Why DON’T you like Eberron?

[AnonJr]

... I love Eberron, and our group played it almost exclusively. We didn't get into planar travel, so I don't know much about the issues there that others have mentioned.

I do have a couple nits to pick.

First, Warforged have to burn a feat just to have a different style body. I loved my Warforged Duskblade I played in Eye of the Litch Queen, but if it wasn't for flaws fitting Mithril Body would have been tight.

Second, is more of an echo of an earlier comment - what you get mechanically from taking the Dragonmark feats is a little less than you'd hope for given the cost. Though, it's worth noting, that it should give you some better RP options. At least with DMs familiar with the setting.

[thorr-kan]

I love me Eberron. It was a different take, unique to 3E, and interesting for it.

In response to the criticism of Io'lokar, consider: Eberron has a very pointed pulp aesthetic. Io'lokar is meant to invoke Shangri-La, the mystical city of knowledge and secret masters: enduringly happy, otherworldly, full of nigh-immortals.

That trope isn't everybody's cake, but it is a common pulp trope.

I don't remember where I read the interpretation. It isn't mine originally.

[Endarire]

Eberron has been my favorite setting from WotC. I know Keith Baker made it and it won a setting contest.

My main complaint is that, for me, its claim to fame are Artificers and Warforged. The setting doesn't focus enough on these for me. That and Planar Shepherds.

Thankee!

[Harrow]

Let me preface things by saying that I've never done a deep dive of Eberron stuff. If I'm digging into Eberron content, it's mostly for Artificer stuff, because I love that class to pieces. This likely means that there's a lot that it has going on that I missed or don't understand.

That said, I don't understand the people claiming that Eberron was supposed to be more grounded. It was my (likely under-informed) understanding that it was more intended to be a closer approximation of what a world with magic would look like (i.e. not medieval europe) with heavy inspiration from pulp adventures and action movies.

On the first count, I feel it failed. I will admit, "cyberpunk" isn't the same thing as "vaugely medieval europe", but it's also not really where I feel the mechanics would take things if they were physics instead. Warforged? Necessary for the cyberpunk thing, but magic users could already make much more powerful constructs and undead that didn't have free will, and yet more powerful outsiders could be summoned and called for things where such traits were required. The warforged were there because we needed androids questioning what makes someone a person, not for any realistic representation of how people would act in a magic-heavy environment. Things like the dragonmarks had to be added to give people more access to magic, but mechanically, it's far easier to be a 1st level wizard than gain the skill ranks for even a mid-level dragonmark, so I feel like that kind of fell apart somewhere. I dunno, I don't think you have to go full Tippyverse, but I feel like there's a lot of mundane utility for magic in D&D that gets ignored in the settings, and Eberron did little-to-nothing to address this. I couldn't tell you where I got the idea from, so maybe that wasn't even their intention in the first place.

On the second point, taking I am deeply opposed to games, both video and pen-and-paper rpgs, trying to take too much inspiration from non-interactive mediums. A movie is an one and a half to two and a half hours of things happening in front of you. Games are dozens of hours of me doing things. Stuff that works great in one medium is going to have trouble translating to another. I'm not here for a "cinematic experience", I'm here to roll dice that tell me that my wizard shouldn't have tried bluffing his way into a bandit camp because, even with disguise self, he's still rather awkward and terribad at lying.

[Ozreth]

A movie is an one and a half to two and a half hours of things happening in front of you. Games are dozens of hours of me doing things. Stuff that works great in one medium is going to have trouble translating to another. I'm not here for a "cinematic experience", I'm here to roll dice that tell me that my wizard shouldn't have tried bluffing his way into a bandit camp because, even with disguise self, he's still rather awkward and terribad at lying.

Love this comment and it is something I was feeling but couldn't quite articulate but you nailed it.

[Batcathat]

A level zero spell cast by a first-level spellcaster is worth 5GP, an untrained hireling makes 1sp per day and a trained hireling makes 3sp per day. An untrained hireling would have to save two months of wages to get a single casting of even a level zero spell like Mending, and a trained hireling would spend over two weeks wages for the same. And this is all from the maths of goods and services in the PHB.

Just by dent of the basic economics of the DnD system, magic will be out of reach for most people except nobility and adventurers.

Sure, I get why not every commoner is going around casting spells (though I think it would be nice to see a setting where the price of magic goes down similarly to the price of technology in the real world) but even assuming it's just for the rich, it doesn't seem to affect their world much either in most settings. There are ways to justify it (some more convincing than others), of course.

Like I said, I mostly think it's somewhat boring world-building and a wasted opportunity to include something as major as magic and then have the world mostly as it would've been without magic.

[Elkad]

That. That right there. Artificers are stupid, and their face is stupid and their stupid Warforged are stupid.

Thanks for stating so eloquently what I was scrolling down this thread to attempt to post.

[H_H_F_F]

So, Eberron is my favorite setting by a longshot, and the only none-homebrew setting I'd DM. It's the best. I often refer to it as "The Good Setting^TM"

That being said, naturally, there are things I dislike about it. I'm going to focus on things I actively dislike, not on "not enough" stuff (there should've been more dragonmark-based items, there should've been more fleshed out royal courts, etcetera) or "not my favorite execution" stuff (Faiths of Eberron handling of Vassals and Seekers, Forge of War's handling of Thrane and military-industrial complex, etc). Just going to go for some major points that don't work for me at heart.

• Argonessen
  
  Let me start out by clarifying: unlike other posters in this thread, I'm 100% a fan of the idea that there are way larger powers at play behind the seeming surface of things. You think the Houses and the Nations are the biggest deal around? Wait 'till you hear of the Dreaming Dark, or the Daelkyr. Oh, you think that's the real story? Get ready for a million year long secret war, bro. No notes.
  
  My issue is with making the Chamber a CIVILIZATION. If you'd have told me there are on average 100 dragons alive at any point, half of which are feral and dangerous, the other half organized together, capable of epic magic, and of destroying entire continents if they need to? Awesome. Yeah, the Chamber VS the Lords of Dust is the real story, give it to me for sure.
  
  But you're telling me there are thousands of them? Thousands of epic level casters hanging out being worried about the prophecy all day? That breaks my immersion. They really tried to make it make sense, but it doesn't. So, my issue isn't "Khorvaire and everyone you know are specs of dust compared to REAL power", I think that mostly works. My issue is Argonessen is too big to make sense for its role in the setting.
  
  
• Timeline
  
  My brother, why the **** is Galifar a 1,000 years old? Why do you have almost an entire freaking millenium of "nothing happened, basically" in your history? Why is that necessary? The first generation and the last generation just happened to have 5 princes to run this ****. What did every other generation look like? For a thousand years, the people of Galifar were completely cool with having no continuity of their royal lines, and then went berserk for them?
  
  The year should have been ~200, not 998.
  
  
• Some Aesthetics
  
  Disclaimer: this is completely and wholly about personal taste.
  They really tried their best to make sure that it wasn't steampunk (just look at the way 3.5 draws artificers VS 5E) but it didn't always work. Also, the whole dino thing. I don't like it.

[Condé]

I do not know many things about Eberron. The only knowledge I have about the setting IS because of me trying to cover everything for later build purpose. I am not a lore kind of guy.

But to me and with few things I know it Always felt more like. A melting-pot of cool things father than its own thing.

Someone said it in this thread and that is how I feel about this setting too. They took the most 2000 aesthetic and every tropes that were in and pushed them into some books trying as hard as they could to make it "cool".

No offense there is nothing wrong about it. It just feels... Mechanical. Artificial.

Eh eh.

[atemu1234]

My biggest problem is that Eberron didn't slot neatly into the continuity of D&D; Athas, Faerun, Greyhawk, Krynn... they all have a long history of shared continuity and a shared cosmology - hell, Planescape and Spelljammer both were built around being able to leave one world and head to another, or have fun in between them.

Eberron, on the other hand, has its own, fairly restrictive cosmology, at least the 3.5 version does. It doesn't mesh well with the grander cosmology, and a lot of the elements it introduces don't play nice with the other settings if you tried to introduce them.

Now, the things I like about it are fairly easy to state: Artificer, Changelings and Warforged. Artificers are a versatile addition to any party, and the races that Eberron added are, in my opinion, just plain cool. Shifters are fifty/fifty for me, though.

[GeoffWatson]

Eberron, on the other hand, has its own, fairly restrictive cosmology, at least the 3.5 version does. It doesn't mesh well with the grander cosmology, and a lot of the elements it introduces don't play nice with the other settings if you tried to introduce them.

In 3e/3.5e the "Planescape" style Great Wheel was part of just the Greyhawk setting, with each of the other settings having their own cosmology.

[TaiLiu]

I think there's some misinformation being spread about Eberron in this thread. I want to correct some of it. My goal isn't to convince you to like Eberron or anything, and I also don't wanna derail the thread.


"Eberron is a magitech setting."

No, Eberron is kinda the opposite of a magitech setting. Eberron is a world where advances in technology don't happen, and advances in arcane magic do. Instead of the telegraph, there are speaking stones. Instead of trains, there's the lightning rail. Instead of guns and artillery, Eberron has wands and siege staves.

Eberron will fall short if looked through the lens of magitech, because it doesn't combine magic and technology at all.


"Warforged are magic robots."

No, Warforged are distinct enough from robots that I don't think "magic robot" works even to a first approximation.

Unlike contemporary or scifi robots, Warforged aren't machines, aren't programmable, aren't designed, and aren't primarily composed of metals.

Warforged are created using Creation Forges, but House Cannith has no idea how they work and very limited control over the output. When they come out of the forge, they come out as conscious and distinct creatures. In the same way humanoids have fingerprints, Warforged have ghulra. They were sold as soldiers, but they aren't programmed to fight. They have to learn, same as any humanoid. They have souls. They're mostly made of livewood, so they're vaguely like human-shaped treants except for everything else about them.

But it's understandable why people use robots as an analogy, since Warforged are pretty weird. They're the results of magical industralization—and the result of poorly-understood Giantish research from a long-ago era and a far-away place. I'm not sure there's a good analogy for them.


