[Eberron] Best Sourcebook?

[root.tar]

What is the best Eberron Sourcebook? What is the worst sourcebook? I want to buy some 3.5 material before its out of print.

I prefer fluff above crunch. Any suggestions?

 

[Jeff Wilder]

The single most useful book, IMO, is Player's Guide to Eberron. Races of Eberron is great, but mostly crunch.

My three favorites are Sharn, City of Towers; Dragonmarked; and Magic of Eberron.

Honorable mentions to Five Nations, Faiths of Eberron, and City of Stormreach.

I didn't particularly enjoy Forge of War, Secrets of Xen'drik, or Secrets of Sarlona. If I weren't a completist, I could easily do without those three.

 

[PoeticJustice]

Hands-down-nothing-comes-close-absolutely-best-Eberron-supplement is Sharn: City of Towers.

Although almost entirely setting information, with very few rules text, this book is my favorite because it's a walking tour of the setting itself. Although later entries would, with varying quality, give setting information about most of the campaign setting, only Sharn presented it with my desired level of detail.

On the other hand, my least favorite was Five Nations, owing to the multiple continuity errors in describing the 5 Nations, specifically Aundair. Call it nerd rage, but it was supremely disappointing to see that Wizards had so little enthusiasm and editorial oversight for their new setting that they wouldn't bother to keep it in line with the core book.

 

[Scribe Ineti]

I like Sharn, Faiths of Eberron, and Dragonmarked a lot. I'd make a recommendation for the Player's Guide to Eberron, but I have real issues with the way the content is presented in that book. Even with the table of contents, it's not particularly intuitive.

 

[Nebten]

What is the best Eberron Sourcebook? What is the worst sourcebook? I want to buy some 3.5 material before its out of print.

Hehe, too late. They are already out of print.

 

[doctorhook]

Technically, it's all out-of-print, AFAIK.

That said, the best ones are the core book (obviously), as well as Sharn: City of Towers, Dragonmarked, Player's Guide to Eberron. I also really enjoyed Dragons of Eberron (think of it as Epic Eberron), and though I haven't read it myself, I've hear Secrets of Sarlona is excellent too, and I've also been recommended Stormreach.

Faiths of Eberron seems cheesy in parts, but it's a very useful book nonetheless. Five Nations is fluffy, but not very exciting. Forge of War is pretty bad in some parts, and good in others. (One of the authors of that book seemed to forget that the Church of the Silver Flame is Lawful Good....) I haven't read Secrets of Xen'drik. The Explorer's Handbook isn't special; don't pay full price for it.

Races of Eberron isn't properly an Eberron book, despite the title; I don't count it.

Magic of Eberron is mostly crunch, and most of it is weird 'n' wacky stuff. The main reason I dislike this book, irrational though it may be, is because of one of the chapter illustrations. (p.46? 48? Somewhere around there.) It's a picture of a bunch of dragons together, IIRC. This picture annoyed me beyond belief, because of the fact that the illustrators couldn't even bother to take the time to learn the iconic "look" for each type of D&D dragon; worse than having thought up their own, they seemed to have just mixed and matched pieces and colours from core dragons into hideous hybrids. Worse still, nothing in the picture suggests that there's supposed to be anything abnormal about them! It infuriates me even thinking about it, much moreso than any other piece of artwork I've ever seen! ...It's petty, I know.

 

[Glyfair]

Races of Eberron isn't properly an Eberron book, despite the title; I don't count it.

Nonsense. It has the same color coveras the "Races of..." series, but other than that it is full of Eberron history and lore. I will admit, the quality is middle of the pack (I put Magic of Eberron at the bottom).

Secrets of Sarlona and Dragons of Eberron are excellent, but somewhat limited if you aren't going to run in those areas (dragon less so, since sections do deal with dragons outside Argonessan). In those areas they are indispensable.

For fluff number one is clearly the campaign setting. Number two isn't a book, but rather Keith Baker's Dragonshards articles. Player's Guide to Eberron is next, but a vocal crowd dislikes that there are campaign "secrets" mentioned within the pages.

Forge of War has a lot of background story. My issue with it is that Wolfgang Baur didn't really get Thrane until after the book was published. The bits on Thrane atrocities are way over the top.

Magic of Eberron is mostly crunch, and most of it is weird 'n' wacky stuff. The main reason I dislike this book, irrational though it may be, is because of one of the chapter illustrations. (p.46? 48? Somewhere around there.) It's a picture of a bunch of dragons together, IIRC. This picture annoyed me beyond belief, because of the fact that the illustrators couldn't even bother to take the time to learn the iconic "look" for each type of D&D dragon; worse than having thought up their own, they seemed to have just mixed and matched pieces and colours from core dragons into hideous hybrids. Worse still, nothing in the picture suggests that there's supposed to be anything abnormal about them! It infuriates me even thinking about it, much moreso than any other piece of artwork I've ever seen! ...It's petty, I know.[/QUOTE]

 

[Nymrohd]

I frankly dislike Dragons of Eberron, it reminded me of ELH (and that is just bad). I think Faiths of Eberron was a poorly managed project: the template used only fit the Sovereign Host and was for some reason enforced on every faith resulting in a lot of repetition. I actually loved Secrets of Sarlona, there were more character archetypes than you can shake an 10' pole at in that book. I have mixed feelings for Magic of Eberron, some of it was great some of it was yuck. I will agree with Sharn, also liked Five Nations. Forge of War has tons of interesting history and I think it adds a lot of understanding of the setting as does Dragonmarked.

