For better or worse Eberron is Wizard’s new baby and they showing it off in a manner that only a mother can.  For about the past year we have seen the ultrasound images in Dragon magazine and endless advertisements.  The Official D&D web site has been ‘gearing up for Eberron’ for the past several months despite numerous other worthy products.  That said is Eberron a babe only a mother could love?  Sure Wizards may not think so – but I am leaning that way after my first look. 

Eberron was a setting wrought from the ‘make a campaign’ contest that was held in 2002.  I have to give credit where credit is due; who ever thought of making D20 an open system and creating this contest is a marketing genius.  Having other people support your product and revive your creatively dead production staff for free is a brilliant move.  I am genuinely jealous in not being able to read the 10,000+ campaign ideas submitted. I’m sure many of which were quite good.  That said, after hearing about the contest and knowing Wizard’s current trend of products, we all knew Eberron or something like was coming. 

Two words can sum up the setting as a whole – ‘Extreme Explorer’.  Picture a setting where every interesting idea you considered but ultimately turned down was now reality.  This includes ideas that you thought were cool when you were twelve – you now have Eberron.  Trains powered by lightning, terminators-er Warforged as PC, portable floating castles, and entire cities of demons.  As a collective, the setting feels like a patchwork quilt vainly sewn together a mishmash of ‘kewl’ ideas that cater towards the 12-16 demographic.  That said let me go over the book in detail and you can judge for yourself.

Artwork – The art is an odd mix of professionally done fantasy work similar to that of the Forgotten Realms Hardcover book and some of it is quite good.  Other portions look as if they come from a low budget comic depicting an inane scene in a bad fantasy novel.  Not only do these full-page comic illustrations simply look silly, but they are also wasteful since the book devotes 10+ pages to them.  The cover art is fair, but generally not my taste.  Also there was no pullout map included with the book which is sacrilege considering the cost is $40 ($27 on Amazon).

Introduction – The introduction to the book does not start off on the right foot for me since the first page is piece of the above mentioned comic art.  The introduction covers the changes from a standard D&D to Eberron including tone and attitude, the inclusion of all D&D rules from all books, and a list of movies to inspire you (yes, seriously, they recommend movies).  They are not shy about what they sell, I will tell you that much.  A world of magic, a world of cinema action, and a world where tone and attitude is everything.

Chapter 1, Races – The races of Eberron are interesting for the most part.  I like them more than I did the talking Lions and Giants of Arcana Unearthed.  Eberron offers a Changling, basically a dumbed down Doppelganger type.  The Kalashtar, a race that justifies Psionics in Eberron.  Shifters, so you can play a werewolf that is not totally broken.  And finally the infamous Warforged, where in so many words you are a terminator.  The Warforged is the most interesting of the bunch and is clearly broken (I will come to that later when I talk about Feats).  He seems inspired by Karn, Silver Golem, from Wizards Magic the Gather game.  At least that is what came to mind for me and likely 80% of all Warforged characters in the world will be named Karn by the unimaginative players.  The races section includes regions, much like the Forgotten Realms Campaign book did.

Chapter 2, Classes – Only one new class is presented in this book which is a shame considering you have 300+ pages of new material and the D20 system is very easy to create new material for.  The new class is an Artificer, and is a mix of a Rune Smith from Forgotten Realms and Tinker Gnome from Dragonlance.  They look well balanced and I imagine Wizards play tested the hell out of them.  Unfortunately an Artificer will be a broken character in the right hands, I will get to that later, but for the most part they are a positive for the book.  The other classes are unchanged for the most part.  Eberron deliberately includes use for all rules from all D&D supplements so you will obviously end up with contradictions and broken combinations.  Mixing Psionics, techno magic, and common sense will no doubt cause problems at some point.  Something to watch out for DMs who let anything flies.

Chapter 3, Heroic Characteristics – This chapter is where the real brokenness of the system starts to show.  It covers Action Points, Feats, Skills and Dragonmarks.  Actions Points is a system where PCs are allotted points at each level, these points can be spent to manipulate with some rolls.  This is nothing new, other types of systems have been around for ages – Warhammer Fantasy uses Fate points which came to mind first.  Personally I think Action Points are a bad idea since it gives the players a sense of invulnerability and it minimizes any back luck that may have.  In fact all they will have is good luck.  If you have 6 players, that is 30 re-rolls – per level.  This is quite a few and really all it takes is a few to take the danger of out a situation.   This is done because Wizards argues that it will create more cinematic game play.  Maybe they are right, maybe not.  Be prepared for PCs to have an added layer of indestructibility regardless and the attitude that will come along with it.

