Eberron inconsistencies

[wingsandsword]

This is probably an exercise in long-term futility, because I remember one such thing came up on the WotC Eberron boards. Someone asked, "Why are Valinar Horses so expensive?"

The answer: "Because the elves don't sell them."

Reply: "So if I horse-thief some of them, and start breeding them, I can make a mint."

Answer: "The horses ridden in battle are fixed. Only certain breeding stock is kept in secret places."

Reply: "So, I have a druid and he casts Regeneration and Heal. Horse is now healthy and can reproduce. I use Dominate Animal to make them breed. Can this work?"

Answer (from Keith Baker himself in a Dragonshard): "The horses have some kind of spiritual connection with the elven heroes of the past. Attempts have been made to breed the horses, but only the elves seem to have the understanding or the knack to ensure success."


And that's just the example I remember. All settings have things that are story-wise awesome, but game-mechanical *whu?* Too many to ever really fix, especially with more rituals and powers being released all the time.

Between things like this and the myriad answers here of "You can't run a teleportation business, House Orien would kill you", or "prominent nobles would put you out of business", it really looks like part of the point of Eberron is you can't really change the setting.

I want to start a business. . .but the existing cartels will assassinate you (or the DM will just say adventurers who open businesses aren't adventurers anymore and end the campaign).

I want to breed rare horses. . .but special magic makes it impossible.

I want to do anything other than dungeon crawls or other conventional adventuring. . ."a wizard did it" to make sure you can't do that.

I was always wary of Eberron for a number of reasons. I've been having fun with DDO, and for an MMORPG, Eberron works, but I'm agreeing with the OP that in a tabletop game I would have trouble swallowing all the sheer fiat required for the setting to work with the assumption that PC's can't really change the setting because the entire world is elaborately set up to stay in an indefinite status quo the PC's can't break.

 

[jimmifett]

Between things like this and the myriad answers here of "You can't run a teleportation business, House Orien would kill you", or "prominent nobles would put you out of business", it really looks like part of the point of Eberron is you can't really change the setting.

I want to start a business. . .but the existing cartels will assassinate you (or the DM will just say adventurers who open businesses aren't adventurers anymore and end the campaign).

I want to breed rare horses. . .but special magic makes it impossible.

I want to do anything other than dungeon crawls or other conventional adventuring. . ."a wizard did it" to make sure you can't do that.

I was always wary of Eberron for a number of reasons. I've been having fun with DDO, and for an MMORPG, Eberron works, but I'm agreeing with the OP that in a tabletop game I would have trouble swallowing all the sheer fiat required for the setting to work with the assumption that PC's can't really change the setting because the entire world is elaborately set up to stay in an indefinite status quo the PC's can't break.

It's not indefinite status quo, you just have to make a concerted effort to topple things. It's not going to happen overnight. It took centuries for Eberron to get to it's current state, it's going to take some time to change things. The Quorri are definately thinking long term, and their plans are starting to come to fruitition.

If you want to compete with Orien, you start out small and off thier radar. You hire those you can trust to run your business smartly while you're off adventuring. Along the way, find ways to discredit or embarass Orien, but be prepared for thier wrath. Try to misdirect it. Make a big enough name for your business, you can displace Orien in certain markets, more easily in distant backwater markets they aren't as concerned in. You could even grow as a subcontractor for them, staying off thier radar longer. Once large enough, you're next step would be to try and secretly convince dragonmarked heirs to join you instead of them. Eventually you usurp the main family branch in an internal coup, and you absorb Orien as your own.

If you want to make valenar horses, you're going to have to study elven history and horses in nature. A druid or ranger may be a good starting point. Find a way to indebt yourself to a valenar stablemaster. Now you can spend a few years observing the process valenar animal husbandry and gleem some secrets. Once you are satisfied you are ready, go off on your own and try to breed them, perhaps adding a little bit of magebred traits into your stock. It will probably take a few decades to get a good breeding stock going, but it's doable given time and cultural knowledge of the process.

 

[Deadstop]

I was always wary of Eberron for a number of reasons. I've been having fun with DDO, and for an MMORPG, Eberron works, but I'm agreeing with the OP that in a tabletop game I would have trouble swallowing all the sheer fiat required for the setting to work with the assumption that PC's can't really change the setting because the entire world is elaborately set up to stay in an indefinite status quo the PC's can't break.

Actually, Eberron is designed to be teetering on the brink of any number of major changes (a new eruption of active world war being prominent among them), but the developers are intent on never pushing the setting past that point in published product, leaving the future up to individual gaming groups.

I don't think the answers that have been posted so far are meant as "Here's why PCs can't do anything meaningful," but rather as "Here's why these things haven't happened so far, even though D&D rules seem to suggest that they would have." If the PCs want to be the ones to break the Houses' monopolies or the Valenar hold on their special horses, they should totally go for it -- remembering, though, that if the solution were as simple as leveraging one "gotcha" spell or technique, it wouldn't have taken this long for someone to try it. Breaking the stranglehold of the dragonmarked Houses is a laudable campaign goal, not something that happens after one clever idea involving resources that the current elites would already know about.

Deadstop

 

[fireinthedust]

All of that goes on in the real world. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Not if they don't explain it. It should be more of a feature, as it featuring into the setting, but fairly quickly the war settles into the background. My experience, at any rate.

 

[fireinthedust]

Actually, I think there's an article series called the Economicon discussing what's possible in a D&D world, and that the rules are reasonable* (*with the article's explanations).

Why don't beholders disintegrate the world one 10ft. cube at a time? They're paranoid, and they'd attack each other.

Look at the rates for rent: you need a wheelbarrel of gold to have a house, is what they're saying, and coins are heavy.

You could argue that this is why there aren't the numbers of powerful items out there: it's too much gold and resources for a +1 bonus that's only 5% better than one plus lower version of the same item (thus very few +5 flaming longswords).

OotS had a series where the concept of the forest bandit army makes no sense: you just can't raise enough cash to make it feasible to run an army of bandits, feed them, arm them, etc.

EDIT:
Is that the sort of thing you're looking for?

I mean, I don't think Eberron is any sillier than any other setting for that reason. You say suspension of disbelief, but the fact is you've got a setting that is problematic for one big reason: monsters.

Monsters are by definition predators of some sort, of the man-eating kind specifically. They're big and they're hungry, and they have skill bonuses that mean they could wipe out a village of NPC commoners (typically 1-3) in a day; most of which would be looking for the ones they missed. Read: 30 days of night, the movie.

And yet we have things like famines, or the massive human populations. That's great, but what about all the prey animals needed to feed the predators? If I'm walking in a forest, I should be able to lob a rock and hit a deer, a squirrel, a game hen. Orc hoards in a standard setting live in mountains and come out en masse to kill humans; however, the mountains shouldn't have the ecosystem needed to create hordes of physically powerful athletes, let alone with semi-annual regularity. Short lifespans use up more energy, and probably more food. This isn't even covering the numbers of size-large Ogres, lizardfolk, goblins/hobgoblins/bugbears out there.

While Eberron has a slightly different situation, we still have loads of monsters in their ecosystem that we don't have in ours. Orcs there are druids, so they could grow lots of food; but the other creatures, especially wild ones, are not.

Where is all the food?

 

[RandomCitizenX]

Between things like this and the myriad answers here of "You can't run a teleportation business, House Orien would kill you", or "prominent nobles would put you out of business", it really looks like part of the point of Eberron is you can't really change the setting.

I want to start a business. . .but the existing cartels will assassinate you (or the DM will just say adventurers who open businesses aren't adventurers anymore and end the campaign).

I want to breed rare horses. . .but special magic makes it impossible.

I want to do anything other than dungeon crawls or other conventional adventuring. . ."a wizard did it" to make sure you can't do that.

I was always wary of Eberron for a number of reasons. I've been having fun with DDO, and for an MMORPG, Eberron works, but I'm agreeing with the OP that in a tabletop game I would have trouble swallowing all the sheer fiat required for the setting to work with the assumption that PC's can't really change the setting because the entire world is elaborately set up to stay in an indefinite status quo the PC's can't break.

