Wizards of the Coast Reveals Revised Eberron Species Details

Wizards of the Coast has revealed some new details about Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, specifically detailing some of the changes players can expect to see from the species rules in the book. The upcoming Eberron splatbook will feature five species. Four of the species appeared in Eberron: Rising From the Last War, while the Khoravar (which have mixed human and elvish ancestries) are presented as a unique species in the book.

Today on D&D Beyond, Wizards listed some of the changes that will appear in each ruleset. Most notably, the Warforged is now presented as a Construct, while the Kalashtar are presented as aberrations. This makes these species immune to various spells that only impact humanoids. Additionally, the Khoravar has a new Lethargy Resilience feature that turns a failed saving throw to end or prevent the Unconscious condition into a success. This feature recharges after 1d4 Long Rests, which is a new design element to D&D.

According to D&D Beyond, the following changes are being made:

Changeling:

• Based on the Changeling from Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.
• Shape-Shifter: You have Advantage on Charisma checks while shape-shifted.

Kalashtar:

• Creature Type: Kalashtar now have the Aberration creature type.
• Mind Link: You can now allow multiple creatures to communicate with you telepathically, and they no longer must be able to see you.
• Severed From Dreams: You gain proficiency in one skill of your choice after a Long Rest. This proficiency lasts until you finish another Long Rest.

Khoravar:

• Now included as a unique playable species in the world of Eberron
• Darkvision: Gain Darkvision with a range of 60 feet.
• Fey Ancestry: You have Advantage on saving throws to avoid or end the Charmed condition.
• Fey Gift: You know the Friends cantrip. When you finish a Long Rest, you can swap it for any Cleric, Druid, or Wizard cantrip.
• Lethargy Resilience: You can turn a failed save to avoid or end the Unconscious condition into a success. You can use this trait again after you finish 1d4 Long Rests.
• Skill Versatility: Gain proficiency in one skill or tool of your choice. After you finish a Long Rest, you may swap that proficiency for a different skill or tool.

Shifter:

• Based on the Shifter from Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.
• Size: You can choose to be Medium or Small when you select this species.

Warforged:

• Creature Type: Warforged now have the Construct creature type.
• Constructed Resilience: Now have Advantage on saving throws to end the Poisoned condition and some aspects of this trait have been moved to Sentry's Rest and the new Tireless trait.
• Integrated Protection: Donning armor no longer takes an hour.
• Sentry's Rest: Now specifies Warforged don't need to sleep, and magic can't put them to sleep.
• Tireless: You don't gain Exhaustion levels from dehydration, malnutrition, or suffocation.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

See from my perspective it's more that they came back with a name that doesn't normalize being biracial the way D&D used to, and I felt it was more accepting the way it was.

Yep. But since they won’t be doing the PHB any time soon, at least we have stats for mixed elfin folk.

Lorewise, Jhor'guntaal (Eberron "half-orcs") are ostensibly still a thing - they make up the bulk of House Tharashk, one of the dragonmarked houses. The only real difference between them and Khoravar is that Khoravar are known to have their own majority Khoravar communities and distinct cultural identity separate from both their human and elven ancestors, whereas Jhor'guntaal generally live in mixed human/orc communities and see themselves as a bridge between the two instead of something distinct from their "parent" species (a perspective largely shared by the "half-elves" of House Medani as well, who reject the "Khoravar" identity precisely for that reason).

As happy as I am that Khoravar have made a return - and I am happy, this looks pretty much exactly like what I was wanting out of an update to the 2014 "half-elf" statblock - they either need to extend the same courtesy to Jhor'guntaal or, better yet, there needs to be a system for constructing species mechanics for mixed ancestry characters of any combination.

I think the closest to a balanced mixed species mechanic we can hope for is the Custom Lineage.
Which they should have just put into the damn PHB.

By all means, ditch the "half-x" naming scheme. But the concept of mixed ancestry characters should be mechanically supported, particularly since, unless I'm very much mistaken, the whole "Pick a Parent" thing never made it into the 2024 rules.

Thank god. The “pick a parent” thing was basically fantasy blood quantum.

Khoravar:

• Now included as a unique playable species in the world of Eberron

And it's one of my pet peeves but Half-Elves and Half-Orc were never biracial, they were (and are) hybrids because Elves, Humans and Orcs are different species.

Except these creatures don’t exist, so they represent real things, which in this case means they represent biracial people. Thats always been what they’ve represented.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Yep. But since they won’t be doing the PHB any time soon, at least we have stats for mixed elfin folk.

