Review: Eberron
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Here's my chapter-by-chapter review of Eberron,
WotC's new campaign setting book. While I was annoyed that one
branch of WotC decided to have an open call for submissions to create the next campaign
setting while there was a whole passel of creative people sitting in
RPG R&D, and equally annoyed that this contest was offering a
$100,000 prize while R&D (and the rest of the company) was doing
layoffs. But I was able to put that aside and look at the book
objectively ... after all, the material isn't what I was miffed about, it was the origin of the material.
With the exception of some parts of the geographical
chapter I've read the whole book (more on the geography bit later), and
used that (rather than a skimming or even just a flip-through) to fuel
this review. Reading 320 pages takes a while and that's why it took me
so long to put this review together.
This is partly an overview and partly a review. I'm
going to call out things that I think are particularly interesting from
a design or story point of view, and I may give opinions on some of
those things, but not necessarily all. Hopefully these points and
opinions will inform you enough to help you make a decision about the
book.
Edit: There's one comment I make here that is explained in online articles or interviews with the designers of the setting (specifically, I'm talking about my curiosity why the warforged were built at LA+0 ... see the Classes section of the review for the full comment). When I wrote this review of the book, I'm reviewing what's in the book. While I think it's great that there's all this supplemental information out there, I'm reviewing the book on its own merits and if my question isn't answered in the book then my concern about that element is completely valid (after all, someone who buys the book doesn't know to go to site X or message board thread Y for an explanation, they expect the book to explain it).
Summary For Those Who Are Too Impatient to Read the Whole Review
I like it. Overall, the mechanics are sound, and while there are a few
things that I would have done differently (and I'm sure every game
designer feels the same way when doing a review), the material is put
together very well, the various campaign elements are well-integrated
throughout the entire setting, and there's a lot going on in terms of
factions, organizations, regions, and plots to give adventurers plenty
to do. Even if you don't want to run an Eberron campaign, there's plenty
of lootable stuff that you can use in another setting. I may not run an
Eberron campaign (I have at least three short campaigns in the hopper
right now and I'm not ready to add a fourth at this time), but I'm
certainly going to use parts of it in my other games and keep an eye on
what WotC does with the new setting.
Introduction
The
most important part of the introduction is the "Ten Things You Need to
Know" section, where it explains things like "Everything in D&D has
a place in Eberron" and summarizes/reinforces key elements of the
setting. Just a few pages, but lets you get a general idea of the
setting without having to read a huge number of pages. :P One bit I'd
like to call out is that in Eberron, monsters don't always hold to the
alignments given to them in the MM, so you might have an evil silver
dragon ... something I like very much because it means the players
can't metagame and gives the DM a bunch of "new" monsters to use as
opponents (otherwise to have your good party fight a silver dragon
there has to be something like mind-control involved, which means you
can't use a bunch of the MM monsters in combat).
Races
In addition to the standard PH fare, this chapter introduces the new PC
races of the setting: changelings, kalashtar, shifters, and warforged.
Changelings: Descended from doppelgangers and
humans, they're naturally roguish and make good spies. I can see a lot
of roleplaying potential in this race, as well as neat feat-based
enhancements and modifications of their powers.
Kalashtar: Human bodies fused with the minds of
psionic outsiders, the kalashtar are a weird and rare race that lives
as exiles from their home plane (ruled by evil psionic creatures who
have custom-bred another human subrace). Naturally psionic, they're the
strongest native tie to psionics in the setting.
Shifters: Descended from humans and natural
lycanthropes, they have a limited ability to assume one animalish form
and associated animal traits. This
I really like, and it's actually the way I was planning on redoing
lycanthropes yet again. As with the changelings, a lot of roleplaying
and mechanical opportunities.
