Is eberron balanced?(for those who have read the book)

[pogre]

rant snipped

Pretention agh. Never get used to it.

Jason

Whoa Tex. I think Eberron falls far enough outside the D&D norm to merit the hope some of the rule variants becoming OGC. The result being lots more adventures and support materials. Otherwise, we'll see the whole thing dry up in terms of adventures and other WOTC proclaimed unprofitable ventures. I don't see that position as pretentious at all and it fits squarely with the WOTC business model.

 

[Yair]

Again, the THREE CORE RULES in 99% of their text are OGC and that isn't enough? Why does it really matter to you?

Aside from that do you expect FFG to make Midnight OGC? How about Green Ronin and Freedom City? Privateer and Iron Kingdoms? It is a freakin setting book not a new book of rules. Publishers do NOT have to make any of their new rules OGC, the product must contain 5% OGC, which CAN be derived from the SRD in toto. Why must WOTC make their products all OGC when they released the whole danged system for FREE to the WORLD? A Million dollar business FREE for publishers and fans to use as they wish... FREE, million dollar a year game... free... proven product FREE.

Pretention agh. Never get used to it.

Jason

FFG did make all the new RULES regarding Midnight OGC (they almost have to, given the OGL, unless they really want to cripple the OGC declaration). I am not familiar with the other products, but I strongly suspect any new rules are OGC too, and probably at least some of the flavor. If I am not mistaken Freeport is ENTIRELY OGC, including the flavor text.

While I also want to support OGC (which is part of the reason I don't like buying from some companies), I won't limit myself to OGC content only. OGC content is just one more 'plus' a book can have; if the book is good enough I will purchase it even with little or no OGC.
Why, I even purchase non-OGL products. Really! Totally different game systems!

WotC made a huge contribution to OGC and is what basically keeps it afloat. Purchasing any product from it is supporting OGC (though especially products containing OGC, of course).
WotC is also the ONLY company to regularly produce quality SRDs of OGC-only content. (Probably because it is the only company that can afford to.) The core books, psionics, deities and demigods, the epic level handbook.... and more to come, probably. If that doesn't support OGC, what does?!

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I think that it appears to be fairly well balanced in game.

Among the many things that keep it that way are two very nice, IMO, assumptions:

That High Level characters are a high priority target

and that High Level characters have a good motivation to be cautious, particularly towards each other.

In the Medusa town example mentioned above, for instance, the Medusas are kept in check by the following factors:

1.) They appear to be in no hurry

2.) The town they occupy is filled with horrid horrid things and potentially delightful treasure. If they can take that town that's kingdom enough, and doing that seems to be taking all of their energy.

3.) There are hordes of nasty militant humanoids surrounding them and they appear to be backed up, at least in their hatred of the medusas, by a variety of high level things.

4.) They move too fast and they get really nasty friction from the local hag tyrants and the church of the silver flame. On the other hand neither group seems eager to make that move preemptively. The way they're developing the conflict between the hags and the stone queen strikes me as very very choice.

One of the best world balance decisions I think this setting made is that like things have set interest in backing each other up against common threats. Orc tribes are one of the most effective world defenders against common threats from nasty abberrations. Together with a the church of the silver flame and a 20 level awakened tree druid.

Loves it loves it loves it.

On the character level I don't know that I know enough about the dragonmarks to comment, but I am very suspicious of someone putting together some particularly abusive builds of the artificer.

Not that those don't exist for everything else...

 

[Tzarevitch]

It's that way for a reason. The reason being that religion in Eberron is a matter of faith. It isn't really spelled out for you, least not where I've seen it, but there is a possibility that divine magic doesn't come from the gods at all, but from having faith itself. What you have faith in is irrelevant.

With the presense of godless clerics, one has to ask where they get their power. It comes from the faith they have in an idea or concept. If someone truely worships fire, and has faith in the fire, they will be able to cast from the Fire domain.

Likewise, if you have true faith in a god, you'll eventually be able to gain spells from the domains associated with that god.

From what I understand, the gods are not an active on Eberron. They are very alien. The gods don't grant you spells because you have faith in them. You get spells from some mysterious divine essense (Eberron itself?) simply because you have strong faith in something. It may be a god, or it may be anything else.

Which makes you wonder..... if spells don't come from the gods, do the gods even exist at all? Which leads us back to the very nature of faith.

I think you misread. The gods DO grant spells to their faithful. They just don't separate faithful from non-faithful based on alignment. SOME clerics are able to gain spells from their faith in an abstract concept such as good or evil.

By the way gaining spells from following a concept is not new, druids have done it almost since the beginning of AD&D. Plenty of druids worship "nature" as a concept. If you have an issue with gaining spells from a mere concept like I do, the simplest way to handle it is to assume that there is a personification behind the concept.

