Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book is a far cry from the "ultimate" in player guides. It's biggest flaw is that it contains no actual character creation information, all of that is in the 4th ed core player's guide. The only thing you get with this book is Eberron specific races, one new class and background information on the world. There is nothing in this book about how to create a character for the game, not even a copy of the character sheet. IMO you can save yourself the $40 and just go with the core book. An additional flaw, and a big pet peeve of mine in rulebooks is there is no index. You're stuck flipping pages in the chapter if you want top look up a power or an item. With computer editing there's no excuse for not having an index theses days, it just laziness. I recommend this book only to completist fanboys. If you just want to play D&D in the Eberron world, you can skip this book. Really.

The book opens up a lot of options for Eberron players. The Eberron Campaign Guide for the DM suggests a lot of neat little hooks that tie very nicely to the player's guide here. The Warforged race is added to 4th edition, as well as the changeling, and the Kalashtar, all intriguing as races, and the book adds artificers as an additional arcane leader. The book covers a bunch of background behind the current setting of Eberron, some of it rather redundant if you already have the Campaign Guide, but not enough for the book to be anywhere near a rehash. Its essentially a steam-punk world for D&D 4th edition.

A recent article in the on-line Dragon magazine strongly suggested that two of the player character classes in the Eberron campaign setting were also applicable in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.

So, I decided to buy a couple copies of the Eberron books.

This book has good maps, and plenty of information to get you started in Eberron. I think they did a better job with this Players Guide than they did with the Forgotten Realms Players Guide.

Eberron 4e is here and boy is it good! The races, class options, and feats are all good, flavorful, and fun. I appreciate how the design team took time to ask themselves "did this work the way we wanted in 3.x?" and if it didn't (like Dragonmarks) then they changed so it did. There are no setting upheavals vs the 3.x version which is not too surprising since the design of 4e took a lot from Eberron IMO. And I think this book is perfect for players in that it provides much of the wonderful flavor of Eberron without giving away secrets or too much knowledge. This, along with the PH2, are my favorite 4e books.

I have to admit that, this book has great athosphere in it and it brings the world of Eberron to your skin, in a good way. There is plenty of good information to get your characters (these hardboiled adventurers) starting their adventurous lifes in Eberron. World of Eberron is a stunning and dangerous world waiting for your characters.

This new 4th Edition supplement its a demonstration of a new way to give you the required information. This book confer all the information that players needs; entirely diferent from other editions that gives the information to the DM and players in one campaing guide book. Just...Great!
Eberron Player's Guide: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement