Xanathar's Guide to Everything Table of contents... [Archive]

Giegue

2017-10-20, 10:41 PM

Wasn't the Redemption paladin the one that got to walk around in robes because of a ridiculous AC boost feature, among other silly things? Also, I was not expecting to see shadow make the cut. I was almost positive that out of all the sorcerer origins we saw, the ones we'd get would be favored soul and two of phoenix, stone and sea....so needless to say getting the shadow sorcerer instead is a massive surprise. Likewise, I was also not expecting the college of whispers to make the cut. Considering how that one had the most "off-beat" fluff for a bard (who would ever think we'd get an offical "evil bard" option?) I was like 99% sure that the bards we'd be getting would be swords, satire and glamour, with whispers not making the cut due to how "against type" it was for the class compared to the other options. However, I absolutely loved the college of whispers from a themeatic standpoint, so seeing it make the cut over satire makes me very, very happy. Also, like others here, no skill feats makes me sad. There goes my option to play a diplomatic wizard....

Either way, I am happy to be getting the college of whispers, favored soul and shadow sorcerer, enough that those three classes warrant a purchase on their own. If they didn't scale back the oath of redemption I'll just ban it at my table, as every other sane DM will. So it's a non-issue. I mean, yeah, it denies us another paladin archetype...but if I recall the only other archetype they made for paladins was the oath of treachery/blackguard, which was not only almost as OP as the oath of redemption, but also encouraged characters that specifically don't work well with others in it's fluff. So needless to say, while I am skeptical about it, I can see why they chose it....the alternative (blackguard) would cause a lot more headaches for DMs.

Also, interesting factoid...Wizards did release a bit of info on the subclasses, and apparently, at least in some cases, they took the gamer feedback to heart. The one that caught my attention was that Favored Souls (re-named divine souls) now get different class features based on their deity's alignement, choosing between good, evil, lawful or chaotic when they gain the subclass and getting different features as a result. They did say that the "healer" favored soul we got is what the "good" option for the subclass is, but they gave zero info on what the lawful, chaotic and evil versions of it look like or focus on.

I personally hope that the evil version gets to indulge in some necromancy/undead mastery, since this game needs more classes that can do the "I raise undead minions" thing considering the only class that can do it with any reasonable proficiency as of now is the wizard, and I feel that such a character trope is iconic enough to fantasy that it should not be class-locked like that, especially since historically in D&D there has usually been multible classes that excelled at animating the undead, and enough of them that you could get different flavors of necromancer. We have the arcane necromancer (wizard), and since the death cleric is a necrotic blaster and not an undead reanimatior, the evil favored soul could be a great way to bring back the "divine minion-master/undeath cultist" character that was such a staple of past D&D. Now, I know that the "evil deity" favored soul may not be a necromancer, but hey, it would fit the fluff, fill a flavor niche this game doesn't have yet, and well...I can hope, right?

As for lawful and chaotic...I don't know why...but I'm seeing the chaotic one being the "blaster" of the four, possibly with some randomization-based abilities that make it wild magic lite, while I see the lawful one being the crowd control sorcerer who's all about locking enemies down, imposing order and asserting authority. All of them will have access to the cleric list as the original favored soul, I assume, and if evil is a necro pet-master that makes a nice group of sub-specialties for the archetype since with that model you have basically everything you could want in a divine sorcerer covered. You have the expected/traditional healer/buffer (good), the undead minionancer "cleric" of old D&D, albeit with some slight cosmetic changes (Evil), the crowd controlling "god sorcerer" (lawful) and the traditional dps sorc/blaster (chaotic). I actually kinda like the sound of that. Also, with good favored souls being healing focused, it's now totally possible to play a robed "white mage" type character in D&D, another niche that I felt needed to be filled for a while.

So while some of this has me sad, a lot of it has me excited, too. Hopefully the stuff I'm excited for is awesome enough to make me less sad about its low points.

Naanomi

2017-10-20, 11:08 PM

Whisper Bard (as it was in the UA) is basically just Darksun Bard

mephnick

2017-10-20, 11:17 PM

Wasn't the Redemption paladin the one that got to walk around in robes because of a ridiculous AC boost feature, among other silly things?

Yeah, it was a complete mess. In a twisted way I'm almost glad it made it in because I'm very interested to see how drastically they must have changed it..

The part I actually like the least about it is the charm knock-out. As a DM, the thought of a PC knocking out every NPC they come across and interrogating them makes me want to scream.

JakOfAllTirades

2017-10-20, 11:29 PM

mephnick

2017-10-20, 11:37 PM

I'll have to disagree about the Skill feats; they bored me to death. So many of them were nearly identical:

1) here's an OP boost to your chosen skill which stacks with Expertise, and...

OP boost? How? You needed to be proficient already to get the Expertise or it just gave you proficiency..and Expertise doesn't "stack".

2) a cheesy way to shoehorn your non-combat skill into combat situations..

Some of them were dumb, yes, thankfully it was a playtest and could be changed like everything else in the book. None of them were too powerful for an ASI and it allowed other characters to excel in a character aspect for an expensive cost.

toapat

2017-10-20, 11:42 PM

Wasn't the Redemption paladin the one that got to walk around in robes because of a ridiculous AC boost feature, among other silly things?

yes, it got the best AC possible of any class without multiclassing, surpassing even an idealized barbarian.

it has the most powerful Oath spell list of any paladin printed

it has more powerful tank mechanics than oath of the crown, making it harder to kill than a frenzy barbarian

About the only saving grace of the entire subclass was its capstonee simply didnt work, as soon as something hit you, it broke for 24 hours vs that something

So it was trying to be the Jedi Paladin, the Dex paladin, the Fullcaster paladin, the Control-support caster paladin, the Fulltank paladin

TrinculoLives

2017-10-21, 03:12 AM

I am liking the DM content, but can't help but feel that some of the focus is not quite where it should be. Sleeping in armour? Ho-hum. Dozens of pages of names? Erm...

What about crafting? Even just a chart of ingredients for potions and magic items and which creatures/locales contain said ingredients would be enough to fire up at least a couple of my players. What goes into a potion of healing? How much are dragon scales worth? Do Modrons have a perpetual motion machine inside of them? What can you do with a unicorn's horn?

Currently, it seems that creatures like the flail snail are rare and far between. More support for foraging and crafting please WotC!

Throne12

2017-10-21, 08:41 AM

Lack of Skill Feats almost kills the book for me. I'm not in love with a lot of the subclasses (Redemption ugh) but I thought Skill Feats were something the system actually needed.

Blame the Community because Mike Marles said that the UA feats didn't do so well so they weren't going to put them in the book.

Throne12

2017-10-21, 08:47 AM

Come to think of it, I've just found out about the revealed Wizard Spell List Preview (http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/DnDXL2017_Spells.pdf) and I wonder if they, as always, get more interesting stuff than the other spellcasters. Either way, it seems like they've gone full-blown in adding spells. I mean, I already know how to break everything imaginable even with the spells I have, but this is going to be a treat for munchkins. We're about to transcend from Greater Deity to Overdeity levels.

A lot of those spells sound cool to use.

mephnick

2017-10-21, 09:31 AM

Blame the Community because Mike Marles said that the UA feats didn't do so well so they weren't going to put them in the book.

Well the community has a long standing problem with understanding the system they're playing so I'm not surprised.

Tectorman

2017-10-21, 10:09 AM

Deleted

2017-10-21, 10:26 AM

Let the speculation.... COMMENCE!

DMG 2 and PHB 2 got combined and people will ve left disappointed that we didn't get a true PHB 2 or DMG 2.

jaappleton

2017-10-21, 10:27 AM

I’m not seeing the Oath of Treachery for the Paladin and that honestly was what I was looking forward to the most. A Paladin subclass that kept things like tenets a solely RP concern without being codified as a sword of Damocles, constantly looming over the player’s head and reminding him how he can be forced into an MC or an oath change when such a mechanism doesn’t exist for anyone else. There’s still the possibility that Conquest or Redemption don’t have any tenets, but I really gotta say that over half of my interest in this book just got shot behind a woodshed.

Much like yourself, I was really pulling for the Treachery Paladin. Honestly it had a terrible and outright misleading name, because Treachery makes it seem like betrayal, when in reality it was really the "I swear my Oath to myself, I'll save my own hide first" Paladin, which is a concept that really excited me because it was entirely unlike any Paladin archetype; it opened this whole door for RP possibilities, only to be slammed shut. Quite disappointing, especially when the Redemption Paladin was a complete mess mechanically.

I'm curious to see the changes between the UA released Deep Stalker and the Gloom Stalker. I think they changed the emphasis from the Underdark to the Shadowfell, but I'm eager to see if anything mechanically has changed.

Aside from that, all I care about is the new spells. I'm desperately for new spells, I'm very hyped about those.

They also released the entire Forge Cleric subclass, and there was something I found very interesting about it; All the bonus Domain spells it uses are from the PHB. The only reason I can think of for that is because it was so popular its likely to be reprinted in other, future material, and they didn't want it to rely on spells that exclusively appear in XGtE. If you look closely, there's a seemingly deleted sidebar on the Forge Cleric layout, possibly for an alternative spell list which does incorporate XGtE spells. Though I admit, that's purely my own speculation.

toapat

2017-10-21, 11:20 AM

lunaticfringe

2017-10-21, 11:35 AM

I'm on the Boo Redemption where's my Treachery wagon! Hooray for Racial Feats, boo because its just gonna be phb races. Hooray for Inquisitive! Ugh Samurai & Cavalier. **** Hexblade imho.

jaappleton

2017-10-21, 11:35 AM

i think youre forgetting how many of the mechanics of treachery paladin explicitly caused you to cause your targets to start murdering their Meattools.

Nothing about it caused it to hurt your friends.

I believe you're referring to Treacherous Strike at 7th level, nothing about it forces you to target an ally. Just another creature within range.

Xethik

2017-10-21, 11:46 AM

Yeah, as someone playing a Kobold Oath of Treachery Paladin, I don't find there is anything that forces or encourages me to backstab my friends. The Tenets do encourage a selfish attitude, but I don't feel that it is any worse than most non-Good alignments.

I do wish it was revisited to reduce the power of the Poison Strike at early levels, which was pretty ridiculous.

toapat

2017-10-21, 11:52 AM

Nothing about it caused it to hurt your friends.

I believe you're referring to Treacherous Strike at 7th level, nothing about it forces you to target an ally. Just another creature within range.

its Ultimate and spell list also are about causing enemies to betray their friends.

you are correct that the oath is not written to imply "I Have no friends, only tools to dispose of once their usefulness is expended" Honestly, i think the name itself is what makes people think its about betraying people, but compared to Oath of Vengeance which is numerically overpowered in combat and the focus on making your target stab its buddies in the face, makes the whole class seem boobytrapped in party play.

Thing is, there is nothing unhealthy about a class that is intended to invoke some interparty strife

Xethik

2017-10-21, 11:55 AM

its Ultimate and spell list also are about causing enemies to betray their friends.

you are correct that the oath is not written to imply "I Have no friends, only tools to dispose of once their usefulness is expended" Honestly, i think the name itself is what makes people think its about betraying people, but compared to Oath of Vengeance which is numerically overpowered in combat and the focus on making your target stab its buddies in the face, makes the whole class seem boobytrapped in party play.

Thing is, there is nothing unhealthy about a class that is intended to invoke some interparty strife
Ah, so the Treachery name is because you cause enemies to betray their friends? That is fairly accurate and they do have Dominate Person and Confusion on their list like you mentioned.

They also released the entire Forge Cleric subclass, and there was something I found very interesting about it; All the bonus Domain spells it uses are from the PHB. The only reason I can think of for that is because it was so popular its likely to be reprinted in other, future material, and they didn't want it to rely on spells that exclusively appear in XGtE. If you look closely, there's a seemingly deleted sidebar on the Forge Cleric layout, possibly for an alternative spell list which does incorporate XGtE spells. Though I admit, that's purely my own speculation.
That might be the alternative worship sidebar mentioned in the Table of Contents? I'd have to pull up the document again (can't view PDFs at the moment) to see if the sidebar appears on the same page the Forge Domain header.

Relbin

2017-10-21, 12:04 PM

Positives:
So many subclasses! I am excited for divine soul, shadow Sorcerer, ancestral guardian, circle of the Shepard, and gloom stalker.
Racial feats! I’m curious whether some of these (e.g. Elven Accuracy) got toned down.
DM content!

Neutral:
Oath of Redemption and hexblade needed some serious reworking from the last version we saw. Curious to see if they fixed the issues.

Negatives:
17 pages of character names seems like serious padding
I really wish they had reprinted the melee Cantrips (or made new ones) for War Wizard/hexblade.
Sad there’s no stone Sorcerer, knight, or raven queen warlock
Reprinting subclasses/spells is an awkward fix for PHB +1 and I’m not crazy about buying the same content twice.
Revised ranger’s absence is annoying.

Naanomi

2017-10-21, 12:15 PM

Sad there’s no <...> knight
The preview video says the Cavalier in XGtE is basically UA Cavalier + UA Knight -Superiority Dice

MeeposFire

2017-10-21, 12:37 PM

mephnick

2017-10-21, 01:23 PM

17 pages of character names seems like serious padding.

Seriously. I don't get the need for character names. I can make a list of 100 names for each race in 10 minutes using online generators already. Who is going to use this?

toapat

2017-10-21, 01:24 PM

There are some interesting rules things in here if you look such as potentially creating an actual rules answer to the question of what happens if you do not take a long rest for a long period of time.

Also I am preparing for the trend of abusing the terms "overpowered" and "broken" and to a lesser extent "underpowered".

well, theres the problem that broken is a term we use too interchangeably with Overpowered, underpowered, and nonfunctional.

But, from an objective point of view, Oath of Vengeance paladin is numerically overpowered in the math ive seen, like it reliably competes with frenzy barbarian and outperforms battlemaster fighter offensively.

and while Redemption paladin doesnt vastly improve the offensive capacity of paladin to any degree, it very much functions to pave over every functional weakness in the class, in that it provides the best oath spell list of all 8 subclasses, dethroning Ancients as the most robust list in the class, its list is much more focused into providing offensive crowd control spells, which is another weakpoint of the paladin, and then it basically functions as the dex paladin, having the unarmored defense ability except stronger than either barbarian or monk get it, along with effectively better natural hp and saves than a monk gets, and then getting powerful mitigation auras from their subclass.

It really is in the UA objectively and massively overpowered, with the only mitigating factor is its absurd "Damage resistance" capstone being broken by its own retaliation damage.

comparatively, Hexblade and the possibly surviving elemental subsitution from lore wizard into war magic, are overpowered in much more specific issues, where the Hexblade was effectively "1 level Instant godbuff to paladin" and Elemental Substitution combined with Magic Missile and Celestial Patron warlock is the highest DPR build in the game even after adjustment for finite spellslots.

comparatively, most of these subclasses in the XGtE are not overpowered, but more typically underpowered because of some mechanism of play intrinsic to the subclass being technically broken similar to the multiclass caster rules. A good example of that is the Cavalier fighter, who in UA was primarily underpowered because of the reliance on the mount and the concurrent creation of the knight fighter.

Now, if Hexblade offers its mechanical benefits over a long period of time, as opposed to all at once at level one, then that is factually fine in terms of balance, it makes the class instead of a godly powerhouse into a reasonable warlock patron, although still heavily favoring the Pact of the Blade.

if War Magic Wizard cannot energy substitute magic missile to fire or radiant damage, then the entire feature which is a horrific problem in the Lore wizard UA is no longer broken and rather frustratingly powerful for DMs

Seriously. I don't get the need for character names. I can make a list of 100 names for each race in 10 minutes using online generators already. Who is going to use this?

people without Fantastynamegenerator.com currently accessible

mephnick

2017-10-21, 01:32 PM

people without Fantastynamegenerator.com currently accessible

I mean you print it out and keep it in your DM binder. I hope if someone is running a game they're at least organized enough for that.

Deleted

2017-10-21, 01:53 PM

I mean you print it out and keep it in your DM binder. I hope if someone is running a game they're at least organized enough for that.

You're obviously asking for too much.

Beechgnome

2017-10-21, 02:29 PM

The names at the end does seem a bit much but I'm content knowing the rest of the book is still bigger than SCAG, which was really mostly filler. 70 pages for players 25 for spells and 70 for DM is OK bY me. Because we've seen so much of this I'm very curious about the unknowns: the This is your Life section and the magic items section. And the spells if course.

SaurOps

2017-10-21, 02:51 PM

people without Fantastynamegenerator.com currently accessible

jisho.org (http://jisho.org/) is particularly good for getting Japanese names even if you're a native English speaker/reader, since you can look something up by typing it in English, follow a link to kanji details for your astonishingly appropriate name components, and then replace the #kanji that follows it with #name in the search field. Any given result will tend to have many, many pages of names, both of locations and personal names (given and family).

Giegue

2017-10-21, 05:04 PM

So I just realized they somehow shove both the divine soul and shadow sorcerer onto the same page, and since I remember the shadow sorcerer having some fairly wordy/mechanically complex abilities how much do you want to bet the Divine Soul just subsumed the theurgy wizard and that the "different paths" for each alignment are just going to end up being "you get the features of a cleric domain tied to your alignment choice" alla the theurgy wizard? I can already see the matches.... Good Divine Soul gets the Life Domain's features, Evil Divine Soul gets the Death Domain's features, Chaotic Divine Soul gets the Trickery Domain's features and Lawful gets..Knowledge? War?...TBH I'm not sure which domain fits for lawful....hmmm...

Either way, seeing that it's not going to take up a bunch of page space, I think I may have just cracked what the divine soul is...the favored soul combined with the theurgy wizard....and that makes me sad since just getting cleric domain features is not nearly as cool as what I thought the subclass was going to be. Oh well.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-21, 08:37 PM

I'm honestly questioning if it is even worth my time to allow my players to use it, let alone purchase it. I say that because I run my games in eberron & already need to rewrite and/or ban significant sections of various core books & have seen nothing from anyone at wotc to suggest that I wouldn't need to expend significant amounts of time to strip faerun from things that could have been handled trivially with an "in other settings..." or "In eberron..." sidebar blurb.

The most Irksome part is that it's needless, coatl have no noteworthy role in any setting except eberron yet their creator couldn't even get a name drop over "unnamed god" in the mm. The PHB has close to a whole page devoted to describing humans in different regions of faerun & faerun only. Drow have roughly half a page devoted to a picture of spiders & description of Drizzit, but couldn't spare the room for something like "in settings such as Eberron, drow may be wildly different" or something. PotA devotes more words saying that the elemental planes lack direct analogues & that xyz would be the closest fits than many of the suggested planes had ever had published about them & manages to do it without actually saying anything about those planes.

pwykersotz

2017-10-21, 08:51 PM

I'm loving it all. Well, except the names. Those are kind of dumb. But I'm super curious about the skills and tools together option. The DM tools seem like they cut a pretty wide swath, and it's good to get that advanced trapmaking put into a book. I'm excited! :smallsmile:

toapat

2017-10-21, 08:53 PM

*snip*

do realize when i made the comment, i meant as in "No internet", right?

I'm honestly questioning if it is even worth my time to allow my players to use it, let alone purchase it. I say that because I run my games in eberron & already need to rewrite and/or ban significant sections of various core books & have seen nothing from anyone at wotc to suggest that I wouldn't need to expend significant amounts of time to strip faerun from things that could have been handled trivially with an "in other settings..." or "In eberron..." sidebar blurb.

The most Irksome part is that it's needless, coatl have no noteworthy role in any setting except eberron yet their creator couldn't even get a name drop over "unnamed god" in the mm. The PHB has close to a whole page devoted to describing humans in different regions of faerun & faerun only. Drow have roughly half a page devoted to a picture of spiders & description of Drizzit, but couldn't spare the room for something like "in settings such as Eberron, drow may be wildly different" or something. PotA devotes more words saying that the elemental planes lack direct analogues & that xyz would be the closest fits than many of the suggested planes had ever had published about them & manages to do it without actually saying anything about those planes.

the only time, setting to setting that you should need to ban something, is because of incompatible Pantheons.

Fernia and Rizia are literally just the plane of fire/water for Eberron. Dolurth is the Shadowfell, and the rest of Wheel specific locations all map into the 13 planes of the Eberron cosmology. Also dont forget that Eberron is the Eberon Cosmology's Baator and Shavarath where all the devils live is technically their version of mount celestia.

Im honestly finding it surprising for a DM of the setting that requires you do the 90% of the legwork you buy supplement books to normally cover is complaining about having to do what is expected of the setting

Naanomi

2017-10-21, 08:57 PM

Banning things from Ebberon seems strange; wasn't one of the explicit setting componants that 'everything that is in DnD had a place in Ebberon'?

mephnick

2017-10-21, 09:07 PM

I mean to be fair, Eberron was just some fan-made contest entry over a decade ago. WotC has no traditional connection to it and no duty to accomodate it if they don't feel like it's worth thinking about. It's no different than Midnight or Birthright, but you don't see people complaining everytime they're ignored in flavor-text.

jas61292

2017-10-21, 09:47 PM

Unlike a lot of people, it seems, I love the huge number of pages on names. Random name selection is super important to me, and while I can certainly just use the internet, more resources for this is always better. And I especially love guidance on names in the standard cultures of non-human races. It would be one thing if those names were "stealing space" from other potential things, but I understand enough to know that that is not how it works.

toapat

2017-10-21, 09:55 PM

Banning things from Ebberon seems strange; wasn't one of the explicit setting componants that 'everything that is in DnD had a place in Ebberon'?

to be fair, in a strictly technical sense, i could see in a No-Holds-barred game of cosmic power 3.5 DnD, banning the Eberron character from the Ur-Priest PrC because that PrC is about working to empower your own dead god, when Eberron doesnt really have gods in the first place, with the closest thing to a god being the God-Emperor-of-Mankind'ed soulstuff of the Coatls merged into the prison of a greator daemon.

but i dont know of any cases where the classes, even from SCAG, would be barred from currently published player content.

in fact, for instance, Volo's Guide to Monsters is actually much more of an Eberron book in terms of player materials because of the nation of Droaam being a semi-neutral nation of the nonPHB races

Malifice

2017-10-21, 10:15 PM

Tetrasodium

2017-10-21, 10:49 PM

do realize when i made the comment, i meant as in "No internet", right?

the only time, setting to setting that you should need to ban something, is because of incompatible Pantheons.

Fernia and Rizia are literally just the plane of fire/water for Eberron. Dolurth is the Shadowfell, and the rest of Wheel specific locations all map into the 13 planes of the Eberron cosmology. Also dont forget that Eberron is the Eberon Cosmology's Baator and Shavarath where all the devils live is technically their version of mount celestia.

Im honestly finding it surprising for a DM of the setting that requires you do the 90% of the legwork you buy supplement books to normally cover is complaining about having to do what is expected of the setting
eberron uses -none- of FR's deities, it has a completely different planar structure, drow are so wildly different that it's easier to ban them than to rewrite their entire PHB entry. Those planes do not map like you suggest & it was only the very misguided 4e "durrrr it's just like FR y0!", even PotA acknowledges that the eberron planar cosmology does not lineup with the default FR ones on 249 right after suggesting how to significantly change various eberron groups to fit
the do nothing uninvolved NPC quest giver FR factions rather than the other way around.

Banning things from Ebberon seems strange; wasn't one of the explicit setting componants that 'everything that is in DnD had a place in Ebberon'?
No, only in 4e's misguided attempt to turn it into faerun, thankfullt WotC is acknowledging (https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/883891093829332992) that particular fit of lunacy as wrong at best.

I mean to be fair, Eberron was just some fan-made contest entry over a decade ago. WotC has no traditional connection to it and no duty to accomodate it if they don't feel like it's worth thinking about. It's no different than Midnight or Birthright, but you don't see people complaining everytime they're ignored in flavor-text.

actually no, it was wotc that ran the thing to find a new setting.

JackPhoenix

2017-10-21, 10:52 PM

lets just point out how extremely bad redemption being in the book is.

It covers 2 entire pages. It literally became even moreso everything wrong with it from the UA where it only covered 3/4s of a page

More likely there will be redemption paladin on page 38, full-page illustration on 39, and ranger starts on 40. See cleric, druid, sorcerer. I can see the two-pages for warlock invocations justified.

However, I think the chapter layout looks weird. I think spells should be put before DM tools, if only to more clearly establish "player" and "DM" sections of the book.

the only time, setting to setting that you should need to ban something, is because of incompatible Pantheons.

Fernia and Rizia are literally just the plane of fire/water for Eberron. Dolurth is the Shadowfell, and the rest of Wheel specific locations all map into the 13 planes of the Eberron cosmology. Also dont forget that Eberron is the Eberon Cosmology's Baator and Shavarath where all the devils live is technically their version of mount celestia.

Risia is nothing like EPoW. Baator is Eberron's Baator, because 4e had to shove its cr*p where it doesn't belong, Shavarath is nothing like Mount Celestia and actually much closer to Acheron. Devils live all over the place (planes), including Eberron and Khyber, Shavarath, Risia, Fernia, Dolurrh and Mabar, because they aren't single "race" in Eberron.

Banning things from Ebberon seems strange; wasn't one of the explicit setting componants that 'everything that is in DnD had a place in Ebberon'?

That doesn't mean "anything can be shoved there without any thought". Most things have to be changed fluff-wise because settings work differently, even though you use the same stats for humans, FR cultures are different from Eberron human cultures are different from Dragonlance human cultures are different from Greyhawk human cultures.

Unlike a lot of people, it seems, I love the huge number of pages on names. Random name selection is super important to me, and while I can certainly just use the internet, more resources for this is always better. And I especially love guidance on names in the standard cultures of non-human races. It would be one thing if those names were "stealing space" from other potential things, but I understand enough to know that that is not how it works.

Semi agree. While having name tables is good, I don't care about real world names. I'm not playing German human, I'm playing Karrnathi human (Eberron example used because I'm not playing, and I won't be playing, FR human). They should put names from fantasy cultures (even if it's only FR) there, to make sense of the naming conventions those cultures use. But that would require them to actually have those naming conventions instead of having random words with no similarities that may as well be made by having a cat run over a keyboard and then spending 5 seconds in making the resulting mess pronounceable (or not, given the usual tendencies of fantasy authors). Vast majority of people aren't Tolkien or whoever created the naming for TES.

No, only in 4e's misguided attempt to turn it into faerun, thankfullt WotC is acknowledging (https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/883891093829332992) that particular fit of lunacy as wrong at best.

It seems to me more like he says he won't be including Eberron material into splatbooks because it's not Boring Generic Setting #384 and Eberron material can't be fit into FR. Instead, you should take the Boring Generic Stuff and shove it into Eberron, if you want to play it (or use pre-5e fluff)

toapat

2017-10-21, 11:18 PM

eberron uses -none- of FR's deities.

Which is why the Soveriegn host exists as a set of deities stolen literally from the Faith of the Seven of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Risia is nothing like EPoW. Baator is Eberron's Baator, because 4e had to shove its cr*p where it doesn't belong, Shavarath is nothing like Mount Celestia and actually much closer to Acheron. Devils live all over the place (planes), including Eberron and Khyber, Shavarath, Risia, Fernia, Dolurrh and Mabar, because they aren't single "race" in Eberron.

The author, and the developers retconned the changes away, and nothing in the eberron story happened during 4E anyway.

and the reason devils appear specifically outside of Eberron in the default lore is because the Giant Empire of Xendrik, in their infancy before the first Epoch with Dal Qour destroyed them, cast a world-altering spell that shoved the majority of the devils off the plane and into Shavarath, ruining Shavarath for everyone involved

JackPhoenix

2017-10-21, 11:26 PM

The author, and the developers retconned the changes away, and nothing in the eberron story happened during 4E anyway.

and the reason devils appear specifically outside of Eberron in the default lore is because the Giant Empire of Xoriat, in their infancy before the first Epoch with Dolurth destroyed them, cast a world-altering spell that shoved the majority of the devils off the plane and into Shavarath, ruining Shavarath for everyone involved

I mean, you may run it like that in your game, but there's literally everything wrong with that sentence.

toapat

2017-10-21, 11:46 PM

I mean, you may run it like that in your game, but there's literally everything wrong with that sentence.

have you not read the lore foundations of the world at large? Thats literally stuff that people have had to claw out of Keith in the past, barring my mistake of Dal Qour destroying the Giant Empire of Xendrik, im tired

Tetrasodium

2017-10-22, 12:23 AM

I mean, you may run it like that in your game, but there's literally everything wrong with that sentence.
Agreed, there is so much wrong with the statement he made that there's not even a point to begin correcting it. sadly, the same applies to most of the "but x is just a renamed $FaerunThing" type statements. The fact that core books like the players effing handbook give minor fluff blurbs about every setting except eberron encourages it & is the reason why I ban certain things rather than spend the time to rebuild them from the ground up complete with the required setting understanding replacing deeply rooted faerun stuff.

