The Gaming Den

[Jerry]

I have heard several people's opinions on Eberron here. I have mostly heard negative comments.

I want to know what it is about the setting that is so bad.

[FrankTrollman]

Every D&D setting has to answer the basic questions of what the fucking hell happens when the setting hits the high level stuff and goes crazy. They have done so with various degrees of success. Greyhawk straight up said that people got to high level only infrequently and actually had them tear the setting in half from time to time, it was kind of cool. Forgotten Realms went on a much less believable route and claimed that somehow high level D&D effects all over the place "balanced out" and that this would make some sort of equilibrium. And while that was lame, Planescape introduced a much more believable equilibrium where all the players seriously had infinite power and infinite territory and were fighting over proportions of that infinity rather than specific locations. Spelljammer had a really weird system going where magical effects seriously accumulated to the point where they no longer fit on planets and then they fought interstellar wars against each other Space 1889 style. And Birthright took the Greyhawk thing to the next level by actually hard coding the lack of level gain into the setting itself.

Eberron responds to the questions of high level interactions by handwaving it all away and saying that all the big important people died recently in the last war. So basically the entire setting is a giant cop out that has no staying power and the entire game world will seriously come crashing down the moment the player characters get access to wall of iron, fabricate, and a craft skill.

Seriously it's written into the actual setting that everyone who would be able to run Wish Economics is busy or dead. So while you still can do it just by adventuring for a few weeks, the setting is directly, completely, and explicitly incapable of actually staying recognizable once you do that.

So Eberron is a basic failure of a setting. The DM has to make up on the fly what happens to the entire setting the moment the PCs become powerful and start asking to interact with the world, because the game world has no institutions at all to deal with such characters inherently.

-Frank

[Jerry]

I always assumed that the Dragonmarked Houses had all the Fabricate, Wall of Iron, and such loopholes, and that they controlled the game setting in a way that the megacorps control the Shadowrun setting.

So Eberron's schtick is that there is no high level antagonists exploiting the hell out of magic?

P.S. What did Birthright do to restrict high levels?

[Leress]

Except for the fact that Dragonmarked House can't really do that because of this ability...

[Jerry]

[Voss]

Only partly. They also just innately break all the rules for crafting. You can seriously have a portable hole stocked up as a 'arcane laboratory' for item creation, staff it with the crafter haemonculus and pop your head in every so often to do the UMD checks to finish the items. Plus they can explicitly stack metamagic feats on wand and staves, so you pretty much go off the scale as soon as you can make wands. At level... 7 or 8, or whatever it is, you can start mass producing wands that work out to wands of <persistent> <whatever-spell-you-want>. And then you just take a bandoleer of wands of save or lose (at least 2 of for each saving throw), and go kill whatever you feel like.

The Houses really don't control jack. They do low-level trade, at the mid-range of the gold economy, but they way they're described, they apparently are all too stupid to actually take advantage of what they can actually do. The half-elf house of storm has a fleet of airships... that they don't leverage in any way at all. They apparently just fly on fairly standardized trade routes. And hell, the gnomes actually produce the airships, and control most of the information on the continent. But they're a small weak kingdom off in one corner.


As for Birthright... its a little vague at this point, but mostly its because the rulers are literally from specific bloodlines. They're the only ones that can bond with the kingdoms they run, and more importantly, the only people (humans, anyway) that can use magic. Peasants literally can't play in the big leagues, because they can never, ever wield real power. The best most people can hope for is to become a captain of the guard, or a semi-successful merchant. Hmm. I should take another look at it after all these years, it would be interesting to look at a setting that actually addresses why D&D land actually looks like D&D land.
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Mearls still makes fail!
But damn... he's got nothing on Jason Buhlman
Or not, as it turns out. Mearls seems to be fond of abject failure. Jason just seems to want to root through other people's garbage.

[Cynic]

[virgil]

It is, especially since he's crafting a wand at reduced XP costs, but able to regain the XP that should've been used, thus getting a net profit in XP with only time wasted (which is also at a reduced rate).

It does cost gold though, so I suspect that our little artificer's early creations is a wand of fabricate.
_________________
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

EXPLOSIVE RUNES!

[RandomCasualty2]

[Talisman]

[Koumei]

There are, of course, plenty of other reasons to hate Eberron:

1. Because all the "PSIONICS MAKES YOUR GAME BETTER AND IF YOU DON'T ALLOW IT I'LL GO AND CRY TO MY MUM AND/OR STORMWIND!" people have a hard-on for it. They also never shut up about how it's the best, and how you should only ever play it, and how every other "We don't fellate your stupid system and flavour of psionics." setting sucks.