The Feats section amplifies the Action Point problem because a good many of the Feats revolve around action points by letting players spend actions points in different ways.  This can come in the form of an extra action, gaining more actions, enhancing the effect of action points, and using actions points in combat movement.   The Warforged Feats are rather high-end since they grant silly bonuses to Armor Class, Damage Reduction and immunity to sneak attacks and critical hits.  Note that the Warforged are already granted construct immunities and the drawbacks are negligible. Adamantine Body grants +8 AC, DR 2.  This stacks with some other feats and class abilities to create yourself a 1^st level terminator PC.

This is really too bad since a number of the Feats are quite good and would enhance role-playing quite a bit.  Bind Elemental to create items, Child of Winter for evil Druids, and a host of music and barbarian feats that all look like fun.  The Feats are followed by a section on Dragon Marks.  Dragon marks are essentially tattoos that have some powers and authority within the world.  It is similar the Blood Marks from the Birthright campaign as they indicate a social station to a point.  Dragon Marks are connection to the various houses in the game, which is probably the most interesting part of Eberron.

Chapter 4, Prestige Classes – The Eberron prestige classes heavily revolve around the world as one would expect.  This is either in the form of there connection to the world itself or the tone of the world as a whole, ala Extreme Explorer.  The section is notably short and only describes a handful of classes that are on a whole unmemorable.  Extreme Explorer stands out simply because the name is so silly and you get special abilities that include Extreme Hustle and Extreme Action.  Actually the class is somewhat interesting; too bad it is utterly ruined by the god awful names.  Who ever at Wizards let those slide ought to be beat with a rubber hose.

Chapter 5, Magic – Magic itself remains the same as it did in 3^rd D&D.  No noticeable changes, but the world does have a group of weak spell casters that handle the day to day management of the world as a whole.  It is a pleasant surprise that most of the NPCs in Eberron are a quarter of the level of those in Forgotten Realms.  The magic section covers the Cosmology of the World in fine detail, and it is obvious a good deal of thought was put into the construction of the Cosmology.  It is different from most of the previous D&D settings and I’m glad to see they are deviating in that aspect.  The Cosmology is one of the more interesting parts of the book and looks fairly playable as far as plots, higher powers, and perhaps planar adventures.  Artificer spells and a few new Wizard and Cleric spells fill up the rest of the space.  The Artificer spells are well thought out and look fairly interesting.  It is difficult to tell what problem could arise in play simply because the Artificer has so many options and combinations of what he can come up with.  This is great for creativity but will definitely cause problems if intelligent players get a hold on one.

Chapter 6, Adventuring Equipment – What really surprises is me is that Eberron was sold with an almost Steam-Punk image of magic and devices floating around.  With a class such as Artificer you would assume a plethora of equipment would be on hand but this is simply not the case.  No Gunpowder, no gadgets to toy with and definitely no vehicles to purchase and run around the world on.  Airships are shown in pictures and hinted at being around, but rules for owning one are non existent.  This was actually a disappointment to me since I expected an over the top list of crap to buy.  I know, not very eloquent, but if I’m stuck as a player in this world, I at least want the goods to get a hold of that I see everywhere.

Chapter 7, Life in the World – The background of Eberron is well thought out and is probably the biggest reason to buy the book.  While it is nothing mind-blowing, it is interesting, well detailed, and has a plethora of ideas for any fantasy campaign.  It is clear that the producers of the game simply pooled the best ideas they had and made a world out of what was in front of them.  As for a D&D setting Eberron lacks the cohesiveness of Dragonlance, the moody atmosphere of Darksun, the strangely personable NPCs of Forgotten Realms and the feeling of home that Greyhawk offers.  I’m not sure what exactly the world of Eberron is other than a collection of ideas made into a world.  Perhaps it is because I have not played it for any length of time.  The world is something to look forward too however, 80% of the value of the book is right here.  One bad thing about this section is the last few pages which has a timeline of Eberron.  It dates back 10+ million (yes million) years, which is clearly unnecessary for PCs, DM or otherwise to know.  I think people forget exactly how long 1000 years really is.

