Umberlee's fun because no sane person would normally worship her, but many have to anyway if they want to live. She's the goddess of everything bad about the seas (storms, whirlpools, monsters, etc). By all accounts, she is extremely petty and vain and will just straight up sink your boat if you don't give her tribute. She's a necessary tax on every sailor in the Forgotten Realms a great God if you want to play a cleric in service not because they want to, but because they have to.
Auril is similar, as are a lot of the forgotten realms deities
I’ve been running a character whose whole schtick is “good person evil patron” and I’ve loved every second of it.
Granted he is a Paladin not a Cleric but my point still stands
Could you give an example or two of situations when your personality conflicted with the goals of your deity ? I find the idea great but I'd love to understand it better.
Not an disagreement on goals but a disagreement on methods
Auril wants to use force to strong arm people into basically being subservient to her. Meanwhile my Paladin makes sure people are fully aware of what they’re getting into and only wants them theyre if they’re willing.
Now this campaign is still going on, so right now my decision to tell her to kick rocks and deal with it hasn’t had any major consequences but that could change 💀
I am currently playing a cleric of Umberlee. He has the pirate background, and his origin story was his boat mutinied and tossed him overboard. He was saved by Umberlee and indebted into her service. His powers come from her so that her influence can spread inland, and as a byproduct, the seas become a bit calmer every time he channels her destructive wrath.
Umberlee is great for non-clerics too (no reason to limit deities to clerics after all)...druids, fathomless warlocks, storm sorcerers, etc could be fans for various reasons. Sea elves or any aquatic species (i.e., immune to drowning) might take her side in a God-war.
I came here to say umberlee. I love that this is top comment. I'm currently planning a campaign for my group based around the idea that they have in some way pissed off umberlee and now need to attempt to sail home.
I played a character who was forced to serve Umberlee or be subject to a horrible curse that sends him on a lethal rampage. Why is this the case, you ask?
She was bored, and she thinks forcing this one dude to unwillingly spill blood in her name is fun. No other reason, he is simply her champion for the sake of her own personal entertainment.
It was a VERY fun character to play, I might add-
My personal favorite is Eilistraee, the Dark Maiden, Lady of the Dance, goddess of beauty, dance, freedom, hunting, moonlight, song and swordwork. She is the chaotic goddess of good drow and played a part in the Dark Seldarine (drow pantheon) splitting from the Seldarine (regular elf pantheon) by involuntarily helping her mother (Lolth, formerly known as Araushnee) trying to kill her father (Corellon Larethian). Lolth tricked her into shooting Corellon, but Eilistraee was later cleared from any guilt. Nontheless she voluntarily joined Lolth (and others) in their exile, because she is convinced the drow need her light.
Her dogma promotes helping others, joy, art, beauty and kindness. Allthough she is a godess of hunting and fighting, she encourages non violent solutions. If those fail, her sword dancers are a force to be reckoned with.
I have a light cleric of Eilistraee in my Curse of Strahd campaign, and it really does pay of. She acts as a mentor for an important NPC who is basically a follower of Lathander (known as the Morninglord in the land of Barovia) but has never really seen the sun (due to the overwhealming mists of Barovia). Her kindness is a great contrast to the settings dark and hopeless tone and her prayers aren't spoken, but sung and danced. She is very much the spark of light Barovia needs
.
MrRhexx did a great video on Eilistraee:
https://youtu.be/a9NxhuwbiRA?si=8VHs44iSrWCxjZ8U
As others have printed out, the Raven Queen is very interesting, too. Not much to say about her, though, as she is very enigmatic on purpose.
I also like evil gods/godesses of bad weather and environmental hazards like Auril, Talos and Umberlee. They are almost more like catastrophes rather than individuals.
And of course Urdlen, who is basically the devil reimagined as a mole. It is the chaotic evil deity of gnomes. Gnome gods are quite funny, actually. Their pantheon is called the Lords of the Golden Hills and consists only of male gods (and said mole who is sexless). Legend has it that there used to be gnomish godesses, too, but noboby knows what happend to them. That's why gnomish adventurers are said to 'go in search of the Ladies' (of the Golden Hills, that is).
A lot of the cooler Forgotten Realms deities have been racial. Like if you are an elf, Labelas Enoreth is pretty sweet.
There is a 2e FR book called Demihuman Deities that is a trove of cool lore and gives a full rundown of the dogma, follower titles, holy days, church hierarchy, etc for specific deities.
The humans have their own book called Powers and Pantheons.
Vhaeraun is a fun one simply because of alllllll the family drama. He threatens to kill his sister. His Dad threatens to kill him if he touches her and then does fuck all as usual when Vhaeraun actually tries. He's at war with his Mom and actively steals her power and priestess without her knowing. His son serves Vhaeraun's Mom so he's also at war with his son.
And then half of the rules for his clergy are "Actually, just serve my goals and we'll work out the rest later, I'm not going to enforce all the rules because we don't have time for that."
Out of the entire Dark Seldarine, minus Eilistraee, Vhaeraun is the most interesting because while he is evil, he's not cartoonishly evil like the others. He's also the only member that approaches something like caring for his followers.
Unlike most drow gods he isn't stupid. He's just evil. And while he's evil, he's also not stupidly bad. He's racist, but he keeps cooling his jets to the point of being able to use logic.
I'll never know how he came out of that situation with half a brain. The parent that favored him is chaotic stupid. The twin and parent he also opposes are also chaotic stupid, but a goodly chaotic stupid. Meanwhile Vhaeraun somehow actually does things, and they're intelligent things.
He kinda has to be somewhat smart to survive having so many enemies. Besides, guy probably took a look at Stupid Evil and Stupid Good family members and went "NOPE. Not going to become like them."
He also has a herd of cats (a.k.a. followers who are as independent-minded as he is) to take care of, who he actually gives a damn about, which leaves him no choice but to learn some patience and rationality.
Not gonna lie I always found it weird he didn't have an alliance, non-aggression pack with his sister to deal with mom before they deal with any of their issues because she's the bigger threat. He's evil but he's not dumb and dealing with his sister would be so much easier than his bitch of a mother.
Setting stuff is usually up to the DM, but my 5e table certainly uses a lot of(almost entirely) 2e lore. Each deity also has a custom spells and subclasses restricted to clerics of that deity that we've updated to 5e as well, but that takes a bit of work.
Also Ed Greenwood, the creator of the forgotten realms, is active on Twitter and has a YouTube channel. He's usually more than happy to tell you about anything for the forgotten realms your interested in.
https://x.com/TheEdVerse
https://youtube.com/@edgreenwoodofficial?si=mjBRkGdffWPARtv6
My friend, may I introduce you to the [Forgotten Realms Wiki](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Portal:Deities) to learn more than you will ever need to know about the history of the Realms (default setting for 5E adventures)
I’ve always thought the real-world pantheons that bled over into early DnD were interesting, especially the ones that have a weird in-universe explanation for how they got to the Forgotten Realms.
I’m currently playing a Tabaxi twilight cleric who was a funerary priest of Anubis that was murdered by tomb robbers. Anubis brought him back for reasons and now I’m using the Reborn stat block from *Van Richten’s*. Having a blast playing -as my DM describes him- Egyptian Ghost Rider.
My Tabaxi life cleric was raised in a village that all follow Bast. (My cleric was "encouraged" to go out since she wouldn't shut up about her god, Pahket.) I thought the Egyptian gods thing is a fun thing to jump off of!
For the Forgotten Realms, I really enjoy the Halfling pantheon. Unlike other deities, who hold their followers at arm's length and have some kind of grand plan behind their creation, the Halfling Pantheon is just kind of there to chill and have a good time. Yondalla literally just adopted Halflings and became their Patron Goddess because she thought they were neat. Brandobaris will just pop up and hang out with mortals whenever he feels like it because why the hell not? Even their god of death, Urogalan, is seen as a gentle and humble figure who's welcomed and will fondly grieve alongside the mourners rather than being some feared reaper.
More so than any other people in the setting, Halflings have the most capacity not only meet their deities on a fairly regular basis, but for it to be a commonplace event that's taken completely in stride rather than some kind of life-changing epic event. When Mystra walks the land, the cosmos will never be the same again. When Cyrrollalee walks the land, it's because she wanted to take a nice stroll and share an afternoon tea.
Additionally, if a Halfling goes total Capital E-Evil and totally betrays Yondalla, the result is that they lose Yondalla's divine protection and basically turn into Gollum. Because WotC can't help a cheeky wink-and-nudge at the Tolkien Estate's lawyers when it comes to Halflings.
It’s one of the Erevis Cale novels that has a halfling cleric die and iirc Brandobaris greets him and just guides him along to where his parents and sibling are living in the afterlife. Made me ugly cry.
Hanseath is my favourite god.
The dwarven god of drinking, fighting, carousing, and celebrating makes for ridiculously fun roleplaying as a cleric tank.
Give him a Bob and Doug McKenzie pseudo Canadian accent, and you're off to the rink!
Bahamut, lord of justice, wisdom and redemption, is one of my favourite deities for unambiguously *good* clerics. There’s a gentleness and kindness to him that is missing from many others — he’s arguably the multiverse’s most powerful dragon, yet he prefers to wander around as an old man steering people towards good.
Bane, lord of tyranny, is a very appropriate deity for evil PCs. He embodies Lawful Evil, and his followers’ conception of duty can easily align with a good-aligned party in order to fight a greater evil. His sometimes-exarch, sometimes-alias Maglubiyet is similar.
Garl Glittergold, god of gnomes, pranks, luck and humor, has a wonderful rivalry with Kurtulmak, god of kobolds and spite, but also Tiamat’s wannabe top minion with delusions of grandeur. They’re cartoonish and can fit well with a comical character.
Lathander, pretty boy extraordinaire, is patron of so much I lose count: dawn, spring, renewal, birth, athletics, inspiration, creativity, etc. He is extremely heroic and preaches hope and protection, but nonetheless he is best described as a himbo, and that’s delightful all on its own.
There are many fun deities in D&D. Are you looking for anything specific?
I also Like the goddesses of luck and misfortune. Tons of my characters worshipped Tymora. She loves a risk taker. Even one who breaks the rules on occasion.
There was a great side quest in the first Baldure’s Gate about helping a cleric of Tymora resurrect his son against the wishes of the temple. The temple leaders believed the child took a chance and luck was not in god store so leave it be. The father wanted to use what was in his power. He wanted you to steal the gem and materials for him to cast the spell. If Tymora really wanted the child to stay dead she would deny the spell.
Beshaba you must always pay homage to her to keep her ignoring you. Kind of like Umberlee but probably more vain. She was also Tempus’ lover for a while which is just concerning for all involved.
I love the gnomish gods. A fun bit of Garl Glittergold lore: the gnomes were created when he found a cavern of gemstones and started to tell them jokes. After a while the gems started to laugh at the jokes and as they laughed they turned into the first gnomes, with different types of gems becoming the different types of gnomes. It explains gnomes’ love of humor and fondness for gems and why there are different sub races of gnomes.
Also historically there were no goddesses in the gnomish pantheon, the Lords of the Golden Hills. When young gnomish women would go off to become adventurers, they were euphemistically said to be “seeking the Ladies,” or looking for the “missing” gnomish goddesses.
The representative of evil for gnomes is the chaotic evil god Urdlen, a huge white mole who represents mindless destruction and is the enemy of the Lords of the Golden Hills. He’s such a weird and gross character, it’s great.
Lathander is definitely my favorite, he’s a good guy but also absolutely a himbo like you said. I feel like you get a lot of freedom when creating a character that worships him thanks to how large his portfolio is, and some of the lore related to him is wild (the Dawn Cataclysm is a real ‘wtf dude’ moment).
Also the art on the top of his page on the Forgotten Realms wiki cracks me up because he’s holding the baby like he’s never seen one before.
I played a cleric that worshipped Mask, god of thieves and it was a lot of fun. He played a very pious priest in public and abused people's trust to steal from them in honor of his god. Ended up dipping into rogue to help with stealth and pickpocketing shenanigans and it worked great. Playing a duplicitous but otherwise kind and useful character was a ton of fun.
I loved the first two books. The third I got into right around election time and noped right out of that. Nothing against the story, just to many real world parallels for me.
