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I should like very much to recommend the digital Inheritance of Embers unreservedly, but as of the end of January, 2024, I really cannot. When this PDF is eventually fixed, and the NUMEROUS glaring errors in it are finally corrected, it will be a marvelous resource for Eldar/Aeldari fans. Right now, it's nigh-on unusable in many of its parts.
(And yes, having written for the hobby games industry myself, I know that errata are inevitable. I accept that, as anyone reasonable should. But I'm talking about a staggering number of easily-caught errors that somehow made it to virtual print.)
Copy-and-paste errors abound (notice that the Howling Banshees don't even have Weapon Skill among their required skills even though they're a melee archetype specifically...and then notice that that's because their skill stat line was simply lifted whole cloth from the stealth-and-sniping Ranger archetype).
Similarly, the Wargear chapter is a dreadful mess, and its tables seem largely inconsistent with the Wargear tables in the core rulebook; even weapons like the Warlock's and Farseer's Witchblade inexplicably show different stats from their listings in the core book. If Cubicle 7 has had a genuine change of heart about how efficacious a given Aeldari weapon should be, fine. But indicate that explicitly; otherwise, the discrepancy just looks like shoddy editing, which is what I very much fear it to be.
The problem with such manifold mistakes is that, as with cockroaches spotted in a restaurant kitchen, one immediately begins to worry about all the bugs one can't see. I am hesitant to use much of this book in a campaign at present for the simple reason that I suspect much of its rules crunch as expressed in numbers and keywords is flatly incorrect.
The shame of it all is that, if these mistakes weren't so abundant, this would be a wonderful resource for players and GMs who want to run Eldar characters and campaigns. Inheritance of Embers has just about everything you're looking for if you're an Aeldari fanatic like me—Craftworld, Corsair, Drukhari, and Harlequin archetypes; new weapons and equipment; new psyker powers; new talents; information on the Ynarri; tips for playing these enigmatic aliens; gorgeous (if largely recycled) art; a compelling setting in the Ul-Khari craftworld, which is rich with conflict and juicy plot hooks; a bestiary.... There's a lot here to like, it's true.
But is the book usable at present? Well, sort of. Until the dozens of errata we early adopters have submitted are incorporated into the PDF (along with, ideally, another serious editing pass from C7 staffers themselves), be prepared to make nigh-constant judgment calls about which data in the book to keep and which to dump or revise. And after a while, one wonders why one has paid for a book that one can only use after a generous allotment of homebrew-style tinkering. Fan-written versions of most of the archetypes exist on the internet; at this point, why not just use those instead? Even if that content needs tweaking too, it's free.
If Cubicle 7 wants to charge money for a book that roleplayers can safely regard as both useful and definitive, they simply have to do better than this. I didn't want to be disappointed, and I do still love much of what's in the book, but I'd advise you to wait before buying. As of this writing, the PDF has not been updated since it was released on DriveThruRPG on 11/1/2024 (or 1/11/2024 for us Yanks). I would definitely hold off before handing over your hard-earned money.
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