Eberron Dragonmarked Houses and Ravnica Guilds

[JCS]

I recently picked up the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, and I thought the Guild background approach could easily be adapted to Eberron's Dragonmarked Houses. For example, the Dimir Operative background could easily be a member of House Phiarlan or Thuranni without modification. Mechanically the guild backgrounds don't add much, just expanding the spell lists for characters, so depending on class choices that might not be optimal, though with most classes offering a spell option, it could certainly work. The fluff aspect of the Guild descriptions, particularly the Rank and Renown structure and the "View on Other Guilds" sidebars would work well in a future 5E Eberron update.

I'm not entirely satisfied with the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron's sub-race approach to Dragonmarked characters; I know the Eberron designers have experimented with different approaches to Marks in 5E (Feat based like 3.5E is an obvious alternative) - I'd be curious to see the Ravnica approach applied to Eberron.

 

[Azzy]

Funny, one of my friends was talking about using Ravnica style backgrounds for just such a purpose earlier today.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I don't know how much "stuff" you get in the Ravnica guild backgrounds, but the reason why making dragonmarks a sub-race option works well is because it 1) automatically denotes which race has each specific dragonmark (whereas a background requires you to write in "Only allowed to be select by X race", which is not something backgrounds typically do), and 2) the amount of magic and features a dragonmark gives to a character is more equivalent to what you receive as a race/sub-race, rather than a background. Normal backgrounds only give you two skills, two tools or languages, and a roleplay feature. Not nearly enough magical power that dragonmarks bestow.

That's not to say that once Jeremy and the rules team get ahold of the Eberron rules made for Wayfinders they might not switch dragonmarks off of sub-races and make them something else... but at least in terms of current balance, the marks work well for what they need to do.