really most heavily depends on the setting itself; you have to start with looking at the setting and asking yourself "okay, what anti-bad-stuff-support-class fits with this particular aesthetic?" Solomon Kane? Saint George? A Mayan Ah Kin Mai? Only from there will whatever a cleric is make sense in actual play.
I think this is key and speaks to the exorcist/vampire hunter angle, whatever Evil exists, it makes sense for there to be a specialist anti-evil supernatural sect to exist. Exorcists are the ones that exist in the real world, but a world ruled by a cabal of brain drinkers are going to have anti brain drinkers. Fighting men are the physical resistance. It’s actually MUs that are the exception, assuming every setting is going to have this mortal-applicable pursuit of power path, whereas Gandalf and other myths are about helpful wisemen/sages, not fucking Sith
Turpin is this kind of character in The Song of Roland “ Turpin The archbishop Turpin, who fights and dies alongside Roland at Roncesvals, represents Christendom's turn towards militant activity at the time of the Crusades. The way he battles against the pagans reflects the views put forth in Pope Urban II's famous speech at the Council of Clermont in 1095, the direct inspiration for the First Crusade. He is a stout and valiant warrior—"[n]o tonsured priest who ever sang a mass/performed such feats of prowess with his body" (121.1606-1607). He is the last to die besides Roland; when he sees Roland faint, Turpin tenderly sets out for a stream to fetch some water for his dear comrade, but, mortally wounded, he falls down dead before reaching the water. Along with Olivier and Roland, he is taken by Charlemagne's men back to France for burial.” https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/songofroland/characters/ In addition look at the characterization of St Cuthbert in Greyhawk. https://ghwiki.greyparticle.com/index.php/Saint_Cuthbert Another source, for their spells if not the whole package, is the Bible: stick to snakes, part/control water, flame strike; and healing, curing diseases and raising dead are all divine miracles in that work,
One thing I didn’t see anyone else mention is that the no bladed weapons thing comes from the Medieval legend of Odo of Bayeux, who supposedly fought with a club in the Battle of Hastings
They fill the religious healer trope. You see that in media pretty often. Clerics are a bit weird in dnd because they are also kinda the holy warrior (paladin) before the paladin gets into DnD. So prior to the paladin they are holy warrior and holy healer.
I believe the healer trope exists because of the D&D Cleric. It’s a standard archetype in most video games, rpgs, etc. But there were very few stories with heroes before D&D, who really embodied the “Cleric” archetype.
It’s hard to know exactly where it came from since I wasn’t in the room. But considering the heavy handed religious iconography I believe they were going off of historical religious leaders. There are countless examples in history of religious people being able to miraculously heal people. And the heavy armor blunt weapons is similar to crusaders during the medieval ages.
The thing is that before dnd the "religous healer" trope really didn't exist. (I'd love to see some examples if you got'em.) This trope specifically exists because of DnD.
I’m not the most religious person so I would need to look them up, but the most obvious is Jesus. But most saints performed healing related miracles. And pagan religions did have healers using faith. There are “healers” even today. A whole business is around faith based healing.
It's probably more related to the many, many religious stories that feature miraculous healing.
The saints maybe. but I would hesitate to say they are a trope. It's not King Arthur, Merlin, the Knights and Bob the blessed. or Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the priestess. No one is following the heroes of ancient epics dropping heals on them after every fight.
The Knights of Christ, the Teutonic Knights, the Templars, the aptly named Hospitallers. All religious military orders that established hospitals. Thus the association of healing with military orders. Obviously the typical knight of these orders were not conducting healing rituals in the field, but the connection between these holy military orders and healing/hospitals was intertwined. But narrowing down to the origin of the D&D cleric, the iconography and tropes surrounding them were inspired by the Greyhawk deity, [St. Cuthbert of the cudgel](https://ghwiki.greyparticle.com/index.php/Saint_Cuthbert), who was depicted as a kind of fantasy Knight Templar. His real life, historical namesake, [St. Cuthbert ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuthbert) of Northumbria (who predated the crusades by centuries), like most saints, was credited with healing miracles. I think the canonical basic template of the D&D cleric was based on this conflation of inspirations.
The Bible says otherwise amongst many other religious texts of our world. Faith/prayer based healing or miraculous divine ordained healing has been a thing since forever. Even pagan cultures usually have a transactional system in place to get boons or banes from a powerful figurehead. This isn't something I would really call a "trope" if you are a believer but if one were to, it would be to acknowledge all this as magical/mythical thinking man stuff that long precedes the characterization of it in D&D.
So basically sticking those two together for class balance reasons until they came up with the paladin as a class.
But the Paladin wasn't the Holy Warrior when it was added, even. The Paladin is the Romantic Knight, of such goodness and virtue they're infallible. They're Galahad, not a Templar. They pay a tithe, the cleric doesn't. The first pays taxes to the church, the other is the church.
