Eberron: Forge of the Artificer to Be Priced at $29.99

Dungeons & Dragons is returning to the splatbook era. Today, Wizards of the Coast announced pre-orders for Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, a new "rules expansion" focused on Eberron. Buried in the pre-order announcement is that the physical version of the book will cost just $29.99, suggesting a much thinner page count and the lowest price point for a Fifth Edition book released by Wizards of the Coast.

Wizards previously teased that the new Eberron book would be different from other D&D sourcebooks, but the $29.99 price point is about half of the current $50-$60 price point for current D&D rules manuals. No page count has been confirmed for the new Eberron book, so we'll have to see just how much of a splatbook Eberron: Forge of the Artificer ends up being.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Maybe because I am Spanish and my History is different, and then the sensibilities about certain threats may be different. I could understand even WotC made serious efforts to say slavery is wrong some players could want to buy slaves to create a harem of monster girls, or something style Gor Saga (this is like mixing Conan the Barbarian and fifty shadows of Gray).

We have the option to create a new timeline or reboot the IP, or only appearing like scenary in multi-planar adventures. A third option would be the spin-off, the same crunch but different characters in other place. This should allow more creative freedom to add elements from other sources, for example PC species and subclasses.

A new videogame of Dark Sun is possible, but I guess it would be more focused into survival and building a camp.

The fourth option is a spiritual succesor, with a completely new plot but crecycling some stuff from the previous one.

Now I am imagining the planar-traveler from the "City of Spires" (Black Spine advenfture) conquering most "Athaspace" but the region of Tyr. I also imagine a "clone" of Yathazor, City of Calamity like a post-apocaliptic urban ruins with a touch of psionic + creepepasta fiction (style Blackrooms or SCP fundation).

Other idea is slavery is "replaced" by other thing. The convicts (most of times they only couldn't pay the abusive taxes or debts) are "robotized" into a type of earth elemental, or mind-control plant parasite (no undead or construct, let's try to be more original). The process is relatively reversible

Are the spinewyrms true dragons with age categories? This could be interesting if they could create their own "wetware grafts" to create a group of infiltrators.

 

[SteveC]

It will be interesting to see what kind of a book a $30 price point will give you in 2025. I remember back in the days when D&D moved from 3.0 to 3.5 there was a discussion about the books for that edition being all hardcover. The change was made due to price point and profitability. Looks like it is a case of "The times, they are a changin'."

 

[Bolares]

I think we are overestimating the significance of the price point. I think it's just a smaller, companion book to Rising, and for that reason it will be cheaper.

 

[tetrasodium]

I think we are overestimating the significance of the price point. I think it's just a smaller, companion book to Rising, and for that reason it will be cheaper.

That's what makes it such an interesting thing to speculate about. It's role as a companion book opens a lot of possibilities when it comes to things like leveling/chargen rules & creature support for the setting itself. Rising was a great setting book, but the PC chargen rule & creature support∆ was still largely stock fr/greyhawk.

∆ yes I know there was a few trolls and such in the back but they were pretty anemic

 

[SteveC]

I think we are overestimating the significance of the price point. I think it's just a smaller, companion book to Rising, and for that reason it will be cheaper.

I think you're missing that the price point was in the thread title, so that's what got me thinking about it.

But beyond that, I've been here since the days of 3E where we had a lot of discussions of books or other supplements that it wasn't even worth WotC's time to publish. A lot of the designers from that era talked about this. In fact, Ryan Dancy made the point that the OGL would allow smaller third party companies to publish adventures, which didn't make that many sales.

And we had the issue when books like soft cover "Sword and Fist" made way for hard cover, and more expensive, books like "Complete Warrior." A big part of that change was cost and profit.

I'm all for discussing what's going to be in the new book, but it seemed that the price point was part of the topic of this thread.

 

[Bolares]

I think you're missing that the price point was in the thread title, so that's what got me thinking about it.

But beyond that, I've been here since the days of 3E where we had a lot of discussions of books or other supplements that it wasn't even worth WotC's time to publish. A lot of the designers from that era talked about this. In fact, Ryan Dancy made the point that the OGL would allow smaller third party companies to publish adventures, which didn't make that many sales.

And we had the issue when books like soft cover "Sword and Fist" made way for hard cover, and more expensive, books like "Complete Warrior." A big part of that change was cost and profit.

I'm all for discussing what's going to be in the new book, but it seemed that the price point was part of the topic of this thread.

Wait, I'm not saying you can't discuss the price. Why would I do that? I'm just stating my opinion that the price is more about the size of the book and the fact that it's a suplementary book to Rising.

 

[Clint_L]

I don't recall ever feeling like official D&D books were overpriced, in any edition. If anything, given the scale of their print runs, they might tend to underprice their books, putting pressure on competitors.

 

[Bolares]

I don't recall ever feeling like official D&D books were overpriced, in any edition. If anything, given the scale of their print runs, they might tend to underprice their books, putting pressure on competitors.

Here in Brazil they were always overpriced...

 

[Gradine]

The fourth option is a spiritual succesor, with a completely new plot but crecycling some stuff from the previous one.

If I were WotC and I really wanted to reboot Dark Sun, this is what I would do, but I would go about it first with Magic: The Gathering releasing their own "spiritual successor" as a plane setting without all of the negative baggage but with some very familiar hallmarks. Then you put out a setting book for the M:tG setting for D&D 5.5. The people who want Dark Sun without all the baggage will be happy, the people who want Dark Sun with all the baggage will have already homebrewed their own version or already quit WotC long ago so when they do complain about:

"WotC releases PG version of Dark Sun for crybabies."
"This isn't Dark Sun."

...it won't even matter because those people are not playing current versions of D&D and almost certainly haven't been for a long time.

 

[Riley]

I don't recall ever feeling like official D&D books were overpriced, in any edition. If anything, given the scale of their print runs, they might tend to underprice their books, putting pressure on competitors.

That 1e DMG seemed really expensive to me at $12.

And shortly after I bought it, they raised the price to $15! Phew!