"Keith Baker won the WOTC setting contest due to an insider advantage."

Others have rightly mentioned that there's no evidence for this. A Manifest Zone podcast episode, Fifteen Years of Eberron, discusses this a little.

According to Chris Perkins, Bill Slavicsek, and James Wyatt, most of the settings submitted to the WOTC setting contest were uninspired and often shaped by popular media at the time. At first they thought Eberron was kinda silly, what with the wide magic replacing technology, but then they got into it. Eventually they honed in on Eberron as the future setting for D&D.

After Eberron was chosen, Keith met with the lead designers. After some discussion, Keith and the leads learned that Keith's sister used to play D&D with one of the designers. Maybe that's the kernel of truth that sprouted this rumor.

[Prime32]

There's a huge gameplay vs. story issue with dragonmarks. Despite the fact that dragonmarked individuals are incredibly favored, the abilities associated with them mechanically are pathetic and generally worse than the opportunity cost of taking an actually good feat. The fact that higher tier dragonmarks with more effective powers are effectively gated by HD via their skill requirements is a doubly whammy, as often the effects simply aren't impressive compared to a caster of equivalent level, in a setting that's supposed to account for the presence of spellcasters! The Mark of Passage, for example, one of the better ones, grants access to teleport at the exact same level that a wizard could just cast it. And yet everyone in the setting is completely obsessed with dragonmarks.

Agreed that they can be kind of underwhelming. But there are also a bunch of magic items which enhance or are fuelled by dragonmarks (and some spells which are more effective when used by a character with a specific mark). E.g.

• Bag of Bounty (10,000gp; Mark of Hospitality): You can use create food and water faster and more times per day, and can create any kind of food you could make with Profession (cook).
• Collar of the Wild Bond (5,000gp; Mark of Handling): You can use your dominate animal power on the wearer of the collar at will and from Medium range.
• Dragonmark Rod^MoE (30,000gp~60,000gp depending on Mark): 3/day produce any least power associated with your mark, even one you do not possess (does not count against your mark's daily uses). You can also use any lesser power 2/day and any greater power 1/day, provided the grade of your own mark is high enough.
• Gloves of the Locksmith^S:CoT (10,000gp; Mark of Warding): 3/day create an upgraded arcane lock tied to 1-3 keys; the holders of the keys can bypass the lock, and receive mental alerts whenever it's opened by any means.
• Helm of the Sentinel (20,000gp; Mark of Sentinel): Contingency 1/day but limited to the powers of your mark.
• Houseward (25,000gp; Mark of Warding): Multiplies the duration of some mark powers by x24.
• Inquisitive Goggles (16,000gp; Mark of Finding): Locate creature can also learn the target's movements in the last 24 hours. Can use Search on an object to learn about the last creature to touch it, also granting a bonus on tracking them and potentially letting you target them with locate creature.
• Keycharm (150gp; Mark of Warding): When you use one of your mark powers you can tie it to the charm; whoever is holding the charm counts as the caster of the spell, allowing them to receive its mental alerts, pass through wards, etc.
• Prospector's Rod (7,400gp; Mark of Finding): Various upgrades to locate object, including tripling its range and extending its duration as long as you concentrate.
• Speaking Stone (10,000gp; Mark of Scribing): When using whispering wind to contact another speaking stone, the message travels at increased speed and has no maximum range.
• Wheel of Wind and Water (8,000gp; Mark of Storm): Creates ideal sailing conditions around a ship, allowing it to travel more quickly; allows automatic control of elemental vessels.

Keith Baker mentioned somewhere the existence of cheaper items which aren't useful to adventurers, like blenders powered by the Mark of Hospitality.

Also note that the DC of Disguise checks increases by +10 if your disguise needs to incorporate a dragonmark, which is useful when you have politics and changelings running around.

Hell, one of the most powerful characters in the settings objective is to stop being an immortal lich so she can use her dragonmark that probably gives her create greater undead 1/day as an SLA. One must wonder what use a 16th level wizard has for a necromancy SLA.

Vol has what later material would call a "Transcendant Mark" - her half-dragon status uniquely amplifying her mark's connection to the Prophecy in order to boost its power far beyond even Siberys status.

A lot of Eberonn's big unanswered questions are easily solved by the plethora of low level magic users sticking their noggins together and experimenting. "Do warforged have souls"? Apparently nobody has looked, because there's quite a few spells even in core that could determine whether or not they do without question.

They've looked, but the way those effects work on warforged is confusing and contradictory. Warforged can't become undead (neither naturally nor as a result of necromancy spells), and they apparently do not travel to the afterlife while dead. There's an in-universe argument that warforged have a "pseudo-soul" which exists only as an effect of their bodily functions and is destroyed on death. Some warforged instead argue that they have a different afterlife from other creatures, e.g. becoming one with a mysterious god of constructs (think The Well of All Sparks from Transformers); supremacists like the Lord of Blades claim that this makes the warforged a favoured people since who wants to go to Dolurrh when they die anyway, while some fringe theologians believe that this warforged "Becoming God" may be the Silver Flame.

[Elkad]

I think there's some misinformation being spread about Eberron in this thread. I want to correct some of it. My goal isn't to convince you to like Eberron or anything, and I also don't wanna derail the thread.


"Eberron is a magitech setting."

No, Eberron is kinda the opposite of a magitech setting. Eberron is a world where advances in technology don't happen, and advances in arcane magic do. Instead of the telegraph, there are speaking stones. Instead of trains, there's the lightning rail. Instead of guns and artillery, Eberron has wands and siege staves.

That's the exact definition of magitech. Common man takes the subway to work, and sends messages with a telegraph, without really knowing how either of them work.

If one subway is powered by a gate to the plane of pure vacuum at the front of the train sucking it down the tracks, and the other by tiny fusion reactor, it doesn't matter at all. He gets on, he reads the paper, he gets off at work.

[TaiLiu]

That's the exact definition of magitech. Common man takes the subway to work, and sends messages with a telegraph, without really knowing how either of them work.

If one subway is powered by a gate to the plane of pure vacuum at the front of the train sucking it down the tracks, and the other by tiny fusion reactor, it doesn't matter at all. He gets on, he reads the paper, he gets off at work.

My understanding is that magitech combines magic and technology. Eberron just replaces the latter. Maybe I’m wrong. But if I am, then I don’t understand the complaints about Eberron failing to reach magitech ideals.

Magic industry differs from technological industry in a pretty important way. Imagine that the trains only run when a special member of the Mafia is driving it. That’s the case with the Lightning Rail. It performs a similar function to trains in our world, but the requirements for running it are different. Which has consequences for how the world of Eberron operates.

[Metastachydium]

"Warforged are magic robots."

No, Warforged are distinct enough from robots that I don't think "magic robot" works even to a first approximation.

Unlike contemporary or scifi robots, Warforged aren't machines, aren't programmable, aren't designed, and aren't primarily composed of metals.

They aren't robots as such, no, but they are artificial beings that look like robots (do I hate their visuals (but then, Eberron art never really worked for me)!), and mostly exist to explore the whole trite old "what if our androids are really people" sci-fi trope (which they don't make a particularly interesting work of for me).

They're mostly made of livewood, so they're vaguely like human-shaped treants

AND YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW!!

[H_H_F_F]

They aren't robots as such, no, but they are artificial beings that look like robots (do I hate their visuals (but then, Eberron art never really worked for me)!), and mostly exist to explore the whole trite old "what if our androids are really people" sci-fi trope (which they don't make a particularly interesting work of for me).



AND YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW!!

Come on, Meta. You can't tell me landforged walker does nothing for you, can you?

[Bohandas]

IIRC Some of the numerology doesn't work out as cleanly as it could. Like most of the various mystically significant things where there used to be 13 and now there's just 12 seem to have changed at unrelated times for unfelated reasons

[Fizban]

My understanding is that magitech combines magic and technology. Eberron just replaces the latter. Maybe I’m wrong. But if I am, then I don’t understand the complaints about Eberron failing to reach magitech ideals.

I would define magitech as technology powered by magic, which may or may not include aspects of mundane scientific technology. Technomancy would for combinations only. A magitech system is one where the magical technology functions based on a system of rules, which the players can use, the same as they would any other game mechanic.

As for my complaint, well I provided links rather than bury the thread in six past threads worth of detail. But again, Eberron does not have magitech rules. It has a bunch of specific magic items, and a bunch of people members of specific families with feats that give them 1/day SLAs.

• The airships that are supposedly made by teams of artificers are not: they still use normal rules, being made by one high level caster at 1 day per 1,000gp.
• The magic items fail to replace the technology as suggested: their "telegraphs" don't move at the speed of light, they move at 60mph. Which is nice for medieval speeds but this is a world with 30mph trains and 20mph airships, things that are contemporary with actual speed of light telegraphs.
• Their magic trains run on 100% fiat railways because the conductor stones have no price. I guess we simply assume the price for maglev train rocks is however low it needs to be.
• The spells given by these dragonmarks are still tied to character level so those of sufficient power to mean something are still absurdly rare. Even the base marks being at much higher numbers than spellcasters, I'm pretty sure still don't number nearly enough to affect significant change, if the spells even mattered.
• Meanwhile they can be duplicated by absurdly simple magic items, making their main feature an arbitrary discount on bigger magic items by making them require the feats. I don't even have to specify custom items either, because they make that whole point of "everything has a place in Eberron," and there's a published item that can do the job.

You say "technology" of Eberron advances through magic, but it doesn't. Not until you first establish a rule that the books made no mention of, essentially banning all new magic items (presumably also spells) without big expensive long-term possibly group research projects. Only then can you say that all the digging for ancient secrets and research advancement actually matter. Because without such a rule, I can have my character immediately invent a bunch of custom items that do everything better, without any need for dragonmarks- they require DM approval of course, but I'm generally following the formulas and unless the DM then predicates that approval upon spending a bunch of time researching them thus creating the rule that I just pointed out the setting lacks. . . yeah.

