One of things you should keep in mind is Eberron is specifically stuck at 998 YK -- when you're generally expected to begin your own campaign. This is important because the notion that the Dragonmarked Houses are on a path to conquer Khorvaire is definitely a persistent idea surrounding them in the novels, but it's still just a possibility that's on the horizon at this point. The Houses narratively are pretty similar in concept to those dystopian corporate giants found in cyberpunk settings. They're also shown doing all manner of shady conspiracy things on the side, ala the X-Files.
My thoughts exactly! Why already have the Dragonmarked Houses CONQUER the world, when you can make them TRY to conquer it and involve the players in the process?
There is also a couple of questions around the representation of history prior 2 the last war. ..... It's said there was a 1000 years of peace under the great nation of galifie. What exactly happened that the ruling dynasty forced the dragon marked to sign that agreement? What kind of rebellions happened during that time that were forcibly suppressed? Are there lost marks? Was the kingship of Galifar descended from a dragon market that then died out or were assassinated? Did Galifar send out expeditions like the empire of China did during its great golden ages... Could they return?
@gmanbo the point is that the Korth Edict wasn't that bad for the houses. Sure they got limitations but they also got recognition, a lot of autonomy and basically a recognized monopoly over their respective trades. It was an exchange: the houses accepted the rule of Galifar and promised to not interfere with the politics while the kingdom closed an eye over their economic activities. Galifar was also successful in uniting the continent because he gained the support of the houses. The houses basically betted on him.
1. Part of the point of the airships being unreliable is that they're a new technology that came about in recent history, intended to compete with the Orien-dominated market of travel. 2. You could argue that the dragonmarked houses already do rule the world, they just don't need armies to enforce their rule the same way that the rulers of the Five Nations do. It's also important to note that people with dragonmarks make up a very small minority of the overall population. There are, however, vast swaths of history in the setting that were left blank so you could easily fill in a rebellion or a house attempting to establish their own nation. Lyrandar is certainly actively doing that in Valenar. 3. There is a notable human-centric cult in the Pure Flame, who are Silver Flame extremists, though they tend to be more anti-monster than anything else. 4. The gods being vague is part of what I love about the setting. There's room for the DM to decide what's true, what's mythologized, or what they can leave a mystery for their campaign. 5. The magewright appears as a background in Quickstone: Frontiers of Eberron. It's basically an artisan with the Magic Initiate feat. There's plenty of resources online for further reading, Keith Baker's blog is full of articles he's written about the setting over the years. However, there's also lots of room to fill in your own answers as well.
I'd also recommend reading Exploring Eberron and Chronicles of Eberron if you haven't already. They expand on Eberron's planes, the cultures in the seas, and various other areas that haven't been touched on in the WotC published books.
Number 1: right? the Hindenburg also had one really big point of failure heck we've been flying planes for over a hundred years and they still fall out of the sky on occasion
@starshade7826 the reality of celestials and fiends only make sense if the gods are remote and need to act through these proxies. If a God can stride into town what need would they have of angels or demons?
Yeah I kept waiting for the criticism of the worldbuilding around the airships. All I heard were plot hooks and great ways to engage players on offense or defense.
I apologize in advance, but Eberron is one of my "special interests" and this video full activated me. I enjoyed the entire video, some stuff I disagree on or have other information, or even just my own perspective. And sometimes I've lost track of which is which. But I would absolutely LOVE to see more videos on Eberron, because there is honestly SO MUCH lore! So many interlocking pieces moving all at the same time. Riedra is a beautiful nightmare, the Lords of Dust are a FASCINATING take on "Supreme Evils", and the FEEL of the setting is just so rich. Like, you mentioned a couple times the Cold War aspects of it all, and you are not wrong! The Mourning and the resulting tenuous peace are very much in the image of Hiroshima and the following tense conflict. But it also draws a lot from the Interwar period, BETWEEN WW1 and WW2, with a lot of its pulpy adventure setups looking like Indiana Jones and the Mummy. Or even Casablanca. But it also manages to braid in the sort of "Around the World in 80 Days" and other Jules Verne style trappings when it wants to. I've been quite keen on the Lhazaar Principalities lately, and have a whole 3-4 yr campaign that's been set JUST in Sharn outside of a handful of excursions. But on to some of the topics in the video: Airships: Your points are all correct, but part of the idea is that... these are all just the Hindenburg waiting to happen. They are just prevalent enough that they aren't SUPER unique and rare beyond any public utility, but they are still special. Most would still have an understudy pilot as well as guards that could handle low/mid tier hijackers. But they idea that they are a point of vulnerability and a sign of hubris is 100% part of the idea. If an airship shows up in a printed adventure, there is, like, a 50/50 chance of crashing. Dragonmarked Houses: One of the ideas that gets explored in some of the extended 3rd party books Keith Baker has made for 5E as well as earlier stuff back in 3rd and 4th Ed is that the Houses are in working from the ideology of that classic Lex Luthor line: "Do you know how much power I would have to give up to be President?" In many ways they ARE running the show, but they are supposed to be more representative of Corporate power. They already lie, cheat, and steal all over Khorvaire, breaking the Korth Edicts in a bunch of different ways where they are "technical" legal (the best kind of legal). And so they preserve the Edicts because they also offer protections TO the Houses, which they are quick to bring up any time the nobility starts thinking they aren't in the capitalist suicide pact, too. And the "War of the Mark" was also... not as clean as you are making it out. Part of the idea is that... there were DOZENS of houses. Maybe HUNDREDS. And the whole war between all these VERY MUCH infant family power structures was incredibly chaotic and not very civil. To everyone who WASN'T one of these families, it was like a giant round robin Hatsfields and McCoys feud. Most outsiders just saw this like a bunch of themed gang fights. No one was really sure who was going to win and even more so CARED all that much. They were just going about doing their thing and maybe hiring them for their services, but no one wanted them in charge. Huge part of the critique of the capitalist structure is that there's been this massive revisionist story created that is projecting the houses current position BACKWARDS into history while the truth was it got bloody as hell. But now that the 12 houses have come out on top, and found an equilibrium for themselves, they justify all the horrors along the way and make nice with the nobles and public. And of course no one else is allowed to rise to their rank or disrupt their control of their specific spheres of power. Human Colonization: The progress of the Sarlona expansion into Khorvaire makes more sense when you look at the timing. The mass exodus out of Sarlona also happened to just start about 2,000 years after the final fall of the Dhakaani Empire of the Goblinoids. Enough time for the empire to fully fade into memory (even with long lived races) but just about the right amount of time that the power vacuum was begging for a new consolidator. And the colonizers from Sarlona really fit the bill because they were EAGER to just expand Sovereign damned EVERYWHERE. The Dwarves were also still reeling from their expulsion from the deep mountains by the Daelkyr on TOP of a massive Orc invasion. The Halflings were largely content to just live their lives out on the plains. The Orcs had all their "Druid Shit" going on. Elves have long settled into a somewhat stagnant culture, their constant obsession with death and the undying means they have difficulty breaking out and trying new things. And it's also important to remember that just because the Houses stand united to EXTERNAL threats, they are also incredibly petty and power hungry amongst themselves. You mentioned the lightning rail and airships in the beginning, and there is STILL some bad blood between Lyrander and Orien over that. House Deneith and Cannith still have some beef because the Warforged put a huge dent in Deneith's market share for mercenary labor. So Humans having 5 houses wouldn't necessarily make them look MORE powerful, but in fact could cause more HAVOC. In the groups where there is only the one mark, you will tend to see they are more integrated and focused. Kundarak in the Dwarves gets a ton of support because you can either help Kundarak do "Warding" stuff, or you can do your own thing and not have to worry about house stuff spilling into your cheerios. Faiths: I do not view this as "atheistic", but one could argue it is "agnostic". Part of the idea behind it is that you actually have to HAVE FAITH in the powers. The Sovereigns provide a pantheon that is instructive and broad. The Silver Flame is very present with their faith. Even the Blood of Vol has their own perspective on how the world should work. But the big thing is that no one KNOWS the answer to it all. Like, when you dig into some of the deeper lore, you'll find some wild stuff! There are multiple SECTS of Sovereign worship, and some of those not only limit which of the 9 are worshipped, but some even add in members of the Dark Six as volatile but important avatars of the world. Another aspect of the Blood of Vol that I love is that their central ethos can be summarized as "The Gods are real, and they are the enemy". The divinity that exists in all people was indeed bestowed by the gods, but the Blood of Vol has declared them negligent protectors and guardians. And so they seek collective self improvement as a REPLACEMENT for the grace the gods are "supposed" to give the people of Eberron. Magewrights: I do feel like there IS something special about Magewrights in a fantasy world, as a sort of blue-collar magic user where the average Wizard would be more Ivory Tower Academia or White Collar. Like seeing a disagreement between a physicist and a plumber because the physicist knows all the laws and theorems, but the plumber has seen 1,000 different ways to make a pipe explode up close and personal and he knows this is #372. A player character Magewright would, though, have to go one of a couple ways that move them BEYOND just being a Magewright. Either they've started to unravel some of the deeper secrets of the arcane out of a long career in the trenches of magical industry, allowing them to become a full on Wizard (the Scott Lang approach). Or them being a Magewright is a foundational and formative part of their backstory, but they have also expanded beyond that into some other class [mechanically, start as whatever class but have the Magic Initiate feat] (the Mario Mario approach). Like, it wouldn't be that much different than the characters who got their start as a farmer, a black smith, a librarian, or a gutter punk. But at some point they all graduated into something MORE.
Some comments on the issues you've identified: Airships - These are an incredibly recent innovation - only eight years old at setting start - and them having fatal flaws is very intentional. From a setting standpoint, these are still largely a prototype - most cities don't have airship moors, they're less efficient than lightning rails for trade and mass transport, and as you said they're primarily used for luxury travel. From a gameplay standpoint, this allows them to be a more versatile form of transport, while also allowing for a variety of troubles and pivot points that lightning rails don't have. Dragonmarked Houses - I'm unsure what all you've read beyond the 5e sourcebook, but if you've only read that, I'd assign that book as the source of confusion here. That text does very much so focus on the Galifar and post-Galifar era of Eberron (for I think fair reasons) and so doesn't look at the pre-Galifar period, where the Dragonmarked Houses were as you described and were incredibly powerful and influential. In fact, Galifar only came to be united because the Dragonmarked Houses became kingmakers and backed Galifar in a bid for further power, only to then be caught on the backfoot after the war and forced into the Korth Edicts by the power they had previously helped to ascend. In the modern day, some Dragonmarked Houses are beginning to gain further influence - House Cannith was functionally co-ruling Cyre before the Day of Mourning, and even today is only not as prominent because it's heartland was magi-nuked eight years ago, House Vadalis has an heir (who has renounced their claims, but still) as the regent of the Auindarian throne, and in general the Houses are in their own corporate cold war of working towards greater power and influence but also not wanting to upset the balance of power and risk losing everything. Race Power Balance - For one, the dragonmarks didn't exist in ancient times, which is why you didn't see them impacitng Dhakaan. They only began manifesting a few thousand years ago, around when Humans began arriving in Khorvaire, which is why you see them get so many (I'd agree arguably too many for what's realistic in-setting). As for the lack of existence of human supremacy, I feel like that's a reasonable choice by Keith Baker, the creator of the setting, to have Khorvaire be a more diverse setting and to choose to not have pure racial supremacists be a prominent thing in the Five Nations. In other parts of the world it definitely exists though - though Sarlona may not be explicitly human supremacist, by all intents and purposes it ends up being it. Faith - I'll admit I'm not sure if I can identify a single "issue" per say that you have with Eberron's version of religion, but I just wanted to personally put in that I'm a big fan of the way Eberron does religion and it's varieties, especially for being a more modern setting. All in all, I'm glad you've enjoyed your foray into Eberron and really appreciated your comments and concerns shared here! Eberron is a constantly growing world and Keith Baker actively encourages creating your own version of the world as best befits your views and table. If you're interested in exploring more of the setting, three great sources are the 3.5e and 4e sourcebooks as well as Keith Baker's own DM's Guild books for 5e. There's so much of the world that can be explored and I'd love to see your journey through more of it if it's something you wanted to do!
@@philopharynx7910 Absolutely, and I'm unsure how I forgot to mention it in my original comment. Another commentor mentioned the blog and I fully agree that it's an amazing resource for anyone interested in Eberron.
Dragonmarked Houses don't rise up and try to take over because every time they'd try, someone, be it one of the five nations or rival Dragonmarked Houses, sends a hit squad in the form of uppity adventurers to murderhobo the instigators.
"only lyrandar dragonmarked" being able to fly them is a bit of house propaganda. When it was written, there was a skill that didn't get a ton of use outside of eberron, "use magic device". Inside ebberon, use magic device was incredibly useful, and one of its features was tricking magic devices to believe you had whatever qualifications it required. Also the houses don't rule Khorvaire. The Cabinet of Faces does👽
Your description of your early assumptions about Eberron...the flying coaches, hyper-industrialized magical world, magical Coruscant......Ravnica, my guy, you are describing Ravnica.
Dragonmarked houses have a lot of limitations. There are two basic ones going way back. The first is that dragonmarks might be hereditary, at least to a degree, but that heredity doesn't follow legal rules of succession and inheritance, so unless the dragonmarked houses perform an unprecedented level of sexual restraint, there are going to be quite a few random people out there who develop marks without any particular loyalty to the house. A second one is that, in the grand scheme of things, dragonmarks aren't that common, so you need immense extra power per person to really, truly tip the balance relative to countries and the average person with a dragonmark only has the least mark and no PC classes. The dragonmarks are an edge, but it's only a relatively few exceptional individuals who develop the real, serious powers from them. It's the access to industrial scale magical items that require the dragonmarks that are the real power of them, not the personal scale buffs. Another limitation is that the peace settlement of the Last War includes reaffirming the Korth Edicts. Except for the unrecognized state of Droaam and the various Lhazaar Principalities, all nations of Khorvaire have signed an agreement to uphold the edicts. Granting lands to houses would be in violation of the peace treaty and an excuse for the other nations to smack you down. Beyond that, there are loads of powerful forces out there that don't care. Plain old wizards are a thing and sorcerers popping up without connection to any houses. The major faiths can not only motivate a lot of people, they have their own powerful champions and the nations are still powerful, even if they're less powerful than Galifar had been. That's without going into the true heavyweights, like the dragons of the Chamber who are specifically concerned with shepherding dragonmarks to manipulate the Draconic Prophecy, the other dragons of Argonnessen that want to make sure nobody gets ideas above their station, the Inspired rulers of Riedra and the Lords of Dust who want to stir the pot for their own ends, the Undying Court of Aerenal or lesser powers like the returned Dhakaani or the Daugthers of Sora Kel. There are lots of forces out there that wouldn't want the Dragonmarked Houses taking over, just like the Dragonmarked Houses all have rivalries with each other. Sure Sivis might not particularly compete with Deneith, but they'd sure prefer not to be forced into a subordinate position to House Deneith. Finally, unlike the nations that have quite a bit of patriotism backing them up after a literal century of willingness to fight each other, the Dragonmarked Houses don't command a lot of loyalty. The average smith or magewright working for House Cannith is going to be a lot more loyal to Breland or Karrnath or wherever they're from than the guys giving them a certification stamp. Same with the Deneith mercenary army and the Tharashk mercenaries are all brokered by the Daughters of Sora Kel and are far more likely to show loyalty there. Any Dragonmarked house actively trying to take over anything is going to face a lot of pushback, including from its own employees, a lot of its members and all the other houses trying to secure their own angle. A distinct subset of members getting a bonus on a handful of skills and a handful of extra spells added to their spell lists isn't going to overcome this, even without dragons, demons, a divine court of elf mummies or extradimensional dream spirits trying to keep them divided. And the story of the House of Vol shows just how willing to get involved the dragons and elf mummies are.
