D&D 5E Eberron: Forge of the Artificer

[GarrettKP]

It doesn't matter "which one of us is right" because I stayed the reason for why my enthusiasm is muted for a book of like to be excited about and you used it as an excuse to push 5e's long-standing toxic OneTrueWayism that makes it a requirement for witch to be the one establishing the baseline foundation rather than doing like they did with vrgtr and telling the GM to just make it happen


Eberron might be fine with heroic fantasy, but 5e is not "heroic fantasy"... 5e & 5.24e are both Super-heroic fantasy with an emphasis on super. If you look through my posting history you will find that running eberron games is quite the norm for me, I have no interest in continuing to fight 5e to do that though. That lack of interest influences my interest in both the book and 5e itself which was the reason why I stated back in post 55 that the book needs to provide better mechanical support for the setting's tone then they did in vrgtr where they told the GM to just do it without the barest shred of mechanical support.

The problem is you haven’t established what you think the settings tone is. All you’ve done is talk about what it isn’t.

So what is the tone of Eberron, in your eyes, that the game isn’t able to support? Defining it will help the rest of us engage with this discussion.

 

[TwoSix]

The problem is you haven’t established what you think the settings tone is. All you’ve done is talk about what it isn’t.

So is the tone of Eberron, in your eyes, that the game isn’t able to support? Defining it will help the rest of us engage with this discussion.

Honestly, I think Eberron is malleable enough to run in pretty much any edition, or even in non-D&D games.

 

[tetrasodium]

The problem is you haven’t established what you think the settings tone is. All you’ve done is talk about what it isn’t.

So is the tone of Eberron, in your eyes, that the game isn’t able to support? Defining it will help the rest of us engage with this discussion.

Simply supporting play beyond 5e's OneTrueWay super-heroic baseline doesn't require you to use it any more than the DMG supporting PCs can't die as the sole optional rule in it requires me to use it. The pushback you are providing seems to be more about ensuring that some other gm won't use a set of rules once those rules are supplied to them rather than why those Super-heroic elements are good for eberron.

Keep reading past the first reply in that post to the section responding to your post. The tonal problem lies in those Super-heroic mechanical elements. In 58/60 the two of us had a disagreement over if 5e is "heroic fantasy" or "super-heroic fantasy". Kinda weird to ignore the section responding to your post and claim that tone is not defined well enough for there to be a mechanical conflict with eberron's tone when specific super-heroic mechanical elements have already been highlighted as contributing to the super-heroic clash you chose to ignore and omit. This OneTrueWayism aimed at preventing support for alternatives started with what should have been a fairly uncontroversial statement "This book must not take vrgtr's lead in telling the gm to fix the system to fit the tone while doing nothing to lay a new starting foundation for the GM to start from. It takes more than simply having the right races" and some specific areas that need an alternative with better mechanical support.

 

[Gradine]

Honestly, I think Eberron is malleable enough to run in pretty much any edition, or even in non-D&D games.

I know that there's a pretty significant following of Eberron fans who play using Savage Worlds

 

[GarrettKP]

Simply supporting play beyond 5e's OneTrueWay super-heroic baseline doesn't require you to use it any more than the DMG supporting PCs can't die as the sole optional rule in it requires me to use it. The pushback you are providing seems to be more about ensuring that some other gm won't use a set of rules once those rules are supplied to them rather than why those Super-heroic elements are good for eberron.

Keep reading past the first reply in that post to the section responding to your post. The tonal problem lies in those Super-heroic mechanical elements. In 58/60 the two of us had a disagreement over if 5e is "heroic fantasy" or "super-heroic fantasy". Kinda weird to ignore the section responding to your post and claim that tone is not defined well enough for there to be a mechanical conflict with eberron's tone when specific super-heroic mechanical elements have already been highlighted as contributing to the super-heroic clash you chose to ignore and omit. This OneTrueWayism aimed at preventing support for alternatives started with what should have been a fairly uncontroversial statement "This book must not take vrgtr's lead in telling the gm to fix the system to fit the tone while doing nothing to lay a new starting foundation for the GM to start from. It takes more than simply having the right races" and some specific areas that need an alternative with better mechanical support.

