Clerics and false worship / false deities

[ferrit]

Have you ever played (or DM’d) a character pretending they worship a deity they don’t, or unknowingly worshipping a deity under a different name, or so on?

I was reading some background on Vecna and came across this line; ”New inductees into Vecna’s cult are carefully groomed and often believe they are joining an obscure sect of some knowledge god, and are only told the truth when they show their willingness to do anything in pursuit of knowledge and power.”

I immediately started imagining a character that was a straight-up, by-the-books, possibly-neutral Knowledge Cleric who has Vecna as their deity. Either actively pretending they worship a different deity (Vecna is the god of secrets, after all) or perhaps even a new acolyte in the dark of who their deity actually is.

For a deity like Cyric (god of lies) this makes sense and is probably established in canon somewhere, but I’m having trouble thinking of the mechanics in day-to-day adventuring.

How does that work in practice?
Could a cleric who prays and receives spells do so without even knowing who answers or where they come from?
Could a cleric actively speak of, and pretend worship of, a different deity without flagrantly insulting and offending their actual deity?
What about the rest of the party? How long could you conceivably keep it secret for? Should you?
Would somebody “uncover you” with a simple divination spell?
Would you accidentally uncover yourself if you cast the wrong divination spell?
How much of “the secret” is player information held back, and how much is offloaded to the DM?

[Sjappo]

I would imagine that a cleric would call on his god by name, especially in the Forgotten Realms. I could imagine cults calling on a god by use of an obscure title and thus duping unknowing acolytes. But it would come out pretty fast.

About keeping it a secret, I don't like player secrets. It leads to weird "knowing glances" from DM to player or vice versa, which mostly irritate the other players. Or it leads to a gotcha moment where a betrayal is revealed mostly also annoying the rest of the players.

I do like character secrets. Secrets that can be shared with other players so that they can play their character accordingly and all have fun playing being ignorant and when the secret inevitably comes out.

[Keravath]

Have you ever played (or DM’d) a character pretending they worship a deity they don’t, or unknowingly worshipping a deity under a different name, or so on?

I was reading some background on Vecna and came across this line; ”New inductees into Vecna’s cult are carefully groomed and often believe they are joining an obscure sect of some knowledge god, and are only told the truth when they show their willingness to do anything in pursuit of knowledge and power.”

I immediately started imagining a character that was a straight-up, by-the-books, possibly-neutral Knowledge Cleric who has Vecna as their deity. Either actively pretending they worship a different deity (Vecna is the god of secrets, after all) or perhaps even a new acolyte in the dark of who their deity actually is.

For a deity like Cyric (god of lies) this makes sense and is probably established in canon somewhere, but I’m having trouble thinking of the mechanics in day-to-day adventuring.

How does that work in practice?
Could a cleric who prays and receives spells do so without even knowing who answers or where they come from?
Could a cleric actively speak of, and pretend worship of, a different deity without flagrantly insulting and offending their actual deity?
What about the rest of the party? How long could you conceivably keep it secret for? Should you?
Would somebody “uncover you” with a simple divination spell?
Would you accidentally uncover yourself if you cast the wrong divination spell?
How much of “the secret” is player information held back, and how much is offloaded to the DM?


"Could a cleric who prays and receives spells do so without even knowing who answers or where they come from?"

Yes. It is fluff and if a god does not want a worshipper to know from whence their power comes then it should be trivial for the god to prevent the cleric from knowing.

"Could a cleric actively speak of, and pretend worship of, a different deity without flagrantly insulting and offending their actual deity?"

If the actual diety does not want to reveal themselves at this point in time then they would be unlikely to be offended by a cleric opening praying to and praising a different diety. They would probably think the irony to be hilarious and will savor the moment when the cleric is in too deep and discovers that their diety is not who they thought it was.

"What about the rest of the party? How long could you conceivably keep it secret for? Should you?"

If the cleric doesn't know, how could any of the rest of the party? If the cleric is intentionally pretending to worship a different god then presumably this is to hide the god they really worship. It is intentionally secret for whatever reason. If they are an expert in both the religions then they should have advantage on any deception checks and should automatically succeed against laypersons. They may have more difficulty convincing a cleric of their pretend religion that they are also a cleric of that religion since the diety involved might decide to let their cleric know that the other cleric is not a follower ... but that is up to the DM and the dieties involved.

"Would somebody “uncover you” with a simple divination spell?"

How? If the cleric is deluding themselves then they really believe that they worship a different god and I don't think there are divination spells that would let you know. If the cleric is pretending then zone of truth and similar spells might make it difficult for them to lie about it. I didn't check all the divination spells so there could be something I missed but in general divination spells don't give information on a character's diety and if you learn a character's alignment then they could still be a character following a god with an alignment different from theirs. No proof there.

"Would you accidentally uncover yourself if you cast the wrong divination spell?"

Again, my question would be how? Is there a divination spell that could reveal your diety's true intentions? Keeping in mind that it is the diety that grants the power to cast the spell, I don't see much issue with the diety manipulating the results of such a spell perceived by their cleric. Someone else might be able to find out but the cleric won't unless that is the result the deity desires.

"How much of “the secret” is player information held back, and how much is offloaded to the DM?"

This depends on whether this is the DM interfering with a character development and backstory or whether it was a player/character concept which is being implemented with the aid of the DM. It depends on whether the player is aware of it or not. If the character is not supposed to know who they worship but the player does then it doesn't need any DM intervention since the player will role play the character as believing they worship the alternate diety except when the character decides to do things that fit with the influence of the other diety that the character may not be aware of. The DM can participate by throwing in additional interactions but this is mostly for the rest of the party and should be limited by discussions with the player since they may want this aspect of the character to remain hidden from everyone for some time.

If the DM decides to substitute the diety for some game plot reason then it is entirely on the DM to implement and deal with the fallout afterward since there are a lot of players who might be upset with that level of interference with their character.

[Democratus]

There are lots of examples in D&D of people intentionally (or mistakenly) worshiping one deity that is actually another.

The Elemental Eye in Temple of Elemental Evil. Cyric. Bane. Vecna.

There are even instances where an evil god tricked a good worshiper into worshiping them while pretending to be the other deity - resulting in the worshiper going to the Wall of the Faithless.

It's complicated. :smallcool: