#my new trickster cleric of beshaba

[freelanceplatypus]

What color scheme do y'all like best for this new dnd character? 1, 2 or 3!

[honourablejester]

Tymora: Lady Luck and the Trickery Domain

Okay. So this is only partially about the D&D deity and cleric trickery domain, and more about my feelings on tricksters and luck, but howandever. We’re going to go with it.

I was looking for a deity for a trickery cleric, and came across Tymora, goddess of luck and gamblers, and got excited! Because she’s cool, and she looks like she fits, and I love both gamblers and tricksters, so I figured we’d give that a go!

But then I was reading the actual abilities for the trickery domain cleric, and … there’s a bit of a disconnect? It didn’t feel quite right for a devotee of a goddess of luck. The trickery domain is all about illusion and deception and stealth. There’s some raw chaos in there, you get stuff like polymorph, but the domain in general seems to be geared towards thief/revolutionary style of trickster, the likes of Hermes or Mask or even some of the fey. It’s about the social architect, the revolutionary, the daring thief, the swindler. Which is perfect! Tricksters are the bomb, and there’s so many options in there. It’s a great domain to play around in.

It just didn’t seem to feel right for Tymora (and Beshaba on the flipside). And I think that’s less about the domain, and more about my feelings on Lady Luck?

Mostly, Lady Luck is not a trickster. She is chaotic, yes, she is the embodiment of chaos in many ways, but she’s not …

Okay. Trickery is about using wit or skill or guile to cheat power. Trickery is about deception and sleight of hand or thought. Trickery is about upending the social order, stealing the lich’s phylactery, tricking the murderer into publicly confessing, letting the villain think they’ve won while you spirit the survivors to safety. It’s about guile. It’s about skill. It’s about rigging the game and tweaking the odds. It’s about shaving the dice.

If you shave the dice, you’re not playing with luck anymore.

The thing about most trickster gods is that they’re pointed up. They’re fighting from the bottom towards the top. They go against power. But Lady Luck is power. Lady Luck is facing out and down. Lady Luck is something closer to a Fate. Lady Luck is the raw force of chaos that tweaks the balance of the universe.

Lady Luck doesn’t trick people. She changes their fate. She doesn’t need illusions. She twists reality.

I’m not saying she wouldn’t be a sponsor of tricksters. She absolutely would. She would throw champions into the teeth of the world, skill and daring against power, and the result balanced on luck, skill, and her favour. She works as a patron for tricksters.

She just … doesn’t really feel like a trickster herself. She feels like a sponsor of the trickery domain, not a part of it herself.

If anything, she (and her sister) feel closer to gods of fate, order and death. If she wasn’t a pure embodiment of chaos, I’d put her in the Order Domain, because she has such a strong element of fate and arbitration, but she really isn’t order either. If there were such a thing as a Balance domain, I’d put her there. But trickery … it doesn’t feel right on her.

I was just … I had a gambler in my head. A devotee of luck, of courage and daring, the leap of faith and the roll of the dice. Favoured of the Lady Luck, to twist fate ever so slightly in their favour.

The abilities and spells that would go with a goddess like that, I don’t think they’d be ones of illusion and stealth. They’d be more … things like Guidance, Bless, Enhance Ability (I feel like Bestow Curse and Bane are maybe stepping on Beshaba’s toes a bit, though if they were sharing a new domain go right ahead). Abilities that affect your minimum or maximum on a dice roll, that give you advantage or your enemies disadvantage. Things of that nature.

Basically, if I wanted to play a devotee of Tymora, my first instinct would probably be closer to a wild magic sorcerer than a trickery cleric. If I was playing a devotee of Beshaba, something with a good dose of the necromancy school. Or, actually, the grave domain abilities have a lot of arbitration of fate and changing of luck. It weirdly feels like it would work for them.

Again, Tymora feels weirdly like a god of death/grave/life. Because fate.

So. Apologies for that random ramble. I just wanted to try and articulate my thoughts a bit, see why lady luck as a trickster felt slightly off to me as a concept.