An interesting idea is that humans have used the mechanical fact that half-human hybrids are a thing and other races only hybridize to humans to absorb other races dragon marks: your half orc's kids with a human will all be human, that's how your human house ends up all dragon marked.
Overall, Eberron is designed to have plot hooks for all sorts of games. Thus they've set it up where this is a a time of instability and change, with lots of different possibilities. They have extended the background to support this, not built up from the background. Still, I think that it is more coherent than the average published game world. ------- Airships are flawed. They are barely beyond the prototype stage. They were also produced specifically to give house Lyrandar an edge. But these flaws are actually great hooks for a game. If you are on an airship, it's a dramatic combat. You need to protect the pilot and the crystal. I usually don't run Eberron in 5e, so at higher levels, there are usually several members of the party who can fly for at least a battle. If the pilot goes, in the original there was a chance for a strong-willed non-Lyrandar to at least maintain control enough to bring it down safely. The idea of an airship that doesn't require a Lyrandar heir is a big McGuffin. You'd have an enemy in a powerful organization. Other houses would publicly denounce you, but secretly want the plans for themselves. --------- Dragonmarks are rare and vary in power. I doubt that the average person with a mark is as strong as a PC with the mark. While it opens up some powerful spells, you still need to be a high level character to access many of them, and they are rare. As you said, it's a wide magic setting, not high magic. In the expansions, they imply that the marks were fewer and simpler early on. Enough to give an advantage, but not enough to take over the world. Likewise, aberrant marks were more common at first. During the war, the dragonmarked houses kept to the Korth edicts to remain (relatively) neutral and sell their services to each side. This protected the houses as noncombatants. In the world after the war, they are surging in power. If you want to play a political game, this is a great starting point because the balance is so precarious. Once again, they have set up the world to provide fun plot hooks to hang a game off of. The nations and nobles have lost a lot of power, but they do have the land and armies that the houses haven't traditionally had. If a house is seen building up forces, they are at risk until they are strong enough to hold them. What's more, many of the citizens identify by their nation, especially after the war. Houses have economic power, but not the sheer numbers at this point. There are other power groups that add players to this poker game. The Aurum is a group based on wealth, no matter the origin. The Church of the Silver Flame is definitely expansionist and has a source of corruption within it. Dragons have been playing a long game of politics and magical prophecy for millennia. The Dreaming Dark. The Emerald Claw. Demon Cults. There are enough pieces on the board that make it hard for one group to unilaterally win. And the dragonmark houses compete against each other. They each have their focuses, but several compete with others. If one house grows too strong, they would worry about this and try to build up their own houses. ------- The fact that we don't have concrete evidence of the gods make religion more interesting to me. In most worlds, the gods are proven. There's no need to make a leap of faith. You just need to choose a side. Being an atheist is provably stupid. What's more, it makes conflict within the church a possibility. In a standard game, if you stray too far from your deity, then you lose your power. But in Eberron, we can have people who interpret the faith very differently and both still have the same "evidence" of having powers. You can have schisms and holy wars. In the real world, we have less evidence of religion than Eberron and we have lots of stories and conflicts within a religion ad between different religions. ------ One of the beauties of Eberron is that you can play so many different styles of game. Political games, trading empires, taming a frontier, exploring lost worlds, surviving an apocalypse, urban noir, psychic spies, monsters among us, and many more.
I think you stumbleled onto one of most important plot points of Eberron, there is no one how could enforce Korth edicts aside from Houses themselves. But they dot work together really wel they compete and rival with each other. Lyrandar created airships to rival lightning rail of Orien. Cannith was strongest house during war, bacause of the all weapon and warforged manufacturing. But now its influence is falling bellow more civilian houses. House Tharask are the fantasy oil barons with all the dragoshards in everything. If houses combined have decided to take over Khorvaire, they could do it. But houses like Jorasco, Medani, Vadalis and Ghallanda knows that in this new word order they would benefit less than other houses, so that why the dragonmarked houses can never agree to something like this. If one of the houses decided to take over nation for it own, al the other houses would intervene, because they cannot allow someone to break the equilibrium of power.
The depth of this setting and the variety of genres you can play there are just awesome, but my favourite bits are the details.. like the way that 13 -- a Baker's dozen -- is prominent throughout his work. It's easily as broad and deep in scope as the Forgotten Realms or Athas. About Magewrights, though.. I had always taken magewrighting to be a team effort, like, say, Millwrighting. While each individual craftsperson does a part of the job, it is the efforts of the team... whether that's a work gang or assembly line or whatever... that make the thing possible that even great wizards can't. Every magewrought item is the product of several crafters' work, not just a single magician. Like how a single pilot can destroy a city with a single bomb, but it takes hundreds of people with hundreds of different specialties to run the generation plant that powers it. My thoughts on the matter, anyway. I appreciate your "how does this plausibly happen?" approach to worldbuilding, and I adore your 'how would this change the world?' examinations on things like common magic items and spells. All I can think of for why the Dragonmarked don't rule openly is that they'd rather not have it be their heads on the block when the people inevitably disagree with the government. Even if the edicts are no longer in effect, they're still good business practice and they've worked all this time, so don't mess with them.
I think this is going to be a long post, (be warned) not because I want to somehow show off with this, but because the Grungeon Master might not have the 3.5 edition books that elaborate A LOT further on all of these points. On the Houses At least these are the ideas I got from the 3.5 edition era books: the Dragonmarked Houses started banding together to form the "house" collectives (remember, each "house" is not only a single family) only after Galifar's ancestor Karrn I the Conqueror. It might have been, that instead of "elevated", as our Grungeon Master here suggests, the members might have been reviled as abominations before Galifar I or Karrn I (remember, the Aberrant marks are destructive and terrifying force, enough so that parents of Sharn scare children with tales of them to this very day). Why is all magical things always ”admired”? Usually far likely reaction is fear which leads to hate. One also needs to consider, that the Houses themselves, while presenting a unified front, are absolutely not a unified entity themselves. House Tharashk tries to cut into the House Deneith mercenary market while Orien and Lyrandar vie for the supremacy of the shipping industry, even though they both have separate ”specialties” in doing that. House Kundarak wields their own guards while Deneith dances around in their inquisitive and bodyguard services, the bodyguard section of which Kundarak would surely want to grab for themselves. The Korth Edicts were as much a limitation to their rivals (each other) which is propably why they agreed to it in the first place. But now the Last War has swept the Kingdom of Galifar to nonexistence. One must note though, that according to the book Dragonmarked, the houses suffered greatly during the war, even the sellsword-selling deneith, not to mention House Cannith (which was based in the now lost nation of Cyre). So if they orchestrated the War, it must have somehow gotten…out of hand. A very good conspiracy for the players to unravel though. Why dragonmarks on these specific races? Well, simply put: because they were the core races during the 3.5 edition of D&D. The Eberron book itself recognized this oddity, but always advocated (As it did with a lot of things) for the Dungeon Master to decide on the solutions to the worlds ”mysteries” tehmselves. Why the dragonmarks only appeared on certain bloodlines of specific specie, for example. It gave some options but refrained from anything concrete. Personally I think the reality on why humans have so many dragonmarks because otherwise nobody would play the ”plain old boring vanilla humans”. On the Ariships The simple matter is that the khyber crystal is housed deep inside the structure of the vessel, and the elemental energy that forms the ring (the ring is entirely composed of the elementals’ energy, not made of any other substance, the support struts are. Targeting this crystal is difficult, as it is absolutely housed in the most secure part of the ship. This makes it no more difficult to target than an engine of an airplane. What comes to the single captain… well usually the captain has a first mate also with a mark of Lyrandar. Perhaps not as skilled as the captain, but more than enough to drive the ship fast out of harms way. As expensive as the airships are, I find it silly to only have one heir to operate it, and nothing suggests they wouldn’t have. Bribing these captains might also be more difficult than expected, since ones that operate such expensive and image-striking vessles like the airships are bound to be most trusted, notable, prized (and well paid) of their house barring the leadership itself. And as for the aspiring sky pirates… what sky pirates? House Lyrandar is the first and only entity possessing these airships, and has not (as of yet) sold them to anyone. Lyrandar has absolutely no challengers in the air to worry about (occacional wyvern notwithstanding, and well..just dont fly to a wyvern territory). Dragons are more problematic…but they rarely leave the continent of Argonnessen. That previous one is technically not true… all the Elemental-bound items and vessels come from the gnomes of Zilargo, and they jealosuly guard the secrets of their making (which is rumored they found from the ruins dotting the continent of Xen’drik). It is possible, that the gnomes of Zilargo and their secret police the Trust maintain some elemental vessels, but anyone digging into this matter has…disappeared. And why would those jolly good, small-sized people be up to something bad anyway huh? On the Worship I actually fundamentally disagree with Grungeon Master here. I argue that every other setting is much more atheistic than Eberron. Why have faith and belief when a god literally can (and have) appreared right next to you when you talk some bad rap about them? What makes clerics different than warlocks at all? They all seem to make deals with an extremely powerful entity. Clerics don’t have faith, they have a sugar daddy, just like a warlock. In Eberron it’s different. You don’t KNOW the gods are real. That is the whole point of faith. The clerics of the same god can have compeltely opposing alignments, and both can still receive cleric spells from their faith. The mere mystery of whether the gods even are real underscores the entire concept of faith. Game mechanically I remember once reading that the creators of Eberron did not want any situation, where the gods are accessible at all. For above mentioned reasons, but also because then, someone would give them statistics, and then players would go and kill them. Sorry for the long post…
I believe the focus on Sharn in the 5e Eberron book is because they felt that that was the most distinct part of Eberron, and since they're likely only doing one hardcover that's what they focused on. I can understand the decision, particularly with the limited release schedule they've been doing, but I miss the wealth of lore from 3e. Airships in Eberron are a new technology, and still kinda rare. At least in older editions, it was possible for a non-heir to try to command the bound elemental in order to control the ship, but a Lyrandar heir could do it without rolling (technically, the binding thing was one item and the command thing was a second). And having single points of failure is a good thing from a narrative point of view: it explains why the ships PCs are on keep crashing in inhospitable places. One of the minor issues with airships is really an issue with the lightning rail, and that's that both charge the same cost per mile. In 3e, this was soft-retconned to where the price in the Eberron Core Book was for luxurious first-class lightning rail transport, and that there were also second-class and steerage tickets available at significantly lower prices. This explains why lightning rail is still the dominant form of transportation. I think Word of Keith is also that the rail lines shown on the maps are the big trunk lines where the cars come and go all the time, but that there are minor lines all over the place that come along maybe once a day or week. The Edicts of Korth remain in force mainly because they also govern relations between the houses themselves, and because most houses believe they're in a pretty cushy position and don't want to rock the boat. The houses are essentially the fantasy version of Shadowrun's megacorps. They already wield a huge amount of economic power, which indirectly gives them political power, and turning that into direct political power would require conquest and that's hugely messy. Galifar is also seen as an ideal to which to aspire, and it's only been two years since the formal end of the war and four years since the armistice following the Mourning. That said, in the 3e material some houses are... not so much violating the Edicts as they are pushing its limits. I recall there being something about Lyrandar pushing the boundaries of the "no land" clause up in Aundair (don't recall the specifics though), and elements in house Deneith are being influenced by the Dreaming Dark to use their military might to put themselves on top. But those are in the "potential plots" column - it's a thing that might happen, and it's left to the DM to explore what the ramifications will be if it does. That's all part of Eberron being frozen at 998 YK - there are lots of instabilities in the setting that can tip over one way or the other if the DM so chooses, but the setting material assumes that that hasn't happened yet. Also, most of the dragonmarked houses don't have a particularly great martial inclination. The obvious exception is Deneith (the merc house), with some others having access to various types of military forces. Cannith *had* the warforged, but were forced to disband their creation facilities. Vadalis has various buffed-up animals (and, in 4e, had a Secret Project going where they were trying to make magebred humans with mixed results). Kundarak has *guards*, but wouldn't be much good at waging war. And Tharashk also has a lot of mercs, but that's more because of their connections in the Shadow Marches and Droaam than because of their mark. Regarding the dominance of humans, this is to some extent a problem with the Ridiculously Ancient History timeline. The intent is that in the aftermath of the Daelkyr War, the formerly dominant goblins (and other inhabitants of Khorvaire, though the goblins and orcs bore the brunt of it) were severely weakened. I've seen references to pre-Daelkyr goblins being more powerful and internally harmonic (the term used was "eusocial", sort of like a bee hive), but that post-Daelkyr goblins having lost that, but that might have been on Keith Baker's blog or something so I don't know how canon that is. This in turn made it easy for the humans to roll in and take over the place. The main problem with this is that there's a 2000 year gap between the Daelkyr war and the human migrations to Khorvaire. I wouldn't say Eberron is *atheistic*, per se. A more appropriate word would be "agnostic". There is definitely divine power in the world, and you get similar gods showing up in different cultures, implying that there's some truth to those gods - either that they actually exist in the panentheistic fashion championed by the various churches (the gods are spiritually present wherever they are relevant but don't manifest, but Arawai still guides the hunter's arrow and Onatar the blacksmith's hammer), or at least that they form archetypes that make it easier to channel faith/divine magic. I personally love this: it removes the focus from plots created by actual gods and puts it on the religions formed by human(oid) activities, which I find much more interesting.
You know, the airships being able to be piloted by *only* a member of house Lyrandar is a very good way for the house Lyrandar to maintain *monopoly on air travel.* You're surprised that a privileged class would seek to perpetuate their privileged postion, really?
I hope we get a follow up to address the people in the comment sections who know the lore. Also specific world building aspects of the setting that are worth considering
I’d definitely be interested in a Mage Wright class/subclass! Still need to get Baker’s other Eberron books on DMs guild. One of my favorite settings, glad you took a look at it! Take care!
The dragon marked houses big problem was that they kept wanting to kill each other - The houses had their own game of thrones thing going on that kept them from forming a unified group, and them being divided meant they could be levered against each other.
I'm not too familiar with the setting but it sounds like the dragonmarked houses are more akin to Cyberpunk Megacorps than they are to anything in a classical DnD setting. Maybe in the past the individual dragonmarked people had their own holdings and fought amongst their own dragonmark for dominance, ala any old system of heroes and villains battling it out. Then with the stability of the old empire they became monopolies and claimed that every member of a dragon mark as their own by right. With the war, they are now free to conquer and claim territory but have a tradition of ruling from the shadows, so they only exhibit complete dominance in some areas of limited stability.
You pretty much nailed it. The dragonmarked houses are supposed to be a thing a DM can use in their campaign as an antagonist. House Phiarlan's network of spies and assassins are secretly controlling every kingdom and _YOU_ THE PLAYER have to stop them.
There is a point to be raised on how human psychology informs religion, and it relates directly to the atheism of Eberron. If there was exactly one “divinely marked” family, then you get a very strong religion on the order of Exodus 28, where you have the sons of the brother of one man being “marked” with a literal gold plate on their foreheads saying “holy to the Lord”, and Royal-looking scarlet and purple and gold threads to make their garments, and that the people of their nation are required to offer all their sacrifices to these men, or else be killed if they offer the sacrifices to anyone else. If there are multiple “divinely marked” families, then suddenly the people on the outside might be thinking “oh, maybe I shouldn’t cozy up too much to this family lest that other family get jealous or lest the family I chose might fall out of favor or lose a battle.” Then, when those families are never seeking to be offered sacrifices, the gradual trend in society would be to just become as agnostic as a Jewish comedian explaining that her parents led her to believe that Santa was real, but that Santa just never comes to their house because they are Jewish. Or as agnostic as the statement “all roads lead to heaven”, where suddenly no one really cares about heaven, and more of a focus turns towards making money.