Warforged: Living constructs built to aid one
country's war effort, they're an interesting twist on the rules:
creatures with some -- but not all -- of the advantages and
disadvantages of being a construct. The first thing I thought of after
reading the warforged section was, "You could totally do modrons this
way." Construct and yet living ... it fits perfectly. And as with the
changelings and shifters, there's a lot of roleplaying ("Because I was
built rather than born, is my soul different?") and mechanical
opportunity (and they present mechanical enhancements of various kinds
elsewhere in the book). The only real problem I have with the warforged
is their relative power level: they're LA +0, just like a human ... yet
someone (in-campaign) decided "let's spend thousands of gold to create a
race of warrior-servants that aren't any more powerful than you're
typical made-the-old-fashioned-way human soldier." Strange ... I would
have presented them as a LA +1 race just to justify the investment of
creating creatures that are destined for the front lines of combat,
giving them some kind of boost to account for the LA, such as a single
construct d10 HD they retain instead of swapping it for a class d10,
and/or the construct bonus hit points for a creature of their size, etc.
One grump: The warforged writeup mentions "Warforged can be enchanted just as armor can be. The character must be present for the entire time it takes to enchant him."
Yeaaaargh!! C'mon, I learned not to use the word "enchant" in terms of
"enchanting objects" from my WotC editors, so someone over there in
Renton needs a talking-to.... :) (Edit: For those complaining that I brought this up, understand that I used to use "enchant" in the context of "enchant an item" all the time, and then when 3E came out I was told by a senior editor at WotC, "don't use 'enchant' in that context any more because blah blah blah," so I stopped ... WotC may have reversed their stance on that since then, lacking a really good replacement term, but I still feel compell--er, obligated-- to point it out ... and I did in a smiley to show I'm just teasing my friends back in Washington).
Classes
The chapter presents one new class (the artificer) and (like we did in
the FRCS) goes over each PH class explaining its role in the setting.
It also includes a short anecdote of a sample member of that class, and
a small story evolves over the course of this chapter. Some of the
"iconic Eberron PCs" (whether or not that's what WotC calls them, I
suspect many people will think of them that way) are mentioned as
traveling or adventuring together, which is a nice touch.
Artificer: This is a nice idea for a support-member
base class and I'm sure people will want to try it out to be the "item
guy" character. My real problem with this class is that it's really
frontloaded: at 1st-level you get five
class abilities. Four of the five (Artisan Bonus, Disable Trap, Scribe
Scroll, and Item Creation) don't need you to advance your artificer
class level to improve them (they are either flat bonuses or they
depend on ranks in a skill). I think you'll see a lot of people
interested in artificing who'll cherry-pick this class (taking only one
level in it, then returning to their main class) and use its many nice
1st-level abilities to augment their main class' abilities (such as a
martial character using the lesser armor enhancement, magic weapon, magic vestment, or shield of faith
infusion to buff their AC or attacks, a rogue using skill enhancement to
increase a roll vs. a tough DC, etc.). When they rearranged so much in
the 3.5 PH classes so you couldn't cherry-pick the monk, paladin, or
ranger classes, I'm surprised they put so much stuff in the first level
of the artificer class.
Cleric: Five significant points for the cleric class
in Eberron. One, faith in Eberron is the pantheonic approach ... most
people (including clerics) consider themselves to worship a particular
pantheon rather than a single deity. Two, clerics are the fighting arm
of the church, regular "priests" of a church are either adepts (Edit: I originally--and incorrectly--said "acolytes" for some reason) (slightly tweaked from the DMG version) or experts, usually handling
bureaucracy and healing with skills rather than magic, which explains
why your average church isn't a powerhouse of low-level clerics (it
also shifts the focus for people seeking magical healing to the
dragonmarked House with the mark of Healing). Three, the gods are more
remote in this setting, and clerics aren't restricted to one step from
their deity's alignment. Four, this means they aren't restricted from
casting spells with opposite alignment descriptors. Five, this also
means that a cleric who violates his church's tenets might be punished
by his church,
but still get spells and cleric class features from his deity. This
means you can have corrupt evil clerics secretly working in the middle
of a good church, and they don't stand out like a sore thumb for lack
of turning and spellcasting. All five are neat options that enhance the
flavor (and mystery and intrigue) and help fight metagaming.
Monks: Like in FR, most of the monks in Eberron are
tied to a particular pantheon, and this has a slight effect what
feats they can choose. Unlike in FR, their choice doesn't let them
multiclass without penalty (you have to take a feat to do that, which
is kinda poopy, as the multiclassing limitation is only there for
roleplaying purposes at the insistence of some of the 3.0 playtesters
anyway).
