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| Player's Guide to Eberron (Dungeons & Dragons d20 3.5 Fantasy Roleplaying, Eberron Supplement) | 
 enlarge | Authors: James Wyatt, Keith Baker, Luke Johnson, Steven Brown
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $4.31
You Save: $25.64 (86%)
New (23) Used (18) from $4.29
Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 259224
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0786939125
Dewey Decimal Number: 793.93
EAN: 9780786939121
ASIN: 0786939125
Publication Date: January 17, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new, may have remainder mark or slight shelfware
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Product Description
Secrets Every Hero Should Know
What does an elf from Shae Cairdal know about the nation of Aerenal? How do you play a half-orc from the Shadow Marches? What does your character know about the Blood of Vol or the royal line of Galifar? Player’s Guide to Eberron answers these questions and more. This companion to the Eberron™ Campaign Setting explores the world from the player’s point of view and presents exciting new options for Eberron characters.
Player’s Guide to Eberron describes important locations, events, organizations, races, and features of the Eberron campaign setting, organized in an accessible and easily digestible format so that players can use the book as a handy reference guide. In addition, this book provides new feats, prestige classes, spells, and magic items.
For use with these Dungeons & Dragons core books
Player’s Handbook™ Dungeon Master’s Guide™ Monster Manual™
Eberron Campaign Setting
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
 An excellent book with one caveat. January 20, 2006
31 out of 31 found this review helpful
This is an excellent, flavor-rich cyclopaedia for the world of Eberron, arranged in 2 to 4 page entries in alphabetical order covering the various nations, cultures, and factions of the world. Within these pages you'll find eloquent summaries to spark your imagination or catch up player knowledge to the point of character knowledge. There are sidebars describing where the new classes from the Complete [character type] series fit into the world of Eberron, along with the various subraces from the Races of [foo] series. These expositions make sense. They show that in a world as crowded with drama as Eberron, there is still room remaining for more of the magic and mystery that other D&D supplements spill. If anything, the babel of fantasy tidbits from other books make MORE sense when put into context this way.
My one concern with this book is the deceiving title. It is a player's guide if one considers the DM a player, too. DMs expecting the book to respect the secrets of the setting, preserving them to be gradually revealed to the players, will be disappointed. Within the first entry of the Guide the names of the secret masters of Eberron have already been ticked off by checklist. This one complaint is hardly enough to detract from an otherwise awesome book.
 Excellent overview of the Eberron world. February 28, 2006
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
This book is divided into two chapters. The first deals with character concepts appropriate to the Eberron setting. These are fairly generic, but useful for players trying to come up with ideas.
The second chapter is where the book really shines. PGTE lists a large variety of topics in an encyclopedia style format, making them easy to find. Each topic is explored in moderate detail, and includes topic related game mechanics (on sidebars), suggestions on how to incorporate other Wizards of the Coast books (such as where other races live, where Warlocks get their power), and interesting tidbits such as what a DC 10 Knowledge (Nature) check tells you about the Gatekeepers.
All in all this is a fantastic book. With full color art, a well done index, and good solid writing throughout you'll be hard pressed to find a better produced gaming book out there. While the price may seem a little steep for the book's relatively small size, the text density and high quality writing more than make up for it.
Know that this is a setting-heavy book. Those interested primarily in game mechanics will not find a lot here, though what is provided is interesting and strongly tied to the entry it is found in.
EXPANDING THE EBERRON CAMPAIGN February 13, 2006
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Wizards of the Coast continues to build on its outstanding new Eberron setting with their latest release, The Players Guide to Eberron. But don't let the title fool you, as this book is just as important to the DM as it is to players. The book is designed to help your characters fit into the Eberron campaign by fleshing out the world even more. The book begins by offering character archetypes which are basically personality packages designed to work with existing classes. These are things such as Outlanders, Restless Wanderers, War Torn Heroes and more, and all designed to add depth to the Eberron player character.
The balance of the book is essentially laid out in an encyclopedia type format in alphabetical order and covers places, events, races, all geared towards the player and how they will interact with them. Subjects include the Dark Six, those six dark gods who stand in opposition to the Sovereign Host. These seem to be Lovecraftian-inspired deities...wholly evil on a cosmic scale and only blithely aware of those that worship them. There is The Fury, worshipped primarily by the insane but also by cults of Mind Flayers and Drow; And there is The Devourer who manifests himself as a destructive force of nature causing storms and earthquakes.