Not too keen on a class or subclass, but I think Magewright as a 5.2-style Background/Origin Feat for Eberron would be great. A Feat that allows characters to choose a spell from a curated list to cast as a ritual. This curated list could be added to by a DM to accommodate spells released in later books. Making Magewright a Feat also keeps it in the grasp of NPCs without PC class levels, which is rather important IMO.
@@ryanroyce A feat would def. be nice :D for when you don't want to multiclass into a magic class. And for my DM style: I don't really care if the spells are new.... i'll make it work somehow. And my NPCs have rarely a class at all... they just do stuff
Eberron is definitely up there among my favorite official settings. So much so that my own homebrew world is very similar in concept to Eberron, only with more of a gaslight punk aesthetic than a steampunk one.
These are all valid points, however I do recall that it's either canon or implied that the church of the silver flame worshippers do become part of the silver flame as sort of a gestalt soul afterlife, rather than the standard eberron afterlife. Also I do think it is mostly canon in expanded material that yes the dragonmarked houses do have a sort of keep each other in check/crab in a bucket mentality. But this is a great video about my personal fave canon setting, I seriously wish it would overtake faerune as the face of DND as there's so much interesting about it
I know this is just going to vanish into the ether of comments, but your exploration has been exciting to me because it reminded me of something even older, called TippyVerse, which was an exploration of this in 3.5 that resulted in barrier cities with huge magical wastelands between them.
I do think I still prefer the ideas you have, but Eberron is also VERY interesting. I'm more of a fan of making my own settings so your concepts are much easier to place into my own world.
I've never read the Eberron Source/Campaign books, but have read some stuff about it. Anyhow, a homebrewed way to explain why the Dragon Marked Houses haven't officially taken over land/rulership I thought of just now listening to this video. What if the marks originated from actual Dragons, each House was chosen by a powerful Ancient Dragon (think Warlock patrony). Perhaps those Dragons or at least descendants of those Dragons still exist and specifically are watching those Houses. The dragons perhaps even created the Accords magically binding the people.
That would fit with a thing I vaguely remember from Eberron; half dragons are illegal. Something like the last user of the Dragonmark of Death was elf/green dragon, and mixing true dragon blood with a dragon mark is extremely bad for Reasons. I'll have to look that up.
@@SymbioteMullet Half-dragons aren't a problem per se. The thing with Vol was that she was a half-dragon with a very powerful dragonmark, and that made the Chamber (the dragon organization most focused on the Prophecy) take notice and destroy the house with extreme prejudice.
Half dragons like other said are not banned, per se just dragons do see them as abominations. The reason the dragonmark house of death was destroyed was they were basically doing eugenitics to strengthen their dragonmarks, this all crystalized with Vol with the addition of dragon as a parent, Vol dragonmark swelled in power to that of the strong artifacts in Eberron an Eldritch Machine. The Elves and dragons basically teamed up out of fear the house of death would conquer the world.
@@saffron97 Ok, interesting. So my little quick idea without knowing much from the source books, just came up with it while watching this video has some Canonical merit. Cool
Several people have given thoughts on dragon marked houses and ruling the world, but they have forgotten the most important thing about dragon marks: They are parts of the draconic prophecy playing out on humans. Dragon marks appear throughout the world, not just on people. And the dragons and demons are in a war to control the prophecy. This prophecy is playing out in the actions and fates of the dragon marked people, who become pawns of the dragons and demons. And the demons and dragons are so subtle and long acting in their actions that most people don't know what is going on or that such a battle is even happening. Long story short (too late) dragons and demons only want their own chosen dragon marked people to achieve certain things and oppose the ones the other team wants to achieve them. It is hard to be the king when two ultra powerful forces consider you pawns.
Eberron is deeply focused on the contemporary events at the default starting date for the setting and as such it doesn't make most of its notable features ancient, on the contrary Church of the Silver Flame, Dragonmarked Houses and airships are very recent compared to typical millenia old staples of D&D worldbuilding. That's a feature, not a bug.
While it hasn't really been touched on a lot in this video, one thing I really like about Eberron is its cosmology. It's far less bloated than the Great Wheel cosmology, and the planes themselves always play a more direct role in how the world works through the manifest zones. It's like having the Outlands gate-towns from Planescape, but actually on the Material Plane. Speaking of Planescape, given that you've mentioned your disapproval of the Blood War a few times, I wouldn't mind a deep dive video on why the Blood War doesn't work as a concept lol.
I would think that the airships described could be one *model* of airship, but in a magical setting, other _types_ of airship should exist as well, and compete with them. They might not have as good performance, but should work, just by combining various spells and physics effects.
I think the magewrights were a more interesting concept in 3.5 when Eberron came to light. Specifically that they were mundane artificers, or pre-artificers. In effect they were just people using tools to preform magic (in the form of Schema). As I bailed from D&D pre fifth Ed i can't say how they'd work at current. For the Dragonmarked houses, they already do run the world. They don't own land, but land is granted to them by kingdoms to get favor. They don't have armies, but you'd be hard pressed to run an army without House Jorasco healing mercenaries, Gallanda summoning provisions, or Cannith providing weapons. These houses simply have to threaten to abstain contracts and any country would be at a massive disadvantage. They don't want supplant the rulers as they are capitalists'. Their power comes from paying customers and wielding influence based on who cant afford to be without their assistance. I will airships were a bit of a wash, but I believe that was due to them basically being prototype in nature (a joint venture between Zilargo and Lyrandar). Keep in mind this is the same magitech that runs the Lightning rail so, the same vulnerabilities you see in the airships, the Lightning rail also has. Great video! Glad people convinced you to take a look at Eberron. It is my favorite setting, even if Baker himself never saw the world lasting another 50 years before dead-gray misting itself into oblivion.
The three Dragons that created the Eberron setting probably set things up that prevented the Gods from getting too powerful for the Dragons who created the setting to deal with. Among other things, it was explicitly stated that they chose a spot so distant from the normal going-ons of other major power's normal realms of operations to create their world at. So the Eberron gods (and demons) themselves may in fact be the creation of the Three Dragons given the location's distance from the other standard astral planes.
So there’s some misunderstanding of the core assumptions of the setting. The overwhelming majority of people will never rise above 5th level. There are a handful of epic threats in the world, but they are largely removed, living on other continents, so the primary play continent of khorvaire is newbs. The Silverflame and Blood of Vol’s focus less of worship are a Rakshasa bound by iirc a particularly pure soul and a celestial and a Lich respectively, both speak directly to followers. The dragonmarks were not well understood when they manifested. “Bob and his family sure are good at carpentry must be that birthmark they all have” isn’t a reasonable leap of logic. More likely the familial affinity for crafting led to magical study which they were slightly more proficient at until centuries of breeding, experimentation, and codification resulted in what we see in the species block. They continue to abide the edicts because they’re post WW2. They know as soon as one house stops abiding them it will be another war and their numbers are already being rebuilt after the last. Also, the great dragons made their displeasure known when the Mark of Death was destroyed bc it messed up the Draconic prophecy, so abiding the edicts and avoiding that war keeps the dragons from stepping in more forcefully to preserve the remaining elements of the prophecy.
I dont entirely see the issue with gods and feith as you described it here. I think its all a mater of teast. Dnd gods are more like what we see in greek and norse myths, constantly present in the setting and constantly medling in mortal afears. In Eberon, they seam to be far more distant and unknowable, more higher inhuman forces of nature. Its less a mater that the seting is more "atheist" and more that the devine and any specifecs about it is ⁰ much less demonstrable and aperent then in Dnd. People can curtainly belive what they all kinds of things about them, but any curtainty about there exact nature and intentions is...well....all a mater a feith😅
I've always perceived the setting amidst a Cold War of their own attempting to avoid magically mutual assured destruction. So, that explains to me why the houses don't just conquer everything.
Hey, a little off topic but in a game that Im DM'ing for the players are currently guarding a merchant ship with Bags of Holding filled with the merchandise being the main cargo. I've come up with (what I believe to be) a good response and adaption to how the world interacts with these items, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on how magical interdimensional storage would affect trade, how those engaged in trade would try to minimize losses of their Bags, and other related topics that could pop up like you did with Teleportation Circles.
I haven't read the Eberron 5e rules, but it sounds like they dramatically increased the power of dragonmarks. In 3.5 it took 3 feats to get a greater dragonmark, and they provided no intuition dice or other abilities, just a 1/day spell. In game terms the magic provided by dragonmarks was negligible compared to the magic spellcasters received from their class levels. Based on those rules, I always assumed that, like any powerful caste, the true power of the dragonmarked houses is inherited social privilege. The houses long ago parlayed their minor advantages to become an alternate aristocracy, one based on commercial interest rather than land ownership or religious authority. It's the ongoing exercise and enforcement of that privilege which keeps them in power. Eberron's magical vehicles require dragonmarks to control them because that's the way the houses designed them.
In 3e, dragonmarks are feats that come in chains. But a 5e feat is (a) a much bigger deal than in 3e, and (b) usually not available at level 1. So what they did was to turn the dragonmarks into subraces - so you have lightfoot halflings, stoutheart halflings, Jorasco halflings, and Ghallanda halflings. Of course, since different races have the power budget split differently between main and sub races, that leads to some imbalances for the marks as well. In addition, it is suggested that the power of greater marks can be handled as part of your class - basically, a cleric might be getting their powers from their Mark of Healing instead of a particular deity.
1. Airships were first invented as weapons of war to facilitate the movement of troops and goods in a way not dependent on overland supply lines (and as siege engines, per Eye of the Wolf). The requirement of a dragonmarked pilot ensured Lyrandar's continued payout by the nations. That they now, in peacetime, are being retrofitted as a luxury means of travel is a natural evolution of the technology-- one not considered in this video. 2. Why would the Houses need to own land? Own titles? Own armies? They own the economy. They are analogous to corporate power. The Edicts are obsolete and ineffective, but not for the reasons you state. They assume a set of rules that the Houses are no longer playing by. The power of the Marks themselves, therefore, are relatively inconsequential compared to what millions of gold pieces in the bank can buy you. 3. You're asking the wrong questions about Dragonmarks. The Marks are manifestations of the Draconic Prophecy which had previously only been seen in natural phenomena like coral reefs. They only appeared on the intelligent species at the moment of human arrival on Khorvaire. Why? The introduction of the Marks is as much a change to the status quo as the newly arrived humans. What do these massive tidal shifts mean? The question isn't "Why is lightning striking the same spot twenty times?" in War of the Worlds -- not really it's "What the hell is happening?" 4. The world has just spent a century at war. Hundreds of millions have died. If ever the gods had mercy or an interest in the welfare of their followers, surely they would have made themselves manifest. A distant, deistic presence is a natural expression of a world still broken by war of that magnitude.
I think the whole part about the houses not claiming land and raising an army can be justified by the idea of "that balance of power works, and threatening has lead to disaster" and also probably some mix of "if we do it, everyone will dog pile on us and wipe us out, old testament style." Basically the backlash of trying is not worth the risk
Yeah, I see this as an intentional move by the Dragonmarked Houses - it is far better to rule behind the scenes with wealth, than to assume political power and put yourself out there to be dragged down by the Five Nations, assisted by the other houses. Not to mention, everyone is still unsure of the cause of the Mourning, so there is a realistic fear of sticking ones’ head far enough out to tempt fate. However, every bit of the themes expounded on make FANTASTIC plot hooks for an Everton campaign, and this is intentional, with as others have mentioned the static year date meaning that any of these paths are possible.
I'm not familiar with Eberron, but the problems with the airships seem simple enough to address: carry backup Khyber dragonshards and backup crewmen (especially from a rival house who are just itching to get a chance to prove themselves more reliable). The problem-as-written almost sounds like an excuse for adventures, just like in Star Trek. If the USS Enterprise had carried backup dilithium crystals, a quarter of the episodes would have been over in two minutes.
Openly taking sides would severely hurt their profits and give reason for other countries to create local factions of the Dragonmarked houses from disaffected house members that are loyal to those countries. They already have monopolies whose political neutral monopoly status are more or less respected by the other countries. Becoming sovereign powers in and of themselves almost guarantees that they will lose both their monopoly status and their neutral organization status.
I'm not overly familiar with the setting but perhaps the reason the Dragonmarked Houses haven't taken over is that it would involve a war they would all get dragged into. Possibly the current balance of power exists because none of the houses want to get into a position where they're a threat to the others
The airships: dragonmarked pilots are the only ones who can reliably pilot the airship. Anyone can _try_. What you risk when you try to pilot the airship is that the elemental takes control of the airship OR that it escapes. If it takes control it might go somewhere you don't want to, or possibly try to crash it to break free. If it breaks free then your airship falls. It is indeed a huge point of weakness of the airship that so few can pilot it, and that you can't just learn it. This is not a deliberate design decision though, nobody knows how to make an airship that anyone can pilot. This is why airships are nearly impossible to hijack, pointless to steal, and never worth taking into a combat scenario. Yes, a skypirate can attack it, but then again, how? Won't they need a flying mount to do so in the first place? You have to be a VERY successful pirate to have a flying mount. Or you have to be a rogue house lyrandar member with your own ship. That itself is IMO not a weakness in the setting, but an excellent starting point for a campaign!
It's worth pointing out that Dragonmarks used to be much less powerful. Eberron wasn't made for 5e. It was updated to it. Low level dragonmarks might get 1 centripetal or first level spell/day. And not unlimited casting of that centripetal. One use. Dnd 5e is a lot higher magic at the low end than earlier editions, even if the top end of magic has been nerved.
The train *is* faster than the airship. However, the airship is only eight years old, the train is much older. However the train network has a big hole called the mournlands. I'll also note that airships going into the mournlands is a very bad idea. It's rather part of the lore that the marks came to families who already did what they do, the families of house cannith where smiths and tinkers, not rulers. The family of vol where necromancers long before they got the mark of death. But ah, that family did seek some power and look where that got them. It's also to note that the houses got major losses when a entire nation turned into chernobyl. Cannith for example lost their leadership and is now three rival factions gunning for the baron position. Meta talk here. the marks are given to the 3.5 core races, to make them more intresting and enticing as more suplements and splats came out and people played more the power creep. Ergo orcs, gobbos etc didn't get a mark. (also half-orcs in 3.5 are so bad that finding got shared) With regards to the gods, that's the point. Beliving in the gods is a question of faith rather than fact. The nature of the gods is a ongoing theological debate rather than a chat with one of them, and also allows for splinter chruches of the faith. Diffrent regions having diffrent interpitations of the same gods, like in our world.
