Dude, the OP specifically said they're trying to win, probably for the first time. Don't troll them by pretending a challenge god (read: weak god) is a good choice for that.
The best god for Tm is Fedhas, due to wandering mushrooms being so powerful. Ru, Hepliaklqana, and Kikubaaqudgha are also very strong choices. These gods all kind of dominate your game, though; if you want a less god-oriented game, Okawaru, Makhleb, and Gozag are also pretty good choices.
My full ranking for DrTm (and most Tm in general) would be as follows, with the best gods on top and the worst at the bottom:
- Fedhas - mushrooms at 1* alone is enough to make Fedhas the best god. Just make a few mushrooms as soon as you get the ability and you can use them to kill anything you don't want to kill yourself; you can, and this is not hyperbole, clear D:1-15 and Lair with mushrooms alone if you want to.
- Kikubaaqudgha - If you plan on playing "as a Tm" and using unarmed then the pain weapon is irrelevant but you still get amazing spells and deliver corpses really early. Kiku zombies are about as good as wandering mushrooms.
- Hepliaklqana - you get a passable ally instantly upon worshipping, which is nuts, and then it turns into a really strong ally
- Ru - Take the biggest sacrifice(s) you can to get to high piety quickly. Ru's abilities are pretty much broken once you get them, and unless you are supernaturally unlucky you'll get them quickly. The only sacrifices you want to stay away from are love, drink, and words.
- Gozag - Potion petition is the only good reason to worship this god, but it's an amazing reason, since you get one free use of potion petition as soon as you worship. Optimally, you should probably never use call merchant because 2 potion petitions is better, but it's not like calling merchants is going to lose you the game so if you find it fun go ahead. Bribe Zot when you get there.
- Makhleb - Servants are just really good. Healing on kills is convenient too.
- Okawaru - You get heroism at 1*, which you should use a lot. Unfortunately, Okawaru's piety gain is extremely variable and it can easily take a long time to reach 1*. Finesse is also very strong once you get it, but it takes a while to get it. Don't worry about the gifts, they suck anyway.
- Yredelemnul - Animate remains is pretty good; it's also pretty much strictly worse than what Kiku gives you. The ally gifts are inferior to proper use of Kiku's deliver corpses as well, but may be easier to use. Drain life is very good. Both gods are heavy on micromanagement. If you really abuse animate remains to its fullest then Yred is probably technically better than Okawaru and Makhleb, but like, you can just worship Kiku to get a better version of that.
- Elyvilon - You get to heal yourself a lot and you get to effectively insta-kill monsters a lot, at the expense of training invocations a lot and not being able to use necromancy spells when you find them.
- Nemelex Xobeh - I would not recommend this god to any new player because cards are very complicated, but it is reasonably strong because decks of summoning are kind of ridiculous. The problem is it may take a while before you actually get a good deck.
- Uskayaw - Uskayaw is hard to evaluate and probably completely inappropriate for unspoiled play, since knowledge of Uskayaw's piety gain mechanism is both vital to using the god remotely effectively, and nearly impossible to glean in-game. If you can afford to spend many turns building piety, you can deal with pretty much any monster(s), but if you don't have those turns then you don't have a god. The transmuter "playstyle" is probably the most glass-cannony character in the game so it is not well-suited to Uskayaw.
- Dithmenos - Shadow mimic is borderline useless with unarmed combat, but umbra is decent and bleed smoke and shadow form are both very good.
- Ashenzari - You can wield some ass cursed weapon for fast piety gain and it doesn't matter because you can just meld it...but this is really annoying and ultimately Ash isn't especially good since she offers nothing until relatively far into the game.
The Shining One - If Ash does nothing TSO does even less. For a long time the only real benefit you get is an accuracy boost. Divine shield is awful and cleansing flame is pretty bad unless you get high invocations. Eventually you get angels which are good but don't make up for the god being awful before then.
- Sif Muna - As a general rule, Sif does almost nothing, and Tm is no exception to that rule. You get an MP recovery ability long after MP has stopped being meaningful, and amnesia that you don't need. The only reason this god could provide any actual benefit is that you eventually (VERY late) get miscast protection and book gifts.
- Vehumet - Vehumet on DrTm is pretty much functionally equivalent to staying atheist, since there's no incentive for DrTm to switch to being a conjurer. The only way Vehumet would do anything is if you get lucky and get gifted Conjure Flame or Sticky Flame. That...still isn't much. You can treat this one as effectively tied with Sif.
- Cheibriados - We're getting into "possibly worse than no god at all" territory now, as you would expect from a Challenge God(tm). Slow movement, combined with loss of haste, is really, really bad. Bend time is extremely good, so Chei deserves credit for that, but even though the powers eventually outweigh the drawbacks of being slow, you still end up with worse overall power than you would with a strong god. Also since you're a Tm you don't really care about spellpower so the stat boost isn't as useful as it is for the better chei backgrounds like IE, and your early game will be extended and awful.
- Trog - Trog prevents you from casting spells entirely, so you won't have the option of using transmutations, and you'll want to switch away from unarmed combat as well. But you will quickly get access to berserk (remember that you can burn your starting book in order to kill an ogre or whatever), which is enough to get to max piety, and then you have brothers in arms which is the best summon in the game, plus weapon gifts. As usual Trog makes the later game very easy, the problem is that during the transition stage your character is pretty bad.
- Qazlal - At this point, being worse than no god is no longer just possible, but highly probable. Qazlal makes constant noise and you will find it very difficult to position monsters properly. Expect to do every level from the stairs and have to fight lots of monsters at once even then. The invocations do not make up for this.
- Xom - If you're really curious why I put Xom below Chei and Qazlal my rationale for that is here.
- Zin - Doesn't let you cast transmutations spells, leaving you with basically nothing for a long time (the abilities aren't exciting until Sanctuary).
(I deliberately excluded Jiyva and Lugonu because their altars basically don't exist.)
edit: By the way, resistances are not important. You don't need to worry about them when planning character builds, and on the rare occasion that you e.g. want to kill Nikola, you have potions of resistance. The only resistance you particularly want to have from equipment is rF+ for Zot:5 because of orbs of fire, and you're nearly guaranteed to find a ring with rF+ before then.
Friday, 31st March 2017, 17:46 