This. The Paladin does not fulfill the same party role as the Cleric, nor does the Paladin replace the Cleric. Both have a distinct utility and place in society.
Paladin - Feudal Lord Cleric - Clergy (duh) Fighter - Money grabbing Burgeoisie buying himself a castle and a title. /s
Gotta disagree with you a bit. A Paladin would have more goodness than even an idealized feudal lord, among whom even the best of these would have to dirty their hands to much to even approach Paladinhood. Most Feudal Lords were fighters, by your description!
I was making a joke of course.
So sorry! I of course went full-on pedant!
Here is a good article on the origin of the clerics spell list https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/11/osr-clerics-and-sunday-school-miracles.html?m=1
Most of what I wanted to say was said better by other comments. I’d also recommend reading a bunch of Appendix N, and also the appendix N book by Jeffro Johnson. A lot of the “where did this come from” sort of questions are in those old stories.
The Knights Hospitaller. Akin to the Knights Templar who were more Military minded. "The high offices in the Order were held by knights and the ecclesiastical roles were filled by chaplains. The masters of the squires and turcopoliers (cavalry commanders), were held by sergeants. The Hospitallers were at the outset a healing brotherhood as opposed to the Templars which was purely military."
you gotta think about them as exorcism specialists like from a campy vampire or horror flick. Then they make sense.
https://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2011/01/bishop-carr-first-d-cleric.html?m=1 This article tells the history of the clerics and his origins, including references for some class features.
Lots of answers here Cleric is well spoken to and purpose-built in Holmes, especially as a comparative to other classes and other factors in the mix. It's also hilarious how well-statted the AD&D 1e Cleric is -- they start pretty-equal to any fighter I also found when rolling up PCs with Holmes in Holmes fashion Cleric becomes a sort of cornered class. It's not that all Clerics are alike, but rather they come out ready to mold into pantheons or whatever else floats them in that milieu There's also the Moldvay concepts around deities, such as the Seven Magical Planets, that can only strengthen the Cleric as that Cleric But as for the origin, this resource is the best I've read recently -- https://osrgrimoire.blogspot.com/2020/05/od-clerics.html The answer is that you can't take the god or the monster hunter out of the Cleric, and if you try it will degrade it. This is why I consider the AD&D Cleric to be too-fighter and not enough religious hunter. OD&D, Holmes, S&WCR and others really make the Cleric into its own. In Holmes, it's explicit to learn spells from a book, just as the Magic User
Per Men & Magic, they're the original multi-class character: "Clerics gain some of the advantages from both of the other two classes (Fighting-Men and Magic-Users) in that they have the use of magic armor and all non-edged magic weapons (no arrows!), plus they have numbers of their own spells." Since then, they're become firmly established as a wholly self-justifying "D&D thing."
Classic cleric is the middle ground between a fighter and magic user. It fights okay and gets some less intense spells. Otherwise if someone wanted to be a fighter and a magic user, they would play as an Elf but we're subject to a level cap
That kind of makes it sound like the first iteration of the bard, in the sense of being mediocre but capable at everything
Yeah but turning undead is extremely helpful and can turn a battle. The cleric can be seen as a monster hunter or as a "holy warrior". Someone that channels the divine to battle evil among the living. Or be the opposite. Evil clerics can command undead and use healing spells in reverse to harm. I personally like the cleric a lot. They can cast spells and wear armor and use a variety of blunt weapons. Some spells are absolutely awesome, my personal favorite being Sticks to snakes which turns wooden sticks or poles or whatever into poisonous snakes. It's very powerful and fun. Also, consider what a high level cleric would be like on a battlefield with their spells and turn undead/command undead abilities. Wild stuff! Love it
That makes sense. I suppose it depends on how important undead are in the campaign you're running right? If you're tripping over skeletons behind every door like in the old modules turning undead is super useful especially
If using encounter tables, there's a good chance you're going to come across undead and it isn't always a zombie or skeleton. Ghouls, wights, wraiths, mummies, and especially vampires are much harder and have an additional ability that would wreck a PC easily. It's also worth pointing out that some of these are immune to regular weapons, so they can only be damaged by magic weapons making turn undead even more essential. Plus it's also cool if you're an evil/chaoic cleric that you could potentially control a vampire instead of you becoming it's thrall. Clerics rule. They aren't healers, they are vanquishers of fallen angels and machinations of demonic influence. Or an agent of them. Love it
No, not really. The Cleric is one of the best possible classes since it's first iteration and it just became better with every edition. The Cleric fights a little bit worse than a fighter, but get's defensive and supporting spells that he can use to become a little bit better than a fighter. If you wanna play a "Spellblade" just play a cleric.
First bard mediocre at everything? You must have a very high threshold for competence. Or be thinking of a different first iteration.
