D&D 5E Eberron versus Multiverse

[tetrasodium]

I don't know, the Big Eberron Tiamat story would probably involve her followers springing her from cosmic prison so she can boss around dragons and try to take over the world. Sounds vaguely familiar......

Evil deity vs. archfiend: 6 of 1, half dozen of the other.

This is an example of why reusing a name with so much lore baggage is so problematic The why takes some history & lore to set the stage though.
The Dragons of eberron are not like the beasts of FR & Greyhawk... Rather they are the closest thing eberron has to gods & control epic magic, one example of that magic was cursing the entire continent of xendriik 40,000+ years ago & that curse still remains. While extremely long lived, Dragons are still mortal beings with free will. During the Age of Demons, the dragons were losing badly to the overlords. One of those overlords is the evil that lurks in the heart of every dragon made flesh. It had the power to grow that prideful evil & corrupt dragons that fell prey to her influence. Unfortunately, Dragons of Eberron makes a lot of references to the FR style for various things including while talking about Tiamat. Since then, The Dragons have been concerned with understanding & guiding The Draconic Prophecy.

Because there is an overlord specifically geared towards corrupting them, they try to hold back while quietly manipulating things in the background by proxies. If things get bad enough for The Dragons to get involved, they might go full Vorlon & do the equivalent o solving the mouse problem in your house by dropping Tsar Bomba on your house. One of the credible possible causes for The Day of Mourning & destruction of the entire nation of Cyre is that The Last war was heading towards possibly influencing The Prophecy in negative ways if the war continued. Destroying an entire nation & most of the citizens there was a perfectly effective solution to avoiding those eventualities.

Yes she is listed as one of the gods in the Dragon's pantheon in that book, but she's not a god & got placed there in hopes that it would keep her away to turn her attention elsewhere.

 

[Arnwolf666]

This is an example of why reusing a name with so much lore baggage is so problematic The why takes some history & lore to set the stage though.
The Dragons of eberron are not like the beasts of FR & Greyhawk... Rather they are the closest thing eberron has to gods & control epic magic, one example of that magic was curing the entire continent of xendriik 40,000+ years ago & that curse still remains. While extremely long lived, Dragons are still mortal beings with free will. During the Age of Demons, the dragons were losing badly to the overlords. One of those overlords is the evil that lurks in the heart of every dragon made flesh. It had the power to grow that prideful evil & corrupt dragons that fell prey to her influence. Unfortunately, Dragons of Eberron makes a lot of references to the FR style for various things including while talking about Tiamat. Since then, The Dragons have been concerned with understanding & guiding The Draconic Prophecy.

Because there is an overlord specifically geared towards corrupting them, they try to hold back while quietly manipulating things in the background by proxies. If things get bad enough for The Dragons to get involved, they might go full Vorlon & do the equivalent o solving the mouse problem in your house by dropping Tsar Bomba on your house. One of the credible possible causes for The Day of Mourning & destruction of the entire nation of Cyre is that The Last war was heading towards possibly influencing The Prophecy in negative ways if the war continued. Destroying an entire nation & most of the citizens there was a perfectly effective solution to avoiding those eventualities.

Yes she is listed as one of the gods in the Dragon's pantheon in that book, but she's not a god & got placed there in hopes that it would keep her away to turn her attention elsewhere.

Those are just legends. There’s no truth to that

 

[Urriak Uruk]

When they first announced Ravnica and Eberron they showed a diagram with the campaign settings sort of a black and white map. Does anyone remember it? Know where can I find it?

I haven't heard of this, but I'd definitely like to see it myself.

 

[Seramus]

To be honest. I would like every wizard guild and college to have a different cosmology. At least from their perspective. The dirty secret of planescape is that they aren’t even sure of the extra structure, just that a place exists that a portal or color pool takes them. Just like our own view of the universe there are multiple competing structures for reality.

That's called Mage: the Ascension.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

This is an example of why reusing a name with so much lore baggage is so problematic The why takes some history & lore to set the stage though.
The Dragons of eberron are not like the beasts of FR & Greyhawk... Rather they are the closest thing eberron has to gods & control epic magic, one example of that magic was curing the entire continent of xendriik 40,000+ years ago & that curse still remains. While extremely long lived, Dragons are still mortal beings with free will. During the Age of Demons, the dragons were losing badly to the overlords. One of those overlords is the evil that lurks in the heart of every dragon made flesh. It had the power to grow that prideful evil & corrupt dragons that fell prey to her influence. Unfortunately, Dragons of Eberron makes a lot of references to the FR style for various things including while talking about Tiamat. Since then, The Dragons have been concerned with understanding & guiding The Draconic Prophecy.

