UPDATE: 2025/05/13 10:51 EST BY BEN BROSOFSKY

Eberron: Forge of the Artificer is 112 pages.

D&D provided Screen Rant with Eberron: Forge of the Artificer's word count of 112 pages.

It's entirely possible to play Dungeons & Dragons for free, but it's entirely too tempting to spend a lot on it. With a constant stream of expensive sourcebooks, interesting accessories, and every imaginable variety of dice, sticking to a budget means you'll have to ignore a lot of potential purchases. Investing in official books can often rack up the most significant expenditures, with most releases coming in the form of oversized hardback tomes that cost 50 or 60 dollars.

The new book Eberron: Forge of the Artificer, on the other hand, is set to break that mold. As more of a supplement to 2019's Eberron: Rising from the Last War than an entirely standalone product, it doesn't necessarily require the same over-the-top treatment. While that didn't stop slim books like Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and Xanathar's Guide to Everything from targeting the same format as their bulkier cousins, D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast is finally shaking things up.

Eberron: Forge Of The Artificer Is Only $30

Half The Price Of Other Sourcebooks

As confirmed in its official Eberron: Forge of the Artificer will retail for $29.99, half the cost of recent books like Vecna: Eve of Ruin and Quests from the Infinite Staircase. A digital copy drops the price to $19.99, undercutting the $29.99 digital versions of other recent releases by $10. Both digital and physical can be purchased together in the "Ultimate Bundle" for a total of $39.99.

D&D's 2024 core rulebooks returned to the older $49.99 price point to provide a more accessible entry point, but the $59.99 price of the Dragon Delves reaffirms that this was a decision made specifically for the rulebooks rather than a wide-ranging policy.

While third-party sourcebooks can range in price and format, official D&D products haven't had a shakeup of this scale in a while. The exact size and format of the book isn't yet clear — I reached out to PR for any specifics and received a clarification that there's no additional information to share at this time — but I'd hazard a guess that it's a paperback volume. The render on D&D Beyond looks a bit different, and I can't imagine any volume in the standard hardback format would be cheaper in 2025 than the anemic $39.99 Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide was in 2015.

The difference in price and format isn't huge news, as Jeremy Crawford teased that it wouldn't follow the mold at a press event in January. A cheaper release seemed like the most likely outcome, but the details weren't confirmed until now. While the established change in format could also mean a difference in page size, print quality, or other factors, altering the binding seems like the most obvious move to cut down on price.

D&D Might Start Introducing More Affordable Books

Eberron: Forge Of The Artificer Probably Isn't A One-Off

Although the lower-priced venture of Eberron: Forge of the Artificer could be a one-off, it seems more like a litmus test for D&D to try more affordable releases in the future. After a decade of 5e books that follow very predictable patterns, D&D has started to loosen the rules a bit in several areas recently. New books like Dragon Delves reflect a more varied approach to art design, and the Forgotten Realms sourcebooks coming later this year sound more substantial than any 5e settings books so far.

If Eberron: Forge of the Artificer is a success, there's no reason why other books that mimic its format couldn't follow. Even if the profit margins end up being lower, more D&D players will likely be willing to buy a slim volume for $30 than for $40+. Some of my favorite D&D products are supplements from past editions or third-party products that cost $20-30, and if they don't waste space, these books can sometimes hold even more good material than full-sized volumes.

Having Two Book Formats Could Be Great For D&D

Not Everything Needs The Deluxe Treatment

A shelf of D&D's matching 5e hardcovers has an undeniable appeal, but over a decade into the edition's lifespan, expanding beyond this concept is a worthwhile endeavor. Although a few 5e books are true essentials, the approach to releases has been unbalanced, with a glut of long-format campaign books and a scarcity of some alternative prospects. D&D's already shifting away from that schedule, with no campaign book on the slate for 2025, and introducing a new, cheaper format could be a good way to fill in the gaps.

D&D still hasn't revealed the identity of a mystery project coming in October, but messaging around the lack of a campaign book for the year has been consistent so far.

Although I'm launching into a Curse of Strahd campaign now, I DMed a homebrew saga for years, and smaller supplements are a more appealing way to augment a custom story and world. When quickly pulling ideas for cities, I've gotten plenty of use out of Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins, a 1998 paperback supplement that retailed for $19.99 and packed a ton of material into 128 pages. Adventure anthology books and rules supplements can also offer good pulls, but when you're using an anthology just to heavily remix a couple of dungeons, a cheaper, smaller supplement might be a better value.

By the sound of it, Eberron: Forge of the Artificer will still have plenty of useful material, promising highlights like five revised species and over 20 new monsters. Adopting this approach for other books could make it easier for D&D to do similarly targeted follow-ups. I'd also like to see it employed to make books with more specific focuses. While the catch-all approach of 5e sourcebooks that attempt to cover player options, new monsters, setting details, and more works in some cases, I'm often only interested in one or two elements of what a book has to offer.

Eberron: Forge of the Artificer could still turn out underwhelming, but even if it does, a cheaper format for some books isn't an idea that D&D should abandon. Occasional affordable options don't replace the market for the 5e book format, and release slates will look more exciting if every product isn't attached to a $60 price tag. Considering how rigidly 5e avoided the splatbook format for a decade, I wasn't expecting to see a major new release at a $30 price anytime soon, but I'm certainly glad that Dungeons & Dragons is proving me wrong.