Because 3.x already has a magitech system. The item creation guidelines that many people like to treat as hard no-DM rules, are a magitech system, which can then be broken if you treat it as hard rules, just like every other published magitech system. The DMG knows this, and so requires the DM approve any new items, which is the only way you can actually have an open-ended magitech system without breaking it. The whole point of scientific/technological/whatever advancement is to figure out the rules of reality and use them to "break" the game. Steel was bad enough, steam power was bad enough, drilling for oil, electricity, we're how many busted exploits into reality by now?

Eberron is not magitech. It has a bunch of non-formula items that work because the DM said so, but only for certain characters because the DM said so, which have achieved a certain level of saturation in the setting because the DM said so.

Magic industry differs from technological industry in a pretty important way. Imagine that the trains only run when a special member of the Mafia is driving it. That’s the case with the Lightning Rail. It performs a similar function to trains in our world, but the requirements for running it are different. Which has consequences for how the world of Eberron operates.

Indeed, and the main change in operation is that none of it matters. You can't steal an airship because they can literally only be (reliably) piloted by members of the Official House, specifically born with and taking the Special Feat? Wow, so cool. Everything being tied to hereditary 'marks', which explicitly become corrupted if the bloodlines mix, means that the very mechanics of the setting ensure it remains in stasis. The Houses not only have no mechanical way to interact as organizations, they would gain nothing from actually opposing each other. Not only is it not magitech, it's specifically designed so that the backdrop cannot change. Sure there can be wars between the nations, and the PCs can go on pulpy adventures, but that's it.

I find this profoundly off-putting and dull, moreso the more I think about it. So, the "technology" of this world is tied to a series of inviolate hereditary bloodlines which are as such essentially unassailable? You're just supposed to accept that and indeed treat it as a boon, because now you don't have to think about how the tech works or where it comes from? We already had a tech system, and a perfectly functional excuse for why it wasn't widespread (there are a finite number of casters that don't feel like spending their entire lives crafting things to fix peasant problems), which, again, Eberron doesn't even get itself out of.

I don't actually want to do a game set during a magical industrial revolution, but that doesn't mean I want a setting that pretends it already happened while also being completely fiat and specifically tying it to bloodlines. I'm absolutely sick of "bloodline" sorcerer nonsense, why would I want a setting that has embraced it as the driver of all technology? That world sucks.


I've heard it suggested that a more interesting conflict would be these upstart Artificers vs the House monopolies, as the Artificers realize they don't actually have to deal with any of that House stuff (because they don't, 3.x magic items don't care about any of it) and start banding together into their own guild, and yeah that would be way more interesting. Except of course that's not what Eberron is supposed to be about- it's supposed to be about pulpy adventures with train heists and imperialistic jungle expeditions and oh spooky Mournland horror and maybe you'll help start/avert a new war etc. People are always mentioning all sorts of stuff from the setting that sounds cool, though I've not run into it, but I'm always just stuck on the entire basic premise of their quasi-post-WW. . I? I think it's supposed to be WWI-ish setting that replaces early industrial tech with 'magic' that neither respects the game's magic rules nor actually even gets the job done. Running an Artificer's Guild uprising in Eberron wouldn't be any better, it's still just a magical-industrial revolution game, except with a bunch of designated antagonists?

Well I suppose that does give you a ready institution for the PCs to oppose, rather than coming up with some nebulous "uh you're trying to make the world better so badguys attack."

And yes, I'm aware that most of the Dragonmarked Houses don't actually involve major technological infrastructure. Which makes them even less relevant.

[Scots Dragon]

There are a few reasons the setting doesn’t gel for me. One of the big ones is that it’s a little too static: the novels, sourcebooks, etc. can never change or advance the world in any real meaningful way. It doesn’t feel like a living setting with more beyond the frame in the same way that other campaign settings do.

The other reason is that it’s a little too low level. There’s a lower ceiling in what’s possible and how far a campaign can go compared to, say, the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk in that respect.

I don’t think it’s a bad setting at all, but it just feels a little too limiting.

[Troacctid]

There are a few reasons the setting doesn’t gel for me. One of the big ones is that it’s a little too static: the novels, sourcebooks, etc. can never change or advance the world in any real meaningful way. It doesn’t feel like a living setting with more beyond the frame in the same way that other campaign settings do.

The novels and published adventures can. Lhesh Haruuc dies and sets off a succession crisis for Darguun in one of them, for example.

I think fixing the timeline in the year 998 is one of the best things that Eberron does. It allows all the lore to expand as much as it needs to without ever damaging cross-compatibility. In the Forgotten Realms, one of the problems you run into is that every time they advance the timeline, you lose the ability to use older material without adapting it to the new present day. Like, in my 5e campaign, I can't just pull out Mysteries of the Moonsea when my players go to visit Mulmaster, because the city is different now than it was then. Eberron doesn't have that issue.

It's not that Khorvaire can't advance. It's that it's presented to you balanced on a knife's edge, and it's up to the DM to decide when, how, and why it falls.

