D&D 5E That Eberron Cover Is Just A Placeholder

According to WotC's Jeremy Crawford, Ben Oliver's cover for Eberron: Rising from the Last War on Amazon and WotC's website is an interior illustration serving as a placeholder.

Crawford added that "That warforged has customized itself in unusual ways. Each warforged can alter how it looks. That said, the book has plenty of traditional-looking warforged." There's more to the art, as you can see in the banner across the top of WotC's webpage. I rather like it.

Ben Oliver is credited as the cover artist in WotC's product page; his cover art will presumably be revealed soon, as the book is only three months away.

Ben Oliver was the artist who illustrated the covers of Tomb of Annihilation and Curse of Strahd.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

It's not a bad piece of art by any means, it just completely fails in the context of being a cover for an Eberron setting book. Apart from the Warforged it gives no hint of what's unique about Eberron, nothing to entice anyone to want to learn about the setting.

On the other hand, the limited edition cover is spot on!

 

[Reynard]

I'm probably the only one that feels the special edition cover is too Steampunk. To me Eberron is post WW1 fantasy noir and pulp adventure, with the technomagical accoutrements necessary to support those genres. The original campaign setting had relatively little Steampunk aesthetic and it has slowly grown since then.

 

[Plamodu978]

oh......HellYea

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm probably the only one that feels the special edition cover is too Steampunk. To me Eberron is post WW1 fantasy noir and pulp adventure, with the technomagical accoutrements necessary to support those genres. The original campaign setting had relatively little Steampunk aesthetic and it has slowly grown since then.

I don't see anything specifically steampunk. No steam engines, smoking chimneys, or unnecessary pressure indicator needles.

It is rather reminiscent of Flash Gordon (C1934) though.

Art Deco basically.

 

[SMHWorlds]

I like the cover. I feel that just simply saying that will make me a ton of enemies, but it seemed to be interesting enough. TBH I am not a fan of the current art styles employed across the 5E brand. The individual pieces are fine and the artists are hella talented. But the aesthetic is bland and uninteresting. This one was okay, genuinely liked it.

 

[Nicholas B. Carter]

Does the woman on the cover look like Angelina Jolie to anyone else? I am super surprised that I haven't seen anyone else saying this!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Does the woman on the cover look like Angelina Jolie to anyone else? I am super surprised that I haven't seen anyone else saying this!

It's been mentioned before. It's not unusual for artists to make use of reference photos when creating portraits of fictional characters. Neverwinter Nights (original not the MMO) got into trouble over it's portraits looking too much like real people and had to change them.