[RPG] How to apply the Mark of Making dragonmark to a variant human in Eberron

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I am confused on how to apply the dragonmark variant on a human in Eberron, specifically the Mark of Making from the Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron.

Do the dragonmark features (from p. 101) completely replace the variant human set (ASI, Skill, Feat), or only the Ability Score Increase of the variant human (e.g. you still get a Feat and a Skill)?

Best Answer

It's a variant of the basic human race that replaces your Ability Score Increase trait.

The "Creating a Dragonmarked Character" section says (Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, p. 90; Eberron: Rising from the Last War, p. 37):

Dragonmarks are associated with race, depicted by a combination of variant races and subraces.

  • For humans and half-orcs, a dragonmark is a variant race that replaces normal traits associated with those races.
  • For half-elves, a dragonmark is a variant race. You keep some of the standard half-elf traits and replace others with the traits associated with your mark.
  • For dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings, the dragonmark replaces your subrace.

As you can see, it says that for humans, the dragonmark is a variant version of the race that replaces specified traits of that race.

And under "Mark of Making Traits" (WGtE, p. 101; E:RftLW, p. 45), it says:

If your human character has the Mark of Making, the following traits replace the human’s Ability Score Increase trait in the Player’s Handbook.

It lists an ASI for the dragonmark, and a number of other features.

It is applied to the basic human race, and is a new variant thereof; it is not intended to be applied to the variant human, which is a different variant of the human race already.

Note: D&D Beyond seems to have an error on the standalone race listings where the dragonmark subraces/variant races also appear (if you have bought the subraces/variants themselves, not just the "compendium content"). While it includes the information about the dragonmark, the associated house, some examples of characters with that dragonmark, and the associated traits, it seems to leave out the description of which traits (e.g. your ASI) it replaces, or whether it serves as your subrace (e.g. for halflings). This is only true of the standalone race listings; the compendium content itself displays the full list properly.

For instance, for the Mark of Making human, the human race listing includes some improperly formatted headers: both the Mark of Making Human heading and the House Cannith subheading (that should be a subsection of it) have <h3> headers. There's also no specific subheading for the Mark of Making Traits themselves as there is in the PDF/compendium content (they just appear under the House Cannith section), so the text I quoted above under "Mark of Making Traits" doesn't appear there either - which may be the cause of your confusion.

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