Lesser and Greater Dragonmarks in 2025

Over the course of the next year I’m writing a series of articles about the Dragonmarked Houses. The point of these articles is to provide my take on the houses—their culture, history, and hooks for characters or NPCs from those houses. As always, this work is kanon—it’s how I use the houses in MY campaign and may contradict or ignore elements of canon lore. I’ve already written one of these articles, about House Orien. I’ve also written an article that considers various aspects of dragonmarks and how they work. But that’s a long, speculative article, and I want to call out a specific element that I will be using as kanon in all of the articles I’m writing from this point on… and that concerns Lesser and Greater Dragonmarks.

When Eberron was originally released, Dragonmarks were a chain of three feats. The first feat gave you the Least Mark, which gave you access to 1st or 2nd level spell effects. Lesser Dragonmark was a second feat that gave you access to a 3rd or 4th level spell. Greater Dragonmark was the final link in the chain, providing access to a spell of 5th level or more. In addition, the Dragonmarked Heir prestige class gave a character with a Dragonmark greater use of its powers; and the Dragonmarked sourcebook provided a host of additional feats that enhanced marks. Fourth and Fifth Edition abandoned this approach. Instead, the basic Dragonmark feat provides access to “Spells of the Mark”, a set of spells that are added to the class list of any spellcasting character who carries a mark. These mirror the original spell lists of the 3.5 Dragonmarks, but are inaccessible unless the bearer can cast spells. The Potent Dragonmark feat offers a way around this. Instead of just adding the Spells of the Mark to the list of spells a marked character can prepare, it says that the character always has those spells prepared… and grants the bearer a spell slot of up to 5th level that can be used to cast Spells of the Mark, which they regain after a short rest. Finally, the Unearthed Arcana article presents a set of “Greater Dragonmark” feats. But these don’t provide access to new spells; they simply enhance the effects of a dragonmark, and are more like the mark-enhancing feats in Dragonmarked than the original Greater Dragonmarks.

With this in mind, here is how I am dealing with dragonmarks going forward.

• The size and designation of a Dragonmark—Least, Lesser, Greater—is determined by the highest level Spell of the Mark the bearer is capable of casting, whether through Spellcasting or the Potent Dragonmark feat. Anyone who possesses a Dragonmark begins with the Least Mark. When they gain the ability to cast a 3rd level Spell of the Mark their mark increases in size, becoming a Least Mark. When they gain the ability to cast a 5th level Spell of the Mark, the mark grows again, and is recognized as a Greater Dragonmark.
• Dragonmarked NPCs who are spellcasters can add their Spells of the Mark to the list of spells they can cast. If they aren’t spellcasters, my default approach would be to follow the example of the 3.5 Mark, and to give the ability to cast a spell from each level of their Dragonmark (Least, Lesser, Greater) once per day.
• While this is a good general model for NPCs, specific NPCs could squeeze more out of their marks—just as the Dragonmarked Heir prestige class and Dragonmarked feats allowed in 3.5. They could also have one of the Dragonmark Focus Items presented in Exploring Eberron. A second point is that while a player character would have to be 9th level to get access to 5th level spell slots and thus, a Greater Dragonmark, an NPC could have a Greater Dragonmark without having the power of a 9th level adventurer. The heir who activates the Orien Teleportation Circle for you may have a Greater Dragonmark, but aside from their Dragonmark they could have the stat block of a Scout.

So in my Dragonmark articles, when I refer to a character as having a Greater Dragonmark, I mean that they have the ability to cast 5th level spells of the Mark. I am not addressing Siberys Marks at the moment. In 3.5 they were an entirely separate thing from the Dragonmark feat chain, and so rare that they weren’t a standard part of the services offered by the houses… so I’m not worrying about them here.

That’s all for now! Thanks to my Patreon supporters for making these articles possible. And it’s my Patreon supporters who have chosen House Medani as the topic of my next article, and who will get to see pieces of that article as I develop it.