Microlite81 Cleric

[Jorgo]

Can clerics use the morningstar or will it draw blood? otherwise they just seem like fighters.

[Yora]

In reality even a club will cause bleeding. Just bare hands cause bleeding wounds!
You can be certain that hammers and maces would cause a gruesome bloody mess. Sling bullets can penetrate the skin and become embedded inside the body to require surgical extraction.

Whether you think a morningstar is a thematically appropriate weapon for clerics really comes down to the personal tastes of the GM. Or you could go with the definition from the 1981 Basic rules on which Microlite81 is based, which puts the restriction on "edged weapons". Morningstars have spikes, not edges, so they would be allowed.

[Digitalelf]

Later editions, starting with the 1983 Mentzer Basic rules, became more specific with what weapons a cleric may use, and these did not include the Morningstar. :smallfrown:

For example:

A cleric may only use a mace, club, war hammer, or sling.

[Winter_Wolf]

I never really got the in-character logic of that. Those things cause massive blunt force trauma, shattered bones, and essentially advocating beating the hell out of enemies until they're a bloody pulp and/or quite dead. The least barbaric weapon on that short list is a sling.

[Knaight]

I never really got the in-character logic of that. Those things cause massive blunt force trauma, shattered bones, and essentially advocating beating the hell out of enemies until they're a bloody pulp and/or quite dead. The least barbaric weapon on that short list is a sling.

It's not like the strikes from swords, spears, arrows, etc. aren't also messy. These are killing implements, there's a level of barbarity to all of them and blunt weapons aren't particularly worse. They're also not better, and the whole idea that a military order uses maces not to draw blood is ludicrous, but there's no reason to go too far in the opposite direction here.

[Winter_Wolf]

It's not like the strikes from swords, spears, arrows, etc. aren't also messy. These are killing implements, there's a level of barbarity to all of them and blunt weapons aren't particularly worse. They're also not better, and the whole idea that a military order uses maces not to draw blood is ludicrous, but there's no reason to go too far in the opposite direction here.

All of that is tru, yes. Which I suppose is my point: why have these restrictions that just don't make sense given the purpose of weapons in th first place? Is it more just an ease of use thing, where anyone can theoretically pick up some clublike weapon and start bashing, but attempting to flail around with a blade or axe or what have you results in more harm to the would-be user?

That being said, ball and chain, meteor hammers, and even cetainflail designs are way more dangerous to the person holding them when they don't really know what they're doing. I realize that of those only the flails might be considers simple enough for easy training. Now I'm rambling. But back to point, ease of use really begs the question of why dagger and knives aren't on the whitelist. They're certainly less dangerous damage-wise than any of the blunts listed.