I figured.
I also understand the criticisms of Faiths & Pantheons. Hey, we didn't want to do those statblocks, either.
But one of the things that I find frustrating about that project is the idea that so much of the flavor text was regurgitated from Faiths & Avatars. I wrote about a third of the book, and other than the dogma I don't think I copied a single thing from the original book. Some of the ideas were the same, of course (because they're the same gods), but the book is not just a copy of the earlier volume, believe me.
Glad you enjoyed "The Whispering Cairn." It's probably my favorite adventure of all those I have written over the years.
--Erik
Hmmm, I only recently used Cyric's priests in my campaign, and my impression [after comparing the entries in both books] was that they were almost identical in content, except that Cyric's entry in 'Faiths & Avatars' seemed to contain more information (e.g. priestly titles). Although my judgement may have been colored by my initial disappointment (for some reason I expected F&P to expand heavily on the contents of F&A) and opinions expressed on the internet and by fellow DMs in RL ("They just copy-pasted the information from F&A... don't buy it!"). So, I'll readily admit that I may very well be wrong here, and that the contents are not as "identical" as I thought.
Regardless of that, it's a great source on FR religions for a new DM, or someone who doesn't already own F&A!
Now that you mentioned them, I feel the deity stat blocks in 3E *are* a waste of space; in general I don't like PCs slaying the deities in their true forms (quasi-deities or weak demipowers are another matter, though; I could see epic level PCs managing to kill them after a series of Quests and fiendishly clever preparation), but I also blame the poorly designed rules for divine beings in 'Deities & Demigods'. The rules were just... odd (for the lack of a better word) with a very limited number of [mostly weak] salient divine abilities, too low stats to represent most gods "accurately" (esp. those who had levels in two or even three spellcasting classes) and the weird choice to limit their character levels to 40 and their "at-will" spellcasting to domain spells. And even with these limitations deities ended up being way too powerful (which makes me question the need for stats -- especially for their "true forms"). It all *barely* worked for archetypal deities, and when you try to apply these rules for more exotic deities (Juiblex, Moander, Ghaunadaur, to name a few), it just completely fell apart. And it fell apart with several of the "standard" gods, as well; I mean, Helm can't grant his paladins their spells? Tempus can't resurrect anyone anymore? Gond has to have Bard levels just to rack up his numerous Craft skills? Demipowers couldn't have avatar forms anymore, because it required DR 6 to get that SDA? And so on.
As I said, I definitely don't see this as your fault (or Eric's, for that matter)... those rules were just so poorly written, and the end result was that deities (and their avatars, which were just a notch below their true forms) were oddly limited but still mechanically way beyond the abilities of even the most powerful PCs I've ever seen.