I'd like to share two of my additions to Eberron that correlate to some of your thoughts: dragonmarks and religion. 1. I have a goblin antagonist that feels the Dhakaani Empire, aka the goblinoids, were cheated out of dragonmarks when their empire declined and the humans (including halflings) rose into power. This has led to uncovering rumors/knowledge that dragonmarks came from aberrant marks lineages that were bred, just like desirable genetic traits. So, this goblin is looking for ways to get goblinoids aberrant marks, either by finding existing marked goblinoids, kidnapping members of dragonmark houses and attempting to steal their marks, and manipulating and/or uncovering the secrets of the draconic prophecy to gain the power to imbue others with the marks. 2. My view of Eberron's divine fits into a much larger aspect of how I tie everything together. I link all my worlds and settings together through the planes and space. I still use most of 2nd edition (or its original) flavor for all the settings. World settings are within spheres that float in the phlagiston. Some spheres are farther away or harder to get into. When it comes to the planes, I consider them to be all the same planes in all the settings, even if they have different names. Most of the planes are infinite, so even though the planes embody some single aspect, there still will be differences as you travel. So, when it comes to divine beings, I consider Eberron to be connected to areas of the planes that are so far away from the stereotypical deity that divine power and influence act differently. I act as though there are reasons why settings have certain deities, why some deities can be found in multiple settings, and why other settings have something different (like Eberron and Dark Sun). Planar beings have more knowledge about this, but they don't give it much thought as other divine influences are so far removed from their activities. Eberron mortals have different reasons for exploring the planes than those in other settings. In contrast to a setting like the Forgottten Realms, where mortals can meet (even try and fight, kill, or become gods) so they travel the planes to encounter these deities, Eberron planar travelers are likely looking for ways to affect how their world works by getting power through manifest zones. They want to bring whatever makes that plane special into the material plane. This is why the religions of Eberron are so different, even when groups worship the same 'deity.' An Eberron mortal might not realize that if they walked in one direction in Shavarath for a thousand years, they would end up in a portion of the Abyss that connects to Oerth, the Greyhawk world. I do have methods for faster crossovers, though, like the Domains of Dread and Sigil, if the players want to be able to mix settings. Just my two cents (or one dime).
what you mentioned at the beggining of thinking eberron is this sprawling courosant style city with flying coaches and stuff, that's actually Ravnica. i recommend reading that one too
Great video. Very good point on the dragon mark supremacy. All kings and Lords justify their social class by their magic "blue blood". Never got interested by eberon, might check it out later, just for scheming Gnomes
The question of the Dragonmark family not (already) ruling Khorvair is based on Five factor: 1) Internal Struggle: many houses are internally fractured, like Cannith are ruled by three different people in different region and with different objective, so before they can star and external war many are trying to block an internal division as appened th the House of Shadows. 2) External Struggles: The Houses compete with each other and many aren't actually in shapes to support a war, for example Orien who struggles to recover from the damages suffered during the war. There are also the competition with the Universities and various organizations trying to interfere. 3) Economy: after long year the houses have preferred to fight on the market than on the battlefield for economic reasons. Only a small number (Cannith, Thuranni, Deneith, Jorasco, Vadalis) of them would consider an open war between the Houses of Houses and Nations to be economically positive, while many more would suffer greatly (Orien, Medani, Ghallanda, Kundarak, Tharashk). Some other would fight for other reasons (Sivis don't gain anything from a total war but would fiercely try to protect Zilargo; Lyrandar could try to create a Khoravar/Halfelf Nation and push away other species while meddling with dark forces; Phiarlan seems more interested in elf affair than dominating Khorvaire), so the chance that the house could unite against the nations is low, they have more power trying to influence the nations. 4) Dragons, Mark of Death and Aberrant Mark: The fall of the House Vol, the Mark of Death, brought by an alliance of Dragons and Elves, and the fall of House Tarkanan, th Aberrant Mark, brought by an alligiance of the other house is a clear indication of what could happen if the houses don't plan their fight. 5) House Phiarlan were the first house and simply interested in keeping the history for their tradition they adhere to the elven culture where magic is more common, than came Sivis, and gnome are small but cunning. They know that an open war against Orcs, Humans and Elves they would probably loses, so they started to manipolate the other houses in something less treatening, pushing them to stand united against common enemy while not pose a treat to the different kingdom. Even a small kingdom like Thrane has more soldier than the largest Houses. House Vol was destroyed by dragons and elves. Deneith came third and were a noble clan of fighter under Karrn and they almost created an empire until famine stiked them down and Karrn saved them so they pladget to him and later to Galifar. Cannith were the fourth to rose and there were already many kingdom while not so many dragonmarked people, so they simply started as artisan but become able to create their jurisdiction, but they are artisan, not fighter, so they don't have an army. So, in the story, some of them tried to rule, but failed
I'd be interested in your thoughts on game settings such as Starfinder or Shadowrun. Setting where the logical steps of magic and society have had time to grow beyond the typical medievalist Dnd time period. Do they feel just like sci fi fantasy with magic slapped on or do you see markers of magic and society growing in parallel into an advanced setting reasonably?
Magewright as a background: you get arcana and sleight of hand, tinkers' tools and one other artisan's tool of choice, and your background feature is the ritual caster (wizard) feat.
Wondering if those edicts had some sort of magical reinforcement... I've barely read any Eberron myself tbh lol EDIT: 3.5 had a few ways to make magically reinforced contracts and Eberron was started in it so... Another edit: Magewright was apparently made in 3.5 but the class kinda sucked (they were basically wizards w/o books who had an extremely limited number of spells known who could prepare their spells from that limited spells known list... which 3.5 used full vancian fire-and-forget magic slots so if you wanted two Sleeps on a given day you had to prepare two Sleeps)
Magewright class sounds like something that works for a sudo-spellcaster class like pf2’s Kineticist. You pick one or two spell then add combate and utility abilities as you level. It’s like building a character around one cantrip and modify it like the old metamagic system. May only know shocking Grasp but so good at it you can punch like a monk and force lightning.
Eberon was written specifically for 3.5 edition which had more magic crafting by the player characters. The 2024 books seem to be shifting more towards that direction again. So the mage write should be closer to be a playable option.
Personally I love Eberron. However my biggest issue with the setting is the law of succession Galifar used. Basically the kingdom was divided into five regions. During the rule of a king each region would be administered by one of his sons. After the death of the king the oldest son would inherit the throne while the others would continue their job as governors until the sons of the new king got old enough. I've always thought it is an extremely disfunctional system, it does the opposite you want to do in a similar situation. You don't want potential rivals to have a powerbase to claim the crown. With a similar law succession wars should have been the norm, not the exceptional event which was the Last War.
In my opinion, religion is one of my favourite features of Eberron. The gods can’t or won’t physically manifest or directly answer prayers that are meant to commune with them. Because of this, many doubt the gods’ actual existence, and this is purposely left ambiguous for the DM to decide if they do exist or not. And the idea of gods with clerics not being real isn’t immediately seen as ludicrous. There is genuine reason to believe that they aren’t real, especially with the Blood of Vol, a religion denying the existence of all gods, having divine magic. Throughout history, there are figures who may have been divine servants or inspiration for religions. For example, there were several dragons in the earliest days that resemble the gods. Were they the gods manifested? Did they ascend to godhood? Were they simply champions of the gods, used to represent their patrons or conflated with them? Or did they merely inspire the tales of the gods, being confused for any of the above? Any of these could be true and it’s the DM’s choice, if the DM even wants to make a decision. Also, it makes sense for a royal line to raise one religion above the others as the state religion and claim the gods as patrons, rather than being claimed by the gods, as justification for rulership. And in a world where religion is more agnostic, it makes sense for other religions to spring up that aren’t focused on gods. The elves of Aerenal and Valenar practice different forms of ancestor worship to grant their ancestors immortality. You have the Silver Flame being a divine force, rather than a conscious divine entity that can directly interact with worshippers. And you have the Path of Light and the Blood of Vol as religions based on philosophies rather than divinities. And basically every religion has splinter groups. Some people, mainly in Droaam, worship the Dark Six, focusing on positive aspects rather than depicting them as simple evil gods. There are “Three-Faced Cults” that count the Dark Six as part of the main pantheon, as if there’s no distinction between them. You have a religious-nationalist terrorist group in the Order of the Emerald Claw, made up of Blood of Vol seekers. You have internal controversy in the Path of Light on pacifism. And the Cults of the Dragon Below are a blanket term for wildly varying cults that worship fiends and aberrations. Overall, I feel that ambiguity other the gods’ existence allows Eberron to have the most interesting and realistic interpretations of religion in official D&D lore.
Sounds like the Grungeon Master has come up with intriguing mysteries to solve in an Eberron campaign. ;) Step 1. Find the issues. Step 2. Make plot gold in explaining them.
The goblinoids would have slaughtered the humans if they hadn't just finished a war with the Daelkyr. A lot of goblinoids went crazy (by goblinoid standards) and the rest fled to underground super-bunkers. As the campaign begins, these alien goblinoids are coming back.
Airships feel like an experimental but very luxurious and fanciful way of travel in eberron, low practicality at þeir current stage but *all* of þe allure. Like luxury vehicles in real life (except wiþ a few actual good uses.)
As far as the dragon mark houses controlling nations Until the end of the last war, there was no need for a grand pooba for any one house A wise emperor would have divided houses into regional families With each head of family being a first among equals in inter house politics So even as the empire fell Until one family rises into dominance in one house
I think the houses not seeking to become ‘sovereign’ has more to do with practicality than not. If you’ve got a monopoly on an industry, you’re set for generations. If you become a sovereign, the masses consider you responsible for them. They already run the world in a separate and divided way between themselves because they don’t need the burdens of sovereignty.
The thing about the half-orc and half-elf dragonmarks is a little more complicated and would actually conflict pretty heavily with the "human supremacy movement" idea. Half-elves in eberron aren't the same as they might be in the forgotten realms due to the fact that when elves and humans mate in this world, the end result is almost always another human or elf. Though half&elves originally came from human-elf unions, half-elves are now their own true-breeding (I hate that term) race called the Khoravar (since they are actually native to Khorvaire) and do not associate themselves with either of the other races. The half-orcs and the mark of finding on the other hand are seen in their culture as the manifestation of the good that has come from humans and orcs living together.
I would worldbuild a clandestine organization that is specifically dedicated to keeping the ultra-powerful dragonmarked families from becoming despotic. The senior members of the dragonmarked families are aware of it, maybe even a part of it in order to keep the other families from gaining an advantage.
Something similar already exists: it is the Aurum, a group of rich and powerful non-dragonmarked people who want to replace and hurt dragonmarked houses. They resemble a masonry group.
It doesn't matter if the Houses can take over or not. The people of the 5 nations, and the rest of them, too, would never give consent to their rule. Plus, Dragonmarks don't give that many combat bonuses.
Theres a third-party Investigator class that gets ritual spellcasting only, whoch might be a way to make a magewright? But thats more of a monster hunter, with combat abilities and quick ritual casting instead of fundamental spellcraft.
How could you not balance a Magewright? It's only cantrips and ritual spells should be easy to do honestly even as a rougue subclass, although I think it works better as it's own thing Or a series of feats anybody can take
I think the main thing is they used to be an npc class, they are more focused on crafting and their profession than being an adventurer. Through the magewright background in the newest Keith Baker Eberron book (giving magic initiate wizard) and some reflavoring of class abilities you could easily have a magewright adventurer, though most magewrights wouldn't be. Part of their specialty is also using magic as rituals that normally can't be, which could be a fun though also sometimes more difficult to balance feature (from attempts I've seen at similar abilities).
I don't know about Eberron in 5e, since it was created for 3.5. In 3.5, I don't think you needed a Lyrandar heir with a Dragonmark to control the elemental, it just made it easier. I doubt every pirate with an airship has a Lyrandar heir.
Okay but like Planes have 2 pilots if you take those out the plane is fuckt, they are also higly specialised and well trained. So the same things aply pritty much as do to the airpanes
@@TheZenBullet if we are talking about the modern aviation industry, most commercial planes have multiple engines, specific areas just for pilots, and multiple capable pilots on each flight to alleviate these exact issues. Being stranded in the air is also far worse than being stranded on the ground. Also, how is any of this clickbait? It's a discussion of some problems I personally found with the way the setting is presented in official materials.
It’s extremely weird that you think the existence of a privileged group trying to maintain their privilege is bad world building. I don’t know if this “super utilitarian” thing you do is a bit but it’s extremely tiresome
@@Draeckon No, I watched the video. He did say he likes it overall. But he agrees it’s more boring than the surrounding world. There is so much more interesting stuff in Eberron but they devoted an entire chapter to it.
I agree. Sharn had some interesting points, but it's just another huge city. There are many more interesting and unique parts of the world. I've run campaigns in Eberron and my players never visited Sharn and never expressed an interest in doing so.
Eberron is the single dumbest d&d setting that I could have ever imagined. It was specifically created for a contest by a single person, which is already a bad start. They have an entirely separate planar network and no guarantee of the existence of the divine (even though they have documented encounters with demons, devils and all sorts of other nasties), so we’re 2/2 for a complete and retarded departure from the unified spelljammer setting with absolutely nothing going for it except no consequences for abusing high-level magic and arbitrary “dragon marks”, whatever that means. What pisses me off the most is the warforged, it’s playing a pseudo-construct with absolutely none of the benefits of playing a construct. The only good thing about the setting was the invention of the artificer class, which is way too complicated to play for most tables unless your DM lets you turn it into a pseudo-gunslinger instead of what it actually is.
-high level magic is extremely rare in Eberron and if you wield it too casually you can get the attention of an entire nation of dragons. The last time that happened those dragons exterminated the giants. -the lack of divine adds complexity to religious institutions. In Eberron a cleric can't ask his God what they think is the right choice. This leads to different sects and visions inside the same religions. - dragon marks are called like that because they are considered a blessing from the Dragons which created the world and because they are part of the draconic prophecy.
Oh damn why did you read Eberron rising from the last war? It’s a complete pile of trash. You need to read the 3rd and 4th edition books. 5th edition worlds from WoTC are complete trash. We played a 9 year game in Eberron across 3rd and 4th edition and it was great. Don’t waste my time with trash talking stuff everyone already knows in garbage. Go to the actual Baler source.
not an eberron expert here thus purely speculative, but 10:02 could have several explanations, first that emperor could have wielded great magical power similar to the houses and if that's the case there might be some curse affecting the houses' bloodlines which acts like a potentially deadly contract penalty if they'd break the contract/oath and as they are considered neutral parties they can basically come and go everywhere, mediate/advise in politics everywhere, etc. without drawing the ire of the populations, which makes them more powerful than most rulers, thus negating a possible motivation for breaking the contract magic.
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One of things you should keep in mind is Eberron is specifically stuck at 998 YK -- when you're generally expected to begin your own campaign. This is important because the notion that the Dragonmarked Houses are on a path to conquer Khorvaire is definitely a persistent idea surrounding them in the novels, but it's still just a possibility that's on the horizon at this point.
The Houses narratively are pretty similar in concept to those dystopian corporate giants found in cyberpunk settings. They're also shown doing all manner of shady conspiracy things on the side, ala the X-Files.
My thoughts exactly! Why already have the Dragonmarked Houses CONQUER the world, when you can make them TRY to conquer it and involve the players in the process?
There is also a couple of questions around the representation of history prior 2 the last war.
.....
It's said there was a 1000 years of peace under the great nation of galifie.
What exactly happened that the ruling dynasty forced the dragon marked to sign that agreement?
What kind of rebellions happened during that time that were forcibly suppressed?
Are there lost marks?
Was the kingship of Galifar descended from a dragon market that then died out or were assassinated?
Did Galifar send out expeditions like the empire of China did during its great golden ages...
Could they return?
@gmanbo there's atleast 1 lost mark and that's the mark of death
@gmanbo the point is that the Korth Edict wasn't that bad for the houses. Sure they got limitations but they also got recognition, a lot of autonomy and basically a recognized monopoly over their respective trades. It was an exchange: the houses accepted the rule of Galifar and promised to not interfere with the politics while the kingdom closed an eye over their economic activities.
Galifar was also successful in uniting the continent because he gained the support of the houses. The houses basically betted on him.
1. Part of the point of the airships being unreliable is that they're a new technology that came about in recent history, intended to compete with the Orien-dominated market of travel.