Heroic Characters
This is the PC-oriented rules stuff, covering action points, feats, and gods.
Action Points: I haven't read Star Wars d20 in a
while, but this feels a lot like the Force Points mechanic from that
game (and I'm guessing they used the Revised Star Wars d20 rules for
Force Points, which IIRC got some tweaking from the original version) (Edit: yes, Unearthed Arcana uses Action Points, too, derived from the original d20SW Force Point mechanic).
Not a bad mechanic, and it certainly lets characters get a little
heroic boost now and then. I especially like the short section
explaining additional uses for action points (beyond just adding to die
rolls, such as gaining another use of a number-of-uses-per-day class
ability, stabilizing at negative hit points, etc.). Some feats cost
action points to use, which is another neat implementation of the
mechanic.
Feats: Your usual assortment of smart feats to enhance class or race abilities. Nice work.
Dragonmarks: These are feats that give minor magical
abilities and a visible mark to go with it (which also ties you to a
particular guild-like dragonmarked House, a nice way of tying your game
choices into the setting), with feats in a chain giving better
abilities. This section also gives a short overview of the House for
each mark so you can think up the way your character fits in. I might
even steal the dragonmarks and some of the houses for my home campaign.
Prestige Classes
Of course the book has prestige classes, but as a core campaign setting book it should have them, and they should
be specifically tied to the setting, rather than generic prestige
classes with little world flavor. Fortunately, all is well in this
chapter, as every prestige class is tied to the setting, whether as a
representative of a House, a ranger of a particular pristine forest,
champion of one of the pantheons, the representative daredevil pulp
hero, mysterious dragonmarked hero (it sounds generic but it's not),
the representative pulp investigator, the ultimate warforged, and the
ultimate feral shifter. One of them has a significant power issues (the
Weretouched Master class eventually gives you ability score modifiers
based on what kind of lycanthrope you're descended from, and the
werebear gets more than the wererat because of this) but that's more a
problem with the original lycanthropes than the class (the lycanthropes
need to be made equal so the prestige class and feats relating to them
can be equal for all types).
Magic
Overview: A nice overview of magical elements in the
campaign and how they affect daily life (healing, hospitality,
transportation, etc. ... mainly as an avenue of the powers of the
Houses), and how the non-adventuring spellcasters ply their trade in
the world.
Variant spell components: Nice idea, though the
costs make me a little wary. For example, as a component you can
include a dragonseye acorn (60gp) as a component for a 10% chance to
empower the spell, so for 600gp you're sort of guaranteed the spell
will be empowered. I don't feel like running all the numbers to check
everything out, but I'm going to trust that WotC actually ran the
numbers on this for low-, medium-, and high-level spells to make sure
this isn't too good to be true. I like variant components and I think
they add neat features to the game, so I'm glad they introduced them
here. Another nice thing is that each of the components is tied to a
geographic area in the world, so the DM can make quests for it in those
areas or include the components in treasure lists.
Planes: The planes pay a big part in Eberron's
history, with at least two planar invasions or overlaps responsible for
the near-destruction or enslavement of once-great races and
civilizations. The campaign uses its own planar arrangement, and each
plane is in a kind of orbit (except for the planar source of chaos,
which bounces randomly), bringing it closer or farther to Eberron, and
the proximity affecting traits on Eberron. Nice! Plenty of way to
introduce weird localized effects and keep spellcasters on their toes.
One really nice thing they did for this is point out that the DM
doesn't have to keep careful track of thirteen different planar
calendars, you can fudge it to make a good story or adventure (of
course, you can't fudge it too
much ... if a plane on a 100-year cycle is conjoined Eberron one week,
far the next, and conjoined again the next after that, that is sloppy
DMing with little consideration to setting consistency). It gives each
plane's traits plus what MM creatures are common there (since Eberron
doesn't use the Great Wheel, the planar homes presented in the MM
aren't accurate).
