How do playtesters interact with text thats primarily historical overviews and statistics?
Sean: Most of the playtesters involved were checking the new prestige classes for this book. We did have a couple of people that looked at it for continuity with previous material, but because Eric worked on the last iteration of the deity books and Erik does a lot of research before he writes, we were confident that historical accuracy wasn’t going to be a problem. Wizards: How did the new D&D game rules impact the design and development of this book? Were they more help or hindrance? Eric: The generic “cleric” really came alive in 2nd Edition AD&D with the concept of the specialty priest. However, without the underlying principles of balance found in the 3rd Edition, many of those specialty priests ended up very unbalanced from a play perspective. In my mind, 3rd Edition allows the creation of all manner of custom clerics (or other characters), but in a very play-balanced way. You’ll see that influence on the prestige classes found in Faiths and Pantheons, and that respect 3rd Editio
