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

[spigadang]

The balance i am talking about is in game. Another problem i have is now clerics can be of any alignment. example a lg god with a ce priest, no loss of spells. But a pladadin must still be LG.

 

[spigadang]

that is strange

 

[Brisk-sg]

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, and where do th magic items and the warforged come from if the highest level mage i saw in the book was 9th lvl?

I view PCs (adventurers) as having a high concentration of power. It might only take one PC to do something that would take 10 or more soldiers/adepts/ect to accomplish otherwise. Just because there are not many high-level characters detailed in the book does not mean there is no potential countermeasure against evil in the world. While a group of high level PCs can take care of many situations, so can larger but more mundane groups of lesser leveled individuals (such as armies, knighthoods, ect). The same can be said of creating the warforged and other wonders. An industrial manufacturing process relies on many individuals instead of one individual to complete.

From a rules standpoint, industrial manufacturing has never really been covered for mundane or magical items. All of the current item creation rules assume one powerful individual creating the item. The lightning rail was not the work of one wizard; it was the work of three houses (House Orien, House Cannith, and House Zilargo). In my opinion it is more realistic for a large scale collaboration then for one wizard to build such devices. I wish there were mechanics to represent large scale building in d20 however.

I think we just have different tastes in campaigns. I prefer campaigns with a lower average level for NPCs, while you have a taste for campaigns with very high level NPCs.

 

[I'm A Banana]

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

Y'know who's stoppin' them? The PC's, that's who.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

The balance i am talking about is in game. Another problem i have is now clerics can be of any alignment. example a lg god with a ce priest, no loss of spells. But a pladadin must still be LG.

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.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm not sure why anyone would want Eberron to be the Forgotten Realms. The Forgotten Realms are already the best at being the Forgotten Realms.

There's no reason to expect that the people who survived the Last War would be the highest level participants -- said high level folks would be primary targets, more than anything else. Likewise, as has been stated, an army can take down any individual, no matter how high level. There's no reason the world needs high level characters to keep them in check.

More importantly, Eberron isn't SimD&D. The world exists as a construct to enable good games. This isn't meant to be a standalone setting that runs even when no one's playing it. (We're getting into funky Grant Morrison territory here.) What's fun is more important than what is allegedly balanced (and I stress the "allegedly"). Lots of folks find the presence of high level NPCs who can easily dominate play to be a big turn-off. The notion that they're always busy saving the world doesn't make things better -- if the world is threatened five different ways every day, it's terribly implausible that it would have survived any length of time, since the forces of good would just have to fail ONCE. It's certainly less plausible than a world without characters as tough as Superman flouncing around.

 

[Brisk-sg]

The balance i am talking about is in game. Another problem i have is now clerics can be of any alignment. example a lg god with a ce priest, no loss of spells. But a pladadin must still be LG.

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.

 

[teitan]

1: No idea. I won't buy Eberron until they OGC at least the new rules it contains, and maybe not even then.

2: Care to extrapolate on what you mean?

What, the PHB, DMG and MM aren't enough? Are you a gaming publisher? If not, OGC should not matter one wit to you...

Jason

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

What, the PHB, DMG and MM aren't enough? Are you a gaming publisher? If not, OGC should not matter one wit to you...

Jason

It matters to me, half on principle and half on practicality. In principle, I think the OGL has been good for the hobby, and to whatever extent I'm able, I'd like to exert pressure to keep its spirit alive. In practice, if it isn't OGC, you're less likely to see third-party support for it, and that makes me less inclined to buy it.

 

[teitan]

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