The flip side of this is my personal biggest complaint about the setting, which is that the depth of lore can make onboarding difficult for players who are new to Eberron. There's just a lot of stuff in the canon.

[Elkad]

Magic industry differs from technological industry in a pretty important way. Imagine that the trains only run when a special member of the Mafia is driving it. That’s the case with the Lightning Rail. It performs a similar function to trains in our world, but the requirements for running it are different. Which has consequences for how the world of Eberron operates.

If you are the guy taking the train to work, it doesn't make any difference how it works. It's a train.

You buy a ticket and get on, ride down the rails, and get off at your stop.

That's the definition of magitech. Take a mundane thing, make it work by magic, but if you don't care how it works, you can't tell the difference, because the function didn't change.

[Zevox]

I don't honestly know a lot about Eberron; I've never owned any of its books or look at any detailed accounts of its world and lore. I know I've heard things about it doing unusual things with certain races, but couldn't tell you what they are off the top of my head.

I can tell you why I've never given it the time of day though: the magitech element. I do not want that in my D&D, I want the game at a medieval-feeling tech level. I don't care whether your trains run on coal or magic, I don't want them in my D&D settings; same with robots, etc. Just hearing about the Warforged and other such elements immediately made me decide against giving the setting any more detailed look back when it first came out, and that's unlikely to ever change.

[glass]

Eberron, on the other hand, has its own, fairly restrictive cosmology, at least the 3.5 version does. It doesn't mesh well with the grander cosmology, and a lot of the elements it introduces don't play nice with the other settings if you tried to introduce them.

Depends on how grand your "grander cosmology" is. If you use the idea from the 3e Manual of the Planes that different cosmologies can exist side by side, it works fine!

That's the definition of magitech.

It is, apparently, a definition of "magitech". It's not one I am familiar with (mine was more in line with TaiLu's), and I think it elides important differences between different concepts.

I can tell you why I've never given it the time of day though: the magitech element. I do not want that in my D&D, I want the game at a medieval-feeling tech level. I don't care whether your trains run on coal or magic, I don't want them in my D&D settings; same with robots, etc. Just hearing about the Warforged and other such elements immediately made me decide against giving the setting any more detailed look back when it first came out, and that's unlikely to ever change.

Trains I will give you; it doesn't look like Eberron is for you. But it does not have robots!

Warforged have more in common with golems than sci-fi robots. Do golems also spoil your "medieval-feeling tech level"?

[Metastachydium]

Come on, Meta. You can't tell me landforged walker does nothing for you, can you?

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Okay, you got me. But that's just because of the friendly little planties doing friendly little planty things vouching for them and any Warforged without Ironwood Body may just roll over and die!

Warforged have more in common with golems than sci-fi robots. Do golems also spoil your "medieval-feeling tech level"?

Golems are (more or less) crude statues built of dead matter, given a semblance of life by magic and bound to the will of a master so that they can perform simple tasks, often fighting. They are powerful and dangerous tools, but ultimately little more than high-end magic items. I am staunchly opposed to depicting them as looking like robots (though even at their worst, they look less like those than your average Warforged) or Frankenstein's monster, but even when they visually resemble such things, they are simply nothing like them.

Warforged have none of the properties that make Golems Golems, barring how they are also Constructs, nor do they have the very specifically magical properties commonly associated with Golems in and out of the game (most notably the resistence to magic, but also the built-in means of outside control &c.). Once more, they are these robotic looking things that basically try to explore the same thing Frankenstein's monster was conceived for, except in a far less interesting or nuanced way (even compared to the usual sci-fi "Androids are people too" afterglows of the idea).

[Psyren]

I don't hate Eberron - but if I had a list of things that hold it back from being my favorite setting they would be these:

The Gods/Churches Dynamic: I prefer D&D gods to be active players in the world, even if they can't always act directly; there is so much delicious storytelling potential in that. You could never get stories like OotS or Baldur's Gate 3 out of a setting like Eberron - neither the BG3 main plot, which is driven directly by internecine divine politics, nor even smaller character-driven stories like Gale's borderline exploitation by Mystra and literally everything to do with Shadowheart's past. Eberron gods just seem paper-thin to me in comparison to that; this isn't to say I think that Eberron's approach to divinity is bad or wrong, it's just not what I happen to think D&D stories do best.

The Not-Afterlife: Related to the above, Everybody Goes to Dolurrh when they die just feels immensely boring to me. The vast majority of people having capital-N-Nothing to look forward to, again, feels like the setting chose to leave a lot of great story hooks on the table. Even if it's not everyone in a given setting, just the knowledge by some that the afterlife has its own elaborate system of rewards and punishments to seek out or evade is a powerful character motivation and full of hooks.

Eberron Sucks Up the Oxygen: This isn't really Eberron's fault, but ever since it was created, it's always seems to be the next-highest setting to get attention from the designers, while so many other interesting D&D settings seem to have taken a backseat and left to languish on the vine. It took us over two decades to revisit both Planescape and Krynn, and it's now been over a decade since Dark Sun, but Eberron has managed to stay in print far more frequently. I don't know what the root cause of that is - maybe WotC's rights to/ownership of Eberron is a lot less ambiguous than some of those other settings - all I can really do is speculate why Eberron is seemingly always right behind FR on the update list while all the others seem to take eons. (And hell, we have yet to get an update for Greyhawk, though I suppose a big part of that is that it isn't all that different from FR at the end of the day.)

