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

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[doctorbadwolf]

If you don't like it, that's fine, don't use it in your game. I like it, and use it: for goodness sake can people's tastes around here stop being discounted and mocked?

Your taste isn’t being mocked. Bad writing is being mocked.

I like the first DnD movie. I don’t get offended when people mock it, because they aren’t mocking me, they’re mocking a poorly produced movie.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

And similarly, 5E "clarifies" that they descend from Corellon. Same difference.

That’s a retcon, not a clarification. The 4e change is additive. It doesn’t contradict anything.

The 5e change explicitly contradicts previous lore. For no good reason. Literally, Eberron would still be part of the “metasetting” if they left it in its proper state as a separate universe. Because that’s what a multiverse actually is.

 

[Parmandur]

Some writing might not be to everyone's tastes: doesn't mean everybody agrees, and certainly is no excuse for mockery and disparagement.

 

[Bolares]

That was changed with 4E. And in 5E, that is extended to them being related to the other Elves of the Material Plane.

From 4e's EPG:

"[...] At other times, leaving the feyspires was not a choice, such as when giants conquered Shae Tirias Tolai, the City of Silver and Bone. That feyspire appeared in the wilds of Xen'drik, and giants seized the opportunity to attack and take the population of Shae Tirias Tolai into captivity. The race of elves descended from these displaced eladrin."

So both in 3e and 4e the elves were created in the material plane, and looking in the onlysemi-official 5e book I didn't find where elves were created, so to me its hard to affirm that they were not created in the material plane.
The only5e source I found that may be interpreted that in a way that affirms that Eberron's elves are related to Corellon is the text I quoted from MToF, and I've already explained why I don't believe that text is applicable in Eberron.

I've never seen a setting lore be inplicitly retconned...

 

[Parmandur]

From 4e's EPG:

"[...] At other times, leaving the feyspires was not a choice, such as when giants conquered Shae Tirias Tolai, the City of Silver and Bone. That feyspire appeared in the wilds of Xen'drik, and giants seized the opportunity to attack and take the population of Shae Tirias Tolai into captivity. The race of elves descended from these displaced eladrin."

So both in 3e and 4e the elves were created in the material plane, and looking in the onlysemi-official 5e book I didn't find where elves were created, so to me its hard to affirm that they were not created in the material plane.
The only5e source I found that may be interpreted that in a way that affirms that Eberron's elves are related to Corellon is the text I quoted from MToF, and I've already explained why I don't believe that text is applicable in Eberron.

I've never seen a setting lore be inplicitly retconned...

What does the Wayfinders Guide say, or the new book?

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Still, the point is they came from outside. Originally, from Corellon. Corellon isn't neccesarily aware of Eberron, anymore than Eberron Elves are aware of him, but 5E Elves are his children.

That doesn't work. They're not from "outside". The Progenitor Wyrms created the 13 Planes of Eberron along with Eberron itself.

 

[Parmandur]

That doesn't work. They're not from "outside". The Progenitor Wyrms created the 13 Planes of Eberron along with Eberron itself.

What did they create the Planes from?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That doesn't work. They're not from "outside". The Progenitor Wyrms created the 13 Planes of Eberron along with Eberron itself.

Exactly. The whole “the elves of Eberron just forgot where they come from” is just the statement of a clueless tourist (Mordenkainen), based on lazy assumptions. The elves of Eberron have no tie whatsoever to Corellon.

 

[R_J_K75]

It is not the same. Specifically in this case, it is “like” a crystal sphere in that it demarcates the boundary between Eberron and the larger multiverse, and that's about it.

It certainly is not actually a crystal sphere. If Eberron has one of those, the Ring of Syberis is contained within that sphere.

Thats what I got from watching that video too. WotC has made this both confusing, and contradictory to how wildspace works if the Ring of Syberis is "like" a crystal sphere. If Eberron has no crystal sphere wouldnt it just float in the phlogiston, what if someone lights a match, would the whole world go KA-BOOM? Im sure this will all be more clear when the book comes out.

 

[Bolares]

I'm not confortable with calling this stuff garbage or stating that it should be mocked, but it's hard for me to believe that text should be read as an all encompassing dogma, because it not only contradicts every piece of lore from the setting and the way the same designers handle mentions and additions to Eberron's lore. To me that's a statement that refers to Forgotten Realms, as most of 5e does. They always state when somethingrelates to every setting, so why wouldn't they do that here. To me there are only two ways to see this. Or it's not about eberron or the designers didn't remember eberron while writting that.