2. Warforged. They're less like golems and more like robots. Get that shit out of here. Now. It's a dumb idea, and didn't surprise me that the first "Expand 4E" article was to add them as a playable race. Also, people who play Warforged are seriously unable to give them a personality, instead falling back on one of the following:
"I'm a REAL boy! Don't call me a thing! Number 5 is ALIIIIIIIVE!"
"I AM SUPERIOR, MEATBAGS!"

And the fanboys seem to take this approach of Warforged actually being a superior race, the perfect thing in existence. How any flaw, anything they do wrong, is a problem with the creator, and how anything good about them is a special trait of the rustbucket itself.

3. Every race except for Warforged can be described as follows:

"A human fucked a __________. IT BREEDS TRUE!!!!1111one"

Those are at least the things I hate the most about it. But as an endless fountain of hate when I'm in a bad mood, ask me again next time I get knocked back on a job application.

[Voss]

Because Eberron was billed as the setting that specific takes D&Disms and integrates them into the setting. It was actually part of the point of the search- take all the shit that currently existed in D&D and shove it into the setting in a comprehensible way. But all the rulers top out at 12th level or less, and most of the underlings are lower, so it fails to take anything in the upper levels into accoutn at all.

When you get right down to it, as written, Vol, as a 1000+ year old half-dragon/elf lich girl w/ the sole surviving Mark of Death (yeah, she stands out a wee bit) can literally wipe any nation on the continent off the map by herself without even involving the multiple secret organizations that serve her personally.

FR has plenty of people to oppose anyone else gaining power, Greyhawk has the Circle of Eight and some other big names that would notice up-and-comers and explain the realities of existence to them (keep your head down or go planeswalking) and Dark Sun has game-breaking dragon sorcerers and their personal army of actual worshippers who eat people who get uppity. Planescape is literally infinite, and has an untold number of Powers that can slap you down no matter what kind of wish-based shennigans you pull. Eberron kind of stands out as a place where once you hit 13+, you can make the world your bitch. As it is, the most powerful NPC running around is an eleven year old girl who's an 18th level cleric only when she's in a specific town. If you can get her out (by any means, including forcibly teleporting her out), she reverts to a 3rd level cleric- pure assassin bait.
_________________
Mearls still makes fail!
But damn... he's got nothing on Jason Buhlman
Or not, as it turns out. Mearls seems to be fond of abject failure. Jason just seems to want to root through other people's garbage.

[virgil]

[Jerry]

[Psychic Robot]

I like Eberron for what it is: over-the-top, everything-including-the-kitchen-sink crap. The warforged and changelings are my favorite races, and I can appreciate them in the context of the setting. Now, if you tried to create psychic robots and make them Core...well, I'd be a bit displeased. Not as displeased as I am with Draenlings and Blood Eladrin, mind you, but displeased nonetheless.
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[RandomCasualty2]

[virgil]

Hence the 'common acceptance' that generic WotC forumites tout about, being the same people that think having near limitless resources is somehow breaking the RaW. I know that it doesn't give any explanation, and 'equilibrium' is just a bad excuse, but that is the theory that some people seem to think exists.

This is part of the reason why I prefer to run Planescape with the Wish Economy in action for when the players reach 11th level. They can have themselves a tower made out of emeralds and magic swords hanging over every door frame, while they lounge on beds stuffed with achaierai feathers and a horde of mithral-plated skeleton servants attend to their every need. All that, and they won't suffer for any kind of loss of tangible power, because such riches couldn't buy them a single upgrade.

They'll even learn to care about the machinations of the Blood War through personal vendettas, bids for power/profit, and the idea of glory in the realms they will actually frequent.
_________________
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick

Click here to see the hidden message (It might contain spoilers)

EXPLOSIVE RUNES!

[ckafrica]

I liked the idea of the Eberron world but the high level thing does seem to screw it. Might be good with the E6 system though
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The internet gave a voice to the world thus gave definitive proof that the world is mostly full of idiots.

[FrankTrollman]

[Draco_Argentum]

[Voss]

[NoDot]

[Jerry]

[zeruslord]

Frank is mostly talking about the part where the setting just works because everybody has agreed to play middle-ages and/or iron age fantasy. There is no explanation other than that Raistlin just never thought of it. This works out better before the setting was put into 3.X.
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Title of the song /Naïve expression of love/Reluctance to accept that you are gone Request to turn back time /And rectify my wrongs/Repetition of the title of the song
DaVinci's Notebook-Title of the Song

[Voss]