It's Less Unique Now: Back when Eberron was created, a pulpy magepunk/steampunk-ish D&D setting was truly novel, and gave us all a welcome break from the quasi-medieval Faerun/Greyhawk/Mystara/Barovia milieu. (Robots! Lasers! Factories! Trains!) But now, thanks to MTG settings having been brought into D&D, Eberron's primary selling point seems to be diluted. Now, if I want a magepunk setting I can run Ravnica or Dominaria or Neo-Kamigawa etc. And even their big selling point, the Artificer class, is something I can plop into Lantan or Lamordia or Mount Nevermind in a more familiar setting if a player wants to be one of those.

Again, I bear no ill-will towards Eberron but given the choice, I would just take the elements of it that I like (like artificers and a PC construct race) and run them elsewhere.

[glass]

Warforged have none of the properties that make Golems Golems, barring how they are also Constructs

Even if that were true, that would be a pretty big "barring that" (huge, in fact). And anyway, the main thing they have in common with golems is that they look pretty similar (albeit usually smaller and sometimes less monolithic in materials).

Also, yeah, they are sapient which most (but by no means all) golems are not. But since fictional robots vary dramatically in the levels of sapience also, I am not sure what that has do do with the price of fish (and real robots are completely non-sapient, like golems).

nor do they have the very specifically magical properties commonly associated with Golems in and out of the game (most notably the resistence to magic, but also the built-in means of outside control &c.).

You get that golems were an example, right? Substitute a different kind of humanoid-shaped construct if you prefer. D&D has plenty. Anyway, given that I was responding to Zevox's complaint about Eberron having robots - their not being or looking technological is an appropriate rebuttal to that, and nit picking about how they are different from golems is irrelevant.

Once more, they are these robotic looking things

Robots usually look overtly technological, or look just like humans but with funky skill colour. Warforged look, as noted, like smaller golems.

De gustibus non est disuptandum. You're allowed to not like warforged; you don't need to (and shouldn't) make up reason to dislike them. Especially when your stated reasons are hogwash.

[RedMage125]

I genuinely love Eberron. It's one of the only pre-published settings I've ever wanted to run a game in, and one I'm just *dying* to have a chance to be a player in. I've got every 3.5e Everron product in print, I have the 4e books, the 5e book, and both of Keith Baker's 5e Eberron books from DM's Guild. I know a lot about the lore.

I guess one drawback of Eberron, however, is that I feel like a lot of the material doesn't port over well to other settings. I don't allow Eberron races, dragonmarks, artificers, and so on in my home setting. My home campaign setting more closely resembles "classic" settings, like Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk. Namely, because I prefer to more or less meet player expectations when I have new players of what they expect a game world to be like with deities, classes, expected text level, and so on. Much like how I insist all players be presented with all house rules up front, anything that deviates from expectations from the books should be presented up front. So when I run Eberron, I've made a short "primer" for players unfamiliar with the setting.

That said, there's been some assertions in this thread about Eberron which aren't quite right.

The perceived lack of mechanical significance to dragonmarks, for example. By the DMG, when making a magic item, limiting who can use an item drastically reduces its cost. So items that can only be used by those possessing a specific dragonmark makes them easier to make. Second, and this is a suggestion by Keith Baker, so more "kanon" than canon, but a lot of magic items from the DMG even are intended to be changed to requiring a dragonmark. Cloak of Elvenkind, for example.

Eberron also focuses on the idea that PCs are special and unique. An NPC wizard who instructs at Arcanix, for example, may be a level 6 wizard. But she doesn't have the facility to cast spells the same way a PC does. It may take her several minutes or an hour to cast her 3rd level spells. The wandslingers used as arcane artillery in the last war REQUIRE a wand of some sort to cast spells, and cannot do so with their hands. A magewright may be able to cast a few spells, but they're limited by the specialization of their profession, and they usually require reagents that a PC caster does not. Fortunately, these reagents are somewhat affordable, so even commoners in Sharn are more likely to go to a magewright to repair a broken cookpot than a blacksmith. So the idea that NPCs have full access to the exact kind of spellcasting that PCs do is not part of the setting.

Dragonmarks being a part of that "everyday magic" is how the setting achieves its "wide magic". And yes, the SLAs come online around the same level as the spells do for PCs, but they're not class restricted. An Orien heir doesn't have to be a wizard to get Teleport from his mark. There's even a Prestige Class in the book Dragonmarked that allows them to eventually do a lot of minor teleporting all over the place.

And one more thing...

Vol has what later material would call a "Transcendant Mark" - her half-dragon status uniquely amplifying her mark's connection to the Prophecy in order to boost its power far beyond even Siberys status.

Minor note, the later material called Erandis' mark an "Apex Mark", not "Transcendent".

