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?

 

[IchneumonWasp]

I am very happy to see them doing this. They might lack the resources to produce a lot of new books, but this gives players the minimum support needed to play the game with their favorite campaign setting.

About the actual rules: I have mixed feelings. I understand why they hesitate designing and adding completely new classes to the 'core' roster of classes, but the Artificer just doesn't feel entirely the same. Still, thematically you can come close if you multi-class with more martial classes, as other posters have noted.

I am somewhat disappointed though, since what they wrote about psionics when discussing the Kalashtar means we might never see a full Psionic Handbook type book with complete separate classes and we'll instead get 'psionic' sub-classes for the wizard, sorcerer and fighter. Although that would 'work', it would be a shame.

 

[jimmifett]

I actually like it as a wizard subclass rather than the creation of a completely new class. Unless the issue is more with the wizard than the artificer being a subclass. Not sure which other class it could have been a subclass of though.

On a side note, artificer was a specialist wizard class back in 2e which I rediscovered last night reading through spells & magic. This might explain why I'm happy with it being a wizard subclass while still retaining much of the flavour of the Eberron Artificer.

For me, much of the flavor involved using items that couldn't normally be used by classes. Divine, Arcane, made no difference to the artificer, to them it all really boiled down to moving energies into differently shaped lattices and matrices. I feel not being able to infused spells into scrolls and such that aren't on their spell list breaks this feel.

 

[BryonD]

I'm pretty underwhelmed.
I mean, that is it for a month? Really?

I don't mean to complain about free content. But, I'll happily pay for more.

 

[Evhelm]

Initial thoughts:

I love the format, but don't like the current result.

I've been looking at the 4e and 3e Artificers and trying to find a way to make an authentic 5e version. This Wizard Tradition feels totally toothless to me. It does get around the concentration rules in an interesting way, but one of the greatest gifts of an artificer was being able to create permanent magic items; this reduces that feature to an entirely minor role.

Warforged still seem a bit overpowered (no eating? no drinking? no "sleeping"? no disease? AND they apparently get full heals from cure wounds?) and there is no symbiosis anymore between artificers and warforged (which makes me sad).

 

[Raunalyn]

The problem is that there are elements of the artificer class that don't appear in this subclass. Among them.

* Artificers could fight decently. Simple weapons, d8 HD, medium armor + shields. The wizard lacks all this as he's supposed to be a support PC.
* Artificers were trapfinders (Search, Disable Device) as good as a rogue. The wizard lacks the proficiencies (perception, thieves tools) to do this. (Although, I guess an appropriate background could fix that).
* Artificers were great at dealing with constructs (healing, building, and destroying them). The wizard doesn't get any special abilities to do any of that, beyond the traditional spells any wizard can cast.
* Artificer spells were mostly buffing, building, and a touch of healing (in 4e). Wizard spells summon monsters, throw fireballs, animate skeletons, and a bunch of other un-flavorful stuff.

Those things alone are major strikes, and really make former methods of playing the artificer (both 3e's generalist and 4e's leader/healer) both invalid.

I'm not even sure how to fix these things, but it gives me a point of reference to start.

I'd almost be inclined to create them as a Cleric subclass and create the "Artificer" domain...it almost makes sense considering their support role, mechanics, and flavor..and this is despite it being a divine class.

Damnit...I just gave myself ideas...

 

[TarionzCousin]

I'm curious as to what Keith Baker thinks about this--if he can/will share his thoughts. It might not be politic or in his best interests to comment, however.
[MENTION=15800]Hellcow[/MENTION]

 

[pukunui]

Looks like the warforged haven't changed at all from the playtest. I was expecting them to have at least tweaked them a bit.

 

[Sir Brennen]

That also concerns me, because it still skews toward better races from the PHB - like Hill Dwarf, Drow, Half-Elf, and a few others.

Perhaps the temp hit points on shift could be considered a stealth Con bonus?

 

[occam]

The Infuse Potions ability of the artificer seems like fun. However... I don't have my DMG with me, so can someone confirm if a potion of superior healing provides 8d4+8 (avg. 28) hit points of healing? If so, a 5th-level artificer starts to become a very powerful healing resource (considering that a 5th-level cleric's cure wounds only gets up to 3d8+mod, +5 for a life cleric (avg. ~23)).

 

[SharnDM]

Super excited to have my favorite D&D Campaign Setting getting some love. Honestly wondering what more they even need to put out there for Eberron. The Lore is pretty substantial and it wouldn't work well to advance the timeline at all.

Anyway, I wrote a bit about it on my blog.

https://melsmifgames.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/5e-eberron-and-the-purpose-of-unearthed-arcana/