Eberron: Forge of the Artificer Announced, Among other D&D Books

 So, you know I love the Artificer. And with the recent UA, it seemed likely we were going to get some kind of revision for the class. Fittingly, it appears that it will be part of an Eberron sourcebook.

One of the things I've always wanted 5E to do was to revisit non-Forgotten Realms settings, and Eberron, with its early-20th Century, technological vibes, has always been one of the settings that resonates the most with me (the only reason I'm skeptical I'll ever run anything there is that it overlaps too much with my own homebrew setting - but that makes it very easy for me to steal stuff from it!)

The book, Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, is, according to ENWorld, slated to be a "companion" piece to Rising from the Last War, 5E's first Eberron sourcebook that also first gave us the Artificer class before its reprint in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything.

Among its features are, presumably, the revised Artificer, as well as the new Khoravar species. The Khoravar, I believe, were the half-elves of Eberron, but are being treated as their own species here. There are also going to be new rules for Airships (though any time they say anything about vehicle rules, I think I'll believe it when I see it).

The book is not a campaign, but has sample adventures called Sharn Inquisitives, Dragonmark Intrigue, and Morgrave Expeditions.

Also, notably, Dragonmarks are no longer treated as sub-races, but are instead feats, and no longer locked to any particular species.

There's no word on updated Eberron species (I'm always eager to see Warforged get a post-Tasha's update) though we did get Changelings and Shifters in Monsters of the Multiverse, so perhaps it's not too urgent.

My favorite bit here is what appears to be concept art or perhaps just class art for the Artificer:

Clearly, we have the Battle Smith, the Alchemist, the Armorer, and then one I'm not sure about, followed by the Artillerist. The mystery Artificer could simply be the general class art, though if that's the case, it's oddly low-tech. I'm curious if we might finally get a 5th subclass for the Artificer, which would be very exciting.

This one comes out August 19th this year.

However, this isn't the only book that was announced. The other (and this is in addition to the two Forgotten Realms sourcebooks) is Dragon Delves, an adventure anthology with ten adventures going from levels 1 to 12, each of which focuses on a different metallic or chromatic dragon. Excitingly, the art style of this book looks like a real departure, with each adventure having its own, much more stylized art. There's a picture of a white dragon, for example, that looks like that more cartoonish Midcentury Modern, 1960s-esque style, which I think is fucking rad. (You can find it in the post linked above).

This one comes out July 8th this year.

A new starter set, Heroes of the Borderland, is based on (and kind of a sequel to) the classic Keep on the Borderland module, coming out September 16th.

And then, of course, the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide, with all those subclasses I spent the last post talking about, comes out November 11th.

The Forgotten Realms Adventure Guide, which is more DM-facing, will focus on five different locations: the Moonshae Isles, Icewind Dale, the Dalelands, Calimshan, and Baldur's Gate (which, given the various subclasses the players get, actually makes a lot of sense - Moon Bards from the Isles, Winter Walkers from Icewind Dale, Noble Genie Paladins from Calimshan, Scion of the Three Rogues from Baldur's Gate, etc.)

So, it looks like, while the first half of this year will just be the new Monster Manual, it looks like the back half will have plenty of new releases.

I suspect that these will generally be on the higher price point that we've been getting. I'll be curious to see how much bang for our buck we get in terms of page count (no, quantity is not the same as quality, but after Spelljammer, I want any 70-dollar book I buy to be at least 250 pages, and preferably north of 300).