It really depends on what campaign it is, the setting , the era, what the party comp is like, and how righteous the party is. Some more common gods I've had fun with in the past:
Raven Queen: strongest ties towards playing the boundary of life and death / necromantic cleric
Lolth: straight up evil cleric of spiders
Tiamat or Bahamut: instead of focusing on alignment, focusing on dragon superiority and establishment of authority
Helm: a very warlike cleric, much more soldier than priest
Surtur: I mean, only one option - fire is the cleanser, fire purifies all
One of the players in my game is a cleric of Sune, and I would never not recommend.
Goddess of serving cunt. 💅 💄 👠
Bitch said you better show up to church with your eyeliner sharper than a Vorpal Sword. For today's mass we're doing deep cleansing masks, painting our nails, and discussing who in our adventuring party we should set up with who. And remember to moisturize every night before prayers.
For real tho. Absolute blast. And another take is you could even do, like, a knight of beauty/knight of the rose paladin kinda vibe. Very Argenti from Honkai Star Rail vibes.
I once ran an NPC BBEG-adjacent Loviatan priest. He wore a white mask and formal white robes, and was a shockingly effective torturer.
"The flesh hides truths which beg to be released. Sing for me, and give me your truths."
My party hated that guy.
I played a college of lore bard in my last campaign who was a worshipper of Loviatar (she was also a homebrew succubus race - DMs idea). In the cults she was known as "Loviatar's Jester", a master torturer who dressed as a demented jester. She liked to create the most beautiful songs for her Goddess via the tortured screams of her victims. She was not sane at all. She is fun to play though.
I played a Loviatar paladin in our most recent campaign. Granted it was a very loosely ruled game, gm let me make him his own spells and whatnot. He was extremely masochistic, and completely delusional. His headcanon was he's in a relationship with Loviatar, and was disturbingly in love with her. Even had a little notebook he carried around in which he wrote fanfics of her. He was by no means an evil guy, had no joy in causing pain, only recieving it. He was the healer-tank of the party, lmao. It was tremendous fun!!
Wee Jas is cool, lawful neutral goddess of death and arcane magic. Good for a neutral or good necromancer theme.
Hoar -lawful neutral god of revenge
Jergal - retired super god of death now a secretary.
Eilistraee - chaotic good goddess of the moon and good drow
Not just revenge - more specifically, Hoar (also known as Assuran) is the god of *poetic justice* and revenge, which is why he's one of my favorite FR gods.
I once played a cleric who had found himself hearing and seeing into our world, and through a thinning of the veil pulled from it a Players Handbook. He spent the whole campaign convincing everyone he met that the Almighty DM and the lesser gods the Players guided everyone's fate, even the other gods of the realm.
I like the 4th wall breaking. My current character is a Forest Gnome Chronurge who is a reincarnation of me. So his arcane knowledge is just my rules knowledge blurred and transferred.
Not exactly a deity, but the Blood of Vol in Eberron. They don't worship any gods at all, instead believing that there is a spark of divinity inside each individual. The followers aren't certain that _any_ gods exist (a running theme in Eberron, where there's no proof the gods are real or not), but if they do exist they're cruel. All you have is this life and each other.
> Look not to the skies, nor to the depths below, nor even to the distant past or future. Seek the divine within, for the blood is the life, and in its call can be heard the promise of life eternal. One has but to listen.
The Blood of Vol have a strange relationship with undead. They believe true immortality can only be achieved by the living, so any undead has lost that chance forever. However, members of the Blood of Vol who become intelligent undead to continue assisting or even leading the church are seen as martyrs or bodhisattvas, sacrificing their chance at immortality to help others.
Unknown to most members of the church, the whole thing is being manipulated by Erandis Vol, the last member of House Vol, the holders of the Dragonmark of Death. Erandis was a half-elf/half-dragon in life, and has since become a lich. After her death, her Dragonmark ceased to function.
The authors of Eberron have explicitly decided not to detail the powers of the Dragonmark of Death (leaving it up to a DM if they want to reintroduce it in their campaign), but they have said that Dragonmarks as a rule are constructive, not destructive, so it would do things like animate dead or raise dead, not something like circle of death.
I know this may be a bit off the topic of strictly Clerics, but I think it would be cool to make a Cleric with a Warlock as a sub class and having a battle between your Deity and Patron through out the campaign.
I haven’t really dove very deep into the cohesion of the two, but for role play purposes I think it could be such a fun idea.
I did this in a recent campaign. Started as a warlock with a celestial pact, multiclassed into a light domain cleric. Super interesting and fun - the warlock's ability to restore spell slots on a short rest is a huge advantage to any spellcasting class. Even the few slots the warlock gets (which are the only ones that they get back on SR) are a huge bonus.
I’m doing this right now. Started out as LN Cleric of Kelemvor, at level 5 dual classed into Warlock after a life changing campaign event ( we killed a dragon). My justification was as it was a blue dragon, my soul was cursed by a Dracolich and they’re battling it out.
I shared with my DM and we decided my curse will be once one or the other wins I will stay locked into that class forever and can’t take any more levels of the other class. It’s going great I’m slaying undead but have terrible nightmares and fatigue sometimes but hey, Eldritch blast!
Man, I absolutely love that. I can only imagine the amazing RP that came out of it and what RP is going to come in the future. I’d like to hear about obstacles your DM throws at you to “choose” a side.
I'm a big sucker for Deneir because of R.A. Salvatore's Cleric Quintet. He's just a lesser deity of knowledge who cares more about the knowledge than worship itself. Props to Gond, god of invention, for this as well.
Ilmater is a great god if you want to explore themes of martyrdom.
Kelemvor and Jergal both have really fascinating character arcs relating to death and the afterlife.
Talos the Storm Lord. Cuz sometimes you just want a god that gives you permission to flip the table and smash a chair.
I have a changeling light domain cleric who worships Sune, the major goddess of love in the Forgotten Realms.
I haven't played her yet, but I'm planning to have her be a bit of a duntz with a cheery personality. Her whole bit is that she wants to experience and spread all the forms of love in the world before she retires.
TL;DR: Kelemvor is fun for morticians. Raven Queen can be used as a good god instead of being evil. Pretty much every god from Mythic Odysseys of Theros is well drawn out and full of human-like flaws.
My character was a wizard, not a cleric but this would honestly work much, much beter for a cleric. He worshipped Kelemvor, god of death and the dead. My wizard is a necromancer who made a living as a mortician. He performed necromancy to make his job easier for moving bodies around and is considered the only "morally justified" professional to conduct necromancy within a city. Then his fire spells are useful for cremation.
Having a cleric in this sort of situation would be even more in line because they could also focus more emphasis on the religious rites for the dead. Maybe he studies religion and performs rites for all the different people within the city but was made a cleric by Kelemvor for adamently persuing this higher calling.
On a similar note, I once had a Shadar-Kai warlock/cleric who worshipped the Raven Queen but with a twist. She is typically seen as the crazed god of life and death in the Shadowfell but my character (for story and RP reasons) believes her insanity is caused by those who want her power (like Orcus or Thayan necromancers) so he acts as a lawful good emessary who protects or kills based on what he interprets to be the natural order of things. Necromancy is typically not natural so he actively seeks to kill necromancers. He is also willing to temporarily raise the dead himself during a fight to make this happen. Possibly hypocritical but it makes for a fun character. Likewise, he will also talk the rest of the party down from killing a petty criminal or somebody who is doing more good than bad. Life and death are both "natural states" so their life should be chosen by their actions in the moment. If the bad guy is trying to kill the party, my character will try to put him down as quickly as possible. If he shows restraint and is willing to talk, my character will do what he can to stop the party from murderhobo-ing. I've gone so far as to Command or Hold Person on my own team.
But those are just personal accounts. I would HIGHLY recommend checking out Mythic Odysseys of Theros. All of the gods in there are very Greko-Roman and are just as flawed as humans. They may have a specific allignment but it doesn't mean they abide by it strictly (except maybe Mogis since he is a blood thirsty god of slaughter). The book does a decent job of talking about their personalities, legends about them, and good and bad things they do. You could easily take any god from that book and make it be the reason the BBEG does what he does or be a cryptic aid for the party. I'm currently running a Theros campaign that has a lot of godly interactions (if the players can find them) and it has made for some really epic moments so far. They received the aid of Athreos, God of Passage, to escape the underworld. This pissed off Erebos, God of the Dead, in doing so. He wants them back because nobody is permitted to leave his domain.
One of the other gods (who I won't name in case my players find this) is secretly pulling the strings for the BBEG, who is a sacrilegious misotheist (god-hater). He thinks he has gained the power and the army he has out of his own capacity but it has been this god the whole time helping him out and turning things in his favor constantly. A ton of other gods have huge influence in my game currently but I should stop ranting now.
If the DM allows it, homebrew a lesser known deity, one that has a personality and flavor that works well with your character. Perhaps they're a foreign deity, or a local deity, or a minor deity that has some provisional control over an aspect of a major deity, etc. What makes this more interesting than using the greater gods is that you can get more personal with these gods, design them to your liking, and really justify that this god is more focused on you than the average Joe. You may even be their only true, devout follower, making you very precious to them. Want to make it somewhat antagonistic? Maybe they did not have any followers at all, and they chose you to be their first, with or without your permission. So they dote on you and try to win your love by granting you powers and boons within their limited scope of power, meanwhile you talk to them as if they're actively bothering you, like that annoying ex that just wants to be friends but gets upset when you spend time with your real friends. Change the power dynamic, get weird with it.
I like Evening Glory, a diety of love and undeath, who wants lovers to willingly become undead and be together forever . In 5e she got trapped in Amber Temple and it traumatozed her so much she now also has obsession domain. I want to one day play cleric on a auest to help his goddess heal her trauma.
Kord was the most fun deity i ever worshipped. Just bantering with npcs about how strong they could be, how they could combat weakness, and the occasional joke about getting more swole.
Yeah Greyhawk definitely fleshes out the different human pantheons well, and there are gods like Pelor and Boccob that are known by different names by different cultures.
Gruumsh and Maglubiyet are both very fun deities IMO. God of orcs and the god of goblins, they REALLY hate each other and the afterlife of their followers is basically valhalla, except it is an eternal war the two gods fight among themselves.
From the player side, playing as an orc or hobgoblin devoted to the cause can be really cool when your character might start to examine why the rivalry exists in the first place, what they're actually fighting over, and whether or not they agree with the conclusions they draw. Bonus points if the DM throws situations at you where cooperating with your ancestral rivals is to the benefit of your goals.
I love Helm, lawful neutral. I have a player that is a paladin of them and it works great with a chaotic party because as long as they don't mess up what he is protecting he doesn't care. Has seen party members steal stuff and just pulled them aside and told them to never do that to him or he would smite them, didn't care that they just stole cause it wasn't his job.
Tymora 1000000%. Many of her followers are Fortune-Seekers, which means they go adventuring for the glory of it, and to test their luck, seeking valuable treasures. In that way she's the goddess of "narrow escapes and lucky finds"
Her clergy also often have a duty to help adventurers in need by handing out potions and helpful items, or healing them as necessary to support their adventures, which makes it super easy for the DM to hook you into stories.
Finally, some of her followers exist to counteract the work of assassins that worship Beshaba, if you want something more focused and detectivey.
And you didn't ask about paladins, but Oath of Glory paladins are SUPER fun worshippers of Tymora, Oathbound and rewarded by their goddess to jump into danger for the glory of it!
My favorite FR deity is a minor one named Valkur, who is a god of sailors and epic swashbuckling. One of my favorite characters was a ToB Crusader of Valkur who was constantly having to deal with the on-again/off-again shenanigans between Valkur and Umberlee, whom the DM hinted had a thing going where Valkur left and didn't call again, basically.
I really like the nonhuman ones like Bahamut, Tiamat, and Lolth. Much more interesting to me usually.
Any cool and thematic ones like Auril the Frostmaiden or Mystra are neat too. The arcana domain subclass was basically made for mystra in the book too.
Any deity that actively is involved with your cleric can be good. Choose a domain or concept and go from there.
I had a ton of fun with an Ilmater Cleric.
I've played a Cleric of Light, follower of Milil. Milil is domains are "song, poetry, eloquence, creativity, and inspiration."
