Have you been disillusioned by Eberron?

[Starman]

D'oh! And now anyone who takes insult at being called childish is a fanboy! The insults never stop!

Fanboys are soooo anime.

 

[Glyfair]

I'm not familiar with the Ask Keith Baker thread. Could you point me to it?

There have been 3 so far (the first two being closed do to length). The best resources is the Ask Keith Baker FAQ which are the previous posts stripped to just questions and answers. The other is the current thread.

 

[Henry]

A) Eberron is inconsistent. Eberron is suffering from power creep, it requires careful coordination of all of the book material and the Keith Baker-provided information in order to do it "properly," it is terrible at providing context for other WotC books, its setting elements are jarring and do not fit properly together; thus, Eberron is inconsistent.

That would I won't agree with... yet. However, Races of Eberron and Five Nations do push the bar up a little bit from where ECS set it, as several people on the WotC forums have noted. I hope that the designers are still paying attention to more of the core tenets of the world, because while I can get behind high level NPC aristocrats, experts, adepts, etc. Any friendly NPC with PC classes over 10th or 11th level, I tend to discount.

2) Eberron is not real D&D. Eberron contains robots, it includes psionics, it violates the notion of definite alignment, it violates the notion of very present deities granting spells, it violates the idea of segregated races, and other such sacred cows; thus, Eberron is not D&D.

For this one, remember that peoples' definitions of "D&D" differ greatly. For those who assert these, they probably mean, "Eberron is not real (pre-3rd edition) D&D." Because as Joshua noted, all of the tenets (prevalent low-level magic, distant deities, descriptive alignments, etc.) all stem directly from the 3E PHB -- if someone chooses not to follow them and stick with precedents that predate 3E, that's cool, but asserting they're not D&D implies more they aren't "the spirit of D&D from early days till recently" instead of "they aren't D&D as described in the recent books" which Eberron MOST CERTAINLY is.

 

[Henry]

However, they are also robots. A robot is a construct.

Bah, a robot is a Czech serf, get it right!

 

[diaglo]

I used to looooooong ago before the days of Eric Noah's site. Nowadays, I avoid that fanboy pit of elitism like the plague.

i still go there. just like i did here. and a dozen or so other sites.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I quit going there after I realized that I wasn't getting nearly the level of conversation that I am here. Too much bickering and flaming for my tastes. ENWorld beats the WotC boards hands down.

Kane

 

[Teemu]

Is it plausible to suggest that the nations of Khorvaire ignored a possible weapon for use against their enemies in the Last War like psionics? If psionics exists in Khorvaire, which the core book suggests it does, then why wasn't there a psionics arms-race to exploit this "hidden" or "secret" weapon? It's because the handling of psionics was bungled, hamstrung by the concerns that mainstream D&D players hate psionics.

Psionic activity in Khorvaire is very limited. The only real practitioners of the power are the few kalashtar and inspired communities, mainly in Sharn and Q’Barra, respectively. There are the individual ‘wild talents’ among the common races, but they are still very rare. Outside the Quori-related people, the most likely places you could find psionics are the various Cults of the Dragon below, because of their connection to Xoriat and Khyber, the places where mind flayers, among other things, come from. It’s entirely plausible that the forces of Khorvaire haven’t tapped into these strange powers. They have (arcane) magic, for Aureon’s sake! Plus, there simply are no psionic traditions among the cultures, no major contact with psionic-using forces.

Yes, the metagame reasons have affected the treatment of psionics in Eberron, of course. But if you do want to use them, there are existing reasons for their existence, reasons for why they’re being used where they are. The Dreaming Dark make excellent villains, those bad guys with mysterious powers that don’t seem to make any sense at first. The Cults of the Dragon Below are extremely diverse, and tying psionics to them is very easy.

 

[The_Gneech]

Bah, a robot is a Czech serf, get it right!

Feh! And furthermore, harumph!

-TG

 

[Desdichado]

Dangfraggit, a golem is a magic robot! Warforged are droids with variation.

There's nothing wrong with that. I like the warforged, they're nifty.

However, they are also robots. A robot is a construct.

Sheesh.

Well, yeah, but that misses the point. Those who complain about "robots" in Eberron tend to think of robots and their science fiction incarnation--i.e., mechanical and electrical with an AI for a brain instead of a magically animated creature with an actual soul.

I said I could see the point of the criticism because in play there's very little difference between the two in many ways, but the background of the two is completely different, and the background of the warforged--in a game that commonly features golems, shield guardians, the magic jar spell, and other elements that all add up just one step away from warforged--works very well in the D&D milieu, IMO. I think the complaints that they're just "robots" completely misses the point.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Dangfraggit, a golem is a magic robot! Warforged are droids with variation.

There's nothing wrong with that. I like the warforged, they're nifty.

However, they are also robots. A robot is a construct.

Sheesh.

-The Gneech

I am just glad my players have not started to think sex-bots