priest and theologian

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

Some religious groups are genuinely all about the smiting their enemies.
The Thugee come immediately to mind.
The Jewish Zealots, as well.
The more extreme forms of Islam have spawned several, as well.
Christianity has the Knights Templar arise from its loins, too.

Warrior priests are not the provenance of fiction alone.

True, but warrior priests don't necessarily have to be magic users. And my point is that allowing clerics to directly smite could unbalance the game (or at least make the clerics undesirably duplicative of wizards). So the proposal is have the clerics mostly able to improve the combat performance of others.

Followers of the war god Slima, for instance, might be commanded to slay non-Slima followers wherever they find them. But Sliman clerics would carry this out by using spells that make Slima followers more effective in combat, rather than by using spells that directly inflict damage.