I was not planning to get this book, but the fact that it’s an all-in-one guide and bestiary for the setting (plus that pre-written adventure) has definitely put it on my radar. Thanks for the great review, Nate!
I loved the movie Treasure Planet. I was sad that while it was a hit with critics it didn't do well in the box office hence why it's sequel was cancelled.
I'll be honest, as long as the art is decent quality and consistent with the setting I don't really carry if it's recycled. I'm more interested in content.
5:54 Warforged are not becoming "more emotional" or "more sentient." They have always had sentience, a soul, and emotions. The interesting hook for the Warforged now that the Last War is over is what purpose do they make for themselves. They are not robots who are becoming people; they already were.
The older Wayne Reynolds art stands out a bit, but it is very much the "iconic" look of the Eberron setting. The original 3.5 books started every chapter with a one page comic, capturing a scene or event from the World of Eberron which would be relevant to the topic of the chapter. It very much carried on the tradition of each 2e D&D setting being given its own unique "style", with Eberron's pulpy nature being highlighted by its Graphic Novel type look. As far as the high vs low fantasy goes, it is a very high magic world, but its actually one the grittiest D&D settings, because it leans very much into the Film Noir, and Indiana Jones style feel, rather than your classic Middle Earth type adventure. You might find that an adventure is set agaist a very high magic background, but still captures a "street level" type game, better than something in forgotten realms does.
Keith Baker has actually said that Eberron is a "wide magic" world, rather than a "high magic" world. The Dragonmarked Houses are supposed to churn out a lot of very low level stuff, with high level stuff still being as rare as it is in other D&D worlds. Having said that, you don't see flying ships in every D&D setting. So what Keith says doesn't seem to fit in totally with the airships.
@@DavidShepheard I think it still fits. Wide magic is available to almost everyone. They can afford magical household items that make day to day life easier. But to travel on an airship or even the lightning rail is very expensive, and not as available to the masses.
@@MythicMachina they took away warforged subraces, integrated armor and tool, and made them lame. They're nothing special anymore. Not sure about alchemist subclass but I heard they didnt fix anything from the UA and even made a feature worse
4:07 Re: "There were some 3.5 Edition books, in Eberron. There were many 4th Edition books." You have that backwards WASD20. The vast majority of Eberron RPG books are 3.5 books, with only a few 4th Edition books. There were also organised play campaigns for 3.5 which created even more 3.5 Eberron content. If someone new to 5e likes Eberron: Rising from the Last War and wants to get some of the older books, they are probably going to find a lot of duplicated content in Eberron Campaign Setting (the main 3.5 book) and Eberron Campaign Guide (the main 4e book). If you take those two books out of the equation, you end up with only a couple of 4e books that do something you won't find in Eberron: Rising fro the Last War, so looking at the Print on Demand reprints of 3.5 books (as well as second-hand 3.5 books) is probably something to consider. Eberron has also been opened up to the DMs Guild content creator program, so you can find things over there that were not published by Wizards of the Coast. A lot of the 5e products are created by fans, but there are some, like Morgrave Miscellany, which have been created by Keith Baker and people who helped him work on the first 5e Eberron product. Anyhoo. Aside from that minor mix-up, this is a great review. Thanks for showing us what is on all the pages, as that's really useful for making a purchasing decision.
I'm going to say this: I like the cover for the Limited Edition, but whose idea was it to have the golden trim end up in the fold of the cover!? If it had been offset a little to the right, the cover would've looked so much better!
I absolutely agree with you for the incongruent styles of the arts: i love older editions arts (especially the fourth edition style) but i cannot see them combined with fifth edition new style. Apart from that, this book looks great!
I forgot to mention it in the review, but I really like the gold text and illustrations for the dragonmarks, as well as a little newspaper clippings throughout.
My copy of this arrived today, it's my first D&D book in my collection. My DM owns the core 3 books I can loan until I buy my own but I 100% want to attempt to use this to run my first campaign. I love this type of fantasy as my first table top game was Warhammer so it brings that touch to me personally. I cannot wait to give this a full read and go! Thanks for giving an overview of this so I know what to look for in where as its lot of content to read at once.
Another great video! I was intrigued by this before. Watching this has made me even more interested in this setting. I used to play G.U.R.P.S. back in the day to play a different kind of setting like this or steampunk kinda feel. This should an easy way do bring that feeling into 5th edition D&D. I'm excited, just gotta try to get my friends on board. Thanks again for the video.
In my opinion, Eberron is an amazingly creative setting that was the first setting to fully take advantage of the 3.5 rules. It is good to see it make a come back as a setting for 5e. But I do agree that the art is mostly recycled, but it doesn't feel it is as consistent as it was in the original setting book. Eberron style was defined by Wayne Reynolds and the comic style of his art. It is the same that happens with Golarion and Pathfinder books, which you expect to have a Wayne Reynolds cover at least and the art more or less reminiscent of Reynold's style. So I agree that since this book recycles art from 3 different editions, it feels kinda.weird.
Posting this early in the video: Thank you for this review. I just wish D&D and other games would stop cross-referencing rules from one chapter to the other or even one book to the other. I would also prefer smaller, soft covers to make them portable! But aside from that, looks great!
The different art styles were never a thing that bugged me. I think the only time it did was the goblin art they used in the second edition monstrous manual.
@@user-mz2ow4ky7v yeah it looks really good. A little sad that the archivist didn't make it one of my players really liked that but hey nothing's stopping me from still using UA subs.
I am so happy about that Orc change. Makes them more useful than the Volo orcs. Also the propulsion arm is wicked. Warforged are pretty good, feels like they could have kept the Subraces and just gave them their skills instead for diversity
@@WASD20 Yeah they seemed to use the envoy Subrace for the base race, but removed intergrated tool from it. Probably cause it was the most played Subrace they made it default. Oh also Wayfinders Guide is basically a beta run for E:RLW and in fact will be updated to match E:RLW but won't get certian things from E:RLW like two of the three Artificer Archtypes and such.