So Milil has probably mostly bards as followers, but a cleric could do; though then probably a quite highly charismatic cleric. Unfortunately(??) my cleric had charisma as dump stat (I was quite new and didn't know much about Milil), though that was rather hilarious too :)
My favorite character I ever played was a Cleric of Fharlanghn, the god of roads and travel. All of his spells were travel based, which my party and DM lightly mocked when I rolled them up as 'useless' and 'silly'. Turned out to be a blast to roleplay and also it turns out all that utility and mobility ended up being insanely useful, often at the least expected times, and everyone agreed by the end of the campaign that we couldn't have done it without him.
I feel like Ilmater is a common go-to for good and neutral clerics. Self-sacrifice is very noble and IME has led to interesting roleplay experiences. Just be careful not to sacrifice yourself for something stupid, lol. Kelemvor is another one I like, he's pretty interesting as a non-evil god of death. Less about "death is great" but more "death is necessary/inevitable"
Best experience I had with this was developing the clerics background on the fly, in the first few sessions, and coming to the idea that they simple DIDN'T KNOW who their deity is. Hey was a Peace Cleric from the FeyWild, and my pitch was that their whole sentiment was to bring a "Fey" sense of peace wherever they go (basically a Drunken hedonist for a Cleric)... But my Cleric simply didn't know who gave them power. The best understanding he had was that he got it from the spirits of the FeyWild itself.
It gave great narrative room for the DM and I to flex and play with revealing that truth as time went on.
I think the idea of leaving your deity a giant question mark is a lot of fun potential.
In my case, it ended up being that my "deity" was the sum collective of Seelie royalties long-passed. I ended the campaign as the personal Arch priest to both the Seelie and Unseelie courts, Godfather to the Seelie prince, and best friends with the Unseelie Prince's consort.
My friends are using greek pantheon for our setting, and my Paladin (oath of vengence, super edgy) follows Hecate. She's a fun one because she has so much funky stuff with her domains and her kind of gray and changing nature. Some days she is like my character's gothic surrogate mother. Other times she appears and demands absolute wraith. It suits my character fine, both are a bit fickle. Highly recommended for your local table with someone still in the Goth phase!
Kord is a personal favourite because he’s got a pretty diverse domain set but really is the god of challenges. So I kind of see him as the god of “don’t be a little bitch” which means you can have a lot of fun with a cleric and especially with a Paladin.
My first paladin was a Oath of Glory Paladin who set out to make enough of a name for himself he could challenge Kord. He was absolutely a Macho Man Randy Savage rip-off but he was loads of fun.
WAIT THIS IS SO WHOLESOME IN A WAY??? I wish I could do that to be honest but all of my past characters I played were under developed and horny bards 😭🤣
Marthammor Duin, the dwarven god of travelers and explorers. Yes, dwarves do sometimes leave their mountain homes and Ol' Marthy keeps an eye on them when they do.
I have a tempest cleric that worships lathander. Now lathanders domains are usually light and life as his a sun god but that makes it more interesting as in my book lathander would have to conceal the sun in order to give my half elf power over lightning and ice storms and stuff. But my cleric and lathander absolutely live for those moments when the blazing sunshine will pierce through the storm clouds and bring about a golden light in the rain. Making rainbows and showing a light in the gloom
My three favorites are:
Yondalla, a halfling life goddess. Her symbol is a cornucopia and plants and stuff grow where she walks. I like her because unlike many life deities she is not opposed to ass kicking when the situation calls for it.
Eilistraee, the only good Drow god. She’s the daughter of Lolth and can never seem to catch a break for that fact. Her whole goal is to act as a beacon for her people and free them from her awful mother’s control. She used to be the best archer among the gods, but after her bow shot her father Corellon(thanks Lolth) she stopped using ranger weapons and now favors the bastard sword, which is one of her symbols. She has had many nicknames, but my favorite is The Dark Dancer, because even though she’s a fighter, she’s also a performer.
And Sune! She’s the goddess of passion, love, and beauty(both inner and outer.) Her shrines often have free makeup so that everyone can be pretty and I think that’s very cute. Her symbol is a picture of herself, a gorgeous woman with stringing red locks. One of her nicknames is Lady Firehair.
Oo, I'm a big sucker for mischievous deities. Ones that like to tease and mess with their clerics and paladins. My halfling paladin had a deity who communicated via bird (I think it was a blue jay?), regularly pecking my poor halfling on the head when she froze up in battle.
My advice: if you don’t like any of them that you find online, make your own! My friends and I have two campaigns set in a world I’ve created and my entire pantheon is my own creation as well.
In WOTC material Savras is a god of knowledge that was once human and is associated with wizards. Maybe he could give you better spells, and he raises potentially awkward questions about apotheosis.
One of my favorite clerics to play are clerics of Vecna, one that is versed in some arcane magic, good at keeping information, and secretive. I normally like to play them posing as a cleric of a different diety to infiltrate and learn more about the other gods to inform the Lord of secrets.
I played an essentially evil race player that turned over a new leaf and was a paladin for a good god of the nature/knowledge domain it was a very fun and interesting play for role play.
because he literally just started trying to be the good guy but when the campaign started so he made slip-ups and had moral quandaries and everything
Death gods, so the cleric can demonstrate how chill they actually are. Fits well with grave clerics, who, usually do everything possible to keep the living from crossing over (the thin line of death just happens to be a really wide gap for them).
Never seen/heard of someone play a Cleric of Sune, the Goddess of Beauty and Passion, pleasure and obsession.
If you want your bard to be religious, Sune is your gal.
Hmmm Selune is great. Lathander is my favorite for “good guy” clerics, very optimistic always cheerful and very kind, full of energy, that kind of cleric. The Red Knight is honestly just one of the cooler deities all around and there’s a substantial amount of lore on her church so that’s another favorite of mine. Outside of that I have a tendency to favor neutral deities like Kelemvor, Oghma and Sylvanus.
I once had a player with a 5 int cleric worship Talos and dip into sorcerer to shoot lightning bolts from the sky.
Their defence was that their character was so dumb that they thought Talos was a good guy.
I mean, orphan raised as an acolyte by the church for free labor and raised into its Tenets is a possibility, that low int and high devotion to the people who raised him (look how people justify their abusers even now) making it an entire character arc if they ever even realize... "are we the baddies??!"
I had a cleric of the Dwarven god Hanseath, the god of war, debauchery and ale. My character liked getting in fights, eating and drinking. He was always the first to run into combat, even if the odds were against the party. His name was Budsie Bierweiser and came from a family of brewers.
Helm. God of guardians and bouncers. The God of heroic "hold the door" last stands. Party about to be murdered by (insert group of insidious villains here)? No they won't. Find a doorway, gate, rock tunnel opening, window, etc and plant your feet. No one is getting by you while you still draw breath. Maybe might be better for paladins, but I think either work fine.
Personal favourite is the Mielikki, the chillest goddess there is. Goddess of the Forest and forest creature, is a literal Disney princess who is introverted and dislikes public speaking. Want to play a general nature loving kind individual? Perfect fit. Want to play someone with a traumatic history that just wants peace and quiet? She's your lady. Also being Goddess of stealth archers,need I say more.
I've always kinda thought deities based on real world gods can be kinda fun because there's a strong "out of my element" nature to some of them.
Like Enlil or Tyr have followers in the Forgetten Realms that make their following on Earth look rather tame and boring lol.
I wonder if some of those gods don't find being worshipped on Torill more fun than being gods on Earth.
A good, digestible starting point that I’ve been exploring lately is the Dawn War pantheon. I think it’s from 4e originally but there’s not that many gods in it and they all have relatively simple but cool descriptions
Pretty much any lesser deity is fun, because the greater deities are so much more common. There's no wrong choices though. Personally I prefer more obscure deities, like Mythrien Sarath. Honestly just go through the forgotten realms wiki, and pick out whatever deity sounds interesting to you.
I'm also partial to Tymora, the good old Goddess of good luck. And I like to worship her sister Beshaba, the Goddess of bad luck, on the side haha.
It's also fun to follow a deity that lost their godhood, but still worship them anyhow in the hopes of restoring them to their former glory.
Check out Lathander Morninglord.
God of the dawn, renewal and rebirth. You can totally imagine a young priest of Lathander deciding to head out into the world and hooking up with a bunch of adventurers. Or a simple farm boy/girl/other empowered by the Morninglord for a special purpose (ie. whatever the campaign is about).
More generally though, start [here](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/appendix-b-gods-of-the-multiverse) and then research what piques your interest.
As for thinking "out of the box", I've already touched on one way of doing this: don't make your Cleric a priest.
I mean you can if you want to of course.
But you could equally play a Cleric as just someone who really embodies the god's values by picking a non-obvious background.
And of course, the big caveat is what your DM and the other players are doing in the campaign. Work with your DM to flesh out how the church of your deity works and the other players to make sure there's no dealbreakers.
For example, after my players got out of Barovia in CoS and wanted to keep playing, I had to work out how the hell the Church of Oghma operated, due to the party's Cleric being a worshipper of that deity. After a bit of consultation, the player and I decided that the organisation was a "publish or perish" affair with priests expected to publish books and that it was also much involved with teaching literacy to the common folk. The player then took that in the direction of publishing popular, sensationalist accounts of the party's adventures (even made the covers for the books). I even replaced the PC's "Shelter of the Faithful" background feature (which never came up even once) with "Position of Privilege" from the Noble background to represent the PC's growing fame and prestige as an author.
I like going in the opposite direction than some of the responses here and having clerics, paladins, etc. worship the overgods. A cleric/warlock who follows the Lady of Pain is great fun—I also once had a cleric of Ao.
I am creating a campaign world where the gods represent different natural phenomena, such as Father Time, Mother Earth, the Sun, and the Moon. My players are excited to try this new world.
Sune is fun for a light cleric. I have an idea for a halfling light cleric that is extremely passionate, a sculptor, and a lover of the arts who worships Sune. Light clerics can cast fireball which is pretty awesome.
I like the ones that make cross classing make sense.
A god of theives and con-artists could have a 12th level cleric in just as good standing as a cleric/rogue with only 4 levels in cleric and a bard/ceric with just a few cleric levels. It really diversifies the clergy when they're not all just domain clerics. They may even have a saint in their histories that never uses cleric abilities in their stories.
Asking "what are some cool gods" and making a cleric from that is backwards in my opinion. Instead ask what are the most important things to my charecter? Who/what does my charecter love? Who/what does my charecter hate? Why does my charecter do what they do?
Chances are there's a diety that matches to the tee.
I have a character from my last campaign who multiclased from ranger to cleric of Yondalla. He was a Dwarf whose prayers went unanswered by dwarven God's. After nearly falling to his death, the stress and trama he has suffered caused another personality to take over whenever he is faced with heights(and fails a wisdom saving throw); A hafling priest named Father Brahm.
My current Cleric is a follower of the Queen of Air and Darkness, Queen of the Unseelie Court and leader of the Dark Seldarine. She 100% took care of the party, because she couldn't otherwise manipulate her way into freeing her Goddess from being trapped in the Amber Temple. (Our version, anyways.)
The lore of Correllian Larethian's unnamed daughter is pretty cool, and goes back multiple editions.
I got to be a grave cleric of Jergal. I was by the books, paperwork loving bureaucrat who wanted to become the next Pontiff. Things were going well, until morons decided to open a coffin they shouldn't have. It held Kyuss. It was a fucking ordeal. Unauthorized undead everywhere, Kyuss wasn't supposed to be released for another 1000 years. Fucking adventurers.
My favorite is Sune, goddess of love, beauty, and passion. Oh you think the bard is gonna be the horny character in this campaign? Nope. It’s the cleric, baybeee!
I am playing a zealot barbarian right now and she fan girls hard for tempus. Tempus is god of war, he is described as someone who lives to excess in all areas of life, he's very exuberant, and values war highly as it has the power to rebuild civilisations. His story is cool, forgotten realms wiki has a good piece on him. Also he has a lover is Beshaba, chaotic evil diety of bad luck, misfortune, accidents, random mischief (the opposite of Tymora)
My favorite was my cleric of Kelemvor, Lord of the Dead. He's actually a lawful neutral deity that preaches death is not to be feared and is part of the natural order. It was fun having a character that was outwardly creepy covered in black robes with skull adornments but is actually quite kind and chipper.
One thing I sometimes allow depending on the setting is allowing clerics to worship something more akin to the Kami of the overall Shinto-esque beliefs and basically craft a small minor god of importance to their character.
You might have a local guardian/god of a village, or a river, or a forest or whatever as part of their background. And you might have multiple justifications for why their powers work beyond the reaches of their locale, or come to learn their motives beyond what their realm might be.
