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In many versions of D&D, clerics can't use bladed/edged/pointy weapons, and are instead restricted to things like staves, clubs, maces, etc. Why is this?
Is there some historical reason? Is there some fantasy prototype of this sort of cleric? Is this just for game balance, to prevent them from being fighters+magic?
According to a regular in Gygax and Arneson's early Blackmoor and Greyhawk games, the cleric was largely draw from the priests in 70s vampire movies, with the prohibition against edged weapons inspired by legends and fantasy fiction:
Ahem. I was there.
In CHAINMAIL there were wizards that functioned as artillery.
Then there was Dave Arneson's first miniatures/roleplaying campaign. Some players were 'good guys' and some players were 'bad guys' and Dave was the referee.
One of the 'bad guys' wanted to play a Vampire. He was extremely smart and capable, and as he got more and more experience he got tougher and tougher.
This was the early 70s, so the model for 'vampire' was Christopher Lee in Hammer films. No deep folklore [stuff].
Well, after a time, nobody could touch Sir Fang. Yes, that was his name.
To fix the threatened end of the game they came up with a character that was, at first, a 'vampire hunter'. Peter Cushing in the same films.
As the rough specs were drawn up, comments about the need for healing and for curing disease came up.
Ta da, the "priest" was born. Changed later to 'cleric'.
The bit about edged weapons was from Gary's reading the old stories about Archbishop Turpin [ed: later clarified to be Bishop Odo], who wielded a mace because he didn't want to shed blood ("who lives by the sword dies by the sword").
In other words, it came about the same way that 90% of the D&D rules came about :
WE MADE UP SOME [STUFF] THAT WE THOUGHT WOULD BE FUN.
As he says, clerics were partly inspired by stories and misconceptions about historical warrior-priests, such as Turpin from the Song of Roland and Odo, a prominent figure in the Bayeux Tapestry. The idea of fighting clerics vowing to avoid spilling blood with their weapons is not at all historically accurate, but it's a popular image in some legends and Victorian pseudo-history, and featured in fantasy fiction of the 60s and 70s as well (e.g., according to Wikipedia, The Once and Future King).
As far as I can tell, there was no original rationale other than flavor. Maces are generally a bit weaker than swords in most editions of D&D, but OD&D used straight d6 for weapon damage rolls; I think at that stage the game had other "balancing" mechanisms so weapon damage wasn't a big one. I can't say whether Gygax actually believed the image of the cleric fighting with only blunt weapons was historical — remember, D&D's chief goal was always to emulate the creators' favorite fantasy fiction, not real history — but he clearly liked it enough to make it a part of the game.
There's an interesting item in the Wikipedia article Sources and influences on the development of Dungeons & Dragons about Clerics. Quoting from an old Dragon Magazine article it states:
The cleric is largely inspired by folklore of the medieval cleric of Templar.[13] Like the Templars described in White's The Once and Future King, clerics in D&D were forbidden edged weapons by religious vows.
The source footnote states:
"The AD&D game models its cleric after the medieval fighter-cleric, à la Templar or Hospitlar." Lakofka, Lenard (1982-12). "Leomund's Tiny Hunt: The cloistered cleric". Dragon (TSR, Inc) VII:7 (68): pp. 30
I always understood that literary/historical rationale to be a convenient means of covering the fact that fighters who can also heal and turn back undead would just be too unbalanced. They needed to be impaired in combat relative to fighters, and only being able to use blunt weapons was a handy way to help that.
I believe it goes back to Bishop Odo, an 11th Century cleric depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry wielding a club. Many historians believe that he wields a club because, as a cleric, he would have been forbidden from carrying a sword. Whether this widely-believed historical status is true or not, it's likely that the priesthood were generally not trained in sword-fighting.
Medieval inquisitors were forbidden from drawing blood when extracting a confession. Blood was sacred to Christianity after all. They could do anything else they wanted into process, as long as it didn't draw blood. This is one source often cited for why generic clerics can't use edged weapons. Mythos clerics on the other hand could use any weapons their gods allowed.