[Metastachydium]

Even if that were true, that would be a pretty big "barring that" (huge, in fact).

To use some extreme examples, an animated suit of armour is a fantasy staple; a robot with chainsaw hands shooting lasers isn't. Both would be Constructs if statted as D&D monsters, but how that would make them very similar or equally fitting in any given setting escapes me.

And anyway, the main thing they have in common with golems is that they look pretty similar (albeit usually smaller and sometimes less monolithic in materials).

No, they don't. Golems (unless portrayed having very robotic features for no good reason at all, which as said, I'm not terribly fond of) are more like statues; Warforged have nuts and bolts and plates and mechanical joints, ending up looking much more like a machine than a(n ideally) somewhat crude work of art.

Also, yeah, they are sapient which most (but by no means all) golems are not. But since fictional robots vary dramatically in the levels of sapience also, I am not sure what that has do do with the price of fish (and real robots are completely non-sapient, like golems).

Do note how I didn't even bring that up, even though it is rather important that Golems are traditionally itemlike tools rather than creatures. At best, slaves, at worst just motile objects.

You get that golems were an example, right?

No, I didn't get that from your one-sentence throwaway line. "Androids in my fantasy is perfectly normal because Golems" pops up a lot, so I assumed it's that again.

Substitute a different kind of humanoid-shaped construct if you prefer. D&D has plenty.

And I don't like the more robotic/clockwork/tracked vehicle looking ones any more than I like Warforged; most of them are merely not a big part of the setting, just another statblock in some splat.

Anyway, given that I was responding to Zevox's complaint about Eberron having robots - their not being or looking technological is an appropriate rebuttal to that, and nit picking about how they are different from golems is irrelevant.

Robots usually look overtly technological, or look just like humans but with funky skill colour. Warforged look, as noted, like smaller golems.

1. I don't know where you saw art of Warforged that don't look technological or robotic; or Warforged that aren't mass-produced in big forges, but certainly not the same Eberron I'm aware of;
2.a. Golems are usually rather large, but that's not a terribly important part of what defines them, and at any rate, D&D has Medium Golems even in Core [I misremembered that bit; sorry 'bout that] that are smaller than standard Warforged; at the same time, Warforged Chargers exist and are bigger than many Large Golems; and
2.b. far more importantly, as noted, Warforged do look overtly technological, and no matter how many times you repeat it without further elaboration, "they look like Golems" will not suddenly become true.

De gustibus non est disuptandem.

Disputandum, but otherwise certainly.

You're allowed to not like warforged; you don't need to (and shouldn't) make up reason to dislike them. Especially when your stated reasons are hogwash.

I explained why I'm saying what I'm saying. Repeatedly. Until such time as you can come up with a better rebuttal than "they look like Golems which we aren't talking about so you're wrong", leave me be with this "hogwash" thing.

[Fizban]

I've mentioned some clever tricks Eberron does that I like, and some have mentioned fixes that would solve their problems, so in that vein:

Dragonmarks turning the onus on widespread magic from member of specific classes to feats, is a perfect solution, it just doesn't go far enough. Ideally one would figure out how many people were in X profession historically and use that to determine how many people you must declare are born with X mark, but it's really much easier to just say that in this world anyone can learn a bit of magic with a feat. The feats can be static spell choices/lines or completely freeform, but if you just make magic properly ubiquitous, you can skip straight to the ramifications of the spells allowed by assuming they are sufficiently ubiquitous. And because low level spells for low level feats will never eclipse members of actual spellcasting classes, it doesn't even mess with game balance that much, assuming your spells were already balanced.

The Artificer not being added to standard city generation (that I'm aware of), means it's actually mechanically represented as a new, not-widespread class. A true advancement in the field. And it brings with it a paradigm shifting ability to craft items two levels lower than normal. While it's unreliable and no less expensive, once the class is sufficiently widespread, that does represent an advancement in the availability of magic items. Places that could have afforded (because taxes are taxes) certain things but lacked anyone high enough level to craft them, may thanks to the Artificer may now be able to craft them. The only thing that stops permanent wondrous items from being crafted literally everywhere is that Artificers still have to wait for 3rd level to get Craft Wondrous. Depending on their level generation die, there can still be plenty of hamlets that do have a proper crafter- and anywhere that does, well that 3rd level crafter counts as +2 higher so they can craft with 3rd level spells. That's Plant Growth, Fireball, Suggestion, Animate Dead, Speak With Dead, Magic Circle, Locate Object, Stone Shape, in addition to stuff from last level like Make Whole, Gust of Wind, Detect Thoughts, Zone of Truth, and that's not even considering splatbooks with spells actually designed for setting Significance.

Instead of being tied to individuals that spend their lives learning a trade and eventually die and need to be replaced, which a place may or may not have had, for a few thousand gold (maybe the price of a house) you can make a magic item that will do that job forever. Plenty of these items should already be in use in the world, but once Artificers are widespread, the level of spells that ought to be widely available is directly increased. That increase in availability will cause in increase in interest (and ease of replacement), which might remove one of the reasons for lack of proliferation.