Possession: Many outsiders in Eberron have the
ability to enter a spiritual state and possess mortals. Cool! The
possession rules are very similar to that in Ghostwalk, and I wouldn't be surprised if they used the Ghostwalk possession rules as a basis for this (it covers a few more topics than Ghostwalk's
rules). Good outsiders have a similar ability called channeling, which
basically is the same thing except it requires a willing host.
Domains: Eberron has the Artifice domain, which is
very similar to the Craft domain from the FRCS (almost the same granted
power, very similar spell list except Eberron doesn't have some of the
unique FRCS spells ... turns out this domain first appeared in Deities & Demigods). Ditto for the Craft domain, Community domain. New
domains (to me, at least ... many of them appear in other WotC books, most of which I don't have): Commerce, Deathless (Book of Exalted Deeds), Decay, Dragon Below
(a faith-related domain, somewhat like the racial domains in FRCS),
Exorcism (Defenders of the Faith), Feast, Life, Meditation (Dragonlance Campaign Setting), Necromancer, Passion (Dragonlance Campaign Setting), Shadow (note that this is not a renamed version of the Darkness domain from the FRCS ... they have only their domain power and 1st-level spell in common). Not a bad selection of "new" domains for the cleric fans out there. :)
Spells/Infusions: Quite a few spells, many of which
are artificer infusions and not conventional spells (though many of
these are just artificer adaptations of spells). Many of the infusions
could be spells (such as Artificer 1, Sor/Wiz1) and it's a little sad
that they limited so many of them to artificer-only; I understand the
desire to make the artificer special by giving it some unique magical
things, but I don't see the reason why a sorcerer couldn't learn
inflict light damage (an inflict light wounds against constructs), metamagic item (applies a metamagic feat you know to a spell trigger item), or skill enhancement (gives a circumstance bonus to one skill), even if they're at a higher level than the artificer. Speaking of skill enhancement, the wieldskill spell from Magic of Faerûn
(which also gives a bonus to a skill) was cut from the list of general spells in
Player's Guide to Faerûn (now it's a Gond-only spell), and rumor has it that wieldskill was restricted this way because it stole the rogue's thunder. If that is the case it makes sense that skill enhancement was allowed in Eberron as an artificer-only spell, though personally I feel that skill-enhancing spells are perfectly reasonable if done right. Other than that, a nice selection of spells, many of which directly relate to the setting (such as detect aberration,
handy in the Mournlands where mutated creatures abound). While I'm
discussing spells, let's give a thank-you to Duane Maxwell, one of my Magic of Faerûn co-authors, who designed the hardening
spell that appears in this book (and originally in Magic of Faerûn); Duane realized there was a need for a
spell in D&D that made castle walls and other objects harder to
destroy, and in a setting where constructs and items play an even more
significant part, that spell is even more important.
Equipment
Some new exotic weapons keyed to the various cultures and regions in
the setting. Only one kooky thing: the Xen'drik boomerang (a
three-bladed thing rather than the Australian type) returns to its
thrower if it misses its target, which means if I stand at one end of a
150 ft. long, 10 ft. wide hallway and my opponent is on the other end,
I can throw the boomerang at him, and if I miss, it travels straight at
him and straight back to me, at which point I can catch it. :/
Two new armor types, one a specific type of darkwood armor and the other made from hardened leaves.
Several new special/alchemical substances, such as
acidic fire (alchemist's fire that's part acid), alchemist's frost
(cold), and alchemist's spark (electricity). There's the noxious
smokestick (which can nauseate a creature that breathes it, but I
wonder if the user has a half-second delay to give them time to throw
it or if it smokes up right away in the user's square).
Some new skill toolkits, sets of clothing,
documentation (important in a setting where having no papers can get you
thrown in jail), dinosaur mounts for purchase (the halfling lands
export them), buying spellcasting and magical effects from dragonmarked
Houses (including transport on the flying airships and superfast
lightwood waterships, which are so expensive only the guild can afford
them, and so rare that it's pretty obvious when you steal one), and new
special materials for armor and weapons. All stuff that's well-tied to
the setting and shows they put a lot of work into making sure nothing
looked like an add-on.
