Forgotten Realms 'Chosen'

[LiL KiNG]

Ok here it is, I'm currently playing a 3.5 FR campaign and the option of becoming a Chosen of your Deity has been opened up as an option. However, aside from the Chosen of Mystra I cannot find any additional information for other Deities 'Chosen'. I found a reference to a Chosen of Mask, but nothing concrete on the abilities gained.

We're looking at just sitting down as the group and discussing a fair/balanced build using the different Deities portfolios and the Chosen of Mystra as a template to build off of, but before we did that I wanted to see if anyone knew of any other information out there on this topic - my google-fu apparently sucks as well.

Thanks.
-LK

 

[Alexander123]

There is a chosen of bane template in the FR supplement Faiths and Pantheons.

 

[LiL KiNG]

There is a chosen of bane template in the FR supplement Faiths and Pantheons.

Ah, I don't have that book but I believe one of the other guys does, I'll check with him. Thanks! If that's the case that's another template to help us create new ones off of.

One guys has Malar for his deity so for gained abilities for being his Chosen we were looking at something like being granted; +10 ft. movement, natural bite (1d6) and claw (1d8) attacks, scent ability, damage reduction 10/silver, no movement penalties for speed when Tracking, and adding a couple spell-like abilities to be determined.

 

[Empirate]

Chosen templates seem to be fixed as LA +4 (at least, the Chosen of Mystra and Bane are). Employing them has several consequences:

1. Chosen abilities should be extremely powerful to reflect the high level adjustment. We're talking at least Half-Fiend or Half-Celestial powerful here (although these templates are very weak for +4). That includes hefty abilitiy score increases.
Chosen of Mystra gain +10 Con for some reason. Chosen of Malar might gain +10 Str instead, or +4 Str, +4 Dex, +4 Con, or some such. Also, spell-like abilities should include some fairly high-level spells (Animal Growth, Animal Shapes, Bite of the Were-X, or Shapechange for Chosen of Malar?), as well as some good at-will SLAs (maybe Pass Without Trace, Speak With Animals, Dominate Animal, Magic Fang, Summon Nature's Ally IV).
One or more really quasi-unique flavor abilities should also be part of the package. How about a Rage ability that also transforms you à la Wildshape?

2. High level adjustments are really hard to make balanced in most games. This is especially true for caster PCs, who will almost always lose out on LA, as it puts higher-level spells out of reach. Only very rarely will the template's abilities make up for that kind of loss. But noncasters will suffer, too, since they lose hit dice complete with BAB, saves progression, skills, feats... what seems to be a powerful template at first glance is almost always unplayable or at least a pain once LA goes higher than +2.

3. Chosen are supposed to be really, really unique. There's usually only one Chosen of any given deity around, AFAIK (Mystra making an exception on the grounds of being just that awesome, obviously). So the PC who becomes a Chosen will naturally become the focus of his deity's religion in the whole world. Even a god such as Malar, who doesn't seem to lend himself to worship readily (what with the bloody hunter of the wilds stuff), will have tens of thousands, maybe millions of followers. The Chosen PC will become the object of worship, sectarian struggles, and theological dispute, as well as the target of envy on an epic-level scale. And we all know how a wolfpack solves such issues.

These are some points that should be very, very well considered before you bring Chosen into the game as an option for PCs.

 

[Thanael]

Re 1. There is no set Chosen template for all deities. For the different deities being chose is a different thing. The Chosen Mystra exists as a template iirc. The Chosen of Mask are far fewer in number and don't get such immense powers as the Chosen of Mystra. OTOH the first Chosen of Mask was assisted by his deity in gaining the shade template, and some unique powers of the second are quite aptly modeled with the divine champion prc. Cadderly Bonaduce gained several unique powers (wrt to aging) when he was Chosen of Deneir that also had severe drawbacks and tied him to his temple.


Here's a great thread on WotC where the author Paul Kemp discusses a 3.5 build for Erevis Cale and Drasek Riven, the 1st and 2nd Chosen of Mask respectively. Paul's builds are excellently tweaked by TomCosta later in the thread and could give you an idea how to create a chosen. Note that Mask's Chosen don't get many great abilities like Mystras, and they have to earn every bit of power for themselves with Mask only tentatively guiding them.

Here's a very informative thread on Chosen on the Candlekeep forum.

Re 3. Check out the list of Chose in the candlekeep thread and note the sheer number of Chosen of Mystra.


So in the end i say work out your Chosen templates individually and make use of other templates and/or prestige classes when appropriate. But gaining it should always be hard. Check out the Chosen of Masks stats in the thread above and then read the Erevis Cale novels and see what they needed to do to get those abilities. Perhaps a total LA +4 is a good guideline.

 

[Empirate]

Also, make sure that you treat the mechanical aspect separately from the story aspect, and work out both to your satisfaction beforehand.

Another template that might be interesting to consider is the (notoriously under-LA'd) Saint template in Book of Exalted Deeds.

 

[Runestar]

Chosen of malar was detailed in one issue of dungeon, IIRC. It grants +4str, 10con, +5 natural weapons, timeless body (not immortality), and has a LA of +8.

Chosen of mask is simply the shade template (races of faerun).

I believe that for many deities, "chosen" is just a status, without any special powers.

 

[LiL KiNG]

Thanks for all the responses guys! Don't think any of us realized the Chosen template has a +4 LA!! That may change some minds... or at least mine...

Thanks also for the links to the Crystalkeep thread - was neat to see that compiled listing of Chosen, actually gave the magazine # that published the Malar's Chosen so we just have to find it now.

Yikes! if the Malar's Chosen is a +8 LA I can almost bet he won't want it - that's ridiculously high!