D&D 5E New Eberron Book Details From WotC

WotC’s Jeremy Crawford appeared on Twitch last night with Bart Carroll, discussing the upcoming D&D setting book Eberron: Rising from the Last War. Lots of details within!

- Overview of Eberron, emphasized potentials for adventure and post-WWI pulp style of setting.

- Dragonmarked Houses as fantasy Corporations, playable Dragonmarked characters as race rules in the book

- Rules and stories for playing, Warforged, Changlings, Kalsthar, Shifters, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Orcs. Playable Orc is different fro mthe Volo's Guide rules to reflect the different story (no intelligence malus, few other tweaks, still usable for other worlds, these are PC Orcs as opposed to Monster Manual Orcs like Volo's).

- Full rules for the Artificer, including a new feature in this book for making Common and Uncommon magic items

- Aberrant Dragonmark Feats are in the book

- Group patron rules for organizations the late 19th-early 20th century style: newspapers, criminal syndicates, universities, spy rings: fourth choice after Race-Class-Background that the party makes together, has new fluff background features to give characters and adventure hooks

- Possibility of the party becoming their own patron, example being creating your own Crime Syndicate

- All of the above is Chapter 1 material

- Chapter 2 is a Gazeeter of Korvaire and the world: delves into great nations, the religions, touches on otehr continents

- Chapter 3 is a zoom in on Sharn, a microcosm of the setting, great place for Noir intrigue

- Chapter 4 is a 100 page adventure creation toolkit comparable to Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica: wealth of adventure building tables, maps, organization information, first level adventure set in Sharn. Reveals brand new information about the Mournland, for instance, during the war they created not just regular Warforged and Warforged Titans but also Warforged Colossi the size of skyscrapers: one of the maps is of a fallen Warfored Colossi as a dungeon @doctorbadwolf

- Section in "massive" chapter for creating adventures about Eberron's cosmology, and how it relates to Great Wheel multiverse, left to DM to decide how sealed off Eberron is by the Progenitor Dragons

- There are extended magical item economy rules in chapter 5, Common magical items are plentiful: buying, selling, crafting rules and price lists.

- Eberron specific monsters and NPCs in the sixth and final chapter, covering things like Daelkyr, Living Spells (3 different Living Spells in the book including Living Cloud Kill, and a template for making more) and various specific NPCs

Twitch

Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.

www.twitch.tv

 

[R_J_K75]

Consider this: the pure Gazeeter section about Baldur's Gate n the next book is 50 pages long.

That's 50 pages for one city state, on a giant coast filed with city states. I think it is safe to bet that the next AP will highlight some section of the Realms in a similar manner: I'm guessing Icewind Dale.

Id rather they do a Shadowdale/Moonsea story arc. In "the Twisted Tower of Ashaba" adventure my buddy put the "pulsating spider sac" in his backpack, only to have it hatch about a half hour later. The dales were great to adventure in.

I do miss the old TSR days when theyd publish a book or two a month. Id love to see a book on Sembia or Nimbral.

 

[R_J_K75]

I think one thing that newer players have is a feeling of freedom in genre. A lot of streams eschew the purely medieval fantasy themes of D&D and freely mix in anachronisms, supertech and other weird fantasy elements. Ironically, these were all present at the dawn of the hobby but were kind of suppressed in official D&D products for a long time, or at least sequestered in their own settings. In this way, I think Eberron is actually a better introduction to D&D than Forgotten Realms. It would be very cool to see an Eberron Starter Set, or a Planejammer* starter set when the time comes.

*I still think they are going to mash these into one setting.

I agree with the Planejammer statement, it just makes sense because any conversation about the planes would be moot without including crystal spheres and the phlogiston.

 

[Reynard]

I agree with the Planejammer statement, it just makes sense because any conversation about the planes would be moot without including crystal spheres and the phlogiston.

I wouldn't say that. Rather 'jamming through the Astral and out into the wider multiverse makes a lot more sense that the crystal sphere nonsense. It opens up options as well as maintaining the ability to fly between campaign settings.

 

[Parmandur]

I wouldn't say that. Rather 'jamming through the Astral and out into the wider multiverse makes a lot more sense that the crystal sphere nonsense. It opens up options as well as maintaining the ability to fly between campaign settings.

The Crystal Spheres are already canonical in 5E.

 

[Yaarel]

@Parmandur

Great synopsis of material covered.

The previews make more excited about the Eberron setting.

I always considered the terms ‘pulp fiction’ and ‘noir’ to be vague. I appreciate how the setting book will go into detail, anchoring the genre in its reallife historical context.

Specific reallife details of corporations, universities, newspapers, crime syndicates, and spy rings, really help me concretize the setting and its adventure possibilities my imagination.

 

[Reynard]

The Crystal Spheres are already canonical in 5E.

They are still nonsense.

 

[Bolares]

Canonical Nonsense.... is it a Whoopi Goldberg movie?

 

[Parmandur]

They are still nonsense.

But it means they are not getting rid of them.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

They are still nonsense.

Maybe to you, but it's pretty similar to some theories held by ancient scientists on how the solar system worked. After all, the idea of every world belonging in a "sphere" isn't too different than how the gravity of the sun creates a "sphere" around it, though not a physical/tangible/visible one.

 

[Reynard]

Maybe to you, but it's pretty similar to some theories held by ancient scientists on how the solar system worked. After all, the idea of every world belonging in a "sphere" isn't too different than how the gravity of the sun creates a "sphere" around it, though not a physical/tangible/visible one.

Yes, yes, ancient natural philosophers who only had access to direct observations thought up the idea to try and explain what they observed. It's still nonsense and kind of dumb and an Astral Plane = Space campaign setting would be millions of times better.