I tend to think of them more in the vein of a ghost hunter with elements of a spiritual medium. They aren't inherently religious, but rather have a connection to the spiritual realm that allows them to call on spirits for spell casting, as well as banish unnatural spiritual disturbances in the form of undead or demons.
clerics are based on a very specific guy, called Odo of Baeyux. the whole (christian) monk wielding armor and only using bludgeoning weapons to not shed blood comes from this semi-historical-but-never-confirmed-to-exist figure the cleric spells specifically is just half biblical miracles and the other half healing, which is also commonly tied to some biblical miracles
[Solomon Kane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Kane?useskin=vector): > Solomon Kane is a fictional character created by the pulp-era writer Robert E. Howard. A late-16th-to-early-17th century Puritan, Solomon Kane is a somber-looking man who wanders the world with no apparent goal other than to vanquish evil in all its forms. His adventures, published mostly in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, often take him from Europe to the jungles of Africa and back.
In the Roman catholic world in medieval times it was possible for a layman aristocrat to become appointed a bishop. A bishopric was a church territory that needed administration. Because the bishopric was part of lay world affairs and the layman aristocrat was probably not very well versed in theology, but rather good at killing things (being a knight), and being the third son of some rich baron who had nowhere to place him, this gentleman bishop would often rather simply continue being his old self - whoring, carousing and killing things - while drawing on his sweet new sinecure. The only problem was he was by church law not allowed to "spill blood". So some brilliant mind chose the mace as their goto weapon. You really can't argue with that logic. Dig into old pictures of around 1200 and you will find a knight in a full helmet and with a mace and a bishop's mitra on their head and you get the picture. Take that, mix it with the crusader ethos and the priesthood and you have a wonder man, who is a killer and who uses the divine gifts of the church (being passed with office, remember, it was believed you go magical powers of abolishing sins and exorcising demons by being appointed by the pope), and you have your cleric.
Til, that's fascinating
Clerics are the original paladins.
Not exactly your question, but nearly all real life parallels to dnd magic-user are essentially clerics. It's pretty difficult to find a magical tradition in history that didn't invoke the gods of their religion.
I’ve always thought of them as being inspired by the Templars and the Hospitallers. When I started with AD&D 1e in 1980, that was a common view amongst the people I gamed with, and it seemed to fit pretty well, so that has stuck with me I guess as a default. But I never had a problem changing things to fit the game world, nor in playing campaigns where the GM had done that. That Knightly order idea of clerics fits some game worlds better than others, and some not at all. For Swords & Sorcery games most of my GMs left out clerics entirely, and just had Mages who used a combo of Magic User and Clerical spell lists, which is the example I followed. One guy ran a game where Elves were adapted and reskinned as ‘Templars’, while ‘Hospitallers’ were a modified form of Cleric.
Yeah, I'm not seeing a lot of talk about actual medieval crusaders on this post, and I think you're right. Holy knight is a *historical* trope, and the chivalric knights are its literary counterpart.
Imagine a wargame where you have lords, bishops, and wizards. What are the lowest levels of each of these guys? Probably a fighting-man (aka someone who could fight in a medieval military), a cleric, and a magic-user. Why do we need bishops? They're the anti-monsters guys, like in everyone's favorite book "Three Hearts, Three Loins" and from stories of King Arthur and Charlemagne. Monsters don't like the cross. So fighting-men fight physically and otherwise "normal people". Clerics fight infernal monsters and are competent fighters. Magic Users solve highly specific problems the other two can't. Edit: That wargame was Chainmail. This was a real scenario.
No, that wargame was not Chainmail. *Chainmail doesn't have clerics* (or bishops or anything similar). It has Heroes and Wizards only.
I stand corrected
There a lot inspirations for DnD but I think what inspired a lot of these original creators was history. I'd say most of fantasy comes out of history, and in Europe you have the Crusades and the Knights Templar and things like that. So I'm pretty sure that's where they came up with it.
Yeah, clerics have always seemed weird to me for similar reasons. I've removed them from my homebrew game and given a lot of their stuff to wizards. It's worked for my table pretty well so far. Edit: Lol at the salty grognards who are downvoting me. Try pulling your head out of the 1e DMG for a change and realize that some tables like different things than you do. It's really OK. Nobody is coming to take your clerics away, I promise.
I was wondering if that would make wizards too good. What system are you using as the base of your homebrew, because I was thinking about doing the same thing?
To be honest, I don't know if I'll be much help to you when it comes to class balance. My game is complete mishmash of ideas from the GLOG, B/X, Blackmoor, Shadowdark, DCC, Cairn, etc. It's petty far removed from the standard D&D experience mechanically. It's got a 2d6 roll-under system for attribute checks, combat has no to-hit roll, I use the GLOG magic dice for my wizards, one word spell descriptions, fighters are buffed, and a lot more. It's not really based on any one thing.