Because there is an overlord specifically geared towards corrupting them, they try to hold back while quietly manipulating things in the background by proxies. If things get bad enough for The Dragons to get involved, they might go full Vorlon & do the equivalent o solving the mouse problem in your house by dropping Tsar Bomba on your house. One of the credible possible causes for The Day of Mourning & destruction of the entire nation of Cyre is that The Last war was heading towards possibly influencing The Prophecy in negative ways if the war continued. Destroying an entire nation & most of the citizens there was a perfectly effective solution to avoiding those eventualities.

Yes she is listed as one of the gods in the Dragon's pantheon in that book, but she's not a god & got placed there in hopes that it would keep her away to turn her attention elsewhere.

Sorry I didn't see anything particularly problematic. Did you forget a paragraph or is there a part II? It seems like it needs something about how a different 5-headed dragon would be better or maybe how it would be better if the Big Evil Dragon was something other than a 5-headed dragon (obviously it needs more heads, am I right?)

 

[vpuigdoller]

I haven't heard of this, but I'd definitely like to see it myself.

I can’t find anything, starting to think I imagined it, lol.

 

[Hriston]

I think the fact that they are real is not so much the problem. It is simply that like all stuff in Eberron also the gods are different, aka game mechanically different. Whether their followers get powers from then because they believe, or because that is the property of them which is not so different to other settings does not matter in the end.

E.g. in my campaign the players already did meet gods face to face (one of them in the afterlife) and in Avatar ( a scene with Iuz (in persona because demigod) and Heironeous Avatar).
So this follows the standard expectation. But, it is not the rule that even the most virtuous cleric may ever even see as much as an avatar of his god during a whole campaign. And it is also not mandatory that the afterlife of a deceased character is played out.
So in fact in many, if not most campaigns, the gods could be as distant and mysterious as the Eberron gods and the characters in game would not even notice and also the players would not know for sure depending on the DM elaborating on this topic or not.
What I want to say is it simply does not matter, unless you are planning a planescape crossover with eberron eventually, and there the bigger problem would rather be the different planar arrangement first.

You seem to assume the gods of Eberron are real (in the setting). Is that confirmed by the setting material, or is that just your preference?

 

[Hriston]

also @dave2008

No. It is a logic consequence of the base maxime to have a twist in everything.

Just as a gold dragon might be of evil alignment in Eberron, and benevolent orc druids try to save the world you cannot simply have the standard planar arrangement.

See, some of the other gods live in these "normal" great wheel planes. But it is all fine if you do not go to the nine hells or abyss or Elysium but instead to Shavarath, Dorluh or Syrannia instead.

The standard great wheel is totally interwoven with almost all of D&D history, (the decoupling from it went wrong in 4e), so it would be more complicated to keep it instead of coming up with their own planar system and some cool names to get a distinctive difference.

It worked very well in a similar context with darksun, so they did it like that.

I think you’re answering a different question than I was. When considering why the designers decided to place Eberron within the same cosmology as other “worlds of D&D”, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to say they did it to be different.

 

[Coroc]

You seem to assume the gods of Eberron are real (in the setting). Is that confirmed by the setting material, or is that just your preference?

I do not like the idea that the spells clerics in eberron casts comes from pure belief. But as I see it Eberron is defined as that is a valid possibility. Still I also think you cannot find out whether or whether not it is that way.
If Eberron has got divine beings, eventually granting spells (I mean there is the third possibility that they are real but still the spells do not come from them, ever thought about that?), then those beings are very hard to reach directly it may be even impossible.
But all of those assumptions should not hamper the standard campaign especially not when in Eberron.
Clerics simply work fine, no matter how one sees it in or out of character. ABnd I thin kthe cleric himself believes his god is real, doesn't he?


I mean I think I read this somewhere in official material about creating your own campaign world that its totally legit to have a singular divine power giving out every clerics power, if there are evil clerics too then that might be a different aspect of the single deity.
Some people take RL religion very very serious, and they might have principles revered rather than entities no matter if fictional. But even if you are none of them, a Light vs Shadow concept might suit you well. Or some basic philosophies, like peace or hate or hope or desperation, whatever suits you. Not personified, i hope you get what I mean

 

[Coroc]

I think you’re answering a different question than I was. When considering why the designers decided to place Eberron within the same cosmology as other “worlds of D&D”, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to say they did it to be different.

Yes it does, eventually. Maybe I am wrong on their intents here, but think about it:
Take Eberron Dragons; ok the "color = alignment" - scheme is out of the regular. But what else?
Their dragons are a creator race besides being the powerful well known mob.
Now that is a different thing altogether.

Now the gods
Unlike normal D&D they do not seem to have homeplane avatar etc. But what else?
Their gods might even be nonexistent, now that is the Macguffin then why do their spells work?