2. You could argue that the dragonmarked houses already do rule the world, they just don't need armies to enforce their rule the same way that the rulers of the Five Nations do. It's also important to note that people with dragonmarks make up a very small minority of the overall population. There are, however, vast swaths of history in the setting that were left blank so you could easily fill in a rebellion or a house attempting to establish their own nation. Lyrandar is certainly actively doing that in Valenar.
3. There is a notable human-centric cult in the Pure Flame, who are Silver Flame extremists, though they tend to be more anti-monster than anything else.
4. The gods being vague is part of what I love about the setting. There's room for the DM to decide what's true, what's mythologized, or what they can leave a mystery for their campaign.
5. The magewright appears as a background in Quickstone: Frontiers of Eberron. It's basically an artisan with the Magic Initiate feat.
There's plenty of resources online for further reading, Keith Baker's blog is full of articles he's written about the setting over the years. However, there's also lots of room to fill in your own answers as well.
I'd also recommend reading Exploring Eberron and Chronicles of Eberron if you haven't already. They expand on Eberron's planes, the cultures in the seas, and various other areas that haven't been touched on in the WotC published books.
All of thise, and dido on Keith Baker's blog, something I somehow forgot to mention despite having it as something to check daily.
Number 1: right? the Hindenburg also had one really big point of failure
heck we've been flying planes for over a hundred years and they still fall out of the sky on occasion
I have a bit of a problem with gods being vague when devils and angels are obviously real.
@starshade7826 the reality of celestials and fiends only make sense if the gods are remote and need to act through these proxies. If a God can stride into town what need would they have of angels or demons?
Your discussion of disabling the flight crew of an airship makes me want to run an Eberron adaption of Airplane! (1980). A parody of a parody.
Imagining all of the autopilot scenes with a poorly made simulacrum of the pilot
Surely you can't be serious!
@@tomkerruish2982 I am serious. And don't call me Zh'rley.
Yeah I kept waiting for the criticism of the worldbuilding around the airships. All I heard were plot hooks and great ways to engage players on offense or defense.
@@tomkerruish2982
Yes, I am - and don’t call me Shirley!
I apologize in advance, but Eberron is one of my "special interests" and this video full activated me. I enjoyed the entire video, some stuff I disagree on or have other information, or even just my own perspective. And sometimes I've lost track of which is which. But I would absolutely LOVE to see more videos on Eberron, because there is honestly SO MUCH lore! So many interlocking pieces moving all at the same time. Riedra is a beautiful nightmare, the Lords of Dust are a FASCINATING take on "Supreme Evils", and the FEEL of the setting is just so rich.
Like, you mentioned a couple times the Cold War aspects of it all, and you are not wrong! The Mourning and the resulting tenuous peace are very much in the image of Hiroshima and the following tense conflict. But it also draws a lot from the Interwar period, BETWEEN WW1 and WW2, with a lot of its pulpy adventure setups looking like Indiana Jones and the Mummy. Or even Casablanca. But it also manages to braid in the sort of "Around the World in 80 Days" and other Jules Verne style trappings when it wants to. I've been quite keen on the Lhazaar Principalities lately, and have a whole 3-4 yr campaign that's been set JUST in Sharn outside of a handful of excursions.
But on to some of the topics in the video:
Airships: Your points are all correct, but part of the idea is that... these are all just the Hindenburg waiting to happen. They are just prevalent enough that they aren't SUPER unique and rare beyond any public utility, but they are still special. Most would still have an understudy pilot as well as guards that could handle low/mid tier hijackers. But they idea that they are a point of vulnerability and a sign of hubris is 100% part of the idea. If an airship shows up in a printed adventure, there is, like, a 50/50 chance of crashing.
Dragonmarked Houses: One of the ideas that gets explored in some of the extended 3rd party books Keith Baker has made for 5E as well as earlier stuff back in 3rd and 4th Ed is that the Houses are in working from the ideology of that classic Lex Luthor line: "Do you know how much power I would have to give up to be President?" In many ways they ARE running the show, but they are supposed to be more representative of Corporate power. They already lie, cheat, and steal all over Khorvaire, breaking the Korth Edicts in a bunch of different ways where they are "technical" legal (the best kind of legal). And so they preserve the Edicts because they also offer protections TO the Houses, which they are quick to bring up any time the nobility starts thinking they aren't in the capitalist suicide pact, too.
And the "War of the Mark" was also... not as clean as you are making it out. Part of the idea is that... there were DOZENS of houses. Maybe HUNDREDS. And the whole war between all these VERY MUCH infant family power structures was incredibly chaotic and not very civil. To everyone who WASN'T one of these families, it was like a giant round robin Hatsfields and McCoys feud. Most outsiders just saw this like a bunch of themed gang fights. No one was really sure who was going to win and even more so CARED all that much. They were just going about doing their thing and maybe hiring them for their services, but no one wanted them in charge.
Huge part of the critique of the capitalist structure is that there's been this massive revisionist story created that is projecting the houses current position BACKWARDS into history while the truth was it got bloody as hell. But now that the 12 houses have come out on top, and found an equilibrium for themselves, they justify all the horrors along the way and make nice with the nobles and public. And of course no one else is allowed to rise to their rank or disrupt their control of their specific spheres of power.
Human Colonization: The progress of the Sarlona expansion into Khorvaire makes more sense when you look at the timing. The mass exodus out of Sarlona also happened to just start about 2,000 years after the final fall of the Dhakaani Empire of the Goblinoids. Enough time for the empire to fully fade into memory (even with long lived races) but just about the right amount of time that the power vacuum was begging for a new consolidator. And the colonizers from Sarlona really fit the bill because they were EAGER to just expand Sovereign damned EVERYWHERE.
The Dwarves were also still reeling from their expulsion from the deep mountains by the Daelkyr on TOP of a massive Orc invasion. The Halflings were largely content to just live their lives out on the plains. The Orcs had all their "Druid Shit" going on. Elves have long settled into a somewhat stagnant culture, their constant obsession with death and the undying means they have difficulty breaking out and trying new things.
And it's also important to remember that just because the Houses stand united to EXTERNAL threats, they are also incredibly petty and power hungry amongst themselves. You mentioned the lightning rail and airships in the beginning, and there is STILL some bad blood between Lyrander and Orien over that. House Deneith and Cannith still have some beef because the Warforged put a huge dent in Deneith's market share for mercenary labor. So Humans having 5 houses wouldn't necessarily make them look MORE powerful, but in fact could cause more HAVOC. In the groups where there is only the one mark, you will tend to see they are more integrated and focused. Kundarak in the Dwarves gets a ton of support because you can either help Kundarak do "Warding" stuff, or you can do your own thing and not have to worry about house stuff spilling into your cheerios.
Faiths: I do not view this as "atheistic", but one could argue it is "agnostic". Part of the idea behind it is that you actually have to HAVE FAITH in the powers. The Sovereigns provide a pantheon that is instructive and broad. The Silver Flame is very present with their faith. Even the Blood of Vol has their own perspective on how the world should work. But the big thing is that no one KNOWS the answer to it all.
Like, when you dig into some of the deeper lore, you'll find some wild stuff! There are multiple SECTS of Sovereign worship, and some of those not only limit which of the 9 are worshipped, but some even add in members of the Dark Six as volatile but important avatars of the world.
Another aspect of the Blood of Vol that I love is that their central ethos can be summarized as "The Gods are real, and they are the enemy". The divinity that exists in all people was indeed bestowed by the gods, but the Blood of Vol has declared them negligent protectors and guardians. And so they seek collective self improvement as a REPLACEMENT for the grace the gods are "supposed" to give the people of Eberron.
Magewrights: I do feel like there IS something special about Magewrights in a fantasy world, as a sort of blue-collar magic user where the average Wizard would be more Ivory Tower Academia or White Collar. Like seeing a disagreement between a physicist and a plumber because the physicist knows all the laws and theorems, but the plumber has seen 1,000 different ways to make a pipe explode up close and personal and he knows this is #372. A player character Magewright would, though, have to go one of a couple ways that move them BEYOND just being a Magewright. Either they've started to unravel some of the deeper secrets of the arcane out of a long career in the trenches of magical industry, allowing them to become a full on Wizard (the Scott Lang approach). Or them being a Magewright is a foundational and formative part of their backstory, but they have also expanded beyond that into some other class [mechanically, start as whatever class but have the Magic Initiate feat] (the Mario Mario approach). Like, it wouldn't be that much different than the characters who got their start as a farmer, a black smith, a librarian, or a gutter punk. But at some point they all graduated into something MORE.
I applaud your thoroughness, as a fellow Eberron enjoyer.
Some comments on the issues you've identified:
Airships - These are an incredibly recent innovation - only eight years old at setting start - and them having fatal flaws is very intentional. From a setting standpoint, these are still largely a prototype - most cities don't have airship moors, they're less efficient than lightning rails for trade and mass transport, and as you said they're primarily used for luxury travel. From a gameplay standpoint, this allows them to be a more versatile form of transport, while also allowing for a variety of troubles and pivot points that lightning rails don't have.
Dragonmarked Houses - I'm unsure what all you've read beyond the 5e sourcebook, but if you've only read that, I'd assign that book as the source of confusion here. That text does very much so focus on the Galifar and post-Galifar era of Eberron (for I think fair reasons) and so doesn't look at the pre-Galifar period, where the Dragonmarked Houses were as you described and were incredibly powerful and influential. In fact, Galifar only came to be united because the Dragonmarked Houses became kingmakers and backed Galifar in a bid for further power, only to then be caught on the backfoot after the war and forced into the Korth Edicts by the power they had previously helped to ascend. In the modern day, some Dragonmarked Houses are beginning to gain further influence - House Cannith was functionally co-ruling Cyre before the Day of Mourning, and even today is only not as prominent because it's heartland was magi-nuked eight years ago, House Vadalis has an heir (who has renounced their claims, but still) as the regent of the Auindarian throne, and in general the Houses are in their own corporate cold war of working towards greater power and influence but also not wanting to upset the balance of power and risk losing everything.
Race Power Balance - For one, the dragonmarks didn't exist in ancient times, which is why you didn't see them impacitng Dhakaan. They only began manifesting a few thousand years ago, around when Humans began arriving in Khorvaire, which is why you see them get so many (I'd agree arguably too many for what's realistic in-setting). As for the lack of existence of human supremacy, I feel like that's a reasonable choice by Keith Baker, the creator of the setting, to have Khorvaire be a more diverse setting and to choose to not have pure racial supremacists be a prominent thing in the Five Nations. In other parts of the world it definitely exists though - though Sarlona may not be explicitly human supremacist, by all intents and purposes it ends up being it.
Faith - I'll admit I'm not sure if I can identify a single "issue" per say that you have with Eberron's version of religion, but I just wanted to personally put in that I'm a big fan of the way Eberron does religion and it's varieties, especially for being a more modern setting.
All in all, I'm glad you've enjoyed your foray into Eberron and really appreciated your comments and concerns shared here! Eberron is a constantly growing world and Keith Baker actively encourages creating your own version of the world as best befits your views and table. If you're interested in exploring more of the setting, three great sources are the 3.5e and 4e sourcebooks as well as Keith Baker's own DM's Guild books for 5e. There's so much of the world that can be explored and I'd love to see your journey through more of it if it's something you wanted to do!
Baker's blog also has many books worth of information on it for free.
@@philopharynx7910 Absolutely, and I'm unsure how I forgot to mention it in my original comment. Another commentor mentioned the blog and I fully agree that it's an amazing resource for anyone interested in Eberron.
There is also the manifest zone podcast which explains a lot about Eberron.
Dragonmarked Houses don't rise up and try to take over because every time they'd try, someone, be it one of the five nations or rival Dragonmarked Houses, sends a hit squad in the form of uppity adventurers to murderhobo the instigators.
"only lyrandar dragonmarked" being able to fly them is a bit of house propaganda. When it was written, there was a skill that didn't get a ton of use outside of eberron, "use magic device". Inside ebberon, use magic device was incredibly useful, and one of its features was tricking magic devices to believe you had whatever qualifications it required.
Also the houses don't rule Khorvaire. The Cabinet of Faces does👽
Your description of your early assumptions about Eberron...the flying coaches, hyper-industrialized magical world, magical Coruscant......Ravnica, my guy, you are describing Ravnica.
Dragonmarked houses have a lot of limitations. There are two basic ones going way back. The first is that dragonmarks might be hereditary, at least to a degree, but that heredity doesn't follow legal rules of succession and inheritance, so unless the dragonmarked houses perform an unprecedented level of sexual restraint, there are going to be quite a few random people out there who develop marks without any particular loyalty to the house. A second one is that, in the grand scheme of things, dragonmarks aren't that common, so you need immense extra power per person to really, truly tip the balance relative to countries and the average person with a dragonmark only has the least mark and no PC classes. The dragonmarks are an edge, but it's only a relatively few exceptional individuals who develop the real, serious powers from them. It's the access to industrial scale magical items that require the dragonmarks that are the real power of them, not the personal scale buffs.
Another limitation is that the peace settlement of the Last War includes reaffirming the Korth Edicts. Except for the unrecognized state of Droaam and the various Lhazaar Principalities, all nations of Khorvaire have signed an agreement to uphold the edicts. Granting lands to houses would be in violation of the peace treaty and an excuse for the other nations to smack you down.
Beyond that, there are loads of powerful forces out there that don't care. Plain old wizards are a thing and sorcerers popping up without connection to any houses. The major faiths can not only motivate a lot of people, they have their own powerful champions and the nations are still powerful, even if they're less powerful than Galifar had been. That's without going into the true heavyweights, like the dragons of the Chamber who are specifically concerned with shepherding dragonmarks to manipulate the Draconic Prophecy, the other dragons of Argonnessen that want to make sure nobody gets ideas above their station, the Inspired rulers of Riedra and the Lords of Dust who want to stir the pot for their own ends, the Undying Court of Aerenal or lesser powers like the returned Dhakaani or the Daugthers of Sora Kel. There are lots of forces out there that wouldn't want the Dragonmarked Houses taking over, just like the Dragonmarked Houses all have rivalries with each other. Sure Sivis might not particularly compete with Deneith, but they'd sure prefer not to be forced into a subordinate position to House Deneith.
Finally, unlike the nations that have quite a bit of patriotism backing them up after a literal century of willingness to fight each other, the Dragonmarked Houses don't command a lot of loyalty. The average smith or magewright working for House Cannith is going to be a lot more loyal to Breland or Karrnath or wherever they're from than the guys giving them a certification stamp. Same with the Deneith mercenary army and the Tharashk mercenaries are all brokered by the Daughters of Sora Kel and are far more likely to show loyalty there. Any Dragonmarked house actively trying to take over anything is going to face a lot of pushback, including from its own employees, a lot of its members and all the other houses trying to secure their own angle. A distinct subset of members getting a bonus on a handful of skills and a handful of extra spells added to their spell lists isn't going to overcome this, even without dragons, demons, a divine court of elf mummies or extradimensional dream spirits trying to keep them divided. And the story of the House of Vol shows just how willing to get involved the dragons and elf mummies are.
An interesting idea is that humans have used the mechanical fact that half-human hybrids are a thing and other races only hybridize to humans to absorb other races dragon marks: your half orc's kids with a human will all be human, that's how your human house ends up all dragon marked.
Overall, Eberron is designed to have plot hooks for all sorts of games. Thus they've set it up where this is a a time of instability and change, with lots of different possibilities. They have extended the background to support this, not built up from the background. Still, I think that it is more coherent than the average published game world.
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Airships are flawed. They are barely beyond the prototype stage. They were also produced specifically to give house Lyrandar an edge. But these flaws are actually great hooks for a game.