Life In The World
This chapter is what lets you get into Eberron as if it were a real
place: its calendar, daily life, views on government, the role of the
Houses, economics, level of education (fairly high, schooling is
considered a right for all citizens in most countries, but I don't
think it specifically mentions whether or not your typical NPC is
literate or not though I suspect they are because of newspaper-type
sources of information are common), views on adventurers, and languages.
Then it tackles each country (or geographical region
in the case of sparsely-settled wildlands without a true common
government). Countries list a capital, population, exports, and
commonly-used languages; note that with the exception of alignment,
this format was pioneered by the FRCS, so it's nice to see it retained,
especially in regard to the exports (which make it a lot easier for a
DM to figure out trade routes and thus adventures around them). Each
country is given a history, an overview of what industries/economics,
specific notes on life in that area, its government, power groups,
religion, major settlements, important sites, adventuring notes (what
adventurers can expect in terms of travel, housing, treatment by the
locals, etc.), and adventure ideas (four or more for each area, which
is more than what we could do in the FRCS because we over-wrote). You
have a good mix of countries that have remained stable for quite some
times, some teetering-on-the-edge countries, a theocracy led by a
prophet-priest, a "monster country," a "war-torn badlands" region, and
so on, so you can pick just about any sort of campaign theme and find a
place for it somewhere in the world.
One thing I think it's important to point out is
that most of the country leaders are mid-level (10th-level or so) and
often have many NPC classes (mainly aristocrat and expert, of course)
which means that once the PCs get to the mid-levels they're basically
peers of the leaders of the world, which is an interesting dynamic (in
pulp terms, it means even the Queen of England looks highly on Allan
Quatermain) and is different from FR where the leaders are often really
high-level. One side effect of this is that in some of the
tribal-monster or low-population countries, PCs have a chance of taking
out an evil leader without having to be high-level characters to do it.
There is a lot of opportunity for political intrigue
in the setting. Since the current countries are mostly spin-offs or
survivors from five daughter nations of a unified empire, there's a lot
of scheming going on in the ranks of the nobles and royals who want to
claim the empire's crown, and that means that you could pick any one
country as the focal point for your game and make the adjacent
countries into allies or enemies depending on how you want to push
those relationships. In many ways this reminds me of the Birthright setting from TSR (that's a positive comparison in my book ... I liked Birthright
very much and it has a strong element of political intrigue and
adventurers working for various heads of state to accomplish things the
crown can't do with common soldiers).
I mentioned at the top of this review that I didn't
read all of the geographical section; I wanted to capture the feel of
the world without having to learn all of the tiniest details, so I read
the history, life, and government sections of each country and skimmed
the rest. I don't feel that this affects my review or my opinion of the
book, as I can understand the setting without having specific
information on the major settlements and adventure hooks for each
country, but I wanted to be up front about skimming this part.
Following the country writeups are similar writeups
for the other continents of the world. Most of these are "mysterious
foreign places that nobody goes to" to the common folk, but can be
visited by adventurers (often a very dangerous thing to do, since one
is ruled by dragons and another by evil counterparts of the psionic
kalashtar race).
Next is a history section which goes back to the
creation of the world, but wisely spends a majority of its space
covering the past 5,000 years and the rise of the PC races in the
world. It's a nice summary, if a bit short (two pages, but each
country's writeup covers local history in more detail so that's OK) and
is a handy place to cross-link the names of the kings and queens of the
modern world, as they all have their place on the timeline.
Organizations
In any setting where guild-like power groups such as the dragonmarked
Houses play a significant part, you need to devote an entire chapter to
power groups, and this is it. Because "pulp adventure" is one of the
themes of Eberron, you'd expect mysterious financial cartels, ancient
religious sects, worshippers of evil from the dawn of time, and dusty
scholars obsessed with old lore. It's all here. You want to play
something like the recent movie The Mummy
with archeologists, awakened evil, secret crusaders dedicated to
containing that evil, and foreigners with commercial interests in your
adventures, you can. Want to play Raiders of a Lost Ark
with exploration, scholars backing you, an ancient artifact, and rival
adventurers funded by an evil foreign government, you can.
This chapter is twenty pages long. Even with eight
pages allocated to the dragonmarked Houses, you still get 14
organizations (some of which are metacategories, like "the royal
families") to push and pull on things in the campaign. It would be easy
to pick three of these groups and build a campaign about the PCs
investigating the involvement of those three groups, trying to find out
which group is really on their side and which wants to end the world.
Plus, and a sample member of each group is statted up for the DM's convenience.
An Eberron Campaign
Advice on creating a party, styles of play, story and pacing, recurring
villains (including two sample NPCs and low- and mid-level), plot
themes, and a look at NPC classes in the setting (with a new class, the
magewright). All stuff you need to help get the feel of the campaign
right. Some people think this is too little (nine pages of text), but
if you're interested in a pulp campaign you're already familiar with
its components and this serves as a refresher and a focus for your
ideas.
Magewright: This NPC class is largely responsible
for the advance in crafting and high productivity levels of skilled
workers in the setting. It's basically a weak spellcaster with a very
specialized spell list that uses those spells to enhance its ability to
craft mundane items and/or provide magical services to normal people (alarm, unseen servant,
etc.). I'm not sure you couldn't accomplish the same thing with a
selection of feats (like they did with the dragonmarked Houses), which
would also make it an appealing choice for PCs (right now I don't think
any PC would multiclass as a magewright, it's far more efficient to
just multiclass as wizard or sorcerer which gets you a lot more stuff,
too). It works as presented, but the designer in me thinks there's a
better way than creating a new NPC class.
Magic Items
Here's some cool stuff.
Dragonshard items: Eberron is a world created by a
battle between three celestial dragons -- Siberys, Eberron, and Khyber (notice how all three have the syllable "ber" in common ... I wonder what the intended etymology of that syllable is). Siberys had his form shattered and exists as a ring of asteroids high
above the equator, Khyber was bound deep underground, and Eberron
became the physical barrier -- the world -- that separates the two. Now
mortals seek Siberys shards (which fall from the sky and land in
equatorial areas), Eberron shards (which are found in soil in geode
form), and Khyber shards (which are found on the walls of underground
volcanic caverns). Each type of shard contains magical power and can
enhance different things (including different dragonmarks), and because
they're found in different parts of the world already they're a reason
they're adventure. Most of the magic items of this section derive from
crafting items with dragonshards attached.
Another new magic thing involves binding an
elemental into an item to give the item elemental properties (like
binding a fire elemental into a weapon to make it act like a flaming
weapon, or binding an air elemental into armor to give it the power of
flight). An interesting point they don't cover in the book is the issue
of slavery; can a good creature be morally comfortable using a weapon
containing an imprisoned intelligent being? Sure, it's "just an
elemental," but elementals are living creatures that can think and
speak....
Other new stuff is warforged components (magic items
you can build into a warforged's body to give permanent effects), some
new general items, a handful of artifacts, and some "wondrous
locations" (magical effects tied to a specific location rather than an
object).
Monsters
Every setting it going to have new monsters unique to the setting.
Eberron has the deathless type (introduced first in the Book of Exalted Deeds, in this setting they're the ancestors that rule the ancient elven nation on a nearby
continent), carcass crab (previewed on the WotC site, a giant monster
that glues armored corpses to itself for armor and disguise), daelkyr
(supertough chaotic outsiders from the plane of chaos, using living
"items" grafted to their flesh instead of magic items), dinosaurs (one
nice touch is that it gives Eberron names for these dinosaurs so you
don't have to use the latinized Earth-names), dolgaunts and dolgrim
(freaky mutated monsters created by the daelkyr during their last
planar invasion), dusk hags (weird prophetic hags, usually neutral),
new homunculi (craft-helpers, messengers, spies, and defenders), horrid
animals (druid-mutated creatures made to help defend pristine natural
areas), valenar horse (a new special elf-bred horse), inspired (the
evil counterparts of the kalashtar, but BOO on using a generic single
word as a new monster's name!), Karrnathi skeleton & Karrnathi
zombie (new intelligent undead soldiers), living spells (spells gone
awry and living as oozelike creatures, a very neat idea), magebred
animals (template for creatures bred with the help of magical selection
and augmentation), quori (the psionic dream-monsters that possess the
inspired, generally unable to reach Eberron directly so they have to
use possession, many types a la demons and devils but only one type
presented here), zakya (a weaker warrior-type rakshasa), symbiont (the
living equipment the daelkyr use, useable by PCs but at some risk), and
warforged titan (an early type of warforged, fully construct and not
living, big, previewed on the WotC site). Not a bad mix, well-tied to
the setting, some of them on the high end of things (and I'm not sure
we need monster stats on the 25 HD undying leaders of the elves of
another continent ... how often are you going to fight that?).
