D&D 5E Keith Baker: Exploring Eberron

Eberron creator Keith Baker has been busy recently! He has unveiled the cover to his new book, to be released in July on DMs Guild in PDF and Print on Demand hardcover. It will dive into parts of Eberron that have received little attention in prior books, including the undersea civilizations and the planes.

Keith sent Sly Flourish a PDF copy of the book, which Sly flipped through


Also, check out the KB Presents Twitter for past previews

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Indeed. Even inside a house sions with dragonmarks are rare. Outside of a house they should be incredibly rare. Player character exceptionalism is a base assumption in Eberron. If a previously unknown someone suddenly shows up waving a dragonmark around the House is going to take an interest.

This isn't really the case. From ERFTLW: "About half of the members of a bloodline manifest the mark.". From 3.5e's Dragonmarked: "Though the appearance of marks cannot be consistently predicted, approximately half the children born to dragonmarked parents eventually develop dragonmarks of their own." While it's not stated exactly how big the Houses themselves are going off of this standard, anywhere between a third to two thirds of each House's bloodline members should have their House's Dragonmark, averaging at about one half, not factoring in outsiders accepted into the House and not (yet) in the family tree.

Also, there are ways to be a Foundling, manifesting a Dragonmark with no ties to your parent house, without being descended from an Excoriate. If you have the Mark of Finding, the Dragonmark has been with your people long before House Tharashk had ever been established, and the House is really more of a formality for those city dwellers over east. If you have the Mark of Storm, you could have relations to the Wind Whisperers, a fleet of pirates in the Lhazaar Principalities. Aereni and Tairnadal elves sometimes manifest the Mark of Shadow, despite House Phiarlan deserting Aerenal thousands of years ago.

Because the pilot needs to sleep. It's inefficient to have a valuable asset like an skyship standing idle whilst the pilot sleeps.

This is never mentioned anywhere. All the sources that describe the players hiring a Lyrandar airship only have them paying for one heir's service. If there were any regular flights that took longer than 24 hours and thus needed a copilot at the ready, that would probably be mentioned.

An apprentice/understudy being trained by the pilot? Possibly. But a full fledged heir would probably either have an airship of their own or be in another branch fo teh house (sea fleets, Raincaller's Guild, etc.)

 

[Fedifensor]

This is never mentioned anywhere. All the sources that describe the players hiring a Lyrandar airship only have them paying for one heir's service. If there were any regular flights that took longer than 24 hours and thus needed a copilot at the ready, that would probably be mentioned.

An apprentice/understudy being trained by the pilot? Possibly. But a full fledged heir would probably either have an airship of their own or be in another branch fo teh house (sea fleets, Raincaller's Guild, etc.)

Actually, it is mentioned on page 234 of Eberron: Rising from the Last War.

Controlling the vessel (without the benefit of something like the conductor stones that dictate a lighting rail route) requires constant attention, so at least two pilots typically travel on every journey.

There isn't a reliable way for a non-heir to control a ship, at least at low levels. You can control a ship for 1 minute by making a DC 20 Charisma (Persuasion) check, but the only people that can make that automatically are 11th level rogues with Reliable Talent and at least a +10 to Persuasion. You could also use charm monster or dominate monster, but that is dependent on whether the elemental makes the saving throw. So, only Dragonmarked members of House Lyrandar are flying airships, and you need two of them so the ship can fly constantly (even then, it's a 12+ hour workday for each of them).


We're starting a campaign that includes a PC member of House Lyrandar, and a prototype Cyran airship they found at the edge of the Mournland right after the Day of Mourning. The PCs were all part of a mercenary unit that claimed the airship as spoils of war, and it's going to be interesting to explore how House Lyrandar will react to it. The ship is a tiny scout vessel, barely large enough to hold the group, and possibly the smallest airship ever created (I just ordered this to use for the game). The OOC reason for it is to give the PCs an easy way to get to far-flung locations for adventure without taking ages to get there. Yes, that means we're bypassing several potential lightning rail plots...though I could see something like The Train Job episode of Firefly.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Actually, it is mentioned on page 234 of Eberron: Rising from the Last War.

There isn't a reliable way for a non-heir to control a ship, at least at low levels. You can control a ship for 1 minute by making a DC 20 Charisma (Persuasion) check, but the only people that can make that automatically are 11th level rogues with Reliable Talent and at least a +10 to Persuasion. You could also use charm monster or dominate monster, but that is dependent on whether the elemental makes the saving throw. So, only Dragonmarked members of House Lyrandar are flying airships, and you need two of them so the ship can fly constantly (even then, it's a 12+ hour workday for each of them).


We're starting a campaign that includes a PC member of House Lyrandar, and a prototype Cyran airship they found at the edge of the Mournland right after the Day of Mourning. The PCs were all part of a mercenary unit that claimed the airship as spoils of war, and it's going to be interesting to explore how House Lyrandar will react to it. The ship is a tiny scout vessel, barely large enough to hold the group, and possibly the smallest airship ever created (I just ordered this to use for the game). The OOC reason for it is to give the PCs an easy way to get to far-flung locations for adventure without taking ages to get there. Yes, that means we're bypassing several potential lightning rail plots...though I could see something like The Train Job episode of Firefly.

Huh, didn't catch that.

 

[Fedifensor]

Huh, didn't catch that.

One thing to remember is that Lyrandar airships are not commonplace. The first airships emerged only eight years ago (990 YK), and their number should be tiny compared to the number of dragonmarked heirs of the House that can pilot them. Staffing for Lyrandar galleons is a much bigger concern, since they have the same restrictions regarding movement as airships and there is more of them (since they don't need the soarwood that is only found on Aerenal). I suspect the larger airships and ones used by a military have three pilots, allowing shorter shifts and no interruption in service if some tragedy occurs.

 

[Panda-s1]

The fact that it 100% means that any resulting child who develops a mark will develop an aberrant mark and aberrant Mark's are subject to some pretty heavy scorn+propaganda likely puts it in a box similar to "how do nations that ban incest due to high genetic mutation results in children enforce it".... scorn and condemnation are strong forces against so they kinda don't need to unless you get caught .

uh, not sure if incest is the best comparison. people marrying their cousins was considered normal behavior until fairly recently in human history, also iirc there's some psychological stuff that stops this as well. I feel like the exceptionalism of dragonmarked people makes more sense tbh.

 

[Panda-s1]

By "fraternization", are you talking about people from differnet Houses having children with each other?

In general, it's a zero tolerance policy. You get caught? You're kicked out of the House. Most of the Houses don't really go out of their way to try and root out members breaking the taboo on inter-house relations (Vadalis probably being an exception due to how obsessed with their lineage and bloodlines they are). But if you do get caught in the act, it would be a miracle if you were somehow not Excoriated.

Also, the Dragonmarked Houses assume that their members are self-policing on not mixing the lineages due to that almost always leading to Aberrant Dragonmarks. They assume that the fear of creating children with Aberrant Dragonmarks is enough to dissuade any star-crossed lovers from eloping. With how strong the social stigma is against Aberrant marked people in general, it usually works.

While the body of this thread is still warm (Last post before the revivify spell is from December), I think there are a ton of possibilities how a house can get information about dragonmark uses e.g. if someone heals people for gold or such. I think Eberron is designed in a way that it is hard to keep something secret, there are loads of spies Phiarlan has even a trade in spying and most organizations will either have their own information network or pay for one.

I do not think that being dragonmarked but not connected to the according house is happening often (or at least it should not happen often). Association with a house no matter if PC or NPC usually brings more advantages than disadvantages.

The fact that it 100% means that any resulting child who develops a mark will develop an aberrant mark and aberrant Mark's are subject to some pretty heavy scorn+propaganda likely puts it in a box similar to "how do nations that ban incest due to high genetic mutation results in children enforce it".... scorn and condemnation are strong forces against so they kinda don't need to unless you get caught .

I mean okay this all makes sense, but at the same time people are dumb and make dumb decisions all the time. I can't help but read this as something that happens rarely, but regularly, and there's probably a lot more abberant dragonmarks than we think.

also given the nature of war, I'd imagine this happened a lot during the Last War. abberant marks everywhere.

also this doesn't address same sex relations, like it's probably not good for business anyway, but it's harder to justify with the abberant mark thing.

 

[MarkB]

Since the Houses need to keep the bloodlines reasonably strong in order to ensure that they keep consistently producing dragonmarked heirs, but at the same time don't want to be interbreeding too closely within family lines, I imagine that there's a whole level of social politics around making good matches between the various family lines within a House, much as there was in medieval-to-reneissance times between European royal and noble families. Within the context of those social pressures, diluting the House with 'common' (non-House) blood would be frowned upon but not considered too scandalous - at least you'd be bringing in fresh genetic stock.

But fraternising with a member of another House or race, thus guaranteeing that your bloodline would not breed true, would be a fast way to become a social pariah within House circles.

 

[tetrasodium]

I mean okay this all makes sense, but at the same time people are dumb and make dumb decisions all the time. I can't help but read this as something that happens rarely, but regularly, and there's probably a lot more abberant dragonmarks than we think.

also given the nature of war, I'd imagine this happened a lot during the Last War. abberant marks everywhere.

also this doesn't address same sex relations, like it's probably not good for business anyway, but it's harder to justify with the abberant mark thing.

Almost certainly there are a lot of sberrant marks yes, not to mention the fact that there are all thebastard offspring between a possibly drunken dragonmarked heir & a drunken beauty or sexworker who don't manifest a mark & can still bear an aberrant with another bastard.


Aberrant's aren't always dangerous & out of control folks losing it (but enough are) so unless their mark is someplace they can't hide like their face they might be able to go around living a nearly normal life not wildly dissimilar from some sorcerers. The problem comes when they are say... a chef & worked for years to reach a high point of recognition until one day they lost their temper & killed an entire kitchen staff while discovering their mark for the first time. Those type of aberrant marked individuals are no doubt the minority but the results are terrible enough & dramaticized enough with propaganda that everyone "knows" that aberrants are all dangerous

 

[ChaosOS]

Dragonmarks: Gnolls and the Znir Pact

Art by Mariana Suarez Otero for Eberron Expanded In the dawn of time, before the Sovereigns and the Silver Flame, Eberron was the domain of the fiendish overlords. This was an age of chaos, as the …

keith-baker.com

New Keith post! Lore write up for gnolls, plus confirmation that the book will include racial stats!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This isn't really the case. From ERFTLW: "About half of the members of a bloodline manifest the mark.".

But most of the people who work for a House are employees, not heirs.

Also, there are ways to be a Foundling

Foundlings are massively valuable, because they don't come with the same management expectations as family members. The make ideal "reserve pilots" and other lower status posts that still require dragonmarks.