If you are on an airship, it's a dramatic combat. You need to protect the pilot and the crystal. I usually don't run Eberron in 5e, so at higher levels, there are usually several members of the party who can fly for at least a battle. If the pilot goes, in the original there was a chance for a strong-willed non-Lyrandar to at least maintain control enough to bring it down safely.
The idea of an airship that doesn't require a Lyrandar heir is a big McGuffin. You'd have an enemy in a powerful organization. Other houses would publicly denounce you, but secretly want the plans for themselves.
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Dragonmarks are rare and vary in power. I doubt that the average person with a mark is as strong as a PC with the mark. While it opens up some powerful spells, you still need to be a high level character to access many of them, and they are rare. As you said, it's a wide magic setting, not high magic. In the expansions, they imply that the marks were fewer and simpler early on. Enough to give an advantage, but not enough to take over the world. Likewise, aberrant marks were more common at first.
During the war, the dragonmarked houses kept to the Korth edicts to remain (relatively) neutral and sell their services to each side. This protected the houses as noncombatants. In the world after the war, they are surging in power. If you want to play a political game, this is a great starting point because the balance is so precarious. Once again, they have set up the world to provide fun plot hooks to hang a game off of.
The nations and nobles have lost a lot of power, but they do have the land and armies that the houses haven't traditionally had. If a house is seen building up forces, they are at risk until they are strong enough to hold them. What's more, many of the citizens identify by their nation, especially after the war. Houses have economic power, but not the sheer numbers at this point.
There are other power groups that add players to this poker game. The Aurum is a group based on wealth, no matter the origin. The Church of the Silver Flame is definitely expansionist and has a source of corruption within it. Dragons have been playing a long game of politics and magical prophecy for millennia. The Dreaming Dark. The Emerald Claw. Demon Cults. There are enough pieces on the board that make it hard for one group to unilaterally win.
And the dragonmark houses compete against each other. They each have their focuses, but several compete with others. If one house grows too strong, they would worry about this and try to build up their own houses.
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The fact that we don't have concrete evidence of the gods make religion more interesting to me. In most worlds, the gods are proven. There's no need to make a leap of faith. You just need to choose a side. Being an atheist is provably stupid. What's more, it makes conflict within the church a possibility. In a standard game, if you stray too far from your deity, then you lose your power.
But in Eberron, we can have people who interpret the faith very differently and both still have the same "evidence" of having powers. You can have schisms and holy wars. In the real world, we have less evidence of religion than Eberron and we have lots of stories and conflicts within a religion ad between different religions.
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One of the beauties of Eberron is that you can play so many different styles of game. Political games, trading empires, taming a frontier, exploring lost worlds, surviving an apocalypse, urban noir, psychic spies, monsters among us, and many more.
I think you stumbleled onto one of most important plot points of Eberron, there is no one how could enforce Korth edicts aside from Houses themselves. But they dot work together really wel they compete and rival with each other. Lyrandar created airships to rival lightning rail of Orien. Cannith was strongest house during war, bacause of the all weapon and warforged manufacturing. But now its influence is falling bellow more civilian houses. House Tharask are the fantasy oil barons with all the dragoshards in everything.
If houses combined have decided to take over Khorvaire, they could do it. But houses like Jorasco, Medani, Vadalis and Ghallanda knows that in this new word order they would benefit less than other houses, so that why the dragonmarked houses can never agree to something like this.
If one of the houses decided to take over nation for it own, al the other houses would intervene, because they cannot allow someone to break the equilibrium of power.
The great scandal of Luxery Airship Skytanic did not hsve enough flying carpets and working feather fall tokens when the order came to abandon ship...
The depth of this setting and the variety of genres you can play there are just awesome, but my favourite bits are the details.. like the way that 13 -- a Baker's dozen -- is prominent throughout his work. It's easily as broad and deep in scope as the Forgotten Realms or Athas.
About Magewrights, though.. I had always taken magewrighting to be a team effort, like, say, Millwrighting. While each individual craftsperson does a part of the job, it is the efforts of the team... whether that's a work gang or assembly line or whatever... that make the thing possible that even great wizards can't. Every magewrought item is the product of several crafters' work, not just a single magician.
Like how a single pilot can destroy a city with a single bomb, but it takes hundreds of people with hundreds of different specialties to run the generation plant that powers it. My thoughts on the matter, anyway.
I appreciate your "how does this plausibly happen?" approach to worldbuilding, and I adore your 'how would this change the world?' examinations on things like common magic items and spells. All I can think of for why the Dragonmarked don't rule openly is that they'd rather not have it be their heads on the block when the people inevitably disagree with the government. Even if the edicts are no longer in effect, they're still good business practice and they've worked all this time, so don't mess with them.
I would love to hear more of uour thoughts on Ebberron. I find the idea of the DM houses making a play for power to be a juicy campaign hook.
I think this is going to be a long post, (be warned) not because I want to somehow show off with this, but because the Grungeon Master might not have the 3.5 edition books that elaborate A LOT further on all of these points.
On the Houses
At least these are the ideas I got from the 3.5 edition era books: the Dragonmarked Houses started banding together to form the "house" collectives (remember, each "house" is not only a single family) only after Galifar's ancestor Karrn I the Conqueror.
It might have been, that instead of "elevated", as our Grungeon Master here suggests, the members might have been reviled as abominations before Galifar I or Karrn I (remember, the Aberrant marks are destructive and terrifying force, enough so that parents of Sharn scare children with tales of them to this very day). Why is all magical things always ”admired”? Usually far likely reaction is fear which leads to hate.
One also needs to consider, that the Houses themselves, while presenting a unified front, are absolutely not a unified entity themselves. House Tharashk tries to cut into the House Deneith mercenary market while Orien and Lyrandar vie for the supremacy of the shipping industry, even though they both have separate ”specialties” in doing that. House Kundarak wields their own guards while Deneith dances around in their inquisitive and bodyguard services, the bodyguard section of which Kundarak would surely want to grab for themselves.
The Korth Edicts were as much a limitation to their rivals (each other) which is propably why they agreed to it in the first place. But now the Last War has swept the Kingdom of Galifar to nonexistence. One must note though, that according to the book Dragonmarked, the houses suffered greatly during the war, even the sellsword-selling deneith, not to mention House Cannith (which was based in the now lost nation of Cyre). So if they orchestrated the War, it must have somehow gotten…out of hand. A very good conspiracy for the players to unravel though.
Why dragonmarks on these specific races? Well, simply put: because they were the core races during the 3.5 edition of D&D. The Eberron book itself recognized this oddity, but always advocated (As it did with a lot of things) for the Dungeon Master to decide on the solutions to the worlds ”mysteries” tehmselves. Why the dragonmarks only appeared on certain bloodlines of specific specie, for example. It gave some options but refrained from anything concrete. Personally I think the reality on why humans have so many dragonmarks because otherwise nobody would play the ”plain old boring vanilla humans”.
On the Ariships
The simple matter is that the khyber crystal is housed deep inside the structure of the vessel, and the elemental energy that forms the ring (the ring is entirely composed of the elementals’ energy, not made of any other substance, the support struts are. Targeting this crystal is difficult, as it is absolutely housed in the most secure part of the ship. This makes it no more difficult to target than an engine of an airplane.
What comes to the single captain… well usually the captain has a first mate also with a mark of Lyrandar. Perhaps not as skilled as the captain, but more than enough to drive the ship fast out of harms way. As expensive as the airships are, I find it silly to only have one heir to operate it, and nothing suggests they wouldn’t have. Bribing these captains might also be more difficult than expected, since ones that operate such expensive and image-striking vessles like the airships are bound to be most trusted, notable, prized (and well paid) of their house barring the leadership itself.
And as for the aspiring sky pirates… what sky pirates? House Lyrandar is the first and only entity possessing these airships, and has not (as of yet) sold them to anyone. Lyrandar has absolutely no challengers in the air to worry about (occacional wyvern notwithstanding, and well..just dont fly to a wyvern territory). Dragons are more problematic…but they rarely leave the continent of Argonnessen.
That previous one is technically not true… all the Elemental-bound items and vessels come from the gnomes of Zilargo, and they jealosuly guard the secrets of their making (which is rumored they found from the ruins dotting the continent of Xen’drik). It is possible, that the gnomes of Zilargo and their secret police the Trust maintain some elemental vessels, but anyone digging into this matter has…disappeared. And why would those jolly good, small-sized people be up to something bad anyway huh?
On the Worship
I actually fundamentally disagree with Grungeon Master here. I argue that every other setting is much more atheistic than Eberron. Why have faith and belief when a god literally can (and have) appreared right next to you when you talk some bad rap about them? What makes clerics different than warlocks at all? They all seem to make deals with an extremely powerful entity. Clerics don’t have faith, they have a sugar daddy, just like a warlock.
In Eberron it’s different. You don’t KNOW the gods are real. That is the whole point of faith. The clerics of the same god can have compeltely opposing alignments, and both can still receive cleric spells from their faith. The mere mystery of whether the gods even are real underscores the entire concept of faith.
Game mechanically I remember once reading that the creators of Eberron did not want any situation, where the gods are accessible at all. For above mentioned reasons, but also because then, someone would give them statistics, and then players would go and kill them.
Sorry for the long post…
I believe the focus on Sharn in the 5e Eberron book is because they felt that that was the most distinct part of Eberron, and since they're likely only doing one hardcover that's what they focused on. I can understand the decision, particularly with the limited release schedule they've been doing, but I miss the wealth of lore from 3e.
Airships in Eberron are a new technology, and still kinda rare. At least in older editions, it was possible for a non-heir to try to command the bound elemental in order to control the ship, but a Lyrandar heir could do it without rolling (technically, the binding thing was one item and the command thing was a second). And having single points of failure is a good thing from a narrative point of view: it explains why the ships PCs are on keep crashing in inhospitable places.
One of the minor issues with airships is really an issue with the lightning rail, and that's that both charge the same cost per mile. In 3e, this was soft-retconned to where the price in the Eberron Core Book was for luxurious first-class lightning rail transport, and that there were also second-class and steerage tickets available at significantly lower prices. This explains why lightning rail is still the dominant form of transportation. I think Word of Keith is also that the rail lines shown on the maps are the big trunk lines where the cars come and go all the time, but that there are minor lines all over the place that come along maybe once a day or week.
The Edicts of Korth remain in force mainly because they also govern relations between the houses themselves, and because most houses believe they're in a pretty cushy position and don't want to rock the boat. The houses are essentially the fantasy version of Shadowrun's megacorps. They already wield a huge amount of economic power, which indirectly gives them political power, and turning that into direct political power would require conquest and that's hugely messy. Galifar is also seen as an ideal to which to aspire, and it's only been two years since the formal end of the war and four years since the armistice following the Mourning. That said, in the 3e material some houses are... not so much violating the Edicts as they are pushing its limits. I recall there being something about Lyrandar pushing the boundaries of the "no land" clause up in Aundair (don't recall the specifics though), and elements in house Deneith are being influenced by the Dreaming Dark to use their military might to put themselves on top. But those are in the "potential plots" column - it's a thing that might happen, and it's left to the DM to explore what the ramifications will be if it does. That's all part of Eberron being frozen at 998 YK - there are lots of instabilities in the setting that can tip over one way or the other if the DM so chooses, but the setting material assumes that that hasn't happened yet.
Also, most of the dragonmarked houses don't have a particularly great martial inclination. The obvious exception is Deneith (the merc house), with some others having access to various types of military forces. Cannith *had* the warforged, but were forced to disband their creation facilities. Vadalis has various buffed-up animals (and, in 4e, had a Secret Project going where they were trying to make magebred humans with mixed results). Kundarak has *guards*, but wouldn't be much good at waging war. And Tharashk also has a lot of mercs, but that's more because of their connections in the Shadow Marches and Droaam than because of their mark.
Regarding the dominance of humans, this is to some extent a problem with the Ridiculously Ancient History timeline. The intent is that in the aftermath of the Daelkyr War, the formerly dominant goblins (and other inhabitants of Khorvaire, though the goblins and orcs bore the brunt of it) were severely weakened. I've seen references to pre-Daelkyr goblins being more powerful and internally harmonic (the term used was "eusocial", sort of like a bee hive), but that post-Daelkyr goblins having lost that, but that might have been on Keith Baker's blog or something so I don't know how canon that is. This in turn made it easy for the humans to roll in and take over the place. The main problem with this is that there's a 2000 year gap between the Daelkyr war and the human migrations to Khorvaire.
I wouldn't say Eberron is *atheistic*, per se. A more appropriate word would be "agnostic". There is definitely divine power in the world, and you get similar gods showing up in different cultures, implying that there's some truth to those gods - either that they actually exist in the panentheistic fashion championed by the various churches (the gods are spiritually present wherever they are relevant but don't manifest, but Arawai still guides the hunter's arrow and Onatar the blacksmith's hammer), or at least that they form archetypes that make it easier to channel faith/divine magic.
I personally love this: it removes the focus from plots created by actual gods and puts it on the religions formed by human(oid) activities, which I find much more interesting.
You know, the airships being able to be piloted by *only* a member of house Lyrandar is a very good way for the house Lyrandar to maintain *monopoly on air travel.* You're surprised that a privileged class would seek to perpetuate their privileged postion, really?
I hope we get a follow up to address the people in the comment sections who know the lore. Also specific world building aspects of the setting that are worth considering
I’d definitely be interested in a Mage Wright class/subclass! Still need to get Baker’s other Eberron books on DMs guild.
One of my favorite settings, glad you took a look at it! Take care!
I mean, the big city can totally be "the trackless wilderness beyond" I think it really depends how you run it or if the players are native
The dragon marked houses big problem was that they kept wanting to kill each other - The houses had their own game of thrones thing going on that kept them from forming a unified group, and them being divided meant they could be levered against each other.
I'm not too familiar with the setting but it sounds like the dragonmarked houses are more akin to Cyberpunk Megacorps than they are to anything in a classical DnD setting. Maybe in the past the individual dragonmarked people had their own holdings and fought amongst their own dragonmark for dominance, ala any old system of heroes and villains battling it out. Then with the stability of the old empire they became monopolies and claimed that every member of a dragon mark as their own by right. With the war, they are now free to conquer and claim territory but have a tradition of ruling from the shadows, so they only exhibit complete dominance in some areas of limited stability.
You pretty much nailed it. The dragonmarked houses are supposed to be a thing a DM can use in their campaign as an antagonist. House Phiarlan's network of spies and assassins are secretly controlling every kingdom and _YOU_ THE PLAYER have to stop them.
There is a point to be raised on how human psychology informs religion, and it relates directly to the atheism of Eberron.
If there was exactly one “divinely marked” family, then you get a very strong religion on the order of Exodus 28, where you have the sons of the brother of one man being “marked” with a literal gold plate on their foreheads saying “holy to the Lord”, and Royal-looking scarlet and purple and gold threads to make their garments, and that the people of their nation are required to offer all their sacrifices to these men, or else be killed if they offer the sacrifices to anyone else.
If there are multiple “divinely marked” families, then suddenly the people on the outside might be thinking “oh, maybe I shouldn’t cozy up too much to this family lest that other family get jealous or lest the family I chose might fall out of favor or lose a battle.” Then, when those families are never seeking to be offered sacrifices, the gradual trend in society would be to just become as agnostic as a Jewish comedian explaining that her parents led her to believe that Santa was real, but that Santa just never comes to their house because they are Jewish. Or as agnostic as the statement “all roads lead to heaven”, where suddenly no one really cares about heaven, and more of a focus turns towards making money.
A Magewright class would be awesome :D
Not too keen on a class or subclass, but I think Magewright as a 5.2-style Background/Origin Feat for Eberron would be great. A Feat that allows characters to choose a spell from a curated list to cast as a ritual. This curated list could be added to by a DM to accommodate spells released in later books.
