D&D 5E Eberron Is Here Today!

Eberron: Rising from the Last War hits local gamestores today. Eberron creator Keith Baker talks on his blog about what's changed!

So, what's changed? The Mror Dwarves, races, Dragonmarks, the Mournland, Lady Illmarrow, monsters... but not guns!

And what's new? The artificer class, group patrons, warforged colossus, and scary monsters!

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Explore the lands of Eberron in this campaign sourcebook for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

This book provides everything players and Dungeon Masters need to play Dungeons & Dragons in Eberron—a war-torn world filled with magic-fueled technology, airships and lightning trains, where noir-inspired mystery meets swashbuckling adventure. Will Eberron enter a prosperous new age, or will the shadow of war descend once again?

• Meld magic and invention to craft objects of wonder as an artificer—the first official class to be released for fifth edition D&D since the Player’s Handbook.
• Enter the world of Eberron in a 1st-level adventure set in Sharn, the City of Towers
• Dive straight into your pulp adventures with easy-to-use locations, complete with maps of train cars, battle-scarred fortresses, and fallen warforged colossi.
• Explore Sharn, a city of skyscrapers, airships, and intrigue and a crossroads for the world’s war-ravaged peoples.
• Flesh out your characters with a new D&D game element called a group patron—a background for your whole party.
• Explore 16 new race/subrace options including dragonmarks, which magically transform certain members of the races in the Player’s Handbook.
• Confront horrific monsters born from the world’s devastating wars.
• Prepare to venture into the Mournland, a mist-cloaked, corpse-littered land twisted by magic.

 

[hbarsquared]

I'm a huge fan of Eberron, and very happy this book was published. With that said, I'm disappointed.

Of course, it's great having the mechanics for races and dragonmarks, for example, though uninspired. It would have been nice if they had pushed the envelope creatively a little bit further, but oh well.

Sad that over half the art is recycled, the best pieces in the book are usually the recycled ones, and they didn't even use the best Eberron pieces!

And the typos! And I'm not just talking about a stray misplaced "c." There's the glaring "your" instead of you're," as well as striaght up incorrect statements like, "Goodberry wine takes the place of House Vadalis healing.". There are many errors in the lore itself throughout the book that would be extremely confusing for first-timers.

Plus the formatting and editing. Each area of the gazetteer has a section titled "Interesting Things About X" that takes up two lines. Couldn't they have come up with a more succinct headline, and gaining another two lines of text? Just a waste.

And so much text is needlessly repeated. I pove the patrons, but you see the same text in the introduction, the patron description, "build your group," examples, and other patrons, sometimes word for word. Very frustrating.

I feel sad that the book could have been so much more.

 

[Hellcow]

I posted this on a different thread, but seeing the "Eberron is 100% part of the Great Wheel. The Gods are real" comment, I figure I'll share it here too. (For anyone who doesn't know, I'm Keith Baker, one of the designers on Rising From The Last War. Howdy!)

Eberron has always been tied to the multiverse. Page 92 of the original Eberron Campaign Setting says "Eberron spins within its own Material Plane, enfolded by three coexistent transitive planes: the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane, and the Plane of Shadow, just as in the core D&D cosmology (see Chapter 5 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide)." WotC stated long ago that it was officially possible for people to travel to Eberron from other settings by using those transitive planes. You may not have noticed, because it's the default assumption of the setting that no one ever does... just as page 232 of Rising From The Last War establishes that the default assumption of the book is that "contact between the worlds and planes beyond its cosmology is impossible."

The idea is there that it COULD be possible, but it has absolutely ALWAYS been there: from the very beginning, Eberron had its own unique cosmology, but that entire cosmology was still part of the broader system of astral/ethereal/shadow. This simply calls that out more clearly, in part because it allows us to clearly say "This book is based on the assumption that contact with other settings is impossible." Again, the NEW aspect of this is to clarify that if you want it to be an aspect of your campaign, you're changing the default assumptions.

Likewise, the fact that this means that Cyric and Bane exist somewhere in the universe is utterly meaningless in Eberron. This doesn't mean that "Gods definitively exist," because as others have pointed out, the people of Eberron wouldn't identify the "gods" of FR as gods. The Vassals of the Sovereign Host believe that their deities are omniscient and omnipresent. The idea of one of them taking a physical form is pointlessly limiting; that's not a GOD, it's a powerful angel or an overlord. They would view the worship of such beings as a Cult of the Dragon Below; note that the Cults do worship coherent entities such as the overlords and daelkyr. And that's the point: the overlords have always been presented as beings that have the POWER of gods in other settings (literally using the rules for Divine Rank) but the answer of the masses wasn't to worship them, it was to bind them in spiritual chains. So yes, Rising acknowledges that the multiverse exists (as Eberron always has) and that therefore the gods of other settings exists; this doesn't change the critical facts:

• Those beings have no ability to influence Eberron unless you, the DM, choose to change that.
• As the default assumption is that they cannot and have never influenced the setting, they are absolutely and entirely unknown to the people of the setting.
• Those beings don't qualify as "gods" by the definitions used in Eberron, and the gods worshipped on Eberron do not follow their model. Eberron has always had beings that use the same rules as gods of other settings: those beings are the overlords, and rather than being worshipped, they were imprisoned.

