Hey guys. Eberron was one of the first D&D settings I ever played in and ran, so when I found Dungeon World my first thought after “Holy crap! This game is awesome!” was “Can I do Eberron with this?” So I started working on it, and while there are some assumptions that have to be made, I think it works pretty well. I’d really like some feedback about…well, anything really.
P.S. Yes I know about the other Artificer class floating around, and yes I did steal some moves from it, but I feel like this Artificer is more in line with the one in the 3.5 Campaign Setting Guide.
cool cool cool
I’d love it if someone would gin up a Master Inquisitive class!
I was debating between doing that as a compendium class or base class, and I went for cc, just because I could see most classes bringing something special to it: the artificer with all his magical investigation gear, the bard and thief being the “standard”, or even the fighter as the classic hard-boiled detective.
CC is the best option yeah
Dragonmarks are cool.
Love the idea. And you can even totally go both 3e or 4e ways in DW without destroying things. I’d love to recreate a storm sorcerer going Lyrandar Wind-Rider and finally really explore that concept beyond the combat application.
When you jump into the clouds, roll +DEX
I admit I’m much more familiar with the 3e side of things, but thank you for reminding me about those. Off to Books-A-Million!
The Dwarf Artificer racial move is strictly worse than the cores rules on haggling, which involve subtracting your Charisma (not Cha) from the price. I’d make it “reduce price by twice your Intelligence score” since it’s not like another 16-18 coin is going to break things.
The Elf Paladin is great. Both it and the Elf Cleric only really works for Aerenal elves though, not Valenar elves – since they’re pretty different cultural groups it would make sense to at the very least have Aerenal/Valenar Clerics/Paladins have different moves. The rest are non-specific enough to work for both.
Halfling Druid should probably be phrased like every other Druid move that gives an extra attunement, but it’s great.
Human Cleric isn’t particularly Eberron-ish. Instead of racial moves for Clerics, you should probably do pantheon-based moves. The Silver Flame as extra damage vs. Evil creatures and shapeshifts, etc. Not sure if the Human Wizard works for the same reason – I would make it “you know an additional Wizard spell of your choice” with the fictional positioning stressing that magic is common and well-understood.
Changelings flat out get a new move, which isn’t my preferred way of handling a unique racial ability like theirs. Either give them the same class move for every class you want them to be an option for (the shapeshift move you wrote is fine), or else find a way of working the shapeshifting into a class-specific move, like maybe:
Changeling Thief: you can change your physical appearance to that of any humanoid of roughly the same size as you (plus or minus 2 feet), but your clothing and equipment don’t change with you. When you attack someone wearing the form of one of their trusted allies or loved ones, take +1 to Backstab.
Changeling Bard: you can change your physical appearance to that of any humanoid of roughly the same size as you (plus or minus 2 feet), but your clothing and equipment don’t change with you. When you are Charming and Open with someone and wear the form of one of someone from their homeland, ask an additional question.
Changeling Wizard: you can change your physical appearance to that of any humanoid of roughly the same size as you (plus or minus 2 feet), but your clothing and equipment don’t change with you. You have a practical understanding of physical change; when you Cast an enchantement Spell, take +1.
Gnome Thief is great. Gnome Wizard is nine extra spells vs. one for every racial that adds spells, so it definitely needs a hit with the nerf bat (it also ends up being close to my suggested human Wizard racial). No gnomish secret police move? That seems like oversight! Maybe for the Fighter?
Half-Elf: you don’t need to reprint all the racial moves! Just give them a racial move that says “you can pick either the Human or Elf move for any class” and the Half-Elven advanced move.
Half-Orc racials are all neat. I like the Ranger especially.
Kalashtar Battlemind isn’t ideal, as it’s going to require more dice rolls and more tracking of resources. Cleric, Paladin and Soulknife are all great. For the Psion, you don’t say which version you use – if it’s TombsGrave’s Psion, that ability is actually already part of a starting move, so I’d suggest making the racial “when you use Heart’s Sorrow, choose one even on a miss.”
Shifter racials: see my comment about Changelings. The extra racial move is also pretty finnicky to track, but then it’s an unused mechanic that could be cool; it probably just needs to be more clearly written. I would honestly ditch the extra racial move entirely, as shifters always have their animalistic traits anyway, and your class moves all do a good job of building “shifter-ness” into themselves.
Warforged: see comments about Changelings. Warforged Fighter has an extraneous “both” floating around. Warforged Paladin is good but probably better phrased as “when you go on a Quest you’re always considered to have the following boon in addition to whatever others you pick: ✴ You feel no fear” or something like that.
because of relevance,
My take on Warforged:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1B0wIA7urxnD-U8SgmXAAc4t8kyJgA0mHxU6hYez3FoQ/edit?usp=sharing
And my take on Half-Orcs
Fighter: When you roll a 10+ on Hack&Slash and you choose to deal extra Damage, deal an additional +1d4 damage
Rogue: When you are wielding a Mace or similar blunt weapon and you Backstab an enemy you may roll +STR (you may add a Mace as Equipment option when you create your character)
Ranger: If you Hunt and Track an Enemy you have wounded and you roll a 6 or lower, treat it as a 7 instead
(Cleric: Your god demands blood, add Petition: Personal Victory to the precepts of your religion)
I’m curious why you decided to write a separate Artificer class to the one that’s already out there, incidentally (since you use some of the moves from it) – although yours is far more like the actual Artificer base class from 3.x/4E in tone, the one that’s out there would work just fine if you rewrite the flavour to change it from technology to magic.
I especially like “Ooh, What Does This Button Do?” since it’s something that would see little use outside Eberron, but since magic in Eberron is as common as technology in our world, it’s a license to examine every piece of magitech the Artificer didn’t personally build.
Artificer Knowledge needs a more jazzed-up name! Infusion’s XP cost might mean people never perm items, but I suppose if you don’t pick “weird effect whenever it’s used” perming means not having a chance to fail when you want to use that item.
Unfortunately Area of Expertise isn’t too great. For starters, it’s a grab-bag of starter abilities from other classes, which is bad for niche protection. Secondly, it just gives you a flat bonus rather than involving your magic items at all.
The solution is to scrap Area of Expertise entirely. Add “It’s going to cost a lot of money (50 coin or more)” to the options for Infusion, remove all mention of expertise and leave it as a freeform move. Then, you can make “you can repair constructs” the fourth starting move.
Alignment is fine. Load is a bit high for a bookish type; 7+Str seems more fitting. The 2 coin seems out of place, and the magical crossbow is needlessly complex since you can make one with Infusion. Also, you’re a cushy engineer type; dungeon rations don’t seem to make sense as something you’re packing off the bat. I’d change it to:
Your Load is 7+Str. You start with your work tools (hand, 1 weight), a permanently infused item (of your choice, but the GM has to approve it) and 40 coin. Choose your defences:
✴ Leather armour (1 armour, 1 weight)
✴ Work clothes (0 weight) and a bag of books (2 weight, 5 uses)
Choose your weapon:
✴ Light crossbow (+1 damage, near, reload, 1 weight) and bolts (3 ammo, 1 weight)
✴ Alchemist’s fire (near, dangerous, 2 ammo, 1 weight)
Choose one:
✴ Adventuring gear (5 uses, 1 weight) and dungeon rations (5 uses, 1 weight)
✴ 2 healing potions (0 weight)
Greater Attunement is a bad idea for an advanced move; the Artificer shouldn’t be dealing damage on par with the Fighter. The rest of the moves are fine.
Your Dragonmarked Heir CCs seem fine to me.
Alex Norris Thank you for the feedback! For the dwarf artificer, my thought was that you’d be able to haggle anything down, because if I remember correctly, the Charisma thing only applies to certain things.
I really like the idea of pantheon moves; it definitely captures the feel of it more. For the other races, I don’t know if I’ll change how it’s written, but the shifter definitely needs rewriting. The concept works fairly well in my group though: we have a shifter Druid.
I’ll respond to the other stuff in a bit.
Now to the Artificer. The reason I added Area of Expertise is that I felt that the class needed some choices. The fighter’s got his sig. weapon, the spellcasters have their spells, even the rogue has the choice of poison. The artificer wouldn’t, and logically, you can’t be amazing at making everything.
The bonus to Infusion was just a thought, I felt that your choice needed to have some bearing over what you could infuse. Maybe if it was something like “you cannot fail at infusing something within your AoE”?
I pretty much agree with everything else you’ve said.
The Shifter racial moves you have are perfectly fine, and incorporate the animalistic side of the shifter just fine. The extra race move can just be dropped.
I genuinely just think Area of Expertise isn’t salvageable as a move. Choice is fine, but not choice that takes mechanics from a whole bunch of different existing classes (it both invalidates niche protection and is way too complicated). I don’t think the Artificer needs choice in the way the Fighter gets with Signature Weapon, because Infusion as-written lets them do pretty much anything.
When I was originally posting feedback, this was what I first thought up as an AoE replacement move:
Mass Production
You’ve specialised in investing magic in objects in a certain way. Choose one of these effects to be your Specialisation:
✴ Imbue an item with a number of Wizard spell levels equal to your Int. Whenever the item is used, one of the spells imbued in the item is drained.
✴ Imbue an item with the power to manipulate an element. When you do so, choose an element (fire, water, earth or air), and the item gains hold equal to your Cha. Anyone wielding the item can spend that hold to give a single, simple order to anything made out of that element (e.g.you could command earth to move out of the way, or fire to die down).
✴ Imbue an item with various useful, minor magics. That item can project light at will, create enough clean water to keep two people from dying of thirst once a day, generate enough heat to keep you warm at night and function as replacement work tools if needed. This effect lasts for 24 hours.
If the item is permanent, all spells or hold recharge daily at dawn, noon, dusk or midnight (choose which one at creation).
This is actually the perfect example of a move that suffers from D&Dism: it’s a horrible mish-mash of different effects stuck together in a single move, with a very mechanistic focus (everything has durations and time limits with no fictional basis) and zero ties to the fiction bar what’s implied in the move name.
I took it out of my final feedback because it suffers from the same problem as your version of AoE: far too much emphasis on the rules rather than the fiction. DW isn’t D&D, and it’s perfectly fine to give moves that have no immediate mechanics tied to them; you don’t need to detail every little thing.
What about if Area of Expertise doesn’t have the extra move associated with it; the benefits would just be fictional then. It would just influence the character’s choice of magic item, and what that character is likely to do with infusion.
Yes. That works a lot better.
Something like:
The Area of My Expertise
You specialise in investing your magic into a certain type of items, choose one: rods and staves, rings and pendants, potions and salves, scrolls and embroidery. When you infuse magic into that type of item, take +1. When you infuse magic into a type of item you haven’t specialised in, take -1.
Although the -1 rankles me – it would be better to find a way of rewarding creating an expertise item that isn’t a +1, so you don’t have to contrast it with taking -1 to create non-expertise items.
You’re short on advanced moves, but I would then have an advanced move that lets you add “arms and armour” as one of your known expertises. This would replace Attunement, and be the prerequisite for a 6-10 move that lets you deal +1d6 damage when you attack with an item you’ve enchanted.
Yeah, I know. Maybe you can’t get below a 7-9 on something you specialized in, or above a 7-9 on something you haven’t (but not both).
Ooh, I like that. But shouldn’t constructs and homunculi be in there? Or would that be only warforged?
Constructs and homonculi seems weird as a type of item to specialise in. They’ve got their own motor power and you’d need to build the construct before you can imbue it. That’s prime material for making it an advanced move that requires the construct-building move!
My thinking was that there will most likely be a warforged in most parties (at least there’s been one in every game of Eberron I’ve ever run) and even if there isn’t, the artificer could have a homunculus to boost up and mess around with.
I’m looking forward to the AbsoluteFocus and AbsoluteSoul additions!
Aaron Mehlhaff glad to hear it! I’m working with Alexander Davis on Absolute Focus, so I’m not sure when that’ll be coming out.
From here I’m thinking I’ll release smaller supplements relating to different themes like “Races of Eberron-Changelings” or “Regions of Eberron-The Eldeen Reaches” with a compendium class or two per document. It’s probably the best way to do this without succumbing to project creep.
Just dropping by to say thanks for sharing this. I started re-reading it this morning to assist with my Eberron DW conversion, and then my Dad sent me Adventures on Dungeon Planet, so I think I will incorporate that too (Warforged/Engine of Destruction, Changeling/Mutant, and Artificer/Technician). You’ve done great work here, and it will be harvested to great effect at my table.
Thanks Matt Horam! I probably will, at some point, make an Engine of Destruction and Mutant variant for Eberron, but right now I’m more concerned with getting the book out the door.