OD&D Conundrums: Clerics and Edged Weapons

When devising a D&D campaign, one of the things I'm always compelled to rationalise is why clerics are restricted from using bladed weapons.  There are historical precedents in our world, but these may not necessarily apply in the average D&D campaign setting, especially when most of those settings are heavily polytheistic.  Let's take a look at some history, of the real world variety and also the D&D variety.  (You may find that I'm a bit more fluent with one than the other...)

The first thing to explore is whether clerics had that restriction at all in OD&D.  The text says "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!)".  If we're to take the text at its literal word, the restriction only applies to magical weapons.  But of course, OD&D is notoriously inexact, and necessitated a lot of clarification in AD&D and other later editions.  The other classes also give their weapon and armor allowances in terms of magic items, with the sole exception of the magic-user being restricted to daggers.  We know from AD&D that all of these were meant to apply to normal weapons as well, but readers in 1974 wouldn't have known that at all.

(There's an issue of The Strategic Review were Gary gives an angry rebuttal to a critical review of D&D. One of his retorts lambasts the reviewer for playing a spear-wielding cleric, but I dunno Gary, maybe you should have written it in the rules. Just putting it out there.)

Looking forward can give us clarification, but so can looking back now that we have access to the pre-publication draft of OD&D.  In that draft, it's explicit: "In any event, clerics may not used edged weapons (at the referee's discretion)."  The referee gets to choose, but the rule was intended from the start.  I do wonder sometimes what was left out on purpose, and what was left out by accident, and whether Gary could always remember what actually made it to print.  It would be easy to mix it all up in memory.  Regardless, clerics were always intended to be restricted to blunt weapons.

As for why this rule exists... It's all so clerics can't use magic swords.  Magic swords in OD&D are powerful.  They're all intelligent, and a good chunk of them have special powers.  They're intended as an equalising factor for fighters.  Magic-users and clerics can both cast spells, but fighters can't... until they find a good magic sword.  Give those swords to the spell-casters, and this intended balance is disrupted.  How effective this balance was is up for debate; I'd say not very effective at all, because a significant sore point in D&D's development has been the power gap between casters and non-casters.  But the intention was there from the start: casters don't get magic swords, so magic-users are restricted to daggers and clerics can't use edged weapons.

But where is this all coming from?  What was the historical or literary source?  Historically, the main influence would probably be the principle of sine effusione sanguinis, meaning "to shed no blood".  I'm having some trouble researching whether Catholic priests followed this principle, and if they did why, because every article that's popping up is related to D&D.  But it appears that the clergy did fight on occasion, especially in the Crusades, and they may have used maces and other blunt weapons to get around this principle.  "But Nathan," I hear you ask, "would not hitting a man upon the head with a flanged mace or morningstar cause them to bleed?"  To which I reply, of course it would. Profusely.  But people love to get around restrictions on a technicality or a flimsy justification, and priests are certainly no different there.

The main historical source that people point to is the Bayeux Tapestry, and it's depiction of Bishop Odo of Bayeux fighting with a mace.  There's also Bishop Turpin, depicted in The Song of Roland as fighting Saracens, also with a mace.  Turpin is a very likely source, as I believe that he's been specifically name-checked by Gary or one of his crew (although I can't find a source to corroborate that belief).

(This blog post does a much better job than me of laying out the historical precedents, if you're interested.)

Historical or not, clerics in D&D are famously restricted to blunt weapons, and in the interests of sticking close to D&D lore I'll be keeping that restriction as well.  Except, it's not a universal restriction, is it?  When you get into 2nd edition, and possibly even some of the specific pantheons of 1e, there are clerics allowed to use certain bladed weapons depending on their religious beliefs.  Which makes perfect sense, but means that whatever explanation I come up with, it has to be flexible enough to allow for some religions to ignore it.

In my 2nd edition campaign, circa 1997-2000, I explained it like this: there was a god of light (Solarin) and a god of darkness (Malak).  (Yeah, I know, the names were a bit on-the-nose, I was 18.)  These gods fought in the cosmos for a few centuries, until finally Malak stabbed Solarin in the side with his spear.  But this didn't kill him; instead, it sent him hurtling in orbit around the planet, with light spilling from the wound, and this was the origin of the sun.  So clerics of both sides avoided bladed weapons, one side in sympathy for their wounded sun god, the other to avoid their dark master's mistake.  Or some shit like that, it was 26 years ago, but it did the job, and stopped my players asking why they couldn't give their cleric a two-handed sword.  I'll need a different explanation now though.

The obvious one would be to go with the real-world inspiration, since I'm already basing the campaign's major religion on the Catholic church.  I could very easily say that the Church of Law forbids its clerics to shed blood, and they've justified their way around it by hefting dirty great flanged maces instead.  Then, when I later introduce some competing churches I could just have those that are offshoots of the Church of Law using that restriction.  The problem here is Anti-Clerics.  If it's a restriction of the Church of Law, why are these devil-worshippers and dark cultists also similarly restricted?  There's no reason they should be.  So that explanation is out.

I've been tossing up the idea of there having been some kind of primordial war between mortals and the gods in the ancient past, which ended with the gods retreating to the Outer Planes, and mortals ruling the Earth.  Maybe during that war, the gods decreed that "mortals may not take up blades against us", and mortals got around that decree by taking up the mace instead.  So the legends say, anyway...  Now it's less of a restriction and more of a tradition, although certain gods may enforce it more rigorously.  And while clerics may not be literally "taking up blades against the gods", they're always fighting for their deity, and against creatures of an opposed alignment.  And would not fighting a god's servants also be taking up blades against the gods?  I like this.  For some clerics it's a hard restriction, for others a tradition, and there are some who would have abandoned it long, long ago.  But for the Church of Law it's very much a going concern, and in the opening campaign area it will be for Chaotic clerics as well.