 

[Shroomy]

IMO, you can't go wrong with Sharn: City of Towers. Overall, I enjoyed the majority of the Eberron books (I own them all except for Dragons of Eberron), though some of them are really just collections of articles and DM aids. Those books (such as the Explorer's Handbook and Secrets of Xen'drik) would probably fit better into something like the DDI, if that had existed at the time.

BTW, Keith Baker's "Dragonshard" articles are indeed awesome check them out.

 

[JeffB]

I don't know about WORST as I only own one Eberron sourcebook, but as far as I am concerned Secrets of Xendrik is the best book WOTC has published under 2E, 3E, or 4E, period. I don't run 3E or Eberron for that matter. Total DM toolkit/idea mine, and most of it easily yoinked for whatever campaign setting you use.


Here's something of a review I posted over at the Necro forums many moons ago-

Def the best WOTC purchase I have made is the Secrets of Xen'Drik book for Eberron. A 160p hardcover that retails for $29.95 MSRP. I got it on a closeout for $5.00 BRAND NEW. For those who are not familiar with Xen'Drik, it is Eberron's "lost continent", where 10s of thousands of years ago Giants (Titans? it's intentionally left vague) ruled, and the first Elves were a slave race. Ancient Xen'drik had an advanced level of magic and society that modern day Eberron has not been able to approach. Ultimately the Giants/Titans brought about their own destruction 40K years ago and were plunged into barbarism-they have never recovered. Xen'drik is packed full of "the unknown" as the entire continent is basically unexplored. Only two major towns exist, and one is basically "off limits" to the PC's anyway. Another cool feature of Xen'drik is The Travellers Curse. There are still areas where the ancient magical destruction has ripped through time and space, and basically a journey that might take 3 days going may take 2 hours, or 6 months coming back To quote the book "the Traveller's Curse twists time and distance, both in perception and reality". There are also random "shifting zones". What may have been an arid desert plain yesterday could be a volcanic field or arctic tundra the next. These of course are things which have made Xen'drik dangerous to explore and hard to map out with any certainty. Much of what is known about the continent's History and the land itself is based on legend and conjecture, not always fact. All of this this (at least for me) makes Xen'drik a DM's playground (and it is designed as such)

The book text itself is filled to the brim with plot hooks (both readily apparent and between the lines), and specifically there are several "mini adventure locations" meant to be placed anywhere you like (e.g. The Ancient Harbor, Old Growth Ruins, The Forsaken City, etc), a 100 entry list of adventure hooks, encounter trap areas (think Indiana Jones), several 2-3 page "adventure frameworks" which add enough detail and direction for the DM to build upon (these include basic plot and theme, suggested sites, PC level and encounters/EL,etc.). There are also sections devoted to magical and psionic locations (e.g. Memorial Marker of the Elven Dead, The Timeless Fountain, etc.), curses, magical item effects (not crunch, but flavor) and forgotten civilizations. I find all of this material sufficiently "generic" to be used in most any D&D campaign. And thats why it has been such a great buy- I can drop nearly all of this into any campaign I'd like since much of it's is not tied to Eberron proper, or names/power groups, etc are easily exchanged for ones approriate to your campaign.

Of course like any WOTC book there are new monsters, magic items, feats, PrClasses, equipment, encounters/NPC groups, etc. A couple of the monsters are very Eberron centric, but the majority are usable for other worlds with no problem and include sample encounters for each monster type. There are also plug and play encounters consisting of things like a "drow scouting party" or sahuagin raiders" -These are designed with the Adventure frameworks in mind, but are just as useable for your world and adventures (side note- the Xen'drik's take on the drow is the best thing since their original appearance in the G series- none of that FR drow angst/Elminster's girlfriend crap). There are some neat artifacts and artifact spells ( "always inscribed on some large immovable object, such as an immense stone wall, or a towering crystal pillar"-these can be cast once per year if the runes are deciphered, however the caster must again find the place/object where discovered to re-learn it- they are too complex to translate into a written form, etc).

Get's a two thumbs up from me. I would def reccomend to take a half hour or so and read through some of it at your FLGS or Bookstore. I passed over this several times at full price- I really liked what I had read, but $30.00 for 160 pages is a bit steep IMO. However, now that I'm very familiar with it, I would have paid full price for it. It's not long on pages, but is def long on utility. Hell, it may even convince me to run a Xen'drik centered Eberron game.