D&D 5E Eberron Is Here Today!

Eberron: Rising from the Last War hits local gamestores today. Eberron creator Keith Baker talks on his blog about what's changed!

So, what's changed? The Mror Dwarves, races, Dragonmarks, the Mournland, Lady Illmarrow, monsters... but not guns!

And what's new? The artificer class, group patrons, warforged colossus, and scary monsters!

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Explore the lands of Eberron in this campaign sourcebook for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

This book provides everything players and Dungeon Masters need to play Dungeons & Dragons in Eberron—a war-torn world filled with magic-fueled technology, airships and lightning trains, where noir-inspired mystery meets swashbuckling adventure. Will Eberron enter a prosperous new age, or will the shadow of war descend once again?

• Meld magic and invention to craft objects of wonder as an artificer—the first official class to be released for fifth edition D&D since the Player’s Handbook.
• Enter the world of Eberron in a 1st-level adventure set in Sharn, the City of Towers
• Dive straight into your pulp adventures with easy-to-use locations, complete with maps of train cars, battle-scarred fortresses, and fallen warforged colossi.
• Explore Sharn, a city of skyscrapers, airships, and intrigue and a crossroads for the world’s war-ravaged peoples.
• Flesh out your characters with a new D&D game element called a group patron—a background for your whole party.
• Explore 16 new race/subrace options including dragonmarks, which magically transform certain members of the races in the Player’s Handbook.
• Confront horrific monsters born from the world’s devastating wars.
• Prepare to venture into the Mournland, a mist-cloaked, corpse-littered land twisted by magic.

 

[dave2008]

THE 30% RIP OFF

• Let's not mince words: if you bought Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, you got ripped off. Most of that book is, word for word, reprinted in Rising from the Last War.

I guess I'm lucky that I didn't buy WGtE, so does that mean it is 90% good and 10% meh for someone like me?

 

[MarkB]

Since I probably won't get hold of the book for at least another 18 hours:
Will the infusions still let me play an Artificer with a magically reloading crossbow and an infinite supply magic bolts?

Yes, Repeating Shot is still in there.

 

[Al2O3]

Yes, Repeating Shot is still in there.

Thanks!
That Infusion was what really got me excited about the artificer and thus this book.

I really look forward to checking out what else that's in there, since I now have nothing I worry about.

 

[R_J_K75]

I use it all the time, it works great

Hmm, everything is pulling up just fine for me. The first day a product is up can have some hiccups simply due to the mechanics of the release process, but after that it's pretty much always rock solid stable.

I was looking at google news which took me D&D Beyonds website for the book and as of about 3PM EST people were still having trouble. Might be fixed now I cant say. Ive had problems with the free version before so I dont use it anymore.

 

[DWChancellor]

A lot of what made Eberron in 3E so incredible was the singularity of vision forged through the contest with Keith on top of everything. Having read a lot of his Eberron posts through the years I was hoping he'd be given free reign to show that level of love.

Sounds like this might be closer to the 4E Eberron book which diluted the verve and energy of the 3E original and generally had poor art.

That's fine, as long as someone else did all the rules lifting for 5E conversion, I still have all of the 3E books. Kind of a lot of reading but... =)

 

[Shardstone]

I guess I'm lucky that didn't WGtE, so does that mean it is 90% good and 10% meh for someone like me?

yep!

 

[imagineGod]

My review I wrote on another group.


THE 60% GOOD

• The setting is honestly super interesting, with a lot of redefinition of the core PHB races into something neat (like dwarves who use aberrants to make living weapons and armor, or elves who worship the oldest undead liches as gods).
• Introduces a lot of new mechanics, such as the Dragonmark sub-races (which also serve as MegaCorps ala Cyberpunk; each Dragonmark House is a non-biological gathering of dragonmarked people that corner the market on something and have lots of espionoage between them).
• • Introduces the Artificer class, which has two good sub-classes (Artillerist and Battlesmith) and one really, really bad sub-class (Alchemist).
  • The Group Patron + Adventure Creation tables make it super easy to run a campaign in this world, and gives lots of ideas of how to make a game feel noir, pulpy, and "by the seat" with advice for recurring villains, etc etc.
  • A bunch of new-races are included (and ultimatley I wish Eberron was JUST Humans + these new-races, even with the dope reflavorings).
  • Very in-depth fractions for creating adventures, complete with sample adventure kits including a map, tables, seeds, etc.
  • The adventure generators are really astounding. They put every other book's generators, except maybe Ravnica's, to shame.
  • A pretty big bestiary with a range of enemies from low to high CR.