I think the closest to a balanced mixed species mechanic we can hope for is the Custom Lineage.
Which they should have just put into the damn PHB.

Thank god. The “pick a parent” thing was basically fantasy blood quantum.

Except these creatures don’t exist, so they represent real things, which in this case means they represent biracial people. Thats always been what they’ve represented.

Not sure about "always". Half-elves appear in ancient myths that long predate the concept of human "races".

 

[LazarusKane]

Except these creatures don’t exist, so they represent real things, which in this case means they represent biracial people. Thats always been what they’ve represented.

No. They can represent biracial people for someone (and I made the error in a former post to not consider this - sorry for that ) - but saying "these creatures don’t exist, so they represent real things" is IMHO way to simplistic: So elves are simply beautiful humans, dwarfs are stocky humans etc?
Please consider that there are people - me among them - that see and use the different species as precisely that: Nonhuman.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Having multi-species parents in the D&D game would have been fine if every single species had that opportunity. It's the fact they singled out just TWO of them, both of which have a Human parent who is never distinguished by their species in their name and thus always assumed Human to be the "default" species in the game (just like if someone was to say they were "half-Asian" everyone would immediately think "Oh, along with White of course, because what other possible pairing is there?" which is not something we should be aspiring to.) At barest minimum, if people HAVE to have game mechanics taken from both parents to truly feel like they are from bi-species parents (which is a whole different argument that I also think is ridiculous based upon how lame and stupid pretty much all species mechanics are), then the game can make a paired species system wherein players can select features from ANY two species to represent their parents, and we won't call those folks "half" anything.

It's more or less the naming convention and the fact that there are only two options for bi-species parents, one of which HAS to be Human that has always been the problem. That's not the positive representation some people seem to think it is.

EDIT: And this doesn't touch upon the fact that one of the only two bi-species parenting was almost always described as being the result of sexual assault. Yeah... great representation there! Good job D&D! Let's make sure we keep these in the game!

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Maybe we should stop calling them hybrids and start calling them "Creoles"?

The half elves, orcs, dwarves and giants of my personal setting have been calling themselves "creole peoples". Everyone wants pirates of the Caribbean in their d&d setting, no one wants to bother looking at Caribbean culture.

 

[Remathilis]

I’m mixed race and I always identified with the half elf and half orc as mixed.

I know you didn’t mean to, but you just insulted me and people like me in an incredibly painful manner.

From a game mechanics side: the Khorvar work fine for classic half-elf and the orc mechanics are superior to half-orc. You can use them both to mechanically represent the 2014 races in 2024. Just like how a wizard can be redefined as a witch (c.f. Tasha), the mechs are similar enough to be used to represent the idea of a mixed species without using the half-human terminology.

 

[Remathilis]

They are still called half-elves in 3e and 5e, so I'm guessing they were half-elves in 4e, too. It will interesting to see if there is any use of the term half-elf in the full 5.5e write-up.

Khorvar was the name the half-elves called themselves in lore. The PHB called them half-elves, so the mechanical reference to Khorvar is to PHB half-elf. The half-elf is no longer in the PHB, so they don't need to use that term anymore.

 

[TwoSix]

When I run Eberron (and most other cosmopolitan D&D settings), I assume that most individuals descend from multiple races. The racial/ancestry mechanics simply represent a combination of common phenotypes and cultural inheritances that crop up.

Your bog-standard Khorvairan "human" is going to be 80-90% (in a 23andme sense) descended from Sarlonan-Lhazaarian human stock, but definitely has an elf, or a dwarf, or a gnome great*-grandparent in their lineage.

 

[Remathilis]

I think part of the problem is that people see a lot of D&D species as "half-x" where x is another race or monster type. Tieflings are half-fiends. Aasimar are half-angels. Dragonborn are half-dragons. Shifters are half-lycanthropes. Etc. D&D has tried to move away from "humans breed with everything" for about a decade or more. (Certainly since 4e, I think in response to sheer number of "half-x" templates in 3e). Which is why tieflings got the "children of Asmodeus" origin in 4e rather than "my dad was a demon" origin in 3e (and implied in 2e).

To me, this is trying to move half-elf from the implied first gen elf/human hybrid to the "somewhere in my family ancestry is a bit of human and elf blood" like tieflings and aasimar got.

 

[Maxperson]

Khorvar was the name the half-elves called themselves in lore. The PHB called them half-elves, so the mechanical reference to Khorvar is to PHB half-elf. The half-elf is no longer in the PHB, so they don't need to use that term anymore.

This response misses the point.