D&D 5E Domain of Fate?

[Laurefindel]

In one of my worlds I have a culture venerating the Triad (the principle behind the fates, the norns, and similar trinity from other cultures). And since I try to make a few racial class archetypes for each of the playable races and cultures, I thought that a Fate Divine Domain would be fitting.

But would a priest or priestess venerating fate have power over a creature’s fate or destiny? The whole lesson about fate is that nothing can change it, no matter how hard the mortals or the gods try. In the end, everyone’s destiny is fulfilled. This prompted me to revise a few of that archetype’s features...

With that in mind, what could a priest of fate do? Predict one’s fate is nice, but hard to play out on the long run. Unless the predictions are mostly inconsequential, but at this point is it worth predicting anything...

There is the divination wizard approach whereas the character has seen something, but the player decide what it is on the spot when the opportunity comes. Ideally, I’d like another mechanics than the stored d20 rolls of the divination wizard, if only for variety’s sake.

Another would be about the fulfillment of one’s destiny, either precipitating it or retarding it (“one day you too will die, but today is not that day” kind of ability).

Or perhaps destiny can be altered, stolen, or bestowed, and in the end, all of fate’s threads are woven in the fabric that was meant to be.

I’m hesitating here, and suggestions/advices would be welcome

 

[Shiroiken]

I'd think of it this way: priests of Fate are destined to ensure that the appropriate Fate occurs. Perhaps it's fate that I'm watching Quantum Leap right now, but the phrase "putting right what once went wrong" isn't a bad way of looking at it. There would definitely be forces (both good and evil) that would like to twist fate in their favor, and the priests role is to adjust events that were altered to change fate. Since that's their role, whatever they do is the correct course of action, since they're subconsciously driven by Fate. Of course, that last part could be twisted by players, in which case they become one of those forces that corrupts Fate!

As far as mechanics... I got nothing, so good luck with that!

 

[Li Shenron]

That's quite a challenge you have there... You can take a look here for some real-life inspiration: Moirai - Wikipedia

Apparently there were at least some offerings done to what the ancient Romans and Greeks believed to be the controllers of destiny, but I agree with you on the fact that controlling the destiny is in contrast to believing in destiny. If you can change it, then it's not destiny, it's just the most probable outcome or at most it is whatever would happen to you if you don't know about it and therefore do nothing to change what you're about to do.

I think it would be cool to have something like a "Church of Fate" in a fantasy setting, but I would certainly be disappointed to see it turn into a "it's your fate, can't change it, but actually you can", like it often ends up in movies and tv series (that's because they actually want to deliver the message that there is no such thing as destiny, which is a more common belief in our times). But those ancient Romans/Greeks in fact believed that even the gods could not change destiny one bit, and I would play along with this idea also in D&D.

I like your ideas of focusing on (1) predicting and (2) precipitating or retarding it.

Generally I think the problems will be similar to those of time-travelling, which is all cool and fine in a movie which you simply watch passively, but are notoriously very tricky to pull off in a game where instead you want to decide what your character does. So naturally after (1) the characters will want to change something about their destiny to their advantage. Doing (2) should be relatively safe because it doesn't invalidate the prediction, but you can also dare something more as long as it doesn't really contrast (1).

I am just rambling here because I don't have concrete ideas... but my broad feeling is that you should figure out something based on the idea that the more you know of your destiny, the less you can do about it.

Say that the domain grants divination about your future. If you discover that "you are destined to rule an empire", this still doesn't tell you what empire, when it will happen or how you will achieve it. So perhaps the domain powers will then help you decide those or at least direct them towards something you like. Sort of knowing that your path will lead to X, but you still can choose whether it passes through A or B. The more you predict however, the less choices you have, because predicting something will make it inevitable.