Eberron...is it worth picking -up?

[Mouseferatu]

ZOMG, you have finally sold me on Ebberronnn with just two sentences wherein others have expended thousands of words to get me interested in Eebeeeerrrrooon.

I wanna push redshirts off of trains and airships and hear them scream!!!

I posted this a while ago, when Eberron was relatively new. It's a sequence that actually happened in one of my games, and is perhaps the most "iconically pulp" combat scene I've ever run.

http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=1728234&postcount=13

 

[Nightfall]

Stone,

Yeah well I'm still in a D&D mindset. Devils, Demons and Loths are like three breeds of bear. I know they are related but they are complete separate species. So stacking them together seems wrong to me.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I posted this a while ago, when Eberron was relatively new. It's a sequence that actually happened in one of my games, and is perhaps the most "iconically pulp" combat scene I've ever run.

http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=1728234&postcount=13

Did you make the Emerald Claw cultist go "ah-ah-aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Didja?

 

[Nightfall]

Prince,

This is Ari we're talking about. Of course he did!

 

[Stone Dog]

Stone,

Yeah well I'm still in a D&D mindset. Devils, Demons and Loths are like three breeds of bear. I know they are related but they are complete separate species. So stacking them together seems wrong to me.

Yeah, I can see that. The Devils, Demons and Loths are still separated for the most part. The first two are fighting each other in an endless conflict that echos War across the universe and the Lolths are over there in the realm of eternal Darkness plotting their plots and scheming their schemes just like always. It is the big guns who, back in the Age of Demons, either became imprisoned beneath the earth in their own demiplane kingdoms or banished to the Outer Planes to wail and gnash their teeth or whatever they choose to do.

One of my first Eberron games actually centered around the demon prince Pazuzu and the cult trying to make the floaty bits of Sharn fall in a mass sacrifice intended to bring Him out and have dominion over Sharn's manifest zone as a kind of fiendish beachhead.

Maybe my next try should place the characters in an uneasy alliance with the Blood of Vol against a cult of Orcus. Even the blood worshiping necromancers know that the bloated goat walking about is a bad BAD thing.

That is one thing I really like about the set up. You can have your favorite demon princes and devil lords with the same animosities and nefarious goals, but they aren't on some distant Outer Plane, they are right HERE and waiting to rise up and take back the world which is their birthright!

 

[Henry]

Maybe my next try should place the characters in an uneasy alliance with the Blood of Vol against a cult of Orcus. Even the blood worshiping necromancers know that the bloated goat walking about is a bad BAD thing.

Yoink!

It's a sequence that actually happened in one of my games, and is perhaps the most "iconically pulp" combat scene I've ever run.

You too, huh? Having a battle atop moving Lightning-cars, at 30 mph, with lightning strikes playing all about, was too good to pass up. In my description, the lightning rails create a "lightning tunnel" that the cars rush inside of when in motion, and I even put an attack penalty on those bruisers using two-handed weapons if they didn't want to be fried by a lightning arc while swinging their weapons.

Another question springs to mind...What sort of DMing style does Eberron require?

As others have said, it's been demonstrated with everything from Indiana Jones pulp feel, to film-noir detective story feel, to just straight hack-and-slash, even to grim "Sergeant Rock"-style grit, for stories set in the Last War. It'll handle most any style you wish. Heck, it even has its own Ptolus-style setting, thanks to Sharn, with dungeons and sub-dungeons and sub-sub-dungeons beneath it. The city of Sharn has been settled and re-built by no less than TWO different races and three or four different civilizations. They just keep stacking crap on top thanks to the air-magic zone it's built on.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

In Keith's conversion notes for the Savage Tide adventure path, he explains that there are native outsiders born of Khyber which are virtually identical to the fiends of Shavarath and other planes, though they are of course rarer than the rakshasas who dominate the Lords of Dust.

In fact, it would be a mistake to equate the eternal three-cornered war of Shavarath with the Blood War of core D&D/Greyhawk/Planescape. Demons, devils, and archons may be organised into overarching factions on the battlefields of Shavarath, but "demons" and "devils" and "celestials" as a type of creature explicitly do not exist as singular factions across the planes of Eberron.

The nalfeshnee and lemures of Dolurrh, the balors and pit fiends of Fernia, the bebiliths of Lamannia, the succubi of Mabar, the gelugons (ice devils) of Risia: these creatures have nothing to do with the armies of Shavarath. The same goes for the lantern archons of Irian.

The only group of fiends which is as unified in Eberron as it is in the core cosmology is the yugoloths of Mabar.

 

[jameswilliamogle]

Action Points: Awesome. My character can actually be heroic, even in a low-powered game.

Setting: Awesome. Finally removing "all x (x=goblin, kobold, orc, etc) are evil" makes for a more realistic and interesting game.

Artificer & Warforged: A bit too powerful, imo. Reasons are numerous (and probably around these boards, too). I think Living Constructs should either be more living, or more construct. Artificers kill all when they get metamagic item infusion.

Overall: FR is a bit tired. LG is just too traditional. Other settings aren't that popular. Eberron is a great addition.

 

[Shroomy]

I posted this a while ago, when Eberron was relatively new. It's a sequence that actually happened in one of my games, and is perhaps the most "iconically pulp" combat scene I've ever run.

http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=1728234&postcount=13

Awesome, simply awesome.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

And hey! With Lightning Rails or Airships, you can now simulate those crazy heist scenes that you always wanted, but with the lethal velocities/altitudes! Nothing says redshirts better than being able to push goons off the side and listen to their screams as they fall to their doom.

QFT.

My first Eberron campaign ended with a battle on top of a moving Lightning Rail, as the PCs dropped down from an airship above.

It was...glorious. There were quite a few tense moments as a few of the PCs almost fell from the top of the cars. Throw in a couple of rogue warforged that were loyal to a third party (the Lord of Blades, actually) and it ended up being a three-way battle.