Making Magewright a Feat also keeps it in the grasp of NPCs without PC class levels, which is rather important IMO.
@@ryanroyce A feat would def. be nice :D for when you don't want to multiclass into a magic class.
And for my DM style: I don't really care if the spells are new.... i'll make it work somehow. And my NPCs have rarely a class at all... they just do stuff
While not a class, there is the Magewright Background in the new Frontiers of Eberron (by Keith Baker himself)
@@anotherone5235 Uh i didn't know that. Thanks :D
Eberron is definitely up there among my favorite official settings. So much so that my own homebrew world is very similar in concept to Eberron, only with more of a gaslight punk aesthetic than a steampunk one.
These are all valid points, however I do recall that it's either canon or implied that the church of the silver flame worshippers do become part of the silver flame as sort of a gestalt soul afterlife, rather than the standard eberron afterlife. Also I do think it is mostly canon in expanded material that yes the dragonmarked houses do have a sort of keep each other in check/crab in a bucket mentality.
But this is a great video about my personal fave canon setting, I seriously wish it would overtake faerune as the face of DND as there's so much interesting about it
More Artificer love in the form of a Magewright subclass? Yes, Please!!
Heck, simply theming the artificer as a magewright who has made a few breakthroughs works.
I know this is just going to vanish into the ether of comments, but your exploration has been exciting to me because it reminded me of something even older, called TippyVerse, which was an exploration of this in 3.5 that resulted in barrier cities with huge magical wastelands between them.
I do think I still prefer the ideas you have, but Eberron is also VERY interesting. I'm more of a fan of making my own settings so your concepts are much easier to place into my own world.
I've never read the Eberron Source/Campaign books, but have read some stuff about it. Anyhow, a homebrewed way to explain why the Dragon Marked Houses haven't officially taken over land/rulership I thought of just now listening to this video. What if the marks originated from actual Dragons, each House was chosen by a powerful Ancient Dragon (think Warlock patrony). Perhaps those Dragons or at least descendants of those Dragons still exist and specifically are watching those Houses. The dragons perhaps even created the Accords magically binding the people.
That would fit with a thing I vaguely remember from Eberron; half dragons are illegal. Something like the last user of the Dragonmark of Death was elf/green dragon, and mixing true dragon blood with a dragon mark is extremely bad for Reasons. I'll have to look that up.
@@SymbioteMullet Half-dragons aren't a problem per se. The thing with Vol was that she was a half-dragon with a very powerful dragonmark, and that made the Chamber (the dragon organization most focused on the Prophecy) take notice and destroy the house with extreme prejudice.
Half dragons like other said are not banned, per se just dragons do see them as abominations. The reason the dragonmark house of death was destroyed was they were basically doing eugenitics to strengthen their dragonmarks, this all crystalized with Vol with the addition of dragon as a parent, Vol dragonmark swelled in power to that of the strong artifacts in Eberron an Eldritch Machine. The Elves and dragons basically teamed up out of fear the house of death would conquer the world.
@@saffron97 Ok, interesting. So my little quick idea without knowing much from the source books, just came up with it while watching this video has some Canonical merit. Cool
Several people have given thoughts on dragon marked houses and ruling the world, but they have forgotten the most important thing about dragon marks: They are parts of the draconic prophecy playing out on humans. Dragon marks appear throughout the world, not just on people. And the dragons and demons are in a war to control the prophecy. This prophecy is playing out in the actions and fates of the dragon marked people, who become pawns of the dragons and demons. And the demons and dragons are so subtle and long acting in their actions that most people don't know what is going on or that such a battle is even happening. Long story short (too late) dragons and demons only want their own chosen dragon marked people to achieve certain things and oppose the ones the other team wants to achieve them. It is hard to be the king when two ultra powerful forces consider you pawns.
Eberron is deeply focused on the contemporary events at the default starting date for the setting and as such it doesn't make most of its notable features ancient, on the contrary Church of the Silver Flame, Dragonmarked Houses and airships are very recent compared to typical millenia old staples of D&D worldbuilding. That's a feature, not a bug.
While it hasn't really been touched on a lot in this video, one thing I really like about Eberron is its cosmology. It's far less bloated than the Great Wheel cosmology, and the planes themselves always play a more direct role in how the world works through the manifest zones. It's like having the Outlands gate-towns from Planescape, but actually on the Material Plane.
Speaking of Planescape, given that you've mentioned your disapproval of the Blood War a few times, I wouldn't mind a deep dive video on why the Blood War doesn't work as a concept lol.
I would think that the airships described could be one *model* of airship, but in a magical setting, other _types_ of airship should exist as well, and compete with them. They might not have as good performance, but should work, just by combining various spells and physics effects.
Th airships weaknesses could be that they haven't run into sky pirates or dying or bribed heirs yet,
I think the magewrights were a more interesting concept in 3.5 when Eberron came to light. Specifically that they were mundane artificers, or pre-artificers. In effect they were just people using tools to preform magic (in the form of Schema). As I bailed from D&D pre fifth Ed i can't say how they'd work at current.
For the Dragonmarked houses, they already do run the world. They don't own land, but land is granted to them by kingdoms to get favor. They don't have armies, but you'd be hard pressed to run an army without House Jorasco healing mercenaries, Gallanda summoning provisions, or Cannith providing weapons. These houses simply have to threaten to abstain contracts and any country would be at a massive disadvantage. They don't want supplant the rulers as they are capitalists'. Their power comes from paying customers and wielding influence based on who cant afford to be without their assistance.
I will airships were a bit of a wash, but I believe that was due to them basically being prototype in nature (a joint venture between Zilargo and Lyrandar). Keep in mind this is the same magitech that runs the Lightning rail so, the same vulnerabilities you see in the airships, the Lightning rail also has.
Great video! Glad people convinced you to take a look at Eberron. It is my favorite setting, even if Baker himself never saw the world lasting another 50 years before dead-gray misting itself into oblivion.
The three Dragons that created the Eberron setting probably set things up that prevented the Gods from getting too powerful for the Dragons who created the setting to deal with. Among other things, it was explicitly stated that they chose a spot so distant from the normal going-ons of other major power's normal realms of operations to create their world at. So the Eberron gods (and demons) themselves may in fact be the creation of the Three Dragons given the location's distance from the other standard astral planes.
So there’s some misunderstanding of the core assumptions of the setting.
The overwhelming majority of people will never rise above 5th level. There are a handful of epic threats in the world, but they are largely removed, living on other continents, so the primary play continent of khorvaire is newbs.
The Silverflame and Blood of Vol’s focus less of worship are a Rakshasa bound by iirc a particularly pure soul and a celestial and a Lich respectively, both speak directly to followers.
The dragonmarks were not well understood when they manifested. “Bob and his family sure are good at carpentry must be that birthmark they all have” isn’t a reasonable leap of logic. More likely the familial affinity for crafting led to magical study which they were slightly more proficient at until centuries of breeding, experimentation, and codification resulted in what we see in the species block.
They continue to abide the edicts because they’re post WW2. They know as soon as one house stops abiding them it will be another war and their numbers are already being rebuilt after the last.
Also, the great dragons made their displeasure known when the Mark of Death was destroyed bc it messed up the Draconic prophecy, so abiding the edicts and avoiding that war keeps the dragons from stepping in more forcefully to preserve the remaining elements of the prophecy.
I dont entirely see the issue with gods and feith as you described it here. I think its all a mater of teast.
Dnd gods are more like what we see in greek and norse myths, constantly present in the setting and constantly medling in mortal afears.
In Eberon, they seam to be far more distant and unknowable, more higher inhuman forces of nature.
Its less a mater that the seting is more "atheist" and more that the devine and any specifecs about it is ⁰ much less demonstrable and aperent then in Dnd. People can curtainly belive what they all kinds of things about them, but any curtainty about there exact nature and intentions is...well....all a mater a feith😅
I've always perceived the setting amidst a Cold War of their own attempting to avoid magically mutual assured destruction. So, that explains to me why the houses don't just conquer everything.
Hey, a little off topic but in a game that Im DM'ing for the players are currently guarding a merchant ship with Bags of Holding filled with the merchandise being the main cargo. I've come up with (what I believe to be) a good response and adaption to how the world interacts with these items, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on how magical interdimensional storage would affect trade, how those engaged in trade would try to minimize losses of their Bags, and other related topics that could pop up like you did with Teleportation Circles.
you could even see the dragon house, becoming megacorps/tradehouses with as much power as a nation
I haven't read the Eberron 5e rules, but it sounds like they dramatically increased the power of dragonmarks. In 3.5 it took 3 feats to get a greater dragonmark, and they provided no intuition dice or other abilities, just a 1/day spell. In game terms the magic provided by dragonmarks was negligible compared to the magic spellcasters received from their class levels.
Based on those rules, I always assumed that, like any powerful caste, the true power of the dragonmarked houses is inherited social privilege. The houses long ago parlayed their minor advantages to become an alternate aristocracy, one based on commercial interest rather than land ownership or religious authority. It's the ongoing exercise and enforcement of that privilege which keeps them in power. Eberron's magical vehicles require dragonmarks to control them because that's the way the houses designed them.
In 3e, dragonmarks are feats that come in chains. But a 5e feat is (a) a much bigger deal than in 3e, and (b) usually not available at level 1. So what they did was to turn the dragonmarks into subraces - so you have lightfoot halflings, stoutheart halflings, Jorasco halflings, and Ghallanda halflings. Of course, since different races have the power budget split differently between main and sub races, that leads to some imbalances for the marks as well. In addition, it is suggested that the power of greater marks can be handled as part of your class - basically, a cleric might be getting their powers from their Mark of Healing instead of a particular deity.
1. Airships were first invented as weapons of war to facilitate the movement of troops and goods in a way not dependent on overland supply lines (and as siege engines, per Eye of the Wolf). The requirement of a dragonmarked pilot ensured Lyrandar's continued payout by the nations. That they now, in peacetime, are being retrofitted as a luxury means of travel is a natural evolution of the technology-- one not considered in this video.
2. Why would the Houses need to own land? Own titles? Own armies? They own the economy. They are analogous to corporate power. The Edicts are obsolete and ineffective, but not for the reasons you state. They assume a set of rules that the Houses are no longer playing by. The power of the Marks themselves, therefore, are relatively inconsequential compared to what millions of gold pieces in the bank can buy you.
3. You're asking the wrong questions about Dragonmarks. The Marks are manifestations of the Draconic Prophecy which had previously only been seen in natural phenomena like coral reefs. They only appeared on the intelligent species at the moment of human arrival on Khorvaire. Why? The introduction of the Marks is as much a change to the status quo as the newly arrived humans. What do these massive tidal shifts mean? The question isn't "Why is lightning striking the same spot twenty times?" in War of the Worlds -- not really it's "What the hell is happening?"
4. The world has just spent a century at war. Hundreds of millions have died. If ever the gods had mercy or an interest in the welfare of their followers, surely they would have made themselves manifest. A distant, deistic presence is a natural expression of a world still broken by war of that magnitude.
I think the whole part about the houses not claiming land and raising an army can be justified by the idea of "that balance of power works, and threatening has lead to disaster" and also probably some mix of "if we do it, everyone will dog pile on us and wipe us out, old testament style." Basically the backlash of trying is not worth the risk
Yeah, I see this as an intentional move by the Dragonmarked Houses - it is far better to rule behind the scenes with wealth, than to assume political power and put yourself out there to be dragged down by the Five Nations, assisted by the other houses. Not to mention, everyone is still unsure of the cause of the Mourning, so there is a realistic fear of sticking ones’ head far enough out to tempt fate.
However, every bit of the themes expounded on make FANTASTIC plot hooks for an Everton campaign, and this is intentional, with as others have mentioned the static year date meaning that any of these paths are possible.
I would be down for a Magewright video.
Every problem feels like an adventure to explore. Love that about Ebberon.
I'm not familiar with Eberron, but the problems with the airships seem simple enough to address: carry backup Khyber dragonshards and backup crewmen (especially from a rival house who are just itching to get a chance to prove themselves more reliable). The problem-as-written almost sounds like an excuse for adventures, just like in Star Trek. If the USS Enterprise had carried backup dilithium crystals, a quarter of the episodes would have been over in two minutes.
Openly taking sides would severely hurt their profits and give reason for other countries to create local factions of the Dragonmarked houses from disaffected house members that are loyal to those countries.
They already have monopolies whose political neutral monopoly status are more or less respected by the other countries. Becoming sovereign powers in and of themselves almost guarantees that they will lose both their monopoly status and their neutral organization status.
I'm not overly familiar with the setting but perhaps the reason the Dragonmarked Houses haven't taken over is that it would involve a war they would all get dragged into. Possibly the current balance of power exists because none of the houses want to get into a position where they're a threat to the others
The airships: dragonmarked pilots are the only ones who can reliably pilot the airship. Anyone can _try_. What you risk when you try to pilot the airship is that the elemental takes control of the airship OR that it escapes. If it takes control it might go somewhere you don't want to, or possibly try to crash it to break free. If it breaks free then your airship falls.
It is indeed a huge point of weakness of the airship that so few can pilot it, and that you can't just learn it. This is not a deliberate design decision though, nobody knows how to make an airship that anyone can pilot.
This is why airships are nearly impossible to hijack, pointless to steal, and never worth taking into a combat scenario. Yes, a skypirate can attack it, but then again, how? Won't they need a flying mount to do so in the first place? You have to be a VERY successful pirate to have a flying mount. Or you have to be a rogue house lyrandar member with your own ship. That itself is IMO not a weakness in the setting, but an excellent starting point for a campaign!
This makes so much sense out of all the background fluff from DDO back in the day.
It's worth pointing out that Dragonmarks used to be much less powerful. Eberron wasn't made for 5e. It was updated to it. Low level dragonmarks might get 1 centripetal or first level spell/day.
And not unlimited casting of that centripetal. One use.
Dnd 5e is a lot higher magic at the low end than earlier editions, even if the top end of magic has been nerved.
Flying ships were in a D&D BECMI or AD&D 2e module somewhere, I think... TSR was playing with that idea for a while.
The train *is* faster than the airship. However, the airship is only eight years old, the train is much older. However the train network has a big hole called the mournlands. I'll also note that airships going into the mournlands is a very bad idea.
It's rather part of the lore that the marks came to families who already did what they do, the families of house cannith where smiths and tinkers, not rulers. The family of vol where necromancers long before they got the mark of death. But ah, that family did seek some power and look where that got them. It's also to note that the houses got major losses when a entire nation turned into chernobyl. Cannith for example lost their leadership and is now three rival factions gunning for the baron position.
Meta talk here. the marks are given to the 3.5 core races, to make them more intresting and enticing as more suplements and splats came out and people played more the power creep. Ergo orcs, gobbos etc didn't get a mark. (also half-orcs in 3.5 are so bad that finding got shared)
With regards to the gods, that's the point. Beliving in the gods is a question of faith rather than fact. The nature of the gods is a ongoing theological debate rather than a chat with one of them, and also allows for splinter chruches of the faith. Diffrent regions having diffrent interpitations of the same gods, like in our world.
I'd like to share two of my additions to Eberron that correlate to some of your thoughts: dragonmarks and religion.
1. I have a goblin antagonist that feels the Dhakaani Empire, aka the goblinoids, were cheated out of dragonmarks when their empire declined and the humans (including halflings) rose into power. This has led to uncovering rumors/knowledge that dragonmarks came from aberrant marks lineages that were bred, just like desirable genetic traits. So, this goblin is looking for ways to get goblinoids aberrant marks, either by finding existing marked goblinoids, kidnapping members of dragonmark houses and attempting to steal their marks, and manipulating and/or uncovering the secrets of the draconic prophecy to gain the power to imbue others with the marks.