I understand what you mean about the varying art styles, but having gotten into D&D in 5e, I really enjoyed seeing the past artwork. It was unfamiliar to me, having never read any of the 3.5 or 4e books, and the “older” art is still fantastic in my opinion!
I debated a few years about picking this up because I have Eberron material from previous editions including my favorite from the 4th edition. Still, I gave in after a flip through at the store and I am glad I finally picked it up, yes the lore is mostly unchanged but it is more in depth and there are some cool parts to it. The tear out map is a straight reprint from the 4th edition book, but it's nice to be able to have it as a standalone map you can use, which is really cool. Eberron was also the setting for the DDO mmorpg before they expanded it so I fell in love with the lore and world back then. The pre-written adventure itself is worth the price of admission.
Eberron was my favorite 3.5 and 4th edition setting, a lot of fun. One thing I really liked is the level scale was a lot smaller. A lot of the powerful characters in the world are something like lvl 8-15, makes the lower D&D levels more heroic more quickly IMHO. Plus skyships... not even a steampunk fan but loved it.
As someone who really likes Eberron as a setting that is fine, it's a very different D&D setting and can be a bit hard to fully get into with how different the setting is.
I love the concepts of the Neo Noir and Steampunk, but the actual setting leaves me meh. My goal is to make my own setting combining Eberron technology, Greyhawk maps and environments, and the spirit of Dragonlance Grimmified.
I have a question for everyone here, one that's not SPECIFICALLY about THIS particular book but ALL these D&D books in general. In terms of tomes that have lore behind the creatures in D&D and/or character and race descriptions, which of these books would you recommend me purchasing; Tome of Foes, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything or possibly all of them? I ask this because I'm a writer and I like to use background info on certain mythological beasties to help give me inspiration for ideas. Volo's Guide and the Monster Manual are two books I have already that have the stuff I desire from these D&D books. I'm just curious if there's anything else like those two out there I should keep an eye out for
Great and honest review! Eberron's still my favorite setting in D & D and am glad you're trying it out. I get your nitpick regarding the art but even in the 1st edition of eberron that incongruence already exists. For me, the best art that really encapsulate eberron were the ones made by Steve Prescott. Wayne Reynolds' come in second especially for those epic scenes which I think were the ones always "assigned" to him. If you could find the time to look for samples of Steve's art and have them "accompany" you while reading the book then I hope you get the same feeling I had of wanting to go on a swashbuckling adventure ala indiana jones but with a pulp noir intrigue and a very rich & deep history & mythology! Again thanks for a great & honest review.
The last war one looks like pathfinder artwork style so i'd guess 3rd edition, the mark of the shadow artwork (16:36) looks like 4th edition artwork. Yeah it's a real mesh of reused artwork it would seem.
The letters of the rising from the last war in the alternate cover shine or some parts, because I get one and I see the letters of the foil but they aren't aligned
Dark sun would either be watered down due to politics or just never see the light of day. You dont need a sourcebook really, its nice but u can do it without it
I love me some Eberron. Ran it from day 1 release until current. Have nearly all the source data. Won't be able to get the new book for awhile due to holiday and seasonal finances. I been eyeing up Beadle & Grimms box set as well. I've ran so many hours for so many groups in Eberron. Sometimes 10 different campaigns for 10 different rosters of players. As always great work my man. Quality. I gave it a retweet on my twitter and hit that like button for sure. Have a great holiday season. ✌
I kind of got started into D&D about maybe a month ago with a campaign I found online don't ask me how I found them might have been on Facebook or something we talked about it I joined the Discord with a bunch of new players add a DM who has been around for a while I started looking this stuff up in D&D Beyond found this book and now I'm thinking of doing something like space pirates
I fell in love with the Warforged aswell when I first saw them on D&D Beyond (the UA version) - and while that made me very intrigued by the Eberron setting, I'm actually very disappointed how bland and underwhelming the official version of the Warforged became. Don't get me wrong: I understand that the old version of Integrated Protection was a bit too much, especially for Fighter + caster muticlassers (who only took 1 level in Fighter for the heavy armor proficiency and could grab the heavy armor of a Warforged without having to have a high strength score). Still, I would have loved it if they had - at least - still left in the subraces of the Warforged, they made the race so much more interesting ! What a shame !
I'm late to the party, but another great review! Thanks Nate. Quite tempted to pick this up.....might have to sell a kidney to find a Special Edition to buy😍
About half of the art in this book has been recycled/repurposed from older publications. 3:12 This is in the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, not sure if it was used in yet another book before that. 3:21 and 15:59 This the COVER of The FORGE OF WAR, a 3.5 source book for Eberron. 4:54 recycled, not sure from where. 5:12 An ancient piece of art, 3rd Edition Monster Manual I think. 6:23 Obviously repurposed from older versions of the Eberron Campaign Setting 6:29 The picture on the right, showing a halfling, is repurposed. 6:31 Again the picture on the right, showing a man with a staff, has been repurposed. 6:32 The picture on the right, showing a gnome has been repurposed. 6:34 The picture on the right, showing an elf woman and an elf man, has been repurposed. 6:37 The picture to the right, showing an "elevator" in a building, has been repurposed. 9:37 Another piece of recycled art. 9:43 , 9:55 to 10:00 4th Edition map of Khorvaire 10:07 Next piece of recycled art on the bottom of the left page. 10:08 This picture is also recycled. 10:10 Both pictures shown here, the map and the "City of the Deathless", have been recycled. 10:20 The icons of the different religions are also repurposed art. 10:36 Again, another piece of recycled art. 10:37 The top-down map of Sharn has also been recycled. 11:16 And another piece of recycled art. 13:13 The picture to the right, depicting Ashtakala, is recycled. 13:26 Again another piece of recycled art. 13:48 The dome, shown on the right page, is a piece of recycled art. 14:19 And another recycled picture 14:32 Next piece of recycled art. 14:54 Yep, the Dwarf "Cyborg" is also recycled 15:15 Yes, you are right, you have seen these pictures before. Both are recycled. 15:17 The "warforged dog" on the right is recycled. 15:18 Skeleton on the right is recycled. 15:20 The Lord of Blades on the left is a repurposed 3rd Edition art piece. 15:23 The Bone Knight is also from 3rd Edition Eberron.
