Eberron Player's Guide: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement [Hardcover]

David Noonan (Author), Ari Marmell (Author)

Book Description

Series: D&D Supplement | Publication Date: June 16, 2009

The complete guide to building Eberron(R) characters.

The Eberron Player's Guide presents the film noir world of Eberron from the point of view of the adventurer exploring it. This product includes everything a player needs to create their character for a D&D(R) campaign in the Eberron setting, including new feats, new character powers, new paragon paths and epic destinies, and even a new 4th edition version of a classic Eberron class: the Artificer!

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast; Supplement edition (June 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786951001
• ISBN-13: 978-0786951000
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #231,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Ultimate Players Guide, June 16, 2009

By 

Eric Moran (Minneapolis, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eberron Player's Guide: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement (Hardcover)

This guide is what I would call the ultimate in a Player's Guide for D&D 4E. I did not use Eberron much in 3rd edition, we only briefly used it towards the end of our time with 3rd. I am currently running a game in 4E that is set in Eberron, but I have been basing all of the material off items from the 3rd edition.

With this guide, this helps hash out all of your PCs history. This has information on each different area of the world, and helps you write out your backstory (which I'm now requiring my PCs to do). Each area has a description of that part of the world, and lists the major features of each. It also has information how to adapt your character to fall under one of the Dragonmarked houses, and other scenarios from the history of Eberron. The book does introduce 3 new races (Changelings (shapeshifters), Kalashtar (dark fugutive humanoids), and Warforged (constructs)), and one new Class, the Artificer. It also has lots of new paragon paths, and a few epic destinies, along with a new skill, Alchemy, which is similar to and can be replaced by Rituals. And as with all player books, there are lots of new feats, and equipment, dragonmarked, normal, and magical. And the book has information on Genasi, which I did not allow one of my players to use since I was holding out for more information on Eberron, I am giving her the option of using this (with the limitations that are in the book of course).

My biggest complaint is similar to the main Eberron campaign setting from 3rd edition, lack of information on the world outside of Khorvaire (the main continent). I like to throw my party into a wild world, and there are barely 4 pages describing the rest of the world. Hopefully this will be somewhat remedied by the Campaign setting book due next month, but I have little hope.

As I stated previously, this is a very great guide for players (and DM's) to help develop their characters and establish a great backstory for them. I highly recommend it to players who are in the Eberron module.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Only Ok, but still a must if you're running Eberron in 4E., July 6, 2009

By 

T. A. Clark (Spring Valley, MN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eberron Player's Guide: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement (Hardcover)

Artificers are back, and well constructed to work with 4th edition. This is a class that's unique and fun enough that I could see it eventually winding up alongside the standard classes in a future iteration of D&D.

The Eberron races are great, with the Kalashtar and particularly the Warforged being favorites in my own gaming group for both npc's and players.



The bad side of all this is that all of this feels like it could have been part of a single release rather than being separated from the campaign guide.

To be fair, there's plenty here; I just don't think most of it is useful by itself, and the context necessary to make it shine is going to be in the separate campaign guide. Some of the more interesting aspects of Eberron that made me enjoy it in 3E was how it handled certain traditional aspects in its own way, such as war-like desert elves and so on. They get a mention here, but none of it is fleshed out in a way that makes it feel satisfying, or lain out in a way that makes those things part of the standard flow of character creation using the book.

Is the book worth the money? I'd definitely say yes, but only when combined with the campaign book. It's half of a complete campaign, so I gave it three stars as it's just not enough by itself to warrant more... and it winds up being pretty expensive to put together all you need for the campaign world.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars great update to 4E, miss the Eberron specific artwork, July 16, 2009

By 

Jason Hobson (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Eberron Player's Guide: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement (Hardcover)

I'm a long time fan of the Eberron setting. The book does a fine job of updating the mechanics to 4th Edition particularly the dragonmarks and paragon paths. I'm still holding tight to my old 3.5 Eberron books for flavor, story elements and look+feel. That's what I miss the most in this update is the art. The original setting books had a very unique artistic license that differentiated the setting from anything else on the market from WoTC or others. Alas now everything from WoTC looks the same.