Chapter 8, Organizations – This extends the world supplement in chapter seven.  It details the various organizations that were not already talked about in the Dragonmarked section.  You have a lot of houses, which reminds me quite a bit of Dune, and I think that is intentional.  The world is self-proclaimed as a gray setting with no hard black and white, good and evil.  They generally did a poor job at this since you know right off the bat who the villains are and who are generally the good guys.   The institutions are somewhat more interesting and it is nice that they gave some flavor to tribes of druids and barbarians that are not quite so predictable. 

Chapter 9, An Eberron Campaign – Essentially a continuation of the Eberron World section and a DM for Dummies guide.  You get your plot themes and a few words on running and managing a campaign.  I get the feeling that this section was unnecessary since Eberron is not a product the uninitiated would buy.

Chapter 10, Magic Items – The magic items are standard fare with the addition of artifacts and Warforged item being most notably.  Warforged items are power-ups for your party Terminator- er Warforged.  I hate to make it that simple, but it is what it is.  I was disappointed that nothing was really said about the roll an Artificer could play with magic items and item creation as a whole.  Do you smell supplement? I do.

Chapter 11, Monsters – They give you enough critters to make it obviously different from normal run of the mill boring til you cry D&D.  Some are interesting but they certainly lack personality for the most part.  No hordes from the chaos waste here to sacrifice you to their blood god, just random bookie men and parts monsters (random tentacles and teeth and make something out of it).  The deathless is a new subtype and are annoying to me.  They are good undead, but not really undead since they are good.  You know, because dying, being stuffed in a rotting carcass for eons does wonders for your sanity.  This was there big push about no black and white, good or evil – a good undead…

Chapter 12, A 1^st level Adventure - A decent little adventure but it looks the same as anything that would have been in Dungeon magazine in the past decade.  Find the who-has it for a reward dealie.  A free adventure is good though, though I would not say it was on par with some of the third party D20 supplement what have come out recently.  The lack of good adventures in one thing Wizards D&D has really messed up since 3^rd edition came out, which is a damn shame.  This does nothing to change that.

The Bottom Line

I was pleasantly disappointed with Eberron.  It was sadly better than what I had expected which does not say much for my expectations.  Eberron is far too bad of a setting for me to punish my players with.  A large problem has to do with taking an intelligent group and putting them into this world.   You would have problems of taking things to their logical conclusion.  The first thing one of my players said to me after glancing at the book was, “Okay I have an Adamantine body – how much gold if I sell off a few arm plates?”  I did not have an answer and I absolutely hate saying ‘you can’t do that’ for no in-game reason.  It is almost humorous since I know what would happen if this actually happened in a Eberron game if I ran one - the rest of the party probably would try their damnest to get the Adamantine Warforged killed to sell off his carcass or make weapons from him.  “You see my lad, this is my trusty Sword - ah poor Manard Helirons, we will miss him”.

Evolving to a logical conclusion is major problem from a practical point of view.  Airships, floating castles, lightning trains are all interesting ideas but I knew there was a reason that I very, very sparing used them in my campaigns in the past.  Before you know it the PCs are wearing a cowboy hat riding around in a floating tank mounted with wands of fireballs.  With a class like the Artificer and the technology gadgets and massive magic around it is only a matter of time before players come to their senses and a make the most of a given situation.  That can be cool in its own way, but it is definitely not something that will last more than a few sessions.  The best scenario here is to have a group of really stupid players, and then I think the campaign would run just fine.

Still, in the right hands and the right mindset Eberron is playable setting.  The detail and production of the world is by far the best thing about it and I will undoubtedly steal some ideas for myself if nothing else.  As a whole however I find many things far too silly and breakable, even a group with no intentions of misbalancing the game will have a hard time not doing so with Action Points.  The problem of extreme high magic is taking things to there logical conclusion as I’ve said above.  Alas, Manard Helirons, Warforged from the mountains of Mror Holds, destined to have his body smelted into weapons by a group of greedy adventurers will likely never see the light of day.  I bid you well fair terminator.