I was very on the fence about this book. As a Wayfinder's guide owner I needed to see some what the book offered first. I like that some of the Dragonmarked houses have been expanded. Overall, it looked to just flesh some things out that tiny bit more (leaders, locations of headquarters). If feels to me that I would be buying the book essentially for chapter 4 (the adventure builder) and the rollable tables. Still a little on the fence but more positively inclined. I agree that the standard edition cover art is a huge miss. Oh, I am currently running a great Eberron game with the Wayfinder's guide, Morgrave Miscellany (DMs Guild) and UA Artificer class and it is fantastic. Sharn-centric but makes it harder to justify purchasing the book.
I love the book and the content, mismatching art doesn't bother me in the least. I like that they are paying tribute to past artists for earlier representations for this material, allowing their art to remain relevant. I special edition cover, however, is worlds better than the standard, on that, I most certainly agree. Great review as always!
Huge Eberron fan and certainly a setting i am keen to run. I have got the special cover book and love it but the art inside was sadly copied over but i can look past that for the great content and all the great info inside. I'd suggest that the gritty type of adventure can still be achieved by running a bit of a noire campaign but i understand that equally there will still be elements of high fantasy involved. I can't wait to get going and thanks for doing the review :)
I love the Artwork, I more love the 3.5 artwork, some are from covers from the novels. To me it feels that it does work well together, but I am also happy to see more of the 3.5 artwork because it was always my favorite but I also like the 5th edition artwork along side them.
Love this review. Totally getting this book, I need more world settings. Any chance you can do one on converting the old Dragonlance source book to 5th ed.?? I really miss DL and I don't see Wizards releasing a book anytime soon
Just looking over this I feel this is already more well put together than the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica was lore wise at least. Ravnica is a great place but they only sort of touched on a lot of stuff where this seems to go in depth.
What is the diffrence with this bok and the eborron guildmaster guide? Is it the same location and content? What is the pro and cons? Cause it is confusing with both a setting bok and a guildmaster Book. Because the guildmaster guide to ravanica seems like its the same as a setting book.
I actually rather like the normal cover for this book, so I disagree with that first point. It is just that the special cover is so FANTASTIC that it looks less great in comparison. Yes, I did snag one of the alternate covers.
I liked the regular book I understand why you may not but it's the style of art the background is made plain so focus of the eye is drawn to center two races. Great info an good video.
Legit I like the old style better than the new one for certain campaigns (Eberron for instance and my own personal one) but yeah I wish it was just the old not both
I dont mind the mixed art. In fact, i like seeing top notch art return, but recycled only would be disappointing so i also like the new art. I dont need to have art match. It's art. I'm more interested in does it make me feel, does it inspire? The uninspiring cover guess it wasn't dedigned in Sarlona haha) i agree is a disappointment.
Also huge fan of the original 3rd edition art. Would be heartbreaking if that entiendo vanished. Much like DiTerlizzi art in Planescape 2e such is just dead on the setting. I hope they re use some of that art with the planescape reboot
That art wasn't originally supposed to be cover art. WotC put out a preview of the original cover and got some nerd rage about that picture, so they moved it into the book and moved one of the chapter pictures to the front cover. WASD20 has a point about the halfling not seeming to be iconic to Eberron, but he didn't flip the book over to see the halfling's animal companion, which has been pushed onto the back cover. What we have with that replacement cover picture is a halfling with a dinosaur companion who is ready to attack with a boomerang. That's a lot more interesting than what you see if you only look at half the cover painting. :-) The cliff at the far left of the painting does look less finished than the cliff at the right side and the bottom left side of the painting is very blurry. It's possibly that was intentional (if maybe this was supposed to be the edge of the Mournlands) but it's just as likely than the artist was asked to put the characters on the extreme right and treat the left part of the painting as a sacrificial area to be covered by blurb text. I'm not sure, but I think that art directors actually specifically ask artists to fade out some bits of paintings, so that they can be used as a background that does not steal focus from text. So an unfinished look is not necessarily an unfinished picture. It could be exactly how it was asked to be. One thing that does disappoint me with this painting is that the artist is capable and gives us a couple of interesting characters, but there is a vague winged monster in the top-right of the picture and I have no idea what part of Eberron this is supposed to be located in. So the artist has some great storytelling there, but I have no idea what the actual story might be.
Im curious how much information in this book is simply repetition from the Wayfinders guide to Eberron. Does it have enough new information to make it a worthwhile purchase?
I have my copy ordered. Also I feel really bad for the former kingdom of Cyre as that kingdom got royally screwed over not only did the rightful queen of the whole country get screwed over due to her more wicked siblings wanting the throne refusing to respect their family oath which kickstarted the whole Last Great War in the first place resulting in Cyre getting invaded multiple times due to it's location, and then completely annihilated via magical nuke and became The Mourninglands.
While I really like the cover on the special edition cover over the standard edition, I still like the revised standard version more than what WOTC had shown originally was going to be the cover. All I thought when I saw the original cover art, was, "giant purple face"
From what I've seen the campaign fluff (the state of the world) is no different from when the setting came out 15 years ago (just like most of the art), which means there's very little reason to purchase the book if you already own the older edition. I really wish Baker would move up the timeline, since for those of us who've played Eberron before there's nothing left to squeeze out of it.
@@TheCarlosLuna i am not reaaally that against the "exploit", is not like elemental compatibility really comes up much in DnD. And it's always more resistances and immunities on the monsters' side. Basically everyone and their mother shrugs off fire and poison, basically no one resists radiant and like 2 people are immune to it, and force is just the second less-resisted thing around.
Higher tech than Faerun, but both are high fantasy in my mind. When you have shifters and changelings and gnomes and robots and spirit beings it’s hard for me not say that’s high fantasy.
aperently a Warforged cannot have a Dragonmark...thats too bad. but im glad warforged AND artificer is now in 5e...which is very fun when combined with warforged.