Risia is nothing like EPoW. Baator is Eberron's Baator, because 4e had to shove its cr*p where it doesn't belong, Shavarath is nothing like Mount Celestia and actually much closer to Acheron. Devils live all over the place (planes), including Eberron and Khyber, Shavarath, Risia, Fernia, Dolurrh and Mabar, because they aren't single "race" in Eberron.

That doesn't mean "anything can be shoved there without any thought". Most things have to be changed fluff-wise because settings work differently, even though you use the same stats for humans, FR cultures are different from Eberron human cultures are different from Dragonlance human cultures are different from Greyhawk human cultures.

Semi agree. While having name tables is good, I don't care about real world names. I'm not playing German human, I'm playing Karrnathi human (Eberron example used because I'm not playing, and I won't be playing, FR human). They should put names from fantasy cultures (even if it's only FR) there, to make sense of the naming conventions those cultures use. But that would require them to actually have those naming conventions instead of having random words with no similarities that may as well be made by having a cat run over a keyboard and then spending 5 seconds in making the resulting mess pronounceable (or not, given the usual tendencies of fantasy authors). Vast majority of people aren't Tolkien or whoever created the naming for TES.

It seems to me more like he says he won't be including Eberron material into splatbooks because it's not Boring Generic Setting #384 and Eberron material can't be fit into FR. Instead, you should take the Boring Generic Stuff and shove it into Eberron, if you want to play it (or use pre-5e fluff)

He might be saying that, but the question was about the core PHB & MM, those are definitely not in the realm of "random splatbook". Your own post acknowledges that you cant just shove things from one setting into another setting without changing it without thought. Having "melf's acid arrow is a spell" or "evard's black tentacles is a spell" in a setting almost certainly needs no consideration to how it will fit any given setting, similar applies to concepts like "many magic items draw power from crystals called dragonshards". Thus far, the only time eberron was given even the briefest footnote as part of a race/class/etc since 5e was released is the tortle (the eberron UA is from dndnext & that's why it's all so terribad)

Tortles don't have their own pantheon of gods, but they often worship the gods of other races. It is not unusual for a tortle to hear stories or legends related to a god ans choose to worship that deity. In the Forgotten realms, tortles are especially fond of eldath, gond, Lathander, Savras, selune, & tymora. In the Greyhawk setting, they gravitate towards Celestian, fharlanghn, pelor, pholtus, & st cuthburt. Tortles are often drawn to the gods of good in Dragonlance, & the sovereign Host in Eberron.

That is the only race/class released for 5e that considers factors needed to fit it into eberron at the same level it considers other settings.... and that's the reason why I'm skeptical about if xge will be worth buying for me due to the expectation that I will need to rewrite so much of it to make the purchase pointless. Yes some of the archtypes & stuff free of fluff in UA could fit various things in eberron great; but if tied too tightly to FR specific fluff with no consideration for eberron whatsoever at any level I'd need to rewrite too much. The fact that rather than explicitly answering the question about eberron they are giving a cutesy nonanswer of "The options in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything can be used in any D&D world" (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/921921006612049921) combined with the mearls tweet from earlier makes me especially dubious that eberron was given one single iota of consideration at any point during its writing.

Naanomi

2017-10-22, 12:40 AM

No, only in 4e's misguided attempt to turn it into faerun, thankfullt WotC is acknowledging (https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/883891093829332992) that particular fit of lunacy as wrong at best.
Page 8 of the first official Eberron book ever published: #1 of the '10 things you need to know': "If it exists in D&D, then it has a place in Eberron."

tsotate

2017-10-22, 12:56 AM

I'm just excited to see the "Area Effects on a Grid" section. We can finally get a definitive answer on what 5e spell templates should look like, after the game's been out for a mere 3 years.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-22, 01:00 AM

I mean, you may run it like that in your game, but there's literally everything wrong with that sentence.

Which is why the Soveriegn host exists as a set of deities stolen literally from the Faith of the Seven of A Song of Ice and Fire.

The author, and the developers retconned the changes away, and nothing in the eberron story happened during 4E anyway.

and the reason devils appear specifically outside of Eberron in the default lore is because the Giant Empire of Xendrik, in their infancy before the first Epoch with Dal Qour destroyed them, cast a world-altering spell that shoved the majority of the devils off the plane and into Shavarath, ruining Shavarath for everyone involved

More likely there will be redemption paladin on page 38, full-page illustration on 39, and ranger starts on 40. See cleric, druid, sorcerer. I can see the two-pages for warlock invocations justified.

However, I think the chapter layout looks weird. I think spells should be put before DM tools, if only to more clearly establish "player" and "DM" sections of the book.

Risia is nothing like EPoW. Baator is Eberron's Baator, because 4e had to shove its cr*p where it doesn't belong, Shavarath is nothing like Mount Celestia and actually much closer to Acheron. Devils live all over the place (planes), including Eberron and Khyber, Shavarath, Risia, Fernia, Dolurrh and Mabar, because they aren't single "race" in Eberron.

That doesn't mean "anything can be shoved there without any thought". Most things have to be changed fluff-wise because settings work differently, even though you use the same stats for humans, FR cultures are different from Eberron human cultures are different from Dragonlance human cultures are different from Greyhawk human cultures.

Semi agree. While having name tables is good, I don't care about real world names. I'm not playing German human, I'm playing Karrnathi human (Eberron example used because I'm not playing, and I won't be playing, FR human). They should put names from fantasy cultures (even if it's only FR) there, to make sense of the naming conventions those cultures use. But that would require them to actually have those naming conventions instead of having random words with no similarities that may as well be made by having a cat run over a keyboard and then spending 5 seconds in making the resulting mess pronounceable (or not, given the usual tendencies of fantasy authors). Vast majority of people aren't Tolkien or whoever created the naming for TES.

It seems to me more like he says he won't be including Eberron material into splatbooks because it's not Boring Generic Setting #384 and Eberron material can't be fit into FR. Instead, you should take the Boring Generic Stuff and shove it into Eberron, if you want to play it (or use pre-5e fluff)

Page 8 of the first official Eberron book ever published: #1 of the '10 things you need to know': "If it exists in D&D, then it has a place in Eberron."
back then, the phb was far more setting neutral the 4e & 5e ones are chock full of setting specific stuff baked into core stuff like races and classes right from the get go. furthermore, it doesn't mean you can force anything from FR into it without consideration to how it needs to be changed in order to fit eberron. Just because magic items often being powered by dragonshards is something that can fit ripple free into most any setting doesn't mean that the lightning rail made by house cannith & operated by house orien/lyrander will fit as is too. Tge sane goes for early anything too heavily tied to the fluff of aby setting being imported into a other setting. Unfortunately that "if it exists..." Lime has been used so egregiously to force ebereon to conform to ill fitting boltons inserted lube free with all the lore of their original setting without consideration for how it should adapt to fut eberron far too many times. With 5e they have taken it a step further from 4e and given zero consideration to eberron at any point in core books & mearls gas at least admitted that eberron is different enough from faerun that it can't apply as it did in the past rather than admit regret that those core books don't give it consideration at any level beside the other settings.

Zalabim

2017-10-22, 02:00 AM

JakOfAllTirades

2017-10-22, 02:57 AM

No they dont. Read the rules bro.

Where exactly does this rule appear?

Waterdeep Merch

2017-10-22, 03:21 AM

Where exactly does this rule appear?
Page 173-174, under Proficiency Bonus:

Occasionally, your proficiency bonus might be multiplied or divided (doubled or halved, for example) before you apply it. For example, the rogue's Expertise feature doubles the proficiency bonus for certain ability checks. If a circumstance suggests that your proficiency bonus applies more than once to the same roll, you still add it only once and multiply or divide it only once.

Ergo, you may only have your proficiency bonus doubled once, never twice. You cannot stack the skill expertise feats with bard/rogue expertise.

Malifice

2017-10-22, 03:38 AM

Where exactly does this rule appear?

See above.

This discussion was had yonks ago when the game first came out, along with how to calculate AC (pick one method, and one method only) etc.

Its a core rule at the start of the PHB under the proficiency bonus section.

Zalabim

2017-10-22, 03:50 AM

Where exactly does this rule appear?

Also on Page 12, at the end of proficiency bonus.

toapat

2017-10-22, 06:57 AM

back then, the phb was far more setting neutral the 4e & 5e ones are chock full of setting specific stuff baked into core stuff like races and classes right from the get go. furthermore, it doesn't mean you can force anything from FR into it without consideration to how it needs to be changed in order to fit eberron. Just because magic items often being powered by dragonshards is something that can fit ripple free into most any setting doesn't mean that the lightning rail made by house cannith & operated by house orien/lyrander will fit as is too. Tge sane goes for early anything too heavily tied to the fluff of aby setting being imported into a other setting. Unfortunately that "if it exists..." Lime has been used so egregiously to force ebereon to conform to ill fitting boltons inserted lube free with all the lore of their original setting without consideration for how it should adapt to fut eberron far too many times. With 5e they have taken it a step further from 4e and given zero consideration to eberron at any point in core books & mearls gas at least admitted that eberron is different enough from faerun that it can't apply as it did in the past rather than admit regret that those core books don't give it consideration at any level beside the other settings.

the only World-Specific thing in the entirity of the PHB is the dragonborn which in faerun was a special Template-race created by having Bahamut strike you with lightning, and putting you inside a dragon egg for a year, or in Dragonlance where the 4/5e dragonborn are from, when with eberron they are perfectly acceptible as adventurers who are descended from the slaved races of Argonessan.

the "Default Drow" literally are unchanged in eberron, literally only having a Find and replace for every instance of Spider in their lore with scorpion and "Illithid slaves" with "giant slaves". Dryders in Eberron's cosmology are demons from IIRC mabar rather than even being barred. High elves are from Aerenal and wood elves are from Valenar in Khorvair.

Or how about the Circle of Land and Circle of the Moon druids who, at least because of extant prior world lore, ONLY fit in Eberron because of The Gatekeepers of Khorvair.

Honestly, it seems you run Eberron off of the wikis where it seems like a very different setting than what it is portrayed as in the books, which is even stranger because if your using online materials i would have assumed you would have found refference to Keith Baker saying that, specifically because in 3.5 there are No unique-to-player rules in the entire edition, unlike 4th and 5th ed where players are built using the character creation system where as monsters are built using the respective system's monster creation system.

and as i said earlier, the Volo's guide sourcebook, while the races have detail differences, is still more of an Eberron sourcebook despite being written from the perspective of and focusing on the versions from Faerun, because of the different expectations of the campaign and world making it much harder to allow as a DM monster races to players if not doing an underworld campaign.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-22, 08:11 AM

the only World-Specific thing in the entirity of the PHB is the dragonborn which in faerun was a special Template-race created by having Bahamut strike you with lightning, and putting you inside a dragon egg for a year, or in Dragonlance where the 4/5e dragonborn are from, when with eberron they are perfectly acceptible as adventurers who are descended from the slaved races of Argonessan.

the "Default Drow" literally are unchanged in eberron, literally only having a Find and replace for every instance of Spider in their lore with scorpion and "Illithid slaves" with "giant slaves". Dryders in Eberron's cosmology are demons from IIRC mabar rather than even being barred. High elves are from Aerenal and wood elves are from Valenar in Khorvair.

Or how about the Circle of Land and Circle of the Moon druids who, at least because of extant prior world lore, ONLY fit in Eberron because of The Gatekeepers of Khorvair.

Honestly, it seems you run Eberron off of the wikis where it seems like a very different setting than what it is portrayed as in the books, which is even stranger because if your using online materials i would have assumed you would have found refference to Keith Baker saying that, specifically because in 3.5 there are No unique-to-player rules in the entire edition, unlike 4th and 5th ed where players are built using the character creation system where as monsters are built using the respective system's monster creation system.

and as i said earlier, the Volo's guide sourcebook, while the races have detail differences, is still more of an Eberron sourcebook despite being written from the perspective of and focusing on the versions from Faerun, because of the different expectations of the campaign and world making it much harder to allow as a DM monster races to players if not doing an underworld campaign.

Holy bleep, once again you are wrong on too many levels to even begin correcting. The only place in "Eberron" that drow match your description is in waterdeep online (ddo) where they give up even preteding it's eberron & just open a portal to faerun (that's not an analogy/metaphor, they actually do that!). Some drow worship vulkoor the scorpion who has nothing in common with lloth. Of those who revere vulkoor, he is only one of many spirit animal type creatures they worship. Because lloth as faerun describes her does not effing exist, it makes no sense for drider to exist at all.

The gatekeeper lore has nothing to do with the lack of lore baked into in moon/land druid archtypes & even still really needs a new circle to fit. Given how often they mention the effing feywild & shadowfell (neither of which are part of eberron's cosmology) with the new druid archtypes, it can't be those either. Your assessment of drow is why I answer the "do drow exist" question with "just assume no bewcausae everything about them in the phb is so absurdly inapplicable & I have to homebrew so much 5e **** out of 3.5 that I don't even want to get into xen'drik yet... but you can use their stats and be just an elf from somewhwere in khorvaire if you want"

While the playabe races section of volos does a better job than the effing phb at being setting neutral, there is not even a footnote about goblins/orcs/gnolls/etc in eberron (or anything else) in any published 5e material being different making it still potentially very difficult if a player is too wound up in faerun specifics about orcus or something

Given that wotc can't even bother to update the eberron UA from dndNext to 5e after all these rules all 5e eberron games must have significant levels of unique to players rules because unlike dragonlance, forgotten realms, greyhawk, & ravenloft... eberron & dark sun are the only worlds that have zero mention in any of the core PHB race/class writeups. Posts like your blatantly wrong on everything every time ones in this thread about the lore of eberron only serve to make the problem worse for gm's attempting to run eberron.

JackPhoenix

2017-10-22, 08:38 AM

the only World-Specific thing in the entirity of the PHB is the dragonborn which in faerun was a special Template-race created by having Bahamut strike you with lightning, and putting you inside a dragon egg for a year, or in Dragonlance where the 4/5e dragonborn are from, when with eberron they are perfectly acceptible as adventurers who are descended from the slaved races of Argonessan.

the "Default Drow" literally are unchanged in eberron, literally only having a Find and replace for every instance of Spider in their lore with scorpion and "Illithid slaves" with "giant slaves". Dryders in Eberron's cosmology are demons from IIRC mabar rather than even being barred. High elves are from Aerenal and wood elves are from Valenar in Khorvair.

Or how about the Circle of Land and Circle of the Moon druids who, at least because of extant prior world lore, ONLY fit in Eberron because of The Gatekeepers of Khorvair.

Honestly, it seems you run Eberron off of the wikis where it seems like a very different setting than what it is portrayed as in the books, which is even stranger because if your using online materials i would have assumed you would have found refference to Keith Baker saying that, specifically because in 3.5 there are No unique-to-player rules in the entire edition, unlike 4th and 5th ed where players are built using the character creation system where as monsters are built using the respective system's monster creation system.

and as i said earlier, the Volo's guide sourcebook, while the races have detail differences, is still more of an Eberron sourcebook despite being written from the perspective of and focusing on the versions from Faerun, because of the different expectations of the campaign and world making it much harder to allow as a DM monster races to players if not doing an underworld campaign.

Except the dragonborn were another example of 4e stupidity forced into Eberron, namely "See those Q'barran lizardfolk? They were actually dragonborn all along!"

The default drow didn't even used the same racial stats in Eberron (they were given different weapon proficiencies), and they have nothing in common with FR drow fluff. Not to mention there isn't one, but at least 3 very different drow cultures (and even the scorpion (amongst other things) worshipping Vulkoorim are different from what you describe, not to mention Sulatar or Umbragen). There are no driders in Eberron, scorrow is the Eberron version. If you want to include driders, I would tie them to Umbragen or daelkyr experiments. And there are no "high" or "wood" elves in Eberron, any elven subrace (included because "everything that exists in D&D has its place in Eberron", not because Keith thinks Eberron should have dozens of different types of elves) may belong to any elven culture (Aereni, Valenar or Khorvaire. Or Lhazaarite Vol descendants).

Druidic circles have more in common with WoW's class specializations than with Eberron. Still, Gatekeepers would deserve their own circle (as Tetrasodium already mentioned), as would Greensingers and Children of Winter. Warden of the Wood fit default circles well enough, though, and both Land and (especially) Moon druids may be made to fit with any druidic sect if you squint enough.

VGtM has nothing to do with Eberron. At all. Despite providing stats for some races that are common in Eberron (and doing horrible job of it, like making hobgoblin into perfect wizard race), nothing of the pages of fluff is usable in Eberron. The fact that WotC gave us playable monstrous races in FR sourcebook suggest that they intend them to be playable in FR, without any consideration for Eberron (not even the "x in different settings" bits SCAG gave for its subclasses. And there doesn't seem to be anything like that in XGtE either, if the table of content is any indication)

Deleted

2017-10-22, 08:41 AM

Except the dragonborn were another example of 4e stupidity forced into Eberron, namely "See those Q'barran lizardfolk? They were actually dragonborn all along!"

I'll take some messy lore/fluff if it means I get some awesome mechanics.

I can freely change lore, fluff, or whatever... But changing mechanics is a lot harder.

toapat

2017-10-22, 08:45 AM

*guy who has never read anything about Eberron*

ignoring subcults of Vulkoor that would just be the Blood of Vol organization subverting the purpose of the faith, vulkoor is just Lolth, except scorpions instead of spiders, not being dicked over by her husband because gods dont exist in eberron, and male. Vulkoor still has the Drow first and only point of view favoring a survival of the fittest and inheritors of the world that hate their cousins because of what is instead a perceived slight rather than an actual ****ing over by the god of dickery.

the Feywild and Shadowfell effectively were first introduced as integral planes into DnD by Eberron, as the planes of Lamania and Mabar respectively.

The gatekeepers are a coalition of druids against undead, abominations, and outsiders. they would naturally being not a formal organization have a hell of alot less formal training between their members than the druids of Faerun who all pray to a small set of gods who all believe the same things. the edgecase philosophies are then further covered by the horizon walker ranger and ancients paladin.

the only things on a purely mechanical point of view missing from Keith Baker's knockoff Shadowrun in post WW1 Fantasy europe for 5E is vehicle combat rules that actually work, which are better dedicated to spelljammer than eberron where all the small number of airships are owned by House Lyrandar who wouldnt waste multi-billion dollar vessels, While dragonmarks cannot even be implemented since the mechanisms required to create the dragonmark system does not exist and is not compatible with 5E dnd at all.

Except the dragonborn were another example of 4e stupidity forced into Eberron, namely "See those Q'barran lizardfolk? They were actually dragonborn all along!"

Dragonborm existed well before 4E DnD codified them into their currently playable race and have their roots in Dragonlance as far back as the 1990s, and come directly from an interview with Gary Gygax who is a better DM than anyone who complains like you do for simply ACCEPTING that his players want to play a dragon and PRESENTING A SOLUTION for it.

Dragonborn dont fit in faerun naturally, they fit in eberron just fine because of Argonessan

Regitnui

2017-10-22, 09:00 AM

Sweet Olladra's bounteous beauty! Toapat, no insult intended, but you know nothing about Eberron except the thinnest veneer of it. Let's go over each of your examples just in your last post. If I had to take every post you made, I'd be here all week.

the only World-Specific thing in the entirety of the PHB is the dragonborn which in Faerun was a special template-race created by having Bahamut strike you with lightning, and putting you inside a dragon egg for a year, or in Dragonlance where the 4/5e dragonborn are from, when with Eberron they are perfectly acceptable as adventurers who are descended from the slaved races of Argonessen.

OK, Dragonborn in Eberron are from Argonessen. That's about the only thing you have right. They are not descendants of dragon slave races. They are descendants of a primordial race that dedicated themselves to the dragon's fight against the fiends. In that way, they are similar to the shulassakar (good yuan-ti), that dedicated themselves to the coatl, or (my personal opinion. Tabaxi don't otherwise exist) the tabaxi of the Demon Wastes who serve the rakshasa and the Rakshasa Rajahs.

Currently the dragonborn in Eberron can come from Argonessen, which is more of an NPC role, being the emissary of a dragon, or the tribes of Q'barra, who live alongside the lizardfolk and share a certain disdain for the softskin races, or in other words, everyone else.

As a side note, the Dragonlance "dragonborn" are actualy draconians, and are specifically tied to breeds of good dragon.

the "Default Drow" literally are unchanged in Eberron, literally only having a Find and replace for every instance of spider in their lore with scorpion and "Illithid slaves" with "giant slaves". Driders in Eberron's cosmology are demons from IIRC Mabar rather than even being barred. High elves are from Aerenal and wood elves are from Valenar in Khorvaire.

There are no "Default Drow" in Eberron. There are three major civilisations of drow. The tribal drow are the most common, and they worship hundreds of spirit deities, among which Vulkoor is the most prominent for tribes in the area near Stormreach. They don't just worship Vulkoor, but those who do are called Vulkoori Drow.

The Umbragen live in Khyber, beneath the earth, but fight an endless battle against the monsters down there. They are bound to an entity called the Shadow which made it possible to even survive down there.. They are actually friendly to surface dwellers; after all, the more allies they have the better.

The Sulatar or "fire-binders" consider themselves the inheritors of the giant's lore, and use elemental bonding techniques to wield fire-enchanted weapons and items. They are hostile, but generalyl because they defend their perceived heritage and claim an gnome stole their techniques to create elemental binding in Khorvaire.

Driders are generally found in Lamannia, the Twilight Forest, where nature exists at its most wild and primitive and powerful. They are living creatures, and therefore as welcome on Mabar as a bug is in a starving tiger's mouth.

There are no subrace distinctions in Eberron. Wood Elves and High Elves are individual aptitudes, not distinct races like in FR. The drow are the only elven subrace on Eberron with distinct appearance, excluding the aquatic elves whose changes are minimal.

Or how about the Circle of Land and Circle of the Moon druids who, at least because of extant prior world lore, ONLY fit in Eberron because of The Gatekeepers of Khorvaire.

OK, I'd like to start with the fact that there are about 6 different druidic cultures on Eberron besides the Gatekeepers. Any single one of those traditions could give rise to any druidic subclass. Again, it's about individual proficiency, not traditions.

Honestly, it seems you run Eberron off of the wikis where it seems like a very different setting than what it is portrayed as in the books, which is even stranger because if you're using online materials I would have assumed you would have found reference to Keith Baker saying that, specifically because in 3.5 there are no unique-to-player rules in the entire edition, unlike 4th and 5th ed where players are built using the character creation system where as monsters are built using the respective system's monster creation system.

Um... What?

Everything I've said above comes from either the books or Keith Baker's website. I'm actually not even sure what you're trying to claim in the latter half of this paragraph; I would have just struck it through and ignored it, but I want clarification.

and as i said earlier, the Volo's guide sourcebook, while the races have detail differences, is still more of an Eberron sourcebook despite being written from the perspective of and focusing on the versions from Faerun, because of the different expectations of the campaign and world making it much harder to allow as a DM monster races to players if not doing an underworld campaign.

Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Volo's Guide is a FR sourcebook through and through. Let me list the new races from that book that have an existing place in Eberron lore, as in not having to be retroactively added;

Goblin (Darguun)
Hobgoblin (Darguun)
Bugbear (Darguun)
Kobold (Monsters)
Yuan-ti (as shulassakar, mentioned above) (Isolationalist and arrogant)
Lizardfolk (Alien, Isolationalist and arrogant)
Orc (actually fairly decent blokes, all things considered)

What you don't see is every race given a full writeup in VGtM excepting Lizardfolk. There are no defined civilisations of Tabaxi, Goliaths, Firbolgs, Tritons, Kenku or Aasimar. There are ways to add them in, but going by the original vision of Eberron, they aren't there. Some of the PHB races can be dropped as well; Dragonborn and Tieflings didn't exist in 3.5 Eberron either. They were retroactively added in 4e, but even then are isolationalist and vanishingly rare respectively.

In conclusion; Toapat, I'd welcome you to read the books in their own merits, and be introduced to Eberron from a blank slate, not from the "This is D&D and therefore must be like Greyhawk/FR". Incidentally, Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms have more in common than any other setting and Eberron. It's why we like it and why we want it in 5e soon as possible, before Dark Sun has to break the PHB over its knee.

JackPhoenix

2017-10-22, 09:16 AM

ignoring subcults of Vulkoor that would just be the Blood of Vol organization subverting the purpose of the faith, vulkoor is just Lolth, except scorpions instead of spiders, not being dicked over by her husband because gods dont exist in eberron, and male. Vulkoor still has the Drow first and only point of view favoring a survival of the fittest and inheritors of the world that hate their cousins because of what is instead a perceived slight rather than an actual ****ing over by the god of dickery.

Vulkoor has nothing to do with Blood of Vol. And "Vulkoor is just Lolth, except he's not like Lolth at all besides being patron of drow (and their positions in their respective cultures is far from the same) and depicted as half-drow, half-arachnid"... I mean, do you even read what you type?

the Feywild and Shadowfell effectively were first introduced as integral planes into DnD by Eberron, as the planes of Lamania and Mabar respectively.

While similar and partially true, both Lammania and Mabar (which is *not* 4e Shadowfell in Eberron, Dolurrh is) are different

The gatekeepers are a coalition of druids against undead, abominations, and outsiders. they would naturally being not a formal organization have a hell of alot less formal training between their members than the druids of Faerun who all pray to a small set of gods who all believe the same things. the edgecase philosophies are then further covered by the horizon walker ranger and ancients paladin.

No, they are not. The Gatekeepers are the OG druidic sect, and while they were formed to fight against Daelkyr Incursion, they *are* formal organization, as are the other druid sects.

the only things on a purely mechanical point of view missing from Keith Baker's knockoff Shadowrun in post WW1 Fantasy europe for 5E is vehicle combat rules that actually work, which are better dedicated to spelljammer than eberron where all the small number of airships are owned by House Lyrandar who wouldnt waste multi-billion dollar vessels, While dragonmarks cannot even be implemented since the mechanisms required to create the dragonmark system does not exist and is not compatible with 5E dnd at all.

Vehicle combat never played any big role in Eberron, unlike dragonmarks, which can be (and were) implemented just fine in the very first UA. And things missing from purely mechanical perspective? Unlike vehicles, and besides dragonmarks: artificer, psionics, Eberron-specific races, proper magic item creation and economy, elemental binding, action points (all right, this one may be skipped)....

Dragonborm existed well before 4E DnD codified them into their currently playable race and have their roots in Dragonlance as far back as the 1990s, and come directly from an interview with Gary Gygax who is a better DM than anyone who complains like you do for simply ACCEPTING that his players want to play a dragon and PRESENTING A SOLUTION for it.

Dragonborn dont fit in faerun naturally, they fit in eberron just fine because of Argonessan

Draconians are not dragonborn, no matter what PHB claims, even though they may be their spiritual forebearers. And they find FR's fantasy kitchen sink better than the setting where most dragons see half-breeds (which, admittedly, dragonborn are not, before someone accuses me from equating them with half-dragons) as abominations to be destroyed. Rhashaak doesn't really count, he's corrupted and crazy. Remember what happened last time someone tried to crossbreed dragons with something else? Lady Vol do.

UrielAwakened

2017-10-22, 09:17 AM

4e Eberron was really good. Probably the best version of it.

toapat

2017-10-22, 09:19 AM

Um... What?

Everything I've said above comes from either the books or Keith Baker's website. I'm actually not even sure what you're trying to claim in the latter half of this paragraph; I would have just struck it through and ignored it, but I want clarification.

on the WOtC forums early-midway through 4E Kieth baker said explicitly that 4E was more effective at depicting eberron than 3.5 ever could be because of how the character and monster building systems were explicitly non-transitive between eachother, exactly as how in the foreward of PGtE for 3.5 says that the player characters are special snowflakes in the world.. He was not validating the lore changes of which he opposed everything, but specifically the system in a technical sense.

this is because, for how much we dont see the intermediate stages of construction in monster statblocks, every piece of character and monster building in 3.5 is codified and transitive between eachother with the sole exception of monster hitdice because those are replaced by character levels. Players and monsters gain a feat every 3 hit dice, a stat increase every 4, their saves are either equal to 1/3rd hit dice if non-proficient or 2+1/2 for proficient saves, and BAB is equal to 1/2, 3/4, 100% of hitdice depending on creature type. In fact most if not all of the monsters of 3.5 use the Standard Array and have a racial modifier exactly like player characters for their attributes. In fact the only deviant from this pattern entirely is the succubus entry which has a racial +10 modifier to charisma.

