D&D (2024) Comeliness and Representation in Recent DnD Art

[Thomas Shey]

In the existentially horrifying sense that it may not exist?

Maybe, but more specifically in a p-zombie kind of way, where you can have something that is indistinguishable from having it, yet supposedly doesn't.

 

[Zardnaar]

Is this like the Star Wars thing where the droids are clearly intelligent, feeling beings but absolutely no one but Luke cares?

Debateable how self aware they are.

Most can't break ther programming. Basically means they're machines.

R2 might be an exception idk in New canon.

 

[Voadam]

Why not create a race FOR the gender issue. Warforged have no gender, but unless memory fails me, they have no souls also.

It was left specifically ambiguous with people in world arguing both ways on whether they have no souls.

Races of Eberron page 16:

THE QUESTION OF SOULS
The Treaty of Thronehold gave warforged their freedom, but only after great debate. House Cannith and Thrane argued ardently that warforged were not living creatures because they do not possess souls. Their evidence for this was that warforged cannot become undead by any known method, not even ghosts or shadows. They are immune to energy drain, and no one knows of a warforged soul in Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead. Breland argued that because warforged can be raised and resurrected, they must have souls. Of course, House Cannith and Thrane countered that no warforged brought back from death told tales of any kind of afterlife.
In the end, the Question of Souls, as that portion of the negotiations came to be known, was left unanswered. Warforged were freed because they could exhibit thought and free will. Today many people continue to think of warforged as creatures without souls, and citizens of Thrane often refer to warforged as “the soulless.”

Since they are specifically subject to raise dead and 3.5 raise dead requires the subject's soul to be "free and willing to return" for raising to work and 3.5 has rules specifically about how bringing things back from the dead involves bringing their soul back my interpretation is that RAW warforged have souls but in world many in Eberron feel they do not.

3.5 PH page 171 "When a living creature dies, its soul departs its body, leaves the Material Plane, travels through the Astral Plane, and goes to abide on the plane where the creature’s deity resides. If the creature did not worship a deity, its soul departs to the plane corresponding to its alignment. Bringing someone back from the dead means retrieving his or her soul and returning it to his or her body."

In the 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting book where they were introduced they have sentience and free will and the living construct type. While immune to energy drain they are subject to "ability damage, ability drain, and death effects or necromancy effects" unlike normal constructs. They can also be raised and resurrected.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You'll notice that I threw "IMO" in there. Of course what a soul is and its role can and will vary from setting to setting. I would say that claiming a soul is necessary for sentience is a more absolutist view than anything I said.

The soul is not necessary. Warforged are more like a Roomba which is magically given a soul. Or a sentient magic item. They don’t have a positronic brain equivalent. They think because magic.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Debateable how self aware they are.

They fear death and actively seek to be freed from restraining bolts.

There's some in Mandalorian that drink to forget.

Most can't break ther programming. Basically means they're machines.

If this was true, restraining bolts wouldn't exist.

And some of them have independent jobs with no one in command of them.

R2 might be an exception idk in New canon.

I'm pretty sure this is all an in-universe justification to ignore the suffering of a slave caste.

 

[Clint_L]

I love that a thread about comeliness and representation has evolved into a multi-page discussion of whether Warforged have souls. Sometimes discussion drift is frustrating, but this one is kind of delightful.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I love that a thread about comeliness and representation has evolved into a multi-page discussion of whether Warforged have souls. Sometimes discussion drift is frustrating, but this one is kind of delightful.

And it’s kinda silly to be debating this when the Eberron books very explicitly state that Warforged do have souls.

 

[Zardnaar]

They fear death and actively seek to be freed from restraining bolts.

There's some in Mandalorian that drink to forget.

If this was true, restraining bolts wouldn't exist.

And some of them have independent jobs with no one in command of them.


I'm pretty sure this is all an in-universe justification to ignore the suffering of a slave caste.

Old EU went there new idk how exactly it works.

Some droids definitely seem free willed in both old EU they definitely were.

 

[Horwath]

As for warforged problem,
This is why I would treat warforged/autognome as a template,

Template that you can take as your 1st level feat.

cram as much as you can of the warforged traits into budget of a (very good)full feat and just add it to existing racial/ancestry features that you had.

Lore can be that with magic or divine intervention your soul/mind/spirit is moved into warforged chassis.

That way you can have distinctive warforged characters of all backgrounds.

That feat can even be gained later as a gift from DM for some story hooks, as you have been blessed/cursed and transformed into warforged.


Now that I think about it, this maybe could apply to Aasimars, tieflings, shifters, dhampirs. dragonborn etc...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

RE: the original thread topic

Saw a video recently that pointed out that, when you look up most races in D&D, male characters are depicted with practical clothes or full armor, while women are almost always depicted scantily clad for whatever they're doing--even professional dwarf smiths have major boob window going on.

But what I was surprsied (and somewhat pleased) to see is...this is at least less true of "male dragonborn" vs "female dragonborn" when I look them up in a browser I rarely use (Edge, in this case) so as to avoid targeted image searches. There were several scantily-clad male pictures in just the first dozen or so, while several of the female pictures were in full practical clothing or outright fully armored (and that's excluding the official art, which usually avoids boob window and the like.)

Though I did notice that, despite WotC's new(-ish...) stance regarding female dragonborn endowment, most art of female dragonborn still gives them breasts--regardless of the artist or player (many of whom were, in fact, women themselves.)