“Whether aboard an airship or a train car, embark on thrilling adventures shrouded in intrigue! Discover secrets buried by years of devastating war, in which magic-fueled weapons threatened an entire continent.” The pulp adventure and noir intrigue of Eberron have come to the 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons in full, hardcover form! After multiple iterations of artifice, after reading the Wayfinder’s Guide on the lightning rail ride here, we’re finally Rising from the Last War with new races, new narrative mechanics, 5e’s first all-new class, and a tacklebox worth of hooks to bring your characters into the adventure. Let’s go through chapter by chapter, and see what there is to find under the light of the Ring of Siberys!

Quick aside: as promised, the Wayfinder’s Guide to Eberron has been updated following the release of Eberron: Rising from the Last War, so some of what we’re about to go over here can also be found there: warforged, dragonmarks, that sort of thing. Rising is definitely the more detailed product, you’re going to find a lot more Stuff here, but if you’ve got the Guide then you’re off to a good start on your own.

There’s a short intro section that talks about some of the broad facts of the Eberron setting, including discussing the pulp adventure and noir intrigue that create Eberron’s preferred genre, and then we get into . . .

Chapter 1: Character Creation

Races

There’s something for every race on the face of Eberron, but let’s start with the ones that call Eberron their first home: changelings, kalashtar, shifters, and warforged.

The differences in the changeling are, appropriately enough, pretty subtle. For their ability score increase they still receive +2 Charisma, but their +1 can now go into an ability score of your choice instead of just Intelligence or Dexterity. ‘Change Appearance’ has become ‘Shapechanger’, and it’s worded slightly differently – the RftLW version explicitly calls out the ability to change the sound of your voice, for instance. However, the feature no longer automatically grants advantage on Deception checks to avoid detection. Presumably that sort of thing is left up to the DM and the situation now, which seems fair. Unsettling Visage? Gone. Divergent Persona is also gone; instead we get Changeling Instincts, which grants proficiency with two out of Deception, Insight, Intimidation, and Persuasion. I’m a fan of the ability score change, but while Changeling Instincts is a perfectly fine mechanical substitute, I admit I liked the flavor of Divergent Persona. Then again, there’s nothing to keep a player from roleplaying a divergent persona themselves.

Kalashtar gets +2 Wisdom and +1 Charisma instead of +1 to each and +1 to a third of their choice. Dual Mind is always on instead of requiring a reaction and Mental Discipline remains unchanged, and Mind Link is mostly the same in practice, although notably it requires an action instead of a bonus action, lasts an entire hour, and has increases its range by level instead of flat 60’. Psychic Glamour is gone, but Severed from Dreams remains the same. This one feels, mechanically, like one step forward, one step back, and one step slightly to the side. Not needing to spend a reaction to have advantage on Wisdom saving throws is nice, and getting to link with someone for an hour is pretty cool, but I think Psychic Glamour could have been pared back a bit without entirely removing it, and I feel like the ability score changes rob the kalashtar of some flexibility, the opposite of the changeling.

A big change for the shifters is that their core abilities don’t do too much. First of all, the core features don’t grant any kind of ability score increase, that’s all been shifted (I’m hilarious) to the subraces. Second, Keen Senses is gone, so not every shifter is going to be proficient with Perception anymore. Shifting and Darkvision remain the same, though. Beasthide shifters add +1 Strength alongside their +2 Constitution, but are otherwise unchanged. Ditto for the Longtooth, who are only different in that they get +2 Strength and +1 Dexterity. Swifstride are the same by the ability score numbers, still totalling +2 Dexterity and +1 Charisma, but they’re shifting feature increases their walking speed by an additional 5’. Wildhunt shifters again have the same totals at +2 Wisdom +1 Dexterity, but their other features have changed. Mark the Scent is out, and the Shifting Feature grants advantage on Wisdom checks and also prevents creatures within 30’ from having advantage for attacks against you unless you’re incapacitated. Overall, pretty minor stuff; I feel like the changes to the subraces actually do some good work to make them fit their lycanthropic ancestors a little more precisely.

The warforged changed the most dramatically. The subraces are gone, taking the majority of their features with them. Constitution gets +2 now, and one other ability of your choice gets +1. Warforged Resilience became Constructed Resilience, which only changed by stripping out the part where they can’t suffer exhaustion from not resting. Sentry’s Rest is the same. Integrated Protection had a pretty big change. You still get +1 AC, but instead of having armor built in you don it like anyone else; it’s just impossible for someone to remove it against your will while you’re alive. Specialized Design carries the weight of the vanished subraces, granting both a skill and a tool proficiency of your choice. I liked the subraces a fair bit, but the core race we see here has become more flexible to compensate, and there’s always some of the items we’ll see later in the book that can be added on.