As for Volos, i wasnt talking about it in a "fluff book" sense. i meant in providing rules for eberron moreso than faerun could ever use because of the differential construction of the settings intended use.

lunaticfringe

2017-10-22, 09:30 AM

It's why we like it and why we want it in 5e soon as possible, before Dark Sun has to break the PHB over its knee.

I love Eberron, I love Dark Sun. In loving Dark Sun, I have learned something. I don't want updated mass appeal versions of the settings I love. Because they are Stupid and completely miss the frakking point of the setting. The vibe is off and dumb****, sloppy shoehorning abounds. If I want to play Dark Sun or Eberron I'll slap something together that doesn't have to appeal to the teeming masses or pull out my old books.

JackPhoenix

2017-10-22, 09:40 AM

on the WOtC forums early-midway through 4E Kieth baker said explicitly that 4E was more effective at depicting eberron than 3.5 ever could be because of how the character and monster building systems were explicitly non-transitive between eachother, exactly as how in the foreward of PGtE for 3.5 says that the player characters are special snowflakes in the world.. He was not validating the lore changes of which he opposed everything, but specifically the system in a technical sense.

this is because, for how much we dont see the intermediate stages of construction in monster statblocks, every piece of character and monster building in 3.5 is codified and transitive between eachother with the sole exception of monster hitdice because those are replaced by character levels. Players and monsters gain a feat every 3 hit dice, a stat increase every 4, their saves are either equal to 1/3rd hit dice if non-proficient or 2+1/2 for proficient saves, and BAB is equal to 1/2, 3/4, 100% of hitdice depending on creature type. In fact most if not all of the monsters of 3.5 use the Standard Array and have a racial modifier exactly like player characters for their attributes. In fact the only deviant from this pattern entirely is the succubus entry which has a racial +10 modifier to charisma.

So? Mechanics are different between different editions, what's your point? We know how 3e works. 4e was better in some regards and worse in others. 5e is, IMO, better then either of the two previous editions, because it fits the intended feeling of Eberron better than 3.5 (even though it lacks some things Eberron would need), and its mechanics are much less gamist and actually make sense from IC perspective, unlike 4e.

As for Volos, i wasnt talking about it in a "fluff book" sense. i meant in providing rules for eberron moreso than faerun could ever use because of the differential construction of the settings intended use.

So, basically "it provides rules for Eberron more than for FR if you don't actually read any of the fluff", which isn't true at all.

toapat

2017-10-22, 10:06 AM

So? Mechanics are different between different editions, what's your point? We know how 3e works. 4e was better in some regards and worse in others. 5e is, IMO, better then either of the two previous editions, because it fits the intended feeling of Eberron better than 3.5 (even though it lacks some things Eberron would need), and its mechanics are much less gamist and actually make sense from IC perspective, unlike 4e.

So, basically "it provides rules for Eberron more than for FR if you don't actually read any of the fluff", which isn't true at all.

the point is, the guy who designed the setting as a knockoff shadowrun for DnD said he prefered 4e for it. I also agree because theres intrinsic mechanisms of the setting that 5th ed is not designed around utilizing that are required for the setting.

And while 4E may have made the Realm of the Dead the Shadowfell Equivalent, the Shadowfell is the realm of night, not zombieland, so it should be mabar.

Fluff, is fluff. Mechanics, which are the important bit, are still reliant on the assumptions of the setting. Faerun is not a setting about allowing the players to run around with a Yuan-Ti, Menzoberranzan Drow, a Kobold, and a lizardfolk, and go around being the heros, and yet you can do that in Eberron if you swap out the drow for an appropriate one. The only race that doesnt have some precidence in Volos, are the Tritons who can show up anywhere in the oceans, while the Tabaxi could be from Sarlona or Xendrik depending on where if ever they decide to get shoved.

Twizzly513

2017-10-22, 10:06 AM

Unoriginal

2017-10-22, 10:38 AM

Well, gods and angels, there is a lot of negativity in this thread.

I'm beginning to wonder if people who actually like that stuff don't usually show up in that kind of speculation threads.

Then again I wonder if negative people aren't more enjoyable than people who genuinely think they can win everything ever with pseudo-exploits.

JackPhoenix

2017-10-22, 10:49 AM

the point is, the guy who designed the setting as a knockoff shadowrun for DnD said he prefered 4e for it. I also agree because theres intrinsic mechanisms of the setting that 5th ed is not designed around utilizing that are required for the setting.

Keith was saying that when there was no 5e. And the exact thing... NPCs and PCs being fundamentally different... is in 5e too, together with mechanics that fit Eberron much better than what 4e offered (because the mechanics of 4e were purely gamist and if applied to a setting, any sense of versimilitude would be broken).

And while 4E may have made the Realm of the Dead the Shadowfell Equivalent, the Shadowfell is the realm of night, not zombieland, so it should be mabar.

Shadowfell is realm of dead, it's where the dead ends before Raven Queen sends them to their respective afterlifes. Dolurrh is realm of dead, it's where the souls of the dead ends. Mabar is Eberron's equivalent to Negative Energy Plane, which Shadowfell is *not*

Fluff, is fluff. Mechanics, which are the important bit, are still reliant on the assumptions of the setting. Faerun is not a setting about allowing the players to run around with a Yuan-Ti, Menzoberranzan Drow, a Kobold, and a lizardfolk, and go around being the heros, and yet you can do that in Eberron if you swap out the drow for an appropriate one. The only race that doesnt have some precidence in Volos, are the Tritons who can show up anywhere in the oceans, while the Tabaxi could be from Sarlona or Xendrik depending on where if ever they decide to get shoved.

And aasimar, and firbolg, and goliath, and tabaxi, and kenku...

The mere fact that those races were presented in VGtM, an explicitly FR supplement with no mention of Eberron anywhere, and that Drizzt & co. run around the Realms since 80's, proves you wrong. Drow adventurer on Khorvaire is much more out of place than drow adventurer in, say, Neverwinter.

Look, I understand you want to "win" the argument and be right, but you obviously either don't know what are you talking about, or you're trolling (as was my impression from this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22499070&postcount=53) post, because, well, the bottom paragraph being so wrong it seems deliberate)

toapat

2017-10-22, 11:04 AM

And aasimar, and firbolg, and goliath, and tabaxi, and kenku...

i literally opened Secrets of Sarlona and found those races in the Table of contents baring the Kenku and tabaxi. I assume i could find Kenku if i knew where to look and Tabaxi simply didnt exist until 5e

JackPhoenix

2017-10-22, 11:12 AM

i literally opened Secrets of Sarlona and found those races in the Table of contents baring the Kenku and tabaxi. I assume i could find Kenku if i knew where to look and Tabaxi simply didnt exist until 5e

All right, let's see...

Races
Aventi
Changelings
Chosen (Empty Vessels)
Dromites
Dwarves and Duergar
Elans
Eneko
Half-Giants
Humans
Kalashtar
Maenads
Ogre and Ogre Mages
Shifters
Skulks
Xephs
Yuan-Ti
Planar Races

So, either your copy of SoS is very different from my own, or you're deliberately lying. Well, I know which option is more likely...

And tabaxi were a thing since 1e

toapat

2017-10-22, 11:21 AM

All right, let's see...

So, either your copy of SoS is very different from my own, or you're deliberately lying. Well, I know which option is more likely...

And tabaxi were a thing since 1e

Firbolgs and Goliaths were called half giants in 3.5, if you actually READ the plane-touched entry, it notes that rarely do Aasimar show up in the ice wastes.

Tabaxi in 5E are NOT the Odnd/2E Tabaxi, they share similarities to but are distinct from the Catfolk of 3.5, and the Tabaxi of 3.5 would have been exterminated by the Silver Flame, but are also further distinct as a race because theey are shapeshifters. My statement that 5E tabaxi are new is still factual.

Regitnui

2017-10-22, 11:26 AM

toapat

2017-10-22, 11:34 AM

No, no they weren't. Goliaths are in Races of Stone for 3.5.

Aasimar are rarer than hen's teeth. They have no established place in Eberron because you're likely to only ever encounter one in a few centuries.

Um, I'm fairly certain the tabaxi in 5e occupy the same places in FR as the ones from 2e. And also tabaxi aren't shifters, which are related to lycanthropes, which was the real target of the Silver Flame inquisition.

Literally quick reference searches says once 3.5 Ended, thats when half giants stopped being called that entirely and just became goliaths.

they have an established place, its just a footnote but claiming they arent there when the section literally says where they show up is in the book.

No, they dont. I literally asked wikipedia and considering the books they appear in (Fiend Folio) they are basically Rakshasa cults. And 3.5 Tabaxi ARE shapeshifter cats that can become human. theyre in a late release of Dragon magazine and learned Humanoid Handling in place of Animal Handling like all cat-races of 3.5, so if were using single system continuity then tabaxi would have been exterminated

JackPhoenix

2017-10-22, 11:34 AM

Firbolgs and Goliaths were called half giants in 3.5, if you actually READ the plane-touched entry, it notes that rarely do Aasimar show up in the ice wastes.

Tabaxi in 5E are NOT the Odnd/2E Tabaxi, they share similarities to but are distinct from the Catfolk of 3.5, and the Tabaxi of 3.5 would have been exterminated by the Silver Flame, but are also further distinct as a race because theey are shapeshifters. My statement that 5E tabaxi are new is still factual.

Firbolgs and goliaths both existed in 3.5, as separate races from half-giants. Even though firbolgs are different in 5e than they were in 3.5e. I've read the plane-touched entry and seen the mention of aasimar (and tiefling) there. Sure, all sorts of planetouched races existed in 3.5 (well, more like plane-touched individuals, they weren't numerous enough to qualify as a race of their own).

And can you back up your claim that 5e tabaxi aren't the same race as 2e tabaxi? Not to mention Regitnui's objections.

Literally quick reference searches says once 3.5 Ended, thats when half giants stopped being called that entirely and just became goliaths.

Again, wrong. Both goliaths and half-giants were separate races in 3.5.

No, they dont. I literally asked wikipedia and considering the books they appear in (Fiend Folio) they are basically Rakshasa cults. And 3.5 Tabaxi ARE shapeshifter cats that can become human. theyre in a late release of Dragon magazine and learned Humanoid Handling in place of Animal Handling like all cat-races of 3.5

Sorry, does that mean that because elves had entry in Monster Manual, they are monsters? Just because the book is named Fiend Folio (as a reference to 1e Fiend Folio, also, 3e book was released before Eberron) doesn't mean they have anything to do with rakshasas. And you're mistaking tabaxi for tibbits (who *are* shapeshifting cats) and that dragon magazine article was a joke anyway (assuming it's the same stuff that was available on WotC website)

toapat

2017-10-22, 11:43 AM

as a reference to 1e Fiend Folio

As in the 1st edition Fiend Folio

JackPhoenix

2017-10-22, 11:45 AM

As in the 1st edition Fiend Folio

Which, again, had nothing to do with rakshasas or Eberron.

Regitnui

2017-10-22, 11:46 AM

[
Literally quick reference searches says once 3.5 Ended, thats when half giants stopped being called that entirely and just became goliaths.

they have an established place, its just a footnote but claiming they arent there when the section literally says where they show up is in the book.

No, they dont. I literally asked wikipedia and considering the books they appear in (Fiend Folio) they are basically Rakshasa cults. And 3.5 Tabaxi ARE shapeshifter cats that can become human. theyre in a late release of Dragon magazine and learned Humanoid Handling in place of Animal Handling like all cat-races of 3.5, so if were using single system continuity then tabaxi would have been exterminated

Look, toapat, you're clearly well-read. You know a lot of obscure 3.5 stuff. The trouble is that it just doesn't work the way you seem to have put it together. Explicitly, it doesn't work like that. Tabaxi aren't shifters. The suggestion that they worship the Rakhsasa Rajahs was made by me a little higher up, and to my knowledge is about as official as warforged being a Gond-made race in the Forgotten Realms. As far as I know, JackPhoenix can correct me, nobody ever included tabaxi in Eberron before I suggested them as demon cultists.

You're wrong. JackPhoenix, Tetrasodium and I can prove you wrong on every point you've made, and we have. You don't know Eberron. We do. We metaphorically sat in the Korranberg Libraries and sat in the Wayfinder Foundation reports, while you seem to be sitting in Sigil and repeating half-heard nuggets from a rakshasa.

toapat

2017-10-22, 12:07 PM

Which, again, had nothing to do with rakshasas or Eberron.

which is the point of why having the same name is useless to the comparison. Tabaxi did not officially exist in either edition where eberron was having material published, and i cannot find a continuity link between those tabaxi and the tabaxi presented in Volo's guide because of the major cultural differences from a race of evil isolationist Leopard people to an Isolated race of catpeople that are extremely curious, while materialistic but not inclined towards the use of currency.

Strictly speaking, what i have access to in Pre-3.5 materials due to their less comprehensive conversion to PDF due to not having the same Media war against it, the 5E tabaxi are only the 1/2e Tabaxi in Name.

Unoriginal

2017-10-22, 12:09 PM

Are Rakshasa Raja even a thing in 5e?

Naanomi

2017-10-22, 12:23 PM

Tabaxi are an important race in Maztica, a continent that existed in 3e (but was never explored) so presumably they still existed fluffwise (until 4e wiped the whole continent off the map?)

Regitnui

2017-10-22, 12:24 PM

Are Rakshasa Raja even a thing in 5e?

Rakshasa Rajahs are an Eberron thing. They're also called the Overlords. The easiest equivalent for the uninitiated visitor to Eberron is the Archdevils and Demon Lords of the Great Wheel. Critical differences are that the rakshasa rajahs are native to the Material Plane, but are bound in Khyber by the Silver Flame, the divine energy of (almost) the entire couatl race. Their servants, the Lords of Dust, scheme endlessly against the dragons over the fate of the world. While individual dragons can be vicious and racist, the world under the rule of the Overlords would be a horrendous thing to see; even one released would fundamentally change the world for the worse.

The actual demon lords and archdevils can be translated into Eberron with varying degrees of success, but the only two beings from existing D&D explicitly named as Overlords are Tiamat, whose province is the darkness in the hearts of dragons (imprisoned in Argonessen under a suicide watch of elite dragon military) and Levistus (frozen in the Frostfell, status otherwise unknown).

toapat

2017-10-22, 12:26 PM

You're wrong. JackPhoenix, Tetrasodium and I can prove you wrong

Claiming im wrong, factually misrepresenting the very arguments made, and declaring your own victory, Do not an argument make.

Are Rakshasa Raja even a thing in 5e?

Depends on degrees of relation. the Rajahs are not visible in eberron, quick reference sugests entities that can function as a Rajah statistically exist, the actual Rajahs from 2e have no representation.

Tabaxi are an important race in Maztica, a continent that existed in 3e (but was never explored)

how unexplored?

Regitnui

2017-10-22, 12:29 PM

Claiming I'mwrong, factually misrepresenting the very arguments made, and declaring your own victory, do not an argument make.

I don't need to misrepresent anything. You're doing a fine job of that on your own. Whatever Eberron material you've read, it's not the same as the majority of people I've met. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's not the same Eberron material Keith Baker has read and written. You're clearly knowledgable about obscure D&D stuff, but you don't know Eberron.

toapat

2017-10-22, 12:35 PM

I don't need to misrepresent anything. You're doing a fine job of that on your own. Whatever Eberron material you've read, it's not the same as the majority of people I've met. In fact, I'm fairly certain it's not the same Eberron material Keith Baker has read and written. You're clearly knowledgable about obscure D&D stuff, but you don't know Eberron.

im literally opening the PDFs and cross referencing material as im writing this, so unless the Internet composited incorrect PDFs a decade ago during the 3.5 purge, i have no idea what youre looking at or using as continuity

Regitnui

2017-10-22, 01:02 PM

im literally opening the PDFs and cross referencing material as im writing this, so unless the Internet composited incorrect PDFs a decade ago during the 3.5 purge, i have no idea what youre looking at or using as continuity

Honestly, if you're looking at the actual 3.5 books, I have no clue how you're confusing tibbits, tabaxi and shifters; calling the drow of Eberron "identical" to those of Greyhawk and FR; conflating half-giants, goliaths and firbolgs; and claiming that the Gatekeepers are the only druids on Khorvaire.

2e lore is irrelevant to Eberron. You may as well try to use a Fighting Man's Thac0 to avoid being hit by a 5e goblin. Eberron was built on 3.5 for 3.5. Its history began there, in those books, and has been taken across two editions now. You're looking at the same books, but you're apparently drawing homebrew conclusions from them, not Eberron.

JackPhoenix

2017-10-22, 01:08 PM

which is the point of why having the same name is useless to the comparison. Tabaxi did not officially exist in either edition where eberron was having material published, and i cannot find a continuity link between those tabaxi and the tabaxi presented in Volo's guide because of the major cultural differences from a race of evil isolationist Leopard people to an Isolated race of catpeople that are extremely curious, while materialistic but not inclined towards the use of currency.

Strictly speaking, what i have access to in Pre-3.5 materials due to their less comprehensive conversion to PDF due to not having the same Media war against it, the 5E tabaxi are only the 1/2e Tabaxi in Name.

Not really. Tabaxi weren't stated in 3.5e, but that doesn't make the 5e version different species from 1e version. They are obviously the same thing (and original tabaxi were CN, not evil), just updated to the current edition.

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. If it uses the same name as original tabaxi, looks like original tabaxi, and behaves like original tabaxi, it's propably meant to be the the same creature, no matter what edition it was or wasn't present in.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-22, 01:43 PM

which is the point of why having the same name is useless to the comparison.

Eberron is not dark sun/forgotten realms/greyhawk/dragonlance/etc. you can't take $thing from one setting complete with its lore & setting specific fluff & seamlessly transpose it into a different setting without giving thought to how that $thing needs to be changed & altered to even fit or if it can fit whatsoever. You seem to be hell bent on doing just that & have finally realized the problem that is being complained about & source of why XgE will very likely have zero value as anything but a paperweight for an eberron GM

To end the nonsense argument oveer Tabaxi, they fit just fine into the lore & fluff of eberron... Specifically:"House Vadalis performed some illegal magebreeding experiments on humans during the war & oh look that one tabaxi is one of the failures" oops all of the tabaxi culture is gone & never existed. Oops, given that origin, it's extremely likely that most of what it does say about them in the FR specific Volo's needs to be thrown out for tabaxi to fit into eberron rather than eberron fitting FR style tabaxi.

Ad to tabaxi?... they are the only race I refuse to allow in my Eberron games. I'll grudgingly allow a Gnoll that uses tabaxi stats, but not a tabaxi. The reason why is because the tabaxi outshines multiple subraces of shifter in their owen strong suits, is able to do it all the time, & is often able to do it better due to the fact that thew shifter UA writeup dates back to the d&dNext test & tabxi were designed for... well.... fifth edition.
The same goes for warforged & tortles.

Regitnui

2017-10-22, 02:20 PM

To end the nonsense argument oveer Tabaxi, they fit just fine into the lore & fluff of eberron... Specifically:"House Vadalis performed some illegal magebreeding experiments on humans during the war & oh look that one tabaxi is one of the failures" oops all of the tabaxi culture is gone & never existed. Oops, given that origin, it's extremely likely that most of what it does say about them in the FR specific Volo's needs to be thrown out for tabaxi to fit into eberron rather than eberron fitting FR style tabaxi.

Going past all the problems about the UA races being a little unbalanced (I'd play a changeling at anyone's table who allows UA), what would you think about putting tabaxi in as members of the cannibalistic demon cults of the Demon Wastes? A facebook group I was on agreed that the cannibalistic tabaxi cultists along with a more peaceful population in an obscure region of Xen'drik could be a fairly interesting story for a tabaxi PC. As in, they're from Xen'drik and have to face the origin of his kind as monsters.

JackPhoenix

2017-10-22, 02:32 PM

Going past all the problems about the UA races being a little unbalanced (I'd play a changeling at anyone's table who allows UA), what would you think about putting tabaxi in as members of the cannibalistic demon cults of the Demon Wastes? A facebook group I was on agreed that the cannibalistic tabaxi cultists along with a more peaceful population in an obscure region of Xen'drik could be a fairly interesting story for a tabaxi PC. As in, they're from Xen'drik and have to face the origin of his kind as monsters.

My take on tabaxi would be "tribe of shifters who got permanently stuck in shifted form thanks to [reasons]". Note that looking like werebeast or the most commonly known fiend would make adventuring across Khorvaire very problematic, to the point of possibly being attacked on sight by CotSF members, especially Aundairian puritans.

For added irony, perhaps they were cursed to be like that by vengeful lycantrophes during the Purge, when they turned against their (remote) kin, and almost exterminated by their former allies who didn't know they weren't full-blooded werecats.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-22, 02:47 PM

Going past all the problems about the UA races being a little unbalanced (I'd play a changeling at anyone's table who allows UA), what would you think about putting tabaxi in as members of the cannibalistic demon cults of the Demon Wastes? A facebook group I was on agreed that the cannibalistic tabaxi cultists along with a more peaceful population in an obscure region of Xen'drik could be a fairly interesting story for a tabaxi PC. As in, they're from Xen'drik and have to face the origin of his kind as monsters.

With +1 dex/cha Deception & "As an action, you can polymorph into any humanoid of your size that you have seen, or
back into your true form" changelings are the best of the bunch, potentially by far depending on what leeway your gm allows you with a nonmagical polymorph limited to humanoids. Tabaxi are a race from volo's, shifters are in the same multiple year old Pre-5e written d&dNext UA as changelings.

Tabxi exceed multiple subraces of shifter & are able to do it all the time rather than just while shifting.

Regitnui

2017-10-22, 02:56 PM

With +1 dex/cha Deception & "As an action, you can polymorph into any humanoid of your size that you have seen, or back into your true form" changelings are the best of the bunch, potentially by far depending on what leeway your gm allows you with a nonmagical polymorph limited to humanoids. Tabaxi are a race from volo's, shifters are in the same multiple year old Pre-5e written d&dNext UA as changelings.

Tabxi exceed multiple subraces of shifter & are able to do it all the time rather than just while shifting.

Thanks, but I was asking about the fluff, not the mechanic. What would you, as an declared hater of tabaxi, think about them being included as "kill-on-sight" cannibalistic demon worshippers?

And changelings don't gain the abilities of what they shifted into, just the appearance. It's a cosmetic polymorph, not a full Change Shape like the metallic dragons. A changeling shapeshifted into a drow doesn't get Drow Spellcasting, for example

Tetrasodium

2017-10-22, 03:48 PM

Thanks, but I was asking about the fluff, not the mechanic. What would you, as an declared hater of tabaxi, think about them being included as "kill-on-sight" cannibalistic demon worshippers?

And changelings don't gain the abilities of what they shifted into, just the appearance. It's a cosmetic polymorph, not a full Change Shape like the metallic dragons. A changeling shapeshifted into a drow doesn't get Drow Spellcasting, for example
I've got two of them in one of my games (three if you count the changeling occasionally posing as one) & a third in a second game. One is a gnoll barbarian with an aberrant mark & the other is a gnoll UA revised ranger. My problem with adding tabaxi is centered around a few points

Their lore is pointlessly ill fitting because it depends too much on FR's Medieval Stasis (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasis) maintained with nobody saying "hey lets rule a proper nation"
What could fit (wandering nomad trader stuff) is filled by others (halflings & to an extent actual gnolls too) & adding them into the mix does nothing to improve things
They work fine as a subrace of znir pact gnoll & have no reason to exist as a new addition diluting the role of gnolls as oretty much the most inhuman of the nonmagical monstrous races (ie they stop shy of more monstrous & magical troll/harpy/etc). If I can take all the subraces of elf/dwarf/etc & say "ignore all that FR specific fluff,you are just an elf/dwarf/etc regardless of which subrace you choose" then doing the same to the charismatic dextrous gnolls from FR is easier than trying to maintain a web of ill fitting fluff tneeded to fit eberron around a piece of FR someone wants to transport in.
They trivially outdo longstride, &longclaw(?), and cliffwalk shifters all at the samet time without ever needing to spend an action to unlock via shifting or wirry about their shift ending. maybe if they update the eberron UA written for dndNext to 5e that might change

It's not that I hate tabaxi (I even played one for a while in TyP set in faerun). it'd that I refuse to start down that slippery slope again as long as I still need to reference/convert from out of print 3.5 stuff & untrain my players from years of the "all FR all the time" influences reinforced by all current core 5e books. If I had 5e eberron books I could point to & use as a base point for both me & my players to operate from when it comes to the setting & a useful amount of mechanical crunch I'd probably allow them in through all sorts of justifications... but not until then.

With that said, the idea of them being kill on sight anywhere house tharask might have a reasonable presence just seems weird. most people in khorvaire have never been to or heard much abiout the demon wastes besides maybe "it sucks & is dangerous, stay away". If your average settler cab mistake a dragonborn or yaun-ti for a lizardman, having them treated as a gnoll is not even going to merit a second thought

I mention yaunti because I have a warlock player with one who was mentioning how he was disappointed they don't have the tail & all of a naga only to giggle & squee when I told him that it was easier to have the snake body & get called a lizardman by most everyone who doesn't know better than it was to explain why he was human looking with scales

I know with the changeling thing, but barring a writeup for them written at any point since it went from the d&dNext test to 5e, I allowdarkvision/climb speed/never came up maybe gills with shifting

MeeposFire

2017-10-22, 04:16 PM

Thank goodness I already love Eberron because if I did not you all would make me hate it.

Sicarius Victis

2017-10-22, 04:43 PM

Worth mentioning that while a Tabaxi may outclass a Shifter, that's less because the Tabaxi is too good and more because the Shifter is bad.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-22, 04:50 PM

Worth mentioning that while a Tabaxi may outclass a Shifter, that's less because the Tabaxi is too good and more because the Shifter is bad.

agreed & as loong as that's the case it plus the poor fit for their faerun fluff for eberron bans them from my games as anything but a znir pact gnoll.

Edit: Also don't forget that the reason shifters are so bad as designed in the eberron UA is because they were designed for DnDNext not 5th edition. The all faerun all the time & nothing but faerun focus from WotC keeps it that way

JakOfAllTirades

2017-10-22, 10:17 PM

See above.

This discussion was had yonks ago when the game first came out, along with how to calculate AC (pick one method, and one method only) etc.

Its a core rule at the start of the PHB under the proficiency bonus section.

Many thanks. This makes the Skill Feats somewhat less awful IMO, but I still find them unimaginative and dull.

Crusher

2017-10-22, 11:16 PM

I love Eberron, I love Dark Sun. In loving Dark Sun, I have learned something. I don't want updated mass appeal versions of the settings I love. Because they are Stupid and completely miss the frakking point of the setting. The vibe is off and dumb****, sloppy shoehorning abounds. If I want to play Dark Sun or Eberron I'll slap something together that doesn't have to appeal to the teeming masses or pull out my old books.

Yeah, no joke. Always be careful what you wish for...

Regitnui

2017-10-22, 11:34 PM

Thank goodness I already love Eberron because if I did not you all would make me hate it.

Apologies. The debate got a little out of hand, didn't it?

Protato

2017-10-23, 12:22 AM

Getting away from discussion of other settings, I'm happy to see that Hexblade made it in. I just hope this time, they made Eldritch Smite a subclass feature (replacing Shadow Hound, which doesn't fit mechanically or flavor IMO) and not an Invocation. The name section seems a bit odd to me but I'm happy its there I suppose, especially as someone that gives every character either a human name or a mythological/historical name anyway. Also looking forward to the stuff they put in for DMs!

MinimanMidget

2017-10-23, 12:53 AM

Ugh, I hope they don't make Eldritch Smite a subclass feature. Bad enough that they're releasing Hexblade, but crippling anyone who wants to play Bladelock without using it?

DracoKnight

2017-10-23, 01:53 AM

Eldritch Smite isn’t going to be the 6th level feature. Mearles said that the Shadow Hound was replaced with the ability to rip out the soul of your cursed target, and turn it into a specter when you reduce it to 0 hp.

Erit

2017-10-23, 10:38 AM

Mearles said that the Shadow Hound was replaced with the ability to rip out the soul of your cursed target, and turn it into a specter when you reduce it to 0 hp.

Now this? This sounds metal. I can scarce wait.

toapat

2017-10-23, 10:41 AM

Ugh, I hope they don't make Eldritch Smite a subclass feature. Bad enough that they're releasing Hexblade, but crippling anyone who wants to play Bladelock without using it?

eldrich smite last we saw it was nowhere near as powerful as it was in the Warlock UA

DracoKnight

2017-10-23, 02:54 PM

Now this? This sounds metal. I can scarce wait.

I’m super hyped to see the final version of the Hexblade.

miburo

2017-10-23, 07:39 PM

I'm bummed that the Stone Sorcerer didn't make the cut. Skill feats were cool but took a little bit away from the Rogue and Bard as expertise was their shtick, so I'm not that broken up about it. As for the whole names thing--I think the 6 pages of nonhuman names are pretty useful, as most players might not have good references for that. The other 11 pages of real-world human names? Ehhhh...