It's not that it is an indefinite status quo, it is that there are reasons in place as to why it is the current status quo. PCs, however, are meant to shake up the norm in the setting. The questions about House Orien is a perfect example of this. There is a reason why the conductor stones have not been stolen and a rival teleportation service established by the normal people. The average peasant would fail when House Orien would do the nasty things a big and powerful corporate entity/guild without any outside oversight would do to protect its interest. As we all no PCs are not as easily discouraged and often are able to come up with the resources to come out of it on top.

 

[Loincloth of Armour]

...assumption that PC's can't really change the setting because the entire world is elaborately set up to stay in an indefinite status quo the PC's can't break.

Not "you can never be allowed to break the setting," but,

"5 (usually) clever geeks with access to physics defying magic designed around dungeon crawling and in a situation where they won't have to actually do the actual work themselves shouldn't be allowed to effortlessly break an evocative setting where the background fluff is part of why we like playing there."

As jimmifett suggested, if they want to put the work in and the DM wants to run that kind of game, great. If it's just a, "I can win(?) by exploiting a number of spells," not so great.

see also: Wall of Iron mining, Make Whole copying, Polymorph Any Object gold creation, etc, etc, etc.

 

[Puggins]

Between things like this and the myriad answers here of "You can't run a teleportation business, House Orien would kill you", or "prominent nobles would put you out of business", it really looks like part of the point of Eberron is you can't really change the setting.

No, that's not the case. Rather, the world is the way it is for a reason. The characters, by definition, are the fly in the ointment that MIGHT be able to change something.

It's sort of like saying "what's stopping me from grabbing some diamonds in the South African mines and setting up competition with Debeers?

Answer: nothing, except Debeers, hundred of armed thugs and a political lobby that will give you legal fits.

D&D characters are the guys that might be able to take out the guards, navigate the legal maze and outsmart Debeers. We, as ordinary Joes, can't.

I want to start a business. . .but the existing cartels will assassinate you (or the DM will just say adventurers who open businesses aren't adventurers anymore and end the campaign).

This is never mentioned in any Eberron book. The cartels are there to make your campaign interesting, not to stop you from pursuing a course of action. That's what your train-riding DM is for.

I want to breed rare horses. . .but special magic makes it impossible.

Not mentioned anywhere. Simply something that people implied.

I want to do anything other than dungeon crawls or other conventional adventuring. . ."a wizard did it" to make sure you can't do that.

Nothing of the sort mentioned in the Eberron books. This is the generic response from a narrow-minded DM, not advice from Eberron books.

I was always wary of Eberron for a number of reasons. I've been having fun with DDO, and for an MMORPG, Eberron works, but I'm agreeing with the OP that in a tabletop game I would have trouble swallowing all the sheer fiat required for the setting to work with the assumption that PC's can't really change the setting because the entire world is elaborately set up to stay in an indefinite status quo the PC's can't break.

No, it isn't. At all. In fact, the world is specifically rigged to explode a few years (or even months) from the starting point of the campaign timeline. It's implied that the characters are going to have a HUGE impact on that explosion. In other words, it's the exact opposite of what you just described.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Not if they don't explain it.

Don't explain what, exactly?

"Shady organizations profited off the war, and now blithely act as though they're the friend of the common man." "Lots of people are screwed up by their experiences in the war." "The powerful fed the weak and powerless into the meatgrinder of war, and expect their next of kin to just take it."

At the risk of violating ENWorld rules on politics, further information on any of this is available in the nearest newspaper.

but fairly quickly the war settles into the background. My experience, at any rate.

I've read lots of people who say the exact opposite. I know that if I ran an Eberron game, especially in the current climate, having everyone's war history be a big part of who they are today would be a big focus of mine as DM.

Keith Baker is not responsible for what people choose to focus on or ignore in Eberron.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Actually, Eberron is designed to be teetering on the brink of any number of major changes (a new eruption of active world war being prominent among them), but the developers are intent on never pushing the setting past that point in published product, leaving the future up to individual gaming groups.

I concur. The setting reads to me as balancing on the edge of multiple cliffs. It's up to individual DMs and/or player groups to decide which they are interested in seeing topple over.