Say you start off as a cleric of one god, but for character reasons switch to a different one at some point - is that possible? Likewise, if it is, what happens if the domains of your new god do not include the one you selected from your old one?
Posted Oct 27, 2017, 7:10 PM UTC
You can change anything you want about a character (except name) for the first four levels. Once you hit level 5, you have to stick with your domain. Which deity you pick for that domain...not sure if anyone cares if you change that.
Most DMs aren't going to ask you what deity you serve unless you make it relevant to the game
Up until before you play the first time at 5th level, you may change your deity and domain. After that point you are stuck with your domain, but may change deities as long as you keep the domain the same.
Per the AL Player's Guide:
Deities. If your character worships a deity, those deities listed in the Deities of the Forgotten Realms and Nonhuman Deities tables in the PHB or any deity listed in the resources listed in Step 1& 2, above are available. While paladins don’t have to worship a deity, clerics do. If your deity doesn’t include suggested domains in the resource in which it is found, only the Life domain is available.
I'm aware of this, and while the prevailing opinion seems to be that you can change your Deity at will, there's a lot of grey area. In particular around this line: "If your deity doesn’t include suggested domains in the resource in which it is found, only the Life domain is available."
I think it's reasonable to take this as "You can't switch to a deity that doesn't have the same domain you do", however it doesn't actually say that and it's not clear if that is the intent. Obviously you can't change domains to match your new deity, but are you restricted from choosing a deity that doesn't have the domain you selected (lets assume this is after level 5).
Further up in the thread Zathrus said:
You cannot. If it would be an invalid deity for your domain then you cannot change it to that unless you have a rebuild that would let you change the domain too.
But could provide no official ruling on the subject. Likwise, everyone else in the thread seems to think it's fair game to change your deity, but I haven't seen anything official. The only reason I can think of that you'd want to do this is for story reasons, so I doubt anyone cares from a rules perspective, but it does make me wonder why the domain selection rule exists at all.
I am inclined to agree with you thought that you can only change to a deity that shares a domain... but by 5th level, you should be pretty set on your faith. In a home campaign I would love to do that at a higher level, but alas, AL is pretty strict on that.
I only say that because it is pretty clear that after your first game at 5th, you are not allowed to mechanically change your character.
What was the circumstance that raised this question? Did something happen in a module or hardcover that made your character question his faith?
There's no specific character involved in this, it's something that occurred to me because of two separate circumstances:
First, I'm at a table with a player who has flavored his Cleric as a worshiper of Ubtao, though since Ubtao isn't an AL legal deity he's "mechanically" a life cleric of a different god. Life domain works for everything so it hardly matters what god he actually worships.
Second, I have a character that (mechanically) I want to have the war domain. This is a Yuan-ti cleric, so it makes sense that they would have worshiped one of the snake gods - but so far as I can tell those are restricted to the life domain. It doesn't actually matter though, because for background reasons this character would start level one worshiping Torm, with the snake god worship being distant past only (In this case I would need to switch domains, not just deities, if I wanted to do this in-game - but the character's backstory requires that this have happened in the past, otherwise I'd just do the level 5 rebuild).
Combined, these two things made me think about this rule, and made me realize that it's not very clear (both in terms of what's allowed, and what the purpose of it is). It's possible that the cleric in my first example is in violation of this rule, but it's not really clear and nobody at the table cares so I'm not concerned. He has had to point out though that his character is probably crazy or being fooled by some sort of trickster god, since he legally can't worship Ubtao (who is not a "god" in D&D parlance). And he's already had at least one crisis of faith upon being told by the oracle that Ubtao does not speak to chultan's anymore (except possibly those from Mezro).
Personally, I just want a little more clarity in how this is supposed to work, rather than everyone just having to guess.
You can change everything but your name until you hit 5th level or somehow get a 1-time rebuild (like when SCAG came out)
EDIT: Do not understand why someone down voted. This is absolutely 100% true and supported by the ALPG.
I downvoted it because it's not answering the question I was asking - you are correct in what you said, but the answer doesn't fit the question. At the time I didn't feel like explaining this again as I've already done so a few times in this thread, but I just saw your edit so I figured I'd clarify for you.
If you take advantage of the pre-level 5 rebuild it is a rebuild, not a plot driven change in your character (it happens at the meta level, and is as though you were picking the options via character creation and normal level up). In this situation you'd pick a deity, then choose from the list of valid domains for that deity, per-AL rules.
My question is, what happens if your character converts to the worship of another god mid-campaign? In such a case you'd change your deity (no rule against it that I can find), but cannot change your domain (without an available rebuild) - you might not even want to change your domain even if you had a rebuild. This appears to be legal, but I was hoping to find some official guidance on the subject as the implication is that you can combine any god and any domain simply by converting to a different god after character creation, and while I don't think that has any power/balance implications it would be nice to have some guidance on the subject. From what I can tell the rule about domain selection is mostly to keep the lore consistent in the FR universe, but theoretically converting shouldn't be a problem lore-wise, so while I suspect it is fine I was hoping to find that it had been officially addressed.
You should retire your character if his "plot driven" dedication to his deity is so swayed that he converts to another deity. If I was your GM, I wouldn't allow you to play that character if you are using a domain that is not specific to that deity or the Life domain. And I would also not allow you to play that illegal character if you changed domains and were not below 5th level.
You can’t switch domains. It just doesn’t work that way.
Switching deities is just a flavor thing and shouldn’t be an issue as long as nothing changes mechanically
My question is more along the lines of, if you switch deities, what happens if you now have an illegal domain for your new deity? Since AL clerics are required to pick a domain from the list associated with their god (or the life domain), then you could end up in a situation where you have a god that does not have the domain your character has. Is this allowed?
Switching domains is obviously not allowed, but as you said the deities are mostly flavor. However if switching them is allowed then why even bother restricting what domains a cleric can take as they can just "convert" immediately to another god after taking their preferred domain to get the deity/domain combo they want. I personally don't have any issue with this (because the deities shouldn't have an effect on mechanics in my opinion), but I'm not sure if a rule against it exists.
I guess if a DM really wanted to be a stickler about it they could give you some problems
You cannot. If it would be an invalid deity for your domain then you cannot change it to that unless you have a rebuild that would let you change the domain too.
Is this just your opinion, or is there actually a rule that says this? I'm looking for some sort of official ruling but haven't found one.
There absolutely is a rule that you must have a proper deity for your domain in AL. Page 3 of the current player’s guide.