Rising presents a clearer explanation of the principle presented on page 92 of the first Eberron book: Eberron COULD be connected to other settings if you want it to be, but the default assumption is that it's not. Beyond this, one of the core principles of Eberron is that canon is merely a starting point and that YOU decide what's true in your campaign. Ultimately, each DM decides if the Sovereigns are real, and each DM decides if Eberron is connected to the multiverse.

The only thing that I feel IS overstated is the statement that the Progenitors DID create the creatures of Eberron being presented as absolute fact. The rest of the book presents the idea that the Progenitors may have been metaphorical, and that is still the default assumption. The primary point of the section was to concretely say that despite default 5E stating "All orcs are tied to Gruumsh" and "All Elves are children of Corellon" that this does NOT apply to Eberron—that the elves and orcs of Eberron are part of EBERRON and have no ties to the multiverse beyond it. As others have called out, Rising does point out that the drow of Eberron were created by the GIANTS, not by Lolth OR the Progenitors. As with the Sovereigns, it's up to the DM to decide if the Progenitors truly existed, and if so, what they actually were. What's important is—just as has always been the case—Eberron is a part of the multiverse, but it is an isolated part that has its own cosmology and that has no contact with the rest of the Multiverse unless you, the DM, choose to change that.

 

[Zardnaar]

Alt cover was only $6 more than the normal cover here.

 

[pukunui]

And the typos! And I'm not just talking about a stray misplaced "c." There's the glaring "your" instead of you're," as well as striaght up incorrect statements like, "Goodberry wine takes the place of House Vadalis healing.".

Agreed. As much as I am enjoying reading this book, it has got to be the worst edited/proofread book in the whole 5e line so far. Barely a page goes by without some glaring error.

One example that comes to mind is how often the Mark of Storm is referred to as the Mark of Storms throughout the book. A simple find and replace search would’ve fixed things like that quickly.

Also, I’ve never been a WAR fan, but his art looks especially bad mixed in with all the fantastic new pieces. I know WAR was a big part of the original Eberron look but I think it would’ve been better not to recycle his stuff.

 

[Zardnaar]

WAR art doesn't age well. Outside Eberron I didn't even like it that much back in the day.

For cover art alt cover, 3.5 for the best, 4E campaign guide the worst and a tossup between 4E players guide and 5E normal version for the next ones.

3.5 cover has aged ok, 4E and 5E covers weren't very good to begin with.

 

[Zaukrie]

I am enjoying this book so far, quite a bit. Hoping to find a group to play in it!

 

[hbarsquared]

Reading through the Sharn section is painful. Riddled with typos, numerous and needless, "this will be detailed more in chapter X," and text is repeated, sometimes word for word, no less than three times, for practically every location mentioned. Not to mention the number of times some of the descriptions are repeated in other chapters, also word for word.

I want to support Eberron, and I love the expansions of the lore and having mechanics, but... Both 3e and 4e were better books. In fact, Wayfinder's is a better Campaign Setting book.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I want to support Eberron, and I love the expansions of the lore and having mechanics, but... Both 3e and 4e were better books. In fact, Wayfinder's is a better Campaign Setting book.

Don't agree.

 

[Kurotowa]

Don't agree.

The same for me. Rising has excellent sections on group patrons and antagonist organizations and so on that are invaluable for running an Eberron campaign. I won't deny the book's editing wasn't up to par, but that's a different matter from the value of the content itself.

 

[AkaKageWarrior]

I gave this book to my son as a christmas present.
We both played DDO, so we knew a little about Eberron, guilds, dragonmarks, dragonshards, warforged, that's it. We never had any Eberron book / material.

So our "verdict": it's good, we like it!

Many race options, plus a seemingly (not yet played) well balanced artificer.
And lots of info about the world (we learned a lot about stuff we only understood marginally when playing DDO), with many campaign / adventure seeds.

But WTF is there no index? Even the worst-of-all-indexes record-breaking Player's Handbook index is better than none...