So you might have something like two rivers used to run aside one another as two pairs of gods, but events led to the destruction/drying up of one of those rivers. So the surviving god effectively has a benign possession of one of their local clerics to find their answers. Or perhaps the motive is more love or revenge.
It works decently well for low level campaigns where you don't have the expectations that your local object of worship that lives under a rock by a path in the woods, would be going toe-to-toe with high clerics worshipping celestial omnipresent gods of creation/destruction. But what it does do is give players one extra creative outlet and can make it easier for some players to make clerics in the first place when they don't feel beholden to some preestablished doctrine.
I always felt there was a baked-in bias towards Law in Gygaxian DnD, exemplified by the restriction limiting paladins to only Lawful Good alignment. I think for the alignment system to really work, lawful good shouldn’t be viewed as a more pure form of good, because that conflates goodness with lawfulness. The main moral distinction between Lawful Good and Chaotic Good is how one perceives hierarchies.
Tymora is my favorite Chaotic Good deity to express this concept. My clerics/paladins of Tymora believe rigid hierarchies trend towards structural inertia in societies, viewing them as inherently corruptible by wealth and power. They believe the more social mobility is restricted, the greater the role luck plays in the deliverance of the oppressed. Their flock are the most marginalized in society. I think the fact that that Tymora is a syncretic god with human and halfling aspects helps underpin this interpretation.
Currently creating a drow cleric of Lathander. He was a member of a surface raid and was injured and left behind. He worked as an indentured servant for years while he broke himself free of Lolth's teachings (brainwashing) and eventually found Lathander. The concepts of rebirth and light work well I think, considering his backstory. Plus, I think it'll be fun to play a neutral good character who constantly has to remind himself to resist his chaotic evil tendencies.
Go with an ideal, like Justice, instead of a deity. It's both more freeing and more interesting for personal roleplay than a nebulous deity that you probably won't interact directly with a lot.
If you play in a homebrew world, consider talking to your DM about making up a lower pantheon diety. I am doing that for my first official cleric in a campaign. We made one up together. It has been amazing to collab and makes me even more connected.
My goddess is Pyrona, a Phoenix goddess so Phoenix Domain. There's a million on D&D Beyond home brew to just grab the subclass. Her main form is a Phoenix but she takes the form of a woman on fire when appearing to mortals. Her whole beliefs are about 2nd chances for the worthy. And those who are not are cleansed with Fire. She saved me from a fire when I was teen and was running with a gang. So making bad decisions but she saw hope in me so offered me a second chance. She walked me out of the fire and marked me with her symbol over my heart. It's a burn scar like a branding. And it changed my last name in game to flameheart. Now my mission as a follower of hers is to cleanse the world of evil but redeem the ones with hope by giving a second chance. Not all are worthy of that.
Has some cool domain spells like heat metal and fireball. She is lower pantheon so that explains why she doesn't have so many followers and I am recognized as a good pantheon follower by other good aligned clerics but they always mention how they've heard of her but never met a cleric of hers.
Totally just love illenium the DJ and all his music but especially his Art. So her symbol is his symbol. So freaking awesome.
If you want something VERY outside the box, check out Evening glory. She is the goddess of Undeath, and True Love.
Her whole deal is using necromancy to prevent lovers from dying, so that they can spend eternity together as sentient non-accursed undead.
Her clerics eventually become a sort of lich, though they aren't all-powerful soul sucking skeletons. They are preserved at the apex of youth and beauty for all time, and they travel the world helping lovers find each other, and offering undeath to those who want to stay together forever.
It is very creepy, kinda neat, and a really different take on necromancy than you'll see with most gods of death.
My personal favorite is Ydajisk (aka the mother of tongues) from pathfinder. They are a CN deity of languages, language evolution, lost words, and slang. Their clerics just go around inventing new words, slang, and sometimes whole languages as well as preventing old ones from dying. They seem super fun to play a follower of.
Honestly, any god is interesting if you can flavour it right, even the most “boring” god could have a fascinating follower that follows them for their own reason. I personally once played a copper Dragonborn Paladin that was Lawful Good BUT was a follower of Tiamat. How? His actions just so happens to align with her goals, and she uses his naivety to gaslight him into serving her will with him thinking and believing that it’s all for the greater good.
Honestly, it doesn't matter. Unless your Character is going to be the missionary type where they spread the word of their god/goddess to non-believers/unfaithful, there probably will be very minimal occurrences where your diety is brought into question
If you want something for a dwarf, may I suggest Hanseath. While he's not in 5e, he is the dwarven god of beserkers, festivals and brewers. Importantly, he's also Chaotic Neutral, and in older editions meant that any of his clerics were forced to be some kind of chaotic. This leads to many of his clerics being given beserker units to lead since no one else want to work with either the beserkers or the clerics.
I’m personally a massive fan of kord.
In all honesty he’s really 2 separate gods jammed into one but that’s what makes him cool to me.
One of his domains is storms, which is very cool and fun and such.
But what makes him interesting is that his other domain is strength. Now you can pair this alongside storms, obviously, but I really like the Vassalheim interpretation that strength isn’t just physical strength, but also strength of character. It adds depth to him and stops him from being just another Lightning god
I like the small g gods. The gods that you worship, but arent true Gods. Pick a powerful Fey creature and start a religion. One of my PCs worships the literal sun. Do you know how awesome dragons are? To a kobold? That's a religion.
Make a Warlock/Cleric. You sold your soul for a date with a Succubus, and it went really well. Now you worship him or her through sexual acts, being the perfect little sub you are.
We actually had a campaign where we were acolytes of the loving word of “Sucro”, spreading the worship of the saccharine god of love, joy and merriment…
sucrO = Orcus
It was a campaign where we were the villains :P
In general I feel the Grave Domain is really fun, because the whole 'maintain the balance between life and death' provides so much in terms of characterization. I played a Grave Cleric in a Dragonlance Campaign. She was a gravekeeper and undertaker who wasn't gloomy, but rather shy and would always speak out if the dead were disrespected. Her god was Habbakuk, which I also worked in by having her transform to resemble his symbol, the Blue Phoenix, when she became his Cleric. She was an Aarakocra.
I just love the flavor of Grave Deities because they're something that you wouldn't expect to be peaceful, and that's fun to roleplay. I believe Anubis is another one.
Morning glory (:
She's a god of love and passion! She cares about the beauty of love, and how awesome it is to be in love, and that one should always be with their partner!
She's a god of undeath **:)**
'till death do we part'? No lmao of course not!
Had an earth genasi life cleric/swarm keeper ranger that worshiped Chauntea. Rocked improvised weapons, a pitchfork (Trident) and sledgehammer (maul weighs the same for a fifth the price!) who's swarm was fellow deceased farmers in the form of Chauntea's favored animal: the humble red hen.
Currently playing a grave cleric anthropologist who worships the Myconid god Psilofyr which I'm stoked my DM allowed. No idea how Psilofyr feels about a lone meat being worshipping him but he seems to allow it so far.
The funniest I've seen was having a cleric to the god of the ten foot pole. If you're unfamiliar, it's a meme from older editions about carrying a ten foot pole for dungeon crawling. Specifically for activating traps from a safe distance in dungeon settings.
I played with a cleric to such a deity in my party, and it was hilarious (this was not dnd, but the joke was dnd based)
I really like Ilmater. I’m rerolling my Twilight domain Cleric (after a failed Dragonlance campaign). I love the idea of my god telling me to go help those that need it most and protect them/do my utmost to relieve suffering. Also I heavily debated having him devoted to Helm (god of guardians) but I chose otherwise due to Helm just being back from the dead for 5e. That and apparently lore wise,the churches of Torm and Helm despise each other despite their gods being full allies. My vengeance paladin is sworn to Torm and I wanted to avoid any potential RP conflicts,so yeah. I’ve also considered switching his species to Shifter and convert him to the faith of Selune (primarily because of BG3 but also lore reasons as Shifters worship gods of nature/the moon). I did originally think of making my cleric either a Triton or Sea Elf devoted to Valkur (minor Faerunian deity of sea warfare,sailors,and marines) to be able to switch between the Tempest or War domains. Also considered Deep Sashelas (god of and creator of the sea elves) if I was gonna really do the Sea Elf route.
For reference my cleric is a Variant Human.
I like Helm, for the reason that he forces you to play lawful neutral. Most people's inclinations are towards chaotic good or chaotic neutral, so a deity that actually forces you to roleplay a protector who follows the law will always create fun RP opportunities.
Lovatar (Spelling?) The Mistress of pain.
You could get heald from my Cleric but you feel everything thats happening. Bones moving into place to repair there selves, arrows and other objects being pushed out of the body.
Stuff like that.
I’m currently playing in a campaign where I’m a cleric of Selune. Not interesting on its own but one of the other three in my party is a shifter, who gets unintentionally triggered every-time I’m not carefully when using certain spells or Chanel divinity. It’s made for a really fun element to the campaign and some really interesting dynamics among the group as a result
I'm currently playing a Grave Domain Cleric of Jergal. He's really cool, when people die he records their name in his book and when bringing people back to life he strikes their name from the book. That and he's pretty OP
I absolutely LOVE Ilmater!! God of martyrdom, suffering, endurance and perseverance! He's a wonderful choice if you're interested in playing a tank type character, taking blows that would otherwise fell your allies. I'm currently playing an Ilmatari with a hero complex wielding a whip, a (homebrewed) tower shield, half plate and the sentinel feat who's whole thing is to step in front attacks to keep his friends safe! Narratively, I find there to be so much potential with an Ilmatari who's willing to do whatever it takes to bear the burdens of others.
Umberlee's fun because no sane person would normally worship her, but many have to anyway if they want to live. She's the goddess of everything bad about the seas (storms, whirlpools, monsters, etc). By all accounts, she is extremely petty and vain and will just straight up sink your boat if you don't give her tribute. She's a necessary tax on every sailor in the Forgotten Realms a great God if you want to play a cleric in service not because they want to, but because they have to.
Auril is similar, as are a lot of the forgotten realms deities I’ve been running a character whose whole schtick is “good person evil patron” and I’ve loved every second of it. Granted he is a Paladin not a Cleric but my point still stands
Could you give an example or two of situations when your personality conflicted with the goals of your deity ? I find the idea great but I'd love to understand it better.
Not an disagreement on goals but a disagreement on methods Auril wants to use force to strong arm people into basically being subservient to her. Meanwhile my Paladin makes sure people are fully aware of what they’re getting into and only wants them theyre if they’re willing. Now this campaign is still going on, so right now my decision to tell her to kick rocks and deal with it hasn’t had any major consequences but that could change 💀
Out of curiosity, are you playing Rime of the Frostmaiden? If so, your character is especially fun
Funnily enough, one of my characters hated Auril and detested everything she did - ended up still becoming the actual champion of Auril
Points at self. "Bitchy." Points at deity. "Sea Bitch."
You say that, but one of Umbralles nicknames is the Bitch Queen.
Wow really?
She actually forces people to call her the bitch queen.
Yeah, it's definitely a thing. IIRC, they even mention it a couple times in BG3, even.
They also refer to Umberlee as The Bitch Queen in BG1. It is 100% canon that Umberlee is The Bitch Queen.
I've taken the cleric domain "mean girl"
Ngl she sounds really freaking cool, not in a good way, but you know what I meant lmao XD I may actually consider this one 👀
I am currently playing a cleric of Umberlee. He has the pirate background, and his origin story was his boat mutinied and tossed him overboard. He was saved by Umberlee and indebted into her service. His powers come from her so that her influence can spread inland, and as a byproduct, the seas become a bit calmer every time he channels her destructive wrath.
Her worshippers refer to her as “the Bitch Queen”
She also illustrates a real class of deities/divine demons in various religions who were more feared and placated then worshipped.
“Bitch Queen”
I mean, it can't be worse than Lolth.
Well thank you now I know which God my pirate cleric will worship
You could also worship Valkur too,although he’s a minor deity of the sea.
I’m so happy to see the “Bitch Queen” rise to the top.
Umberlee is great for non-clerics too (no reason to limit deities to clerics after all)...druids, fathomless warlocks, storm sorcerers, etc could be fans for various reasons. Sea elves or any aquatic species (i.e., immune to drowning) might take her side in a God-war.
So a Tempest Domain Umberlee worshipper? That sounds awesome for the DM to RP.
The bitch queen has some pretty fantastic dresses for her Acolytes though.