Then we have everyone else. Everyone gets a fair amount of setting information to work with, and I particularly like how each section addresses the different population centers of the races. The elves, for instance, cover the Aereni, the Tairnadal, the Drow of Xen’drik, and the elves who have ‘gone native’ in the Five Nations. A lot, but not all, of the races also get some random tables to roll on, like Zil gnomes getting to roll for which scheme they’re working on or dwarves finding out why they might have left the Mror Holds. Speaking of which, there have been some interesting tweaks, like some dwarves wielding aberrant symbionts to fight the daelkyr beneath the Holds. There’s one particularly glaring discrepancy, however, in that the section addressing “Half-Orcs and Dragonmarks” says that only half-orcs can manifest the Mark of Finding . . . but every other instance in the book seems to still have humans being able to manifest it. A relic of a proposed change that got missed in the editing process, I imagine.

We also get stats for playing bugbears, goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs, which I quite like. One of my favorite parts of Eberron has always been that the dar and the druidic orcs are the ones with the Merit Badge for Saving the World, as opposed to the humans and elves and such in most settings, so it’s nice to see them getting their due up front here. I’m not going to go into minutiae here because this section is already running long, but take my word for it: all four have some pretty neat abilities, features, and skills that I think will make them pretty fun to play.

Hey, maybe I’ll do a Daelkyr War Meet the Party, show them off that way?

Dragonmarks

The mystical markings that grant the magical megacorporations of the setting their clout continue to be presented as either variant races (humans, half-orcs, and half-elves) or subraces (dwarves, elves, gnomes, haflings). I’m not going to go through every single dragonmark in detail, but there have been some noticeable changes. First of all, every ‘marked individual is getting access to spells, whether they’re a spellcaster class or not, using whichever ability score their variant/subrace grants them. If the characters have the Spellcasting or Pact Magic features from their class, though, the dragonmark also adds some mark-determined skills to their spell list, like a cleric’s domain. Everyone still has the excellent intuition die feature . . . although I can’t spot any sign of the Greater Dragonmark feat which would have turned that d4 to a d6 among other bonuses, which I find to be a disappointing lack. Still, overall I think this is a pretty neat way to handle the whole dragonmarked thing, and all of them look fun to play.

Ah, and how could we forget the aberrant dragonmarks, because the Houses sure as heck wouldn’t. Still a feat, still +1 Constitution, but otherwise it’s changed. Instead of just one sorcerer spell you gain a cantrip and a 1st-level spell (which can be cast once per rest). Instead of spending Hit Dice and taking damage to enhance it, you can expend a Hit Die and roll it. Even, you get that many temp HP, odds and a random creature within 30’ (which can include you, mind) takes that much psychic damage. There’s also an option for Greater Aberrant Power: at 10th level a character with the Aberrant Dragonmarked feat has a 10% to gain an epic boon from Chapter 7 of the DMG! If they don’t do so, they have a 10% chance again every time they level up. This option makes me narrow my eyes a little harder at the space where the Greater Dragonmark feat used to be, but bam, it definitely sends the aberrants in the direction I wanted them to go while reviewing Wayfinder’s.

House Agent and Artificer

The House Agent background represents any character with official and employee-grade connections with a dragonmarked House, whether you’re a member of the families or simply a valued asset. Proficiency with Investigation and Persuasion is the name of the game, but you also get two tool proficiencies depending on which House you work for: brewer’s supplies and cook’s utensils for Ghallanda, a musical instrument and a poisoner’s kit for Thuranni, and so on. And, of course, your House Connections feature means that wherever your House has an enclave, you’ll find succor.

Now, the artificer. First, huge change: the Archivist is gone, poof, vanished. It was the strangest of the four builds, so I can’t say I’m too surprised , but it does leave us with ‘only’ three: Alchemist, Artillerist, and Battle Smith. Let’s deal with the core class before looking at those, though.

1st and 2nd level look the same (although in the end you’ll both know more and be able to have more active infusions). Tool Expertise isn’t at 3rd level any more, but it does show back up at 6th (fair). You do get The Right Tool For The Job, though: the artificer can use tinker’s tools to create one of any kind of artisan’s tools that they want (neat). Arcane Armament is gone, so no extra attack in the core class, which is kind of a bummer. Flash of Genius shows up at 7th level though, spending a reaction to add your Intelligence modifier to an ability check or saving throw for a creature within 30’ (really neat). Right Cantrip For The Job is gone (boo), but Spell Storing Item drops from 18th to 11th level (yay)!

