Artificer Help (lost Eberron book)

[Elminster's Son]

Adamantine Body [Warforged]
At the cost of mobility, a warforged characte's body can be crafted with a layer of adamantine that provides formidable protective armor and some damage reduction.
Prerequisites:Warforged, 1st level only
Benefit: Your armor bonus is increased to +8 and you gain damage reduction 2 adamantine, However your base land speed is reduced to 20ft and you are considered to be wearing heavy armor. You have a +1 Maximum Dexterity bonus to AC, a -5 penalty on all skill checks that armor check penalties apply to (Balence, Climb, Escape Artist, Hide, Jump, Move Silently, Slight of Hand, Swim and Tumble) and a Arcane Spell Failure Chance of 35%.

Normal: Without this feat, your warforged character has an armor bonus of +2.

Special: Unlike most feats, this feat must be taken at 1st level, during character creation. Warforged druids who take this feat cannot cast druid spells or use any of the druid's supernatural or spell-like class features. Warforged characters with this feat do not gain the benefit of any class feature prohibited to a character wearing heavy armor.

Source: Eberron Campaign Setting, Page 50.
~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't see anywhere in this feat that says you become proficient with Heavy Armor. So essentially you are not proficient with it and suffer the penalties that are accrewed from being Non-proficient. Essentially you're running around in Full Plate that can't be taken off.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Issent that Splitting hairs just a wee bit?

No - it's a very important distinction backed up by Keith Baker himself. Warforged are always proficient in their own skins.

EDIT:

And if you don't believe me re: Baker, you can check his Q&A threads on the WotC forums. He made this distinction early on, so it's probably in one of the first FAQs.

 

[Graf]

The body feats aren't armor. I gave a warforged player with Ad Plateing the normal swim penality (and effectively tried to sink him in the ocean) and was painfully humiliated later when we checked the rules.

If you relax your mind and just read what's written without assuming you'll see Patryn's right.

Having said that my character has absurdly low physical checks for physical skills. He's is supposed to be a stunted and pseudo useless little freak at the start of the game. He's going to have lots of scrolls of Jump (and spider climb later) to keep the game from hopefully slowing down too much.
Over time he's going probably spend a fair amount of money and resources enchanting himself with effects like "silent" "bouyant" installing climbing claws, etc.
Since warforged are a bit powerful anyway I think its a fair trade off for being immune to a lot of attacks.

The party looks like it is going to have 3 warforged (it was breifly going to be all warforged) so we should have lots of interesting intra-racial roleplaying.

We aren't using the Races book because everyone with the books has just moved and to Singapore and we don't have any copies. Kinda a shame, but no substitution levels...

 

[Staffan]

To me (and I would feel to most) that the '-5 Penalty on all skill checks to armor check penalties apply to' effectively Equals a fancy way of saying a -5 Armor Check Penalty.

There are two main differences between the penalties for adamantium/mithral body and an actual armor check penalty:
* The body feats don't double the penalty for swimming.
* The body feats don't apply the penalty to Ride and attack rolls if you're not proficient with light/heavy armor.

 

[Zephyrus]

Wow... I guess I'll start playing Warforged Wizards, Sorcerer's or Warmages with Adamantine Body since asside from that one in three spells will fail having a armor equal to a fighter in full plate at first level cant be beat!


Its understandable and one thing for a Warforged Fighter to have the Adamantine Body (asside from the fact that they get heavy armor prof.) but its obsurd to allow classes that dont even get armor prof at all or limited armor prof to not be penalized in some way. That was the point of the Non-Profiency penalty.

Sure a Warforged is comfortable in their own skin, that doesnt nessisarly mean they were not well designed. I a manner its as if they need to learn how to utlize their body better since the training they recieved dident cover it. Fighters are trained to move while wearing bulky combuersome armor and such. Adamantine Body is considered to be wearing heavy armor. so the same principle can be applied to warforged to move their body in ways to minimize the impairments that that reinforcement causes. Without that training (armor profiency) they should be as impaired as anyone else wearing armor they were not trained to handle.

Overweight people can be graceful, but it usually requires training to do so as its not as easy or their are other considerations that make moving gracefully more challenging. The same anology can be applied to Warforged with reinforced bodies. The main difference is that a persons weight often can change (look at Oprah or Carny Wilson) compared to Warforged being constructed one way and that body never really changing.

