The differences between Clerics, Specialty Priests, and Paladins

As promised I'm finally getting around to this.

Cleric: A priest who adheres to the dictates of a religion(church) and not through strict adherence to the capricious whims of a deity. A cleric serves a church or flock. His powers come from faith and following the dictates of the faith.
- Crusaders: Crusaders gain power from the strength of their own "righteous" zeal in service to the church to which they belong.
- Monastics: A monastic follows the dictates of the church hierarchy, often through the use of written holy documents(though not all of them can read). These are a religion's scholars and tend to keep an eye on the holy relics and secrets that have been accumulated over the years
- Miracle Workers: Miracle workers draw their power from faith itself. They do not necessarily serve a god or church, but instead serve a community or an ideal.

Specialty Priest: A priest who obeys a god directly. While they sometimes do form priesthoods in organized lands, this isn't always the case. Traditionally, specialty priests only occur in religions with high populations.

Paladins: In effect, a paladin is basically a cleric who instead of being based in a religion, is loyal to a code of conduct. In my campaigns I usually have an ancient order of knights or something who created this code, and Paladins are merely the ones who carry it on. As such, I also normally allow for "Paladins" of other alignments who follow other codes of conduct, and I hope to present them in later blog postings.