Lash is so wonderful that she is tempting me to choose cleric for my first official campaign! But playing BG3 does kinda make me feel like all the gods are just terrible, and the path of religious trauma feels all but inevitable. Are any of them not so? Is there a way to portray a more positive relationship?
ayyy thanks nonnie!! as established i really love clerics so allow me to pile some peer pressure on top of your decision pile!! go be a cleric!! (if the playstyle appeals to you etc)
it sounds like you're talking about pen-and-paper dnd, yeah? (you might be my earlier anon??) disclaimer that i'm not a 5e lore expert, but one difference ime from the bg3 experience is that bg3 is coming to you as a pre-written narrative with its own themes (such as humanoid choice in the face of manipulation, which extends to gods).
5e lore, on the other hand, is written as a bunch of open-ended hooks you/your dm can choose to engage with or not. also most gods in 5e don't have a ton of complex canon lore about being secretly evil or selfish--it's kind of bluntly "good god" "evil god" "neutral god" etc to leave you room to play and worldbuild. (other than uhhh i guess being complicit in the wall of the faithless đŹ which is dubiously canonical now anyway.) like, a god like eilistraee is going to be very easy to imagine a positive relationship with for a good-aligned cleric if that's what you're looking for. and even a god like mystra who comes off pretty bad in bg3, is like...relatively fine in canon 5e lore. i think of bg3 almost like someone's fleshed-out tabletop game where the dm has made characterization and world decisions to flesh out the lore
plus the gods do have personalities, greek god-style, which means that your cleric might, idk, overarchingly agree with their own god's goals but find bits of their dogma annoying or wrong, or otherwise relate to them with a bit of conflict (for spice!) without necessarily feeling used/betrayed. this lends itself to storytelling where a cleric might find themselves challenged by what they find on the road: the gods aren't perfect, just like, idk, your friend the wizard in your party isn't perfect
(ALSO like. if you're not married to the idea of playing an unambiguously good-aligned cleric, there's nothing stopping you from playing a character who unabashedly loves their awful god lmao. or like, a lawful neutral god like kelemvor--you could create a cleric who is so so into that very specific, harsh-but-fair moral code)
you might find the "deities by alignment" page a good way to find the overall vibe you're looking for! like i said, the lore is built out of hooks for you, so there's plenty of room to create a relationship that feels fun to play. (or, like, a non-relationship! lash has strong feelings about Being A Cleric but ilmater has never manifested for her personally)