The increasing number of attunable magic items over the course of the class is back, instead of suddenly being able to attune to 6 at 20th level, but things have actually gotten a bit more interesting, there. 10th level’s Magic Item Adept lets you attune up to four items, but it also reduces the time to craft a common or uncommon magic item to a quarter of normal, and reduces the gold cost by half. 14th level’s Magic Item Savant lets you attune up to five, and lets you ignore all class, race, spell, and level requirements for attunement. Magic Item Master doesn’t have any frills, but it nets you your sixth attuned item early at 18th level. Soul of Artifice at 20th level might not increase your attuned items any more as a result, but if anything it’s more bonkers: still +1 to all saving throws for each attuned item you’ve got, and every time you’re reduced to 0 HP but not killed outright you can end one of your infusions (you’ll have up to 6 by then) with a reaction to instead be reduced to 1 HP.

That is b a n a n a s. But hey, it’s 20th level, how many people are going to get that far anyway? Let them have their Ultimate Final Form if they do, says I.

The builds have had a number of small but dramatic tweaks across all three. Features kick in at 3rd, 5th, 9th and 15th level instead of 3rd, 6th, and 14th. The features that reduced crafting time and gold cost for their chosen items are gone, obviously having been supplanted by Magic Item Adept. The additional spells have changed for some: the alchemist has the healing word spells now, and the battle smith has ditched a few smites in favor of more variety like shield and conjure barrage. The alchemist has lost their homunculus, but gained Experimental Elixirs that do all sorts of things from healing to flight (mind, every elixer starts granting temp HP by 9th level), and their capstone feature adds heal as well. The artillerist has lost the Wand Prototype that stores cantrips (boo again, I liked having lots of cantrips), but gains an Arcane Firearm that adds 1d8 to one of your spell’s damage rolls every time you use it as your focus. Also, the eldritch cannon (formerly the arcane turret) does get an increase to its damage-dealing forms. The battle smith has picked up an Extra Attack feature (ah, now dropping Arcane Armament makes more sense), Arcane Jolt uses d6s instead of d4s since it’’s now 9th level instead of 6th, and Improved Defender also gives your Steel (not Iron) Defender +2 AC.

Hey, wait a minute . . . where’s the arcane weapon spell?

Overall, I’d say the changes to the artificer were all about making the different builds feel more different; I fully approve of things like the adjustments to spell lists, the alchemist not having a wee buddy like the other two, the slightly-heavier-hitting artillerist, and the battle smith being the one with an extra attack. Stick one of each in the same group and their playstyles would be sufficiently unique to let each shine. I don’t agree with all of the changes (where’s my arcane weapon and cantrip flexibility darn it), but I’d still play the heck out of each of them.

Did I mention that Soul of Artifice is bananas?

Patrons

Now we’re getting into completely new territory, and what might be one of my favorite parts of this book. One of the things that’s always stood out to me personally about Eberron is that it is very difficult for an adventuring party to operate in a vacuum; even trying to pillage a ruin usually means at least two factions want to interfere, on top of the third who is paying you to do the pillaging in the first place. So there are a lot of sources of opposition, but then there are also a lot of potential allies and bankrollers, and that’s where patrons come in. There are a lot of different types of patron: adventuring guilds, crime syndicates, dragonmarked houses, espionage agencies, heads of state, immortal beings, inquisitive agencies, military forces, newspapers, religious orders, and universities.

Choosing a patron for your characters provides a lot of material to work with: roles within the patron’s organization you could take up, what kind of contacts you might have, resources to draw upon, your relationship with other factions as a result of the patronage, adventures that you might find yourself going on, and so on. There are also assignments and responsibilities that the patron might give to you, whether that’s a military force handing down orders or you yourself having to manage the guild or newspaper or what have you that you founded. Each type of patron comes with one fully-fleshed out example (King’s Dark Lanterns, the Korranberg Chronicle, Morgrave University, etc.) and some advice for different patrons of the same type (different guilds or heads of state, running your own crime syndicate, with dreamlily and changelings!).

A patron won’t be for every group, but for those who pick one, I’d say they’re an excellent way to set up with your DM what kind of Eberron campaign you want to be playing.

