So excited to finally get a look at this! Love the new Kalashtar, especially.

I'm pretty pleased with how these species sound, particularly the half-elf. They seem like the jack of all trades they're known for being, but by making Friends their default cantrip, they still come across as the negotiators they're known for being too. But if you need your half-elf to be flexible, you can swap Friends out for something like Toll the Dead, Thaumturgy, Shillelagh, Produce Flame, Minor Illusion, Mage Hand, etc. The list goes on!

Small shifters is a fun option.  

Never realized until today that I needed to play a wererat’s three foot tall great, great, grandson

Why on earth would they make a species feature usable once every 1d4 days? That's going to be incredibly annoying to track.

Warforged officially being constructs is very interesting, wonder if that will interact with things in strange ways now. Shouldn't be an issue for healing since they removed restrictions on healing spells, but some features like the Mace of Smiting and the Shatter spell will be dangerous against Warforged.

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I'm trying to think of how kalashtar being aberrations makes any sense or how the designers arrived at that logic, because given the inspiration for the kalashtar, I'm not the only one who worries it's a queerphobic dog-whistle towards indigenous two-spirit peoples.

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I can see your concerns given the negative connotation of the term "aberration" and perhaps the general feeling that by making them non-humanoid they are being othered. However I think the thought process is consistent with what we saw in the new Monster Manual: creatures that have been transformed by the lower planes, like gnolls, are Fiends. (Question: Why aren't Tieflings fiends in the PHB!?). Creatures who come from or are influenced by one of the elemental planes are now Elementals (i.e. Aarakocra). Creatures transformed by aberrations tend to also be aberrations - and Kalashtar are basically a humanoid (Human) and an aberration (Quori spirit) sharing single body.

So whether that's a good or bad decision I would leave to you, but I don't think it's meant to signal "Kalashtar = bad". 

Eberron is (was?) such an incredible setting, I only run my games there. This feels oddly like a watering down of these races, and it only leads me to worry that you've turned Eberron in to "Faerun, but with mechanical people." 

The Dragonmark rules are also some thin gruel--everyone can have a Dragonmark now! Wheee! Did the War of the Mark not happen in this new Eberron? Are the Barons just going to let some tiefling or whatever run around with a Mark of Shadow? If one of the PCs in a party suddenly develops a Dragonmark, despite not being part of ancestry, THAT should become the focus of the campaign. Like: "Holy #$%^! We need to hide you and find out how you got this thing that you ABSOLUTELY should not have!" while it slowly turns that PC insane. 

I know I can always ignore the new new rules, and run my Eberron the way the Sovereign Host and Keith intended, but still. Sort of feels like we're Disney-fying the realms, and I don't know why. 

I hated it. I'm clear that the Eberron theme has incorporated many things between the medieval and aether punk, but this new art, I don't care if it's pretty or not, it just seems generic to me. In the concept art and what was published in 3.5 there was a unique touch, which reminded me of artists like Moebius. Eberron was very different from other settings and it seems to me that by appealing to the masses they sacrifice all of that. It's not a brave bet, it's in my opinion a cowardly way of not taking risks and trying to sell to a lot of people. For the rest, it seems that this book is going to be very small. I don't know what kind of lore it will keep. For my part, I'll see what mechanics work for me, I'll discard the art and stick with the kanon and whatever independent authors publish who seem to have the creativity that you lack.

Thank you for making an Abberation playable race!!! makes me so excited to see what will come in the future! All the third party species have been cool, but to officially see it is another thing. What I've personally been waiting for!.

Personally, I really dislike the change to Changelings where they have advantage on Charisma checks while shape-shifted. It makes absolutely zero sense. Why does looking different make you more persuasive?

 

As for the last one, Occam's Razor says it's simple:They got lazy with Tiefling & Goliath, & they've changed their mind on such due to people WANTING to play as aberrations, Fiends & other non-Humanoid species because they identify more with those creature types than humanoids.

I think it's more likely that in 2014 design only the three core books are required. If that's (currently) true for 2024, then the wilder PC types like aberrations and fiends have been left to the non-core books.

I hope that's what shifter looks like while shifted. I prefer their normal form look mostly human, but anyone who has seen a shifter can spot the tells.

Kalashtar aren't just funny looking humans, their bond with an immortal spirit gives them a different cognitive outlook than their human peers. Tieflings, by contrast, can be casually born to humans for no obvious reason, and there is no inherent difference between their minds and those of humans.

Per lore, marks are still tied almost exclusively to races. It's just that PCs can break that rule, but if they do, they will be very exceptional, possibly tied to the Draconic Prophecy. 

Changelings get advantage on Charisma checks while shapeshifted. Or in other words, changelings have advantage on Charisma checks!

Quote from AdnanAlRaqi >>

And we need heroic aberrations. The term means something like 'influenced by the Far Realm' and I don't see why that should be any more intri sically evil than Owlbears being 'monstrosities' makes them evil.

Point of order: the Far Realm doesn't exist in Eberron. It's its own multiverse. Most of the aberrations of Eberron are tied to a plane called Xoriat in some way or another. The only exception that I'm aware of is the quori, whom this conversation began about. They are the immortals of Dal Quor, the Region of Dreams. I'm not even aware that quori were aberrations when they first appeared in D&D. They were "outsiders" with the "quori" subtype.

Also, if the Changeling is based on the one from MotM, I think that will be Fey still.

I fear the term “weretouched” for shifters is as misapplied as “lycanthropes” has been used to denote all shapechangers of the man-to-beast type, and not solely werewolves, when “lycanthropes” literally means “wolf-man” (“Therianthrope” is the catch-all word).
“Weretouched” literally means “man touched” or “human touched”, as the “were” part of the word “werewolf” means “man” or “human”, thus meaning “man wolf” or “human wolf”.