Character creation

Alignment

For the sake of party cohesion and having the story move along, everyone should play this game as a good aligned character, or at least as lawful or true neutral that’s trying hard to get along.

For the same reason, I don’t want any characters like clerics, paladins and warlocks to get their power from daelkyr, Overlords, or any of the Dark Six except the Traveler.

Backgrounds

We’ll work out ways that all your characters know each other as part of the initial session, including who their adventure hooks come from. It can be good to leave a few things unstated to start with, until a point comes up in the story where you can say something like, “Oh, my father worked at the Gold Dragon Inn that this NPC ate at every week.”

The last character I played a lot of, in Faerûn with fourth edition D&D, was named Celestine Sideras. I wrote a background for her as if it was a story she was telling in a tavern, which has plenty of flavour but not too many details to constrain the adventure. And she was certainly lying about some of it to make herself look better.

Stats

I plan to use the standard array of points for stats: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8. If you already know what you’re doing then I’m OK with you using point-buy instead. Somebody in the party needs to end up with a high number of points in charisma, please.

I don’t intend to DM the game in a way that needs you to min/max your points along with a perfectly matching race and class, so you can choose whatever you want, assign 15 and 14 to the recommended stats for the class, then go with whatever you like after that.

If you know nothing about creating a D&D character, we’ll work on that together. I strongly recommend using tools like the D&D Beyond Character Creation Tool to create your character and track their statistics.

Dragonmarks

Although they’re a big part of Eberron, there’s no need to play a character with a dragonmark. If you do, then as your family and your employer for every moment you’re awake, your house will expect to keep track of you and to benefit from their investment in you. Think about how what kind of relationship you have with your house, and what kind of work you do.

For example, someone with the Mark of Shadow could belong to either House Phiarlan or Thuranni. They might never have to deal with the darker side of their house, spending their life as an entertainer, except for that one time in their long life when they’re given a quest to acquire a copy of a particularly sensitive document. Someone with the Mark of Handling might spend their life with natural animals, never knowing the details of the mage­breeding side of the house, or its secret, terrible experiments.

Psionics

Basic fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons has no standard rules for psionics for psychic characters, who typically have links to Dal Quor in Eberron. For a character like this, you could:

• Use some of the rules for psionics from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything.

• Change the description, and potentially the damage type, of existing spells, as described in Keith Baker’s article on Riedra in 5E.

Races

For this campaign, you can play as any of these races; ones in bold are unique to Eberron:

• Changeling

• Dwarf (hill, mountain or dragonmarked)

• Elf (high, wood or dragonmarked)

• Gnome (forest, rock or dragonmarked)

• Goblin, hobgoblin or bugbear (but be nice)

• Half-elf (optionally as dragonmarked variant)

• Half-orc (optionally as dragonmarked variant)

• Halfling (Lightfoot, stout or dragonmarked)

• Human (optionally as dragonmarked variant)

• Kalashtar

• Orc

• Shifter

• Warforged

If you can justify how they fit into the world, and provide the official description if they’re not in the PHB, you could also play one of these races:

• Aarakocra

• Dragonborn

• Tabaxi

• Tiefling

Sorry, you can’t play as a dragon.

While the races have traditional lands and cultures like the gnomes of Zilargo and the nomad dinosaur-riding halflings of the Talenta Plains, any of the races in Eberron can instead be part of the culture of the city or country in which they live, whether that’s a modern city like Fairhaven or a remote region like the Eldeen Reaches. Dwarves living in Sharn have even separated themselves into two different suburbs depending on whether they align themselves with Breland or the Mror Holds. Think about whether you have a traditional character, or someone more cosmopolitan.

Classes

You can play as any PHB class, or the new Eberron class:

• Artificers (INT, STR/CON) (alchemists, artillerists and battle smiths) use tools and dragonshards like wizards use spells and material components. Battle smiths get to have their own robot pet.

• Barbarians (STR, CON) follow their primal, uncivilised instincts, drawing on archetypal natural forces to rage against their enemies, while not needing to wear armour.

• Bards (CHA, DEX) use music and performance to cast spells and inspire their party, and tease their enemies so mercilessly that they take damage.

• Clerics (WIS, STR/CON) are warrior priests who draw their power from divine sources, such as their faith in the sovereigns or the Silver Flame.

• Druids (WIS, CON) draw their power from the natural world, based on the magic taught to the orcs by the dragon Vvaraak, and can even take the form of any animal they’ve seen.

• Fighters (STR/DEX, CON) are paragons of martial skill, whether they are knights, soldiers or mercenaries.

• Monks (DEX, WIS) draw on their inner 氣 (qi) to excel at unarmed combat and defense, and extremely cool and powerful anime attacks. Think Korra, Marvel’s Ancient One, Goku, ninja turtles, kung fu pandas, and so on.

• Paladins (STR, CON) are beacons of justice and righteousness, taking oaths to avenge great wrongs or to smite evil with extreme prejudice wherever it is found.

• Rangers (DEX, WIS/STR) are a bit meh, but you can choose to have an animal companion. Okay if you want to play as Aragorn, I guess.

• Rogues (DEX, INT/CHA) are masters of stealth, intrigue, hiding daggers and being dodgy, and may be found on either side of the law, or taking advantage of the confusing grey area in the middle.

• Sorcerers (CHA, CON) are magic users, like wizards, but who have innate, unpredictable magical powers, often gained from forgotten fey or dragon ancestry, or from the influence of manifest zones.

• Warlocks (CHA, CON) get scary magical powers from dangerous pacts with powerful, otherworldly beings. I would prefer warlocks to have a patron who won’t ruin the game.

• Wizards (INT, CON/DEX/CHA) learn to cast magic from years of boring study (so boring) of the arcane secrets revealed to the giants by the dragon Ourelonastrix, until they can manipulate reality with a single word and a movement of their hand.

The classes with constitution as their second highest stat are most likely to get up close and personal with the enemy. Magic users can be classified by how fast they gain spell slots, with faster progression generally having more to keep track of. Full casters are bards, clerics, druids, sorcerers and wizards. Half casters are artificers, paladins and rangers. The eldritch knight subclass of fighters and the arcane trickster subclass of rogues get even less, while warlocks are different, but more like half casters.

In the end, at least one character should have reasonable healing magic, so that you don’t need to negotiate bulk buying rates with House Jorasco.

Note that most people in Eberron aren’t even level one in a class, and even specialists rarely get above level three. Whichever class you choose, even a ranger, you are very quickly going to be awesome.