The patrons section also sees the start of another favorite part of the book: newspaper clippings! Scattered from here to the end of Chapter 4 headlines, reports, and opinion pieces from such papers as the Chronicle, the Aundairan Scroll, the Sharn Inquisitive, the Voice of Thrane, and more give us an in-universe look at the setting’s rumors, cultures, points of view, and history. It’s a great touch, and I’m glad they went with it.

Wow, 101 pages into a 320 page book, and we’ve only now come to the end of the ‘who is my character and how are they engaged in the setting’ stuff. That’s pretty impressive. There’s less fiddly details as we charge ahead, but now things start getting informative.

Chapter 2: Khorvaire Gazetteer

Nations of Khorvaire

This section takes a look at every nation and region on the continent of Khorvaire. A few of the same topics are covered in each: ‘Interesting Things’ about the area (House Deneith has a strong presence in Darguun, the lizardfolk of Q’Barra have truck with fiendish powers), information on the culture, and some locations worth making a visit to for good or ill. Each also has a few notes to consider when making characters, whether PC or NPC; Brelish tend to have a somewhat iffy relationship with the law, the Eldeen might be from settled farmlands or the deep woods, a Karrn is going to have some kind of opinion about the undead. Many regions also have a section called ‘Aftermath of the Last War’, which is pretty much what it sounds like. This is a good example of something I’m noticing throughout this iteration of the setting: the fact that Cyre was wiped out a mere four years ago, and the war ended barely two years ago, is leaned in to a lot more than it used to be. Not that the Last War was ever old news in the setting, but this time out Eberron seems very clear that it wants you the players and DMs to be considering what the War has done to the world – and to your characters.

Overall, you’re not getting a huge deep dive into any one given region, and you’re not getting any region-specific statblocks to work with. I would have liked a few example NPC profiles for players to meet, for instance. That being said, as primers to get started adventuring anywhere on Khorvaire go, this is pretty excellent. I’d say the tips and questions about characters and their origins will see a lot of use in every campaign.

Distant Lands

Khorvaire isn’t the be-all-end-all of Eberron, and this section gives us a briefing on the other continents and locales: Aerenal, Argonnessen, Khyber, Sarlona, Xen’drik, and a pleasant surprise with a spotlight on the Frostfell and Everice at the North and South poles. Each section talks about the culture (if there is any such thing) in its chosen region, and tells us a bit about what’s going on there. It’s definitely just an overview, but one thing I particularly liked was that the hooks provided came in two lists for each area: things you might be doing if you visit there, and things you might be doing on Khorvaire because of the region’s influence. So, even if you don’t travel beyond the shores of Khorvaire in your campaign, you might still be getting some good use out of this section. Each region also has a random trinket table, and hey, I’m always up for more fun trinket options.

Faiths of Khorvaire

Religion is a funny thing on Eberron, relative to the rest of the D&D multiverse: the gods never manifest for a chat or take on the BBEG themselves, instead only expressing themselves through the faith of their followers, and yet that faith is a Big Deal in Eberron. That’s what this section covers: some background-ish tables for your character’s relationship with faith (positive or negative), and the beliefs, symbols, rites, and temples for every faith from the Sovereign Host to the Cults of the Dragon Below. It’s actually a pretty comprehensive section, a must-read for any paladin, cleric, or druid and a highly-recommended read for any other player, particularly characters from more ‘unique’ backgrounds like kalashtar or Aereni elves. Of course, a DM is going to have a lot of potential value here, and it’s a fun read to boot.

Chapter 3: Sharn, City of Towers

Ah, the City of Knives, the City of Eyes, the New York City of the setting! Chapter 3 is actually the second shortest chapter of the book if you don’t count the intro, but that has less to do with a lack of content and more to do with the fact that it is very focused on delivering lots of content about a very specific subject. Sharn has a reputation as a setting-within-a-setting, entire campaigns could take place that never leave the city’s boundaries, and it got its own sourcebook in the 3.5 days. There’s a ton of material here, from a random table for what happens when you fall off a bridge to magical services available in the city to the long-lasting scars of the war to the government (hey named NPCs who serve on the Council, just like I wanted in Chapter 2) to guilds and magical orders and holidays and more! As you go through the chapter you get information not just on the important districts of the different plateaus but noteworthy locations in each of those districts, more random tables from bazaar merchants in Dura to shows in Menthis, and Things To Do that serve as adventure hooks. The chapter also ends by talking about the criminal and law enforcement factions in the city. If you have a criminal contact this is where you find out exactly who they are (Boromar halfling burglar Myri Olar or Daask kobold arsonist sorcerer Ash, perhaps), and if you’re wondering why the Redcloak Battalion is after you, well, this will tell you how bad the trial is going to be.