Otherwise? I'm PUMPED. Hexblade, Arcane Archer, Scout, and Kensei make me happy. I hope the revised Eldritch Smite invocation makes the cut. Racial feats are cool--let's hope Elven Accuracy got a bit nerfed though.

Naanomi

2017-10-23, 08:16 PM

The other 11 pages of real-world human names? Ehhhh...
I doubt they are 'real world' names... probably split up among all the various FR countries/regions

Kuulvheysoon

2017-10-23, 08:34 PM

I doubt they are 'real world' names... probably split up among all the various FR countries/regions

No, they're real world. It lists off groups like Celtic, Norse and Germanic.

MeeposFire

2017-10-23, 08:39 PM

No, they're real world. It lists off groups like Celtic, Norse and Germanic.

Though if you know the influences in the various areas of FR then you will find certain culture's names fit in different areas very well.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-23, 09:00 PM

No, they're real world. It lists off groups like Celtic, Norse and Germanic.

Cali****e Names: (Male) Aseir, Bardeid, Haseid, Khem ed, Mehmen, Sudeim an, Zasheir; (female), Atala, Ceidil, Hama, Jasmal, Meilil, Seipora, Yasheira, Zasheida; (surnames) Basha, Dumein, Jassan, Khalid, Mostana, Pashar, Rein
Chondathan Names: (Male) Darvin, Dorn, Evendur, Gorstag, Grim, Helm, Malark, Morn, Randal,
Stedd; (female) Arveene, Esvele, Jhessail, Kerri, Lureene, Miri, Rowan, Shandri, Tessele; (surnames) Amblecrown, Buckman, Dundragon, Evenwood, Greycastle, Tallstag
Damaran Names: (Male) Bor, Fodel, Glar, Grigor, Igan, Ivor, Kosef, Mival, Orel, Pavel, Sergor; (female) Alethra, Kara, Katernin, Mara, Natali, Olma, Tana, Zora; (surnames) Bersk, Chernin, Dotsk, Kulenov, Marsk, Nemetsk, Shemov, Starag
Illuskan Names: (Male) Ander, Blath, Bran, Frath,Geth, Lander, Luth, Malcer, Stor, Taman, Urth; (female) Amafrey, Betha, Cefrey, Kethra, Mara, Olga, Silifrey, Westra; (surnames) Brightwood, Helder, Hornraven, Lackman, Storm wind, Windrivver
Mulan Names: (Male) Aoth, Bareris, Ehput-Ki, Kethoth, Mumed, Ram as, So-Kehur, Thazar-De,
Urhur; (female) Arizima, Chathi, Nephis, Nulara, Murithi, Sefris, Thola, Umara, Zolis; (surnames) Ankhalab, Anskuld, Fezim, Hahpet, Nathandem, Sepret, Uuthrakt
Rashemi Names:/b[ (Male) Borivik, Faurgar, Jandar, Kanithar, Madislak, Ralmevik, Shaumar, Vladislak; (female) Fyevarra, Hulmarra, Immith, Imzel,Navarra, Shevarra, Tammith. Yuldra; (surnames) Chergoba, Dyernina, Iltazyara, Murnyethara, Stayanoga, Ulmokina
[B]Shou Names: (Male) An, Chen, Chi, Fai, Jiang, Jun, Lian, Long, Meng, On, Shan, Shui, Wen; (female) Bai, Chao, Jia, Lei, Mei, Qiao, Shui, Tai; (surnames) Chien, Huang, Kao, Kung, Lao, Ling, Mei, Pin, Shin, Sum, Tan, Wan
Turami Names: (Male) Anton, Diero, M arcon, Pieron, Rimardo, Rom ero, Salazar, Umbero; (female) Balama, Dona, Faila, Jalana, Luisa, Marta, Quara, Selise, Vonda; (surnames) Agosto, Astorio, Calabra, Domine, Falone, Marivaldi, Pisacar, Ramondo

I bet they mention what FR region(s) they apply to & no other settings unless those settings are derived from greyhawk too. WotC's history through 5e has not smiled upon any setting that does not rhyme with "blorgotten bealms" or present itself in a largely interchangeable manner to one that does.

No brains

2017-10-23, 09:08 PM

Deleted

2017-10-23, 09:59 PM

Telwar

2017-10-23, 10:28 PM

No, they're real world. It lists off groups like Celtic, Norse and Germanic.

I have to say, one of my favorite things from the Birthright boxed set was the list of names per culture. That was damn helpful. Sure, there are online generators (and I'm a smidge surprised they don't reprint/republish the 3.5 Races of... name generators, and I know some of them made it online), but sometimes you need a name NOW and it's faster to flip through a list than run a search.

Heck, it was non-trivial to find a source for Arabic names for our al Qadim game; I eventually found something from the SCA that was useful.

HermanTheWize

2017-10-24, 07:52 AM

Things I'm Excited For:

Subclasses
Spells
Racial Feats
Maybe Random Encounters

samcifer

2017-10-24, 09:47 AM

Things I'm Excited For:

Subclasses
Spells
Racial Feats
Maybe Random Encounters

Come on... You're forgetting the single most exciting page of all... The copy write page. Can't wait to finally be able to read the Library of Congress catalogue number that this book will be assigned. I'm on pins and needles with excitement over it!

tkuremento

2017-10-24, 11:12 AM

Thank goodness I already love Eberron because if I did not you all would make me hate it.

This except I'm not familiar so now I just hate it by default as a setting.

More seriously though what I'm looking forward to the most is how Inquisitive Rogue is written because if it still allows me to get my ranged/thrown sneak attacks without needing to stealth or have advantage, then I'm gonna have an official way to make a knife thrower with sneak attack continually! This is personally my bread and butter concept, I love playing them.

After that I'd say I wanna see how Kensei and possibly War Magic Wizard are, and I also hope the feats are good stuff.

(Edits in bold for clarification)

rbstr

2017-10-24, 11:18 AM

then I'm gonna have an official way to make a knife thrower with sneak attack!

You can already do that with a dagger. "The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon."
Daggers are finesse. How wouldn't the Inquisitive be able to use it?

Deleted

2017-10-24, 11:23 AM

You can already do that with a dagger. "The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon."
Daggers are finesse. How wouldn't the Inquisitive be able to use it?

Just as an add-on, you can dual wield with thrown weapons, so if your Rogue misses with the first thrown dagger then they can throw their second one (assuming they have two out to begin with).

Regitnui

2017-10-24, 11:25 AM

This except I'm not familiar so now I just hate it as a default setting.

It is a poor default system for D&D, since it's not "Fantasy Classic". However, it's a great setting for expanding people's horizons of D&D, and since we've been stuck in Fairly-well-known Realms (excluding a short trip to Ravenloft) for so long that Elminster's got AL adventurers clinging to his boots, Eberron is a natural step away from Fantasy Classic to the more outlandish settings D&D can portray, like Dark Sun and Planescape; All the familiar races are there, and the world is broad-strokes kingdoms and adventure, but the variety and exotic nature of the foreign cultures (Anything outside the 5 Nations) as well as the removal of alignment, makes Eberron a natural segue between the familiar and the psionic post-apocalypse of Dark Sun and the sheer reality-breaking that is Planescape.

tkuremento

2017-10-24, 12:18 PM

You can already do that with a dagger. "The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon."
Daggers are finesse. How wouldn't the Inquisitive be able to use it?

Sorry I didn't specify what I meant. I mean continual sneak attack damage without having to stealth from ranged. I just use a bonus action to Insightful Fighting. Then I also have 3 levels in EK to be able to recall the dagger as a bonus action on future turns. Only need one dagger and so long as I succeed on the skill check I have sneak attack for a minute on that target.

tkuremento

2017-10-24, 12:19 PM

Regitnui

2017-10-24, 12:25 PM

Apparently I made another typo, having just woken up. I meant to say I hate it BY default as a setting. Let me go back and correct my original statement :X

Was the argument that bad? I feel like I've shamed my fandom by being a fanboy, not a fan.

Deleted

2017-10-24, 12:32 PM

It is a poor default system for D&D, since it's not "Fantasy Classic". However, it's a great setting for expanding people's horizons of D&D, and since we've been stuck in Fairly-well-known Realms (excluding a short trip to Ravenloft) for so long that Elminster's got AL adventurers clinging to his boots, Eberron is a natural step away from Fantasy Classic to the more outlandish settings D&D can portray, like Dark Sun and Planescape; All the familiar races are there, and the world is broad-strokes kingdoms and adventure, but the variety and exotic nature of the foreign cultures (Anything outside the 5 Nations) as well as the removal of alignment, makes Eberron a natural segue between the familiar and the psionic post-apocalypse of Dark Sun and the sheer reality-breaking that is Planescape.

On of the biggest issues I've seen with D&D since... Forever... Is that the classes aren't built around a specific setting. All the classes are very much non-committal and you can see them in pretty much any setting that doesn't specifically ban them (and even then, I've seen Dark Sun games where specific gods are trying to reclaim Athas and everyone is a Rogue/Cleric build).

If you ask a person who might be interested in D&D, or many non-hardcore people that play D&D to be honest, what their favorite fantasy world is... Most people are not going to say a setting from D&D. They're going to say LotR, Westeros, Marvel, Pokemon, Mega-Man, and so many others. D&D settings don't have star power even though D&D is older than a lot of other things out there.

D&D piggybacks off other settings/worlds for their main rule books and this makes their settings not in the forefront of people's minds. And I know D&D has lore and specific worlds out there... In side books, but that isn't what a majority of people are reading. A majority of people are reading the base rules and throwing D&D characters into either other basic fantasy worlds or whatever is the flavor of the week for AL/Official Materials (not always coming from WotC/D&D).

I know way too many people who says that D&D's main setting is LotR.

For such an iconic game, you would think they wouldn't be so non-committal on the world around the classes.

So if they made the base rules as part of the world around them, give some specifics, weave the clases into the base world around them just like you do with the side books. Give people a reason to know the basic world of D&D, make it special and weave the classes into it.

Pex

2017-10-24, 12:34 PM

lunaticfringe

2017-10-24, 12:42 PM

Sorry I didn't specify what I meant. I mean continual sneak attack damage without having to stealth from ranged. I just use a bonus action to Insightful Fighting. Then I also have 3 levels in EK to be able to recall the dagger as a bonus action on future turns. Only need one dagger and so long as I succeed on the skill check I have sneak attack for a minute on that target.

I'd still be loaded with Silvered Spares for those times when you have to target swap.

tkuremento

2017-10-24, 12:49 PM

I'd still be loaded with Silvered Spares for those times when you have to target swap.

Well yea, for sure. It just means you don't have to worry if got a good dagger and accidentally throwing it away. Heck I'd almost consider having a crappy spare dagger that I throw in first in case it goes POOF. Plus I can have a bond to two weapons with that 3 levels in EK, just can only recall one per turn. I'd never go EK5 for Extra attack because of this, but I would consider EK4 if Inquisitive 17 is different or just because a lot of characters will never be full 20.

Pichu

2017-10-24, 12:51 PM

What? No Lore Wizard? This book is dumb...

Jokes aside, I'm so excited for this to come out!

Regitnui

2017-10-24, 01:03 PM

Give people a reason to know the basic world of D&D, make it special and weave the classes into it.

That's just it though. Every single one of those you mentioned; LotR, Westeros, Marvel, Pokemon, Mega-Man; all of them have established worlds. Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones are book series (non-interactive). Marvel is a comic book world (non-interactive). Pokemon and Mega Man are both video games, which, while more interactive than a book or film, set their universes up to challenge the player. They all have consistent universe because they all have a single narrative structure.

D&D doesn't. Dungeons and Dragons, back from when Gygax, Arneson and those people all the spells are named after sat around a table, never presumed to have a single, base, narrative. All those other franchises say "Here's our world." Dungeons & Dragons says, "Show us your world." It, and every other roleplaying system after, want to offer you a system in which to tell your own stories. White Wolf's World of Darkness had an overarching plot, true. But they never told the story. They gave that job to the Storyteller.

Dungeons and Dragons has the strength of not being tied to any narrative. I don't have a choice when playing Pokemon. I can't bring my winnings back to my mother and buy her a nicer home, I can't speak to a random trainer and decide I want to adventure with them. I must battle all the gyms and beat the Elite Four and a villainous team. In Dungeons and Dragons, there are no restrictions on me. I can take the money from my dungeon haul back to my hometown for my mother. I can talk to a random NPC I met on the side of the road and adventure with them. I can ignore the random encounters, I can refuse to meet the generals and kings, and I can do whatever I want.

Within reason, of course.

D&D doesn't have a base world because it doesn't need one. All it needs is 5-7 people sitting around a table with a vast amount of imagination, a set of dice, and a shared intention to have fun. Dungeons and Dragons is a set of rules with which to tell your own stories. It's the narrative equivalent of Lego. You take the building blocks; race, class, personality; and you make your own story. Pokemon tells me to be a ten-year-old child that's gifted in telling wild animals to beat up others. Mega Man tells me I'm a robot boy designed to beat Dr Wily and save the world. Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings tell me to sit back and listen to a story. Dungeons and Dragons hands me a book of options and says; Who are you? What do you want to do?

Why do you think there's such things as Pokemon Tabletop Advanced (ttRPG for Pokemon) and a Game of Thrones setting for D&D? Because whatever people experience, there's a real allure in having your own little piece of story. Daenerys Targaryen might have walked through fire naked and hatched dragons. Gandalf beat up a creature older than the mountain its buried under. That's cool. That's awesome. But how much more fun is it to say "I hatched a dragon by walking through a fire"? How much more awesome is it when you can say, "We beat a balor back into the depths of hell"?

D&D doesn't have a base setting. It might help people to say "Elminster is a wizard so powerful that he literally screws the goddess of magic" or "King Boranel is a 50-year-old human who rides a bear and keeps two white tigers as lap cats and can fight a construct to a draw", but people don't need a base setting to say, "Today I want to be a wood elf archer who teases the human about being slow." Imagination is D&D's selling point, and if people are forgetting how to be imaginative, it's not the fault of the product.

tl;dr Sure, if D&D had a base setting it might have characters in the pop culture consciousness. But I think it's infinitely better that D&D offers you the chance to be the character you'll remember for the rest of your life.

Deleted

2017-10-24, 01:09 PM

Yay! They will have a process for identifying a spell being cast. Implementation to come, but at least there's something.

Yay! They will offer guidelines on crafting magic items. Hopefully it's better than what's in the PHB, something that actually works and allows a character to craft an item in a reasonable amount of time as opposed to game months and years i.e. never. I'm neutral on the concept of purchasing magic items, but still Yay! at least talking about it reinforces the idea that magic items exist in 5E and that it was never, ever the idea that 5E was supposed to be played without them. 5E is played such that no character needs to have one particular magic item, but that's a whole universe of difference of not playing with magic items at all. The game does not collapse into unplayability because a PC has some permanent/continuous use magic items. /rant

Yay! Clarifying proper spell targets. Hopefully that will better explain how Twinning a spell is supposed to work.

Hopefully the chapter on traps will clarify when to use Perception and when to use Investigation.

The fact that skills are so bare bones in the PHB has always bugged me, DM hand waving skills is pretty lazy and they may as well not even had skills and made it actual rules light (ability check variant).

Side Note:
They have already explained twin spell.

"When you cast a spell that targets only one creature and doesn’t have a range of self, you can spend a number of sorcery points equal to the spell’s level to target a second creature in range with the same spell (1 sorcery point if the spell is a cantrip).

To be eligible, a spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature at the spell’s current level. For example, magic missile and scorching ray aren’t eligible, but ray of frost and chromatic orb are."

Even chain lightning says "You create a bolt of lightning that arcs toward a target of your choice that you can see within range. Three bolts then leap from that target to as many as three other targets, each of which must be within 30 feet of the first target. A target can be a creature or an object and can be targeted by only one of the bolts."

You can't twin chain lightning. Which is about the only spell I know comes up when people are asking about Twin Spell.

Edit

Why do you think there's such things as Pokemon Tabletop Advanced (ttRPG for Pokemon) and a Game of Thrones setting for D&D? Because whatever people experience, there's a real allure in having your own little piece of story. Daenerys Targaryen might have walked through fire naked and hatched dragons. Gandalf beat up a creature older than the mountain its buried under. That's cool. That's awesome. But how much more fun is it to say "I hatched a dragon by walking through a fire"? How much more awesome is it when you can say, "We beat a balor back into the depths of hell"?

Because people want a specific world that they know and love and will force it into other things even if it doesn't actually fit. Instead of D&D being a side thought in this equation, have D&D be the main attraction.

If you make an actual setting and promote it, the average person will grow to know and love the world of D&D... Without having to be a hardcore fan.

D&D essentially blocks off a lot of their lore and world to the casual audience because they don't take advantage of it.

tkuremento

2017-10-24, 02:21 PM

That's just it though. Every single one of those you mentioned; LotR, Westeros, Marvel, Pokemon, Mega-Man; all of them have established worlds. Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones are book series (non-interactive). Marvel is a comic book world (non-interactive). Pokemon and Mega Man are both video games, which, while more interactive than a book or film, set their universes up to challenge the player. They all have consistent universe because they all have a single narrative structure.

Except Marvel has a Multiverse with many different storylines and arcs, Pokemon has the Anime, the games, and some manga that are all different, and Mega-Man also has several different variations.

thepsyker

2017-10-24, 02:31 PM

I for one like (the idea of) the list of names being added to the book. If the book goes into the meanings and connotations of the names, it can open up some interesting role play experiences. You can use hidden meanings, homophones, cultural influences, and other jazz to makes your character's name really mean something. I really hope it includes some guidelines for Frankenstein names like Mordenkainen.

Given they are covering 17 cultures in 10 pages it seems unlikely they will have space for that much detail. I guess that is what bugs me about the name tables. It is a fair bit of space given the size of the book, but not enough space to handle the job in an interesting manner. Maybe they handled the presentation in a way that allows for a bit of value added, but if it is just a table of a dozen masculine names, a table of a dozen female names, and maybe a table of sample surnames I would find that to be a little disappointing as a use of limited book space.

samcifer

2017-10-24, 02:49 PM

Here's a link to the official release of the page...

http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/DnDXL2017_XGE_TOC.pdf

http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/DnDXL2017_XGE_TOC.pdf

Regitnui

2017-10-24, 02:55 PM

Except Marvel has a Multiverse with many different storylines and arcs, Pokemon has the Anime, the games, and some manga that are all different, and Mega-Man also has several different variations.

Yet, they all play off the same established world. The core conceit remains the same. The core narrative is the same. At no point in Marvel's multiverse is there a world without the marketable names of the superheroes and supervillains. Pokemon has the same universe in all incarnations, just experienced differently, and Mega-Man is a video game based around the same gameplay and the same universe. All of them at their most creative are variations on the same theme. You can't stop Mega-Man from fighting the bosses and saving the world except by turning off the game. I can't join the International Police in Pokemon. And neither of us can do anything when Captain America decides to go all Nazi because Cosmic Cube nonsense. We are bystanders in Marvel, and constrained by the game in the others.

Dungeons and Dragons is the ultimate roguelike, ultimate sandbox, and ultimate exercise in creativity. I can go from one table playing D&D where the players are fighting giants in a carved glacier with remorhazes bursting from the walls, to another where they're shooting wands of lightning bolt across a battlefield at an incoming undead army riding golem horses, to one where they're delivering precious water from a marid to the sultan of a parched desert kingdom, and to lifting a shipment of adamantine into an airship off a train powered by air elementals, and they're all D&D. And the most important part is you are the one who's doing it. You drive the story in D&D. You decide to fight the giants. You face down the zombies with the flames of undeath in their eyes. You have the water in your backpack as the desert sun beats down. You choose to run or fight when the train security start slashing at your heels as the airship lifts away.

D&D is not a game. It's a set of rules for you to make the game. You will remember your moments of heroism, failure, and choices. Not someone else's stupid decision to have Captain America's good half pop out of his skull like Athena and beat up the tyrant half.

tkuremento

2017-10-24, 03:17 PM

Yet, they all play off the same established world. The core conceit remains the same. The core narrative is the same. At no point in Marvel's multiverse is there a world without the marketable names of the superheroes and supervillains. Pokemon has the same universe in all incarnations, just experienced differently, and Mega-Man is a video game based around the same gameplay and the same universe. All of them at their most creative are variations on the same theme. You can't stop Mega-Man from fighting the bosses and saving the world except by turning off the game. I can't join the International Police in Pokemon. And neither of us can do anything when Captain America decides to go all Nazi because Cosmic Cube nonsense. We are bystanders in Marvel, and constrained by the game in the others.

Firstly, Mega Man Battle Network, very different style of games. Also I'm not really joining the rest of the argument, I was just pointing out how the stories do change quite a bit. I mean there is a series where Peter Parker becomes Hulk and Steve Rogers gets fused to what is basically an Iron Man suit. Oh, and Reed Richards is basically the equivalent to Nick Fury. Sure you have the familiar names but they are in drastically different positions. And don't even get me started on the events that led up to the Amalgam Comics stuff, and then the actual following Amalgam Comics (not for either to be confused with the mutant known as Amalgam). Pokemon I guess does more or less have the same feel, but there are also major differences at the same time.

Regitnui

2017-10-24, 03:28 PM

Firstly, Mega Man Battle Network, very different style of games. Also I'm not really joining the rest of the argument, I was just pointing out how the stories do change quite a bit. I mean there is a series where Peter Parker becomes Hulk and Steve Rogers gets fused to what is basically an Iron Man suit. Oh, and Reed Richards is basically the equivalent to Nick Fury. Sure you have the familiar names but they are in drastically different positions. And don't even get me started on the events that led up to the Amalgam Comics stuff, and then the actual following Amalgam Comics (not for either to be confused with the mutant known as Amalgam). Pokemon I guess does more or less have the same feel, but there are also major differences at the same time.

"Peter Parker is the Hulk"
"Bruce Banner is the Hulk"

"Steve Rogers is Iron Man"
"Tony Stark is Iron Man"

See how that's still variations on the same theme? Even the Amalgam comics, which are relying on the similarity of narratives between two publishers, are interesting because of their resemblance to their constituent worlds. It's not the variation that sells Marvel. It's the similarities. Swapping the names or changing the colour of a suit or merging them with the motif of a similar character doesn't change the fact that the comics are variations on the same theme, taking place in an established world.

That's not bad. Don't read anything I say as saying the established world and variations on that is a bad thing. My argument is that it doesn't work for D&D. For Marvel, for Pokemon, for Mega-Man (the Battle Network trades on the same universe, not the same gameplay. It's not a counter-example), the variations on a theme works great, even fantastically. But it's not the approach D&D should take. D&D is not about the characters that already exist in the world. It's about the characters you make to interact with whatever world you've made. Even defined settings like Eberron and FR have individual variations at the table (the infamous "Guns in Eberron" debate rages on).

Deleted

2017-10-24, 03:39 PM

D&D is not a game. It's a set of rules for you to make the game.

First, I'm gonna have to stop you right here.

You're absolutely bonkers by trying to say D&D isn't a game. You've said a bunch of weird and off the wall stuff the last few posts but right here, you trying to pull off this? Nope.

D&D is a game that has a specific base fluff, it's very generic but it's there.

I guess videogames aren't games, they are just a set of program language in which you can make a game out of.

I'm out. After dealing with Malifice I've decided bot to deal with delusional people anymore.

Elric VIII

2017-10-24, 04:05 PM

I'm a bit disappointed that they did not include some SCAG reprints. I was really hoping to play a Bladesinger that used Melf's Minute Meteors in AL.

KorvinStarmast

2017-10-24, 04:13 PM

I'm a bit disappointed that they did not include some SCAG reprints.
Suggest you read that table of contents again a bit more slowly. :smallbiggrin:

Way of the Sun Soul
Storm Sorcerer
Swashbuckler
Mastermind

DarkKnightJin

2017-10-24, 04:28 PM

I'm a bit disappointed that they did not include some SCAG reprints. I was really hoping to play a Bladesinger that used Melf's Minute Meteors in AL.

I do wish they would've reprinted the SCAG cantrips.
Just so those that picked up this book instead of the SCAG could use 'em too. I mean, I bought the SCAG, but I'm kinda regretting the decision. There's a few things I'd consider using that aren't going to be in XGtE, the cantrips being some of them. And honestly, they couldn't fit the page, page and a half needed for the cantrips in the book somewhere?

SharkForce

2017-10-24, 04:34 PM

Sorry I didn't specify what I meant. I mean continual sneak attack damage without having to stealth from ranged. I just use a bonus action to Insightful Fighting. Then I also have 3 levels in EK to be able to recall the dagger as a bonus action on future turns. Only need one dagger and so long as I succeed on the skill check I have sneak attack for a minute on that target.

you already have that. just need an enemy adjacent to the target, and to not have disadvantage. any rogue can consistently sneak attack with thrown daggers, round after round, so long as they have an ally next to their target (and they haven't run out of daggers)

JackPhoenix

2017-10-24, 04:59 PM

tkuremento

2017-10-24, 05:49 PM

you already have that. just need an enemy adjacent to the target, and to not have disadvantage. any rogue can consistently sneak attack with thrown daggers, round after round, so long as they have an ally next to their target (and they haven't run out of daggers)

I don't want to get too pedantic but I'm talking about reducing variables like needing advantage, needing an ally, etc etc etc. I am not going to go through the book to list every instance that I am attempting to overcome by simple making an Insight skill check.

Pex

2017-10-24, 06:38 PM

Have you seen the Downtime UA? Because if it's based on that without heavy modification (and it most likely is), that "yay" is a bit premature. While it was a bit cheaper, it took even longer to make anything.

I'm willing to change a Yay to a Boo should it be of need. I've Booed a few things in 5E already. :smallwink:

Elric VIII

2017-10-24, 07:55 PM

Suggest you read that table of contents again a bit more slowly. :smallbiggrin:

Way of the Sun Soul
Storm Sorcerer
Swashbuckler
Mastermind

Oh wow, I looked for Arcana Cleric and Bladesinger (the two classes I wanted to play) and didn't even see the others. I guess I just assumed if they didn't print the cool classes the others wouldn't be there either.

Regitnui

2017-10-24, 11:38 PM

First, I'm gonna have to stop you right here.

You're absolutely bonkers by trying to say D&D isn't a game. You've said a bunch of weird and off the wall stuff the last few posts but right here, you trying to pull off this? Nope.

D&D is a game that has a specific base fluff, it's very generic but it's there.

I guess videogames aren't games, they are just a set of program language in which you can make a game out of.

I'm out. After dealing with Malifice I've decided bot to deal with delusional people anymore.

You're calling me delusional? Delusional? That's not cool.

But alright, I'll deal with you as if you actually made an attempt at conversation:

To use your analogy, D&D is a game engine, it's the set of tools with which you make the game. Unreal Engine, RPG Maker, Frostbite, all of them have inherent biases to specific types of game they specialise in. This is the electronic equivalent of D&D's base fluff. Actually, let me see if I can't draw some parallels that would make it clearer; Dungeons and Dragons offers rules to make the world, like a game engine allows a developer tools to shape the electronic world. Dungeons and Dragons favours a certain kind of game (the base fluff), like RPG Maker is weighted towards making RPGs, not FPSs. The Dungeon Master is designer and AI. The players are players.

Honestly, if you can't see the link between Dungeons and Dragons and any RPG from the history of electronic gaming, it's not my fault and it doesn't make me delusional.

tkuremento

2017-10-25, 08:27 AM

You're calling me delusional? Delusional? That's not cool.

But alright, I'll deal with you as if you actually made an attempt at conversation:

To use your analogy, D&D is a game engine, it's the set of tools with which you make the game. Unreal Engine, RPG Maker, Frostbite, all of them have inherent biases to specific types of game they specialise in. This is the electronic equivalent of D&D's base fluff. Actually, let me see if I can't draw some parallels that would make it clearer; Dungeons and Dragons offers rules to make the world, like a game engine allows a developer tools to shape the electronic world. Dungeons and Dragons favours a certain kind of game (the base fluff), like RPG Maker is weighted towards making RPGs, not FPSs. The Dungeon Master is designer and AI. The players are players.

Honestly, if you can't see the link between Dungeons and Dragons and any RPG from the history of electronic gaming, it's not my fault and it doesn't make me delusional.

D&D is only like RPG Maker if you are limited to certain assets and macros if you don't want to change much but if you want to change more than you gotta mod that stuff in. Except also it has a small selection of assets from other settings that more or less could be used toward something out of the norm but still requires a bit of modding beyond that to get it up to snuff else it is sorta half-arsed.