We fundamentally disagree about 5e and that will be the main sticking point here. You keep saying D&D is “super” heroic fantasy but that just has not been my experience in any way.

I’ve DM for the entire life of 5e now, and I can kill players with ease if needed. In my 1-20 Eberron campaign, I killed a 17th level character with just swarms of skeletons. It is not hard to challenge characters with the system once you realize the fundamental issue with 5e’s CR system and make the proper adjustment (which WotC has made with the 2024 rules by removing the multiplier).

You also keep saying “One True Way” but that has not been my experience either, as my Curse of Strahd games vs my Eberron campaign has had wildly different tones without the need to change anything mechanically.

Tone is not something that is governed by mechanics of a system. Tone is governed by the story you as the DM are telling.

I’ll ask again, what mechanics are lacking to make you feel you can run Eberron games properly? I don’t want a vague answer like “super-heroic fantasy” or “OneTrueWayism,” I just want to know what about the mechanics is causing this problem for you?

 

[Reynard]

Simply supporting play beyond 5e's OneTrueWay super-heroic baseline doesn't require you to use it any more than the DMG supporting PCs can't die as the sole optional rule in it requires me to use it. The pushback you are providing seems to be more about ensuring that some other gm won't use a set of rules once those rules are supplied to them rather than why those Super-heroic elements are good for eberron.

Keep reading past the first reply in that post to the section responding to your post. The tonal problem lies in those Super-heroic mechanical elements. In 58/60 the two of us had a disagreement over if 5e is "heroic fantasy" or "super-heroic fantasy". Kinda weird to ignore the section responding to your post and claim that tone is not defined well enough for there to be a mechanical conflict with eberron's tone when specific super-heroic mechanical elements have already been highlighted as contributing to the super-heroic clash you chose to ignore and omit. This OneTrueWayism aimed at preventing support for alternatives started with what should have been a fairly uncontroversial statement "This book must not take vrgtr's lead in telling the gm to fix the system to fit the tone while doing nothing to lay a new starting foundation for the GM to start from. It takes more than simply having the right races" and some specific areas that need an alternative with better mechanical support.

Tell me again how Eberron doesn't support superheroic high fantasy:

 

[TheSword]

Honestly very excited by the prospect of a great quality published adventure. That has always been Eberron’s one big failing to my mind. No test drive for what the setting can do.

I ran Rise of the Runelords in Eberron for 5e and frankly it worked brilliantly. The mix of giants and ancient terrors fitted well. But it lacked the pulp elements that I would have liked to see. Genuinely interested as to how this comes out!

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Tell me again how Eberron doesn't support superheroic high fantasy:
View attachment 394703

Yeah, like, as a huge fan of capeshit Eberron is 100% the closest to a superhero setting D&D gets.

Contemporary superhero comics are characterized, I'd say, by an urban setting that itself encompasses all genres of speculative fiction, in addition to having larger-than-life protagonists with supernatural powers and distinct, flamboyant appearances. Gotham, Metropolis and Marvel's iteration of NYC are just as much "characters" as Batman, Superman and the Fantastic Four, and a key facet of all of these cities is that the citizens in it are totally inured to almost any kind of high-concept supernatural fuckery.

When a terrorist dressed in purple with green hair robs a museum using April Fools themed gadgets, the people of Gotham City still have to show up to work tomorrow and relax in the knowledge that their city's resident weirdo vigilantes will solve the issue by the time they wake up. If there's anywhere in the D&D multiverse where that mindset would be present, it's Sharn (the citizens of Sigil, of course, wouldn't expect the issue to be solved and the citizens of Waterdeep would expect the issue to be solved by the government they pay taxes to).

