Not sure where you are counting 5 domains.
Cayden Cailean has 4. Desna has 4 and 2 alternates for a total of 6.
If this is homebrew already, pick how many you want. Having more domains gives more options when choosing domain spells. But each domain spell costs a feat, so it isn't going to increase the power of any character - just their flexibility of build choice.
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Since the remaster we don't use alignments so that's clearly not the reason (anymore). And I don't think there was really that much of a push to keep all the alignments equal with each other anyway - there's always been sooooo many demon lords flooding the market.
I suspect part of it is actually to more strongly characterize deities. If there's a bunch of deities that all have eight domains, there's gonna be a lot of overlap between them, making them less distinct from each other.
Let me rephrase. Why stick to 4 domains? Is there a mechanical reason, to make sure that all domains were distributed among all 9 domains? (Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil).
To clarify: The confusion on the number of domains is a side-tangent detail that I noticed.
I am not aware of any enforced number of domains or any reason for any particular number cap to be needed.
A Deity entry with 17 domain options would still not result in a more powerful Cleric character. They would get one Domain spell per feat slot that they spend on Domain Initiate or Advanced Domain.
A Deity entry with 17 domain options means that Clerics of that deity have more options to choose from when they get those feats, but they still only get one spell for each one.
Okay, so is the domain option limited by the Cleric class?
Yes.
The way the Cleric levels work, if I am reading the rules correctly, the Cleric Feat of "Domain Initiate", which appears at Lvl 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20, allows a selection of a different domain each time, and gaining its domain spell.
Cloistered Cleric also gets another one for free at level 1. So that could be up to 11 of the 1st level Domain Spells.
However, a lot of the time, the Cleric is going to want to take other class feats as well. Such as the Advanced Domain feat. Or maybe even Maker of Miracles to get a second 10th level spell slot.
With Advanced Domain and Expanded Domain Initiate, a Cloistered Cleric of Desna could fill all of their class feats with just Domain spell feats.
1st: Domain Initiate
2nd: Domain Initiate
4th: Expanded Domain Initiate
6th: Domain Initiate
8th: Domain Initiate
10th: Expanded Domain Initiate
12th - 20th: Advanced Domain x5
They would have 11 focus spells to cast, and 3 focus points to cast them with.
And they would still be missing one of the Advanced Domain spells from one of the 6 domains and alternate domains that Desna has.
Isn't each Cleric restricted to each 1 deity? Wouldn't that mean that each cleric would have a maximum of 4 different Domains?
That is from just one Deity - Desna.
Desna has 4 primary domains (dreams, moon, luck, travel) and 2 alternate domains (star, void).
Expanded Domain Initiate pulls from the two alternate domains. Advanced Domain can pull from any of the domains that you have the first spell from - either primary domain or alternate domain.
Also, I have heard that the rationale for have 4 domains per deity is:
"don't have any 2 deities share more than 2 domains."
That may or may not be a rationale for the core deities of the Inner Sea setting. I haven't heard one way or the other.
That wouldn't affect homebrew that you are creating. You can use that guidance yourself if you want. Or ignore it if you would rather.
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Cloistered Cleric also gets another one for free at level 1. So that could be up to 11 of the 1st level Domain Spells.
However, a lot of the time, the Cleric is going to want to take other class feats as well. Such as the Advanced Domain feat. Or maybe even Maker of Miracles to get a second 10th level spell slot.
With Advanced Domain and Expanded Domain Initiate, a Cloistered Cleric of Desna could fill all of their class feats with just Domain spell feats.
1st: Domain Initiate
2nd: Domain Initiate
4th: Expanded Domain Initiate
6th: Domain Initiate
8th: Domain Initiate
10th: Expanded Domain Initiate
12th - 20th: Advanced Domain x5They would have 11 focus spells to cast, and 3 focus points to cast them with.
And they would still be missing one of the Advanced Domain spells from one of the 6 domains and alternate domains that Desna has.
Isn't each Cleric restricted to each 1 deity? Wouldn't that mean that each cleric would have a maximum of 4 different Domains?
Also, I have heard that the rationale for have 4 domains per deity is:
"don't have any 2 deities share more than 2 domains."
With the Cleric Feat Syncretism you can essentially have 2 Deities. You believe them to be aspects of the same deity, but you can pull domains from both of them.
As an example, my Cleric of Achaekek is Syncretic into the deity Suyuddha. I did that to get the Swarm domain...and so that I could refer to my Sawtooth Sabers as Catsclaw Cutlasses.
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I think it had to do with how domain worked in 1e. As people said in the thread already, there, deities had 5 domains each, demideity (beings like the archdevil or demon lords) 4 each, and "quasideity" (beings like the infernal duke or nascent demon lords) had 3 each. However, despite this making them seemingly rather unified and "equal" to each other of the same rank, the way alignment intersected with domains made the deity at the extremities of the chart far more narrow than the ones in the middle.
In 1e, there were "good/evil/lawfull/chaotic" domain, and a divinity that landed in one of these alignment had to have that domain, no matter what. So chaotic evil deities for exemple only had 3 "free" domain, since two had to be locked to chaotic and evil. Nascent demon lords with their 3 total domain only had a single specific domain to call their own. on the other side of the spectrum, true neutral deity had to had 5 wholy "special" domain, even if their lore was rather narrow and the last few were headscratcher to find.
1e tried to solve this issue with the "subdomains", which were slightly tweaked variation of existing domains, and that weren't tied to such strict rules, so they could give any "vast" deity a number of additional subdomain to make up for the limitation, while not giving much (or any) to "focussed" deities. But while this system allowed for more flexibility, it was pretty clearly a bandaid, a way to go around their own rule to give as much domain as they want to the deities they felt were lacking.
So in 2e, they decided to change the system in the first place to not be so constrained by it. They ditched the alignment domains altogether to avoid the "boring obligatory domains", decided to give every single divinity, no matter the power, the same number of domain, so that player wouldn't nerf themselves by picking a "lesser divinity" to follow, locked it to "4", since they sometime felt that 3 was too little to chose from for some deity and 5 was sometime too much for some others, and changed the subdomain system into "alternate domain" ones so that they can still break their own rule and give some deities that feel "vaster" more area of interest, with the caveat that these alternate domains are more difficult to obtain.
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My speculations:
I can see 2 reasons.
1- Simplicity. If all deities have 4 domains, it makes things simple to use, and to design.
2- Width of concepts and narrative design. If a smaller deity only have 2 domains, but the narrative of that deity makes it fit more, that means that they don't have enough domains to fullfill their full fantasy, and that would force Paizo to make all the smaller gods hyper specialized. Making every deities 4 domains, that make it easier to have them ALL more full-fledged, "3 dimensional", and still able to fulfill the full narrative promises they make. (In PF1, the biggest number was 5 domains, but many of them had their alignment domains taking a lot of space (2 domains "slots" out of 5 for corner deities!), but with PF2's removal of alignment domains, 4 is often good enough. (Yes, alignment domains were removed even before the remaster. There's still "Law" domain, as an example, but not all deities that were "lawful" had it, only those that was fitting, like Abadar.)
And if a deity could have more, then there's the Alternate Domains, and becasue it has a "price of entry", it's perfectly fine for a deity to not have them, thus not "forcing" the design too much to include them.
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The reason everything has four is just because Paizo went "All deities should have the same number of domains for consistency". As for why four, likely because it is high enough to give a wide breadth of options whilst still being low enough that the deity can actually feel focused.