Clerics and Weapons

While I'm on a clerical kick, here's the official "Why can't clerics use pointy things?" explanation for the campaign world. This originally appeared on the Obsidian Portal wiki, but I never got around to reposting it here.

As stated in all the early editions of D&D, clerics are restricted to blunt weapons, leaving it up to the referee to enforce and/or explain this restriction. Here’s mine:

In the year 941, the nobles of both the Great Empire and Nan-Matal were concerned with the growing influence of the various sects within their borders. Looking to strip these priests of the ability to raise private armies, the nobles attempted to outlaw the carrying of weaponry by any servant of an established temple. The clergy was outraged at the proposal and threatened to withhold services, rites, and prayers from anyone of noble birth. The nobles counter-threaten to evict every clergyman from their borders. Ultimately, cooler heads stepped in to work a compromise, and at the Diet of Tides held during Starfall of that year, the clergy agreed to limit their arms to the mace, hammer, cudgel, staff, and sling. For more than six centuries, it has been illegal for any cleric to carry an edged weapon and any found doing so faces immediate arrest. This restriction does not apply to the so-called martial clergy of some non-human churches. Thus, fighter/clerics and the like are allowed to bear any weapon legally so long as they adhere to the normal laws of weapon possession in the Uncertain Lands.

Now, since there is currently one cleric running around the campaign who came from another world where the rules were a little different, what might this limitation mean to Mars Markus? Mars has been operating under the grandfather clause and is still allowed to use his edged weapons that he's trained in. The reason he escapes incarceration is that the cult of Mog is unknown in the Kinan-M'Nath and is therefore not covered by the Diet of Tides. Should our servant of the Spider ever decide to start pushing that old time Arachnid Religion (or establish a stronghold), he might attract the attention of ecclesiastical law and risk incarceration. But for now, Mars can get away with it.