A Warforged should still require training to maximize (or more appropriatly, minmize) the impairments of reinforced bodies. That training takes the form of Armor Profiency. On the off chance that a Forged doesnt recieve any, or enough training they should be impaired till they acquire sufficient training. This takes the form of Non-Profiency in armor penalty.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Wow... I guess I'll start playing Warforged Wizards, Sorcerer's or Warmages with Adamantine Body since asside from that one in three spells will fail having a armor equal to a fighter in full plate at first level cant be beat!

... because that would make a lot of sense ...

but its obsurd to allow classes that dont even get armor prof at all or limited armor prof to not be penalized in some way.

They are penalized. They must spend a feat to get it, their movement rate is reduced, any class abilities dependent on heavy armor are nullified, they get a huge ASF penalty, and they take a high penalty to most physical skills - skills that the classes you mention above would have to buy at cross-class ranks, generally, and with a very limited pool of skill points.

In other words, a warforged fighter is likely to, eventually, be able to jump in adamantine skin. A warforged wizard won't be able to clear a 2' trench until he learns to fly.

That was the point of the Non-Profiency penalty.

Which, as mentioned above, doesn't exist for warforged plating.

A Warforged should still require training to maximize (or more appropriatly, minmize) the impairments of reinforced bodies. That training takes the form of Armor Profiency. On the off chance that a Forged doesnt recieve any, or enough training they should be impaired till they acquire sufficient training. This takes the form of Non-Profiency in armor penalty.

The fact that you don't like the way the rule is written doesn't change the rule - unless you're DMing and point it out to your players as a house rule.

Warforged plating options do not have an armor check penalty. They have a penalty that is in many respects similar to an ACP, but is not actually an ACP.

 

[Graf]

Wow... I guess I'll start playing Warforged Wizards, Sorcerer's or Warmages with Adamantine Body since asside from that one in three spells will fail having a armor equal to a fighter in full plate at first level cant be beat!

If this was ironic then you are agreeing with us.
If this was not ironic then.... thats what... a serious statement?
In fact I can think of a lot of things that would be better for a caster than a 35% arcane spell failure and +8 AC.

If you really beleive this is true I encourage you to give all your arcane spell casters heavy armor proficiency. I would love to find out how many of them actualy put on any sort of plate mail.
Warforged are quite powerful. But its not like the fact that the -5 to balance is not a non-proficency penalty is some how "pushing them over the top".

Incidentally I started playing my character today. As expected an enthusiastic use of scrolls (and a couple of good rolls assisted by action points) was really the difference between being useless and not.
And infuse item really does eat up a lot of xp huh... but when you need to be a dwarf it was where it was at.

I am seriously considering taking Skill Focus "Use Magical Device" next level.
Thanks for all your help!(esp Patryn)

 

[Zephyrus]

If this was ironic then you are agreeing with us.
If this was not ironic then.... thats what... a serious statement?
In fact I can think of a lot of things that would be better for a caster than a 35% arcane spell failure and +8 AC.

I exchanged a few e-mails with Keith on a different group and while I dont exactly agree he made a very good argument of it. I think the thing I found the most interesting was that the reason he knew about WotC Dev's stance on it was because he tried pretty much the exact thing for an RPGA character. In his e-mail he commented that it was badly worded and thus was why he wanted the Dev Teams offical stance. Some of his other comments on warforged also gave me a bit of insight on them as well that I found interesting.

I still feel that it might have better done as ACP, I wont dispute it anymore as the insights pointed out provide, although unusual, are sufficient checks and balences that its not as bad as I thought. I'm not above admitting that my information was incomplete and as a result biased my view heavily.

Taking Skill Focus UMD at 3rd is definitly a good idea as a Artificer (Warforged or not, but expecially for warforged due to their hit in CHA). Magical Affinity is also a good feat. If you find yourself particularly fond of Scrolls dont forget to add in the Synergies from other skills once you get 5 Ranks.

If you have Race's of Eberron you should have a look at the Warforged Artificer Racial substitution Levels as their are some good things to be had their. Also, Magic of Eberron just came out and their are alot of nifty goodies in their as well including an infusion that can add a metamagic to a scroll and also several new Homoculous (as a Scout type Warforged taking both a hit in STR and size Small causing a hit in carrying capacity the new Packmate Homoculous might be right up your ally).

Good luck in your game.