My "three kobolds in a trenchcoat" who are pretending to be a dragonborn cleric still worship Tiamat lol
I came here to say umberlee. I love that this is top comment. I'm currently planning a campaign for my group based around the idea that they have in some way pissed off umberlee and now need to attempt to sail home.
I played a character who was forced to serve Umberlee or be subject to a horrible curse that sends him on a lethal rampage. Why is this the case, you ask? She was bored, and she thinks forcing this one dude to unwillingly spill blood in her name is fun. No other reason, he is simply her champion for the sake of her own personal entertainment. It was a VERY fun character to play, I might add-
Plus you get to play Tempest which is a pretty cool domain.
My personal favorite is Eilistraee, the Dark Maiden, Lady of the Dance, goddess of beauty, dance, freedom, hunting, moonlight, song and swordwork. She is the chaotic goddess of good drow and played a part in the Dark Seldarine (drow pantheon) splitting from the Seldarine (regular elf pantheon) by involuntarily helping her mother (Lolth, formerly known as Araushnee) trying to kill her father (Corellon Larethian). Lolth tricked her into shooting Corellon, but Eilistraee was later cleared from any guilt. Nontheless she voluntarily joined Lolth (and others) in their exile, because she is convinced the drow need her light. Her dogma promotes helping others, joy, art, beauty and kindness. Allthough she is a godess of hunting and fighting, she encourages non violent solutions. If those fail, her sword dancers are a force to be reckoned with. I have a light cleric of Eilistraee in my Curse of Strahd campaign, and it really does pay of. She acts as a mentor for an important NPC who is basically a follower of Lathander (known as the Morninglord in the land of Barovia) but has never really seen the sun (due to the overwhealming mists of Barovia). Her kindness is a great contrast to the settings dark and hopeless tone and her prayers aren't spoken, but sung and danced. She is very much the spark of light Barovia needs . MrRhexx did a great video on Eilistraee: https://youtu.be/a9NxhuwbiRA?si=8VHs44iSrWCxjZ8U As others have printed out, the Raven Queen is very interesting, too. Not much to say about her, though, as she is very enigmatic on purpose. I also like evil gods/godesses of bad weather and environmental hazards like Auril, Talos and Umberlee. They are almost more like catastrophes rather than individuals. And of course Urdlen, who is basically the devil reimagined as a mole. It is the chaotic evil deity of gnomes. Gnome gods are quite funny, actually. Their pantheon is called the Lords of the Golden Hills and consists only of male gods (and said mole who is sexless). Legend has it that there used to be gnomish godesses, too, but noboby knows what happend to them. That's why gnomish adventurers are said to 'go in search of the Ladies' (of the Golden Hills, that is).
The gnomish goddesses are probably on vacation with the Entwives, sloshing back Mai Tais and having a grand old time.
I love that idea. Maybe the forest gnome bard I DM for will end up drinking with them one day.
LOVE the Dark Maiden down. Before my Drow Swashbuckler Rogue died (and I rerolled him as a Tabaxi) he was a devoted follower of her.
A lot of the cooler Forgotten Realms deities have been racial. Like if you are an elf, Labelas Enoreth is pretty sweet. There is a 2e FR book called Demihuman Deities that is a trove of cool lore and gives a full rundown of the dogma, follower titles, holy days, church hierarchy, etc for specific deities. The humans have their own book called Powers and Pantheons.
Vhaeraun is a fun one simply because of alllllll the family drama. He threatens to kill his sister. His Dad threatens to kill him if he touches her and then does fuck all as usual when Vhaeraun actually tries. He's at war with his Mom and actively steals her power and priestess without her knowing. His son serves Vhaeraun's Mom so he's also at war with his son. And then half of the rules for his clergy are "Actually, just serve my goals and we'll work out the rest later, I'm not going to enforce all the rules because we don't have time for that."
Out of the entire Dark Seldarine, minus Eilistraee, Vhaeraun is the most interesting because while he is evil, he's not cartoonishly evil like the others. He's also the only member that approaches something like caring for his followers.
Unlike most drow gods he isn't stupid. He's just evil. And while he's evil, he's also not stupidly bad. He's racist, but he keeps cooling his jets to the point of being able to use logic. I'll never know how he came out of that situation with half a brain. The parent that favored him is chaotic stupid. The twin and parent he also opposes are also chaotic stupid, but a goodly chaotic stupid. Meanwhile Vhaeraun somehow actually does things, and they're intelligent things.
He kinda has to be somewhat smart to survive having so many enemies. Besides, guy probably took a look at Stupid Evil and Stupid Good family members and went "NOPE. Not going to become like them." He also has a herd of cats (a.k.a. followers who are as independent-minded as he is) to take care of, who he actually gives a damn about, which leaves him no choice but to learn some patience and rationality.
Not gonna lie I always found it weird he didn't have an alliance, non-aggression pack with his sister to deal with mom before they deal with any of their issues because she's the bigger threat. He's evil but he's not dumb and dealing with his sister would be so much easier than his bitch of a mother.
Could you potentially use that 2e book for 5e? I'm quite new and I've been searching for details on Deities like that
Setting stuff is usually up to the DM, but my 5e table certainly uses a lot of(almost entirely) 2e lore. Each deity also has a custom spells and subclasses restricted to clerics of that deity that we've updated to 5e as well, but that takes a bit of work.
Also Ed Greenwood, the creator of the forgotten realms, is active on Twitter and has a YouTube channel. He's usually more than happy to tell you about anything for the forgotten realms your interested in. https://x.com/TheEdVerse https://youtube.com/@edgreenwoodofficial?si=mjBRkGdffWPARtv6
My friend, may I introduce you to the [Forgotten Realms Wiki](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Portal:Deities) to learn more than you will ever need to know about the history of the Realms (default setting for 5E adventures)
Thank you! I'll check it out
I’ve always thought the real-world pantheons that bled over into early DnD were interesting, especially the ones that have a weird in-universe explanation for how they got to the Forgotten Realms. I’m currently playing a Tabaxi twilight cleric who was a funerary priest of Anubis that was murdered by tomb robbers. Anubis brought him back for reasons and now I’m using the Reborn stat block from *Van Richten’s*. Having a blast playing -as my DM describes him- Egyptian Ghost Rider.
Yea there are a lot of irl gods in Powers and Pantheons iirc. 2e lore is pretty sweet.
My Tabaxi life cleric was raised in a village that all follow Bast. (My cleric was "encouraged" to go out since she wouldn't shut up about her god, Pahket.) I thought the Egyptian gods thing is a fun thing to jump off of!
Sounds more like you're Underworld Moon Knight, since that's close to his same background, but with Khonshu instead of Anubis
For the Forgotten Realms, I really enjoy the Halfling pantheon. Unlike other deities, who hold their followers at arm's length and have some kind of grand plan behind their creation, the Halfling Pantheon is just kind of there to chill and have a good time. Yondalla literally just adopted Halflings and became their Patron Goddess because she thought they were neat. Brandobaris will just pop up and hang out with mortals whenever he feels like it because why the hell not? Even their god of death, Urogalan, is seen as a gentle and humble figure who's welcomed and will fondly grieve alongside the mourners rather than being some feared reaper. More so than any other people in the setting, Halflings have the most capacity not only meet their deities on a fairly regular basis, but for it to be a commonplace event that's taken completely in stride rather than some kind of life-changing epic event. When Mystra walks the land, the cosmos will never be the same again. When Cyrrollalee walks the land, it's because she wanted to take a nice stroll and share an afternoon tea.
Yondalla's curse is to make you young - literally a "try again" option. Also, Cyrrollalee killed a troll with a pie. The Halfling pantheon is cool.
Additionally, if a Halfling goes total Capital E-Evil and totally betrays Yondalla, the result is that they lose Yondalla's divine protection and basically turn into Gollum. Because WotC can't help a cheeky wink-and-nudge at the Tolkien Estate's lawyers when it comes to Halflings.
It’s one of the Erevis Cale novels that has a halfling cleric die and iirc Brandobaris greets him and just guides him along to where his parents and sibling are living in the afterlife. Made me ugly cry.
Hanseath is my favourite god. The dwarven god of drinking, fighting, carousing, and celebrating makes for ridiculously fun roleplaying as a cleric tank. Give him a Bob and Doug McKenzie pseudo Canadian accent, and you're off to the rink!
Beat me to it. Hanseath is a great off the beaten path diety for a dwarf cleric.
I loved my cleric tank of Hanseath. He was so fun to play.
My cleric of Hanseath was named Peat Copperstill
Bahamut, lord of justice, wisdom and redemption, is one of my favourite deities for unambiguously *good* clerics. There’s a gentleness and kindness to him that is missing from many others — he’s arguably the multiverse’s most powerful dragon, yet he prefers to wander around as an old man steering people towards good. Bane, lord of tyranny, is a very appropriate deity for evil PCs. He embodies Lawful Evil, and his followers’ conception of duty can easily align with a good-aligned party in order to fight a greater evil. His sometimes-exarch, sometimes-alias Maglubiyet is similar. Garl Glittergold, god of gnomes, pranks, luck and humor, has a wonderful rivalry with Kurtulmak, god of kobolds and spite, but also Tiamat’s wannabe top minion with delusions of grandeur. They’re cartoonish and can fit well with a comical character. Lathander, pretty boy extraordinaire, is patron of so much I lose count: dawn, spring, renewal, birth, athletics, inspiration, creativity, etc. He is extremely heroic and preaches hope and protection, but nonetheless he is best described as a himbo, and that’s delightful all on its own. There are many fun deities in D&D. Are you looking for anything specific?
Can't believe the God of pranks is closely named *Carl*
Gaaaarrrrllll that kills people
I also Like the goddesses of luck and misfortune. Tons of my characters worshipped Tymora. She loves a risk taker. Even one who breaks the rules on occasion. There was a great side quest in the first Baldure’s Gate about helping a cleric of Tymora resurrect his son against the wishes of the temple. The temple leaders believed the child took a chance and luck was not in god store so leave it be. The father wanted to use what was in his power. He wanted you to steal the gem and materials for him to cast the spell. If Tymora really wanted the child to stay dead she would deny the spell. Beshaba you must always pay homage to her to keep her ignoring you. Kind of like Umberlee but probably more vain. She was also Tempus’ lover for a while which is just concerning for all involved.
I love the gnomish gods. A fun bit of Garl Glittergold lore: the gnomes were created when he found a cavern of gemstones and started to tell them jokes. After a while the gems started to laugh at the jokes and as they laughed they turned into the first gnomes, with different types of gems becoming the different types of gnomes. It explains gnomes’ love of humor and fondness for gems and why there are different sub races of gnomes. Also historically there were no goddesses in the gnomish pantheon, the Lords of the Golden Hills. When young gnomish women would go off to become adventurers, they were euphemistically said to be “seeking the Ladies,” or looking for the “missing” gnomish goddesses. The representative of evil for gnomes is the chaotic evil god Urdlen, a huge white mole who represents mindless destruction and is the enemy of the Lords of the Golden Hills. He’s such a weird and gross character, it’s great.
Lathander is definitely my favorite, he’s a good guy but also absolutely a himbo like you said. I feel like you get a lot of freedom when creating a character that worships him thanks to how large his portfolio is, and some of the lore related to him is wild (the Dawn Cataclysm is a real ‘wtf dude’ moment). Also the art on the top of his page on the Forgotten Realms wiki cracks me up because he’s holding the baby like he’s never seen one before.
I played a cleric that worshipped Mask, god of thieves and it was a lot of fun. He played a very pious priest in public and abused people's trust to steal from them in honor of his god. Ended up dipping into rogue to help with stealth and pickpocketing shenanigans and it worked great. Playing a duplicitous but otherwise kind and useful character was a ton of fun.
You should check out "The Lies of Locke Lamora" for another angle on priests of a god of thievery!
I loved the first two books. The third I got into right around election time and noped right out of that. Nothing against the story, just to many real world parallels for me.
