Faiths of Eberron

Faiths of Eberron encompasses source material for the various major (or at least, known) religions of the Eberron setting. From a big-picture view, there's actually more fluff and flavour than meat, so to speak. I personally like reading fluff, so YMMV.

The first five chapters each cover a major religion, while a compilation of “others” are in chapter 6. Each of these chapters and sub-chapters follow a similar template, which gives it a nice consistent structure, but also ends up with a lot of flavour text (multiple paragraphs) that basically say “Not applicable”.

Some sections are great for roleplaying, like mentality, rites, rituals, and how they deal with governments and other religions, while some are less useful, like religion-specific calendars. I liked how the religions draw inspiration from real-world religions.

Each religion also has a simple locale that can be used to flesh out an adventure, and the major religions each has a specific prestige class (one of the rare sourcebooks that don't have a prestige class chapter). Somewhat typically, the prestige classes run the range from being interesting (Sovereign Speaker) to bad (Escalation Mage, Planar Shepherd) - bad due to having mechanics that doesn't mesh at all with flavour.

Chapter 1 covers the most “common” religion: the Sovereign Host. It's also the biggest chapter, which is understandable, considering that it's a pantheon with the most deities in it. Unfortunately, there's quite a bit of information repeated from the Eberron Campaign Setting. It also feels rather bland and generic (in terms of the deities). The emphasis was on the pantheon as a whole, so it has an unfortunate side effect of downplaying the individual deities, so it kinda ended up feeling like it doesn't have much of an identity aside from being “good”.

Chapter 2 is on the evil side of pantheon, the Dark Six. Again, a fair bit of repetition but the exposition here is much better than the Sovereign Host. Curiously, the Dark Six was presented in a manner that puts them as an “alternative” to the Sovereign Host, instead of being a feared “dark side”. Unsure if this was intentional. Anyway, I found the theological discussions in the sidebars about how the entire pantheon could possibly have been split differently ages ago, and how the deities could be rearranged to be fascinating. Doubtless it can used as the basis for a long campaign of discovery.

Chapter 3 presents the Silver Flame rather well, elaborating on their ideals, their beliefs, and even their views on the afterlife. The lycanthrope purge was also touched upon, although it felt like it was a miss to provide hooks and more insights into this event. There's also a focus on variant Silver Flame beliefs that's interesting, from zealots and the “dark side”.

Chapter 4 covers what I feel is the most interesting faith in Eberron - the Blood of Vol. The dual nature of this religion makes for an extremely intriguing setup. Unfortunately, I felt like this chapter was the biggest miss. Following the “template”, it again repeats the “general information” and tries to cover a bit of both sides - the mundane clueless worshippers, and the secret circle of power, but it ended up being rather light on both.

Chapter 5 wraps up the last major group - the druids. This was also a disappointing chapter. Given the rather brief descriptions of the variant sects within the druids in the Eberron Campaign Setting, I was hoping for a lot more elaboration here. I found that it failed to properly establish the motivations and distinctions between each sect and how each sect could have formed. Also, the write-up for these sects actually makes them somewhat unsuitable as PCs (unless we're talking about adventures in the Eldeen Reaches and its border regions), as any member of the sect would have little reason to venture too far away.

Finally, we get to the “other faiths” chapter, chapter 6. Specifically, it covers the warforged, the Inspired, the kalashtar, cults of the Dragon Below, the Seren barbarians, and the Undying Court. Each of these are fleshed out well enough, but to a lesser extent than the major ones. I particularly liked the ones on the kalashtar and the Undying Court, as it also gives a glimpse in their respective societies. The construct faith was a bit weird for me, and I found the inclusion of the Seren's dragon worship to be an odd choice while the Valenar just got relegated to a “variant” sect. Nothing on Talenta halfings, Darguun, or Droaam.

Chapter 7, the last, concludes the sourcebook with a score of feats, a couple of spells and psionics, a couple of magic items, and repeat information on construct grafts (unless you don't have other sourcebooks). Everything in about 12 pages.

Overall, the sourcebook brings very little to the table in terms of new player options. If your game is heavy on the roleplaying aspects, especially on the religion side of things, the details here can be beneficial in helping to paint different peoples more effectively, if you want to “stay true” to the setting, I suppose.