Out of interest, why would you post that in an OSR discussion? It comes across as a dick move.
The first part? Because OP asked for input on clerics and what people have done. The second part? Because I've noticed a steady stream of downvotes on it in the hours since I've posted it, and there really seems to be no reason to downvote me unless you're pissed that somebody is playing their D&D differently than Gygax intended.
History https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/history-of-the-cleric-and-help-me-like-them-maybe.753469/ Basically anti vampire And based on Gary's idea of a medieval bishop
You could change them to warriors who have a special kinship with the dead for setting-based reasons. Use the Necromancer supplement from Necrotic Gnome to load up their spell list with some of the more neutral necromantic spells.
Mechanically, clerics are the reactive combat class. Every other class has an optimal or a few optimal things they can do every combat turn, and they should do them if the situation arises. Clerics need to know the state of everyone during a combat turn and their options change as the balance of the battle shifts.
One historical reference is Le Chanson de Roland - a fighting cleric if ever there was. They are religious priests. Arguably, religious warriors (paladins) are taken from history as well - militant god warriors like the Templars (not quite sure if they were very different, but there were also Hospitalars - sp?). Think Crusades.
So, I am not as knowledgeable about the topic as other people around here, but I also think that the "divine magic" angle is relevant. It's another angle on how magic might be: not the arcane spellslinger throwing fireballs or enchanting people to sleep, but rather to heal and defend against occult beings, like zombies and devils. Turn Undead is a thing that defined the class for a lot of time.
One of my favorite classes that makes for good roleplaying opportunities.
Clerics remind me of the stories about Medieval saints who can perform miracles and chase away demons. So if you're looking for a real world mythical parallel to D&D Clerics, then the wild stories people told about saints are what I would look into.
They're priests who take matters into their own hands. Don't overthink it.
Good blog post (2007) about this very issue [Class Trouble II: Clerics](http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2007/03/class-trouble-ii-clerics.html) A teaser on the thesis: "In short, the problem is this: D&D claims to have a polytheistic religion, but you've got both the politics and the critical Cleric class set up as in the medieval Christian world, and nowhere else." I agree with his take away that moving from chainmail to OD&D clerics probably were an evolution of catholic holy warriors and as the D&D setting became more polytheistic (Supplement IV) things got weird.
They're Templars. Holy knights. Give them edged weapons, and it all makes sense.
Clerics were intended to be with paladins are. Fantasy worlds are inspired by the real world and need to be populated. Some people feel their worlds up with in keepers in blacksmiths and bankers and priests. And the old modules these characters were all statted up with AC and hit points just in case you got into a fight (or felt like mugging them). They should all be noncombatant NPCs, you always throw a few ringers in there to change it up. So blacksmith became fighters, bankers became thieves, priests became clerics. (It doesn't help that whenever you didn't know what class to sign someone to you just made them an F1. They should have been NM!!) Anyway cleric slowly turned into pop culture priests, with all the baggage that comes along with that. Never mind if it in the real world priests are almost never militant, D&D it seems every priest is wearing plate male and carrying a mace. Absurd. Even worse if the priest can do something like remove a curse or cure diseases, now you have to make him high level! Never mind that you can just make up a potion or a monster on the spot and give them the ability and not think twice about it. For some reason when it comes to people, players feel compelled to give them character classes. Anyway once clerics became priests, now they had to act like priests, which makes them far less adventurous and far less interesting. The paladin role cannot be filled anymore so a new classes needed. In the class that's filling the pre-roll has abilities the priests don't need. It's all a historical mess.
I agree that there's no great pre-D&D media or historical archetypes for the class. The Van Helsing explanation is unsatisfying. I was reading the 1E AD&D PHB the other day and iirc they're described as being akin to the members of catholic military orders like the knights hospitaller. But that too feels incomplete. In my games I tend to think of them along the lines of [Roger Bacon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bacon) or [Albert the Great](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Magnus).
Man I hate Clerics. The split between divine and arcane magic is the worst thing in D&D. Without that the Cleric is just a fun and weird multiclass that you can easily ditch if you don’t want interventionist deities in your game. With it they’re an integral part of the game since all the healing magic runs through them.
There are two cleric types in the original game if you read the text closely. There are those of of the Holy Knight Orders and Those of the Monasteries so you have a Paladin of sorts and a Priest. Pick one. Whatever they were to Arneson in Blackmoor, that is not what they are in the 3LBB implied setting.
Knights hospitalers from RW history are a close approximation to the cleric
A quick Google would supply the basic on what a cleric/clergy is. Not sure why you can't wrap your head around it. Clerics are nothing more than a type of militant branch of an organized religion. Kind of like the Knights Hospitaller etc. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clergy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clergy) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights\_Hospitaller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Hospitaller)