This feels like one of the most essential Eberron books on this site. You may have found like me that while The Houses make up a large portion of who you could possibly interact with in the world, their stats and even details of their membership is hugely under represented in official books.
Even if you don’t use the combat stats for these NPCs, the little bits of introductory lore are priceless in helping Eberron DMs to flesh out their world and get a sense of who is out there, and what the Dragonmarked Houses might be up to.
I’ll be including a couple of cool ideas like the House Orien NPCs who can all go hand in hand with a story of finding alternate routes for Lightning Rails that bypass the Mournland. Or an Orien courier chase or escort mission across a city like Sharn. Each houses members have these really nicely unique abilities that flavour them enough to be unique.
I really liked the items too, they give nice little rewards for sessions where the houses are present, and what these items are, are player items made from the unique little combat abilities that some of these NPCs have. I could see them fleshing out the armories of the houses and being nice story rewards for players that have one of the associated Dragonmarks. I’ve personally struggled to make my Sivis player feel connected to the house, and now I have a nice little sword to give to him that’ll make him feel unique.
Ultimately 50 different Eberron NPCs go a long long way to patching up any holes in an Eberron Campaign. I enjoyed that each house has a varied CR range of several different NPCs that could represent team members out in the field, or guarding their holdings, and you get one unique named NPC that can bring a unique story element to the game, as the names NPCs tend to do something unexpected and unusual yet very fitting with their powers.
Many thanks to the authors, I think this is really well done book, and again, one of the essential third party eberron books on this site.
|