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Races of Eberron
A new D&D sourcebook detailing the major races of the Eberron™ world.
Races of Eberron™ provides Dungeons & Dragons® players and Dungeon Masters with an in-depth look at the new races of the Eberron Campaign Setting, including changelings, the kalashtar, shifters, and the warforged. The book includes extensive information on each race, plus new race-related feats, prestige classes, spells, and equipment. In addition, this book highlights the other major races of the Eberron world, including elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, half-orcs, and drow.
AUTHOR Jesse Decker is a designer for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. whose recent roleplaying game design credits include Races of Stone™ and Unearthed Arcana™. Before joining the RPG R&D team as a designer, Jesse served as Editor-in-Chief of Dragon® Magazine.
AUTHOR Matthew Sernett is the Editor-in-Chief of Dragon Magazine. He has written several roleplaying game books for Green Ronin and Wizards of the Coast, Inc. His recent credits include d20 Menace Manual™.
AUTHOR Keith Baker is the creator and co-author of the Eberron Campaign Setting. A foremost expert on the world of Eberron, he wrote Shadows of the Last War™ and co-authored City of Towers™.
AUTHOR Gwendolyn F.M. Kestrel is a managing editor for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. In addition to editing several D&D books, she has co-authored Underdark™ and Planar Handbook™, for Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Races of Eberron™ provides Dungeons & Dragons® players and Dungeon Masters with an in-depth look at the new races of the Eberron Campaign Setting, including changelings, the kalashtar, shifters, and the warforged. The book includes extensive information on each race, plus new race-related feats, prestige classes, spells, and equipment. In addition, this book highlights the other major races of the Eberron world, including elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, half-orcs, and drow.
AUTHOR Jesse Decker is a designer for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. whose recent roleplaying game design credits include Races of Stone™ and Unearthed Arcana™. Before joining the RPG R&D team as a designer, Jesse served as Editor-in-Chief of Dragon® Magazine.
AUTHOR Matthew Sernett is the Editor-in-Chief of Dragon Magazine. He has written several roleplaying game books for Green Ronin and Wizards of the Coast, Inc. His recent credits include d20 Menace Manual™.
AUTHOR Keith Baker is the creator and co-author of the Eberron Campaign Setting. A foremost expert on the world of Eberron, he wrote Shadows of the Last War™ and co-authored City of Towers™.
AUTHOR Gwendolyn F.M. Kestrel is a managing editor for Wizards of the Coast, Inc. In addition to editing several D&D books, she has co-authored Underdark™ and Planar Handbook™, for Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 1, 2021
While it's titled "Races of Eberron", it's really more of a "New Player Races in Eberron not in the Player's Handbook". It's focused on the warforged, shifters, changelings, and the kalashtar.
The warforged starts first, coming in chapter 1, and they are arguably the most interesting new race in Eberron. The shifters are in chapter 2, changelings are in chapter 3, and the kalashtar in chapter 4. In each of these chapters, there's a bit of a recap of their racial attributes and general description, plus a "day in the life" write-up. These are much appreciated as they help set a tone for each race. I liked all of these chapters with perhaps the changeling feeling a bit off - for a very mutable race, their attempt to "categorise" changelings into three distinct philosophies felt a little jarring to their nature.
Anyway, in each of these chapters provide sections on things like culture, society, pyschology, beliefs, values, and race relations. While they all contain great write-ups and help flesh out these new races over what was presented in the Eberron Campaign Setting, I couldn't help but feel that it's not enough. For a sourcebook focused on four specific races, they all felt a little light.
After those four races, chapter 5 summarises the other races of Eberron. This could be weakest link of the sourcebook. Sure, it touches on all of the core Eberron races (including the drow and even the Inspired), but it's so light that it almost feels like an afterthought. Each race gets a small section with a dash of extra flavour over what was already described in the Eberron Campaign Setting. Can't help feeling like they could have used this space for more on the four targeted races and just publish another sourcebook for this section.
And after all that, chapter 6 is the beginning of the new options - we start off with a lot of new feats, and some rather interesting race-specific feats for the four targeted races. These races also get racial substitution levels, quite a few of them I found to be rather flavourful.
Chapter 7 features the obligatory prestige classes (eight of them). Generally... they're pretty bad (in terms of flavour and whether there's a need for them to exist), except maybe the Moonspeaker (shifter druid). Only one of these actually has ten levels (the aforementioned Moonspeaker has twelve). Five are five-level classes, and the last only has three levels. I'm undecided on which has the worst conflict between flavour, lore, and mechanics (probably the Spellcarved).