Rogerdodger557

2017-10-25, 09:00 AM

You're calling me delusional? Delusional? That's not cool.

But alright, I'll deal with you as if you actually made an attempt at conversation:

To use your analogy, D&D is a game engine, it's the set of tools with which you make the game. Unreal Engine, RPG Maker, Frostbite, all of them have inherent biases to specific types of game they specialise in. This is the electronic equivalent of D&D's base fluff. Actually, let me see if I can't draw some parallels that would make it clearer; Dungeons and Dragons offers rules to make the world, like a game engine allows a developer tools to shape the electronic world. Dungeons and Dragons favours a certain kind of game (the base fluff), like RPG Maker is weighted towards making RPGs, not FPSs. The Dungeon Master is designer and AI. The players are players.

Honestly, if you can't see the link between Dungeons and Dragons and any RPG from the history of electronic gaming, it's not my fault and it doesn't make me delusional.

D&D is the franchise, like Call of Duty or Elder Scrolls. The game engine is the d20 dice system. Every campaign is it's own game. I don't ask people if the want to play Frostbite, I ask them if they want to play Battlefield. The different editions of D&D are essentially their own games within the series. 3.5 isn't like 5e, which isn't like AD&D. The game engine provides how you accomplish things(with D&D, that's dice). The game provides the mechanics for how to accomplish things(the different editions). The DM creates the backdrop, the world in which the game is played.

Regitnui

2017-10-25, 09:37 AM

D&D is the franchise, like Call of Duty or Elder Scrolls. The game engine is the d20 dice system. Every campaign is it's own game. I don't ask people if the want to play Frostbite, I ask them if they want to play Battlefield. The different editions of D&D are essentially their own games within the series. 3.5 isn't like 5e, which isn't like AD&D. The game engine provides how you accomplish things(with D&D, that's dice). The game provides the mechanics for how to accomplish things(the different editions). The DM creates the backdrop, the world in which the game is played.

I agree. But just realign things; the individual tables are individual games run on the same engine/ruleset. The DM is the designer of the game (session prep) and AI (during game). Different editions are just that; revisions to the engine/ruleset. Unreal Engine has different editions, for example.

You don't ask people to play Frostbite because "a Frostbite game" means nothing to most people, just like "Martial Int-based half-caster" means nothing to most people. Asking someone if they want to play D&D has name recognition, but it still doesn't specify anything about the actual game. Dark Sun is just as much D&D as FR.

The d20 dice system is close to a game engine. It's the equivalent of modding tools. Building a game off the d20 system is like doing a Total Conversion Mod of Skyrim. It's still recognisably running on D&D principles, even when the flavour's different.

D&D (whichever edition) is the console/game engine.
D20 (which is reliant on D&D edition) is the stripped-down modding tools.
The Setting is the Franchise. (FR, Dark Sun, Mystara, Raveloft, etc.)
The DM is the game designer and AI.
The players are the players. Redundantly.

D&D pretty much directly inspired modern electronic RPGs, and the parallels are obvious. Now we're just hashing details.

samcifer

2017-10-25, 09:43 AM

D&D is only like RPG Maker if you are limited to certain assets and macros if you don't want to change much but if you want to change more than you gotta mod that stuff in. Except also it has a small selection of assets from other settings that more or less could be used toward something out of the norm but still requires a bit of modding beyond that to get it up to snuff else it is sorta half-arsed.

btw, really love your One Piece crew member crests image in your sig. :)

tkuremento

2017-10-25, 09:55 AM

btw, really love your One Piece crew member crests image in your sig. :)

Thanks, I took some scans people made of the various Jolly Rogers for the members of the Straw Hats from the manga's extra pages or whatever and then placed them in the order they joined from left to right save for Luffy cause he is the captain and has the biggest image of the 9.

samcifer

2017-10-25, 10:02 AM

Thanks, I took some scans people made of the various Jolly Rogers for the members of the Straw Hats from the manga's extra pages or whatever and then placed them in the order they joined from left to right save for Luffy cause he is the captain and has the biggest image of the 9.

It was a fun puzzle for me to try to figure out which crest represents which crew member. :)

Rogerdodger557

2017-10-25, 10:12 AM

I agree. But just realign things
This shows that you do not agree

D&D (whichever edition) is the console/game engine.
D20 (which is reliant on D&D edition) is the stripped-down modding tools.
The Setting is the Franchise. (FR, Dark Sun, Mystara, Raveloft, etc.)
The DM is the game designer and AI.
The players are the players. Redundantly.

D&D is the console, D20 is the engine. Modding tools use the game's engine to change the mechanics/game in various ways, like new armor, new items, and the like.

Unoriginal

2017-10-25, 11:36 AM

Not all of D&D editions work on the D20 system, even if they use a system with twenty-sided dice. Only 3.X is tied to the D20 line.

Regitnui

2017-10-25, 11:40 AM

This shows that you do not agree

D&D is the console, D20 is the engine. Modding tools use the game's engine to change the mechanics/game in various ways, like new armor, new items, and the like.

I can partially agree. I can mostly agree. Is it something about the internet that every discussion becomes black and white?

D20 is the modding tools; it's given to people to make their own, compatible products. Think of like the Elder Scrolls; a set of assets and tools to create additions to the core.

Deleted

2017-10-25, 01:50 PM

Not all of D&D editions work on the D20 system, even if they use a system with twenty-sided dice. Only 3.X is tied to the D20 line.

Actually 4e is also under the d20 system but WotC did go to the GSL which had no open content.

But when most people say a d20 system they aren't specifically referencing WotC OGL, they are referencing the sides of yhe dice used.

Like when people say a d6 system or a d12 system.

Dr.Samurai

2017-10-25, 03:42 PM

Toapat, I get that you're not a fan of Eberron. But you don't know much about it. You're free to be disdainful of it. But please know what it is you're disdaining...

Fernia and Rizia are literally just the plane of fire/water for Eberron.
Eberron does not have a plane of water. Risia is a plane of Ice and is mildly evil aligned, as opposed to the neutral inner planes of previous settings.

Fernia tracks more with traditional planes of fire, right down to the City of Brass, but, again, is mildly evil aligned.

Further, Keith has suggested that all of the planes have a spirit at their centers (much like we know Dal Quor does) and that all of the planes may go through their own cycles as well.

Eberron's planes shift in alignment with the Material Plane, and may have "sentient" forces at their cores that go through periodic cycles that change their nature. It's different to other cosmologies.

Dolurth is the Shadowfell, and the rest of Wheel specific locations all map into the 13 planes of the Eberron cosmology.
The Shadowfell is the Plane of Shadow. Dolurrh is not the plane of shadow. Neither is Mabar. That's 4th edition stuff.

In 3rd edition, there was a Plane of Shadow, Mabar, and Dolurrh. The Shadowfell would simply be another name for the Plane of Shadow, nevermind what Keep on the Shadowfell says about an Eberron conversion.

Also dont forget that Eberron is the Eberon Cosmology's Baator and Shavarath where all the devils live is technically their version of mount celestia.
All the devils do not live on Shavarath or Baator. And Shavarath is not like Mount Celestia. Devils (and demons) in Eberron come from any of the planes, and, as outsiders composed of those forces, are different depending on where they hail from. So a balor from Fernia manifests more as a fire demon, than one from Shavarath which exaggerates traits related to war.

Shavarath has zones which are good or evil aligned depending on what faction has control of it at that time. It is a plane of eternal battle, nothing like the "heaven" that is Mount Celestia.

to be fair, in a strictly technical sense, i could see in a No-Holds-barred game of cosmic power 3.5 DnD, banning the Eberron character from the Ur-Priest PrC because that PrC is about working to empower your own dead god, when Eberron doesnt really have gods in the first place
Ur-priests in 3rd edition stole divine power from active gods. Eberron still has divine magic, despite making the gods distant/unknown/intangible, so however divine casters are getting that power, an ur-priest in Eberron can theoretically siphon it off.

with the closest thing to a god being the God-Emperor-of-Mankind'ed soulstuff of the Coatls merged into the prison of a greator daemon.
The Silver Flame is more like a force like... well the Force lol. The closest thing to a god in Eberron would be the Undying Court in Aerenal. But they are limited to the island continent because their power is tied to devotion, which is tied to the Irian manifest zones there.

in fact, for instance, Volo's Guide to Monsters is actually much more of an Eberron book in terms of player materials because of the nation of Droaam being a semi-neutral nation of the nonPHB races
Droaam doesn't have Aasimar, Firbolgs, Goliath, Kenku, Lizardfolk, Tabaxi, Triton, Hobgoblins, Bugbears, Yuan-ti, etc.

There are goblins there, but there are goblins all across Khorvaire. There are kobolds there as well. And orcs. But there are orcs in the Shadow Marches and in the Demon Wastes and Mror Holds.

Droaam is a nation of gnolls, ogres, trolls, harpies, minotaurs, goblins, medusae, and other various races. But most of the race options in Volo's are not really represented there. The goblins have made a nation for themselves in Darguun.

and the reason devils appear specifically outside of Eberron in the default lore is because the Giant Empire of Xendrik, in their infancy before the first Epoch with Dal Qour destroyed them, cast a world-altering spell that shoved the majority of the devils off the plane and into Shavarath, ruining Shavarath for everyone involved
I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from. Was this included somewhere that I missed?

have you not read the lore foundations of the world at large? Thats literally stuff that people have had to claw out of Keith in the past, barring my mistake of Dal Qour destroying the Giant Empire of Xendrik, im tired
If this is something people had to pry out of Keith Baker, it stands to reason that not everyone has read it. Do you have a link to this "lore"?

the only World-Specific thing in the entirity of the PHB is the dragonborn which in faerun was a special Template-race created by having Bahamut strike you with lightning, and putting you inside a dragon egg for a year, or in Dragonlance where the 4/5e dragonborn are from, when with eberron they are perfectly acceptible as adventurers who are descended from the slaved races of Argonessan.
No, they aren't perfectly acceptable. They don't slot in easily. In FR, you can attach anything to the gods because they actually walk around and chum it up with all the epic level NPCs, and they go around doing stuff like creating new races whenever they feel like.

In Eberron, there is no Cat Lord to create the Tabaxi. There is no Lolth to betray Corellon and have the elves cursed to become Drow. Given that the dragons are largely uninterested with the mortal races, it doesn't easily track that they created a race of dragonborn slaves.

the "Default Drow" literally are unchanged in eberron, literally only having a Find and replace for every instance of Spider in their lore with scorpion and "Illithid slaves" with "giant slaves". Dryders in Eberron's cosmology are demons from IIRC mabar rather than even being barred. High elves are from Aerenal and wood elves are from Valenar in Khorvair.
I like that you try to make your point by pretending there is a "default" drow. Obviously the back-stabbing, totally unrealistic drow society that we know in the Forgotten Realms is *nothing* like the drow hunter tribes of the Vulkoori drow, or the Sulatar, or the Umbragen. Not to mention, because of the curse on Xendrik, you can't actually get giant metropolises like Menzoberranzan. The Vulkoori drow are tribal and nomadic. The Sulatar are elemental binders that favor fire. The Umbragen are not lords of the Underdark but rather besieged by one of the powerful monsters of the setting, and desperately seeking help.

People in Eberron don't see a drow and **** themselves because they're in close proximity to a psychotic blood-thirsty sado-masochist.

Scorrows, the Eberron version of Driders, are not outcasts, but instead their own separate race that breeds true.

As others have mentioned, wood elves and high elves aren't a thing in Eberron. Any elf can be portrayed by either subrace.

Or how about the Circle of Land and Circle of the Moon druids who, at least because of extant prior world lore, ONLY fit in Eberron because of The Gatekeepers of Khorvair.
I don't pay much attention to the druid class, but I see nothing about the class or it's archetypes that screams "Eberron" to me.

ignoring subcults of Vulkoor that would just be the Blood of Vol organization subverting the purpose of the faith, vulkoor is just Lolth, except scorpions instead of spiders, not being dicked over by her husband because gods dont exist in eberron, and male. Vulkoor still has the Drow first and only point of view favoring a survival of the fittest and inheritors of the world that hate their cousins because of what is instead a perceived slight rather than an actual ****ing over by the god of dickery.
Drow cultures in Eberron are nothing like Drow culture in Forgotten Realms. Stop pretending it is.

the Feywild and Shadowfell effectively were first introduced as integral planes into DnD by Eberron, as the planes of Lamania and Mabar respectively.
The Shadowfell is simply another name for the Plane of Shadow. In the Keep on the Shadowfell conversion, they melded Mabar and Doluurh into it. But Keith commented on this and said that the way he sees it is simply that the Shadowfell is the Plane of Shadow (which has existed in Eberron since its inception) and that spirits or travelers must cross through it to reach Mabar or Dolurrh. Just a slight conceptual change to accommodate the poor conversion to Eberron.

If you want to try to map the planes to Eberron's cosmology, then the Shadowfell would be the Plane of Shadow, the Feywild would be Thelanis(not Lamannia), the Negative Energy Plane would be Mabar, and there is no real analogue to Dolurrh because in other settings the spirits of the dead go all over the place, depending on alignment and what gods they followed. In Eberron, spirits of the dead go to Dolurrh, and from there, no one really knows what happens.

The gatekeepers are a coalition of druids against undead, abominations, and outsiders. they would naturally being not a formal organization have a hell of alot less formal training between their members than the druids of Faerun who all pray to a small set of gods who all believe the same things. the edgecase philosophies are then further covered by the horizon walker ranger and ancients paladin.
The Gatekeepers specifically fight the forces of Xoriat. The Gatekeepers were the first druids, taught by a dragon specifically to fight the forces of madness forseen to invade from Xoriat. From them come all other druidic traditions. They are indeed an organization, since they have to maintain the portal seals that keep the forces of Xoriat at bay. In fact, one of the hooks to the setting is that the seals are breaking down and the Gatekeepers (an organization) need help maintaining them.

When the Dhakaani bards and artificers teamed up with the orc druids to repel the aberrations of Xoriat, that was a coalition...

Dragonborn dont fit in faerun naturally, they fit in eberron just fine because of Argonessan
A continent of dragons does not necessarily imply dragonborn. Everything fits naturally in Forgotten Realms because there is no coherent order to the setting. It's literally the setting that you can put *anything* into it because it doesn't matter. You can dump an unknown race here, have a reborn god there, a pocket dimension that added this, a cataclysm here, gods interfered and did this, etc.

Eberron is not like that.

on the WOtC forums early-midway through 4E Kieth baker said explicitly that 4E was more effective at depicting eberron than 3.5 ever could be because of how the character and monster building systems were explicitly non-transitive between eachother, exactly as how in the foreward of PGtE for 3.5 says that the player characters are special snowflakes in the world.. He was not validating the lore changes of which he opposed everything, but specifically the system in a technical sense.

I remember Keith saying that 4th edition's ritual system was better for Eberron's magic-based economy and for the Dragonmarked houses' monopoly on certain spells/services. But I don't remember him saying that 4th edition was definitively the best setting for Eberron. I remember him seeing strengths/weaknesses in each.

And while 4E may have made the Realm of the Dead the Shadowfell Equivalent, the Shadowfell is the realm of night, not zombieland, so it should be mabar.
Dolurrh is not zombieland. It is the realm of the dead, not the undead. Mabar is the realm of the undead. Mabar can keep creatures from dying through undeath. Dolurrh is for the dead. They are not the same. Stop conflating like... everything.

Faerun is not a setting about allowing the players to run around with a Yuan-Ti, Menzoberranzan Drow, a Kobold, and a lizardfolk, and go around being the heros, and yet you can do that in Eberron if you swap out the drow for an appropriate one. The only race that doesnt have some precidence in Volos, are the Tritons who can show up anywhere in the oceans, while the Tabaxi could be from Sarlona or Xendrik depending on where if ever they decide to get shoved.
Are you deliberately being disingenuous? So... a little blurb in a sidebar counts as "precedence in Eberron", but actually being a part of the campaign setting like Drow and Yuan-ti and Kobolds doesn't count as precedence in Forgotten Realms? Serpent Kingdoms is a 3.5 splatbook for the Forgotten Realms setting. Drow have a *very* explored presence in FR. Kurtulmak is a god in Forgotten Realms that created the kobolds and has a long lasting feud with the gnome god of the setting, so gnomes and kobolds have a feud as well.

To suggest that they are more established in Eberron than in Forgotten Realms is nonsense.

Firbolgs and Goliaths were called half giants in 3.5, if you actually READ the plane-touched entry, it notes that rarely do Aasimar show up in the ice wastes.
Half giants are their own race and psionic. Goliaths and Firbolgs are not psionic. Further, in 3rd edition firbolg were not a player race. They were giants. In 4th edition, there was a lot of renaming stuff, so goliaths were simply the race used to portray half-giants in Dark Sun.

No, they dont. I literally asked wikipedia and considering the books they appear in (Fiend Folio) they are basically Rakshasa cults. And 3.5 Tabaxi ARE shapeshifter cats that can become human. theyre in a late release of Dragon magazine and learned Humanoid Handling in place of Animal Handling like all cat-races of 3.5, so if were using single system continuity then tabaxi would have been exterminated
Tabaxi are not shapeshifting cats...

gold dragon

2017-10-25, 08:10 PM

I can't wait to get my hands on this!:smallamused:

John

Quoxis

2017-10-26, 07:26 AM

I'm mildly pissed that of the oh-so-many subclasses they advertised 4 are just reprints of scag, but i assume that's for the stupid AL rules.

Millstone85

2017-10-26, 07:29 AM

The Shadowfell is the Plane of Shadow. Dolurrh is not the plane of shadow. Neither is Mabar. That's 4th edition stuff.

In 3rd edition, there was a Plane of Shadow, Mabar, and Dolurrh. The Shadowfell would simply be another name for the Plane of Shadow, nevermind what Keep on the Shadowfell says about an Eberron conversion.Well, the Shadowfell is 4th edition stuff. And in the default setting of that edition, Nentir Vale, it is (1) a bleak echo of the mortal world, (2) dominated by necrotic energy, (3) where the souls of the dead go.

Compared to 3rd edition Eberron, it has aspects of (1) the Plane of Shadow, (2) Mabar and (3) Dolurrh. That means none of these planes is a complete match.

In the Keep on the Shadowfell conversion, they melded Mabar and Doluurh into it.I don't know about this Keep on the Shadowfell, but in the campaign guide 4e gave the title of Shadowfell exclusively to Dolurrh.https://i.imgur.com/U6XcGFI.png

If you want to try to map the planes to Eberron's cosmology, then the Shadowfell would be the Plane of Shadow, the Feywild would be Thelanis(not Lamannia), the Negative Energy Plane would be Mabar, and there is no real analogue to Dolurrh because in other settings the spirits of the dead go all over the place, depending on alignment and what gods they followed. In Eberron, spirits of the dead go to Dolurrh, and from there, no one really knows what happens.That's why I thought Dolurrh was indeed the best match, or the least bad one. In Nentir Vale, there is hope to reach the realm of your god, or reincarnate, or move into the great beyond, but you must first journey through the same crappy afterlife as everyone else.

Daphne

2017-10-26, 07:30 AM

I'm mildly pissed that of the oh-so-many subclasses they advertised 4 are just reprints of scag, but i assume that's for the stupid AL rules.
They never counted the SCAG subclasses, they said there would be 24+ new subclasses and they delivered 27. The SCAG ones are just a bonus (and they will come with errata).

Unoriginal

2017-10-26, 07:45 AM

I'm mildly pissed that of the oh-so-many subclasses they advertised 4 are just reprints of scag, but i assume that's for the stupid AL rules.

They advertised 20+ new subclasses, the repretins from the SCAG weren't counted in it. No reason to get pissed at it.

Dr.Samurai

2017-10-26, 08:26 AM

Well, the Shadowfell is 4th edition stuff.
Right. Fourth edition butchered Eberron's cosmology. I believe that Tetrasodium was complaining about matching new mechanics to the lore of Eberron. And Toapat's position is that everything matches just wonderfully or is actually unchanged (virtually).

That's not the case. Even 4th edition Eberron's campaign setting, in an attempt to track to the new cosmology of 4th edition, totally wrecks Eberron's planes.

Originally the planes were actual planes that orbit Eberron through the Astral Plane. In 4th edition, they become relatively small territories or large cities that float around the Astral. Like... an entire plane, like Syrania or Daanvi, reduced to a floating city of angels. Then, stuff like Dolurrh, which *specifically* has no physical connection to the Plane of Shadow in 3rd edition, now *is* the Plane of Shadow in 4th edition.

And in the default setting of that edition, Nentir Vale, it is (1) a bleak echo of the mortal world, (2) dominated by necrotic energy, (3) where the souls of the dead go.

Compared to 3rd edition Eberron, it has aspects of (1) the Plane of Shadow, (2) Mabar and (3) Dolurrh. That means none of these planes is a complete match.
Correct. It is a useless addition to the campaign setting. Eberron already did planes differently in 3rd edition, there was no need to try and make it like the default cosmology by making the Shadowfell something other than a new name for the Plane of Shadow. Another example would be adding Baator. It's not just a matter of adding it in, which you could easily do in Forgotten Realms. You have to create a reason for it to be there, to try and maintain the cosmology of the setting (as much as you can).

I don't know about this Keep on the Shadowfell, but in the campaign guide 4e gave the title of Shadowfell exclusively to Dolurrh.
You are right. The conversion for Keep on the Shadowfell was before the official 4th edition campaign setting was released. Once the setting was released, The Shadowfell was officially Dolurrh.

In4Dimensions

2017-10-26, 08:28 AM

No Mystic makes me sad... :smallfrown:

Rogerdodger557

2017-10-26, 08:32 AM

No Mystic makes me sad... :smallfrown:

Mystic had been confirmed to not be in XGtE for several months now.

In4Dimensions

2017-10-26, 09:09 AM

Mystic had been confirmed to not be in XGtE for several months now.
Oh. Darn. I was really hoping to build an official one.

Princess

2017-10-26, 05:47 PM

Much like yourself, I was really pulling for the Treachery Paladin. Honestly it had a terrible and outright misleading name, because Treachery makes it seem like betrayal, when in reality it was really the "I swear my Oath to myself, I'll save my own hide first" Paladin, which is a concept that really excited me because it was entirely unlike any Paladin archetype; it opened this whole door for RP possibilities, only to be slammed shut. Quite disappointing, especially when the Redemption Paladin was a complete mess mechanically.

I'm curious to see the changes between the UA released Deep Stalker and the Gloom Stalker. I think they changed the emphasis from the Underdark to the Shadowfell, but I'm eager to see if anything mechanically has changed.

Aside from that, all I care about is the new spells. I'm desperately for new spells, I'm very hyped about those.

They also released the entire Forge Cleric subclass, and there was something I found very interesting about it; All the bonus Domain spells it uses are from the PHB. The only reason I can think of for that is because it was so popular its likely to be reprinted in other, future material, and they didn't want it to rely on spells that exclusively appear in XGtE. If you look closely, there's a seemingly deleted sidebar on the Forge Cleric layout, possibly for an alternative spell list which does incorporate XGtE spells. Though I admit, that's purely my own speculation.

Start a social media outcry for the Oath of Self, maybe? I also thought it was a well-done subclass with an ill-conceived name

Tetrasodium

2017-10-26, 10:14 PM

Correct. It is a useless addition to the campaign setting. Eberron already did planes differently in 3rd edition, there was no need to try and make it like the default cosmology by making the Shadowfell something other than a new name for the Plane of Shadow. Another example would be adding Baator. It's not just a matter of adding it in, which you could easily do in Forgotten Realms. You have to create a reason for it to be there, to try and maintain the cosmology of the setting (as much as you can).

The most bizarre & obnoxious part is that they have this everything fits no thought to what isolated never influencing their neighbor kitchen sink of random but they refuse to do things like just say that warforged were made in lantan as part of a civil war they had during the spellplague/sundering & thrikeen exist in $place & just integrate them like everything else without considering how they should effect things... instead they do stuff like design the artificer to fit lantan & give no indication that it won't be forced into eberron as is... after the way they treated it in 4e, there is every reason to be concerned about them forcing the ill fitting artificer as is into a setting it doesn't at all begin to fit into. we always here how GT is great because anything fits, but they treat it like it needs great thought to fit anything from other settings while those settings get treated like they are in desperate need of some FR influences

Regitnui

2017-10-26, 11:30 PM

The most bizarre & obnoxious part is that they have this everything fits no thought to what isolated never influencing their neighbor kitchen sink of random but they refuse to do things like just say that warforged were made in lantan as part of a civil war they had during the spellplague/sundering & thrikeen exist in $place & just integrate them like everything else without considering how they should effect things... instead they do stuff like design the artificer to fit lantan & give no indication that it won't be forced into eberron as is... after the way they treated it in 4e, there is every reason to be concerned about them forcing the ill fitting artificer as is into a setting it doesn't at all begin to fit into. we always here how GT is great because anything fits, but they treat it like it needs great thought to fit anything from other settings while those settings get treated like they are in desperate need of some FR influences

Just to clarify, you're saying the worst part is how they're treating everyone, even non-AL kitchen table players, as playing Forgotten Realms by default. They also take the attitude that Eberron things like warforged and artificers belong in the FR and should be be changed to fit there instead of their native setting?

I can see definite Eberron influences in the subclasses they're designing, and not just the artificer and mystic. College of Whispers Bard is a Phiarlan entertainer (and a step towards DS bard), both forge and grave domains fill gaps for Eberron gods that hadn't had a space previously (Onatar and the Keeper, example), Way of the Sun Soul is a great fit for the Silver Flame monks, while the Zealot Barbarian is the Galaash'kala orcs. The Inquisitive is even named for an Eberron concept it fills; the local kind of private detective.

None of this excuses that Eberron was the first UA they released and we haven't seen a peep out of them about any other full campaign setting that can't be bolted on to FR. It's why I think the AL is a horrible idea they should have left to M:tG. I mean, is there any benefit at all to playing AL? You're playing their adventures, when they want to play, having your character arbitrarily restricted to PHB+1, and you're not even earning points to go to a national or international D&D tournament. A tighter hold encourages M:tG, since it's a sport. D&D should be left to fit the players and DMs, who can sort out rulings and table differences fairly well on their own if they're mature adults. Or sensible children.

Rogerdodger557

2017-10-27, 05:38 AM

They also released the entire Forge Cleric subclass, and there was something I found very interesting about it; All the bonus Domain spells it uses are from the PHB. The only reason I can think of for that is because it was so popular its likely to be reprinted in other, future material, and they didn't want it to rely on spells that exclusively appear in XGtE. If you look closely, there's a seemingly deleted sidebar on the Forge Cleric layout, possibly for an alternative spell list which does incorporate XGtE spells. Though I admit, that's purely my own speculation.

The side bar is titled : Serving a Pantheon, Philosophy, or Force

Regitnui

2017-10-27, 06:48 AM

The side bar is titled : Serving a Pantheon, Philosophy, or Force

Another concept from Eberron, though I'm not sure if it was introduced there. You could be a cleric of the entire Sovereign Host or Dark Six, choosing among the domains offered, or you could believe so fervently in an ideal or non-god thing (Blood of Vol or Lord of Blades, for example) that you gained clerical powers anyway.

Yes, that does mean it's entirely possible to play an atheist cleric in Eberron.

Kuulvheysoon

2017-10-27, 08:24 AM

Another concept from Eberron, though I'm not sure if it was introduced there. You could be a cleric of the entire Sovereign Host or Dark Six, choosing among the domains offered, or you could believe so fervently in an ideal or non-god thing (Blood of Vol or Lord of Blades, for example) that you gained clerical powers anyway.

Yes, that does mean it's entirely possible to play an atheist cleric in Eberron.

While I'm fairly certain that worshipping a pantheon was a new concept introduced in Eberron, I know for a fact that you could worship an abstract force in the vanilla 3.5E.

rbstr

2017-10-27, 09:36 AM

I mean, is there any benefit at all to playing AL? You're playing their adventures, when they want to play, having your character arbitrarily restricted to PHB+1, and you're not even earning points to go to a national or international D&D tournament. A tighter hold encourages M:tG, since it's a sport. D&D should be left to fit the players and DMs, who can sort out rulings and table differences fairly well on their own if they're mature adults. Or sensible children.

The point of AL is to provide a way to play that is convenient. The standardization of setting, adventure and PC materials give the player an easily portable character and make the DM-work streamlined.

It's super easy to say "Hey want to play a game of Magic?" and if both people have decks away you go right there.
"Hey lets play DnD" is an entirely different proposition. AL tries to bridge the gap somewhat.

mephnick

2017-10-27, 09:41 AM

Also, please never use the term "sport" to describe a card game, thanks.

Regitnui

2017-10-27, 10:25 AM

Also, please never use the term "sport" to describe a card game, thanks.

