NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7148373" data-attributes="member: 6778044">The original design of the Chosen was quite different:"That is, Mystra (yes, the name comes from the word “mystery,” because I wanted magic to be mysterious, its details never all known or knowable, but a matter of secrets and personal experimentation; one of Mystra’s sobriquets from the outset was Our Lady of Mysteries) could only hold and contain so much power, or she would collapse or explode into a wild release of raw magical force, which I envisaged as a silver fire (so that’s why another of Mystra’s nicknames is “Our Lady of Silver,” and the Seven Sisters, of Mystra’s bloodline, all have silver hair, tresses that they can move and use like tentacles). She had to vest little pockets of her divine energy, this silver fire, in various mortals. And dare not try to seize it from them, or compel them magically, because doing so would cause the very leakage of silver fire, destroying the mortal, Mystra herself, and most of the world (the Realms) she was goddess of. Hence, the Chosen—free-willed mortals who Mystra tried to raise and train to serve her, but who could defy her (as Sammaster, founder of the Cult of the Dragon, did) or more often go insane under the stress of life and service as a Chosen (many Chosen have suffered this fate, and arguably, Elminster and the Seven aren’t sane; gamers who decry their “randy” natures should realize that they are among the most lonely and grief-ridden individuals in existence, having been attacked and betrayed so often for what they are, and having outlived all their loved ones many times over, so they hunger for human intimacy)."This was in response to the question Ed asked himself: "If you have a god as a member of a superhero team (for example, Thor was an Avenger, and Hercules one of the Defenders), what exactly do you need any of the others in the team for? And who, beyond another god or god-power-scale being, provides any satisfying opposition to a god, if big onstage battles are an integral part of the storytelling?"Instead, TSR wanted something different: "Yes, the Chosen had all too ripe a potential to become superheroes, brawling their way across a world and snatching the spotlight away from player characters—particularly when other writers and designers tossed aside the unique nature of the Chosen of Mystra and decided “Chosen” meant “mortal champion of a deity, that the deity infuses with superpowers and sends on missions,” and that every deity should have multiple Chosens, and the arms race was on."</blockquote>

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