Eberron has its own version of the Underdark called The Khyber. The Khyber section provides background on the Daelkyr, that extra-planar race of beings who broke through to the world of Eberron and are responsible for the creation of many of the races of the underdark such as Belashyrra Lord of the Eyes who created Beholders and Orlassk who created Basilisks and Medusas, and other monsters with the power to petrify. These creatures are sometimes referred to as aberrations meaning that they don't fit into true nature. Also included for the players are the known entrances to the Khyber, scattered throughout Eberron.
Other subjects covered include The Demon Wastes, villainous organizations, the hybrid race called Changelings, The deities of the Sovereign Host, and much more. Players will be happy to know that some new prestige classes are included as well. There are the Revenant Blades and the Gatekeeper Mystagogues. The Gatekeeper Mystagogues are those that have taken up the cause to battle and destroy the Daelkyr-created aberrations. They begin as druids of at least 3rd level and gain numerous special abilities to aid them in their profession.
As mentioned at the beginning, the book is also of value to the DM as a tool to design adventure hooks and set-up their own campaigns in conjunction with other Eberron material.
You can also count on new feats, magic items, and spells throughout the 160 page, hardcover book. While the Players Guide to Eberron may not be essential to the campaign, I do heartily recommend it as it expands the setting and adds greater depth and color to an already well-defined world. As usual the art within is first rate, and the material is well-written and researched. Highly recommended!
Reviewed by Tim Janson
 Critical Formatting Error February 26, 2006
9 out of 20 found this review helpful
Imagine a Player's Handbook laid out as an Encyclopedia. But not a complete encyclopedia with all reasonable entries in alphabetical order, rather a mutually exclusive encyclopedia where any piece of information appears only once. Interested in knowing what classes are available...better know what organization they are usually members of. Interested in equipment...better know who's most likely to be using it, or who invented it, or where it can be purchased, maybe. Interested in a spell...better know who first developed it, or perhaps where they lived, or perhaps what world event inspired them to develop it. This book is a user interface disaster. One might expect the Player's Guide to Eberron to contain an introduction to the gaming world including a geography and history (this book does actually contain bits of geography and history broken up over several entries and presented in no coherent way). Then it would follow a similar layout to the Player's Handbook with sections for races (including the new races and the major tribes and holds of existing races), classes, PC organizations including religions, skills, feats, equipment, adventuring in Eberron, and spells. What you get instead is interesting to be sure, but more of an idea generator and knowledge check resource for DMs than any kind of guide for players. Perhaps the necessary overlap in an actual player's guide with the original Eberron Campaign Setting book made this infeasible. However, since that is a DM reference, I'm not sure where a player interested in Eberron should go; just sure that it's not to the Player's Guide to Eberron.
 What a Rip Off May 4, 2006
9 out of 19 found this review helpful
This is a 160 page Player's Source Book Not an Art or Picture Book. Wizard's made the decision to limit most of their source books to 160 pages. Frankly I'm getting tired of reading Wizard Web articles about "All the Material" they had to cut and couldn't fit into a source book after it is released when almost a quarter of this source book like most of their recently published books have to much of the book devoted to art, pictures and reprinting already published material.
Is it useful? Yes and it introduces some new material but it also Fails to Make the Grade. Unless you have money to burn in my opinion this source book only rates the status of a single group source gaming reference versus purchasing as a personal reference book.
The first four pages are a cover page, a credits page and two full pages of pictures. Lose the 2 picture pages and combine the credits and the cover page in the future frees up 3 pages for material.
Basically 15% of the source book 24 & 1/4 pages of 160 are devoted to art and pictures. Things like 4 pages of Full Page Art, 6&1/2 pages of Half Page Art, 4 & 3/4 pages of Quarter Page Art, 1&1/3 pages of One Third page Art and 3 & 2/3 pages of 1/6 or less page Art. Quit reprinting old art and the same old maps again and again.
The Player's Guide to Eberron was produced after the Eberron Campaign System but well over 10 pages are devoted to Reprinting established material. Something a single sentence can reference which they already do for monsters and spells like: The Basics of The Sovereign Host or The Dark Six or The Blood of Vol were introuduced and covered in ECS page....
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