2. My view of Eberron's divine fits into a much larger aspect of how I tie everything together. I link all my worlds and settings together through the planes and space. I still use most of 2nd edition (or its original) flavor for all the settings. World settings are within spheres that float in the phlagiston. Some spheres are farther away or harder to get into. When it comes to the planes, I consider them to be all the same planes in all the settings, even if they have different names. Most of the planes are infinite, so even though the planes embody some single aspect, there still will be differences as you travel. So, when it comes to divine beings, I consider Eberron to be connected to areas of the planes that are so far away from the stereotypical deity that divine power and influence act differently. I act as though there are reasons why settings have certain deities, why some deities can be found in multiple settings, and why other settings have something different (like Eberron and Dark Sun). Planar beings have more knowledge about this, but they don't give it much thought as other divine influences are so far removed from their activities. Eberron mortals have different reasons for exploring the planes than those in other settings. In contrast to a setting like the Forgottten Realms, where mortals can meet (even try and fight, kill, or become gods) so they travel the planes to encounter these deities, Eberron planar travelers are likely looking for ways to affect how their world works by getting power through manifest zones. They want to bring whatever makes that plane special into the material plane. This is why the religions of Eberron are so different, even when groups worship the same 'deity.' An Eberron mortal might not realize that if they walked in one direction in Shavarath for a thousand years, they would end up in a portion of the Abyss that connects to Oerth, the Greyhawk world. I do have methods for faster crossovers, though, like the Domains of Dread and Sigil, if the players want to be able to mix settings.
Just my two cents (or one dime).
what you mentioned at the beggining of thinking eberron is this sprawling courosant style city with flying coaches and stuff, that's actually Ravnica. i recommend reading that one too
Great video.
Very good point on the dragon mark supremacy.
All kings and Lords justify their social class by their magic "blue blood".
Never got interested by eberon, might check it out later, just for scheming Gnomes
The question of the Dragonmark family not (already) ruling Khorvair is based on Five factor:
1) Internal Struggle: many houses are internally fractured, like Cannith are ruled by three different people in different region and with different objective, so before they can star and external war many are trying to block an internal division as appened th the House of Shadows.
2) External Struggles: The Houses compete with each other and many aren't actually in shapes to support a war, for example Orien who struggles to recover from the damages suffered during the war. There are also the competition with the Universities and various organizations trying to interfere.
3) Economy: after long year the houses have preferred to fight on the market than on the battlefield for economic reasons. Only a small number (Cannith, Thuranni, Deneith, Jorasco, Vadalis) of them would consider an open war between the Houses of Houses and Nations to be economically positive, while many more would suffer greatly (Orien, Medani, Ghallanda, Kundarak, Tharashk). Some other would fight for other reasons (Sivis don't gain anything from a total war but would fiercely try to protect Zilargo; Lyrandar could try to create a Khoravar/Halfelf Nation and push away other species while meddling with dark forces; Phiarlan seems more interested in elf affair than dominating Khorvaire), so the chance that the house could unite against the nations is low, they have more power trying to influence the nations.
4) Dragons, Mark of Death and Aberrant Mark: The fall of the House Vol, the Mark of Death, brought by an alliance of Dragons and Elves, and the fall of House Tarkanan, th Aberrant Mark, brought by an alligiance of the other house is a clear indication of what could happen if the houses don't plan their fight.
5) House Phiarlan were the first house and simply interested in keeping the history for their tradition they adhere to the elven culture where magic is more common, than came Sivis, and gnome are small but cunning. They know that an open war against Orcs, Humans and Elves they would probably loses, so they started to manipolate the other houses in something less treatening, pushing them to stand united against common enemy while not pose a treat to the different kingdom. Even a small kingdom like Thrane has more soldier than the largest Houses. House Vol was destroyed by dragons and elves. Deneith came third and were a noble clan of fighter under Karrn and they almost created an empire until famine stiked them down and Karrn saved them so they pladget to him and later to Galifar. Cannith were the fourth to rose and there were already many kingdom while not so many dragonmarked people, so they simply started as artisan but become able to create their jurisdiction, but they are artisan, not fighter, so they don't have an army.
So, in the story, some of them tried to rule, but failed
I've been meaning to give Eberron a look, now I will!
I'd be interested in your thoughts on game settings such as Starfinder or Shadowrun. Setting where the logical steps of magic and society have had time to grow beyond the typical medievalist Dnd time period. Do they feel just like sci fi fantasy with magic slapped on or do you see markers of magic and society growing in parallel into an advanced setting reasonably?
23:32 yes please, class or subclass would be very interesting!
Magewright as a background: you get arcana and sleight of hand, tinkers' tools and one other artisan's tool of choice, and your background feature is the ritual caster (wizard) feat.
Wondering if those edicts had some sort of magical reinforcement... I've barely read any Eberron myself tbh lol
EDIT: 3.5 had a few ways to make magically reinforced contracts and Eberron was started in it so...
Another edit: Magewright was apparently made in 3.5 but the class kinda sucked (they were basically wizards w/o books who had an extremely limited number of spells known who could prepare their spells from that limited spells known list... which 3.5 used full vancian fire-and-forget magic slots so if you wanted two Sleeps on a given day you had to prepare two Sleeps)
Magewright class sounds like something that works for a sudo-spellcaster class like pf2’s Kineticist. You pick one or two spell then add combate and utility abilities as you level. It’s like building a character around one cantrip and modify it like the old metamagic system. May only know shocking Grasp but so good at it you can punch like a monk and force lightning.
Eberon was written specifically for 3.5 edition which had more magic crafting by the player characters. The 2024 books seem to be shifting more towards that direction again. So the mage write should be closer to be a playable option.
Leaving a comment here to remember to check the comments again in case people give cool remarks
Same
Regarding the houses, one of the big plot avenues is specifically the Houses throwing off the Korth accords, that a GM can pursue
Personally I love Eberron. However my biggest issue with the setting is the law of succession Galifar used.
Basically the kingdom was divided into five regions. During the rule of a king each region would be administered by one of his sons. After the death of the king the oldest son would inherit the throne while the others would continue their job as governors until the sons of the new king got old enough.
I've always thought it is an extremely disfunctional system, it does the opposite you want to do in a similar situation. You don't want potential rivals to have a powerbase to claim the crown. With a similar law succession wars should have been the norm, not the exceptional event which was the Last War.
In my opinion, religion is one of my favourite features of Eberron. The gods can’t or won’t physically manifest or directly answer prayers that are meant to commune with them. Because of this, many doubt the gods’ actual existence, and this is purposely left ambiguous for the DM to decide if they do exist or not. And the idea of gods with clerics not being real isn’t immediately seen as ludicrous. There is genuine reason to believe that they aren’t real, especially with the Blood of Vol, a religion denying the existence of all gods, having divine magic. Throughout history, there are figures who may have been divine servants or inspiration for religions. For example, there were several dragons in the earliest days that resemble the gods. Were they the gods manifested? Did they ascend to godhood? Were they simply champions of the gods, used to represent their patrons or conflated with them? Or did they merely inspire the tales of the gods, being confused for any of the above? Any of these could be true and it’s the DM’s choice, if the DM even wants to make a decision. Also, it makes sense for a royal line to raise one religion above the others as the state religion and claim the gods as patrons, rather than being claimed by the gods, as justification for rulership. And in a world where religion is more agnostic, it makes sense for other religions to spring up that aren’t focused on gods. The elves of Aerenal and Valenar practice different forms of ancestor worship to grant their ancestors immortality. You have the Silver Flame being a divine force, rather than a conscious divine entity that can directly interact with worshippers. And you have the Path of Light and the Blood of Vol as religions based on philosophies rather than divinities. And basically every religion has splinter groups. Some people, mainly in Droaam, worship the Dark Six, focusing on positive aspects rather than depicting them as simple evil gods. There are “Three-Faced Cults” that count the Dark Six as part of the main pantheon, as if there’s no distinction between them. You have a religious-nationalist terrorist group in the Order of the Emerald Claw, made up of Blood of Vol seekers. You have internal controversy in the Path of Light on pacifism. And the Cults of the Dragon Below are a blanket term for wildly varying cults that worship fiends and aberrations. Overall, I feel that ambiguity other the gods’ existence allows Eberron to have the most interesting and realistic interpretations of religion in official D&D lore.
Shmeberron, Rising from the last Waah!
Sounds like the Grungeon Master has come up with intriguing mysteries to solve in an Eberron campaign. ;)
Step 1. Find the issues. Step 2. Make plot gold in explaining them.
Eberron is best as a fun box of bits to take or ignore the parts you want.
The goblinoids would have slaughtered the humans if they hadn't just finished a war with the Daelkyr. A lot of goblinoids went crazy (by goblinoid standards) and the rest fled to underground super-bunkers. As the campaign begins, these alien goblinoids are coming back.
Get yourself the 3.5e Eberron campaign setting
Airships feel like an experimental but very luxurious and fanciful way of travel in eberron, low practicality at þeir current stage but *all* of þe allure. Like luxury vehicles in real life (except wiþ a few actual good uses.)
Babies first Eberron review…. / golfclap
As far as the dragon mark houses controlling nations
Until the end of the last war, there was no need for a grand pooba for any one house
A wise emperor would have divided houses into regional families
With each head of family being a first among equals in inter house politics
So even as the empire fell
Until one family rises into dominance in one house
May I recommend looking up the 5th edition 3rd party class Merchant?
I think the houses not seeking to become ‘sovereign’ has more to do with practicality than not. If you’ve got a monopoly on an industry, you’re set for generations. If you become a sovereign, the masses consider you responsible for them. They already run the world in a separate and divided way between themselves because they don’t need the burdens of sovereignty.
The thing about the half-orc and half-elf dragonmarks is a little more complicated and would actually conflict pretty heavily with the "human supremacy movement" idea. Half-elves in eberron aren't the same as they might be in the forgotten realms due to the fact that when elves and humans mate in this world, the end result is almost always another human or elf. Though half&elves originally came from human-elf unions, half-elves are now their own true-breeding (I hate that term) race called the Khoravar (since they are actually native to Khorvaire) and do not associate themselves with either of the other races. The half-orcs and the mark of finding on the other hand are seen in their culture as the manifestation of the good that has come from humans and orcs living together.
Very interesting!
I would worldbuild a clandestine organization that is specifically dedicated to keeping the ultra-powerful dragonmarked families from becoming despotic. The senior members of the dragonmarked families are aware of it, maybe even a part of it in order to keep the other families from gaining an advantage.
Something similar already exists: it is the Aurum, a group of rich and powerful non-dragonmarked people who want to replace and hurt dragonmarked houses. They resemble a masonry group.
Wednesday upload? oh hell yeah
It doesn't matter if the Houses can take over or not. The people of the 5 nations, and the rest of them, too, would never give consent to their rule. Plus, Dragonmarks don't give that many combat bonuses.
Theres a third-party Investigator class that gets ritual spellcasting only, whoch might be a way to make a magewright? But thats more of a monster hunter, with combat abilities and quick ritual casting instead of fundamental spellcraft.
How could you not balance a Magewright? It's only cantrips and ritual spells should be easy to do honestly even as a rougue subclass, although I think it works better as it's own thing
Or a series of feats anybody can take
I think the main thing is they used to be an npc class, they are more focused on crafting and their profession than being an adventurer. Through the magewright background in the newest Keith Baker Eberron book (giving magic initiate wizard) and some reflavoring of class abilities you could easily have a magewright adventurer, though most magewrights wouldn't be. Part of their specialty is also using magic as rituals that normally can't be, which could be a fun though also sometimes more difficult to balance feature (from attempts I've seen at similar abilities).
I don't know about Eberron in 5e, since it was created for 3.5. In 3.5, I don't think you needed a Lyrandar heir with a Dragonmark to control the elemental, it just made it easier. I doubt every pirate with an airship has a Lyrandar heir.
Okay but like
Planes have 2 pilots if you take those out the plane is fuckt, they are also higly specialised and well trained. So the same things aply pritty much as do to the airpanes
Yeah, 2 pilots, 2 engines (at least)
These airships have 1 of each
21:44 some walk WHAT!?
Why do you look at these cool plot hooks and treat them like plot holes in a movie? Sounds like they evoked some cool ideas from you already!
I wouldn't mind this channel becoming an Eberron channel, tbh.
I'd be interested in seeing what adjustments you'd make to the setting.
Yes because as we know the airplane industry sucks in the real world because of their reliance on specialized workers and engines
Ugh clickbait
@@TheZenBullet if we are talking about the modern aviation industry, most commercial planes have multiple engines, specific areas just for pilots, and multiple capable pilots on each flight to alleviate these exact issues.
Being stranded in the air is also far worse than being stranded on the ground.
Also, how is any of this clickbait? It's a discussion of some problems I personally found with the way the setting is presented in official materials.
It’s extremely weird that you think the existence of a privileged group trying to maintain their privilege is bad world building. I don’t know if this “super utilitarian” thing you do is a bit but it’s extremely tiresome
So nice to know I’m not the only one that found sharn incredibly boring. Could barely bring myself to read the chapter on it.
Someone didn't watch the video.😅 He likes it overall.
@@Draeckon No, I watched the video. He did say he likes it overall. But he agrees it’s more boring than the surrounding world. There is so much more interesting stuff in Eberron but they devoted an entire chapter to it.
Why is Sharn so boring to you? It's unlike any other DnD setting
I agree. Sharn had some interesting points, but it's just another huge city. There are many more interesting and unique parts of the world. I've run campaigns in Eberron and my players never visited Sharn and never expressed an interest in doing so.
@@imayb1 The towers and magitech elements are USPs.
Eberron is the single dumbest d&d setting that I could have ever imagined. It was specifically created for a contest by a single person, which is already a bad start. They have an entirely separate planar network and no guarantee of the existence of the divine (even though they have documented encounters with demons, devils and all sorts of other nasties), so we’re 2/2 for a complete and retarded departure from the unified spelljammer setting with absolutely nothing going for it except no consequences for abusing high-level magic and arbitrary “dragon marks”, whatever that means. What pisses me off the most is the warforged, it’s playing a pseudo-construct with absolutely none of the benefits of playing a construct. The only good thing about the setting was the invention of the artificer class, which is way too complicated to play for most tables unless your DM lets you turn it into a pseudo-gunslinger instead of what it actually is.
-high level magic is extremely rare in Eberron and if you wield it too casually you can get the attention of an entire nation of dragons. The last time that happened those dragons exterminated the giants.
-the lack of divine adds complexity to religious institutions. In Eberron a cleric can't ask his God what they think is the right choice. This leads to different sects and visions inside the same religions.
- dragon marks are called like that because they are considered a blessing from the Dragons which created the world and because they are part of the draconic prophecy.
Oh damn why did you read Eberron rising from the last war? It’s a complete pile of trash. You need to read the 3rd and 4th edition books. 5th edition worlds from WoTC are complete trash. We played a 9 year game in Eberron across 3rd and 4th edition and it was great. Don’t waste my time with trash talking stuff everyone already knows in garbage. Go to the actual Baler source.
not an eberron expert here thus purely speculative, but 10:02 could have several explanations, first that emperor could have wielded great magical power similar to the houses and if that's the case there might be some curse affecting the houses' bloodlines which acts like a potentially deadly contract penalty if they'd break the contract/oath and as they are considered neutral parties they can basically come and go everywhere, mediate/advise in politics everywhere, etc. without drawing the ire of the populations, which makes them more powerful than most rulers, thus negating a possible motivation for breaking the contract magic.
Sounds dumb and easy to abuse via loophole