A lot of the art is recycled, as you flip through. I think it's so they can maintain continuity with the feel of the older books. As long as it's used sparingly, for this purpose, I don't mind. There appears to be plenty of new art, too. I also don't think you have to be a spellcaster to use your dragonmark spells. PS - love your work, and thanks for the flip-through while I await delivery of my book.
I'm disappointed with how they handled Warforged compared to the UA version. Mostly the 'let's remove subraces and just make em all kinda like the Envoy'.
I agree with you, Nate. We’ve been waiting forever for an official Eberron book in 5e, and they recycled a TON of the art. Then they wanna charge full price like all the other 5e books. I kinda call shenanigans on that! 👎 The content looks pretty cool, but it seems like Wayfinder’s pretty much contains all you need if you know a lot of the in world lore and such. As always, a great review. Thanks!! 🙏
I don't actually like warforged all that much, not as they come in the lore at least. the thing that always drew me to playing a machine is the isolation of it all, being the only one of your kind in a hostile world where not only are people racist to you because 'green small people bad' but because a lot of them physically don't know or understand you. having sentient machines be a common thing, I feel, waters what makes robots special down, and just makes it into Detroit: Become Human with a steampunk aesthetic. I'm still going to be playing them in my games, but instead of an entire race of machines, I'll take it on a case by case basis. a clockwork soldier made by an eccentric genius gone wrong, a pile of scrap moulded into a person by a forge god, a person so badly burnt that the only option to heal them is to turn them into something else. that's what makes robots special to me.
Don't overlook the magic items list in the book. They have some items that actually allow you to play with the lingering injuries optional rule from the DMG without literally crippling your PCs. I am especially a fan of the arcane propulsion arm.
I know people dont consider races playable unless it says so but I've always played dnd as if it's an intelligent being and somewhat humanoid it can be played as a character.
Lots of recycled art from 3.5 and 4.0. Not too big of a deal. A lot of it looks re-used just based on the text I quickly saw in the video. However, unless they were jumping to some point in the future or the past where they would have to re-write the history. It almost looks like a "port" over to the 5e system. I just ordered my copy and will dig into it when it arrives. I ran a 3.5 Eberron campaign for a very long time and have all those books and honestly like with 4e, if this is the only Eberron book they release you can then easily read the older 3.5 material for the "fluff" and history of specific areas and use the new mechanics from the 5e book. It is, by far, my favorite setting for D&D ever and I've played for 40 years! After 4.0 I left the d20 system for a whole different kind of system but now getting back into a 5e game that feels more like a fresh take on the system I'm excited to get Eberron now.
![What are 'Group Backgrounds' in D&D? [Eberron: Rising from the Last War]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/NtzcL9uG8OM/mqdefault.jpg)
![What are 'Group Backgrounds' in D&D? [Eberron: Rising from the Last War]](/img/tr.png)
This man was my American History teacher in high school, and I'm so sad that I didn't know how amazing DnD was when I was still there
I always thought he would be ELA
Scarn, Michael Scarn he actually looks a lot like my 7th grade history teacher 😂
@@hassanh8783 History is where all the real nerds hide out.
“First chapter is all about Eberron.”
I would hope the entire book would be about Eberron.
Lol. Sometimes words just came out of my mouth.
LMAO.
I was not planning to get this book, but the fact that it’s an all-in-one guide and bestiary for the setting (plus that pre-written adventure) has definitely put it on my radar. Thanks for the great review, Nate!
Woohoo! Yeah, Eberon! Now i can be in the world of Treasure Planet which i’ve been dying to play.
I loved the movie Treasure Planet. I was sad that while it was a hit with critics it didn't do well in the box office hence why it's sequel was cancelled.
@@AkkiLad I hate being reminded about the canceled sequel. It just makes my ache
I'll be honest, as long as the art is decent quality and consistent with the setting I don't really carry if it's recycled. I'm more interested in content.
Oh don't worry, most of the content is recycled too.
5:54 Warforged are not becoming "more emotional" or "more sentient." They have always had sentience, a soul, and emotions. The interesting hook for the Warforged now that the Last War is over is what purpose do they make for themselves. They are not robots who are becoming people; they already were.
Ah. Thanks for the clarification!
A good inspiration for how to see it is Pierce from the dreaming dark series.
The older Wayne Reynolds art stands out a bit, but it is very much the "iconic" look of the Eberron setting. The original 3.5 books started every chapter with a one page comic, capturing a scene or event from the World of Eberron which would be relevant to the topic of the chapter. It very much carried on the tradition of each 2e D&D setting being given its own unique "style", with Eberron's pulpy nature being highlighted by its Graphic Novel type look.
As far as the high vs low fantasy goes, it is a very high magic world, but its actually one the grittiest D&D settings, because it leans very much into the Film Noir, and Indiana Jones style feel, rather than your classic Middle Earth type adventure. You might find that an adventure is set agaist a very high magic background, but still captures a "street level" type game, better than something in forgotten realms does.
Keith Baker has actually said that Eberron is a "wide magic" world, rather than a "high magic" world.
The Dragonmarked Houses are supposed to churn out a lot of very low level stuff, with high level stuff still being as rare as it is in other D&D worlds.
Having said that, you don't see flying ships in every D&D setting. So what Keith says doesn't seem to fit in totally with the airships.
@@DavidShepheard I think it still fits. Wide magic is available to almost everyone. They can afford magical household items that make day to day life easier. But to travel on an airship or even the lightning rail is very expensive, and not as available to the masses.
I adore how the changeling looks now. Just completely white until they shapechange
I want this book for two things, artificer, and warforged.
Too bad they made warforged boring and the alchemist is the worst subclass in the game now.
@@RolandTheJabberwocky really? How so?
@@MythicMachina they took away warforged subraces, integrated armor and tool, and made them lame. They're nothing special anymore. Not sure about alchemist subclass but I heard they didnt fix anything from the UA and even made a feature worse
@@gavinhudson1960 that kinds sucks. Well, my group likes to take thing into our own hands and chnage things if needed, so we can work around it.
@@MythicMachina yeah I'm a very lenient DM so I'll let my group run Wayfarer's Guide races instead.