THE 10% MEH

• The art in this book is monstly horrendous. If it isn't reused from the original 3E Eberron books, its a new piece that ranges from trash to slightly above average, with maybe 5 or fewer pieces in the book being original AND good. This is a travesty and greatly weakens the aesthetic of the setting; so much of the old art is a jumbled mess, and so much of the new art is honest to god a mystery as to what it says about the world. I've attached to this post one of the dope pieces though - a Warforged Colossus slumped in a Mournland ruin.
• This book would have benefitted from more focus. All the stuff outside the main continent should have been cut or left for Wayfinders and that space given to better exploring the ramshackle war-torn landscape that is left behind. Every section in the gazeteer offers a small blurb about how the Last War effected it, but not enough is shared that realls gives you the post Last War vibe.
• Much of the writing is pretty meh. Not bad, well-edited, but a lot of it doesn't do a lot to rile up the imagination. Compared to Descent into Avernus or Ravnica or Saltmarsh, I felt that this was a step back, and it hindered my enjoyment of the book.
• The Alchemist Sub-Class is absolute trash. It has an infusion tax if you want the cool homunculi, and its new level 3 ability is a trashy skill to make a random d6 potion with a small-time magical effect (or flying).

THE 30% RIP OFF

• Let's not mince words: if you bought Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, you got ripped off. Most of that book is, word for word, reprinted in Rising from the Last War.
• The gazatter sections are all 100% copy/pasted and then embellished a bit with "Aftermath of the Last War" sections, as are the faiths, planes, and the entirty of Sharn.
• All the cool tables in Wayfinder's is copy/pasted as well, and some even shortened, such as the "Falling in Sharn" table (which went from a d10 to a d8).
• Again, a lot of art just comes from old books. Tragic. And while Ravnica reprinted art too, at least its original art (sans the cover) was all FANTASTIC.

DO I THINK YOU SHOULD BUY THIS BOOK?

• If you want a wide magical society, this is a pretty good one, but Ravnica is better.
• If you want a world that's a cool spin on Forgotten Realms, that is a lot more coherent, and that has some cooler aesthetics, then this is the book for you.
• If you want a book to help you run Noir, Intrigue, or Pulp stories, this is a must-buy for the adventure-generation stuff.
• A lot of the NPCs and factions are just OK, so if you want this book for piece meal, your mileage may vary.
• If you want the new races, classes, and Dragonmarks, this might be a good purchase. All are pretty interesting for the most part, sans the mechanically-defunt Warforged.
• The bestiary isn't big enough to justify the purchase by itself.
• If you buy these books for the art and writing, avoid; it isn't worth it.

A very detailed point-by-point review, though brutal in some sections.

Not sure why you pick on the Artificer class in particular. It is still a special class that stands out from the baseline classes and strikes a level of similarly to the Pathfinder 2e Alchemist. It is a logical in-game world option for engineers, instead of relying on the rogue-wizard multi classing option for this role.

 

[Yaarel]

I have Wayfarers. I am excited to get the new − official − Eberron Rising setting book, especially for its nuanced and considered additions, within a comprehensive presentation. I am also curious about its meta discussion about the pulp fiction and noir genres. That glimpse from a previous preview caught my attention, and brought the setting to new life in a new way. These genres had been vague to me. Concretizing examples such as universities, newspapers, and so on, instantly evoked new encounters and adventures in my imagination.

 

[Shardstone]

A very detailed point-by-point review, though brutal in some sections.

Not sure why you pick on the Artificer class in particular. It is still a special class that stands out from the baseline classes and strikes a level of similarly to the Pathfinder 2e Alchemist. It is a logical in-game world option for engineers, instead of relying on the rogue-wizard multi classing option for this role.

You misunderstand. I like the class. I hate the alchemist. The alchemist is very, very poorly designed IMO.

 

[Mercule]

Nice review, over all, but I have one nit to pick:

• If you want a world that's a cool spin on Forgotten Realms, that is a lot more coherent, and that has some cooler aesthetics, then this is the book for you.

This is, honestly, a WTF point, from me. I don't see how Eberron is related to the Realms, at all. I'd actually say something more like, "If you like the D&D game but want something other than the Forgotten Realms, especially if you want cooler aesthetics, this book's for you."

Maybe this is the end result of what I was afraid was going to happen with 5E and the emphasis on the Realms -- the setting is inseparable from the game in some people's minds. If so, that's a real travesty, since the Realms didn't show up until 15 years after the game was launched, when it was already mature and established. You could delete the entirety of the Realms from existence and it wouldn't be a big deal (some of us would even say that it'd be a net positive for the game).