I don't know, the word seems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_World_Championship) to (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_Pro_Tour) fit (https://magic.wizards.com/en/events/premierplay/2017WC). If DotA, Counter Strike and fighting games can spawn esports, why can't a card game be, especially when the grand prize is $50,000?

mephnick

2017-10-27, 10:30 AM

Tetrasodium

2017-10-27, 11:37 AM

Just to clarify, you're saying the worst part is how they're treating everyone, even non-AL kitchen table players, as playing Forgotten Realms by default. They also take the attitude that Eberron things like warforged and artificers belong in the FR and should be be changed to fit there instead of their native setting?
It is difficult to say that there is one single thing that can be nailed down as "the worst part", just that language can be messy & parse badly when you start looking too closely at idioms like that; but yes it's going to be very high up on the list. A very clear & concise example is that around eberron's thirteenth anniversary I asked mearls if he regretted the core books practically forgot to ever consider eberron on any level given the anniversary & got this (https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/883891093829332992) reply back. Topat's repeated assertions in this thread about drow as described on PHB24 fit eberron perfectly as writen. The fact that even without stealing space from the half page of drizzit writeup or needing to shrink the lloth imagery a few pixels there is more than enough empty white space to fit something like "but in settings like Eberron & Darksun drow are wildly different" shows just how blatant the lack of consideration is. that blatant lack of consideration trickles down into all sorts of places & creates prolems (https://twitter.com/JM13136849/status/922997202481422336) that eberron/darksun GMs need to spend unreasonable amounts of time home brewing things that would not have needed homebrewing if given just one second of thought to questions like "is there a way this can fit Faerun and be less problematic in fitting it into the other settings?"

I can see definite Eberron influences in the subclasses they're designing, and not just the artificer and mystic. College of Whispers Bard is a Phiarlan entertainer (and a step towards DS bard), both forge and grave domains fill gaps for Eberron gods that hadn't had a space previously (Onatar and the Keeper, example), Way of the Sun Soul is a great fit for the Silver Flame monks, while the Zealot Barbarian is the Galaash'kala orcs. The Inquisitive is even named for an Eberron concept it fills; the local kind of private detective.
There are definately potential influences yes, but with the zero consideration plus faerun lore baked into stuff on top of their habit of placing a blurb in back that gives a gm advice on rewriting things to fit the other settings after players have already been thinking up what they think is a cool idea based on the faerun & faerun only writeups for... well... most anything... Factor in how often Jthe WotC folks have mentioned "the feywild" in those class intro blurbs where they emphasize how strongly the class draws inspiration from it you have a situation prime for a repeat of the PHB24 drow problem when you consider Eberron & Darksun both lack a feywild & the nearest thing in eberron has simew very different baseline consuderations to take into account. "did they even consider if a slightly different wording would be more setting neutral/adaptable" is not a question that they are inspiring faith in a "yes" given history & those videos.

None of this excuses that Eberron was the first UA they released and we haven't seen a peep out of them about any other full campaign setting that can't be bolted on to FR. It's why I think the AL is a horrible idea they should have left to M:tG. I mean, is there any benefit at all to playing AL? You're playing their adventures, when they want to play, having your character arbitrarily restricted to PHB+1, and you're not even earning points to go to a national or international D&D tournament. A tighter hold encourages M:tG, since it's a sport. D&D should be left to fit the players and DMs, who can sort out rulings and table differences fairly well on their own if they're mature adults. Or sensible children.

I get into this in my reply to rbstr below... but you hit on a lot of the reasons why not considering that GMs rarely have incentive to act as unpaid life support systems for the RunAsWritten hardcover adventures is a risky thing when writing core books enturely to support that RunAsWritten setting & that setting only (a blurb in the back of the book about how to rewrite the whole thing to fit other official settings does not change what was done on all the previous pages).
One of my eberron games started running LMoP because it was ny first time GM'ing 5e & I felt like I needed at least a little guidance. In general I stayed pretty close to the original adventure with only minor differences & my players would often describe it with words like "It's pretty cool if your familiar with LMoP because everything is still there but you won't know what's coming up because things are all so changed up to be completely different. you'll havbe fun & no you don't really need to know anything about eberron". That game was by request of the FLGS that I start running d&d instead of fate because they really needed GMs after some of them burned out. I started a second eberron game a few months later for the same reason & didn't even try to pretend that I was running almost AL legal stuff based on an official source nobody cared about the loss & some of the other GMs have started doing similar with their own stuff.

While I'm fairly certain that worshipping a pantheon was a new concept introduced in Eberron, I know for a fact that you could worship an abstract force in the vanilla 3.5E.

Agreed... I think there was even at least one PrC that was designed around it. clerics not needing a god was less an eberronism as it was a way of exemplifying just how radical the alignment changes were that allowed a cleric to worship a god of a completely opposed alignment & not lose their powers. the monotheistic CoSF was a (I believe a first, especially when you consider its darker aspects). The sovereign host was kind of a new thing in that everyone just worshipped them all together instead of having 9 different temples in each town. The Dark Six was completely new in that it was an evil faith not basically devoted to rape, muder, torture, etc but more of a prmore primal take on just the way things are rather than bad stuff that needs stopping.

The point of AL is to provide a way to play that is convenient. The standardization of setting, adventure and PC materials give the player an easily portable character and make the DM-work streamlined.

It's super easy to say "Hey want to play a game of Magic?" and if both people have decks away you go right there.
"Hey lets play DnD" is an entirely different proposition. AL tries to bridge the gap somewhat.

while the goal is admirable, it's gone too far in the standarization into core & forgets to take into account that the gm is generally not getting paid to do this so will burn out after a certain level of acting as a life support system for a RunAsWritten hardcover adventure they had to buy.

rbstr

2017-10-27, 11:39 AM

A "sport" requires a physical fitness component by definition. E-sport is some term created by people who want to make them sound more legitimate to the general public.

It doesn't really matter at all what you call a sport or not, so maybe just deal with it instead of being a pedant?

(Also, FWIW: The International Sports Federation and the Olympic Committee recognize Chess as a sport.)

Regitnui

2017-10-27, 12:19 PM

A "sport" requires a physical fitness component by definition. E-sport is some term created by people who want to make them sound more legitimate to the general public.

They're all just games. Which is fine. I love me some Counter-Strike. But people labeling card and video games as sports just sounds really silly.

Not your decision, frankly. They're called sports now. And considering that, as rbstr pointed out, chess has long been considered an Olympic sport, I certainly think M:tG is well within what can be reasonably considered both a sport and a game.

while the goal is admirable, it's gone too far in the standarization into core & forgets to take into account that the gm is generally not getting paid to do this so will burn out after a certain level of acting as a life support system for a RunAsWritten hardcover adventure they had to buy.

It's almost like Mearls and Crawford don't want to have nonstandard settings in D&D. Like there's someone in the office or in the Hasbro liason who really enjoys Eberron and wanted to keep playing their Next campaign, so the dev team knocked together something, gave it to that person, and then released as UA with the attitude of "Now they can stop bothering us".

mephnick

2017-10-27, 12:36 PM

Not your decision, frankly. They're called sports now.

It's still my decision to mock people that say it, as will anyone else that plays actual sports. I guess that means the smelly fat guy in the comic shop is an athlete.

It's almost like Mearls and Crawford don't want to have nonstandard settings in D&D. Like there's someone in the office or in the Hasbro liason who really enjoys Eberron and wanted to keep playing their Next campaign, so the dev team knocked together something, gave it to that person, and then released as UA with the attitude of "Now they can stop bothering us".

They probably don't want to have non-standard settings because their team is very small, can only focus on a project or two at a time and they maybe don't think it will be as financially viable as an adventure path or book of character options?

Tetrasodium

2017-10-27, 01:06 PM

It's still my decision to mock people that say it, as will anyone else that plays actual sports. I guess that means the smelly fat guy in the comic shop is an athlete.

They probably don't want to have non-standard settings because their team is very small, can only focus on a project or two at a time and they maybe don't think it will be as financially viable as an adventure path or book of character options?

It's not that simple, look at aasimar player race.

Aasimar are placed in the world to serve as guardians
of law and good. Their patrons expect them to strike at
evil, lead by example, and further the cause of justice.
From an early age, an aasimar receives visions and
guidance from celestial entities via dreams. These
dreams help shape an aasimar, granting a sense of des-
tiny and a desire for righteousness.
Each aasimar can count a specific celestial agent of
the gods as a guide. This entity is typically a deva, an
angel who acts as a messenger to the mortal world.

right away they flatly do not fit darksun whatsoever & to say they poorly fit eberron is being kind

Aasimar are placed in the world to serve as guardians
of law and good, but are sometimes just the result of latent planar energies manifesting & drifting through a mortal. Their patrons expect them to strike at
evil, lead by example, and further the cause of justice if the planar energies infused within do not already drive that sort of urge.
From an early age, an aasimar receives visions and
guidance from celestial entities via dreams. These
dreams help shape an aasimar, granting a sense of des-
tiny and a desire for righteousness.
Each aasimar can count a specific celestial agent of
the gods o as a guide. This entity is typically a deva, an
angel who acts as a messenger to the mortal world, or even a spark of planar energy that became bound to their soul.
eberron: "sure you can play one, just ignore all of the crap about the gods & celestials. Just use the stuff about planar energies & say you were effected by a manifest zone"
dark sun: (admittedly I'm not the most familiar with it but I think this has a chance of almost fitting)"well.... ok, we will say that a bit of planar energy from the desert wastes got bound to your soul & changed you, but the gods are dead & the planes destroyed so all of that other crap is moot".
whenever they have a chance to consider other settings, they resort to "but those GMs could just rewrite it [from the ground up] to fit".

Regitnui

2017-10-27, 01:25 PM

They probably don't want to have non-standard settings because their team is very small, can only focus on a project or two at a time and they maybe don't think it will be as financially viable as an adventure path or book of character options?

Why can't one of those projects be something other than more Fairly-well-known Realms stuff? I'm not expert, but surely you can take part of the team and say "you work on a different campaign setting, we'll focus on the current project"?

Dr.Samurai

2017-10-27, 02:03 PM

Tetra, I agree with the sentiment that you're sharing, but, for me, the mechanics are more important than the lore. Keith Baker is very approachable and now has a Patreon where backers can submit questions for him to respond to through his Dragonmarks articles (or Dragonshard, I never remember). Plus there's Facebook groups and the forums here obviously where you can speak with other Eberron players to discuss how to fit various mechanics into setting.

Mechanics are trickier because they require balance. I'm not great when it comes to game mechanics, so I'd rather a book like XGtE give me mechanics, and I'll find a way to fit it into Eberron. Monster Manual 3 did sidebars about how to fit monsters into Eberron and they weren't always great. So for me, give me the mechanics, and I'll figure out the lore.

That said... I want a 5E Eberron book! Or three or four of them :smallamused:.

SharkForce

2017-10-27, 02:47 PM

While I'm fairly certain that worshipping a pantheon was a new concept introduced in Eberron, I know for a fact that you could worship an abstract force in the vanilla 3.5E.

pantheons are definitely not something introduced in eberron. if nothing else, 2e spelljammer explicitly had priests that worship pantheons, but i would say the AD&D 2nd edition cleric right from the PHB was more or less intended to be a priest of a pantheon. they can be "any religion", and it later discusses the fact that the regular cleric class was kept deliberately unspecific (even described using the word "generic"), only going as far as defining whether the religion was "good" or "evil", and if you want to play a priest of something more specific, it gives guidelines for creating them. in fact, pretty much every later book dealing with priests goes into either making priests of specific mythoi (ie specific deities) or specialty priests for specific deities.

and i suspect that if i owned enough material from before then, i'd find plenty of evidence for priests of entire pantheons as well. i don't think clerics of something specific really made it into the PHB before 3rd edition.

edit:

Why can't one of those projects be something other than more Fairly-well-known Realms stuff? I'm not expert, but surely you can take part of the team and say "you work on a different campaign setting, we'll focus on the current project"?

because money. it really isn't complicated. all of the information they've had for the past however many years (probably decades) tells them that forgotten realms is their cash cow. you want to make money? write for forgotten realms. that's the setting that has always sold best, and until they get some compelling evidence (say, huge drops in sales of FR material), they're probably going to continue producing the material that is most likely to sell to the most people. a minority of their customers being tired of forgotten realms is certainly not desirable, but so long as it is a minority, they are going to continue to sell the books that their market research tells them they can not only sell more of, but that they can sell each book at a higher profit margin (because costs are lower and sale price is basically the same either way), because that's how they make more money.

i imagine that if some skilled game design company were to come along and offer them enough money to license one of their other settings, they'd be up for it, so long as they don't have plans for the near future; after all, making some money off of dark sun or eberron is better than making no money, so long as their IP isn't damaged in the process. but even then, licensing isn't likely to be free. they'll probably need a liaison with the licensee to protect their IP (as an example, a lot of people seem to hate the idea of spelljammer as it is, so if you hand out the IP, expect a good chance that someone is going to want to make major changes to the setting), for example.

of course, the problem then becomes, is the licensee going to be able to make more money selling the licensed product when they have to pay for the license, or from making their own setting where they get to keep all of the money *and* they get to have full creative control.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-27, 04:22 PM

because money. it really isn't complicated. all of the information they've had for the past however many years (probably decades) tells them that forgotten realms is their cash cow. you want to make money? write for forgotten realms. that's the setting that has always sold best, and until they get some compelling evidence (say, huge drops in sales of FR material), they're probably going to continue producing the material that is most likely to sell to the most people. a minority of their customers being tired of forgotten realms is certainly not desirable, but so long as it is a minority, they are going to continue to sell the books that their market research tells them they can not only sell more of, but that they can sell each book at a higher profit margin (because costs are lower and sale price is basically the same either way), because that's how they make more money.

i imagine that if some skilled game design company were to come along and offer them enough money to license one of their other settings, they'd be up for it, so long as they don't have plans for the near future; after all, making some money off of dark sun or eberron is better than making no money, so long as their IP isn't damaged in the process. but even then, licensing isn't likely to be free. they'll probably need a liaison with the licensee to protect their IP (as an example, a lot of people seem to hate the idea of spelljammer as it is, so if you hand out the IP, expect a good chance that someone is going to want to make major changes to the setting), for example.

of course, the problem then becomes, is the licensee going to be able to make more money selling the licensed product when they have to pay for the license, or from making their own setting where they get to keep all of the money *and* they get to have full creative control.

I keep seeing this type of argument about fr geberating more cash than other settings & can't disagree more strongly. effectively 100% of the 5e content & almost all of the video games released during any edition was for FR. Books like the monster manual (something that most any gm kinda needs) are flavored almost completely , if not entirely, for faerun & it gets tacked down as "aha! fer is the money maker" when it outsells $setting book & $SettingSupport book. when that support book is pretty much only useful to people running that setting. Whem they come up with a MM2, fiend folio, lords of madness, etc all themed for faerun they get added to the FR column of the spreadsheet. You don't see core books like monsters of eberron (where monstrous humanoids are often part of society & more likely to be say an ogre dockhand/bandit/etc, where aberrations have a significantly more interesting well considered role in the history of the world that could easily be adopted by any "anything fits in the kitchen sink setting of FR" GM, where undead have a more nuanced role that people like karrnath & sometimes BoV folks have actually exploited successfully for reasons other than "quick go kill them"... see/repeat the note about the kitchen sink in the aberrations comment for undead)... instead, you see volo's guide to monsters where they take most of the races in droaam & describe how their civilizations function in faerun as another win for FR. I don't know darksun well enough to give a MM equivalent example, but even not running darksun I could see it being useful asa GM.

Even when they do have a licensee for one of the non FR settings like eberron, it;s either a RTS with a thin veneer of pseudo eberron slapped on, or almost right away they give up & fall back to the standard faerun inspired (https://www.engadget.com/2010/08/06/exploring-the-rest-of-eberron/) kitchen sink stuff until they eventually just open a portal to faerun & bring over eleminster. ddo can hardly be blamed when there is only about 5 (maybe 10?) monsters that have had writeups for eberron & those are spread across a half dozen or more books. After all, what are they licensing a setting for when they meed to make monster lore from scratch?

War_lord

2017-10-27, 04:49 PM

I find myself agreeing with Tetra in this case. Of course FR is going to be the only setting that sells merchandise when the only premade setting the average casual player is going to have any exposure to is Forgotten Realms. When the material is set up so that even a DM writing their own setting is encouraged to make Forgotten Realms assumptions about how the world works. Do people actually like the Forgotten Realms as a setting or is it just what they've always been exposed to?

samcifer

2017-10-27, 05:04 PM

I find it sad because longtooth shifter is my fiancé's favorite (and only) race to play. I personally really like the warforged.

SharkForce

2017-10-27, 05:29 PM

I keep seeing this type of argument about fr geberating more cash than other settings & can't disagree more strongly. effectively 100% of the 5e content & almost all of the video games released during any edition was for FR. Books like the monster manual (something that most any gm kinda needs) are flavored almost completely , if not entirely, for faerun & it gets tacked down as "aha! fer is the money maker" when it outsells $setting book & $SettingSupport book. when that support book is pretty much only useful to people running that setting. Whem they come up with a MM2, fiend folio, lords of madness, etc all themed for faerun they get added to the FR column of the spreadsheet. You don't see core books like monsters of eberron (where monstrous humanoids are often part of society & more likely to be say an ogre dockhand/bandit/etc, where aberrations have a significantly more interesting well considered role in the history of the world that could easily be adopted by any "anything fits in the kitchen sink setting of FR" GM, where undead have a more nuanced role that people like karrnath & sometimes BoV folks have actually exploited successfully for reasons other than "quick go kill them"... see/repeat the note about the kitchen sink in the aberrations comment for undead)... instead, you see volo's guide to monsters where they take most of the races in droaam & describe how their civilizations function in faerun as another win for FR. I don't know darksun well enough to give a MM equivalent example, but even not running darksun I could see it being useful asa GM.

Even when they do have a licensee for one of the non FR settings like eberron, it;s either a RTS with a thin veneer of pseudo eberron slapped on, or almost right away they give up & fall back to the standard faerun inspired (https://www.engadget.com/2010/08/06/exploring-the-rest-of-eberron/) kitchen sink stuff until they eventually just open a portal to faerun & bring over eleminster. ddo can hardly be blamed when there is only about 5 (maybe 10?) monsters that have had writeups for eberron & those are spread across a half dozen or more books. After all, what are they licensing a setting for when they meed to make monster lore from scratch?

I find myself agreeing with Tetra in this case. Of course FR is going to be the only setting that sells merchandise when the only premade setting the average casual player is going to have any exposure to is Forgotten Realms. When the material is set up so that even a DM writing their own setting is encouraged to make Forgotten Realms assumptions about how the world works. Do people actually like the Forgotten Realms as a setting or is it just what they've always been exposed to?

except that back in the day, they did have multiple settings, and FR wasn't crammed into everything setting-neutral as the default assumption, and back then, it was the big money maker, and until they have evidence that this has changed, it will continue to be their new default.

people like forgotten realms. obviously not all people. neither of you like it. i'm not a fan of it myself. plenty of other people don't like it too. but the information that WotC has shows that it has consistently been a popular setting, most likely for decades. most likely, WotC has continued to do various forms of market research, and most likely, FR has continued to be the most popular setting they've got based on that research.

they're not sitting in their evil castle surrounded by evil minions twirling their evil mustaches and sipping evil champagne whilst they discuss their evil plans to produce exclusively for a setting that you dislike just to troll you. they're fairly normal people working for a fairly normal for-profit corporation, and the available information that they have says that forgotten realms makes the most money. even if they wanted to do something else, most likely that would raise questions from the people they answer to, who probably don't really care in the slightest about D&D except as far as it makes money (or perhaps those people just have to answer to other people who don't care, or one step further up beyond that, or whatever), and when they decide they'd like to stop making as much money, the people in charge of them are not going to allow it, because ultimately it all comes down to that.

if WotC are producing forgotten realms material, it is because they expect to make more money doing that. it sucks for those of us who aren't fans of FR. but that's the reality of it.

DracoKnight

2017-10-27, 05:31 PM

I find it sad because longtooth shifter is my fiancé's favorite (and only) race to play. I personally really like the warforged.

There's a warforged soul knife rattling around in my brain that I really want to play.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-27, 06:01 PM

except that back in the day, they did have multiple settings, and FR wasn't crammed into everything setting-neutral as the default assumption, and back then, it was the big money maker, and until they have evidence that this has changed, it will continue to be their new default.

people like forgotten realms. obviously not all people. neither of you like it. i'm not a fan of it myself. plenty of other people don't like it too. but the information that WotC has shows that it has consistently been a popular setting, most likely for decades. most likely, WotC has continued to do various forms of market research, and most likely, FR has continued to be the most popular setting they've got based on that research.

they're not sitting in their evil castle surrounded by evil minions twirling their evil mustaches and sipping evil champagne whilst they discuss their evil plans to produce exclusively for a setting that you dislike just to troll you. they're fairly normal people working for a fairly normal for-profit corporation, and the available information that they have says that forgotten realms makes the most money. even if they wanted to do something else, most likely that would raise questions from the people they answer to, who probably don't really care in the slightest about D&D except as far as it makes money (or perhaps those people just have to answer to other people who don't care, or one step further up beyond that, or whatever), and when they decide they'd like to stop making as much money, the people in charge of them are not going to allow it, because ultimately it all comes down to that.

if WotC are producing forgotten realms material, it is because they expect to make more money doing that. it sucks for those of us who aren't fans of FR. but that's the reality of it.

You are being disingenuous again & ignoring just how much of the content (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3d2ptm/complete_list_of_dnd_35_source_books/) (core and extra) that was FR centric back then almost all of those books & all of the monster manual/themed monster manuals were written with FR lore since greyhawk/ravenloft/etc were largely compatible with name swaps & lots more undead than healthy for anyone with a pulse. even stuff like the books about dragons & draconic races were largely themed for FR with dragonlance & eberron sidebars here & there despite those two settings having important roles for dragons. there were only like nine different monster manuals with an FR spin on the lore then. If other settings had special mosters, they could stick them in across whatever books they got

mephnick

2017-10-27, 06:12 PM

People need to remember that Hasbro bought WotC for the Pokemon and M:tG CCGs. When they restructured WotC, D&D didn't bring in enough money (I believe the ball park was 50mil annual to pass) to be considered a brand that was core of WotC's business plan. Hasbro gives D&D very limited funding and the future existence of the brand is almost entirely up to WotC making a profit in that division. With that in mind, I'm pretty sure everything WotC spends money on is targeted to be a "sure thing", such as FR adventures and character options.

SharkForce

2017-10-27, 07:40 PM

You are being disingenuous again & ignoring just how much of the content (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3d2ptm/complete_list_of_dnd_35_source_books/) (core and extra) that was FR centric back then almost all of those books & all of the monster manual/themed monster manuals were written with FR lore since greyhawk/ravenloft/etc were largely compatible with name swaps & lots more undead than healthy for anyone with a pulse. even stuff like the books about dragons & draconic races were largely themed for FR with dragonlance & eberron sidebars here & there despite those two settings having important roles for dragons. there were only like nine different monster manuals with an FR spin on the lore then. If other settings had special mosters, they could stick them in across whatever books they got

a lot of the setting neutral stuff was just that: setting neutral. it's just that FR is also pretty setting neutral, and whatever isn't setting neutral they just kinda jam it in there anyways and pretend like it always fit in the first place. so yes, the book about dragons was not a book about eberron dragons or dragonlance dragons. it was a book about dragons in vanilla D&D, which is basically how dragons fit in to forgotten realms. not because forgotten realms is the setting they were aiming for, but because forgotten realms just uses the default stuff for dragons. and a lot of other stuff for that matter.

additionally, turns out there were editions of D&D *before* 3.5, which shouldn't be news to anyone considering that 3.5 is numbered something other than 1.

now certainly, that still means that the dragon book was not written for settings where dragons had a special role. but again, that's because in vanilla, dragons don't have a special role. they're just dragons. they sit around in caves full of treasure and don't really do much except maybe occasionally get angry that they don't have more treasure.

again, WotC is a for-profit company, and they'll do what is most likely to get them profit. FR has been their most profitable IP. and to some extent, that likely builds on itself; more people know about drizzt because he's popular, which makes him more profitable of an IP than, say... tanis half-elven. because he's more profitable, he then gets more books, which gets him more well-known, which makes him more valuable, which encourages them to publish more books, etc. but ultimately, somewhere along the way, it started off with people buying more drizzt books without more drizzt books being published than anything else, and it has most likely continued with people buying more drizzt books than they do of other properties which never took off in the same way.

WotC has done more market research on this than you have. if they're selling FR, it's because they have reason to believe that FR is what people want to buy. if there were a million people who wanted to buy FR and 2 million that wanted to buy eberron, they'd start publishing eberron books, because the people who ultimately decide what WotC does don't care about eberron or forgotten realms, they care about selling 2 million books at a better profit margin vs selling 1 million books at a worse profit margin. it isn't like there was never a time where eberron had a chance to sell books, or dark sun, or birthright, or dragonlance, or any of the settings for that matter. they all had a chance. turns out most people who buy D&D books more or less want vanilla D&D in a very high magic setting. there is no secret plot to keep all the other settings down. it's just simple, heartless math that says they make more money selling forgotten realms, therefore they keep pushing forgotten realms.

you are under no obligation to like that fact, of course, but the sooner you accept that it is what it is, the sooner you can move on with your life. when it is raining, you can choose to put up your umbrella or you can choose to let the rain fall on you, but it is utter nonsense to insist that there is no rain, that it is actually a fleet of airplanes with water tanks following you around to ruin your day, and demand that instead of putting up your umbrella someone should call off that fleet of airplanes.

Zalabim

2017-10-28, 02:36 AM

It is difficult to say that there is one single thing that can be nailed down as "the worst part", just that language can be messy & parse badly when you start looking too closely at idioms like that; but yes it's going to be very high up on the list. A very clear & concise example is that around eberron's thirteenth anniversary I asked mearls if he regretted the core books practically forgot to ever consider eberron on any level given the anniversary & got this (https://twitter.com/mikemearls/status/883891093829332992) reply back. Topat's repeated assertions in this thread about drow as described on PHB24 fit eberron perfectly as writen. The fact that even without stealing space from the half page of drizzit writeup or needing to shrink the lloth imagery a few pixels there is more than enough empty white space to fit something like "but in settings like Eberron & Darksun drow are wildly different" shows just how blatant the lack of consideration is. that blatant lack of consideration trickles down into all sorts of places & creates prolems (https://twitter.com/JM13136849/status/922997202481422336) that eberron/darksun GMs need to spend unreasonable amounts of time home brewing things that would not have needed homebrewing if given just one second of thought to questions like "is there a way this can fit Faerun and be less problematic in fitting it into the other settings?"

Tetra, I can't share your view of Eberron. Your Eberron is mired in the kind of dogmatic thinking that's part of the reason I hate the FR. "This doesn't have a place in my setting" is the favorite line of FR fans encountering anything new. For example, my Eberron's prime plane is more entwined with its planes than other settings, not less. It just has different planes. And really, "guided by celestials, bursts into holy light, and sometimes goes dark and evil", and no one thinks of the Silver Flame? I can't respect your Eberron at all. It's all canon and dogma, not options and themes. I hate to see my favorite setting ruined by fanboys before I even get to complete one campaign.

Regitnui

2017-10-28, 03:00 AM

Tetra, I can't share your view of Eberron. Your Eberron is mired in the kind of dogmatic thinking that's part of the reason I hate the FR. "This doesn't have a place in my setting" is the favorite line of FR fans encountering anything new. For example, my Eberron's prime plane is more entwined with its planes than other settings, not less. It just has different planes. And really, "guided by celestials, bursts into holy light, and sometimes goes dark and evil", and no one thinks of the Silver Flame? I can't respect your Eberron at all. It's all canon and dogma, not options and themes. I hate to see my favorite setting ruined by fanboys before I even get to complete one campaign.

Eberron has many manifest zones, so the planes have a great influence on Eberron by canon. But, Keith Baker himself has agreed that there is no 100% canon Eberron for many things. There's a difference between "change your Eberron to suit your campaign" and "Eberron is FR in all but name", though. Eberron has some core assumptions that makes it different from FR, primarily that there's no fixed alignment, no manifested gods, and different cultures.

I understand that Eberron might not make as much money as FR, but they gave us a massive hint towards Eberron in 5e right at the beginning, and we've yet to hear a peep from them since. All the classes had faster turnaround times than this. Why is there not any hint or announcements for Eberron when we know they worked on it?