As others have said, Eberron was designed explicitly to encompass all forms of speculative fiction storytelling within the D&D ruleset, but a massive part of the setting is nonetheless dedicated to "pulp." And, buddy, superhero comics directly descend from pulp magazines; there's a precisely laid out geneology from the Scarlet Pimpernel through Doc Savage to Superman. Not only is there room for superheroic fantasy in Eberron, it's respectful to the source material to play it in such a way.

 

[MarkB]

5e misses the mark on Eberron's tone by placing PCs on the same pedestal where you find Superman's world of cardboard mixed with the regeneration of Deadpool & wolverine, that doesn't fit eberron any more than 5e's "magic items are OpTiOnAl" baseline fits Eberron's wide magic world.

Seriously? Eberron is the setting which explicitly had NPCs with heroic classes being very rare, and PCs with XP-based quick advancement being the exception, while most NPCs would go years or even their entire lives without gaining levels. It always treated PCs as being exceptional and extraordinary compared to the rest of the world.

And while magic items may not be obligatory in 5e, there's absolutely nothing stopping a DM from handing out low-level common and uncommon magic items like candy. It won't even seriously affect game balance.

As I type there is even a thread on 5.24's healing kits where someone reports a verbal exchange of a player saying "just kill me" with the GM's follow-up being that they can't because the system won't let it happen.

That seems more like your personal taste than anything inherent to the Eberron setting. It was never presented as an inherently deadly world in which PC death was frequent. Heck, it was the setting that introduced action points to make PCs inherently more heroic and allow players to swing the odds in their favour.

 

[tetrasodium]

Seriously? Eberron is the setting which explicitly had NPCs with heroic classes being very rare, and PCs with XP-based quick advancement being the exception, while most NPCs would go years or even their entire lives without gaining levels. It always treated PCs as being exceptional and extraordinary compared to the rest of the world.

And while magic items may not be obligatory in 5e, there's absolutely nothing stopping a DM from handing out low-level common and uncommon magic items like candy. It won't even seriously affect game balance.

That seems more like your personal taste than anything inherent to the Eberron setting. It was never presented as an inherently deadly world in which PC death was frequent. Heck, it was the setting that introduced action points to make PCs inherently more heroic and allow players to swing the odds in their favour.

That's the core of the problem. Eberron accomplishes that through stuff PCs gain and learn through play. 5e accomplishes it through existing as a pc. That doesn't leave room for the through play part.

We fundamentally disagree about 5e and that will be the main sticking point here. You keep saying D&D is “super” heroic fantasy but that just has not been my experience in any way.

I’ve DM for the entire life of 5e now, and I can kill players with ease if needed. In my 1-20 Eberron campaign, I killed a 17th level character with just swarms of skeletons. It is not hard to challenge characters with the system once you realize the fundamental issue with 5e’s CR system and make the proper adjustment (which WotC has made with the 2024 rules by removing the multiplier).

You also keep saying “One True Way” but that has not been my experience either, as my Curse of Strahd games vs my Eberron campaign has had wildly different tones without the need to change anything mechanically.

Tone is not something that is governed by mechanics of a system. Tone is governed by the story you as the DM are telling.

I’ll ask again, what mechanics are lacking to make you feel you can run Eberron games properly? I don’t want a vague answer like “super-heroic fantasy” or “OneTrueWayism,” I just want to know what about the mechanics is causing this problem for you?

The 5.24 books are still only at two of the three and those two have only been out a couple months now. Are you seriously claiming to have run campaigns in 5.24 that ran level 1 up into tier 4 &tier 5? Do you run d&d as a full time job for that group of 40 hours a week players?... That's probably not even in the same universe as normal play for a group. Between death saves, healing word and similar, like bonus action healers kits.

The one true way proof is literally your own posts resisting the idea that there should be mechanical support that the GM can simply point at while saying "we are using those sidebars" or similar. That fact is underscored by the fact that you weren't the only poster to start down this path of attempting to ensure no other play style is even supported with the option of printed rules. Unfortunately wotc themselves spent much of the last decade encouraging that idea.