The last two chapters are fairly short (which is fine) - equipment and spells (and infusions, and psionics) - and fairly skewed. For a book focused on races, the equipment chapter is mainly focused on warforged components, a bit of shifter, and quite a bit of drow (for some odd reason). I guess the changelings and the kalahstar (and the Inspired) don't have much unique equipment.
The same thing is observed with spells. Yes, there are a couple of new spells spread out across all the spellcasting classes (there's very little infusions and psionics), but it's very skewed (a lot of warforged, a bit of shifter, a bit of changeling). It's a bit of an odd decision to not try to come up with more specificity given the nature of this sourcebook.
Overall, this sourcebook feels like a half-hearted attempt to expand on the Eberron races.
The warforged starts first, coming in chapter 1, and they are arguably the most interesting new race in Eberron. The shifters are in chapter 2, changelings are in chapter 3, and the kalashtar in chapter 4. In each of these chapters, there's a bit of a recap of their racial attributes and general description, plus a "day in the life" write-up. These are much appreciated as they help set a tone for each race. I liked all of these chapters with perhaps the changeling feeling a bit off - for a very mutable race, their attempt to "categorise" changelings into three distinct philosophies felt a little jarring to their nature.
Anyway, in each of these chapters provide sections on things like culture, society, pyschology, beliefs, values, and race relations. While they all contain great write-ups and help flesh out these new races over what was presented in the Eberron Campaign Setting, I couldn't help but feel that it's not enough. For a sourcebook focused on four specific races, they all felt a little light.
After those four races, chapter 5 summarises the other races of Eberron. This could be weakest link of the sourcebook. Sure, it touches on all of the core Eberron races (including the drow and even the Inspired), but it's so light that it almost feels like an afterthought. Each race gets a small section with a dash of extra flavour over what was already described in the Eberron Campaign Setting. Can't help feeling like they could have used this space for more on the four targeted races and just publish another sourcebook for this section.
And after all that, chapter 6 is the beginning of the new options - we start off with a lot of new feats, and some rather interesting race-specific feats for the four targeted races. These races also get racial substitution levels, quite a few of them I found to be rather flavourful.
Chapter 7 features the obligatory prestige classes (eight of them). Generally... they're pretty bad (in terms of flavour and whether there's a need for them to exist), except maybe the Moonspeaker (shifter druid). Only one of these actually has ten levels (the aforementioned Moonspeaker has twelve). Five are five-level classes, and the last only has three levels. I'm undecided on which has the worst conflict between flavour, lore, and mechanics (probably the Spellcarved).
The last two chapters are fairly short (which is fine) - equipment and spells (and infusions, and psionics) - and fairly skewed. For a book focused on races, the equipment chapter is mainly focused on warforged components, a bit of shifter, and quite a bit of drow (for some odd reason). I guess the changelings and the kalahstar (and the Inspired) don't have much unique equipment.
The same thing is observed with spells. Yes, there are a couple of new spells spread out across all the spellcasting classes (there's very little infusions and psionics), but it's very skewed (a lot of warforged, a bit of shifter, a bit of changeling). It's a bit of an odd decision to not try to come up with more specificity given the nature of this sourcebook.
Overall, this sourcebook feels like a half-hearted attempt to expand on the Eberron races.
May 30, 2012
Stuff I Read D&D Edition – Races of Eberron
The Eberron train keeps on rolling, and has finally brought me to what many would consider a very important book in the Eberron line of supplements. After all, this book deals with all of the races introduced in the Eberron Campaign Setting, though not in any of the additional supplements. But really, this book introduced a rather shockingly small amount of new material, focusing on reintroducing the races and, what is more likely, making them available to campaign settings other than Eberron. Which makes a sort of sense, and the version of the book that I have looks more like a core supplement than an Eberron supplemnt, and more closely resembles books like Races of Stone and Races of Dragon than it does other Eberron books. Which is fine, I suppose, as the races of Eberron are some good races, and especially with the Warforged and Changelings offer any campaign setting a slew of character options.
So I guess I didn’t find it as enjoyable because I was approaching this book differently, assuming that it fit with the other Eberron supplements and then was kind of let down when the book really does very little to give further information about the races. I mean, there are some things in the book that are interesting. There are some interesting NPCs that the book introduces, and some race specific feats and such, but in terms of giving the setting more depth this supplement fell woefully short. Find of like The Five Nations, this book divides itself in the beginning between the different races, and then uses the remainder of the book to get into feats and spells and items and that kind of thing. It’s not a horrible thing, and the book also introduces prestige classes and the like, some of which provide interesting options. And the feats and such listed are also fine additions. Technically speaking, the book does bring enough new to the table.