This chapter is one that’s more of a Venn diagram with the Sharn section in Wayfinder’s. While Wayfinder’s doesn’t go into as much detail as Rising does, there are a couple things there that you won’t find here: the random tables for the PHB backgrounds, the Starting Points, and the Quick Sharn Stories are unique to Wayfinder’s. There’ll be more Sharn adventure hooks in a bit, though.

Chapter 4: Building Eberron Adventures

Themes and Factions

Chapter 4 starts off by talking about exactly how to get the pulp action and noir intrigue that make the setting stand out to work for you. There’s several pages of advice on villains, including ways to keep them alive in the face of pragmatic player characters, followed by advice for ramping up the action of an adventure and stringing along an intrigue plot to keep the players guessing and interested. Tonal advice sections in RPG books tend to be hit or miss for me, but I think this one’s a hit, particularly since little prompts in the form of tables for things like ‘how is this villain morally ambiguous’ and ‘plot twists that spike the intrigue levels’ provide good stepping stones to getting to the kind of stories that make Eberron feel like Eberron.

Remember how I said that it’s difficult for Eberron adventurers to operate in a vacuum? This next section is why. Every faction, good or evil, that didn’t already get its time in the spotlight in Chapter 2 shows up here, and a few that did are looked at with more detail: the Aurum, Cults of the Dragon Below, Dragonmarked Houses, Dragons, The Dreaming Dark, Droaam, Gatekeepers, Goblinoids and the Heirs of Dhakaan, the Lord of Blades, the Lords of Dust, and the Order of the Emerald Claw, plus the sheer presence of the Last War and the horror show that is the Mournland. Each section talks about the themes of a campaign that would feature that faction (or event, or location), along with missions or adventures that players might be sent on, unnamed NPCs to interact with, and locations that are important to them. Any one could fill a campaign on its own, so of course Eberron shines the most when there’s a train wreck of multiple factions scrambling for their own goals.

Speaking of train wrecks, this section also has some maps (amongst which is a lightning rail), a nice touch that could prove very useful for certain campaigns.

Planes of Existence and Travel

Eberron has its own, complicated cosmology unique in the Great Wheel of the multiverse, with many planes of existence ‘orbiting’ around it like planets. The second best part of this section is that every one of those planes, from Daanvi the Perfect Order to Xorait the Realm of Madness gets some details and a random table of effects for what’s going on in the manifest zones on Eberron, where those planes bleed through to the material world.

My favorite part, though, is that the book does take the time to address the Realms-sized elephant in the room. Eberron is hard to get to, by default impossible to visit from any other setting; between all the planes, moons, and the Ring of Siberys, creating a portal there or flying in on a spelljammer is a dangerous idea. Not to mention that between Dal Quor and Xoriat the beings on Eberron have a fair amount of experience when it comes to giving extraplanar opponents the boot, the setting has more seals than an aquarium. That being said, the idea of introducing things from, say, Forgotten Realms is discussed, and discussed very smartly. Asmodeus is the example given. He’d be a new player on the scene, potentially quite disruptive to everyone else’s plans since archdevils are not usually on the Eberronian menu . . . but the situation could likely blow up in his face as well, as he doesn’t have an established power base and, as I said, Eberron’s gotten rocked by beings from the local weirdness and put them out the door twice, it’s not likely to look kindly on an outsider mucking about. Honestly, I think it’s a pretty great compromise between people who want Eberron to stand apart and those who want some multiversal shenanigans; you can do either, you just need to think a bit more for the latter.

The travel section is pretty self explanatory, talking about the iconic magical vessels like the lightning rail and elemental airships and locales like the Golden Dragon Inn chain. There’s a 1d100 table for mysterious rail/airship passengers, it’s awesome.

Adventures and Crimes in Sharn

Leaning into the setting-within-a-setting thing for Sharn again, this section provides adventure seeds, random street events, and even some interesting home bases for your players to set up shop in for a campaign that never has to leave the city limits. Sharn also gets its own slew of factions, in the form of the criminal syndicates and the Sharn Watch that plague/protect/purloin the city. Aside from general information about each faction you get named(!) NPCs to interact with, adventure hooks, assignments they might give you as patrons, some flavorful unnamed villain NPCs (yes that includes the Watch) to add in, and some more maps. More good stuff. However, this chapter ends not with a hook or a character seed, but a full-fledged adventure.

