Eberron 4e

Over the last several days, I've been reading through the 4e "Eberron Player's Guide", which has been an interesting experience. I'm a big fan of the Eberron setting, but less so of some of the rules elements that it has introduced to the 3e ruleset. Further, I had seen comments to the effect that Eberron worked a lot better under the 4e rules.

My impressions of the 4e book have been mixed. I like that they've presented a lot of material in a fairly concise manner, including material that was first introduced in the supplements to the original campaign setting. I like that they've managed to insert the new 4e races (Dragonborn, Tieflings, Eladrin) into the world without it feeling artificial or that they've shoehorned them in. And I especially like that they resisted the temptation to either reboot the world (Dark Sun), advance the timeline (as they originally planned), or hit it with a major shake-up (Forgotten Realms). Of course, commercially this seems not to have worked out for them, but in terms of putting out a good product I would argue that it was the right way forward. (In fairness, their decision to reboot Dark Sun was also the right decision - different considerations gave rise to a different correct answer.)

However, the big problem with the book is that I fundamentally don't like 4e all that much, and this book does nothing to shake that. That's probably not all that surprising, but whenever it goes into the rules for the Artificer, or talks about the power structure, or... it just does nothing for me. It's quite certain that I won't be switching further campaigns to 4e in light of this book!

However, the assertion that Eberron works better under 4e than 3e... is wrong. Simple as that.

See, the biggest problem I've been facing with my Eberron campaign, which was a small issue at the start but is becoming increasingly difficult, is the length of combat. A low-level 3e combat can take 30 minutes or more, with a higher-level combat hitting an hour or more quite easily. And that despite the mastery that we have over the system.

In an environment like that, it can be quite difficult to engage in proper storytelling. With a single 3-hour session every 2 weeks, it really gets to be a bit of a slog very quickly. Every encounter has to count, and anything that's not combat needs to be very lean... and even then it's a struggle. Given that the campaign story is also quite complex, and the group spend significant amounts of time batting around ideas and putting things together, it becomesquite tricky. (And make no mistake - I want the group to spend time going through the issues. But that means that combat can be a problem.)

With 4e, combat takes longer. Even low-level combats seem to take about an hour to play through, while the only higher-level combat I ran (and the one that finally convinced me the game just wasn't for me) lasted 2.5 hours. Again, with a single 3-hour session every two weeks, I simply can't tell the stories I want under those parameters.

(The length of combat in 4e is a deliberate design choice, and I'm not actually saying it's a bad choice. Just that it doesn't work for me, for the reason above.)

If Eberron is supposed to be about fast-moving pulp action, then a system where every combat is an hour-long grind is really not the best fit. 4e really is no better a fit for this setting than 3e was.

Of course, that said, there is a system that really should be a much better fit. One that was designed specifically for pulp action/adventure. A game that is fast! furious! fun!

Yes, the better system for playing in Eberron is actually something like "Savage Worlds". I'm not sure that's too much of a surprise, really.