To me the inclusion of in setting information in the form of the newspaper clippings is a really awesome thing for the book
I agree!
4:07 Re: "There were some 3.5 Edition books, in Eberron. There were many 4th Edition books." You have that backwards WASD20.
The vast majority of Eberron RPG books are 3.5 books, with only a few 4th Edition books. There were also organised play campaigns for 3.5 which created even more 3.5 Eberron content.
If someone new to 5e likes Eberron: Rising from the Last War and wants to get some of the older books, they are probably going to find a lot of duplicated content in Eberron Campaign Setting (the main 3.5 book) and Eberron Campaign Guide (the main 4e book). If you take those two books out of the equation, you end up with only a couple of 4e books that do something you won't find in Eberron: Rising fro the Last War, so looking at the Print on Demand reprints of 3.5 books (as well as second-hand 3.5 books) is probably something to consider.
Eberron has also been opened up to the DMs Guild content creator program, so you can find things over there that were not published by Wizards of the Coast. A lot of the 5e products are created by fans, but there are some, like Morgrave Miscellany, which have been created by Keith Baker and people who helped him work on the first 5e Eberron product.
Anyhoo. Aside from that minor mix-up, this is a great review. Thanks for showing us what is on all the pages, as that's really useful for making a purchasing decision.
I'm a little jealous that you have it already lol, my pre-ordered copy is still on the way. Thanks for getting me even more hyped though!
that pic you mentioned is from the original eberron books, art by wayne reynolds. It is iconic for Eberron
I'm going to say this: I like the cover for the Limited Edition, but whose idea was it to have the golden trim end up in the fold of the cover!? If it had been offset a little to the right, the cover would've looked so much better!
I absolutely agree with you for the incongruent styles of the arts: i love older editions arts (especially the fourth edition style) but i cannot see them combined with fifth edition new style. Apart from that, this book looks great!
The Art direction and layout of the book is gorgeous.
I forgot to mention it in the review, but I really like the gold text and illustrations for the dragonmarks, as well as a little newspaper clippings throughout.
I am super happy that Saltmarsh and TFTYP can both be placed in Eberron. Makes it alot easier starting off.
My copy of this arrived today, it's my first D&D book in my collection. My DM owns the core 3 books I can loan until I buy my own but I 100% want to attempt to use this to run my first campaign. I love this type of fantasy as my first table top game was Warhammer so it brings that touch to me personally. I cannot wait to give this a full read and go! Thanks for giving an overview of this so I know what to look for in where as its lot of content to read at once.
Another great video! I was intrigued by this before. Watching this has made me even more interested in this setting. I used to play G.U.R.P.S. back in the day to play a different kind of setting like this or steampunk kinda feel. This should an easy way do bring that feeling into 5th edition D&D. I'm excited, just gotta try to get my friends on board. Thanks again for the video.
In my opinion, Eberron is an amazingly creative setting that was the first setting to fully take advantage of the 3.5 rules. It is good to see it make a come back as a setting for 5e.
But I do agree that the art is mostly recycled, but it doesn't feel it is as consistent as it was in the original setting book. Eberron style was defined by Wayne Reynolds and the comic style of his art. It is the same that happens with Golarion and Pathfinder books, which you expect to have a Wayne Reynolds cover at least and the art more or less reminiscent of Reynold's style. So I agree that since this book recycles art from 3 different editions, it feels kinda.weird.
Posting this early in the video: Thank you for this review.
I just wish D&D and other games would stop cross-referencing rules from one chapter to the other or even one book to the other. I would also prefer smaller, soft covers to make them portable! But aside from that, looks great!
Ya it's like they tweaked the 4ed model of pumping out successive PHBs, DMs Guides, etc.
They should do a set of softcover pocket editions of all the books!!!! Kind of how the old Volo's guides use to be. I would get them.
@@aspektx They did that for third edition as well, if I remember well.
Disagree strongly on the cover arts. I actually like the non-collectors one just as much. It's simple, straightforward, colorful and on point.
The different art styles were never a thing that bugged me. I think the only time it did was the goblin art they used in the second edition monstrous manual.
The special cover editions are on Amazon right now.
Really? I thought they were supposed to be limited editions sold only in bricks and mortar stores.
As soon as I saw the artificer class I bought it on amazon.
looks like they made some good changes from UA
@@user-mz2ow4ky7v yeah it looks really good. A little sad that the archivist didn't make it one of my players really liked that but hey nothing's stopping me from still using UA subs.
@@DanTheBear yeah after just realizing that I'm disheartened too. I really was looking forward to playing that class =/
I think that was a major selling point for a lot of us.
Archivist was quite powerful, though the flavor was great. With any luck? We'll see it and other archetypes in future releases.
I am so happy about that Orc change.
Makes them more useful than the Volo orcs.
Also the propulsion arm is wicked.
Warforged are pretty good, feels like they could have kept the Subraces and just gave them their skills instead for diversity
I did seem to remember Warforged having subraces in Wayfinder's guide. I agree it would have been nice to keep that.
@@WASD20
Yeah they seemed to use the envoy Subrace for the base race, but removed intergrated tool from it.
Probably cause it was the most played Subrace they made it default.
Oh also Wayfinders Guide is basically a beta run for E:RLW and in fact will be updated to match E:RLW but won't get certian things from E:RLW like two of the three Artificer Archtypes and such.
I understand what you mean about the varying art styles, but having gotten into D&D in 5e, I really enjoyed seeing the past artwork. It was unfamiliar to me, having never read any of the 3.5 or 4e books, and the “older” art is still fantastic in my opinion!
I debated a few years about picking this up because I have Eberron material from previous editions including my favorite from the 4th edition. Still, I gave in after a flip through at the store and I am glad I finally picked it up, yes the lore is mostly unchanged but it is more in depth and there are some cool parts to it. The tear out map is a straight reprint from the 4th edition book, but it's nice to be able to have it as a standalone map you can use, which is really cool. Eberron was also the setting for the DDO mmorpg before they expanded it so I fell in love with the lore and world back then. The pre-written adventure itself is worth the price of admission.
I've been looking forward to this book and your review! Thanks!
Didn't let me down 👍 great stuff thank you!
Eberron was my favorite 3.5 and 4th edition setting, a lot of fun. One thing I really liked is the level scale was a lot smaller. A lot of the powerful characters in the world are something like lvl 8-15, makes the lower D&D levels more heroic more quickly IMHO. Plus skyships... not even a steampunk fan but loved it.
I think that Eberron is not for me either. Nice breakdown.
Thanks for the review!
As someone who really likes Eberron as a setting that is fine, it's a very different D&D setting and can be a bit hard to fully get into with how different the setting is.
I love the concepts of the Neo Noir and Steampunk, but the actual setting leaves me meh. My goal is to make my own setting combining Eberron technology, Greyhawk maps and environments, and the spirit of Dragonlance Grimmified.
The two characters in the artwork illustrating The Mark of Shadow at 16:40 look a lot like Merisiel and Valeros from Pathfinder.
I have a question for everyone here, one that's not SPECIFICALLY about THIS particular book but ALL these D&D books in general.
In terms of tomes that have lore behind the creatures in D&D and/or character and race descriptions, which of these books would you recommend me purchasing; Tome of Foes, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything or possibly all of them?
I ask this because I'm a writer and I like to use background info on certain mythological beasties to help give me inspiration for ideas. Volo's Guide and the Monster Manual are two books I have already that have the stuff I desire from these D&D books. I'm just curious if there's anything else like those two out there I should keep an eye out for
Probably Mordenkainen’s tome of foes if you’re looking for monster lore.
My local store, Out Of The Box, had it on the 16th so me and my DM read through it and we were most interested in the races and lore.
Great and honest review! Eberron's still my favorite setting in D & D and am glad you're trying it out. I get your nitpick regarding the art but even in the 1st edition of eberron that incongruence already exists. For me, the best art that really encapsulate eberron were the ones made by Steve Prescott. Wayne Reynolds' come in second especially for those epic scenes which I think were the ones always "assigned" to him. If you could find the time to look for samples of Steve's art and have them "accompany" you while reading the book then I hope you get the same feeling I had of wanting to go on a swashbuckling adventure ala indiana jones but with a pulp noir intrigue and a very rich & deep history & mythology! Again thanks for a great & honest review.
There are a lot of recycled art in this book...
Still a great book!
I mean, there's a lot of recycles art in D&D in general.
I really love steampunk and now I can mix it eith DND I cannot wait for this...
I think i am changing from my forgotten realms to Ebberon characters and all, via a teleportation error.
I'm just working out a way to do that, too. Eberron is my favourite campaign world.
Fantastic video, thanks for the gift!
The last war one looks like pathfinder artwork style so i'd guess 3rd edition, the mark of the shadow artwork (16:36) looks like 4th edition artwork. Yeah it's a real mesh of reused artwork it would seem.
The letters of the rising from the last war in the alternate cover shine or some parts, because I get one and I see the letters of the foil but they aren't aligned
wow that special edition is beautiful!
Hm. Pondering conversion possibilities for Spelljammer...
Cant wait for new settings like dragonlance, mystara, dark sun etc
Dark sun would either be watered down due to politics or just never see the light of day. You dont need a sourcebook really, its nice but u can do it without it
I love me some Eberron. Ran it from day 1 release until current. Have nearly all the source data. Won't be able to get the new book for awhile due to holiday and seasonal finances. I been eyeing up Beadle & Grimms box set as well. I've ran so many hours for so many groups in Eberron. Sometimes 10 different campaigns for 10 different rosters of players. As always great work my man. Quality. I gave it a retweet on my twitter and hit that like button for sure. Have a great holiday season. ✌
I kind of got started into D&D about maybe a month ago with a campaign I found online don't ask me how I found them might have been on Facebook or something we talked about it I joined the Discord with a bunch of new players add a DM who has been around for a while I started looking this stuff up in D&D Beyond found this book and now I'm thinking of doing something like space pirates
I fell in love with the Warforged aswell when I first saw them on D&D Beyond (the UA version) - and while that made me very intrigued by the Eberron setting, I'm actually very disappointed how bland and underwhelming the official version of the Warforged became.
Don't get me wrong: I understand that the old version of Integrated Protection was a bit too much, especially for Fighter + caster muticlassers (who only took 1 level in Fighter for the heavy armor proficiency and could grab the heavy armor of a Warforged without having to have a high strength score). Still, I would have loved it if they had - at least - still left in the subraces of the Warforged, they made the race so much more interesting ! What a shame !
Sub-races definitely would have been cool.
I'm late to the party, but another great review! Thanks Nate. Quite tempted to pick this up.....might have to sell a kidney to find a Special Edition to buy😍
I liked the cover for the regular book...
About half of the art in this book has been recycled/repurposed from older publications.
3:12 This is in the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, not sure if it was used in yet another book before that.
3:21 and 15:59 This the COVER of The FORGE OF WAR, a 3.5 source book for Eberron.
4:54 recycled, not sure from where.
5:12 An ancient piece of art, 3rd Edition Monster Manual I think.
6:23 Obviously repurposed from older versions of the Eberron Campaign Setting
6:29 The picture on the right, showing a halfling, is repurposed.
6:31 Again the picture on the right, showing a man with a staff, has been repurposed.
6:32 The picture on the right, showing a gnome has been repurposed.
6:34 The picture on the right, showing an elf woman and an elf man, has been repurposed.
6:37 The picture to the right, showing an "elevator" in a building, has been repurposed.
9:37 Another piece of recycled art.
9:43 , 9:55 to 10:00 4th Edition map of Khorvaire
10:07 Next piece of recycled art on the bottom of the left page.
10:08 This picture is also recycled.
10:10 Both pictures shown here, the map and the "City of the Deathless", have been recycled.
10:20 The icons of the different religions are also repurposed art.
10:36 Again, another piece of recycled art.
10:37 The top-down map of Sharn has also been recycled.
11:16 And another piece of recycled art.
13:13 The picture to the right, depicting Ashtakala, is recycled.
13:26 Again another piece of recycled art.
13:48 The dome, shown on the right page, is a piece of recycled art.
