Avatar

An avatar was a physical manifestation of a deity on Toril.

Powers
An avatar was significantly less powerful than the deity it represented, but on par or beyond the most powerful of mortals. The loss of an avatar usually did no permanent damage to a deity, as could be recorded for Mystra and Tiamat. It could, however, mean a set-back for divine plans and was always seen as an affront.

Depending on a deity's rank, it could possibly have a number of avatars at once. Divine power also determined how long it would take a god to reform an avatar destroyed on the Prime.

Incarnation
An incarnation was a mortal, lesser form of avatar derived from a manifestation. Their general temperament was the same, though they were not under their deity's direct control and could be affected by mortal weaknesses. They were also less powerful than a normal avatar, possessing only minor divine powers.

Blood relatives sired by an incarnation would possess exceptional abilities, but lack any divine power. If an incarnation was ever slain, the divine spirit of a manifestation would always reform or "reincarnate" it within the physical body of one of these descendants.

On Toril, it was primarily the Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons that had incarnations, with those in Mulhorand acting as provincial governors and the heads of each deity's priesthood. Their incarnations all had innate abilities that replicated the spells command, comprehend languages, detect evil, detect good, detect lie, dispel magic, know alignment, polymorph self, summon minion, teleport without error, tongues, and true seeing.

Relationships
Many avatars employed in the Realms were mightier than those found in other crystal spheres, as befitted a world with many powerful mortal individuals.

History
The Time of Troubles in 1358 DR marked an exception to many rules concerning avatars: Ao forced the full persons of all deities to walk Toril in the form of their avatars, which lead to many extraordinary events and the demise of several gods. One such event was the various incarnations of the Mulhorandi and Untheric deities falling into comas, as the god-kings attempted to regain some of their lost power by absorbing the divine fragments held by those bodies.

In the years following this Avatar Crisis, many deities invested their manifestations with increased power. No such development has been reported for most monster deities. As for the Mulhorandi deities, following the Avatar Crisis their manifestations on the Prime reunited with their divine essence in the Outer Planes, for Ao had dispersed the magical barrier that had long separated them. As a result of this reunion, Pharaoh Horustep III and all other incarnations lost the fragments of divinity that were within them, reducing them to mere mortals with divine lineage.