A First Look at Eberron: Forge of the Artificer
Tabletop Tuesday
It’s been just over six years since the release of Eberron: Rising from the Last War. That source book was, until this week, the only 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons content for fans of the Eberron setting. Today, we get our first look at Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, which releases officially on December 9th, but is currently available for preview on D&D Beyond for Master Tier subscribers.
Review Score: 7.0 / 10
I really enjoyed Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, but I was quite confused at times about the organization of the book, and I was a bit disappointed on its reliance on the reader’s access to Eberron: Rising from the Last War for added details and context.
We’ve known for a while that a new Eberron book was going to be a part of the 2024 soft relaunch of D&D when the redesigned Artificer class first showed up on Unearthed Arcana in late 2024 and Dragonmarks were previewed earlier this year, also as playtest material.
Which is to say that Forge of the Artificer serves two main purposes. The first is to provide updates to the rules for playing a character in Eberron to bring it in line with the new 2024 rules changes.
Not only does this include the expected playtest content (Artificer class and Dragonmark feats) but also new backgrounds (for both Dragonmarks and other Eberron-related origins), updates to the main species of Eberron, Bastions, House Renown, and, perhaps most excitingly, vehicle rules for one of the big draws of the setting: Airships.
Eberron: Forge of the Artificer’s second purpose is to give dungeon masters an updated guide to running campaigns in the world of Eberron. While this part isn’t nearly as extensive as Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, it does include a lot of new information and brings us up to speed on the political maneuverings and advancements of various organizations on Eberron since the release of Eberron: Rising from the Last War.
The framework for the DM information is three full campaign guides. These don’t include fully detailed adventures with maps the way the Forgotten Realms DM supplement did. Instead, there are three outlines of campaigns, with broad strokes for adventure progression, background information for various NPCs and potential hooks, and some highlights for storyline options.
I think this is a great resource for DMs who may be new to the setting, or may be trying to balance their time commitments, and can use the basic outlines and NPCs to help create a more detailed campaign. But it’s also valuable for DMs looking to invest in their own storytelling, by providing them with a solid supplement of new information about the major organizations, people, cities, and conflicts of Eberron.
As I said earlier, if there’s a downside to Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, it’s that there’s so much information from Eberron: Rising from the Last War missing from the book. The reason I see this as a downside isn’t just because six years have passed, but also because the 2024 soft relaunch undoubtedly has brought many completely new or lapsed players to Dungeons & Dragons.
Those players may have never heard of Eberron, or maybe haven’t played since 3rd Edition when Eberron had a large number of source books (4th Edition support wasn’t nearly as strong). Now they are getting into the 2024 edition and pick up a new Eberron book only to find out they have to go track down another book, that’s six years old, to make up the missing information.
Maybe that’s intentional on Wizards’ part to try to drive up sales of Eberron: Rising from the Last War? It’s more likely that they simply decided that most of that information hadn’t changed significantly enough to warrant a massive relaunch of Eberron as a setting, especially not in the same was as the Forgotten Realms fans who had to wait 10 years since 2015’s Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide for a Faerun-specific sourcebook in 5th Edition.
Eberron hasn’t seen a large amount of support from Wizards since 3rd Edition but it’s also easy to forget that 3rd Edition saw an absolutely wild number of sourcebooks released across a wide variety of IPs (anyone else miss Urban Arcana?).
Eberron as a setting isn’t as long-lived or prolific as the Forgotten Realms but it’s not impossible to imagine a video game like Baldur’s Gate 3 being just as successful in the political intrigue of Sharn, set amid the backdrop of airship and the draconic prophecy.
Either way, Eberron: Forge of the Artificer is a great update for players looking for a D&D experience that feels like a Final Fantasy setting at times, but crossed with Tomb Raider and Dick Tracy at the same time. Also everyone wears Iron Man armor, or something like it. Have fun!
Bonus Magic Content
As always I’m looking ahead towards the crossover of Magic and Dungeons & Dragons and Eberron provides some unique opportunities. Airships of course are prominent in their own ways on Dominaria as well as Kaladesh/Avishkar so the rules contained here can be easily adapted to those worlds for modified adventures.
The Warforged species is a good fit for anyone wanting to bring Karn into their games as an NPC. And many of the rules for artifice, though many of those are in Eberron: Rising from the Last War, fit well in any plane that has a large component of artifacts (Mirrodin, Dominaria, Kaladesh/Avishkar, Vryn, and Kamigawa).
Additionally, the design of the Dragonmarked Houses and the use of renown and intrigue to set up stories fits well in any Magic setting that has a similar organization system such as Ravnica, Capenna, and Fiora.
Lastly, there is a Film Noir adventure/campaign guide which I think could be adapted quite easily to something on Ravnica similar to the adventures in Murder at Karlov Manor.
Rich Stein (He/Him) has been playing D&D since the late days of Advanced D&D and enjoys tabletop RPGs of all flavors. He’s currently playing in a Fabula Ultima campaign and planning a Shift campaign for his 8 year old and their friends. He hopes to get a Dungeons and Dragon campaign with some close friends and family kicked off in the new year. He thinks Magic the Gathering would translate very well to an RPG system, but that system unfortunately isn’t Dungeons and Dragons so the world may never see it happen.