14:19 And another recycled picture
14:32 Next piece of recycled art.
14:54 Yep, the Dwarf "Cyborg" is also recycled
15:15 Yes, you are right, you have seen these pictures before. Both are recycled.
15:17 The "warforged dog" on the right is recycled.
15:18 Skeleton on the right is recycled.
15:20 The Lord of Blades on the left is a repurposed 3rd Edition art piece.
15:23 The Bone Knight is also from 3rd Edition Eberron.
I was advised to get it and It was ok but I felt it was kind of lacklustre compared to previous editions
I was very on the fence about this book. As a Wayfinder's guide owner I needed to see some what the book offered first. I like that some of the Dragonmarked houses have been expanded. Overall, it looked to just flesh some things out that tiny bit more (leaders, locations of headquarters).
If feels to me that I would be buying the book essentially for chapter 4 (the adventure builder) and the rollable tables. Still a little on the fence but more positively inclined. I agree that the standard edition cover art is a huge miss.
Oh, I am currently running a great Eberron game with the Wayfinder's guide, Morgrave Miscellany (DMs Guild) and UA Artificer class and it is fantastic. Sharn-centric but makes it harder to justify purchasing the book.
I love the book and the content, mismatching art doesn't bother me in the least. I like that they are paying tribute to past artists for earlier representations for this material, allowing their art to remain relevant. I special edition cover, however, is worlds better than the standard, on that, I most certainly agree. Great review as always!
Huge Eberron fan and certainly a setting i am keen to run. I have got the special cover book and love it but the art inside was sadly copied over but i can look past that for the great content and all the great info inside. I'd suggest that the gritty type of adventure can still be achieved by running a bit of a noire campaign but i understand that equally there will still be elements of high fantasy involved. I can't wait to get going and thanks for doing the review :)
I love the Artwork, I more love the 3.5 artwork, some are from covers from the novels. To me it feels that it does work well together, but I am also happy to see more of the 3.5 artwork because it was always my favorite but I also like the 5th edition artwork along side them.
I’ve never been this early! I really want to get this for my birthday
Love this review. Totally getting this book, I need more world settings. Any chance you can do one on converting the old Dragonlance source book to 5th ed.?? I really miss DL and I don't see Wizards releasing a book anytime soon
Great review, love your stuff. Im getting this book for sure
Just looking over this I feel this is already more well put together than the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica was lore wise at least. Ravnica is a great place but they only sort of touched on a lot of stuff where this seems to go in depth.
What is the diffrence with this bok and the eborron guildmaster guide? Is it the same location and content? What is the pro and cons? Cause it is confusing with both a setting bok and a guildmaster Book. Because the guildmaster guide to ravanica seems like its the same as a setting book.
It was essentially a rough draft of this book.
I actually rather like the normal cover for this book, so I disagree with that first point. It is just that the special cover is so FANTASTIC that it looks less great in comparison. Yes, I did snag one of the alternate covers.
Excited for Eberron love the setting
I liked the regular book I understand why you may not but it's the style of art the background is made plain so focus of the eye is drawn to center two races. Great info an good video.
Legit I like the old style better than the new one for certain campaigns (Eberron for instance and my own personal one) but yeah I wish it was just the old not both
Could you please do a review of Sandy Peterson's "Cthulhu Mythos 5e" and "Ghoul Island 5e" module for it. Thank you.
Cool breakdown of the book
Good stuff
I dont mind the mixed art. In fact, i like seeing top notch art return, but recycled only would be disappointing so i also like the new art. I dont need to have art match. It's art. I'm more interested in does it make me feel, does it inspire? The uninspiring cover guess it wasn't dedigned in Sarlona haha) i agree is a disappointment.
Also huge fan of the original 3rd edition art. Would be heartbreaking if that entiendo vanished. Much like DiTerlizzi art in Planescape 2e such is just dead on the setting. I hope they re use some of that art with the planescape reboot
For my Dnd campaign eberron is a godsend for my campaign. Especially when the Party got a Warforge Colossus fight a 3 Dragons in an epic Kaiju Battle
Didn’t have to trash the other cover so hard jeez. A Warforged Mage is pretty unique lol. Plus the painting is actually cool asf.
That art wasn't originally supposed to be cover art. WotC put out a preview of the original cover and got some nerd rage about that picture, so they moved it into the book and moved one of the chapter pictures to the front cover.
WASD20 has a point about the halfling not seeming to be iconic to Eberron, but he didn't flip the book over to see the halfling's animal companion, which has been pushed onto the back cover.
What we have with that replacement cover picture is a halfling with a dinosaur companion who is ready to attack with a boomerang. That's a lot more interesting than what you see if you only look at half the cover painting. :-)
The cliff at the far left of the painting does look less finished than the cliff at the right side and the bottom left side of the painting is very blurry. It's possibly that was intentional (if maybe this was supposed to be the edge of the Mournlands) but it's just as likely than the artist was asked to put the characters on the extreme right and treat the left part of the painting as a sacrificial area to be covered by blurb text.
I'm not sure, but I think that art directors actually specifically ask artists to fade out some bits of paintings, so that they can be used as a background that does not steal focus from text. So an unfinished look is not necessarily an unfinished picture. It could be exactly how it was asked to be.
One thing that does disappoint me with this painting is that the artist is capable and gives us a couple of interesting characters, but there is a vague winged monster in the top-right of the picture and I have no idea what part of Eberron this is supposed to be located in. So the artist has some great storytelling there, but I have no idea what the actual story might be.
David Shepheard I appreciate your perspective bro🤙thanks!
Im curious how much information in this book is simply repetition from the Wayfinders guide to Eberron. Does it have enough new information to make it a worthwhile purchase?
I have my copy ordered. Also I feel really bad for the former kingdom of Cyre as that kingdom got royally screwed over not only did the rightful queen of the whole country get screwed over due to her more wicked siblings wanting the throne refusing to respect their family oath which kickstarted the whole Last Great War in the first place resulting in Cyre getting invaded multiple times due to it's location, and then completely annihilated via magical nuke and became The Mourninglands.
