I have a player in a campaign I've just started who would like to worship one deity, when in reality his powers and abilities have been coming from another. For example, their daily prayers would go towards Abadar, but their spells and abilities would come from Iomedae. Their character would have no knowledge of this, but it would eventually be revealed to them.
I'm having trouble finding an answer as to whether there is precedent for this in the lore already, mostly because the character is good; if they were evil, then it would be conceivable to me that an evil deity would do this to try and corrupt/convert a good-aligned person. But since they are good, I'd like to keep them worshiping a good or neutral deity, and I can't find a reason as to why such deity would want to deceive someone this way. Thoughts?
I see it more a question of "why". If a deity would have a reason for granting powers to a worshipper of another deity, I don't doubt that they can do it.
Considering your example, you would first need to figure out why Abadar himself doesn't accept his worshipper (At least not enough to give him powers). Is the worshipper not following his edicts? Does Abadar has some greater plan? Is there some deal or a curse that prevents Abadar doing so? Maybe the worshipper would be in some kind of danger if their magic came from Abadar?
Then you would figure out why another god would get involved. Does they have some greater plan? Have they made a deal with Abadar to provide magic in his stead?
Figuring these things out may give you a reason for maintaining the deception.
Precedent in the lore? not sure. There is an ex-cleric archtype in 1E that kinda does that, but with some alien entity giving you powers instead of the deity you are praying to,but that is a little different to another god answering someone that wasn't ever an ex-cleric. that's the closest precedent I can recall and its not setting material.
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I have a player in a campaign I've just started who would like to worship one deity, when in reality his powers and abilities have been coming from another. For example, their daily prayers would go towards Abadar, but their spells and abilities would come from Iomedae. Their character would have no knowledge of this, but it would eventually be revealed to them.
I'm having trouble finding an answer as to whether there is precedent for this in the lore already, mostly because the character is good; if they were evil, then it would be conceivable to me that an evil deity would do this to try and corrupt/convert a good-aligned person. But since they are good, I'd like to keep them worshiping a good or neutral deity, and I can't find a reason as to why such deity would want to deceive someone this way. Thoughts?
The only in-game rationale I can immediately think of for this particular pair of gods is that Iomedae is 'the Inheritor' of Aroden's worshippers, and Aroden and Abadar have some similarities, so I could see someone raised in a family of former Aroden worshippers, who have begrudgingly turned to Abadarite faith, because it's 'close enough' might find one of their scions with more than the average potential for faith-based-casting to be subtly encouraged by the Inheritor to embrace this potential, while allowing him to continue, for a short time, to honor his Abadarite upbringing (but under the intention that the PC will get the clue eventually and beginning worshipping her properly!).
Granted, she's immortal, and, like most gods, has a longer view of things than most mortals, so 'eventually' might be years, and he could think it was a lifelong journey 'to the truth' while she considered it 'a blink of an eye' and 'inevitable.'
Creative Director
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This is something that you should only do with the player's consent, whether or not it's meant to be a surprise that the character would not already know about. So as a homebrew variant, it's fine as long as the GM and players are okay with it.
It's not something that happens in canon, in any event, for Golarion. (Unless something like this slips by without me noticing.)
Even in the case of Iomedae inheriting many of Aroden's worshipers, there was no trickery; the clerics knew that they were getting their spells from a different deity.
Worshiping deity 1 but actually getting your cleric spells and powers from deity 2 is not something that we do in Pathfinder, officially speaking.
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Worshiping deity 1 but actually getting your cleric spells and powers from deity 2 is not something that we do in Pathfinder, officially speaking.
How does this work for syncretists, like clerics of the Godclaw? To the extent they follow the entire gestalt concept, which deity grants them spells? Do the five deities collaborate to grant spells by consensus? Do they rotate which one grants spells on a particular day? Or is the cleric actually aligned with one of the gods despite their beliefs? What is the cleric believes themselves more in line with one of the five, but is actually more in line with another?
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Worshiping deity 1 but actually getting your cleric spells and powers from deity 2 is not something that we do in Pathfinder, officially speaking.How does this work for syncretists, like clerics of the Godclaw? To the extent they follow the entire gestalt concept, which deity grants them spells? Do the five deities collaborate to grant spells by consensus? Do they rotate which one grants spells on a particular day? Or is the cleric actually aligned with one of the gods despite their beliefs? What is the cleric believes themselves more in line with one of the five, but is actually more in line with another?
It's trickier, but the basic gist is that you still pick your primary deity and then do your best to follow the non-clashing edicts by obeying all the anathemas.
A cleric is defined by the fact that they worship one deity more than the others. A divine caster who worships multiple deities equally is not a cleric; they are a divine bloodline sorcerer or an oracle.