Will Favoured Soul be required to choose a God in AL?

Will Favoured Soul be required to choose a God?

I don't think it should for several reasons.
1: The Favoured Soul isn't required to pray for spells, it comes from a divine spark inside their Souls, so if doesn't require any actions or beliefs on their part.
2: Some Favoured Souls maybe descended from Celestials not aligned with a Deity.
3: Favoured Souls are the perfect Priests for the Mulhorandi Gods, who interbreed with mortal followers over centuries.
4: It allows for a situation where the Favoured Soul character doesn't know who their Celestial/Divine/Fiend ancestor or God choosing them is unknown, a mystery to be discovered.
5: A Favoured Soul who doesn't worship any Gods falsely believing that they are in fact a God in their own right.
6: Favoured Souls have the choice to rebel against the one who granted them a divine spark.

Why would this character have to do more than any other character...?

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Favoured souls aren't AL legal at this time. Until we see them in their final form in a printed book (possibly XGE), we have no idea and it is pointless to speculate

I don't know that it's pointless to speculate, but it's probably pointless to get too worked up over the options. I kind of like speculating, though.

To my mind, this is really more of a 'how much are you into the Forgotten Realms as a setting' question. To see what I mean, let's look at paladins.

The Player's Handbook does not explicitly state that paladins must worship a deity -- paladins derive their powers from the strength of the oath that they swear at 3rd level (and, in theory, any preparatory oaths they take prior to that). Yet many paladins in AL do have patron deities -- particularly those who fall along the more traditional 'LG and LG-adjacent' section of the alignment grid. It's not at all uncommon to sit down at a table with a paladin and have the first question asked be "Paladin of whom?" The idea of a paladin who doesn't worship a specific deity is odd enough that, even though the rules allow it, it seems off and 'wrong' to not do so, especially in the Realms, which is a setting in which the gods are far more visible and, for lack of a better term, 'activist' than in other settings.

In that sense, I suspect if you create a Favored Soul for AL (once the XTGE comes out), the most common question you're going to get is "Favored Soul of whom?" Divine sparks aren't just lying around waiting for people to pick them up and incorporate them into their souls -- the idea in the Realms would be that your spark indicates your connection to a divine power.

I could see that choosing a Favored Soul who doesn't know which deity provided the divine spark would be an interesting role-playing decision. Still, that sort of choice works much better in an independent campaign, where the DM can incorporate that RP point into adventures, than it does in AL, where the campaign itself doesn't really care about your individual character's RP goals and drives. (For example, the campaign also doesn't include anything for Hermit characters to determine the secret bit of lore they've discovered and now have to deal with, or for characters with personality traits like "I seek an ancient scroll that is said to grant enlightenment to all who read it" to eventually find the item they're seeking.) In that sense, you're better off treating the divine spark 'donor' as an acting decision -- the character may not know who it is, but you as the person running the character should know, if only because then you can effectively play the character in those accidental moments where an adventure provides an opportunity for your character to figure out some of the mystery.

tl;dr: You probably won't be required to choose a deity for a Favored Soul, just as you don't have to choose one for a Paladin, but in the Realms, it'll seem weird if you don't.

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Pauper

What if a deity bestowed those features that come with being a Favored Soul but had reasons for not wanting you to know the origin? That deity may not want you to follow/worship them to keep secret that you are their chosen. You have no idea why you can do these things or you always had the abilities but didn't no they were . It could also be that deity which granted them didn't want you to unlock them unless/until a specific event or period in time occurred? It is for the Player Character to discover the origin of the abilities perhaps as part of an adventure campaign.

CydKnight said:

What if a deity bestowed those features that come with being a Favored Soul but had reasons for not wanting you to know the origin? That deity may not want you to follow/worship them to keep secret that you are their chosen. You have no idea why you can do these things or you always had the abilities but didn't no they were . It could also be that deity which granted them didn't want you to unlock them unless/until a specific event or period in time occurred? It is for the Player Character to discover the origin of the abilities perhaps as part of an adventure campaign.

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Yeah, I don't see that happening in AL.

CydKnight said:

It is for the Player Character to discover the origin of the abilities perhaps as part of an adventure campaign.

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ccs said:

Yeah, I don't see that happening in AL.

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Exactly. There will almost certainly be no AL-published adventures that deal with that specific plot. If you play AL regularly with the same DM, maybe you can convince the DM to work some references to the plot into the otherwise unrelated AL adventures she's running, but otherwise, as a player, you're going to have to resolve that plot on your own, if you care.

For that reason, the player should know who the patron is, even if the character doesn't -- that way, if, say, an adventure involves servitors of Bane, and the secret patron is Bane, the player can work out some kind of moment where the character gains some insight into the mystery.

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Pauper

Pauper said:

Exactly. There will almost certainly be no AL-published adventures that deal with that specific plot. If you play AL regularly with the same DM, maybe you can convince the DM to work some references to the plot into the otherwise unrelated AL adventures she's running, but otherwise, as a player, you're going to have to resolve that plot on your own, if you care.

For that reason, the player should know who the patron is, even if the character doesn't -- that way, if, say, an adventure involves servitors of Bane, and the secret patron is Bane, the player can work out some kind of moment where the character gains some insight into the mystery.

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Pauper

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Yeah I got carried away. Sorry.

Specific always trumps general, so if Forgotten Realms rules require a patron deity for a class or sub-class, then that is what you will have to do as long as AL is set in FR.

kalani said:

Favoured souls aren't AL legal at this time. Until we see them in their final form in a printed book (possibly XGE), we have no idea and it is pointless to speculate

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Unless the Favoured Soul is radically altered we basically do know what to expect from the class so speculation is not pointless.