Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana is Here - and it's all about EBERRON!

Pretty awesome that this series has started

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/unearthed-arcana-eberron

Will Greyhawk or Dragonlance be next??

Probably Dragonlance. Does Greyhawk have any particular crunchy player bits that aren't covered by the PHB already?

 

[Gradine]

This is part of why I've toyed around with the idea that they are magic items. It cleaves closer to the fiction, allowing the player to experience the narrative the same way the character does. Not without its problems, but I can certainly see the value in it.

I remember reading this idea in one of the older threads, and it first gave me the idea that they could be handled by the DM. Then the DMG came out and I really enjoyed the section on Blessings, Charms and Boons, and the idea just clicked.

 

[MarkB]

One variant I was thinking of playing with for more powerful, evolving aberrant dragonmarks: If you take an aberrant mark, you gain each rank of dragonmark power one level sooner than for normal dragonmarks, but instead of choosing a spell, you roll randomly on the list of spells at each rank.

 

[fuindordm]

Ahem. Can I just say... NAILED IT!
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?363786-Artificer-(Wizard-Subclass)
I tried to make that subclass before knowing the item creation rules. Time to think about v2...

Anyway, regarding WotC's artificer:

Giving them a version of brew potion is a good way to give them some healing role without drastically changing the spell list. It's also a good way of letting them sneak past the concentration limit. But do all artificers need to be brewers/alchemists?

Still no wand support. My version used the arcane recovery to charge wands and give the class an option for enhancing wand spells by taking more charges. Using those slots to create temporary scrolls is a good move too.

But when we think about all the abilities an artificer *should* have, not even counting medium fighting competence, the whole thing starts to feel too heavy for a subclass. I hope they're also thinking about designing a new class from the ground up.

 

[Uchawi]

They have a conundrum to deal with in reference to feats. How do you deliver content, when they are optional? It makes more sense to treat dragonmarks like defiling in dark sun, or wizards/moons in krynn, where it is a background choice to gain entry. I also think dragonmarks should be a new type of rune magic, but I am not sure if that goes against canon. If they can be treated as rune magic, then any spells gained can not be used as additional spell slots for a caster. However, if a caster decides to learn rune magic (another flavor/background choice) then they can be viewed as additional slots. The downside is the casters body is covered in ruins, and some may view that in a negative fashion.

But what I really don't like, is any way to offer new ability to martial classes, that is similar to spells. It appears these supplements will offer all classes content via backgrounds, feats or magic items, or exclusive content to spell casters via spells.

 

[Paraxis]

I am in the camp that doesn't like the idea of using feats for Dragonmarks in this edition, for the reasons others have mentioned such as non-human variants can not start off at level 1 with one and how some campaigns just don't use optional feat rules.

My proposed change would be either to make the choice of having a dragonmark take up an attunement slot so dragonmarked characters could only attune two magic items, or to increase the effectiveness or amount of action points for non-dragonmarked characters. For example those characters who don't choose to be from a dragonmarked house roll d8's for action points or get an extra 2 per level.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

They have a conundrum to deal with in reference to feats. How do you deliver content, when they are optional? It makes more sense to treat dragonmarks like defiling in dark sun, or wizards/moons in krynn, where it is a background choice to gain entry. I also think dragonmarks should be a new type of rune magic, but I am not sure if that goes against canon. If they can be treated as rune magic, then any spells gained can not be used as additional spell slots for a caster. However, if a caster decides to learn rune magic (another flavor/background choice) then they can be viewed as additional slots. The downside is the casters body is covered in ruins, and some may view that in a negative fashion.

I'm not sure I understand your thinking here.

There's no real "conundrum" with Dragonmarks as Feats, because there's no guarantee that all "optional" rules are "optional" in every single setting. It would be madness to make that guarantee, and that's why they've not made it. Equally, even if you disallow all other Feats, you can easily fit Dragonmarks in.

As far as I know, Defiling and Moons haven't been described in 5E, so we have yet to see how they're treated, and further, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Eberron (kinda seems like not), but Dragonmarks aren't a "caster thing" or a "wizard thing", they're an "anyone thing".

But what I really don't like, is any way to offer new ability to martial classes, that is similar to spells. It appears these supplements will offer all classes content via backgrounds, feats or magic items, or exclusive content to spell casters via spells.

What are you saying here? It doesn't make a lot of sense grammatically. I mean, I can see two main possibilities:

1) That you're wholly opposed to "Martial*" characters ever getting any abilities even arguably similar to spells, by any means. That's fine, I guess, but you're in a sub-group of all players, and what is "spell-like" is hotly debated.

Or

2) Going in the opposite direction, and assuming you've missed a couple of words out, you're disappointed because they appear to only be going to deliver new content via Feats (which are supposedly optional), Backgrounds, Magic Items or Spells, and thus "Martial" classes don't have a good vector for adding content. In which case, yeah, that makes sense and is definitely a problem* in the longer-term, just like it was a problem in 2E and 3E, wherein there were hundreds or even thousands of spells added, which could be used to give more variety and options for casters, even in a "live" game ("I found a spellbook!"), but where stuff being added for Fighters/Rogues/etc. was pretty much limited to starting characters (kits etc.) or vectored in via Weapon Proficiencies/Feats/PrCs which are not in 5E (and which had problems of their own in those editions). Whereas 4E simply added Martial stuff via AEDU and avoided the problem (which isn't to say it was superior, just that it solved this particular issue).