JackPhoenix

2017-10-28, 07:22 AM

Snip

Problem is not only that they keep promoting FR, but that WotC fight against other settings, not just Eberron. Look at DMsG, their policy is "FR or no setting only". Why? They presumably get share of the profit from sales, and it's not like it would cost them anything to allow other settings. Keith Baker and others would create Eberron, Dark Sun, and whatever else material for free, and presumably WotC gets share of the profit from selling stuff on DMsG (I think, I'm not exactly sure how the money policy there works). Even if they don't get a share, it still doesn't cost them anything, and they still own the IP, so it can't be fear of possible trademark disputes.

It's not like making adventures setting neutral or calling Xanathar's Guide to Everything "PHB 2" would hurt the sales, FR is already boring and generic mess that you could just fit APs in without modification even if they don't include FR specific details. Propably the opposite, I (and other people I know about) don't consider FR books worth our money, and if we really want crunch from them (say, Volo's subclasses or BB/GFB), it's not that hard to find it on the internet. Same with XGtE, while it's expected to be mostly crunch, I won't be paying for it specifically because I don't want to support WotC's "FR everything" policy, even though I'll get it the moment a scanned PDF is available. For me, it's easier to convert, for example, 3.5e's Red Hand of Doom to 5e than bothering with changing 5e APs to fit my favorite setting (not that I run APs anyway, I create my own campaigns).

Are WotC afraid that giving the barest amount of support to non-FR settings would hurt their sales, because then the new players will know there are settings more interesting and better than Realms That Should Stay Forgotten and won't buy that **** anymore?

Regitnui

2017-10-28, 07:32 AM

Problem is not only that they keep promoting FR, but that WotC fight against other settings, not just Eberron. Look at DMsG, their policy is "FR or no setting only". Why? They presumably get share of the profit from sales, and it's not like it would cost them anything to allow other settings. Keith Baker and others would create Eberron, Dark Sun, and whatever else material for free, and presumably WotC gets share of the profit from selling stuff on DMsG (I think, I'm not exactly sure how the money policy there works). Even if they don't get a share, it still doesn't cost them anything, and they still own the IP, so it can't be fear of possible trademark disputes.

It's not like making adventures setting neutral or calling Xanathar's Guide to Everything "PHB 2" would hurt the sales, FR is already boring and generic mess that you could just fit APs in without modification even if they don't include FR specific details. Propably the opposite, I (and other people I know about) don't consider FR books worth our money, and if we really want crunch from them (say, Volo's subclasses or BB/GFB), it's not that hard to find it on the internet. Same with XGtE, while it's expected to be mostly crunch, I won't be paying for it specifically because I don't want to support WotC's "FR everything" policy, even though I'll get it the moment a scanned PDF is available. For me, it's easier to convert, for example, 3.5e's Red Hand of Doom to 5e than bothering with changing 5e APs to fit my favorite setting (not that I run APs anyway, I create my own campaigns).

Are WotC afraid that giving the barest amount of support to non-FR settings would hurt their sales, because then the new players will know there are settings more interesting and better than Realms That Should Stay Forgotten and won't buy that **** anymore?

All of this. It costs me near a grand to buy D&D books in this backwater junk economy. I've bought the core books only because I need the material to run games, and Volo's only because I managed to find it half-price in a discount bin. I'm not going to buy more FR-only material, but I'll hand over money for Eberron material. My situation might not be the majority or may even be practically unique for WotC's marketing team's purposes, but I'm sure there are others who aren't buying that would. You can't tell me one book or even an official EEPC for Eberron and permission on DMsG would render WotC bankrupt.

Actually someone with Twitter ask Mearls and Crawford if they're ever even going to offer us an Eberron Player's Companion and unlock the setting on DMsG. Us fans are starting to feel like Harry Potter in the Dursley's house.

Unoriginal

2017-10-28, 08:37 AM

Look, I don't want to sound mean, but in total, how many game books about Eberron where released? All editions included?

Two? One for 3.X and one for 4e? And from what I've read in this thread, the 4e changes weren't liked.

I'm sorry a campaign setting you love has not got the attention you'd want it to have, but as things are the business people in charge of D&D probably don't think they can afford to make a book that risk to stay on the bookstore shelves.

Putting months of work into a new setting is an huge risk, both if it proves unpopular and people don't buy the book AND if it proves too popular and ends up being preferred over the other books.

And to this, you have to add in the fact that even the fans of previous editions Eberron might think the new version is garbage because X thing was changed, and not buy the book.

So, the question is, how to convince people who don't want to take this risk to do so?

lunaticfringe

2017-10-28, 08:40 AM

In 3.5 fifteen books by my count. 3.5 loved it's splats

Unoriginal

2017-10-28, 08:47 AM

In 3.5 fifteen books by my count. 3.5 loved it's splats

My bad, then. I'm curious how popular the setting was at its peak.

Kuulvheysoon

2017-10-28, 08:48 AM

Look, I don't want to sound mean, but in total, how many game books about Eberron where released? All editions included?

Two? One for 3.X and one for 4e? And from what I've read in this thread, the 4e changes weren't liked.

In 3.5 fifteen books by my count. 3.5 loved it's splats

I was going to be say, I’m looking at eight of them right now, so it better be more than 2.

Which I also have to point out, is more than Dark Sun hasn’t received in every edition so far in total, yet we’re getting talk of an upcoming Dark Sun UA.

Naanomi

2017-10-28, 09:04 AM

I was going to be say, I’m looking at eight of them right now, so it better be more than 2.

Which I also have to point out, is more than Dark Sun hasn’t received in every edition so far in total, yet we’re getting talk of an upcoming Dark Sun UA.
2e Darksun alone had over 30 products...

Tetrasodium

2017-10-28, 09:15 AM

Sharkforce once again, you ignore reality & seem wierdly invested in pushing the idea that the kitchen sink everything fits midden heap of rotting flesh known as forgotten realms intrude into the other wsettings rather than adapt anything from those other settings. the reason I cited 3.5 is because that's when they started approaching the idea of setting(s) differently & quit with the stupid basic/advanced split. It was also tsr before then & tsr had other well known problems that make it useless for comparison to anything related to money.

When you talk about how forgotten realms makes more money, you are comparing the monster manual, players handbook, vgtm, scag, stk, pota, etc to.... oh wait -all- of the 5e hardcovers are set in faerun & CoS is pulled from it. So with slate, we have to look at 3.5 where FR has...

BoVD
BoED
I believe Complete adventurer, complete srcane, complete champion, complete divine, complete mage, complete psionic, complete scoundrel, & complete warrior.
draconomicon
dragon magic, elder evils
epic level handbook
expanded psionics
fiend folio
fiendish codex I
fiendish Codex II
Libris Mortis
Lords of Madness
Magic of the incarnum
manual of the planes
masters of the wild
monster manual I
monster manual II
monster manual III
monster manual IV
monster manual V
planar handbook
races of destiny
races of stone
races of the dragon
races of the wild
savage species
tome of blood
tome of battle
tome of magic
and those are just the ones I remember.. books like sandstorm & such I'm fairly certain were FR themed too.

there are more books that are actually called monster manual and are effectively monster manuals than any other setting had total. That's before you factor in all the FR themed complete/tome of/book of/etc books they shoveled out the door. If you look at published adventures, it again has similar ratios. other settings would need to sell orders of magnitude more books in order to match given the numbers difference.

Arguments about WotC having a small team & needing to focus on FR because of it certaily seem to be reasonable if one did not know better... but the dmsguild submission rules forbid those other settings & wotc keeps half(?) of the money made there. Apparently their team is so small & strapped for cash that they can't afford to make money letting other people make & sell stuff for those other settings.... including nobodies like keith baker who has said many times that he has stuff he would love to put on dmsguild but is not allowed to due to the rules for setting restrictions (https://support.dmsguild.com/hc/en-us/articles/217028818-Content-Guidelines) there.

In short, the claim you are making is irrelivant & self reinforcing because -everything- is set in FR making it even more absurd that everything must be 100% FR with no consideration to other settings.

Tetra, I can't share your view of Eberron. Your Eberron is mired in the kind of dogmatic thinking that's part of the reason I hate the FR. "This doesn't have a place in my setting" is the favorite line of FR fans encountering anything new. For example, my Eberron's prime plane is more entwined with its planes than other settings, not less. It just has different planes. And really, "guided by celestials, bursts into holy light, and sometimes goes dark and evil", and no one thinks of the Silver Flame? I can't respect your Eberron at all. It's all canon and dogma, not options and themes. I hate to see my favorite setting ruined by fanboys before I even get to complete one campaign.

Tetra, I can't share your view of Eberron. Your Eberron is mired in the kind of dogmatic thinking that's part of the reason I hate the FR. "This doesn't have a place in my setting" is the favorite line of FR fans encountering anything new. For example, my Eberron's prime plane is more entwined with its planes than other settings, not less. It just has different planes. And really, "guided by celestials, bursts into holy light, and sometimes goes dark and evil", and no one thinks of the Silver Flame? I can't respect your Eberron at all. It's all canon and dogma, not options and themes. I hate to see my favorite setting ruined by fanboys before I even get to complete one campaign.

@Zalabim as others have pointed out, there is no one eberron & always going to be differences (often significant), but there are some differet base assumptions than FR makes that are made at very low & fundamental levels with the setting.

as to your no one thinks of the silver flame comment... I have no idea what in the holy bleep you are even talking about & it does not seem to be anything I wrote. In my eberron, the planes have very significant presence in the form of manifest zones & coterminous periods. My players in one game are actually just about to make their way out of an old mithral mine near the breland side of the breland/karrnathi border that started manifesting mabar while they were in it trying to stop a plague they believed somehow related... but that doesn't mean that I'm going to remove mabar & turn it into the plane of shadow or plane of death... and I won't do that because it is neither & removing the identies of the planes in eberron just so they can match the nearly 100% faerun planar cosmology detailed in the decades(?) out of print planar handbook is absurd. By extension, for a darksun GM it is extremely problematic to have celestials/gods/extraplanar entities simply because one of the core concepts [/u]there in Athlas[/u] is that the other planes are destroyed & gods are probably all dead... so having a race that depends on their existance is problematic. Because the writeup for all of the celestials & extraplanar beings in the MM & mm2(volos) is FR & FR only it becomes problematic for an eberron GM to have a player drawing on that material when considering their race's position & role in the world. Because as far as I know darksun pretty much destroyed the planes & killed the gods it becomes extremely problematic to have a race depending on their existance there..... Because my quick rewrite example of how aasimar could have been made to fit all settings considered both of those core differences from FR I chose a wording that fit both.

Could the silver flame be involved in the creation of Aasimar instead of some infusion of planar energies (https://twitter.com/JM13136849/status/922997202481422336) or something?... sure absolutely... but oh wait, the words "silver flame" do not appear in volos, the monster manual, scag, srk, or LMoP, pota has advice on making it more like the order of the gauntlet rather than adapting OotG's influences in PotA to fit the CoSF. Now the silver flame does get a mention burried near the back of the phb in Appendix B gods of the multiverse & gets name dropped on light domain/paladin, but I'm not sure what you are getting at.

Look, I don't want to sound mean, but in total, how many game books about Eberron where released? All editions included?

Two? One for 3.X and one for 4e? And from what I've read in this thread, the 4e changes weren't liked.

I'm sorry a campaign setting you love has not got the attention you'd want it to have, but as things are the business people in charge of D&D probably don't think they can afford to make a book that risk to stay on the bookstore shelves.

Putting months of work into a new setting is an huge risk, both if it proves unpopular and people don't buy the book AND if it proves too popular and ends up being preferred over the other books.

And to this, you have to add in the fact that even the fans of previous editions Eberron might think the new version is garbage because X thing was changed, and not buy the book.

So, the question is, how to convince people who don't want to take this risk to do so?

onver a dozen, lunaticfringe's count of 15 sounds about right if not spot on. 4e's changes were not well received because those changes can be summed up with "durrrr hurrrr lol! lets replace the planes with the planes from faerun & just say they have a different name in eberron before dumping in a bunch of faerun gods that make no sense & making them into a core significant part of the setting... Eleminster's going to love it y0!"

Just for good measure... those books are...

eberron Campaign setting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eberron_Campaign_Setting)
Sharn:City of towers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharn:_City_of_Towers)
Races of eberron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Races_of_Eberron)
The five nations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Nations_(accessory))
Explorers handbook (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer%27s_Handbook)
Magic of eberron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_of_Eberron)
Player's guide to eberron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player%27s_Guide_to_Eberron)
Secrets of Xen'driik (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_Xen%27drik)
Faiths of eberron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faiths_of_Eberron)
dragonmarked (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonmarked)
secrets of sarlona (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_Sarlona)
The forge of war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forge_of_War)
Dragons of Eberron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_of_Eberron)
City of Stormreach (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Stormreach)
Adventurers guide to eberron (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Adventurer%27s_Guide_to_Eberron)

It had the following adventures

Shadows of the last war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_of_the_Last_War)
Whispers of the vampire's blade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whispers_of_the_Vampire%27s_Blade)
Grasp of the emerald claw (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasp_of_the_Emerald_Claw)
Voyage of the golden dragon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_of_the_Golden_Dragon)
Eyes of the lich queen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyes_of_the_Lich_Queen)

In addition it had forty-three novels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eberron_novels)

all combined it exemplifies just how silly people sound when they try to pretend eberron was never popular enough to merit consideration when creating core books like the effing monster manual & volos. The fact that xge is named after a waterdeep crime boss siggests that eberron won't suddenly be getting considered either... especially when you add hair splitting answers from wotc like this (https://twitter.com/JeremyECrawford/status/921921006612049921). By that meaningless cutesy nswer, SCAG too "can be used in any d&d world" because it's got a block in the back about other settings.

Naanomi

2017-10-28, 09:27 AM

mephnick

2017-10-28, 09:36 AM

In 3.5 fifteen books by my count. 3.5 loved it's splats

Yeah...and all those splats is why the D&D brand was so weak at the end of 3.5 when Hasbro boight WotC and downgraded it to a non-core product.

Kuulvheysoon

2017-10-28, 09:42 AM

2e Darksun alone had over 30 products...

Well I’ll be damned.

I never was a fan, and I only got into D&D towards the very end of 2E, so I never imagined that there’d be that many. Consider me informed, good sir.

*tips hat*

Eragon123

2017-10-28, 11:02 AM

https://youtu.be/woo78vJ213o

Hexblade with Mearls

Millstone85

2017-10-28, 11:04 AM

https://youtu.be/woo78vJ213o

Hexblade with MearlsA reupload for technical reasons. Also, videos are discussed in a different thread.

JackPhoenix

2017-10-28, 11:30 AM

When you talk about how forgotten realms makes more money, you are comparing the monster manual, players handbook, vgtm, scag, stk, pota, etc to.... oh wait -all- of the 5e hardcovers are set in faerun & CoS is pulled from it. So with slate, we have to look at 3.5 where FR has...

BoVD
BoED
I believe Complete adventurer, complete srcane, complete champion, complete divine, complete mage, complete psionic, complete scoundrel, & complete warrior.
draconomicon
dragon magic, elder evils
epic level handbook
expanded psionics
fiend folio
fiendish codex I
fiendish Codex II
Libris Mortis
Lords of Madness
Magic of the incarnum
manual of the planes
masters of the wild
monster manual I
monster manual II
monster manual III
monster manual IV
monster manual V
planar handbook
races of destiny
races of stone
races of the dragon
races of the wild
savage species
tome of blood
tome of battle
tome of magic
and those are just the ones I remember.. books like sandstorm & such I'm fairly certain were FR themed too.

there are more books that are actually called monster manual and are effectively monster manuals than any other setting had total. That's before you factor in all the FR themed complete/tome of/book of/etc books they shoveled out the door. If you look at published adventures, it again has similar ratios. other settings would need to sell orders of magnitude more books in order to match given the numbers difference.

None of those are FR books, but the later Monster Manuals (IV and V?) sets the example how MM should look like: beyond the generic monster fluff and stat block, many entries included "[name] in [setting]" where the monster in question was given non-generic default fluff. That includes not only how things should be fluffed in Eberron, but also in FR, because MM's were setting neutral, but included monsters better suited for certain setting (lot of constructs for Eberron got advice how to put them into FR). Actually, all of those books were setting neutral, they weren't even 3.5's "default setting", which was not-Greyhawk.

Snipped list of Eberron material

Also two video game, Dragonshard RTS and DDO MMO (before that one got tainted by FR too)

Kuulvheysoon

2017-10-28, 11:46 AM

None of those are FR books, but the later Monster Manuals (IV and V?) sets the example how MM should look like: beyond the generic monster fluff and stat block, many entries included "[name] in [setting]" where the monster in question was given non-generic default fluff. That includes not only how things should be fluffed in Eberron, but also in FR, because MM's were setting neutral, but included monsters better suited for certain setting (lot of constructs for Eberron got advice how to put them into FR). Actually, all of those books were setting neutral, they weren't even 3.5's "default setting", which was not-Greyhawk.

Also two video game, Dragonshard RTS and DDO MMO (before that one got tainted by FR too)

It was the Monster Manual 3 that started the (blank) in different settings. I remember because Changelings and shifter and war forged are all in that book.

Don’t forget the Dragonshards(?) series of web enhancements on wizards.com that Keith Baker wrote for a pretty decently long time.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-28, 12:04 PM

Greyhawk, not FR, was the default 3rd ed setting... (you won’t find Pelor in Faerun). Every book not marked as Forgotten Realms (or another setting) assumes Greyhawk (or expanded Greyhawk as part of Planescape cosmology) setting

None of those are FR books, but the later Monster Manuals (IV and V?) sets the example how MM should look like: beyond the generic monster fluff and stat block, many entries included "[name] in [setting]" where the monster in question was given non-generic default fluff. That includes not only how things should be fluffed in Eberron, but also in FR, because MM's were setting neutral, but included monsters better suited for certain setting (lot of constructs for Eberron got advice how to put them into FR). Actually, all of those books were setting neutral, they weren't even 3.5's "default setting", which was not-Greyhawk.

Also two video game, Dragonshard RTS and DDO MMO (before that one got tainted by FR too)

You are both right. I have a habit of conflating FR & greyhawk together because they are so incredibly similar (planar cosmology, medieval stasis, basically just name changed deities treated the same way, etc). You won't see Pelor in Faerun, you will see him with a "Hi, My name is: Lathander" namebadge because both have similar roles & are worshipped in similar ways (as individuals rather than a pantheon).

While many of the later ones did indeed have sidebars that talked about putting those creatures in other settings & how they fit in there, it was the deliberate choice to abandon that sort of thing & make the core books into 100% faerun specific lore that makes me question if there is any reason to buy yet another faerun only sourcebook/adventure that I'd need to perform significant rewriting on in order to fit. PotA has a lot of advice on making eberron fit PotA in the eberron section. STK does not even include the word eberron, khorvaire, or xen'drik. Volos bizarrely has one mention of it on page 94 and this is the entirety of the eberron coverage "Eberron. The Fury the Keeper, the Mockery, the Shadow, the Traveler. ". That may seem a little confusing though so I'll quote its whole sidebar

[qquote="vgtm94"]
Goos OF OTHER WORLDS
In worlds other than the Forgotten Realms, yuan-ti make
pacts with deities of the pantheons presented in appendix
B of the Player's Handbook. The following are suggested
yuan-ti deities for each pantheon.
Greyhawk. Erythnul, luz, Tharizdun, Vecna.
Dragonlance. Chemosh, Sargonnas.
Eberron. The Fury the Keeper, the Mockery, the Shadow,
the Traveler.
Celtic. Math Mathonwy, Morrigan.
Greek. Ares, Hecate.
Egyptian. Apep, Set.
Norse. Hel, Loki. [/quote]
But still that makes no sense so I'll elaborate on it. page 93 &94 has about a page and a half about the gods of the yaun-ti.... those gods except for that useless sidebar are all described in terms of faerun. Just to be safe, soveriegn host & silver flame are also not mentioned. They get bonus points (like one point singular) for the beliefs section of the tprtle document for mentioning greyhawk, dragonlance, & eberron alongside faerun. that singular mention does not make me want tobe confident about putting faith in ToA or XgE not needing significant rewrite to fit eberron... or even mention it uselessly like PotA did.

Naanomi

2017-10-28, 12:40 PM

Tetrasodium

2017-10-28, 01:13 PM

Both Greyhawk and FR are Tolkien-inspired fantasy worlds, so some similarity isn’t surprising. I see a fair number of distinctions though... the Gods are much more ‘interventionistic’ in FR (and a lot more of them!), and high-level NPCs and organizations are more integrated in the setting. We don’t see it much with all the focus on the Sword Coasr, but as a larger setting it has more variety (Zakhara. Maztica, etc) and is overall ‘bigger’ than Greyhawk

3.X also differentiated the cosmology a bit (the ‘world tree’ which sort of served as a test run for 4e cosmology), but 5e retconned the retconn back to The Great Wheel

Personally, I prefer Planescape for my ‘D&D but not classic fantasy’ feel; but I can see the appeal of Eberron as well. I think Eberron started in a good place with intentional design, no active meta-plot, and a ‘there is a room for everything’ baked into the design philosophy from the start (instead of being exclusionary in its differences, like Darksun)

The various power groups in FR are more involved than in greyhawk yes, but they don't really do anything (compared to eberron where the dragonmarked houses drove civilization into advancing in leaps and bounds. You couldn't transport the dragonmarked houses into faerun without causing problems, even as a new arrival.... not because they have so much lore; but because they exist to enrich themselves & they do that while driving the advancement of civilization & that medieval stasis is important to faerun.

Eberron is certainly more accepting of new influences than something like darksun, but that doesn't mean you can do what 4e did & try to make eberron the third corner of a Faerun/greyhawk/eberron triangle of pallette swapping by dumping a bunch of renamed faerun/greyhawk stuff into it with no concern for if it disrupts existing lore (Orcus) in order to justify adding tieflings to a setting with an already well developed history of massive demonic & extraplanar invader/influences.... hell eberron has demons native to the prime material plane/eberron. the problem with ading baator is that its only reason for existing in eberron is so tiefling could have the same origin instead of just saying they have been around for ages.

Replacing the eberron planes with the planes from the manual of the planes but with different names was poorly received because it was pointless & insulting. If eberrons planes were just differently named faerun/greyhawk planes, the five nations & dragonmarked houses would put aside their differences and usher in an era of colonization that makes the spantards look like amateurs. Eleminster & the rest of Mystara's chosen would be dead or locked away in the dreadhold faster than you could blink if they tried to stop it. it was a one way pollution that tried to force eberron to become a palette shiftend name swapped greyhawk/faerun with a twist (ie like ravenloft does with undead) with nothing going the other way.... as many times as I've written that colonization & enslavement of faerun thing, I think I might do that sometime >:D

Naanomi

2017-10-28, 01:27 PM

Greyhawk is medieval stasis without a lot of exploration... FR is more like ‘early renaissance’ in most parts of the map (and moreso in Lantan, when it exists). Lorewise, Faerun has had several ‘magitek’ civilizations surpassing Eberron (though more ‘magic’ and less ‘tek’ aesthetically); but since it ended badly the Gods (Ogham, Mystra) have actively worked to reign things in

When I say ‘Eberron has a place for everything’ I don’t mean lore, or Gods, or Cosmology. But I do think any monsters, and character options (races/classes) are pretty easy to work in somewhere

JackPhoenix

2017-10-28, 01:49 PM

[qquote="vgtm94"]
Goos OF OTHER WORLDS
In worlds other than the Forgotten Realms, yuan-ti make
pacts with deities of the pantheons presented in appendix
B of the Player's Handbook. The following are suggested
yuan-ti deities for each pantheon.
Greyhawk. Erythnul, luz, Tharizdun, Vecna.
Dragonlance. Chemosh, Sargonnas.
Eberron. The Fury the Keeper, the Mockery, the Shadow,
the Traveler.
Celtic. Math Mathonwy, Morrigan.
Greek. Ares, Hecate.
Egyptian. Apep, Set.
Norse. Hel, Loki.
But still that makes no sense so I'll elaborate on it. page 93 &94 has about a page and a half about the gods of the yaun-ti.... those gods except for that useless sidebar are all described in terms of faerun. Just to be safe, soveriegn host & silver flame are also not mentioned. They get bonus points (like one point singular) for the beliefs section of the tprtle document for mentioning greyhawk, dragonlance, & eberron alongside faerun. that singular mention does not make me want tobe confident about putting faith in ToA or XgE not needing significant rewrite to fit eberron... or even mention it uselessly like PotA did.

OK, while I'm fan of the Eberron, that's not the worst thing about that sidebar, even though it is inaccurate and doesn't really explain the intricacies of Yuan-ti presence in Eberron. The worst thing is the attempt to shove Yuan-ti into Dragonlance. And I don't even like Dragonlance!

Smitty Wesson

2017-10-28, 02:06 PM

When I say ‘Eberron has a place for everything’ I don’t mean lore, or Gods, or Cosmology. But I do think any monsters, and character options (races/classes) are pretty easy to work in somewhere

Partly because Xen'drik is the designated kitchen sink - its geography is mutable and confusing, most of its history is obscured, and it's a huge chunk of land that can fit innumerable small communities. Trying to fit new player races in the history of Khorvaire gets a lot more tricky, as the 4e update of the setting showed - Dragonborn, eladrin, and goliaths are all fairly blatantly tacked on and have much less history and texture than the races that were written into the history to begin with. The main rule of Eberron conversion, to my eye, is: if you can't find somewhere it fits, either the Daelkyr made it or it lives in Xen'drik.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-28, 02:46 PM

Partly because Xen'drik is the designated kitchen sink - its geography is mutable and confusing, most of its history is obscured, and it's a huge chunk of land that can fit innumerable small communities. Trying to fit new player races in the history of Khorvaire gets a lot more tricky, as the 4e update of the setting showed - Dragonborn, eladrin, and goliaths are all fairly blatantly tacked on and have much less history and texture than the races that were written into the history to begin with. The main rule of Eberron conversion, to my eye, is: if you can't find somewhere it fits, either the Daelkyr made it or it lives in Xen'drik.

while xen'drik allows for some truely bizzare stuff to be dumped in & it's intentionally setup as kind of a semi-blank slate for gm's to use, Naomi was right in that you can work just about anything into eberron by finding a way the part you want fits & adjusting it accordingly. That doesn't mean that eberron will (or should) adapt to fit all of the baggage that another setting brings along with that thing you want.

For example, there are a LOT (http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-aasimar/) of ways that you can make aasimar fit into eberron.... but none of those ways involve all of the faerun specific garbage described about celestial bloodlines & such in VGtM. I have a player playing a bladesinger (a mercifully not too faerun tied class, but that's also likely because it's based on a truly ancient class/PrC). We had already talked about elves in valenar/sarloa & he had decided valenar fit best so it was just a matter if "ok, you are a Valenar blade dancer/blade singer & fought in the war." But because Aasimar & some pother stuff are so heavily tied to faerun lore it leads to needlessly painful discussions like this (https://twitter.com/JM13136849/status/922997202481422336) as a result of WotC's refusal to consider other settings beyond that wtf inspiring sidebar on yaun-ti faith in VGtM

SharkForce

2017-10-28, 04:44 PM

i'm not pushing FR. i'm simply explaining why FR is the new default setting for pretty much everything now. historically, it sells more. most likely, WotC has more up-to-date market research that tells them it still sells more. it doesn't even have to be a case where an eberron book would fail to make a profit (it might, but with the rate they're producing material i suspect many people who don't have strong feelings about eberron would still buy it just for something new). it just has to be less than they could be making if they had instead produced a forgotten realms book.

i don't *want* more FR stuff. i have simply accepted that FR is their most reliable way to make money, and that as a business which exists entirely to make money that is all the reason they need to keep on pushing more FR stuff on us. the people making the decisions aren't choosing between forgotten realms and eberron. they don't care about forgotten realms or eberron. for all they care about, the settings could be named A and B. they have evidence that selling A will lead to selling more product at a lower cost per product than selling B, and so they keep on choosing A, and they will continue to choose A until they have evidence that B, or C, or D, or Q, or whatever else, will sell more product at a lower cost per product than A.

now, i don't know enough to know why only FR is allowed in DM's guild for sure, but i can make some guesses there. most likely it has to do with building their brand, and building up the market. by which i mean, it's possible that FR appeals more in general, but appeals more especially to some group of customers they want to bring back; being fairly generic fantasy, they may feel that FR fits better with the settings many of the old players they're trying to bring back to the hobby used to play, even if those players were in their own generic fantasy world rather than specifically the FR one. they may feel that FR is the setting that appeals most strongly to people who are not currently playing D&D or RPGs in general, and so they only want FR because they feel like it draws in new players better.

ultimately, we don't really know for sure that they're even making a significant amount of money (to them) on DM's guild. it is entirely possible they view it more as a marketing tool that pays for itself plus a bit rather than as a place to sell D&D books, or as a way to get other people to pay to be talent scouted, and they're only looking for new talent that might be suitable to write for FR.

it is also possible that it has something to do with licensing, but i'm not an IP lawyer so i really don't know for sure about that.

now, the case for DM's guild being FR-only is certainly less clear cut. but again, it is most likely profit-driven. because at the end of the day, WotC exists to make money. it doesn't exist to produce awesome new magic cards, and it certainly doesn't exist to produce D&D books, those things are just methods they use to make money. even if the dev team wants to write for eberron or dark sun or spelljammer, they're going to be told to just keep on writing for FR, because that is the best way to make money.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-28, 05:02 PM

Pex

2017-10-28, 05:48 PM

While I'm fairly certain that worshipping a pantheon was a new concept introduced in Eberron, I know for a fact that you could worship an abstract force in the vanilla 3.5E.

In Forgotten Realms itself you can worship the Triad - Tyr, Torm, and Ilmater. Rashemen worshipped, with different names, Chauntea, Mielikki, and Mystra.
Mulhorandi could revere their Pantheon or even just the family of Osiris, Isis, and (Horus) Ra.

SharkForce

2017-10-28, 06:17 PM

In other words, you've been shown flatly incorrect multiple times when claiming that data shows something, you have no data to backup your claims about how data shows X, you really don't know anything, but we should believe all of the reasons you originally stated and be happy because you must be correct....

uhh, no. I'll continue to be unhappy until wotc clean up their act. The tortle being truely setting neutral and having a section that mentions the other settings alongside forgotten realms may have been a new leaf, but failing any reason to believe that it's more than just a fluke & will continue for books like ToA & XgE I will remain skeptically dubious about the value of either book for me & see no reason to hide that historically well supported skepticism.

shown incorrect how? do you have WotC's market research? do you have their financial records and can see that the forgotten realms have not historically sold better?

they're a for-profit corporation. they make decisions based on money.

you're perfectly free to be unhappy about it, but it all still boils down to the same thing: they expect to make more money selling forgotten realms than they do anything else, and because their objective is to make money, it doesn't make sense to sell anything else. could they mix in an eberron book? sure. but their objective isn't supporting their campaign settings. it is making money. any efforts to make an eberron book could instead be devoted to making another FR book, which they expect will make more money for them.

WotC don't have an act to clean up. they never made a promise to publish eberron in any time frame. they never actually even promised to follow up on the eberron UA, nor have they promised that they will ever follow up on any dark sun UA they may or may not release in the future. there is no obligation for them to make material for the setting you like. it sucks that they may just ignore the settings you like entirely, but they have no obligation to do anything different from what they're doing now. frankly, the eberron UA they release may even reflect that at least someone in the organization would *like* to publish an eberron book, but it wasn't a promise that eberron was for sure going to be a book in the near future.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-28, 06:58 PM

shown incorrect how? do you have WotC's market research? do you have their financial records and can see that the forgotten realms have not historically sold better?

they're a for-profit corporation. they make decisions based on money.

you're perfectly free to be unhappy about it, but it all still boils down to the same thing: they expect to make more money selling forgotten realms than they do anything else, and because their objective is to make money, it doesn't make sense to sell anything else. could they mix in an eberron book? sure. but their objective isn't supporting their campaign settings. it is making money. any efforts to make an eberron book could instead be devoted to making another FR book, which they expect will make more money for them.

WotC don't have an act to clean up. they never made a promise to publish eberron in any time frame. they never actually even promised to follow up on the eberron UA, nor have they promised that they will ever follow up on any dark sun UA they may or may not release in the future. there is no obligation for them to make material for the setting you like. it sucks that they may just ignore the settings you like entirely, but they have no obligation to do anything different from what they're doing now. frankly, the eberron UA they release may even reflect that at least someone in the organization would *like* to publish an eberron book, but it wasn't a promise that eberron was for sure going to be a book in the near future.

you keep claiming that settings other than FR are niche products that don't sell, apparently that's why eberron has over a dozen souercebook as not including the 40some novels & such... or why darksun apparently has 30 according to someone earlier. you keep claiming that faerunforgotten realms is the thing that sells, yet ignore that you are comparing core books that are themed to fit FR or virtually just FR with different names (greyhawk) to setting books. You admit to spouting opinion based on the 97% of data you simply made up whole cloth to support an assertion. I don't need any ofWotC's market research to discredit you because everything you claim is opinion without even publishing history or anything to support it. this is also not the first thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?539852-Mike-Mearls-is-bringing-back-Dark-Sun&p=22501014#post22501014) that you've made these sort of claims based on data you not only don't have but simply made up. I'd not be surprised if you've made the claims elsewhere too,

While you are right that WotcC does not need to release other settings... I run two games with over a thousand bucks in PHB's plus several volos a couple scags, & others across my players... if I & other GM's tired of having to spend more work adapting Fr stuff than it takes to just make from scratch start saying "don't bother with X book because I'm not allowing it"... guess who's bottom line is affected. Unlike your "he numbers show that faerun makes the most money" claims, a GM telling their players "don't buy X because I'm not allowing it" absolutely costs money

You can't make claims based on data you don't have & have not seen then get pissy & expect others to find it for you when they call your claims absurd.

War_lord

2017-10-28, 07:07 PM

you keep claiming that settings other than FR are niche products that don't sell, apparently that's why eberron has over a dozen souercebook as not including the 40some novels & such... or why darksun apparently has 30 according to someone earlier.

Putting out loads of material they couldn't get a real return on was one of the reasons TSR went belly up, no matter how good it was for the consumer it split the base too much.

Astofel

2017-10-28, 07:14 PM

All this just makes me glad that I have my own setting to run games in so I can look at what WotC is putting out and then decide how it fits into my world, rather than trying to shoehorn something into an already established setting with years of pre-written lore for me to have to read. If I wanted to run a D&D adventure in a more modern world I wouldn't run Eberron, I'd make my own modern setting that makes the same assumptions as 'vanilla' D&D so I wouldn't have to ban or heavily alter the things the players might want to play.

So anyway, how about that ToC, guys? Personally I'm intrigued by the 'This is Your Life' section. I wonder if it has anything mechanical in it, or if it's more of a guideline for crafting character backstories.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-28, 07:16 PM

Putting out loads of material they couldn't get a real return on was one of the reasons TSR went belly up, no matter how good it was for the consumer it split the base too much.

Hasbro purchased TSR in 97 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons) the submissions for a new setting was five years later in 2002 (https://web.archive.org/web/20041211075323/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebps/20040604a) and it was ultimately released two years later in 2004 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eberron_Campaign_Setting)..... It's almost like Eberron has nothing to do with TSR... you know given how linear time and all is the norm for human experience on earth & the universe at large as far as we know.

War_lord

2017-10-28, 07:29 PM

SharkForce

2017-10-28, 07:37 PM

you keep claiming that settings other than FR are niche products that don't sell.

no.

i have said that FR sells more. how much more? it doesn't matter. the people making the decisions have had placed in front of them the following:

1) make more money selling A
2) make less money selling B

the rest is just stuff that they don't care about. they don't care if eberron is popular with some people (so long as it is fewer people than FR). they don't care if you are getting tired of forgotten realms. they simply don't care, and possibly don't even know any major differences between the settings. all they care about is that forgotten realms sells more, and whether that is 10% more or 50% more (and i'm sure for some settings, not necessarily eberron, but some settings, it is *much* more than even a 50% increase in sales) is completely irrelevant. they are not going to choose to make less money when they can instead choose to make more money.

it sucks. i don't like FR any more than you do. heck, i haven't even bought any of the FR books at all. didn't buy SCAG or VGtM, have no plans to buy XGtE at the moment. but it is what it is.

it is unfortunate, but i need to explain this to you: they don't care about your group (or mine, for that matter) all that much. now, if a large portion of their customers get tired of FR, to the point where FR stops selling well, then they'll start caring. but your group is not statistically significant all by itself. so sure, if you & other DMs (by which i mean, a LOT of other DMs) get sick of FR, eventually it will change. until then, they're going to take their extra 10% (or however much it is) sales and 10% cost savings (or however much they save from spreading their static costs over a larger number of books) every time. it isn't even a hard decision for them, because they're not asking which setting is cooler or which setting they haven't done in a while, all they need to ask is what makes them the most money, and so long as there is one really obvious answer, that's what they'll pick.

Tetrasodium

2017-10-28, 07:45 PM

Did I say Eberron? I'm saying that putting out multiple books for a setting is not either an indicator or guarantee of financial profit. And if you're arguing Eberron deserves that, you're also giving Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Grayhawk et all the same esteem. You realize that your determination to act like a total jerk ultimately undermines you right? You did the same thing with your opinions on Druids.

No you said TSR all of those settings have ties to TSR, eberron does not & as a result has nothing to do with it. They made 15 books & 40+ novels for a setting that didn't make money?... one book losing money?... making a second book after that based on it?... making an additional fourteen that lost money?.... seems... unlikely.sGiven sharkforce's ultimage amission that he has no access to the statistics/polling/financial results/etc that he's been using to support his claims making the attempt to brig TSR into the mix even more odd.

as to the druid argument, even the trolls eventually had to admit (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21858859&postcount=0) they were attacking me over a failure to understand a common & rather old figure of speech while they argued with everybody but me.

.

it sucks. i don't like FR any more than you do. heck, i haven't even bought any of the FR books at all. didn't buy SCAG or VGtM, have no plans to buy XGtE at the moment. but it is what it is.

it is unfortunate, but i need to explain this to you: they don't care about your group (or mine, for that matter) all that much. now, if a large portion of their customers get tired of FR, to the point where FR stops selling well, then they'll start caring. but your group is not statistically significant all by itself. so sure, if you & other DMs (by which i mean, a LOT of other DMs) get sick of FR, eventually it will change. until then, they're going to take their extra 10% (or however much it is) sales and 10% cost savings (or however much they save from spreading their static costs over a larger number of books) every time. it isn't even a hard decision for them, because they're not asking which setting is cooler or which setting they haven't done in a while, all they need to ask is what makes them the most money, and so long as there is one really obvious answer, that's what they'll pick.

I voice my discontent because when angry people voice that discontent you get things like these:

All of this. It costs me near a grand to buy D&D books in this backwater junk economy. I've bought the core books only because I need the material to run games, and Volo's only because I managed to find it half-price in a discount bin. I'm not going to buy more FR-only material, but I'll hand over money for Eberron material. My situation might not be the majority or may even be practically unique for WotC's marketing team's purposes, but I'm sure there are others who aren't buying that would. You can't tell me one book or even an official EEPC for Eberron and permission on DMsG would render WotC bankrupt.

Actually someone with Twitter ask Mearls and Crawford if they're ever even going to offer us an Eberron Player's Companion and unlock the setting on DMsG. Us fans are starting to feel like Harry Potter in the Dursley's house.

Problem is not only that they keep promoting FR, but that WotC fight against other settings, not just Eberron. Look at DMsG, their policy is "FR or no setting only". Why? They presumably get share of the profit from sales, and it's not like it would cost them anything to allow other settings. Keith Baker and others would create Eberron, Dark Sun, and whatever else material for free, and presumably WotC gets share of the profit from selling stuff on DMsG (I think, I'm not exactly sure how the money policy there works). Even if they don't get a share, it still doesn't cost them anything, and they still own the IP, so it can't be fear of possible trademark disputes.

It's not like making adventures setting neutral or calling Xanathar's Guide to Everything "PHB 2" would hurt the sales, FR is already boring and generic mess that you could just fit APs in without modification even if they don't include FR specific details. Propably the opposite, I (and other people I know about) don't consider FR books worth our money, and if we really want crunch from them (say, Volo's subclasses or BB/GFB), it's not that hard to find it on the internet. Same with XGtE, while it's expected to be mostly crunch, I won't be paying for it specifically because I don't want to support WotC's "FR everything" policy, even though I'll get it the moment a scanned PDF is available. For me, it's easier to convert, for example, 3.5e's Red Hand of Doom to 5e than bothering with changing 5e APs to fit my favorite setting (not that I run APs anyway, I create my own campaigns).

Are WotC afraid that giving the barest amount of support to non-FR settings would hurt their sales, because then the new players will know there are settings more interesting and better than Realms That Should Stay Forgotten and won't buy that **** anymore?

annnnd don't forget your own contribution....

.
it sucks. i don't like FR any more than you do. heck, i haven't even bought any of the FR books at all. didn't buy SCAG or VGtM, have no plans to buy XGtE at the moment. but it is what it is.
that kind of thing has a habit of growing as this thread shows so clearly. That tendency is also why you should drop the "I think maybe probably guess that FR must make more money" drum like iyou just realized it's a mimic about to eat you.... at least if the "not a fan of FR" claim is true that is.

Naanomi

2017-10-28, 08:04 PM

Lord_Jord

2017-10-28, 08:09 PM

Forgotten Realms just happens to be the standard setting for 5e, just as Greyhawk was the standard setting for 3e/3.5

SharkForce

2017-10-28, 08:31 PM

Forgotten Realms just happens to be the standard setting for 5e, just as Greyhawk was the standard setting for 3e/3.5

doesn't exactly require that every book be FR-themed.

it isn't like every book defaulted to greyhawk in 3.x D&D, after all.

@tetrasodium: there's a difference between expressing personal displeasure and declaring that because you think a certain way, everyone else must think a certain way.

i don't like forgotten realms. that doesn't mean anyone else i encounter must also not like forgotten realms. certainly, some people i encounter will also not like the setting, but some people will like it. my current group doesn't, but most of my past groups did like it (and at one point i found it far more tolerable, though it never really caught my interest like some other settings). they bought books for forgotten realms, but not dark sun or dragonlance or greyhawk (or eberron, but that's because it wasn't out yet). heck, even my current group owns several FR books from back in the day, and as i've said, they don't like FR.

so sure, say you don't like it. but going all crazy over it? not doing you any good. if anything, you've made at least one person clearly state that they hate eberron now based on the actions of people in this thread, which is just making it slightly less likely that they'll be producing eberron material because now there's potentially one less customer.

War_lord

2017-10-28, 08:32 PM

No you said TSR all of those settings have ties to TSR, eberron does not & as a result has nothing to do with it. They made 15 books & 40+ novels for a setting that didn't make money?... one book losing money?... making a second book after that based on it?... making an additional fourteen that lost money?.... seems... unlikely.

If it made any money, they'd still be doing it, not releasing a handful of 5e books a year and focusing on one setting. It doesn't matter that Eberron is post TSR, the argument is that oversaturation isn't financially viable stands no matter which company holds the license.

Given sharkforce's ultimage amission that he has no access to the statistics/polling/financial results/etc that he's been using to support his claims making the attempt to brig TSR into the mix even more odd.

You haven't provided any financial data. For your argument to make any sense beyond personal pique, you'd need to show that Eberron makes enough money for WoTC the business to be better off publishing Ebberon material. The fact that they haven't, and that they've in fact made an effort to push a "multiverse" concept, to me, shows that they've decided that multiple settings isn't in their best interests as a business.

as to the druid argument, even the trolls eventually had to admit (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21858859&postcount=0) they were attacking me over a failure to understand a common & rather old figure of speech while they argued with everybody but me.

And this is why engaging with you is pointless. In Tetra's world, Tetra is truth and everyone else is a troll who can't defeat the iron logic of Tetra with their totally invalid opinions.

I voice my discontent because when angry people voice that discontent you get things like these:

Mate, the only thing you voicing your discontent has got you is an embarrassing twitter account. All you've succeed in doing is making me feel like I'm too hard on FR fans when all you do all day is have tantrums over your special interest setting not getting the support you want. At this point all I associate Ebberon with is obsessed fanboys who hate WoTC and any setting that isn't Eberron.

MeeposFire

2017-10-28, 08:46 PM

Forgotten Realms just happens to be the standard setting for 5e, just as Greyhawk was the standard setting for 3e/3.5

Though I must admit FR gets way more love in 5e (well editions it was in too but that is another story) than Greyhawk did in 3e. GH got about as much love as FR does in the 5e PHB (mutipe products like that but what I mean is they get passing reference and they default to GH names and the like but did not really flesh out the setting) but nothing else outside of Living Greyhawk. Eberron and FR both got the lions share of setting activity GH just got token info (which I am fine with GH seems mostly pointless if you are going to do the FR).

That being said as much as I love Eberron I am not really surprised that they have not put out much for it. This edition thus far is not a splat heavy or even book heavy edition so to me this fits the bill. It wil be a long time coming I think before we get an actual book of another setting if we ever do. Granted to me Eberron as a setting needs a book less than most since thus far the setting has been shown to not change in a major fashion between editions and just make the required changes if any due to how the edition works. This is unlike FR which feels that it needs to explain edition changes in story in the setting. That makes my 3e and 4e Eberron books viable for most things and all I need for the most part is a book, article, or something else that gives me ideas on how to adapt things and port things over.

I still would love a dedicated book though because it would be a lot of fun but I am not going crazy about it. Eberron is one of the best settings to adapt into as it is very permissive at its core and always has been. I am very disappointed that some in their desire for more for the setting directly feel the need to drive others away.

War_lord

2017-10-28, 08:58 PM

Meepos is smart, Eberron fans, be like Meepos. Don't go through the whole PHB highlighting every mention of a setting that isn't Eberron getting outraged.

Dr.Samurai

2017-10-28, 09:05 PM

Tetra doth protest too much methinks.

Because of differences in cosmology, pantheons/gods, history, etc., it can be a little more complicated to add new races/classes/features into Eberron than other settings.

That said, it's not impossible. For new races, we have the Daelkyr, House Vadalis, Mordain the Fleshweaver, eldritch events like Manifest Zones and the Mourning, hidden or unknown locales like demiplanes in Khyber and lost cities in Xendrik. Any of these things can explain a new or unknown race that breeds true or an adventurer of a peculiar race that is otherwise unknown or nonexistent.

It's not impossible, and at this point Tetra you're making it sound like some insurmountable task. I would love to see some Eberron support for 5th edition (beyond that lame UA article). But in the meantime I'm happy with new mechanics and I'll gladly take the opportunity to muse on how said mechanics can fit into Eberron.

By the way, whoever suggested that Aasimar be linked with the Silver Flame... great idea. The fallen aasimar could be a conflicted individual, touched by the Silver Flame but being corrupted by the influence of the Overlord bound within it, Bel Shalor. Cool idea!

Deleted

2017-10-28, 09:13 PM

The argument doesn’t need supporting data per se; it is more...

“Wizards/Hasboro is a company that likes making money. If they could make money publishing other settings, they would do so. They do not do so. Therefore, they likely don’t think they could make money publishing other settings”

Well, no.

It can also mean that they don't want to put up the initial investment (risk) in a quarter (or whatever billing cycle) for a potential payout later. This can be for many reasons but it doesn't really mean they don't think they can make money off from it, just that the initial investment would look bad (having to get new people that can actually do the work is different than just using the same people to make new stuff). They could be waiting to show Hasbro "see this stuff works, now we will do YXZ".

Business is fun.

Naanomi

2017-10-28, 09:20 PM

MeeposFire

2017-10-28, 10:09 PM

It can also be true that you may think they are making a mistake and it is possible that you are correct but they are most likely not putting out Eberron content yet because they do not think it is in their best interest yet. That too can change.

Zalabim

2017-10-29, 02:35 AM

By the way, whoever suggested that Aasimar be linked with the Silver Flame... great idea. The fallen aasimar could be a conflicted individual, touched by the Silver Flame but being corrupted by the influence of the Overlord bound within it, Bel Shalor. Cool idea!
That would apparently be everyone from the casual reader to the author himself, except for whatever super-fan Tetrasodium is linking (for a second time) here:

But because Aasimar & some pother stuff are so heavily tied to faerun lore it leads to needlessly painful discussions like this (https://twitter.com/JM13136849/status/922997202481422336) as a result of WotC's refusal to consider other settings beyond that wtf inspiring sidebar on yaun-ti faith in VGtM
This example is one you used earlier, one I quoted when I replied about it, and is completely at odds with this information from earlier in the same paragraph.

For example, there are a LOT (http://keith-baker.com/dragonmarks-aasimar/) of ways that you can make aasimar fit into eberron.... but none of those ways involve all of the faerun specific garbage described about celestial bloodlines & such in VGtM.
They actually seem to 75% include the celestial guides and work as bloodlines too, which the VGtM version aren't necessarily bloodlines.

Anyway, Xanathar's Guide to Everything is supposed to be setting neutral, so I'd advise a wait-and-see-what-that-looks-like policy before hijacking a thread about it.

Regitnui

2017-10-29, 03:55 AM

*Snip*

I still would love a dedicated book though because it would be a lot of fun but I am not going crazy about it. Eberron is one of the best settings to adapt into as it is very permissive at its core and always has been. I am very disappointed that some in their desire for more for the setting directly feel the need to drive others away.

Admittedly, I'm more on your side. I have all the 3.5 books. I really just want an official update for things like the daelkyr and their associated monsters, the Inspired and the Quori, the Dragonmarks, Deathless, manifest zones, and the four races of Changeling, Kalashtar, Shifter and Warforged. I want the pieces to be filled in, and all of those I've mentioned would add to the FR, if that's the only kind of book they can publish now.

Meepos is smart, Eberron fans, be like Meepos. Don't go through the whole PHB highlighting every mention of a setting that isn't Eberron getting outraged.

It doesn't irritate me that there's no mention of Eberron in the PHB. It makes me slightly annoyed that they assume everyone who picks up the 5e book knows what Cali****e, Thethyrian, Illuskan and Chondathan means while explaining them by name-dropping the Inner Sea and Sword Coast and Kara Tur. I'd still be annoyed if they used Eberron Jargon in the same way (Brelish, Adaran, Thranish and Talentan) while not-explaining with places like Xen'drik, Mournland, Shargon's Teeth and Haztaratain Monastery. Setting-neutral means setting-neutral, not "let's mention these places so we don't get sued for suggesting human names are tied to ethnicity.

The PHB is actually fine otherwise, IMHO.

mephnick

2017-10-29, 10:19 AM

Hasbro purchased TSR in 97 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons) the submissions for a new setting was five years later in 2002 (https://web.archive.org/web/20041211075323/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebps/20040604a) and it was ultimately released two years later in 2004 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eberron_Campaign_Setting)..... It's almost like Eberron has nothing to do with TSR... you know given how linear time and all is the norm for human experience on earth & the universe at large as far as we know.

All the pointless splats nearly killed D&D before 4th edition even came out. He's right. TSR D&D was in bad shape. WotC D&D was in WORSE shape and Eberron splats didn't help the financials at all.

Edit: People don't realise how close D&D was/is to not existing at all

Tetrasodium

2017-10-29, 10:26 AM

Well, no.

It can also mean that they don't want to put up the initial investment (risk) in a quarter (or whatever billing cycle) for a potential payout later. This can be for many reasons but it doesn't really mean they don't think they can make money off from it, just that the initial investment would look bad (having to get new people that can actually do the work is different than just using the same people to make new stuff). They could be waiting to show Hasbro "see this stuff works, now we will do YXZ".

Business is fun.

much more likely than a lot of the tripe put forward as reasons for the extreme (compared to previous editions) focus on FR. It also does not rely on compiled data you obviously don't have access to in the way you make the point.

doesn't exactly require that every book be FR-themed.

it isn't like every book defaulted to greyhawk in 3.x D&D, after all.

Correct. There is a difference between "FR is the default setting" and "all FR all the time and pretty much only FR (a blurb in the back about adapting other settings to fit an adventure made exclusively for FR that seemingly gives no consideration to how other settings differ that may or may not exist does not change that)". Not only did 3.5 have books dedicated to other settings; it also had sections written for them & sidebars included with the content they relate to.

Tetra doth protest too much methinks.

Because of differences in cosmology, pantheons/gods, history, etc., it can be a little more complicated to add new races/classes/features into Eberron than other settings.[/url]
not really, just when they make those classes & things seemingly without considering things like "how do the other settings differ?" and "is there a way to both make this interesting FR centric class/race/whatever that can remain interesting and more easily be fit into those other settings without the potentially disruptive elements?"

[QUOTE=Dr.Samurai;22518750]
That said, it's not impossible. For new races, we have the Daelkyr, House Vadalis, Mordain the Fleshweaver, eldritch events like Manifest Zones and the Mourning, hidden or unknown locales like demiplanes in Khyber and lost cities in Xendrik. Any of these things can explain a new or unknown race that breeds true or an adventurer of a peculiar race that is otherwise unknown or nonexistent.

It's not impossible, and at this point Tetra you're making it sound like some insurmountable task. I would love to see some Eberron support for 5th edition (beyond that lame UA article). But in the meantime I'm happy with new mechanics and I'll gladly take the opportunity to muse on how said mechanics can fit into Eberron.

By the way, whoever suggested that Aasimar be linked with the Silver Flame... great idea. The fallen aasimar could be a conflicted individual, touched by the Silver Flame but being corrupted by the influence of the Overlord bound within it, Bel Shalor. Cool idea!

The difficulty with adding a race like aasimar is not finding a way to fit them in, it's in explaining to & working with (https://twitter.com/JM13136849/status/922997202481422336) a player with limited eberron experience to cleave out all of the excess baggage that goes with them as a result of it being so tightly intertwined withthe celestials & gods as they exist i faerun. If the monster manual mentioned settings other than faerun & had sidebars about how they were different (like in previous editions), that process would be less problematic.

The problem is less allowing something from faerun as it is the disruptions caused by all of the setting specific baggage they drag along. In comparison, it would not be difficult to dump a warforged into a faerun campaign simply by saying it was created by "someone" during "a war" and ending it there... the problem comes when the player is constantly bringing up/drawing on the eberron specific side effects of The Last War, House Cannith's impact in the world, and everything else about eberron. Eventually it becomes so disruptive that the GM will be tempted to just say no the next time something looks too deeply tied to the themes of another setting.

The problem with the hardcover adventures that often makes them require extensive rewriting is all of the faerun soecific baggage that goes with them. In the end, if it's easier to make a new adventure/campaign than it is to adapt an adventure to fit the setting (as opposed to the guidance in PoTA mostly about how to adapt elements of the setting to fit the adventure)... why should I bother paying 50$ for a faerun source book that needs more work to use than starting from scratch & a blank sheet of paper? If it does not consider my preferred setting in its design & it's not saving me time, what am I paying for?

Admittedly, I'm more on your side. I have all the 3.5 books. I really just want an official update for things like the daelkyr and their associated monsters, the Inspired and the Quori, the Dragonmarks, Deathless, manifest zones, and the four races of Changeling, Kalashtar, Shifter and Warforged. I want the pieces to be filled in, and all of those I've mentioned would add to the FR, if that's the only kind of book they can publish now.[/url]
Agreed, I can use the embarrasingly sad stats put together during dndnext for warforged/changeling/shifter for PC races & wait for my game to potentally be disrupted by an eventual release that actually compares to the other races (compare tortle to warforged or tabaxi to shifters for some sad & extreme examples of just how bad they are by 5e standards)... I can homebrew my own.... aaannnd wait for an eventual release to cause similar potential disruptions

[QUOTE=Regitnui;22519291]
It doesn't irritate me that there's no mention of Eberron in the PHB. It makes me slightly annoyed that they assume everyone who picks up the 5e book knows what Cali****e, Thethyrian, Illuskan and Chondathan means while explaining them by name-dropping the Inner Sea and Sword Coast and Kara Tur. I'd still be annoyed if they used Eberron Jargon in the same way (Brelish, Adaran, Thranish and Talentan) while not-explaining with places like Xen'drik, Mournland, Shargon's Teeth and Haztaratain Monastery. Setting-neutral means setting-neutral, not "let's mention these places so we don't get sued for suggesting human names are tied to ethnicity.

The PHB is actually fine otherwise, IMHO.
barring extreme examples like the drow entry, the fact that they write those FR jargon & lore dumps as always applicable in the core books without ever bothering to include words like "in some settings, this may differ" it's not a big deal with the phb. The problem that comes with all the faerun baggage that accompanies everything

They actually seem to 75% include the celestial guides and work as bloodlines too, which the VGtM version aren't necessarily bloodlines.
yes. and both options are problematic because they are only described in terms of FR in volos and the rest of the core books. the baggage that comes along as a result can turn into a regular & growing disruption over time.

Anyway, Xanathar's Guide to Everything is supposed to be setting neutral, so I'd advise a wait-and-see-what-that-looks-like policy before hijacking a thread about it.
Supposedly yes, but the last couple books didn't even have a "in other settings" at the back & they've been pretty hit & miss on those. Combine the all FR all the time history of 5e with that and how "The options in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything can be used in any D&D world." both answers and avoids the question of if there is anything in it useful to an eberron gm.... it becomes vedry questionable & deserving of skepticism.