Tzarevitch

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I think you misread. The gods DO grant spells to their faithful. They just don't separate faithful from non-faithful based on alignment. SOME clerics are able to gain spells from their faith in an abstract concept such as good or evil.

By the way gaining spells from following a concept is not new, druids have done it almost since the beginning of AD&D. Plenty of druids worship "nature" as a concept. If you have an issue with gaining spells from a mere concept like I do, the simplest way to handle it is to assume that there is a personification behind the concept.

Tzarevitch

I think you missed my point. Worshippers of gods, let's use the Silver Flame as an example, can obviously get spells from their faith in the Flame.

But the point I was making is: Do the spells come from the Flame, or do they com from having faith itself?

If it truelly comes from the Flame, and divine magic must come from gods, how do we have godless clerics? You could say some god decided to "sponsor" them, but that feels clumsy to me. Why would a god grant spells to a pretend worshipper who is actually working to hurt the church?

If simply having enough faith in anything grants you spells, it works out nicelly. The gods aren't like the FR or Greyhawk gods. They aren't portrayed as super powerful mortals. They are very different, almost alien in concept, and they don't take an active role in the world.

So, at least in my campaign, if a cleric wants to worship the Flame, he gets spells. But what he doesn't know is, the spells don't come from the Flame itself, but from his faith in the Flame. The Flame is his paradigm, it determines his domains, but because of the concept, not because the Flame activly only grants certain domains.

Why does having true faith grant you spells? It comes from the same source as druid magic. Eberron.

 

[Henry]

Hi, everyone! Just thought I'd pop in.

 

[Nilhgualcm Leahcim]

This rule actually makes me very happy. It allows for corrupt clerical bureaucrats within religions. You can have evil bishops who are more interested in their own power then doing the good deeds of their religion. In standard D&D it is difficult to do this in a good religion without making the evil bishop worship an evil god.

OOOO! Finally, something I've been wanting to do for years, and didn't like the logistics of pulling it off. Awesome. I can't wait for my book to get here!

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

My point about the Good ruling NPC's is this. There is a town ruled by many meduses and they have gorgans and other petirifing creatures and in twoo years all they have is one town. Who has stoped them? There is 1,000 of high lvl evil creatures that are intelligent but who has stoped them? To me if a dm is running the world and not just running a game for the players, then evil will have already won. High lvl npc are a necestiy of a real world. They help keep the peace when a pc can not do it and in a wrld of millions you need them,

In the history of Eberron, anytime large invasions start, whole nations intervene. The fiends in the Age of Demons were overthrown by dragons and couatls. The couatls sacrifice many of their number to banish the demons.

In the Age of Giants, the quori invade the giant kingdoms. The dragons and giants band together to banish them, but destroy the giant civilization in the process.

So if the medusa rise up, the rest of Eberron may take them down. Which is how Eberron survives. Heroes might prevent the medusa from rising up at all, however, which is better than having a huge war to stop them.

In our world, nations don't nuke each other because nations want to survive. In the same way, the medusa won't start a war they don't think they can win.

There was a 102 year war and a hero of the war a famous vet of the war is 5 lvl's.

Most heroes in wars are normal people. A farmer who stopped Nazi aggression goes back to his farm after the war ends. He might not be a world adventurer, but he didn't need to be to fight against evil.

and where do th magic items and the warforged come from if the highest level mage i saw in the book was 9th lvl? The more and moe i read the book, the more i think they did not think about everything. There is a train that goes all over the map. How made that for to make a elemmental train i would say you have to be about 20th level and then it goes almost every where. These are the problems i have as balance.

Powerful magic items come from the shards that come from three godlike dragons. Again, society creates the most powerful items.

In the modern world, we can send people to the moon if a nation works together to do so. We don't need one all rich, all powerful scientist to do so.

 

[teitan]

My point is though that GAMERS shouldn't be concerned with OGC this and OGC that. Yes it is nice but how does it affect us in the big picture? Very little because we can use ALL OF IT however we want to use it! If I want to port Dragonmarks to a Realms game, NOTHING can stop me. If I want Shifters in my Greyhawk, who can say NO! Nobody because it is my game. I could give one lick about the OGL and OGC. It is a great thing, if you are a publisher... but I find most people who complain about WOTC not OGCing all their rules to be ticked because they can't get the product for free... funk that noise.

Jason

 

[allenw]

In fact, one line in the book reads something like this: "You are as likely to encounter a good red dragon as an evil gold dragon."

Isn't that true for most gameworlds? It's just that "as likely" usually equals "almost never." I take it that Eberron ups the likelyhood?