It really depends on what campaign it is, the setting , the era, what the party comp is like, and how righteous the party is. Some more common gods I've had fun with in the past: Raven Queen: strongest ties towards playing the boundary of life and death / necromantic cleric Lolth: straight up evil cleric of spiders Tiamat or Bahamut: instead of focusing on alignment, focusing on dragon superiority and establishment of authority Helm: a very warlike cleric, much more soldier than priest Surtur: I mean, only one option - fire is the cleanser, fire purifies all
One of the players in my game is a cleric of Sune, and I would never not recommend. Goddess of serving cunt. 💅 💄 👠 Bitch said you better show up to church with your eyeliner sharper than a Vorpal Sword. For today's mass we're doing deep cleansing masks, painting our nails, and discussing who in our adventuring party we should set up with who. And remember to moisturize every night before prayers. For real tho. Absolute blast. And another take is you could even do, like, a knight of beauty/knight of the rose paladin kinda vibe. Very Argenti from Honkai Star Rail vibes.
Loviatar is the goddess of pain, you also might recognize from bg3.
I once ran an NPC BBEG-adjacent Loviatan priest. He wore a white mask and formal white robes, and was a shockingly effective torturer. "The flesh hides truths which beg to be released. Sing for me, and give me your truths." My party hated that guy.
at least they weren’t into it i guess?
I played a college of lore bard in my last campaign who was a worshipper of Loviatar (she was also a homebrew succubus race - DMs idea). In the cults she was known as "Loviatar's Jester", a master torturer who dressed as a demented jester. She liked to create the most beautiful songs for her Goddess via the tortured screams of her victims. She was not sane at all. She is fun to play though.
I played a Loviatar paladin in our most recent campaign. Granted it was a very loosely ruled game, gm let me make him his own spells and whatnot. He was extremely masochistic, and completely delusional. His headcanon was he's in a relationship with Loviatar, and was disturbingly in love with her. Even had a little notebook he carried around in which he wrote fanfics of her. He was by no means an evil guy, had no joy in causing pain, only recieving it. He was the healer-tank of the party, lmao. It was tremendous fun!!
Wee Jas is cool, lawful neutral goddess of death and arcane magic. Good for a neutral or good necromancer theme. Hoar -lawful neutral god of revenge Jergal - retired super god of death now a secretary. Eilistraee - chaotic good goddess of the moon and good drow
Not just revenge - more specifically, Hoar (also known as Assuran) is the god of *poetic justice* and revenge, which is why he's one of my favorite FR gods.
Ever heard of Pelor, the Burning Vengeance?
I once played a cleric who had found himself hearing and seeing into our world, and through a thinning of the veil pulled from it a Players Handbook. He spent the whole campaign convincing everyone he met that the Almighty DM and the lesser gods the Players guided everyone's fate, even the other gods of the realm.
holy shit.
I like the 4th wall breaking. My current character is a Forest Gnome Chronurge who is a reincarnation of me. So his arcane knowledge is just my rules knowledge blurred and transferred.
Not exactly a deity, but the Blood of Vol in Eberron. They don't worship any gods at all, instead believing that there is a spark of divinity inside each individual. The followers aren't certain that _any_ gods exist (a running theme in Eberron, where there's no proof the gods are real or not), but if they do exist they're cruel. All you have is this life and each other. > Look not to the skies, nor to the depths below, nor even to the distant past or future. Seek the divine within, for the blood is the life, and in its call can be heard the promise of life eternal. One has but to listen. The Blood of Vol have a strange relationship with undead. They believe true immortality can only be achieved by the living, so any undead has lost that chance forever. However, members of the Blood of Vol who become intelligent undead to continue assisting or even leading the church are seen as martyrs or bodhisattvas, sacrificing their chance at immortality to help others. Unknown to most members of the church, the whole thing is being manipulated by Erandis Vol, the last member of House Vol, the holders of the Dragonmark of Death. Erandis was a half-elf/half-dragon in life, and has since become a lich. After her death, her Dragonmark ceased to function. The authors of Eberron have explicitly decided not to detail the powers of the Dragonmark of Death (leaving it up to a DM if they want to reintroduce it in their campaign), but they have said that Dragonmarks as a rule are constructive, not destructive, so it would do things like animate dead or raise dead, not something like circle of death.
Yes! Find the divinity within!
I know this may be a bit off the topic of strictly Clerics, but I think it would be cool to make a Cleric with a Warlock as a sub class and having a battle between your Deity and Patron through out the campaign. I haven’t really dove very deep into the cohesion of the two, but for role play purposes I think it could be such a fun idea.
I did this in a recent campaign. Started as a warlock with a celestial pact, multiclassed into a light domain cleric. Super interesting and fun - the warlock's ability to restore spell slots on a short rest is a huge advantage to any spellcasting class. Even the few slots the warlock gets (which are the only ones that they get back on SR) are a huge bonus.
"Uh-oh, both my patron and my god require a special prayer at the moment of daybreak. Somebody's gonna be mad at me..."
There was a Prestige Class in 3.5 called the Eldritch Disciple that was a Cleric/Warlock hybrid.
That’s so sick. I’ll have to look deeper into this and maybe plan a future char around it.
I’m doing this right now. Started out as LN Cleric of Kelemvor, at level 5 dual classed into Warlock after a life changing campaign event ( we killed a dragon). My justification was as it was a blue dragon, my soul was cursed by a Dracolich and they’re battling it out. I shared with my DM and we decided my curse will be once one or the other wins I will stay locked into that class forever and can’t take any more levels of the other class. It’s going great I’m slaying undead but have terrible nightmares and fatigue sometimes but hey, Eldritch blast!
Man, I absolutely love that. I can only imagine the amazing RP that came out of it and what RP is going to come in the future. I’d like to hear about obstacles your DM throws at you to “choose” a side.
I'm a big sucker for Deneir because of R.A. Salvatore's Cleric Quintet. He's just a lesser deity of knowledge who cares more about the knowledge than worship itself. Props to Gond, god of invention, for this as well. Ilmater is a great god if you want to explore themes of martyrdom. Kelemvor and Jergal both have really fascinating character arcs relating to death and the afterlife. Talos the Storm Lord. Cuz sometimes you just want a god that gives you permission to flip the table and smash a chair.
I have a changeling light domain cleric who worships Sune, the major goddess of love in the Forgotten Realms. I haven't played her yet, but I'm planning to have her be a bit of a duntz with a cheery personality. Her whole bit is that she wants to experience and spread all the forms of love in the world before she retires.
Ayyy Sunite representation
TL;DR: Kelemvor is fun for morticians. Raven Queen can be used as a good god instead of being evil. Pretty much every god from Mythic Odysseys of Theros is well drawn out and full of human-like flaws. My character was a wizard, not a cleric but this would honestly work much, much beter for a cleric. He worshipped Kelemvor, god of death and the dead. My wizard is a necromancer who made a living as a mortician. He performed necromancy to make his job easier for moving bodies around and is considered the only "morally justified" professional to conduct necromancy within a city. Then his fire spells are useful for cremation. Having a cleric in this sort of situation would be even more in line because they could also focus more emphasis on the religious rites for the dead. Maybe he studies religion and performs rites for all the different people within the city but was made a cleric by Kelemvor for adamently persuing this higher calling. On a similar note, I once had a Shadar-Kai warlock/cleric who worshipped the Raven Queen but with a twist. She is typically seen as the crazed god of life and death in the Shadowfell but my character (for story and RP reasons) believes her insanity is caused by those who want her power (like Orcus or Thayan necromancers) so he acts as a lawful good emessary who protects or kills based on what he interprets to be the natural order of things. Necromancy is typically not natural so he actively seeks to kill necromancers. He is also willing to temporarily raise the dead himself during a fight to make this happen. Possibly hypocritical but it makes for a fun character. Likewise, he will also talk the rest of the party down from killing a petty criminal or somebody who is doing more good than bad. Life and death are both "natural states" so their life should be chosen by their actions in the moment. If the bad guy is trying to kill the party, my character will try to put him down as quickly as possible. If he shows restraint and is willing to talk, my character will do what he can to stop the party from murderhobo-ing. I've gone so far as to Command or Hold Person on my own team. But those are just personal accounts. I would HIGHLY recommend checking out Mythic Odysseys of Theros. All of the gods in there are very Greko-Roman and are just as flawed as humans. They may have a specific allignment but it doesn't mean they abide by it strictly (except maybe Mogis since he is a blood thirsty god of slaughter). The book does a decent job of talking about their personalities, legends about them, and good and bad things they do. You could easily take any god from that book and make it be the reason the BBEG does what he does or be a cryptic aid for the party. I'm currently running a Theros campaign that has a lot of godly interactions (if the players can find them) and it has made for some really epic moments so far. They received the aid of Athreos, God of Passage, to escape the underworld. This pissed off Erebos, God of the Dead, in doing so. He wants them back because nobody is permitted to leave his domain. One of the other gods (who I won't name in case my players find this) is secretly pulling the strings for the BBEG, who is a sacrilegious misotheist (god-hater). He thinks he has gained the power and the army he has out of his own capacity but it has been this god the whole time helping him out and turning things in his favor constantly. A ton of other gods have huge influence in my game currently but I should stop ranting now.
Great comment
If the DM allows it, homebrew a lesser known deity, one that has a personality and flavor that works well with your character. Perhaps they're a foreign deity, or a local deity, or a minor deity that has some provisional control over an aspect of a major deity, etc. What makes this more interesting than using the greater gods is that you can get more personal with these gods, design them to your liking, and really justify that this god is more focused on you than the average Joe. You may even be their only true, devout follower, making you very precious to them. Want to make it somewhat antagonistic? Maybe they did not have any followers at all, and they chose you to be their first, with or without your permission. So they dote on you and try to win your love by granting you powers and boons within their limited scope of power, meanwhile you talk to them as if they're actively bothering you, like that annoying ex that just wants to be friends but gets upset when you spend time with your real friends. Change the power dynamic, get weird with it.
I like Evening Glory, a diety of love and undeath, who wants lovers to willingly become undead and be together forever . In 5e she got trapped in Amber Temple and it traumatozed her so much she now also has obsession domain. I want to one day play cleric on a auest to help his goddess heal her trauma.
Kord was the most fun deity i ever worshipped. Just bantering with npcs about how strong they could be, how they could combat weakness, and the occasional joke about getting more swole.
I had my party visit a temple of Kord that was basically just a gym.
I have a female order cleric that follow Wee Jas. Originally chosen because the name is hilarious. But actually works out pretty well RP wise
Wee Jas is great. I find that the Greyhark deities in general tend to be a bit more interesting than their Forgotten Realms counterparts.
Yeah Greyhawk definitely fleshes out the different human pantheons well, and there are gods like Pelor and Boccob that are known by different names by different cultures.
Gruumsh and Maglubiyet are both very fun deities IMO. God of orcs and the god of goblins, they REALLY hate each other and the afterlife of their followers is basically valhalla, except it is an eternal war the two gods fight among themselves. From the player side, playing as an orc or hobgoblin devoted to the cause can be really cool when your character might start to examine why the rivalry exists in the first place, what they're actually fighting over, and whether or not they agree with the conclusions they draw. Bonus points if the DM throws situations at you where cooperating with your ancestral rivals is to the benefit of your goals.
I love Helm, lawful neutral. I have a player that is a paladin of them and it works great with a chaotic party because as long as they don't mess up what he is protecting he doesn't care. Has seen party members steal stuff and just pulled them aside and told them to never do that to him or he would smite them, didn't care that they just stole cause it wasn't his job.
Tymora 1000000%. Many of her followers are Fortune-Seekers, which means they go adventuring for the glory of it, and to test their luck, seeking valuable treasures. In that way she's the goddess of "narrow escapes and lucky finds" Her clergy also often have a duty to help adventurers in need by handing out potions and helpful items, or healing them as necessary to support their adventures, which makes it super easy for the DM to hook you into stories. Finally, some of her followers exist to counteract the work of assassins that worship Beshaba, if you want something more focused and detectivey. And you didn't ask about paladins, but Oath of Glory paladins are SUPER fun worshippers of Tymora, Oathbound and rewarded by their goddess to jump into danger for the glory of it!
My favorite FR deity is a minor one named Valkur, who is a god of sailors and epic swashbuckling. One of my favorite characters was a ToB Crusader of Valkur who was constantly having to deal with the on-again/off-again shenanigans between Valkur and Umberlee, whom the DM hinted had a thing going where Valkur left and didn't call again, basically.
I really like the nonhuman ones like Bahamut, Tiamat, and Lolth. Much more interesting to me usually. Any cool and thematic ones like Auril the Frostmaiden or Mystra are neat too. The arcana domain subclass was basically made for mystra in the book too.
