First impression: Eberron 4th Edition.
Jun. 17th, 2009 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinI had a chance to look at the Eberron Player's Guide tonight. While I've got no interest in the setting, my first impression is that they did a better job of packing it with setting-independent/portable player content than they did the Forgotten Realms one: three new races, an artificer class that I'm more pleased with than I'd expected, a handful of new rituals, interesting new alchemy items, an alchemist paragon path (good idea and well executed), a handful of new magic items of multiple types, etc.
The "Dragonmark" feats strike me as a bit overpowered compared to other feats, especially as many of them include the full benefits of another heroic tier feat plus other stuff. Maybe there's something in the world setting I don't know about that would act as a counterbalance to this (no, "well, each mark is associated with a house" is not a drawback and neither is "well, once you've taken one of these essentially-two-and-a-half-feats-for-the-price-of-one feats, you can't take any others isn't a drawback either), but I would think twice before allowing someone to import them into my campaign. Or I would make them count for both the first and second level feat. I don't know. I'd have to look at them some more and think about it.
Perhaps a better way to handle it would have been to divide them up into multiple feats, an initial one that gives a bonus comparable/equal to a single feat and then locks you into only taking other feats of that Dragonmark... much the way feats are used to handle racial subgroups in the Forgotten Realms book, or the way that you can gain more powers for your familiar by taking further familiar feats as shown in Arcane Power.
The "Dragonmark" feats strike me as a bit overpowered compared to other feats, especially as many of them include the full benefits of another heroic tier feat plus other stuff. Maybe there's something in the world setting I don't know about that would act as a counterbalance to this (no, "well, each mark is associated with a house" is not a drawback and neither is "well, once you've taken one of these essentially-two-and-a-half-feats-for-the-price-of-one feats, you can't take any others isn't a drawback either), but I would think twice before allowing someone to import them into my campaign. Or I would make them count for both the first and second level feat. I don't know. I'd have to look at them some more and think about it.
Perhaps a better way to handle it would have been to divide them up into multiple feats, an initial one that gives a bonus comparable/equal to a single feat and then locks you into only taking other feats of that Dragonmark... much the way feats are used to handle racial subgroups in the Forgotten Realms book, or the way that you can gain more powers for your familiar by taking further familiar feats as shown in Arcane Power.
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on 2009-06-18 06:27 am (UTC)Though there's always the caveat that if something in the rules doesn't seem right to you as a GM, you can always change them.
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on 2009-06-18 06:52 am (UTC)It's just disappointing, when so much of the rest of the book works just fine in any setting. I know Dragonmarks are Eberron-specific, but if they were balanced with everything else, they could be more easily adapted to give players more options in any game.
But then I guess the Forgotten Realms handbook had the spellscarred stuff, which was similarly tied up in the setting.
It's still a good book. I didn't expect to like the artificer class at all, and I think it turned out well.