Still more crunch! - Eberron vs. FR

[klofft]

OK. I'm looking to add still more kitchen sinks to my homebrew. I'm pretty much addicted to crunch (even as a DM) because I find that crunch inspires new ideas for my world.

So, toward that end, I had started a thread asking for the ONE FR book that provided the most crunch. I got a lot of great responses. For me, the Player's Guide won out, but the real problem was that all those great suggestions made me do lots of research, with a result of me looking seriously at picking up MANY FR books, just for the 1/4 to 1/3 crunch the texts may contain (and perhaps an idea here or there from the setting itself).

So now I'm turning my sights on Eberron, with a few related questions for the fans and detractors alike. In my early research, it appears that Eberron books in general are much lighter on the crunch when compared to FR books. Is this the case? And, given that, which book or books so far in that series have the most crunch to them? (I should mention that I already own Races of Eberron and have had no problem re-imagining the material for my world.)

Thanks!
C

 

[ValhallaGH]

The campaign setting is loaded with crunch, including rules on binding elementals and what effects those can have. The Artificer does a lot for inspiring his own flavor, as do the Magewright and the assorted creature templates. (Mmmm. Living Spells. *drools*)
I don't own Magic of Eberron, and I've heard lots of mixed things about it, but I know that it is loaded with crunch.
Most of the Eberron books are crunch-lite but what they have is very flavorful and inspiring (and usually easy to convert). Examples include the Explorer's Handbook and Sharn: City of Towers (which is great for any large city, especially the Lich in undersharn) which come with lots of prestige classes, magical trinkets and applications for new and existing magics in the setting. All such applications either port or translate to most other settings.

If you like lots of crunch then you may want to pick up a copy of Iron Heroes ($14 in pdf form) which is loaded with inspiring crunchy-goodness for skills, feats and general combat options. Most of the mechanics in it are stuff that I have been ad-hoc ruling for years, but these are codified (and therefore consistant) and playtested making them much more balanced than what I was pulling out of my pocket. These cruchy pieces are very generic and may not inspire much setting material; on the other hand you may decide that you absolutely must have a religious cult that leaps out of shadowy ceilings, hamstrings their targets, and spend the rest of the encounter rolling behind their targets and stabbing them with punching daggers.