Along a similar line, the book does get into variant racial options, from Valenar Elves to some slightly different Gnomes and the like. Nothing too incredible there, but it does provide ways to further customize a character and flesh them out more. But, a bit like the Player’s Guide to Eberron, this book just didn’t have much new going on. It is, given, mainly a PC tool, it seems, to help with making characters of the races described. And some of the flavor text isn’t too bad, but that’s about all it is. The core stats are all in the Eberron Campaign Setting anyway, so this book further doesn’t have a lot new about Eberron because it is geared towards non-Eberron settings. It provides alternative explanations for organizations and races that might fit with more traditional D&D settings. And the problem I have with that is that I don’t really want to play other settings. I like Eberron, and so wanted to learn more about Eberron. And that just didn’t happen.
So really there wasn’t a whole lot wrong with the book. It had a bunch of useful information and some interesting tidbits. Not many, but they were there. And if you are not running an Eberron campaign and want to use the races, this is a great option for just that. It means not shelling out the extra money for the Eberron Campaign Setting, which contains a lot of information such a campaign just wouldn’t need. For my money, though, this just wasn’t that helpful. Perhaps if I had read this first it would have been better, but as it stands I just didn’t get a whole lot out of it. Most of this information exists elsewhere, and everything else is statistics and not further insight into the setting. It’s not even all of the races of Eberron, as Magic of Eberron introduced the half-daelkyr. So I am left to give the book a 6.75/10 and move on.
The Eberron train keeps on rolling, and has finally brought me to what many would consider a very important book in the Eberron line of supplements. After all, this book deals with all of the races introduced in the Eberron Campaign Setting, though not in any of the additional supplements. But really, this book introduced a rather shockingly small amount of new material, focusing on reintroducing the races and, what is more likely, making them available to campaign settings other than Eberron. Which makes a sort of sense, and the version of the book that I have looks more like a core supplement than an Eberron supplemnt, and more closely resembles books like Races of Stone and Races of Dragon than it does other Eberron books. Which is fine, I suppose, as the races of Eberron are some good races, and especially with the Warforged and Changelings offer any campaign setting a slew of character options.
So I guess I didn’t find it as enjoyable because I was approaching this book differently, assuming that it fit with the other Eberron supplements and then was kind of let down when the book really does very little to give further information about the races. I mean, there are some things in the book that are interesting. There are some interesting NPCs that the book introduces, and some race specific feats and such, but in terms of giving the setting more depth this supplement fell woefully short. Find of like The Five Nations, this book divides itself in the beginning between the different races, and then uses the remainder of the book to get into feats and spells and items and that kind of thing. It’s not a horrible thing, and the book also introduces prestige classes and the like, some of which provide interesting options. And the feats and such listed are also fine additions. Technically speaking, the book does bring enough new to the table.
Along a similar line, the book does get into variant racial options, from Valenar Elves to some slightly different Gnomes and the like. Nothing too incredible there, but it does provide ways to further customize a character and flesh them out more. But, a bit like the Player’s Guide to Eberron, this book just didn’t have much new going on. It is, given, mainly a PC tool, it seems, to help with making characters of the races described. And some of the flavor text isn’t too bad, but that’s about all it is. The core stats are all in the Eberron Campaign Setting anyway, so this book further doesn’t have a lot new about Eberron because it is geared towards non-Eberron settings. It provides alternative explanations for organizations and races that might fit with more traditional D&D settings. And the problem I have with that is that I don’t really want to play other settings. I like Eberron, and so wanted to learn more about Eberron. And that just didn’t happen.
So really there wasn’t a whole lot wrong with the book. It had a bunch of useful information and some interesting tidbits. Not many, but they were there. And if you are not running an Eberron campaign and want to use the races, this is a great option for just that. It means not shelling out the extra money for the Eberron Campaign Setting, which contains a lot of information such a campaign just wouldn’t need. For my money, though, this just wasn’t that helpful. Perhaps if I had read this first it would have been better, but as it stands I just didn’t get a whole lot out of it. Most of this information exists elsewhere, and everything else is statistics and not further insight into the setting. It’s not even all of the races of Eberron, as Magic of Eberron introduced the half-daelkyr. So I am left to give the book a 6.75/10 and move on.
May 9, 2008
See eberron campaign setting
April 27, 2015
This is one of the worst Eberron supplements they released. avoid.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews