Eberron and 4E

[Durin1211]

I am so confused as to what WoTC is going to do with the Eberron campaign setting. While I see the flavor of 4e might possible make more sense in Eberron there are a few things that have me scratching my head.

In Eberron each race except for Shifters and Changelings has a dragonmarked house. That includes Gnomes, Half Elves and Half-Orcs. If all of the above are getting tossed out the window and 4e is adding Tieflings(I know nothing about them and don't like them)and Dragonborn.

How can they possible work the new 4e system in Eberron.

I liked the Eberron concept. It reminded me a little bit of the Vlad Taltos books by Stephen Brust. Anyway I liked the concept.

One other thing that rankles me is getting rid of the nine alignments. I think it is a fairly easyway of catogorizing a characters personality/values. I remember looking at the Alignment discription box in the 1e players handbook and it made sense to me and I was 12 at the time.

I played D&D in gradeschool for a few years but wandered away from it because of a lack of folks to play it with. I have been enjoying playing D&D 3.5 since a friend asked me if I wanted to play because he knowsI love the Fantasy genre. It just seems to me that 4e wanders to far away from the core of the game.

[Tatterdemalion]

Durin1211 wrote:

I am so confused as to what WoTC is going to do with the Eberron campaign setting. While I see the flavor of 4e might possible make more sense in Eberron there are a few things that have me scratching my head...

I recall a release stating that they wouldn't do anything to support campaign settings for about a year after 4/e's release.

Personally, I'd be surprised to find out they're considering any potential fallout of their decisions.

[Tatterdemalion]

Durin1211 wrote:

One other thing that rankles me is getting rid of the nine alignments.

I suppose they'll also get rid of detect evil and protection from evil.

[Matthew Morris]

Tatterdemalion wrote:

Durin1211 wrote:

One other thing that rankles me is getting rid of the nine alignments.

I suppose they'll also get rid of detect evil and protection from evil.

They were going to have protection from devils but realized half their monsters and characters couldn't touch each other.

We'll just see if they're casting magic circle against sales as well.

I do think that unless the 'forged, changlings, and shifters are in the MM I, with stats, it's going to hurt Eberron.

Edit: Forgot to add. If Eberron is the 2009 campaign setting, the 'power sources' in PHB II better be psionics and maybe something for shfters and changlings.

[RigaMortus]

Durin1211 wrote:

One other thing that rankles me is getting rid of the nine alignments. I think it is a fairly easyway of catogorizing a characters personality/values. I remember looking at the Alignment discription box in the 1e players handbook and it made sense to me and I was 12 at the time.

The alignments as they are don't make much sense. It is easy to categorize good and evil, but law and chaos is a lot more complex and hard to define. Let's look at just the Lawful aspect. What does that mean? Do you follow the Laws of the land? What if they are corrupt? Or is it just a personal code that you follow? Or is it an organization's code of conduct (like Paladins)? What if you are in an organized crime syndicate, they are obviously against the law BUT they do have their own codes to follow. So are they Lawful or Chaotic or Neutral? And what happens when these come into conflict? What if your personal code doesn't co-inside with the laws of the land? You are forced to choose one "law" or rule or code over the other.

And I never really liked in 3E how they say that alignments are just tendancies. A lawful character doesn't always have to act lawful. What? Then what is the point? Then you really aren't lawful then, are you? It's like they give these guidelines on how to play lawful and chaotic and then say "but you really don't have to all the time".

But Good and Evil is more black and white and easy to define. Most heroes are good, unless you are running an evil campaign...

[tdewitt274]

My guess is that they're adding the "most popular" races/classes to the core 4e. When the Eberron CS comes out, it will have additional information based on the flavor of the CS.

Half orcs eventually came into the 3e by way of 1e Unearthed Arcana and the 2e Complete Book of Humanoids. Tieflings will make their rise from the 3e FRCS.

[Tatterdemalion]

Matthew Morris wrote:

We'll just see if they're casting magic circle against sales as well.

LOL :)

I'm certainly suffering a pretty serious penalty on my save vs that spell.

Matthew Morris wrote:

I do think that unless the 'forged, changlings, and shifters are in the MM I, with stats, it's going to hurt Eberron.

Hmmm, that'll be interesting. IMO if they don't show up, it'll validate all my accusations of WotC incompetence. It'll also show pretty dramatically where WotC stands in terms of meaningful customer support (as opposed to empty words spewed out on a weekly basis on the web site).

It may not always sound that way, but I hope I'm wrong.

[Cory Stafford 29]

Tatterdemalion wrote:

Durin1211 wrote:

I am so confused as to what WoTC is going to do with the Eberron campaign setting. While I see the flavor of 4e might possible make more sense in Eberron there are a few things that have me scratching my head...

I recall a release stating that they wouldn't do anything to support campaign settings for about a year after 4/e's release.

Personally, I'd be surprised to find out they're considering any potential fallout of their decisions.

Well, the 4E Forgotten Realms has it's setting book scheduled to be released in August, shortly after 4E's launch. So it's kind of being supported if you call killing it, and reanimatng it as a mindless zombie support. So it's being supported in the same way Dragon and Dungeon are, which isn't saying much.

[Failed Saving Throw]

So are they going to pretend the 3.5 books never happened and release "all-new" 4E rehash fluff? For example, are we going to see 4E versions of the Xen'Drik and Sarlona books...?

[Cory Stafford 29]

I would say that Wizards will recycle most 3.5 material that proved to be popular for 4th edition. What good is a new edition, if you can't milk it like a giant cash cow?