Forgotten Relics

This is a 1st level adventure that should see characters who make it to the end reach 2nd level. Now, I’m not going to go into too much detail so as not to spoil any potential players, but I can tell you that the characters are hired by a Sergeant of the Sharn Watch to check in on an informant whose life is in danger, get her information, and get her out alive. Right away more than one faction is in play and is interested in the informant, and as all good pulp stories go the characters quickly find themselves in a much more complicated situation.

This is 5th Edition’s Intro to Eberron adventure, really, what quite a few people may end up having as their first played experience in the setting, so what it really needs to do is capture Eberron’s feel. I think it manages that! There are run-down warforged bars, chase scenes, kidnappings, old ruins, international motives, disguises, skycoach battles, and hooks for future adventures. I think it’ll whet the appetite quite nicely.

Chapter 5: Treasures

Magic items! The shortest chapter in the book, it’s nevertheless a very interesting one. You have basic prosthetics which replace lost limbs, then there’s basically an arcane rocket fist. The squamous symbionts that the Mror dwarves have been dabbling with are featured here, notably they can’t be removed by anything short of curse-ending magic once they’ve been attached. There are everyday items like everbright lanterns and feather tokens. There’s imbued wood to enhance your wands and staffs to deal more damage, and dragonmark-specific items like the scribe’s pen. Sentient docents can be installed into warforged to provide languages, skills, and spells. Of particular note is that the end of the chapter talks about how common magic items are often widely available for purchase, and if made using dragonshards can often be crafted much faster and cheaper than usual.

Best part, there’s a table for crafting complications when making items that are rarer than common. Whoops, accidentally created a temporary manifest zone to Fernia in the smithy! Uh oh, your Dragon Slayer is sentient and wants to pick fights, good luck!

Chapter 6: Friends and Foes

We close out Rising from the Last War with a Bestiary and a list of Generic NPCs. Magewrights, shifters, warforged soldiers, kalashtar, dolgrims, Karrnathi undead, a pretty decent slew of ‘basic’ Eberron beasties are in here, but there are some whoppers. Two of the daelkyr, Belashyrra and Dyrnn, have statblocks. The warforged colosuss, which puts the gargantuan in giant robot, stomps its way into existence and then shoots existence with an incinerating beam. Two CR 28 Overlords have statblocks, and let me tell you, they will ruin pretty much any/everyone’s day.

These ‘whoppers’ are really cool to have (I’m actually a pretty big fan of the colossus, as many of these massive constructs are lying derelict and are written as half-monster half-dungeon), but . . . remember back in Chapter 2, I mentioned that there weren’t any region-specific statblocks? I find myself cracking open 4th Edition’s Eberron Campaign Guide, and I see that practically every region and organization had at least one statblock to its name; the only 4e dragonmarked house that didn’t have a stablock was Vadalis, and Tarkanan (which has a showing in Rising’s generic NPC section) had two. I think that, instead of Sul Khatesh the Keeper of Secrets, who will straight-up murder any party I might have available to throw at her over the course of the next few real-world years if she even gets out of Khyber jail, I’d have preferred some page space given over to more . . . common opponents. This is the flagship hardcover for Eberron in 5th Edition; while you don’t want to have nothing for higher level play, it could have catered a bit more to parties in the more populated level bands.

Then again we’ve got Exploring Eberron rapidly coming over the horizon and the DM’s Guild in general seems to be buzzing, so mayhaps that’s a problem that will fix itself, if it hasn’t already. There are definitely questions I’d like to ask about the future of the setting in 5th Edition . . . hey, I’m going to PAX Unplugged next month. I wonder if there’s anyone there I could ask …

Conclusion

There are so many ideas in this book, so many seeds that can be planted and grow into so many different adventures. It’s startling to think that this is really, I believe, the first full campaign setting book for 5th Edition; the next closest is the SCAG, which only covers a fraction of the Realms, and Curse of Strahd is as much adventure as it is setting. I’ve gotten so used to there primarily being adventures in this Edition that the amount of potential in this book is great; I think that close to everyone could find at least one thread they’d want to pull on. All of that before even getting into the fact that it’s also a good Eberron book, too.

For Khorvairan veterans who’ve made the march from 4th Edition and even 3.5, yes, there are some changes, but this is still the setting we love. For newcomers . . . I think you’re going to like it here.