In order to deliver stuff for "Martials" in a live campaign, you'd probably need to have something like "techniques", where a "Martial" class could know have X techniques "readied" at a time (i.e. they'd been training in them, had them memorized), and you could learn techniques from masters, or ancient books or the like (really surprised this isn't more of a thing in D&D, given it totally IS a thing in fantasy, history and in real life).

* = Martial is no longer an actual thing. This is 5E, not 4E.

* = For people who like more official crunch content in their games - obviously not for people who are not interested in it, but they are presumably not interested in the whole Unearthed Arcana deal.

[MENTION=13009]Paraxis[/MENTION] - Not a bad idea, but I suspect very few players wouldn't want a Dragonmark on that basis, given it's a guarantee of certain solid magical powers, whereas magic items are always DM discretion, don't always require attunement, and even those that do may well not be seen for many levels. Though that said in Eberron one would expect to see more magic items than other settings.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I'm fine with the Changeling, Shifters and Dragonmarks. Warforged seems to come up a little off somewhere, perhaps it's the whole armour thing.

Artificers I feel there's a few varieties of them, which is probably why I agree with an idea proposed upthread that there should be an Artifice Cleric domain and a Bard College of Artifice. The Wizard tradition of Artificer, I feel it's sort of "meh", and I feel they should have something special and artificery with using Arcane Foci.

 

[collin]

Well, after viewing the UA document and reading all of the posts in this thread, I decided I would finally throw in my 5 cents.

1) I am fairly disappointed with what WotC released in the UA for Eberron. I have seen better home-brewed posted information in EN World than what WotC put together. Why did they even bother?

2) The races are still not where they probably need to be, but I think they are close. Noticeable absence of the Kalashtar. I'll get to that in a second.

3) The Artificer was a quick and cheap easy way out. It does not really help with capturing the original flavor of Eberron.

4) Dragonmarks. Like the races, not horrible, but could easily be made better.

5) Action Points/Hero Points. Whatever.

What I am seeing in these proposed 'helping rules' for folks who want to run Eberron is a little disturbing to me in that WotC seems to either a) have trouble thinking out of the box, or b) they have locked down the rules (as another poster suggested) for 5th edition and are terribly reluctant to make any variant changes with regards to the various play settings. I wonder what they would want to do with Dark Sun? Example: how can you not simply come up with some rules that would allow Psionics and the Kalashtar? Doesn't really fit in the current 5th edition rules, I know, but why should that stop the brain-trust at WotC from developing some rules on the fly for now?

Eberron (like Dark Sun and Dragonlance) is a different world. It was created with a specific theme and purpose: high adventure, pulp action, low-level but plentiful magic. These concepts, especially the last one, do not fit into the current rules. So, change them for Eberron. Allow a feat for all players at first level to allow for Dragonmarked characters. Allow Artificers to be creators of magic items, just not quite as easily as they did in 3.5-4.0. Make some new rules for 5th edition that only apply to Eberron races.

Why say "Changlings can only change into humanoids that they have previously seen." Really?? What a can of worms THAT is. I can see it now: players are going to be arguing with their DMs about what races they have seen or could have seen in their lifetime. How could they leave that so open-ended and limiting at the same time?

I don't know at this point if I should hope that WotC comes out with new/revised Eberron setting book that fixes and expands on some of this stuff, or tell them to just drop it if this what we can expect from them for this or any other play setting. So far, they have missed the mark on Eberron. If their thought is to try and incorporate these rules into a general world for all settings, I think THAT is also a mistake. Who cares if Shifters and Artificers could be used in Greyhawk? They were never meant to be used in other settings - they were created specifically for Eberron. For me, I will probably ignore ~80% of this stuff and just continue home-brewing everything.

 

[DEFCON 1]

What I am seeing in these proposed 'helping rules' for folks who want to run Eberron is a little disturbing to me in that WotC seems to either a) have trouble thinking out of the box, or b) they have locked down the rules (as another poster suggested) for 5th edition and are terribly reluctant to make any variant changes with regards to the various play settings..

Or C) They're treating this as a playtest document, so they are starting discussion at most basic level to get foundational feelings from everyone on these concepts. And once they know which tracks they are on feel like the right tracks for people... they can then begin to build up from there. Adding in complexity and perhaps more involved options later on.

But it doesn't do them any good to do a whole crapload of design and development work first, just to then find out when they throw it out to the public that everyone *hates* it and they have to go back to the drawing board, scrapping months of real work. WotC's job right now is to find out if their basic ideas and concepts work for people so they can determine if they are going in the right direction. And considering the responses given here already-- they are probably learning a great deal about what players are really looking for for this stuff, and whether wizard subclasses, feats, etc. are the ways to go or if they need to re-think.

Remember... this is Basic Game / very first playtesting packet levels we are at for this stuff. It ain't gonna look that polished for a whole heck of a while. So just like when we were playtesting... we need to actually play the rules given to us, then post our feelings on whether it did or did not work.

 

[collin]

Or C) They're treating this as a playtest document, so they are starting discussion at most basic level to get foundational feelings from everyone on these concepts. And once they know which tracks they are on feel like the right tracks for people... they can then begin to build up from there. Adding in complexity and perhaps more involved options later on.

I hope you are right, DEFCON.