D&D 5E Does Eberron need to be high fantasy?

[Minigiant]

Eberron is kinda built on the high frequency, low power end of fantasy. As for the "craziness" or "unexplainable, it can very.

High Frequency
Low Power
Variable Craziness


The Y is low. The X is very high. The Z is debatable.
Some old element is high to keep the Eberron feel it must be high fantasy.

 

[Charles Rampant]

I like the way that the question separated Eberron from 3.x. I had a similar question about the Forgotten Realms recently: I associate it with the computer games and 'D&Disms', and for my that included magc item shops. So, I thought to myself, should 5e Forgotten Realms include magic item shops like that adventurers' bazaar in Baldur's Gate 2? After some thinking - and posting the question over on Candlekeep - I came to the decision that no, it did not. But the thought is the same as your question in many ways: does the essential tone of the setting require these odd 3.x elements?

To that end, I would suggest that the setting's essential tone can be preserved without too much damage, even in the 5e magic item economy. In this world, about a dozen magic items are ubiquitous and can be bought (the lanterns, etc). But that still leaves the very vast majority of the DMG items off-bounds, and lets those be the cool things that your players adventure for.

 

[MarkB]

I suppose that is what I am wondering.

3.x had a high powered world built into the system. Every x-level character had thousands of gp worth of magical items. And everyone had levels.

One of Eberron's conceits wss that not everyone has levels. Player Characters are special - they can level up at standard rates. But most NPCs would take years to gain a level, and those who are high level tend to use mostly NPC levels, with a handful of PC levels thrown in.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I've played a lot in the Forgotten Realms when I started playing D&D, but have since moved on to home brew settings. I still play the DDO videogame, which is set in Eberron... and to be honest, I can't tell the difference between the two settings. The only difference I have noticed, is warforged, airships, and a whole lot of magical floaty things like you see in all fantasy MMO's. Other than that, they both seem like standard high fantasy settings to me, with very little character to them.

DDO is an extremely poor representation of what Eberron is all about.

 

[sleypy]

Eberron and Forgotten Realms both have aspects of high fantasy. Eberron is high fantasy because it is internally consistent but following a different set of rules than the "real" world. FR doesn't have much consistency due to high magic, but the adventures have an epic scope (isn't usually the case in Eberron.)

Eberron is somewhat like shadowrunner in that the Dragonmarked houses, corporate, are more powerful than the nations, and there are disparities in wealth and magic.

Powerful magic is guard closely by the Houses. You could avoid involving the dragonmarked houses, and have a, relatively, low magic adventure. (Good luck running Eberron without players wanting a dragonmarked though.)

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

With all of this talk about settings I have been thinking about which ones I like and dislike.

When I first heard about Eberron I was enthusiastic. Steampunk D&D? Yes please. But then it turned out to be high fantasy so I made it work in Ravenloft instead.

So I think I don't like Eberron. But then, I also didn't like FR in 3e either. It was much too high fantasy for me.

In 5e I like FR just fine. I think it is partly due to it being the core setting so they need to pull things back a bit. But moreso I think it is the edition itself. When orcs are still a threat to 10th level characters the world is different. When you don't have merchants selling goods for coppers alongside others selling magic items for thousands of gold pieces, the world is different. That comes through.

I am no Eberron expert, so I ask, could a 5e version keep the feel and flavour of it while also being grounded in traditional fantasy tropes?

I am curious because the big difference here is that Eberron was made in 3e so maybe its world was modeled on the conceits of the edition whereas FR has reverted to its older roots?

I think you might be mixing up High fantasy and high magic.
Also Eberon is magepunk not steampunk there is no technolegy like steam engines everything is magic powered.
The base asumption in mage punk is that magic took the place of scientific asvancement made in the real world.

 

[Imaculata]

DDO is an extremely poor representation of what Eberron is all about.

So it's not about steampunk stuff, airships, warforged and artificers?

 

[ad_hoc]

I think you might be mixing up High fantasy and high magic.
Also Eberon is magepunk not steampunk there is no technolegy like steam engines everything is magic powered.
The base asumption in mage punk is that magic took the place of scientific asvancement made in the real world.

Yeah I think you are right about the first part. I think I had intended to write more about high powered magic and then didn't.

And yeah magic instead of steam. Isn't the idea similar? I suppose I found the magic technology too advanced. I would like unreliability and not mimicking technology past the Victorian age.

But then maybe there is more of that than I know.

I know there are already things about Eberron in this thread that I haven't seen other people write about before.

I was turned off of it early and then when people post about it l, it is usually about powerful magic items and such. So thanks for the posts.

If we get a 5e update I will be sure to check it out. I didn't like what I saw in UA but then I haven't liked any of them.

 

[Space Jockey]

So it's not about steampunk stuff, airships, warforged and artificers?

Nope. It's about uncertainty and emotional and physical scars from a long, terrible war, in an era eerily similar to post-World War I. It's about the schemes of dragonmarked houses, fantasy equivalents of megacorporations. It's about swashbuckling, pulpy adventures in dangerous lands. It's about discovering that absolute good and evil are extremely rare in a world full of morally grey. It's about discovering intrigue and conspiracies that go down the rabbit hole, and then down several other rabbit holes.

The "steampunk" stuff (don't know why people call it that) are only one feature in the setting and hardly play front and center. DDO doesn't to the setting justice at all.

 

[Faraer]

I had a similar question about the Forgotten Realms recently: I associate it with the computer games and 'D&Disms', and for my that included magc item shops. So, I thought to myself, should 5e Forgotten Realms include magic item shops like that adventurers' bazaar in Baldur's Gate 2? After some thinking - and posting the question over on Candlekeep - I came to the decision that no, it did not.

I'm not sure it came across in that thread, but magic item shops of the 3E variety are expressly not part of Ed's concept of the Realms. The closest you find is curio shops like the Old Xoblob Shop in Waterdeep that *might* have a magical thing or two somewhere.