So, after running a few ideas back and forth, I think we have the definitive version of the Deminar Cleric (all ideas subject to change), so let's take a look at it:
The Cleric is a tool of the god he worships, more accurately, a weapon. While his purpose does, partially, revolve around converting others to his religion, that's nothing that a priest or particularly devout layperson could do. The cleric has a much more defined warrior purpose in life.
A cleric delves dungeons and braves the wilderness to protect devout citizens from monsters, secure ancient relics and sites important to his god, and, most importantly, to destroy undead in all their forms. Undead are an anathema to the gods, a violation of the natural order, denying a soul its rightful rest, whether accidentally or in an attempt at immortality. Clerics, above all else, seek to destroy undead, mostly undead with souls, the soulless ones are not as big a deal, but still a violation of natural order.
All clerics use blunt weapons, not because of some religious doctrine, but because it's the most effective against undead. Things that don't bleed out or have living vital organs to pierce are only best destroyed when crushed to bits. It's not that they can't use other weapons, it's that they aren't trained to use other weapons. After all, all adventurers are trained before they go out into their first dungeon as level 1, 0 XP fresh meat (Something that's not talked about much, but think about it, you can't just be a farmer one day, then go off and be a fighter the next, properly knowing how to fight using a bastard sword without cutting your own leg off, every adventurer has training in his specific class, don't let people tell you otherwise). Nontraining results, mechanically, in being unable to use other weapons (rather then some clunky penalty for weapons, remember, this is LL, a model of B/X, nice and simple rules now). But, to keep clerics diverse, all receive training in their gods favored weapon (or possible weapons, TBD), a weapon that best represents the god and his ideals.
Turning the Undead, this falls into the very reason a cleric is out and about, getting rid of the Undead. Turning the undead, as the rules write it, seems to be a manifestation of power that sorta erupts around the cleric and can take down or make run any number of undead critters around him. To me, I picture it as a glow that either comes from above or from within the cleric and then suddenly radiates outwards, washing everything in the room with its light. What is it? It's the divine "fuel" that the gods give to clerics to cast their spells, just in raw form, it's divinity made manifest, in a way. It doesn't affect living things because they belong in the divine order, but unliving things, that's another story. Undead with souls run or are disintegrated as they are faced with the realization that they do not belong in the natural order, they are either made afraid or consumed by pure divine energy. Soulless undead are another story, why do they "run" or blow up? Well, soulless undead are made either by arcane or divine magic, they are fueled by that magic to operate and follow their last order, so the divine energy shorts out that magic fuel, either short circuiting their order and causing them to wander aimlessly instead of attack (i.e. the running) or sever their magical connection and cause them to crumble.
Now, clerics also get magic, and they all have access to the same spells, so why is that? Well, it's just a matter of the passage of time and the codifying of things. All gods provide is the divine fuel to cast a spell, it is up to the cleric to shape it and then make it work. So, over the many centuries and millennium that this has been going on, a certain set of spells has been codified and used again and again. Thus, as a cleric goes through training, he learns of the spells his masters know, who got them from their masters, who got them from there masters, and so on. What is taught, is what is learned, and any cleric going to learn about spells are going to see relatively the same things. Original or offbeat spells can still be found, be they released in a supplement by us down the road, they are just comparatively rare. There is already some division anyway, between the lawful and chaotic gods with the reversible spells, and, like Favored Weapons, we'll probably throw in a spell or two special to each god (maybe one per level, like domains?) to separate each cleric based on who he actually worships (something not really touched in LL and even B/X in order to stay setting neutral, understandably)
So there it is, all the mysteries of the clerics special abilities and restrictions explained! If I missed anything, drop a comment about it, if not, maybe someday soon another Design & Development post about another rule fitting in with a setting will come along.
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