Following the new monsters are a review of MM
monsters that play a particular role in the setting or how they're
changed in some way. A nice touch, educating the DM in how to best
serve the campaign with the core monsters.
The Forgotten Forge
This is an included 1st-level adventure in the city. A good plan,
showing what sort of adventures to expect and create in the setting,
and gives everyone a common experience (like how everyone who played
basic D&D played The Keep on the Borderlands, how most 1E AD&Ders played the Giants series or The Temple of Elemental Evil, etc., and how many 3E D&Ders player The Sunless Citadel
and the other "adventure path" adventures). That strengthens the Eberron
players' ties to each other ("Yeah, so when we fought the evil priest
my rogue took out the bodyguard with a sneak attack...," "When we fought him, my wizard zapped him in the face with a magic missile....").
I actually haven't read the adventure (same reasons as for skimming the
country writeups, plus I don't anticipate running the adventure in the
near future) but including it is a good thing.
Index
It has an index. Yay!
General Comments
Artwork: There's been a lot of talk about the
artwork, how some of it is like a comic book. Well, pulp heroic
adventure has a history associated with comic books, and using
comic-style artwork reinforces that. My copy of the book is in black
& white and I haven't gone over all the illos posted on the WotC
web site, they look good in black & white. I like comic books and
comic book art; we're not talking about some crappy indie comic
illustrated by a talentless hack, we're talking about professional
artists who make their living doing art in that style. It suits the
book. You may not like that style of art, but if that's the case you're
probably not a fan of pulp adventure.
Technological Level: There has been a lot of talk
about the tech level in the campaign, calling it "steampunk" and
focusing on the lightning rail (a magically-powered transport vehicle).
One, the tech level isn't that high ... the lightning rail and a
handful of magically-powered ships of a different kind are the peak of
the tech level. Most of the tech is just an enhancement of your
standard fantasy tech, mainly an output increase in production (from
the work of the magewrights). It's nice to see this ... so many fantasy
worlds keep the same tech level (swords, armor) for a thousand years,
which is just absurd because your tech is going to evolve ... just
because a small fraction of people has access to magic doesn't mean the
rest of the world isn't going to look for nonmagical ways to make their
lives easier. So this tech advancement (as limited as it is) is
entirely natural and appropriate.
Psionics: Before reading he book, my impression was
that Eberron was designed to use the Expanded Psionics Handbook, and
that if you didn't use the EPH you'd be missing out on a significant
aspect of the setting (compare to the FRCS, which says Faerûn is
officially a nonpsionic campaign, though you can of course use psionics
if you want to). Well, that impression I had was wrong. There is very
little in the setting that requires psionics--just the kalashtar,
inspired, and quori--and those elements are small enough that you could
replace them with nonpsionic abilities or cut those creatures entirely
and it wouldn't have a significant effect on the campaign (their
historical significance of those creatures would remain, but whatever
they're doing "at present" could remain hidden and mysterious). This is
pleasing to me ... this setup doesn't require you to have the EPH, and
not requiring you to buy another book to run the campaign is a
customer-friendly choice. Personally I'm not much into psionics, but I
know a lot of people are, and they can use psionics in the campaign
from the start because the campaign is designed to incorporate
psionics. So you win either way.
Final Comments
I'll restate: I like the book. I like the setting. I like the
mechanics. I like how it's all tied together. If you're looking to
start a new campaign, you should consider buying it. If you're looking
to add some stuff to your ongoing campaign, you should consider buying
it. It's a good book, even though I don't agree with how all of it was
done (I'm on the outside looking in, so I'm not privy to why they chose
to do some things they way they did, so I'm sure there's a reason for
it. Congratulations to Keith Baker and WotC ... well done!