While I really like the cover on the special edition cover over the standard edition, I still like the revised standard version more than what WOTC had shown originally was going to be the cover. All I thought when I saw the original cover art, was, "giant purple face"
I’m with you
From what I've seen the campaign fluff (the state of the world) is no different from when the setting came out 15 years ago (just like most of the art), which means there's very little reason to purchase the book if you already own the older edition. I really wish Baker would move up the timeline, since for those of us who've played Eberron before there's nothing left to squeeze out of it.
just ordered a copy, good review
R.I.P. Arcane Weapon :(
Probably worst thing me XD
@@MrElvenbrother They didn't have to remove Arcane Weapon, they could have just made it like Divine Favor but with force damage instead of radiant.
@@TheCarlosLuna I personally would have kept it multi-element but nerfed it somehow, or made it a class feature of at least the artillerist.
@@MrElvenbrother The thing is that elemental vulnerabilities can be exploited to deal more damage, balance-wise I would make it like Divine Favor.
@@TheCarlosLuna i am not reaaally that against the "exploit", is not like elemental compatibility really comes up much in DnD. And it's always more resistances and immunities on the monsters' side.
Basically everyone and their mother shrugs off fire and poison, basically no one resists radiant and like 2 people are immune to it, and force is just the second less-resisted thing around.
The weird art is from Pathfinder main artist I believe!
I actually really like it, just doesn’t seem to fit the style of the rest of the book and other 5e art.
That’s interesting. I wouldn’t call Faerun “low fantasy” at all, but I see how it and Eberron are drastically different.
I definitely wouldn't either!
@@WASD20 Forgotten Realms is high fantasy with high magic, Eberron is noir and pulp adventure with wide magic.
Higher tech than Faerun, but both are high fantasy in my mind. When you have shifters and changelings and gnomes and robots and spirit beings it’s hard for me not say that’s high fantasy.
I don't think it's available in belgium yet. I'm tempted though...
Should be. It is available in Germany, I will get mine on friday.
I’m wanting to get this book and get into Eberron, so should I try and get Wayfinder’s guide to Eberron as well?
No. This book really replaces and expands on the wayfinders guide. I view the wayfinders guide as a playtest version.
WASD20 Thank you
art is nice.i Never play Eberron our grey hawk,only forgotten realms and ravenloft
Never read it, but I already love it!
aperently a Warforged cannot have a Dragonmark...thats too bad.
but im glad warforged AND artificer is now in 5e...which is very fun when combined with warforged.
Give me Greyhawk or give me death.
Lol! I prefer the regular cover :D
You are objectively wrong about this. 😆
A lot of the art is recycled, as you flip through. I think it's so they can maintain continuity with the feel of the older books. As long as it's used sparingly, for this purpose, I don't mind. There appears to be plenty of new art, too. I also don't think you have to be a spellcaster to use your dragonmark spells. PS - love your work, and thanks for the flip-through while I await delivery of my book.
I'm disappointed with how they handled Warforged compared to the UA version. Mostly the 'let's remove subraces and just make em all kinda like the Envoy'.
I agree with you, Nate. We’ve been waiting forever for an official Eberron book in 5e, and they recycled a TON of the art. Then they wanna charge full price like all the other 5e books. I kinda call shenanigans on that! 👎 The content looks pretty cool, but it seems like Wayfinder’s pretty much contains all you need if you know a lot of the in world lore and such.
As always, a great review. Thanks!! 🙏
I don't actually like warforged all that much, not as they come in the lore at least. the thing that always drew me to playing a machine is the isolation of it all, being the only one of your kind in a hostile world where not only are people racist to you because 'green small people bad' but because a lot of them physically don't know or understand you. having sentient machines be a common thing, I feel, waters what makes robots special down, and just makes it into Detroit: Become Human with a steampunk aesthetic. I'm still going to be playing them in my games, but instead of an entire race of machines, I'll take it on a case by case basis. a clockwork soldier made by an eccentric genius gone wrong, a pile of scrap moulded into a person by a forge god, a person so badly burnt that the only option to heal them is to turn them into something else. that's what makes robots special to me.
Can I choose to remove the racial or subrace benefits if I want a dragonmark?
The dragonmark will tell you what it replaces for your chosen race. It will either replace the subrace or racial features.
Don't overlook the magic items list in the book. They have some items that actually allow you to play with the lingering injuries optional rule from the DMG without literally crippling your PCs. I am especially a fan of the arcane propulsion arm.
I know people dont consider races playable unless it says so but I've always played dnd as if it's an intelligent being and somewhat humanoid it can be played as a character.
Nikola Tesla - The First Artificer. Would be a great idea for a campaign, throw in some eldritch steampunk stuff...
Eberron is basically Kaladesh for D&D
Dean Kleinbooi kaladesh is basically eberron for magic
Is eberron a campaign, I’m sorry I’m a noob
Nope
WASD20 ok thank you, does it give anything that you can play through or is it just a handbook to eberron
Variations in art styles in a book doesn’t bother me that much. And if it is recycled, as long as it is good art , use it as long as it is still good.
No changelings?
Yep. First race I mentioned, I think.
Lots of recycled art from 3.5 and 4.0. Not too big of a deal. A lot of it looks re-used just based on the text I quickly saw in the video. However, unless they were jumping to some point in the future or the past where they would have to re-write the history. It almost looks like a "port" over to the 5e system. I just ordered my copy and will dig into it when it arrives. I ran a 3.5 Eberron campaign for a very long time and have all those books and honestly like with 4e, if this is the only Eberron book they release you can then easily read the older 3.5 material for the "fluff" and history of specific areas and use the new mechanics from the 5e book. It is, by far, my favorite setting for D&D ever and I've played for 40 years! After 4.0 I left the d20 system for a whole different kind of system but now getting back into a 5e game that feels more like a fresh take on the system I'm excited to get Eberron now.
Now I want dark sun 5e
YES
Planescape For 5e When
I'm honestly just happy we got the newer cover instead of the old one. The first one was god awful.
It was more polished, but I agree - the big purple gnome face was just odd.
Damn, I need this book