Jonric: What kinds of challenges have you encountered implementing the character abilities, and what are some you consider particularly notable?

Ferret Baudoin: One of the challenges was adding prestige classes that advance a spellcaster's casting ability as he gains levels in that class. It took our gameplay programmers some serious work to make it so that as you swap between Wizard and let's say the Arcane Trickster - and still be progressing in spell levels you know and spells per day. What used to be a fairly static table - "Oh, I'm third level, so now I get access to second-level spells" now becomes a much more complicated "I'm third level in Arcane Trickster, but to know what spells I get, I have to consider a bunch of rules on other classes." It's not as easy as it sounds, and the result of the hard work is that divine and arcane spellcasters get access to some tasty prestige classes.

Some abilities out there I consider noteworthy are the new Fighter feats introduced in 3.5 that really make that class have some carrots at higher levels. And I'm glad we're getting to add the Mirror Image spell to the game; I have all sorts of fond memories of that from the Infinity Engine games.