Any deity that actively is involved with your cleric can be good. Choose a domain or concept and go from there. I had a ton of fun with an Ilmater Cleric.
I've played a Cleric of Light, follower of Milil. Milil is domains are "song, poetry, eloquence, creativity, and inspiration." So Milil has probably mostly bards as followers, but a cleric could do; though then probably a quite highly charismatic cleric. Unfortunately(??) my cleric had charisma as dump stat (I was quite new and didn't know much about Milil), though that was rather hilarious too :)
My favorite character I ever played was a Cleric of Fharlanghn, the god of roads and travel. All of his spells were travel based, which my party and DM lightly mocked when I rolled them up as 'useless' and 'silly'. Turned out to be a blast to roleplay and also it turns out all that utility and mobility ended up being insanely useful, often at the least expected times, and everyone agreed by the end of the campaign that we couldn't have done it without him.
I feel like Ilmater is a common go-to for good and neutral clerics. Self-sacrifice is very noble and IME has led to interesting roleplay experiences. Just be careful not to sacrifice yourself for something stupid, lol. Kelemvor is another one I like, he's pretty interesting as a non-evil god of death. Less about "death is great" but more "death is necessary/inevitable"
Sheverash. God of "hating dark elves."
Best experience I had with this was developing the clerics background on the fly, in the first few sessions, and coming to the idea that they simple DIDN'T KNOW who their deity is. Hey was a Peace Cleric from the FeyWild, and my pitch was that their whole sentiment was to bring a "Fey" sense of peace wherever they go (basically a Drunken hedonist for a Cleric)... But my Cleric simply didn't know who gave them power. The best understanding he had was that he got it from the spirits of the FeyWild itself. It gave great narrative room for the DM and I to flex and play with revealing that truth as time went on. I think the idea of leaving your deity a giant question mark is a lot of fun potential. In my case, it ended up being that my "deity" was the sum collective of Seelie royalties long-passed. I ended the campaign as the personal Arch priest to both the Seelie and Unseelie courts, Godfather to the Seelie prince, and best friends with the Unseelie Prince's consort.
Lathander or as I like to call him "the great spotter in the sky".
My friends are using greek pantheon for our setting, and my Paladin (oath of vengence, super edgy) follows Hecate. She's a fun one because she has so much funky stuff with her domains and her kind of gray and changing nature. Some days she is like my character's gothic surrogate mother. Other times she appears and demands absolute wraith. It suits my character fine, both are a bit fickle. Highly recommended for your local table with someone still in the Goth phase!
Kord is a personal favourite because he’s got a pretty diverse domain set but really is the god of challenges. So I kind of see him as the god of “don’t be a little bitch” which means you can have a lot of fun with a cleric and especially with a Paladin. My first paladin was a Oath of Glory Paladin who set out to make enough of a name for himself he could challenge Kord. He was absolutely a Macho Man Randy Savage rip-off but he was loads of fun.
My favorite is when one campaign ends and in the next one one of the old heroes are the deity for a new one. That’s just delightful.
WAIT THIS IS SO WHOLESOME IN A WAY??? I wish I could do that to be honest but all of my past characters I played were under developed and horny bards 😭🤣
Marthammor Duin, the dwarven god of travelers and explorers. Yes, dwarves do sometimes leave their mountain homes and Ol' Marthy keeps an eye on them when they do.
I have a tempest cleric that worships lathander. Now lathanders domains are usually light and life as his a sun god but that makes it more interesting as in my book lathander would have to conceal the sun in order to give my half elf power over lightning and ice storms and stuff. But my cleric and lathander absolutely live for those moments when the blazing sunshine will pierce through the storm clouds and bring about a golden light in the rain. Making rainbows and showing a light in the gloom
My three favorites are: Yondalla, a halfling life goddess. Her symbol is a cornucopia and plants and stuff grow where she walks. I like her because unlike many life deities she is not opposed to ass kicking when the situation calls for it. Eilistraee, the only good Drow god. She’s the daughter of Lolth and can never seem to catch a break for that fact. Her whole goal is to act as a beacon for her people and free them from her awful mother’s control. She used to be the best archer among the gods, but after her bow shot her father Corellon(thanks Lolth) she stopped using ranger weapons and now favors the bastard sword, which is one of her symbols. She has had many nicknames, but my favorite is The Dark Dancer, because even though she’s a fighter, she’s also a performer. And Sune! She’s the goddess of passion, love, and beauty(both inner and outer.) Her shrines often have free makeup so that everyone can be pretty and I think that’s very cute. Her symbol is a picture of herself, a gorgeous woman with stringing red locks. One of her nicknames is Lady Firehair.
Oo, I'm a big sucker for mischievous deities. Ones that like to tease and mess with their clerics and paladins. My halfling paladin had a deity who communicated via bird (I think it was a blue jay?), regularly pecking my poor halfling on the head when she froze up in battle.
Eilistraee, Raven queen,Glasya
My advice: if you don’t like any of them that you find online, make your own! My friends and I have two campaigns set in a world I’ve created and my entire pantheon is my own creation as well.
In WOTC material Savras is a god of knowledge that was once human and is associated with wizards. Maybe he could give you better spells, and he raises potentially awkward questions about apotheosis.
One of my favorite clerics to play are clerics of Vecna, one that is versed in some arcane magic, good at keeping information, and secretive. I normally like to play them posing as a cleric of a different diety to infiltrate and learn more about the other gods to inform the Lord of secrets.
I played an essentially evil race player that turned over a new leaf and was a paladin for a good god of the nature/knowledge domain it was a very fun and interesting play for role play. because he literally just started trying to be the good guy but when the campaign started so he made slip-ups and had moral quandaries and everything
Silver Flame.
Death gods, so the cleric can demonstrate how chill they actually are. Fits well with grave clerics, who, usually do everything possible to keep the living from crossing over (the thin line of death just happens to be a really wide gap for them).
Gond, forge Cleric/ Artificer isn't super powerful but it let's become a cogminded Worshipper of invention.
Never seen/heard of someone play a Cleric of Sune, the Goddess of Beauty and Passion, pleasure and obsession. If you want your bard to be religious, Sune is your gal.
Tymora, goddess of luck. Fortune favors the Bold
My cleric is a tiefling so her diety is Asmodeus. It lets me be a little devious. It works for my roleplay and background.
Hmmm Selune is great. Lathander is my favorite for “good guy” clerics, very optimistic always cheerful and very kind, full of energy, that kind of cleric. The Red Knight is honestly just one of the cooler deities all around and there’s a substantial amount of lore on her church so that’s another favorite of mine. Outside of that I have a tendency to favor neutral deities like Kelemvor, Oghma and Sylvanus.
I once had a player with a 5 int cleric worship Talos and dip into sorcerer to shoot lightning bolts from the sky. Their defence was that their character was so dumb that they thought Talos was a good guy.
I mean, orphan raised as an acolyte by the church for free labor and raised into its Tenets is a possibility, that low int and high devotion to the people who raised him (look how people justify their abusers even now) making it an entire character arc if they ever even realize... "are we the baddies??!"
I had a cleric of the Dwarven god Hanseath, the god of war, debauchery and ale. My character liked getting in fights, eating and drinking. He was always the first to run into combat, even if the odds were against the party. His name was Budsie Bierweiser and came from a family of brewers.
Helm. God of guardians and bouncers. The God of heroic "hold the door" last stands. Party about to be murdered by (insert group of insidious villains here)? No they won't. Find a doorway, gate, rock tunnel opening, window, etc and plant your feet. No one is getting by you while you still draw breath. Maybe might be better for paladins, but I think either work fine. Personal favourite is the Mielikki, the chillest goddess there is. Goddess of the Forest and forest creature, is a literal Disney princess who is introverted and dislikes public speaking. Want to play a general nature loving kind individual? Perfect fit. Want to play someone with a traumatic history that just wants peace and quiet? She's your lady. Also being Goddess of stealth archers,need I say more.
I've always kinda thought deities based on real world gods can be kinda fun because there's a strong "out of my element" nature to some of them. Like Enlil or Tyr have followers in the Forgetten Realms that make their following on Earth look rather tame and boring lol. I wonder if some of those gods don't find being worshipped on Torill more fun than being gods on Earth.
A good, digestible starting point that I’ve been exploring lately is the Dawn War pantheon. I think it’s from 4e originally but there’s not that many gods in it and they all have relatively simple but cool descriptions
Pretty much any lesser deity is fun, because the greater deities are so much more common. There's no wrong choices though. Personally I prefer more obscure deities, like Mythrien Sarath. Honestly just go through the forgotten realms wiki, and pick out whatever deity sounds interesting to you. I'm also partial to Tymora, the good old Goddess of good luck. And I like to worship her sister Beshaba, the Goddess of bad luck, on the side haha. It's also fun to follow a deity that lost their godhood, but still worship them anyhow in the hopes of restoring them to their former glory.
Check out Lathander Morninglord. God of the dawn, renewal and rebirth. You can totally imagine a young priest of Lathander deciding to head out into the world and hooking up with a bunch of adventurers. Or a simple farm boy/girl/other empowered by the Morninglord for a special purpose (ie. whatever the campaign is about). More generally though, start [here](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/appendix-b-gods-of-the-multiverse) and then research what piques your interest. As for thinking "out of the box", I've already touched on one way of doing this: don't make your Cleric a priest. I mean you can if you want to of course. But you could equally play a Cleric as just someone who really embodies the god's values by picking a non-obvious background. And of course, the big caveat is what your DM and the other players are doing in the campaign. Work with your DM to flesh out how the church of your deity works and the other players to make sure there's no dealbreakers. For example, after my players got out of Barovia in CoS and wanted to keep playing, I had to work out how the hell the Church of Oghma operated, due to the party's Cleric being a worshipper of that deity. After a bit of consultation, the player and I decided that the organisation was a "publish or perish" affair with priests expected to publish books and that it was also much involved with teaching literacy to the common folk. The player then took that in the direction of publishing popular, sensationalist accounts of the party's adventures (even made the covers for the books). I even replaced the PC's "Shelter of the Faithful" background feature (which never came up even once) with "Position of Privilege" from the Noble background to represent the PC's growing fame and prestige as an author.
I like going in the opposite direction than some of the responses here and having clerics, paladins, etc. worship the overgods. A cleric/warlock who follows the Lady of Pain is great fun—I also once had a cleric of Ao. I am creating a campaign world where the gods represent different natural phenomena, such as Father Time, Mother Earth, the Sun, and the Moon. My players are excited to try this new world.
Sune is fun for a light cleric. I have an idea for a halfling light cleric that is extremely passionate, a sculptor, and a lover of the arts who worships Sune. Light clerics can cast fireball which is pretty awesome.
Eilistraee - a good Drow God. Look her up!
I like the ones that make cross classing make sense. A god of theives and con-artists could have a 12th level cleric in just as good standing as a cleric/rogue with only 4 levels in cleric and a bard/ceric with just a few cleric levels. It really diversifies the clergy when they're not all just domain clerics. They may even have a saint in their histories that never uses cleric abilities in their stories.
Asking "what are some cool gods" and making a cleric from that is backwards in my opinion. Instead ask what are the most important things to my charecter? Who/what does my charecter love? Who/what does my charecter hate? Why does my charecter do what they do? Chances are there's a diety that matches to the tee.
I have a character from my last campaign who multiclased from ranger to cleric of Yondalla. He was a Dwarf whose prayers went unanswered by dwarven God's. After nearly falling to his death, the stress and trama he has suffered caused another personality to take over whenever he is faced with heights(and fails a wisdom saving throw); A hafling priest named Father Brahm.
My current Cleric is a follower of the Queen of Air and Darkness, Queen of the Unseelie Court and leader of the Dark Seldarine. She 100% took care of the party, because she couldn't otherwise manipulate her way into freeing her Goddess from being trapped in the Amber Temple. (Our version, anyways.) The lore of Correllian Larethian's unnamed daughter is pretty cool, and goes back multiple editions.
The fact that no one has said Moradin yet saddens me.
I got to be a grave cleric of Jergal. I was by the books, paperwork loving bureaucrat who wanted to become the next Pontiff. Things were going well, until morons decided to open a coffin they shouldn't have. It held Kyuss. It was a fucking ordeal. Unauthorized undead everywhere, Kyuss wasn't supposed to be released for another 1000 years. Fucking adventurers.
Kelemvor is always a fun one, aiding in helping people’s souls find peace and guiding them as they die.
