In a current PF2E game, my Cleric has a deity and I do RP him to stay in Ragathiel's favor. It's explicitly called out and I don't think it's dumb at all...
Sure. But is Ragathiel any better than Bjorn’er, the god of rapturous dance that I just made up? Imo, no. If someone wants to choose a predefined god, sure. If someone wants to make one up? Also sure.
The only thing I’d be fairly vocal about is that until some lore has reason to enter the narrative, it isn’t canon. E.g. the space faring races that appear in both dnd and pathfinder
I mean, objectively yes I do think Ragathiel is better than Bjorn’er because there is actual lore, thought, and consistency there. [0]
Look by all means, if you want to bring your own deity or $WHATEVER to a table I don't think most reasonable DMs and players would even bat an eye but you'll absolutely be expected to put some degree of effort into this beyond just showing up unprepared and cooking shit up on the fly.
I would argue it’s even better role play if players don’t know things though. If you meet some followers of Bane, a player who knows the lore will probably deem them to be a bad guy. If they have no idea, they will roll knowledge to see if their character would know. The DM providing information based on character knowledge checks is generally a great source of fun.
The DM saying “yeah I know you know Bane is a bad guy but I made your roll for it and you failed so you need to pretend you don’t know that” is never very good even if the players try to obey the spirit of things.
