Agree with OP. Further, there are only two classes--fighters and spell casting types. Everything else is a sub-class of some kind.

Funny, had the same debate with a former poster a few days ago. I like his take on it: clerics are ordained warrior-priests, paladins are divinely inspired questing knights. Bishop Turpin, Odo of Bayeux, Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights — clerics. Galahad, Percival, Holger Carlsen — paladins.

HARP.. (High adventure roleplaying)  had a paladin as a sub-class of Cleric.
Which made a lot of sense.

I may have this wrong, but I believe Gary had Paladin's originally under St. Cuthbert.  If that is correct, to do otherwise may be incorrect

Quote from: The Butcher;822758Funny, had the same debate with a former poster a few days ago. I like his take on it: clerics are ordained warrior-priests, paladins are divinely inspired questing knights. Bishop Turpin, Odo of Bayeux, Knights Templar, Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights — clerics. Galahad, Percival, Holger Carlsen — paladins.

Having thought on it a while, I think this distinction works best for me. It doesn't really separate the two mechanically, of course, but at this point I don't know as I can be sure I'm not simply conflating issues with other aspects of D&D I may not entirely like inside my head.

I do think it is dumb to have both. I think you can have Clerics and Knights, or you can have Knights, Paladins, and Monks/priests (monks in the western sense, not the Kung-Fu sense), but Clerics and Paladins were basically both riffs on the same thing.

2e D&D came the closest to a sensibly paring down the D&D class bloat with kits enabling a fighter to be a knight, a gladiator or a barbarian but the drive to sell more books and a touch of fear about rocking the boat put pay to the idea.

The 2e Priest with its variants allowed you to create the pastoral priest who was weak at combat but had spells and powers and the Militant order priest like the Templar or Knight of St John. In this system the Paladin should very much have been retired.

The D&D cleric as a class is basically a band-aid. Envisaged to shut down a Vampire PC and then being used to fill the mechanical flaw of HPs as characters grew to higher levels. The martial cleric from OD&D and 1e can only really be thought of as a militant order monk. There really is no other explanation for their martial prowess compared to the other classes.

In my Platonic idea of D&D Clerics form a broad class from priests to Militant orders with mechanical variation as per 2e. Divine power would come from a piety rating that would move up or down through play based on character actions. A Paladin would be a martial priest, like a Templar, with a high piety. A paladin would loose some or all of those powers as their piety dropped. Not all knights are Galahad some are Lancelot and some are Kay and some are Mordred