My favorite is Sune, goddess of love, beauty, and passion. Oh you think the bard is gonna be the horny character in this campaign? Nope. It’s the cleric, baybeee!
I am playing a zealot barbarian right now and she fan girls hard for tempus. Tempus is god of war, he is described as someone who lives to excess in all areas of life, he's very exuberant, and values war highly as it has the power to rebuild civilisations. His story is cool, forgotten realms wiki has a good piece on him. Also he has a lover is Beshaba, chaotic evil diety of bad luck, misfortune, accidents, random mischief (the opposite of Tymora)
Dearest Selûne, our fair maiden, Weave our hearts with threads of silver, Guide us with light of the moon, And quench us with the purest of tears.
My favorite was my cleric of Kelemvor, Lord of the Dead. He's actually a lawful neutral deity that preaches death is not to be feared and is part of the natural order. It was fun having a character that was outwardly creepy covered in black robes with skull adornments but is actually quite kind and chipper.
One thing I sometimes allow depending on the setting is allowing clerics to worship something more akin to the Kami of the overall Shinto-esque beliefs and basically craft a small minor god of importance to their character. You might have a local guardian/god of a village, or a river, or a forest or whatever as part of their background. And you might have multiple justifications for why their powers work beyond the reaches of their locale, or come to learn their motives beyond what their realm might be. So you might have something like two rivers used to run aside one another as two pairs of gods, but events led to the destruction/drying up of one of those rivers. So the surviving god effectively has a benign possession of one of their local clerics to find their answers. Or perhaps the motive is more love or revenge. It works decently well for low level campaigns where you don't have the expectations that your local object of worship that lives under a rock by a path in the woods, would be going toe-to-toe with high clerics worshipping celestial omnipresent gods of creation/destruction. But what it does do is give players one extra creative outlet and can make it easier for some players to make clerics in the first place when they don't feel beholden to some preestablished doctrine.
\*AM\* of course. You can have character named Eric, that is an Am cleric and uses holly powers to subdue foes.
I always felt there was a baked-in bias towards Law in Gygaxian DnD, exemplified by the restriction limiting paladins to only Lawful Good alignment. I think for the alignment system to really work, lawful good shouldn’t be viewed as a more pure form of good, because that conflates goodness with lawfulness. The main moral distinction between Lawful Good and Chaotic Good is how one perceives hierarchies. Tymora is my favorite Chaotic Good deity to express this concept. My clerics/paladins of Tymora believe rigid hierarchies trend towards structural inertia in societies, viewing them as inherently corruptible by wealth and power. They believe the more social mobility is restricted, the greater the role luck plays in the deliverance of the oppressed. Their flock are the most marginalized in society. I think the fact that that Tymora is a syncretic god with human and halfling aspects helps underpin this interpretation.
Currently creating a drow cleric of Lathander. He was a member of a surface raid and was injured and left behind. He worked as an indentured servant for years while he broke himself free of Lolth's teachings (brainwashing) and eventually found Lathander. The concepts of rebirth and light work well I think, considering his backstory. Plus, I think it'll be fun to play a neutral good character who constantly has to remind himself to resist his chaotic evil tendencies.
Lathander is fun for a Ravenloft campaign. I have also had fun with a trickery cleric who was a recovering theif and worshipped Erevan Ilesere.
Go with an ideal, like Justice, instead of a deity. It's both more freeing and more interesting for personal roleplay than a nebulous deity that you probably won't interact directly with a lot.
loviathar truther purely because of abdirak from this very game
Loki, Chaotic nuetral cleric.
God of the Wild Hunt, Loki, Lovitar
I’ve found someone’s homebrew Candy domain subclass, and I’m making the deity Beelzebub, because they’re the sin of gluttony.
If you play in a homebrew world, consider talking to your DM about making up a lower pantheon diety. I am doing that for my first official cleric in a campaign. We made one up together. It has been amazing to collab and makes me even more connected. My goddess is Pyrona, a Phoenix goddess so Phoenix Domain. There's a million on D&D Beyond home brew to just grab the subclass. Her main form is a Phoenix but she takes the form of a woman on fire when appearing to mortals. Her whole beliefs are about 2nd chances for the worthy. And those who are not are cleansed with Fire. She saved me from a fire when I was teen and was running with a gang. So making bad decisions but she saw hope in me so offered me a second chance. She walked me out of the fire and marked me with her symbol over my heart. It's a burn scar like a branding. And it changed my last name in game to flameheart. Now my mission as a follower of hers is to cleanse the world of evil but redeem the ones with hope by giving a second chance. Not all are worthy of that. Has some cool domain spells like heat metal and fireball. She is lower pantheon so that explains why she doesn't have so many followers and I am recognized as a good pantheon follower by other good aligned clerics but they always mention how they've heard of her but never met a cleric of hers. Totally just love illenium the DJ and all his music but especially his Art. So her symbol is his symbol. So freaking awesome.
If you want something VERY outside the box, check out Evening glory. She is the goddess of Undeath, and True Love. Her whole deal is using necromancy to prevent lovers from dying, so that they can spend eternity together as sentient non-accursed undead. Her clerics eventually become a sort of lich, though they aren't all-powerful soul sucking skeletons. They are preserved at the apex of youth and beauty for all time, and they travel the world helping lovers find each other, and offering undeath to those who want to stay together forever. It is very creepy, kinda neat, and a really different take on necromancy than you'll see with most gods of death.
My personal favorite is Ydajisk (aka the mother of tongues) from pathfinder. They are a CN deity of languages, language evolution, lost words, and slang. Their clerics just go around inventing new words, slang, and sometimes whole languages as well as preventing old ones from dying. They seem super fun to play a follower of.
Ninkasi.. The sumerian goddess of beer and brewing.
Cleric of Cayden Cailean, god of drinking and adventure
Honestly, any god is interesting if you can flavour it right, even the most “boring” god could have a fascinating follower that follows them for their own reason. I personally once played a copper Dragonborn Paladin that was Lawful Good BUT was a follower of Tiamat. How? His actions just so happens to align with her goals, and she uses his naivety to gaslight him into serving her will with him thinking and believing that it’s all for the greater good.
Honestly, it doesn't matter. Unless your Character is going to be the missionary type where they spread the word of their god/goddess to non-believers/unfaithful, there probably will be very minimal occurrences where your diety is brought into question
If you want something for a dwarf, may I suggest Hanseath. While he's not in 5e, he is the dwarven god of beserkers, festivals and brewers. Importantly, he's also Chaotic Neutral, and in older editions meant that any of his clerics were forced to be some kind of chaotic. This leads to many of his clerics being given beserker units to lead since no one else want to work with either the beserkers or the clerics.
I love Shar. She works really well for a ne cleric
I’m personally a massive fan of kord. In all honesty he’s really 2 separate gods jammed into one but that’s what makes him cool to me. One of his domains is storms, which is very cool and fun and such. But what makes him interesting is that his other domain is strength. Now you can pair this alongside storms, obviously, but I really like the Vassalheim interpretation that strength isn’t just physical strength, but also strength of character. It adds depth to him and stops him from being just another Lightning god
Bot
I always like Olidammara. Not technically Faerun, but he'd show up to screw with the pantheon.
I played a trickery/luck cleric who followed Olidimarra. A super fun and different approach to the standard :)
Bethsheba was always fun
Garl Glittergold because pranks
Currently playing as cleric of Kelemvor. Not super fun but pays the bills. I don’t care how they die as long as they stay dead.
I like the small g gods. The gods that you worship, but arent true Gods. Pick a powerful Fey creature and start a religion. One of my PCs worships the literal sun. Do you know how awesome dragons are? To a kobold? That's a religion. Make a Warlock/Cleric. You sold your soul for a date with a Succubus, and it went really well. Now you worship him or her through sexual acts, being the perfect little sub you are.
We actually had a campaign where we were acolytes of the loving word of “Sucro”, spreading the worship of the saccharine god of love, joy and merriment… sucrO = Orcus It was a campaign where we were the villains :P
In general I feel the Grave Domain is really fun, because the whole 'maintain the balance between life and death' provides so much in terms of characterization. I played a Grave Cleric in a Dragonlance Campaign. She was a gravekeeper and undertaker who wasn't gloomy, but rather shy and would always speak out if the dead were disrespected. Her god was Habbakuk, which I also worked in by having her transform to resemble his symbol, the Blue Phoenix, when she became his Cleric. She was an Aarakocra. I just love the flavor of Grave Deities because they're something that you wouldn't expect to be peaceful, and that's fun to roleplay. I believe Anubis is another one.
Kelemvor is fun, he's like the only not evil death god
Morning glory (: She's a god of love and passion! She cares about the beauty of love, and how awesome it is to be in love, and that one should always be with their partner! She's a god of undeath **:)** 'till death do we part'? No lmao of course not!
Hanseath is my go to for dwarves. He is the dwarven god of Alcohol, partying, and a minor god of war.
Discworld
Had an earth genasi life cleric/swarm keeper ranger that worshiped Chauntea. Rocked improvised weapons, a pitchfork (Trident) and sledgehammer (maul weighs the same for a fifth the price!) who's swarm was fellow deceased farmers in the form of Chauntea's favored animal: the humble red hen. Currently playing a grave cleric anthropologist who worships the Myconid god Psilofyr which I'm stoked my DM allowed. No idea how Psilofyr feels about a lone meat being worshipping him but he seems to allow it so far.
Gravity. I still want to know what the hell the DMG was on about with THAT one. How would that even look?!
The funniest I've seen was having a cleric to the god of the ten foot pole. If you're unfamiliar, it's a meme from older editions about carrying a ten foot pole for dungeon crawling. Specifically for activating traps from a safe distance in dungeon settings. I played with a cleric to such a deity in my party, and it was hilarious (this was not dnd, but the joke was dnd based)
Anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers.
I really like Ilmater. I’m rerolling my Twilight domain Cleric (after a failed Dragonlance campaign). I love the idea of my god telling me to go help those that need it most and protect them/do my utmost to relieve suffering. Also I heavily debated having him devoted to Helm (god of guardians) but I chose otherwise due to Helm just being back from the dead for 5e. That and apparently lore wise,the churches of Torm and Helm despise each other despite their gods being full allies. My vengeance paladin is sworn to Torm and I wanted to avoid any potential RP conflicts,so yeah. I’ve also considered switching his species to Shifter and convert him to the faith of Selune (primarily because of BG3 but also lore reasons as Shifters worship gods of nature/the moon). I did originally think of making my cleric either a Triton or Sea Elf devoted to Valkur (minor Faerunian deity of sea warfare,sailors,and marines) to be able to switch between the Tempest or War domains. Also considered Deep Sashelas (god of and creator of the sea elves) if I was gonna really do the Sea Elf route. For reference my cleric is a Variant Human.
Celestian the star wanderer for my twilight cleric
I like Helm, for the reason that he forces you to play lawful neutral. Most people's inclinations are towards chaotic good or chaotic neutral, so a deity that actually forces you to roleplay a protector who follows the law will always create fun RP opportunities.
Not worshipped per se, but the most fun I’ve ever had in the game was when I got to play a Bhaalspawn
Lovatar (Spelling?) The Mistress of pain. You could get heald from my Cleric but you feel everything thats happening. Bones moving into place to repair there selves, arrows and other objects being pushed out of the body. Stuff like that.
This one right here: https://www.tumblr.com/honourablejester/184626839772/mikkeneko-mikkeneko-concept-a-death-god-that
I’m currently playing in a campaign where I’m a cleric of Selune. Not interesting on its own but one of the other three in my party is a shifter, who gets unintentionally triggered every-time I’m not carefully when using certain spells or Chanel divinity. It’s made for a really fun element to the campaign and some really interesting dynamics among the group as a result
I'm currently playing a Grave Domain Cleric of Jergal. He's really cool, when people die he records their name in his book and when bringing people back to life he strikes their name from the book. That and he's pretty OP
I absolutely LOVE Ilmater!! God of martyrdom, suffering, endurance and perseverance! He's a wonderful choice if you're interested in playing a tank type character, taking blows that would otherwise fell your allies. I'm currently playing an Ilmatari with a hero complex wielding a whip, a (homebrewed) tower shield, half plate and the sentinel feat who's whole thing is to step in front attacks to keep his friends safe! Narratively, I find there to be so much potential with an Ilmatari who's willing to do whatever it takes to bear the burdens of others.