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]

"every home game is their own,"

I've long since stopped following FR canon or the timeline. My players dont care and its really allowed me to do alot of fun stuff. For instance, all the uber-powerful NPCs no longer exist and Waterdeep is now LE ruled by a single tyrant. Id say I made Waterdeep my own.

Im seriously considering running an Eberron campaign once my current game finishes. My players have a spelljamming helm and will travel. This new iteration has me excited to see what they do with the setting in 5E.

 

[Arnwolf666]

I looked at Eberron cosmology and saw it as just a renaming of planes with a different metaphorical structure. I also always looked at all history as just the authors perspective or research that may or may not be correct. I liked the ending of a forgotten realms novel I once read where khelben blackstaff said he wrote books that were wrong deliberately to just confuse people of what really happened. I like regional perspectives.

 

[Reynard]

I looked at Eberron cosmology and saw it as just a renaming of planes with a different metaphorical structure. I also always looked at all history as just the authors perspective or research that may or may not be correct. I liked the ending of a forgotten realms novel I once read where khelben blackstaff said he wrote books that were wrong deliberately to just confuse people of what really happened. I like regional perspectives.

I would suggest that your "looking at" those things wasn't actually "reading and absorbing" those things. This isn't unique to Eberron by any stretch, but the setting was conceived with particular goals in mind and so things like the history and cosmology and the "physics" of the setting were designed specifically to support those goals without concern about what the wider D&D worlds looked like. Saying that the planes are just renamed Great Wheel planes only serves to show you weren't paying attention.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I looked at Eberron cosmology and saw it as just a renaming of planes with a different metaphorical structure. I also always looked at all history as just the authors perspective or research that may or may not be correct. I liked the ending of a forgotten realms novel I once read where khelben blackstaff said he wrote books that were wrong deliberately to just confuse people of what really happened. I like regional perspectives.

That’s fine if you get good inspiration from that, but it doesn’t reflect the setting at all.

The planes of Eberron are not the planes of Abeir-Toril, by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[R_J_K75]

Saying that the planes are just renamed Great Wheel planes only serves to show you weren't paying attention.

Honestly pretty easy not to make the connection, I didnt until someone mentioned it here. I wanted to play in Eberron/Khorvaire back when the new setting came out and wasnt concerned about the cosmology because I had no intention of taking the game outside of the continent. so, I too kind of glossed over that chapter too. Looking at it from the an inhabitant of that material plane I would guess a very small segment of the population would have anymore than a rudimentary understanding of the cosmology. That knowledge probably only common to scholars, and even then those who research such subjects.

 

[Ash Mantle]

Speaking of Eberron's cosmology, Keith Baker has a new personal project coming out (initially named as Project Raptor), called Exploring Eberron.

https://manifest.zone/kb-presents-project-raptor/

He'll be delving into the planes of Eberron (and its unique set up), as well as into topics which he personally finds interesting, that'll be the faiths of Eberron, as well as the oceans of Eberron and what lies beneath them. Other details'll likely come out closer to the product's publication date.

Apparently this comes out in December on DMsGuild. It'll probably be an excellent companion to Eberron: Rising from the Last War.

 

[darjr]

Keith Baker said that in fact it is supposed to compliment that book. He’s written most of both of em.

 

[Reynard]

Honestly pretty easy not to make the connection, I didnt until someone mentioned it here. I wanted to play in Eberron/Khorvaire back when the new setting came out and wasnt concerned about the cosmology because I had no intention of taking the game outside of the continent. so, I too kind of glossed over that chapter too. Looking at it from the an inhabitant of that material plane I would guess a very small segment of the population would have anymore than a rudimentary understanding of the cosmology. That knowledge probably only common to scholars, and even then those who research such subjects.

Specific knowledge sure but people wouldn't say the elemental plane of fire, they would say Fernia. They wouldn't say The Feywild, they would say Thelanis. The folklore and literature would reflect the specifics of their cosmology in the same way the Westerners on earth have told stories about Purgatory and about meeting the devil at a crossroads. These details make a world feel real and unique. A GM should at least be familiar with them even if they aren't planning on planehopping.

 

[R_J_K75]

These details make a world feel real and unique. A GM should at least be familiar with them even if they aren't planning on planehopping.

I agree that the small details are sometimes what make a setting unique, other times including them adds nothing. It all depends on what type of game you as a DM wish to run and what your players want out of it. Therefore what I and my players consider details worth including may not be what the next DM or players would. Ive run games where I included "unnecessary" details to try and give the world a sense of "realness" only for my players tell me they werent interested and just wanted to get on with the adventure at hand. From there I learned to prep for whats relevant to my upcoming game rather than some obscure question that may or may not be asked. Even if a player does ask me a question chances are they dont know the answer and will believe whatever I tell them. That comes from knowing what type of players Im running the game for.

 

[Reynard]

I agree that the small details are sometimes what make a setting unique, other times including them adds nothing. It all depends on what type of game you as a DM wish to run and what your players want out of it. Therefore what I and my players consider details worth including may not be what the next DM or players would. Ive run games where I included "unnecessary" details to try and give the world a sense of "realness" only for my players tell me they werent interested and just wanted to get on with the adventure at hand. From there I learned to prep for whats relevant to my upcoming game rather than some obscure question that may or may not be asked. Even if a player does ask me a question chances are they dont know the answer and will believe whatever I tell them. That comes from knowing what type of players Im running the game for.

That's not really my point. My point is even when the players don't care about the difference, the NPCs should be saying "Thank the Silver Flame!" instead of "Thank Mystra" or whatever, and when that demon crawls out of the Pit it should not be crawling out of the Nine Hells. The lore built into a world has value even if it is entirely tertiary to smashing monsters in the face and looting the corpses.